Related papers: Spacetime is material
This paper discusses how the transactional interpretation of quantum mechanics can provide for a natural account of the emergence of spacetime events from a quantum substratum. In this account, spacetime is not a substantive manifold that…
Understanding the emergence of a tangible 4-dimensional space-time from a quantum theory of gravity promises to be a tremendously difficult task. This article makes the case that this task may not have to be carried. Space-time as we know…
This article deals with empty spacetime and the question of its physical reality. By "empty spacetime" we mean a collection of bare spacetime points, the remains of ridding spacetime of all matter and fields. We ask whether these geometric…
Quantum Theory, similar to Relativity Theory, requires a new concept of space-time, imposed by a universal constant. While velocity of light $c$ not being infinite calls for a redefinition of space-time on large and cosmological scales,…
Quantum gravity has become a fertile interface between gravitational physics and quantum many-body physics, with its double goal of identifying the microscopic constituents of the universe and their fundamental dynamics, and of…
We give a brief overview of the nature of spacetime emerging from string theory. This is radically different from the familiar spacetime of Einstein's relativity. At a perturbative level, the spacetime metric appears as ``coupling…
According to Schopenhauer, Kant's arguments about the transcendental ideality of space and time can be extended to matter through the concept of causality and the principle of sufficient reason. In this article, I examine to what extent…
With the theory of special relativity, time has been linked with space into a four-dimensional space-time from which a basic question must be asked: can space be really transformed into time and vice-versa? The response is affirmative if…
The Einsteinian Theory of Gravitation ("General Theory of Relativity") is founded essentially; on the reception that the geometrical properties of the 4-dimensional space-time continuum are defined from the matter in it. Contrary to this,…
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 consider the manner in which the spacetime manifold emerges from a quantum substratum through the transactional process, in which spacetime events and their connections are established. In this account, there is no background spacetime…
In prior work, we have argued that spacetime functionalism provides tools for clarifying the conceptual difficulties specifically linked to the emergence of spacetime in certain approaches to quantum gravity. We argue in this article that…
Different aspects of relativity, mainly in a canonical formulation, relevant for the question "Is spacetime nothing more than a mathematical space (which describes the evolution in time of the ordinary three-dimensional world) or is it a…
The fact that in Minkowski space, space and time are both quantized does not have to be introduced as a new postulate in physics, but can actually be derived by combining certain features of General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics. This is…
This paper forms part of a wider campaign: to deny pointillisme. That is the doctrine that a physical theory's fundamental quantities are defined at points of space or of spacetime, and represent intrinsic properties of such points or…
Challenging Mermin's perspective that ``correlations have physical reality; that which they correlate does not'' we argue that correlations and correlata are not fundamentally distinct. These are dual concepts depending on the tensor…
All gauge theories need ``something fixed'' even as ``something changes.'' Underlying the implementation of these ideas all major physical theories make indispensable use of an elaborately designed spacetime model as the ``something…
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…
The paper defends the thesis that it's possible to maintain some conceptual preconditions of overcoming of relativistic intentions in modern philosophy of science ("there are no any general foundations in philosophy of science"). We found…
It is a remarkable fact that all processes occurring in the observable Universe are irreversible, whereas the equations in which the laws of physics are formulated are invariant under time reversal. The emergency of irreversibility from the…