Abstract
After a stone has been dropped into a pond, one observes concentrically diverging (‘defocusing’) waves. Similarly, after an electric current has been switched on, one finds a retarded electromagnetic field that is coherently propagating away from its source. Since the fundamental laws of Nature, which describe these phenomena, are invariant under time reversal, they are equally compatible with the reverse phenomena, in which concentrically focusing waves (and whatever may be dynamically related to them — such as heat) would ‘conspire’ in order to eject a stone out of the water. Deviations of the deterministic laws from time reversal symmetry would modify this argument only in detail (see the Introduction). However, the reversed phenomena are never observed in Nature. In high-dimensional configuration space, the absence of dynamical correlations which would focus to create local effects characterizes the time arrow of thermodynamics (Chap. 3), or, when applied to wave functions, even that of quantum theory (see Sect. 4.3).
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(2007). The Time Arrow of Radiation. In: The Physical Basis of the Direction of Time. The Frontiers Collection. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-68001-7_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-68001-7_3
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