Related papers: Copernicanism and the Typicality in Time
Relationships between objects constitute our notion of space. When these relationships change we interpret this as the passage of time. Observer interpretations are essential to the way we understand these relationships. Hence observer…
We present a new programme for placing constraints on radial inhomogeneity in a dark-energy dominated universe. We introduce a new measure to quantify violations of the Copernican principle. Any violation of this principle would interfere…
The process of identifying a time variable in time reparameterization invariant theories results in great ambiguities about the actual laws of physics described by a given theory. A theory set up to describe one set of physical laws can…
General relativity does not prohibit the existence of space-times that describe time travel. Consideration of such spaces gives rise to a lot of questions and paradoxes, among which there are thermodynamic ones. This paper considers two…
This is a chapter for an upcoming book, "Space, Time, and the Limits of Human Understanding", edited by Shyam Wuppuluri and Giancarlo Ghirardi. I first present the classical picture of flat space and ever-flowing time, as generally accepted…
I give a review of the conceptual issues that arise in theories of quantum cosmology. I start by emphasising some features of ordinary quantum theory that also play a crucial role in understanding quantum cosmology. I then give motivations…
From the first observations made by Slipher, our understanding and interpretation of the cosmological redshift was evolving until reaching the current consensus, through the expanding universe and the emergence of modern physical cosmology…
In this essay we describe a platonic metaphysics where time is a fundamental idea such that the passage of time is independent of observers and the laws of physics. Furthermore, time serves to distinguish between a real and an abstract…
Research in quantum gravity strongly suggests that our world in not fundamentally spatiotemporal, but that spacetime may only emerge in some sense from a non-spatiotemporal structure, as this paper illustrates in the case of causal set…
Space-time is one of the most essential, yet most mysterious concepts in physics. In quantum mechanics it is common to understand time as a marker of instances of evolution and define states around all the space but at one time; while in…
The concept of time is discussed in the context of the canonical formulation of the gravitational field. Using a hypersurface orthogonal foliation, the arbitrariness of the lapse function is eliminated and the shift vector vanishes,…
We discuss a number of fundamental aspects of modern cosmological concepts, from the phenomenological, observational, theoretical and epistemic points of view. We argue that the modern cosmology, despite a great advent, in particular in the…
The increasing relevance of areas such as real-time and embedded systems, pervasive computing, hybrid systems control, and biological and social systems modeling is bringing a growing attention to the temporal aspects of computing, not only…
There have been recent attempts at justifying, from first principles, and within the standard framework, the emergence of classical behavior in the post-inflationary cosmological context. Accounting for this emergence is an important issue,…
With the theory of special relativity, time has been linked with space into a four-dimensional space-time from which a basic question must be asked: can space be really transformed into time and vice-versa? The response is affirmative if…
We study in this paper different topos-theoretical approaches to the problem of construction of General Theory of Relativity. In general case the resulting space-time theory will be non-classical, different from that of the usual Einstein…
This paper compares recent approaches appearing in the literature on the singularity problem for space-times with nonvanishing torsion.
We discuss how the classical notions of time and causal structure may emerge together with quantum-mechanical probabilities from a universal quantum state. For this, the process of decoherence between semiclassical branches is important.…
This paper presents alternative ideas on the physics of time that lead to a new interpretation of cosmological redshifts. These ideas are based on the close relationship between the speed of time and entropy processes in our universe. I…
Bayesian probability theory is used to analyze the oft-made assumption that humans are typical observers in the universe. Some theoretical calculations make the {\it selection fallacy} that we are randomly chosen from a class of objects by…