Researchers Claim Time Could Actually Be Flowing in Reverse, and They Have No Idea Why

Time is an important concept in life as well as in science. The concept has long been thought of as rigid and moving in only one direction. However, a new study published in Scientific Reports gives new insights into this subject.

For around two years, a team of physicists in England conducted several examinations to understand how time's arrow behaved in an open quantum system, stated Popular Mechanics. Time's movement has been considered akin to an arrow in the examination. Their results indicated that time moved in two directions. The analysis was done on an open quantum system, which gets affected by the outer surroundings, rather than a closed one, which is not impacted by any outside factors.

In the system, experts primarily focused on entropy. Entropy essentially means energy dissolving into the atmosphere. Seeing how this dissipation was happening helped researchers to determine in which direction time was flowing in their equations.

For the examination, the experts made two assumptions, according to Interesting Engineering. Firstly, the team disregarded the impact of the outside environment, and secondly, they believed that once the energy was released into the atmosphere, it never came back. Researchers employed several mathematical models to describe the open system's evolution over time. The team specifically concentrated on equations that involved the movement of time in these models.

The study claimed that the equations remained the same, whether time moved forward or backward. This implies that the laws governing the system adhere to time-reversal symmetry. "In our derivation, two opposing arrows of time are obtained. We demonstrate this by analyzing several examples of reduced Markovian dynamics resulting from microscopic open quantum systems models, which initially possess time-reversal symmetry," the study authors shared.

Researchers found that two arrows of time were spontaneously arising in the system, according to Popular Mechanics. This does not mean that there is any kind of time travel taking place in the system. The two time arrows that shoot out in a particular direction, and then don't come back. If an arrow shoots towards the future, it will not come back to the past. Similarly, if an arrow shoots towards the past, it will not come towards the future.

The team noted that in the equations, whether the time is moving forward or backward, entropy always increases, which means that energy is always released into the atmosphere. "You’d still see the milk spilling on the table, but your clock would go the other way around," explained the paper’s senior author, Andrea Rocco, Ph.D., associate professor of physics and mathematical biology at the University of Surrey. Further examinations on this subject could forever change the way thermodynamics and quantum mechanics are perceived by experts.

Another important factor researchers noted in the system was the presence of a time-discontinuous factor, according to Interesting Engineering. This factor essentially breaks the momentum of time's passage. Thomas Guff, lead study author and a research fellow at the University of Surrey, believes that this factor keeps the time symmetry intact within the system. These findings showcase that much more is still left to be understood about time's relationship with physics.