The direction of time and the equivalence of ‘expanding’ and ‘contracting’ world-models

Abstract

It is assumed initially that only the increase of entropy defines locally the sense of advance of time. This assumption, together with the feature of global coherence of statistical processes, which is provided by the cosmic line-element, imply that there is a unique way of associating the standards with the cosmic statistical processes. There is hence a connexion between the sense of divergence of geodesics of fundamental observers and the cosmic time-sense. This is in keeping with the unmodified conservation laws of gravitation and the analogous adiabatic conservation law quite generally without dependence on the explicit form of the line element. These remarks correspond exactly to consequences of the ‘elliptic’ model in the case of de Sitter space, obtained by entirely separate geometrical considerations. A remark is made with regard to the irreversibility associated with quantum measurement.