Related papers: On the Reality of Minkowski Space
Time is absolute in standard quantum theory and dynamical in general relativity. The combination of both theories into a theory of quantum gravity leads therefore to a "problem of time". In my essay I shall investigate those consequences…
Recent links between Finsler Geometry and the geometry of spacetimes are briefly revisited, and prospective ideas and results are explained. Special attention is paid to geometric problems with a direct motivation in Relativity and other…
This article explores the constraints of perception and cognition in relativistic physics. Describing reality as a cognitive representation of our sensory inputs, the article shows how the limitations in perception translate to the…
The state of our understanding of cosmology is reviewed from an astrophysical cosmologist point of view with a particular emphasis given to recent observations and their impact. Discussion is then presented on the implications for particle…
If our universe has appeared in a result of Big Bang or something like this, whether we have reasons to deny an existence of other universes appearing by the same or similar way? An objection that there is no anything like it, is doubtful,…
Quantum gravity (or quantum spacetime) is to unify general relativity and quantum mechanics into a single theoretical framework and presented as the most important open puzzle in fundamental physics. The development of a microscopic theory…
Einstein distinguished between ``principle'' and ``constructive'' theories in physics, and although he thought the latter were more explanatory than the former, he regarded his 1905 formulation of special relativity theory as a principle…
Minkowski space is a physically important space-time for which the finding an adequate holographic description is an urgent problem. In this paper we develop further the proposal made in hep-th/0303006 for the description as a duality…
It is shown that, with some reasonable assumptions, the theory of general relativity can be made compatible with quantum mechanics by using the field equations of general relativity to construct a Robertson-Walker metric for a quantum…
This is a contribution to a book on quantum gravity and philosophy. I discuss nature and origin of the problem of quantum gravity. I examine the knowledge that may guide us in addressing this problem, and the reliability of such knowledge.…
We consider the timelike minimal surface problem in Minkowski spacetimes and show local and global existence of such surfaces having arbitrary dimension $\geq 2$ and arbitrary co-dimension, provided they are initially close to a flat plane.
Our purpose here is to introduce the idea of viewing the spacetime as a macroscopic complex system which, consequently, cannot be directly quantized. It should be thought of as a collection of more fundamental "microscopical" entities…
The relevance of the Planck scale to a theory of quantum gravity has become a worryingly little examined assumption that goes unchallenged in the majority of research in this area. However, in all scientific honesty, the significance of…
Some ideas aimed to understand that time is one-dimensional are briefly reviewed. Some attempts to construct theories in varieties with more spatial and temporal components are presented. It is discussed, from the epistemological point of…
We study the behaviour of a non-relativistic quantum particle interacting with different potentials, in the background spacetime generated by a cosmic string. We find the energy spectra for the quantum systems under consideration and…
A deformation of special relativistic kinematics (possible signal of a theory of quantum gravity at low energies) leads to a modification of the notion of spacetime. At the classical level, this modification is required when one considers a…
After a brief digression on the current landscape of theoretical physics and on some open questions pertaining to coherence with experimental results, still to be settled, it is shown that the properties of the Deformed Minkowski space lead…
Quantum Poincar\'e-Weyl group in two dimensional quantum Minkowski space-time is considered and an appriopriate relativistic kinematics is investigated. It is claimed that a consistent approach to the above questions demands a kind of a…
The duality between the Cartesian coordinates on the Minkowski space-time and the Dirac field is investigated. Two distinct possibilities to define this duality are shown to exist. In both cases, the equations satisfied by prepotentials are…
A new interpretation of the causality implementation in the Lienard-Wiechert solution raises new doubts against the validity of the Lorentz-Dirac equation and the limits of validity of the Minkowski structure of spacetime.