Space-time is a map of happenings, not a real object. Understanding this distinction clears up confusion about time.
Whether or not space-time exists should not be considered controversial or even conceptually difficult once we are clear on the meanings of “space-time,” “events,” and “instants.” Believing in the existence of space-time is no more viable than holding onto the old notion of a celestial sphere: both are observer-centered models that are powerful and convenient for describing the world, but neither represents reality itself.
Still, from the perspectives of modern physics, philosophy, popular science communication, and even science fiction, stating that space-time does not exist remains a provocative claim.
But what would it mean for a world where everything that has ever happened or will happen somehow “exists” now as part of an interwoven fabric?
Events are not locations
It is tempting to imagine past events — such as losing a tooth or hearing good news — as if they continue to exist elsewhere. Time travel stories reinforce this idea, portraying the past and future as destinations that can be accessed or altered with the right technology.
Philosophers often talk this way too. Eternalism says all events across all time exist. The growing block view suggests the past and present exist while the future will come to be. Presentism says only the present exists, while the past used to exist and the future will when it happens. And general relativity presents a four-dimensional continuum that bends and curves — we tend to imagine that continuum of the events as really existing.
The confusion emerges out of the definition of the word “exist.” With space-time, it’s applied uncritically to a mathematical description of happenings — turning a model into an ontological theory on the nature of being.
A totality
In physics, space-time is the continuous set of events that happen throughout space and time — from here to the furthest galaxy, from the Big Bang to the far future. It is a four-dimensional map that records and measures where and when everything happens. In physics, an event is an instantaneous occurrence at a specific place and time.
An instant is the three-dimensional collection of spatially separated events that happen “at the same time” (with relativity’s usual caveat that simultaneity depends on one’s relative state of rest).
Space-time is the totality of all events that ever happen.
It’s also our most powerful way of cataloguing the world’s happenings. That cataloguing is indispensable, but the words and concepts we use for it matter.
There are infinitely many points in the three dimensions of space, and at every instant as time passes a unique event occurs at each location.
Positionings throughout time
Physicists describe a car traveling straight at constant speed with a simple space-time diagram: position on one axis, time on the other. Instants stack together to form a two-dimensional space-time. The car’s position is a point within each instant, and those points join to form a worldline — the full record of the car’s position throughout the time interval, whose slope is the car’s speed.
Real motion is far more complex. The car rides along on a rotating Earth orbiting the sun, which orbits the Milky Way as it drifts through the local universe. Plotting the car’s position at every instant ultimately requires four-dimensional space-time.
Space-time is the map of where and when events happen. A worldline is the record of every event that occurs throughout one’s life. The key question is whether the map — or all the events it draws together at once — should be said to exist in the same way that cars, people, and the places they go exist.
Objects exist
Consider what “exist” means. Objects, buildings, people, cities, planets, galaxies exist — they are either places or occupy places, enduring there over intervals of time. They persist through changes and can be encountered repeatedly.
Treating occurrences as things that exist smuggles confusion into our language and concepts. When analyzing space-time, do events, instants, worldlines or even space-time as a whole exist in the same sense as places and people? Or is it more accurate to say that events happen in an existing world?
On that view, space-time is the map that records those happenings, allowing us to describe the spatial and temporal relationships between them.
Space-time does not exist
Events do not exist; they happen. Consequently, space-time does not exist. Events happen everywhere throughout the course of existence, and the occurrence of an event is categorically different from the existence of anything — whether object, place, or concept.
First, there is no empirical evidence that any past, present, or future event “exists” in the way that things in the world around us exist. Verifying the existence of an event as an ongoing object would require something like a time machine to go and observe it now. Even present events cannot be verified as ongoing things that exist.
In contrast, material objects exist. Time-travel paradoxes rest on the false premise that events exist as revisitable locations. Recognizing the categorical difference between occurrence and existence resolves these paradoxes.
Second, this recognition reframes the philosophy of time. Much debate over the past century has treated events as things that exist. Philosophers then focus on their tense properties: is an event past, present, or future? Did this one occur earlier or later than that one?
These discussions rely on an assumption that events are existent things that bear these properties. From there, it’s a short step to the conclusion that time is unreal or that the passage of time is an illusion, on the identification that the same event can be labeled differently from different standpoints. But the ontological distinction was lost at the start: events don’t exist, they happen. Tense and order are features of how happenings relate within an existing world, not properties of existent objects.
Finally, consider relativity. It is a mathematical theory that describes a four-dimensional space-time continuum, and not a theory about a four-dimensional thing that exists — that, in the course of its own existence, bends and warps due to gravity.
Conceptual clarity
Physics can’t actually describe space-time itself as something that actually exists, nor can it account for any change it might experience as an existing thing.
Space-time provides a powerful description of how events happen: how they are ordered relative to one another, how sequences of events are measured to unfold, and how lengths are measured in different reference frames. If we stop saying that events — and space-time — exist, we recover conceptual clarity without sacrificing a single prediction.
Written by Daryl Janzen, Observatory Manager and Instructor, Astronomy, University of Saskatchewan.
Adapted from an article originally published in The Conversation.
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115 Comments
This whole semantic acrobatics reminds me of a quote by some bloke that was commiting perjury before a Senate commission: “That depends on what your definition of ‘is’ is”.
Quaint considering the guy occupying the oval today is literally a traitor to the country who should be in Leavenworth until he’s gone
Take your meds please.
It’s complicated. But yet, I agree with with it.
“Sound” matters it holds a place in time that is.
thank you for an excellent analysis.
What do you use?
I have always have said that past present and future , particularly future doesn’t exist..thoupresent and what we called future its either an extended part of the present as past is actually the present. Contradictory yes ! because if there is no movement none of them will be realized. Ex a rock has no past or future its an inert matter as everything else around it unless there interaction between itself and others including movement.
All other is an illusion of the mind to organize it presence among them. Biological beings are a decaying matter ageing programed to dissapear as it was borne .
