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Theoretical physics: The origins of space and timeMany researchers believe that physics will not be complete until it can explain not just thebehaviour of space and t ime, but where these entit ies come from.

28 August 2013

Zeeya Merali

Theoretical physics: The origins of space and time : Nature News & Comment 14/10/13

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Free podcastZeeya Merali discusses some of thetheories that are trying to explainthe origins of space and time.

“Imagine waking up one day and realizing that you actually live inside a computer game,” says Mark VanRaamsdonk, describing what sounds like a pitch f or a science-f iction f ilm. But f or Van Raamsdonk, aphysicist at the University of Brit ish Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, this scenario is a way to think aboutreality. If it is true, he says, “everything around us — the whole three-dimensional physical world — is anillusion born f rom inf ormation encoded elsewhere, on a two-dimensional chip”. That would make ourUniverse, with its three spatial dimensions, a kind of hologram, projected f rom a substrate that existsonly in lower dimensions.

This 'holographic principle' is strange even by the usual standards of theoretical physics. But VanRaamsdonk is one of a small band of researchers who think that the usual ideas are not yet strangeenough. If nothing else, they say, neither of the two great pillars of modern physics — general relativity,which describes gravity as a curvature of space and time, and quantum mechanics, which governs theatomic realm — gives any account f or the existence of space and time. Neither does string theory, whichdescribes elementary threads of energy.

Van Raamsdonk and his colleagues are convinced that physicswill not be complete until it can explain how space and timeemerge f rom something more f undamental — a project that willrequire concepts at least as audacious as holography. Theyargue that such a radical reconceptualization of reality is theonly way to explain what happens when the inf initely dense'singularity' at the core of a black hole distorts the f abric ofspace-time beyond all recognition, or how researchers can unif y

atomic- level quantum theory and planet- level general relativity — a project that has resisted theorists'ef f orts f or generations.

“All our experiences tell us we shouldn't have two dramatically dif f erent conceptions of reality — theremust be one huge overarching theory,” says Abhay Ashtekar, a physicist at Pennsylvania State Universityin University Park.

Finding that one huge theory is a daunting challenge. Here, Nature explores some promising lines ofattack — as well as some of the emerging ideas about how to test these concepts (see 'The f abric ofreality').

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Gravity as thermodynamicsOne of the most obvious questions to ask is whether this endeavour is a f ool's errand. Where is theevidence that there actually is anything more f undamental than space and time?

A provocative hint comes f rom a series of startling discoveries made in the early 1970s, when it becameclear that quantum mechanics and gravity were intimately intertwined with thermodynamics, the science ofheat.

In 1974, most f amously, Stephen Hawking of the University of Cambridge, UK, showed that quantumef f ects in the space around a black hole will cause it to spew out radiation as if it was hot. Otherphysicists quickly determined that this phenomenon was quite general. Even in completely empty space,they f ound, an astronaut undergoing acceleration would perceive that he or she was surrounded by aheat bath. The ef f ect would be too small to be perceptible f or any acceleration achievable by rockets, butit seemed to be f undamental. If quantum theory and general relativity are correct — and both have beenabundantly corroborated by experiment — then the existence of Hawking radiation seemed inescapable.

A second key discovery was closely related. In standard thermodynamics, an object can radiate heat onlyby decreasing its entropy, a measure of the number of quantum states inside it. And so it is with blackholes: even bef ore Hawking's 1974 paper, Jacob Bekenstein, now at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem,had shown that black holes possess entropy. But there was a dif f erence. In most objects, the entropy is

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proportional to the number of atoms the object contains, and thus to its volume. But a black hole'sentropy turned out to be proportional to the surf ace area of its event horizon — the boundary out ofwhich not even light can escape. It was as if that surf ace somehow encoded inf ormation about what wasinside, just as a two-dimensional hologram encodes a three-dimensional image.

In 1995, Ted Jacobson, a physicist at the University of Maryland inCollege Park, combined these two f indings, and postulated that everypoint in space lies on a tiny 'black-hole horizon' that also obeys theentropy–area relationship. From that, he f ound, the mathematics yieldedEinstein's equations of general relativity — but using only thermodynamicconcepts, not the idea of bending space-time1.

“This seemed to say something deep about the origins of gravity,” saysJacobson. In particular, the laws of thermodynamics are statistical innature — a macroscopic average over the motions of myriad atoms andmolecules — so his result suggested that gravity is also statistical, amacroscopic approximation to the unseen constituents of space and time.

In 2010, this idea was taken a step f urther by Erik Verlinde, a string theorist at the University ofAmsterdam, who showed2 that the statistical thermodynamics of the space-time constituents —whatever they turned out to be — could automatically generate Newton's law of gravitational attraction.

And in separate work, Thanu Padmanabhan, a cosmologist at the Inter-University Centre f or Astronomyand Astrophysics in Pune, India, showed3 that Einstein's equations can be rewritten in a f orm that makesthem identical to the laws of thermodynamics — as can many alternative theories of gravity.Padmanabhan is currently extending the thermodynamic approach in an ef f ort to explain the origin andmagnitude of dark energy: a mysterious cosmic f orce that is accelerating the Universe's expansion.

Testing such ideas empirically will be extremely dif f icult. In the same way that water looks perf ectlysmooth and f luid until it is observed on the scale of its molecules — a f raction of a nanometre —estimates suggest that space-time will look continuous all the way down to the Planck scale: roughly10−35 metres, or some 20 orders of magnitude smaller than a proton.

But it may not be impossible. One of ten-mentioned way to test whether space-time is made of discreteconstituents is to look f or delays as high-energy photons travel to Earth f rom distant cosmic eventssuch as supernovae and γ-ray bursts. In ef f ect, the shortest-wavelength photons would sense thediscreteness as a subtle bumpiness in the road they had to travel, which would slow them down ever soslightly. Giovanni Amelino-Camelia, a quantum-gravity researcher at the University of Rome, and hiscolleagues have f ound4 hints of just such delays in the photons f rom a γ-ray burst recorded in April. Theresults are not def init ive, says Amelino-Camelia, but the group plans to expand its search to look at thetravel t imes of high-energy neutrinos produced by cosmic events. He says that if theories cannot betested, “then to me, they are not science. They are just religious belief s, and they hold no interest f orme.”

