Photo illustration by Mark Riechers (TTBOOK). Original images by Tengyart (CC0) and Marcelo Gleiser (via the author).
Time may be a fundamental quality of the universe, but physicists still can't explain what time is. But that hasn't stopped theoretical physicist Marcelo Gleiser from devoting much of his life to studying the origins of time. In this conversation with Anne Strainchamps, he says a traumatic loss in his childhood forced him to confront the fleeting nature of existence - and led to his insatiable curiosity about the cosmos.