Quantum Cosmology and the Age of the Universe

TL;DR

This paper examines how the problem of time in quantum gravity impacts quantum cosmology models, highlighting the loss of temporal information like the universe's age and its implications for empirical content.

Contribution

It analyzes the effect of the problem of time on minisuperspace models in quantum cosmology, emphasizing the loss of temporal structures during quantization.

Findings

Temporal structures are lost in quantum cosmology models.

Loss of time affects the empirical content of the models.

The problem challenges the interpretability of quantum cosmology results.

Abstract

In this article I study how the problem of time of canonical approaches to quantum gravity affects the simple minisuperspace models used in quantum cosmology. I follow some authors who have argued that this issue makes the quantization of general relativity problematic to conclude that the same applies in the case of quantum cosmology. In particular, I argue that temporal structures are lost in quantization and that this is a problem, as they encode part of the empirical content of classical cosmology, such as the age of the universe.