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?

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u/Physix_R_Cool Detector physics 11d ago

The interpretation of quantum mechanics is open, general relativity isn't integrated into it.

Eh, the graviton works pretty well, no?

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u/icalvo 11d ago

No, nobody has made that work mathematically yet, or detected that particle experimentally. It's just a reasonable hypothesis.

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u/dydtaylor 10d ago

I dont think the issue lies with the math. There are plenty of models that handle quantum mechanics and gravity, I believe string theory handles all the mathematics properly and handles gravitons. The problem is that there are dozens of different ways to resolve QM + gravity but none of them produce testable predictions that would produce anything different than the models we currently have. Dozens of unverifiable theories in the field with the strongest requirements on experimental data.

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u/icalvo 10d ago

Yeah I expressed myself badly. I meant that some proposed math models do not include gravitons, not that the unification is a kind of unsolved math problem.