Related papers: Possible physical universes
I survey physics theories involving parallel universes, arguing that they form a natural four-level hierarchy of multiverses allowing progressively greater diversity. Level I: A generic prediction of inflation is an infinite ergodic…
Scientists have measured that what we can see of space is about a billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion (10^81) times the volume of an average human. Inflationary theory suggests that the entirety of space…
This paper has two parts, for a specific multiverse, and for the origin of our universe as it resulted from that multiverse. The first is based on the Planck domain and a Chandrasekhar equation that have quantum, relativity, gravity, and…
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…
It goes without saying that we are stuck with the universe we have. Nevertheless, we would like to go beyond simply describing our observed universe, and try to understand why it is that way rather than some other way. Physicists and…
We consider the multiverse in the intrinsically quantum mechanical framework recently proposed in Refs. [1,2]. By requiring that the principles of quantum mechanics are universally valid and that physical predictions do not depend on the…
Arising out of an attempt at a new foundations of mathematics, in which relations are more primitive than sets, and out of the theoretical physicists' concept of underlying causes of empirical phenomena, the idea of a purely mathematical…
We explore the emergence of many-body physics from quantum mechanics via spontaneous symmetry breaking. To this end, we study potentials which are functionals on the space of Hamiltonians enjoying an unstable critical point corresponding to…
The development of science and technology has progressively demonstrated the ability of humankind to understand and manipulate the physical world, and it has also shown some fundamental limitations to predictability of physical events. This…
I explore physics implications of the External Reality Hypothesis (ERH) that there exists an external physical reality completely independent of us humans. I argue that with a sufficiently broad definition of mathematics, it implies the…
Perhaps one of the most intriguing questions in philosophy concerns the true nature of external reality. In this paper, we discuss some of the theories that have been put forth regarding the nature of reality and of our perceived universe.…
The ``unification'' of fundamental physical forces (interactions) imagines a ``single'' conceptual entity using which {\em all} the observable or physical phenomena, {\em ie}, changes to physical bodies, would be suitably describable. The…
A quantum theory of the universe consists of a theory of its quantum dynamics and a theory of its quantum state The theory predicts quantum multiverses in the form of decoherent sets of alternative histories describing the evolution of the…
The purpose of this paper is to propose an extension to Lee Smolin's hypothesis that our own universe belongs to a population of universes evolving by natural selection. Smolin's hypothesis explains why the parameters of physics possess the…
A description of physical reality in which wholeness is the foundation is discussed along with the motivation for such an attempt. As a possible mathematical framework within which a physical theory based on wholeness may be expressed,…
We construct an idealized universe for didactic purposes. This universe is assumed to consist of absolute Euclidean space and to be filled with a classical medium which allows for sound waves. A known solution to the wave equation…
This paper is a response to some recent discussions of many-minds interpretations in the philosophical literature. After an introduction to the many-minds idea, the complexity of quantum states for macroscopic objects is stressed. Then it…
The quest to understand better the nature of the initial cosmological singularity is with us since the discovery of the expanding universe. Here, we propose several non-flat models, among them the standard cosmological scenario with a…
We review current theoretical cosmology, including fundamental and mathematical cosmology and physical cosmology (as well as cosmology in the quantum realm), with an emphasis on open questions.
This paper is concerned with complex macroscopic behaviour arising in many-body systems through the combinations of competitive interactions and disorder, even with simple ingredients at the microscopic level. It attempts to indicate and…