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Single Idea 19475

[filed under theme 27. Natural Reality / C. Space / 6. Space-Time ]

Full Idea

Relativity says space and time are on the same footing - together they are the fabric of reality. Quantum mechanics, on the other hand, treats time and space differently, with time occasionally seeming more fundamental.

Gist of Idea

Relativity makes time and space jointly basic; quantum theory splits them, and prioritises time

Source

New Scientist writers (New Scientist articles [2013], 2013.06.15)

Book Ref

-: 'New Scientist magazine' [ 2013], p.36

A Reaction

Interesting. When talking about time, people glibly cite relativistic space-time to tell you that time is just another dimension. Now I can reply 'Aaah, but what about time in quantum mechanics? Eh? Eh?'. Excellent.

The 26 ideas from 'New Scientist articles'

19947 Hilbert Space is an abstraction representing all possible states of a quantum system [New Sci.]
17603 Chemistry just needs the periodic table, and protons, electrons and neutrinos [New Sci.]
17604 We are halfway to synthesising any molecule we want [New Sci.]
19477 General relativity predicts black holes, as former massive stars, and as galaxy centres [New Sci.]
19474 Quantum states are measured by external time, of unknown origin [New Sci.]
19473 The Schrödinger equation describes the evolution of an object's wave function in Hilbert space [New Sci.]
19475 Relativity makes time and space jointly basic; quantum theory splits them, and prioritises time [New Sci.]
19478 Light moves at a constant space-time speed, but its direction is in neither space nor time [New Sci.]
19476 String theory needs at least 10 space-time dimensions [New Sci.]
16420 84.5 percent of the universe is made of dark matter [New Sci.]
16419 No one has yet devised a rationality test [New Sci.]
16417 About a third of variation in human intelligence is environmental [New Sci.]
16418 People can be highly intelligent, yet very stupid [New Sci.]
19482 Current physics says matter and antimatter should have reduced to light at the big bang [New Sci.]
19483 CP violation shows a decay imbalance in matter and antimatter, leading to matter's dominance [New Sci.]
19484 Psychologists measure personality along five dimensions [New Sci.]
19955 Space-time may be a geometrical manifestation of quantum entanglement [New Sci.]
19954 It is impossible for find a model of actuality among the innumerable models in string theory [New Sci.]
19953 In string theory space-time has a grainy indivisible substructure [New Sci.]
19952 Black holes have entropy, but general relativity says they are unstructured, and lack entropy [New Sci.]
19737 A system can infer the structure of the world by making predictions about it [New Sci.]
19736 Neural networks can extract the car-ness of a car, or the chair-ness of a chair [New Sci.]
19949 Quantum theory relies on a clock outside the system - but where is it located? [New Sci.]
19948 Einstein's merging of time with space has left us confused about the nature of time [New Sci.]
19950 Entropy is the only time-asymmetric law, so time may be linked to entropy [New Sci.]
19951 Entropy is puzzling, so we may need to build new laws which include time directionality [New Sci.]