Why Physicists Are Beginning to Think Space and Time Are ‘Orders’

This past December, physics was awarded the Nobel Prize for the experimental confirmation of a phenomenon known for more than 80 years: entanglement. As Albert Einstein and his collaborators discovered in 1935, quantum objects can be mysteriously connected even if they are separated by great distances. But as a strange phenomenon appears, why is such an old idea still worth the most valuable prize in physics?

Coincidentally, a few weeks before the new Nobel Laureate was honored in Stockholm, another team of distinguished scientists from Harvard, MIT, Caltech, Fermilab and Google announced that they had run a process on Google’s quantum computer that could be interpreted as a wormhole. . Wormholes are tunnels through the universe that can operate as a shortcut through space and time and are loved by science fiction fans, and although the tunnel in this recent experiment was perceived to exist only in the 2-dimensional toy universe, it may break through for the future. research in the field of physics.

But why the complexity compared to space and time? And how important can it be to future physics breakthroughs? Properly understood, the implication implies that the universe is “monistic,” as the philosophers call it, that everything in nature is part of a single and unified whole, in nature. The defining property of a mechanical quantity is that its underlying reality is described in terms of waves, and requires a universal universal function. Already decades ago, researchers such as Hugh Everett and Dieter Zeh demonstrated how our everyday reality can emerge from such a universal quantum-mechanical description. But now there are only researchers such as Leonard Susskind or Sean Carroll who are developing ideas about how the hidden things of quantum can explain not only matter, but also the fabric of space and time.

The problem is much more than just another weird phenomenon. The active principle behind both is why so many mechanics merge the world into one and why we experience this basic unity as so many separate things. At the same time, complexity is the reason why we seem to live in classical reality. He is—quite literally—the glue and creator of worlds. Implication applies to objects with two or more components and describes what happens when the quantum principle “everything that can happen can happen” is applied to such compounds. The implied state is therefore the superposition of all possible combinations that can be combined in a composite to produce the same effect. Again, it is the nature of the wave’s quantitative domain that can help to illustrate how the entanglement actually works.

Imagine a calm, glassy sea on a clear day. Now ask yourself, how is it possible to cover such a plane with two separate wave patterns? One possibility is that superimposing two completely flat surfaces again results in a completely flat surface. But another possibility that would produce a flat surface is if two patterns of identical waves were superimposed on each other during the middle of the oscillation cycle, so that the crests of one pattern cancel out the wave channels of the other one and vice versa. If we only observe the glassy ocean in which the two swells are joined together, we shall by no means find the patterns of the individual swells. What sounds quite commonplace when we talk about waves has the most prodigious consequences when applied to competitive issues. If your neighbor told you that he has two cats, one alive and one dead, this implies that either the first cat or the second one is dead and the other cat, respectively alive, is strange and sick. you care to describe the manner, and you do not know which of them is the lucky one, but you would have done the other. Not so in the whole world. In terms of mechanics, the same sentence suggests that two cats are intermingled by superimposition of cases, including the first cat being alive and the second dead and the first cat being dead, the second alive, but also the possibilities where both cats are. half-alive and half-alive, or the first cat is one-third alive, while the second cat adds two-thirds of its missing life. As for cats, the fates and conditions of individual animals are dissolved into the state of the whole. Again, as far as the universe is concerned, there are no particulars. All that is, merges into one “one.”

The vast and completely new territory to explore shows us the extent of the complexity. It defines a new foundation for science and turns the seeker’s theory of everything upside down – building on quantum cosmology rather than physics or string theory. But how realistic is it for scientists to pursue such an approach? Surprisingly, it’s not just realistic – they actually do it already. Researchers on the quantum front of gravity have begun to rethink space-time due to its complexity. A growing number of scientists came to base their research on the nonseparability of the universe. Hopes are high that through this approach they will finally understand what space and time, deep down, are.

Whether space is implied by entanglement, physics is described by abstract objects beyond space and time, or the space of possibilities represented by Everett’s universal wave function, or whether everything in the universe is reduced to a single quantum object, all these ideas share a distinct meaning. monistic flavor. It is now difficult to judge which of these ideas will shape the future of physics and which will eventually disappear. What’s interesting is that, while the ideas were originally developed often in the context of string theory, string theory seems to have progressed, and strings have no role in the most recent research. The common thread now seems to be that space and time are no longer considered fundamental. Contemporary physics does not begin with space and time to stay with things in this pre-existing field. But space and time themselves are considered products of a larger, fundamental projector. Nathan Seiberg, principal string theorist at the Advanced Institute at Princeton, is not alone in his opinion when he says: “I’m pretty sure space and time are illusions. These are primitive ideas that will be replaced by something more sophisticated. In addition, in most scenarios that propose emerging spaces, complexity plays a key role. As Rasmus Jaksland, the philosopher of science, points out, this ultimately suggests that there are no more singularities in the universe; that everything is connected with other things: “adopting involvement, as the world making a relation, comes at the price of leaving separability. But those who are ready to take this step, perhaps consider that they are involved in a fundamental relationship with which to establish this world (and perhaps all other possible ones).” And so with the passing of space and time, one betrays another.

On the other hand, from the perspective of quantum monism, such unstable mental consequences are not far off. Already in Einstein’s theory of general relativity, space is no longer static; rather it arises from the abundance of matter and energy. Much like the German philosopher Gottfried W. Leibniz describes the view, it describes the relative order of things. If now according to the quantum of monism only one remains, nothing remains to arrange or order and finally there is no longer any need for the concept of space at this fundamental level of description. One, as much as the universe, creates space, time, and matter.

“GR=QM” Leonard Susskind stated in an open letter to researchers in quantum information science: general relativity is nothing more than a quantum-mechanical theory of hundreds of years, which has been applied to all things very successfully, but never really. I understood clearly. As Sean Carroll pointed out, “Perhaps the quantum of gravity was a mistake, and space-time was hidden in quantum mechanics everywhere.” As for the rest, “as much as the quantity of gravity, perhaps as much as mechanics tries to gravitate. Or more accurately but less evocatively, ‘you will find gravity within as much as mechanics,’” suggests Carroll in his blog. No, it seems that if quantum mechanics had taken it seriously from the beginning, if the theory had been understood which does not occur in place and time, but within the main reality of the projector, many dead ends in the exploration of quantum gravity could have been avoided. If we approve of the monistic principles of quantitative mechanics – the heritage of philosophy of three thousand years, which was embraced in antiquity, persecuted in the Middle Ages, revived in the Renaissance, uncorrupted in Romanticism, and first Everett. Zeh has demonstrated them rather than the influential author Niels Bohr in his pragmatic interpretation, which reduced the quantum of mechanics to a tool, we want further on the way to judge the foundations of things.

Adapted from One: How does the ancient idea hold the future of physics? with Henry Päs. Copyright © 2023. Available from Basic Books, an imprint of Hachette Book Group, Inc.