CitationsAdd new citationList by: CiterankMap Link[1] Time's Arrow and Archimedes' Point (book)
Author: Huw Price - Professor of Philosophy and Director, Center for Time, University of Sydney Cited by: Peter Baldwin 8:09 AM 29 April 2011 GMT Citerank: (3) 100641The Arrow of Time?A map exploring some issues concerning the nature of time that lie at the boundary of physics and philosophy. The map follows up a talk to the Blackheath Philosophy Forum on 2 April 2011 by Huw Price, Professor of Philosophy and director of the Center for Time at Sydney University.7F1CEB7, 105364Neutral Kaon exceptionThe behavior of a particle called the neutral Kaon provides an exception to the generalization that physical processes are time-symmetric AND this asymmetry may account for the time-asymmetry expressed by the Second Law of Thermodynamics.109FDEF6, 115263Ontological costHuw Price notes that anthropic reasoning that appeals to some form of multiverse cosmology requires us to posit that much more exists than we are ordinarily aware of - that it has a huge 'ontological cost' - and that we should therefore look for less costly explanations.13EF597B URL: | Excerpt / Summary "The mechanics underlying Boltzmann's H-theorem are time-symmetric in themselves, however. How then does he manage to derive a time-asymmetric conclusion, namely that H decreases over time? Not surprisingly, the answer is that he has actually imported a time-asymmetric assumption. It is the Stosszahlansatz, or "assumption of molecular chaos". In effect, this is Maxwell's assumption that the probabilities (or, more strictly, frequencies) of velocities of colliding particles are independent."
Why is this an asymmetric assumption? because we expect the velocities of particles to become correlated as a result of their collisions. We expect outgoing products of collisions to be correlated with one another in various ways, even if they never encounter one another in the future. We do not expect the incoming components of a collision to be correlated, if they have never encountered one another in the past." |
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