Related papers: Past events never come back
In contemporary physics space and time are intertwined entities so that kinematical and dynamical quantities are expressed in the four-dimensional space-time. This formulation seems to contradict our every-day experience and perception…
Entropy creation rate is introduced for a system interacting with thermostats ({\it i.e.}, in the usual language, for a system subject to internal conservative forces interacting with ``external'' thermostats via conservative forces) and a…
Irreversibility remains one of the least understood concepts in physics. One of the main reasons is the fact that the fundamental laws of classical and quantum physics are time symmetric, whereas macroscopic processes evolve in a preferred…
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…
A closer look (with hindsight) at Newtonian and relativistic kinematics reveals two things. Not surprisingly, Newtonian time remains the empty and artificial - albeit useful - figment it is known to be. Quite unexpectedly however it turns…
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…
The question of how irreversibility can emerge as a generic phenomena when the underlying mechanical theory is reversible has been a long-standing fundamental problem for both classical and quantum mechanics. We describe a mechanism for the…
Physicists are increasingly beginning to take seriously the possibility of laws outside the traditional time-evolution paradigm; yet our understanding of determinism is still predicated on a forwards time-evolution picture, making it…
Time irreversibility, defined as the lack of invariance of the statistical properties of a system or time series under the operation of time reversal, has received an increasing attention during the last decades, thanks to the information…
The concept of time mostly plays a subordinate role in finance and economics. The assumption is that time flows continuously and that time series data should be analyzed at regular, equidistant intervals. Nonetheless, already nearly 60…
It is brought forward that viable theories of the physical world that have no variable at all that can play the role of time, do not exist; some notion of time is one of the very first ingredients a candidate theory should possess. Almost…
The time irreversibility problem is the dichotomy of the reversible microscopic dynamics and the irreversible macroscopic physics. This problem was considered by Boltzmann, Poincar\'e, Bogolyubov and many other authors and though some…
Quantum non-local correlations and the acausal, spooky action at a distance suggest a discord between quantum theory and special relativity. We propose a resolution for this discord by first observing that there is a problem of time in…
We elaborate on the existing notion that quantum mechanics is an emergent phenomenon, by presenting a thermodynamical theory that is dual to quantum mechanics. This dual theory is that of classical irreversible thermodynamics. The linear…
It is a remarkable fact that all processes occurring in the observable Universe are irreversible, whereas the equations in which the laws of physics are formulated are invariant under time reversal. The emergency of irreversibility from the…
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…
The problem of time is a deep paradox in our physical description of the world. According to Aristotle's relational theory, time is a measure of change and does not exist on its own. In contrast, quantum mechanics, just like Newtonian…
General relativity allows for the existence of closed time-like curves, along which a material object could travel back in time and interact with its past self. This possibility raises the question whether certain initial conditions, or…
A review of some basic facts of classical dynamics shows that time, or precisely duration, is redundant as a fundamental concept. Duration and the behaviour of clocks emerge from a timeless law that governs change.
Discussions on indeterminism in physics focus on the possibility of an open future, i.e. the possibility of having potential alternative future events, the realisation of one of which is not fully determined by the present state of affairs.…