Related papers: A possible cosmological effect on the quantum-to-c…
The gap between classical mechanics and quantum mechanics has an important interpretive implication: the Universe must have an irreducible fundamental level, which determines the properties of matter at higher levels of organization. We…
We investigate the gravitational property of the quantum vacuum by treating its large energy density predicted by quantum field theory seriously and assuming that it does gravitate to obey the equivalence principle of general relativity. We…
The transition from quantum to classical statistics is studied in light of Huggett's finding that the empirical data do not support the usual claim that the distinction between classical and quantum objects consists in the capacity of…
The most striking observable feature of our indeterministic quantum universe is the wide range of time, place, and scale on which the deterministic laws of classical physics hold to an excellent approximation. This essay describes how this…
Quantum mechanics is nonlocal. Classical mechanics is local. Consequently classical mechanics can not explain all quantum phenomena. Conversely, it is cumbersome to use quantum mechanics to describe classical phenomena. Not only are the…
The meaning of the expansion of the universe, or the `expansion of space,' is explored using two phenomena: the motion of a test particle against a homogeneous background and the cosmological redshift. Contrary to some expectations, a…
It is regrettable that the quantum length of an object is rarely if ever discussed, because it provides an ideal pedagogical paradigm for understanding how a physicist uses classical intuition to define quantum properties and how such…
Quantum mechanical effects related to the recently developed projective theory of relativity are considered. It is shown that at cosmological time intervals the light velocity increases and the atomic units of length and time are shrinking.…
A formalism is developed for describing approximate classical behaviour in finite (but possibly large) quantum systems. This is done in terms of a structure common to classical and quantum mechanics, viz. a Poisson space with a transition…
It is shown that quantum uncertainty of motion in systems controlled mainly by gravity generally grows with orbital timescale $H^{-1}$, and dominates classical motion for trajectories separated by distances less than $\approx H^{-3/5}$ in…
Between the microscopic domain ruled by quantum gravity, and the macroscopic scales described by general relativity, there might be an intermediate, "mesoscopic" regime, where spacetime can still be approximately treated as a differentiable…
Whereas the entropy of any deterministic classical system described by a principle of least action is zero, one can assign a "quantum information" to quantum mechanical degree of freedom equal to Hausdorff area of the deviation from a…
Classical physics is approached from quantum mechanics in the macroscopic limit. The technical device to achieve this goal is the quantum version of the central limit theorem, derived for an observable at a given time and for the…
While ultimately they are described by quantum mechanics, macroscopic mechanical systems are nevertheless observed to follow the trajectories predicted by classical mechanics. Hence, in the regime defining macroscopic physics, the…
Quantum mechanics marks a radical departure from the classical understanding of Nature, fostering an inherent randomness which forbids a deterministic description; yet the most fundamental departure arises from something different. As shown…
It is possible that there may be differences in the fundamental physical parameters from one side of the observed universe to the other. I show that the cosmological constant is likely to be the most sensitive of the physical parameters to…
Modification to the behavior of geometrical density at short scales is a key result of loop quantum cosmology, responsible for an interesting phenomenology in the very early universe. We demonstrate the way matter with arbitrary scale…
We review attempts to estimate the influence of global cosmological expansion on local systems. Here `local' is taken to mean that the sizes of the considered systems are much smaller than cosmologically relevant scales. For example, such…
Duality transformations within the quantum mechanics of a finite number of degrees of freedom can be regarded as the dependence of the notion of a quantum, i.e., an elementary excitation of the vacuum, on the observer on classical phase…
The effect of the large-scale cosmological expansion on small systems is studied in the light of modern cosmological models of large-scale structure. We identify certain assumptions of earlier works which render them unrealistic regarding…