This is the distinctive core of the quantum concept of time: Other times are just special cases of other universes. This understanding first emerged from early research on quantum gravity in the 1960s, in particular from the work of Bryce DeWitt, but to the best of my knowledge it was not stated in a general way until 1983, by Don Page and William Wooters. The snapshots which we call ‘other times in our universe’ are distinguished from ‘other universes’ only from our perspective, and only in that they are especially closely related to ours by the laws of physics. They are therefore the ones of
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What we call the past and future are indistinguishable from other universes—in fact, we think of them in the same way, except that we relate to past and future by laws of physics and make exception for other universes by artificial boundaries between them and the one we experience this moment.
