Abstract
A local area network (LAN) consists typically of several telecommunication nodes, all of which share a public IP address and a single point of contact with the Internet, namely the router. For an outside observer, the whole LAN with all its nodes would look point-like (having one, shared, "public IP" address and a single connection with the Internet), but in its interactions it would appear field-like, as a LAN of several nodes, each with its own "private IP" address, has an internal structure and interacts with the outside world differently than a single node would. In this study, the above particle/LAN analogy will be used as a basis of Átmiton theory, according to which, elementary particles are made of LANs consisting of a type of telecommunication node - called átmiton - and space is a 3D network of átmita with the simple cubic topology. In this work, it is demonstrated that connecting a particle/LAN entity on the lattice of space distorts its local topology, effectively introducing a crystal defect to the lattice of space. This defect increases the distance between points lying at opposite sides of it. The internal interactions of any massive object should be producing constantly copious numbers of such space-defects, which diffuse away from their source, by means of a random walk. Here it is suggested that general relativity's notion of spacetime's curvature is equivalent to the aforementioned diffusion-driven impurity model in the flat, discrete lattice of space of Átmiton theory. Their equivalency is demonstrated for the specific case of a spherical mass, around which the Schwarzschild metric is shown to be valid.