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The Essence of the Time 2017-11-05
Abstract
Starting with an introduction into the opinions and hypotheses currently under discussion about the
question "what is the nature, the essence of 'time'?" on a popular physico-chemical and physics le-
vel, I further focus on the need to differentiate aggregation levels for which in each case (compared
to lower aggregation levels) new properties will emerge which exhibit their principles. Then the rea-
der is guided to the new hypothesis for answering the a. m. question presented here: "time" is an
emergent property from entropy production, entropy flow in a 3-dimensional space. Furthermore,
another hypothesis is presented aimed at resolving the apparent inconsistency between the timeless
Newton and Einstein laws with the reality of the time's arrow.
Introduction
The question "What is the time's nature, essence?" is still an unresolved riddle. Many people consi -
der time being an illusion. Lee Smolin says in his book "Time Reborn":1 "The imagination that time
is an illusion has a status of a philosophical and religious platitude." The nature laws so far known
like Newton's or Einstein's deliver the same results irrespective of time, irrespective of the time's ar-
row. Newton's and Einstein's laws are timeless.
While from our daily experience it is unimaginable that a tree which had fallen down and broke
apart during a storm will spontaneously revive, stand up and some day later continue spending us
shadow with its intensively green leaves, there are more than only one physicist who argue that this
might be unimaginable or might have a very low probability to happen, but if we wait enough time,
maybe longer than the universe's age, it may indeed happen.2 At least, such an argument considers
"time" being a reality.
Here3 the authors claim there were ever more strong hints for that time is an illusion, even more
strange, it simply doesn't exist. Time has not been created during the big bang nor did it exist before
it. Craig Callender argues in the German issue Spektrum der Wissenschaft under the headline "Is
time an illusion?"4 that everything we actually express in a time unit (day, hour, minute, second)
can as well be expressed without such units, comparable with that we do not need money for buying
products: instead of paying 100 € for a pair of shoes we could exchange the shoes for 50 cups of
coffee; similarly instead of saying "75 heart beats per minute" and "the earth is rotating around its
axis once per day" one could say "each earth rotation are 108,000 heart beats", which I would - with
all due respect - refuse to say as heart beats are not at all regular, not from human to human and
even not for one human, depending on his/her situation, health status, shape.
Nach Lee Smolin1 (p 147 ff in German issue) originates this assumption from a (as he calls it) "cos-
mological misjudgement": as already earlier with Newton's gravity law and also with Einstein's
relativity theory, people jumped to the conclusion that what is valid for some or all subsystems, is
1"Im Universum der Zeit" Pantheon-Verlag 2015 (original issue 2013 "Time Reborn", Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, N. Y.)
2http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20160708-the-past-is-not-set-in-stone-so-we-may-be-able-to-change-it (the analogy used
therein was not like the mine aout the fallen tree, but a less descriptive one: 2 gases are mixed in 2 containers linked with a
tube; could they spontaneously demix so that e. g. left is the nitrogen, on the right carbon dioxide? Non-equilibrium
thermodynamics says "no", the advocates of reversibility say "yes, although is highly improbable, but it is principally possible,
but it may take very long, maybe longer than the age of the universe).
3http://nautil.us/issue/9/time/in-search-of-times-origin
4Spektrum der Wissenschaft, 10.2010, S. 33. In the following article, some physicists in US and GB have been interviewed and
asked to tell their opinion about "what is time": https://www.space.com/29859-the-illusion-of-time.html
1
also valid for the cosmos as a whole. He continues by saying that the universe is an entity different
from any of its parts, it is also not a simple sum of all its parts.
Differentiating aggregation levels
This thought should leave us to the well-known (but often forgotten) fact, that for every higher ag-
gregation level of matter, new laws are emerging. So evolution principles can not be derived from
or reduced to principles of the functioning of a living plant, an animal, or a cell, and the function of
a cell can not be reduced to the understanding of the composition of the cell's isolated chemical
components, and the structure and formation mechanism of one or all of the cell's chemicals com-
ponents can not be reduced to the properties of a carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen and sulfur
atom, nor of their protons, neutrons and electrons.
We can not derive the principles of evolution from our even ever better knowledge of the elementa-
ry particles. These are totally different aggregation levels of matter. The laws of the elementary par -
ticles properties and interactions do not by themselves directly create nor determine the evolution
laws. The phenomenon "evolution" has emerged only when the new higher aggregation level "life"
including "reproduction" occured.
Hence even more serious: we can not reduce the laws of the universe to the laws of quantums. We
will need to remind us about this conclusion a little bit later.
What do we observe every day while we believe and seem to feel "time flows from past via pre-
sence to future"? We observe changes around us and with us. We observe plants to grow, mature
and degrade; we observe clouds to come and go, rain to fall and to stop, the sun is rising and setting,
spring, summer, automn and winter and coming and passing, and archeologists and paleobiologists
are telling us about the past time long gone before us.
How comes, things come and go, grow and die, cultures emerge, mature, reign and fall, we oursel-
ves have been born, grown up, matured, and became older, weaker, will finally, maybe soon, die?
Non-equilibrium systems, chaos and order out of chaos
Prigogine explained us all of this in general with his non-equlibrium thermodynamical theory5: whi-
le according to thermodynamics laws, entropy on a universal scale will ever grow, in open subsys-
tems it may decrease for some time. An excessive decrease of entropy in a subsystem (and an equi-
valent entropy export into the space surrounding the subsystem) is equivalent with the development
of structures, in Prigogine's words "dissipative structures"; in any open system which exhibits an
excess flow of energy into it, through it, entropy will be exported, and "dissipative" structures will
spontaneously develop. This means, that "order" will spontaneously develop by "self-organisation".
