Dear philosophers, and foundationalists, of physics,
We ALSO have a mini meeting in CMS on 2 May: exploiting the visits, and
good nature!, of Erik Curiel and Gordon Belot, who are visiting that day.
The topic, broadly, is: spacetime. Do join us; and for dinner from about
7.00 in some pub, probably the Punter, at back of St Johns.
We have MR4 at DAMTP (CMS) from 16.00 to 18.30 Monday 2 May.
SO: since they stop selling tea at 4.00 (nuts!): We start at 4, and Erik
and Gordon have up to 75 mins including discussion.
SO
3.30 plus, meet at cms café for tea;
4.00: Gordon Belot:
5.15: Break
5.20! Erik Curiel.
6.35 pub , dinner . . anyone welcome: I will book at eg Punter gastropub
1 km East ie at back of St Johns; or we could go further into town. please
say if you are coming to dinner
(NB: we ALSO HAVE MR11 on Tues 3 May from noon till 15.00 for follow on
discussion with blackboard).
Gordon will talk about Einsteins 1917 cosmology paper; Erik will talk
about black holes.
Erik also has a title and abstract: as follows.
"Black-Hole Entropy Really Is Entropy"
Serious questions have been raised about whether the area of a black
hole should be considered a truly thermodynamical form of entropy, and
surface gravity a truly thermodynamical temperature. Among the
problems those questions point to are: that there is no "common
mechanism" shared by ordinary thermodynamical systems and black holes
to underpin the idea that black holes really are "thermodynamical";
that the Zeroth Law for black holes, constancy of surface gravity, is
not equivalent to the deepest formulation of the Zeroth Law for
ordinary thermodynamics, transitivity of equilibrium; that black-hole
area is neither an extensive nor an additive quantity, as ordinary
thermodynamical entropy is; that a lack of a general, localized
expression for gravitational energy makes it difficult to construct a
thermodynamical internal energy for black holes that could serve as a
proper state-function; and several more along the same line. The
fundamental worry is that the mere fact that the relevant black-hole
quantities satisfy what seem to be the Laws of thermodynamics extended
into this new regime does not by itself guarantee that enough of the
structure of ordinary thermodynamics is thereby recovered. There is
much more to ordinary thermodynamics, after all, than just the four
Laws. Transitivity of equilibrium, for instance, normally grounds the
construction of the state space of an ordinary thermodynamical system
and the arguments that isolated systems spontaneously approach
equilibrium. I argue in this talk that all these problems can be
answered, and that black-hole area and surface gravity should be
considered truly thermodynamical quantities.
Best, Jeremy
------
Jeremy Butterfield:
Trinity College, Cambridge CB2 1TQ
Tel: 07557-668413 (mobile)
Visit the journal, Studies in the History and Philosophy of Modern Physics
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/13552198
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