Welcome to Julian Barbour’s web site
This site introduces my work on the foundations of physics and as a
popular-science writer. A non-technical
description of my ideas and in particular my current research into Shape Dynamics is available.
Since completion of my PhD in 1968, I have worked outside an academic
environment, though I
have collaborated with several researchers in academia. The picture
above shows me at my home in north Oxfordshire, England. Much of the
work with my collaborators has been done there.
Besides research papers, I have written three books: The Discovery of Dynamics, which investigates the background to Newton’s great discoveries. The End of Time, which is written for both the general reader and scientists. In it I argue that time is ultimately an illusion. In The Janus Point, I explore a gravitational arrow of time.
During the last few years, I have collaborated with Tim Koslowski and Flavio Mercati. Previous collaborators include Edward Anderson, Brendan Z. Foster, Henrique Gomes, Sean Gryb, Bryan Kelleher and the late Niall Ó Murchadha. I describe our current research programme here. We receive offers of collaboration with interest and can provide some support and supervision to young researchers.
Please note that I don't operate any social media accounts. In particular, the Twitter account using my name is not mine.
News
- World Science Festival discussion with Brian Greene, in which I emphasise that entropy can only be properly defined in a confined system. In the previous WSF podcast on time (starting from about 10 minutes), Roger Penrose imagines a galaxy in a box in order to argue that gravitational entropy behaves in the opposite way to ordinary entropy. But this purely imaginary box stops the true evolution of the galaxy which in reality exhibits the non-entropic dynamic arrow of time I discuss with Brian Greene.
- 'Salon' talk about the remarkable creativity of Newtonian universal gravitation.
- 2022 talk at Oxford Philosophers of Science with first suggestion there may be no quantum wave functions.
- In depth interview with Curt Jaimungal.
- Discussions one and two with Michele Reilly, Seth Lloyd and students at MIT.
- Podcast: Arjun Khemani interviews me with Samuel Kuypers.
- Discussion with Vasudev Shyam https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1mnQPdu44E.
- Discussion with Zaza Doborjginidze on his podcast
- Closer to truth interview.
- Discussion with Philip Davies (more technical than usual)
- The Janus Point is published
- A history of thermodynamics (pdf)
- Updated ideas
- New explainer videos
- Preprint on Entropy and the typicality of universes
- Talk at Zürich Workshop on time in physics:
"Time's arrow and the entropy of the universe" (video, slides) - Preprint of PRL paper "Identification of a gravitational arrow of time"
- Shape Dynamics tutorial by Flavio Mercati
Last
update: 7-February-2025