Einsteinians Want Granular Spacetime

Sabine Hossenfelder: "...hints at a deeper truth: that space-time is made of small elements whose collective motion gives rise to the force we call gravity. In this case, gravity would not be a truly fundamental phenomenon, but an emergent one." https://www.forbes.com/sites/startsw...rgent-gravity/

My comment in Forbes:

This "deeper truth" is not even wrong. Spacetime is not an ab initio model that one can modify (by introducing granularity for instance). It is a CONSEQUENCE of Einstein's constant-speed-of-light postulate, and if the consequence is unsatisfactory, the postulate must be false (logic forbids the combination "true postulate, wrong consequence"):

http://community.bowdoin.edu/news/20...rs-of-gravity/
"Special relativity is based on the observation that the speed of light is always the same, independently of who measures it, or how fast the source of the light is moving with respect to the observer. Einstein demonstrated that as an immediate consequence, space and time can no longer be independent, but should rather be considered a new joint entity called "spacetime."

Pentcho Valev

Bringing granularity to spacetime is equivalent to painting the word "relativity" in yellow:

http://radio.wpsu.org/post/reality-not-what-we-can-see
"The challenge is to somehow bring the notion of granularity to spacetime, bring the discrete to the continuous. This is the problem that has baffled theoretical physicists for at least half a century."

Theoretical physicists, spacetime is, essentially, the Lorentz transformation equations - nothing more, nothing less. You cannot make the equations granular, can you? If spacetime is wrong and should be "retired", then the underlying premise, Einstein's constant-speed-of-light postulate, is false:

http://community.bowdoin.edu/news/20...rs-of-gravity/
"Special relativity is based on the observation that the speed of light is always the same, independently of who measures it, or how fast the source of the light is moving with respect to the observer. Einstein demonstrated that as an immediate consequence, space and time can no longer be independent, but should rather be considered a new joint entity called "spacetime." x

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U47kyV4TMnE
Nima Arkani-Hamed (06:09): "Almost all of us believe that space-time doesn't really exist, space-time is doomed and has to be replaced by some more primitive building blocks."

https://edge.org/response-detail/25477
What scientific idea is ready for retirement? Steve Giddings: "Spacetime. Physics has always been regarded as playing out on an underlying stage of space and time. Special relativity joined these into spacetime... [...] The apparent need to retire classical spacetime as a fundamental concept is profound..."

https://www.edge.org/response-detail/26563
Nobel Laureate David Gross observed, "Everyone in string theory is convinced...that spacetime is doomed. But we don't know what it's replaced by."

http://www.newscientist.com/article/...spacetime.html
"Rethinking Einstein: The end of space-time [...] The stumbling block lies with their conflicting views of space and time. As seen by quantum theory, space and time are a static backdrop against which particles move. In Einstein's theories, by contrast, not only are space and time inextricably linked, but the resulting space-time is moulded by the bodies within it. [...] Something has to give in this tussle between general relativity and quantum mechanics, and the smart money says that it's relativity that will be the loser."

http://www.newscientist.com/article/...erse-tick.html
"...says John Norton, a philosopher based at the University of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Norton is hesitant to express it, but his instinct - and the consensus in physics - seems to be that space and time exist on their own. The trouble with this idea, though, is that it doesn't sit well with relativity, which describes space-time as a malleable fabric whose geometry can be changed by the gravity of stars, planets and matter."

https://www.amazon.ca/Faster-Than-Sp.../dp/0738205257
Joao Magueijo, Faster Than the Speed of Light, p. 250: "Lee [Smolin] and I discussed these paradoxes at great length for many months, starting in January 2001. We would meet in cafés in South Kensington or Holland Park to mull over the problem. THE ROOT OF ALL THE EVIL WAS CLEARLY SPECIAL RELATIVITY. All these paradoxes resulted from well known effects such as length contraction, time dilation, or E=mc^2, all basic predictions of special relativity. And all denied the possibility of establishing a well-defined border, common to all observers, capable of containing new quantum gravitational effects."

https://www.newscientist.com/article...wards-in-time/
"[George] Ellis is up against one of the most successful theories in physics: special relativity. It revealed that there's no such thing as objective simultaneity. [...] And if not "now", what is moving through time? Rescuing an objective "now" is a daunting task."

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22029410.900
New Scientist: "Saving time: Physics killed it. Do we need it back? [...] Einstein landed the fatal blow at the turn of the 20th century."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2013...reality-review
"And by making the clock's tick relative - what happens simultaneously for one observer might seem sequential to another - Einstein's theory of special relativity not only destroyed any notion of absolute time but made time equivalent to a dimension in space: the future is already out there waiting for us; we just can't see it until we get there. This view is a logical and metaphysical dead end, says Smolin."

http://www.knetbooks.com/search-resu...&referrer=KBCJ
"Was Einstein wrong? At least in his understanding of time, Smolin argues, the great theorist of relativity was dead wrong. What is worse, by firmly enshrining his error in scientific orthodoxy, Einstein trapped his successors in insoluble dilemmas..."

https://www.quantamagazine.org/20161...-time-problem/
"The effort to unify quantum mechanics and general relativity means reconciling totally different notions of time. In quantum mechanics, time is universal and absolute; its steady ticks dictate the evolving entanglements between particles. But in general relativity (Albert Einstein's theory of gravity), time is relative and dynamical, a dimension that's inextricably interwoven with directions X, Y and Z into a four-dimensional "space-time" fabric."

https://www.perimeterinstitute.ca/re...essons-quantum
Perimeter Institute: "Quantum mechanics has one thing, time, which is absolute. But general relativity tells us that space and time are both dynamical so there is a big contradiction there. So the question is, can quantum gravity be formulated in a context where quantum mechanics still has absolute time?"

http://science.sciencemag.org/conten...cience.aac6498
"In Einstein's general theory of relativity, time depends locally on gravity; in standard quantum theory, time is global – all clocks "tick" uniformly."

http://arxiv.org/pdf/gr-qc/0610057.pdf
"One one hand, time in quantum mechanics is a Newtonian time, i.e., an absolute time. In fact, the two main methods of quantization, namely, canonical quantization method due to Dirac and Feynman's path integral method are based on classical constraints which become operators annihilating the physical states, and on the sum over all possible classical trajectories, respectively. Therefore, both quantization methods rely on the Newton global and absolute time. (...) The transition to (special) relativistic quantum field theories can be realized by replacing the unique absolute Newtonian time by a set of timelike parameters associated to the naturally distinguished family of relativistic inertial frames."

http://www.hindawi.com/journals/isrn/2013/509316/
"In quantum mechanics, time is absolute. The parameter occurring in the Schrödinger equation has been directly inherited from Newtonian mechanics and is not turned into an operator. In quantum field theory, time by itself is no longer absolute, but the four-dimensional spacetime is; it constitutes the fixed background structure on which the dynamical fields act. GR is of a very different nature. According to the Einstein equations (2), spacetime is dynamical, acting in a complicated manner with energy momentum of matter and with itself. The concepts of time (spacetime) in quantum theory and GR are thus drastically different and cannot both be fundamentally true.."

Pentcho Valev