# Is Space Discrete or Continuous?



## bellisaurius (Jan 18, 2012)

sofort99 said:


> LOL!
> 
> That's actually what I think happens. We stay at one point until after an entropy "tipping point", then we become decoherent and then coalesce around the next point one planck length away.


Nothing like knowing I travel by a stutter warp drive where I briefy cease to be- in between the gulfs of the true void between spaces.


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## sofort99 (Mar 27, 2010)

bellisaurius said:


> Nothing like knowing I travel by a stutter warp drive where I briefy cease to be- in between the gulfs of the true void between spaces.


If you are willing to look at reality like this, I'm actually less interested in what's going on while I'm here, than I am in figuring out how to take advantage of the spaces in between.


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## Wulfyn (May 22, 2010)

sofort99 said:


> It's not the minimum. It's the maximum.
> 
> All movement is incremental. One Planck length per Planck time is equal to c, and is the maximum number of increments allowed.


That's entirely the point - it is both the minimum (nothing can move less than one planck length because that is the smallest unit allowed) and the maximum (because one planck length per planck time is the speed of light).




> We stay at one point until after an entropy "tipping point", then we become decoherent and then coalesce around the next point one planck length away.



So are you saying that as time moves by frame by frame the object is in the same position, and then at a certain tipping point it transports to the adjacent planck length? If so then what controls this tipping point?

Also what do you mean by coalesce? If you can disappear and reappear then how does this mechanism work and why are you limited to reappearing just one planck length from the original position? Also how long does the decoalescing and coalescing take if the minimum time length is one planck length and that is the rate you are travelling at if you are a photon?




> If you are willing to look at reality like this, I'm actually less interested in what's going on while I'm here, than I am in figuring out how to take advantage of the spaces in between.


What spaces in between? I thought you said the universe was discrete?


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## bellisaurius (Jan 18, 2012)

Wulfyn said:


> That's entirely the point - it is both the minimum (nothing can move less than one planck length because that is the smallest unit allowed) and the maximum (because one planck length per planck time is the speed of light).
> 
> 
> 
> ...


The coalescing part is talking about the Copenhagen interpetation, and how things don't exist as discrete objects at the atomic scale, but as probability distributions. Copenhagen comes into play because we don't perceive the world as a series of distrbutions, but as solid objects. Coalescing is a wave function collapsing because the item interacted with something else (being observed).


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## William I am (May 20, 2011)

It's continuous. How could it not be?

I like to think of the universe as a thing of bubbles- there are lots of different sizes and other things, but everything is pushing on something else and suspended by the constant balance of forces. Sometimes things move, but everything is constantly pushing and pulling on every other object in the universe in a state of balance. I think that space must be continuous, intuitively... but I can't quite explain why.

As for Time, Time doesn't exist. We created time to help us tell how things are relating to each other, but time is an arbitrary thing, usually based on some measurement of some physical thing (atomic clocks are based on the physics of radioactive decay, I think), and physical things have limitations on how small things can get, and therefore on how accurate they can get. 
Time is a made up "3rd party" if you will that is used to describe interactions between other things. It doesn't really exist, except as a human perception of things changing at different relative rates.

Also, given what you're saying on this last page here..... you should look up xeno's paradox.


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## RobynC (Jun 10, 2011)

@wuliheron
Would a Theory of Everything mean you'd know everything knowable?


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## bigtex1989 (Feb 7, 2011)

So this turns out to be a fairly easy question with the answer being "whatever makes the problem easier".

There can be equally strong cases for both discrete and continuous space, but I think most people throw in with continuous space because it makes things easier more often than not.

The argument I heard for continuous space was something like "think about how you take a nice integral. You get these pieces of area that become closer and closer together until you have a continuous function." It is close enough to be continuous.

The argument I heard for discrete space is "there MUST be something in between two things, always." Though at some point, that something has to not matter much.

My answer is, if your measurements are infinitely precise, you must consider space discrete. Since that will most likely never be the case, I'm just going to go ahead and do all my physics problems assuming space is continuous and save myself the touble.


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## wuliheron (Sep 5, 2011)

RobynC said:


> @_wuliheron_
> Would a Theory of Everything mean you'd know everything knowable?


It just refers to a single theory that in principle could predict any physical phenomena or explain why it is impossible to do so. Emphasis on the _*in principle*, _as it could be entirely impractical to predict even something mundane like the next roll of the dice in Vegas or the next winning lottery numbers.


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## RobynC (Jun 10, 2011)

So, the devil's in the details @wuliheron?


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## wuliheron (Sep 5, 2011)

RobynC said:


> So, the devil's in the details @_wuliheron_?


Exactly, all these theories are "holographic" in the sense that details are everything and the foundations can be broad providing real eye openers down the road.


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