Is time infinite in both directions?

In the other direction, into the future, time seems to be unbounded, though this is less certain, it depends very precisely on several cosmological parameters, whose values are not yet certainly known. So our current best hypothesis is that time is finite into the past, but infinite into the future.

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Does time flow in both directions?

According to Julian Barbour, time flows both ways at once.

Imagine that each direction is an arrow whose origin is zero. While the arrow on the right increases gradually to infinity, the one on the left points to negative infinity.

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Why does time seem to only go in one direction?

Heat generation increases entropy and is an irreversible process, so the laws of thermodynamics require that such objects can only run in one direction: from past to future.

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Is the universe infinite in all directions?

There's a limit to how much of the universe we can see. The observable universe is finite in that it hasn't existed forever. It extends 46 billion light years in every direction from us. (While our universe is 13.8 billion years old, the observable universe reaches further since the universe is expanding).

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Why does time only flow forward?

The second law of thermodynamics is a very important relation in physics, and it states that the entropy of a closed (self-contained) system can only increase or stay the same over time; it can never go down. In other words, over time, the entropy of the entire Universe must increase.

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Brian Cox - Is The Universe Infinite?

39 related questions found

Will time ever go backwards?

both in systems on Earth and for the Universe as a whole, and as far as we can tell, time continues to always march forward at the same rate it always does: one second per second.

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Why doesn't time go backwards?

"The answer is because the Big Bang had low entropy. And still, 14 billion years later we are swimming in the aftermath of that tsunami that started near the Big Bang. That's why time has a direction for us." The extraordinarily low entropy of the Universe at the Big Bang is both an answer and an enormous question.

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Do physicists think the universe is infinite?

No. We do not know whether the Universe is finite or not. To give you an example, imagine the geometry of the Universe in two dimensions as a plane. It is flat, and a plane is normally infinite.

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How can the universe be infinite if it had a beginning?

How can the universe be infinite if it started expanding 13.8 billion years ago? If the universe is infinite, it has always been infinite. At the Big Bang, it was infinitely dense. Since then it has just been getting less dense as space has expanded.

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What exists outside the universe?

The trite answer is that both space and time were created at the big bang about 14 billion years ago, so there is nothing beyond the universe. However, much of the universe exists beyond the observable universe, which is maybe about 90 billion light years across.

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Why we don t understand time?

It's All In Your Head. We don't naturally perceive time as a specific quantity. We instead perceive changes that happen as a result of time passing. We observe the duration and succession of events, and translate that into measurement units—seconds, minutes, days.

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Is One Direction gone forever?

The band went on indefinite hiatus in January 2016, allowing all members to pursue other projects. As of 2020, the band have sold a total of 70 million records worldwide, making them one of the best-selling boy bands of all time.

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How long has One Direction been gone?

One Direction has been on hiatus since 2015.

The band was formed in 2010 on the UK version of "The X Factor" and it is comprised of five guys who auditioned as solo artists. The members include Liam Payne, Zayn Malik, Niall Horan, Harry Styles, and Louis Tomlinson.

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Where does time run backwards?

The big bang may have created an additional universe where time goes backwards, according to new simulations. Using computer models, the researchers determined that there might be a parallel universe on the “other side” of the big bang, where time, and everything else, goes in an opposite direction.

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How can time pass differently?

Gravitational time dilation is a physics concept about changes in the passage of time, caused by general relativity. A clock in outer space moves more quickly than a clock on Earth. Heavy things like planets create a gravitational field that slows down time nearby.

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Is The arrow of time an illusion?

The perception of an arrow of time that we have in our everyday life therefore appears to be nothing more than an illusion of consciousness in this model of the universe, an emergent quality that we happen to experience due to our particular kind of existence at this particular point in the evolution of the universe.

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Why is there no edge to the universe?

Since the part of the universe that we can see is flat and uniform, and since our corner of the universe is not special, all parts of the universe must be flat and uniform. The only way for the universe to be flat and uniform literally everywhere is for the universe to be infinite and have no edge.

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Can the universe cause itself to begin to exist?

There are at least three ways the universe can cause itself to exist, by (1) a closed, simultaneous causal loop at the first instant of time, (2) beginning with a continuum of instantaneous states in a first half-open second, with each state being caused by earlier states, and (3) being caused to exist by backward ...

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What's at the end of space?

Practically, we cannot even imagine thinking of the end of space. It is a void where the multiverses lie. Our universe alone is expanding in every direction and covering billions of kilometres within seconds. There is infinite space where such universes roam and there is actually no end.

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Is it possible that the universe will never end?

Scientists now consider it unlikely the universe has an end – a region where the galaxies stop or where there would be a barrier of some kind marking the end of space.

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What is at the edge of the universe?

One thing's for sure: the Universe does not have an edge. There's no physical boundary – no wall, no border, no fence around the edges of the cosmos. This doesn't necessarily mean that the Universe is infinitely large though.

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Did Einstein think the universe was finite?

Einstein was not comfortable with the notion of an infinite Universe that contained a finite amount of matter. He believed that a spatially bounded, and thus finite, Universe was a much more natural choice from the point of view of general relativity.

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Would time stop if the universe stopped expanding?

Not only would time continue to run forward, as far as we know, but the instant that preceded the Big Crunch would have enormously more entropy than the Universe did at the start of the hot Big Bang.

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What happens if space stops expanding?

If the metric expansion stopped, then contraction will inevitably follow, accelerating as time passes and finishing the universe in a kind of gravitational collapse, turning the universe into a black hole.

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Will the universe ever contract?

So the scientists say that the acceleration of the Universe would stop in next 65 million years. In next 100 million years (a very short time when space is considered) it will stop expanding and start contracting.

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