Xref: utzoo comp.ai.philosophy:785 comp.ai.neural-nets:3128 Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!swrinde!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!brunix!cs.brown.edu!cs196006 From: cs196006@cs.brown.edu (Josh Hendrix) Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy,comp.ai.neural-nets Subject: Re: Continuous vs. discrete Message-ID: <70401@brunix.UUCP> Date: 1 Apr 91 02:29:58 GMT References: <1991Mar26.215728.28875@watserv1.waterloo.edu> <1991Mar30.040808.1896@ddsw1.MCS.COM> <1991Mar31.204818.15437@cs.ubc.ca> Sender: news@brunix.UUCP Organization: Brown Computer Science Dept. Lines: 28 In article <1991Mar31.204818.15437@cs.ubc.ca>, scharein@cs.ubc.ca (Robert Scharein) writes: |> In article <1991Mar30.040808.1896@ddsw1.MCS.COM> zane@ddsw1.MCS.COM (Sameer Parekh) writes: |> >In article <1991Mar26.215728.28875@watserv1.waterloo.edu> ssingh@watserv1.waterloo.edu (Sneaky Sanj ;-) writes: |> >>Time could very well be discrete as well. Something about a "chronon" |> >>10^-23 seconds. Space (?), anybody's guess. |> >> |> The above is a bit misleading. While you are correct about space |> being discrete, it is wrong to infer this fact from regarding |> electron orbitals. On energy scales where electrons are in orbitals, |> space may be thought of as perfectly continuous, and indeed this |> is the assumption in classical quantum mechanics (where the theory |> of orbitals comes from). At very high energy scales (or at small |> length or time scales), where quantum gravity effects play a role, |> space (or more precisely space-time) is discrete. But since nobody |> has a completely satisfactory theory of quantum gravity, we don't |> know the exact nature of this quantization. |> Rob Scharein Whoa! Stop the bus! Wait a minute! I am not a physicist, and have only read a few books on 'layman's quantum mechanics', but I've never run across this assertion. I'm not saying you're wrong (I have no way of knowing, no training). I just want to read more on this before I start treating it as a fact. Do you have any good references (you posted two) that deal directly with this? Thanks, Josh