From Quanta Magazine:
In the new story of the arrow of time, it is the loss of information through quantum entanglement, rather than a subjective lack of human knowledge, that drives a cup of coffee into equilibrium with the surrounding room. The room eventually equilibrates with the outside environment, and the environment drifts even more slowly toward equilibrium with the rest of the universe. The giants of 19th century thermodynamics viewed this process as a gradual dispersal of energy that increases the overall entropy, or disorder, of the universe. Today, Lloyd, Popescu and others in their field see the arrow of time differently. In their view, information becomes increasingly diffuse, but it never disappears completely. So, they assert, although entropy increases locally, the overall entropy of the universe stays constant at zero.
“The universe as a whole is in a pure state,” Lloyd said. “But individual pieces of it, because they are entangled with the rest of the universe, are in mixtures.”
One aspect of time’s arrow remains unsolved. “There is nothing in these works to say why you started at the gate,” Popescu said, referring to the park analogy. “In other words, they don’t explain why the initial state of the universe was far from equilibrium.” He said this is a question about the nature of the Big Bang.
…
The backdrop for the steady growth of entanglement throughout the universe is, of course, time itself. The physicists stress that despite great advances in understanding how changes in time occur, they have made no progress in uncovering the nature of time itself or why it seems different (both perceptually and in the equations of quantum mechanics) than the three dimensions of space. Popescu calls this “one of the greatest unknowns in physics.”
Yes, as a long-ago author said,
The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.
. The science is better today; the art was better then.
See also: Big Bang exterminator wanted, will train
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