Janus Point
by Julian Barbour · first published 2018
8mentions
1recommended by
5HN commenters
2021–2025first – last mentioned
20% recommend60% neutral20% critical
Affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
…that to the whole universe. I have been much more convinced that the universe, starting from a maximally structured configuration, tends to even greater structure, as Julian Barbour wrote about in the Janus Point. Structure emergence, as opposed to catastrophic mixing. My perspective used to be like yours but it has become: the game is only starting.
on “Dabrowski’s theory and existential depression (2020)” ↗…summarize it quite tersely) takes the idea of 3- or n-body simulations and goes very far indeed with it (i.e. why there is something rather than nothing), I highly recommend checking out Julian Barbour's The Janus Point.
on “A rudimentary simulation of the three-body problem” ↗…rotations, where you can sub `t -> it'`, and then Minkowskian spacetime becomes Euclidean but time becomes complex-valued. Groovy stuff. I'm not much of a physics buff but I loved reading Julian Barbour's The Janus Point for a great treatment of the possibility of negative time. The craziest thing I've seen though is the suggestion that an accelerating charge, emitting radiation that interacts with the charge itself…
on “Opposing arrows of time can theoretically emerge from certain quantum systems” ↗Barbour’s thesis is that the Big Bang, which he calls the Janus Point, seeded the flow of time in two directions. Time “no longer has one direction, from past to future, but instead has two: from a common past at the Janus point to two futures in the two directions away…
on “Julian Barbour’s ideas about time and the universe have roamed free of academia” ↗This idea has been explored by Julian Barbour in his book The Janus Point. http://www.platonia.com/books.html The related math and modelling goes under the name Shape Dynamics: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shape_dynamics Shape Dynamics - An Introduction https://arxiv.org/abs/1105.0183
on “The Gravo-Thermal Catastrophe” ↗I was literally thinking of the same similarities. Barbour's exposition of the principle of least action as being time is interesting. There's a section in The Janus Point where he goes into detail about the fact that there are parts of the cosmos that (due to cosmic inflation) are farther apart in terms of light-years than the universe is old, and growing in separation…
on “On the Nature of Time” ↗…http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2019/12/the-path-we-didnt-t... Back to Petit and plagiarism: compare: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10509-014-2106-5 https://januscosmologicalmodel.com/cptsymmetry with Julian Barbour's Janus Point book blurb: > In a universe filled by chaos and disorder, one physicist makes the radical argument that the growth of order drives the passage of time -- and shapes the destiny of the universe. Time…
on “Scientists find first observational evidence linking black holes to dark energy” ↗>> In December, 2020, he published The Janus Point, his first book since The End of Time. It’s named after the two-headed Roman god who simultaneously looks forward and backward. Dammit. I thought I was going to read an engaging discussion about the…
on “Julian Barbour’s ideas about time and the universe have roamed free of academia” ↗