Related papers: The Universe as a Process of Unique Events

We argue that theories of quantum gravity constructed with the help of (Causal) Dynamical Triangulations have given us the most informative, quantitative models to date of quantum spacetime. Most importantly, these are derived dynamically…

A new, very different physical model of the universe is proposed. Its virtues include unifying relativity and quantum mechanics, and particles with de Broglie waves. It also appears to provide a truly unified physical basis for…

We study a collection of discrete Markov chains related to the causal set approach to modeling discrete theories of quantum gravity. The transition probabilities of these chains satisfy a general covariance principle, a causality principle,…

In 1979 Penrose hypothesized that the arrows of time are explained by the hypothesis that the fundamental laws are time irreversible. That is, our reversible laws, such as the standard model and general relativity are effective, and emerge…

It is difficult to extract reliable criteria for causal locality from the limited ingredients found in textbook quantum theory. In the end, Bell humbly warned that his eponymous theorem was based on criteria that "should be viewed with the…

A single mechanism, endemic to the standard model of physics, is proposed to explain wavefunction collapse, classical motion, dissipation, equilibration, and the transition from pure quantum mechanics through open system decoherence to the…

In [1] we present an extension of Prime Event Structures by a mechanism to express dynamicity in the causal relation. More precisely we add the possibility that the occurrence of an event can add or remove causal dependencies between events…

We begin by describing a sequential growth model in which the universe grows one element at a time in discrete time steps. At each step, the process has the form of a causal set and the "completed" universe is given by a path consisting of…

It is known that the classical framework of causal models is not general enough to allow for causal reasoning about quantum systems. While the framework has been generalized in a variety of different ways to the quantum case, much of this…

Each scheme of state reconstruction comes down to parametrize the state of a quantum system by expectation values or probabilities directly measurable in an experiment. It is argued that the time evolution of these quantities provides an…

The Causal Set hypothesis asserts that spacetime, ultimately, is discrete and its underlying structure is that of a locally finite partial ordered set, and macroscopic causality reflects a deeper notion of order in terms of which all the…

It is commonly assumed that every quantum system is represented by some algebra of operators. Doubt is cast on this assumption by what appears, at first glance, to be a reasonable candidate for a quantum system that is not naturally…

An interpretation and re-formulation of modern physics which removes the presumption of the space-time continuum, and bases physical theory on a small number of rational and empirical principles. After briefly describing the philosophical…

We propose a method to search for signs of causal structure in spatiotemporal data making minimal a priori assumptions about the underlying dynamics. To this end, we generalize the elementary concept of recurrence for a point process in…

The causal closure of physics is usually discussed in a context free way. Here I discuss it in the context of engineering systems and biology, where strong emergence takes place due to a combination of upwards emergence and downwards…

Acausal features of quantum electrodynamic processes are discussed. While these processes are not present for the classical electrodynamic theory, in the quantum electrodynamic theory, acausal processes are well known to exist. For example,…

This essay advocates the view that any problem that has a meaningful empirical content, can be formulated in constructive, more definitely, finite terms. We consider combinatorial models of dynamical systems and approaches to statistical…

Extreme weather is one of the main mechanisms through which climate change will directly impact human society. Coping with such change as a global community requires markedly improved understanding of how global warming drives extreme…

We present a novel derivation of both the Minkowski metric and Lorentz transformations from the consistent quantification of a causally ordered set of events with respect to an embedded observer. Unlike past derivations, which have relied…

We study the emergence of Minkowski space-time from a causal network. Differently from previous approaches, we require the network to be topologically homogeneous, so that the metric is derived from pure event-counting. Emergence from…