Does NOW exist?
The journey of Time, from matter to your mind.
What is Now?
Let’s take 5 million years ago, to be generous. Did reality exist before us, children of the chimp? Of course, yes. Reality does not need us to exist. But the problem is not reality itself, it is now.
In physics, now is relative to the observer. My “now” is not the same as yours, nor the same as a rock’s. In Einstein’s relativity, there is no universal present, only events and observers. Yet we feel that now must be more than a perception.
The Slice Analogy
Imagine cutting the entire universe into ultra-thin slices, like a lab slices a tissue sample. If you had a machine that could cut everything at once, faster than any motion inside the universe, you would capture a perfect frozen image of all things together. That frozen picture is now: the smallest possible frame of time we can imagine.
In relativity, such a slice is called a hypersurface of spacetime. Each observer has their own slicing, their own “camera of the now.”
The Quantum Thickness of Now
But is now truly infinitesimal? At the quantum scale, events blur into each other, never perfectly sharp. Physics tells us that below the Planck time, about 10⁻⁴³ seconds, the very concept of time ceases to make sense. This suggests that now may not be a pure point, but has a minimum span.
Each imprint takes as long as the “now” to be made. It’s impossible that now has no length if we imagine the universe in an analog mode. If the universe is continuous, then now carries a real thickness, a material imprint.
Otherwise, the other possibility is a holographic reality, and actually what moves inside are just discrete quantities, like in a computer memory, bits that are passed through and regrouped until we can make sense of the continuous reality.
Then, the universe is like a cabbage, but with the leaves transforming into other leaves at tipping points, where matter is aggregated enough. Like the boiling point. Matter has boiling points from the fundamental states, call it the heart of the cabbage, to the surface… us, the children of the chimp.
Either way, now is not nothing: it has structure.
Phase Transitions and Emergence
Think of the universe evolving like matter at its boiling point. At critical thresholds, the state of reality changes. Quantum fields condense, particles form, stars ignite. These transitions shape the unfolding of now.
Our present is not static. It is the dynamic frontier where one state becomes another. The fabric of now is woven from transformations, just as water becomes steam or matter crystallizes into order.
Consciousness and the Perception of Now
Yet what we call now is not only physical. It is also constructed by perception. A cat lives in a different temporal window than a child. A psychonaut in altered states may stretch or compress now far beyond ordinary boundaries.
So now, in a broad sense, is a fundamental feature of reality, but our access is limited to our perception. Consciousness alone cannot jump in time, so the span effect of now depends on the complexifying power of each brain.
Neuroscience shows that the brain integrates signals over specific timescales, fractions of a second in humans, and this integration is what we call the present moment.
So there are many nows: the relativistic slice of physics, the blurred minimum of quantum mechanics, the emergent now of cosmic transitions, and the lived now of consciousness.
Conclusion
In the broadest sense, now is a fundamental feature of reality. Relativity shows it is observer-dependent. Quantum physics hints it may have a minimum duration. Cosmology reveals it evolves through phase transitions. Neuroscience proves it is filtered by the mind.
Our now is where the universe and perception meet. A frame, a pulse, a vibration. Different for a rock, a chimp, a child, or a dreamer.
Now, outside our perception, has no meaning. Now is a fact that has no meaning by itself without the subject to experience it; experience is the core reality of meaning, or consciousness. Reality is not the whole of possibility, only tangible experience reflected in the consciousness space is relevant to our understanding. We don't know what we don't know; at any point our now is limited to our tangible or conceptual perception. So in fact, Now is a state of awareness where the universe makes sense of itself.
Now may be a hybrid product, the mirror AND the reflection which understands itself: Consciousness.
We as conscious beings may exist in a 4th dimension of reality. The cornerstone of the whole arc of existence.
Consciousness evolves in a space at the intersection of reality which is and the reality which becomes, all at the pace of NOW.