In search of now: The mystery and science of the present moment

What is Now? It seems simple. The immediate moment, what we’re experiencing this instant, bathes us like air, or gravity. It is our connection with the world. Yet when we try to grasp it and analyse the phenomenon of the present, it vanishes. According to the most trusted models of physics, Now doesn’t exist at all, and neuroscience suggests that it’s merely a convincing hallucination.

But if there’s no such thing as Now, where does our feeling of “nowness” come from? What shapes the flow of events and sensations that we perceive—and is this really just an illusion? Best-selling science writer Jo Marchant takes us on a grand tour of the latest thinking in cosmology, quantum mechanics, psychology, and neuroscience to tackle these questions and explore the fundamental essence of time.

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