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Other physicists are looking at laboratory tests. In 2012, f or example, researchers f rom the University ofVienna and Imperial College London proposed5 a tabletop experiment in which a microscopic mirror wouldbe moved around with lasers. They argued that Planck-scale granularit ies in space-time would producedetectable changes in the light ref lected f rom the mirror (see Nature http://doi.org/njf ; 2012).

Loop quantum gravityEven if it is correct, the thermodynamic approach says nothing about what the f undamental constituentsof space and time might be. If space-time is a f abric, so to speak, then what are its threads?

One possible answer is quite literal. The theory of loop quantum gravity, which has been underdevelopment since the mid-1980s by Ashtekar and others, describes the f abric of space-time as anevolving spider's web of strands that carry inf ormation about the quantized areas and volumes of theregions they pass through6. The individual strands of the web must eventually join their ends to f ormloops — hence the theory's name — but have nothing to do with the much better-known strings of stringtheory. The latter move around in space-time, whereas strands actually are space-time: the inf ormationthey carry def ines the shape of the space-time f abric in their vicinity.

Because the loops are quantum objects, however, they also def ine a minimum unit of area in much thesame way that ordinary quantum mechanics def ines a minimum ground-state energy f or an electron in ahydrogen atom. This quantum of area is a patch roughly one Planck scale on a side. Try to insert an extrastrand that carries less area, and it will simply disconnect f rom the rest of the web. It will not be able tolink to anything else, and will ef f ectively drop out of space-time.

Loop quantum gravityThis simulation shows how space evolves in loop quantum gravity. The colours of the faces of the tetrahedra

indicate how much area exists at that given point, at a particular moment of time.

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One welcome consequence of a minimum area is that loop quantum gravity cannot squeeze an inf initeamount of curvature onto an inf initesimal point. This means that it cannot produce the kind ofsingularit ies that cause Einstein's equations of general relativity to break down at the instant of the BigBang and at the centres of black holes.

In 2006, Ashtekar and his colleagues reported7 a series of simulations that took advantage of that f act,using the loop quantum gravity version of Einstein's equations to run the clock backwards and visualizewhat happened bef ore the Big Bang. The reversed cosmos contracted towards the Big Bang, asexpected. But as it approached the f undamental size limit dictated by loop quantum gravity, a repulsivef orce kicked in and kept the singularity open, turning it into a tunnel to a cosmos that preceded our own.

This year, physicists Rodolf o Gambini at the Uruguayan University of the Republic in Montevideo andJorge Pullin at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge reported8 a similar simulation f or a black hole.They f ound that an observer travelling deep into the heart of a black hole would encounter not asingularity, but a thin space-time tunnel leading to another part of space. “Getting rid of the singularityproblem is a signif icant achievement,” says Ashtekar, who is working with other researchers to identif ysignatures that would have been lef t by a bounce, rather than a bang, on the cosmic microwavebackground — the radiation lef t over f rom the Universe's massive expansion in its inf ant moments.

Loop quantum gravity is not a complete unif ied theory, because it does not include any other f orces.Furthermore, physicists have yet to show how ordinary space-time would emerge f rom such a web ofinf ormation. But Daniele Orit i, a physicist at the Max Planck Institute f or Gravitational Physics in Golm,Germany, is hoping to f ind inspiration in the work of condensed-matter physicists, who have producedexotic phases of matter that undergo transit ions described by quantum f ield theory. Orit i and hiscolleagues are searching f or f ormulae to describe how the Universe might similarly change phase,transit ioning f rom a set of discrete loops to a smooth and continuous space-time. “It is early days andour job is hard because we are f ishes swimming in the f luid at the same time as trying to understand it,”says Orit i.

Causal setsSuch f rustrations have led some investigators to pursue a minimalist programme known as causal settheory. Pioneered by Raf ael Sorkin, a physicist at the Perimeter Institute in Waterloo, Canada, the theorypostulates that the building blocks of space-time are simple mathematical points that are connected bylinks, with each link pointing f rom past to f uture. Such a link is a bare-bones representation of causality,meaning that an earlier point can af f ect a later one, but not vice versa. The resulting network is like agrowing tree that gradually builds up into space-time. “You can think of space emerging f rom points in asimilar way to temperature emerging f rom atoms,” says Sorkin. “It doesn't make sense to ask, 'What's thetemperature of a single atom?' You need a collection f or the concept to have meaning.”

In the late 1980s, Sorkin used this f ramework to estimate9 the number of points that the observableUniverse should contain, and reasoned that they should give rise to a small intrinsic energy that causesthe Universe to accelerate its expansion. A f ew years later, the discovery of dark energy conf irmed hisguess. “People of ten think that quantum gravity cannot make testable predictions, but here's a casewhere it did,” says Joe Henson, a quantum-gravity researcher at Imperial College London. “If the value of

Theoretical physics: The origins of space and time : Nature News & Comment 14/10/13

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dark energy had been larger, or zero, causal set theory would have been ruled out.”

Causal dynamical triangulationsThat hardly constituted proof , however, and causal set theory has of f ered f ew other predictions thatcould be tested. Some physicists have f ound it much more f ruitf ul to use computer simulations. The idea,which dates back to the early 1990s, is to approximate the unknown f undamental constituents with t inychunks of ordinary space-time caught up in a roiling sea of quantum f luctuations, and to f ollow howthese chunks spontaneously glue themselves together into larger structures.

