Related papers: Is time one-dimensional?
A number of very different approaches to quantum gravity contain a common thread, a hint that spacetime at very short distances becomes effectively two dimensional. I review this evidence, starting with a discussion of the physical meaning…
Time is one of those issues about which many thinkers and scientists have tried to pronounce their finest thoughts, but the discourse about time has remained vague and often inconsistent. In this paper we put forward a conceptual framework…
In this article, the evolution of the ideas about the fourth spatial dimension is presented, starting from those which come out within classical Euclidean geometry and going through those arose in the framework of non-Euclidean geometries,…
Our main purpose here is to study some qualitative aspects of space and time. These include the notion of space and time regarded as the containers of respectively bodies and events, the divisibility of space, and the unrepeatability of…
Time is, figuratively and literally, becoming the new dimension for crystalline matter. As such, rapid recent progress on time-varying media gave rise to the notion of temporal and spatiotemporal crystals. Fundamentally rethinking the role…
For many years now it has become conventional for theorists to argue that "space-time is doomed", with the difficulties in finding a quantum theory of gravity implying the necessity of basing a fundamental theory on something quite…
A general sketch on how the problem of space dimensionality depends on anthropic arguments is presented. Several examples of how life has been used to constraint space dimensionality (and vice-versa) are reviewed. In particular, the…
Some notes and questions about the concept of time are exposed. Particular reference is given to the problem in quantum mechanics, in connection with the indeterminacy principle.
The satisfactory development of Quaternionic Analysis has indicated new solutions for physical and mathematical problems. It is worth mentioning the fact that quaternions possess four dimensions, and in this way they may be considered as…
Understanding the nature of time remains a key unsolved problem in science. Newton in the Principia asserted an absolute universal time that {\it `flows equably'}. Hamilton then proposed a mathematical unification of space and time within…
Some superstring theories have more than one effective low-energy limit, corresponding to classical spacetimes with different dimensionalities. We argue that all but the 3+1-dimensional one might correspond to ``dead worlds'', devoid of…
We distinguish two different concepts of time that play a role in physics: \textit{geometric time} and \textit{creative time}. The former is the time of deterministic physics and merely parametrizes a given evolution. The latter is instead…
This talk reviews some mathematical and physical ideas related to the notion of dimension. After a brief historical introduction, various modern constructions from fractal geometry, noncommutative geometry, and theoretical physics are…
Time has always played a crucial role in cosmology. I review some of the aspects of the present cosmological model which are more directly related to time, such as: the definition of a cosmic time; the existence of typical timescales and…
The idea that possible configurations of a physical system can be represented as points in a multidimensional configuration space ${\cal C}$ is explored. The notion of spacetime, without ${\cal C}$, does not exist in this theory. Spacetime…
There is a rich history of domino tilings in two dimensions. Through a variety of techniques we can answer questions such as: how many tilings are there of a given region or what does the space of all tilings look like? These questions and…
This paper attempts to synthesize various conceptualizations of the term "context" as found in computing literature. Ten conceptual dimensions of context thus emerge -- location; user, task, and system characteristics; physical, social,…
I discuss three connections between Dummett's writings about time and philosophical aspects of physics. The first connection (Section 2) arises from remarks of Dummett's about the different relations of observation to time and to space. The…
Four-dimensional spacetime, together with a natural generalisation to extra dimensions, is obtained through an analysis of the structures and symmetries deriving from possible arithmetic expressions for one-dimensional time. On taking the…
Time, space, and matter are categories of our reasoning, whose properties appear to be fundamental. However, these require a scrutiny as in the extreme regime of the primordial universe these present quantum properties. What does it mean…