Related papers: Boltzmann Brains--I'd Rather See Than Be One
Unless our universe is decaying at an astronomical rate (i.e., on the present cosmological timescale of Gigayears, rather than on the quantum recurrence timescale of googolplexes), it would apparently produce an infinite number of observers…
The scientific method relies on facts, established through repeated measurements and agreed upon universally, independently of who observed them. In quantum mechanics, the objectivity of observations is not so clear, most dramatically…
The pure Brans-Dicke (BD) gravity with or without the cosmological constant $\Lambda $ has been taken as a model theory for the dark matter. Indeed, there has been a consensus that unless one modifies either the standard theory of gravity,…
One of the pronounced characteristics of gravity, distinct from other interactions, is that there are no local observables which are independent of the choice of the spacetime coordinates. This property acquires crucial importance in the…
Scientific theories need to be testable by observations, say using Bayes' theorem. A complete theory needs at least the three parts of dynamical laws for specified physical variables, the correct solution of the dynamical laws (boundary…
Are your perceptions, memories and observational data, a statistical fluctuation out of the thermal equilibrium of the universe, having no correlation with the actual past state of the universe? Arguments are given in the literature for and…
In analyzing the nature of thermal radiance experienced by an accelerated observer (Unruh effect), an eternal black hole (Hawking effect) and in certain types of cosmological expansion, one of us proposed a unifying viewpoint that these can…
According to our current conception of physics, any valid physical theory is supposed to describe the objective evolution of a unique external world. However, this condition is challenged by quantum theory, which suggests that physical…
By way of a complete integration of the Friedmann equations, in terms of observables, it is shown that for the cosmological constant $\Lambda > 0$ there exist non-flat FLRW models for which the total density parameter $\Omega$ remains $\sim…
The Bell experiment is discussed in the light of a new approach to the foundation of quantum mechanics. It is concluded from the basic model that the mind of any observer must be limited in some way: In certain contexts, he is simply not…
If our observable Universe is only a tiny region of a vastly larger and conformally older spacetime, then the usual formulations of the classical flatness and horizon problems of the Hot Big Bang can be reinterpreted as artifacts…
We study the perception of Hawking radiation by different observers outside a black hole. The analysis is done in terms of an effective-temperature function that varies along the trajectory of each observer. The vacuum state of the…
Quantum mechanics traditionally places the observer outside of the system being studied and employs the Born interpretation. In this and related papers the observer is placed inside the system. To accomplish this, special rules are required…
We reformulate the Hamilton-Jacobi tunneling method for calculating Hawking radiation in static, spherically-symmetric spacetimes by explicitly incorporating a preferred family of frames. These frames correspond to a family of observers…
Assuming that an accelerated observer with four-velocity ${\bf u}_{\rm R}$ in a curved spacetime attributes the standard Bekenstein-Hawking entropy and Unruh temperature to his "local Rindler horizon", we show that the $\rm \it change$ in…
An observer at rest with the expanding universe experiences some extra noise in the quantum vacuum, and so does an accelerated observer in a vacuum at rest (in Minkowski space). The literature mainly focuses on the ideal cases of…
A realist description of our universe requires a twofold concept of locality. On one hand, there are the strictly Einstein-local interactions which generate the time evolution. On the other hand, the quantum state space calls for a…
We analyze, in the paradigm of open quantum systems, the reduced dynamics of a freely-falling two-level detector in de Sitter space-time in weak interaction with a reservoir of fluctuating quantized conformal scalar fields in the de Sitter…
The horizon of a flat Friedmann--Robertson--Walker (FRW) universe is considered to be dynamic when the Hubble parameter $H$ and the Hubble radius $r_{H}$ vary with time, unlike for de Sitter universes. To clarify the thermodynamics on a…
The Unruh effect predicts that a uniformly accelerated observer perceives the vacuum seen by an inertial observer as a thermal bath at a temperature proportional to its proper acceleration. This phenomenon is often regarded as a flat…