Is there a second arrow of time? New research says yes
“We could be wrong. But if we are right, it’s profoundly important.” Leading mineralogist Dr. Robert Hazen on the missing law of nature that could explain why life emerges.
Transcript:
Robert Hazen: I have to make a confession here. I have to be honest. We could be wrong. We could be spectacularly wrong. But it’s also possible that science is missing a profound truth about the cosmos. We have these 10 or so laws of nature, only one of which currently has an arrow of time. That’s the second law of thermodynamics, the increase in entropy—it’s disorder; it’s decay.
We all grow old. We all die. But the second law doesn’t explain why things evolve; why life emerges from non-life. You look around, and you see flowers bloom and trees blossom and birds sing. It seems like all of those things are counter to the idea of disorder. In fact, it’s a kind of ordering of nature.