Get your science geek on: Time could disappear

I have the greatest admiration for people who can think about things so far out there and yet make them seem totally plausible. Scientists are excellent at this and prove it once more with the notion that – according to a new theory – time may literally be running; and could one day vanish altogether.

The concept is based on string theory ideas which allow dimensions of space and time to swap places. The overall theory belongs to Professor Jose Senovilla, at the University of the Basque Country in Bilbao, Spain. It is a theory that goes counter to the prevailing “dark energy” theory which physicists purpose as being the force that is driving galaxies apart.

Professor Senovilla on the other hand suggests

…. there is no such thing as dark energy. Instead, he says we have been fooled into thinking the expansion of the universe is accelerating because time itself is slowing down.
At our local everyday level, the change would be imperceptible.

But it would be obvious from cosmic scale measurements tracking the course of the universe over billions of years.

Astronomers work out the speed of the universe’s expansion from the frequency of light emitted by certain types of supernovae, or exploding stars.

However, these measurements depend on our current perception of time, says Prof Senovilla.
If time has been slowing down, and clocks are now running more slowly than they did long ago, it would appear from our perspective as if things have been speeding up. Looking back over billions of years, galaxies would seem to be travelling away from each other faster and faster at various intervals since the Big Bang.

“Our calculations show that we would think that the expansion of the universe is accelerating,” said Senovilla.

Source: BreakingNews.ie :: Bizarre theory suggests time may be running out

As Professor Gary Gibbons, a cosmologist as Cambridge University who finds the while idea interesting, says

“We believe that time emerged during the Big Bang, and if time can emerge, it can also disappear – that’s just the reverse effect,” he said.

Mind you this isn’t something that we’ll need to pencil into our date books anytime soon given that this happening probably wouldn’t occur for a few billion years.