![]() Seems easy: Just hit it with a cue stick. Vinokur likened the challenge to sending a speeding billiard ball back to where it started. But getting a wave function to go in reverse is no small trick.ĭr. The law describing its evolution, known as the Schrödinger equation, after Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger, is equally valid running forward or backward. The wave function extends throughout space and time. As a result, a particle such as an electron, or a system of them, is represented by a mathematical entity called a wave function, whose magnitude is a measure of the probability of finding a particle in a particular place or condition. The uncertainty principle, which lies at the heart of quantum mechanics, states that, at any given moment, either the location or the velocity of a subatomic particle can be specified, but not both. Thus, the atoms in an egg never unscramble themselves, in part because there are countless more ways for them to be thoroughly scrambled than successfully reassembled. We seem to be at the mercy of the second law of thermodynamics, which states that disorder and complexity only increase in a closed system such as, say, the universe. In the real world we can climb out of the subway and turn left or right, but we don’t have the choice of going forward or back in time. But if time is just another dimension of space-time, as Einstein said, it’s a strange one-way dimension. On paper, the basic laws of physics are reversible they work mathematically whether time is running forward or backward. “The system comprising two particles is even more irreversible, let alone the eggs - comprising billions of particles - we break to prepare an omelet.” Lesovik of the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology. ![]() Vinokur, of Argonne National Laboratory, said in an email message he is one of the five aspiring time lords led by Gordey B. “We demonstrate that time-reversing even ONE quantum particle is an unsurmountable task for nature alone,” Valerii M. Now it seems that, under general conditions, even a single particle probably can’t go backward without help and careful tinkering. Most of us already sense that the atoms of a scrambled egg can’t be unscrambled back inside a pristine shell. But it was a Pyrrhic victory at best, requiring manipulations so unlikely to occur naturally that it only reinforced the notion that we are helplessly trapped in the flow of time. Using an IBM quantum computer, they managed to undo the aging of a single, simulated elementary particle by one millionth of a second. In what amounts to a technological triumph for the aspiring Benjamin Buttons of the virtual world, a team of quantum physicists reported earlier this year that they had succeeded in creating a computer algorithm that acts like the Fountain of Youth. This is not typically seen in regular life. Scott Fitzgerald and then a movie starring Brad Pitt, a man ages backward: He is born an old man, regresses over the years and dies an infant. In “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,” a story by F.
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