Is gravity the force driving time forwards?

A paper was recently published in Physical Review Letters last October, by Flavio Mercati at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Canada, and his colleagues. The paper, entitled “Identification of a Gravitational Arrow of Time,” argues that to understand the arrow of time, we don’t need to worry about the initial conditions of the Universe; instead, the authors believe gravity can explain the phenomenon by itself. You can read about the paper here at the Cosmos website.

This speaks directly to Rule #3, “All change is the result of the force of gravity.” It’s easy to see how gravity can make things change, but to read scientific evidence about gravity’s influence on time itself is quite interesting!