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.

Episode 050 - Craig Lent: decoherence, entropy, and faith

Episode 050 - Craig Lent: decoherence, entropy, and faith

FromThat's So Second Millennium


Episode 050 - Craig Lent: decoherence, entropy, and faith

FromThat's So Second Millennium

ratings:
Length:
34 minutes
Released:
Mar 11, 2019
Format:
Podcast episode

Description

0:00 - Three issues: entropy, decoherence, Schrodinger vs. Dirac equations
2:30 - Schrodinger uses a non-relativistic Hamiltonian, with a p^2/2m kinetic energy
3:00 - Dirac equation absorbs special relativity by shifting from scalar to spinor field
4:00 - Quantum field theory as a further extension, accommodating fields that include many particles
5:00 - Field Lagrangian and all the particles and interactions in the Standard Model
6:00 - Even "everyday" gravity is in some sense accommodatable in the theory, just not extreme gravity capable of "separating out the vacuum"
8:00 - Decoherence, not to be confused with the measurement problem
9:00 - Decoherence arising from the interaction of a simple system with other systems
10:00 - Reduced density matrix begins to look classical
11:00 - Zurek and the work on decoherence: states that are "chosen" to survive interaction with the environment
11:30 - Measurement problem not solved by this work
12:30 - Entropy: the proposal that entropy is most fundamentally lack of information
progress from the special case of thermodynamic entropy, to statistical mechanics,
to von Neumann's quantum definition, to Shannon's information theory
21:00 - Craig's career: why is an engineer so interested in the fundamentals of physics?
24:00 - Journey of faith
30:30 - People of Praise in Indianapolis
31:20 - Final thoughts
Released:
Mar 11, 2019
Format:
Podcast episode

Titles in the series (100)

Taking science AND faith seriously.