TEDxCaltech - Sean Carroll - Cosmology and the Arrow of Time

Sean Carroll is a theoretical physicist at Caltech.  He received his Ph.D. in 1993 from Harvard University, and has previously worked at MIT, the Institute for Theoretical Physics at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and the University of Chicago.  His research ranges over a number of topics in theoretical physics, focusing on cosmology, particle physics, and general relativity, with special emphasis on dark matter, dark energy, and the origin of the universe. He is the author of "From Eternity to Here," a popular book on cosmology and the arrow of time, and of "Spacetime and Geometry," a textbook on general relativity; has produced a set of introductory lectures for The Teaching Company entitled "Dark Matter and Dark Energy: The Dark Side of the Universe;" and is a co-founder of the popular science blog Cosmic Variance, http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cos....

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On January 14, 2011, Caltech hosted TEDxCaltech, an exciting one-day event to honor Richard Feynman, Nobel Laureate, Caltech physics professor, iconoclast, visionary, and all-around "curious character." Visit TEDxCaltech.com for more details.

• Category

  Science & Technology

[Jonathan White]

None of you is using the correct definition of entropy. It isn't a measure of non-homogeneity, it's the logarithm of the number of possible microstates associated with a certain macrostate, ie the number of ways to make a certain arrangement of matter. The early universe was smooth, but it was composed of relatively few, very high-energy particles. Now it's composed of mostly low-energy particles, but a lot more of them, so there are many more ways to arrange it, and entropy is much higher.

[Sam Wise]

This is still what I consider to be the best Ted talk ever released. It's grounded in science (not this soft-science shit they've been spamming my feed with lately :[ ), it addresses the current problems within it's field, it's highly factual, and it's content at large is very thought provoking. Cheers, Misour Carroll.

[breunlimited]

Actually, you're making the common mistake of just how long eternity is. Sure, it's going to take a long, long time for that apple pie to just spontaneously appear, but who cares when we can wait around forever.

[dopplerduck]

There was no space for fields to be in. In fact, the type of "empty" space we see around us today showed up only 370,000 years after the Big Bang.

[PZMyersIsBowman]

please make a video calling pz myers bowman

[Ametkhoshascake]

Stop talking shit, you don't make sense, what you said applies nowhere in this lecture, you're just mind fucking.

[635574]

a stupid mistake claiming that things could oppose the laws they are set up with only based on supposition that the whole range of probabilities detached from its context could come to be.

[tubedude709]

Was there fields in "space" before the big bang?

[auchucknorris]

knowing that were much nearer to the start of the universe to the end makes me wanna get every one together and win the fucking universe, like we probs got a sick advantage, how many times has life had to reset on earth after a wipe out? maybe like 3? thats super fucking near the start of life, some inhabitable planets could maybe reset 100 times before a life form gets to the point of being evolved enough to defend its self from meteorites and shit, lets go, team human WO