Quantum Entanglement & Space-Time
Posted on 08/28/2013 3:33:35 PM PDT by LibWhacker
Many researchers believe that physics will not be complete until it can explain not just the behaviour of space and time, but where these entities come from.
“Imagine waking up one day and realizing that you actually live inside a computer game,” says Mark Van Raamsdonk, describing what sounds like a pitch for a science-fiction film. But for Van Raamsdonk, a physicist at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, this scenario is a way to think about reality. If it is true, he says, “everything around us — the whole three-dimensional physical world — is an illusion born from information encoded elsewhere, on a two-dimensional chip”. That would make our Universe, with its three spatial dimensions, a kind of hologram, projected from a substrate that exists only in lower dimensions.
This 'holographic principle' is strange even by the usual standards of theoretical physics. But Van Raamsdonk is one of a small band of researchers who think that the usual ideas are not yet strange enough. If nothing else, they say, neither of the two great pillars of modern physics — general relativity, which describes gravity as a curvature of space and time, and quantum mechanics, which governs the atomic realm — gives any account for the existence of space and time. Neither does string theory, which describes elementary threads of energy.
Van Raamsdonk and his colleagues are convinced that physics will not be complete until it can explain how space and time emerge from something more fundamental — a project that will require concepts at least as audacious as holography. They argue that such a radical reconceptualization of reality is the only way to explain what happens when the infinitely dense 'singularity' at the core of a black hole distorts the fabric of space-time beyond all recognition, ...
(Excerpt) Read more at nature.com ...
I loved that article.
Makes perfect sense and only reinforced what I’d always known but had never seen explained.
Any favorites? I like Solaris and A Perfect Vacuum.
Some people think “time” doesn’t even exist—that it’s just a concept to help us deal with mortality and sequences of events in the eternal now.
Rather simplistic and naïve.
The difference between a duffer and a PhD theoretical Physicist is mathematics.
A theoretical Physicist cosmologist can test his theory with mathematical models. A sound cosmological theory will have a mathematical model that will confirm or disprove its possibility. If the mathematics determine that the theory is possible then a physical experiment can be designed to test the theory’s relationship to the real world.
A duffer would be hard pressed to design a mathematical model to demonstrate that the universe resides on the back of a turtle or any other theory he may dream up and be harder pressed to design an experiment to provide physical proof to backup that theory.
Heh. This is physics today, "held together by quantum entanglement at the boundary." All dressed up and nowhere to go.
Simplistic and naive, maybe. I agree.
But I did say that the physicist knows the language of his trade. Maybe you didn’t understand what I was getting at, but that language IS mathematics.
I will disagree with you on one point: mathematical models will NOT always prove or disprove a theory. They will ten k to confirm or disconfirm, but the mathematics is always also subject to inspection and investigation. The history of physics is replete with theories once confirmed by mathematical models which were later shown - both the theory and the model - to be incomplete or inadequate.
My point was and is that cosmology is supremely speculative.
Pass the Dutchie ‘pon the left hand side, man.
Thanks for the link.
I’m told that gravity bends space. I know relativity bends my mind. Schroeder’s work continues the process.
I think it is standard relativity theory that time dilation depends on the (location and velocity of the) observer. The passage of time as seen from earth today would likely differ from the passage of time as seen by an observer at the time and location of the big bang. Could 15 billion years be consistent with 6 thousand years? Maybe so.
Quantum Entanglement & Space-Time
As a physics major I always looked at my major as trying to figure out the language of God....but I know what you mean there were always a few of “those types”.
Another freeper posted the article and we both came to the conclusion that determining the age depends on whose perspective one is looking from.....anyone outside time and space (God) or those inside time and space (us, angels, demons).
My post like the above is 92 and OP agreed on 94.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/3051495/posts
Interesting stuff.
Dude, knock yourself out. "Inflation" is a bunch of hand-waving for observations of the existing universe that they just can't explain. Your theory is as good as any.
Can’t? Never say never...
One of the fundamental problems with modern physics IMO is that they are chasing down the 'string theory' rabbit hole. String theory isn't even wrong, and pretty much can't really be tested.
the trouble is that something like string theory appears to mathematically beautiful to many physicists but it is neither prescriptive or descriptive of reality. That is, the math doesn’t describe any part of visible reality nor can the math be used to solve real life problems.
So what is on the other side of the Universe?....
The holographic image of me ruling the entire universe isn’t far off now.
Get to the point!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.