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We all have an innate, personal sense of time. Aphorisms abound: “Time flies ...”, “A stitch in time ...”. But what is time, really? Scientists ascribe a special meaning to time, one that until about a century ago coincided with the common concept of time — then Einstein upset the applecart. Time travel is a staple of a subgenre of science fiction, but is it possible? Did time start in the Big Bang, and will it ever end? Does time even exist? We will explore this thing that seems so simple but becomes more puzzling the deeper one thinks about it. Perhaps more questions than answers, but we should have a good “time”.

Instructor Theodore (Ted) Williams is Professor Emeritus of Physics and Astronomy at Rutgers University and former Director of the South African Astronomical Observatory. He has a physics BS degree from Purdue University and astronomy PhD from the California Institute of Technology. He spent most of his career at Rutgers, where he pursued observational studies of galaxies and developed astronomical instrumentation, while teaching a variety of undergraduate and graduate courses in physics and astronomy. He has spent innumerable nights at telescopes around the world, including observatories in California, Arizona, Texas, and Hawaii, as well as Chile, China and South Africa, and an orbiting facility on the Space Shuttle (Ted stayed firmly on the ground). He has taught a number of astronomy courses for Coastal Senior College.