Can the past be undone , no can the future be stopped yes ..the present determine one or the other. Space therefore is there but doesn’t or exist or has nothing to do with time thou ..movement
yes perception human mind . The question remains what about movement, exist and it’s dimensional others that can be piece apart by events ..oh well
I took my medications heavily drggd.
Thank you.
The now is what ever one conceives/perceives “now” to be and is already the futures past.
I agree, but, to be fair, most of the oval office occupiers, from both sides of the aisle, were traitors to the country, opting to serve the Wall Street instead of We The People.
Facts.
Small little snag… If events don’t exist, then the event of attracting doesn’t exist, which means the force that does the non existent attracting doesn’t exist, and we call that force gravity.
Either events exist, or gravity needs a new definition.
Existence is what concious minds deal with. A rock doesn’t have an Existential crisis. Also gravity isn’t a force, its a pseudoforce in genrelativity. Its curvature, and things roll down hills of potential energy, it’s their nature. Like water flowing downhill. These are ontological conversations and also dealing with straightening out prescriptive or descriptive concepts and descriptions of nature. Its a philosophy of science thing rather than a math and physics statement
You people agree on what your latest, favored news reporters told you. Once you realize that the ideas you’ve been holding, were silly kid things that, as a process of growing, you are constantly advancing from, then you’ll realize you are not considering what you have yet to learn. You are minus your own (future) wisdom.
But you won’t hear it from your friends nor media sources.
Oh please elaborate on anything he has done that is traitorous?
He spearheaded a literal coup in 2020.
He is using the military as police.
He is weaponizing the justice department.
He is actively working to criminalize speech he doesn’t agree with, and has used his administration to censor TV, universities, and scientific journals. People have actually been arrested for criticizing him.
And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. You should try getting your information from credible sources instead of maga-cult echo chambers on social media. You might actually learn something.
I have some new theories.
100%!!!!!!
What does any of this trash talk have to do with a scientific and philosophical rendered publication.
Writer must be short on brainpower.
I agree, hence, when an object is altered, the only way to put it back is to alter it again. So inside the black hole, can’t alter anything, entropy is nil.
That “define ‘is’” testimony made to Congress was by former POTUS Bill Clinton.
The author alleges that there is a difference between and object and an event, as if an object is some permanent, inert or fixed, thing. There are no things, and there are no objects. What we call a thing or object is really an event disguised as an object. On the smallest level it’s constantly in motion, and impossible to fully pinpoint. If an event is described as something that is changing or transforming, then nothing is actually the same from one nanosecond to the next.
I call it the subjectivity of the objectiveness.
In order to describe anything some points of reference are needed …this is logical,not speculation, or magic.
We are already bearing results of ever relativistic nature of so -called soft sciences.
It would be unforgivable if we let it happen to physics!
As knowledge and instrumental or AI methods evolve, we will , undoubtedly differently interpret the time and space, or their derivatives. Let’s the discussion not be resolved into medieval scholastica , we are in 2025.
This essay belongs under the heading of philosophy, not physics. Ontology: “Study of the nature of being, becoming, existence or reality, as well as the basic categories of being and their relations (philosophy).”
(Another more humorous definition: Of or relating to the argument for the existence of X holding that the existence of the concept of X entails the existence of X.)
100% no clarity gained.
Correct.
The other two commenters on this article are absolute buffoons. Daryl Janzen is one of the few people who gets this right. Spacetime os not fundamental. It is not the stage on which everything happens. The ONLY things that actually exist are quantum fields who interact with each other. Quantum interactions give rise to the emergent phenomenon we know colloquially as space-time. This is why physicists have such a hard time reconciling QFT with GR. They’ve had all the pieces to the puzzle for decades. But they, like the buffoons who commented before me, are unwilling to accept the truth that everything we know about the universe points us to. They are closed-minded fools, and this is why we have not made any progress in the fundamentals of physics since the 1980s.
Am I the only one who thinks this was written by ChatGPT? Way too many em dashes
No, I wrote it.
I’m happy to have the opportunity to say this directly to you:
All my life I’ve been fascinated with the subject but always felt a bit left out that I couldn’t quite ‘get’ the connection between my observable world and the one that’s been described by physicists, astronomers et al. You have cleared up my inability to reconcile them. Thank you.
Thank you very much for taking the time to say so. I really appreciate it!
Agree completely.
My autocorrect inserts dashes here, there, and everywhere it deems fit. But I assure you, every comment I leave on the internet has been written entirely by me. That being said, there’s every possibility that some lazy tool fired up ChatGPT, or as I like to call it, technological linguistic de-evolution. I swear I can hear trillions of screams as brain cells die all across this planet every time someone uses that friggin app… Some of which are mine each time someone “validates their argument” by saying, “According to ChatGPT,” or “Well, ChatGPT says…” As if it’s the end-all be-all source of knowledge like a modern-day Oracle at Delphi. smh
Time IS an illusion… if it is anything, it’s the DISTANCE between events, as well as the ORDER of those events. Both have been underestimated in physics & astronomy equations.
Agreed.
Again an article that is more and more in sync with the virtual topology arguments as informally described in the Time Hybrids book of Fred Van Oystaeyen.
Honestly I was kind of thinking the same thing it just has that vibe of someone or something that is speaking with authority while having to much confidence on a subject it doesn’t truely know everything about and further more the response given to your comment provided by the author “No, I wrote it” is the exact reaction you would get from something attempting to speak in an authoritative tone to coercively try to convince you or anybody else reading this to believe it and would be asking anyone to do so blindly when not providing any evidence or stating any references to Prior work that could support the claim of being genuine it is precisely what it or any other one in the same would be expected to do
I seem to remember taking part in a metaphysics discussion on the space/time continuum complete with wormholes and the theory that something occurring in the present also occurred in the past… since every moment of now becomes an event happening in the past. There was also a possibility that a race is never actually won since there is always a minuscule amount of space left to complete. Bertrand Russel agreed it was a matter of ontology.. our language was not descriptive enough.
