This program unpacks Playstation 3 Theme files (.p3t) so that you can touch-up an existing theme to your likings or use a certain wallpaper from it (as many themes have multiple). But remember, if you use content from another theme and release it, be sure to give credit!
Download p3textractor.zip from above. Extract the files to a folder with a program such as WinZip or WinRAR. Now there are multiple ways to extract the theme.
The first way is to simply open the p3t file with p3textractor.exe. If you don’t know how to do this, right click the p3t file and select Open With. Alternatively, open the p3t file and it will ask you to select a program to open with. Click Browse and find p3textractor.exe from where you previously extracted it to. It will open CMD and extract the theme to extracted.[filename]. After that, all you need to do for any future p3t files is open them and it will extract.
The second way is very simple. Just drag the p3t file to p3textractor.exe. It will open CMD and extract the theme to extracted.[filename].
For the third way, first put the p3t file you want to extract into the same folder as p3textractor.exe. Open CMD and browse to the folder with p3extractor.exe. Enter the following: p3textractor filename.p3t [destination path]Replace filename with the name of the p3t file, and replace [destination path] with the name of the folder you want the files to be extracted to. A destination path is not required. By default it will extract to extracted.filename.
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The film is partially presented in a found footage format by featuring fictional interviews, news footage, and video from surveillance cameras. The story, which explores themes of humanity, xenophobia and social segregation, begins in an alternate 1982, when an alien spaceship appears over Johannesburg, South Africa. When a population of sick and malnourished insectoid aliens is discovered on the ship, the South African government confines them to an internment camp called District 9. Twenty years later, during the government's relocation of the aliens to another camp, one of the confined aliens named Christopher Johnson, who is about to try to escape from Earth with his son and return home, crosses paths with a bureaucrat named Wikus van de Merwe leading the relocation. The title and premise of District 9 were inspired by events in Cape Town's District Six, during the apartheid era.
A viral marketing campaign for the film began in 2008 at San Diego Comic-Con, while the theatrical trailer debuted in July 2009. District 9 had its World Premiere on 23 July 2009 at San Diego Comic-Con.[6][7] It was released by TriStar Pictures on 14 August 2009, in North America and became a financial success, earning over $210 million at the box office. It also received acclaim from critics and garnered numerous awards and nominations, including four Academy Award nominations for Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Visual Effects, and Best Film Editing.[8]
In 1982, a giant extraterrestrial spaceship arrives and hovers over the South African city of Johannesburg. An investigation team finds over a million malnourished aliens inside, and the South African government relocates them to a camp called District 9. However, over the years, it turns into a slum, and locals often complain that the aliens—derogatorily called "prawns"—are filthy, ignorant lawbreakers who bleed resources from humans.
Following unrest between the aliens and locals, the government hires Multinational United (MNU), a giant weapons manufacturer, to relocate the aliens to a new camp outside the city. Piet Smit, an MNU executive, appoints an MNU employee and his son-in-law, Wikus van de Merwe, to lead the relocation. Meanwhile, three aliens, Christopher Johnson, his young son CJ, and his friend Paul, search a District 9 garbage dump for alien fuel in Prawn technology, which Christopher has had them spend the last 20 years synthesizing enough of to enact his plan. They finally finish in Paul's shack as the relocation begins, but when Wikus comes to serve Paul a notice, he finds the hidden container with the fuel and accidentally sprays some of it in his face while confiscating it. Koobus Venter, a cruel MNU mercenary, kills Paul.
Wikus begins mutating into a Prawn, starting with his left arm injured after the fuel exposure. He is immediately taken to the brutal MNU lab, where researchers discover his chimeric DNA grants him the ability to operate Prawn weaponry, which is biologically restricted for them. Wanting to capture this human/alien hybridity before Wikus fully transforms, Smit orders Wikus' body to be vivisected and harvested for its profitable properties. Wikus, however, overpowers the lab personnel and escapes. While Venter's forces hunt for him, a smear story is broadcast, one that reaches Wikus' wife and Smit's daughter, Tania, claiming Wikus is a wanted fugitive who has contracted a contagious disease from copulating with aliens.