Structures developing in comparable subsystems, or structures developing in the same subsystems
but at a different time, although under same conditions, are never identical however similar. Snow
flakes - forming under ever changing dynamic non-equilibrium conditions in clouds at various
heights in turbulent air flow - display a vast unlimited variety of structures. Under equilibrium con-
ditions below 0°C, water will form ice crystals but never snow flakes.
It is a character of non-equilibrium systems that exact results of processes occuring therein can not
be precisely predicted. Snowfall events, their time and location, can in average only be predicted
5https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/chemistry/laureates/1977/prigogine-lecture.pdf
2
with an about 60% probability. Weather in general is a typical example for non-equilibrium and cha-
os leading to the consequence that weather forecast will never be 100% correct. There are too many
non-linearly interacting elements which render a precise forecast impossible. This is not due to in-
competent weather experts, also not due to still too small supercomputers nor inappropriate pro-
gramming, but a principle character of chaos in non-equilibrium systems.
During I worked on a first draft of this ar-
ticle in my part-time home in ShenZhen
(China), a third typhoon within only 10
days was approaching the coast of
GuangDong province. While the first two
arrived at those coastal locations within
an error of only about 50 km, the third
one which was expected to arrive on Sun-
day, Sept. 3rd, 2017, behave in a way not
pleasing the forecasters.
On Friday it was first said the typhoon
would arrive Sunday around noon time
about 50 km East of ShenZhen. Then it
made a 90° turn to the North so that they
expected a landing several 100 km East of ShenZhen. The typhoon however a few hours later made
another 90° turn, now to the West so a landing was expected West of ShenZhen. In addition, its
speed was much slower than predicted. Finally, after another turn to the Northwest, it arrived
around midnight (12 hours = 100% later than predicted only 36 hours before its real arrival) about
100 km East of ShenZhen and had downgraded to a "severe tropical storm", in contrast to the fore-
cast which expected - also due to its slow speed over the warm waters - a strengthening into a seve-
re typhoon.
Short term weather forecasts are usually relatively reliable, however unstable weather situations re-
sult in drastically decreasing reliability.6 Only if one would measure extremely intensively, with
sensors in every cubic meter of the atmosphere and the oceans, we could probably be able to exactly
predict the coming weather: it would be dark, freezing cold, we all would die, weather would stop
being dynamic, the earth surface would approach conditions close to equilibrium system.
Prigogine showed in his work basically outlined in the 1950s and 60s that the non-equilibrium cha-
racter causes our world not to be deterministic: any system (like our earth and any subsystem on it)
which exhibits an excessive input and throughput of energy and matter will behave chaotically, will
in detail not be predictable, will not be deterministic, but full of dynamic, interesting structures and
full of life.
In case of the earth, it is the sun supplying light and heat, together with remaining heat from within
the earth's core (the result of gigantic flow of matter leding to the formation of the earth) which
drive the earth's dynamics: continents are moving over the earth surface, vulcanos and continents
meeting are forming mountains, solar irridiation drives the evaporation of ocean water, the forma-
6In Wikipedia https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wettervorhersage (German version, the respective english page does not comment on
reliability) it is said: "Today, a forecast for the next week is about as reliable as 30 years ago a forecast for the coming day. A 24
hours forecast achieves an accuracy of above 90%. The accuracy for the coming 3 days is a little better than 75%. The reliability
varies very strongly depending upon the general weather condition. So it is sometimes possible in a stable winter high pressure
condition to forecast for one week with a 90% realiability. However in an unstable summer thunderstorm condition, forecast
accuracy is often significantly below 75% for 24 hours. In addition, one has to differentiate the accuracy level between temperature
and precipitation. Tempertures can be forecast at a much higher accuracy than precipitation."
3
tion of clouds, winds, rain will fall somewhere and somewhen, rivers will erode the mountains for-
med ages ago, organic matter has formed life, plants, trees, moss and lychen are growing based on
photosynthesis while creating fruitful soil and hence over time shaping the earth suface, animals
and man have evolved which live from plants and shaping the earth surface as well.
In the living world we can find the same pattern as in the inorganic chaotic world: like snow flakes
are not identical, no DNA of any individual of the same species will be identical with any other. No-
organism of a given species looks 100% identical alike. After a man and a woman had sex (hopeful-
ly with love and joy) and an embryo begins to grow, no one can say it will be a boy or girl, will later
grow how tall, will become intelligent or not, will enter into a business as plumber or professor or
musician or else, will be successful or not, homo- or heterosexually oriented, rich or poor, healthy
or sick ...
After we would plant an acorn from one single oak tree about 20 m apart from each other in a loca-
tion where the soil is the same, wind, solar irridiation and rainfall is the same - will these two oaks
over time develop to become identically looking alike oaks, with the branches at the same position,
the same length, during summer carrying identical leaves? No, leaves will not look alike, only simi-
lar, branches will have formed at different positions because during growth, the tree has unnumera-
ble amount of options when and where to branch, to bifurcate7, everyone of them having the same
likelyhood to occur or not, only by chance on the one tree it will happen here, on the other there,
with the result that both trees despite their identical DNA and virtually identical condition for grow-
th after some time will only look similar, but not at all alike. How rivers will shape the river bed can
not be predicted in detail, and two river beds even in similar environment will not look alike, as can
be seen in small "rivers" at sandy beaches (and compare page 7):
So this is not only the case with two humans, two oaks, but also with societies, cultures, their histo-
ry, with all the animate and inanimate nature, continents, mountains and valleys, the sun and planets
(are the saturn moons all alike? no, not even one is similar to another!), other solar and planetary
systems, galaxies and galaxy clusters: all of this is dynamic, not predictable in detail, often even not
the future trend can be derived from the past, all of our universe is subject to steady becoming and
passing away.
We can not predict earth quakes or vulcano eruptions, quite often not tomorrow's weather. We do
not know the NASDAQ index of tomorrow, not to talk about the indices of next month nor year.
