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Letter: Can time flow backwards in some areas of space?

Published 17 July 2024

From Dave Johnson, Ashby de la Zouch, Leicestershire, UK

Chanda Prescod-Weinstein comments on the idea that the arrow of time is linked to increasing entropy. What this approach seems to miss is that, while in most systems entropy will almost always increase, there is a very small chance that a system will become more orderly, with lower entropy, just as a result of random motion. Especially if the system consists of just a few molecules. As the universe is big, these long shots will be happening somewhere all the time (29 June, p 20).

Does this mean that, in small, random pockets of space, time’s arrow goes backwards? That doesn’t seem to make much sense. I would prefer to view our universe as a system of mathematical equations, where t for time is a parameter in some of those equations. This parameter causes change to happen in our universe. Without change, there would be no experience of any kind of reality.

Issue no. 3500 published 20 July 2024

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