A Quantum Experiment shows the world how time can be made to go backward.

Quantum physics and Classical Physics seem to be at loggerheads. While one dismisses one fact, the other readily accepts it and surmises it to be true. In the quantum world, unlike in Classical Physics, particles can go through solid walls, be in two places at one moment and can communicate over an infinite distance. To take things further, quantum physicists also deem time travel to be a probability and a new experiment seems to concur with this notion.

Previous experiments, even in the field of quantum physics, have corroborated the fact that particles are dependent on initial conditions which connote towards time moving forward. However, an experiment published in the journal arXiv.org claims that the time can flow in the reverse direction as well as the researching team had positive results which seemingly confuse this fact. No one could have thought that mixing of acetone with chloroform can bring forth efficacious results but researchers created conditions with such an amalgam, where for some purposes, time actually appears to move backward by making use of the fact that time can be defined in terms of movement of energy.

In the experiment, they observed chloroform, a molecule comprising a carbon atom attached to one hydrogen and three chlorine atoms. The magnetic field was used to align the nuclei of carbon and hydrogen atoms of chloroform when they were submerged in acetone which aided in maneuvering the spin property of the particles. By heating the nuclei using the nuclear magnetic resonance, they were able to get heated hydrogen particles even hotter while carbon atoms to get colder. In other words, they showed the dissipation of heat from a cold quantum particle to a hotter one under certain controlled conditions, thereby, revealing the thermodynamic equivalent of reversing time in a very tiny pocket of the Universe.

The experiment was conducted at the microscopic level with controlled conditions and does not exactly prove the possibility of time travel but it is in accordance with the notion that time is a relative concept rather than being an absolute fact. The absolute time or ‘time arrow’ finds its roots in the second law of thermodynamics which states that entropy, or disorder, tends to increase over time and does not decrease, meaning that the time is irreversible and there exists asymmetry between past and future.  However, Lutz contradicted to that by saying,

“Different systems can have arrows of time that point in different directions.”

This was affirmed by the experiment where the arrow of time was in atypical direction for the qubits, a quantum particle when compared with the arrow of time in laboratory pointing in a forward direction. The demonstration also solidifies the interplay of thermodynamics and quantum mechanics by providing befitting explanations on where exactly they coincide, a path leading towards a new undiscovered world. A representative of the team mentioned that in the following words:

“By revealing the fundamental influence of initial quantum correlations on time’s arrow, our experiment highlights the subtle interplay of quantum mechanics, thermodynamics and information theory.”

Practically speaking, the study also concluded on how heat can be channeled according to one’s requirements under apt conditions with the application of rules of quantum physics. This can make way for some interesting technical applications with larger implications. The researchers also suggested that their results on the thermodynamic arrow of time might also have stimulating consequences on the cosmological arrow of time. Exactly how these observations scale up from tiny to macroscopic systems of the size of a Universe is something for future experiments to investigate.

With this discovery of reversal of heat transfer resulting in a reversal of time, the scientists are hopeful to employ the unique thermodynamics of quantum particles to create quantum engines that could outperform the working of typical machines, such as controlling the direction of heat flow on small scales. It further emphasizes the limitations of the standard local formulation of the second law for initially correlated systems and offers at the same time a novel mechanism to control heat on the micro scale. In any case, it could provide aid in filling in some of the gaps in understanding why the dimension of time leans so heavily in one direction.