They are far from having all the pieces to any puzzle. Life is an adventure not a puzzle. Nor is it a fill in the blank.. it’s about bringing glory to God through Christ Jesus. And far as everything else it is meaningless it’s chasing the wind. But if you dedicate yourselves everything expands further and further. There is no end that’s what people don’t realize. There are no paradoxes only anomalies or unknown, and quite a bit of that. Fundamental? Yes we have me and university of northern California contributed to what Jesus gave me that lead the university to discover each element has a positive or negative charge to it.
To God be the glory.
There is no god, lol.
Prove it
“TIME: the interval between events.”, High School Physics, meaning the extremely brief instance of nothing, results equivalent, to the nothing, beyond this, universal extent, and/or universal extents, constantly, occuring, throughout the universe, when mutual annihilations of impacting neutrinos occur, before the space is as nearly as rapidly, filling it; though, there are multiple examples of this, kind of instant nothingness and examples, like them, only not as completely the absences as instant nothingnesses, as mutual annihilations of impacting neutrinos; rather, variations of the expressions, black holes the opposites of them, also. ” spacetime”?! Time is expression of spaces, “intervals”, as completely, as between two widely separated universes, each universe it’s own time unit, made up of, instant, ever so brief, “intervals”, -between, not needing the other, to conform, to an, ” interval”, with that space, between universes, if any others, to qualify as, ” time units”, as a quantity, an endless quantity? Length, width, height and, between each expression, instances of nothing, results of countless mutual annihilations of neutrinos, like that, nothing, beyond a universe.
The only buffoon here is you, my son, for taking all of this way too seriously.
The math describing a 4D spacetime continuum was published 120 years ago. People have been testing it experimentally ever since, and there hasn’t been a single case where the math has ever been wrong.
That makes a very strong case that the author (and those agreeing with him) don’t know wtf they’re talking about.
Mathematics is a form of language which, like all language, has the purpose of describing the world with terminology relevant to the particular situations being described. IMO the article’s author is simply correct to point out that “spacetime” is a mathematically defined mental construct which allows physicists to make useful statements and accurate predictions about objects and events which are not observable to the naked human senses. By that I mean things too small, to big, to far distant, to fast, or too slow for our naked senses to keep track of. Numbers and other mathematical objects are needed to express and objectively record amounts discovered by measurements and to allow comparisons of relative amounts, sizes, etc.
Mathematical objects and operators are (words) needed to make predictions on the basis of mathematical structures which have been found to successfully _represent_ particular real world objects and their properties. But, as with all other words, they are mental behaviours _about_ the things they represent; they are not the things themselves (“Ceci n’est pas une pipe”).
In summary, mathematics is descriptive language, _not_ ontology.
Agree. I keep trying to make this point. No matter how we probe the universe, all we find is fields and particles doing their thing. The only places we find mathematics are in our heads or things we constructed. Mathematics works extremely well to predict paths and events, but it is a model, not the world. And theoretical physicists seem to have lost touch with this.
Have you ever taken a physics class? Or any kind of collegiate science class having to do with how to develop a hypothesis and the process where a hypothesis becomes a theory? My guess is no, judging by the fact that you don’t seem to understand that when a prediction is confirmed with observational and experimental data, repeatedly, over a long period of time – means the prediction was correct.
If spacetime didn’t exist as Einstein described it, then we wouldn’t see things like gravitational lensing, as mass warps said spacetime – causing the light traveling through it to bend.
The math made the predictions, and observation confirmed it (MANY times).
“Mathematics is descriptive language…”
And Einstein’s “descriptive language” regarding spacetime being a 4D contiuum have held up to 120 years of testing, and hasn’t been wrong yet. His math made predictions that have been confirmed time and time again with observational and experimental data. Ergo, his description of space being a 4D continuum IS correct, and the author – who is claiming that a 4D spacetime does NOT exist – is blatantly wrong. The way you disprove math is with better math. Not “trust me bro” – which is what the author’s argument boils down to given as he didn’t provide a single shred of evidence to back his claims.
Michael, I think you are missing the point. The point is summed up in the aphorism/rubric(?): The map is not the territory. This applies to the whole of our subjective awareness of _being here now_. I am not saying that either of Einsteinian relativity or the main body of QM has failed in terms of Popper’s falsifiability criterion. What I _am_ saying is that QM and GR/SR seem to contradict each other on at least one fundamental issue, ie “instantaneity” (across potentially infinite distances) for QM versus “speed of light” (c) being an absolute limit, per relativity, to the rate of spread of any kind of causal influence.
There are perhaps other contradictions between those two eminently successful descriptive systems but I am neither a mathematician nor a scientist so can’t speak to them. I am therefore at liberty to conjecture that maybe the seeming disjuction between QM and GR/SR could be due to one or more ontological assumptions they both embody. For example “c”, the so called speed of light is currently taken to be the fastest possible speed of _anything at all_ which is actually not provable. What _is_ proved to every reasonable person’s satisfaction is that c is the fastest speed we humans can measure. But c could instead by the speed of gravity or the vacuum, such that anything in contact with gravity/vacuum is limited to c but things not directly in contact with the vacuum might have hugely greater intrinsic internal speeds.
Speakers of the language of QM cannot (currently at least) countenance such an idea because the quantum force fields are taken to be properties of “space-time” rather than intrinsically separate entities. This entails that they necessarily overlap or merge in the sense that any particular “infinitesimal point” of space-time can be occupied by the current strength of each or all of the respective vectors. That idea is very problematic ontologically because it requires space-time to be more than merely the sum of its contents at any particular point.