Wikus takes refuge in District 9, finding Christopher and the spaceship's concealed command module dropship underneath his house. Christopher explains to Wikus that the confiscated fuel is crucial to his plan of reactivating the dropship, and if he can get them in the dropship to the mothership, he can cure Wikus. Wikus attempts to acquire weapons from the District 9 Nigerian arms dealer, Obesandjo, who wants to eat Wikus's alien arm to gain alien abilities. Wikus, however, seizes an alien weapon and escapes.
Wikus and Christopher force themselves through MNU to the lab to retrieve the fuel. However, after seeing the brutal experiments MNU has performed on his people in the lab—including a dissected Paul—Christopher tells Wikus he must return home as fast as possible for help and cannot undo Wikus' mutation until he returns in 3 years due to the limited supply of fuel. Enraged, Wikus knocks Christopher down and attempts to fly the module to the mothership himself, but Venter's forces shoot it down. Venter captures Wikus and Christopher, but Obesandjo's gang ambushes the MNU convoy and seizes Wikus.
Meanwhile, CJ, remaining hidden in the dropship, remotely activates the mothership and a large robotic alien battle suit in Obesandjo's base. The suit guns down the Nigerians, and Wikus enters the suit and rescues Christopher from the mercenaries. Heading to the dropship, the two come under heavy fire, and Wikus decides to stay behind to fend off the mercenaries and buy time for Christopher to escape, who promises to return after 3 years and heal Wikus. After all of the other mercenaries are killed, Venter finally cripples the suit and is about to execute Wikus when slum Prawns attack and dismember him alive. Christopher makes it into the dropship with CJ, and the dropship is levitated via a tractor beam back into the mothership, which leaves Earth.
MNU's experiments are exposed, and the aliens are moved to the new camp named District 10. Tania finds a metal flower on her doorstep, giving her hope that Wikus is still alive. Wikus, now fully transformed into a Prawn, is shown in a junkyard crafting flowers for his wife.
Sharlto Copley as Wikus van de Merwe, a mild-mannered, shy, bumbling, awkward bureaucrat at the MNU Department of Alien Affairs, who becomes infected with an alien fluid, slowly turning him into one of the "prawns". This was the first time acting professionally in a feature film for Copley, a friend of director Blomkamp.[9]
Jason Cope as Christopher Johnson, a District 9 prawn who assists Wikus in fighting MNU.
Cope also performed the role of Grey Bradnam, the UKNR Chief Correspondent and all the speaking aliens, as well as for the cameraman Trent[10]
David James as Colonel Koobus Venter, an aggressive, sadistic, and xenophobic PMC mercenary-soldier sent to capture Wikus. He is shown as taking pleasure in killing the aliens and responding brutally to anyone who opposes him.
Vanessa Haywood as Tania Smit-van de Merwe, Wikus's wife.
Mandla Gaduka as Fundiswa Mhlanga, Wikus's assistant and trainee during the eviction
Eugene Wanangwa Khumbanyiwa as Obesandjo, a paralyzed psychopathic Nigerian gang leader who believes that eating alien body parts will enable him to operate their weapons
Louis Minnaar as Piet Smit, managing director of MNU South Africa and Wikus's father-in-law
Kenneth Nkosi as Thomas, an MNU security guard and good friend of Wikus
Like Alive in Joburg, the short film on which the feature film is based, the setting of District 9 is inspired by historical events during the apartheid era, particularly alluding to District Six, an inner-city residential area in Cape Town, declared a "whites only" area by the government in 1966, with 60,000 people forcibly removed to Cape Flats, 25 km (16 miles) away.[11] The film also refers to contemporary evictions and forced removals to suburban ghettos in post-apartheid South Africa, as well as the resistance of its residents.[12][13] This includes the high-profile attempted forced removal of the Joe Slovo informal settlement in Cape Town to temporary relocation areas in Delft, plus evictions in the shack settlement Chiawelo, where the film was actually shot.[10]Blikkiesdorp, a temporary relocation area in Cape Town, has also been compared with the District 9 camp, earning a front-page spread in the Daily Voice.[14][15]
