Is time truly linear — or could its flow be a large-scale illusion?
In Elementary Cycles Theory (ECT), time is not a continuous river, but a tapestry of ultra-fast microscopic cycles. Every elementary particle is described as an internal clock, its intrinsic time recurrence determined by its energy via de Broglie’s relation. This periodicity is not a metaphor — it is a physical constraint, implemented through periodic boundary conditions in time.
At first glance, this vision seems to challenge one of the deepest intuitions in physics: the arrow of time. If everything is cyclic, wouldn’t the universe be trapped in eternal recurrence — with no distinction between past and future?
The surprising answer is no.
Although ECT postulates cyclic dynamics at the fundamental level, the macroscopic arrow of time emerges naturally. In fact, it’s not an exception to the theory — it is a statistical consequence of it.
This idea is already latent in standard wave-particle duality, where each particle is associated with a time recurrence (de Broglie’s “periodic phenomenon”) defined by its energy. Since the universe is composed entirely of such elementary particles, and each particle possesses its own intrinsic clock, time itself can be described as the collective behavior of these internal cycles.
In systems involving many interacting particles, these cycles become modulated through local energy exchanges. Thermal noise, quantum fluctuations, and decoherence lead to dephasing — the perfect synchronization of cycles breaks down. The system evolves toward chaotic or ergodic behavior. This dephasing is the statistical foundation of irreversibility.
Just as a single pendulum swings back and forth in perfect regularity, a room full of metronomes will gradually desynchronize under perturbations. In the same way, a universe built from billions of intrinsic cycles transitions from microscopic periodicity to macroscopic irreversibility. Entropy increases. Clocks tick forward. The universe does not return to its initial state.
In this light, the flow of time is not a primitive feature of the universe. It is an emergent, relational property — a large-scale manifestation of countless microscopic cycles interacting under the laws of statistics.
Elementary Cycles Theory reveals that the arrow of time is not in conflict with cyclic time — it is born from it.
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