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“Forget time”

Essay written for the FQXi contest on the Nature of Time

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Abstract

Following a line of research that I have developed for several years, I argue that the best strategy for understanding quantum gravity is to build a picture of the physical world where the notion of time plays no role at all. I summarize here this point of view, explaining why I think that in a fundamental description of nature we must “forget time”, and how this can be done in the classical and in the quantum theory. The idea is to develop a formalism that treats dependent and independent variables on the same footing. In short, I propose to interpret mechanics as a theory of relations between variables, rather than the theory of the evolution of variables in time.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Centre de Physique Theorique de Luminy, Marseille, France

    Carlo Rovelli

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  1. Carlo Rovelli
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Correspondence to Carlo Rovelli.

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Rovelli, C. “Forget time”. Found Phys 41, 1475–1490 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10701-011-9561-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10701-011-9561-4

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