The arrow of time is relative: experimental support

It is amazing how experimental findings pop up - almost one every day - to support TGD. Experimenters seem to work as if they knew about predictions of TGD and were systematically testing its predictions. Do they? Or does science make progress at the level of collective consciousness and are individual scientists like neutrons in brain? Certainly TGD is a curse word for the HEP-TH empire (high energy physics - theory). Last week I wrote about experiments giving support for TGD view about prebiotic forms of life. Now it is about arrow of time: the arrow of time is relative.

Remark: TGD is like the forbidden interval C-F# in music before times of Bach (the sound of ambulance by the way): it was regarded as something satanic by the church. You can find it oppoing up is the compositions of Bach again and again! Suddenly it became deeply spiritual!

What has been found that heat flows from from system with temperature T₁ to a system with temperature T₂> T₁ if there is correlation between the two systems meaning that the density matrix for the two nuclear systems (samples consisting of hydrogen atoms and carbon atoms) is not mere tensor product of density matrices but contains an additional term describing correlation. It must be emphasized that this finding is not in conflict with the standard view about second law which only says that heat flows from system with higher temperature to that with lower temperature provided that there are no correlations between the systems.

The argument runs as follows. The mutual information for the uncorrelated systems vanishes, and since it can only increase this implies flow of heat in the standard direction. If the mutual information is non-vanishing in the initial situation (due to the correlation) it can also decrease and this can give a heat flow in non-standard direction. This has been observed.

Although one can model the finding using standard thermodynamics, one can ask whether something deeper might be involved. Should one be cautious and talk only about the changing direction of heat flow due to the breaking of the basic assumptions of thermodynamics, and avoid speaking about direction of thermodynamical time? Or could a genuine change of the arrow of time take place? Going even deeper, one must ask what thermodynamical time, the time of physicist (geometric time), and the arrow of time do really mean? What is the relationship between these two times? This leads to ponder questions about the basics of quantum measurement theory and here I can only consider TGD based vision (see this).

1. The basic prediction of zero energy ontology (ZEO) is that the arrow of geometric time can have both signs whereas the arrow of subjective time (relating closely to thermodynamic time) defined by experience created by sequence of state function reductions is always the same. The arrow of geometric time is indeed relative. The flow of geometric time corresponds to the increase of distance between tips of causal diamond (CD) and the increase in particular reduction is at either tip of CD and in this manner defines arrow of time. CD grows either "upwards" or "downwards". A geometric measure for experienced time is that distance between the tips of CD which always increases.
   

   Time reflection symmetry (T) with respect tot he center of CD is broken in TGD: the classical time evolutions of space-time surfaces are not T mirror images of each other. This is true also for the quantal evolutions defined by zero energy states essentially as quantum superpositions of classical evolutions. States and their time reversals obey the initial conditions at opposite boundaries of CD. Arrow of time is forced by the place (either boundary of CD), where initial conditions are posed, not by the initial conditions themselves.
   
   

2. One must however remember that ZEO describes genuine quantum systems whereas thermodynamics decribes ensemble, which is a highly idealized notion. In ZEO arrow of geometric time would change in each "big" quantum jump and would remain the same during the sequence of "small" state function reductions defining the counterpart of Zeno effect or weak measurement.
   
   
3. Initial conditions breaking the basic assumptions of thermodynamics induce correlations and the heat flow in "wrong" direction in the model for the finding. The arrow of time is claimed to be changed in time interval of length of order 2 millisecond. Interestingly, millisecond happens to characterize the time scale of nerve pulse and ZEO predicts that in living matter the change of the arrow of time takes place routinely. In ZEO based description the growth of the temporal distance between the tips of CD would be of order 2 milliseconds.
   

   It would be however the opposite boundary of CD in geometric past that would receide farther away. One can argue that it is not possible measure the position of the past boundary of CD directly. But is it possible to measure the distance between the tips of CD indirectly from the behavior of the ensemble? ZEO would suggest that the time appearing in the Hamiltonian modelling the system corresponds to the distance between tips of CD and never decreases. The change of the direction of heat flow would correspond to the reduction to the original boundary of CD in the experiment and the correlation would make ZEO visible.
   

   If the two descriptions are equivalent, the initial correlations for the ensemble force should correspond to posing initial conditions at the non-standard boundary of CD leading to the reversal of the arrow of time. The very act of posing the correlations would correspond to a "big" state function reduction to opposite boundary of CD. In standard quantum measurement theory state preparation indeed corresponds to this state function reduction so that the two descriptions might be consistent.
   
   

See the the article Re-examination of the basic notions of TGD inspired theory of consciousness.

For a summary of earlier postings see Latest progress in TGD.

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