Related papers: Physical Time and Human Time
Most of us think we know some basic facts about how time works. The facts we believe we know are based on a few intuitions about time, which are, in turn, based on our conscious waking experiences. As far as I can tell, these intuitions…
It is often said that in general relativity time does not exist. This is because the Einstein equations generate motion in time that is a symmetry of the theory, not true time evolution. In quantum gravity, the timelessness of general…
The conceptual definition and understanding of the nature of time, both qualitatively and quantitatively is of the utmost difficulty and importance, and plays a fundamental role in physics. Physical systems seem to evolve in paths of…
Rather than an a priori arena in which events take place, space-time is a construction of our mind making possible a particular kind of ordering of events. As quantum entanglement is a property of states independent of classical distances,…
Along with weaving together observations, experiments, and theoretical constructs into a coherent mesh of understanding of the world around us, physics over its past five centuries has continuously refined the base concepts on which the…
Time is absolute in standard quantum theory and dynamical in general relativity. The combination of both theories into a theory of quantum gravity leads therefore to a "problem of time". In my essay I shall investigate those consequences…
Science is a crowning glory of the human spirit and its applications remain our best hope for social progress. But there are limitations to current science and perhaps to any science. The general mind-body problem is known to be intractable…
Time perception is crucial for a coherent human experience. As life progresses, our perception of the passage of time becomes increasingly non-uniform, often feeling as though it accelerates with age. While various causes for this…
The notions of time in the theories of Newton and Einstein are reviewed so that certain of their assumptions are clarified. These assumptions will be seen as the causes of the incompatibility between the two different ways of understanding…
We review the idea, due to Einstein, Eddington, Hoyle and Ballard, that time is a subjective label, whose primary purpose is to order events, perhaps in a higher-dimensional universe. In this approach, all moments in time exist…
This paper extends the work of a previous paper [arXiv:1208.2611] on the flow of time, to consider the origin of the arrow of time. It proposes that a `past condition' cascades down from cosmological to micro scales, being realized in many…
Even though the concepts of time and space are basic concepts of physics, they have not been vouchsafed a constructive definition. As to space, this is no wonder because a correct notion of space cannot be formed in the frame of the…
After stating the measurement problem, physicists usually assume the problem to be coming from the measurement part. Since classical probabilities also collapse when updating information, there is nothing special about quantum state…
Scientists continue to wrestle with the enigma of time. Is time a dynamic or a fundamental property of spacetime? Why does it have an arrow pointing from past to future? Why are physical laws time-symmetric in a universe with broken…
The spacetime structure of the spatially uniformly expanding universe is described in terms of a kind of global space and global time instead of the space and time we usually recognize. The global space at some instant is a space in which…
In this manuscript we initiate a systematic examination of the physical basis for the time concept in cosmology. We discuss and defend the idea that the physical basis of the time concept is necessarily related to physical processes which…
Did time begin at a Big Bang? Will the present expansion of the universe last for a finite or infinite time? These questions sound philosophical but are becoming, now in the twenty-first century, central to the scientific study of…
This essay offers a meta-level analysis in the sociology and history of physics in the context of the so-called "Arrow of Time Problem" or "Two Times Problem," which asserts that the empirically observed directionality of time is in…
The mind-body problem is reviewed in the context of a non-technical account of quantum information theory. The importance of clearly defining: `what is physical?' is highlighted, since only then can we give meaning to the concept…
Microphysical laws are time reversible, but macrophysics, chemistry and biology are not. This chapter explores how this asymmetry (a classic example of a broken symmetry) arises due to the cosmological context, where a non-local Direction…