Doctor Shohini Chauduri wrote that District 9 even echoes apartheid in its title, as it is reminiscent "of District 6 in Cape Town, declared a whites-only area under the Group Areas Act". She also discusses how the wide shots used in District 9 strongly emphasize the idea of exclusion under apartheid. The separation of people and "prawns" into human and non-human zones marks South Africa's social divisions.[16]
The film emphasizes the irony of Wikus and the impact of his experiences on his personality, which shows him becoming more humane as he becomes less biologically human. The film uses his story to pose the question of humanity as the "prawn" characters in the film are shown to be kinder to Wikus than the actual humans are as he undergoes his transformation. The film also features the portrayal of Nigerian Arms dealers, provoking thought on conflict between marginalized communities.[17] Chris Mikesell from the University of Hawaii newspaper Ka Leo writes that "Substitute 'black,' 'Asian,' 'Mexican,' 'illegal,' 'Jew,' 'white,' or any number of different labels for the word 'prawn' in this film and you will hear the hidden truth behind the dialogue".[18]
Themes of racism and xenophobia are shown in the form of speciesism. Used to describe the aliens, the word "prawn" is a reference to the Parktown prawn, a king cricket species considered a pest in South Africa.[19][20] Copley has said that the theme is not intended to be the main focus of the work, but can work at a subconscious level even if it is not noticed. The racism in the film is portrayed on an institutional level, as despite the brutality towards the aliens by MNU exposed to the public they are still relocated as originally planned.[21]
Duane Dudek of the Journal Sentinel wrote that "The result is an action film about xenophobia, in which all races of humans are united in their dislike and mistrust of an insect-like species".[22]
Another underlying theme in District 9 is states' reliance on multinational corporations (whose accountability is unclear and whose interests are not necessarily congruent with democratic principles) as a form of government-funded enforcement. As MNU represents the type of corporation which partners with governments, the negative portrayal of MNU in the film depicts the dangers of outsourcing militaries and bureaucracies to private contractors.[23][24]
Producer Peter Jackson planned to produce a film adaptation based on the Halo video game franchise with first-time director Neill Blomkamp. Due to a lack of financing, the Halo adaptation was placed on hold. Jackson and Blomkamp discussed pursuing alternative projects and eventually chose to produce and direct, respectively, District 9 featuring props and items originally made for the Halo film.[25] Blomkamp had previously directed commercials and short films, but District 9 was his first feature film. The director co-wrote the script with his wife, Terri Tatchell, and chose to film in South Africa, where he was born.[26][27]
In District 9, Tatchell and Blomkamp returned to the world explored in his short filmAlive in Joburg, choosing characters, moments and concepts that they found interesting including the documentary-style filmmaking, staged interviews, alien designs, alien technology/mecha suits, and the parallels to racial conflict and segregation in South Africa, and fleshing out these elements for the feature film.[28]
The film was shot on location in Chiawelo, Soweto, during a time of violent unrest in Alexandra (Gauteng) and other South African townships involving clashes between native South Africans and Africans born in other countries.[31] The location that portrays District 9 is itself a real impoverished neighbourhood from which people were being forcibly relocated to government-subsidised housing.[10] Several scenes were shot at the Ponte building.[32]
Filming for District 9 took place during the winter in Johannesburg. According to director Neill Blomkamp, during the winter season, Johannesburg "actually looks like Chernobyl", a "nuclear apocalyptic wasteland". Blomkamp wanted to capture the deserted, bleak atmosphere and environment, so he and the crew had to film during the months of June through July. The film took a total of 60 days of shooting. Filming in December raised another issue in that there was much more rain. Due to the rain, there was a lot of greenery to work with, which Blomkamp did not want. Blomkamp had to cut some of the vegetation in the scenery to portray the setting as desolate and dark.
