Is the arrow of time bullshit

"The arrow of time, or time's arrow, is a concept developed in 1927 by the British astronomer Arthur Eddington involving the "one-way direction" or "asymmetry" of time. This direction, which can be determined, according to Eddington, by studying the organization of atoms, molecules and bodies, might be drawn upon a four-dimensional relativistic map of the world ("a solid block of paper").[1]
Physical processes at the microscopic level are believed to be either entirely or mostly time-symmetric: if the direction of time were to reverse, the theoretical statements that describe them would remain true. Yet at the macroscopic level it often appears that this is not the case: there is an obvious direction (or flow) of time."

isnt time the same really back and forth ? what is this bs!

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it often appears that... there is an obvious direction (or flow) of time.

This has also been my experience to date. So, based on my observation alone, the statement above appears to be true. Physicists don't seem to claim more than this "appearance" of directionality, since there is no theoretical basis for a stronger claim than that.

i was watching an episode of nova on pbs where a guy in a bowtie was standing in front of a green screen of the universe and he said einstein predicted we could travel through time. so afaik it's bullshit.

was bowtie guy bill nye or degrasse or brian greene or ugh david pogue?

yeah, it was brian greene

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hd4rgyZzseY

brian greene seems always so measured and calibrated in what he says in interviews so if there is bullshit present, he'd probably let you know. like in that string theory special he was all, "just so you know, we don't have any way of testing this exotic stuff so this is probably bullshit."

when yo uwatch movies backwards the only way you can tell an arrow of time is if someone barfs

Entropy is obviously directional but that's kind of just a brute statistical fact, it doesn't seem like the sort of thing that could be the cause of the directionality we experience, or even the manifestation of some deeper theoretical directionality. And yet it seems wrong to call it just a coincidence, that entropy and our experience both travel in the same direction.

http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/nstv/2011/08/born-to-be-viral-how-to-unmix-a-mixed-fluid.html

Maybe it's really simple. Things change. The universe changes. Change is a fundamental aspect of reality. As we experience reality, so we experience change. Change will be in an entropic direction due to simple statistics, so our experience will reflect that.

Funny fluids notwithstanding.

Ha. The funny fluid shows you can reverse time, sort of, but only with viscous fluids like corn syrup. With non-viscous, good luck.

GOOD LUCK WITH THAT, BUDDY!!!!!!

isnt entorpy just movement of particles - some hitting each other while the ones on the outisde have none to hit so they fly away...if they were magnetic it would go backwards when you put them in a box

I dunno most high-level theoretical physicists who write things normal people can read who have talked about this suggest that time as we construe it is basically a fiction and that we really don't understand causality enough at all to make any pronouncements about if time is directional in any real, physical, way.

Entropy increases universally over any given length of time, so that might be a "times arrow." As I understand it entropy has more to do with energy dispersing into lower and lower efficiencies (ie "heat loss" and stuff -- or the explosive energy of gasoline being transferred to the more "dispersed" kinetic energy of a car moving forward).

But IANA physicist.

this seems like less of a physics question than a neurology/phenomenology/economics question.

the Fibonacci vagina

that being said itis nreat to watch movies backwards in quicktime - you press left arrow and command to make the magic

have you noticed quicktime chops up the audio into segments and reverses those instead of doing a continuous backwards audio stream?
bad form, apple!

this seems like less of a physics question than a neurology/phenomenology/economics question.

― Philip Nunez

That reminds me of a crazy theory I semi-hold: that the more one focuses on the past or studies it, the more "past" there is.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYgfCTWA9TU&feature=youtube_gdata_player

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7BD1rAzJgzI&feature=youtube_gdata_player

Most music is written to be played and heard in only one direction. If time ever reverses, I predict this will be excruciating to listen to.

Bach wrote some music that sounds good both forward and backward, he was into nerdy shit like that.

i remember that Bach piece! i think it was not just forward and backward but also you had to flip the music sheet upside down.
(it wasn't very good!)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tge8-3guMBw&feature=youtube_gdata_player

backwards forwards, no difference in all things

for example - you are sittin go nthe john - a shit flies up into your ass and proceeds through your bory, eventually leaving your mouth as a carrot. the carrot goes into the ground and changes into dirt and water which is bascially shit anyway

the mayans used daytimers which read the same way backwards and forwards. plus let's not forget the old-fashioned kind of sundials.

The only arrow of time is the relentless growth of entropy. Due to conservation laws, pretty much everything else in physics is equivalent if you reverse the flow of time, and IIRC antimatter can be treated mathematically as normal particles moving backwards in time.

B-b-but that's a big only.

There is an arrow of time, however that arrow is defined by the speed of light. The arrow is point out from your internal experience towards the world. Everything you see is in the past, and the further away something is, the further in the past it is.

mayb ewe are missing the arrow for the feathers - would a backwards time arrow not fly featherfirst infto fuckland?

what about the ocarina of time

Alternatively, antiphotons emerge from their interactions with our eyes and any other absorbing (in our time orientation) matter, and converge upon particle reactions where they cause electrons to jump orbit and colliding nuclei to fission apart.

Entropy is partly just the observation that particles in random motion (ie, all of them) tend to disperse, as does light. We humans (and all other life) exist in part by leeching energy from steps in this increasing disorder to create local pockets of complexity. Its not clear to me whether biological life would be possible in the opposite direction of time.

The past is a cancelled check.

in some theoretical circles the arrow of time looks like a b0ner

And there's a bit of cosmic joke in there about the arrow of time/entropy making life & thought possible in this universe also dooming it to slow heat death.