5 ms·
A “knot dominated era” may have existed in the early universe: study
Paper in Physical Review Letters: https://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/s3vd-brsn https://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/s3vd-brsn
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- DerekL 1y agoI think the title removed the wrong words to make it fit into 80 characters. The actual title is “The key to why the universe exists may lie in an 1800s knot idea science once dismissed”. Removing “why the” makes the title ungrammatical. Removing just “science once dismissed” from the end would work better.
- pinkmuffinere 1y agoFor convenience @dang, the new suggested title is The key to why the universe exists may lie in an 1800s knot idea When I first read the existing title I was also very confused
- dang 1y agoI agree that that would be a good way to shorten it, but the title itself needs to be changed ("Please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait" - https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html). "Key to why the universe exists" is linkbaity, and "1800s knot idea" appears misleading, since the intersection between what Kelvin said and what these researchers are saying appears to be just "knots". Edit: The mention of Kelvin's original idea does make the article more interesting though!
- dang 1y agoThe article's title is too baity for HN so I lifted a phrase from the paper itself. More at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45696368 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45696368
- meindnoch 1y ago[flagged]
- kotaKat 1y ago[flagged]
- snozolli 1y agoIn 1867, Lord Kelvin imagined atoms as knots in the aether. I had never heard of this before, and I find the idea absolutely delightful. As I understand it, the "knots" are stable vortices in the aether. It was popular from 1870 - 1890, and it blows my mind that only a few years later the electron was discovered (1897), and less than 50 years later (1938), the scanning electron microscope was invented! 1955 was when the atom was first imaged. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vortex_theory_of_the_atom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vortex_theory_of_the_atom
- perihelions 1y agoI was literally just reading about this (see in particular "arguments in favor of") https://webhomes.maths.ed.ac.uk/~v1ranick/papers/mfaknot.pdf https://webhomes.maths.ed.ac.uk/~v1ranick/papers/mfaknot.pdf ("Geometry and Physics of Knots" by Atiyah) It's interesting that the mathematical theory of knots was initially developed in response to Kelvin's proposal (i.e. Tait's work), because people were motivated trying to work out its implications for atomic theory. A branch of mathematics created by wrong physics.
- EA-3167 1y agoOddly close to to the QFT view while missing the fundamental nature of fields.
- jordibc 1y agoI think the idea of knots as a basis for everything has come and gone several times. One of those were in the 90s, which is when I became aware thanks to the excellent "Gauge Fields, Knots and Gravity" by John Baez and Javier P Muniain, that was part of the "Series on Knots and Everything" [1]. Those are really intriguing ideas. [1] https://www.worldscientific.com/series/skae https://www.worldscientific.com/series/skae
- tug2024 1y ago[dead]
- datameta 1y agoThe more we learn the more I'm unsure of whether it is a wonder anything exists at all or whether considering the scales of time involved (and hypothetical metaverse) whether it was all inevitable.
- kulahan 1y agoYou can take it back out even further and ask why a universe in which chemistry is even possible popped up. A single small change and either everything becomes unbelievably heavy and collapses, or everything stays unreasonably light and we never get past hydrogen and helium. Fun fact: it's very easy to rule out a multiverse theory where travel between universes is possible. If the multiverse theory is correct, every possible combination of universe is out there. This means there is a universe which formed in exactly the right way such that the citizens all decided to leave their universe and invade our specific one. They formed 10 billion years ago and completely annihilated all matter in our universe. Since we are still here, either the multiverse is false, or travel between universes is impossible.
- debugnik 1y agoYou're assuming that that particular set of universes is possible. Maybe it hasn't happened because getting them to agree is not scientifically possible. This reminds me of Stephen Hawking telling John Oliver that the latter dating Charlize Theron is beyond the bounds of scientific possibility in any of the infinite parallel universes.
- novemp 1y ago
- hvs 1y agoCalculations show that everything we see today, from atoms to galaxies, exists because just one extra particle of matter survived for every billion matter–antimatter pairs. Everything about the Universe boggles the mind, but I was unaware of this.
