4 ms·

I'm still hoping for a quantum gravity theory that can basically explain Einstein's spacetime using intuitive languages. (I'm probably stupid, but I'm hoping it

I'm still hoping for a quantum gravity theory that can basically explain Einstein's spacetime using intuitive languages. (I'm probably stupid, but I'm hoping it's all just chunks like a game server, with delays between chunks)

elashri 3y ago
Do you consider the quantum mechanics as an intuitive theory ( In whatever definition of intuition you think of)? Because if you don't, then any Quantum Gravity wouldn't be for you.
- someguy7250 3y ago
  Quantum is not the most intuitive thing to discuss. And frankly a quantum theory without complex, solid maths behind it might as well be a fairy tale. In the context of how atoms work without having electrons that lose charge and fall into nuclei, how different atoms absorb / emit different colors/wavelengths of light: The simplest theory is that they just are this way. Just fix up the existing "codebase" to accommodate for this observed fact. So they just said electrons has discrete energy states and orbits to choose from. It's literally the simplest way to accommodate the observed fact that electrons do not fall into nuclei. It led to super complex Maths and predictions about black holes, and seemingly conflicts with general relativity. But, Can you think of anything more intuitive?
  - burnished 3y ago
    Discrete quanta of light was my 'hmmmm' moment, at least when it occurred to me to interpret it as a rubbish hack
    - OkayPhysicist 3y ago
      The photon model of light is pretty well demanded by the existence of the photoelectric effect.
bowsamic 3y ago
Einstein's general theory of relativity is already extremely intuitive compared to even non-relativistic Quantum Mechanics (which literally has no accepted intuitive description). Theories of Quantum Gravity are way more unintuitive
- someguy7250 3y ago
  > Theories of Quantum Gravity are way more unintuitive Hence my desire for an intuitive one.
  - bowsamic 3y ago
    You would need an intuitive theory of quantum mechanics first, which doesn't exist
    - someguy7250 3y ago
      Yeah. This is all just basically me talking nonsense. I'm not educated enough and further discussions would only yield nonsense. (But if you are curious, the idea is that space is divided into chunks. Crossing chunks or propogating EM/gravitational fields through a chunk causes a delay, which means the particle's inertial frame loses time. And even if particles are traveling at infinite speed inside a chunk, that delay causes an effective speed limit. That's the speed of light. Similarly, there could be other ideas that also "backport" the entire spacetime theory onto quantum.)
      - bowsamic 3y ago
        We can already do quantum field theory on a curved spacetime, so part of the backporting is already done. The problem is partly the quantisation of spacetime that you point out. Gravity can't be quantised like the other forces, it just doesn't work
        someguy7250 3y ago
        I don't really know where it went wrong with the real theories. But, when I imagine quantized gravity in my head, I don't imagine having a carrier particle (graviton). Rather, it feels like gravity is special and the chunks of spacetime themselves are carrying information about the gravitational field. My imagination is odd because it's based on how I would write a distributed game server. (It doesn't make sense to simulate gravity pairs between every single pair of particles. This isn't just slow, it doesn't scale if the universe expands. But it makes sense to precalculate gravity field as a chunked map and then update one chunk at a time.) (You can ask the same about light/EM but light hits only some of the things and can cause complex local interactions at the scale of electron orbits. When gravity changes, it's very macroscopic instead. So I wanted to treat them differently)

elashri 3y ago

Do you consider the quantum mechanics as an intuitive theory ( In whatever definition of intuition you think of)? Because if you don't, then any Quantum Gravity wouldn't be for you.

someguy7250 3y ago
Quantum is not the most intuitive thing to discuss. And frankly a quantum theory without complex, solid maths behind it might as well be a fairy tale. In the context of how atoms work without having electrons that lose charge and fall into nuclei, how different atoms absorb / emit different colors/wavelengths of light: The simplest theory is that they just are this way. Just fix up the existing "codebase" to accommodate for this observed fact. So they just said electrons has discrete energy states and orbits to choose from. It's literally the simplest way to accommodate the observed fact that electrons do not fall into nuclei. It led to super complex Maths and predictions about black holes, and seemingly conflicts with general relativity. But, Can you think of anything more intuitive?
- burnished 3y ago
  Discrete quanta of light was my 'hmmmm' moment, at least when it occurred to me to interpret it as a rubbish hack
  - OkayPhysicist 3y ago
    The photon model of light is pretty well demanded by the existence of the photoelectric effect.

bowsamic 3y ago

Einstein's general theory of relativity is already extremely intuitive compared to even non-relativistic Quantum Mechanics (which literally has no accepted intuitive description). Theories of Quantum Gravity are way more unintuitive

someguy7250 3y ago
> Theories of Quantum Gravity are way more unintuitive Hence my desire for an intuitive one.
- bowsamic 3y ago
  You would need an intuitive theory of quantum mechanics first, which doesn't exist
  - someguy7250 3y ago
    Yeah. This is all just basically me talking nonsense. I'm not educated enough and further discussions would only yield nonsense. (But if you are curious, the idea is that space is divided into chunks. Crossing chunks or propogating EM/gravitational fields through a chunk causes a delay, which means the particle's inertial frame loses time. And even if particles are traveling at infinite speed inside a chunk, that delay causes an effective speed limit. That's the speed of light. Similarly, there could be other ideas that also "backport" the entire spacetime theory onto quantum.)
    - bowsamic 3y ago
      We can already do quantum field theory on a curved spacetime, so part of the backporting is already done. The problem is partly the quantisation of spacetime that you point out. Gravity can't be quantised like the other forces, it just doesn't work
      - someguy7250 3y ago
        I don't really know where it went wrong with the real theories. But, when I imagine quantized gravity in my head, I don't imagine having a carrier particle (graviton). Rather, it feels like gravity is special and the chunks of spacetime themselves are carrying information about the gravitational field. My imagination is odd because it's based on how I would write a distributed game server. (It doesn't make sense to simulate gravity pairs between every single pair of particles. This isn't just slow, it doesn't scale if the universe expands. But it makes sense to precalculate gravity field as a chunked map and then update one chunk at a time.) (You can ask the same about light/EM but light hits only some of the things and can cause complex local interactions at the scale of electron orbits. When gravity changes, it's very macroscopic instead. So I wanted to treat them differently)