2024-07-15 04:00:17
A new study offers a new vision of time: what if it were just an illusion resulting from quantum entanglement? This hypothesis could not only clarify certain contradictions in physics, but also revolutionize our understanding of theUniverse.
Time, an elusive element for physicists, complicates the search for a “theory of everything” capable of unifying all the laws of physique. But this new study, published in Physical Review Asuggests that time could emerge from thequantum entanglementa phenomenon linking two distant particles.
In quantum systems, time appears immutable and external, unlike in Einstein’s general relativity where it can be distorted by gravity and velocity. This divergence prevents theunification physical theories. To resolve this inconsistency, researchers turned to the Page and Wootters mechanism, proposed in 1983, which postulates that time emerges from a link between an object and another serving as a clock.
By applying this mechanism to two theoretical quantum states—a vibrating harmonic oscillator and a set of small magnets serving as a clock—the researchers observed that their system could be described by theSchrödinger equationbut without explicit recourse to time. They then repeated their calculations assuming macroscopic objects, simplifying their equations to those of classical physics, thus suggesting that the flow of time arises from the very entanglement at large scale.
This approach, while mathematically consistent, has raised caution among other physicists. The hypothesis remains difficult to test and has not yet produced any verifiable experimental predictions. However, some researchers believe that starting with quantum physics to understand classical physics is a promising direction.
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