arXiv subjects

Paul Merriam

Publications and source records attributed to Paul Merriam.

3 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2025

A Theory of the Big Bang in McTaggart's Time

There are long standing questions about the Big Bang What were its properties? Was there nothing before it? Was the universe always here? Many conceptual issues revolve around time. This paper gives a novel model based on McTaggarts temporal distinction between the A-series future-present-past and B-series earlier-times to later times. These series are useful while situated in a Presentist and Fragmentalist account of quantum mechanics, one in which the consistency with the Special Relativity in particular the relativity of simultaneity will be made explicit section 6. This allows us to make a fruitful distinction between two pertinent questions what happens as we go to earlier times toward the Big Bang? And: what happens as we go further into the past toward the Big Bang?

physics.hist-ph↗

arXiv2025

Presentist Fragmentalism and Quantum Mechanics

This paper states and gives three applications of a novel Presentist Fragmentalist interpretation of quantum mechanics. In a cognate paper it was explicitly shown this kind of presentism is consistent with special relativity and that it has implications for how to understand time as it relates to the Big Bang, 5. In this paper we narrowly focus on three applications. These are surely the most important conundrums for any proposed interpretation of quantum mechanics, Schrodingers Cat, Bell nonlocality, and the Born rule. It will be shown that these can be handled in a consistent and intuitive way.

physics.gen-ph↗

arXiv2005

Quantum Relativity: Physical Laws Must be Invariant Over Quantum Systems

Decoherence may not solve all of the measurement problems of quantum mechanics. It is proposed that a solution to these problems may be to allow that superpositions describe physically real systems in the following sense. Each quantum system "carries" around a local spacetime in whose terms other quantum systems may take on nonlocal states. Each quantum system forms a physically valid coordinate frame. The laws of physics should be formulated to be invariant under the group of allowed transformations among such frames. A transformation of relatively superposed spatial coordinates that allows an electron system to preserve the de Broglie Relation in describing a double-slit laboratory system-in analogy to a Minkowskian Transformation-is proposed. In general, "quantum relativity" says is invariant under transformations among quantum reference frames. Some conjectures on how this impacts gravity and gauge invariance are made.

quant-ph↗