The earliest ef f orts were disappointing, says Renate Loll, a physicist now at Radboud University inNijmegen, the Netherlands. The space-time building blocks were simple hyper-pyramids — f our-dimensional counterparts to three-dimensional tetrahedrons — and the simulation's gluing rules allowedthem to combine f reely. The result was a series of bizarre 'universes' that had f ar too many dimensions(or too f ew), and that f olded back on themselves or broke into pieces. “It was a f ree-f or-all that gaveback nothing that resembles what we see around us,” says Loll.

Causal dynamical t riangulat ionThis simplified version of causal dynamical triangulation uses just two dimensions: one of space and one of time.

The video shows two-dimensional universes generated by pieces of space assembling themselves according

to quantum rules. Each colour represent a slice through the universe at particular time after the Big Bang, which is

depicted as a tiny black ball.

But, like Sorkin, Loll and her colleagues f ound that adding causality changed everything. Af ter all, saysLoll, the dimension of t ime is not quite like the three dimensions of space. “We cannot travel back andf orth in t ime,” she says. So the team changed its simulations to ensure that ef f ects could not comebef ore their cause — and f ound that the space-time chunks started consistently assembling themselvesinto smooth f our-dimensional universes with properties similar to our own10.

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Article PubMed ISI ChemPort

Intriguingly, the simulations also hint that soon af ter the Big Bang, the Universe went through an inf antphase with only two dimensions — one of space and one of t ime. This prediction has also been madeindependently by others attempting to derive equations of quantum gravity, and even some who suggestthat the appearance of dark energy is a sign that our Universe is now growing a f ourth spatial dimension.Others have shown that a two-dimensional phase in the early Universe would create patterns similar tothose already seen in the cosmic microwave background.

HolographyMeanwhile, Van Raamsdonk has proposed a very dif f erent idea about the emergence of space-time,based on the holographic principle. Inspired by the hologram-like way that black holes store all theirentropy at the surf ace, this principle was f irst given an explicit mathematical f orm by Juan Maldacena, astring theorist at the Institute of Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, who published11 his inf luentialmodel of a holographic universe in 1998. In that model, the three-dimensional interior of the universecontains strings and black holes governed only by gravity, whereas its two-dimensional boundarycontains elementary particles and f ields that obey ordinary quantum laws without gravity.

Hypothetical residents of the three-dimensional space would never see this boundary, because it wouldbe inf initely f ar away. But that does not af f ect the mathematics: anything happening in the three-dimensional universe can be described equally well by equations in the two-dimensional boundary, andvice versa.

In 2010, Van Raamsdonk studied what that means when quantum particles on the boundary are'entangled' — meaning that measurements made on one inevitably af f ect the other12. He discovered thatif every particle entanglement between two separate regions of the boundary is steadily reduced to zero,so that the quantum links between the two disappear, the three-dimensional space responds by graduallydividing itself like a splitt ing cell, until the last, thin connection between the two halves snaps. Repeatingthat process will subdivide the three-dimensional space again and again, while the two-dimensionalboundary stays connected. So, in ef f ect, Van Raamsdonk concluded, the three-dimensional universe isbeing held together by quantum entanglement on the boundary — which means that in some sense,quantum entanglement and space-time are the same thing.

Or, as Maldacena puts it: “This suggests that quantum is the most f undamental, and space-time emergesf rom it.”

Nature 500, 516–519 (29 August 2013) doi:10.1038/500516a

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1. Jacobson, T. Phys. Rev. Lett. 75, 1260–1263 (1995).

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2. Verlinde, E. J. High Energy Phys. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/JHEP04(< a=""> class="year">2011)029(2011).<>

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From nature.comAstrophysics: Fire in the hole!03 April 2013Data teleportation: The quantum space race05 December 2012Theorists bridge space-time rips30 October 2012Physics: Unif ication + 15016 March 2011Collider gets yet more exotic 'to-do' list20 July 2010Time to test t ime10 November 2008

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34 comments Subscribe to comments

From elsewhereMark Van RaamsdonkAbhay AshtekarTed JacobsonRafael SorkinRenate Loll

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Affiliat ionsZeeya Merali is a freelance writer in London.

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Martin Ciupa • 2013-09-15 10:51 AM

The reasoning in my comment below is t ied up with the f act that our conscious awareness ofspace-time is the ult imate primitive, per a Cartesian phenomenological argument.

Vladimir Tamari • 2013-09-25 09:07 AM

I have speculated that t ime does not exist as a dimension (only as an artif act of humanmemory), and that 3D space is emergant f rom the node-node relation of a universal latt ice.However I do agree with the limitations to scientif ic theorizing that you mentioned in your lastcomment. Here is my take on that in a recent essay:THE CLOUD OF UNKNOWING & THEITSY QUBITSY UNIVERSE http://f qxi.org/community/f orum/category/31419

Martin Ciupa • 2013-09-15 10:18 AM

"Many researchers believe that physics will not be complete until it can explain not just thebehaviour of space and time, but where these entit ies come f rom." But can they, by themeans/methods of science? That is to say, understanding the methods of science in that theymay take a hypotheses, that is based on assumptions, and seek to support those assumptions,as being derivative of a more primitive theory (based on hypotheses that are f alsif iable, and a setof assumptions). Removing those primitive assumptions, rendering them "f acts" would place thetheory as "non f alsif iable" (in ef f ect a dogma). Thus the agenda can not be done by the methods

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of science.

knyaz istokov • 2013-09-10 04:45 PM

!.Все вселенные как и всё из чего они состоят имеют свои составляющие пространства ивремени,особенно живые организмы. 2.Возможно составляющие пространства и времениэто мысли,идеи.Поэтому при обнаружении составляющих они могут мгновенно меняться иисчезать при соприкосновении и под воздействием аналогичных составляющихнаблюдателя. 3.Пространство и время одна из составляющих тёмнойматерии.Пространство и время перемещается через чёрные дыры в виде информационносветового потока. 4.Каждая из вселенных развивается в рамках своего измерения за счётвнутренней энергии информационного поля и ускоряется до границ разума. 5.Развитиевселенных происходит от плоских до тех где нет измерений.

