{"id":2426,"date":"2009-06-26T10:41:45","date_gmt":"2009-06-26T17:41:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/cosmicvariance\/2009\/06\/26\/aaas-2010\/"},"modified":"2009-06-26T10:41:45","modified_gmt":"2009-06-26T17:41:45","slug":"aaas-2010","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/2009\/06\/26\/aaas-2010\/","title":{"rendered":"AAAS 2010"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The internets have spoken, and it&#8217;s a good thing I listened.  A few months ago I had the idea to organize a session at the upcoming <a href=\"http:\/\/www.aaas.org\/meetings\/\">meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science<\/a>, in San Diego next February.  It&#8217;s a giant cross-scientific-disciplinary meeting, offering a great chance for journalists and scientists in diverse fields to catch up on what&#8217;s happening in other areas.<\/p>\n<p>But I couldn&#8217;t decide between two possible topics, both of which are close to my heart:  &#8220;The Origin of the Universe&#8221; or &#8220;The Arrow of Time.&#8221;  (My original book subtitle was &#8220;The Origin of the Universe and the Arrow of Time,&#8221; before that was squelched by the marketing department and replaced with &#8220;The Quest for the Ultimate Theory of Time.&#8221;  Quests are big these days, apparently.)  So I did the natural thing:  I <a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/seanmcarroll\/status\/1366585999\">Tweeted<\/a> the question.  And the internet spoke with a fairly unambiguous voice:  &#8220;Arrow of Time&#8221; sounded more interesting.  So that&#8217;s what I proposed.<\/p>\n<p>And now we&#8217;ve just been accepted, so it&#8217;s on for San Diego 2010.  We have a fantastic line-up of speakers (and also me), spanning quite a range of topics:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Me, setting the stage about the arrow of time and the Second Law, and drawing some connections to cosmology.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.usyd.edu.au\/time\/price\/\">Huw Price<\/a>, director of the Centre for Time, Department of Philosophy, University of Sydney, and author of <em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Times-Arrow-Archimedes-Point-Directions\/dp\/0195117980\/\">Time&#8217;s Arrow and Archimedes&#8217; Point<\/a><\/em>.  Huw will be talking about the arrow of time in philosophy.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/physics.illinois.edu\/people\/profile.asp?aleggett\">Anthony Leggett<\/a>, winner of the Nobel Prize in 2003 for his work on superfluidity.  Tony will be talking about the arrow of time in quantum mechanics and condensed matter physics.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.thp.uni-koeln.de\/~lassig\/\">Michael L\u00e4ssig<\/a>, University of Cologne.  Michael specializes in statistical physics and quantitative biology, and will be speaking on the arrow of time in biology, in particular in evolution.  He recently gave a <a href=\"http:\/\/online.itp.ucsb.edu\/bblunch\/lassig\/\">talk on this topic at the KITP<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.wjh.harvard.edu\/~dsweb\/\">Daniel Schacter<\/a>, Harvard, author of <em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Seven-Sins-Memory-Forgets-Remembers\/dp\/0618219196\/\">The Seven Sins of Memory<\/a><\/em>.  Dan was the leader of the studies showing that the brain <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/cosmicvariance\/2009\/04\/14\/remembering-the-past-is-like-imagining-the-future\/\">predicts the future in the same way that it remembers the past<\/a>.  He&#8217;ll be talking about the arrow of time in psychology.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>That&#8217;s the fun part about this topic; it ranges naturally from the birth of the universe to the operation of your brain.  Should be a good symposium.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Update:<\/strong>  Unfortunately, Daniel Schacter won&#8217;t be able to make the symposium.  Instead, we are very fortunate to have <a href=\"http:\/\/memory.wustl.edu\/McDermott_Lab\/KBM.html\">Kathleen McDermott<\/a> of Washington University in St. Louis.  Her <a href=\"http:\/\/memory.wustl.edu\/McDermott_Lab\/MCL.html\">research<\/a> involves how we remember the past and forecast the future.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The internets have spoken, and it&#8217;s a good thing I listened. A few months ago I had the idea to organize a session at the upcoming meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, in San Diego next February. It&#8217;s a giant cross-scientific-disciplinary meeting, offering a great chance for journalists and scientists in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35,36],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2426","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-time","category-travel"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2426","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2426"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2426\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2426"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2426"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2426"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}