Physicists reverse time using quantum computer

Most comments moved to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19378567.

Actual Study: "Arrow of Time and its Reversal on IBM Quantum Computer" https://arxiv.org/pdf/1712.10057.pdf

This is a garbage article. They are basically taking the concept of entropy and saying that because they found a way to force something to happen that is insanely improbable it's "reversing time". That's nonsense.

That's like saying that hydrogen and oxygen atoms bonded to form water molecules and using electrolysis to split them back into hydrogen and oxygen is time travel. It's completely absurd.

No, it's actually quite different. What you're suggesting is that they manually scattered each electron, and then brought each one manually back into place. What actually occurred is that a completely different state was induced, which effectively 'reversed time' (I really hate that phrase). I found a pdf of the study, but I lost it among all the 'Have scientists created a TARDIS?'s. Basically, it said the maths, and the probability of an electron spontaneously entering the state. You could probably find it, if you really wanted to.

tihs yloh

Quantum Leap, here we come (grin)