Related papers: Spacetime Conventionalism Revisited
An asymmetry exists between time and space in the sense that physical systems inevitably evolve over time whereas there is no corresponding ubiquitous translation over space. The asymmetry, which is presumed to be elemental, is represented…
In an apparently unexplored region of relativistic spacetime, a simple thought experiment demonstrates that conjoined Lorentz transformations predict a proper clock at rest will run backwards and that prediction violates the logical…
Two questions are investigated by looking successively at classical mechanics, special relativity, and relativistic gravity: first, how is space related with spacetime? The proposed answer is that each given reference fluid, that is a…
The standard formulation of quantum theory assumes a predefined notion of time. This is a major obstacle in the search for a quantum theory of gravity, where the causal structure of space-time is expected to be dynamical and fundamentally…
The causal structure of space-time offers a natural notion of an opposite or orthogonal in the logical sense, where the opposite of a set is formed by all points non time-like related with it. We show that for a general space-time the…
Operational definition of space-time in light of quantum mechanics and general relativity inevitably indicates an intrinsic imprecision in space-time structure which has to do with space-time dimension as well. The operational dimension of…
In contemporary physics space and time are intertwined entities so that kinematical and dynamical quantities are expressed in the four-dimensional space-time. This formulation seems to contradict our every-day experience and perception…
Causality is one of the fundamental structures of spacetimes, determining the possible behaviour and propagation of physical information. Causal structure can be analysed through the various modal logics it induces. The modal logics for the…
The difficulty of explaining non-local correlations in a fixed causal structure sheds new light on the old debate on whether space and time are to be seen as fundamental. Refraining from assuming space-time as given a priori has a number of…
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…
Theories of quantum gravity generically presuppose or predict that the reality underlying relativistic spacetimes they are describing is significantly non-spatiotemporal. On pain of empirical incoherence, approaches to quantum gravity must…
Following recent assumptions to unify quantum mechanics and general relativity, the structure of spacetime is suppose to be a consequence of the relations among some fundamental objects, and its concept can be formulated without the…
Classical limits of quantum systems are shown to lead to different conceptions of spaces different from the classical one underlying the process of quantization of such systems. The accent is put in situations where traces of…
We show that the geometric structure of an arbitrary relativistic spacetime can be determined by the transformation groups associated with a collection of privileged coordinate systems.
General relativity poses serious problems for counterfactual propositions peculiar to it as a physical theory. Because these problems arise solely from the dynamical nature of spacetime geometry, they are shared by all schools of thought on…
Quantum measurement predictions are consistent with relativity for macroscopic observations, but there is no consensus on how to explain this consistency in fundamental terms. The prevailing assumption is that the relativistic structure of…
We discuss the usual account of causal structure that relies on the temporal precedence constraint between cause-effect pairs. In particular, we consider the subtle interplay between local and global characters of time and causality encoded…
I discuss several issues related to "classical" spacetime structure. I review Galilean, Newtonian, and Leibnizian spacetimes, and briefly describe more recent developments. The target audience is undergraduates and early graduate students…
Physicists are increasingly beginning to take seriously the possibility of laws outside the traditional time-evolution paradigm; yet our understanding of determinism is still predicated on a forwards time-evolution picture, making it…
Collapse models possibly suggest the need for a better understanding of the structure of space-time. We argue that physical space, and space-time, are emergent features of the Universe, which arise as a result of dynamical collapse of the…