Related papers: Physical unknowables
A source of unpredictability is equivalent to a source of information: unpredictability means not knowing which of a set of alternatives is the actual one; determining the actual alternative yields information. The degree of…
The fundamental physical theories that interpret and explain behaviour of matter in nature are dependent on several unobservables and insensibles in their construction. While a rigorous natural philosophy cannot take them for granted, there…
The uncertainty of a quantum state is given by the composition of two components. The first is called the quantum component and is given by the probability distribution of an observable relative to the state. The second is the classical…
A physical system is determined by a finite set of initial conditions and "laws" represented by equations. The system is computable if we can solve the equations in all instances using a "finite body of mathematical knowledge". In this…
The uncertainty associated with probing the quantum state is expressed as the effective abundance (measure) of possibilities for its collapse. New kinds of uncertainty limits entailed by quantum description of the physical system arise in…
If quantum mechanics is taken for granted the randomness derived from it may be vacuous or even delusional, yet sufficient for many practical purposes. "Random" quantum events are intimately related to the emergence of both space-time as…
It has been suggested, on the one hand, that quantum states are just states of knowledge; and, on the other, that quantum theory is merely a theory of correlations. These suggestions are confronted with problems about the nature of…
The study of undecidability in problems arising from physics has experienced a renewed interest, mainly in connection with quantum information problems. The goal of this review is to survey this recent development. After a historical…
The indeterministic outcome of a measurement of an individual quantum is certified by the impossibility of the simultaneous, definite, deterministic pre-existence of all conceivable observables from physical conditions of that quantum…
Do scientific theories limit human knowledge? In other words, are there physical variables hidden by essence forever? We argue for negative answers and illustrate our point on chaotic classical dynamical systems. We emphasize parallels with…
It is revealed that a special kind of Poisson stable point, which we call an unpredictable point, gives rise to the existence of chaos in the quasi-minimal set. The existing definitions of chaos are formulated in sets of motions. This is…
As computability implies value definiteness, certain sequences of quantum outcomes cannot be computable.
Quantum uncertainty is described here in two guises: indeterminacy with its concomitant indeterminism of measurement outcomes, and fuzziness, or unsharpness. Both features were long seen as obstructions of experimental possibilities that…
The role of impossibilities in theories of Physics is mentioned and a recent result is recalled in which Quantum Mechanics is characterized by three information-theoretic impossibilities. The inconvenience of the asymmetries established by…
The concept of uncertainty quanta for a general system is introduced and applied to some important problems in physics and mathematics. EPR paradox gives new clue to the further understanding of particle correlation which turns out to be…
Every quantum physical system can be considered the ''shadow'' of a special kind of classical system. The system proposed here is classical mainly because each observable function has a well precise value on each state of the system: an…
In the framework of effective quantum field theory we address the definition of physical quantities characterizing unstable particles. With the aid of a one-loop calculation, we study this issue in terms of the charge and the magnetic…
A number of unsolved problems and open questions about the nature and the properties of supernovae are identified and briefly discussed. Some suggestions and directions toward possible solutions are also considered.
In Physics, we have laws that determine the time evolution of a given physical system, depending on its parameters and its initial conditions. When we have multi-stable systems, many attractors coexist so that their basins of attraction…
It is often stated that quantum mechanics only makes statistical predictions and that a quantum state is described by the various probability distributions associated with it. Can we describe a quantum state completely in terms of…