2 Futures Can Explain Time's Mysterious Past - Scientific American

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2 Futures Can Explain Time's

Mysterious Past
New theories suggest the big bang was not the beginning, and that we may live in the past of a
parallel universe
December 8, 2014 | By Lee Billings
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Physicists have a problem with time.

Whether through Newtons gravitation,
Maxwells electrodynamics, Einsteins
special and general relativity or quantum
mechanics, all the equations that best
describe our universe work perfectly if time
flows forward or backward.
Of course the world we experience is
entirely different. The universe is
expanding, not contracting. Stars emit light
rather than absorb it, and radioactive atoms
decay rather than reassemble. Omelets
dont transform back to unbroken eggs and
cigarettes never coalesce from smoke and
ashes. We remember the past, not the
In the evolution of cosmic structure, is entropy or

gravity the more dominant force? The answer to
this question has deep implications for the
universe's future, as well as its past.
Credit: NASA; ESA; G. Illingworth, D. Magee, and
P. Oesch, University of California, Santa Cruz; R.
Bouwens, Leiden University; and the HUDF09
Team
future, and we grow old and decrepit, not

young and rejuvenated. For us, time has a clear and irreversible direction. It flies
forward like a missile, equations be damned.
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For more than a century, the standard explanation for times arrow, as the
Coal Ash Is Not Hazardous Waste under U.S.
astrophysicist Arthur Eddington first called it in 1927, has been that it is an emergent
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property of thermodynamics, as first laid out in the work of the 19th-century Austrian
physicist Ludwig Boltzmann. In this view what we perceive as the arrow of time is
really just the inexorable rearrangement of highly ordered states into random, useless
configurations, a product of the universal tendency for all things to settle toward
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equilibrium with one another.

X
Informally speaking, the crux of

this
ist &
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devise. The law states that in any closed system (like the universe itself), entropy
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disordercan only increase. Increasing entropy is a cosmic certainty because there

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are always a great many more disordered states than orderly ones for any given
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system, similar to how there are
many more
to scatter papers across a desk than
to stack them neatly in a single pile.
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From Boltzmanns era onward, scientists allergic to the notion of such an immaculate
conception have been grappling with this conundrum.
1 hour ago reply retweet favorite
sciam Popular on our site now: New

theories suggest the big bang was not the
beginning. http://t.co/gTb02TWCZ4
#science http://t.co/Kfg7g8MG8u
Boltzmann, believing the universe to be eternal in accordance with Newtons laws,

thought that eternity could explain a low-entropy origin for times arrow. Given
enough timeendless time, in factanything that can happen will happen, including
4 hours ago reply retweet favorite
AmyNordrum A Seattle Christmas at

Handel's Messiah @ Benaroya Hall
http://t.co/p0OxzRd8Sd
the emergence of a large region of very low entropy as a statistical fluctuation from an
ageless, high-entropy universe in a state of near-equilibrium. Boltzmann mused that
7 hours ago reply retweet favorite
we might live in such an improbable region, with an arrow of time set by the regions
long, slow entropic slide back into equilibrium.
Todays cosmologists have a tougher task, because the universe as we now know it
isnt ageless and unmoving: They have to explain the emergence of times arrow
within a dynamic, relativistic universe that apparently began some 14 billion years ago
in the fiery conflagration of the big bang. More often than not the explanation involves
fine-tuningthe careful and arbitrary tweaking of a theorys parameters to accord
with observations.
Many of the modern explanations for a low-entropy arrow of time involve a theory
called inflationthe idea that a strange burst of antigravity ballooned the primordial
universe to an astronomically larger size, smoothing it out into what corresponds to a
very low-entropy state from which subsequent cosmic structures could emerge. But
explaining inflation itself seems to require even more fine-tuning. One of the
problems is that once begun, inflation tends to continue unstoppably. This eternal
inflation would spawn infinitudes of baby universes about which predictions and
observations are, at best, elusive. Whether this is an undesirable bug or a wonderful
feature of the theory is a matter of fierce debate; for the time being it seems that
inflations extreme flexibility and explanatory power are both its greatest strength and
its greatest weakness.
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For all these reasons, some scientists seeking a low-entropy origin for times arrow
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find explanations relying on inflation slightly unsatisfying. There are many

researchers now trying to show in some natural way why its reasonable to expect the
initial entropy of the universe to be very low, says David Albert, a philosopher and
physicist at Columbia University. There are even some who think that the entropy
being low at the beginning of the universe should just be added as a new law of
physics.
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That latter idea is tantamount to despairing cosmologists simply throwing in the
towel. Fortunately, there may be another way.
Tentative new work from Julian Barbour of the University of Oxford, Tim Koslowski
of the University of New Brunswick and Flavio Mercati of the Perimeter Institute for
Theoretical Physics suggests that perhaps the arrow of time doesnt really require a
fine-tuned, low-entropy initial state at all but is instead the inevitable product of the
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fundamental laws of physics. Barbour and his colleagues argue that it is gravity, rather
You Should Know: Paulette Vincent Ruz and
than thermodynamics, that draws the bowstring to let times arrow fly. Their findings
Adventures in Chemistryland
X
were published in October in Physical Review Letters.
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The teams conclusions comeG

