I think many questions go begging here. Your elementary unit SU will have more of a logical existence than a 'physical' existence. There is no reason to suppose that Pythagoras's theory will apply because Pythagoras's theory entails ideas of straight lines, a right angle, and so forth but your elementary units are too simple to know about that stuff :-) How do they even know where their ends are? Ie what makes the difference between the 'length' of the elementary unit and the 'end' where it joins another.
In fact though, I think it is more exciting to contemplate the possibility that space-time is a process. Certainly this is what is being asserted by the proponents of "Process Physics". I cannot pretend to understand the mathematical formalisation they put forward. I like the idea very much though so I play around with my mental picture version and see where it takes me. The story so far looks like this: * existence [all that which is] consists of nodes and connections * the nodes can be called a 'quorum' when talking about one, and 'quora' for plural * the connections can be called a 'janus' when talking about one, and 'jani' for plural * the janus is named after the Roman god Janus, the god of doors and name sake of the month of January, the common feature being that Janus had two faces one for each opposite direction, and two natures one being that of connecting and the other being that of dividing * the quorum is so named because there must be at least three jani facing together and bound together [how so bound is a mystery] because if there were only two their condition would be indistinguishable from there just being one janus connecting two real quora, and this in effect is how jani 'disappear' * my assumption, which reflects some aspects of what I think the process physics people are on about, is that the plenitude constituted by these jani and their quora [connections and nodes], is fundamentally unstable such that whenever it is possible for a janus to slip out of a quorum this will happen, as for example it MUST happen if two jani find themselves both to be facing into the same two quora; they will become one janus - one connection, and if this means that there would otherwise only be two jani left at one or both of the quora they face, then [by definition almost] such a quorum ceases to exist * the net effect of this is that the plenitude is always simplifying and 'collapsing' in the direction of smallwards and this is the basis of gravity, so it is true to say that gravity IS space-time and vice versa * it has to be remembered that jani and their quora ARE space-time, and ARE everything which exists, there is nothing else * for brevity and clarity, we can call this conception of the plenitude "JQspacetime" * for reasons not clear to me, regions of JQspacetime can become knotted and self-entangled such that the in-falling drift in the direction of smallwards cannot normally destroy the tangle which thus takes on something of the nature of a permanent vortex; these regions of JQspacetime are what people call 'particles' * there are all sorts of characteristic JQspacetime vortices and quite a few of them have the ability to create simple 'glider' type vortices - much like the glider factories of the cellular automata *Game of Life* which, being essentially complex wave forms in the plenitude travel about at a characteristic velocity which reflects their complexity and some aspect of the intrinsic rate of evolution of the in-falling JQspacetime * distance within JQspacetime is first and foremost a question of connection; there is essentially NO distance at all between the two faces of a janus; it has no 'body' and is simply a connection between two quora * thus it is possible, indeed very common, that the two faces of a janus look into quora which are only otherwise connected [and here we could say 'next most closely connected'] indirectly via a pathway composed of a whole sequence of other jani * because the two faces of a janus simply ARE a connection between two quora, if the 'next most closest connection' between the two quora entails a sequence of umpteen billions of billions of other jani so that a NASA space probe would take decades to go the long way round [by the shortest feasible path none the less], well that is just the way it is Now I realise that all that is a lot of words but, if you care to look closely, you will see that it is all plain-English and goes a fair way to informally explaining quite a lot of things. * so-called Dark matter may simply be vortex knots that neither generate nor receive gliders * the generation and receipt of gliders may be the basis of electromagnetic, weak nuclear, and strong nuclear forces * the various kinds of charge may be the manifestations of chirality, fractal dimensionality, other aspects of topology, and wave interactions such as harmonic resonance and interference * none of the above relies on any concepts of 'particle' or 'solidity' but points to all aspects of existence manifesting a wave nature, so talk of particles is out of place, 'wavicles' might be a word we have to use :-) That is enough for now. I will leave for another posting my question about the apparent scandal of Michelson/Morley interferometry NOT actually falsifying the aether concept, and Dayton Miller is it? Not only not falsifying it but actually providing support for a clear sidereal drift of some cosmic velocity. Regards Mark Peaty CDES [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.arach.net.au/~mpeaty/ Mohsen Ravanbakhsh wrote: > Bent, Stathis, > > Suppose that space is discrete. It has some elementary unit. Let's call > it SU. > Suppose there are 3 of these units out there in a right triangular > fashion( L shape) > Then what is the distance between two distant angles? is it made up of > some integer numbers of space unit? Pythagoras' theorem says no. You > might say we can not measure such distance because when we're talking > about elements of space there should be nothing smaller than it... So > what is that distance? How you gonna make a discrete space when it's > intuitively continuous. > > Mohsen Ravanbakhsh. > > > --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---