On miracles and spacetime
What have recently been dubbed two ‘miracles’ of general relativity—(1) that all non-gravitational interactions are locally governed by Poincaré invariant dynamical laws; and (2) that, in the regime of experimental practice in which curvature effects may be ignored, the local Poincaré symmetries of...
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| Format: | Journal article |
| Language: | English |
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Elsevier
2018
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| _version_ | 1826286544354279424 |
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| author | Read, J |
| author_facet | Read, J |
| author_sort | Read, J |
| collection | OXFORD |
| description | What have recently been dubbed two ‘miracles’ of general relativity—(1) that all non-gravitational interactions are locally governed by Poincaré invariant dynamical laws; and (2) that, in the regime of experimental practice in which curvature effects may be ignored, the local Poincaré symmetries of the dynamical laws governing matter fields coincide with the local Poincaré symmetries of the dynamical metric field—remain unaccounted for in that theory. In this paper, I demonstrate that these two ‘miracles’ admit of a natural explanation in one particular successor theory to general relativity—namely, perturbative string theory. I argue that this point has important implications when considering both the ‘chronogeometricity’ (that is, the object in question being surveyed by rods and clocks built from matter fields) and spatiotemporal status of the dynamical metric field in both general relativity and perturbative string theory. |
| first_indexed | 2024-03-07T01:45:20Z |
| format | Journal article |
| id | oxford-uuid:983a04c6-2452-4164-a5fc-27dc1d274a8f |
| institution | University of Oxford |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-03-07T01:45:20Z |
| publishDate | 2018 |
| publisher | Elsevier |
| record_format | dspace |
| spelling | oxford-uuid:983a04c6-2452-4164-a5fc-27dc1d274a8f2022-03-27T00:05:29ZOn miracles and spacetimeJournal articlehttp://purl.org/coar/resource_type/c_dcae04bcuuid:983a04c6-2452-4164-a5fc-27dc1d274a8fEnglishSymplectic Elements at OxfordElsevier2018Read, JWhat have recently been dubbed two ‘miracles’ of general relativity—(1) that all non-gravitational interactions are locally governed by Poincaré invariant dynamical laws; and (2) that, in the regime of experimental practice in which curvature effects may be ignored, the local Poincaré symmetries of the dynamical laws governing matter fields coincide with the local Poincaré symmetries of the dynamical metric field—remain unaccounted for in that theory. In this paper, I demonstrate that these two ‘miracles’ admit of a natural explanation in one particular successor theory to general relativity—namely, perturbative string theory. I argue that this point has important implications when considering both the ‘chronogeometricity’ (that is, the object in question being surveyed by rods and clocks built from matter fields) and spatiotemporal status of the dynamical metric field in both general relativity and perturbative string theory. |
| spellingShingle | Read, J On miracles and spacetime |
| title | On miracles and spacetime |
| title_full | On miracles and spacetime |
| title_fullStr | On miracles and spacetime |
| title_full_unstemmed | On miracles and spacetime |
| title_short | On miracles and spacetime |
| title_sort | on miracles and spacetime |
| work_keys_str_mv | AT readj onmiraclesandspacetime |