theSIGNAL SCIENCE
31 October 2026
"Time is what keeps everything from happening at once."
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Science

A Universe With 24,000 Atoms and No Clock

A Birmingham physicist has built a tiny quantum cosmos in the lab, and time seems to appear inside it without any outside clock.

Imagine a universe with no clock. Nothing ticks. Nothing stands outside it, counting seconds. Could anything still happen in a sensible order?

That is not a children's riddle. It is a real headache in theoretical physics. The Wheeler-DeWitt equation, which appears in attempts to marry quantum mechanics with gravity, describes the whole universe as one frozen quantum state. There is no time variable in it at all.

So who decides what comes first and what comes later? One bold answer is that time is not a starting ingredient of reality. Instead, it may emerge from the changing relationships between the parts of the universe. Giovanni Barontini, a professor at the University of Birmingham, decided to test this in a laboratory.

Photo: Brecht Corbeel / Unsplash
Laser beams hold a cloud of ultracold atoms inside a precisely controlled quantum experiment.
Discuss
  • If time emerges from change, what would it mean for a completely unchanging universe to have no time?
  • Why might physicists trust a cloud of 24,000 atoms to say something about the whole cosmos?
  • The Wheeler-DeWitt equation contains no time variable; how could a theory work without one?
Science

Exploding Stars May Have Blocked Cosmic Light

Thirteen billion years ago, the universe was foggy. Neutral hydrogen swallowed ultraviolet light, and then, somehow, the fog lifted. Many astronomers believed supernova winds helped clear it. Hubble now suggests the opposite: those blasts can trap ultraviolet radiation inside galaxies, as Cody Carr's team reported in Nature Astronomy.…
  • If exploding stars blocked ultraviolet light, what else might have ended the cosmic fog?
∞
Time may not be a built-in feature of the universe, but something that arises from change within it.
Giovanni Barontini, Professor of Physics, University of Birmingham
Science

The Snakebites Nobody Counted

More than half the countries with dangerous snakes never count their bitten patients. Imagine a victim in rural Nigeria or Nepal, hours from a clinic, visiting a healer instead. She vanishes from every statistic. So researchers reviewed data from 79 countries and built a geostatistical model, using climate, snake diversity and poverty to estimate what records miss. Their conclusion: the crisis is far bigger than official figures suggest, and sub-Saharan Africa suffers most.…
  • If governments cannot count snakebite victims, how can they fairly plan treatment and antivenom supplies?
EUROPE · Science
Putin hails Elon Musk’s ‘genius’ amid plans for Russian version of Starlink
GLOBAL · Science
James Webb discovers a scorching lava planet with a “giant sunscreen”
AMERICAS · Science
Smithsonian scientists just recreated the first 2 billion years of the Universe
MIDDLE EAST · Science
A 700,000-year-old elephant tooth reveals a lost world where early humans lived
theSIGNAL IN THE LAB
1VOCABULARY
emergefrozen
chilledanalogyfoothold
obstructinggeostatistical
2GRAMMAR FOCUS
Wish and if only — expressing regret
Use 'wish' or 'if only' + past simple for present regrets (I wish I knew), + past perfect for regrets about the past (If only they had checked), and 'wish' + would/could to express annoyance or a desire for change.
had · were · would · could · hadn't · knew · had counted
  1. Physicists studying the Wheeler-DeWitt equation sometimes say, 'If only time a variable in the equation, our problem would be solved.'
  2. Some theorists wish they how time emerges from the universe's parts, but the answer remains elusive.
  3. Barontini's critics might say they wish a cloud of atoms a true cosmos, because then the analogy would be easier to defend.
  4. Astronomers wish they earlier that supernova winds could trap ultraviolet light inside galaxies, as it would have saved years of wrong assumptions.
  5. Many astronomers now wish the supernova explanation so widely accepted, since Hubble's new findings contradict it.
  6. Health workers wish governments every snakebite victim, because the true scale of the crisis is hidden in missing data.
3IDIOMS
Define each idiom in your own words. Then write one in a sentence of your own.
  1. to get a foothold
  2. a real headache
  3. to lift the fog
  4. to vanish from the statistics (to fall through the cracks)
  5. to be the opposite of what was believed (to turn a theory on its head)
4CRITICAL THINKING
All three stories show scientists revising or challenging an assumption: that time needs a clock, that supernovae cleared the cosmic fog, that official records reflect reality. Which of these assumptions seems hardest to give up, and why? What does it take for a scientific community to accept that a long-held belief might be wrong?
5CREATIVE · HEADLINES
Write a headline for the top story in each of the following styles. One line each, no explanation:
  • TABLOID NEWSPAPER
  • LUXURY MAGAZINE
  • ACTIVIST BLOG
6WRITING
Choose one of the three stories and write a short paragraph explaining what the researchers still do not know and which single piece of evidence you would most want to see next. Support your choice with reasons.
7DEGREES OF EXTREMITY
Complete each ladder from mild to strong.
  • The results were surprising.→→
  • The experiment was quite difficult.→→
  • Scientists were a bit puzzled by the data.→→
  • The problem is rather awkward for physicists.→→
  • The official figures are slightly inaccurate.→→
  • The universe was somewhat hazy.→→
8SPEAKING
  1. How might scientists explain a universe without time to a ten-year-old?
  2. Which is harder to accept: a cosmic mystery or a hidden human tragedy?
  3. Should researchers publish bold ideas before other experts have checked them thoroughly?
  4. What invisible problems in your own community deserve to be measured properly?