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Physicists have started to realise that causality might not be as straightforward as we thought. Instead of cause always preceding effect, effects can sometimes precipitate their causes. And, even more mindbogglingly, both can be true at once. In this version of events, you would be opening the fridge because the butter was already on the table, and your toast would be perfectly golden both before and after you put it in the toaster. You wouldn’t just be making breakfast – your breakfast would also be making you.

Playing fast and loose with causality does more than make for confusing mornings. It could shake physics to its very foundations. No longer having a definite order of events goes against the picture of the universe painted by general relativity, and even hints at a reality beyond quantum mechanics, the best model we have of the subatomic world. Allowing causality to operate in both directions could allow us to combine these two theories into a single framework of quantum gravity, a goal that has eluded us for over a century. The end of causality as we know it …

In everyday life, causes always precede effects.  But new experiments suggests that things might be different when things get very, very tiny: “In the quantum realm, cause doesn’t necessarily come before effect.”

* Shakespeare, Comedy of Errors

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As we get small, we might recall that it was on this date in 1564 that results of the Council of Trent (Concilium Tridentinum) were published, condemning what the Catholic Church deemed to be the heresies of Protestants.  The embodiment of the Counter-Reformation, it established a firm and permanent distinction between the two practices of faith.

Council of Trent (painting in the Museo del Palazzo del Buonconsiglio, Trento)

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