10 February 2021 3pm

Fay Dowker (London)

On line seminar - to register, please send an email to silvia.debianchi@uab.cat

This video is part of the PROTEUS project that has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (Grant agreement No. 758145)

 

Abstract

What would we experience if the world were a four dimensional Block in which the future already exists? My own view is that “we” would experience nothing since such a Block would
correspond to a world that had run its course and everything would already be over. At our current stage of understanding of fundamental physics, however, this debate about the empirical consequences of a Block universeview cannot be resolved. I will instead show that taking the view that the physical world “becomes’’ has proved to be a useful heuristic in one approach to quantum gravity, causal set theory. That is, one approach to the problem of quantum gravity has been fruitfully influenced by the view that we can escape the Block and that time really passes.