What Is The Material Structure of Spacetime?

I was doing some light reading and I realized that the notion that gravity is the result of spacetime pressing down onto mass/volume objects has never bothered to detail exactly what spacetime is materially composed of. Yes, there is a lot of information concerning the mathematical aspects of spacetime (vectors and equations and stuff), but if this spacetime is capable of pinning material things to material surfaces, then reality (system coherence and cohesion) insists that it must exist as a material slurry of some sort.

One ToE theorist has suggested that it is comprised of clouds of nutrinos, but I haven't seen any calls for the Nobel committee to rush to his side, so I'm assuming that his notion isn't widely embraced.

Any ideas concerning what this spacetime aether is made of?

a reply to: NorEaster

Besides light and gravity, you mean? How about the spirit world? Whats that made of?

originally posted by: intrptr
a reply to: NorEaster

Besides light and gravity, you mean? How about the spirit world? Whats that made of?

Gravity is the result of spacetime, and light is apparently affected by that gravity, so no, they aren't part of spacetime's material composition.

The concept of spirits is a human perception translation conceptual placeholder, so that doesn't work either.

a reply to: NorEaster

What Is The Material Structure of Spacetime?

I don't think spacetime has a material component. Spacetime imo is just the minds intellectual construct to try and make sense of the environment.

I would say timespace is made of infinity, just never ending.

If there was a time of no time then how could time start if there is no time for anything to happen?

If you got in a super fast spaceship and went in any direction would you eventually hit some wall because there is no space on the other side? I doubt it.

Metric, of course.

What are nutrinos?

Are they cousins of neutrinos?

originally posted by: Maverick7
What are nutrinos?

Are they cousins of neutrinos?

Sure. Their idiot can't-spell-their-own-name cousins.

originally posted by: kwakakev
I would say timespace is made of infinity, just never ending.

If there was a time of no time then how could time start if there is no time for anything to happen?

If you got in a super fast spaceship and went in any direction would you eventually hit some wall because there is no space on the other side? I doubt it.

Infinity. I see. Just gobs and gobs of infinity, all jammed in together and pushing stuff together when they aren't creating bowled "dimples" as a result of having planets and stars pressing out against them.

I don't know. I may have to think over this.

originally posted by: olaru12
a reply to: NorEaster

What Is The Material Structure of Spacetime?

I don't think spacetime has a material component. Spacetime imo is just the minds intellectual construct to try and make sense of the environment.

For it to directly affect material structure, spacetime must possess its own material structure. There's no way around this one fact of how material structures operate.

*added*

And as far as blaming it all on some amorphous form of energy, all known energies are based on kinetic release (movement) and on nothing else, so movement isn't a material structure. Resistance to movement is the basis of material structure. Spacetime cannot be made of energy. Nothing is made of energy. Whatever exists as material is the result of the relative absence of energy when compared to the movement of photons in a vacuum.

Just wanted to head that nonstarter off before it showed up.

originally posted by: NorEaster
gravity is the result of spacetime pressing down onto mass/volume objects ...

My understanding is the other way around, the mass of the object presses down on the fabric of space / time, I also beleve that it must be made out of something, maybe there is where all the dark matter / Dark energy is stored, whithin the fabric of space time itself...

I wonder if we could peek into the infinitesimal way past the particle size we might find that Space is porous, and if you have small enough particles they can fall off the space fabric. To where? I don't know, maybe to a different universe parallel to our own, to the void where the universe bubble is expanding to...

Or if you could take a picture of Plank time you could see between universes like between 2 pictures in a roll of film. would we detect another universe?

I wonder when and if that will be possible...

AlexGT

originally posted by: ATSAlex

originally posted by: NorEaster
gravity is the result of spacetime pressing down onto mass/volume objects ...

My understanding is the other way around, the mass of the object presses down on the fabric of space / time,

That is only if you believe that Spacetime is a 2 dimensional "sheet" of some sort, but that's never been actually suggested in spite of the diagrams and Youtube video CAD simulations showing the Moon swirling down an eternal drain caused by the Earth's greater size and mass. Those simulations are inaccurate but the most intellectually accessible depictions of how spacetime works as a gravity inducer.

I also beleve that it must be made out of something, maybe there is where all the dark matter / Dark energy is stored, whithin the fabric of space time itself...

Dark Matter isn't an answer, since no one knows the material structure of that either. And Dark Energy is just Dark Matter that hasn't become matter yet. It's still in kinetic release; whatever it is.

I wonder if we could peek into the infinitesimal way past the particle size we might find that Space is porous, and if you have small enough particles they can fall off the space fabric. To where? I don't know, maybe to a different universe parallel to our own, to the void where the universe bubble is expanding to...

Or if you could take a picture of Plank time you could see between universes like between 2 pictures in a roll of film. would we detect another universe?

I wonder when and if that will be possible...

AlexGT

Again, you're thinking of spacetime as being a 2D rubber sheet that the planets and stars are sitting on. The actual concept of spacetime embraces 3 spatial dimensions and a 4th dimension of time.

I am neither a physicist nor a mathematician. However my understanding is that one theory gaining prominence - derived from membrane theory - is that the material structure you allude to is really anything but in the classical sense in which we tend to conceive of it.