Blomkamp said no single film influenced District 9, but cited the 1980s "hardcore sci-fi/action" films such as Alien, Aliens, The Terminator, Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Predator and RoboCop as subconscious influences. The director said, "I don't know whether the film has that feeling or not for the audience, but I wanted it to have that harsh 1980s kind of vibe—I didn't want it to feel glossy and slick."[28]
Because of the amount of hand-held shooting required for the film, the producers and crew decided to shoot using the digital Red One4K camera. Cinematographer Trent Opaloch used nine digital Red Ones owned by Peter Jackson for primary filming.[35] According to HD Magazine, District 9 was shot on RED One cameras using build 15, Cooke S4 primes and Angenieux zooms. The documentary-style and CCTV-style cam footage was shot on the Sony EX1/EX3 XDCAM-HD. Additionally, the post-production team was warned that the most RED Camera footage they could handle a day was about an hour and a half. When that got to five hours a day additional resources were brought in, and 120 terabytes of data was filled.[36]
This film is essentially an expanded version of director Neill Blomkamp's 2005 work. The original short film, titled "Alive in Joburg" was written and directed by Neill Blomkamp. It narrates the conflict between aliens and local residents in Johannesburg (referred to as Joburg). Sharlto Copley, who starred in "Alive in Joburg," also became the lead actor in "District 9." Interestingly, the movie was developed with six different endings, but only one was ultimately used.
During the same period, Peter Jackson was planning to produce a film adaptation of the Xbox game "Halo" and had chosen Neill Blomkamp as the director. However, due to the interests of major corporations, the project was indefinitely shelved. Believing in Blomkamp's talent, Peter Jackson decided to fund a new project, investing 30 million dollars for Blomkamp to direct a film of his own choosing. This led to the creation of "District 9."
The alien settlement depicted in the film was actually shot in an African slum, lending a gritty realism to the setting. Except for the main characters' dwelling and the alien protagonist Christopher's hut, which were temporarily constructed, all the slum shacks were real locations. The depiction of aliens dismembering wild beasts and their fondness for cat food draws a parallel to the desperate living conditions in slums, where inhabitants often rely on carrion or cat food for sustenance.
The idea of aliens eating cat food was inspired by a crew member who used cat food as bait for shrimp during the film's production. Additionally, the narrative of the aliens' relocation in the film mirrors a real event: the demolition of a Johannesburg slum and the subsequent forced relocation of its residents to a government-built settlement area.
This approach in the movie not only adds a layer of authenticity but also serves as a powerful metaphor for the socio-economic issues faced by marginalized communities.
Blomkamp wanted the aliens to maintain both humane and barbaric features in the design of the creatures. According to Terri Tatchell, the director's writing partner, "They are not appealing, they are not cute, and they don't tug at our heartstrings. He went for a scary, hard, warrior-looking alien, which is much more of a challenge."[37] The look of the alien, with its exoskeleton-crustacean hybrid and crab-like shells, was meant to initially evoke a sense of disgust from viewers but as the story progresses, the audience was meant to sympathize with these creatures who had such human-like emotions and characteristics. Blomkamp established criteria for the design of the aliens. He wanted the species to be insect-like but also bipedal. The director wanted the audience to relate to the aliens and said of the restriction on the creature design, "Unfortunately, they had to be human-esque because our psychology doesn't allow us to really empathize with something unless it has a face and an anthropomorphic shape. Like if you see something that's four-legged, you think it's a dog; that's just how we're wired ... If you make a film about an alien force, which is the oppressor or aggressor, and you don't want to empathize with them, you can go to town. So creatively that's what I wanted to do but story-wise, I just couldn't."[38]
Blomkamp originally sought to have Weta Digital design the creatures, but the company was busy with effects for Avatar. The director then decided to choose a Vancouver-based effects company because he anticipated making films there in the future and because British Columbia offered a tax credit. Blomkamp met with Image Engine and considered them "a bit of a gamble" since the company had not pursued a project as large as a feature film.[28] Aside from the aliens appearing on the operating table in the medical lab, all of them were created using CGI visual effects.[39]
Weta Digital designed the 21⁄2-kilometer-diameter mothership[40] and the drop ship, while the exo-suit and the little pets were designed by The Embassy Visual Effects. Zoic Studios performed overflow 2D work.[28] On-set live special effects were created by MXFX.[41] Some of the software used for the visual effects were Autodesk Softimage.[42]
The music for District 9 was scored by Canadian composer Clinton Shorter, who spent three weeks preparing for the film. Director Neill Blomkamp wanted a "raw and dark" score, but one that maintained its South African roots. This was a challenge for Shorter, who found much of the South African music he worked with to be optimistic and joyful. Unable to get the African drums to sound dark and heavy, Shorter used a combination of taiko drums and synthesized instruments for the desired effects, with the core African elements of the score conveyed in the vocals and smaller percussion.[43] Both the score and soundtrack feature music and vocals from Kwaito artists.
