Month: September 2013

I have recently been wondering about probability. What is it? Well obviously I know that its “The chance of something happening” but how does probability manifest itself in our universe. Firstly I have made the assumption that for something to happen, you must have a time component. For example a universe with 0 dimensions, and no time, cannot have probability. A point could exist in such a universe, since a point is as Euclid defined “that which has no part” or in other words a point has no dimensions. But in a 0 dimensional space there is no time and so it cannot appear. However in a 1 dimensional universe where the only dimension is temporal, this gives rise to something being able to happen. Admittedly this kind of universe is still only big enough to contain a point, but it can either be there, or not be there. It is a binary universe, and the only event that can ever happen in that universe is the emergence of a point. You could go so far as to say that the entropy of this simple universe starts low, and then at some point becomes high. The trouble with this model is that its time reversible. If you look at this simple universe with time going backwards the point simply exists to start with, and then disappears. So in that sense the temporal dimension is not temporal at all, since it has no arrow of time.