ABSTRACT
Abstract
Eternities are proposed as fundamental dimensions necessary to complete a description of the universe. Four-dimensional spacetime is assumed to be made up of discrete quanta that emerge from an aspatial, atemporal eternity containing formless energy. The energy undergoes a phase change that causes spherical quanta to condense out and form a spacetime lattice. Formless energy gains form on entering the lattice, evolving into force and matter particles. Spacetime quanta provide the smallest elementary units of space and time, their ratio of length to time being the velocity of light. Their initial space dimensions are derived from the circular Planck area. Quanta make up about 70 per cent of the lattice, with particles moving from quantum to quantum at points of contact of the spheres. The resultant addition of randomness into paths requires correction by the interstitial energy around the spheres, operating to conserve momentum-energy and minimize its action. Quanta continue to condense out of eternity, producing expansion of spacetime. Interstitial energy constrained by the lattice provides the energy of the vacuum. It provides non-locality phenomena and interacts with elementary particles and randomness in the lattice to produce wave-particle duality. Effects of special relativity are produced by distortion of the quanta. The lattice is rigid to forces of the standard module but mass-energy distorts quanta, which control the path of mass. The mass of a gravitationally collapsed object is contained in a spherical shell of quanta reduced to two spatial dimensions at the event horizon, whose interior contains the formless energy of eternity. The shell temperature corresponds to that calculated for an equivalent black hole, the entropy is four times higher.