Jonathan J. Halliwell, Juan Pérez-Mercader, Wojciech H. Zurek.
Physical Origins of Time Asymmetry.
CUP. 1994
In the world about us, the past is distinctly different from
the future. More precisely, we say that the processes going
on in the world about us are asymmetric in time, or display
an arrow of time. Yet this manifest fact of our experience
is particularly difficult to explain in terms of the fundamental
laws of physics. Newton’s laws, quantum mechanics, electromagnetism,
Einstein’s theory of gravity, etc., make no distinction
between past and future – they are time-symmetric.
Reconciliation of these profoundly conflicting facts is the topic of this volume. It is an interdisciplinary survey of the variety of interconnected phenomena defining arrows of time, and their possible explanations in terms of underlying time-symmetric laws of physics.