Related papers: Spacetime Conventionalism Revisited
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…
As it is well known, classical mechanics consists of several basic features like determinism, reductionism, completeness of knowledge and mechanicism. In this article the basic assumptions are discussed which underlie those features. It is…
General relativity treats spacetime as dynamical and exhibits its breakdown at singularities. This failure is interpreted as evidence that quantum gravity is not a theory formulated within spacetime; instead, it must explain the very…
Although the standard viewpoint in theoretical physics is that the unification of quantum theory and general relativity requires the quantization of gravity and spacetime, there is not consensus about whether spacetime must fundamentally…
The discovery that the Universe is accelerating in its expansion has brought the basic concept of cosmic expansion into question. An analysis of the evolution of this concept suggests that the paradigm that was finally settled into prior to…
The generalisation of proper time, as an alternative to models with extra dimensions of space, has been proposed as the source of the elementary structures of matter. Direct connections with the Standard Model of particle physics together…
This paper explains why spacetime singularities do not constitute a breakdown of physical laws, and points out that the difference between the metrics at singularities and those outside of singularities is factual, rather than nomological.
A brief review about the Newman-Penrose formalism and the asymptotic structure of the spacetime is given. The goal of this review is to describe the latest developments in these topics and make a summary of the most important articles…
We propose a formulation of quantum mechanics in an extended Fock space in which a tensor product structure is applied to time. Subspaces of histories consistent with the dynamics of a particular theory are defined by a direct quantum…
Time-varying materials bring an extra degree of design freedom compared to their conventional time-invariant counterparts. However, few discussions have focused on the underlying physical difference between spatial and temporal boundaries.…
We present a generic way of thinking about time machines from the view of a far away observer. In this model the universe consists of three (or more) regions: One containing the entrance of the time machine, another the exit and the…
We discuss quantum non-locality and contextuality, emphasising logical and structural aspects. We also show how the same mathematical structures arise in various areas of classical computation.
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…
The problem of time in canonical quantum gravity is related to the fact that the canonical description is based on the prior choice of a spacelike foliation, hence making a reference to a spacetime metric. However, the metric is expected to…
We give a brief review of recent developments in five-dimensional theories of spacetime and highlight their geometrical structure mainly in connection with the Campbell-Magaard theorem.
The contemporary physics has revealed growing evidences that the emergence can be applied to not only biology and condensed matter systems but also gravity and spacetime. We observe that noncommutative spacetime necessarily implies emergent…
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…
There are many books on the classical subject of special relativity. However, after having spent a number of years, both in relativistic engineering and research with relativity, I have come to the conclusion that there exist a place for a…
I argue that some important elements of the current cosmological model are "conventionalist" in the sense defined by Karl Popper. These elements include dark matter and dark energy; both are auxiliary hypotheses that were invoked in…
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…