From an ontological perspective it makes _much more_ sense to see that for any thing which truly exists there must be an order of magnitude and structure at which it is what it is and _not anything else_! If we consider the QM force fields in this light it becomes possible that particles, so called, are actually locations where the separately existing Strong, Electro, Weak, and Gravity/Vacuum are variously wrapped or twisted around one another. It then further becomes possible that Fermions are knots (Qnots?) or entanglements involving a node, ie a point of connection, of at least three filaments of one of them. Bosons on the other hand could just be places where a wave of simply twisted filaments of Strong, Electro, or Weak, travel through the vacuum.
Well space exists but time does not exist ! They should have said that because time is just a measurement we invented based on earth orbiting on its axis and Earth orbiting around the Sun . If Mars was our planet and Earth wasn’t inhabitable , then are measurement invention of time would be very different from what it is now .
What would our astronomical unit be then ? Everything would be different .
Time does not exist but distance or space as we call it does exist along with , light and it’s constant . So if you look at the theory of relativity , there is no variable for time because it does not exist . Einstein knew this when he developed that theory .
I’m beginning to wonder if this guy who was talking this level of physics back at the turn of 1900s didn’t have something to do with everything or not!
This talk of four dimensions although it exists, we could never see . The fourth dimension is another axis after the Z axis that is always hidden going away from us as we look at three dimensions .
We would actually have a better chance of seeing six dimensions (or things in 6 dimensions or multiples divisible by 3) as a reflection of three dimensions then we would seeing a fourth dimension in my opinion .
I had to post again because I couldn’t delete the previous comment that was incomplete or edit it .
Well space exists but time does not exist ! They should have said that because time is just a measurement we invented based on earth orbiting on its axis and Earth orbiting around the Sun . If Mars was our planet and Earth wasn’t inhabitable , then are measurement invention of time would be very different from what it is now .
What would our astronomical unit be then ? Everything would be different .
Time does not exist but distance or space as we call it does exist along with , mass, light and it’s constant along with gravity and other related forces. So if you look at the theory of relativity , there is no variable for time because it does not exist .
Einstein knew this when he developed that theory .
I’m beginning to wonder if this guy who was talking this level of physics back at the turn of 1900s didn’t have something to do with everything or not!
This talk of four dimensions although it exists, we could never see . The fourth dimension is another axis after the Z axis that is always hidden going away from us as we look at three dimensions .
We would actually have a better chance of seeing six dimensions (or things in 6 dimensions or multiples divisible by 3) as a reflection of three dimensions then we would seeing a fourth dimension in my opinion .
Quote from the article:
Finally, consider relativity. It is a mathematical theory that describes a four-dimensional space-time continuum, and not a theory about a four-dimensional thing that exists — that, in the course of its own existence, bends and warps due to gravity.
Ok then why were machines build to detect such bending and warping ?
Why some scientist are even convinced they had detect such phenomenas ?
The theory isn’t the space-time fabric and this fabric was never directly observed but to conclude therefore the non-existing of this fabric is false.
If he’s right he should do more than say Because I Say So in as many words as possible.
I am but an humble retired antenna engineer, but my question is, if you can accurately describe an event (a happening) is that description a thing, or isn’t it? IOW, how is it that information is sometimes merely ephemeral?
OTOH, if you cannot accurately describe an event, how can you objectively say it is happening? If it cannot be described, how is it “science?”
These are interesting questions, Mark. In short, yes of course I think a description is a thing. But the map is not the territory. The record of whatever signals you detect with your antennas aren’t the radio waves themselves, right? You can plot the measurements you make over time, say on something like a strip chart, but that strip chart isn’t the actual signal you detected. Photons existed, some interaction with electrons occurred, and a measurement was made. Does that help, or just confuse things more?
Photons are a descriptor of energy and there are no ‘electrons’ This is what soon shall be an artifact of physics – which is a science of an empty area (like a physics classroom), where little science experiments are presented – bouncing balls, etc – electrons are the imagined planets going around a nucleus as an imagined sun (Rutherford). Quarks are an imagined set of three balls held together with Glons – but there are no gluons and no little balls held together by them.
There are stats attributed to high energy called 1st, 2nd, 3rd Generation Quarks – but they are energy smears (in stats) after nuclei have been smeared apart in Accelerator experiments. They are high-energy smears that are not a part of any nucleus – as the nucleus was utterly destroyed to produce them.
Assuming the instant of the Big Bang is “0” and one were to conceive of one second prior to and one second after…
Devide by one half the negitive and the positive seconds to get
-.5 and positive .5, the do it again, and again, and againfrom the Big Bang til now, and we would would still have not reached Zero. How quick in passing is the present? How small can a division of a second be? And does not everything in the entire universe experience this passing of the transition between past and future universally?-not the observation, which is never quick enough to enough to keep up with the transition of the instant. But is only a memorial or image of a particular instant that has already past.
It must be explicitly stated: Incompressibility, inviscidity, and isotropy are attributes describing the characteristics of a physical entity. The “absolute space” or “ideal fluid background” possessing these characteristics is fundamentally distinct from the “nothingness” or “non-existence” discussed in philosophy.
The inviscid-incompressible space paradigm imposes critical constraints on future theoretical frameworks:
a. Topological Renormalization: Linking micro-macro spacetime properties.
b. Defect-Mediated Interactions: Redefining matter-antimatter coupling mechanisms.
c. Educational Reformulation: Demarcating scientific epistemology’ s boundaries.
——Excerpted from https://zhuanlan.zhihu.com/p/1933828835322856603.
The framework of Space Phase Transitions (SPT) revolutionizes our understanding of:
a. Material States: Topological reclassification of phase diagrams.
b. Cosmic Architecture: Vortex-driven large-scale structure formation.
c. Fundamental Laws: Emergent spacetime symmetries from defect networks.
d. Pedagogical integration of geometric intuition into physics instruction.
This is one of the most poorly informed pieces I’ve ever read on this topic. Your arguments are also entirely non-scientific and rely on the very philosophy you seem to decry at the same time throughout this article. It is incredibly telling about your understanding of the topic when you’re making absolute statements about reality with an inherently incomplete (and likely incompletable) data set, while relying on intrinsically philosophical arguments for the basis of your claims.
