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For the first time, a physicist has experimentally watched time emerge from within an isolated quantum system — by creating a “mini-universe.” This bizarre experiment raises an intriguing question: If the universe has nothing outside it, where does time come from?

In a new study published June 11 in the journal Physical Review Research , Giovanni Barontini , an experimental physicist at the University of Birmingham in the U.K., used a cloud of ultracold atoms to build his mini-universe. The system was so well isolated from its surroundings that, like the universe itself, it had nothing external to use as a clock. He split that system in two and ignored one half — what he called the "dark sector" — to show that time could arise entirely from within the system.

The result offers the first experimental look on why the universe has time at all. "When you put everything together, things really start to make sense," Barontini told Live Science. "How time inside the system was speeding up or slowing down, or even stopping — this was quite surprising, how well everything came together. Very neatly, in a way. Which is something that doesn't happen that often in experiments."

The work is an experimental verification of ideas that have been floating around in quantum cosmology and thermodynamics for decades. This is not a bombshell claim that time is an illusion , but it is the first time anyone has put those ideas to a direct, quantitative test in the lab.

A universe with nothing outside

Barontini set out to look at a problem that physicists have puzzled over for nearly 60 years. The Wheeler-DeWitt equation — a central equation in quantum gravity, the field that seeks to unify Einstein’s theory of gravity with quantum mechanics — describes the universe as a whole system with no external time parameter. There is no cosmic clock ticking away outside the universe. So where does our experience of time come from?

One influential idea, called relational time, says that time doesn't exist as a fundamental ingredient of reality. Instead, it emerges from relationships inside the universe, with one part of the system acting as a clock for another. But this idea had never been tested directly in the lab.

Barontini's inspiration came from watching his son play with building toys. "I thought that it's something very similar to what we do in our labs," he told Live Science. "We play with very expensive toys. We create our own small samples of reality."

In his lab, that sample is a Bose-Einstein condensate — a state of matter that forms only at near absolute zero. In a Bose-Einstein condensate, thousands of atoms slow to a near standstill and blur together into a single quantum object, behaving as one.

The University of Birmingham experiment to trap and cool rubidium atoms close to absolute zero — the first step in assembling the mini-universe. (Image credit: University of Birmingham) The dark side of time

To mimic a universe with nothing outside it, Barontini placed the condensate in a trap and divided it down the middle with a thin sheet of laser light. He watched one half, the "bright sector," closely and deliberately ignored the other half, which he called the "dark sector."

The atoms in the bright sector sloshed back and forth in the trap, periodically spilling over the barrier and back again. Barontini called the moments when atoms flooded into the bright sector the "Big Bang" and the times when they drained out the "Big Crunch" (the nickname for one theory of how the universe will end , with the universe collapsing in on itself). Then, he tracked how entropy — a measure of disorder, or how spread out energy is within a system — was exchanged between the two halves as atoms crossed the barrier.

Instead of using laboratory time to order events, he built an "entropic time" — a clock defined entirely by how much entropy was flowing between the two halves of the system. If entropy was flowing, time was ticking. If no entropy was exchanged, time stopped. "The entropy exchange between the two systems could be transformed into an internal time variable," Barontini said.

Time speeds up, slows down and stops

What surprised Barontini most was how cleanly everything fit together. The internal, entropic time reliably ordered events in the bright sector. It matched the sequence seen in laboratory time, but it flowed at a different rate.

When entropy was flooding between the sectors, entropic time ran fast. When the exchange slowed, so did the clock. And when the two halves reached equilibrium (no more entropy flowing), the internal clock stopped altogether.

Both time and the arrow of time — maybe they just are born from ignorance.

Giovanni Barontini, experimental physicist at the University of Birmingham

"Time was speeding up or slowing down, or even stopping, depending on what the system was doing," Barontini said.

He then went a step further: Using this internal time, he derived a version of the Schrödinger equation and showed it accurately reproduced what he saw in the experiment. "This was quite surprising, how well everything came together," he said — "very neatly, in a way, which is something that doesn't happen that often in experiments."

