Jens Berges' blog part 8

Is time real?

I have been diagnosed with a terminal lung condition. As I move ever closer to the end of my life, I have become more interested in fundamental issues such as consciousness (the perception of the self), free will, even the reality of time.

Will I soon be gone forever, or can time be reversed? Is the flow of time an illusion?

It's a theoretical question. But I would like to know whether I would have at least a theoretical chance to be 48 again, and live the life I had back then. It was a good time.

There is an intrinsic relationship between time and causality. If everything that is, or happens, can be traced to causes, and all causes have unique results, then everything can be mapped in a 4-dimensional diagram of space and time. Everything that is, and any event, has a fixed position in this diagram. The flow of time gets replaced with a location in space-time. There is no past and no future.

However, if there are events in the universe that happen randomly, the principle of cause and effect will be broken, and not every event can be mapped with space-time coordinates.

Unfortunately, important laws of physics, and established observations in the realm of cosmology, indicate an irreversible flow of time from the past to the future.

There is the second law of thermodynamics that states that in any closed system (like our universe), as time flows, heat exchange only happens from a warmer area to a colder area, until everything has a uniform temperature.

The second law of thermodynamics can be formulated in many different ways. It also means that in any closed system, everything moves from being organized to being disorganized (a state of higher entropy). Outside energy would have to be applied to this closed system to move things from being disorganized to being organized.

The observation in cosmology that indicates that time flows from the past to the future, is the expansion and age of the universe. This can be measured and calculated.

Furthermore, for an unidirectional flow of time to make mathematical sense, there ought to be some uncertainty about the future. There must be random events in the flow of time that make a mathematical reversal in a closed system impossible.

Not on the level of Newtonian physics, and not on the level of animal (including human) behavior. Both are ruled by cause-and-effect laws, which makes everything a determined outcome.

But unfortunately, on the subatomic level, there is uncertainty, which finally destroys my theoretical dream that I could somehow, somewhere, be 48 again.

I am not talking about Werner Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle (which primarily concerns the accuracy limits of measurements).

But, according to the Copenhagen Interpretation of Niels Bohr and colleagues, radioactive decay is random.

Furthermore, according to a branch of Quantum Theory, before matter becomes matter, it is just fields. And when and where fields become matter, appears to be at random.

So, no, there is not even a theoretical chance that I may live again the life that I had when I was 48, and I will have to die soon without the desired theoretical consolation.