I must also join those that are suspicious of this being written by AI (or at the very least assisted by AI), as the amount of emdashes you use would give anyone with proper literacy an aneurysm. It’s also the #1 telltale of the presence of AI in literature. Either it was AI or you need a refresher on formatting and how to write fluidly. You should not be having this many stops in the middle of your statements, it isn’t creating the emphasis you likely believe it does.
Thank you for browsing and commenting. Nevertheless, you are still much more honest than those hypocritical gentlemen.
In today’s physics, some so-called peer-reviewed journals—including Physical Review Letters, Nature, Science, and others—stubbornly insist on and promote the following:
1. Even though θ and τ particles exhibit differences in experiments, physics can claim they are the same particle. This is science.
2. Even though topological vortices and antivortices have identical structures and opposite rotational directions, physics can define their structures and directions as entirely different. This is science.
3. Even though two sets of cobalt-60 rotate in opposite directions and experiments reveal asymmetry, physics can still define them as mirror images of each other. This is science.
4. Even though vortex structures are ubiquitous—from cosmic accretion disks to particle spins—physics must insist that vortex structures do not exist and require verification. Only the particles that like God, Demonic, or Angelic are the most fundamental structures of the universe. This is science.
5. Even though everything occupies space and maintains its existence in time, physics must still debate and insist on whether space exists and whether time is a figment of the human mind. This is science.
6. Even though space, with its non-stick, incompressible, and isotropic characteristics, provides a solid foundation for the development of physics, physics must still insist that the ideal fluid properties of space do not exist. This is science.
and go on.
Is this the counterintuitive science they widely promote? What are the shames? Contemporary physics and so-called peer-reviewed publications (including Physical Review Letters, Science, Nature, etc.) stubbornly believe that two sets of counter rotating cobalt-60 are two mirror images of each other, constructing a more shocking pseudoscientific theoretical framework in the history of science than the “geocentric model”. This pseudo scientific framework and system have seriously hindered scientific progress and social development.
For nearly a century, physics has been manipulated by this pseudo scientific theoretical system and the interest groups behind it, wasting a lot of manpower, funds, and time. A large amount of pseudo scientific research has been conducted, and countless pseudo scientific papers have been published, causing serious negative impacts on scientific and social progress, as well as humanistic development.
Fortunately, not every member of the public is gullible. Topology is reconfiguring the cognitive framework of modern civilization. With the gradual refinement of artificial intelligence (AI), we are no longer entirely reliant on mediated deception by some so-called peer-reviewed publications (including Physical Review Letters, Science, Nature, etc.). We now possess the means to leverage AI’s efficiency to enhance scientific rigor and productivity.
The arbitraryness of the measurement of space and time is significant, in measuring the “distance” of a coastline the granularity of measure is important. Are you an ant walking from the top of one scyscraper to another? Or are you a giant crossing the divide in one stride?
1. God Is Not Bound by Time
In Scripture, time is part of creation — and therefore subject to God, not the other way around.
Genesis 1:1 – “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.”
→ Time began at creation. Before that, there was no “beginning” to measure.
2 Peter 3:8 – “With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day.”
→ God exists beyond the clock. Human measures of time don’t apply to Him.
Revelation 22:13 – “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End.”
→ God encompasses all time — past, present, future — simultaneously.
So yes — God can visit any moment He desires, because for Him, every moment is equally present.
He doesn’t “travel” through time like us; He sees all of it at once.
2. Human Science Describes Creation — Not the Creator
Physicists like Daryl Janzen or Einstein describe how things work inside the universe.
But the universe itself is inside God’s reality.
So when someone says, “Space-time doesn’t exist,” they’re describing the map of happenings within creation — not making a statement about the infinite Creator who holds that map.
Even Einstein admitted:
> “The problem of God is too vast for our limited minds.
Modern physics might outline how events happen, but not why or who gives them meaning.
And that’s where revelation — not relativity — begins to speak.
3. Why Human “Certainty” Fails
Many scientists speak as if knowledge can replace wonder. But what they really reveal is their faith in human reason — a kind of religion of its own.
They can’t comprehend how an eternal Being could act outside time, so they dismiss it as impossible — not realizing their own logic was built inside time.
It’s like a fish trying to explain the ocean from inside a bowl.
God isn’t in the timeline — the timeline is in God.
4. Faith Restores the Missing Dimension
Science can describe the shadow of reality — the measurable, finite side.
Faith reveals the substance — the infinite, relational side where God moves freely.
To God, every prayer, every act of love, every sin, every miracle — all are simultaneously known and redeemable.
That’s how Christ’s sacrifice on the cross could cover all time — past, present, and future — in one eternal act of love.
—
> Human science can describe how events happen,
but only God knows why they happen.
Time is the stage.
God is the Author — and the Author isn’t trapped inside His own story.
There are so many scientific and historical errors (and blatant doctrinal contradictions) in the bible, that it is impossible to be the word of any god. The “god” of the bible is a fucking idiot who doesn’t know anything about the animals he supposedly created, or the earth he supposedly created, or the history of the people he supposedly created (and so on and so forth). How the hell can people still believe the nonsense in that book when it’s been conclusively disproven like a million times?
Grow up! Your imaginary friend doesn’t exist, and your religion is BS. Just like every other religion.
Historical errors? Go ahead and name 3 that are supported by secular historians that are not in dispute, but are 100% certain it happened contrary to what it said. I’ll wait.
I feel like I should mention that I was a christian for a long time. I even went to school to be a preacher. And unlike the vast majority of christians, I have actually read the entire bible. Multiple times, and using multiple versions (KJV, NIV, etc). I have also studied at secular schools that teach REAL science and history. You’ll never beat me in a religious debate, because I actually know wtf I’m talking about. My sources can be verified, unlike the claims you hear from your pastor/christian friends.
