Related papers: Does a Computer have an Arrow of Time?
In this paper we lay out an argument that generically the psychological arrow of time should align with the thermodynamic arrow of time where that arrow is well-defined. This argument applies to any physical system that can act as a memory,…
Uncovering the origin of the arrow of time remains a fundamental scientific challenge. Within the framework of statistical physics, this problem was inextricably associated with the second law of thermodynamics, which declares that entropy…
The second law of thermodynamics - the usual statement of the arrow of time - has been called the most fundamental law of physics. It is thus difficult to conceive that a single dynamical system could contain subsystems, in significant…
What is the physical origin of the arrow of time? It is a commonly held belief in the physics community that it relates to the increase of entropy as it appears in the statistical interpretation of the second law of thermodynamics. At the…
The thermodynamic arrow-of-time problem is thought to be resolved by the observation that our universe initially was---and still is---far from equilibrium. The psychological arrow-of-time problem is often attributed the same resolution, but…
The mechanism by which thermodynamics sets the direction of time's arrow has long fascinated scientists. Here, we show that a machine learning algorithm can learn to discern the direction of time's arrow when provided with a system's…
The familiar textbook quantum mechanics of laboratory measurements incorporates a quantum mechanical arrow of time --- the direction in time in which state vector reduction operates. This arrow is usually assumed to coincide with the…
A clear explanation is given on how the causal, psychological, and electrodynamic time arrows emerge from the thermodynamic time arrow.
Most attempts to argue for the second law of thermodynamics fail because (1) they use the unviable frequency theory of probability and (2) they do not explain why the arrow of time seen in experiments is aligned with the thermodynamic arrow…
This is the first of five papers comprising The Semantic Arrow of Time. The argument begins with a claim: computing's arrow of time is semantic, not thermodynamic. The direction in which meaning is preserved or destroyed across transactions…
The epistemic arrow of time is the fact that our knowledge of the past seems to be both of a different kind and more detailed than our knowledge of the future. Just like with the other arrows of time, it has often been speculated that the…
Deriving an arrow of time from time-reversal symmetric microscopic dynamics is a fundamental open problem in many areas of physics, ranging from cosmology, to particle physics, to thermodynamics and statistical mechanics. Here we focus on…
It is generally believed that a cosmological arrow of time must be associated with entropy production. Indeed, in his seminal work on cyclic cosmology, Tolman introduced a viscous fluid in order to make successive expansion/contraction…
Arrows of time - thermodynamical, cosmological, electromagnetic, quantum mechanical, psychological - are basic properties of Nature. For a quantum system-bath closed system the de-correlated initial conditions and no-memory (Markovian)…
Statistical physics cannot explain why a thermodynamic arrow of time exists, unless one postulates very special and unnatural initial conditions. Yet, we argue that statistical physics can explain why the thermodynamic arrow of time is…
The puzzle of the thermodynamic arrow of time reduces to the question of how the universe could have had lower entropy in the past. I show that no special entropy lowering mechanism (or fluctuation) is necessary. As a consequence of…
Recently, a substantial amount of debate has grown up around a proposed quantum resolution to the `arrow of time dilemma' that is based on the role of classical memory records of entropy-decreasing events. In this note we show that the…
While the microscopic laws of physics are often symmetric under time reversal, most natural processes that we observe are not. The emergent asymmetry between typical and time-reversed processes is referred to as the arrow of time. In…
The recent surge of interest in the origin of the temporal asymmetry of thermodynamical systems (including the accessible part of the universe itself) put forward two possible explanatory approaches to this age-old problem. Hereby we show…
This paper is a natural continuation of our previous paper arXiv:1011.4173 . We illustrated earlier that in classical Hamilton mechanics, for overwhelming majority of real chaotic macroscopic systems, alignment of their thermodynamic time…