Related papers: What is Special About the Planck Mass?
The Planck constant ($\hbar$) plays a pivotal role in quantum physics. Historically, it has been proposed as postulate, part of a genius empirical relationship $E=\hbar \omega$ in order to explain the intensity spectrum of the blackbody…
The continuum of real numbers has served well as a model for physical space in mechanics and field theories. However it is a well-motivated and popular idea that at the fundamental Planck scale the combination of gravitational and quantum…
The origin and nature of time in complex systems is explored using quantum (or 'Feynman') clocks and the signals produced by them. Networks of these clocks provide the basis for the evolution of complex systems. The general concept of…
We propose the use of a gravitational uncertainty principle for gravitation. We define the corresponding gravitational Planck's constant and the gravitational quantum of mass. We define entropy in terms of the quantum of gravity with the…
Physicists have speculated about the properties of the quantum vacuum for at least 85 years; however, only recently have they understood the quantum vacuum sufficiently well to begin making testable predictions. Specifically, using…
A brief but broad survey is presented of the flows, forms and large-scale transformations of mass-energy in the universe, spanning a range of about twenty orders of magnitude (m_{Planck}/m_{proton}) in space, time and mass. Forms of energy…
Some recent studies of the properties of D-particles suggest that in string theory a rather conventional description of spacetime might be available up to scales that are significantly smaller than the Planck length. We test this…
Statistical physics is important in understanding the physics of interacting many bodies. This has been historically developed by attempts to understand colliding gases and quantifying quantities like entropy, free energy, and other…
Over the past three years we have determined the basic features of the Universe -- spatially flat; accelerating; comprised of 1/3 a new form of matter, 2/3 a new form of energy, with some ordinary matter and a dash of massive neutrinos; and…
A calculus based on pointer-mark coincidences is proposed to define, in a mathematically rigorous way, measurements of space and time intervals. The connection between such measurements in different inertial frames according to the Galilean…
We discuss time measurement in quantum gravity. Using general relativity for large distances and the uncertainty principle we find a minimum time interval of the order of the Planck time, therefore the uncertainty in time measurment is…
A general definition of a clock is proposed, and the role of clocks in establishing temporal pre-conditions in quantum mechanical questions is critically discussed. The different status of clocks as used by theorists external to a system…
Relativity and quantum mechanics are generalized by considering a finite limit for the smallest measurable distance. The value a of this quantum of length is unknown, but it is a universal constant, like c and h. It depends on the total…
Within the framework of the previously proposed formulation of the quantum theory of gravity in terms of world histories, it was suggested that the universe has its own mass. This quantity is analogous to the mass of a particle in…
Planck's formula and General Relativity indicate that potential energy influences spacetime. Using Einstein's Equivalence Principle and an extension of his Chock Hypothesis, an explicit description of this influence is derived. We present a…
Clocks in different heights or with different velocities run with different speeds. For global positioning systems these effects are much too large to be ignored. Nevertheless, in classical and quantum mechanics we get high accuracy using a…
The discovery of the Planck's relation is generally regarded as the starting point of quantum physics. The Planck's constant h is now regarded as one of the most important universal constants. The physical nature of h, however, has not been…
The origin of dark energy remains to be one of the challenges of modern cosmology. We modify Jordan-Brans-Dicke theory using a vector field instead of a scalar field and theory becomes similar to a simple Einstein-aether theory. The time…
I suggest that stars introduce mass and density scales that lead to `naturalness' in the Universe. Namely, two ratios of order unity. (1) The combination of the stellar mass scale, M*, with the Planck mass, MPl, and the Chandrasekhar mass…
We start from the well-known form of the interval of the special relativity, stare it, and build up an attempt to implement the causality from it. Some features appear to be new, they involve the mass of the particle and the structure of…