1.) There was no global flood that killed all of humanity.
2.) The Egyptians never kept a large population of Hebrew slaves.
3.) “The 10 plagues of Egypt” never happened.
4.) There was never a large exodus out of Egypt.
5.) No large population of people wandered around in the desert between Egypt and “the promised land” for 40 years.
For a god who is supposedly omniscient, he sure doesn’t know much about the history of the people he supposedly created/knows “everything” about.
Here’s 5:
There was never a global flood, the egyptians never kept a large number of hebrew slaves, egypt never got hit with 10 plagues, there was never a mass exodus from egypt, and there was never a large amount of people wandering the desert between egypt and palestine for 40 years.
And that’s just the first 5 books of the OT, lol.
Since christianity is built on the belief that the bible is completely infallible, only one historic or scientific error is all that is necessary to disprove the entire book.
You disprove your own point. You’re right in that man does not know whether some higher dimensional creator is directly or indirectly responsible for our universe’s existence. But that is why using quotations from a relatively modern book written by man, personifying a theoretical creator, is simply silly. It makes no sense. What you call faith is willful ignorance.
My brain hurts!
When lightning occurs, the event happens and continue to exist at least till we observe it. If we never discovered the speed of light, the event would exist for even longer through our definition of the speed of sound. It is the lack of understanding of space-time as something tangible that will drive us to its discovery.
It’s a beautiful Sunday morning, so when I read something like “space-time is a map of happenings, not a real object”, I don’t bother myself to read any further… The author has obviously a total misconception about what is probably the most important issue of Theoretical Cosmology and treats space-time as the obsolete Cartesian field of Newtonian mechanics. Even Einstein, despite his philosophical objections with Quantum Theory, had a firm belief that someday will shall prove that space-time itself is quantum. Regardless, as I said I won’t bother myself much, I just dread on the fact that these are the “scientific” concepts that are taught in a University. Maybe, one should stick to what they actually know and are good at, instead of trying to Neil-Degrasse-Tyson about everything…! Just saying…
Everything that was ever claimed by anyone in the name of relativity is pure nonsense. MMX didn’t prove the aether didn’t exist any more than it proved the vacuum didn’t exist. All it did was prove that the aether did not appear to slow down the velocity of light. (vacuum if you will for those orthodox believers) And if theorists back then and now had been a bit brighter they would have realised this without the need for any mirrored experiments. Because if lightspeed was impeded, so too would have been the Planets. The universe would have ground to a stop.
“Everything that was ever claimed by anyone in the name of relativity is pure nonsense.”
Except we have 120 years of experiments and observational evidence that says otherwise. Einstein’s math hasn’t been shown to be incorrect a single time in 120 years. Kinda hard for “nonsense” to never be wrong a single time in over a century, lol.
120 years of fact free spin at best. Sag x and M87 “ black holes” accretion discs are both face on . Chances of one being face on is small. Chances of two are so small it’s fantasy only. Even NASA admitted having the only two confirmed BH images both being face on is an very unusual coincidence.
Regarding experiment. It’s the claims relativists make to bolster up the their religion which are nonsense. They claim Sagnac and Ives Stillwell experiments cannot be explained by a classical model where light is always and only ever at c relative to its source. And then to prove a classical model with light only at c relative to the source can’t predict the offsets observed in these experiments the relativists make the maths in their calculation for classical based on….a false assumption that light travels at variable speeds relative to the source in a classical model!!! No wonder relativists think only relativity can model these experiments. They fix the game and falsify the predictions for the classical competion. The lists of relativist nonsense goes on and on and on and on..
Yes, spacetime does not exist. That means we have to return back to Newtonian physics, where space and time act as arena. Newton viewed light as particles. If light is a stream of rotating particle pairs, it can show wave properties and will be dragged by gravitational fields. So neither aether nor spacetime is required for explaining the speed of light in moving gravitational fields. Light will follow Lorentz- equations, which is used by Einstein.
Except Einstein’s math has held up to 120 years of intense scrutiny, and has never once failed a single test. That’s not true of Newtownian physics.
In other words, you don’t know what you’re talking about. And neither does the author of this article.
The way you disprove math is with better math. Not “trust me bro.”
Thank you, exactly how I see it.
Am I forgetting when quantum physics and general relativity were found to be compatible?
Am I missing where that – in any way – disproves the existance of spacetime?
Am I forgetting where GR has passed every test it’s ever been subjected to in the past 120 years?
Am I forgetting that our technology limits the scales at which we can study gravity, and that as we continue to progress to smaller and smaller scales – GR continues to hold up? We’ve measured gravitational fields in the attonewton range.
Am I forgetting that theories get modified to account for new information – so when we do finally unify GR with QM, it will not mean throwing out GR entirely, but simply modifying it? And that this will not change the predictions of GR regarding a 4D spacetime, as those have been demonstrated by the existance of gravitational lensing? A great example would be how we observe the same super nova blowing up in different locations, at different times. Kind of hard for that to happen if there is no spacetime.
I’m not even so certain that we can say that objects exist, unless we are describing their existence as momentary.
This is hilarious, lol.
The person who wrote this should read more, and talk less. He makes outlandish claims that he doesn’t support with anything except “trust me bro.” That’s not how science works. If you’re going to conclusively state that spacetime doesn’t exist – you had better be able to provide at least some evidence. The author provided no evidence at all.
Einstein published his theory describing spacetime as a 4D continuum 120 years ago. His math has been extensively tested ever since, and it has never failed a single test. Not a single one. In 120 years.
The way you disprove math is with better math. So either provide supporting evidence that you’ve disproven Einstein, or kindly stop acting like you actually know what you’re talking about. Because you clearly don’t.
Time simply is the other 3 dims being “dragged/pulled” thru black matter utilizing dark energy. OK this involves simple concepts but it involves many complications, both mathematical and scientifically/physics based. But I feel it is logic…..
