Related papers: The Nature of Time
This paper investigates the mathematical representation of time in physics. In existing theories time is represented by the real numbers, hence their formal properties represent properties of time: these are surveyed. The central question…
A tradition handed down among physicists maintains that classical physics is a perfectly deterministic theory capable of predicting the future with absolute certainty, independently of any interpretations. It also tells that it was quantum…
What happens to the causal structure of a world when time is reversed? At first glance it seems there are two possible answers: the causal relations are reversed, or they are not. I argue that neither of these answers is correct: we should…
We propose that moments of time arise through the failed emergence of the temporal diffeomorphism as gauge symmetry, and that the passage of time is a continual process of an instantaneous state collapsing toward a gauge-invariant state.…
We introduce the notion of an extended moment in time, the duron. This is a region of temporal ambiguity which arises naturally in the nature of process which we take to be basic. We introduce an algebra of process and show how it is…
In this paper we introduce the concept of random time changes in dynamical systems. The subordination principle may be applied to study the long time behavior of the random time systems. We show, under certain assumptions on the class of…
Life is a discrete, stochastic phenomena : for a biological organism, the time of the two most important events of its life (reproduction and death) is random and these events change the number of individuals of the species by single units.…
A mathematical definition of classical causality over discrete spacetime dynamics is formulated. The approach is background free and permits a definition of causality in a precise way whenever the spacetime dynamics permits. It gives a…
The notion of microscopic state of the system at a given moment of time as a point in the phase space as well as a notion of trajectory is widely used in classical mechanics. However, it does not have an immediate physical meaning, since…
We consider emergence from the perspective of dynamics: states of a system evolving with time. We focus on the role of a decomposition of wholes into parts, and attempt to characterize relationships between levels without reference to…
Mechanics is developed over a differentiable manifold as space of possible positions. Time is considered to fill a one--dimensional Riemannian manifold, so having the metric as lapse. Then the system is quantized with covariant instead of…
Microphysical laws are time reversible, but macrophysics, chemistry and biology are not. This chapter explores how this asymmetry (a classic example of a broken symmetry) arises due to the cosmological context, where a non-local Direction…
Quantum timeless approaches solve the problem of time by recovering the usual unitary evolution of quantum theory relative to a clock in a stationary quantum Universe. For some Hamiltonians of the Universe, such as those including an…
Quantum and classical mechanics are derived using four natural physical principles: (1) the laws of nature are invariant under time evolution, (2) the laws of nature are invariant under tensor composition, (3) the laws of nature are…
I dissent from the standard assertion of a "Two Times Problem," in which physical time is taken as being at odds with the human sense of a "flow of time." I provide a brief overview of the case to be made for the contrary view: namely, that…
Spontaneous symmetry breaking is one of the central organizing principles in physics. Time crystals have emerged as an exotic phase of matter, spontaneously breaking the time translational symmetry, and are mainly categorized as discrete or…
Quantum gravity--the marriage of quantum physics with general relativity--is bound to contain deep and important lessons for the nature of physical time. Some of these lessons shall be canvassed here, particularly as they arise from quantum…
We propose a new point of view regarding the problem of time in quantum mechanics, based on the idea of replacing the usual time operator $\mathbf{T}$ with a suitable real-valued function $T$ on the space of physical states. The proper…
The concept of time is discussed in the context of the canonical formulation of the gravitational field. Using a hypersurface orthogonal foliation, the arbitrariness of the lapse function is eliminated and the shift vector vanishes,…
Certain intriguing consequences of the discreteness of time on the time evolution of dynamical systems are discussed. In the discrete-time classical mechanics proposed here, there is an {\it arrow of time} that follows from the fact that…