"Time is nature's way of keeping everything from
happening at once."
- The Observer's Handbook
"Time is
that which is manufactured by clocks."
- Hermann Bondi
.
INFORMATION
This is a second semester honors
seminar.
Required
Texts: A Brief History of Time,
by Hawking (available in bookstore)
About Time, by Davies (provided by
instructor)
selected readings (provided by
instructor)
See the syllabus
for more detailed information.
The Harkness
system
Hyperphysics - A Brief
Outline of Time
HANDOUTS
- SCHEDULE of READING
- part 2 (updated
3/11) - part 3
(updated 4/9)
1. Hood - How Time is Measured
2. Lamont - Roman calendar reform
3. Evans - Ancient astronomy
4. Dutka - Gregorian revision
Pickett - Continued fractions
5. Audoin - Time Measurement
Sajina - Equation Of Time
Sutton - Time and Sun
6. Hawking Foreword, Ch 1
7. Hawking Ch 2
8. Hawking Ch 3
9. Hawking Ch 4
10. Hawking Ch 5
Reynolds - Physics of Particles
11. Wilczek - Cosmic Asymmetry
between Matter and Antimatter
Reynolds - Cosmic Rays
12. Hawking Ch 6
Optional: Recent
obervations of the Hulse-Taylor binary pulsar
13. Hawking Ch 7
Optional:
Andrew Hamilton on Hawking
radiation (calculations here)
14. Shipman Ch 5 "The search for black holes"
(Black
Holes, Quasars, and the Universe
- QB 843 .B55 S54)
Burnham's Celestial Handbook - epsilon Aurigae (ERAU: QB 64 .B85 1978)
Optional: The current epsilon Aurigae
light curve
15. Shipman Ch 4 "Journey into a black hole"
Optional: UCLA's Galactic
Center Group
16. Shipman Ch 6 "Frontiers and
Fringes"
Shipman - summaries
17. Thorne Ch 1 "The Relativity of Space and
Time" (Black Holes and
Time Warps - QC 6 .T526 1994)
18. Hawking Ch 8 - first half
Milgrom, Does Dark Matter Really
Exist?
Reynolds Chapter 3, pp 45-49,
60-68 Twentieth Century Physics
19. Hawking Ch 8 - second half
20. Hawking Ch 9
Discussion of reports
21. Hawking Ch 10
Optional: On
the dimensionality of spacetime (read the first paragraph and
Fig 1. Anthropic principle?)
22. Hawking Ch 11, Ch 12
Spring Break!!!
23. Davies Prologue, Ch 1 - "A Very Brief History of Time"
Optional: Cosmic Evolution in a Cyclic
Universe, Steinhardt and Turok
24. Davies Ch 2 - "Time for a Change"
25. Davies Ch 3 - "Timewarps"
Optional: On
the
Influence of Gravitation on the Propagation of Light
by Einstein
Tachyons, Physics Today,
may 1969
Answers to the Extra Credit
in 24 and 25
26. Davies Ch 4 - "Black Holes: Gateways to the End of Time"
Optional: Maximal extension of the
Schwarzschild metric
by Kruskal
27. Davies Ch 5 - "The Beginning of Time: When was it"
28. Davies Ch 6 - "Einstein's Greatest Triumph?"
Optional: Recent
values of the Hubble constant
by John Huchra
(also see here)
COBE
results for CMB are here
and here
Geometry of a sphere
WMAP
experimental
"proof" that the universe is flat
29. Davies Ch 7 - "Quantum Time"
Optional: Faster than
Light, by Chiao, Kwiat, and Steinberg
Optional: Quantum
Teleportation, by Zeilinger
30. Barbour - The
Emergence of
Time and Its Arrow from Timelessness (Barbour's web site)
Optional: Quantum Theory of
Gravity, by Bryce DeWitt, 1967 (3.3 Mb)
31. Layzer - The Arrow of Time
Collateral: David
Layzer
Movie: plasma
two-stream instability - phase space
32. Price - Cosmology, Time's
Arrow, and That Old Double Standard
33. Carroll - The Cosmic
Origins of Time's Arrow (Talk at Q2C
at PI)
Feynman: The Distinction of Past and
Future (pdf - online)
MORE READING
Twentieth Century Physics,
by Reynolds - draft Jan 2010 (3 Mb)
Weinberg - What is an elementary particle?
