Physicists Wonder if Time is Slowing Down

Time Slows Down writes: "Scientists have come up with the radical suggestion that the universe's end may come not with a bang but a standstill — that time could be literally running out and could, one day, stop altogether. A decade ago, astronomers noticed that distant supernovae — exploding stars on the very fringes of the universe — seemed to be moving faster than those nearer to the center, suggesting that they were accelerating as they shot through space. One team of scientists says the appearance of acceleration my be caused by time itself gradually slowing down, like a clock that needs winding. If time is indeed slowing down, so that according to this new suggestion our solitary time dimension is slowly turning into a new space dimension, then the far-distant, ancient stars seen by cosmologists would, from our perspective, look as though they were accelerating. While the theory is outlandish some cosmologists believe the idea has merit. "We believe that time emerged during the Big Bang, and if time can emerge, it can also disappear — that's just the reverse effect," says Professor Gary Gibbons."