The Arrow of Time, or Sorry Marty and The Insidious MRC

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As a young stage-struck theater major, I thought that the first law of thermodynamics was that you always moved to the center of the brightest spotlight. I have since learned that it is the first of the three absolute laws of the universe that declares that the amount of energy and matter in the universe is constant. Neither can be created or destroyed. But they can transform; H2O can be ice, water or a gas, but the molecules that make up those three states must remain constant. I have also learned, I think, that information, as a phase of energy, is similarly immune to destruction. 

Perusing that last assertion will make your brain hurt if you are not fairly well versed in theoretical physics. Even Physics for Dummies - and, yes, there is such a publication - fails the Distilled Harmony mandate to Distill Complexity.  But as I said, I think that information slips in there with mass and energy in the first law of thermodynamics as “things in the universe that cannot be destroyed.”  Maybe it can - but only at the edges of certain types of black holes, and if you are Stephen Hawking, because most of the other physics biggies seem to disagree.

As I lie here in bed at 3 AM staring at the LED of the speaker playing a thunderstorm, this strikes me as important.  It would seem that entities, particles, people, puppies, what have you, in the course of existence, move from a state of less information to a state of more information. To reverse that process, for time to run backwards, energy would have to be lost, which contradicts said "first law of thermodynamics." Hence the arrow of time runs one way. From the past into the future. Which, it appears, puts the kibosh on the idea of time travel, at least on a round trip to the future, a realization that, seemingly will always prevent Marty McFly from going Back to the Future.

Whew. Now that we have taken care of that, let us move on to a more complicated issue: the stairwell memory repressing condensate hypothesis. The phenomenon is common enough. I am sitting at my desk in the downstairs office and I sudden realize I need something from the floor above. I get up and begin to climb the stairs. Upon reaching the landing I realize I have no idea why I am going upstairs.  The phenomenon can also be observed in reverse - unlike the one way arrow of time. I can be upstairs and realize that I need something on the main floor. Once again, upon reaching the landing, all knowledge of my objective vanishes.  The secret lies in the fact that if I continue, clueless, to the floor that was my original objective, either up or down, after a moment or two I can recall why I needed to be there. Hence:

The Stairwell Memory Repressing Condensate Hypothesis

There is something - let us call it MRC for Memory Repressing Condensate - that gathers in the stairwell landings that interferes with the normal neurological process we call "memory."  When we move through the MRC it ceases to affect us and memory returns. I would posit two solutions - ceiling fans or a nap. 

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