Can we craft a theory in which space and time aren’t assumed to exist?

In some versions of quantum gravity, time itself condenses into existence.

According to Oriti, the field of quantum gravity now needs more radical ideas to push itself forward. That's because something new is needed to bring the ideas around LQG, which has been developed at the microscopic scale, up to the scale of the Universe as a whole. Over the past decade or so, he has led research in the direction of Group Field Theory (GFT) condensate cosmology, which proposes that the Universe as we know it came about through a kind of hydrodynamic condensation process.

“One can think of this process in GFT condensate cosmology as being analogous to steam,” he says. “Steam is a phase in which the entities which constitute all of space—or atoms of space as we call them—can find themselves condensing into water, which is our analogy for space-time.”

According to this version of LQG, once this transition takes place—at the beginning of the Universe for example—then the familiar constructs of space and time are born. Awkwardly, even speaking of a 'transition' or 'beginning' implicitly assumes the notion of time, or a process happening over time. In the context of these ideas, we must learn to forget that.