Can we turn back time and make disorder decrease? Scientists checked whether black holes, wormholes, or special quantum effects could reverse the growth of entropy (a measure of chaos) in the universe. It turns out that all this just shuffles disorder from place to place, like tidying one room by simply hiding the trash in another. Globally, the arrow of time stays pointing forward. So is there a way to cheat time?
Time is a one-way road: events race forward with no U-turn allowed. The arrow of direction is governed by entropy — a measure of disorder, which only grows in the Universe, like a traffic jam at rush hour. You can clear one intersection, but the overall congestion only gets worse.
Even the wildest “detours” — black holes and wormholes in curved spacetime — won’t let you drive the wrong way. Scientists applied the method of global entropy accounting (Global Entropy Transport) and proved: these objects just shuffle disorder from one pocket to another, like tidying one closet but leaving the whole house a mess, while the total chaos in the Universe keeps growing.
The striking conclusion: the entropy of a typical black hole is billions of times greater than that of an ordinary star — these monsters are veritable warehouses of disorder. The arrow of time is as solid as asphalt: even fanciful wormholes can’t make it show the way to the past.
🎯 The entropy of a black hole depends on the area of its surface (event horizon), not its volume — this discovery by [scientist:Jacob Bekenstein]Jacob Bekenstein[/scientist] gave rise to the idea of a holographic Universe.
🎬 In Greg Egan’s novel ‘Schild’s Ladder,’ the characters try to cheat thermodynamics, but the arrow of time remains relentless.