Discover this podcast and so much more

Podcasts are free to enjoy without a subscription. We also offer ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more for just $11.99/month.

Entropy: Gaining Knowledge by Admitting Ignorance

Entropy: Gaining Knowledge by Admitting Ignorance

FromTheoretical Physics - From Outer Space to Plasma


Entropy: Gaining Knowledge by Admitting Ignorance

FromTheoretical Physics - From Outer Space to Plasma

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)

Members of the Rudolf Peierls Centre for Theoretical Physics host a morning of Theoretical Physics roughly three times a year on a Saturday morning. The mornings consist of three talks pitched to explain an area of our research to an audience familiar with physics at about the second-year undergraduate level and are open to all Oxford Alumni. Topics include Quantum Mechanics, Black Holes, Dark Matter, Plasma, Particle Accelerators and The Large Hadron Collider.