7a term, which Prigogine has chosen for the observation that with the steady increase of a critical parameter (like temperature or
wind velocity) a system often reaches a situation where it has 2 or more options for further development (branching of
pathways). That is the case with growth of trees as well - a branch can develop here or there, and may bifurcate earlier or later.
4
Radioactive elements decay, we know their half-life time (which is a probability figure), but we can
not tell which one of the atoms will fall apart next.
Our world is not deterministic
How different my life, the history of Zipperling Kessler8 followed by Ormecon9, Enthone and even
the printed circuit board technology and the vita of hundreds or even thousands of workers, techni-
cians, engineers and scientists would have been, if Wolfgang C. Petersen at a certain Wednesday in
September 1980 would not have looked into the science pages of the German daily newspaper
"Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung" where I had published a small advertisement looking for a new
position as a development chemist after I had worked for 3 years in a small engineering company
following my PhD work at university. Mr. Petersen never looked into the Wednesday's issues'
science pages, and never before and never after this Wednesday, he looked into the advertisements
where academic people announced their availability, like I did on this one single Wednesday in Sep-
tember 1980; on this evening, he had problems to fall asleep and hoped to become sleepy if reading
the science articles and academic advertisements; in contrast to his expectation, he got excited when
he saw my advertisement, got up from bed and made a note not to forget next morning to contact
me, because it appeared to him that my profile was a perfect fit with his company's needs (and he
was right). This was a classical bifurcation7 which saved Zipperling from being bankrupt soon, crea-
ted a world class masterbatch supplier and an innovative new science-based masterbatch technolo-
gy; the bifurcation furthermore opened a way for me to start research which later led to the Organic
Metal, enriched non-equilibrium thermodynamics, and created the final surface finish ORMECON
CSN which over time shaped the printed circuit world's solderability preservation technology: now,
your car has an almost 100% probability to run based on electronics which involve printed circuit
boards having been protected with a 1 micron thin Tin layer.10 And not only your car.
In the very small (nano) world, at the scale of organisms' cells and humans, and at big scales, we
can oberserve and experience the effect of chaos, bifurcations, the unpredictability of our lives and
the world surrounding us. We experience the arrow of the time, growth and decay. This is opposite
to a view onto the world which is described by basic timeless laws which suggest either time does
not exist, is an illusion, or if it exist, the time's arrow has no meaning. Still, even in most science
areas a viewpoint similar to equilibrium view can be found. Still, a majority of physicists seem to
believe time is an illusion, or "when knowing the past in sufficient detail, it is principally possile to
predict the future".
But already a "three-bodies system" like "sun / earth / moon" is not predictable over sufficiently
long time as has been shown long time ago by Poincaré, and can also be demonstrated in simple
8https://www.researchgate.net/publication/262076086_Short_History_of_Zipperling_Kessler_Co_Ormecon%27s_mother_company?_iepl%5BgeneralViewId
%5D=5QhqXjj6KRPPpY4KwzKrYcDMKCc66HTqXeMZ&_iepl%5Bcontexts%5D%5B0%5D=searchReact&_iepl%5BviewId
%5D=2yElzWvb6Rc11aJxdG5LGVzTBl1q1sJ8zUzE&_iepl%5BsearchType%5D=publication&_iepl%5Bdata%5D%5BcountLessEqual20%5D=1&_iepl%5Bdata
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%3A262076086&_iepl%5BtargetEntityId%5D=PB%3A262076086&_iepl%5BinteractionType%5D=publicationTitle
9https://www.researchgate.net/publication/260427241_Milestones_highlights_of_the_Organic_Metal_Polyaniline_Science_Technology?_iepl%5BgeneralViewId
%5D=5QhqXjj6KRPPpY4KwzKrYcDMKCc66HTqXeMZ&_iepl%5Bcontexts%5D%5B0%5D=searchReact&_iepl%5BviewId
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%3A260427241&_iepl%5BtargetEntityId%5D=PB%3A260427241&_iepl%5BinteractionType%5D=publicationTitle
10 https://www.researchgate.net/publication/49593603_New_Insight_into_Organic_Metal_Polyaniline_Morphology_and_Structure?_iepl%5BviewId
%5D=IPP2Cx93kVcWUa0lXzd0lsgkjDE3xO5vFqqt&_iepl%5Bcontexts%5D%5B0%5D=prfhpi&_iepl%5Bdata%5D%5BstandardItemCount%5D=5&_iepl
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%5Bdata%5D%5BstandardItem3of5%5D=1&_iepl%5BtargetEntityId%5D=PB%3A49593603&_iepl%5BinteractionType%5D=publicationTitle,
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/317686554_ORMECON_CSN_Key_Facts_Comparison_with_Competitor?_iepl%5BgeneralViewId
%5D=Klxqb4paKt427tu4eocru6hWAR1bfjdEryTA&_iepl%5Bcontexts%5D%5B0%5D=searchReact&_iepl%5BviewId
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5
pendulums11. As even already such simple systems are not calculable, how could one ever expect to
calculate and predict the unlimited complexity of the infinite number of non-linearly interacting ele-
ments in our world.
Quite often, some effects we observe are not caused by just one reason, but by 2, 3 or more. This is
quite often overlooked while analyzing failure root causes in complex technical or also nature sys -
tems. The phrase "a butterflie's wing clap in Brazil can cause a tornado in Texas"12 is well known,
but mostly not deeply digested, but is a nice contribution to chats during boring parties in order to
either demonstrate how well educated one is or to humorously hide how bad one's science knowled-
ge is in reality. What is mainly not understood is that small actions can, but not necessarily do result
in big effects, and if, then mostly in non-linear interaction with other actions.
