SMuK 2023 – wissenschaftliches Programm

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AGPhil: Arbeitsgruppe Philosophie der Physik

AGPhil 10: Quantum Foundations Poster Session

AGPhil 10.4: Poster

Donnerstag, 23. März 2023, 16:15–16:45, JAN/0027

Lorentz-invariant quantum gravity via elimination of spacetime — •René Friedrich — Strasbourg

Spacetime is more and more often suspected of being at the origin of the problem of quantum gravity. However, it will be shown that general relativity may not only be described within a spacetime manifold, but also in Lorentz-invariant terms. In particular, gravity may not only be represented in the form of curved spacetime, but also equivalently as gravitational time dilation in flat, uncurved space.

Quantum mechanics and general relativity are harmonizing because - fundamentally speaking - they are both Lorentz-invariant. Lorentz-covariant spacetime is only the way how the universe of general relativity is perceived and measured by observers, it is a sort of "observational interface", half-way between the observer and the underlying reality. The Lorentz-invariant universe of quantum gravity is not observable, it must be retrieved from observation by calculation, in the same way as the proper time of a particle is retrieved from the coordinate time measured by an observer. Instead of a continuous spacetime manifold, the universe consists of timelike and lightlike worldlines which are parameterized by their respective proper time, in a threedimensional manifold of absolute space. Since the spacetime interval of lightlike interactions is zero, their worldlines are simply reduced to a point.