Does time consist of only a past and a future

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If what Quantum physics says is true, that everytime a particular quantum outcome occurs all the other possibilities simultaneously occur then the Universe must be constantly cleaving and branching [diverging] into other Universes.

My thought is that conversely each instant must also be the coming together [converging] of multiple prior instants of multiple Universes. But that implies that the past is not a certain or fixed quantity. While any single quantum event is almost insignificant cummulatively there must be some effect, and they are happening all the time in prodigious numbers.

It sort of lays waste to the term Universe, which implies a singular thing. You live in an instant of a quasi-Universe that is diverging and converging all the time with other Universe states. The Universe itself would be a perceptual thing and not real in any certain way.

Which makes me wonder if what we believe about history is correct. Could it be that the past is a fractured/branching thing. That literally infinite different prior scenarios that could have and did bring us to this point and time. Like looking down a radial set of streets, each one shows a different vista depending on which angle you look at.

Like all the roots [past] of a tree come together at the trunk [present] and point to many branching futures. But with multiple trees in parallel so it is not a single tree, but like an incredibly complex vine.

What if time is not a single contiguous linear thing but a discrete mechanistic thing that happens across limitless quantum events in infinite Universes. So time is not so much a river as a beautiful crystaline thing, refracted through infinite quasi-Universes or Universal states.

If that were true why do we perceive it as a continuum of events? Are we actually a gathering of some quorum number of Universal states that creates an existence? Sort of fudging the difference if you will. People can be convinced they saw something different than they really did. How much can we really depend on our mind's memory for guidance? As a rudder into the future.

You may be talking to someone who came from a slightly different historical past than you did. A slightly different Universe if you will who happened to converge with you into this instant of this state of Universe.

I think of my existence as being cohesive so it is hard to believe this, but it might be true.
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I would almost think that the past is sort of like that Stephen King book/movie. The Langoliers was it? Think about it. We are all observing on and on into the future. So everything that has happened there is noone left to observe it, so it just does not exist. It must fade away. This is also similar to the age old question, "If a tree falls in a forest and noone is around to hear it, does that tree make a noise?"

yes i think it might be that there is no past or future, but just the here and now?

Although if wormholes could intersect with wormholes that were in past and future ones it would jump the here and now for whatever amount of time, so the past would be a here and now, and the future would also be a here and now both existing same time?? that sounds confuseing lol

It amazes me to read people saying that time travel is not possible because if it was travellers would have come back. As we are not yer time travellers how do we know wha the finite boundaries are, just as the speed of light cannot be broken, how do we know that the distance forward and backward in time is not finite. In which case we might not be at the right time for a time traveller to come back: Eg.

Limit of time travel - 200 years forward ot back
time travel invented - 2600
we are 2005 - ergo we are not close enough

Not everything is black and white
Food for thought

i think time is the result of consciousness, the future doesnt exist as such as it is something that happens then it is the past, the future is probable.

the past exists, though, to see the past you would have to go back in time/consciousness, we do however carry some of the past into the future through history and memory etc.

[edit on 20-2-2005 by MysticOfRadiance]