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Entropy: Gaining Knowledge by Admitting Ignorance
Entropy: Gaining Knowledge by Admitting Ignorance
ratings:
Length:
53 minutes
Released:
Dec 3, 2018
Format:
Podcast episode
Description
Alexander Schekochihin, Professor of Theoretical Physics, gives a talk on entropy. When dealing with physical systems that contain many degrees of freedom, a researcher's most consequential realisation is of the enormous amount of detailed information about them that she does not have, and has no hope of obtaining. It turns out that this vast ignorance is not a curse but a blessing: by admitting ignorance and constructing a systematic way of making fair predictions about the system that rely only on the information that one has and on nothing else, one can get surprisingly far in describing the natural world. In an approach anticipated by Boltzmann and Gibbs and given mathematical foundation by Shannon, entropy emerges as a mathematical measure of our uncertainty about large systems and, paradoxically, a way to describe their likely behaviour—and even, some argue, the ultimate fate of the Universe. Alex Schekochihin will admit ignorance and attempt to impart some knowledge.
Released:
Dec 3, 2018
Format:
Podcast episode
Titles in the series (86)
Black holes in the nearby Universe: Members of the Rudolf Peierls Centre for Theoretical Physics hosted the 5th morning of Theoretical Physics covering the subject of Black holes: where physics reaches its limit. by Theoretical Physics - From Outer Space to Plasma