[MamaTexan]

Next up -

A $2 billion dollar study on why water is wet!

[JZelle]

Better check with AlGore. He may have been involved with the Big Bang ;)

[JimRed]

God did it.

[bjmorris]

time is simply the movent of an object in space. if nothing moved, there would be no time. And, since and object cannot move in two directions at the same time, time only goes in one direction. forward.

[Revolting cat!]

[AndrewC]

In a universe of finite entropy, some scientists have proposed that a random fluctuation could trigger inflation. This, however, would require the molecules of the universe to fluctuate from a high-entropy state into one of low entropy-a statistical longshot.

Molecules?

[TC Rider]

..why time flows in one direction?

Because otherwise, poop would fly up our butt.

(For more details read, Phillip K. Dick's "Counterclock World" (one of his few stories not made into a movie yet))

[ideablitz]

I think if John Kerry gets elected, we will know this.
He has a plan. I don't know what it is but he does have a plan. "Stronger Universe, Respected in the Universe." He might have it in his website. "Have you driven Kerry lately?"

It is Bush's fault that we don't know this.
Bush's tax cuts to the rich has caused our scientific community to not to know this.

[Mobilemitter]

Awww, that's what they said the last time....

[boris]

Julian Barbour, in his book The End of Time, argues that the passage of time is an illusion. I reached the same conclusion using different assumptions and logic than he. The mathematician Rudy Rucker was allowed to visit Kurt Gödel (an intellect possibly superior to Einstein, and a contemporary of his at Princeton) shorthly befor his (Gödel's) death. He asked: "What causes the illusion of the passage of time?" Gödel answered obliquely, but did not question the premise of the question.

I have been reading about time for a long -ahem- time. The more I read, the more confused I become. There is a deep mystery here, one that human minds may not be adequate to unravel or understand.

I've also been reading widely and deeply about Buddhism. Not that a 53-year-old Jew is going to convert. But Cordwainer Smith (perhaps one of the littlest-known and most under-rated of all science fiction writers) referred to the Buddha as "the Saint who defeated time by realizing what it is and stepping aside."

I sent Barbour a list of questions after reading his book twice and he (or his bot) responded: "The questions you pose are deep. I hope to someday soon have time to begin to answer them." I suspect if I'd suggested that time is made of curdled milk, I would have received the same response.

--Boris

[Revolting cat!]

I hate time!

[eeriegeno]

Carroll and Chen extend this idea in dramatic fashion, suggesting that inflation could start "in reverse" in the distant past of our universe, so that time could appear to run backwards (from our perspective) to observers far in our past.

Carrol and Chen must have been enjoying the same gin soaked raisins that Ms. Kerry has been nipping on!

[timestax]

bttt