What if spacetime was not fundamental at all? In the context of thermodynamics, macroscopic quantities such as temperature, pressure and viscosity are products of the collective behaviour of numerous microscopic entities. Starting from the astounding revelation that the behaviour of black holes is governed by a family a laws which are strikingly similar to those of thermodynamics, Erik Verlinde developed a speculative framework in which spacetime itself (and perhaps all matter content of the universe) emerges from quantum information-theoretic quantities. In this picture, everything would eventually boil down to correlations, operators and entanglement, from the faintest gravitational wave to large-scale cosmological observables.

Erik Peter Verlinde is a Dutch theoretical physicist and string theorist. The Verlinde formula, which appeared in his PhD thesis and holds great importance in conformal and topological field theory, is named after him. His research deals with string theory, gravity, black holes and cosmology. Currently, he is Professor of theoretical physics at the University of Amsterdam.
[adapted from Wikipedia]

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