Related papers: Lee Smolin Five Great Problems and Their Solution …
Lee Smolin's casual accounting of special and general relativity in The Trouble with Physics raises an interesting question: is it possible to develop a legitimate argument concerning string theories starting from a shaky basis? This is…
The parts contributed by the author in recent discussions with several physicists and mathematicians are reviewed, as they have been occasioned by the 2006 book "The Trouble with Physics", of Lee Smolin. Some of the issues addressed are the…
For Lee Smolin, our universe is only one in a much larger cosmos (the Multiverse) - a member of a growing community of universes, each one being born in a bounce following the formation of a black hole. In the course of this, the values of…
If the results of the first LHC run are not betraying us, many decades of particle physics are culminating in a complete and consistent theory for all non-gravitational physics: the Standard Model. But despite this monumental achievement…
We review a few off-the-beaten-track ideas in cosmology. They solve a variety of fundamental problems; also they are fun. We start with a description of non-singular dilaton cosmology. In these scenarios gravity is modified so that the…
What are the important unanswered questions in cosmology? The choice as to which are the most important is somewhat personal. In the view of the author, the ten topics chosen here for discussion must be included among the most fundamental.…
This article solves the Hume's problem of induction using a probabilistic approach. From the probabilistic perspective, the core task of induction is to estimate the probability of an event and judge the accuracy of the estimation.…
Three of the big puzzles of theoretical physics are the following: (i) There is apparently no time evolution in the dynamics of quantum general relativity, because the allowed quantum states must obey the Hamiltonian constraint. (ii) During…
These lectures deal with the problem of inductive inference, that is, the problem of reasoning under conditions of incomplete information. Is there a general method for handling uncertainty? Or, at least, are there rules that could in…
Evaluating theories in physics used to be easy. Our theories provided very distinct predictions. Experimental accuracy was so small that worrying about epistemological problems was not necessary. That is no longer the case. The…
The purpose of this paper is to propose an extension to Lee Smolin's hypothesis that our own universe belongs to a population of universes evolving by natural selection. Smolin's hypothesis explains why the parameters of physics possess the…
The search for a theory of quantum gravity faces two great challenges: the incredibly small scales of the Planck length and time, and the possibility that the observed constants of nature are in part the result of random processes. A…
Popular multiverse models such as the one based on the string theory landscape require an underlying set of unexplained laws containing many specific features and highly restrictive prerequisites. I explore the consequences of relaxing some…
I argue for a full mathematisation of the physical theory, including its axioms, which must contain no physical primitives. In provocative words: "physics from no physics". Although this may seem an oxymoron, it is the royal road to keep…
The mechanism of continuous set of different universes formation is elaborated. It provides tool to solve the problem of observed smallness of physical parameters. Solution of two puzzles - the hierarchy and the cosmological constant…
In cosmology, we would like to explain our observations and predict future observations from theories of the entire universe. Such cosmological theories make ontological assumptions of what entities exist and what their properties and…
The usual formulation of quantum theory is based on rather obscure axioms (employing complex Hilbert spaces, Hermitean operators, and the trace rule for calculating probabilities). In this paper it is shown that quantum theory can be…
Currently, string theory represents the only advanced approach to a unification of all interactions, including gravity. In spite of the more than thirty years of its existence it did not make any empirically testable predictions. And it is…
Our idea is to imitate Smale's list of problems, in a restricted domain of mathematical aspects of Celestial Mechanics. All the problems are on the n-body problem, some with different homogeneity of the potential, addressing many aspects…
The problem of time, considered as a problem in the usual physical context, is reflected in relation with the paper by Kauffman and Smolin (gr-qc/9703026). It is shown that the problem is a misposed problem in the sense that it was raised…