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12 - The Seeds of Cosmic Structure, the Black Hole Information Puzzle, and the Entropic Arrow of Time

from Part IV - The Whole Universe

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 October 2025

Cristian López
Affiliation:
Université de Lausanne, Switzerland
Olimpia Lombardi
Affiliation:
Universidad de Buenos Aires, Argentina
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Summary

The conceptual problems of quantum theory make a particularly strong appearance in contexts such as black hole physics, or the physics of the very early universe, where the theory must be used with nothing that could be reasonably given the “role of observer” or a “measuring device.” As such, those situations offer a rather fertile ground, where proposals for dealing with those problems could produce results that actually differ substantially from the ones obtained within the “standard type” of studies, where those questions are essentially ignored. We will explore the ways in which one of the proposals to address the so-called measurement problem affects various specific issues that arise within the above-mentioned fields. We will see that in our specific approach to the subject several well-known and concrete problems seem to simply disappear, and in particular, that it could offer a novel and unexpected account for the nature of the entropic arrow of time in cosmology.

Information

Type
Chapter
Information
The Arrow of Time
From Local Systems to the Whole Universe
, pp. 250 - 266
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2025

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