Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astrophysics – General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology
Scientific paper
2008-11-23
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astrophysics
General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology
Submission to the Foundational Questions Institute Essay Competition on "The Nature of Time."
Scientific paper
Despite the obvious utility of the concept, it has often been argued that time does not exist. I take the opposite perspective: let's imagine that time does exist, and the universe is described by a quantum state obeying ordinary time-dependent quantum mechanics. Reconciling this simple picture with the known facts about our universe turns out to be a non-trivial task, but by taking it seriously we can infer deep facts about the fundamental nature of reality. The arrow of time finds a plausible explanation in a "Heraclitean universe," described by a quantum state eternally evolving in an infinite-dimensional Hilbert space.
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