Related papers: On the Reality of Minkowski Space
Epistemic interpretations of quantum mechanics fail to address the puzzle posed by the occurrence of probabilities in a fundamental physical theory. This is a puzzle about the physical world, not a puzzle about our relation to the physical…
The canonical answer to the question posed is "Yes." -- tacitly assuming that quantum theory and the concept of spacetime are to be unified by `quantizing' a theory of gravitation. Yet, instead, one may ponder: Could quantum mechanics arise…
There has been a recent spate of essays defending presentism, the view in the metaphysics of time according to which all and only present events or entities exist. What is particularly striking about this resurgence is that it takes place…
According to scientific realism, science gives us an approximately true description of what the world is like. But what does it mean? In this chapter, we focus on the ontological and metaphysical aspects of this discussion. That is, we are…
Quantum theory and relativity are the pillar theories on which our understanding of physics is based. Poincar\'e invariance is a fundamental physical principle stating that the experimental results must be the same in all inertial reference…
This essay examines our fundamental conceptions of time, spacetime, the asymmetry of time, and the motion of a quantum mechanical particle. The concept of time has multiple meanings and these are often confused in the literature and must be…
General relativity poses serious problems for counterfactual propositions peculiar to it as a physical theory. Because these problems arise solely from the dynamical nature of spacetime geometry, they are shared by all schools of thought on…
The issue of inertia as opposition to acceleration of a massive point particle in Minkowski space-time is investigated in the context of a Hamiltonian constraint system. It is shown that the inertia as a locally-originating force in…
Despite their diversity, many of the most prominent candidate theories of quantum gravity share the property to be effectively lower-dimensional at small scales. In particular, dimension two plays a fundamental role in the finiteness of…
Quantum states are the key mathematical objects in quantum theory. It is therefore surprising that physicists have been unable to agree on what a quantum state truly represents. One possibility is that a pure quantum state corresponds…
Recent advances in observational cosmology are changing the way we view the nature of time. In general relativity, the freedom in choosing a time hypersurface has hampered the implementation of the theory. Fortunately, Hamilton-Jacobi…
The existence of a global time is often taken for granted but should instead be considered as a matter of investigation. By using the tools of global Lorentzian geometry I show that, under physically reasonable conditions, the impossibility…
A particular science is not only defined by its object of study, but also by the point of view and method under which it considers that same object. Taking space and time as an illustrative example, our main aim here is to bring out an…
The present study attempts to provide a consistent and coherent account of what the world could be like, given the conceptual framework and results of contemporary quantum theory. It is suggested that standard quantum mechanics can, and…
Challenging Mermin's perspective that ``correlations have physical reality; that which they correlate does not'' we argue that correlations and correlata are not fundamentally distinct. These are dual concepts depending on the tensor…
The Block Universe idea, representing spacetime as a fixed whole, suggests the flow of time is an illusion: the entire universe just is, with no special meaning attached to the present time. This view is however based on time-reversible…
The nonlinear stability of Minkowski spacetime has been one of the central achievements in the mathematical theory of general relativity and, more broadly, in the analysis of nonlinear geometric wave equations. Since the seminal work of…
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…
The explicit coordinate transformations which show the equivalence between a four-dimensional spatially flat cosmology and an appropriate submanifold in the flat five-dimensional Minkowski space-time are presented. Analogous procedure is…
I present a brief review on space and time in different periods of physics, and then talk on the nature of space and time from physical arguments. I discuss the ways to test such a new perspective on space and time through searching for…