Emergence of the arrow of time
Time has a direction. Microscopic equations of motion in classical and quantum mechanics have time-reversible symmetry. But this symmetry is broken for many macroscopic phenomena. This observation is encoded in the second law of thermodynamics. We experience the flow of time and distinguish past, present, and future. The arrow of time is manifest in phenomena that occur at scales covering many orders of magnitude. Here are some of these different arrows of time, listed in order of increasing time scales. These are discussed by Tony Leggett in chapter 5 of The Problems of Physics. Elementary particle physics. CP violation is observed in certain phenomena associated with the weak nuclear interaction, such as the decay of neutral kaons observed in 1964. The CPT symmetry theorem shows that any local quantum field theory that is invariant under the “proper” Lorentz transformations must also be invariant under combined CPT transformations. This means that CP violation means that time-rever