Related papers: Three's a Crowd: On Causes, Entropy, and Physical …
Recently, Carroll and Chen [hep-th/0410270] suggested a promising natural explanation of the thermodynamic arrow of time. However, we criticize their assertion that there exists a Cauchy hypersurface with a minimal entropy and argue that…
I will argue, pace a great many of my contemporaries, that there's something right about Boltzmann's attempt to ground the second law of thermodynamics in a suitably amended deterministic time-reversal invariant classical dynamics, and that…
We argue that in Universes where future and past differ only by the entropy content a psychological arrow of time pointing in the direction of entropy increase can arise from natural selection in biological evolution. We show that this…
In this paper, we investigate an important issue addressed by several approaches to quantum cosmology, like that based on loop quantum gravity and string theory: the existence of an arrow of time driving the cosmological evolution according…
The causal entropic principle aims to predict the unexpectedly small value of the cosmological constant Lambda using a weighting by entropy increase on causal diamonds. The original work assumed a purely isotropic and homogeneous cosmology.…
We address a long-standing misperception on the gravitational ``arrow of time'', a proposal by Penrose (also known as the ``Weyl-curvature hypothesis") that associates structure formation along timelike directions in which Weyl-curvature…
We investigate the thermodynamic arrow of time in a time-symmetrically recollapsing universe by calculating quantum mechanically the entropy production of a massive scalar field. It is found that even though the Hamiltonian has a…
Current cosmological observations indicate a preference for a cosmological constant that is drastically smaller than what can be explained by conventional particle physics. The Causal Entropic Principle (Bousso, {\it et al}.) provides an…
Since the 1909 work of Carath\'eodory, formulations of thermodynamics have gained ground which highlight the role of the the binary relation of adiabatic accessibility between equilibrium states. A feature of Carath\'eodory's system is that…
In the field theories with twistor structure particles can be identified with (spacially bounded) caustics of null geodesic congruences defined by the twistor field. As a realization, we consider the ``algebrodynamical'' approach based on…
In this paper we propose the use of concepts from thermodynamics in the study of crowd dynamics. Our continuous model consists of the continuity equation for the density of the crowd and a kinetic equation for the velocity field. The latter…
A careful reading of old articles puts Olivier Pauluis' criticisms concerning the definition of isentropic processes in terms of a potential temperature closely associated with the entropy of moist air, together with the third principle of…
The paper consists of the two independent papers - the first one about Nonquantum Gravitation theory, the second one about Quantum Gravitation theory (Part III: Nonquantum Gravitation theory) The first paper is dealing with the analysis of…
The Friedmann equations of general relativity can be derived from the first law of thermodynamics when the entropy of the apparent horizon of a spatially isotropic universe is given by the Bekenstein-Hawking entropy. We point out that if…
We give meaning to the first and second laws of thermodynamics in case of mesoscopic out-of-equilibrium systems which are driven by diffusion processes. The notion of the entropy production is analyzed. The role of the Helmholtz extremum…
An axiomatic approach to macroeconomics based on the mathematical structure of thermodynamics is presented. It deduces relations between aggregate properties of an economy, concerning quantities and flows of goods and money, prices and the…
I examine two cosmological scenarios in which the thermodynamic arrow of time points in opposite directions in the asymptotic past and future. The first scenario, suggested by Aguirre and Gratton, assumes that the two asymptotic regions are…
Even when completely and consistently formulated, a fundamental theory of physics and cosmological boundary conditions may not give unambiguous and unique predictions for the universe we observe; indeed inflation, string/M theory, and…
Most existing proposals to explain the temporal asymmetries we see around us are sited within an approach to physics based on time evolution, and thus they typically put the asymmetry in at the beginning of time in the form of a special…
Statistical physics cannot explain why a thermodynamic arrow of time exists, unless one postulates very special and unnatural initial conditions. Yet, we argue that statistical physics can explain why the thermodynamic arrow of time is…