Related papers: Anthropic principle in cosmology
The definition of thermodynamic entropy is dependent on one's assignment of physical microstates to observed macrostates. As a result, low entropy in the distant past could be equivalently explained by selection of a particular observer. In…
It is possible that the scale of gravity, parameterized by the apparent Planck mass, may obtain different values within different universes in an encompassing multiverse. We investigate the range over which the Planck mass may scan while…
Weinberg et al. calculated the anthropic likelihood of the cosmological constant using a model assuming that the number of observers is proportional to the total mass of gravitationally collapsed objects, with mass greater than a certain…
How special (or not) is the epoch we are living in? What is the appropriate reference class for embedding the observations made at the present time? How probable -- or else -- is anything we observe in the fulness of time? Contemporary…
I discuss the classical cosmological tests-- angular size-redshift, flux-redshift, and galaxy number counts-- in the light of the cosmology prescribed by the intepretation of CMB anisotropies. The discussion is somewhat of a primer for…
Physical cosmology tries to understand the Universe at large with its origin and evolution. Observational and experimental situations in cosmology do not allow us to proceed purely based on the empirical means. We examine in which sense our…
Cosmological fine-tuning has traditionally been associated with the narrowness of the intervals in which the parameters of the physical models must be located to make life possible. A more thorough approach focuses on the probability of the…
A review of the principles of observational testing of cosmological theories is given with a special emphasis on the distinction between observational facts and theoretical hypotheses. A classification of modern cosmological theories and…
A comparison of the standard models in particle physics and in cosmology demonstrates that they are not compatible, though both are well established. Basics of modern cosmology are briefly reviewed. It is argued that the measurements of the…
We challenge the widely held belief that the cosmological principle is an obvious consequence of the observed isotropy of the cosmic microwave background radiation, combined with the Copernican principle. We perform a detailed analysis of a…
We explicitly calculate the value of the cosmological constant, based on the recently developed theory connecting entropic gravity with quantum-events, induced by transactions, called transactional gravity. We suggest a novel interpretation…
This paper uses anthropic reasoning to argue for a reduced likelihood that superintelligent AI will come into existence in the future. To make this argument, a new principle is introduced: the Super-Strong Self-Sampling Assumption (SSSSA),…
The claim that life is an emergent phenomenon exhibiting novel properties and principles is often criticized for being in conflict with causal closure at the microscopic level. I argue that advances in cosmological theory suggesting an…
We present the possibility that the gravitational growth of primordial density fluctuations leads to what can be considered a week version of the cosmological principle. The large scale mass distribution associated with this principle must…
This paper presents a theory of systemic undecidability, reframing incomputability as a structural property of systems rather than a localized feature of specific functions or problems. We define a notion of causal embedding and prove a…
Cosmology has come a long way from being based on a small number of observations to being a data-driven precision science. We discuss the questions "What is observable?", "What in the Universe is knowable?" and "What are the fundamental…
In ordinary situations involving a small part of the universe, Born's rule seems to work well for calculating probabilities of observations in quantum theory. However, there are a number of reasons for believing that it is not adequate for…
The general use of subjective probabilities to model belief has been justified using many axiomatic schemes. For example, ?consistent betting behavior' arguments are well-known. To those not already convinced of the unique fitness and…
A cosmological version of the holographic principle is proposed. Various consequences are discussed including bounds on equation of state and the requirement that the universe be infinite.
Abstraction is a powerful idea widely used in science, to model, reason and explain the behavior of systems in a more tractable search space, by omitting irrelevant details. While notions of abstraction have matured for deterministic…