Professor Huw Price (Federation Fellow and Professor of Natural Metaphysics)

Why is the future so different from the past? Why does the past affect the future and not the other way around? What does quantum mechanics really tell us about the world? Professor Huw Price's work throws fascinating new light on these mysteries of modern physics, and connects them in a wholly original way.

In his best-selling book Time's Arrow and Archimedes' Point, Professor Price begins with the mystery of the arrow of time. Why does disorder always increase, as required by the second law of thermodynamics? He shows that in thinking about such problems, many physicists and philosophers have been misled by the human perspective of time, which distorts and exaggerates the differences between past and future. He argues that to avoid this mistake we need to imagine a point outside time – an Archimedean "view from nowhen" – from which to think about time in an unbiased way.

Professor Price applies this idea to the greatest mystery of modern physics, the meaning of quantum theory. He argues that in missing the Archimedean viewpoint, modern physics has missed a radical and attractive solution to many of the apparent puzzles of quantum physics, such as the famous puzzle of Schrodinger's Cat, and what Einstein called "spooky action at a distance".

Professor Price now works on these issues in conjunction with other researchers in the Centre for Time, established when he returned to Sydney University on a Fedaration Fellowship. The Centre's research focuses on the role of time and time-asymmetry in the foundations of modern physics, and related problems in philosophy.