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Related papers: The nature of the present

200 papers

We put forward a new view of relativity theory that makes the existence of a flow of time compatible with the four-dimensional block universe. To this end, we apply the creation-discovery view elaborated for quantum mechanics to relativity…

History and Philosophy of Physics · Physics 2023-03-01 Diederik Aerts

Energy is no doubt an intuitive concept. Following a previous analysis on the nature of elementary particles and associated elementary quantum fields, the peculiar status and role of energy is scrutinised further at elementary and larger…

Contemporary research programs in fundamental physics appear to suggest that there could be two (physical) times---or none at all. This essay articulates these possibilities in the context of quantum gravity, and in particular of…

History and Philosophy of Physics · Physics 2020-09-14 Christian Wuthrich

I examine the hypothesis that consciousness can be understood as a state of matter, "perceptronium", with distinctive information processing abilities. I explore five basic principles that may distinguish conscious matter from other…

Popular Physics · Physics 2023-08-16 Max Tegmark

The principle of least action provides a holistic worldview in which nature in its entirety and every detail is pictured in terms of actions. Each and every action is ultimately composed of one or multiples of the most elementary action…

General Physics · Physics 2011-10-27 Arto Annila

Rather than an a priori arena in which events take place, space-time is a construction of our mind making possible a particular kind of ordering of events. As quantum entanglement is a property of states independent of classical distances,…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2015-03-26 Karl Svozil

We suggest that the question of why is there something rather than nothing can be answered by the existence of two types of nothing. We propose that matter occurs at the boundaries of intersection of both nothings. This accords with the…

History and Philosophy of Physics · Physics 2025-08-15 Adam Brownstein

Physical theories must stem from observation. The possibility that perceived events are simulated, not real, raises a crucial dilemma about the credibility of known physics, known as the simulation hypothesis. To analyze this hypothesis in…

General Physics · Physics 2024-01-08 Francesco Sisini

The phenomenon of local dynamical inhomogeneity of time is predicted, which implies that the course of time along the trajectory of motion of a particle in the inertial reference frames moving relative to each other depends on the state of…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2007-05-23 V. P. Oleinik , Yu. C. Borimsky , Yu. D. Arepjev

The brain is very often viewed as a network, be it at small scale made of cells, mostly neurons, or at larger scale made of neuronal assemblies. Here we introduce a conjecture, in the spirit of a philosophical though experiment, which…

Neurons and Cognition · Quantitative Biology 2025-12-24 Julien Lagarde

In the field theories in physics, any particular region of the presumed space-time continuum and all interactions between elementary objects therein can be objectively measured and/or accounted for mathematically. Since this does not apply…

Neurons and Cognition · Quantitative Biology 2022-01-19 Birgitta Dresp-Langley

To explain consciousness as a physical process we must acknowledge the role of energy in the brain. Energetic activity is fundamental to all physical processes and causally drives biological behaviour. Recent neuroscientific evidence can be…

Neurons and Cognition · Quantitative Biology 2018-10-15 Robert Pepperell

My goal is to study the dynamics of the Universe from a relational perspective based on the happening of events in temporal relation to each other and their respective points of reference. Accordingly, the flow of time was modeled as the…

General Physics · Physics 2025-05-13 Bruce M Boman

This paper is a shortened version of the full paper that was published in the journal Frontiers of Psychology in May 2022. In recent decades, the scientific study of consciousness has significantly increased our understanding of this…

Neurons and Cognition · Quantitative Biology 2025-02-21 Nir Lahav , Zachariah A. Neemeh

From the Physics point of view, time is now best described through General Relativity, as part of space-time which is a dynamical object encoding gravity. Time possesses also some intrinsic irreversibility due to thermodynamics, quantum…

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology · Physics 2009-03-30 Florian Girelli , Stefano Liberati , Lorenzo Sindoni

Special relativity is no longer a new revolutionary theory but a firmly established cornerstone of modern physics. The teaching of special relativity, however, still follows its presentation as it unfolded historically, trying to convince…

Physics Education · Physics 2008-11-26 Z. K. Silagadze

The concept of the space-time as emerging in the world phase transition, vs. a priori existing, is put forward. The theory of gravity with two basic symmetries, the global affine one and the general covariance, is developed. Implications…

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology · Physics 2007-05-23 Yu. F. Pirogov

Beings, animate or inanimate, are dynamical systems which continuously interact with the (external and /or internal) environment through the physical or physiologic interfaces of their Kantian (representational) realities. And the nature of…

Neurons and Cognition · Quantitative Biology 2019-09-03 Jahan N. Schad

The concept of the space-time as emerging in the world phase transition, vs. a priori exiting, is put forward. The theory of gravity with two basic symmetries, the global affine one and the general covariance, is developed. Implications for…

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology · Physics 2007-05-23 Yu. F. Pirogov

According to Aristotle "time is the number of change with respect to the before and after". That's certainly a vague concept, but at the same time it's both simple and satisfying from a philosophical point of view: things do not change…

History and Philosophy of Physics · Physics 2022-01-07 Marcello Poletti