What is space? What is time? And how do we fit into it all? These are questions not only for physicists and mathematicians, but also for philosophers and theologians. The John Templeton Foundation has gathered together just such an eclectic mix of people for a public discussion entitled The Nature of Space and Time: An Evening of speculation to be held at Emmanuel College in Cambridge on the 7th of September 2006. The discussion panel for the evening comprises some very eminent names indeed: mathematician and Fields medallist Professor Alain Connes, Rev. Dr. Michael Heller from the Vatican Observatory, mathematicians Professor Shahn Majid and Sir Roger Penrose and theologian and physicist Rev. Dr. John Polkinghorne.
A black hole at the centre of a galaxy. To understand what happens at the centre of black holes one needs a theory of quantum gravity. Image taken by the Hubble Space Telescope, courtesy NASA, The Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy and The Space Telescope Science Institute.
While we all have an intuitive understanding of space and time that is sufficient to get us through everyday life, when it comes to deeper questions about them one might expect to turn to physics. The two current fundamental theories of physics are general relativity and quantum mechanics. Whilst general relativity is extremely accurate for describing the universe on the macroscopic level and quantum mechanics similarly on the sub-atomic level, the two theories have never been united. Complications arise when one considers situations simultaneously involving both large mass scales and very small distance scales, currently described by general relativity and quantum mechanics respectively. In order to solve these problems, physicists have been searching for a theory combining the two — called quantum gravity — for several decades. Such a theory would not only give additional insight into how the universe began in the Big Bang, but also predict its ultimate fate.
