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I had never head of anything like this. Does that mean that space and time are somehow discrete instead of continuous?
by phn 12y ago
I had never head of anything like this. Does that mean that space and time are somehow discrete instead of continuous?
- marktangotango 12y agoThis idea kind of ties into the idea of a 'computable' universe: I'm no expert but this article gives some ideas[1]. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_physics#Criticism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_physics#Criticism
- jarin 12y agoFor all practical purposes, they kind of appear to be: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck_length https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck_length https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck_time https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck_time
- tjradcliffe 12y agoThey have a scale. They are not "discrete" in the sense that pixels are discrete because there is no grid (no orientation, no preferred direction, etc). Think of it like the resolution of a microscope: you can only see objects down to scales of 1 micron, say. That doesn't make what you are looking at discrete at the 1 micron level. It makes it blurry (invisible, or in the case of space and time, non-existent) below that level.
- PaulHoule 12y agoHow it shows up depends on the model. Superstrings are objects of (usually) Planckian size, so if the particles are the size of the "grain" then that is one way a scale could manifest. In other models like loops quantum gravity you can only ask questions about loops in space and not about points so that is another way the scale manigests.
- duaneb 12y agoDiscrete is probably not the best way of looking at it; instead, think of it as the smallest scale across which space can change. From this perspective, it's not possible to discern between a quantized and continuous spacetime.