Scientists build a tiny 'mini-universe' that keeps time without a clock

Scientists build a tiny 'mini-universe' that keeps time without a clock

Scientists build a tiny 'mini-universe' that keeps time without a clock

A physicist at the University of Birmingham cooled about 24,000 rubidium atoms to near absolute zero and trapped them in a tiny isolated system that expands and contracts like a miniature universe. Instead of using an outside clock, the team measured time from changes inside the system itself, a measure called entropic time, which kept events in the right order and could even slow down. The work, published in Physical Review Research, does not prove that time is an illusion, but it is the first controlled test of the idea that time can emerge from what happens inside a system rather than from an external ticking clock.

A physicist at the University of Birmingham cooled about 24,000 rubidium atoms to near absolute zero and trapped them in a tiny isolated system that expands and contracts like a miniature universe. Instead of using an outside clock, the team measured time from changes inside the system itself, a measure called entropic time, which kept events in the right order and could even slow down. The work, published in Physical Review Research, does not prove that time is an illusion, but it is the first controlled test of the idea that time can emerge from what happens inside a system rather than from an external ticking clock.

A physicist at the University of Birmingham cooled about 24,000 rubidium atoms to near absolute zero and trapped them in a tiny isolated system that expands and contracts like a miniature universe. Instead of using an outside clock, the team measured time from changes inside the system itself, a measure called entropic time, which kept events in the right order and could even slow down. The work, published in Physical Review Research, does not prove that time is an illusion, but it is the first controlled test of the idea that time can emerge from what happens inside a system rather than from an external ticking clock.