Time Specifically Present

[DJBruce]

I am not sure where to put this so I will put this in General Science. If it belongs in a different sub-forum then I apologize in advance.

 

I have been thinking about the three parts of time past present and future. Past and future seem relatively simple to define but I have been struggling to find a definition of present. I mean if I say this is present by the time I am done saying that it has all happened in the past. And we see everything in the past because even though light is incredible fast it take the light sometime to reach our eyes from what ever it hit. So what we see is actually in the past.

 

Also I have been thinking that when if I looked at the night sky and all of a sudden say a new star to me that star just came to being in my present, but someone closer to the star would have seen it earlier and so it came to being in his present which would be my past. So are there two presents? So my question is what does science have to say about the present?

[Gilded]

I don't think there is a very good scientifical and precise definition of the present/"now". It's a rather philosophical concept. It is also a biological thing, if we assume that it's just the chemistry and neural activity of the brain that makes us perceive linear time and such a thing as the present.

 

If we look at this from a physical relativistic viewpoint there's no such thing as an absolute present time. To quote Einstein: "People like us, who believe in physics, know that the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion."