Emergence of time
arXiv:1911.04772 · doi:10.1007/s10701-020-00331-x
Abstract
Microphysical laws are time reversible, but macrophysics, chemistry and biology are not. This chapter explores how this asymmetry (a classic example of a broken symmetry) arises due to the cosmological context, where a non-local Direction of Time is imposed by the expansion of the universe. This situation is best represented by an Evolving Block Universe, where local arrows of time (thermodynamic, electrodynamic, gravitational, wave, quantum, biological) emerge in concordance with the Direction of Time because a global Past Condition results in the Second Law of Thermodynamics pointing to the future. At the quantum level, the indefinite future changes to the definite past due to quantum wave function collapse events.
arXiv comment31 pages, 4 figures, 1 table. Revised in response to comments received. Second author added
References in corpus (20)
- Planck 2015 results. XIII. Cosmological parameters
- The Dynamics of General Relativity
- Minimal Length Scale Scenarios for Quantum Gravity
- The Spin Foam Approach to Quantum Gravity
- Spin Foam Models for Quantum Gravity
- The Emergent Universe: inflationary cosmology with no singularity
- The Emergent Universe: An Explicit Construction
- On average properties of inhomogeneous fluids in general relativity II: perfect fluid cosmologies
- Statistical Mechanics: A Selective Review of Two Central Issues
- Does the growth of structure affect our dynamical models of the universe? The averaging, backreaction and fitting problems in cosmology
- A Gravitational Entropy Proposal
- Physics in the Real Universe: Time and Spacetime
- The arrow of causality and quantum gravity
- Contextual Wavefunction Collapse: An integrated theory of quantum measurement
- On the limits of quantum theory: contextuality and the quantum-classical cut
- Bias and scatter in the Hubble diagram from cosmological large-scale structure
- Indeterminism in Physics, Classical Chaos and Bohmian Mechanics. Are Real Numbers Really Real?
- The Evolving Block Universe and the Meshing Together of Times
- How Downwards Causation Occurs in Digital Computers
- Electromagnetism and time-asymmetry