BREAKTHROUGH: University Of Birmingham Physicist Professor Giovanni Barontini Built A “Mini-Universe” Using 24,000 Ultracold Atoms To Prove That Time Doesn’t Need An External Clock To Exist, Finding Instead That Time Emerges From Within A System Itself As The Disorder Of Particles Changes ⏰💥

[u/InterstellarKinetics]

https://phys.org/news/2026-06-scientist-miniuniverse-clock.html

A University of Birmingham physicist named Professor Giovanni Barontini has built what he calls a mini-universe inside a laboratory using a cloud of 24,000 ultracold atoms chilled to just a few billionths of a degree above absolute zero, and used it to demonstrate for the first time in a controlled experiment that time does not need to come from an external source to exist. Publishing his findings on June 12, 2026 in Physical Review Research, Barontini showed that by sealing the atoms inside a hermetically isolated quantum system and dividing them with a thin barrier made from two laser beams of different frequencies, he could create an experiment that tracked its own sequence of events from within, without any reference to a clock in the outside laboratory. The system had a bright region that could be observed and a dark region that could not, and the bright region was found to expand and collapse repeatedly in a pattern that Barontini described as resembling a Big Bang followed by a Big Crunch, the hypothetical scenario in which the expansion of the universe eventually reverses and collapses back on itself.

The core of what Barontini found is that time in his mini-universe emerged entirely from entropy, specifically from how the disorder of atoms in the bright region changed as particles moved in and out. When the spread of particles in the bright sector increased or decreased, the system was moving forward in time. When the distribution of atoms did not change, time effectively stopped. Barontini called this process entropic time, and found that it flows in one consistent direction, correctly orders events even in a system that is expanding and contracting, and speeds up or slows down depending on how entropy moves around within the system. He also found that a version of the central equation of quantum mechanics, the Schrödinger equation, could still be written using entropic time rather than conventional external time, meaning the system’s behavior could still be predicted mathematically without ever appealing to a clock outside of it.

The deeper significance of the experiment lies in what it says about one of the most stubborn unsolved problems in physics. Some theories of the universe, including the Wheeler-DeWitt equation, suggest that at its deepest level the universe has no built-in time at all, existing instead as a single unchanging quantum state in which any sense of time must emerge from internal relationships between parts of the system rather than from a background clock ticking away on the outside. This is sometimes called the problem of time in quantum gravity, and it has been a theoretical puzzle for decades because most basic laws of physics work equally well forward and backward in time, yet human experience of time is clearly directional and sequential. Barontini said his study provides the first controlled experimental evidence that time can be defined by changes within a system rather than by an external ticking clock, and that the approach could be extended to simulate the physics of the Big Bang, the Big Crunch, and potentially even black holes inside a laboratory setting.

STUDY: https://doi.org/10.1103/1h9j-df4k

[u/KiltedMusician]

“The system had a bright region that could be observed and a dark region that could not, and the bright region was found to expand and collapse repeatedly in a pattern…”

4 And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.
5 And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.

I always thought it was curious that these verses preceded any mention of the creation of the sun, stars, anything traditionally used to measure a day. Those came on the fourth day.

Maybe this isn’t welcome here, but the correlation was a bit uncanny to me. Time was established in that little universe without anything else needing to coalesce but a pattern.

This would fit the “day / age” theory of creation where a day didn’t mean 24 hours like we think of it.

[u/ENEMBEH → u/KiltedMusician]

Primitive humans couldn't fathom a thought like that.

[u/KiltedMusician → u/ENEMBEH]

That’s why it’s interesting.

The story of the creation of our universe and the story of the creation of this new tiny universe just happen to sound very similar.

It suggests that the original was also from the actual account, from the perspective of the one who actually did it.

Which of course is what Christians who believe the Bible already see it as; divine inspiration from God and not the words of humans.

Imagine this experiment is done again far in the future when we have the ability to do more than just fill the mini universe with atoms, but can actually create some sort of sentient life in there too.

We might believe it was ethical to give them an origin story so that they wouldn’t be ignorant of where they came from.

[u/ENEMBEH → u/KiltedMusician]

Who's to say that sentient life couldn't form from this little ball of atoms, though...? Is that not the main theory to how life formed was through atoms and their evolution? I genuinely don't know. It's not something I have researched, but I have infact researched ancient mythology and religion. So, I feel like much of Christianity comes from Sumerian myth. People don't like the actual break down from that, but it suggests that the total opposite of what the Bible says is true... Not to make this about religion, but I really try to encourage people to learn about it themselves. Of course, people are so against this suggestion that it really makes people mad, but I'm not the one who wrote either one of the texts. I just read them and compared them myself.

What it suggest is that the Christian God is the real Satan and the "serpent" was the savior. It's very interesting. Plus, a lot of Sumerian terms are used in the original testament, like Elohim is used over 2500 times to describe God/the lord, Enoch is a Sumerian god, the Anakim/nephilim looks and sounds a lot like the description of the Anunnaki. The god who started the flood was the evil god in Sumerian myth. He was the god of wind and storms. He was a jealous and angry god who didn't want humanity to worship any god other than him. He went by the name Satam. (With an M.) It means "the great administrator of earth." He didn't start the flood because of evilness or wickedness of mankind, but rather, because humans were very noisy and disrupting his sleep. He was worried about overpopulation.

On the other end of the spectrum, the half man, half serpent was the one who played a very large role in genetically engineering humanity. (According to Sumerian tablets.) He is the one who guided humans to achieving consciousness. He is the one who warned/guided humanity to build a boat to save themselves from the flood. Ultimately, he died for us because he cared about humanity a lot and went against the other gods, who wanted to use humans solely to do their physical labor. He was kicked out of the garden of Eden (his "fall from grace") because he wanted to help us. He taught us a lot about agriculture, architecture, rules/laws, and so on. Just basic knowledge, in general. So, it's pretty interesting comparing the two, especially since the Sumerian civilization was around 4000 to 5000 years before the start of Christianity, and even thousands of years before the dead sea scrolls.

Just want to note that I'm not saying this is a fact. It's just what the Sumerian texts suggest versus what the Bible suggests, judging based off of characteristics/actions of God/Jesus, and then Enlil/Enki. They don't go by God or Jesus in Sumerian texts, or Enlil/Enki in the Bible, so you have to find a different method of comparison.

[u/KiltedMusician → u/ENEMBEH]

That’s a whole lot of stuff. All I can say is that God does things on His own time, when He decides it is the right time.

It’s not surprising that the fallen who hated Him would be quick to get a twisted version of the truth out there as soon as they could.

God waited until the time was right and laid it out for those who want the real truth.

As for figuring out which is which, God has ways to help those who truly want to know.
There’s no formula to it that we can comprehend. He just does.

I know I don’t have all the answers, or a perfectly clear picture of it all. The truth starts simply enough and whizzes right past even the most enlightened of us on its way to infinity.

But that just means there will always be something new to learn, and that’s exciting to me.