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Is Time a Moment? - The Relation of Time with Entropy

 

Although we experience it every day, we have not been able to explain exactly what the concept called time really is. The phenomenon of time, which has been emphasized throughout the history of humanity, from philosophy to physics, from art to daily life, still preserves its mystery.

The biggest reason we perceive time is that we perceive change. So what is it that creates change? In our previous article, while we were talking about the laws of thermodynamics, we explained the concept of entropy belonging to the second law of thermodynamics. We can say that entropy is the change that constantly disrupts the forward disorder at every moment. Time is the river flowing forward in this disorder created by entropy.

The notion of the moment is also important here. According to some scientists and philosophers, time does not exist as a past–present–future. These three-time structures are independent of each other. What is in the past cannot be in the present and in the future, what is in the present cannot be in the past and in the future, and what is in the future cannot be in the past and present. Every experience we live takes place in a 'moment'. According to Aristotle, who defines time as 'nun' (which means 'moment'), your criterion of time is the movement that occurs between two moments. Movement is in the center of time. Change takes time to happen. Aristotle defines time as 'the number of movements relative to before and after'.

As Einstein said, "An hour passes like a second when you're sitting next to a beautiful woman, but a second feels like an hour when you're walking on hot coals". While saying these words, Einstein said the theory of relativity he developed between 1905-1917 for a better understanding. According to the special theory of relativity he developed, it had a dimension like the three-dimensional space in which we move through time. One dimension flowing forward. According to the theory of relativity, space can be considered independent of time, but time cannot be considered independent of space. Because the change in space itself creates time and even our perception of time changes according to the reference system we are in. It's an incredibly intuitive reality.

Although Einstein explained time mathematically very well in his theory of relativity, there are still missing puzzle pieces. As you guessed, the big piece of this puzzle is quantum mechanics. There is still no equation about time in quantum mechanics. Of course, friends who have mastered the subject may say, 'There is the Schrödinger equation dependent on time, we are solving it'. However, that's not what I mean. In quantum dimensions, we don't yet have an equation that explains time and how it works. Although alternative equations exist, these are theories that we cannot prove experimentally.

In short, we will ask these questions and continue to think about them until we find answers that we can be convinced of. If you have an idea, never hesitate to announce it.


Stay with physics. :)

 

 

Reference

The Janus Point: A New Theory of Time

https://www.quora.com/Does-time-travel-in-one-direction-because-of-entropy-Or-is-entropy-simply-the-result-of-time-traveling-in-one-direction-Is-entropy-the-cause-or-the-effect

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b02144gl



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