Scientists Discover That Time Is an Illusion
Opening up on a sore subject
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He time This has long been a difficult problem for physicists. Its inconsistent behavior among our best theories of the universe leads to a dead end that prevents researchers from finding a “theory of everything,” a framework for explaining all the physics of the universe.
To solve this problem, the researchers turned to a theory called Page and Wootters mechanism. This theory, first proposed in 1983, suggests that time arises for an object through its quantum entanglement with another object, which acts as a clock. On the other hand, for an unentangled system, time does not exist, and the system perceives the universe as frozen and unchanging.
In the right direction
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physical applied this mechanism to two theoretically entangled but non-interacting quantum states: an oscillating harmonic oscillator and a set of small magnets that act as a clock.
Using these calculations, they found that their system could be perfectly described by the equation Schrodinger, which predicts the behavior of quantum objects. However, instead of time, His version of the famous equation worked according to the states of small magnets that acted like clocks.
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The team went one step further, repeating their calculations twice, first assuming that the magnetic clock and then the harmonic oscillator were macroscopic (larger) objects. Their equations were simplified to those of classical physics, assuming that the passage of time is a consequence of entanglement even for large-scale objects.
“We firmly believe that the right and logical direction is starting from quantum physics and understanding how to get to classical physics“rather than the other way around,” says Coppo. Building theories of time from scratch based on quantum mechanics could be a promising starting point if they can be adapted to experiments.