Mr Lynds, who studied at university for just six months, said his paper, Time and Classical and Quantum Mechanics: Indeterminacy vs Discontinuity, was being published in the August issue of a Dutch-based journal, Foundations of Physics Letters. The journal specialises in rapid dissemination of research in theoretical or mathematical physics, or the philosophy of science.

Now a broadcasting school tutor, Mr Lynds said his paper established that there was a necessary trade-off of all precisely determined physical values at a time, for their continuity through time.

In effect, he argues that any moving object is never "at rest", and that the concept of time being broken into specific moments is only a human perception...