Physicists Build Big Bang in a Box | Wired Science
Ever read that scifi story where we are just a lab sim, that is in a larger lab sim et., etc. ?
Physicists Build Big Bang in a BoxSitting on a bench at the University of Maryland is the first-ever desktop model of the Big Bang.Don’t worry, the 20-micrometer&endash;wide device simulates how light behaved and time flowed at the universe’s spark, not the explosion itself. It could someday help explain why time marches in only one direction.
Building a toy cosmos in the lab lets physicists run otherwise impossible experiments on the nature of space and time. With Smolyaninov and Hung’s setup, researchers could study the thermodynamic arrow of time, a long-standing problem in physics.
Most physical laws work just as well whether time runs forwards or backwards, but not the Second Law of Thermodynamics. It dictates that disorder must always increase with time. That’s why people can’t age backwards, eggs can’t become uncracked, and Groundhog Day is fiction.