Quantum steps towards the Big Bang

[little_monkey]

In Einstein's relativity theory, space is a continuum. Oriti now breaks down this space into tiny elementary cells and applies the principles of quantum physics to them, thus to space itself and to the theory of relativity describing it. This is the unification idea.

A fundamental problem of all approaches to quantum gravity consists in bridging the huge dimensional scales from the space atoms to the dimensions of the universe. This is where Oriti, his colleague Lorenzo Sindoni and Steffen Gielen, a former postdoc at the AEI who is now a researcher at the Perimeter Institute in Canada, have succeeded. Their approach is based on so-called group field theory. This is closely related to loop quantum gravity, which the AEI has been developing for some time.

The task now consisted in describing how the space of the universe evolves from the elementary cells. Staying with the idea of fluids: How can the hydrodynamics for the flowing water be derived from a theory for the atoms?

This extremely demanding mathematical task recently led to a surprising success. "Under special assumptions, space is created from these building blocks, and evolves like an expanding universe," explains Oriti. "For the first time, we were thus able to derive the Friedmann equation directly as part of our complete theory of the structure of space," he adds. This fundamental equation, which describes the expanding universe, was derived by the Russian mathematician Alexander Friedman in the 1920s on the basis of the General Theory of Relativity. The scientists have therefore succeeded in bridging the gap from the microworld to the macroworld, and thus from quantum mechanics to the General Theory of Relativity: they show that space emerges as the condensate of these elementary cells and evolves into a universe which resembles our own.

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2013-09-quantum-big.html#jCp

[Cyberman]

Wouldn't it be awesome if they managed to pull off a Big Bang and it turned out to be the one that made our Universe just like in Family Guy? Then, when theists play their broken records of "where did everything come from?" and "who made the Big Bang?", we can just post these guys' photo.

[Minimalist]

There's only one kind of "big bang" I'm interested in.

[Cyberman]

Me too. Unfortunately, there's more chance of these guys creating a new Universe.

[ManMachine]

In Einstein's relativity theory, space is a continuum. Oriti now breaks down this space into tiny elementary cells and applies the principles of quantum physics to them, thus to space itself and to the theory of relativity describing it. This is the unification idea.

A fundamental problem of all approaches to quantum gravity consists in bridging the huge dimensional scales from the space atoms to the dimensions of the universe. This is where Oriti, his colleague Lorenzo Sindoni and Steffen Gielen, a former postdoc at the AEI who is now a researcher at the Perimeter Institute in Canada, have succeeded. Their approach is based on so-called group field theory. This is closely related to loop quantum gravity, which the AEI has been developing for some time.

The task now consisted in describing how the space of the universe evolves from the elementary cells. Staying with the idea of fluids: How can the hydrodynamics for the flowing water be derived from a theory for the atoms?

This extremely demanding mathematical task recently led to a surprising success. "Under special assumptions, space is created from these building blocks, and evolves like an expanding universe," explains Oriti. "For the first time, we were thus able to derive the Friedmann equation directly as part of our complete theory of the structure of space," he adds. This fundamental equation, which describes the expanding universe, was derived by the Russian mathematician Alexander Friedman in the 1920s on the basis of the General Theory of Relativity. The scientists have therefore succeeded in bridging the gap from the microworld to the macroworld, and thus from quantum mechanics to the General Theory of Relativity: they show that space emerges as the condensate of these elementary cells and evolves into a universe which resembles our own.

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2013-09-quantum-big.html#jCp

This is one of my favourite fields of study. I've read a number of papers recently that attempt to deal with the problem of Unification by looking for a mechanism that connects Quantum Physics with Newtonian Physics.

Daniele Oriti's theory is a neat idea but it doesn't say much about what these elementary cells might be. But, luckily a team looking into Quantum Entanglement (Einstein's 'spooky action at a distance'), have advanced the concept of Quantum Wormholes, which would provide the structure for these elementary cells and ultimately for the geometry of spacetime.

There is an increasing body of work suggesting that time (and space for that matter) as we precieve it, is an emergent property of these quantum constructs - something I've been personally championing for the last 10 years - which is congruent with information we already know about Quanta and their aparent ability to defy causality.

There is more than a slight convergence in new research and if we are on the right lines then it could pave the way to a Unification Theory. Which is very exciting (for me anyway).


MM