TIME may end in 5 billion years, according to physicist Ben Freivogel at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (see 鈥淐ountdown to oblivion: Only 5 billion years to go鈥�). But before you roll your eyes at the latest pronouncement to come from those crazy cosmologists, remember that it is provocative for good reason.
Thought experiments, such as the one that spawned this idea of the end of time, are cleverly designed to expose weaknesses in our thinking. They have a long history. When Erwin Schr枚dinger formulated his famous feline thought experiment, he wasn鈥檛 trying to argue that cats in boxes are both alive and dead. Rather, he was making a reductio ad absurdum argument to show the peculiarities of quantum mechanics. Likewise, Einstein鈥檚 ponderings on what a beam of light would look like if you were riding alongside it led to special relativity and then to general relativity, a new theory of gravity.
By suggesting that time will end, the work by Freivogel will help physicists think more deeply about cosmology in a multiverse. When you are trying to grasp something as mind-boggling as a multiverse, a thought experiment can be the best tool of all.
Advertisement