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More like, quantum mechanics is the OS for 3 out of 4 fundamental forces in physics. After 100 years of trying, nobody has managed to express gravity in the lan
by sampo 3y ago
More like, quantum mechanics is the OS for 3 out of 4 fundamental forces in physics. After 100 years of trying, nobody has managed to express gravity in the language of quantum mechanics.
- queuebert 3y agoAaronson does quantum computing. He might be slightly biased.
- Tomte 3y agoHe says that explicitly in the text.
- lokimedes 3y agoWhat AS/400 is to Banking, nonrenormalizable.
- elcritch 3y agoI miss doing “random” renormalizations in physics problems. Though probably best we can’t renormalize the universes QM OS itself. ;)
- TZubiri 3y agoMore like the assembly of Physics then? Gravity would be like Deep Learning Models, no one is able to explain them at the fundamental level.
- nathan_compton 3y agoIn this banal set of metaphors it would have to be something else. There may arguably be some mysteries with respect to how deep learning is effective, but its precise mechanistic explanation as a series of operations on a processor is not mysterious. There is not presently a quantum theory of gravity (in fact, I'd argue that despite the practical successes of QFT there isn't really a theory of quantum mechanics _either_ in the sense that algebraic quantum field theories of non-trivial character are so far elusive and no one knows what quantum field theory at large actually is or why it works, but I digress). In the current account of the world there is literally know way for us to understand how gravity arises from the rules we presently believe must be true based on our successes with the other theories.
- umvi 3y agoMaybe because gravity isn't a force at all but a consequence of the curvature of spacetime?
- jerf 3y agoGravity is a "consequence of the curvature of spacetime" in a particular theory that we know can't be the foundational description of reality, because all it has is mass and spacetime in it. Since it's a known-incorrect or known-incomplete theory (pick which one you like), we are not in a position to declare that gravity is absolutely, positively "curvature in spacetime" and nothing else. Moreover, quantum mechanics comprehensively lacks gravity. It isn't just "oh, well, maybe this system is also accelerating due to gravity but we can ignore it". It's, if atoms are in a superposition of "over there" and "over here", what is the gravity of the resulting system? We know we can produce such superpositions in the real world, and when those systems exist, there must be some answer to that question, even though we don't know what it is. What impact does very, very high gravity have on the non-superposition-related aspects of the standard model? How do energies of all the various bits of the proton change in such a field? And so on. It doesn't help at all to simply reiterate the theory of relativity. The conflict between relativity and QM is deep, real, and very very challenging.
- SJC_Hacker 3y ago> the foundational description of reality How can we ever really know that? Isn't the best we can do is just models?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- wdh505 3y agoI think that the same way that energy is shed when a particle steps from high energy to low energy is the way that "gravity aka possibility energy" is shed when quantum superposition collapses into position. I have daydreamed of becoming a physicist just to try testing this. To directly answer your question, by experimental results.
- mellosouls 3y agoFrom the article: quantum mechanics is the operating system that other physical theories run on [...] with the exception of general relativity [...]
- datavirtue 3y agoBecause of emergence. Unintuitive properties that arise from the aggregate interactions of discrete entities. Temperature is an emergent property arising from the movement of all atoms within a space. There are no hot and cold atoms. The graviton doesn't exist. Gravity emerges from the interaction of matter (energy?) with spacetime. They are literally inseparable in our version of the universe. For those still looking for the graviton, the reasoning has led to the realization that you would create a black hole if you made the device that could detect it (as I understand it).
- skirmish 3y agoCarlo Rovelli argues in "The Order of Time" that time itself emerges solely from thermodynamics since there is no arrow of time otherwise in physics. Given that, spacetime itself is not at all foundational but a result of limited human perception.