Abhas Mitra • 2013-09-03 12:53 PM

As of now, there is no observational evidence of any of the predictions of ``Quantum Gravity’’(QG); f or instance despite searching f or 30 years Gamma Ray Astronomers have f ailed to detectany signature of ``Hawking Radiation’’ in the f orm of explosion of primordial black holes (BH).None of the leading Gamma Ray experiments, HESS, VERITAS, MAGIC have f ound any evidencef or any ``granular structure’’ of space or any ``Lorentz Invariance Violation’’ during thepropagation of gamma rays f rom distant sources. All claims of QG and in particular ``cell /atomicstructure’’ of space are at best phenomenology, and it can be easily seen that such notions areactually incorrect. At one point this article conceives of ``the three-dimensional space responds bygradually dividing itself like a splitt ing cell’’. But if the space splits itself like a ``cell’’, what would bethere in between two ``cells’’? Certainly the concept of a background space between the ``cells’’would again creep up, and one is bound to accept the concept of a continuous classicalbackground space even when one would f ancy to junk it! Further, we must admit that all realobservations are consistent with the idea that gravity is a classical phenomenon which is bestexplained by General Relativity (GR). Further all quantum mechanical ef f ects must agree with theirclassical counterparts in the limit Planck constant h=0. And if the space has an atomic structurewhere atoms have dimension ~Lp (Planck Length), the number density of atoms n~ 1/Lp^3. Thenthe statistical density of states of the vacuum gas ~1/Lp^3 so that the entropy ~1/Lp^3. Torecover the classical counterpart, one must let Lp=0. But this would lead to inf inite entropy, inf initetemperature T even f or classical vacuum i.e., nothingness. Similarly, the idea that a BH of mass Mand an Event Horizon (EH) of area A is endowed with an entropy S~A/Lp^2 is inconsistentbecause S=Inf ty in the classical limit h=0, when f or a classic GR BH, S=0 because it correspondsto a unique f rozen state. One cannot get away f rom such dire contradictions by insisting thatthere is no classical vacuum, no classical spacetime, and may be no GR. Af ter all the concepts ofBH and EH whose interpretations led to ``Emergent Gravity’’ ideas are results of classical gravitywhere h=0. Interestingly, long back Narlikar & Padmanabhan (Found. Phys. 18, 659, 1987) wiselyconcluded that ``It is shown that inconsistencies arise when we look upon the Schwarzschildsolution as the space-time arising f rom a localized point singularity. The notion of black holes is

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crit ically examined, and it is argued that, since black hole f ormation never takes place within thepast light cone of a typical external observer, the discussion of physical behavior of black holes,classical or quantum, is only of academic interest. It is suggested that problems related to thesource could be avoided if the event horizon did not f orm and that the universe only containedquasi-black hole.’’ Later Padmanabhan (Phys. Lett. A 136, 203, 1989) showed that if a star wouldcontract within its EH, the entropy of a test particle would blow up. He correctly insisted that thisef f ect is not due to any ``coordinate singularity’’ contradicting the notion of a f inite mass BH.Much later it was f ound that during physical gravitational collapse neither any trapped surf ace norany true BH/EH can f orm at a f inite proper t ime, a f act which immediately resolves BH Inf ormation(and all other paradoxes) associated with EHs (Mitra, Pramana 73, 615, 2009). Simultaneously, itwas shown that though BH solutions are exact, the associated integration constants are zero,and MATHEMATICAL BHs have M=0 (Mitra, J. Math. Phys. 50, 042502, 2009; also astro-ph/0409049). This means that the static BH solutions correspond to the asymptotic f inal statesof physical gravitational collapse where entire mass-energy and angular momentum are radiatedaway. Thus the so-called BH Candidates must be Quasi- BHs rather than true BHs. Further it hasbeen shown that the natural f orm of the quasi-BHs are quasi-static hot balls of plasma (EternallyCollapsing Objects); where outward radiation pressure balances the inward pull of gravity: i.e.,ECOs radiate at their GR Eddington Luminosity (Mitra & Glendenning, MNRAS 404, L50, 2010;Mitra ,MNRAS 367, L66, 2006; 369, 492, 2006). During the preceding gravitational collapse, ECOsmust acquire strong INTRINSIC magnetic f ield and become ``Magnetospheric ECOs’’ (MECOs). AllBH candidates are likely to be MECOs. Thus one can understand evidence of strong magneticf ield ~10^8 G near the accretion disk of Cygnus X-1 (Gnedin et al. arXiv:astro-ph/0304158). Also,there are almost direct evidences that central engines of quasars are MECOs rather than BHs(Schild et al. Astronomical Journal, 132, 420, 2006,http://www.cv.nrao.edu/tuna/past/2006/NEW_QSO_STRUCTURE_FOUND.pdf ). Thus there is notrue horizon, no true BH, no f inite BH entropy, and no puzzle. In f act, with the unique mass M=0,f or a mathematical BH, Hawking f ormula yields T=1/8 pi M =Inf ty; i.e., the horizon & centralsingularity are synonymous of a mathematical M=0 BH having horizon area A=0; its T must beInf inite because this is physical singularity. A classical gravity BH has S=0. This is also explainedby the Hawking f ormula only in the limit M=0; A=0 because S= k ln w=0; w=1 corresponding to theunique f rozen state. So there is no necessity f or hypothetical ``Holography’’ and ``EmergentGravity’’, ``Emergent Spacetime’’. Einstein’s good old GR continues to be retain its beauty &importance. Finally, gravity is not a f undamental f ield in the sense of electromagnetism andnotions of ``quantization of gravity’’, i.e., ``quantization of spacetime structure’’ may not only beunnecessary but f undamentally meaningless. The recent suggestions that Cosmological Constantis actually non-existent (Mitra, Nature Sc. Rep. 2, 923, 2012; JCAP 03, 007, 2013) strengthens thisview.

