Related papers: Zeno meets modern science
We elaborate on the existing notion that quantum mechanics is an emergent phenomenon, by presenting a thermodynamical theory that is dual to quantum mechanics. This dual theory is that of classical irreversible thermodynamics. The linear…
In the past century many fundamental results on unpredictability, undecidability and uncertainty have compelled scientists to grapple with the idea that some questions may never be resolved within our current theories. While this…
This paper collects some reflections about an apparent incongruity between the usual (third-person) understanding of the probability of an event calculated for an extended period of time in the future (e.g., the expected probability of a…
A quantum system being observed evolves more slowly. This `'quantum Zeno effect'' is reviewed with respect to a previous attempt of demonstration, and to subsequent criticism of the significance of the findings. A recent experiment on an…
Quantum Zeno and anti-Zeno effects on pure dephasing are studied using exactly solvable microscopic models. The crossover between these two opposite effects is investigated. The case of a single two-level system undergoing dephasing is…
In an apparently unexplored region of relativistic spacetime, a simple thought experiment demonstrates that conjoined Lorentz transformations predict a proper clock at rest will run backwards and that prediction violates the logical…
Did time begin at a Big Bang? Will the present expansion of the universe last for a finite or infinite time? These questions sound philosophical but are becoming, now in the twenty-first century, central to the scientific study of…
We discuss an apparent information paradox that arises in a materialist's description of the Universe if we assume that the Universe is 100% quantum. We discuss possible ways out of the paradox, including that Laws of Nature are not purely…
Repeated measurements of a quantum particle to check its presence in a region of space was proposed long ago [G. R. Allcock, Ann. Phys. {\bf 53}, 286 (1969)] as a natural way to determine the distribution of times of arrival at the…
Part 1 : For more than two millennia, ever since Euclid's geometry, the so called Archimedean Axiom has been accepted without sufficiently explicit awareness of that fact. The effect has been a severe restriction of our views of space-time,…
Irreversibility remains one of the least understood concepts in physics. One of the main reasons is the fact that the fundamental laws of classical and quantum physics are time symmetric, whereas macroscopic processes evolve in a preferred…
This article has his origin in some lectures given at the University of Bologna, inside an interdisciplinary program of mathematics, history of science, physics and philosophy. Since they are at the junction of these fields, movement and…
The interface between quantum theory and gravity represents still uncharted territory. Recently, some works suggested promising alternative approaches aimed at witnessing quantum features to test the fundamental nature of gravity in…
Wigner's "unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics" in physics can be understood as a reflection of a deep and unexpected unity between the fundamental structures of mathematics and of physics. Some of the history of evidence for this is…
An apparent paradox in Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity, known as a Thomas precession rotation in atomic physics, has been verified experimentally in a number of ways. However, somewhat surprisingly, it has not yet been demonstrated…
We build a discrete model that simulates the ubiquitous competition between the free internal evolution of a two-level system and the decoherence induced by the interaction with its surrounding environment. It is aimed at being as universal…
In open quantum systems, the quantum Zeno effect consists in frequent applications of a given quantum operation, e.g.~a measurement, used to restrict the time evolution (due e.g.~to decoherence) to states that are invariant under the…
In the Nietzschean philosophy, the concept of force from physics is important to build one of its main concepts: the will to power. The concept of force, which Nietzsche found out in the Classical Mechanics, almost disappears in the physics…
We introduce a quantum mechanical model of time travel which includes two figurative beam splitters in order to induce feedback to earlier times. This leads to a unique solution to the paradox where one could kill one's grandfather in that…
The notion of contextuality, which emerges from a theorem established by Simon Kochen and Ernst Specker (1960-1967) and by John Bell (1964-1966), is certainly one of the most fundamental aspects of quantum weirdness. If it is a questioning…