5 ms·

Let’s Rethink Space: Does space exist without objects, or is it made by them?

8 points by pmcpinto 11y ago

teddyh 11y ago
Paywall.
- xlm1717 11y ago
  You can still read the article. They're just using it as an opportunity to sell a subscription.
misja111 11y ago
I wonder if dropping locality as a fundamental property and considering it as an emerging property instead, might make it possible to describe what happens inside an black hole? Because with the conventional views on locality, black holes are singularities in space and since our laws of physics depend on location, they are not defined in black holes where location itself is not defined. When locality is a property which might or might not emerge based on a physical context and some deeper physical laws, it should still be possible to describe the laws of physics inside a black hole because they don't depend on location anymore.
- norea-armozel 11y ago
  That's not exactly right in terms of the description of a blackhole. A blackhole can have a singularity (there's formulations of blackholes without them), but it is not the singularity itself. As for the question of what it would with regard to the singularity inside a blackhole, my guess is nothing unless you make some fundamental assumptions that the geometry of space/time cannot collapse into an infinitely small and dense point. Because the notion of locality doesn't mean much to the idea of a gravitational singularity. They'll still exist just as happily in a non-local universe as they do in a local one if distances are arbitrary. Or rather I should say if geometry/shape is arbitrary for all objects. What makes them a royal pain in the butt is the fact the solutions meant to remove them often leave lots of other assumptions in the air that don't quite square with observations like loop quantum gravity (LIGO I believe knocked out one formulation of it recently). So, until we can find some observable phenomena beyond entanglement that makes it apparent locality and spacetime as we understand it doesn't exist we're going to have to trust the current models we do have.

8 points by pmcpinto 11y ago

teddyh 11y ago

Paywall.

xlm1717 11y ago
You can still read the article. They're just using it as an opportunity to sell a subscription.

misja111 11y ago

I wonder if dropping locality as a fundamental property and considering it as an emerging property instead, might make it possible to describe what happens inside an black hole? Because with the conventional views on locality, black holes are singularities in space and since our laws of physics depend on location, they are not defined in black holes where location itself is not defined. When locality is a property which might or might not emerge based on a physical context and some deeper physical laws, it should still be possible to describe the laws of physics inside a black hole because they don't depend on location anymore.

norea-armozel 11y ago
That's not exactly right in terms of the description of a blackhole. A blackhole can have a singularity (there's formulations of blackholes without them), but it is not the singularity itself. As for the question of what it would with regard to the singularity inside a blackhole, my guess is nothing unless you make some fundamental assumptions that the geometry of space/time cannot collapse into an infinitely small and dense point. Because the notion of locality doesn't mean much to the idea of a gravitational singularity. They'll still exist just as happily in a non-local universe as they do in a local one if distances are arbitrary. Or rather I should say if geometry/shape is arbitrary for all objects. What makes them a royal pain in the butt is the fact the solutions meant to remove them often leave lots of other assumptions in the air that don't quite square with observations like loop quantum gravity (LIGO I believe knocked out one formulation of it recently). So, until we can find some observable phenomena beyond entanglement that makes it apparent locality and spacetime as we understand it doesn't exist we're going to have to trust the current models we do have.