Conveners
Special Event: The Nature of Time
- Roberto Capuzzo Dolcetta (Dep. of Physics, Sapienza, Univ. of Roma)
- Ilia Musco (Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare, Rome)
Description
https://agenda.infn.it/event/38451/
The gravitational mass is a local property of particles like the electric charge, while the inertial mass is the resistance to acceleration, quite a different property. Mach’s principle states that inertial forces should be due to the interaction of a body with all the other masses in the universe. In General Relativity this principle is not fully present and is replaced by the equivalence...
I will show that if the philosophically dubious absolute elements which Newton introduced when he created dynamics are eliminated, his theory of gravity applied to a model universe leads to a theory of time and its arrow that is a direct consequence of Newton's laws. The arrow, which does not arise from a special condition of low entropy in the early universe that must be imposed in addition...
In this contribution I describe the fundamental tension that characterized Western culture in representing time as being fundamental and emergent, especially in fundamental physics and cosmology. I shall discuss the reasons of the persistence of this tension in current physics and then show why in what appears to be a conflict without resolution there is also a stimulating tool for research.
