Where Time Runs Backward

By training, British Physicist Frank Stannard is a sober scientific observer concerned with the material world of matter and motion, of minute particles and massive reactions. By inclination Stannard is a dreamer. His antic imagination has conjured up an oddball universe where time actually runs backward. There, reports Stannard in Nature, a swimmer would rise from the water to land on a diving board, a decaying apple would gradually turn unripe and then into a blossom, all life would proceed from tomb to womb.

Symmetrical Universe. Stannard's reverse-time universe is his carefully considered answer to a question that has long disturbed scientists. In a universe where every other phenomenon seems largely symmetrical, why does time run only one way? "Ever since Einstein, we have thought of space and time as being closely associated with each other," says Stannard. "The behavior of particles in one dimension of space is the same as in another." Thus a particle can move forward or backward, up or down, right or left in space. It cannot do the same in time.

Man's senses and his scientific observations all indicate that time always flows forward for particles and for any process in which they are involved. When a radioactive atom disintegrates into subatomic particles, the particles never reunite to reform the original atom. The universe itself is apparently expanding and radiating its energy into space like an unwinding clock.

Faustian Galaxy. To eliminate this apparent flaw in an otherwise symmetrical universe, Stannard suggests that there is another universe "embed ded in the same space-time framework" as man's--only its time runs backward. Such a "Faustian"* universe, he says, would be unobservable by earthmen because Faustian matter would not in teract with normal matter; it would separate out into planets, solar systems and galaxies of its own.

Only if there were some interaction between the two universes might it be possible to detect a Faustian galaxy, which would absorb energy instead of radiating it in familiar galactic fashion. The search for such a galaxy, Stannard suggests, could be made by a telescope equipped with a sensitive thermal device. If the device suddenly began radiating heat, the telescope almost certainly would be pinpointing a heat-absorbing Faustian galaxy, otherwise invisible because it would also be absorbing rather than emitting light.

Scientists may have already seen evidence of Faustian matter in the be havior of subatomic particles called K-mesons. These particles normally decay rapidly into other smaller bits of matter, but some of them seem to live longer than they theoretically should. Stannard speculates that the K-mesons may actually do a "time-flip" into the Faustian universe, reverse their process of decay and grow younger. Then they flip back and resume their disintegration--while appearing only to have decayed more slowly.

Negative Answer. A Faustian universe can even be justified mathematically, says Stannard, because the Einsteinian equation that expresses the time of one observer relative to the time of another observer moving at a different speed involves a square root. The square root of any number, he points out, can be a positive or a negative number. "What I suggest," says Stannard, "is that we accept the minus answer as a possibility. Thus we get negative, or Faustian, time."

Though his hypothesis strikes him as "esthetically pleasing" and has not yet been seriously challenged, Stannard is quick to admit that there is no proven evidence to support it. Asked by a U.S. student for a simple explanation of his theory, Stannard sent a copy of his Nature article and included some dis arming advice: "If you don't understand the theory, it doesn't matter, because it probably isn't true."

*Stannard is aware of the misnomer; Faust was simply rejuvenated, his death merely postponed.

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