THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING?
Illya Jongeneel. May 17, 2018
Still certainly a topic of discussion, but it seems we are close to the so-pursued law of everything, the all-encompassing theory. Quantum information can be the last missing puzzle piece. An explanation is comprehensive. But first of all that piece of quantum science that is associated with it: the Non-locality.
Non-locality.
If two quantum objects – for example, electrons – have been involved in an interaction at a time, they are part of the same quantum system. For example, two photons in a crystal barium borate each have indeterminate properties, but the sum of those properties is certain. They are in a ‘quantum entanglement’ .
Entanglement of quantum particles. Getty Images / Science Photo Libra
A common wave function then applies to these quantum objects. While this wave function develops over time, the objects in question remain connected in an inseparable relationship.
When the objects involved are then completely separated, so that they can no longer influence each other – at least not in a traceable manner – then it appears that a measurement of the one object consistently reflects a state that is exactly opposite (and complementary) to the state. of the other object at exactly the same time. This is true even if the particles are many light years apart. So it seems that the measurement of the first object has an immediate and simultaneous effect on the state of the second – regardless of the distance or isolation between them.These kinds of effects are called the non-local effects in the QM (nonlocality). Taken literally, this non-locality implies that speeds greater than light are possible, which is contrary to the theory of relativity. Albert Einstein called this phenomenon with some skepticism: “spooky action at a distance” (Einstein, 1947).
However, another possibility is conceivable. Suppose the involved particles do not interact or “communicate” with each other at all after their separation. What remains true is that they continue to complement each other. Maybe they have a parallel development anyway. It is therefore conceivable that the quantum particles involved, on their journey through space and time, take with them all information that is necessary to display the “correct” properties at the “correct” time that still fit in the parallel development prescribed by the wave function.
In other words, the particles store so much information about their original situation that they can always comply with the “program” of the wave function including all its possibilities. The problem is that this would require an absurdly large information capacity.
It has been argued that the whole mystery of quantum physics may be due to the limited comprehension capabilities of our human brain: “In the theory of quantum mechanics we are beyond the reach of visual visualization”
The latter is an underestimation. Although our comprehension is limited, we are capable of reasoning where classical scientific theories give up. More and more prominent physicists are intrigued by the seemingly impossible outcomes of theories emerging from quantum mechanics. The latest development in science leads to an intriguing thesis:
A growing group of physicists think that information is the fundamental building block of the universe, that the universe is made of information. Anyone who tries to give an exact definition will become irrevocably entangled in the limited explanatory power of our human vocabulary. That is striking. Especially when you consider that in everyday life everyone has an instinctive understanding of what we mean by the word information. For example, the newspaper is packed with information. We then call that information “the news”, a term that fits reasonably well with what you can use common sense as an information definition. Information is something you didn’t know, or something you can learn. But in physics you need a more precise definition. Midway through the last century, the American mathematician Claude Shannon made his first attempt. He described the simplest information storage system, one that can be in two separate – equally probable – states, such as “on” and “off”. The information in such a system is called a bit: a zero or a one.
If you let go of the elusive properties of quantum physics on classical bits, you take the step to the qubit: an information carrier that can not only be zero or one, but also zero and one at the same time, something that physicists call superposition. Qubits also have the crazy quality that they want to intertwine. Anyone who then measures one qubit also learns something about the other. However far apart those qubits are physically. Quantum information may even play a decisive role in the universe. Because quantum information can tangle and latch into chains of entangled zeros and ones, that information remains ghostly linked, even across dizzying cosmic distances. That magisterial fabric of entangled information may well be the basis of the entire universe.
One of the people who will make use of this is Verlinde. His ideas tie in with the long-held view in modern theoretical physics that space and time, quantities that people like Einstein used to capture the slippery characteristics of reality, are not fundamental. Underneath is a deeper layer. “The first ideas about what we can use to describe that deeper layer already exist,” says Dijkgraaf. He is referring to research into the mysterious properties of black holes, from which physicists have drawn some remarkable conclusions in recent years. When an object falls into a black hole, two things are likely to happen. First of all, that black hole eats up the object, whereby all information about that object seems to be irretrievably lost. At the same time, the horizon, the border beyond which you can no longer escape the overwhelming gravitational pull of the black hole, becomes a little bit wider. For every bit of information you throw into a black hole, the surface of its horizon grows by a square planck length, the length that physicists believe is the smallest possible length in the cosmos. Every bit of information that disappears in a black hole must be recoverable. This means that every bit that disappears in a black hole can be found on the surface afterwards. While that information is “unreadable” to us in a practical sense, it does not really get lost. Anyone who accurately understands the machinery of black holes can theoretically reconstruct the information.