Paul Hirsch • 2013-09-16 03:22 AM

First, thank you, Zeega, f or an interesting article very well presented. And I particularlyenjoyed your comment, Prof . Mitra. As an amateur, I have no warrant to make sweepingpronouncements on its viability, but I think such well developed and grounded contrarianism isof great value to physics. I look f orward to f ollowing your work on Eternally Collapsing

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Objects. Best wishes.

Roger Granet • 2013-09-03 03:39 AM

From what I can see, none of the suggested ideas gives any real explanation f or how space andtime, or their antecedents, came to be here. Because space, t ime and everything in our universeexist, it seems reasonable that if we want to explain how they came to be, we should f irst try andf igure out why things exist in the f irst place. My view is as f ollows: 1. Why do things exist? Isuggest that a thing exists if it is a grouping, or collection. A grouping is some relationship saying,or def ining, what is contained within. Such a def init ion or grouping is equivalent to an edge,boundary, or enclosing surf ace def ining what is contained within and giving "substance" andexistence to the thing. For instance, the surf ace of a book, the outlines of a cloud, and the curlybraces around a set all def ine what is contained within and give substance and existence to thesethings. Even f or an abstract concept in our mind, we have a list of the things that we think areincluded within that concept. Without such a list, that abstract concept wouldn't exist in our mind.Another example of a grouping, and thus an existent state, is a set. Without a relationshipdef ining what elements are contained within a set, the set would not exist. This relationship, orgrouping is shown by the curly braces, or edge, around the elements of the set, and is what givesexistence to the set 2. Why is there something rather than nothing? First, "absolute nothing", or"non-existence", is f irst def ined to mean: no energy, matter, volume, space, t ime, thoughts,concepts, mathematical truths, etc.; and no minds to think about this absolute lack-of -all. Thisabsolute lack-of -all itself , not our mind's conception of the absolute lack-of -all, is the entirety orwhole amount of all that is present. That's it. It 's all there is. In other words, this lack-of -all, in andof itself , def ines the entirety of all that is present. It says exactly what's there. An entirety, orwhole amount, or everything, is a relationship def ining what is contained within (ie., everything)and is theref ore a grouping, or edge, and, theref ore, an existent state. This edge is not someseparate thing; it is just the relationship, inherent in the absolute lack-of -all, def ining what iscontained within. Theref ore, what has tradit ionally been thought of as "absolute lack-of -all", is,when seen f rom this dif f erent perspective, a grouping, and thus an existent state or "something".Basically, what this means is that we've been misdef ining the word "nothing", and this has causedus to make an incorrect distinction between "something" and "nothing". 3. Using the properties ofan existent entity previously, and incorrectly, thought of as the "complete lack-of -all" or "non-existence", I develop a model of an expanding set of these existent entit ies where this expandingset of entit ies is the same as space. This model provides natural, "mechanical" mechanisms f orthe presence of space, symmetry breaking and energy. Thank you f or listening! If you'reinterested, more is at my website at: sites.google.com/site/ralphthewebsite

Hui Zhang • 2013-09-01 04:53 AM

Even if Maldacena is right, we still canâ t say the God plays dice because the quantum is measuredby current apparatus which are def ined by space and time. So the result of quantum experiment ismeasured and may not be real.

Theoretical physics: The origins of space and time : Nature News & Comment 14/10/13

http://www.nature.com/news/theoretical-physics-the-origins-of-space-and-time-1.13613?WT.mc_id=FBK_NatureNews 13 / 22

John Merryman • 2013-09-01 12:36 AM

Thanks Jerry. In my book you've got more working brain cells than certain people who think theonly possible way that measures of duration and distance could be correlated is if t ime exists assome eternal blocktime. I could rant on about how physics is painting itself into various corners itdoesn't need to, when there are a lot of serious issues that could be addressed, but this is justhow the process works. Some models carry on centuries af ter they lose their way. For example,the problem with monotheism is the absolute is basis, not apex, so a spiritual absolute would bethe essence of being f rom which we rise, not an ideal f orm of it f rom which we f ell. The problem,that you allude to in a prior post, is once we look beyond that veil, it all comes apart. It is our limitswhich give us def init ion and our def init ion that limits us and when we cast them of f .....

jerry clark • 2013-08-31 11:38 PM

I love reading the theories humans come up with as an ef f ort to understand their world anduniverse. However, I believe two hundred years since Thomas Youngs wave theory of light, isenough time to admit there is an upper limit on human ability to conprehend some laws of nature. Iwould f ind it ref reshing if a small portion of scientists could admit that two hundred years oftrying to understand the implications of the double slit experiment has not yielded a solution, andperhaps make a pilgrimage back to the mystical and just see if the mystics or any of the worldsreligions may have tapped into something that could point us to new lines of thought andexploration. Years ago I f ound the book, "The Dancing Wu Li Masters" to have some such interest.Some of the insights the mystics had experienced meshed very well with insights quantummechanics of f ers. If there is such a thing as a Being behind the whole operation, as Einsteinsuspected, then why not take a look at the many holy books around the planet to see if that Beinghid any kernels of insight into its operation.

jerry clark • 2013-08-31 06:43 PM

John Merryman said the f ollowing,". Rather tomorrow becomes yesterday because the earthrotates. Quantum mechanics uses the external vector of t ime and ends up with multiworlds, as itgoes f rom determined past into probabilistic f uture, yet it is the actual occurrences whichdetermine the cat's f ate, as probability collapses into actuality." John, your piece was beautif ullyspoken. Don't know if I have enough grey matter lef t to sort it all out, but your words andthoughts roll through the mind with the beauty of pure poetry.

