Related papers: Time's arrow and life's origin
This paper is a natural continuation of our previous paper arXiv:1011.4173 . We illustrated earlier that in classical Hamilton mechanics, for overwhelming majority of real chaotic macroscopic systems, alignment of their thermodynamic time…
Two of the most difficult problems in the foundations of physics are (1) what gives rise to the arrow of time and (2) what the ontology of quantum mechanics is. I propose a unified 'Humean' solution to the two problems. Humeanism allows us…
We postulate a principle stating that the initial condition of a physical system is typically algorithmically independent of the dynamical law. We argue that this links thermodynamics and causal inference. On the one hand, it entails…
A generalized framework is developed which uses a set description instead of wavefunction to emphasize the role of the observer. Such a framework is found to be very effective in the study of the measurement problem and time's arrow.…
Active matter encompasses systems whose individual consituents dissipate energy to exert propelling forces on their environment. This rapidly developing field harbors a dynamical phenomenology with no counterpart in passive systems. The…
What is time? Why does it "flow" and why are we sure that it flows from past towards future? Why is there such a gigantic distinction between the Past of our world, which we believe to be fixed, and the Future, which we consider…
The origin of life on Earth via the spontaneous emergence of a protocell prior to Darwinian evolution remains a fundamental open question in physics and chemistry. Here, we develop a conceptual framework based on information theory and…
The universal validity of the second law of thermodynamics is widely attributed to a finely tuned initial condition of the universe. This creates a problem: why is the universe atypical? We suggest that the problem is an artefact created by…
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…
For decades, researchers have sought to understand how the irreversibility of the surrounding world emerges from the seemingly time symmetric, fundamental laws of physics. Quantum mechanics conjectured a clue that final irreversibility is…
The fundamental problem on which Ilya Prigogine and the Brussels-Austin Group have focused can be stated briefly as follows. Our observations indicate that there is an arrow of time in our experience of the world (e.g., decay of unstable…
The fundamental time-reversal invariance of dynamical systems can be broken in various ways. One way is based on the presence of resonances and their interactions giving rise to unstable dynamical systems, leading to well-defined time…
Due to recent advances in synthetic biology and artificial life, the origin of life is currently a hot topic of research. We review the literature and argue that the two traditionally competing "replicator-first" and "metabolism-first"…
The evolution of life has been a big enigma despite rapid advancements in the fields of biochemistry, astrobiology, and astrophysics in recent years. The answer to this puzzle has been as mind-boggling as the riddle relating to evolution of…
In a quantum universe with a strong arrow of time, it is standard to postulate that the initial wave function started in a particular macrostate--the special low-entropy macrostate selected by the Past Hypothesis. Moreover, there is an…
Despite great advances in our understanding of the formation of the Solar System, the evolution of the Earth, and the chemical basis for life, we are not much closer than the ancient Greeks to an answer of whether life has arisen and…
A general sketch of how the problem of space dimensionality depends on Anthropic arguments is presented. A new argument in favor of a stable scenario for space dimensionality for a time scale longer than that required for the existence of…
Recent discussions of the origins of the thermodynamical asymmetry ("the arrow of time") by Huw Price and others are critically assessed. This serves as a motivation for consideration of relationship between thermodynamical and cosmological…
It is argued that a fundamental time asymmetry could arise from the global structure of the space manifold. The proposed mechanism relies on the CPT anomaly of certain chiral gauge theories defined over a multiply connected space manifold.…
In the joint paper "Bridging the neuroscience and physics of time" Rovelli, as the physicist coauthor of neuroscientist Dean Buonomano, makes statements that rely on theoretical frameworks employed when the laws of thermodynamics and…