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Particles don't have infinite precision. Position and momentum precision is limited by Heisenberg uncertainty principle. Weight precision is also limited becaus
by ko27 3y ago
Particles don't have infinite precision. Position and momentum precision is limited by Heisenberg uncertainty principle. Weight precision is also limited because energy is quantized.
That, however, doesn't mean that spacetime is not a continuum.
- Aardwolf 3y agoThen what does spacetime being a continuum mean? What's the point of being a continuum if nothing in it can have arbitrary values. If everything in the spacetime has discrete values, what's there still to be continuous?
- ko27 3y agoGravity is continuous, and to disprove that you would need to disprove Lorentz invariance and Einstein's relativity. It's actually amusing that, just few weeks ago, people here on HN were arguing on why are we trying to quantize gravity and that it makes more sense for it to be non-quantum.
- Aardwolf 3y agoBut gravity is caused by the discrete particles (those with mass), so is it really continuous then? A discrete particle could only move in discrete steps, causing discrete jumps in gravity, would that be right? And if gravity is continuous, could it store infinite information (for all the same reasons, having arbitrarily precise values) then?
- ko27 3y ago> But gravity is caused by the discrete particles (those with mass), so is it really continuous then? Of course the field can be continuous, even if the weight is exactly some rational number. "Discrete steps" just means that the value differences in gravitational waves is also discrete. A bigger problem, where relativity clashes with QM, is stuff like singularity and superposition. We don't have an answer for that yet.