Related papers: Brane Worlds, the Subanthropic Principle and the U…
Modern scientific cosmology pushes the boundaries of knowledge and the knowable. This is prompting questions on the nature of scientific knowledge. A central issue is what defines a 'good' model. When addressing global properties of the…
I cast doubt upon the desired consistency between the anthropic principle and modern cosmology.
We examine observational constraints on chaotic inflation models in the Randall-Sundrum Type II braneworld. If inflation takes place in the high-energy regime, the perturbations produced by the quadratic potential are further from…
We re-analyze the question of the use of cosmological observations to infer the present state and future evolution of our patch of the universe. In particular, we discuss under which conditions one might be able to infer that our patch will…
The Fermi Paradox is discussed in the light of the inflationary and brane world cosmologies. We conclude that some brane world cosmologies may be of relevance for the problem of civilizations spreading across our galaxy, strengthening the…
We analyze cosmology assuming unitary quantum mechanics, using a tripartite partition into system, observer and environment degrees of freedom. This generalizes the second law of thermodynamics to "The system's entropy can't decrease unless…
The violation of Bell inequalities seems to establish an important fact about the world: that it is non-local. However, this result relies on the assumption of the statistical independence of the measurement settings with respect to…
We propose an alternative inflationary universe scenario in the context of Randall-Sundrum braneworld cosmology. In this new scenario the existence of extra-dimension(s) plays an essential role. First, the brane universe is initially in the…
The Great Filter interpretation of Fermi's great silence asserts that $Npq$ is not a very large number, where $N$ is the number of potentially life-supporting planets in the observable universe, $p$ is the probability that a randomly chosen…
In the context of models where the dark energy density $\rD$ is a random variable, anthropic selection effects may explain both the "old" cosmological constant problem and the "time coincidence". We argue that this type of solution to both…
The observable universe is necessarily hospitable for life. There are indications, however, that the laws of physics and cosmological parameters need not take the form and values observed, and if they were slightly different life could not…
Anthropic arguments in multiverse cosmology and string theory rely on the weak anthropic principle (WAP). We show that the principle, though ultimately a tautology, is nevertheless ambiguous. It can be reformulated in one of two unambiguous…
The original formulation of the (weak) anthropic principle was prompted by a question about objective time at a macroscopic level, namely the age of the universe when ``anthropic'' observers such as ourselves would be most likely to emerge.…
The observable universe is fundamentally inhomogeneous and anisotropic. Quantum description of the generation of these inhomogeneities and anisotropies is ill-understood and unsatisfactory. After providing a brief account of the standard…
In cosmology the number of scientists using the framework of an expanding universe is very high. This model, the big-bang, is now overwhelmingly present in almost all aspects of society. It is the main stream cosmology of today. A small…
An intelligent agent will often be uncertain about various properties of its environment, and when acting in that environment it will frequently need to quantify its uncertainty. For example, if the agent wishes to employ the…
Cosmic inflation provides a window to the highest energy densities accessible in nature, far beyond those achievable in any realistic terrestrial experiment. Theoretical insights into the inflationary era and its observational probes may…
Inflation has been the leading early universe scenario for two decades, and has become an accepted element of the successful `cosmic concordance' model. However, there are many puzzling features of the resulting theory. It requires both…
We suggest to combine the Anthropic Principle with Many-Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Theory. Realizing the multiplicity of worlds it provides an opportunity of explanation of some important events which are assumed to be extremely…
We attempt to dissolve the measurement problem using an anthropic principle which allows us to invoke rational observers. We argue that the key feature of such observers is that they are rational (we need not care whether they are…