- JohnMakin 1y agoAs a former non-atheist, with plenty of people I know in the church that stubbornly refuse to acknowledge accepted science - I've long experimented with theologies in my head to fit the concept of God as they understand it into a cosmological model. Stuff like this is fun for me to point to. Maybe a watchmaker (set it in motion and then stepped away) "god" tipped the scales ever so slightly here (to be clear, I don't believe this, but communicating science to religious people can help to frame things in this way). To me this creates a much more powerful deity than some guy who somehow only created the universe 6,000 years ago but also for some insane reason made it look billions of years old.
- chr1 1y agoFitting the concept of god into a cosmological model is rather easy. If we agree that everything we see is described by physics, then everything including us is simply a computation. And in principle someone can build a machine to carry out such a computation. People in such a machine will be more or less like us, and the creator of that machine will be exactly like god, outside of space and time, omnipotent, omniscient but having to run the simulation to see what everyone does. From this point of view creating universe 6000 years ago and making it look billions of years old does not look that insane, just a workaround for finite machine time. So the main disagreement is not about existence of god, or materialism vs idealism, but whether a human is equivalent to a computation or not.
- ok_dad 1y agoAlternately, an individual set things in motion that they couldn’t control or stop, and thus the universe was born. God could just be a random entity that got in over their proverbial head. We think creating a universe requires thought or intention but it could be a big mistake.
- NoSalt 1y agoI had a mathematics professor in college whose specialty was in knots. I naively, and probably too bluntly, asked him how his work fit into the world; a question I have regretted to this day. Anyhoo ... I guess this is where it fits into the "world". If you are interested, here is his Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morwen_Thistlethwaite https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morwen_Thistlethwaite
- whatshisface 1y agoThe article didn't say, but a soliton is a solution to a nonlinear PDE that keeps its shape while traveling. One real-world example is a tall ocean wave.
- danwills 1y agoIndeed! I rather like the idea that solitons are something like the simplest self-propagating 'things' in any medium/computation-reigeme, so gliders in Game-of-Life might qualify and in more complex/subtle systems they can have more complex behaviours as well (like bacteria, or flies? Hehe) Here's a fun example I made in gollygang/Ready (and Houdini) of PDE solitons that spin around with rippling wakes: https://youtu.be/edNG2EJWQwQ?si=8b3YsHCDIaj0C7Pa https://youtu.be/edNG2EJWQwQ?si=8b3YsHCDIaj0C7Pa
- pcthrowaway 1y agoWould sound waves then count as solitons?
- danwills 1y agoI believe so, although the way I usually think about Solitons is like a single packet.. so just one cycle of a wave. Continuous sound could probably be thought of as a continuous stream of solitons (I think ppl call them phonons when it's sound though). I haven't studied PDEs nor solitons in a formal way I just love playing with them. Gray Scott with History and Wave (a formula I contributed to Gollygang/Ready) supports many fascinating soliton behaviours. Here's 25mins of one of the strangest parameter settings I've found: https://youtu.be/Naj_J8aznyk?si=Da3A3iTz8rN9qrgq https://youtu.be/Naj_J8aznyk?si=Da3A3iTz8rN9qrgq
- IAmBroom 1y agoOnly if they retain their original shape. The point is not that any wave is a soliton, but a soliton never changes shape as it moves (through time, a medium, or whatever). The soliton can decrease in amplitude, and expand in width, but otherwise remains the same. A pure, single Gaussian hump is the soliton for homogenous linear media. If you create an audible with the spectral shape of a Gaussian (and therefore also the time shape), it might get quieter as it moves across the room, and longer, but will still "sound" the same.
- deafpolygon 1y agoMy personal theory is that universes are born from black holes (or rather, the exit end of the black hole). There are more than one such universe. Big bang theory isn't exactly correct -- our universe expanded from the tail end of a collapsing black hole. I think various "universes" share the same overall laws of physics, but can have different arrangements. Knots certainly fits in this and could explain some of the things.
- IAmBroom 1y agoI like that theory too. If the Universe-Maker ever asks our opinions, at least our votes will add 2 for that category!