Both time itself and the arrow of time — why time flows in one direction rather than the other — may arise from the same source: an observer giving up information. When Barontini chose not to look at the dark sector, he gave up knowledge of that half of the system. That act of ignorance, encoded in entropy, is what gave rise to time in the other half.

"Both time and the arrow of time — maybe they just are born from ignorance," Barontini said. "To have time and to observe, you have to give up some degrees of freedom."

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Barontini sees this as just the beginning. The same cold-atom tool kit that generated a miniature Big Bang and Big Crunch in his trap could, in principle, be engineered to simulate far more exotic phenomena, such as black hole analogues, the conditions of the early universe, and what will happen at the moment of the Big Crunch itself.

"These are things we can do very simply, using the tools we already have to engineer our systems," he said.

The study is a proof of concept ‪—‬ a first demonstration that controlled quantum systems can serve as a test bed for some unanswered questions in physics . For now, those questions remain open.

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The latest Netflix viewership ratings are in, offering insight into the most popular titles across the service. Netflix remains the only streaming platform that transparently shares viewership data with the public, even as its competitors hold their cards close to the vest. This week's report tracks viewership in the week of June 29 to July 5. While the movies list was topped by Enola Holmes 3 , which accumulated 20 million views in its debut week, a holdover hit retained the number one spot on the series list. The show in question has held on to the number one spot thrice in a row, beating out the second season of Avatar: The Last Airbender and the first season of the true-crime documentary series Worst Neighbor Ever .

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Former Grinding Gear Games co-founder and Path of Exile co-creator Chris Wilson previously sold parts of his Magic The Gathering card collection "to fund the company" during PoE's development, but has since amassed one of the biggest and most valuable Magic collections the world has ever seen, as he demonstrates in a new video.

Wilson could – but in this video, does not – claim to have one of the top 10 or even top five biggest Magic collections known to exist.

Showing off "My Oldest Magic: the Gathering Cards," Wilson shows page after page, pile after pile, of high-value and hard-to-find Magic cards dating back decades. From Alpha icons to The Dark, Legends, Antiquities and many other early sets, in this brief look – which seems to represent a fraction of Wilson's library, which includes tens of thousands of Lands alone – the man comes across like a dragon walking you through his treasure hoard.

The headliner is obvious: 14 copies of Black Lotus, the most famous Magic card around, crown Wilson's collection. With 12 sleeved in a binder and two more 9-grade Lotuses safely encased in plastic slabs, Wilson is sitting on a fortune in cardboard flowers.

Wilson never really talks about the value of these cards – beyond turning his nose up at the prospect of paying modern prices for more Black Lotuses – and it can be difficult to price some rarities in a turbulent market. But these are apparently "raw Alpha copies" of Black Lotus with black borders, which can easily sell for five digits apiece, and often much closer to six digits , even ignoring private collectors who've reportedly shelled out millions for a Lotus.

The Lotuses are one thing, but there are also random pages in Wilson's binders that could kill a Magic player. The Magic: The Gathering Reddit community was agasp at collection bombs like 24 copies of The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale, a hotly contested Land which can go for thousands according to TCG Player .

Wilson has one or even two dozen copies of tons of cards that many people have never held in their life. He rifles through piles of the fabled "Power Nine," a set of cards – spiritually related to Yu-Gi-Oh's Power Five – from early sets that offered enormous advantage, often in the form of extra mana, but also via extra turns a la Time Walk.

The Power Nine were printed back when the goblins in the Magic designers' brains flip-flopped unpredictably between pack filler that will never be played because it's unfit to even absorb beer can condensation on the kitchen table, and nuclear weapons that can never be played because they're banned in every galaxy. Thank goodness Magic players don't have to deal with that anymore. The Black Lotus, a bite of free mana, is just one of these nine.

Condition is obviously a factor in resale value, but Wilson has at least 12 near-mint copies of every Mox artifact in Alpha, and he talks over them like nothing. Those are just the ones in a binder; he has loose, more damaged copies of even more Power Nine, including yet more Moxes. The video feels like a fever dream; I wouldn't have the patience to make proxies of all these. Wilson alone commands a non-trivial portion of the entire Alpha market.

