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Quantum mechanics, one of the most successful theories in the history of science, was created to account for physical systems not describable by classical physics. Though it is consistent with all experiments conducted thus far, many of its…
Quantum gravity places important consistency conditions on low-energy effective field theory, such as the absence of global symmetries. These may have important consequences in the search for particle physics beyond the Standard Model. We…
The fact that the energy densities of dark energy and matter are similar currently, known as the coincidence problem, is one of the main unsolved problems of cosmology. We present here a model in which a spatial curvature of the universe…
The understanding of the physical processes that lead to the origin of matter in the early Universe, creating both an excess of matter over anti-matter that survived until the present and a dark matter component, is one of the most…
Recent developments in holographic gravity suggest that spacetime structure may be deeply related to quantum mechanics. In this work, from a different perspective, we demonstrate that wave-particle duality can be interpreted as the…
Unitarity is a pillar of quantum theory. Nevertheless, it is also a source of several of its conceptual problems. We note that in a world where measurements are relational, as is the case in gravitation, quantum mechanics exhibits a…
Much progress has been made in the last few decades in developing the necessary mathematics for understanding the full implications of the quantum-mechanical many-body problem and why the material world appears to be as stable as it is…
The current understanding of the quantum origin of cosmic structure is discussed critically. We point out that in the existing treatments a transition from a symmetric quantum state to an (essentially classical) non-symmetric state is…
Modern cosmology successfully deals with the origin and the evolution of the Universe at large scales, but it is unable to completely answer the question about the nature of the fundamental objects that it is describing. As a matter of…
Relativity and quantum mechanics are generalized by considering a finite limit for the smallest measurable distance. The value a of this quantum of length is unknown, but it is a universal constant, like c and h. It depends on the total…
Dark matter, proposed decades ago as a speculative component of the universe, is now known to be the vital ingredient in the cosmos, eight times more abundant than ordinary matter, one quarter of the total energy density and the component…
A new formulation of relativistic quantum mechanics is presented and applied to a free, massive, and spin zero elementary particle in the Minkowski spacetime. The reformulation requires that time and space, as well as the timelike and…
Einstein's most famous equation -- $E=mc^2$ -- generated a short-circuit between the concepts of mass and energy, which also affects other concepts like matter, radiation, and vacuum. Physics currently has a mixture of classical,…
The hard problem in consciousness is the problem of understanding how physical processes in the brain could give rise to subjective conscious experience. In this paper, I suggest that in order to understand the relationship between…
A program was recently initiated to bridge the gap between the Planck scale physics described by loop quantum gravity and the familiar low energy world. We illustrate the conceptual problems and their solutions through a toy model: quantum…
There are many theories that have resided these last fifty years within the hazy mist we have been calling the Standard Model (SM) of elementary particles. An attempt is made here to construct a coherent description of the SM today, because…
A new kind of duality between the deep structures of spacetime and matter is proposed here, considering two partial orders which incorporate causality, extensity, and discreteness. This may have surprising consequences for the emergence of…
Current physics is faced with the fundamental problem of unifying quantum theory and general relativity, which would have resulted in quantum gravity. The main effort to construct the latter has been bent on quantizing spacetime structure,…
We discuss the problems of dark matter, quantum gravity, and vacuum energy within the context of a theory for which Lorentz invariance is not postulated, but instead emerges as a natural consequence in the physical regimes where it has been…
We reconsider some important foundational problems of quantum mechanics. After reviewing the measurement problem and discussing its unavoidability, we analyze some proposals to overcome it. This analysis leads us to reconsider the current…