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| 23 hours ago
How To Change Your Past

| December 20, 2014
universe, a computer simulation of 1,000 pointlike particles interacting under the

influence of Newtonian gravity.as

They
investigated the dynamic behavior of the system
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using a measure of its "complexity," which corresponds to the ratio of the distance
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between the systems closest pair
of particles
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would evolve into this low-complexity state. Thus, the sheer force of gravity sets the
stage for the systems expansion and the origin of times arrow, all without any
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delicate fine-tuning to first establish a low-entropy initial condition.
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From that low-complexity state, the system of particles then expands outward in both
temporal directions, creating two distinct, symmetric and opposite arrows of time.
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Along each of the two temporal paths, gravity then pulls the particles into larger, more
ordered and complex structuresthe models equivalent of galaxy clusters, stars and
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planetary systems. From there, the standard thermodynamic passage of time can
manifest and unfold on each of the two divergent paths. In other words, the model has
one past but two futures. As hinted by the time-indifferent laws of physics, times
arrow may in a sense move in two directions, although any observer can only see and
experience one. It is the nature of gravity to pull the universe out of its primordial
chaos and create structure, order and complexity, Mercati says. All the solutions
break into two epochs, which go on forever in the two time directions, divided by this
central state which has very characteristic properties.
Although the model is crude, and does not incorporate either quantum mechanics or
general relativity, its potential implications are vast. If it holds true for our actual
universe, then the big bang could no longer be considered a cosmic beginning but
rather only a phase in an effectively timeless and eternal universe. More prosaically, a
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two-branched arrow of time would lead to curious incongruities for observers on

opposite sides. This two-futures situation would exhibit a single, chaotic past in both
directions, meaning that there would be essentially two universes, one on either side
of this central state, Barbour says. If they were complicated enough, both sides could
sustain observers who would perceive time going in opposite directions. Any
intelligent beings there would define their arrow of time as moving away from this
central state. They would think we now live in their deepest past.
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Whats more, Barbour says, if gravitation does prove to be fundamental to the arrow
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of time, this could sooner or later generate testable predictions and potentially lead to
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a less ad hoc explanation than inflation for the history and structure of our
observable universe.
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This is not the first rigorous two-futures solution for times arrow. Most notably,
Mitchell Cancer Institute at University of South Alabama
California Institute of Technology cosmologist Sean Carroll and a graduate student,