The idea that space and time might not be fundamental, that they might instead be relational or emergent, is one I’ve been circling for years.
But here’s the thing: pointing out the problem is the easy part. The hard part is building a framework that explains what reality actually is once you strip away the scaffolding of space-time. And that’s exactly what I’ve been working on.
So many physicists, me included, would disagree. Truth to be told, we don’t know, but it would have been nice to see a more pronounced use of the conditional in this article.
Perhaps you’d have preferred reading this one first? https://scitechdaily.com/does-space-time-really-exist/
Or even a longer read? https://cosmicave.org/2025/06/29/time-travel-a-five-dimensional-trope/
Or, more specifically regarding relativity? https://cosmicave.org/2025/08/06/albert-einsteins-wild-goose-chase/
Or a more concise version of that? https://cosmicave.org/2025/10/01/did-einstein-misunderstand-relativity/
The intention was not to be terse or uncritically declarative without careful thought and justification considering alternatives, but there’s only so much one can do within a 6-minute read…
Ok, now try using credible sources that provide credible data. Not sites full of unsubstantiated fringe hypotheses.
Sorry bro, but you’re wrong. Einstein’s math has held up to 120 years of intense scrutiny, and has yet to falter.
Find a different career. Seriously. People like you so nothing but spread misinformation, which impedes the progress being made by REAL scientists. You’re about a half step above the flat-earthers.
The existence doesn’t exist either. Now what are we gonna do?
I appreciate the discussion, but as a non physicist with nominalist leanings, I immediately want to challenge the notion that material things exist by ‘persisting’ through time. Concepts of material things persist through time, but the ‘things’ themselves are ever changing and are not the ‘same’ things in a strictly material sense. This has long been a thorn in the side of reasoning (eg was the ever restored ship of Theseus the ‘same’ ship even after every plank and mast had been replaced?the Ancients asked).
Nonetheless I think I can agree that events, if they exist, do so in some other sense than material things. Events, for example, even if you can observe them with your own eyes, are not subject to the laws of physics that physicists tell us govern material things.
Stand on a high hill above the ocean above a broad, sweeping cliff, and watch the swells interact with the swells that have reflected off the rocks. You may see the intersection of the waves with their reflection run like a incredibly speedy zipper for miles. If conditions are just right, and the waves and reflections approach parallel, that zipper, a visible nose of interaction, an ‘event’ can move faster than the speed of light, and appear to reverse direction.
Unfortunately this node isn’t of much practical use — we can’t use it to send any information that wasn’t already present in the wave prior to intersection.
At any rate, this is just background musings on the nature of existence. If material things only persist through time as concepts, I guess we best hope that concepts are not events, or we are enter quite the loop.
Yes, I agree completely that existing things are not identically “the same” at different times. I think Heraclitus said it best, though we’ve only got a few fragments of his musings. And I think Parmenides and his followers made a big giant mess of it all because they failed to recognise the distinction between occurrence and existence. But Heraclitus’s river metaphor does such a perfect job of expressing your point here, in my opinion: you can never step twice into the same river because each time you do it’s different waters that flow past you.
Similarly, I don’t imagine I’m the same person from one moment to the next. Nor that our expanding universe is the same from one moment to the next. Everything in existence is constantly changing; every instant is unique.
But really my main point here is not about that at all. Rather, it’s about the fallacy of imagining events, instants, or even spacetime as a whole are things that DO exist. It’s about putting spacetime in the same false category as some people put the river. They falsely think of the river as a “timeless” thing — it is timelessly the river — failing to see Heraclitus’s point. And they essentially extend that false idea to all of four-dimensional spacetime, thinking of it as “timeless” in the same false sense they might think of a river, failing to recognise that the existence of spacetime, as “all reality”, means something more, in a temporal sense, than just the four-dimensional manifold described by the mathematics.
I’d be quite interested in your thoughts on this previous article I wrote: https://scitechdaily.com/does-space-time-really-exist/
I enjoyed your article and agree that time is but an illusion, and a convenient one at that. But then most of life is a series of illusions, or more properly, mutually agreed upon representations that allow us to communicate with others. However your thesis infers that only entities of mass can truly exist regardless of the status they happen to be in at any one point. It is here that my view differs somewhat from yours. There is a non mass entity that very much exists, constantly evolving and producing both physical and other non mass creations, and that being…human Thought. There is another non mass entity that exists in concept but by its very nature does not truly exist I am talking about space itself. It is actually nothingness within which events occur. Thus the framework of Space Time is a combination of nothingness and an illusion worthy only of passing thought.
The past and the future do exist concurrently, separated by the singularity we refer to as ‘now’. However, the events of the past and future are both mutable, and aren’t fixed in their existence. It only sounds like philosophy.
While I do believe there is a certain amount of genius in this post, almost like Einstein’s thought experiments that led him to discover special relativity, but without our any theoretical or experiment physics that makes such a thought exercise applicable to solving any unsolved problems. The genius of this would lead one to the conclusion that we live in an entirely holographic universe in which ALL stars, galaxies, and solar systems are in a quantum superposition between existence and non-existence, because we only see light that has traveled hundreds of thousands of light-years that causes us to have zero ability to know that there is even one star that still exists. Distance (light-years) ÷ C = Time until Superposition collapses to real existence at a previous time, would be a formula that gives the precise time for each star in which it is no longer in Superposition, and can be empiracally proven to have existed at a specific point in space-time. So if the authors framework for reality is correct, we have zero evidence that anything outside of our solar system that we can observe today had even existed 6000 years ago when the Adam and Eve were allegedly created, since the closest objects outside the solar system are believed to be more than 6000 years old, and we are merely seeing very ancient light from things that occured in the universe back when the dinosaurs ruled this earth. So based on the authors assumptions, if space-time does not exist, then the “Celestial Spheres” model becomes far more relevant because it still describes objects that we know to currently exist, while everything outside our solar system is a holographic projection of ancient intergalactic light. While I do believe that a Theory of Everything must incorporate the author’s point of view, I also believe this point of view has little to no utilitarian value unless it can be backed with verifiable theoretical AND experimental physics. If Space-Time does not exist, then we are back to the Celestial Spheres, with General Relativity being out primary means of perceive that which is beyond our own solar system, except we must begin accounting for the fact that nearly everything we observe in the sky tonight actually happened when the dinosaurs were alive, or much much earlier. So there is no way of concluding with any certainty that there is even one single star that still exists today other than our own sin.
