Physicists created a tiny universe and watched time emerge without a clock
Scientists have created a miniature universe in the laboratory that could help answer one of the biggest mysteries in physics: What is time, and where does it come from? Using 24,000 ultracold atoms, a University of Birmingham researcher built an isolated quantum system that repeatedly expands and contracts, mimicking the Big Bang and a possible Big...
Key Takeaways
- Scientists have created a miniature universe in the laboratory that could help answer one of the biggest mysteries in physics: What is time, and where does it come from?
- Using 24,000 ultracold atoms, a University of Birmingham researcher built an isolated quantum system that repeatedly expands and contracts, mimicking the Big Bang and a possible Big Crunch.
- Remarkably, the experiment showed that time could emerge from changes happening inside the system, without relying on an external clock.
Scientists have created a miniature universe in the laboratory that could help answer one of the biggest mysteries in physics: What is time, and where does it come from? Using 24,000 ultracold atoms, a University of Birmingham researcher built an isolated quantum system that repeatedly expands and contracts, mimicking the Big Bang and a possible Big Crunch. Remarkably, the experiment showed that time could emerge from changes happening inside the system, without relying on an external clock.
Original Publisher Attribution
This summary was curated from ScienceDaily.