Quantum Time –“The Key to the Origin of the Universe” (Weekend Feature)





"If you want to know where the universe came from and where it's going, you need to know about time," says Joan Vaccaro at the Griffith University's Center for Quantum Dynamics. "Experiments on subatomic particles over the past 50 years ago show that nature doesn't treat both directions of time equally. In particular, subatomic particles called K and B mesons behave slightly differently depending on the direction of time."

New research from Griffith University's Centre for Quantum Dynamics is broadening perspectives on time and space. In a paper published in the prestigious journal Proceedings of the Royal Society A, Joan Vaccaro of Griffith University challenges the long-held presumption that time evolution — the incessant unfolding of the universe over time — is an elemental part of Nature.

In the paper, "Quantum Asymmetry Between Time and Space," she suggests there may be a deeper origin due to a difference between the two directions of time: to the future and to the past.






The image at the top of the page shows a maser, a jet ejected from a supermassive black hole at the center of a galaxy, named MG J0414+0534. The radiation from the water maser was emitted when the Universe was only about 2.5 billion years old, a fifth of its current age. “The radiation that we detected has taken 11.1 billion years to reach the Earth, said Dr. John McKean of the Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy (ASTRON). “However, because the Universe has expanded like an inflating balloon in that time, stretching out the distances between points, the galaxy in which the water was detected is about 19.8 billion light years away.” (Credit: John McKean/HST Archive Data)

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