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That metery is an illusion

Posted: Sun Nov 17, 2019 10:53 am
by Matt Flynn
Read this five times and it starts making sense, sorta.

From here ... https://www.quantamagazine.org/physicis ... -20130917/

Physicists have discovered a jewel-shaped geometric object that challenges the notion that space and time are fundamental constituents of nature.

The amplituhedron reconceptualized colliding particles — ostensibly temporal events — in terms of timeless geometry. When it was discovered in 2013, many physicists saw yet another reason to think that time must be emergent — a variable that we perceive and that appears in our coarse-grained description of nature, but which is not written into the ultimate laws of reality.

Attempts thus far to incorporate gravity into the laws of physics at the quantum scale have run up against nonsensical infinities and deep paradoxes.

The amplituhedron, or a similar geometric object, could help by removing two deeply rooted principles of physics: locality and unitarity.

Locality is the notion that particles can interact only from adjoining positions in space and time.

And unitarity holds that the probabilities of all possible outcomes of a quantum mechanical interaction must add up to one.

The concepts are the central pillars of quantum field theory in its original form, but in certain situations involving gravity, both break down, suggesting neither is a fundamental aspect of nature.

In keeping with this idea, the new geometric approach to particle interactions removes locality and unitarity from its starting assumptions.

The amplituhedron is not built out of space-time and probabilities; these properties merely arise as consequences of the jewel’s geometry.

The usual picture of space and time, and particles moving around in them, is a construct.

Recently, a strange duality has been found between string theory and quantum field theory, indicating that the former (which includes gravity) is mathematically equivalent to the latter (which does not) when the two theories describe the same event as if it is taking place in different numbers of dimensions.

No one knows quite what to make of this discovery. But the new amplituhedron research suggests space-time, and therefore dimensions, may be illusory ....

http://arxiv.org/pdf/1312.2007.pdf