Special Report: Dimensions of Time
Time, as the late physicist John Archibald Wheeler liked to say, is nature’s way of keeping everything from happening all at once.
But time also has many other jobs. It keeps eggs from unscrambling, glass from unbreaking, and somehow accommodates the expansion of the universe. Time helps humans and other organisms function on a recurring daily schedule that alternates light with darkness. Time in the brain underlies synchronization of sights and sounds needed to make sense of the external world.