vladimir tamari • 2013-08-31 04:29 AM

Thanks Zeeya - An excellent and well illustrated summary of where matters stand. There arehowever other as yet incomplete theories that promise even more f undamental approaches. Oneis my Beautif ul Universe (BU) theory whereby the Universe is perceived as a dense latt ice ofidentical building blocks - bipolar spinning nodes (actually qubits or Bloch spheres) - capable of

Theoretical physics: The origins of space and time : Nature News & Comment 14/10/13

http://www.nature.com/news/theoretical-physics-the-origins-of-space-and-time-1.13613?WT.mc_id=FBK_NatureNews 14 / 22

transmitt ing angular momentum causally, linearly and locally in units of Planck's Constant (h) toadjacent nodes (see attached f igure). I try to show how all of the results of physics mayeventually be derived f rom such a simple f irst principle. Matter, dark matter and energy, gravity,radiation, space and time, probability, relativity, entanglement and uncertainty can all emerge quitenaturally f rom a universal network of such nodes. Seehttp://www.ne.jp/asahi/tamari/vladimir/beautif ul_univ_rev_oct_2011.pdf

Guest • 2013-08-31 04:20 AM

Thanks Zeeya - An excellent and well illustrated summary of where matters stand. There arehowever other as yet incomplete theories that promise even more f undamental approaches. Oneis my Beautif ul Universe (BU) theory whereby the Universe is perceived as a dense latt ice ofidentical building blocks - bipolar spinning nodes (actually qubits or Bloch spheres) - capable oftransmitt ing angular momentum causally, linearly and locally in units of Planck's Constant (h) toadjacent nodes (see attached f igure). I try to show how all of the results of physics mayeventually be derived f rom such a simple f irst principle. Matter, dark matter and energy, gravity,radiation, space and time, probability, relativity, entanglement and uncertainty can all emerge quitenaturally f rom a universal network of such nodes. Seehttp://www.ne.jp/asahi/tamari/vladimir/beautif ul_univ_rev_oct_2011.pdf

John Merryman • 2013-08-31 02:53 AM

I think the most signif icant problem in physics is its treatment of t ime. We exist as points in spaceand experience activity as a sequence of events, thus we model t ime as a progression f rom pastevents to f uture ones. In the broad context though, it is just a sea of activity and this createschange, such that potential becomes actual, ie, it is the f uture becoming past. For instance, theearth does not travel either Newton's f low or Einstein's f ourth dimension f rom yesterday totomorrow. Rather tomorrow becomes yesterday because the earth rotates. Quantum mechanicsuses the external vector of t ime and ends up with multiworlds, as it goes f rom determined pastinto probabilistic f uture, yet it is the actual occurrences which determine the cat's f ate, asprobability collapses into actuality. Causality is not due to temporal sequence, but energytransmission. Yesterday didn't cause today, nor does one wave cause the next. The sun shiningon a spinning planet and wind across the waves are cause of these sequences. T ime then is anef f ect of action, not the basis f or it. Much like temperature arising f rom quantit ies of action, t imearises f rom change caused by action. We are just one of those molecules of water, bouncingf rom one point of contact to another. The narrative ef f ect is what our minds record. Flashes ofinsight, like a movie camera taking a series of stills and reconstructing reality f rom them.

jerry clark • 2013-09-02 06:47 PM

John Merryman, af ter re-reading the f ollowing,,,you wrote,,,"Causality is not due to temporalsequence, but energy transmission. Yesterday didn't cause today, nor does one wave causethe next. The sun shining on a spinning planet and wind across the waves are cause of these

Theoretical physics: The origins of space and time : Nature News & Comment 14/10/13

http://www.nature.com/news/theoretical-physics-the-origins-of-space-and-time-1.13613?WT.mc_id=FBK_NatureNews 15 / 22

sequences. T ime then is an ef f ect of action, not the basis f or it. Much like temperaturearising f rom quantit ies of action, t ime arises f rom change caused by action. We are just oneof those molecules of water, bouncing f rom one point of contact to another. The narrativeef f ect is what our minds record. Flashes of insight, like a movie camera taking a series ofstills and reconstructing reality f rom them." For some reason the above caused me to thinkof the thought experiment where one twin takes a trip into space, then comes back to earth,his brother who stayed on earth has aged say seventy f ive years, the brother who went intospace has remained almost as when he lef t. The part I have never f ound an explanation f oris,,,The twin who went into space did not age, what magic would keep a pre-programed bodyf rom aging the same as the brother who was lef t on earth? Is this another impossible tocomprehend like the double slit experiment, or is there a known answer???

John Merryman • 2013-09-03 01:50 AM

As I understood it some decades ago and this explanation still makes the most sense,since nothing can exceed the speed of light and internal atomic activity, ie, the action ofthe electron, is close to the speed of light, if you accelerate a body to close to c, thenthe internal activity has to slow, otherwise the combination would exceed c. So its clockslows. What this really says to me, is that if t ime is only an ef f ect of action, then spacehas no dynamic or material f eatures. Thus it cannot be bent, bounded, limited, etc. Thisleaves it with only two f eatures. Since it cannot be bounded, it is inf inite and since itdoesn't move, it is inert. There is a way to measure this inertia; Centrif ugal f orce. If anobject is spinning in space, it will create centrif ugal f orce and this is not due to anyoutside ref erences, but only the spin relative to the inertia of space. In f act, you candetermine the rate of spin by the strength of centrif ugal f orce. So when light is movingthrough space, it is against this inherent inertia. The maximum is set by the f act that it isthe rate at which all internal activity has been converted to velocity, so there is no moreenergy to make it go f aster. Otherwise, if space was only an abstraction, then whycouldn't two f rames be moving past each other, traveling at c in the other's f rame, thusany internal activity would negate the principle of c as the cosmic speed limit. As f or thetwins, the one on earth essentially has a f aster metabolic rate, so he ages f aster, justas a more rapid heart beat would cause any creature to age f aster. Not because theyare traveling dif f erent t ime vectors. In f act, if t ime were a vector f rom past to f uture,you would think the f aster clock would move into the f uture more rapidly, but since it isaging/burning quicker, it recedes into the past more rapidly. As f or the idea that theuniverse sprang f rom a point and is expanding, it is assumed eventually distant galaxieswill disappear, because the light will have to travel f urther, but this is dumb. If "space iswhat you measure with a ruler," which is the ruler? The presumed expansion, or theconstant speed of light? If you are going to denominate the distance in lightyears, thenspace isn't expanding, only the distance is increasing and the whole model f alls apart,since we appear to be at the center and arguing space itself expands was the solution.The only logical reason f or us to appear at the center of the expansion is if redshif t isentirely an optical ef f ect, due to enormous distance, but that would mean light doesn'ttravel as a point particle, but expands out to f ill space and quanta of light are largely a

