Physicists Are Unraveling the Mystery of the Arrow of Time



Researchers are solving the riddle of the arrow of time, which has significant ramifications for biology, neuroscience, and physics.

To better understand how particles and cells generate the large-scale dynamics that humans perceive as time passing, theoretical physicists have made strides in a recent study.

The passage of time from the past to the future is a fundamental aspect of how we perceive the world. However, the specific mechanism by which this phenomenon, often known as the arrow of time, results from the microscopic interactions between particles and cells remains a mystery. With the release of a fresh paper in the journal Physical Review Letters, researchers at the CUNY Graduate Center Initiative for the Theoretical Sciences (ITS) are making progress in solving this mystery. The discoveries may have significant ramifications for a variety of fields, including physics, neuroscience, and biology.

Fundamentally, the second law of thermodynamics is where the arrow of time comes from. This is the idea that as physical systems get smaller and more random, they move from being ordered to being disordered. The stronger the arrow of time and the more challenging it is for a system to return to an ordered state, the more disorganized it gets. In essence, we see time moving in one way because of the universe's predisposition toward disorder.

According to Christopher Lynn, a postdoctoral fellow with the ITS program and the paper's first author, "the two questions our team had were, if we looked at a particular system, would we be able to quantify the strength of its arrow of time, and would we be able to sort out how it emerges from the micro scale, where cells and neurons interact, to the whole system." "Our results offer the first step toward understanding how the arrow of time that we encounter in daily life develops from these more microscopic characteristics," the authors write.

The physicists investigated how the arrow of time may be broken down by analyzing particular system components and their interactions in order to start responding to these issues. The components could, for instance, be the retina's working neurons. By focusing on a single moment, they demonstrated how the arrow of time can be divided into fragments formed by parts operating alone, in pairs, in triplets, or in more complex arrangements.

Armed with this technique for dissecting the arrow of time, the researchers examined earlier research on how salamander neurons responded to various films in their retinas. A single object moved randomly across the screen in one film, whereas the richness of natural scenery was fully captured in another. The study found that the arrow of time appeared in both movies, but only in small, intricate groupings of neurons, not in huge, complex ones. Surprisingly, the researchers found that observing random motion produced a greater arrow of time in the retina than viewing a genuine scene did. This latter discovery, according to Lynn, raises concerns about how our internal view of the arrow of time aligns with the outside world.

Researchers studying neurobiology may find these findings particularly interesting, according to Lynn. "They might reveal, for instance, whether the arrow of time behaves differently in neuroatypical brains."

According to David Schwab, the study's lead author and a professor of Physics and Biology at the Graduate Center, "Chris' decomposition of local irreversibility—also known as the arrow of time—is an elegant, general framework that may provide a novel perspective for exploring many high-dimensional, nonequilibrium systems."

By THE GRADUATE CENTER, CUNY 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Do You Sleep on Your Back or Side? Here's The Research on 'Optimal' Sleep Positions

Image
William Dement, a renowned sleep researcher at Stanford University, is quoted as saying that after 50 years of study, the only reason he can think of for why we sleep is "because we become sleepy." Sleep certainly matters for our health and wellbeing even though it may be, as one researcher put it, "the sole major habit in quest of a function." Do we, however, have it right? What do studies on sleeping positions say? Is there a proper sleeping position? The majority of people favor sleeping on their side. This is encouraging news because people who sleep on their backs are more likely to have trouble falling asleep or breathing during the night. Most of the time, we have a tendency to shift around quite a bit at night. According to a study involving 664 sleepers, on average, participants slept on their side 54% of the time, their back 37% of the time, and their front 7% of the time. Males are more likely to change positions throughout the night and move their arms, ...
Read more

The Science of Beards

Image
Here are a few facts that scientists have learned about beards as the world prepares to celebrate amazing facial hair on World Beard Day (September 3). Strong Manly Beard Men who have beards appear to be more dominant, aggressive, and strong, according to numerous studies[1][2][3] that have been conducted. In fact, men claim that growing facial hair makes them feel[4] more manly. Men who choose to grow beards tend to have higher testosterone levels than men who choose to keep their faces clean-shaven, according to research. They are also more likely to be hostile sexists, or to support the patriarchy and male dominance, as well as to believe that women belong in the kitchen, according to research on this topic. The beards (and muscles) on these males might be used to enforce gender roles. Professor R. D. Guthrie proposed in his book "Evolution of human threat display organs" from the 1970s that beards could be utilized to scare male rivals by improving aggressive and threaten...
Read more

Scientists Uncover a Surprising Connection Between Appetite and Sun Exposure

Image
Recent studies from Tel Aviv University show that women are not affected by sun exposure on their hunger levels, but males are. The study shows how the metabolic pathway is engaged differently in men and women. It was carried out utilizing lab models. Males of both animal and human species, as well as those exposed to the sun, are reportedly triggered to produce a protein called p53 that repairs any DNA damage that may have been done to the skin as a result of the exposure. The body produces the hunger-inducing hormone ghrelin in response to p53 activation. In females, the hormone estrogen stops p53 from interacting with ghrelin, preventing the desire to eat after being in the sun. The ground-breaking investigation was directed by professor Carmit Levy and Ph.D. candidate Shivang Parikh of the Department of Human Genetics and Biochemistry at TAU's Sackler Faculty of Medicine. In addition to the Tel Aviv Sourasky (Ichilov), Assuta, Meir, and Sheba Medical Centers, Drs. Yiftach Gepne...
Read more