Things happen, they just happen in a partial order - a podcast by MCMP Team

Fay Dowker (Imperial College London) gives a talk at the 17th UK and European Meeting on the Foundations of Physics (29-31 July, 2013) titled "Things happen, they just happen in a partial order". Abstract: In causal set quantum gravity spacetime is hypothesized to be atomic and causal order is the most basic organising principle. Fundamental discreteness brings with it novel possibilities for "dynamical laws" in which spacetime grows by the accumulation of new atoms, potentially realising within physics C.D. Broad's concept of a growing block universe in which the past is real and the future is not. That a growing block can be compatible with general covariance and the lack of a global time, is demonstrated by the Rideout-Sorkin Classical Sequential Growth models in which the “present” is identified with the growth process itself.

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