Related papers: Time's arrow and life's origin
Physical thermodynamic and kinetic, chemical and biological reasoning restrict the spatial dimensions of living cells and confine them to between one and one hundred micrometers. Cells should necessarily be macroscopic, dissipative objects,…
The extrinsic quantum mechanical arrow of time is understood to be a consequence of the interaction between quantum systems and their environment. A choice of boundary conditions for the Schr\"odinger equation results in a different time…
The question "What is life?" has been asked and studied by the researchers of various fields. Nevertheless, no global theory which unified various aspects of life has been proposed so far. Considering that the physical principle for the…
Preparing general relativity for quantization in the Hamiltonian approach leads to the `problem of time,' rendering the world fundamentally timeless. One proposed solution is the `thermal time hypothesis,' which defines time in terms of…
We present some novel results indicating that time's description in present-day physics is deficient. We use Hawking's information-erasure hypothesis to counter his own claim that time's arrow depends only on initial conditions. Next, we…
We clarify and strengthen our demonstration that arrows of time necessarily arise in unconfined systems. Contrary to a recent claim, this does not require an improbable selection principle.
We discuss some of the cosmological constraints on the evolution and persistence of life in the Universe and in hypothetical universes other than our own. We highlight the role played by the age and size of the universe, and discuss the…
Consider a Hamiltonian system that consists of a slow subsystem S and a fast subsystem F. The autonomous dynamics of S is driven by an effective Hamiltonian, but its thermodynamics is unexpected. We show that a well-defined thermodynamic…
The aim of this article is to analyze the relation between the second law of thermodynamics and the so-called arrow of time. For this purpose, a number of different aspects in this arrow of time are distinguished, in particular those of…
It is recalled that closed (isolated) systems are essentially reversible whilst open systems like the Earth, or living beings on it, are irreversible because they are not isolated. Earth and life irreversibility derives from the evolution…
Advances in our understanding of the physical universe have impacted dramatically on how we view ourselves. Right at the core of all modern thinking about the universe is the assumption that dynamics is an elemental feature that exists…
The 'problem of time' can be 'solved' in principle by taking the viewpoint that information created by quantum systems or Feynman Clocks (FCs) is transferred by signals to detectors as quantum 'infostates' and then used to construct 'time'…
This work explores the implications of assuming time symmetry and applying bridge-type, time-symmetric temporal boundary conditions to deterministic laws of nature with random components. The analysis, drawing on the works of Kolmogorov and…
Biological activities are often seen entrained onto the day-night and other celestial mechanical cycles (e.g., seasonal and lunar), but studies on the origin of life have largely not accounted for such periodic external environmental…
Understanding the emergence of the thermodynamic arrow of time in microscopic systems is of fundamental importance, particularly given that unitary evolution preserves time-reversal symmetry. While projective measurements introduce temporal…
The purpose of the paper is five-fold: (a) Argue that the question in the title can be presented in a meaningful manner and that it requires an answer. (b) Discuss the conventional answers and explain why they are unsatisfactory. (c)…
We review some basic issues of the life-prescribed development of the Earth's system and the Earth's atmosphere and discourse the unity of Earth's type of life in physical and transcendental divisions. In physical division, we exemplify and…
It is well established that at early times, long before the time of radiation-matter equality, the universe could have been well described by a spatially flat, radiation only model. In this letter we consider the whole primeval universe as…
The existence of a non-thermodynamic arrow of time was demonstrated in a recent paper (Mod.Phys.Lett. A13, 1265 (1998)), in which a model of non-local Quantum Electrodynamics was formulated through the principle of gauge invariance. In this…
It is shown that the structures in the universe can be interpreted to show a closed wheel of time, rather than a straight arrow. An analysis in $f(R)$ gravity model has been carried out to show that due to local observations a small arc at…