Related papers: The Nature and Origin of Time-asymmetric Spacetime…
Although most fundamental laws are invariant under time reversal, experience exhibits the presence of irreversible phenomena -- the arrows of time. Their origin lies in cosmology, and I argue that only quantum cosmology can provide the…
We investigate the origin of the arrow of time in quantum mechanics in the context of quantum cosmology. The ``Copenhagen'' quantum mechanics of measured subsystems incorporates a fundamental arrow of time. Extending discussions of…
Scientists continue to wrestle with the enigma of time. Is time a dynamic or a fundamental property of spacetime? Why does it have an arrow pointing from past to future? Why are physical laws time-symmetric in a universe with broken…
While the basic laws of physics seem time-reversal invariant, our understanding of the apparent irreversibility of the macroscopic world is well grounded in the notion of entropy. Because astrophysics deals with the largest structures in…
Time's apparent passage has long been debated by philosophers, with no decisive argument for or against its objective existence. In this paper we show that introducing the issue of determinism gives the debate a new, empirical twist. We…
In this paper we address the problem of the arrow of time from a cosmological point of view, rejecting the traditional entropic approach that defines the future direction of time as the direction of the entropy increase: from our…
The connection between the micro and macro-arrow of time is discussed in the frame of the stochastic quantum hydrodynamic analogy (SQHA). The presence of fluctuations that in the case on non-linear interactions leads to the breaking of the…
This paper extends the work of a previous paper [arXiv:1208.2611] on the flow of time, to consider the origin of the arrow of time. It proposes that a `past condition' cascades down from cosmological to micro scales, being realized in many…
The spread of the time arrows from the environment to an observed subsystem is followed within a harmonic model. A similarity is pointed out between irreversibility and a phase with spontaneously broken symmetry. The causal structure of…
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)…
The relation between the thermodynamical and cosmological arrows of time is usually viewed in the context of the initial conditions of the Universe. It is a necessary but not sufficient condition for ensuring the thermodynamical arrow. We…
The only widely accepted explanation for the various arrows of time that everywhere and at all epochs point in the same direction is the `past hypothesis': the Universe had a very special low-entropy initial state. We present the first…
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…
In this paper I suggest a possible explanation for the asymmetry of time. In the case that I study, the dynamical laws and the boundary conditions are symmetric, but the behavior of time is not. The underlying mechanism is statistical and…
In several previous papers we have argued for a global and non-entropic approach to the problem of the arrow of time, according to which the ''arrow'' is only a metaphorical way of expressing the geometrical time-asymmetry of the universe.…
It is argued that Hawking's `greatest mistake' may not have been a mistake at all. According to the canonical quantum theory of gravity for Friedmann type universes, any time arrows of general nature can only be correlated with that of the…
The outcome of a single quantum experiment is unpredictable, except in a pure-state limit. The definite process that takes place in the apparatus may either be intrinsically random or be explainable from a deeper theory. While the first…
I explain in what sense the structure of space and time is probably vague or indefinite, a notion I define. This leads to the mathematical representation of location in space and time by a vague interval. From this, a principle of…
The nature of time in quantum mechanics is closely related to the use of a complex, rather than say real, Hilbert space. This becomes particularly clear when considering quantum field theory in time dependent backgrounds, such as in…
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…