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Old 10-11-2013, 12:50 PM   #349
kennyc
The Dank Side of the Moon
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I just breezed through Lee Smolin's Time Reborn: From the Crisis in Physics to the Future of the Universe and found it very interesting. I must note that I did not read this word for work and did a lot of skipping over his explanations of things I knew -- the history of physics/cosmology etc. but tried to focus on his new information.

This book in many ways rehashes some of his 'beefs' against leading edge physics - string theory, quantum mechanics, etc. but takes a bit of a new approach by making the bold claim that Time is itself the fundamental component of the structure of reality. As a result of this his claim is that the laws of physics must evolve and change over time. He also makes the claim that this 'setting of time as invariant' is another way of looking at Einstein's relativity (which set the speed of light as invariant - resulting in different experiences of time, time dilation, etc).

I personally have always wondered if what Einstein did was somewhat arbitrary (fixing the speed of light and that it was invariant) and have always wondered if other elements might not be set as invariant with the same results of giving us a completely new view of reality.

I found the book quite interesting. Lee Smolin is a bit of the 'bad boy' of physics but if you are interested in that perspective this is worth the read.
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