Why Einstein Called the Present an Illusion

A month before his own death, Einstein told a grieving family that the line between past, present and future is "a stubbornly persistent illusion." Was that comfort, or physics? This video follows three competing pictures of time: the present-only view we live by, the block universe that relativity seems to point toward, and the growing block that quantum randomness might allow. Along the way: why a distant galaxy's "now" shifts by centuries as Earth orbits the Sun, what that means for free will, and why even an open future may not be one you control. *Sources* Albert Einstein, letter to the Besso family (1955) Hilary Putnam, "Time and Physical Geometry," Journal of Philosophy (1967) Howard Stein, "On Einstein–Minkowski Space-Time," Journal of Philosophy (1968) Rudolf Carnap, "Intellectual Autobiography," in *The Philosophy of Rudolf Carnap*, ed. P. A. Schilpp (1963) C. D. Broad, Scientific Thought (1923) George F. R. Ellis, work on the evolving block universe (2006 onward) Hugh Everett III, the many-worlds interpretation (1957) Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason (1781) Julian Barbour, The End of Time (1999) Carlo Rovelli, The Order of Time (2018)