- #1
The Geoff
- 11
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I came across this recently: http://arxiv.org/abs/1008.4805v1"
Whilst it's mostly beyond my level, from what I can grasp the suggestion is that SR and Minkowski's spacetime can be derived simply by looking at the universe as a network of discrete causal events (a granular universe on the Planck scale, presumably).
The obvious criticism would be that posing a causal network requires a model of spacetime of some description anyway, so it's a bit chicken and egg? It's an interesting idea though, and one which ties in with Wheeler's "it from bit" and various fringe concepts of the universe being a large scale computation of some form. Anyone with a bit more insight have any thoughts?
(PS - first real post, hello everybody!
Whilst it's mostly beyond my level, from what I can grasp the suggestion is that SR and Minkowski's spacetime can be derived simply by looking at the universe as a network of discrete causal events (a granular universe on the Planck scale, presumably).
The obvious criticism would be that posing a causal network requires a model of spacetime of some description anyway, so it's a bit chicken and egg? It's an interesting idea though, and one which ties in with Wheeler's "it from bit" and various fringe concepts of the universe being a large scale computation of some form. Anyone with a bit more insight have any thoughts?
(PS - first real post, hello everybody!
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