"Alpha is special," he says of the formative Magic set. "Because this is the original history of the game. These are cards that dictated the future of what was gonna happen and set it in motion. If Alpha was bad, the rest of the game would never exist. But thankfully Alpha captured a generation of people and that's why we're still playing Magic to this day."

Gobsmacked Magic players also latched onto standouts like the sheets of Mishra's Workshop and Candelabra of Tawnos. Likewise, Wilson has 12 honest-to-god, white-border, Unlimited Ancestral Recalls. Don't worry, he says he "limited" himself to just a dozen because it would be "silly" to try and get 24 today. Signed Alpha cards dating back to the original artist run naturally round out the dizzying video.

"It just makes me feel so happy to go through sets like this and just appreciate the cool old stuff they printed – in my opinion, back when the game was even better than it is today," Wilson says. "Of course, that opinion's gonna vary."

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The brain's memory center may come "prewired," rather than being built from scratch after birth, a new study in mice finds.

The research, published in April in the journal Nature Communications , offers a new perspective on a long-standing question in neuroscience: Does the brain begin as a blank slate and build memories by adding connections through experience, or does it come with built-in wiring? The new research focused on the hippocampus , a seahorse-shaped structure deep in the brain that's essential for forming memories.

Rather than supporting either theory directly, the research points to the latter idea but adds a significant twist.

The researchers focused on a region of the hippocampus called cornu ammonis 3 (CA3), which plays a central role in storing and recalling memories. A trait known as plasticity enables neurons within CA3 to continuously strengthen and weaken their connections and thus strengthen or weaken different memories.

The team examined mouse brain tissue collected shortly after birth, during adolescence or during adulthood. They found that early in life, hippocampal networks are densely wired, with many neurons hyperconnected in a seemingly random pattern. As the brain matures, these haphazard networks become sparser yet more structured as connections are pruned. This pruning begins soon after birth, with significant declines in connectivity by adolescence.

The finding discounts the idea that the hippocampus starts out as a blank slate, or "tabula rasa."

"We find, in a nutshell, that the system is not a tabula rasa, as we thought originally, where you can just write information and then at some point, this information fills the system," said study co-author Peter Jonas , a neuroscientist at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria. "Rather, it starts out as a tabula plena [full slate] and then becomes more sparser and specifically connected."​​

This pattern may help to explain why we remember so little from infancy .

Memories are thought to be stored within networks of neurons that fire together, representing specific experiences. In a young brain, however, these connections between neurons, called synapses, behave differently, the study suggests. In young brain tissue, a single input could cause a neuron to fire, the team found, while in mature networks, neurons typically require multiple inputs to fire.

In very young mice, neurons in a region of the hippocampus called CA3 form a dense, highly interconnected network (yellow), with connections that are largely random. (Image credit: Jake Watson / ISTA) Jonas said the team was surprised by not only the early pruning of connections but also how strong those early connections were. "You might think that early in development, you have poor synapses and weak synapses, but we found the opposite," he told Live Science.

This excitability comes at a cost, however: When neurons are activated too easily, different experiences can trigger overlapping patterns of activity. If that overlap is too great, the brain may struggle to distinguish one memory from another. Instead of forming distinct networks, it may generate broader, less-specific memories. In other words, the system is very active but not very precise.

This imprecision may affect behavior, too. For example, rodent studies show that young animals learn to fear an area of a cage where they received a mild shock, freezing when they return to it. But unlike adults, who freeze at that exact location, young animals also have this response in similar environments — so the memory is there, but it's not precise.

As mice mature, the network within CA3 becomes sparser but more organized (blue) with pruning refining the once-dense web of neural connections. (Image credit: Jake Watson / ISTA) As the brain matures, neurons become more selective and require multiple inputs to fire. The result is more distinct, separate networks that translate to specific and stable memories. So in regard to the inability to recall early childhood, it may be that our earliest memories are too poorly defined to be retained in the long term.

The findings are consistent with a growing body of research on how memory develops, said Hauður Freyja Ólafsdóttir, an assistant professor at the Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour at Radboud University in the Netherlands.

