Related papers: Catalogue of Spacetimes
We develop the spacetime approach to gravitational lensing by spherically symmetric perturbations of flat, cosmological constant-dominated Friedman-Robertson-Walker metrics. The geodesics of the spacetime are expressed as integral…
If we assume that there is the ultimate thoery at all, how should the concept of the spacetime be formulated? The following essay is my consideration on such a question. The use of mathematical expressions is suppressed as long as possible.…
The book gives an overview over the possible perspectives with regard to our conceptions of space and time in the transition from General Relativity to a future theory of Quantum Gravity. Here the most different approaches and strategies…
Special relativity turns out to be more than coordinate transformations in which the constancy of the speed of light plays the central role between two inertial reference frames. Special relativity, in essence, is a theory of…
We build a model of our spacetime by assuming new particles called "space quanta." In the ambient or bulk spacetime ${\cal S}^{D_{\rm amb}}$ ($D_{\rm amb} \ge 4$), a multitude of space quanta form a nearly three-dimensional object, whose…
We shall investigate $D$-dimensional Lorentzian spacetimes in which all of the scalar invariants constructed from the Riemann tensor and its covariant derivatives are zero. These spacetimes are higher-dimensional generalizations of…
A reflexive relation on a set can be a starting point in defining the causal structure of a spacetime in General Relativity and other relativistic theories of gravity. If we identify this relation as the relation between lightlike separated…
We summarize the arguments that space and time are likely to be emergent notions; i.e. they are not present in the fundamental formulation of the theory, but appear as approximate macroscopic concepts. Along the way we briefly review…
I review the holographic theory of space-time and its applications to cosmology. Much of this has appeared before, but the discussion is more unified and concise. I also include some material on work in progress, whose aim is to understand…
Research in quantum gravity strongly suggests that our world in not fundamentally spatiotemporal, but that spacetime may only emerge in some sense from a non-spatiotemporal structure, as this paper illustrates in the case of causal set…
It is generally believed that any quantum theory of gravity should have a generic feature --- a quantum of length. We provide a physical ansatz to obtain an effective non-local metric tensor starting from the standard metric tensor such…
Spacetime is modelled by binary relations - by the classes of the automorphisms $\GL(\C^2)$ of a complex 2-dimensional vector space with respect to the definite unitary subgroup $\U(2)$. In extension of Feynman propagators for particle…
Of those gauge theories of gravity known to be equivalent to general relativity, only the biconformal gauging introduces new structures - the quotient of the conformal group of any pseudo-Euclidean space by its Weyl subgroup always has…
The geometric foundations of General Relativity are revisited, with particular attention to its gauge invariance, as a key to understanding the true nature of spacetime. Beyond the common image of spacetime as a deformable 'fabric' filling…
We introduce class A spacetimes, i.e. compact vicious spacetimes $(M,g)$ such that the Abelian cover $(\bar{M},\bar{g})$ is globally hyperbolic. We study the main properties of class A spacetimes using methods similar to the one introduced…
This essay examines our fundamental conceptions of time, spacetime, the asymmetry of time, and the motion of a quantum mechanical particle. The concept of time has multiple meanings and these are often confused in the literature and must be…
In this paper an alternative theory about space-time is given. First some preliminaries about 3-dimensional time and the reasons for its introduction are presented. Alongside the 3-dimensional space (S) the 3-dimensional space of spatial…
There are a number of algebraic classifications of spacetimes in higher dimensions utilizing alignment theory, bivectors and discriminants. Previous work gave a set of necessary conditions in terms of discriminants for a spacetime to be of…
Using only the principle of relativity and Euclidean geometry we show in this pedagogical article that the square of proper time or length in a two-dimensional spacetime diagram is proportional to the Euclidean area of the corresponding…
The quintet of Dirac $4\times 4$ matrices suggests that the fundamental dimension of the internal (spin) space is $n=5$, instead of the conventional dimension $n=4$. Then extending the usual $4\times 4$ tetrads (vierbein), gravity is…