  This report offers a modern perspective on the question of time
directionality as it arises in a classical and quantum-mechanical context,
based on key developments in the field of gravitational physics. Important
clarifications are achieved regarding, in particular, the concepts of time
reversal, negative energy, and time-symmetric causality. From this analysis
emerges an improved understanding of the general-relativistic concept of
stress-energy of matter as being a manifestation of local variations in the
energy density of zero-point vacuum fluctuations. Based on those developments,
a set of axioms is proposed from which are derived generalized gravitational
field equations which actually constitute a simplification of relativity theory
in the presence of negative-energy matter and a non-zero cosmological constant.
Those results are then applied to provide original solutions to several
long-standing problems in cosmology, including the problem of the nature of
dark matter and dark energy, that of the origin of thermodynamic time
asymmetry, and several other issues traditionally approached using inflation
theory. Finally, we draw on those developments to provide significant new
insights into the foundations of quantum theory, regarding, in particular, the
problem of quantum non-locality, that of the emergence of time in quantum
cosmology, as well as the question of the persistence of quasiclassicality
following decoherence.

General Physics