The continuity of time is the premise of quite a lot of theories and laws in physics. Of course physicists are going to be the ones who go in complete reverse of their very own laws.

While we won’t get to fly back into the past, the experiments conducted will actually be able to explain definitively why we can’t go far back in time instead of the argument that time is continuous.

The Law of Thermodynamics is used as a guiding rule in the universe rather than a definitive all-encompassing idea. The Law states that hot things get colder over time as energy transforms and spreads out from areas where it’s most intense. The Law of thermodynamics is how we explain why warm things becomes cold, such as taking boiling water out into sub-zero weather.

It is also how we can remember what happened yesterday but cannot remember what will happen tomorrow.

“That law is closely related to the notion of the arrow of time that posits the one-way direction of time from the past to the future,” said the study’s lead author Gordey Lesovik, who heads the Laboratory of the Physics of Quantum Information Technology at MIPT.

Within the realm of physics, just about every other known law can be reversed and make sense. An example used would be two balls hitting each other in a game of pool. Visually, when seeing them interact going forward and backward, you would not be able to know the difference.

On the other hand, you could watch balls roll out of pockets, if that went in reverse back into the pyramid shape, well, let’s say it’d be an unusual experience. That’s the second law at work for you.

The main idea behind the quantum physics research taking place is that as you step back from the macro-level, and into the micro-level, and take a look at the smallest parts of our reality – that being electrons – loopholes appear in our understanding via the Law of Thermodynamics.

Electrons are not the same as the balls in a game of pool, and are rather an idea of information occupying space between objects. This is defined in the Schrödinger equation, which represents the possibilities of an electron’s characteristics as a wave of chance.

If we go back to our metaphor of the game of pool, you hit your cue-ball and it starts moving. The Schrödinger equation says that the ball is somewhere on the table moving around at a certain speed. In quantum terms, the ball would be everywhere at a bunch of different speeds with some more likely than others.

You’d be able to stick your hand out to grab the ball and you would know the location of the ball but you would not be able to know the velocity of the ball. If you were to stick your hand out and gently brush the ball you would be able to get the velocity of the ball but you have now just lost the location of the ball.

In its own way Schrödinger’s equation predicts the same for quantum particles. Over time, the possibilities of the position and velocities of the particles increases.

According to materials scientist Valerii Vinokur,  Schrödinger’s equation is reversible. Using this, and our metaphor, this would mean that instead of ever-increasing possibilities, in reverse it would decrease the amount of possibilities.

Using this theory Russian and US physicists have used a quantum computer as their pool ball and manipulation of the computer as time. Hundreds of tests were run with this idea in mind. This ended in the result of a range of possibilities.

Tweaking the computer’s conditions allowed the scientists to demonstrate what would happen if you kicked a pool table and all the balls reformed into the initial pyramid formation. In 85% of trials, that happened. Manipulation of the Schrödinger equation rewinded time and the research will be used in improving quantum computers.

This isn’t the first time in recent history(ha-ha) that the second Law of Thermodynamics has been tested. A couple years ago they they entangled particles into a seemingly perpetual motion machine by heating and cooling them.

The Scientific Research is published here