Related papers: The Top-Down Complexity
There is sufficient amount of internal evidence in the nature of gravitational theories to indicate that gravity is an emergent phenomenon like, e.g, elasticity. Such an emergent nature is most apparent in the structure of gravitational…
We point out that, due to the nonlinearity of the Einstein equations, a homogeneous approximation in cosmology leads to the appearance of an additional term in the Friedmann equation. This new term is associated with the spatial…
We consider growing open chemical reaction systems (CRSs), in which autocatalytic chemical reactions are encapsulated in a finite volume and its size can change in conjunction with the reactions. The thermodynamics of growing CRSs is…
We study the statistical underpinnings of life. We question some common assumptions about the thermodynamics of life and illustrate how, contrary to widespread belief, even in a closed system entropy growth can accompany an increase in…
Emergence is a profound subject that straddles many scientific disciplines, including the formation of galaxies and how consciousness arises from the collective activity of neurons. Despite the broad interest that exists on this concept,…
Complex macroscopic behaviour can arise in many-body systems with only very simple elements as a consequence of the combination of competition and inhomogeneity. This paper attempts to illustrate how statistical physics has driven this…
We employ the law of increasing entropy and the assumption about the decrease of the ground state energy to answer the question what are the reasons of the Big Bang and the origin of the Universe.
Many mechanisms, functions and structures of life have been unraveled. However, the fundamental driving force that propelled chemical evolution and led to life has remained obscure. The 2nd law of thermodynamics, written as an equation of…
Except for crystalline or random structures, an agreed definition of complexity for intermediate and hence interesting cases does not exist. We fill this gap with a notion of complexity that characterises shapes formed by any finite number…
P.W. Anderson proposed the concept of complexity in order to describe the emergence and growth of macroscopic collective patterns out of the simple interactions of many microscopic agents. In the physical sciences this paradigm was…
We develop a cosmological theory in which the evolution of the universe is controlled by the cosmological constant and dominated by the associated vacuum energy. The universe starts as a classical de Sitter space with an infinite effective…
The difficulty of explaining non-local correlations in a fixed causal structure sheds new light on the old debate on whether space and time are to be seen as fundamental. Refraining from assuming space-time as given a priori has a number of…
Biological systems reach organizational complexity that far exceeds the complexity of any known inanimate objects. Biological entities undoubtedly obey the laws of quantum physics and statistical mechanics. However, is modern physics…
In a previous paper (Ref. [1]) the presence of dark energy in our universe was explained as the fingerprint of a comprehensive, much older and expanding multiverse with positive spatial curvature, whose space-time is spanned by this energy,…
Several recent investigations have shown that there is a holographic relationship between the bulk degrees of freedom and the surface degrees of freedom in the spacetime. Furthermore, the entropy on the horizon can produce an entropic force…
After a discussion on several limiting cases where General Relativity turns into less sophisticated theories, we find that in the correct thermodynamical and cosmological weak field limit of Einstein's field equations the entropy of the…
We compute the quantum circuit complexity of the evolution of scalar curvature perturbations on expanding backgrounds, using the language of squeezed vacuum states. In particular, we construct a simple cosmological model consisting of an…
A web of interlocking observations has established that the expansion of the Universe is speeding up and not slowing, revealing the presence of some form of repulsive gravity. Within the context of general relativity the cause of cosmic…
We consider quantum decoherence and entropy increase in early universe cosmology. We first study decoherence in a discrete bipartite quantum system for which a single qubit gets entangled with an environment and the entropy increase is…
The principles of General Relativity allow for a non-vanishing cosmological constant, which can possibly be interpreted at least partially in terms of quantum-fluctuations of matter fields. Depending on sign and magnitude it can cause…