Related papers: Is Winter Coming?
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…
The climate system is a forced, dissipative, nonlinear, complex and heterogeneous system that is out of thermodynamic equilibrium. The system exhibits natural variability on many scales of motion, in time as well as space, and it is subject…
A variety of physical unknowables are discussed. Provable lack of physical omniscience, omnipredictability and omnipotence is derived by reduction to problems which are known to be recursively unsolvable. "Chaotic" symbolic dynamical…
In the paper, the idea of describing not-yet-verified properties of quantum objects with logical many-valuedness is scrutinized. As it is argued, to promote such an idea, the following two foundational problems of many-valued quantum logic…
In this work, we show that very natural, apparently simple problems in quantum measurement theory can be undecidable even if their classical analogues are decidable. Undecidability hence appears as a genuine quantum property here. Formally,…
Recent observations of variability in the ``atmospheric neutrino'' rate place constraints on possible explanations of the atmospheric neutrino anomaly. Many proposed solutions to the problem are static and can not be adapted to the temporal…
Quantum technology is full of figurative and literal noise obscuring its promise. In this overview, we will attempt to provide a sober assessment of the promise of quantum technology with a focus on computing. We provide a tour of quantum…
An intense effort is being made today to build a quantum computer. Instead of presenting what has been achieved, I invoke here analogies from the history of science in an attempt to glimpse what the future might hold. Quantum computing is…
Much has been discussed in the philosophy of science about how we should understand the scientific enterprise. On the one hand, scientific realists believe that empirically adequate theories can be supplemented by interpretations that can…
The uncertainty associated with probing the quantum state is expressed as the effective abundance (measure) of possibilities for its collapse. New kinds of uncertainty limits entailed by quantum description of the physical system arise in…
Quantum gravity--the marriage of quantum physics with general relativity--is bound to contain deep and important lessons for the nature of physical time. Some of these lessons shall be canvassed here, particularly as they arise from quantum…
The world is facing the challenge of climate crisis. Despite the consensus in scientific community about anthropogenic global warming, the web is flooded with articles spreading climate misinformation. These articles are carefully…
The reasoning with qualitative uncertainty measures involves comparative statements about events in terms of their likeliness without necessarily assigning an exact numerical value to these events. The paper is divided into two parts. In…
Frequency of warm and cold winters in the North Eurasian regions is analyzed from long-term data, depending on El Nino phenomena of different types. Frequencies of extremely warm and extremely cold winters for North Eurasian regions in…
If one asked some friends where on the horizon they should expect to see the sunrise, half of the answers would be "in the east". Of course, something analogous would happen with the sunset and the west. However, sunrise and sunset…
The program of a physical concept of information is outlined in the framework of quantum theory. A proposal is made for how to avoid the introduction of axiomatic observables. The conventional (collapse) and the Everett interpretations of…
We review the current status of dimensions, as the result of a long and controversial history that includes input from philosophy and physics. Our conclusion is that they are subjective but essential concepts which provide a kind of…
Nature, in the form of dissipation, inevitably intervenes in our efforts to control a quantum system. In this talk we show that although we cannot, in general, compensate for dissipation by coherent control of the system, such effects are…
This note presents two ideas. The first one is that quantum theory has a fundamentally perturbative basis but leads to nonperturbative states which it would seem natural to take into account in the foundation of a theory of quantum…
Environmental determinism in the past followed from the belief that the gods bestowed political power and the best possible weather on the sponsors of early scholars. Although later discredited in academia because of the associations with…