These are the questions that Guido Tonelli asks in his latest book, Time: The Dream of Killing Chronos. Gizmodo spoke to Tonelli about humanity’s relationship with the concept of time, as well as its role in scientific breakthroughs. That’s a dream that’s part of literature, philosophy, science, or science fiction, if you wish. Gizmodo: In a popular sense, physics is something that seems so fundamental and clear-cut. Among elementary particles, the particles composing ordinary matter are stable and can last billions of years.