Physicist: Space-time does not exist and the universe is a non-stop event sciences

At the heart of everything we know about the universe stretch the threads of an invisible tapestry called space-time, that strange mixture coined by Albert Einstein more than a century ago.

Space-time is a physical concept that combines time and space into a single four-dimensional fabric. This fabric is space itself, and space is not the place in which the universe exists, but rather the universe itself in its geometric aspect.

Space-time is something difficult to perceive or imagine, simply because we humans are creatures that live and perceive the world in three dimensions, but imagining the world in four dimensions is something that we cannot delve into except through mathematics.

New hypothesis

Now imagine that this space in which you are walking and the moment you are experiencing now are nothing more than lines on an intellectual map, and that this fabric that we think is the basis of existence may not exist at all.

This is the bold idea put forward by a Canadian physicist from the University of Saskatchewan, Darryl Janzen, the idea that space-time does not exist.

Janzen specializes in two seemingly distant fields: cosmological physics on the one hand, and philosophy on the other, and by bringing them together he concludes that one of the great misunderstandings in modern physics is the assumption that space-time is a real “thing” in its own right, like a material fabric or a cosmic stage on which events take place.

Public culture usually helps to root this idea, as we always simplify space-time by saying that it represents a rubber “mat” with taut edges. As soon as we place anything heavy on it, say an iron ball, for example, it bends. This is equivalent to the curvature of space-time in the presence of stars.

But what? He suggests it Janzen has a completely different view, which is that space-time is not an existing entity, but rather a mathematical logic or conceptual framework that links events together, just as lines of longitude and latitude on a map of the Earth link cities and seas, without those lines actually existing in nature.

The researcher explains that there is a fundamental difference between what “exists” and what “happens.” Material things, such as planets, mountains, and humans, exist because they have continuity in time and occupy space in space.

As for events, such as stellar explosions or the moment a star is born, they occur and then end, and therefore it cannot be said that space-time, which is a collection of events, “exists” as matter exists.

This proposal does not detract from Einstein’s genius, but rather complements it in a new way. If space-time were merely an intellectual map, our understanding of the universe would change radically, as the universe would not be a container containing things, but rather a network of constantly changing relationships.

Thus, every moment we live is not a point on a fixed time line, but rather a unique flash of existence in an infinite sea of ​​occurrence.

Philosophy of physics

In the philosophy of physics, the “presentist” view holds that only the present is the only real thing that exists in this existence, and the future and past are things that “existed” or “will exist” but are not reality.

Opposing it is the other view called “eternalism,” which says that the past, present, and future are all objective reality, but we just don’t perceive it because we have limited awareness.

When researchers like Janzen say that space-time does not exist, they do not mean that the universe or time is an illusion. Rather, they mean that space-time is not a self-contained “physical entity,” but merely a mathematical or conceptual framework that describes the relationships between events.

That is, what actually exists are the events themselves, not the “stage” on which they occur. This idea stands in direct criticism of the “eternal” school.

But Janzen also does not fully agree with presentism, which cuts time into separate snapshots, making each moment end completely before the next begins, as if existence is extinguished and burned without continuity. This also does not explain the natural interconnectedness that makes the universe evolve smoothly from one state to another.

In this context, he takes the approach that spacetime does not “exist” either as a huge mass ruling the entire history of the universe or a flash ruling a single moment.