Related papers: Time and its arrow: an empiricist's perspective
This paper explores the status of some notions which are usually associated to time, like datations, chronology, durations, causality, cosmic time and time functions in the Einsteinian relativistic theories. It shows how, even if some of…
Some ideas aimed to understand that time is one-dimensional are briefly reviewed. Some attempts to construct theories in varieties with more spatial and temporal components are presented. It is discussed, from the epistemological point of…
Current theoretical physics suggests the flow of time is an illusion: the entire universe just is, with no special meaning attached to the present time. This paper points out that this view, in essence represented by usual space-time…
The origin and nature of time in complex systems is explored using quantum (or 'Feynman') clocks and the signals produced by them. Networks of these clocks provide the basis for the evolution of complex systems. The general concept of…
The importance of the global nature of the arrow of time is shown. Classical Reichenbach diagram and quantum Bohm-Reichenbach diagram, for the universe are introduced. They are used to show the increase of entropy in closed systems, the…
Any theory that states that the basic laws of physics are time-symmetric must be strictly deterministic. Only determinism enables time reversal of entropy increase. A contradiction therefore arises between two statements of Hawking. A…
For more than a century, physics has known of a puzzling conflict between the T-asymmetry of thermodynamic phenomena and the T-symmetry of the underlying microphysics on which these phenomena depend. This paper provides a guide to the…
Adopting a performer-centric perspective, we frequently encounter two statements: "music flows", and "music is life-like". This dissertation builds on top of the two statements above, resulting in an exploration of the role of temporal…
Usually, it is supposed that irreversibility of time appears only in macrophysics. Here, we attempt to introduce the microphysical arrow of time assuming that at a fundamental level nature could be non-associative. Obtaining numerical…
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.…
I try to clarify several confusions in the popular literature concerning chaos, determinism, the arrow of time, entropy and the role of probability in physics. Classical ideas going back to Laplace and Boltzmann are explained and defended…
The recent surge of interest in the origin of the temporal asymmetry of thermodynamical systems (including the accessible part of the universe itself) put forward two possible explanatory approaches to this age-old problem. Hereby we show…
In quantum gravity there is no notion of absolute time. Like all other quantities in the theory, the notion of time has to be introduced "relationally", by studying the behavior of some physical quantities in terms of others chosen as a…
It is shown in the framework of a harmonic system that the thermodynamical time arrow is induced by the environmental initial conditions in a manner similar to spontaneous symmetry breaking. The Closed Time Path formalism is introduced in…
The paper discusses recent proposals by Carroll and Chen, as well as Barbour, Koslowski, and Mercati to explain the (thermodynamic) arrow of time without a Past Hypothesis, i.e., the assumption of a special (low-entropy) initial state of…
In contrast to claims by Barbour, Koslowski and Mercati, their "Janus point solution" does require a very improbable selection condition. While gravitational contraction in an expanding universe may then represent the master arrow of time,…
As a neuroscientist and a theoretical physicist, both working on time, we have decided to open a direct dialogue to examine if the apparent discrepancies regarding the nature of time can be composed.
It is shown that the `arrow of time' operator, M_F, recently suggested by Strauss et al., in arXiv:0802.2448v1 [quant-ph], is simply related to the sign of the canonical `time' observable, T (apparently first introduced by Holevo). In…
A review of some basic facts of classical dynamics shows that time, or precisely duration, is redundant as a fundamental concept. Duration and the behaviour of clocks emerge from a timeless law that governs change.
We present the arguments suggesting that time is emergent in quantum gravity and discuss extensively, but without any technical detail, the many aspects that can be involved in such emergence. We refer to both the physical issues that need…