Related papers: Is time continuous?
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.
We propose that cosmological time is {\it effectively} the conjugate of the constants of nature. Different definitions of time arise, with the most relevant related to the constant controlling the dynamics in each epoch. The Hamiltonian…
We are used to the fact that most if not all physical theories are based on the set of real numbers (or another associative division algebra). These all have a cardinality larger than that of the natural numbers, i.e. form a continuum. It…
Time is a parameter playing a central role in our most fundamental modeling of natural laws. Relativity theory shows that the comparison of times measured by different clocks depends on their relative motions and on the strength of the…
According to Aristotle "time is the number of change with respect to the before and after". That's certainly a vague concept, but at the same time it's both simple and satisfying from a philosophical point of view: things do not change…
From the Physics point of view, time is now best described through General Relativity, as part of space-time which is a dynamical object encoding gravity. Time possesses also some intrinsic irreversibility due to thermodynamics, quantum…
The problem of the Nature of Time is twofold: whether or not time is a fundamental quantity of Nature, and how does clock time of metrology emerge in the experimental description of dynamics. This work strongly supports the fundamental…
Time is a parameter playing a central role in our most fundamental modelling of natural laws. Relativity theory shows that the comparison of times measured by different clocks depends on their relative motions and on the strength of the…
A notion of time is fundamental in the study of dynamical systems. Time arises as a standalone dynamical system and also in solutions or trajectories as a special kind of map between systems. We characterize time by a universal property and…
Two people may claim both to be naturalists, but have divergent conceptions of basic elements of the natural world which lead them to mean different things when they talk about laws of nature, or states, or the role of mathematics in…
Time is a parameter playing a central role in our most fundamental modelling of natural laws. Relativity theory shows that the comparison of times measured by different clocks depends on their relative motion and on the strength of the…
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…
What is time? Why does it "flow" and why are we sure that it flows from past towards future? Why is there such a gigantic distinction between the Past of our world, which we believe to be fixed, and the Future, which we consider…
Time can be defined as the duration between events. It is irreversible. When used as a variable in quantifying the changing properties of matter, this irreversibility of time is incompatible with Newton's deterministic mechanics and with…
Elementary particles, i.e. the basic constituents of nature, are characterized by quantum recurrences in time. The flow of time of every physical system can be therefore decomposed in elementary cycles of time. This allows us to enforce the…
The conceptual definition and understanding of the nature of time, both qualitatively and quantitatively is of the utmost difficulty and importance, and plays a fundamental role in physics. Physical systems seem to evolve in paths of…
The notion of time is derived as a parameter of statistical ensemble representing the underlying system. Varying population numbers of microstates in statistical ensemble result in different expectation values corresponding to different…
Despite the obvious utility of the concept, it has often been argued that time does not exist. I take the opposite perspective: let's imagine that time does exist, and the universe is described by a quantum state obeying ordinary…
We propose that physical time is based on counting the oscillations of wave functions. The discrete counting of the ticks of these clocks does not depend on the metric frame. It remains well defined for the beginning epochs of the universe.…
We briefly review two concepts of time - the usual time associated with "being" and more recent ideas, answering to the description of "becoming". The approximation involved in the former is examined. Finally we argue that it is…