{"id":8869,"date":"2012-10-01T08:24:34","date_gmt":"2012-10-01T15:24:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/cosmicvariance\/?p=8869"},"modified":"2012-10-01T08:24:34","modified_gmt":"2012-10-01T15:24:34","slug":"mysteries-of-time-new-teaching-company-course","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/2012\/10\/01\/mysteries-of-time-new-teaching-company-course\/","title":{"rendered":"Mysteries of Time: New Teaching Company Course"},"content":{"rendered":"

Just in time for the holidays (Halloween totally counts as a holiday), the Teaching Company (a\/k\/a “The Great Courses) is releasing a new course I recorded — Mysteries of Modern Physics: Time<\/a>. For those of you who aren’t familiar with the format (and my previous course, Dark Matter and Dark Energy<\/a>), this is a set of 24 lectures, each half an hour each, modeled on an undergraduate college course for non-scientists. Note that both are hugely discounted at the moment, by 70% off the ordinary price, which isn’t always the case. Unlike the previous course, this new one is available in an audio-only format as well as on video. But in the last few years they have upgraded their graphics and animation considerably, so the video version might be worth a look. Here’s the teaser:<\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=szlAGHMVRRw<\/a><\/p>\n

Unsurprisingly, a lot of the course follows the outline in From Eternity to Here<\/a><\/em>. But it’s also pretty different; the organization has been switched around, and the course has a lot more emphasis on time in everyday life and the psychology of time, less on cosmology and the multiverse. Here are the lecture titles: <\/p>\n

\n1. Why Time Is a Mystery<\/strong>
\n2. What Is Time?<\/strong>
\n3. Keeping Time<\/strong>
\n4. Time\u2019s Arrow<\/strong>
\n5. The Second Law of Thermodynamics<\/strong>
\n6. Reversibility and the Laws of Physics<\/strong>
\n7. Time Reversal in Particle Physics<\/strong>
\n8. Time in Quantum Mechanics<\/strong>
\n9. Entropy and Counting<\/strong>
\n10. Playing with Entropy<\/strong>
\n11. The Past Hypothesis<\/strong>
\n12. Memory, Causality, and Action<\/strong>
\n13. Boltzmann Brains<\/strong>
\n14. Complexity and Life<\/strong>
\n15. The Perception of Time<\/strong>
\n16. Memory and Consciousness<\/strong>
\n17. Time and Relativity<\/strong>
\n18. Curved Spacetime and Black Holes<\/strong>
\n19. Time Travel<\/strong>
\n20. Black Hole Entropy<\/strong>
\n21. Evolution of the Universe<\/strong>
\n22. The Big Bang<\/strong>
\n23. The Multiverse<\/strong>
\n24. Approaches to the Arrow of Time<\/strong>\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

These courses are a lot of fun to do, and hopefully they’re as much fun for the listeners\/viewers. They reach a different audience than books do, and I’ve received fantastic feedback from people who went through the previous course. There are a lot of Great Courses available, so when you’ve had enough science take a look at the history and music offerings.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Just in time for the holidays (Halloween totally counts as a holiday), the Teaching Company (a\/k\/a “The Great Courses) is releasing a new course I recorded — Mysteries of Modern Physics: Time. For those of you who aren’t familiar with the format (and my previous course, Dark Matter and Dark Energy), this is a set […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8869","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-personal","category-time"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8869","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=8869"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8869\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8869"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8869"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8869"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}