2008/12/02 by Adam D. Helfer, Adam Helfer, Helfer, Adam
Medicine · Physics and Astronomy · #Biofield Effects and Biophysics #FOS: Physical sciences #General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology (gr-qc) #Quantum Mechanics and Applications #Quantum Physics (quant-ph) #Relativity and Gravitational Theory #gr-qc #quant-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.0812.0605
10 pages, fqxi essay submission
arxiv created 2008/12/02 · openalex publication_date 2008/12/02 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
I suggest that measurement in quantum theory should be regarded as a sense of time (of things happening), which is as important as the conventional relativistic notion of time. A key question -- of basic physical interest whether one accepts the arguments here or not -- is, What physical criteria determine when a measurement takes place? I suggest a way in which the answer to this may be bound up with the resolution of some pathologies associated with the stress-energy operator, and may at the same time determine the cosmic flow of time. The problem of reconciling the quantum sense of time (measurement) and the conventional relativistic one gives some indication that the the correct "quantization" of gravity is essentially different from that of other fields.