Theoretical physics: The origins of space and time : Nature News & Comment 14/10/13

http://www.nature.com/news/theoretical-physics-the-origins-of-space-and-time-1.13613?WT.mc_id=FBK_NatureNews 16 / 22

f unction of what atoms will absorb. A good analogy is the amount of energy to pop akernel of corn. Not that all this won't get you into a lot of trouble in physics class, butthat's just how I see it. Regards, John M

jerry clark • 2013-09-03 02:49 AM

John Merryman, love your writ ing style. May I suggest it 's t ime "The Dancing Wu LiMasters" received an update, or your personal take on the same, written f or "theunwashed" myself and others. Something the layman can sink his teeth into, chewon, digest, then dream about at night. If the layman lacks understanding, its onlybecause no one is speaking to them in a language they can relate to. I know itshard to translate math into a spoken language, but you seem to be gif ted in thatrespect, I f or one want to comprehend, translate your thoughts into words thatmake us f eel like we are looking at the milky way on a very dark night.

John Merryman • 2013-09-04 12:45 AM

Jerry, Thank you again. While I'm in no way a prof essional writer, here are the f ourentries I've made in FQXI's semi-annual writ ing contests:http://f qxi.org/community/f orum/topic/239 http://f qxi.org/community/f orum/topic/800http://f qxi.org/community/f orum/topic/1304http://f qxi.org/community/f orum/topic/1623 Here is an essay I wrote about a yearand a half ago, on the physical basis of economics and polit ics:http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/03/17/1075305/--What- is-Your-Occupation?detail=hide Suf f ice to say, I have to add the disclaimer these are all my ownthoughts and opinions and are not ref lective of anything of f icial. Regards, John

James T. Dwyer • 2013-08-30 08:28 PM

Fundamentally, the counteraction of mass-energy localization is its extraction f rom dimensionalspacetime. Matter could not have been created without the complementary creation of spacetime.

pawan kumar • 2013-08-30 06:32 PM

Space and time.....they are just perception.....not the matter or physical quantit ies. They originatedf rom our brain and have ended up in the mess.

Anthony Aiya-Oba • 2013-08-30 03:28 PM

All is one, Cosmos is absolutivity of relativity. Everything is eternal oneness (entanglement) ofpairness, equator of self -contradiction is Nature's absolute logic. Thus, (2A+B) + (2B + A) ... = 3(A

Theoretical physics: The origins of space and time : Nature News & Comment 14/10/13

http://www.nature.com/news/theoretical-physics-the-origins-of-space-and-time-1.13613?WT.mc_id=FBK_NatureNews 17 / 22

+ B) Where A & B, can be any value, but never both zero. As self -evident in the numericalrelations: 123 + 321 = 444 (0123456789 + 9876543210 )^10 = 9.999999999x10^99 . Nothing isself -contradiction of Something, and the universe is entanglement (oneness) of Nothing andSomething pairness.

Django Fett • 2013-08-30 05:41 AM

What is it about these articles that brings out the quacks and the crazies?

jerry clark • 2013-08-29 11:06 PM

Pawan Kumar said,,," If we talk of this f urther, surprisingly, SPR even can not explain theproperties of photon, which it should explain the best. A very f undamental property of photon,non-existence at rest, f or example, can not be explained by SPR." I cannot explain it either, but Imight suggest that when light begins to slow to under the speed of light, it begins to become selfaware. It is possible that that is the origin of the stuf f of which the mind is composed.

pawan kumar • 2013-08-30 06:12 PM

Thanks f or Reply Dear Clark. So it endorses my point. there are suggestions only. SpecialRelativity which was derived out of considerations over light, if can not explain the propertiesof light, how can it explain or predict about mass (i.e. mass-energy relationship) which isradically dif f erent f rom light. Space and time...and we...trapped in mess.

jerry clark • 2013-08-29 08:43 PM

Any person on the planet could make a list of a half dozen questions that the human mindcurrently cannot comprehend, such as the double slit experiment just to name one. Then whoeveris behind the workings of this universe could give you the answers to those half dozen questionsor insolvable problems. You would then, not be able to explain or talk about them to anyone, writethem down, or even think about them once the special gif t of insight is removed. This is so simplybecause the planet on which we live has been f ormulated to have an exact upper limit in quantity,quality and degree of comprehension of any knowledge we humans might encounter in the visualplanet and universe. Once the special insight has been with drawn, we would revert to type, andwould have no ability beyond other humans. I am not even sure if we would retain the ability to bein awe of what we had been allowed to comprehend. It 's been more than one hundred eighty yearssince the double slit experiment, and it is still incomprehensible.

robert richardson • 2013-08-30 05:04 PM

Excellent article with ideas I had not previously considered. The way I’ve come to terms withthe double slit experiment is that there is “the way reality is (light)” and the way I perceive it. At

Theoretical physics: The origins of space and time : Nature News & Comment 14/10/13

http://www.nature.com/news/theoretical-physics-the-origins-of-space-and-time-1.13613?WT.mc_id=FBK_NatureNews 18 / 22

the double slit experiment is that there is “the way reality is (light)” and the way I perceive it. Atthis t ime it appears that light travels as a wave and arrives as a point. No matter what I use tomeasure it I must convert it to a point (as in striking my eye) and then processing theinf ormation contained in the point. Neither I nor all my measuring devices will ever be directlyexposed to its true reality.

