This is a reminder for:
Title: Ken Wharton
Pre-talk at 2PM in the Philosophy Common Room. All honours and graduate
students are expected to attend the pre-talk; all others are welcome.
Towards a physical interpretation of action principles
Ken Wharton, San Jose State University
There are two different mathematical schemas used by physicists; Newtonian
and Lagrangian. The Newtonian Schema (NS) is built around dynamical
equations for which one inputs an initial state, while the Lagrangian
Schema (LS) is based upon the action (a global scalar) constrained by both
past and future boundary conditions. Despite the fact that fundamental
physics is more naturally expressed via LS, virtually all efforts to assign
a physical interpretation to these schemas have assumed the dynamical NS
framework. Our failure to interpret LS would not matter if the two schemas
were equivalent, but I argue that this commonly-assumed equivalence is not
justified -- even for purely classical physics -- and that a realistic,
physical interpretation of action principles is 250 years overdue.
The most straightforward physical interpretation of the LS mathematics
quickly leads to significant obstacles. I will demonstrate that in a block
universe, there is a natural path around these obstacles, although it
requires a departure from anything that can be mapped back to NS-style
dynamics. One intriguing consequence is an alteration of classical-LS in a
manner indicative of quantum theory (see, e.g., arXiv:0906.5409).
Ramifications for quantum field theory and quantum gravity will also be
discussed.
When: Wed Aug 11 3:30pm – 5:30pm Eastern Time - Melbourne, Sydney
Where: The Refectory
Calendar: Seminars
Who:
* [email protected] - creator
Event details:
https://www.google.com/calendar/event?action=VIEW&eid=cHZsdmw1bzI3dTdsbzloaWEwZ2tjZnY2Mm8gMm1lN2M3ZnIzb21wbDRyaHZrcG1sYTUzNjhAZw
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