District 9 held its world premiere in 23 July 2009 at the Reading Gaslamp 15 at San Diego Comic-Con, with Copley, Blomkamp and Jackson in attendance.[44][45] It was released by TriStar Pictures on 14 August 2009.
Sony Pictures launched a "Humans Only" marketing campaign to promote District 9. Sony's marketing team designed its promotional material to emulate the segregational billboards that appear throughout the film.[38] Billboards, banners, posters, and stickers were thus designed with the theme in mind, and the material was spread across public places such as bus stops in various cities, including "humans only" signs in certain locations and providing toll-free numbers to report "non-human" activity.[46][47] This marketing strategy was designed to provoke reactions in its target audience (namely, sci-fi fans and people concerned with discrimination), hence the use of obviously fake segregational propaganda.[48]
According to Dwight Caines, Sony's president of digital marketing, an estimated 33,000 phone calls were made to the toll-free numbers during a two-week period with 2,500 of them leaving voicemails with reports of alien sightings.[49] Promotional material was also presented at the 2008 San Diego Comic-Con, advertising the website D-9.com,[50] which had an application presented by the fictional Multi-National United (MNU). The website had a local alert system for Johannesburg (the film's setting), news feeds, behavior recommendations, and rules and regulations. Other viral websites for the film were also launched, including an MNU website with a countdown timer for the film's release,[51] an anti-MNU blog run by fictional alien character Christopher Johnson,[52] and an MNU-sponsored educational website.[53][54] An online game for District 9 has also been made where players can choose to be a human or an alien. H
This program unpacks Playstation 3 Theme files (.p3t) so that you can touch-up an existing theme to your likings or use a certain wallpaper from it (as many themes have multiple). But remember, if you use content from another theme and release it, be sure to give credit!
Download p3textractor.zip from above. Extract the files to a folder with a program such as WinZip or WinRAR. Now there are multiple ways to extract the theme.
The first way is to simply open the p3t file with p3textractor.exe. If you don’t know how to do this, right click the p3t file and select Open With. Alternatively, open the p3t file and it will ask you to select a program to open with. Click Browse and find p3textractor.exe from where you previously extracted it to. It will open CMD and extract the theme to extracted.[filename]. After that, all you need to do for any future p3t files is open them and it will extract.
The second way is very simple. Just drag the p3t file to p3textractor.exe. It will open CMD and extract the theme to extracted.[filename].
For the third way, first put the p3t file you want to extract into the same folder as p3textractor.exe. Open CMD and browse to the folder with p3extractor.exe. Enter the following: p3textractor filename.p3t [destination path]Replace filename with the name of the p3t file, and replace [destination path] with the name of the folder you want the files to be extracted to. A destination path is not required. By default it will extract to extracted.filename.
This program unpacks Playstation 3 Theme files (.p3t) so that you can touch-up an existing theme to your likings or use a certain wallpaper from it (as many themes have multiple). But remember, if you use content from another theme and release it, be sure to give credit!
Download p3textractor.zip from above. Extract the files to a folder with a program such as WinZip or WinRAR. Now there are multiple ways to extract the theme.
The first way is to simply open the p3t file with p3textractor.exe. If you don’t know how to do this, right click the p3t file and select Open With. Alternatively, open the p3t file and it will ask you to select a program to open with. Click Browse and find p3textractor.exe from where you previously extracted it to. It will open CMD and extract the theme to extracted.[filename]. After that, all you need to do for any future p3t files is open them and it will extract.
The second way is very simple. Just drag the p3t file to p3textractor.exe. It will open CMD and extract the theme to extracted.[filename].
For the third way, first put the p3t file you want to extract into the same folder as p3textractor.exe. Open CMD and browse to the folder with p3extractor.exe. Enter the following: p3textractor filename.p3t [destination path]Replace filename with the name of the p3t file, and replace [destination path] with the name of the folder you want the files to be extracted to. A destination path is not required. By default it will extract to extracted.filename.
