Related papers: Observational Indistinguishability and the Beginni…
We discuss three candidate scenarios which seem to allow the possibility that the universe could have existed forever with no initial singularity: eternal infation, cyclic evolution, and the emergent universe. The first two of these…
The existence of initial singularities in expanding universes is proved without assuming the timelike convergence condition. The assumptions made in the proof are ones likely to hold both in open universes and in many closed ones. (It is…
Intuitively, the totality of physical reality -- the Cosmos -- has a beginning only if (i) all parts of the Cosmos agree on the direction of time (the Direction Condition) and (ii) there is a boundary to the past of all non-initial…
Frauchiger and Renner recently cast doubt on the universal applicability of Quantum Mechanics [1]. In the following, it is pointed out that their conclusion of one of three common-sense conditions, demanded for Quantum Mechanics, being…
In physics, there is the prevailing intuition that we are part of a unique external world, and that the goal of physics is to understand and describe this world. This assumption of the fundamentality of objective reality is often seen as a…
Many physicists have thought that absolute time became otiose with the introduction of Special Relativity. William Lane Craig disagrees and argues that although relativity is empirically adequate within a domain of application, relativity…
Determining the initial state of the universe is a challenging problem in quantum cosmology and we argue that the issue is intractable if the basic postulates of quantum mechanics are not modified in a nontrivial way. Namely a "standard"…
The Kalam cosmological argument, of a metaphysical nature, asserts that the universe had a first cause. This study examines the compatibility of its premises through a bibliographic review of advancements in contemporary physics. Quantum…
The discovery that the Universe is accelerating in its expansion has brought the basic concept of cosmic expansion into question. An analysis of the evolution of this concept suggests that the paradigm that was finally settled into prior to…
Did the universe have a beginning or does it exist forever, i.e. is it eternal at least in relation to the past? This fundamental question was a main topic in ancient philosophy of nature and the Middle Ages. Philosophically it was more or…
We discuss scientific realism from the perspective of modern cosmology, especially primordial cosmology: i.e. the cosmological investigation of the very early universe. We first (Section 2) state our allegiance to scientific realism, and…
In physical theories, boundary or initial conditions play the role of selecting special situations which can be described by a theory with its general laws. Cosmology has long been suspected to be different in that its fundamental theory…
Spacetime singularities in general relativity are commonly thought to be problematic, in that they signal a breakdown in the theory. We address the question of how to interpret this breakdown, restricting our attention to classical…
The fundamental physical theories that interpret and explain behaviour of matter in nature are dependent on several unobservables and insensibles in their construction. While a rigorous natural philosophy cannot take them for granted, there…
Naturalness problems such as the hierarchy problem and the origin of dark energy remain significant challenges in modern cosmology. This paper develops a rigorous mathematical framework where each observer defines their own universe, and…
I will review some results of observational cosmology which critically cast doubt upon the foundations of the standard cosmology: 1) The redshifts of the galaxies are due to the expansion of the Universe; 2) The cosmic microwave background…
Even when completely and consistently formulated, a fundamental theory of physics and cosmological boundary conditions may not give unambiguous and unique predictions for the universe we observe; indeed inflation, string/M theory, and…
We discuss cosmological models for an eternal universe. Physical observables show no singularity from the infinite past to the infinite future. While the universe is evolving, there is no beginning and no end - the universe exists forever.…
The contemporary physics has revealed growing evidences that the emergence can be applied to not only biology and condensed matter systems but also gravity and spacetime. We observe that noncommutative spacetime necessarily implies emergent…
The Kalam Cosmological Argument is perhaps the most solid and widly discussed argument for a caused creation of the universe. The usual objections to the argument mainly focus on the second premise. In this paper we discuss the dependency…