Age of universe at 26.7B years, nearly twice as old as previously believed

Re:Age of universe at 26.7B years, nearly twice as old as pr... by rlupi on Friday July 14, 2023 @02:16AM (#36720101)

AFAIK (pardon my limited knowledge of physical and math terms) the spacetime interval is the conserved unit and it has a lower bound in the Plank-scale limit.

In the paragraph above, you assume time is a primitive concept, but it is really an emergent phenomenon. The passing of time, moving by some amount of (the plank-scale limit of) spacetime interval, can happen only across connected configurations.

Think about evolution in spacetime as a combinatorial game, there can be positions where causal links are not possible, or even empty games.

The best analogous I can think of arises in the field of surreal numbers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surreal_number, with their built-in concept of generations.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Age of universe at 26.7B years, nearly twice as old as pr... by montjoy on Friday July 14, 2023 @03:01AM (#36720394)

FWIW I don’t think it’s certain yet that time cannot be divided smaller than the plank limit. I remember reading an article some years ago about an experiment indicating that there seems to be no smallest “slice” of time. Unfortunately I can’t find it and my patience for searching google these days is pretty low.

[ Parent | on HN ]