The Arrow of Time in Various Phenomena
All phenomena that behave differently in one time direction can ultimately be linked to the Second Law of Thermodynamics. This includes the fact that ice cubes melt in hot coffee rather than assembling themselves out of the coffee, that a block sliding on a rough surface slows down rather than speeding up, and that we can remember the past rather than the future. This last phenomenon, called the "psychological arrow of time", has deep connections with Maxwell's demon and the physics of information; In fact, it is easy to understand its link to the Second Law of Thermodynamics if one views memory as correlation between brain cells (or computer bits) and the outer world. Since the Second Law of Thermodynamics is equivalent to the growth with time of such correlations, then it states that memory will be created as we move towards the future (rather than towards the past).
Read more about this topic: Entropy (arrow Of Time)
Famous quotes containing the words arrow, time and/or phenomena:
“Anton Petrovich turned into the passage, followed the arrow to men, mankind, human beings, marched past the toilet, past the kitchen, gave a start when a cat darted under his feet, quickened his step, reached the end of the passage, pushed open a door, and a shower of sunlight splashed his face.”
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)
“The first time a woman marries she follows her parents’ wishes, but when she marries again she follows her own.”
—Chinese proverb.
“The television screen, so unlike the movie screen, sharply reduced human beings, revealed them as small, trivial, flat, in two banal dimensions, drained of color. Wasn’t there something reassuring about it!—that human beings were in fact merely images of a kind registered in one another’s eyes and brains, phenomena composed of microscopic flickering dots like atoms. They were atoms—nothing more. A quick switch of the dial and they disappeared and who could lament the loss?”
—Joyce Carol Oates (b. 1938)