Irreversibility and the arrow of time
We are accustomed to say "time flows from past over the present to the future", and during time is
passing, our world and we ourselves are constantly meeting bifurcation points, the system or we
choose the one or the other pathway, and then, history can not be pulled back, can not be redone,
not be reversed. But still, not only in popular science magazines or TV documentations, it is stated
and argued that 2 mixed gases in 2 connected chambers can principally separate with the effect that
one gas (N2) will be in chamber 1, and the other gas (CO2) will be in chamber 2, which is said not to
be impossible but only highly improbable, we could observe it if we had enough time, but hélas, it
would require more time than the age of the universe2; in other form, very often the example of a
cup of coffee falling down from the table, the cup breaks apart, the coffee is spilled over the floor
and in the tiny gaps of the wooden floor tiles, and only if we had enough time (more than a dozen
billion of years) could we observe the happening to occur backwards, the coffee to withdraw from
the wood, jump in the air, refill the cup which already has reassembled and is flying back to the ta -
ble. Only, what a pity, it is so highly improbable but still possible!
No, not only it is highly improbable but definitely impossible due to the laws of non-equilibrium
thermodynamics.
The a. m. view is derived from Newton's and also Einstein's timeless laws. Time is said to only be
defined through causal relationship, but does not exist as such. Physicists feel being obliged to de-
rive a timeless universe with principally possible and allowed reversibility because Einstein's theo-
ries have been confirmed so wonderfully in the past 100 years, even recently now when the predic-
ted gravitation waves have been observed.
But as long and as soon as one accepts the (Prigogine) viewpoint that time exists and has an arrow,
the question remains "what is the time's nature, what is its essence?" We know what "mass" is, what
"energy" is, what a "distance" is, but we don't know what is "time". We can measure it, but when as-
ked to define it we use circular reasoning. We know what is flowing there when we are looking at a
river: water is flowing. But what is flowing when we experience the time flowing?
11 http://www.clausewitz.com/mobile/chaosdemos.htm, https://vimeo.com/11993047
12 Edward N. Lorenz, Predictability: Does the flap of a butterfly's wings in Brazil set off a tornado in Texas?, title of a presentation
in 1972 on the yearly meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science; Science 320, 2008, S. 431
6
We quite often say "time is passing (by)", but where does
the time go, does it vanish in the past? Is a river passing
and vanishing while water is flowing therein? No, only the
water flows from the mountain to the sea, the river is there
for as long as the water flows therein. "River" is the term
for describing the real effect of what "water flowing in a
(river) bed" is causing. The language "time has passed"
suggests it has vanished, but no: like the river which does
not vanish, time does not vanish, but like the flowing wa-
ter which results in effects (erosion, river bed formation,
etc), the flow of time causes effects which we can uncover
later on. We can "read" the past, it has not vanished but
has effects up until today and into the future.
Sean M. Carrol answers the above question in an article13
so as it is in line with Newton's and Einstein's laws which
are symmetric with respect to time. He does not argue that
time is an illusion, but that it were in contradiction to the
well established and confirmed laws which describe the
time in our world as being symmetric: because the laws of
microphysics do not distinguish between past and future, a time arrow could not exist. He claims
that the universe had begun homogeneously and hot, then it were still "tidy", later it changed to be
colder and "messy". Also he has the opinion that one would have to wait longer than the age of the
universe in order to observe a spontaneous demixing of coffee and milk originally well mixed
which he claims theoretically to be possible, but higly improbable; however, it is already theoreti-
cally impossible due to the laws of non-equilibrium thermodynamics. He asks why entropy was so
low in the beginning of the universe which he feels to be strange when looking at the "fact" that
states of low entropy are so rare. But is is really a fact? We are surrounded by states of low entropy
as we ourselves and our environment are highly stuctured due to far-from-equilibrium-self-organi-
sation, hence states of low entropy. Entropy has just been exported from the earth to somewhere
else in space (I would assume into neutron stars and black holes).
And even there, we have from a statistical and
equilibrium thermodynamics viewpoint highly
improbable structures: all the planetary systems,
galaxies, galaxy clusters and superclusters (bet-
ween which huge "voids" have been detected),
and also the "Great Wall", and long line of gala-
xies with a length of 500 million, a width of
200 million and a depth of only 15 million light
years, a nice filament structure (as shown here
in the figure "The Great Wall"14).
What is a "fact" for Caroll in his article in
"Spektrum der Wissenschaft" is not a fact, in
contrast: the universe itself is highly structu-
red.15, 16
13 Spektrum der Wissenschaft 8.2008 (S. 26)
14 "The Great Wall", taken from https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gro%C3%9Fe_Mauer_(Astronomie)
7
But that Caroll does not consider, and he continues by saying that the universe could also have
started with what we assume will be the end of our universe and then during billions of years con-
tract to an infinitely small dot having infinitely high density - hence exactly opposite to what we
actually understand being the history from "big bang" via today up until the death of a cold univer-
se, because also the reverse were allowed according to nature laws and quantum mechanics as these
laws are timeless and don't have a time arrow.
The time's arrow which we see is - so Caroll - only observable by us because "right besides us" the-
re are other universes with an opposite direction of time. Only, hélas, we can not observe them. I
have a hard time taking such theories serious, same as with modern hypotheses which invent "dark
energy" and "dark matter"17 in order to explain some phenomena in the universe. Also these can not
be detected as they are dark, invisible, however using undetectable phenomena for explaining other
phenomena to me is a mere playing with words, but doesn't explain anything. For same reasons, I
think cosmological theories which "predict" "innumerable" other universes "outside" of ours are ir-
relevant as they can not be falsified. We can not look to "somewhere" outside of our universe and
check whether "somewhere else" are more other universes. This also holds against Lee Smolin1 who
believes time is fundamental, i. e. it exists independant from our universe, time and a history exists
"before the big bang", a history of many universes which opened the possibility for the nature laws
to evolve, to change because universes, so he says, reproduce themselves: from black holes, new
"baby universes" emerge. At least he is one of the few physicists who take the time for real, but also
he does not tell us what according to his opinion is the essence of time. He only says time is funda-
mental.
