If you advance further you reach the centre and if you advance only one clock you land on a clock that forces you to move in the opposite direction.Ĭonsidering the paradox of clocks, does it make sense to build ever more precise time-measuring machines that consume more and more energy? To what extent do the laws of physics make it possible to establish a precise measurement of the passage of time?
For example, in the first move you can only advance either two or three clocks. You may not stop in the central cell or pass over it and you may not land on a clock whose hand points in the opposite direction to the starting one. Travel from the clock that marks the start to the end cell according to the following rules: in each move you can travel as many squares as you want in a straight line following the direction of the clock hand. And as one of the authors of the study, Julia Ares, ironically points out, “maybe we should stop measuring time,” as increasing the entropy of the universe brings it closer to its end, although the author herself clarifies that the increase in entropy is so small that “there’s no need to worry.” From a more philosophical point of view, this could be interpreted as a paradox: if measuring time more precisely brings us closer to the end, does this mean that this makes time pass faster? Brainteaser 1: The arrows of time
Since entropy is a measure of disorder and chaos, this research has shown that measuring time with high precision comes at a price: increased chaos in the universe. This had previously been demonstrated for quantum clocks, but the significance of the new experiment is that it confirms that this relationship between precision and entropy also manifests itself in the classical clocks we use in our macroscopic world, from wristwatches to the atomic clocks housed in GPS satellites. A recent experiment by physicists at Oxford University has shown that the more accurate a clock is, the more entropy it generates. The technological race for more accurate clocks has run up against the fundamental laws of physics.
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