[FOM] Could spacetime be discrete?

[Eray Ozkural]

On 1/14/06, Alasdair Urquhart <urquhart at cs.toronto.edu> wrote:
>
> Richard Haney raises the question as to whether spacetime
> could be discrete.  I am not sure what this means, but if
> it means that there is a minimum length, this appears
> inconsistent with special relativity.  Could somebody
> elucidate this point?

Seth Lloyd would explain this better than I can:

http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/lloyd2/lloyd2_index.html
http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0501135

There are many resources about digital physics on the
web, but I think Lloyd's explanations are the most
accessible.

The wikipedia entry about digital physics is quite brief
and informative, but unfortunately the current
debates are a little complicated (going knee deep
in controversial interpretations of quantum physics)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_physics

I would just like to note the well known Planck length as an
answer to your question about minimal length. As far as
I can tell, this is the scale at which quantum gravity
will be apparent.

Best Regards.

--
Eray Ozkural (exa), PhD candidate.  Comp. Sci. Dept., Bilkent University, Ankara
http://www.cs.bilkent.edu.tr/~erayo  Malfunct: http://www.malfunct.com
Uludag Project: www.uludag.org.tr   KDE Project: http://www.kde.org