In contrast to him, many physicists deny the arrow of time, some go even further and deny the exis -
tence of time as such and declare, "time is an illusion". With this, they feel in line with the nature
laws which do not tell us about an arrow of time as they are symmetrical with respect to time. It
does not bother them that our daily observations contradict such hypotheses. As an extreme conclu-
sion, one could or one would have to say: if time is an illusion, then our existence itself, we oursel-
ves are an illusion (an illusion of whom?).
"Big bang" as the beginning of the time? Prigogine's alternative hypothesis
My understanding however again is mainly based on Prigogine's theories which are principally fal-
sifiable, and at the culmination of my thought strings, I will finish with my own new hypothesis.
Today, one generally starts with the "big bang" hypothesis; about the "big bang", articles and talks
let us believe such an event has already been proven. But that is not the case, and a "big bang" inte-
restingly is in contradiction to the laws which had been taken as the basis for this hypothesis. "Big
bang" hypothesis was created as a consequence of the observation that the universe is expanding -
then presumably, it must have started in an infinitely small dot and an incredibly high temperature.
15 see also http://www.spektrum.de/magazin/die-struktur-des-universums/825683
16 Recently I found an article with further evidence for a high structure in universe, in sharp contrast to the often recalled
statement "the universe is homogeneous in big scale", no: it is obviously crisscrossed by "extremely fine" structures;
astronomers found that between the galaxies, there are widely extended very "fine" strings of hot gas which connect galaxies
like dust filaments connect connect wooden beams in an old attic: http://www.spektrum.de/news/materiestraenge-zwischen-
galaxien/1510951?utm_medium=newsletter&utm_source=sdw-nl&utm_campaign=sdw-nl-daily&utm_content=heute
17 "Dark Matter" has been postulated becasue the rotation speed of the outer areas of galaxies does not match with the gravitation
law, but is too high when considering visible masses and their gravitational influence. This would require the assumption of
unvisible matter, "dark matter". This would not be possible if one would assume a modification of Newton's law called "MOND"
(or variations of this theory), is applicable which says that gravitation does - in really big scale - not diminish with the square of
distance, but stay constant: http://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.117.201101
8
This hypothesis however has two weaknesses, first, the starting inifinitely small dot is mathemati-
cally spoken a singularity so that it can not be described and can not be derived from a reversed ti-
mewise continuous development of the universe, and second, according to the nature laws which
with respect to time are continuous, symmetrical and reversible, "events" can not exist, and the big
bang would definitely be an event, and for sure quite a bombastic one.
Gunzig, Géhéniau and Prigogine have tried to describe the origin of the universe differently18, also
by integrating elements published by Tyron and Hawking:
Before the beginning, there is Nothing, but a Nothing is not really nothing, it can fluctuate, it is un -
stable. It is called "quantum vacuum", it can fluctuate in line with Heisenberg's uncertainty principle
(a basic equation of quantum theory). By chance, particles and anti-particles come to existence, and
they neutralize each other immediately.
Because the energy of the Nothing equals Zero, one can also understand this Zero as the sum of the
negative gravitation energy and the positive energy bound in matter: + E(grav) - E(mass) = 0. The total
energy of the universe is Zero.
This total energy does also not change if - in the timeless state of the quantum vacuum - "suddenly"
the Nothing changes to become a Something which is mass and gravitation.
In case that this instability takes over, extremely small black holes can start to exist, smaller than
nanoscopically small.
Such black holes can decay, the quicker, the smaller they are as they are "hovering" in quantum va-
cuum.
Then, Prigogine introduces an additional aspect into the basic laws of thermodynamics regarding
generation of matter from gravitational energy. As within the instability of the vacuum gravitational
energy may emerge, matter could be generated from it. Then, entropy is generated.
While "before that" (however, there was no time "before" this happening) the quantum vacuum
does not have any entropy, "after this" there is a lot of entropy because there is matter, there are par-
ticles. All of a sudden, what Einstein described as "space-time", started to exist, the four-dimensio-
nal universe with three spacial and one time dimension.
Immediately then, we also have entropy. Prigogine shows with the help of other equations, that
matter can be generated, but can not be retransformed into "space-time". This theory now does not
require any singularity, it describes a continuous and consistent transformation from an empty
Nothing (quantum vacuum) to the beginning of matter and time, becoming and decay, vanishing.
Moreover: because the entropy does not start with a "maximum" amount, but with a low level, the
universe does not (as it is always presumed, also by Caroll) start as a homogeneous hot strutureless
soup, but already with some structures, inhomogeneities, in line with the basic thermodynamics law
that entropy in the universe as a whole can only increase, not decrease.
That is, it started with a compared to today lower value, but not at Zero. This means: the universe
was structured already in its beginning. In the meantime, it is a widely accepted fact, that the micro-
18 E. Gunzig, J. Géhéniau, I. Prigogine: Entropy and Cosmology. In: nature Vol 330, 17 Dec 1987; Prigogine, Géhéniau, Gunzig,
Nardone: Thermodynamics and Cosmology. In: General Relativity and Gravitation, Vol 21, No. 8, 1989 ; see also Ilya Prigogine,
Isabelle Stengers, "Das Paradox der Zeit - Zeit, Chaos und Quanten", Piper-Verlag 1993 (the english original issue appeared in
the same year)
9
wave background is not (as was believed after its discovery) homogeneous, but inhomogeneous,
structured.19 Prigogine at his time could not know this. This fact is consistent with todays observa-
ble large scale structures of the universe (see above), and with the understanding, that the universe
contains a lot of non-equilibrium systems.
Here, I do not want to go into further details of his theory.
