Related papers: Skeptical Notes on a Physics of Passage

The experimental proofs of strong time invariance violation in optics are discussed. Time noninvariance is the only real physical base for explanation the origin of the most phenomena in nonlinear optics. The experimental study of forward…

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…

There has been a recent spate of essays defending presentism, the view in the metaphysics of time according to which all and only present events or entities exist. What is particularly striking about this resurgence is that it takes place…

The centuries-long practice of the teaching turned mechanics into an academic construct detached from its underlying science, the physics of macroscopic bodies. In particular, the regularities that delineate the scope of validity of…

I explain in what sense the structure of space and time is probably vague or indefinite, a notion I define. This leads to the mathematical representation of location in space and time by a vague interval. From this, a principle of…

A quantum mechanical theory is proposed which abandons an external parameter ``time'' in favor of a self-adjoint operator on a Hilbert space whose elements represent measurement events rather than system states. The standard quantum…

Space and time are central concepts for understanding our World. They are important ingredients at the core of every scientific theory and subject of intense debate in philosophy. Albert Einstein's Special and General theories of Relativity…

The mathematical representation of the physical objects determines which mathematical branch will be applied during the physical analysis in the systems studied. The difference among non-quantum physics, like classic or relativistic…

Minkowski space serves as a framework for the theoretical constructions that deal with manifestations of relativistic effects in physical phenomena. But neither Minkowski himself nor the subsequent developers of the relativity theory have…

An introduction is given to discussions on the possiblity of fabricating spacetime geometries allowing time-travel scenarios with the help of matter possessing typically quantum features. Those scenarios are considered in the framework of…

The question of how long a particle takes to pass through a potential barrier is still a controversial topic in quantum mechanics. Arguably, the main theoretical problem in obtaining estimates for measurable times is the fact that…

Some examples from the mathematics of shape are presented that question some of the almost hidden assumptions behind results on limiting behaviour of finitary approximations to space-time. These are presented so as to focus attention on the…

Today's science provides quite a lean picture of time as a mere geometric evolution parameter. I argue that time is much richer. In particular, I argue that besides the geometric time, there is creative time, when objective chance events…

This paper lends perspective to the media catchphrase that <time does not exist>. To show how phrases such as this should be interpreted, we formulate some of the most important questions that arise in discussions about time in physics. We…

This is the first of a series of papers that we intend to publish about the epistemology of fundamental physics in its current state. One of the main objectives of these papers is to improve our understanding of fundamental physics (and…

Within the continuous endeavour of improving the efficiency and resilience of air transport, the trend of using concepts and metrics from statistical physics has recently gained momentum. This scientific discipline, which integrates…

Theoretical physics is the search for simple and universal mathematical descriptions of the natural world. In contrast, much of modern biology is an exploration of the complexity and diversity of life. For many, this contrast is prima facie…

In a way similar to classical mechanics where we have the concept of inertial time as expressed in the motions of bodies, in the (special) theory of relativity we can regard the inertial time as the only notion of time at play. The inertial…

This article presents the most interesting philosophical issues as they arise in causal set theory. The first concerns the apparent disappearance of spacetime at the fundamental level. It shows how the looming empirical incoherence is…

We will prove that, in general, a system formed by several particles moving along relativistic trajectories can not be described by a mechanical system. The contradiction that leads to the previous assertion is due to the fact that a…