Related papers: The End of Time?
We study the question of what is computable by Turing machines equipped with time travel into the past; i.e., with Deutschian closed timelike curves (CTCs) having no bound on their width or length. An alternative viewpoint is that we study…
In quantum gravity there is no notion of absolute time. Like all other quantities in the theory, the notion of time has to be introduced "relationally", by studying the behavior of some physical quantities in terms of others chosen as a…
On the base of years of experience of working on the problem of the physical foundation of quantum mechanics the author offers principles of solving it. Under certain pressure of mathematical formalism there has raised a hypothesis of…
We revisit the issue of time in quantum geometrodynamics and suggest a quantization procedure on the space of true dynamic variables. This procedure separates the issue of quantization from enforcing the constraints caused by the general…
The emergence of irreversibility in physical processes, despite the fundamentally reversible nature of quantum mechanics, remains an open question in physics. This thesis explores the intricate relationship between quantum mechanics and…
A general method is discussed to obtain Markovian master equations which describe the interaction with the environment in a microscopic and non-perturbative fashion. It is based on combining time-dependent scattering theory with the concept…
The picture of space-time that Minkowski created in 1907 has been followed by two important developments in physics not contained in the original picture: general relativity and quantum mechanics. We will argue that the use of concepts of…
A geometric approach to Sundman infinitesimal time-reparametrisation is given and some of its applications are used to illustrate the general theory. Special emphasis is put on geodesic motions and systems described by mechanical type…
Jacobi's action principle is known to lead to a problem of time. For example, the timelessness of the Wheeler-DeWitt equation can be seen as resulting from using Jacobi's principle to define the dynamics of 3-geometries through superspace.…
This paper explores the status of some notions which are usually associated to time, like datations, chronology, durations, causality, cosmic time and time functions in the Einsteinian relativistic theories. It shows how, even if some of…
In light of G\"{o}del's undecidability results (incomplete theorems) for math, quantum indeterminism indicates that physics and the Universe may be indeterministic, incomplete, and open in nature, and therefore demand no single unification…
We describe a link between the cosmological constant problem and the problem of time in quantum gravity. This arises by examining the relationship between the cosmological constant and vacuum energy in light of non-perturbative formulations…
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…
Contemporary research programs in fundamental physics appear to suggest that there could be two (physical) times---or none at all. This essay articulates these possibilities in the context of quantum gravity, and in particular of…
We consider classical and quantum dynamics of a free particle in de Sitter's space-times with different topologies to see what happens to space-time singularities of removable type in quantum theory. We find analytic solution of the…
The goal of this essay is twofold. First, it provides a quick look at the foundations of modern relational mechanics by tracing its development from Julian Barbour and Bruno Bertotti's original ideas until present-day's pure shape dynamics.…
As we have known comprehensively since the early 1990's works of Isham and Kucha\v{r}, The Problem of Time mostly concerns interferences between its many facets. Having introduced the local facets in Articles I to IV, we now show how…
In this article we study the nature of time in Mechanics. The fundamental principle, according to which a mechanical system evolves governed by a second order differential equation, implies the existence of an absolute time-duration in the…
We match the vacuum, stationary, cylindrically symmetric solution of Einstein's field equations with $\Lambda$, in a form recently given by Santos, as an exterior to an infinite cylinder of dust cut out of a G\"{o}del universe. There are…
As R.Feynman has shown to F. Dyson -- who published it then in 1990 under the name of "Feynman's proof of Maxwell's equations" -- the only interactions compatible with the canonical uncertainty relation (for scalar particles on flat $\R^3$)…