time – Quanta Magazine https://www.quantamagazine.org Illuminating science Mon, 16 Sep 2024 14:10:47 -0400 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.2 What Is the Nature of Time? https://www.quantamagazine.org/what-is-the-nature-of-time-20240229/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/what-is-the-nature-of-time-20240229/#respond Thu, 29 Feb 2024 14:00:20 +0000 https://www.quantamagazine.org/?p=135842 The post What Is the Nature of Time? first appeared on Quanta Magazine

]]> Time seems linear to us: We remember the past, experience the present and predict the future, moving consecutively from one moment to the next. But why is it that way, and could time ultimately be a kind of illusion? In this episode, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist Frank Wilczek speaks with host Steven Strogatz about the many “arrows” of time and why most of them seem irreversible...

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]]> https://www.quantamagazine.org/what-is-the-nature-of-time-20240229/feed/ 0 How Quantum Physicists ‘Flipped Time’ (and How They Didn’t) https://www.quantamagazine.org/how-quantum-physicists-flipped-time-and-how-they-didnt-20230127/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/how-quantum-physicists-flipped-time-and-how-they-didnt-20230127/#respond Fri, 27 Jan 2023 15:34:32 +0000 https://www.quantamagazine.org/?p=122661 The post How Quantum Physicists ‘Flipped Time’ (and How They Didn’t) first appeared on Quanta Magazine

]]> Physicists have coaxed particles of light into undergoing opposite transformations simultaneously, like a human turning into a werewolf as the werewolf turns into a human. In carefully engineered circuits, the photons act as if time were flowing in a quantum combination of forward and backward. “For the first time ever, we kind of have a time-traveling machine going in both directions...

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]]> https://www.quantamagazine.org/how-quantum-physicists-flipped-time-and-how-they-didnt-20230127/feed/ 0 How to Think About Relativity https://www.quantamagazine.org/how-to-think-about-relativitys-concept-of-space-time-20221114/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/how-to-think-about-relativitys-concept-of-space-time-20221114/#respond Mon, 14 Nov 2022 14:53:52 +0000 https://www.quantamagazine.org/?p=120545 The post How to Think About Relativity first appeared on Quanta Magazine

]]> In Newtonian physics, space and time had their independent identities, and nobody ever got them mixed up. It was with the theory of relativity, put together in the early 20th century, that talking about space-time became almost unavoidable. In relativity, it’s no longer true that space and time have separate, objective meanings. What really exists is space-time, and slicing it up into space and...

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]]> https://www.quantamagazine.org/how-to-think-about-relativitys-concept-of-space-time-20221114/feed/ 0 Physicists Rewrite the Fundamental Law That Leads to Disorder https://www.quantamagazine.org/physicists-trace-the-rise-in-entropy-to-quantum-information-20220526/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/physicists-trace-the-rise-in-entropy-to-quantum-information-20220526/#respond Thu, 26 May 2022 13:52:59 +0000 https://www.quantamagazine.org/?p=115311 The post Physicists Rewrite the Fundamental Law That Leads to Disorder first appeared on Quanta Magazine

]]> In all of physical law, there’s arguably no principle more sacrosanct than the second law of thermodynamics — the notion that entropy, a measure of disorder, will always stay the same or increase. “If someone points out to you that your pet theory of the universe is in disagreement with Maxwell’s equations — then so much the worse for Maxwell’s equations,” wrote the British astrophysicist Arthur...

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]]> https://www.quantamagazine.org/physicists-trace-the-rise-in-entropy-to-quantum-information-20220526/feed/ 0 An Ultra-Precise Clock Links the Quantum World With Gravity https://www.quantamagazine.org/an-atomic-clock-promises-link-between-quantum-world-and-gravity-20211025/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/an-atomic-clock-promises-link-between-quantum-world-and-gravity-20211025/#respond Mon, 25 Oct 2021 14:39:16 +0000 https://www.quantamagazine.org/?p=109780 The post An Ultra-Precise Clock Links the Quantum World With Gravity first appeared on Quanta Magazine

]]> The infamous twin paradox sends the astronaut Alice on a blazing-fast space voyage. When she returns to reunite with her twin, Bob, she finds that he has aged much faster than she has. It’s a well-known but perplexing result: Time slows if you’re moving fast. Gravity does the same thing. Earth — or any massive body — warps space-time in a way that slows time, according to Albert Einstein’s general...

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