ʇɐɯ0ʇdıɹʞ:𝚑𝚘𝚕𝚘𝚗𝚊𝚞𝚝𝚒𝚌.𝚎𝚗𝚐𝚗𝚛

This physicist created a MINI-UNIVERSE in his laboratory. Then something bizarre happened: ZERO TIME passed on its internal clock between a simulated "Big Crunch" and the next "Big Bang." University of Birmingham physicist Giovanni Barontini built a tiny quantum "universe" using 24,000 rubidium atoms cooled to billionths of a degree above absolute zero. He separated the atoms into two regions using a thin laser barrier. One region repeatedly expanded and collapsed, mimicking Big Bang and Big Crunch cycles. Instead of measuring time with an outside clock, Barontini created an internal clock based on ENTROPY flowing between the two regions. When more entropy was exchanged, this "entropic time" ran faster. When the exchange slowed, time slowed. Between one collapse and the next expansion, zero entropic time elapsed. By adjusting the laser barrier, he could actually change the speed of this internal clock. In another configuration, the miniature universe approached a state resembling "heat death," and its entropic time stopped advancing altogether. The experiment lasted just 120 milliseconds, with measurements taken every 2 milliseconds. Barontini even derived a version of the Schrödinger equation using this internal time that reproduced the observed quantum behavior. Barontini suggested: "Both time and the arrow of time, maybe they just are born from ignorance." He argued that time might emerge from information unavailable to an observer. The study gives physicists an experimental way to investigate a radical possibility: TIME may emerge from physical change rather than exist independently of it. Study published June 11, 2026, in Physical Review Research.