What all this means is: the formation of the universe is a succession of instabilities, is irreversible
and is already characterized as an assembly of non-equilibrium systems from its beginning on. Pri-
gogine called it "phase separation between gravity and matter" after both were indistinguishable in
the quantum vacuum. When the phase separation happened, time began to exist.
The nature, the essence of time: a new hypothesis for discussion
But all this still does not tell us what IS the time? Many leading scientists (Prigogine, Barrows, Pen-
rose, Hawking20 and others) agree that the arrow of time and its direction from past to future is ba-
sed on the second basic thermodynamic law. But what is the essence of time, what does this pheno-
menon which has a direction consist of?
Here I propose the following hypothesis for discussion: "Time" is the "matrix" (the "bed") for the
entropy flow (or flux) in 3D space. Entropy production or (in subsystems) entropy export leads to
an entropy flow through the 3-dimensional space, leading to the emergence of "time", the 4th di-
mension in space-time. Time is proportional to entropy production.
In the past, the "second" was defined as "1/60 of one minute or 1/3600 of one hour, which is 1/24 of
one day". Today, the "second" is defined more precisely21:
In 1967 the Thirteenth General Conference on Weights and Measures defined the SI second of atomic time as the durati-
on of 9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the
ground state of the caesium-133 atom.
This excitation and radiation produces entropy! The microwave radiation which the excited Cae-
sium-133-atom emits is linked with entropy increase, the frequency which we measure is the cali -
bration of our time measurement. Also our sense of time, our "body clock" 22, is the result of oscilla-
tions in some part of our brain: there, our inner daily rhythm is generated which is calibrated from
outside by daylight and other signals - simply summarized: a protein stimulated the generation of
another protein which hamper the generation of the first one. A back-coupling sequence lasts about
19 https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hintergrundstrahlung; here it is interesting to note that the accompanying text says that - in spite
of the reported temperature variations - the microwave background were extraordinarily homogeneous, however at a different
part of the text it says, that the temperature variations are key for cosmology and for theories regarding structures in universe.
20 Stephen W. Hawking, Eine kurze Geschichte der Zeit, Rowohlt 1988
21 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second
22 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circadian_rhythm; the discovery and description of the body clock was honored with the Nobel
Prize in 2017, while I am working on this article.
10
24 hours (which is prolonged to about 25 hours if the day / night rhythm is artificially blocked).
This biochemical clock again is connected with entropy production. The "body clock" is, so to say,
counting the entropy production which in the course of evolution was synchronized with the earth
rotation, with the length of one day, and is felt by us as "1 day". We are not consciously aware of
our body clock.
The essence of a river is the flow of water from the mountain to the valley and then into the ocean,
the result of water flow is the river (it is not the river which is flowing, but the water in the river is
flowing from "top" to "bottom"). The essence of time is the flow of entropy from a low starting le-
vel to finally the maximum level. It is not the time which flows during the time, but the entropy, and
here it is from "bottom" to "top". Locally, time is proportional to the local entropy production,
hence in systems in which entropy decreases, proportional to the entropy export out of that given
system.
At this point, we should take a critical look at Julian Barbour's "The End of Time", at his theory
which aims at eliminating time from physics, at his viewpoint that time is a redundant concept, be-
cause with some of his thoughts he was very close to my hypothesis as given above, but then turns
around by 180° and declares time to be redundant.23 He basically starts by saying that time is "a
succession of pictures, a succession of snapshots, changing continuously one into another. I'am loo-
king at you, you are nodding your head. Without that change, we wouldn't have any notion of
time."24 This article continues: "To Barbour, change is real, but time is not. Time is only a reflection
of change."25
First, I partially agree, as "change is real" means becoming and passing away is real, and that is
connected with entropy production. However, I disagree with "Without that change, we wouldn't
have any notion of time", because also without observable changes (which for him are motions of
objects only26) time progression can be perceived (for instance, if somebody has compulsorily or for
testing purposes been isolated in a dark room). That is due to processes in the body as I will explain
at the end of this article. And in contrast to Barbour, I agree with those for whom time is real, not
only a reflection of change, but a real phenomenon, along my hypothesis: a kind of matrix in which
entropy is flowing; comparable with a river which is not a "reflection" of flowing water, but a real
item emerging from coherent water flow on a slope.
Barbour develops his hypothesis in a more extended and more theoretical article27 according to
which time were redundant, and arrives at this statement: "The flow of time and motions are illu-
sions." It is the purpose of his article to strengthen his goal to eliminate time as a fundamental con-
cept in classical physics: "Time as an independant concept has no place in physics."
There we can again meet and partially agree, as also my hypothesis involves that time is not funda-
mental, but (and that's important to note) emergent. While time is emergent (according to my hypo-
thesis emerges from entropy production in space) it is not automatically "not real", is not an illusi -
on, as many other emergent phenomena and properties in physics, chemistry, biology and society
are not an illusion, but are very real as newly emerging on higher aggregation levels (as already
23 Julian Barbour, "The End of Time", Oxford University Press 2001; and "The Nature of Time"
https://arxiv.org/pdf/0903.3489.pdf, 2009
24 in: https://www.space.com/29859-the-illusion-of-time.html
25 With this he stays on Ernst Mach's shoulders, whom he cites in "The Nature of Time"27: "It is utterly beyond our power to
measure change of things by time ... time is an abstraction at which we arrive by means of the changes of things ..."
26 Barbour's understanding of "change" is exclusively limited to location changes of masses / objects by movements in space, he
defines "time" purely on Newton's background with masses movements and changes in potential energy; the term "entropy" has
not been mentioned even once, although "change" in a complete understanding is much more than only movement!
