The arrow of time as a geometric property of the universe

This video is part of the PROTEUS project that has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (Grant agreement No. 758145)

Abstract

The debate on the arrow of time has been largely gravitating around entropy-increasing behaviors or the expansion of our universe. In one way or another, the debate has assumed a reductionist approach –the arrow of time (if physically meaningful) must be reduced to some material asymmetry of the world. Various theoretical and conceptual problems in this enterprise, like the existence of time-reversal invariant laws, have motivated an eliminativist approach: there seem to be no reasons to take the arrow of time as an intrinsic (or fundamental) feature of the world, but, at best, as an emergent from a directionless basis. In this presentation, we will defend the existence of an intrinsic and fundamental arrow of time by putting forward an alternative approach. According to it, the arrow of time, if it exists, is an intrinsic and primitive feature of the space-time, which is given by the geometrical properties that a space-time can instantiate according to general relativity and our best cosmological models. We will suggest that we live in a universe with such an arrow of time.