"It's exciting on multiple fronts," Ólafsdóttir, who was not involved in the study, told Live Science. "There is plenty of developmental psychology work that suggests that memory becomes more specific with age. And so it's kind of interesting that now, at the circuit level, we're also seeing that the connectivity patterns are becoming sparser."

So what drives brain wiring before birth? That dense, early connectivity may result from a genetically programmed developmental process. Then, after birth, experience refines the wiring, Jonas suggested.

The findings do not rule out the possibility that experiences before birth leave lasting traces in the brain. But Ólafsdóttir thinks those early forms of learning rely on different neural systems than mature hippocampal circuits.

"I'm not disputing that they're there and that they have influence," she said, referencing prenatal experiences. "They leave a trace, let's say, in our brain and probably in our psychology even." But those traces may not resemble the detailed memories formed later in life.

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When asked whether the connections that form before birth represent true memories or are just a byproduct of prenatal development, Jonas said, "The latter is more likely."

The "full slate" may give the brain a crucial head start by enabling neurons to quickly link different types of information, such as sights, sounds and smells. If the brain began as a blank slate, neurons might be too sparsely connected to find each other, making early communication difficult, the study authors think.

By starting with an overconnected network, the hippocampus may ensure that the necessary wiring is already in place, Jonas theorized.

This article was first published May 6, 2026.

See how much you know about the most complex organ in the human body with our brain quiz!

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Moscow will halt diesel exports until the end of July in an attempt to shield its energy markets from the impact of its war with Ukraine, after a wave of drone attacks in Russia squeezed domestic fuel supplies.

The restrictions are likely to have a knock-on effect on diesel prices in Europe, pushing up costs for farmers, haulers and, ultimately, consumers.

Speaking at a government meeting chaired by President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday, Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak announced that Russia had “today introduced a ban on diesel fuel exports” to “increase supplies to the domestic market.” He added that Russia would begin importing petroleum products in July and expand production by using lower-environmental-grade fuels as part of a package aimed at easing domestic shortages.

The export ban followed several days of Ukrainian strikes on Russia’s energy infrastructure.

The timing is not great for Europe. Diesel markets have remained tight since March due to disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz amid the war in Iran. Russia is the world’s second-largest diesel exporter, and while the EU no longer imports Russian diesel directly because of sanctions, a squeeze on Russian exports is likely to ripple through global markets by increasing competition for fuel from elsewhere. That could sustain pressure on fuel costs for diesel-intensive industries on the continent.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Wednesday that Ukrainian forces had hit oil facilities in the Saratov region and Tatarstan as part of what he called a campaign of “fully justified” retaliation for Russia’s attacks on Ukraine. “Russians must feel that their state is waging this war,” Zelenskyy wrote on X.

On Tuesday, Gazprom said it was repairing damage to the Krasnodarskaya compressor station serving the Blue Stream pipeline to Turkey after a drone strike. A day earlier, Ukraine targeted Russia’s largest refinery in Omsk, more than 2,500 kilometers from the front line.

Novak had already warned Tuesday that Russia’s fuel market remained under pressure because of peak summer demand and unplanned refinery outages, instructing regional authorities and energy companies to prevent supply disruptions.

The restrictions will remain in place through July 31.

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Credit: Megan Ellis / Android Authority

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The recent Duolingo course upgrade has left some learners complaining that their progress has been scrambled.

Some users say completed units now include material they never learned, while others have been pushed back into basic lessons.

Other users are also frustrated by the strict new flashcards that reject reasonable answers.

As a part of the increasing minority of people who haven’t yet given up on Duolingo, I laid out a bunch of changes I’d ideally like to see to improve the app last month. Well, Duolingo has indeed made some changes, but they aren’t the ones I wanted. Worse still, the recently introduced Duolingo course upgrade that the company implemented instead has infuriated a whole bunch of people online.

Several recent threads on the r/duolingo subreddit are full of users complaining that their language courses have been shuffled around in ways that make their progress hard to follow. In one thread , a user learning Italian said they had been at around level 50 and were working through more challenging material, only to find themselves suddenly being tested on basic words such as sugar, cat, tree, and milk. Other users in the same thread said they had run into similar issues with Japanese, German, and Spanish.