This program unpacks Playstation 3 Theme files (.p3t) so that you can touch-up an existing theme to your likings or use a certain wallpaper from it (as many themes have multiple). But remember, if you use content from another theme and release it, be sure to give credit!
Download p3textractor.zip from above. Extract the files to a folder with a program such as WinZip or WinRAR. Now there are multiple ways to extract the theme.
The first way is to simply open the p3t file with p3textractor.exe. If you don’t know how to do this, right click the p3t file and select Open With. Alternatively, open the p3t file and it will ask you to select a program to open with. Click Browse and find p3textractor.exe from where you previously extracted it to. It will open CMD and extract the theme to extracted.[filename]. After that, all you need to do for any future p3t files is open them and it will extract.
The second way is very simple. Just drag the p3t file to p3textractor.exe. It will open CMD and extract the theme to extracted.[filename].
For the third way, first put the p3t file you want to extract into the same folder as p3textractor.exe. Open CMD and browse to the folder with p3extractor.exe. Enter the following: p3textractor filename.p3t [destination path]Replace filename with the name of the p3t file, and replace [destination path] with the name of the folder you want the files to be extracted to. A destination path is not required. By default it will extract to extracted.filename.
From the plural form: This is a redirect from a plural noun to its singular form.
This redirect link is used for convenience; it is often preferable to add the plural directly after the link (for example, [[link]]s). However, do not replace these redirected links with a simpler link unless the page is updated for another reason (see WP:NOTBROKEN).
Use this rcat to tag onlymainspace redirects; when plural forms are found in other namespaces, use {{R from modification}}instead.
From an ambiguous term: This is a redirect from an ambiguous page name to a page or list that disambiguates it. These redirects are pointed to by links that should always be disambiguated. Therefore, this template should never appear on a page that has "(disambiguation)" in its title – in that case use {{R to disambiguation page}}instead.
This program unpacks Playstation 3 Theme files (.p3t) so that you can touch-up an existing theme to your likings or use a certain wallpaper from it (as many themes have multiple). But remember, if you use content from another theme and release it, be sure to give credit!
Download p3textractor.zip from above. Extract the files to a folder with a program such as WinZip or WinRAR. Now there are multiple ways to extract the theme.
The first way is to simply open the p3t file with p3textractor.exe. If you don’t know how to do this, right click the p3t file and select Open With. Alternatively, open the p3t file and it will ask you to select a program to open with. Click Browse and find p3textractor.exe from where you previously extracted it to. It will open CMD and extract the theme to extracted.[filename]. After that, all you need to do for any future p3t files is open them and it will extract.
The second way is very simple. Just drag the p3t file to p3textractor.exe. It will open CMD and extract the theme to extracted.[filename].
For the third way, first put the p3t file you want to extract into the same folder as p3textractor.exe. Open CMD and browse to the folder with p3extractor.exe. Enter the following: p3textractor filename.p3t [destination path]Replace filename with the name of the p3t file, and replace [destination path] with the name of the folder you want the files to be extracted to. A destination path is not required. By default it will extract to extracted.filename.
From a short name: This is a redirect from a title that is a shortened form of a more complete page title, such as a person's full name or the unbroken title of a written work.
This article is about the general framework of distance and direction. For the space beyond Earth's atmosphere, see Outer space. For the writing separator, see Space (punctuation). For other uses, see Space (disambiguation).
Debates concerning the nature, essence and the mode of existence of space date back to antiquity; namely, to treatises like the Timaeus of Plato, or Socrates in his reflections on what the Greeks called khôra (i.e. "space"), or in the Physics of Aristotle (Book IV, Delta) in the definition of topos (i.e. place), or in the later "geometrical conception of place" as "space qua extension" in the Discourse on Place (Qawl fi al-Makan) of the 11th-century Arab polymathAlhazen.[4] Many of these classical philosophical questions were discussed in the Renaissance and then reformulated in the 17th century, particularly during the early development of classical mechanics.
