Related papers: Struggles with the Continuum
The continuum of real numbers has served well as a model for physical space in mechanics and field theories. However it is a well-motivated and popular idea that at the fundamental Planck scale the combination of gravitational and quantum…
The cosmological constant problem represents an evident tension between our present description of gravity and particle physics. Many solutions have been proposed, but experimental tests are always difficult or impossible to perform and…
Aspects of the full theory of loop quantum gravity can be studied in a simpler context by reducing to symmetric models like cosmological ones. This leads to several applications where loop effects play a significant role when one is…
Is it actually possible to interpret gravitation as space's property in a pure classical way. Then, we note that extended self-gravitating system equilibrium depends directly on the number of dimension of the space in which it evolves.…
We discuss how developments in physics often imply in the need that spacetime acquires an increasingly richer and complex structure. General Relativity was the first theory to show us the way to connect space and time with the physical…
A tradition handed down among physicists maintains that classical physics is a perfectly deterministic theory capable of predicting the future with absolute certainty, independently of any interpretations. It also tells that it was quantum…
The unification of gravity to the other forces has been a major problem for most of the last century. I use a modification to Newtonian gravitation to extract the strong and weak nuclear coupling constants. Some of the possible implications…
Possibilities emerging out of the dynamical evolutions of collapsing systems are addressed in this thesis through analytical investigations of the highly non-linear Einstein Field Equations. Studies of exact solutions and their properties,…
What if gravity is classical? If true, a consistent co-existence of classical gravity and quantum matter requires that gravity exhibit irreducible fluctuations. These fluctuations can mediate classical correlations, but not quantum…
The most dramatic developments in theoretical physics in the next millennium are likely to come when we make progress on so far unresolved foundational questions. In this essay I consider two of the deepest problems confronting us, the…
The big bang and the Schwarzschild singularities are space-like. They are generally regarded as the "final frontiers" at which space-time ends and general relativity breaks down. We review the status of such space-like singularities from…
It has been suggested, on the one hand, that quantum states are just states of knowledge; and, on the other, that quantum theory is merely a theory of correlations. These suggestions are confronted with problems about the nature of…
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…
Recent astronomical observations indicate that the universe is accelerating. We argue that generic quintessence models that accommodate the present day acceleration tend to accelerate eternally. As a consequence the resulting spacetimes…
The resolution of the problem of cosmological singularity in the framework of gauge theories of gravitation is discussed. Generalized cosmological Friedmann equations for homogeneous isotropic models filled by interacting scalar fields and…
The appearance of infinity together with collapsing quantum state due to the observation or interaction, which are two challenging features of quantum field theory, become very serious problems in quantum gravity as well as in quantum…
Gravitation as a fundamental interaction that governs all phenomena at large and very small scales, but still not well understood at a quantum level, is a cardinal missing link in unification of all physical interactions. Discovery of the…
The nature of gravity is fundamental to our understanding of our own solar system, the galaxy and the structure and evolution of the Universe. Einstein's general theory of relativity is the standard model that is used for almost ninety…
We consider an inverse variational problem for the lines of constant curvature in (pseudo-)Euclidean two-, three-, and four-dimensional spaces. The accumulated results are physically meaningful in the case of relativistic mechanics of…
The nature of space-time and surrounding matter objects was and persists to be a one of the most intriguing and challenging problems facing the mankind and natural scientists especially. As we know one of the most brilliant inventions in…