Related papers: Time's arrow and life's origin
Scientific discussions of the arrow of time often get quite confusing due to highly complex systems they deal with. Popular literature then often coveys messages that tend to get lost in translation. The purpose of this note is to demystify…
This thesis addresses two major problems in the philosophy of physics. The first is how to identify the minimal physical content of a theory; that is, what features of a theory are truly needed to make predictions, and what can be removed…
The outcome of a single quantum experiment is unpredictable, except in a pure-state limit. The definite process that takes place in the apparatus may either be intrinsically random or be explainable from a deeper theory. While the first…
It was recently shown \cite{opposite} that systems with opposite thermodynamic arrows of time could have moderate mutual interaction with neither destroying the order of the other. Such interaction includes signaling. Signals, however, may…
This essay offers a meta-level analysis in the sociology and history of physics in the context of the so-called "Arrow of Time Problem" or "Two Times Problem," which asserts that the empirically observed directionality of time is in…
The only widely accepted explanation for the various arrows of time that everywhere and at all epochs point in the same direction is the `past hypothesis': the Universe had a very special low-entropy initial state. We present the first…
We point out that time's arrow is naturally induced by quantum mechanical evolution, whenever the systems have a very large number ${\cal N}$ of non-degenerate states and a Hamiltonian bounded from below. When ${\cal N}$ is finite, the…
We discuss the arrow of time in terms of the increase of correlations between the system and its environment. Here we show that the existence of the arrow of time, based on deleting correlations, requires a strict absence of initial…
The puzzle of the thermodynamic arrow of time reduces to the question of how the universe could have had lower entropy in the past. I show that no special entropy lowering mechanism (or fluctuation) is necessary. As a consequence of…
In this paper, we investigate an important issue addressed by several approaches to quantum cosmology, like that based on loop quantum gravity and string theory: the existence of an arrow of time driving the cosmological evolution according…
We believe the following three ingredients are enough to explain the mystery of the arrow of time: (1). equations of dynamics of gas molecules, (2). chaotic instabilities of the equations of dynamics, (3). unavoidable perturbations to the…
In any physical theory that admits true indeterminism, the thermodynamic arrow of time can arise regardless of the system's initial conditions. Hence on such theories time's arrow emerges out of the basic physical interactions. The example…
The spread of the time arrows from the environment to an observed subsystem is followed within a harmonic model. A similarity is pointed out between irreversibility and a phase with spontaneously broken symmetry. The causal structure of…
It is argued that the observed Thermodynamic Arrow of Time must arise from the boundary conditions of the universe. We analyse the consequences of the no boundary proposal, the only reasonably complete set of boundary conditions that has…
Entropy and the second law of thermodynamcs were discovered through study of the behaviour of gases in confined spaces. The related techniques developed in the kinetic theory of gases have failed to resolve the apparent conflict between the…
The arrow of time and the accelerated expansion are two fundamental empirical facts of the Universe. We advance the viewpoint that the dark energy (positive cosmological constant) accelerating the expansion of the Universe also supports the…
The familiar textbook quantum mechanics of laboratory measurements incorporates a quantum mechanical arrow of time --- the direction in time in which state vector reduction operates. This arrow is usually assumed to coincide with the…
Emergence of one-time-direction macroscopic evolution of a classical system of two mixed gases having different temperatures is derived and explained. The analysis performed at the microscopic level, where the time-symmetric laws of…
For more than a century, physics has known of a puzzling conflict between the T-asymmetry of thermodynamic phenomena and the T-symmetry of the underlying microphysics on which these phenomena depend. This paper provides a guide to the…
Microphysical laws are time reversible, but macrophysics, chemistry and biology are not. This chapter explores how this asymmetry (a classic example of a broken symmetry) arises due to the cosmological context, where a non-local Direction…