The adventures of Spacetime

Abstract

We discuss how developments in physics often imply in the need that spacetime acquires an increasingly richer and complex structure. General Relativity was the first theory to show us the way to connect space and time with the physical world. Since then, scrutinizing the ways spacetime might exist is, in a way, the very essence of physics. Physics has thus given substance to the pioneering work of scores of brilliant mathematicians who speculated on the geometry and topology of spaces.Comment: Chapter in the book Relativity and the Dimensionality of the World to be published in the Springer series Fundamental Theories of Physics. Volume Editor: Vesselin Petkov. 18 pages plus macros; updated reference