Isaac Newton viewed space as absolute, existing permanently and independently of whether there was any matter in the.[5] In contrast, other natural philosophers, notably Gottfried Leibniz, thought that space was in fact a collection of relations between objects, given by their distance and direction from one another. In the 18th century, the philosopher and theologian George Berkeley attempted to refute the "visibility of spatial depth" in his Essay Towards a New Theory of Vision. Later, the metaphysicianImmanuel Kant said that the concepts of space and time are not empirical ones derived from experiences of the outside world—they are elements of an already given systematic framework that humans possess and use to structure all experiences. Kant referred to the experience of "space" in his Critique of Pure Reason as being a subjective "pure a priori form of intuition".
Galilean and Cartesian theories about space, matter, and motion are at the foundation of the Scientific Revolution, which is understood to have culminated with the publication of Newton's Principia Mathematica in 1687.[6] Newton's theories about space and time helped him explain the movement of objects. While his theory of space is considered the most influential in physics, it emerged from his predecessors' ideas about the same.[7]
As one of the pioneers of modern science, Galileo revised the established Aristotelian and Ptolemaic ideas about a geocentric cosmos. He backed the Copernican theory that the universe was heliocentric, with a stationary Sun at the center and the planets—including the Earth—revolving around the Sun. If the Earth moved, the Aristotelian belief that its natural tendency was to remain at rest was in question. Galileo wanted to prove instead that the Sun moved around its axis, that motion was as natural to an object as the state of rest. In other words, for Galileo, celestial bodies, including the Earth, were naturally inclined to move in circles. This view displaced another Aristotelian idea—that all objects gravitated towards their designated natural place-of-belonging.[8]
Descartes set out to replace the Aristotelian worldview with a theory about space and motion as determined by natural laws. In other words, he sought a metaphysical foundation or a mechanical explanation for his theories about matter and motion. Cartesian space was Euclidean in structure—infinite, uniform and flat.[9] It was defined as that which contained matter; conversely, matter by definition had a spatial extension so that there was no such thing as empty space.[6]
The Cartesian notion of space is closely linked to his theories about the nature of the body, mind and matter. He is famously known for his "cogito ergo sum" (I think therefore I am), or the idea that we can only be certain of the fact that we can doubt, and therefore think and therefore exist. His theories belong to the rationalist tradition, which attributes knowledge about the world to our ability to think rather than to our experiences, as the empiricists believe.[10] He posited a clear distinction between the body and mind, which is referred to as the Cartesian dualism.
Following Galileo and Descartes, during the seventeenth century the philosophy of space and time revolved around the ideas of Gottfried Leibniz, a German philosopher–mathematician, and Isaac Newton, who set out two opposing theories of what space is. Rather than being an entity that independently exists over and above other matter, Leibniz held that space is no more than the collection of spatial relations between objects in the world: "space is that which results from places taken together".[11] Unoccupied regions are those that could have objects in them, and thus spatial relations with other places. For Leibniz, then, space was an idealised abstraction from the relations between individual entities or their possible locations and therefore could not be continuous but must be discrete.[12]
Space could be thought of in a similar way to the relations between family members. Although people in the family are related to one another, the relations do not exist independently of the people.[13]
Leibniz argued that space could not exist independently of objects in the world because that implies a difference between two universes exactly alike except for the location of the material world in each universe. But since there would be no observational way of telling these universes apart then, according to the identity of indiscernibles, there would be no real difference between them. According to the principle of sufficient reason, any theory of space that implied that there could be these two possible universes must therefore be wrong.[14]
Newton took space to be more than relations between material objects and based his position on observation and experimentation. For a relationist there can be no real difference between inertial motion, in which the object travels with constant velocity, and non-inertial motion, in which the velocity changes with time, since all spatial measurements are relative to other objects and their motions. But Newton argued that since non-inertial motion generates forces, it must be absolute.[15] He used the example of water in a spinning bucket to demonstrate his argument. Water in a bucket is hung from a rope and set to spin, starts with a flat surface. After a while, as the bucket continues to spin, the surface of the water becomes concave. If the bucket's spinning is stopped then the surface of the water remains concave as it continues to spin. The concave surface is therefore apparently not the result of relative motion between the bucket and the water.[16] Instead, Newton argued, it must be a result of non-inertial motion relative to space itself. For several centuries the bucket argument was considered decisive in showing that space must exist independently of matter.