27 Julian Barbour, "The Nature of Time" https://arxiv.org/pdf/0903.3489.pdf, 2009
11
mentioned in the beginning of this article to be commented on more at the end of it).28 For example,
a single iron or copper atom does not exhibit electrical conductivity, even a dozen of atoms in a
cluster are not a metal; the very real phenomenon "electrical conductivity" only emerges if (in case
of gold) at least 55 gold atoms a forming a cluster.29 Other researchers came to the conclusion that at
least 144 gold atoms in a cluster are necessary for the emergence of metallic properties.30 For the
purpose of understanding "emergence of new properties on higher aggregation levels", we do not
have to worry about whether 55 or 144 atoms are necessary for the emergence of metallic proper-
ties, neither with the fact that metal particles only above 1 µm size exhibit conductivity in the same
order of magnitude as macroscopic metal pieces nor with the fact, that below 1000 nm diameter, the
conductivity of these metal particles is reduced by orders of magnitude with smaller and smaller
diameter, therefore these are nanometals whose conductivity is characterized by a metallic contribu-
tion within the nanoparticle and a tunneling contribution from particle to particle.31
All what is important now is: while both phenomena, electrical metallic conductivity as tunneling,
are emergent, they are very real phenomena and no illusion. We need new terms in order to describe
the principles on this new aggregation level, and new tools for investigating them. So it is with
"time" which is an emergent phenomenon as well.
Time emerged with the emergence of mass, atoms and particles and hence entropy production in a
3-dimensional space, so space-time emerged. We can make it descriptive for us if we image how a
river is formed, namely if enough water coherently begins to flow on a slope from top to bottom
(not for every type of water flow, a river will be formed: only if enough water is relatively coherent-
ly flowing in a bed, a river emerges); so time emerges because enough entropy is coherently flow-
ing from low to high values. It needs to be recalled that even if in an open system like a tree which
is growing, or an embryo which develops to become a baby, entropy in these systems, "tree" or
"baby", is decreasing, it is increasing in their environment and finally in space because entropy of
these subsystems has been exported same as from the whole earth into space. Time exists because
of entropy production, entropy flow in a 3-dimensional space.
There is no absolute time, i. e. even though we define the "second" as 9,192,631,770 periods of the
radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the
caesium-133 atom, it does not mean that the entropy production is the same in all subsystems of the
universe (e. g., in GPS satellites, atomic clocks are running faster than on earth, daily with 38
µsec32, i. e. more entropy is flowing). For us who we are living on earth, experience nature here, live
in it and of it und explore it, one second is objectively one second, and one day is for us what the
earth needs to rotate once. This has nothing to do with the subjective sense of time which someti-
mes makes us believe time was running fast, and sometimes that the minutes are slowly crawling
like a snail.
For us, it is irrelevant whether in one subsystem more entropy is produced than in another one. For
us, it is irrelevant whether in a glacier possibly less entropy is flowing than in a growing snow flake,
in a 5,000 years old pine tree in the Californian White Mountains less than in a fast growing bam-
boo, the local time for a glacier or a pine tree would appear to be passing slower than in a snow fla-
ke or a bamboo tree, resp.; it is irrelevant whether - in case a water molecule could feel the entropy
flow as "time" - it would have the impression that in a glacier, time is flowing slower than in a snow
28 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergence
29 file:///C:/Users/Admin/Downloads/ISSART13988DE.PDF
30 https://phys.org/news/2015-04-gold-atoms-metal.html, https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/04/150410083516.htm
31 https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/04/150410083516.htm and literature cited therein
32 http://www.quantenwelt.de/technik/GPS/relativitaet.html and http://www.weltderphysik.de/gebiet/planeten/erde/gps/ or (English)
http://www.astronomy.ohio-state.edu/~pogge/Ast162/Unit5/gps.html
12
flake; or whether a cell in such old pine trees would have the impression of a slower time passing
than a cell in a bamboo. Globally and in universe, the gigantic entropy production is relatively even
and steady which can be seen with the processes in the sun, in the planets' movements and the mo-
vements and dynamics in the galaxies and between the galaxies in large clusters, as well as in the
expansion of the universe. In a river, not every water molecule has the same speed than the others,
but the over all flow speed can be measured and is changing only with the amunt of rain.
The entropy production and hence time as an expression of entropy flow not only is not the same in
different locations of the earth and the universe, but also not necessarily stable during the ages: uni-
versal entropy production could become more or less during the billions of years, we would not re -
cognize it, as we would calibrate time with an atomic microwave radiation emission frequency.
Photons are timeless: they are travelling at light speed, don't change, hence are not linked with
entropy production. A photon does not "experience" time. For the same reasons, gravitational waves
(which can be detected since 2015) are timeless as well, they also don't "get weaker by time". This
is probably also the case on the level of quantums. Whether or not protons could decay over time is
still controversial; if at all, it is assumed that the half-life time is at least 1036 years; a proton decay
has not yet been observed. That means that also one aggregation level higher than quantums entropy
still does not exist, no entropy production occurs, hence also this aggregation level is timeless.
It is my understanding that the phenomenon "entropy" only emerges on the aggregation level of
atoms: atoms can be transformed into each other - nuclear fusion in stars, generation of helium and
later ever heavier elements, and also the decay of radioactive nuclids. On this level we see emer-
gence, growth and decay, hence entropy production and can measure the phenomenon "time".
Quantum fluctuations as they can hypothetically happen in the "Nothing" of quantum vacuum,
would be timeless. Time does not exist before the existence of atoms, at least if my hypothesis ma-
kes sense. Consequently, time is not (in contrast to Lee Smolin) fundamental, but emergent, i. e., it
emerges out of something else which is the entropy in 3D space which only is created with the
emergence of atoms. From this we can conclude that in our universe and in our environment there
exist some phenomena which are timeless (photons, gravitation, quantums) while at our aggregation
level, entropy production is continuously ongoing so we are living in time, we can sense and measu-
re it, time is real.
