Frazz by Jef Mallett for December 04, 2012
December 03, 2012
December 05, 2012
Transcript:
Mrs. Olsen: Any questions? Caulfield: Why do we get excited about the first robin of spring but we never get depressed about the last robin before winter? Mrs. Olsen: Ignorance is bliss. Caulfield: Then she forgot all about her lesson plan! Frazz: I bet that made people happy.
… because of the strange asymmetry of time by which we can remember the past but not the future. We know when we see the first robin that it is the first, but not when we see the last robin. There is no full explanation of that asymmetry, but I think it’s because the Big Bang imposes a boundary condition on the Schrödinger equation of the Universe. An analogy is that we perceive an asymmetry between up and down, but that is only because we live on the surface of a body, and not an inherent feature of space.