Instead, all fundamental particles are perturbations - ripples if you will - in the membrane, and are not in and of themselves "real" in the classically held sense. Rather, all matter is extremely complex wrinkling, twisting, and organization of infinitesimally minute (sub Planck scale) portions of said membrane. Space-time then, is the amalgamation of the observable various fields which comprise what we call particles but are in fact perturbations of this membrane, and the warping of space-time (which is more like a multi-dimensional contraction of a metric than the old fashioned "ball sitting on a fabric" model) is in actuality the warping of this membrane... which may itself exist relative to or intersecting with many other such membranes or "branes."

So then of course the question instead becomes, "What do the membranes consist of?" Well, this is where things break down and the limitations of what we presently know come to bear. Why? Because any means of measuring the membrane depend upon our capacity to measure and predict particle interactions... but said particles are... you guessed it... just perturbations of the membrane. They are quantum foam. They are quanta. They are ripples in a membrane. We cannot see the membrane itself, measure it, or see "beyond" it, because literally everything in our physical universe is self-same with the membrane itself, as it comprises all said particles in the first place.

The analogy used is often, "we are stuck, as if on fly paper, to the membrane." That's not a bad analogy, but I like to envision it more like being a blanket. Imagine being a blanket and wanting to see what was outside of you, the blanket... but your eyes, ears, and other sensory organs all consisted of balls of lint inexorably attached to said blanket. There can be no communication between your blanket and others, as the medium through which such communication might occur is comprised of you, the blanket. That's the dilemma we face... assuming the theories are correct.

It has to be "something." But since everything else we can point to and call "something" in our physical universe is theoretically limited to perturbations of whatever it is, we have absolutely no means of defining or measuring it.

Peace.

Agreed, there is so much we don't know about how things work in our universe, it is just an Hypotesis about how it could be, maybe the answer lies in more than 4 dimensions like suggested by Michio Kaku

bigthink.com...

Have you seen the black whole by Nassim Haremein.

He comes up with a structure and equation based on the vectra equilibrium...

vimeo.com...

What "it" is is left open to interpretation, but it's more YOU than you think.

originally posted by: ATSAlex

originally posted by: NorEaster
gravity is the result of spacetime pressing down onto mass/volume objects ...

My understanding is the other way around, the mass of the object presses down on the fabric of space / time, I also beleve that it must be made out of something, maybe there is where all the dark matter / Dark energy is stored, whithin the fabric of space time itself...

I wonder if we could peek into the infinitesimal way past the particle size we might find that Space is porous, and if you have small enough particles they can fall off the space fabric. To where? I don't know, maybe to a different universe parallel to our own, to the void where the universe bubble is expanding to...

Or if you could take a picture of Plank time you could see between universes like between 2 pictures in a roll of film. would we detect another universe?

I wonder when and if that will be possible...

AlexGT

There is the idea that the actual space-time is more than the three-dimensional universe that we can perceive. Those other seven dimensions are scrunched up inside each sub-atomic particle.

It's like looking at a sandy beach - we just see a two-dimensional space. But look closely and you see that each grain of sand is actually spherical and that there is a certain depth to the beach. That adds another three dimensions. Look even further closely and you see that some grains are actually porous and more like Swiss cheese. That adds even more dimensions.

The heavier an atomic particle is, the more it gets attracted towards these higher dimensions and the harder it becomes to make it move; mass and inertia are all related.

a reply to: NorEaster

It has none.

a reply to: NorEaster

Matter is the kind of atomic phenomenon we've observed with protons, neutrons and electrons, so space-time has no material structure. You are putting the chicken before the egg.

Most people accept a static model of the universe where there was a singular big bang or creation event and everything that exists came from that singular moment. Personally, I think things are popping in and out of existence all of the time and matter is just the most stable conformation of energy so that it is very unlikely to vanish.

Why does matter accrue mass when it speeds up? Is it collecting something at a faster rate than that substance is vanishing? What if the cosmos is really made up of a cloud of energy/particles that are constantly popping in and out of existence and gravity is the effect of this cloud being attracted to energetic centers like the ones you find in matter. What if in any given moment, several possible futures are suspended ahead of you in the realm of the potential and theoretical and your fate is not sealed until a choice collapses the probability field and crystallizes the future into reality?

What if there are an infinite number of universes coexisting simultaneously and consciousness just happens to be along for a ride in this one, in this being at this moment. There is no reason we should remain bound to this linear causality. We are awareness and that is the purest force in existence. We are universal and timeless and we can go anywhere. ;p

a reply to: AceWombat04

I appreciate your description of what's obviously difficult to describe. That said, my own understanding of system theory is that within a specific system (our universe being one such system) there cannot be anything that is isolated (structurally or conceptually) from everything else that comprises that system. This would suggest that the theoretical membrane of the theory that you've described can only be a conceptual placeholder; marking the spot where the theory itself hits a brick wall, while maintaining the place where further revelation will someday replace that 'brane with ann associable "something or other".

Like many such theories (infinite numbers of universes populating a primordial multiverse, for instance) that one simply kicks the definitional can down the road in an effort to preserve what might just be a severely flawed foundational theoretical notion (that being General Relativity).

originally posted by: Astyanax
a reply to: NorEaster

It has none.

Literally impossible for this to be true if what it does is at all plausible.