The unsettling possibility raised by quantum gravity is that time may not be a basic ingredient of reality. It may be something that emerges only inside the universe, from entanglement, entropy, and relationships between physical systems — while the deeper quantum structure underneath may have no ticking clock at all.

The unsettling possibility in quantum gravity is not just that our clocks might be inaccurate. It is that the clock may not belong in the deepest description at all. In ordinary life, time feels like the background condition for everything else. Events happen in it. Clocks measure it. Causes seem to move through it. Even [...] The post The unsettling possibility raised by quantum gravity is that time may not be a basic ingredient of reality. It may be something that emerges only inside the unive