Related papers: Of Naturalness and Complexity
According to quantum theory, randomness is a fundamental property of the universe yet classical physics is mostly deterministic. In this article I show that it is possible for deterministic systems to arise from random ones and discuss the…
Many complex systems exhibit extreme events far more often than expected for a normal distribution. This work examines how self-similar bursts of activity across several orders of magnitude can emerge from first principles in systems that…
Dense suspensions of fine particles are significant in numerous biological, industrial, and natural phenomena. They also provide an ideal tool to develop statistical mechanics description for out-of-equilibrium systems. Predicting the bulk…
Complex systems theory pays much attention to simple mechanisms producing nontrivial patterns, especially power laws. However, power laws with exponent close to one also result from complex mixtures of mechanisms that, in isolation, would…
Quantum and classical mechanics are derived using four natural physical principles: (1) the laws of nature are invariant under time evolution, (2) the laws of nature are invariant under tensor composition, (3) the laws of nature are…
Complex systems are characterized by specific time-dependent interactions among their many constituents. As a consequence they often manifest rich, non-trivial and unexpected behavior. Examples arise both in the physical and non-physical…
A characteristical property of a classical physical theory is that the observables are real functions taking an exact outcome on every (pure) state; in a quantum theory, at the contrary, a given observable on a given state can take several…
Reductionism is a prevalent viewpoint in science according to which all physical phenomena can be understood from fundamental laws of physics. Anderson [Science, 177, 393 (1972)], Laughlin and Pines [PNAS, 97, 28 (2000)], and others have…
A rational theory is proposed to describe the large-scale motion in turbulence. The fluid element with inner orientational structures is proposed to be the building block of fluid dynamics. The variance of the orientational structures then…
Different aspects of the predictability problem in dynamical systems are reviewed. The deep relation among Lyapunov exponents, Kolmogorov-Sinai entropy, Shannon entropy and algorithmic complexity is discussed. In particular, we emphasize…
Turbulence is one of the most frequently encountered non-equilibrium phenomena in nature yet characterising the transition that gives rise to it has remained an elusive task. Although in recent studies critical points marking the onset of…
It is shown that if a potential in a nonrelativistic system of Fermi particles has a sufficiently strong singularity, anomalies (nonzero values of quantities formally equal to zero) will probably appear. For different types of singularities…
These notes present a brief introduction to `naturalness' problems in cosmology, and to the Cosmological Constant Problem in particular. The main focus is the `old' cosmological constant problem, though the more recent variants are also…
The formalism of quantum theory over discrete systems is extended in two significant ways. First, quantum evolutions are generalized to act over entire network configurations, so that nodes may find themselves in a quantum superposition of…
We critically analyze the rationale of arguments from finetuning and naturalness in particle physics and cosmology. Some other numerological coincidences are also discussed.
This article examines the subtle relationship between chaos and randomness, two concepts that, although they refer to seemingly unpredictable phenomenon, are based on fundamentally different principles. Chaos manifests in deterministic…
In this article, it is shown specifically that natural system chance events as represented by theory predicted (a priori) probabilistic statements used in such realms as modern particle physics, among others, are only random relative to the…
The understanding of fluid turbulence has considerably progressed in recent years. The application of the methods of statistical mechanics to the description of the motion of fluid particles, i.e. to the Lagrangian dynamics, has led to a…
Real numbers provide a sufficient description of classical physics and all measurable phenomena; however, complex numbers are occasionally utilized as a convenient mathematical tool to aid our calculations. On the other hand, the formalism…
The limited distinctness of physical systems is roughly expressed by uncertainty relations. Here we show distinctness is a finite resource we can exactly count to define basic physical quantities, limits to the resolution of space and time,…