Related papers: Relational Physics and Quantum Space
The quantum mechanics description of a physical object stretched in space and stable in time from the relativistic space-time properties point of view, introduced in special theory of relativity, is considered and analysed. The mathematical…
Quantum theory depends on an external classical time, and there ought to exist an equivalent reformulation of the theory which does not depend on such a time. The demand for the existence of such a reformulation suggests that quantum theory…
Relative motion of particles is examined in the context of relational space-time. It is shown that de Broglie waves may be derived as a representation of the coordinate maps between the rest-frames of these particles. Energy and momentum…
After a brief introduction to issues that plague the realization of a theory of quantum gravity, I suggest that the main one concerns a quantization of the principle of relative simultaneity. This leads me to a distinction between time and…
By taking into account both quantum mechanical and general relativistic effects, I derive an equation that describes some limitations on the measurability of space-time distances. I then discuss possible features of quantum gravity which…
Time in relativity theory has a status different from that adopted by standard quantum mechanics, where time is considered as a parameter measured with reference to an external absolute Newtonian frame. This status strongly restricts its…
The interpretation of quantum mechanics (or, for that matter, of any physical theory) consists in answering the question: How can the world be for the theory to be true? That question is especially pressing in the case of the long-distance…
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…
Most of the approaches to the construction of a theory of quantum gravity share some principles which do not have specific experimental support up to date. Two of these principles are relevant for our discussion: (i) the gravitational field…
We highlight three conflicts between quantum theory and classical general relativity, which make it implausible that a quantum theory of gravity can be arrived at by quantising classical gravity. These conflicts are: quantum nonlocality and…
Flat space-time has not heretofore been thought a suitable locus in which to construct model universes because of the presumed necessity of incorporating gravitation in such models and because of the historical lack of a theory of…
In this paper we investigate the history of relationalism and its present use in some interpretations of quantum mechanics. In the first part of this article we will provide a conceptual analysis of the relation between substantivalism,…
The theory of probability and the quantum theory, the one mathematical and the other physical, are related in that each admits a number of very different interpretations. It has been proposed that the conceptual problems of the quantum…
In special relativity theory the physical quantities are generally expressed as function of the velocity. In the particular case of an extended object, the factor 1/gamma of Lorentz contraction of its length in the direction of motion is…
Quantum gravity (or quantum spacetime) is to unify general relativity and quantum mechanics into a single theoretical framework and presented as the most important open puzzle in fundamental physics. The development of a microscopic theory…
The idea of quantum relativity as a generalized, or rather deformed, version of Einstein (special) relativity has been taking shape in recent years. Following the perspective of deformations, while staying within the framework of Lie…
Hardy's theorem states that the hidden variables of any realistic theory of quantum measurement, whose predictions agree with ordinary quantum theory, must have a preferred Lorentz frame. This presents the conflict between special…
Some authors in the quantum gravity community endorse, explicitly or implicitly, a radical relationalist view of time which states that the ordinal structure of time is not needed even in our classical theories, especially in general…
It is shown that, with some reasonable assumptions, the theory of general relativity can be made compatible with quantum mechanics by using the field equations of general relativity to construct a Robertson-Walker metric for a quantum…
We discuss how developments in physics often imply in the need that spacetime acquires an increasingly richer and complex structure. General Relativity was the first theory to show us the way to connect space and time with the physical…