
Space-time is considered the fabric of physical reality
Science Photo Library/Alamy
The first time a physicist told me they wanted to get rid of space-time, on a cold January morning earlier this year, I stopped typing my interview notes and clutched my New Scientist mug of tea. Space-time is the very fabric of physical reality – the four-dimensional framework that holds everything in the universe. But now the expert on my computer screen was telling me: “The idea of space-time somehow has to go. The notion of space-time can’t really be a totally fundamental one, and has to be…