Related papers: The Thales experiment
Physical time intervals are attributes of single physical object whereas physical space intervals are a relational attribute of two physical objects. Some consequences of the breaking of the space-time exchange symmetry inherent in the…
Here I indulge in wide-ranging speculations on the shape of physics, and technology closely related to physics, over the next one hundred years. Themes include the many faces of unification, the re-imagining of quantum theory, and new forms…
Recent progress in quantum gravity and string theory has raised interest among scientists to whether or not nature behaves discretely at the Planck scale. There are two attitudes twoards this discretenes i.e. top-down and bottom-up…
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…
The paper puts forward a conceptual framework in which the phenomenon of time can be presented and discussed in a proper way. We argue that change is ontologically and epistemologically a more basic phenomenon than time. Time is an abstract…
This paper forms part of a wider campaign: to deny pointillisme. That is the doctrine that a physical theory's fundamental quantities are defined at points of space or of spacetime, and represent intrinsic properties of such points or…
This paper has been withdrawn by the author. In this short paper I present a new approach to the problem of measurement, based on the difference between language (reality) and meta-language (meta-reality). This way, it will be shown as the…
Position and momentum enter at the same level of importance in the formulation of classical or quantum mechanics. This is reflected in the invariance of Poisson brackets or quantum commutators under canonical transformations, which I regard…
It is often said that in general relativity time does not exist. This is because the Einstein equations generate motion in time that is a symmetry of the theory, not true time evolution. In quantum gravity, the timelessness of general…
The notion that the metric field in general relativity can be understood as a property of space-time rests on a feature of the theory sometimes called universal coupling -- the claim that rods and clocks "measure" the metric in a way that…
The problem of how mathematics and physics are related at a foundational level is of much interest. One approach is to work towards a coherent theory of physics and mathematics together. Here steps are taken in this direction by first…
Space-time--time couples Kaluza's five-dimensional geometry with Weyl's conformal space-time geometry to produce an extension that goes beyond what either of those theories can achieve by itself. Kaluza's ``cylinder condition'' is replaced…
As a basis for epistemological study of ``time,'' we analyze three suspect phenomena introduced by modern physics: non-locality, asymmetric aging and advanced interaction. It is shown that all three arise in connection with what has to be…
In quantum mechanics time usually appears as classical parameter which means that it is treated as being essentially different from spatial coordinates that are represented by operators. On the other hand, relativity theory demands to treat…
Large contributions to the near closure of the Universe and to the acceleration of its expansion are due to the gravitation of components of the stress-energy tensor other than its mass density. To familiarise astronomers with the…
There has been recent interest in identifying entanglement as the fundamental concept from which space may emerge. We note that the particular way that a Hilbert space is decomposed into tensor factors is important in what the resulting…
By viewing entanglement as a state function, a new kind of phase transition takes place: the geometric phase transition. This phenomenon occurs due to singularities in the shape of the entangled states set. It is shown how this result can…
It is proposed that the physical universe is an instance of a mathematical structure which possesses a dual structure, and that this dual structure is the collection of all possible knowledge of the physical universe. In turn, the physical…
Some properties of the G\"odel space-time metric and its Riemann extension are studied
Along with weaving together observations, experiments, and theoretical constructs into a coherent mesh of understanding of the world around us, physics over its past five centuries has continuously refined the base concepts on which the…