Related papers: Emergent Spacetime: Reality or Illusion?
General relativity promotes space-time to a physical, dynamical object subject to equations of motion. Quantum gravity, accordingly, must provide a quantum framework for space-time, applicable on the smallest distance scales. Just like…
The nature of time in quantum mechanics is closely related to the use of a complex, rather than say real, Hilbert space. This becomes particularly clear when considering quantum field theory in time dependent backgrounds, such as in…
This essay examines our fundamental conceptions of time, spacetime, the asymmetry of time, and the motion of a quantum mechanical particle. The concept of time has multiple meanings and these are often confused in the literature and must be…
This paper examines the various arguments that have been put forward suggesting either that time does not exist, or that it exists but its flow is not real. I argue that (i) time both exists and flows; (ii) an Evolving Block Universe…
Time is absolute in standard quantum theory and dynamical in general relativity. The combination of both theories into a theory of quantum gravity leads therefore to a "problem of time". In my essay I shall investigate those consequences…
Current theoretical physics suggests the flow of time is an illusion: the entire universe just is, with no special meaning attached to the present time. This paper points out that this view, in essence represented by usual space-time…
Closed, singularity-free, inflationary cosmological models have recently been studied in the context of general relativity. Despite their appeal, these so called emergent models suffer from a number of limitations. These include the fact…
We develop a comprehensive cosmological framework based on the principle that our universe originated as a three-dimensional spatial configuration governed purely by energy functionals, with time emerging dynamically through quantum loop…
By considering a new form of dimensional reduction for noncommutative field theory, we show that the signature of spacetime may be changed. In particular, it is demonstrated that a temporal dimension can emerge from a purely Euclidean…
In this paper we work out a multiverse scenario whose physical characteristics enable us to advance the following the conjecture that whereas the physics of particles and fields is confined to live in the realm of the whole multiverse…
In this paper, we propose a novel Quantum Spacetime Theory (QST) that reinterprets spacetime as an emergent structure, challenging the traditional block universe paradigm and aligning with research into emergent spacetime. Using a sphere…
Field theories that are generally covariant but nongravitational at tree level typically give rise to an emergent gravitational interaction whose strength depends on a physical regulator. We consider emergent gravity models in which scalar…
The possibility that the multiverse corresponds to physical reality deserves serious investigation. Having three different important theories,(quantum mechanics, string theory and inflation), predict the existence of the multiverse is…
We take our world to be an objective reality, but is it? The assumption that the physical world exists in and of itself has struggled to assimilate the findings of modern physics for some time now. For example, an objective space and time…
Collapse models possibly suggest the need for a better understanding of the structure of space-time. We argue that physical space, and space-time, are emergent features of the Universe, which arise as a result of dynamical collapse of the…
The discovery of accelerating expansion of the universe has led us to take the dramatic view that our universe may be one of the many universes in which low energy physical laws take different forms: the multiverse. I explain why/how this…
Our main purpose here is to study some qualitative aspects of space and time. These include the notion of space and time regarded as the containers of respectively bodies and events, the divisibility of space, and the unrepeatability of…
We discuss the emergence of time in quantum gravity, and ask whether time is always "something that flows"'. We first recall that this is indeed the case in both relativity and quantum mechanics, although in very different manners: time…
Despite the obvious utility of the concept, it has often been argued that time does not exist. I take the opposite perspective: let's imagine that time does exist, and the universe is described by a quantum state obeying ordinary…
Matrix theory is a proposed non-perturbative definition of superstring theory in which space is emergent. We begin a study of cosmology in the context of matrix theory. Specifically, we show that matrix theory can lead to an emergent…