 Maybe quantum chaos will lead to a better theory of gravity. Image Credit: kakteen/Shutterstock.com |
All the world’s a stage and the stage itself is space-time where all the laws of physics are merely players. But maybe space-time is not the fundamental aspect that it is believed to be. A team of researchers from Japan’s RIKEN suggests that space-time could emerge from quantum properties, and one in particular that is involved in it is called quantum magic.
That is not something out of a Marvel movie despite sounding like it. It is actually a mathematical measure of how difficult is to simulate a quantum state on a regular (read that as non-quantum) computer. It turns out that apart from the simplest quantum states, anything with a bit of chaos will end up being maximally magical, which is a wonderful mathematical euphemism for we can’t model them.
How does that relate to space-time? Well, there is a quantum theory that needed an extra ingredient and that particular flavor might be quantum magic. The theory is called bulk quantum gravity and it was proposed in the 1990s to try to reconcile gravitational and quantum theories. A requirement is that space-time is something that emerges from the theory, not something that is assumed a priori.
“Physicists have long been fascinated about the possibility that space and time are not fundamental, but rather are derived from something deeper,” lead author Kanato Goto of the RIKEN Interdisciplinary Theoretical and Mathematical Sciences, said in a statement. READ MORE...
