Reflections on the Fate of Spacetime
- 1 April 1996
- journal article
- Published by AIP Publishing in Physics Today
- Vol. 49 (4) , 24-30
- https://doi.org/10.1063/1.881493
Abstract
Our basic ideas about physics went through several upheavals early this century. Quantum mechanics taught us that the classical notions of the position and velocity of a particle were only approximations of the truth. With general relativity, spacetime became a dynamical variable, curving in response to mass and energy. Contemporary developments in theoretical physics suggest that another revolution may be in progress, through which a new source of “fuzziness” may enter physics, and spacetime itself may be reinterpreted as an approximate, derived concept. (See figure 1.) In this article I survey some of these developments.Keywords
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- String theory beyond the Planck scalePublished by Elsevier ,2002