Browsing through my daily dose of slashdot I found a link I just had to follow,
A Jewel at the Heart of Quantum Physics. This article described a mathematical structure that enabled one to solve calculations of particle interactions that had formerly been completely beyond calculation, in some cases on a sheet of paper. In order to arrive at this simplification the theory requires abandoning two core ideas:
Locality is the notion that particles can interact only from
adjoining positions in space and time. And unitarity holds that the
probabilities of all possible outcomes of a quantum mechanical
interaction must add up to one. The concepts are the central pillars of
quantum field theory in its original form, but in certain situations
involving gravity, both break down, suggesting neither is a fundamental
aspect of nature.
In keeping with this idea, the new geometric approach to particle
interactions removes locality and unitarity from its starting
assumptions. The amplituhedron is not built out of space-time and
probabilities; these properties merely arise as consequences of the
jewel’s geometry. The usual picture of space and time, and particles
moving around in them, is a construct.
After reading the article, a number of questions occur to me which I do not have the mathematical chops to even begin to answer.
- Is this the only structure possible, or are there a large, or even infinite number of similar structures, each of which could form the basis of a potential universe?
- Is this structure hidden in the quantum wave equation when you look at it in the right way? It seems it really should be.
- I am imagining something like a standing wave pattern that might have formed by addition with each phase transition of the Big Bang. Does this work at all?
- Is this structure stable and eternal essentially, or is it temporary?
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