Holy hell, talk about burying the lede here! The last sentence of the whole article is:
The new theory allows for information to be destroyed, due to a fundamental breakdown in predictability.
Are you kidding me?!
New theory claims to unite Einstein's gravity with quantum mechanics
151–160 of 203 posts
Re: New theory claims to unite Einstein's gravity with quantum mechanics
#152Holy hell, talk about burying the lede here! The last sentence of the whole article is: The new theory allows for information to be destroyed, due to a fundamental breakdown in predictability. Are you kidding me?!
Is there something fundamental that breaks when information is allowed to be destroyed?
Re: New theory claims to unite Einstein's gravity with quantum mechanics
#153Earlier quoted context omitted.
Turns out the only interesting thing is how sloppy my reading is (and how quick I am to blame others for that sloppiness…). I simply missed the second “each” below: > Should space-time be shown to be quantum, the loser will give to each of the winners, one ITEM of their choice. If the alternative hypothesis is deemed to be correct, the losers will each give 5,000 ITEMS to the winner.
Given this each, I'm surprised the headline isn't 10,000:1 bet. Also, who wants 10,000 <$20 items? It's a cool payout, but if I wanted to spend ~$200,000, I wouldn't do it in 10,000 pieces.
I think, reading it, it could be £1000 worth of wine. For example two cases of decent Gevrey Chambertin, I myself could bring myself to accept such a thing.
Re: New theory claims to unite Einstein's gravity with quantum mechanics
#154Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah they are, they just cannot be verified - or cannot be verified yet. The higgs boson theory was theorised in 1964 and it was untestable at the time, but that theory got the funding together to create one of the largest and most expensive scientific instruments built to prove the theory. Nuclear fusion was theorised in 1915, again untestable at the time, and look how far we've come. The above comment is an anti-sc…
Usually when people say something is untestable they don't mean like the Higgs Boson. It was testable, they just needed the proper tools. This was always known and was being actively worked towards. An untestable theory is one that cannot be tested regardless of the tools due to the nature of the theory. Multiverse is an example of an untestable theory. There is no way we know of to actually prove or disprove it. And…
Isn't the term for this "unfalsifiable"?
Re: New theory claims to unite Einstein's gravity with quantum mechanics
#155I believe gravity can be both quantizable and non quantizable. Gravitons could be like phonons (quantized sound waves) and only exist in the solid state of space time. In the fluid state of space time gravitons don’t exist ( Similar to the fact that phonons can only exist in solids, but not in fluids).
Re: New theory claims to unite Einstein's gravity with quantum mechanics
#156Holy hell, talk about burying the lede here! The last sentence of the whole article is: The new theory allows for information to be destroyed, due to a fundamental breakdown in predictability. Are you kidding me?!
Is there something fundamental that breaks when information is allowed to be destroyed?
Wouldn't that prevent time from going in reverse?
Re: New theory claims to unite Einstein's gravity with quantum mechanics
#157Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's heartwarming to see these people have fun while still sticking to serious work. Everything should be like that.
When it comes to science, only the British seem to be able do that.
Rovelli is Italian, and I think Pennington is American and Oppenheim is Canadian.
Re: New theory claims to unite Einstein's gravity with quantum mechanics
#158Earlier quoted context omitted.
What made them mysterious? Aren't there always some fraction of atoms or molecules with sufficiently high energy to escape the object?
If it were simply a matter of losing particles, I'd expect that one of the many very capable metrology labs around the world would've devised an appropriate experiment, e.g. storing two exact same masses at slightly different temperatures near absolute zero and characterizing the difference in mass (since presumably the higher temperature sample would lose slightly more mass if it were down to high energy particles).…
Look for material condensed on the inside of the jar.
Re: New theory claims to unite Einstein's gravity with quantum mechanics
#159The various standard kilograms held by the national bodies, and the prototype standard kilogram in paris, were measured very precisely over the past hundred years, and their weights did seem to diverge mysteriously.
What made them mysterious? Aren't there always some fraction of atoms or molecules with sufficiently high energy to escape the object?
If the object is evaporating, look for material condensed on the inside of the jar.
Re: New theory claims to unite Einstein's gravity with quantum mechanics
#160> A second paper, published simultaneously in Nature Communications and led by Professor Oppenheim's former Ph.D. students, looks at some of the consequences of the theory, and proposes an experiment to test it: to measure a mass very precisely to see if its weight appears to fluctuate over time. Definitely don't know enough to comment about the overall proposal, but given how many grand physics theories over the pas…
Love that there is a test. Some of the theories like gravity waves and Higgs boson took almost half a century to be confirmed by experimentation. The hard part about this is building tools that can precisely measure mass fluctuations with extremely low error bars at picosecond timescales. Because we need to both validate the theory and that the device is correctly measuring. So much of science became only possible be…
I’m not a physicist much less an astrophysicist and so take what I’m about to say with a hefty grain of salt. But I wonder if this new approach can also explain observations of distant galaxies. Distant galaxies either redshift because they’re moving away faster over time due to dark energy or redshift because their mass is changing. Can this new theory help explain why older galaxies might lose increasing mass over time?