Mathematician John Baez has a paper on the
arXiv called Struggles with the Continuum, which
he concludes with this:
We have
seen that in every major theory of physics, challenging mathematical questions
arise from the assumption that spacetime is a continuum. The continuum
threatens us with infinities. Do these infinities threaten our ability to extract
predictions from these theories—or even our ability to formulate these theories
in a precise way? We can answer these questions, but only with hard work. Is
this a sign that we are somehow on the wrong track? Is the continuum as we
understand it only an approximation to some deeper model of spacetime? Only
time will tell. Nature is providing us with plenty of clues, but it will take
patience to read them correctly.
As readers of this blog well know, the
assumption that spacetime is a continuum is absolutely wrong. The spacetime
model that is the main subject of this blog is a discrete model that avoids all
of the struggles that John discusses. I’ve pointed this out to him in an
e-mail, but I don’t expect it to do any good.