Lobma Thundrup • 2013-08-29 02:17 PM

When will scientists realise that reality can never be understood by the the intellect. The intellect isf ine, to a point, but then, we have to ditch analytical mind to realise reality. "the whole three-dimensional physical world — is an illusion born f rom inf ormation encoded elsewhere." Yes indeed,and the illusion is created by our conf used version of the world, when we imagine there is a 'me,'in here and an outside world. You create the world. Surely Youngs Double Slit experiments withlight, and Uncertainty Principle gave you hints this is so? "Many researchers believe that physicswill not be complete until it can explain not just the behaviour of space and time." "Ashtekar andhis colleagues reported a series of simulations that took advantage of that f act, using the loopquantum gravity version of Einstein's equations to run the clock backwards and visualize whathappened bef ore the Big Bang." Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity dealt a blow to our oldcertainties about the world we perceive, when both time and space were shown to be only relative.What Einstein was not able to do however, was to take the f inal leap into the realisation thatnether t ime nor space exist at all. All we do is measure the relative movements of objects in spaceand name the procedure T ime. No movement no 't ime. To talk of a beginning of t ime is to talkillogical nonsense. Why do those educated scientists f all into the reductionist trap of assumingthat as things get smaller and smaller they become lesser? The idea of a t ime cone extendingbackwards to a Big Bang is nonsense f or how can less and less time/movement produce more ofanything? Science always produces more problems than it solves. It must, by the very nature ofthings.

Marc van der Erve • 2013-08-29 09:02 AM

In addition to my previous comment, it is apparent that physicists, when trying to grasp reality, arebound by their f ramework of ref erence. The latter hinges on "points in space" or "things" that canbe predicted by path descriptions. That is why they so of ten arrive at exotic representations ofreality. They all squeeze the same balloon in dif f erent shapes, the balloon being the establishedf ramework of ref erence. To grasp the true nature of reality, a new paradigm of reality is needed.Indeed, if you'd connect the dots in a dif f erent way, one might def ine our world as a hierarchy ofpurely behavioral phenomena that neatly rise and f all in sync with equilibrium and non-equilibriumthermodynamics. Interestingly, the dark-matter hype then f izzles away with a puf f . This paradigmswitch is what Kuhn ref ers to as The Next Scientif ic Revolution.

Marc van der Erve • 2013-08-29 08:24 AM

Interesting stuf f and beautif ul diagrams but the ult imate synthesis of it all is missing. I covered

Theoretical physics: The origins of space and time : Nature News & Comment 14/10/13

http://www.nature.com/news/theoretical-physics-the-origins-of-space-and-time-1.13613?WT.mc_id=FBK_NatureNews 19 / 22

most of these matters and what they actually hint at when it comes to the true "nature of reality"in The Next Scientif ic Revolution. Kirkus Reviews: https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/marc-van-der-erve1/the-next-scientif ic-revolution/

Anthony Aiya-Oba • 2013-08-29 12:21 AM

Great work indeed. I think the " one overarching theory" that Physicist Abhay Astekar anticipates isNature's absolute logic (absolutivity): equator of self -contradiction of spacetime, entanglement ofatomic- level quantum theory, and planet- level general relativity, as absolute oneness of relativepairness of All in all (Cosmos). Space Radiation-Gravitation Equator Discovered: c^2G = W =9x10^16 x 6.672x10^-11 = 6.0048x10^6 Such that, (6.672x10^-11 x 6.0048x10^0.7)/1x10^-34 =2.007957816x10^-43. http://mathf orum.org/kb/thread.jspa?threadID=2572667 -Aiya-Oba(Philosopher and discoverer of Nature's absolute logic)

bill stroud • 2013-08-29 12:10 AM

Of course it would seem that language was never intended to provide such meaningf ul terms thatidentif ies the actual state or state transit ions. Af ter all its the structure of language where precise(imprecise) terms create paradoxes. The truths exist in domains that language will never describe.When we can communicate at a level that language never can, we will begin to assemble theseelusive truths. Language is a member of the Darwinian set of rational.

Lyssa Martin • 2013-08-29 05:23 AM

Very well said Bill, I f eel the same way.

JP M • 2013-08-28 09:25 PM

By all means continue the research. But I f ind it interesting that scientists and many in the publichave this expectation that at some point everything about existence will be explained by science.However, f undamentally science *cannot* explain existence, it is just outside the scope of scienceto do so. Science might describe what came bef ore this or that, but then where did that comef rom... inf inite regress. Regardless of the mental gymnastics and exotic theories, the question willnever go away: Why is there something rather than nothing? If "quantum is the most f undamental",where does quantum come f rom?

pawan kumar • 2013-08-28 05:11 PM

I have sincere doubts on the many aspects of the modern physics. special theory of relativity(SPR) is one such example. These seem to be nicely interwoven stories and has been applied inthe contexts which are radically dif f erent f rom the original contexts which were considered whilederiving them. If we talk of this f urther, surprisingly, SPR even can not explain the properties of

Theoretical physics: The origins of space and time : Nature News & Comment 14/10/13

http://www.nature.com/news/theoretical-physics-the-origins-of-space-and-time-1.13613?WT.mc_id=FBK_NatureNews 20 / 22

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deriving them. If we talk of this f urther, surprisingly, SPR even can not explain the properties ofphoton, which it should explain the best. A very f undamental property of photon, non-existence atrest, f or example, can not be explained by SPR. This is one instance only. I can count many. Butthe point I want to make is that we need to reexamine the f ounding principles of modern physics.Otherwise we will keep on getting trapped in a mess.

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