The black hole has been a mystery to many physisits since the beginning of time, but to really know what it really holds, we must go in the black hole to find out. Not in this case! The directionality of time and our perception of it has been linked to the entropy of the universe.

Entropy can be seen as the amount of energy a system has lost forever. In an isolated system (like the universe) entropy is always increasing. Many scientists therefore believe that there must be a link between entropy and our perception of time.

“I, as someone who works at an astrophysics lab, think black holes are very very interesting, and they let us examine the idea of time travel in something that is more than just science fiction.” Sharmain Siddique, senior, said.

In 1974, Stephen Hawking theorized that the entropy of a black hole is actually related to the area of the event horizon, a boundary in space-time that separates an observer from the black hole. It is considered the point of no return: nothing can escape the event horizon.

It is assumed that the horizon by the black hole is actually a holographic screen, a hypersurface with a specific entropy. You can have two types of holographic screens, past holographic screens and future holographic screens, depending on whether the entropy within the surface is increasing or decreasing.

If this law is applied to the universe as a whole, the entropy arrow is consistent with the second law of thermodynamics. Entropy increases, time moves forward. But the application of the law onto black holes produces a curious result. Inside a black hole, entropy decreases and thus time runs backward.

“However, I also think that they’re complex and require a heavy lit base to understand, and honestly a lot more research needs to be done on them if we plan to make any leaps with our understanding of them.” Siddique said.

“It is pretty scary that time can go backwards and it’s so weird that something as strong as black hole can do that! I wish I can go back and change some stuff in the past,” Lauren Rosenfield, junior, said.

While there is still researching being done, scientists hope to find many answers of the wonders of the black hole and why it is so powerful.

Top image: Tumblr; punksnoted