German physicists in Darmstadt have shattered our understanding of time. They've measured an internal clock within glass, ticking independently of our own, and discovered its ability to reverse under special circumstances. This "material time" challenges the idea of time as a one-way street.
Till Bohmer and Thomas Blochowicz's study, Time reversibility during the ageing of materials, published in Nature Physics, suggests that the molecules in glass and plastic, under certain conditions, can rewind their chaotic dance. Imagine a shattered vase magically reassembling itself. This mind-bending finding opens doors to materials that could heal themselves or even store information in a fundamentally new way.
The discovery throws a gauntlet at our understanding of time itself. If materials can have their own internal clock and even rewind it, what does this mean for our universe's grand scheme? Time may not be the relentless march we thought it was, but it is a complex symphony with hidden layers yet to be unraveled.
"It was a huge experimental challenge," says Till Bohmer.
"The minuscule fluctuations in the molecules had to be documented using an ultra-sensitive video camera. "You can't just watch the molecules jiggle around," said Professor Thomas Blochowicz.
As per a release, the Darmstadt researchers believe that this generally applies to disordered materials, as they examined two classes of material-glass and plastic-and carried out a computer simulation of a model material with the same results.
The physicists' success is just the beginning. "This leaves us with a mountain of unanswered questions," says Blochowicz. For example, it remains to be clarified to what extent the observed reversibility in terms of material time is due to the reversibility of the physical laws of nature or how the ticking of the internal clock differs for different materials. The researchers are keen to investigate further, so more exciting discoveries could lie ahead.
