Space/Science — HabitableZone

Space/Science » in reply to And another cosmic question

Time is defined thermodynamically, not dynamically.

Make a movie of any kinematic system, say, a star cluster with stars orbiting a common century of gravity, that center being a virtual point defined by the average mass distribution in the cluster. Now run the movie backwards and all of Newton's Laws of Motion still hold. In fact, you can't tell from watching the movie whether the film is running backwards or forwards.

However, if you film the entire history of the cluster, from it's tightly bound origins to its evaporated, or "relaxed" final state, then it does make a difference whether you run the film forward or backwards. The Virial Theorem (how energy is distributed in a dynamical Newtonian system between kinetic and potential forms) evolves, that it, it starts in one condition and winds up in another. It is entropic, thermodynamic, and that evolution only goes in one direction.

Unlike the pure Newtonian laws, thermodynamics defines the arrow of time. It makes no sense to say "can time run backward". The decay from complex to simple is what defines what time is.

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