Time—the tyrant that governs our calendars, alarms, deadlines, and existential anxieties—may not exist in the way we think it does. According to a recent study published in Symmetry, the journal of the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, time is not an independent dimension but an illusion emerging from the geometry of space itself. A consequence, not a cause.

The research, led by mathematical physicist Ishan Sharma of the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, analyzes the deepest symmetries of the universe. For physicists, symmetries are not decorative curiosities; they are clues to the fundamental structure of reality. Sharma’s team proposes that time arises from the interaction of at least three hidden spatial dimensions. In other words: past, present, and future are the shadows cast by a spatial phenomenon our senses cannot directly perceive.

Or more simply: time is a mirage. A projection. A mathematical echo of something larger, deeper, and more complex—something we have not yet learned to see.

The idea is not entirely unprecedented. Thinkers like Julian Barbour, Carlo Rovelli, and Lee Smolin have been questioning time’s autonomy for decades. But Sharma goes further: he suggests that the temporal “flow” we experience is an emergent artifact of how the universe folds, breaks, or reveals its internal symmetries.

If this is correct, time is not equal to space, as Einstein proposed, but secondary to it.

The key lies in “internal symmetries” within particles and their interactions. If the universe is fundamentally described by high-order spatial symmetries, then time is what appears when those symmetries break and produce observable effects.

The “arrow of time”—our stubborn sense of forward motion—may be nothing more than a cognitive interpretation crafted by a brain built to track entropy and change, but incapable of perceiving the higher-dimensional whole.

What does this mean for us ordinary mortals?

Nothing—and everything.

For the average person, these theories probably sound like elegant metaphysics with no practical purpose. But history teaches us the opposite: today’s scientific heresy often becomes tomorrow’s technology. Relativity created GPS. Quantum theory created microprocessors. Electromagnetism created the modern world.

Today’s abstract speculation is tomorrow’s engineering.

But beyond future applications, this theory hits at something deeper: our identity.
If time is an illusion, then the past is not gone, and the future is not “ahead”—both already exist. Every moment is “there,” scattered in a spatial volume we have not learned to navigate. Time is not a line—it is a landscape. A static, eternal geometric present.

Borges would call it the Aleph.

The most striking aspect of Sharma’s claim is not its scientific sophistication but its philosophical resonance. Philosophers from Heraclitus to Augustine to Heidegger agonized over the nature of time. Now, physics advances a disturbing possibility: time, as we experience it, simply does not exist.

Sharma summarizes the idea with ruthless clarity:
“If we understand space correctly, time emerges as a useful illusion, but not as a fundamental ingredient of the universe.”

Maybe the universe is not moving.
Maybe it is we who cannot stay still.

Time as Deception: When Space Decides to Lie to Us

Everyone wants to know what time it is, but no one can explain what time is. Clocks, smartphones, atomic oscillators, Mayan calendars—you name it. All of them measure something that may not exist or that exists only because we lack the perspective to see beyond it.

A study published in Symmetry, from the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, just detonated one of the foundational assumptions of human perception: that time is an autonomous dimension.

Ishan Sharma’s central thesis is as brutal as it is elegant: time is not fundamental. It is emergent. A byproduct of space. A side effect of dimensional interactions.

According to the model, hidden spatial dimensions interact and generate what we perceive as “the present.” Time doesn’t “flow.” Flow is an illusion produced by broken symmetries in a deeper spatial fabric.

Einstein already suspected time wasn’t fully trustworthy. Quantum physicists treat it as a nuisance. Sharma completes the execution: time is not a building block of reality but a cognitive and geometric mirage.

Julian Barbour’s timeless universe, Rovelli’s relational time, Smolin’s evolving laws—all hinted in the same direction. Sharma’s contribution is mathematical: time appears when we misunderstand the shape of space.

Time, then, is our topological ignorance.

Practically speaking, nothing changes. We will continue aging, chasing deadlines, hating Mondays, and resenting alarms. But ontologically, everything collapses: the universe is not something that evolves—it simply is. History doesn’t unfold; it is a spatial structure we explore piece by piece.

“There is no ‘now.’ There are many ‘theres,’” Sharma writes—not poetically but mathematically.

The linearity of time is a biological limitation, not a cosmic property.

Welcome to the eternal present (without you)

This theory doesn’t deny free will, but it destabilizes it. If time is a spatial effect, then decisions may be navigational acts through a pre-existing structure. Like Google Maps without the “avoid highways” button.

Perhaps the past never vanished.
Perhaps the future already happened.
Perhaps death is merely a coordinate change.
Perhaps God does not have a clock.

But don’t panic. Until we decode the geometry of deep space, we remain trapped in this theater of clocks and deadlines.

So yes—you were late.
But it doesn’t matter.
You were already here.