Bringing a logical response to the irrational notion of time reversibility
Science is, without a doubt, source of tremendous progress. But does it also have a dark and misleading side? I have identified one, which may have some severe social consequences for the human spirit and for civilisation.
The beginning of the last century saw the advent of criteria contrarian to those valid since ancient Greek science. Physics, in particular, has introduced a number of irrational and counter-intuitive explanations of natural phenomena at an increasing pace. These range from effects without causes in quantum physics to bizarre time travel scenarios in relativity theory. They also include inflation and fantastic properties of empty space in cosmology.
Under currently accepted physical mechanisms, particles can pop out from nothing and dark energy and dark matter do exist. Parallel worlds are also being discussed. Meanwhile, the unimaginable conditions during the Big Bang, the supposed microscopic start for the estimated 500 billion galaxies in the universe, are being addressed in expensive experiments.
Mainstream science appears to assume that humans have a limited rational ability and therefore that we should give preference to sophisticated abstract mathematical models. In this context, theoretical physical sciences proceed along unchecked, leaving aside thousands of dissident scientists, who have expressed different opinions.
The mechanisms of such research–that is far from understandable reality–are only accessible to scientists who are specialised in relevant fields. However, its consequences are already taught to pupils in schools and popularised on a broad scale on television. This is because they are accepted as facts, which are deserving instruction and research funding.
If the universe started in an explosive chaos and is expected to end in a dead black out, if time is an illusion and logic cannot even help understanding the behaviour of the smallest particles, how does this situation encourage us to keep order in our local world? Why should people make big efforts to think and act rationally, when only computers can apparently calculate reality?
Resignation and indifference
I would argue that theoretical physics with its current thrust into the realms of counter-intuitivity and irrationality is damaging. More specifically, it is psychologically undermining our will and determination to carefully deal with our environment and our future. Worse, it is creating resignation and indifference.
But how can such a development be challenged?
The solution lies in attacking irrational theoretical physics concepts on their weakest point: their understanding of time. We may assume what everyone can see, that in nature time is fundamentally oriented in one direction and irreversible.
Then, this interpretation of how time flows also needs to be applied to quantum physics, the realms of atoms and elementary particles. Let’s first ask theoretical physicists to disprove that processes in nature are time oriented. All their sophisticated theories contradict such interpretation as they rely on fundamental laws allowing time to be reversed.
Amazingly, quantum paradoxes and the irrationalities of astrophysics simply disappear in a world implementing time flow in a single direction driven by energy conversion.
Time, then, is not an illusion. Then, our world becomes very different from a Big Bang universe. Its function is logical, more intelligent, simpler, and more plausible. The start, development and fate of the universe are controlled by information, which already nature learned to apply intelligently.
Many scientists have claimed new approaches, which later turned out to be wrong. What is different here?
Since ancient times people have observed that everything is changing and nothing is being reversed. Even today no experiment can prove that time is invertible. Then it is not surprising that theories basing on reversibility must yield a bizarre, irrational universe.
Let us challenge such constructs and conclude, like Heraclitus, that the world is a stream without return. Then students will be able to better distinguish between fact and fiction, in the same way that humans living in prehistory age did. Although they were open for mysticism and imagination, they acted in an entirely logical way when confronted with real challenges of survival. And theoretical physicists, facing reality, I believe, will discover even more fascinating opportunities.
Helmut is physicist and professor for physical chemistry who retired from the Free University, and the Helmholtz-Centre for Materials and Energy, both in Berlin, Germany. He specialised in the conversion of sustainable energy and in bio-mimetic energy systems, a subject which he still teaches at the Carinthia University of Applied Sciences in Austria. He recently launched an initiative to convince the science community that the existence of a fundamental time arrow, whereby time is only passing in one direction, supports the interpretation of a logical universe, distinct from counterintuitive theories such as those found in quantum physics. He has published more than 450 scientific publications and 10 books and now lives on his mountain farm in Friuli, Italy.
Featured image credit: Lionello DelPiccolo via Unsplash
EuroScientist journal 
The mathematics of Classical physic allow time reversal but in quantum mechanics things get fuzzy. There is T -asymmetry just like CP symmetry is violated. So it is not the case that physics is based on time reversals. I am not sure what problem the author is referring to. Time cannot be reversed as far as I can see in QM experimentally or otherwise.