Do authors get vetted to submit here? Or … Can anyone do it? This made no sense. Hinging the idea or notion that is being ‘attacked’ on vague statements of example rather than a single actual example seems purposeful. I think ultimately it could make sense in some odd reality where people thing of things that happen in time as a kind of object. Also, existence is not a material term itself. So no scientific piece should directly attempt to ‘science’ around a borrowed philosophical or metaphysical concept. That would be to make a philosophical argument to begin with. Idk who this article was for…
Space-time does not exist because neither space nor time exist. They are concepts. You cannot measure them precisely. You cannot observe them precisely. They are completely dependent on the observer relative to the observed and their apparent existence changes constantly making any observation or measurement you thought you made/observed incorrect except in the most general of terms and even that won’t hold true forever. Furthermore, if you are aware of the 3-body problem and it’s corresponding chaotic results, you should realize that the universe is an infinite body problem. Nothing in our reality is ever precise.
Space and time does exist and is very measurable. It is best observed through its aberration, gravitational lensing.
If it didn’t exist you would have to explain how light is bent by the gravitational field of the sun, other stars and black holes. Light does not bend. Space time does and so it exists. Quantitively so.
Why do we keep forgetting basic scientific discoveries?
Albert Einstein’s theory of general relativity was famously tested during a solar eclipse on May 29, 1919.
This is over 100 years old and is (I hate to use this phrase) settled science by now.
Exactly! Gravitational lensing is conclusive evidence that spacetime exists. The author of this article doesn’t know wtf he’s talking about.
Neither do frames of refence. We create them in support of an approach methodology, the measurement paradigm. All our current technologies conform to the measurement paradigm
Records are NOT observations. On an experiential level neither frames of reference Nor spacetime exist. So, experiential reality and especially the phenomenon of vision need to be studied in the first person and modeled in order to develop a replacement. We need to adopt an experiential ontology.
I’ve always found it odd that physicists readily assert that a clock in space runs faster (or slower?) due to the lack of gravity, and therefore that time itself passes slower or faster. But you can’t equate a clock with time itself, can you? If I destroy a clock I don’t destroy time, isn’t it.
Time really does more faster or slower depending on mass (and also speed). We know this for a fact. The GPS satellites have to account for that difference in the flow of time, or they’d be completely useless within 24 hours. We have clocks that are sensitive enough to tell the difference in how fast time moving between a person’s attic, and their basement.
*move faster. Sorry for the typo.
What I don’t like is this has all been said before by laypeople who don’t have emails with .edu in them.
If this were submitted by a gmail account, it would get laughed out of review.
Gatekeeper privilege for a grammatical proof.
What has me thinking? Is that even things that seem to us as quick instances such as blowing out a candle only seem fast from our perspective. Considering that everything is always in a state of change our bodies a planet. The universe is always changing on some scale, nothing is actually static ever. On an extremely small scale everything is moving very quickly relative to us. There is really no difference between the time it takes to blow out a candle or for the duration of our planet to exist. It’s just on the scale of time that we perceive. These so-called fast instances Actually could last infinitely long at a small enough scale and therefore they persist just like a building on the street which isn’t actually persisting at all. It is very slowly falling apart at least relative to our time scale. Everything is changing nothing persists. I don’t think this is accurate at all.
This actually backs the Theory that Causality aka Time is motion, the ultimate form of motion, for nothing can happen without Causality. Motion doesn’t exist as its a state in which something that does exist is in. So while the three dimensions of space exists, the so called fourth dimension of Time does NOT exist. Which begs the question what ARE the extra dimensions in our TEN Dimension reality? (Actually there are 26 dimensions but that’s a completely different topic)
So is information destroyed in a black hole or not?
Possibly. Crystal ball cloudy, try again later.
That is how science works.
I’ve never seen so many comments for one article.
This does appear to only be someone’s hypothesis without evidence to prove whether it’s correct.
First of all, I’m no physicist so my two cents might not be worth much; however, I have to take issue with your assertion that there is no empirical evidence of events that exist in the same way objects do. There are several natural phenomena that at the molecular or atomic scale occur as discrete events but on a macro scale are occurring constantly (past, present and future). Radioactive decay, oxidation, nuclear fusion (stars), reversible chemical reactions, and phase transformations are all examples of constantly occurring molecular/atomic scale events that are quantifiable empirically and exhibit predictable behavior. I don’t see how these phenomena can occur but not exist, especially when they are quantifiable and their state in both the past and future can be calculated and predicted respectively. I’m curious to know how these phenomena fit into your definition of existence. Because, from your article, it seems that they don’t, which would severely undermine your argument, as these phenomena certainly do exist.
Wow man wait wat ….huh cool…
now pass the Doobie.
Wow man wait wat ….huh cool…
now pass the Doobie.
Here’s how I KNOW that time exists. I remember the past. I do not remember the future. Oh, yeah. I have photographs and videos, too. I used to be very small. Over TIME I got bigger. I got photos to prove it. They also prove that I exist, too, BTW. And they also prove that everything is NOT happening all at the same time. Absurd.
This entire article and comments are proof of only one thing: overthinking exists.
To correct this article in one sentence.
The mathematical model called space time fabric is maybe (and only maybe) only partially identical or not identical with the phenomena that causes the observations.
The theory doesn’t proof the existence of the fabric but it’s false to postulate therefore the non-existence of the fabric.