Could space-time be a property of matter in string theory?

nuby · Dec 30, 2008

Could time and space just be properties of matter?

Marcaias · Dec 30, 2008

Wouldn't this correspond (roughly) to the Heisenberg picture of QM: fixed states with evolving positions and momenta?

ismaili · Dec 31, 2008

nuby said:

Could time and space just be properties of matter?

Usually, in the classical theory as well as quantum field theory, the concept of space-time is put in the theory "by hand."
For example, in a field theory, a particle can live in arbitrary space-time dimension. One can generalized our theory to any dimension he wants.

However, in string theory, the concept of space-time is somewhat different. It's a derived concept. For example, in the bosonic string case, the theory is only self-consistent in 26 space-time dimension.

Moreover, the concept of space-time can be different in a different theory. Actually I don't really understand this. But I heard from a talk that the concept of space-time could be different, so that two theories with different space-time dimensions could be "dual" to each other.

Could space-time be a property of matter in string theory?

Discussion

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