Interesting books on the nature of Time, the physics of time, the arrows of time

What is more fascinating than the flow of time? Have you ever thought about why it never flows backwards (or maybe it does, and we just cannot perceive that flow)? Or about whether time flows at all (maybe it is just like a stationary surface of a lake)?

These fascinating questions, including some around the psychology of time perception (why does time seem to pass faster as you grow older)?  are part of the content of these books. Happy Reading – have a great time!

The Physical Basis for the direction of time – H.D. Zeh

The six arrows of time – very clear discussion.  Works of famous physicists on the nature of time, including Stephen Hawking, are all covered.

How the Universal big bank expansion might also provide a (super) arrow of time.

Time travel in Einstein’s universe

From an amazon review –  by user T.R.

I searched extensively for a book that would explain current theories of time and the implications thereof that could be understood by a non-mathematical mind and one not trained in physics, and it was extraordinarily difficult. I ended up choosing this book, which is probably as close as one will get to what I was hoping for. 

Asymmetries in time  Problems in the Philosophy of Science (MIT Press )

From the editorial review

 Horwich notes that there are glaring differences in how we regard the past and future directions of time. For example, we can influence the future but not the past, and can easily gain knowledge of the past but not of the future. Moreover we see a profusion of decay processes but little spontaneous generation of order; time appears to “flow” in one privileged direction, not the other; and we tend to explain phenomena in terms of antecedent circumstances, rather than subsequent ones. Horwich explains such time asymmetries and examines their bearing on the nature of time itself. Asymmetries in Time covers many notoriously difficult problems in the philosophy of science: causation, knowledge, entropy, explanation, time travel, rational choice (including Newcomb’s problem), laws of nature, and counterfactual implication—and gives a unified treatment of these matters. 

In search of time – Dan falk

Falk looks at the quest to comprehend the beginning of time and how time―and the universe―may end. Finally, he examines the puzzle of time’s “flow,” and the remarkable possibility that the passage of time may be an illusion.

The arrow of time

The authors explain Boltzmann’s concept of entropy (the degree of disorder in a system) and show how this determines our vision of time’s arrow. They discuss how some equations in physics are time-independent whereas others involve a timescale. They explore the significance of time in relativity, quantum physics, cosmology and, inevitably, in thermodynamics and chaos theory.

Time warped– Hammond

Why does life seem to speed up as we get older? Why does the clock in your head move at a different speed from the one on the wall? Why is it almost impossible to go a whole day without checking your watch? Is it possible to retrain our brains and improve our relationship with it?

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