In 1967 the physics world was stunned when two physicists unified what had eluded Einstein, Quantum Mechanics and General Relativity. There was only one catch, time does not exist: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheeler–DeWitt_equation In 2013, a group of Italian physicists showed that the Wheeler&DeWitt universe would still have the appearance of time passing within it. https://books.google.com/books?id=fGn7CAAAQBAJ&pg=PA148&lpg=PA148&dq=1967+wheeler+dewitt+quantum+theory+relativity+no+time&source=bl&ots=3HMwU10mNh&sig=46XaE2c-u-jbAt_qM3c33m_oK9Q&hl=en&sa=X&ei=L1iMVYLpFsnXsAX2lZTQBw&ved=0CDYQ6AEwBA#v=onepage&q=1967 wheeler dewitt quantum theory relativity no time&f=false This is one of the greatest debates in modern physics, and its resolution will bring in understanding of our universe with possible unimaginable consequences. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_Reborn I believe that Quantum Mechanics is incomplete, and that time is real. Stay tuned...
Time stops inside a black hole? I doubt it. But it is standard theory. If it does stop inside a black hole, then it probably doesn't exist to begin with. The photon or any other mass-less particle that [must] move at the speed of light supposedly doesn't experience time. I doubt that too:
Depends on what you mean by the word "real"? What is real? Just because you see it or experience it via consciousness doesn't mean it is real....is it?
If time is an illusion, then how do we explain what we normally regard as the passage of time, such as aging, agreed upon recollection of (supposed) past events, overdue interest on debt?
Time is basically moment by moment, experienced by our consciousness. The consciousness is that of a perceiver which is also an illusion. Hence aging isn't real nor true. You are conditioned. Furthermore, Time is a construct by 3 times (past, present and future) which happens all at once together.....at every moment.
If aging isn't real, how do you explain the inevitable wearing out of the body and the death that follows?
This is a common misconception. It is an easy mistake to make. For example, people thought for tens of thousands of years that the earth was still. We now know that the earth is not only spinning at a rate of 1000 miles per hour on its axis, it is also traveling through space at about 60,000 miles per hour. Why we don't perceive this is a deep consequence of the law of physics. But even when one understands the current scientific answer to your question, it leaves one unsatisfied. Still, it is current theory. The idea is quite simple actually. First you have to be careful with definitions, or you quickly reach contradictions without getting out of the garage. Defining what happens to the body as "aging" implies time. So by using the word aging you are setting yourself up for an infinite loop of contradictions. In any event, why we go from an ordered state to a less ordered state (note the definition change) is based on Statistical Thermodynamics. Your mother, through the dynamics of biology, and the nutrients she ate made you extremely ordered when you were born. Statistical Dynamics says that in large systems, the number of ordered states that your molecules can be in are dwarfed by the number of disordered states. So that means that you are more likely to find a system evolving to an unordered state from an ordered one. Hence aging is simply the statistics of large systems, with no external influence, naturally moving towards a lower energy. In fact, in the absence of biological repair countering the physical system that is your body towards a higher entropy, we would probably die in about seven years. So biology is fighting physics. This mechanism is at the level of biology, which means it is emergent from the more fundamental laws of physics, which mostly deal with isolated closed systems. What I am talking about is on a completely fundamental level. What we call the plank time or the plank scale, where physics as we know it breaks down.