Related papers: Time's Arrow and Self-Locating Probability
The nature of a physical law is examined, and it is suggested that there may not be any fundamental dynamical laws. This explains the intrinsic indeterminism of quantum theory. The probabilities for transition from a given initial state to…
The nature of time in quantum mechanics is closely related to the use of a complex, rather than say real, Hilbert space. This becomes particularly clear when considering quantum field theory in time dependent backgrounds, such as in…
This paper is concerned with two questions in the decoherent histories approach to quantum mechanics: the emergence of approximate classical predictability, and the fluctuations about it necessitated by the uncertainty principle. We…
The crucial but very confidential fact is brought into evidence that, as Kolmogorov himself repeatedly claimed, the mathematical theory of probabilities cannot be applied to physical, factual probabilistic situations because the factual…
It is argued that a fundamental time asymmetry could arise from the global structure of the space manifold. The proposed mechanism relies on the CPT anomaly of certain chiral gauge theories defined over a multiply connected space manifold.…
Recently, a substantial amount of debate has grown up around a proposed quantum resolution to the `arrow of time dilemma' that is based on the role of classical memory records of entropy-decreasing events. In this note we show that the…
In physics, there is the prevailing intuition that we are part of a unique external world, and that the goal of physics is to understand and describe this world. This assumption of the fundamentality of objective reality is often seen as a…
We argue using simple models that all successful practical uses of probabilities originate in quantum fluctuations in the microscopic physical world around us, often propagated to macroscopic scales. Thus we claim there is no physically…
In physical theories, boundary or initial conditions play the role of selecting special situations which can be described by a theory with its general laws. Cosmology has long been suspected to be different in that its fundamental theory…
The fundamental problem on which Ilya Prigogine and the Brussels-Austin Group have focused can be stated briefly as follows. Our observations indicate that there is an arrow of time in our experience of the world (e.g., decay of unstable…
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…
We postulate a principle stating that the initial condition of a physical system is typically algorithmically independent of the dynamical law. We argue that this links thermodynamics and causal inference. On the one hand, it entails…
In quantum mechanical experiments one distinguishes between the state of an experimental system and an observable measured in it. Heuristically, the distinction between states and observables is also suggested in scattering theory or when…
Modern physics has unlocked a number of mysteries regarding the early Universe, such as the baryogenesis, the unification of the strong and electroweak forces and the nucleosynthesis. However, understanding the very early Universe, close to…
Despite the fact that the fundamental physical laws are symmetric in time, most observed processes do not show this symmetry. Especially the phenomenon of decay seems to involve a kind of irreversibility that makes the definition of a…
A possible mechanism of time is formulated by developing an idea of time replaced by quantum correlations, with the aid of modern quantum information theory. We invent a microscopic model, where correlations of a closed system are steadily…
It is shown that (special) relativistically dilated time is the vector sum of rest time and time induced by movement in three dimensional space exeeding the rest time component and that the first vector is orthogonally directed relative to…
The "problem of time" in present physics substantially consists in the fact that a straightforward quantization of the general relativistic evolution equation and constraints generates for the Universe wave function the Wheeler-De Witt…
It was previously argued that the phenomenon of quantum gravitational decoherence described by the Wheeler-DeWitt equation is responsible for the emergence of the arrow of time. Here we show that the characteristic spatio-temporal scales of…
While the microscopic laws of physics are often symmetric under time reversal, most natural processes that we observe are not. The emergent asymmetry between typical and time-reversed processes is referred to as the arrow of time. In…