In the quiet of the quantum world, there is no emptiness. Particles are intertwined by invisible threads — entanglement. The authors of the work proposed that the very fabric of spacetime is woven from these threads. This is not just a metaphor: they built a mathematical framework where the distance between points is determined by how much shared information they hold.
This gives rise to fractal geometry. On large scales, the world looks three-dimensional, but when you peer deep down to Planck lengths, its dimensionality flows down to two.
Particle trajectories here are not smooth but jagged, like a coastline. Their random walks lead to the Schrödinger equation — the main law of quantum mechanics. It is not postulated but grows out of the geometry itself.
Gravity in this picture is a response to how the metric, set by entanglement, changes over time. In the familiar limit, Einstein's general relativity emerges, but with additions: new fields appear that slightly alter the law of gravity at extremely small distances. Thus, quanta and gravity for the first time coexist in a single framework, not conflicting but complementing each other. And the web's threads, where it all began, gain weight — literally.
If we could peer down to the Planck scale, the familiar three dimensions of space would seem to dissolve into a two-dimensional hologram — much like the shadow of a three-dimensional object on a wall.
The idea of fractal spacetime echoes the 'quantum foam' from Greg Egan's novels, where reality at the micro level becomes a seething, shifting structure.