Warsaw Spacetime Colloquium: Claus Kiefer (27 November on Zoom)

On Friday, 27 November, Claus Kiefer (University of Cologne) will give a talk entitled “Time in quantum gravity” (abstract below).

The meeting will take place online on Zoom (16:00-18:00 CET). If you have not registered yet, you can do so by sending a message to antonio.vassallo@pw.edu.pl.

The program for the winter semester can be found here, while the recordings of the previous meetings are available on the ICFO’s YouTube channel.

Abstract:

Time is absolute in standard quantum theory and dynamical in general relativity. The combination of the two theories into a theory of quantum gravity thus leads to a `problem of time’. In my talk, I shall investigate those consequences for the concept of time that can be drawn without a detailed knowledge of quantum gravity. The only assumptions are the experimentally supported universality of the superposition principle and the recovery of general relativity in the classical limit. Among the consequences are the fundamental timelessness of quantum gravity, the approximate nature of a semiclassical time, and the correlation of entropy with the size of the Universe. The last consequence gives rise to the irreversibility of our world.