Related papers: On the world cognizability
Einstein wrote memorably that `The eternally incomprehensible thing about the world is its comprehensibility.' This paper argues that the universe must be comprehensible at some level for information gathering and utilizing subsystems such…
This article questions the widespread assumption that there are brain representations that will always remain unconscious in the sense of being inaccessible to individual awareness under any circumstances. This implies that some part of the…
The expansion of our universe, when followed backward in time, implies that it emerged from a phase of huge density, the big bang. These stages are so extreme that classical general relativity combined with matter theories is not able to…
Along with weaving together observations, experiments, and theoretical constructs into a coherent mesh of understanding of the world around us, physics over its past five centuries has continuously refined the base concepts on which the…
Time can be defined as the duration between events. It is irreversible. When used as a variable in quantifying the changing properties of matter, this irreversibility of time is incompatible with Newton's deterministic mechanics and with…
Time is one of the undisputed foundations of our life in the real world. Here it is argued that inside small isolated quantum systems, time does not pass as we are used to, and it is primarily in this sense that quantum objects enjoy only…
It is shown that quantum uncertainty of motion in systems controlled mainly by gravity generally grows with orbital timescale $H^{-1}$, and dominates classical motion for trajectories separated by distances less than $\approx H^{-3/5}$ in…
One of quantum theory's salient features is its apparent indeterminism, i.e. measurement outcomes are typically probabilistic. We formally define and address whether this uncertainty is unavoidable or whether post-quantum theories can offer…
An interdisciplinary physical theory of emergent consciousness has previously been proposed, stemming from quantum computation-like behavior between 10^9 or more entangled molecular qubit states (microtubulin). This model relies on the…
We observe the past and present of the universe, but can we predict the far future? Observations suggest that in thousands of billions of years from now most matter and radiation will be absorbed by the cosmological horizon. As it absorbs…
More than a speculative technology, quantum computing seems to challenge our most basic intuitions about how the physical world should behave. In this thesis I show that, while some intuitions from classical computer science must be…
We aim to bring a new perspective about some aspects of the current research in Cosmology. We start with a brief introduction about the main developments of the field in the last century; then we introduce an analogy that shall elucidate…
The limitations of current technology do not allow one to foresee the expansion of the humankind beyond our planet for at least a few decades. Furthermore, the laws of physics, as for as they are known, preclude any form of traveling beyond…
Suspicions that the world might be some sort of a machine or algorithm existing ``in the mind'' of some symbolic number cruncher have lingered from antiquity. Although popular at times, the most radical forms of this idea never reached…
In this work, we show that very natural, apparently simple problems in quantum measurement theory can be undecidable even if their classical analogues are decidable. Undecidability hence appears as a genuine quantum property here. Formally,…
All the laws of physics are time-reversible. Time arrow emerges only when ensembles of classical particles are treated probabilistically, outside of physics laws, and the entropy and the second law of thermodynamics are introduced. In…
In this paper we propose that cosmological time is a quantum observable that does not commute with other quantum operators essential for the definition of cosmological states, notably the cosmological constant. This is inspired by…
We argue against current proposals concerning the non-existence of time. We point out that a large number of these proposals rely, at least implicitly, on the assumption of `closure' (or `partial closure') of the laws of Physics. I.e. the…
The way we view the reality of nature, including ourselves, depend on consciousness.It also defines the identity of the person, since we know people in terms of their experiences. In general, consciousness defines human existence in this…
The absence of information -- entirely or partly -- is called ignorance. Naturally, one might ask if some ignorance of a whole system will imply some ignorance of its parts. Our classical intuition tells us yes, however quantum theory tells…