Jennifer Chen, produced their own branching model in 2004, one that sought to
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explain the low-entropy origin of times arrow in the context of cosmic inflation and
the creation of baby universes. They attribute the arrow of times emergence in their
model not so much to entropy being very low in the past but rather to entropy being so
much higher in both futures, increased by the inflation-driven creation of baby
universes.
A decade on, Carroll is just as bullish about the prospect that increasing entropy alone
is the source for times arrow, rather than other influences such as gravity.
Everything that happens in the universe to distinguish the past from the future is
ultimately because the entropy is lower in one direction and higher in the other,
Carroll says. This paper by Barbour, KoslowskiXand Mercati is good because they roll
up their sleeves and do the calculations
forftttheir
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get this kind of generic behavior they describe. The
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real question is, is our universe like that? Thats the hard part.
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times arrow, but without the addition of gravity or any other forces. The
thermodynamic secret to the models success, they say, is assuming that the universe
has an unlimited capacity for entropy.
If we assume there is no maximum possible entropy for the universe, then any state
can be a state of low entropy, Guth says. That may sound dumb, but I think it really
works, and I also think its the secret of the Barbour et al construction. If theres no
limit to how big the entropy can get, then you can start anywhere, and from that
starting point youd expect entropy to rise as the system moves to explore larger and
larger regions of phase space. Eternal inflation is a natural context in which to invoke
this idea, since it looks like the maximum possible entropy is unlimited in an eternally
inflating universe.
The controversy over times arrow has come far since the 19th-century ideas of
Boltzmann and the 20th-century notions of Eddington, but in many ways, Barbour
says, the debate at its core remains appropriately timeless. This is opening up a
completely new way to think about a fundamental problem, the nature of the arrow of
time and the origin of the second law of thermodynamics, Barbour says. But really
were just investigating a new aspect of Newtons gravitation, which hadnt been
noticed before. Who knows what might flow from this with further work and
elaboration?
Arthur Eddington coined the term arrow of time, and famously said the shuffling of
material and energy is the only thing which nature cannot undo, Barbour adds. And
here we are, showing beyond any doubt really that this is in fact exactly what gravity
does. It takes systems that look extraordinarily disordered and makes them
wonderfully ordered. And this is what has happened in our universe. We are realizing
the ancient Greek dream of order out of chaos.
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edevere
December 8, 2014, 2:32 PM
My reasoned opinion is that both Sean Carroll and Julian Barbour have it wrong.
My argument (which is similar to Loschmidt's argument) is that you can't get a time-irreversible
macroscopic law of physics (i.e. the Second Law of Thermodynamics) unless there is a
time-irreversible microscopic law of physics (i.e. the weak nuclear force.)
As such, it is my reasoned opinion that the weak nuclear force is the explanation for what we call
the arrow of time. I've written a Platonic dialogue with Sean Carroll as a starring character
hopefully help convey my issues with deriving time-irreversible macroscopic law of physics (2nd
Law) from time-reversible laws of physics (i.e. gravity, E&M, and the strong nuclear force.
http://eddiesblogonenergyandphysics.blogspot.com/2014/03/what-is-cause-of-arrowof-time.html
X
In general, the problem with Sean Carroll's approach is that, if entropy is real, then there needs to
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& it increases with time. Sean wants to have
be a microscopic law of physics thatG
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his cake and eat it too. He wantsG
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be
but
calculated using time-reversible laws of the physics. This is not possible. Boltzmann had to add a
Giveduring
a 1 yearcollisions)
subscription
law of physics (i.e. molecular chaos
in order to derive entropy generation.
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At least Julian Barbour is consistent. He doesn't think that entropy exists, and hence he doesn't
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need to explain why it appears to increase. He thinks that entropy is a figment of our imagination.
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superfluid helium.) We only see entropy generation when there are Fermions (electrons, quarks,
and neutrinos: all of which can interact via the weak nuclear force if they are close enough to each
other and have enough energy.)
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TheGreatUnknown
Whimsically thinking, perhaps, the "other side" of black holes (if they do have one) is another,
unique universe. Along this pondering, when a black hole is created in this universe, a Big Bang
happens for a new universe. And so on, and so forth, creating many unique universes. A black hole
therefore would be a one-way doorway to it's own, unique, and newer universe. Further, in our
universe, that Dark Matter and Dark Energy is extra-universal matter that has arrived through our
universe's "Big Bang" black hole significantly after its inception (our big bang) and therefore can
only emerge as a lower energy, lower density state of existence.
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anil rajvanshi
There are two interesting articles that try to explain this article but from a diffrent angle of ancient
Indian concept of time and origin of Universe.
http://www.nariphaltan.org/time.pdf How time can be introduced and removed.
http://www.nariphaltan.org/origin.pdf How gravity came out first from Universal Consciousness.
Cheers.
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Leathermonster TheGreatUnknown
December 8, 2014, 11:35 PM
I wonder if you were able to cross the event horizon and enter the black hole to be spit out the
other side, if you would arrive in the alternate universe at the moment of that universe's Big Bang,
no matter how long the black hole had existed in our universe.
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reidhb
December 9, 2014, 7:01 AM
1. Time will come to a stop sometime in the future. 2. Time will not come to a stop some time in
the future.
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jjm319
December 9, 2014, 8:51 AM
It makes sense that the particles come together under gravity. But can someone please explain why
they spread out again? Can we get the code for this simulation?
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jayjacobus
Time must always surround now. The order is last, current, next. If time reverses it will be next,
current, next but only initially. After that the order will be last, current, next again and the arrow of
time will still point into the future which is now the past. No matter what the arrow of time will
point from last to next.
It is possible that next(-2) no longer exists. If that's the case in a reversal, then time will stop or
create a brand new past unlinked to the previous past.X
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made
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e!! in a present using similar resources,
processes and materials. The current universe has a similar relationship to past universes.
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royniles
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gzuckier
December 10, 2014, 2:00 AM
Isn't the central issue our asymmetry regards time, in our consciousness? We can look at a video of
a cue ball breaking the racked balls and now immediately whether it's being run forwards or
backwards, when technically it could be reconstructed to run "in reverse" by carefully firing all the
balls in from the edges in the precise velocities that they slam together and spit the cueball out the
front.
After we figure that out, then we can maybe tackle the question of whether the future already exists
and we are just moving our consciousness along a stationary time axis instead of time expanding
itself forwards into the undetermined future.
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vonHasensprung
December 10, 2014, 8:25 AM
Schon seit langer Zeit behaupte ich, dass eine positive und negative Zeitachse existiert, die die
Basis fr unser Universum bildet.
Grundlage dafr war zum einen die Erkenntnis, dass alles was es gibt, wenigstens zwei Seiten hat.
Und zum anderen erschien es mir logisch, dass die Vorgnge in einem Atomkern sich auf der
negativen Zeitachse bewegen mssen. Abgeleitet habe ich dies von der Tatsache, dass die Zeit fr
einen langsamer vergeht, je schneller man sich bewegt. Ebenso gilt dies fr Massezentren (je nher
ich mich an einem Massezentrum befinde, umso langsamer vergeht die Zeit fr mich). Bewege ich
mich fast mit Lichtgeschwindigkeit, steht die Zeit beinahe und befinde ich mich an der Schwelle zu
einem Atomkern oder schwarzen Loch, ebenso. Wrde ich - rein theoretisch - diese Schwelle
jeweils berschreiten msste ich mich in der Zeit also rckwrts bewegen.
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