TY - JOUR
T1 - Time in fundamental physics
AU - Ashtekar, Abhay
N1 - Funding Information:
This paper is an extended version of my contributions to the discussion sessions of the Penn State Workshop on Time and Cosmology and owes its existence to the persuasive skills of Emily Grosholz. I would like to thank Bryan Roberts and Tom Pashby for comments on the first draft. This work was supported in part by the NSF Grant PHY-1205388 and the Eberly research funds of Penn State (09-041-67 UP 19400). Parts of the historical discussion in Sections 2 and 3 overlap with another of my articles ( Ashtekar, 2011 ). 7 7 That article appeared in a collection which, unfortunately, is not easily accessible. Moreover, the primary focus of that article was on the issue of singularities, rather than time.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2014 Elsevier Ltd.
PY - 2015/11/1
Y1 - 2015/11/1
N2 - The first three sections of this paper contain a broad brush summary of the profound changes in the notion of time in fundamental physics that were brought about by three revolutions: the foundations of mechanics distilled by Newton in his Principia, the discovery of special relativity by Einstein and its reformulation by Minkowski, and, finally, the fusion of geometry and gravity in Einstein's general relativity. The fourth section discusses two aspects of yet another deep revision that waits in the wings as we attempt to unify general relativity with quantum physics.
AB - The first three sections of this paper contain a broad brush summary of the profound changes in the notion of time in fundamental physics that were brought about by three revolutions: the foundations of mechanics distilled by Newton in his Principia, the discovery of special relativity by Einstein and its reformulation by Minkowski, and, finally, the fusion of geometry and gravity in Einstein's general relativity. The fourth section discusses two aspects of yet another deep revision that waits in the wings as we attempt to unify general relativity with quantum physics.
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U2 - 10.1016/j.shpsb.2014.08.006
DO - 10.1016/j.shpsb.2014.08.006
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84949539725
SN - 1355-2198
VL - 52
SP - 69
EP - 74
JO - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B - Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics
JF - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B - Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics
ER -