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entropy

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hourglass with clock behind

What is time?

Everyone knows what time is. We can practically feel it ticking away, marching on in the same direction with horrifying regularity. Time has enslaved the Western world and become our most precious commodity. Turn it over to the physicists however, and it begins to morph, twist and even crumble away. So what is time exactly?
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String theory: Convincing mathematics

Find out how a theory from physics has provided tools for solving long-standing problems in number theory. And in turn how number theory helps solve the mystery of black holes.

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Time in a block universe

Fundamental physics says time is symmetric - so why does time move forwards for us in a block universe?
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Why not block time?

Is time real? Are we just puppets living out a future already written? Marina Cortês explains why she thinks time is fundamental and that we don't live in a block universe.
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The future is time

Marina Cortês is one of a growing number of physicists who believe time is fundamental. We ask her about the alternatives theories to the block universe, where time comes first.
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Information is surprise

If I tell you something you already know, then that's not very informative. So perhaps information should be measured in terms of unexpectedness, or surprise?

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Information is bits

Computers represent information using bits — that's 0s and 1s. It turns out that Claude Shannon's entropy, a measure of information invented long before computers became mainstream, measures the minimal number of bits you need to encode a piece of information.