Science
Related: About this forumTheoretical physics: The origins of space and time
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.
Zeeya Merali
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, or how researchers can unify atomic-level quantum theory and planet-level general relativity a project that has resisted theorists' efforts for generations.
All our experiences tell us we shouldn't have two dramatically different conceptions of reality there must be one huge overarching theory, says Abhay Ashtekar, a physicist at Pennsylvania State University in University Park.
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http://www.nature.com/news/theoretical-physics-the-origins-of-space-and-time-1.13613
Vinnie From Indy
(10,820 posts)Love you posts!
K & R
Cheers!
R. Daneel Olivaw
(12,606 posts)Surya Gayatri
(15,445 posts)Vedanta, the basis of Hinduism, has known this for thousands of years. The illusion is called "maya" in Sanscrit.
xocet
(3,871 posts)elias7
(3,991 posts)Those religions are alive and as they do not rely on the historical accuracy of an arbitrary mythology or on the factuality of god. The stories and god(s) are symbolic of the same questions and answers that modern day physics seeks to comprehend.
They are really ahead of the west, both spiritually and conceptually. And elementary concepts in these religions are completely consistent with scientific advance. It is a lack of depth or education to think that science, religion and philosophy are not all seeking the same thing, just in a different language.
FiveGoodMen
(20,018 posts)They're all seeking answers and deeper understanding.
But science is trying to figure out how things work; the others are looking for reasons, meaning, teleological satisfaction.
That's really not the same.
Surya Gayatri
(15,445 posts)Diverse searches are following different paths, but are aiming for the same goal.
FiveGoodMen
(20,018 posts)I'm sure scientists would love to know the why of everything (assuming that's even a valid question) but their goal is just to learn as much as they can about how things work.
With religion and philosophy, the why is the whole point.
That's not the same.
Surya Gayatri
(15,445 posts)musings of Mr. Van Raamsdonk, a physicist at the University of British Columbia, who is extensively quoted in the article.
Surya Gayatri
(15,445 posts)xocet
(3,871 posts)Who wants to argue religion in the science group?
BS posts like yours don't belong in this group.
Surya Gayatri
(15,445 posts)Last edited Fri Aug 30, 2013, 03:21 PM - Edit history (1)
Such a compartmentalized way of thinking!
Science over here only. Philosophy over there exclusively. And ne'er the twain shall meet.
Simply an interesting fact that a philosophical system foresaw the illusory nature of creation millenia ago.
xocet
(3,871 posts)Science here. Religion over there.
Go back to religion if you have nothing scientific to contribute to the discussion.
Surya Gayatri
(15,445 posts)I believe you'll find that this is a direct quote from the scientific article in question.
I didn't introduce a philosophical concept into the discussion. That was Van Raamsdonk, a physicist at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada.
"...this scenario is a way to think about reality..." says Mr. Van Raamsdonk--sounds like a philoshophy of science to me.
xocet
(3,871 posts)None of this has anything remotely to do with science and still does not belong in the science group.
Surya Gayatri
(15,445 posts)Xocet, as you so obviously desire it, I cede the last word to you.
Please, be my guest.
libodem
(19,288 posts)Van Raamsdonk. Winner.
hunter
(38,303 posts)No reason at all really, something about it offends my sense of order.
I'm always playing with "theories of everything" in my head. My latest is a constant universe in which both the past and the future shift around to conform with the present. The past and future don't exist in any real sense, they are imaginary. The "Big Bang" wasn't an event, it's an artifact of the way we model time. In this model I imagine going back in time (you can't, there is no "there" there) thirteen billion years. From that imaginary vantage point the universe would still look to be about 13.798 billion years old just as it does today. Now imagine going forward in time (you can't) thirteen billion years. From that imaginary vantage point the universe would still look 13.798 billion years old. In this universe the song is "Never twice the same, never once very different." What we see as a "Big Bang" is an artifact of the way we "see" time ourselves. But the only reality, the only place that exists, is the "now."
In this model there is no such thing as "time" as we know it, no dimension locked on a ratchet, "traveling" from the past into to future. There's no need for "causal sets" where "...an earlier point can affect a later one, but not vice versa." We exist in a present only, both the past and future are projections of the NOW.
Our biology is deeply prejudiced to see the past as fixed and the future as mutable. After all, every one of us has ancestors going all the way back to the beginning of life and earth. Every last ancestor of yours survived and successfully reproduced, they did this for billions of years. (Heh, what are the odds?) But there's no reason for time to have a "preferred" direction; You are here. There's a past where all your ancestors survived and reproduced. So that "explains" that. If you play with dynamite and win yourself a Darwin award, the absence of your descendants in some imaginary future is also "explained."
At quantum scales the weirdness goes away when you get rid of time. There's a "now." The past and future are clearly mutable. Quantum entanglement, double slit experiments, and all the rest of that "spooky" quantum behavior become much less spooky...
I don't see everything as static in this model; suns are born, suns die, life evolves and then it fizzles out, but it's going on everywhere in this universe, in a "now" and no "place" else. Mathematically in this universe there is only one "speed," the speed of light, c, and that's the measure of three identical dimensions. Me, you, everything, and the universe... it's all light.
Chemisse
(30,803 posts)I have long thought that time is fluid, with the now and the past and the future mingling.
But you have gone a huge step further with this idea.
At quantum scales the weirdness goes away when you get rid of time.
So 2 particles thought to be entangled because of their 'knowledge' of what the other one is doing, in spite of distance, may simply be communicating because their one-time proximity to each other is still existing, and always will be? That takes down one big weirdness.
MyshkinCommaPrince
(611 posts)2013 Isaac Asimov Memorial Debate: The Existence of Nothing
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The 2011 debate is perhaps interesting in this context, too.
dimbear
(6,271 posts)lastlib
(23,159 posts)coming from a guy with a name like "Raamsdonk"?) . . (j/k)
bluedeathray
(511 posts)We don't really understand what's going on around us. We don't even understand the properties of matter in our own world, much less anything on a universal scale. Other than (to us) it's BIG!
Great article. Thanks!