As Rovelli explains it, in quantum mechanics all particles of matter and energy can also be described as waves. And waves have an unusual property: An infinite number of them can exist in the same location. If time and space are one day shown to consist of quanta, the quanta could all exist piled together in a single dimensionless point. “Space and time in some sense melt in this picture,” says Rovelli. “There is no space anymore. There are just quanta kind of living on top of one another without being immersed in a space.”

If you haven’t read Jorge Luis Borges’s short story “El Aleph,” please go and get it. It is built upon just such a point and is one of the finest short stories I have ever read. Italo Calvino also has a very short story that works in a similar vein–”All At One Point.”