Leap Seconds - what are they and how do they
work?
Radiolab from WNYC
- look for the show on "Numbers"
Information Loss
in Black Holes - Stephen Hawking
COLLATERAL
READING
Calendars and Clocks - Reading
Chronology of the Ancient World, E J Bickerman, VCPL 529.31 Bic
Calendar: Humanity's Epic Struggle to Determine a True and Accurate
Year, David Ewing Duncan, VCPL 529.309 Dun
Marking Time: The quest to invent the perfect calendar, Duncan Steel, CE 6 .S74 2000
Mapping Time: The Calendar and its History, E G Richards, VCPL 529.3 Ric
Philosophy
The Philosophy of Space and Time, Hans Reichenbach, BD 632 .R413 1958
Relativity - Reading
Einstein's Clocks, Poincare's Maps: Empires of Time, Peter Galison, VCPL 529 Gal
Miscellaneous
Faster, James Gleick, VCPL 529.7 Gle
Black Holes and Time Warps, Kip S. Thorne, QC 6 .T526 1994
Timescale: An Atlas of the Fourth Dimension, Nigel Calder, VCPL 529 Cal
The Arrow of Time
The arrow of time: A
voyage through
science to solve time's greatest mystery, by Peter Coveney and
Roger Highfield, 1990, QB
209 .C64 1991
The measurement of
time: Time, frequency and the atomic clock, by Claude Audoin
& Bernard Guinot, 2001, QB
213 .A8313 2001
A world without
time: The forgotten legacy of Godel and Einstein, by
Yourgrau, BD
638 .Y73 2006
Time's arrow &
Archimedes' point: New directions for the physics of time, by
Huw Price, 1996, BD
638 .P73 1996
Time's arrows today:
Recent physical and philosophical work on the direction of time,
by Steven Savitt, ed., 1995
Review, Am J Phys, 66 741 (1998)
Miscellaneous
web sites
Newton's
Scholium
Philosophy
of Relativity - Brown University
Philosophy
of Time - Brown Univ
Time
travel and modern physics - SEP
The
Hole argument - SEP
Take
a ride on a time machine
Kutach's
research
Books
on time
Feynman's "Ratchet and Pawl"
argument
E. Coli turning
cog wheels
Gödel, K. 1949. “A remark about
the relationship between
relativity theory and idealistic philosophy,” in Albert
Einstein: Philosopher-Scientist,
edited by P. Schilpp, pp 557-562.
Open Court, La Salle.
QC
16.E5 A43 2000
Space-time, Chapter 10 in
"Space from Zeno to Einstein," Ed. Nick Hugget
QC 6 .S6625 1997
The Direction of Time, Chapter 8 in "Space, Time, and Quanta," by
Robert Mills.
"Space, Time, and Spacetime," by Lawrence Sklar.
"The physical basis of the direction of time," by Heinz Dieter Zeh.
Equation of Time Physics
Today "Quick Study"
G. B. Matthews, The Arrow of Time ~UMI Dissertation Services, Ann
Arbor, MI, 1978.
Geoffrey Matthews, Time's
arrow and the structure of spacetime, Philosophy of Science, 46 p82
(March 1979)
The global arrow of time as a geometrical property of the universe,
Foundations of Phyiscs, 33(6) 877-912 (2003)
Continued Fractions, by CD Olds, QA 295 .O55
David
Layzer, Astrophysicist - author of:
Cosmogenesis: The Growth of Order in the Universe, QB 981 .L333 1990
Constructing the Universe, QB 981 .L33 1984
The history and practice of ancient astronomy, James Evans,
Oxford Univ Press, 1998 (Aufdenberg's office)
The quantum arrow of
time
The Direction of Time, Hans Reichenbach, Dover 1999
The Arrow
of Time by Andrew Thomas
The home page of Ilya Prigonine
