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Notes on Time’s Enigma

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The Arrows of Time

Part of the book series: Fundamental Theories of Physics ((FTPH,volume 172))

Abstract

Scientists continue to wrestle with the enigma of time. Is time a dynamic or a fundamental property of spacetime? Why does it have an arrow pointing from past to future? Why are physical laws time-symmetric in a universe with broken time-reversal symmetry? These questions remain a mystery. The hope has been that an understanding of the selection of the initial state for our universe would solve such puzzles, especially that of times arrow. In this contribution, I discuss how the birth of the universe from the multiverse helps to unravel the nature of time and the reasons behind the time-reversal symmetry of our physical laws. I make the distinction between a local emerging arrow of time in the nucleating universe and the fundamental time with no arrow in the multiverse. The very event of nucleation of the universe from the multiverse breaks time-reversal symmetry, inducing a locally emergent arrow. But, the laws of physics imprinted on this bubble are not processed at birth. Time-reversal symmetry of laws in our universe is inherited from its birth in the multiverse, since these laws originate from the arrowless multiversal time.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    It is interesting that our program for the birth of the universe from the multiverse [1, 6] has led to some intriguing observational consequences [6], with three of its predictions already succesfully tested so far, namely: the void [7], the dark flow [8], and σ8[4, 5].

  2. 2.

    An emerging time in the multiverse does not appear plausible since the emergence adds information on the multiverse that wasn’t there prior.

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Acknowledgements

L.M-H is grateful to DAMTP for their hospitality during the time this work was done. LM-H is supported in part by DOE grant DE-FG02-06ER1418, NSF grant PHY-0553312 and FQXI.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Physics and Astronomy, UNC-Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC, 27599-3255, USA

    Laura Mersini-Houghton

  2. Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics, Cambridge University, Cambridge, UK

    Laura Mersini-Houghton

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  1. Laura Mersini-Houghton
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Correspondence to Laura Mersini-Houghton .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Dept. Physics & Astronomy, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, 27599-3255, North Carolina, USA

    Laura Mersini-Houghton

  2. Posener Str. 85, Bietigheim-Bissingen, 74321, Germany

    Rudy Vaas

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Mersini-Houghton, L. (2012). Notes on Time’s Enigma. In: Mersini-Houghton, L., Vaas, R. (eds) The Arrows of Time. Fundamental Theories of Physics, vol 172. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-23259-6_8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-23259-6_8

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-23258-9

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-23259-6

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