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General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology

Title: Time (a-)symmetry in a recollapsing quantum universe

Authors: H. D. Zeh
Abstract: It is argued that Hawking's `greatest mistake' may not have been a mistake at all. According to the canonical quantum theory of gravity for Friedmann type universes, any time arrows of general nature can only be correlated with that of the expansion. For recollapsing universes this seems to be facilitated in part by quantum effects close to their maximum size. Because of the resulting thermodynamical symmetry between expansion and (formal) collapse, black holes must formally become `white' during the collapse phase (while physically only expansion of the universe and black holes can be observed). It is conjectured that the quantum universe remains completely singularity-free in this way (except for the homogeneous singularity) if an appropriate boundary condition for the wave function is able to exclude {\it past} singularities (as is often assumed).
Comments: 12 pages, Contribution presented at Mazagon, Spain, October 1991
Subjects: General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology (gr-qc)
Cite as: arXiv:gr-qc/9403020
  (or arXiv:gr-qc/9403020v1 for this version)

Submission history

From: [view email]
[v1] Thu, 10 Mar 1994 15:55:06 GMT (14kb)