In the eighteenth century the German philosopher Immanuel Kant published his theory of space as "a property of our mind" by which "we represent to ourselves objects as outside us, and all as in space" in the Critique of Pure Reason[17] On his view the nature of spatial predicates are "relations that only attach to the form of intuition alone, and thus to the subjective constitution of our mind, without which these predicates could not be attached to anything at all."[18] This develops his theory of knowledge in which knowledge about space itself can be both a priori and synthetic.[19]
According to Kant, knowledge about space is synthetic because any proposition about space cannot be true merely in virtue of the meaning of the terms contained in the proposition. In the counter-example, the proposition "all unmarried men are bachelors" is true by virtue of each term's meaning. Further, space is a priori because it is the form of our receptive abilities to receive information about the external world. For example, someone without sight can still perceive spatial attributes via touch, hearing, and smell. Knowledge of space itself is a priori because it belongs to the subjective constitution of our mind as the form or manner of our intuition of external objects.
Euclid's Elements contained five postulates that form the basis for Euclidean geometry. One of these, the parallel postulate, has been the subject of debate among mathematicians for many centuries. It states that on any plane on which there is a straight line L1 and a point P not on L1, there is exactly one straight line L2 on the plane that passes through the point P and is parallel to the straight line L1. Until the 19th century, few doubted the truth of the postulate; instead debate centered over whether it was necessary as an axiom, or whether it was a theory that could be derived from the other axioms.[20] Around 1830 though, the Hungarian János Bolyai and the Russian Nikolai Ivanovich Lobachevsky separately published treatises on a type of geometry that does not include the parallel postulate, called hyperbolic geometry. In this geometry, an infinite number of parallel lines pass through the point P. Consequently, the sum of angles in a triangle is less than 180° and the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter is greater than pi. In the 1850s, Bernhard Riemann developed an equivalent theory of elliptical geometry, in which no parallel lines pass through P. In this geometry, triangles have more than 180° and circles have a ratio of circumference-to-diameter that is less than pi.
Although there was a prevailing Kantian consensus at the time, once non-Euclidean geometries had been formalised, some began to wonder whether or not physical space is curved. Carl Friedrich Gauss, a German mathematician, was the first to consider an empirical investigation of the geometrical structure of space. He thought of making a test of the sum of the angles of an enormous stellar triangle, and there are reports that he actually carried out a test, on a small scale, by triangulating mountain tops in Germany.[21]
Henri Poincaré, a French mathematician and physicist of the late 19th century, introduced an important insight in which he attempted to demonstrate the futility of any attempt to discover which geometry applies to space by experiment.[22] He considered the predicament that would face scientists if they were confined to the surface of an imaginary large sphere with particular properties, known as a sphere-world. In this world, the temperature is taken to vary in such a way that all objects expand and contract in similar proportions in different places on the sphere. With a suitable falloff in temperature, if the scientists try to use measuring rods to determine the sum of the angles in a triangle, they can be deceived into thinking that they inhabit a plane, rather than a spherical surface.[23] In fact, the scientists cannot in principle determine whether they inhabit a plane or sphere and, Poincaré argued, the same is true for the debate over whether real space is Euclidean or not. For him, which geometry was used to describe space was a matter of convention.[24] Since Euclidean geometry is simpler than non-Euclidean geometry, he assumed the former would always be used to describe the 'true' geometry of the world.[25]
In 1905, Albert Einstein published his special theory of relativity, which led to the concept that space and time can be viewed as a single construct known as spacetime. In this theory, the speed of light in vacuum is the same for all observers—which has the result that two events that appear simultaneous to one particular observer will not be simultaneous to another observer if the observers are moving with respect to one another. Moreover, an observer will measure a moving clock to tick more slowly than one that is stationary with respect to them; and objects are measured to be shortened in the direction that they are moving with respect to the observer.
Subsequently, Einstein worked on a general theory of relativity, which is a theory of how gravity interacts with spacetime. Instead of viewing gravity as a force field acting in spacetime, Einstein suggested that it modifies the geometric structure of spacetime itself.[26] According to the general theory, time goes more slowly at places with lower gravitational potentials and rays of light bend in the presence of a gravitational field. Scientists have studied the behaviour of binary pulsars, confirming the predictions of Einstein's theories, and non-Euclidean geometry is usually used to describe spacetime.
