Jan 13, 2017 06:43 PM
The Spacetime Revolutionary
http://fqxi.org/community/articles/display/217
EXCERPT: Carlo Rovelli describes how black holes may transition to "white holes," according to loop quantum gravity—a radical rewrite of fundamental physics.
[...] Decades later and Rovelli, now 60, is at the coalface of potential revolutions in physics. He is one of the founders of loop quantum gravity, which attempts to combine general relativity and quantum theory. [...] In loop quantum gravity, events—"happenings of something somewhere at some time"—are more important than objects. As Rovelli puts it, "an object is just a particularly monotonous sequence of events." Take a wave on the ocean: you can watch it moving but there are no actual objects moving, no single water droplet travels with the wave. Same for humans: Most of the atoms in your body have changed since you were a kid; so, in a sense, you’re a wave of things going in and things coming out. "We’re not a thing," Rovelli explains. "There is a continuity in the process, not in the material."
So to crack the conundrum of quantum gravity, Rovelli argues, we shouldn’t be formulating our equations in terms of things, but in terms of events. In loop quantum gravity, spacetime itself emerges from fundamental discrete quantum events. Although this approach is followed by a large number of researchers worldwide, "the precise formulation of the theory is still discussed, and I’d like to make this all more precise," says Rovelli....
Riding the Rogue Quantum Waves
http://fqxi.org/community/articles/display/216
EXCERPT: Could the formation of giant sea swells help explain how the macroscopic world emerges from the quantum microworld?
[...] According to standard quantum theory, the observer carrying out the experiment in some way causes the collapse of the quantum wave-function, forcing the quantum object to take on definite properties. But nobody can explain how or why that should happen. So Durt, Willox and Colin have turned to rogue ocean waves—which scientists today actually describe using a more complicated version of the Schrödinger equation—for an answer....
http://fqxi.org/community/articles/display/217
EXCERPT: Carlo Rovelli describes how black holes may transition to "white holes," according to loop quantum gravity—a radical rewrite of fundamental physics.
[...] Decades later and Rovelli, now 60, is at the coalface of potential revolutions in physics. He is one of the founders of loop quantum gravity, which attempts to combine general relativity and quantum theory. [...] In loop quantum gravity, events—"happenings of something somewhere at some time"—are more important than objects. As Rovelli puts it, "an object is just a particularly monotonous sequence of events." Take a wave on the ocean: you can watch it moving but there are no actual objects moving, no single water droplet travels with the wave. Same for humans: Most of the atoms in your body have changed since you were a kid; so, in a sense, you’re a wave of things going in and things coming out. "We’re not a thing," Rovelli explains. "There is a continuity in the process, not in the material."
So to crack the conundrum of quantum gravity, Rovelli argues, we shouldn’t be formulating our equations in terms of things, but in terms of events. In loop quantum gravity, spacetime itself emerges from fundamental discrete quantum events. Although this approach is followed by a large number of researchers worldwide, "the precise formulation of the theory is still discussed, and I’d like to make this all more precise," says Rovelli....
Riding the Rogue Quantum Waves
http://fqxi.org/community/articles/display/216
EXCERPT: Could the formation of giant sea swells help explain how the macroscopic world emerges from the quantum microworld?
[...] According to standard quantum theory, the observer carrying out the experiment in some way causes the collapse of the quantum wave-function, forcing the quantum object to take on definite properties. But nobody can explain how or why that should happen. So Durt, Willox and Colin have turned to rogue ocean waves—which scientists today actually describe using a more complicated version of the Schrödinger equation—for an answer....