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The familiar textbook quantum mechanics of laboratory measurements incorporates a quantum mechanical arrow of time --- the direction in time in which state vector reduction operates. This arrow is usually assumed to coincide with the…
The (re)introduction of $\Lambda$ into cosmology has spurred debates that touch on central questions in philosophy of science, as well as the foundations of general relativity and particle physics. We provide a systematic assessment of the…
Classical, Quantum, Relativistic and Statistical: the four branches of mechanics. However, the Quattro Donna of Physics disagree even about the entities that are supposed to be fundamental, such as space, matter and time. In order to search…
Driven by the term "the arrow of time" as a general topic, the article develops a musical discussion by referring to the etymological origin of the term: philosophy (epistemology) and physics (thermodynamics). In particular, the article…
In classical Hamiltonian theories, entropy may be understood either as a statistical property of canonical systems, or as a mechanical property, that is, as a monotonic function of the phase space along trajectories. In classical mechanics,…
In this paper we lay out an argument that generically the psychological arrow of time should align with the thermodynamic arrow of time where that arrow is well-defined. This argument applies to any physical system that can act as a memory,…
An unresolved problem in physics is how the thermodynamic arrow of time arises from an underlying time reversible dynamics. We contribute to this issue by developing a measure of time-symmetry breaking, and by using the work fluctuation…
The thermodynamic uncertainty relation expresses a seemingly universal trade-off between the cost for driving an autonomous system and precision in any output observable. It has so far been proven for discrete systems and for overdamped…
Time is a parameter playing a central role in our most fundamental modelling of natural laws. Relativity theory shows that the comparison of times measured by different clocks depends on their relative motion and on the strength of the…
Recently, a thermodynamic definition of time has been introduced. This definition is useful to find approach some open problems in physics. But, it was obtained by a phenomenological approach and a logical inconsistency appears in the…
The cosmological arrow of time may be linked to the thermodynamic arrow by second law of thermodynamics. The time asymmetry is also associated with dissipative fluid as Tolman introduced a viscous fluid to generate an arrow of time in…
We revisit anthropic arguments purporting to explain the measured value of the cosmological constant. We argue that different ways of assigning probabilities to candidate universes lead to totally different anthropic predictions. As an…
According to the orthodox interpretation of bounce cosmologies, the universe was born from an entropy reducing phase in a previous universe. To defend the thesis that the whole of physical reality was caused to exist a finite time ago,…
As a basis for epistemological study of ``time,'' we analyze three suspect phenomena introduced by modern physics: non-locality, asymmetric aging and advanced interaction. It is shown that all three arise in connection with what has to be…
The only widely accepted explanation for the various arrows of time that everywhere and at all epochs point in the same direction is the `past hypothesis': the Universe had a very special low-entropy initial state. We present the first…
We consider the little-known anthropic argument of Fontenelle dealing with the nature of cometary orbits, given a year before the publication of Newton's Principia. This is particularly interesting in view of the rapid development of the…
The problem of the Nature of Time is twofold: whether or not time is a fundamental quantity of Nature, and how does clock time of metrology emerge in the experimental description of dynamics. This work strongly supports the fundamental…
If an asymmetry in time does not arise from the fundamental dynamical laws of physics, it may be found in special boundary conditions. The argument normally goes that since thermodynamic entropy in the past is lower than in the future…
George Price introduced his famous equation to study selective and environmental effects in discrete populations. We extend Price's framework to the measurable and quantum cases, decomposing all evolutionary processes into selective and…
The emergence of a direction of time in statistical mechanics from an underlying time-reversal-invariant dynamics is explained by examining a simple model. The manner in which time-reversal symmetry is preserved and the role of initial…