Related papers: Time as a Cosmological Phenomenon
This paper provides a prospectus for a new way of thinking about the wavefunction of the universe: a $\Psi$-epistemic quantum cosmology. We present a proposal that, if successfully implemented, would resolve the cosmological measurement…
On the basis that the universe is a closed quantum system with no external observers, we propose a paradigm in which the universe jumps through a series of stages. Each stage is defined by a quantum state, an information content, and rules…
The concept of time is discussed in the context of the canonical formulation of the gravitational field. Using a hypersurface orthogonal foliation, the arbitrariness of the lapse function is eliminated and the shift vector vanishes,…
We present the time drift of the cosmological redshift in a general spherically symmetric spacetime. We demonstrate that its observation would allow us to test the Copernican principle and so determine if our universe is radially…
The paper puts forward a conceptual framework in which the phenomenon of time can be presented and discussed in a proper way. We argue that change is ontologically and epistemologically a more basic phenomenon than time. Time is an abstract…
Time series are ubiquitous in our data rich world. In what follows I will describe how ideas from dynamical systems and topological data analysis can be combined to gain insights from time-varying data. We will see several applications to…
In any physical theory that admits true indeterminism, the thermodynamic arrow of time can arise regardless of the system's initial conditions. Hence on such theories time's arrow emerges out of the basic physical interactions. The example…
Entropy and the second law of thermodynamcs were discovered through study of the behaviour of gases in confined spaces. The related techniques developed in the kinetic theory of gases have failed to resolve the apparent conflict between the…
What is the shape of the Universe? Is it finite or infinite ? Is space multi-connected to create ghost images of faraway cosmic sources? After a "dark age" period, the field of cosmic topology has now become one of the major concerns in…
In both thermodynamics and quantum mechanics the arrow of time is characterized by the statistical likelihood of physical processes. We characterize this arrow of time for the continuous quantum measurement dynamics of a superconducting…
Quantum mechanical effects related to the recently developed projective theory of relativity are considered. It is shown that at cosmological time intervals the light velocity increases and the atomic units of length and time are shrinking.…
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 observed value of the cosmological constant poses large theoretical problems. We find that topology of the Universe provides a natural source for it. Restricting dynamically an Einstein-Cartan gravity to General Relativity in our…
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…
The Block Universe idea, representing spacetime as a fixed whole, suggests the flow of time is an illusion: the entire universe just is, with no special meaning attached to the present time. This view is however based on time-reversible…
If the topology of the universe is compact we show how it significantly changes our assessment of the naturalness of the observed structure of the universe and the likelihood of its present state of high isotropy and near flatness arising…
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…
The existence of a global time is often taken for granted but should instead be considered as a matter of investigation. By using the tools of global Lorentzian geometry I show that, under physically reasonable conditions, the impossibility…
In [Sch05a], it is argued that Boltzmann's intuition, that the psychological arrow of time is necessarily aligned with the thermodynamic arrow, is correct. Schulman gives an explicit physical mechanism for this connection, based on the…
It is widely believed that special initial conditions must be imposed on any time-symmetric law if its solutions are to exhibit behavior of any kind that defines an `arrow of time'. We show that this is not so. The simplest non-trivial…