Related papers: Falsifiability of Isolated Spacetime Regions
An extension of Penrose's singularity theorem is proved for spacetimes where black holes are allowed to form from non-singular initial data. With standard assumptions about the spacetime, and assuming the existence of a trapped surface…
Cosmological models that invoke a multiverse - a collection of unobservable regions of space where conditions are very different from the region around us - are controversial, on the grounds that unobservable phenomena shouldn't play a…
Black hole spacetimes that exhibit integrable singularities have gained considerable interest as alternatives to both regular and singular black holes. Unlike most known regular black hole solutions, these models evade the formation of an…
A physical theory of experiments carried out in a space-time region can accommodate a detector localized in another space-like separated region, in three, not necessarily exclusive, ways: 1) the detector formally collapses physical states…
We propose a resolution to the black-hole information-loss paradox: in one formulation of physical theory, information is preserved and macroscopic causality is violated; in another, causality is preserved and pure states evolve to mixed…
The search for a scientific theory of consciousness should result in theories that are falsifiable. However, here we show that falsification is especially problematic for theories of consciousness. We formally describe the standard…
I review elements of the foundations of black-hole theory with attention to problematic issues, and describe some techniques which either seem to help with the difficulties or at least investigate their scope. The definition of black holes…
Time-symmetric cosmological theories, in which the initial and final states are arranged to have similar features or are independently fixed, have been quite extensively discussed in the literature. However, a more general and perhaps more…
Two recent works suggest a possibility of sending signals to a space-like separated region, contrary to the spirit of special relativity. In the first work [J. Grunhaus, S. Popescu, and D. Rohrlich, Phys. Rev. A 53, 3781 (1996)] it has been…
The information loss paradox is often presented as an unavoidable consequence of well-established physics. However, in order for a genuine paradox to ensue, not-trivial assumptions about, e.g., quantum effects on spacetime, are necessary.…
[Abridged] Some cosmological theories propose that the observable universe is a small part of a much larger universe in which parameters describing the low-energy laws of physics vary from region to region. How can we reasonably assess a…
A theory governing the metric and matter fields in spacetime is {\it locally causal} if the probability distribution for the fields in any region is determined solely by physical data in the region's past, i.e. it is independent of events…
We offer a mathematically rigorous basis for the widely held suspicion that full black hole evaporation is in tension with predictability. Based on conditions expressing the global causal structure of evaporating black hole spacetimes, we…
Experiments motivated by Bell's theorem have led some physicists to conclude that quantum theory is nonlocal. However, the theoretical basis for such claims is usually taken to be Bell's Theorem, which shows only that if certain predictions…
Black holes have the peculiar and intriguing property of having an event horizon, a one-way membrane causally separating their internal region from the rest of the Universe. Today astrophysical observations provide some evidence for the…
The existence of black holes and of spacetime singularities is a fundamental issue in science. Despite this, observations supporting their existence are scarce, and their interpretation unclear. We overview how strong a case for black holes…
Relative surprise regions are shown to minimize, among Bayesian credible regions, the prior probability of covering a false value from the prior. Such regions are also shown to be unbiased in the sense that the prior probability of covering…
Up to a conjecture in Riemannian geometry, we significantly strengthen a recent theorem of Eardley by proving that a compact region in an initial data surface that is collapsing sufficiently fast in comparison to its surface-to-volume ratio…
Marginally outer trapped surfaces are widely considered as the best quasi-local replacements for event horizons of black holes in General Relativity. However, this equivalence is far from being proved, even in stationary and static…
Computing size and credibility of Bayesian credible regions for certifying the reliability of any point estimator of an unknown parameter (such as a quantum state, channel, phase, \emph{etc.}) relies on rejection sampling from the entire…