Related papers: Relativity Is Not About Spacetime
Relationships between objects constitute our notion of space. When these relationships change we interpret this as the passage of time. Observer interpretations are essential to the way we understand these relationships. Hence observer…
I present a discussion of some issues in the ontology of spacetime. After a characterisation of the controversies among relationists, substantivalists, eternalists, and presentists, I offer a new argument for rejecting presentism, the…
Time is absolute in standard quantum theory and dynamical in general relativity. The combination of both theories into a theory of quantum gravity leads therefore to a "problem of time". In my essay I shall investigate those consequences…
The equivalence principle postulates a frame. This implies globally special and locally general relativity. It is proposed here that spacetime emerges from the gauge potential of translations, whilst the Lorenz symmetry is gauged into the…
Over the last decade a growing number of quantum-gravity researchers has been looking for opportunities for the first ever experimental evidence of a Planck-length quantum property of spacetime. These studies are usually based on the…
The developments of special relativity and quantum mechanics marked the beginning of the modern physics age. The former has taught us that while space and time are frame dependent notions, there is a quantity -- the space-time interval --…
The Block Universe idea, representing spacetime as a fixed whole, suggests the flow of time is an illusion: the entire universe just is, with no special meaning attached to the present time. This view is however based on time-reversible…
Unsolved controversies about uncertainty relations and quantum measurements still persists nowadays. They originate around the shortcomings regarding the conventional interpretation of uncertainty relations. Here we show that the respective…
From the ancient Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen paradox to the recent Sorkin-type impossible measurements problem, the contradictions between relativistic causality, quantum non-locality, and quantum measurement have persisted. Based on quantum…
The physical origin of spacetime discreteness remains a central open problem in quantum gravity, with most existing approaches relying on specific microscopic structures or model-dependent assumptions. In this letter, spacetime discreteness…
It is proposed that spacetime should be regarded as an evolving block universe, bounded to the future by the present time, which continually extends to the future. This future boundary is defined at each time by measuring proper time along…
Based on the consideration of naturalness and physical facts in Einstein's theories of relativity, a nontrivial spacetime physical picture, which has a slight difference from the standard one, is introduced by making a further distinction…
Space-time is one of the most essential, yet most mysterious concepts in physics. In quantum mechanics it is common to understand time as a marker of instances of evolution and define states around all the space but at one time; while in…
Observing the violation of Bell's inequality tells us something about all possible future theories: they must all predict nonlocal correlations. Hence Nature is nonlocal. After an elementary introduction to nonlocality and a brief review of…
The role of time in quantum mechanics is discussed. The differences between ordinary observables and an observable which corresponds to the time of an event is examined. In particular, the time-of-arrival of a particle to a fixed location…
In the present paper we give conclusive arguments pointing at physical equivalence among conformally related metrics. Based on the argument that any consistent effective theory of spacetime must be invariant under the one-parameter group of…
General relativity promotes space-time to a physical, dynamical object subject to equations of motion. Quantum gravity, accordingly, must provide a quantum framework for space-time, applicable on the smallest distance scales. Just like…
Classical mechanics, relativity, electrodynamics and quantum mechanics are often depicted as separate realms of physics, each with its own formalism and notion. This remains unsatisfactory with respect to the unity of nature and to the…
By taking into account both quantum mechanical and general relativistic effects, I derive an equation that describes limitations on the measurability of space-time distances as defined by a material reference system.
The geometric form of standard quantum mechanics is compatible with the two postulates: 1) The laws of physics are invariant under the choice of experimental setup and 2) Every quantum observation or event is intrinsically statistical.…