7 основних уроків з фізики

In this same sense, the probability that when molecules collide heat passes from the hotter bodies to those which are colder can be calculated, and turns out to be much greater than the probability of heat moving toward the hotter body.

The cold teaspoon heats up in hot tea because tea and spoon interact with us through a limited number of variables amongst the innumerable variables which characterize their microstate.

It’s a moment of enlightenment. A momentous simplification of the world: space is no longer something distinct from matter, it is one of the ‘material’ components of the world. An entity that undulates, flexes, curves, twists. We are not contained within an invisible rigid infrastructure: we are immersed in a gigantic flexible snail-shell.

The heat of black holes is like the Rosetta Stone of physics, written in a combination of three languages – Quantum, Gravitational and Thermodynamic – still awaiting decipherment in order to reveal the true nature of time.

Einstein showed that light is made of packets: particles of light. Today we call these ‘photons’.

The passage of time is internal to the world, is born in the world itself in the relationship between quantum events that comprise the world and are themselves the source of time.

The growth of our knowledge continued, and with improved instruments it was soon learnt that the solar system itself is only one amongst a vast number of others, and that the sun is no more than a star like others. An infinitesimal speck in a vast cloud of one hundred billion stars – the Galaxy.

But time does not pass at the same speed for her as for those outside the black hole, for the same reason that in the mountains time passes faster than at sea-level.

The question of probability goes to the heart of physics, where everything had seemed to be regulated by firm laws which were universal and irrevocable.