Related papers: Reality is both digital and analog

Information processing at the molecular scale is limited by thermal fluctuations. This can cause undesired consequences in copying information since thermal noise can lead to errors that can compromise the functionality of the copy. For…

Information plays an important role in our understanding of the physical world. We hence propose an entropic measure of information for any physical theory that admits systems, states and measurements. In the quantum and classical world,…

A possible mechanism of time is formulated by developing an idea of time replaced by quantum correlations, with the aid of modern quantum information theory. We invent a microscopic model, where correlations of a closed system are steadily…

We show that the no-deleting and no-cloning principles are implications of information conservation principle. This is unlike in classical physics, where cloning and deleting are possible, independently of information conservation.…

Living systems are fundamentally irreversible, breaking detailed balance and establishing an arrow of time. But how does the evident arrow of time for a whole system arise from the interactions among its multiple elements? We show that the…

Although information, strictly speaking, is not a physical entity, it generally requires physical entities as its carriers, e.g., writing it down on paper, encoding it with quantum particles, or transmitting it using electro-magnetic…

When attempting to assess the strengths and weaknesses of various principles in their potential role of guiding the formulation of a theory of quantum gravity, it is crucial to distinguish between principles which are strongly supported by…

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…

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…

I study the physical nature of traces (or memories). Surprisingly, (i) systems separation with (ii) temperature differences and (iii) long thermalization times, are sufficient conditions to produce macroscopic traces. Traces of the past are…

Based on the hypothesis that the thermodynamic arrow of time is an emergent phenomenon of quantum state complexity evolution, we further propose that the natural pace of time flow is proportional to the changing rate of quantum state…

The nature of time has beguiled philosophers for nearly three millennia. There are myriad types of time including cosmological time, biological time, psychological time, physical time, historical time, and even theological time. My brief…

I use cosmology examples to illustrate that the second law of thermodynamics is not old and tired, but alive and kicking, continuing to stimulate interesting research on really big puzzles. The question "Why is the entropy so low?" (despite…

I argue here that both the first and second laws of thermodynamics, generally understood to be quintessentially physical in nature, can be equally well described as being about certain types of information without the need to invoke…

An investigation of Einstein's ``physical'' reality and the concept of quantum reality in terms of information theory suggests a solution to quantum paradoxes such as the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (EPR) and the Schroedinger-cat paradoxes.…

Information, in its communications sense, is a transactional property. If the received signals communicate choices made by the sender of the signals, then information has been transmitter by the sender to the receiver. Given this reality,…

We review a recent approach to the foundations of quantum mechanics inspired by quantum information theory. The approach is based on a general framework, which allows one to address a large class of physical theories which share basic…

The emergence of an objective reality in line with the laws of the microscopic world has been the focus of longstanding debates. Recent approaches seem to have reached a consensus at least with respect to one aspect, namely, that the…

Phenomenological arrows of time can be traced to a past low-entropy state. Does this imply the universe was in an improbable state in the past? I suggest a different possibility: past low-entropy depends on the coarse-graining implicit in…

Advances in our understanding of the physical universe have impacted dramatically on how we view ourselves. Right at the core of all modern thinking about the universe is the assumption that dynamics is an elemental feature that exists…