Institute Output
On the Nature of Time
Stephen Wolfram
Time is a central feature of human experience. But what actually is it? In traditional scientific accounts it’s often represented as some kind of coordinate much like space (though a coordinate that for some reason is always systematically increasing for us). But while this may be a useful mathematical description, it’s not telling us anything about what time in a sense “intrinsically is”.
Expression Evaluation and Fundamental Physics
Stephen Wolfram
It is shown that way the Wolfram Language rewrites and evaluates expressions mirrors the universe’s own evolution: both proceed through discrete events linked by causal relationships, form “spacetime-like” structures and branch into multiway histories analogous to quantum superpositions.
Non-Vacuum Solutions, Gravitational Collapse and Discrete Singularity Theorems in Wolfram Model Systems
Jonathan Gorard
This study extends the Raychaudhuri equation to discrete spacetimes, exploring conditions under which they might exhibit geodesic incompleteness, and applies numerical simulations to predict black hole formations.
On the Concept of Motion
Stephen Wolfram
It seems like the kind of question that might have been hotly debated by ancient philosophers, but would have been settled long ago: how is it that things can move? And indeed with the view of physical space that’s been almost universally adopted for the past two thousand years it’s basically a non-question. As crystallized by the likes of Euclid it’s been assumed that space is ultimately just a kind of “geometrical background” into which any physical thing can be put—and then moved around.
Some Quantum Mechanical Properties of theWolfram Model
Jonathan Gorard
By exploring hypergraph rules that deliberately break causal invariance, we show that the Wolfram Model’s multiway evolution functions like a quantum superposition whose geometry converges to projective Hilbert space. By proving that observers can “collapse” these histories via Knuth–Bendix completion—and deriving multiway analogues of Einstein’s equations, the path integral and the Schrödinger equation—we unify discrete spacetime, quantum mechanics and relativity within one framework.