In physics all fundamental laws are time invertible. In basic formulas a positive time can be replaced by a negative time and the meaning remains the same. Time flow as we see it in our environment is presently only explained statistically as an arrow in direction of an increase of disorder, entropy. However, in the mathematics, that derives that (e.g. Boltzmann`s H-theoren) always information has to be thrown away to yield a time orientation (information however involves energy, therefore I consider this to be a mathematical manipulation). Quantum processes are consequently defined to be time-neutral. Classical (clock) time has however been introduced via perturbation theory to derive the time dependent Schrödinger equation.
I agree with this sentiment, though not a scientist… The simplest answer is most often right. With the lack of results in the search for strange dimensions, perhaps they should consider ten dimensions, three past and three present and three future joined by one dimension of time… There for one past morphs into present and morphs into future present. The velocity this happens at is that allowed by the dimension of time… An object then would have mass related to its energy in the past dimension manifest through the dimension of time at an allowed rate. Each moment past and present and future would have a relationship where energy is stored in that relationship. So time flows naturally into a future from highest energy to lower energy or most complex to least complex .
That does not mean that there are not ten other dimensions say three past to three present to three some tiny dimension in a distant place and time connected by time again and energy would flow from highest to lowest through this relationship in time and space…
To make ten dimensions a formula that is necessary for movement about time and space solvable by adding the correct last dimension ( as three dimensions) so that matter may move into that last dimension… So this is not to say what they suppose is wrong… Does that seem simpler… So you could have strange action at a distance by adding the six dimensions (the past and present) and the last three dimensions of a distant identical particle and energy would flow there as long as the energy here was higher than the energy there.
Energy stored in this relationship would act in line lineally and resist turning or reversal unless the energy of that reversal was higher than the energy of the original six dimensions of past and present. But if reversed the formula would still be valid and energy would flow from higher to lower and time would still flow forward…. If that is bs it will be forgotten, just seems evident on some level…
for a scientist, the author seems to have missed a key point that underpins all knowledge: nothing can be proven to not exist. the burden of proof is always on existence.
disliking a fact or where it leads does not make it a non-fact. you can object to the idea of lions all day long, but that will not stop them from eating you.
finally: time does not flow backwards; it does not exist. human perception, cognition, and memory are all limited and flawed.
Time is violable, I have seen this all my life, Have books or the nature of precognition, subtile that all men have… To say that time is all in the mind and that the mind invents the flow of time is understandable but wrong, the mind would have to not only maintain the complete narrative of memory just to protect the ego from non linear narrative along the whole life of a personality . Do you know how complex that sounds. The mind will not spend that sort of energy to create just a flow that approximates time.
I have seen information go into the past… You will not believe me, but I tell you that you do not do your science a favor by accepting that time does not exist…
In all of physics time exists. It just depend which theory of time you prefer. There is the A theory which is the traditional view and there is the B theory that posits all time is the same but time still exists. Special Relativity and General relativity , the crown jewels of human achievement use time in their formulation. In fact time and space are interwoven in such a fashion they cannot be separated. It’s just if you are an A theory or a B theory time advocate. It’s standard fair….any physics book will have a discussion of A or B time and asymmetry of time reversal
I believe that a fundamental time arrow exists and that time is not an illusion ( as for example stated by A. Einstein). Imagine the growth of a beautiful snow crystal. The explanation is that it forms, because the free energy of the system tends to assume a minimum. I consider this trend of energy to minimize as the origin of time flow. But energy is now defined to be only a number (a scalar quantity) without interest to become active. A stone rolling down a hill follows the principle of least action (energy times time). I am convinced that it can only do that when energy has a tendency to decrease its presence per state generating entropy. Energy turnover and not statistics drives time.
Our universe reside inside a crypto system we will never be able to see the fundamental big picture.
You may be right but it is human to attempt to understand how nature works and why we are there
Maybe the author of this idiotic article missed out on the concept of quantum superfluids.
I can help, I’m from the private sector : http://lifeform.net/archimedes/Cosmic_Axions.pdf
As a professor of physical chemistry I know what quantum superfluids are. But quantum paradoxes did not satisfy me . After understanding that there is a fundamental time orientation in nature I applied this concept to quantum phenomena and found that they become rationally understandable. They are dynamically self organized systems and allow to perceive our universe differently.