Now it would help to remember that every aggregation level creates new laws: a traffic jam can not
be reduced onto the level of those elements which form the traffic jam; traffic jam does not happen
on the level of "car" or even "motor", "wheel", "gear", and also not on the level on which we descri-
be the limbs of those human beings which drive the car, on which we explain the functioning of
"hands" which control the steering wheel, or the "feet" which act on the gas or brake pedal, and we
can not understand why a "traffic jam" is formed if we describe the lower aggregation levels of
those elements of which a traffic jam consists and without which it would not happen. We even can
not "unify" principles which direct and control the lower aggregation levels with traffic formation
principles.
The rules and principles of a soccer game can not be understood if we know the energy metabolism
of each cell of every soccer player; this metabolism is indispensible for the condition of every
player, but has no connection with the principles of a soccer game, nobody needs to understand the
energy conversion in the muscle cells of the players in order to understand a soccer game, and no-
body would need to "unify" cell energy conversion laws with soccer game principles.
13
Oddly enough, something like this physicists try in cosmology where they intend to unify all theo-
ries into a "Theory of Everything", or the general relativity and quantum theory. I consider this to be
a dead end because it would involve totally different aggregation levels which are intended to be
"unified". And this to be done for the level of the smallest components of our world, the quantums,
and the biggest scale in our world, the whole universe, quite absurd.
Attempt to resolve the inconsistency between timeless laws and the reality of the time's arrow
Considering this, we now can resolve the apparent inconsistency between the timeless character of
the relativity theory and the reality of time and the existence of the time's arrow: On the level of
photons and gravitational waves no time exists, thermodynamics can not be applied, light and gra-
vitation do not have entopy production, hence on this level, time does not exist, but yet we can per-
ceive light and gravitation and they have effects on us and on our environment. The dissent between
timeless relativity theory and time, arrow of time in non-equilibrium thermodynamics is merely an
apparent one.
Evolution laws and biological phenomena do not exist on atomic level; a single iron atom is not
conductive; a single O2 molecule has no pressure; a single H2O molecule is not "liquid"; a SiO2 mo-
lecule (if many of them, they form silicates) is not "hard" or "solid"; a single stone which basically
consists of silicates has no "statics": "statics" occurs first and is only relevant after we compose
many stones to a building or a bridge; one building does not show something like "cityscape", it is
not a town - only many building and roads and other elements will form a town. We can not reduce
the properties of a whole town, of a building or a bridge to the properties of SiO2, or develop a "uni-
fied theory of statics and the SiO2 molecule", it would be absurd and senseless.
"Thermodynamics" do not exist on the quantum level, we can apply thermodynamics only when
many atoms and molecules interact; only on this aggregation level, "entropy" emerges and with it
"time". Time is not fundamental, but emergent and was created with the beginning of entropy pro-
duction in the 3-dimensional space, even not with the "big bang" (assuming it happened which is
generally accepted), but only with the creation of matter which happened only "later after the big
bang" (a strange wording considering that time did not exist "between" big bang and creation of
matter). However, if we want to imagine the development of the universe following Gunzig,
Géhéniau und Prigogine20, then the beginning of the universe is when matter and space had come to
existence.
Then entropy production began and the phenomenon which we call "time" and perceive as "time",
which we can feel and measure. Time does not "pass by", it does also not flow, like the river does
not flow, but the water flows in the river (bed). I think it is a linguistic confusion when writing and
talking so often about "the flow of time", the "passing by of the time", the "vanishing of time". A ri-
ver also does not pass by, does not vanish during the water flows (only if there is no water flowing
any more). A wording like "the flow of time" creates a confusing image in our mind because we can
not imagine what is flowing there if time flows. It obfuscates the relatively simple qualitative33 in-
sight: "time" is, strongly simplified and transferred into an analogy, something for the entropy like
what a river (bed) is for flowing water. Entropy is flowing in some kind of "matrix" which is the
fourth dimension, the time, of the 4-dimensional space-time.
Whenever we hold our hand or foot in a river or we go into the river with our whole body, we can
feel how the water is flowing downwards. But how do we feel "time", how can we feel the entropy
flow, how can we notice that entropy is produced which we perceive as "time passing by"? This is
33 I can not (yet?) express my insight or hypothesis in quantitative form.
14
easy to understand: In our body, we have a lot of "clocks" (now I do not refer to the body clock, we
are not consciously aware of the 24 / 25 hours circadian rhythm): our heart beat, our in- and exha-
ling are rhythmic processes which on one side produce entropy, on the other side can be conscious
to us; whenever we walk - right, left, right left, 1, 2, 1, 2 ... - we can feel another "clock" ticking.
These clocks are not exact but they deliver a feeling to us about the "passing of time". When waking
up, we are hungry and take a breakfast, after some "time", which we perceived because of our heart
beats or because we had walked along the road for some shopping, we are hungry again and prepare
some lunch: we cut cucumber - back and forth, back and forth -, a formerly long cucumber was cut
into many slices (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, ...) which represent some timing, we peel potatoes - back and forth,
back and forth -, let water flow into a pot, water flows in, the pot gets more and more full - all these
are processes which are noticeable happening along some time, processes which tick like clocks. In
the evening it becomes dark, we perceive the day/night rhythm. We observe the tides at the sea, the
seasons during the year, growth of trees, flourish and fade of flowers. The growing of our kids and
the grandkids. The dying of our parents and our own ageing. All these sequences of events act like
short, middle and long-periodically ticking clocks. All of them produce entropy. This is how we feel
entropy flow: as ticking of natural clocks, as passing of time.
When we were born, we have been thrown into the time matrix of the space-time, this causes us to
perceive this as a flow of time from the past via the present to the future. Time is directly linked
with entropy, as is the river with the flowing water; time only exists because of the flow and increa -
se of entropy in a 3-dimensional space. When measuring time and feeling the passing of time, we
measure and feel entropy flow. Emergence, development and fading is entropy production, is flow
of entropy. We measure and sense becoming and passing away by measuring and sensing time.
15