GILLES ROBERT & JACQUES DUBOCHET NOBEL PRIZE
A DIALOGUE AROUND TIME
The paths of time can meet where least expected. Off the beaten track — literally. High in the Valais mountains, between forest and sky, Gilles Robert signposted the way to his mayen, inviting nature lovers to spend a quiet moment in this stone and timber hut, a typical feature of the Alpine landscape, and inscribe their thoughts in a simple notebook he left there. Turning its pages one day, he came across the hand of Jacques Dubochet, Nobel Prize in Chemistry. From this happenstance, a conversation would grow — timid at first, then enthusiastic — between two men yet to discover the many things they had in common: a love of beauty, mountains and nature, readiness to embrace a challenge, and the curiosity of those determined to understand the world without ever stemming its flow. Soon, a friendship formed out of their exchange. A friendship, and Le Temps Opposé.
When two minds grounded in justness and freedom meet, words become matter. Jacques Dubochet lends his voice and his vision of time to Gilles Robert, to offer the watch a sincere and rare echo.
REVERSIBLE TIME
Time passes, the past leads to the future in rhythm with the seconds of the watch. Yet wisely, we know that the future is mysterious.
Classical physics is absolutely deterministic. Combined with the fundamental law of conservation of energy (the total energy of the universe does not change), it claims that the present and the future are solely determined by the past. Symmetrically, knowledge of the present should allow us to know everything about the past.
Quantum mechanics overturned all of this in the first half of the 20th century. It considers that the flow of time is expressed in the path of transition from an initial state to a final state. The initial state is not determined. It carries within itself a range of possibilities, only one of which is realized randomly when the final state becomes observable.
Today, many physicists like to think about the flow of time in terms of the law of conservation of information. It states that the number of bits—0/1—needed to describe the universe does not vary. This law, which Leonard Susskind and George Hrabovsky (2014) call the Zeroth Law of Thermodynamics, is even more fundamental than the conservation of energy. Unlike the latter, the Zeroth Law requires us to keep in mind the mysterious nature of the flow of time.
The watch of classical determinism does not express the uncertainty of TIME REVERSED to the past.
The watch with REVERSED seconds reminds us that the future is built mysteriously on the past we have lived.
Jacques Dubochet the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2017
Leonard Susskind and George Hrabovsky (2014). Classical Mechanics: The Theoretical Minimum. London, Penguin.
