(ORDO NEWS) — It’s been almost a century since scientists broke the universe. Through a complex combination of experiment and theory, physicists have discovered a mechanism based on the mathematics of the probabilistic ticks behind the façade of reality.
This view of the theory underlying quantum mechanics, loosely referred to as the Copenhagen Interpretation, asserts that everything can be described as a possibility as long as we are not forced to describe it as a reality.
But what does that even mean?
Despite decades of experimentation and philosophizing, the gap between the unknown properties of a quantum system and the dimension that we all see with our own eyes has hardly narrowed.
For all the talk of collapsing waveforms, cats in boxes, and observer effects, we are no closer to understanding the nature of reality than early physicists were in the late 1920s.
However, some researchers believe that the keys may be found in the space between quantum physics and another majestic theory born at the beginning of the 20th century, Einstein’s famous general theory of relativity.
Last year, a small group of physicists at the University of Chicago argued that the mere presence of a black hole somewhere nearby pulls the strings of mass in a blurry quantum state and forces it to choose a single fate.
They are now back with a follow-up forecast, presenting their views on different kinds of horizons, in a preprint before peer review .
Imagine a small piece of matter coming out of the darkness inside a closed box. Invisible, he exists in a fog of possibilities. It has no definite location in the shadow, no definite rotation, no definite momentum.
It is important to note that any light it emits is also on an infinite spectrum of possibilities.
This particle hums with potential in a wave that theoretically propagates to infinity.
One can compare this spectrum of possibilities with itself, just as a wave on the surface of a pond can split and recombine to form a recognizable interference pattern.
However, each jolt and jolt in this ripple, as it spreads, it intertwines with another, limiting the range of possibilities at its disposal.
Its interference pattern changes markedly, limiting its results to a process that physicists describe as loss of coherence or decoherence.
It was this process that physicists Dane Danielson, Gautam Satishchandran and Robert Wald considered. an experiment that would lead to an intriguing paradox.
A physicist who looks inside the box to detect the light emitted by a particle inevitably entangles himself and his environment with the waves of the hidden particle, causing some degree of decoherence.
But what if a second person looked over their shoulder and caught the light emitted by the particle with their own eyes?
In the same way, entangled with the light emitted by the particle, they would further limit these possibilities in the particle’s wave, changing it even more.
And if the second observer were standing on a distant planet, light years ago, looking at the box through a telescope? Here’s where it gets weird.
Even though the electromagnetic pulsations of light took years to get out of the box, a second observer would still get entangled with the particle.
According to quantum theory, this should also cause a noticeable change in the wave of the particle, which the first observer will see long before his colleague from a distant world even begins to adjust his telescope.
But what if the second observer lurked deep inside the black hole? The light from the box can easily slip across its horizon, falling into the abyss of curved space-time, but according to the rules of general relativity, information about its entangled fate with a second observer cannot leak back again. p>
Either what we know about quantum physics is wrong, or we have serious problems that need to be solved with the help of general relativity.
Or, according to Danielson, Satishchandran, and Wald, our second observer is irrelevant. This line of no return surrounding the black hole, known as the event horizon, itself serves as an observer, eventually causing almost everything to decohere. Like a crowd of giant eyes in space, watching the universe unfold.
Still not startled? It only gets worse.
Black holes are not the only phenomenon in which space-time becomes a one-way street.
In fact, any sufficiently accelerating object approaching the speed of light will eventually hit a kind of horizon from which the information it emits can never return.
According to the trio’s latest study, these “Rindler Horizons” can also cause similar decoherence in quantum states.
This does not mean that the universe is in any way conscious. Instead, the findings could lead to objective theories about how quantum states turn into absolute measurements, and perhaps about where gravity and quantum physics meet in a single overarching physical theory.
The universe is still split, for at least for now.
All we can say is to observe this space.
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