That is another indication that there is “something” going on with information. If information can make a black hole grow, it also has a physical impact on a cosmic scale. Thanks to an analogy between the information captured on the horizon of a black hole and the entire cosmos, theorists, including Nobel Prize winner Gerard ’t Hooft, even developed the so-called holographic principle. That principle states that reality is a kind of hologram, the result of the dancing of zeros and ones on an invisible horizon around the universe.
However, according to Dijkgraaf, such theories are insufficient for a complete understanding of how reality works. “We also need to be able to explain how that information creates lines, points, and space and time,” he says. “And how that subsequently leads to Einstein’s theory of relativity.” What is again lacking is a good understanding of what information exactly is. What is a bit, and how can you throw one in a black hole? How does a bit “know” that it must form a particle one time and a piece of empty space the other time? If you go back to Shannon’s information definition, you might think of a system that codes for a single bit of information. For example, for a qubit this could be an electron spinning in one direction for a zero and the other for one. Is that electron then a bit of information?
“No”, says Verlinde. “The idea is that the electron itself is also made up of quantum information. You shouldn’t imagine that information as one thing. It is the very thing from which all things arise, ”he says. In doing so, he concurs with a famous statement by the American theoretical physicist John Wheeler, who stated in the 1970s that there was It from bit in the universe. In other words: a physical thing (an “it”) always consists of bits, of information. An interesting thought, although no one can tell you how to get from “bit” to “it”. Until now, this question has led physicists to string theory, a theory that replaced the image of small particles as fundamental building blocks with the image of a reality consisting of vibrating strings and sheets. “And now we are discovering quantum information as the next station,” says Verlinde. We want to understand how chains of entangled bits know that sometimes they have to be a particle and sometimes a piece of empty space. A better understanding of entangled information is the starting point, says Beenakker. “You can say that the 19th century was the century of energy. In the 20th century, entanglement was mainly something philosophical. And now, in the 21st century, entanglement appears to be something you can really do something with. It underpins a very large part of reality. ” According to Beenakker, one thing is really certain: “The ultimate theory of space and time is not geometric, but based on information.”
The final trajectory on the way to comprehensive theory.
So much for the latest insights. We’re almost there now. What is missing is a combination of these latest developments in science in a summarizing all-encompassing but simple thesis.
An unsolvable contradiction seemed – and seems to be – that between Einstein’s theory of relativity and quantum theory. It is precisely this apparent contradiction that perhaps brings us to the all-encompassing theory. For that a side jump via the question:
What is a black hole?
This question is very relevant to physicists. Within these cosmic wolverines they hope to find answers to the greatest puzzles of physics. Issues such as: what are the most fundamental building blocks of reality? And: is it possible to summarize everything we know about the world in one theory? They now come seductively close to that ultimate goal. In the universe processes take place in which black holes are formed. This happens, for example, when massive stars die. The violence that accompanies this compresses the core of the former star so hard that it collapses under its own gravity. A cosmic cascade in which everything is compressed into a single point. A black hole is a point in space from which you can never escape. In 1915, German physicist Karl Schwarzschild was the first to demonstrate, using Einstein’s theory of general relativity, that objects could be made so heavy that even light could no longer escape their gravity. Due to their insanely large mass, such objects eventually converge into a single, literal point: a place without size, a sphere with zero diameter. Physicists later called that bizarre point a singularity.
Black holes are extreme. “It is completely impossible to describe them with our current physics,” says astronomer Heino Falcke. That’s because of a notorious problem in physics: its two main theories – Einstein’s Theory of Relativity and Quantum Theory – have no way of working together. When physicists want to stick both together, things go wrong. Their formulas suddenly give completely ridiculous answers. The gaze of many physicists is therefore firmly focused on black holes. The supposed singularities in the interior of those holes can only be described with a combination of both theories. Black holes probably provide insight into how quantum theory and relativity merge.
And it is precisely this apparent incompatibility of both theories that may be the basis for the all-encompassing theory. It is plausible that both conflicting theories are simultaneously complementary and linked – as if they were in a quantum entanglement – valid. And that this is the core of the comprehensive theory for everything.
Although still open to improvement and criticism, it now forms the basis for the comprehensive theory in the form of a thesis.
These:
The fundamental building block of everything is the entanglement of interconnected complementary opposites.
Processes come about through the interaction of the entangled complementary opposites that are active or inactive in opposition to each other.
In our universe, the primary complementary opposition is: matter / non-matter where non-matter is probably represented by Quantum information. Space is filled with matter and at the same time with immaterial Quantum information. That Quantum information is entangled with (entanglement) and thus in constant interaction with matter. After all, it is the connected contradiction thereof. Quantum information is therefore also the connection between all matter.
You could therefore call the immaterial Quantum information God; or whatever names have been given for what is but is not.