Natural Science Forum / Physics / General Physics / July 2008

Hey stooopid - spacetime *is* a theoretical effect.

Tell that to Mercury's perihelion.

If you don't like metric gravitation and spacetime curvature, use
teleparallel gravitation and spacetime torsion (transforming like
Lorentz force in electrodynamics).  If you don't like either classical
approach, try getting a prediction out of string theory.  That last
has at least 10^1000 acceptable vacuum solutions.  Certainly there is
a prediction in there somewhere (snigger).

If it isn't mathematics it is opinion.  Everybody has an opinion and
an a.shole.  Attention to personal hygiene is important in  both
cases.

In modern theoretical physics, spacetime is a manifold used to MODEL the
spatio-temporal relationships we observe in the world we inhabit.
Spacetime is not part of that world, and is not a "thing", it is an
aspect of the MODEL of the world.

Understanding this will resolve most of your confusions....

Tom Roberts

Do you consider hydrogen and helium to be "entities" ?

Sue...

I agree with Tom Roberts who wrote:

"In modern theoretical physics, spacetime is a manifold used to MODEL
the spatio-temporal relationships we observe in the world we inhabit.
Spacetime is not part of that world, and is not a "thing", it is an
aspect of the MODEL of the world."

In contrast the following models space as a physical entity.

Dynamical 3-Space: A Review
Reginald T. Cahill
School of Chemistry, Physics and Earth Sciences,
Flinders University, Adelaide 5001, Australia
http://arxiv.org/abs/0705.4146

Abstract

For some 100 years physics has modelled space and time via the space-
time concept, with space being merely an observer dependent
perspective effect of that spacetime - space itself had no observer
independent existence - it had no ontological status, and it certainly
had no dynamical description. In recent years this has all changed. In
2002 it was discovered that a dynamical 3-space had been detected many
times, including the Michelson-Morley 1887 light-speed anisotropy
experiment. Here we review the dynamics of this 3-space, tracing its
evolution from that of an emergent phenomena in the
information-theoretic Process Physics to the phenomenological
description in terms of a velocity field describing the relative
internal motion of the structured 3-space. The new physics
of the dynamical 3-space is extensively tested against experimental
and astronomical observations, including the necessary generalisation
of the Maxwell, Schrodinger and Dirac equations, leading to a
derivation and explanation of gravity as a refraction effect of the
quantum matter waves.
Phenomena now explainable include the bore hole anomaly, the
systematics of black hole masses, the at rotation curves of spiral
galaxies, gravitational light bending and lensing, and the supernova
and Gamma-Ray Bursts magnitude-redshift data, for the dynamical
3-space possesses a Hubble expanding 3-space solution. Most
importantly none of these phenomena now require dark matter nor dark
energy. The flat and curved spacetime formalism is derived from the
new physics, so explaining the apparent many successes of those
formalisms, but which have now proven to be ontologically and
experimentally flawed."