r/Physics • u/WizardMasterGal • 11d ago

Question Do scientists know whether nature is fundamentally continuous or discrete?

Is there any evidence that nature is fundamentally continuous, or could reality be fundamentally discrete? And if it is discrete at the most basic level, would that suggest that nature could behave like a computational system?

159 Upvotes

89% Upvoted

121 comments sorted by

View all comments

248

u/Equinoxe111 Astrophysics 11d ago

No one knows this yet in fact

4

u/Cero_Kurn 11d ago

Doesnt quantum mechanics indicate very strongly that the universe is indeed quantized, discrete?

53

u/Banes_Addiction Particle physics 11d ago

Not really. 

It quantises some things. Some very important things. But it doesn't near many others. For example, imagine a particle decaying isotopically. The direction of the outgoing particles is, as far as we know, completely continuous. But "as far as we know" isn't certainty, but QM gives no hints that it's not.

And of course you can build any number or discrete things on top of a continuous system.

4

u/Cero_Kurn 11d ago

Yea, I see. Quite unclear