Trandisciplinary explorations at the edge of knowledge…
Join Paul Davies, Regents’ Professor and Director of the Beyond Center at Arizona State University, at the first installment of the new monthly “Coffee @ Beyond” series! This month’s topic is “The Arrow of Time.”
Abstract
In daily life it is obvious that physical states of the universe evolve in time with a distinct directionality. The ultimate origin of this asymmetry in time, which is most famously captured by the second law of thermodynamics, has been a longstanding enigma, but seems to lie with cosmology and the state of the universe at its origin. I shall argue that gravitation holds the key to providing a comprehensive explanation. Still unresolved, however, is whether complexity in general, and biological evolution in particular, possess an intrinsic directionality.