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By Graham Templeton Jun. 20, 2014 9:30 am
The irreconcilable differences between quantum and “classical” physics are the subject of immense study and debate within the scientific community, and any attempt to close the gap must invoke seemingly frivolous ideas like superstrings and 12-dimentional space. Now, a movement in physics is suggesting that a new possible insight could explain the contradictions in modern physics: maybe time is a superfluid.
The basic logic behind this idea works like so: the properties of water, the high boiling point and surface tension that help to give it its amazing properties, are not a product of any one water molecule but of the interaction between those molecules. Put differently, the properties of a water molecule are fundamental, while the properties of water overall are emergent. The classical view of space-time is that its properties are fundamental, an intrinsic aspect of space-time as the basic backdrop of existence. The liquid theory of space-time says that its properties are emergent, the product of interaction between units about which we currently know nothing at all.
Now, if this all sounds a bit airy-fairy to be counted as hard science, never fear: while the movement to view space-time as a liquid has existed in some form since the early 1990s, earlier this year we got our first actual data on the subject. A team from the University of Munich has collected high-energy photons incoming from the Crab Nebula, finding none of the energy loss we’d expect if the photons had traveled such a long distance through a fluid. The Crab Nebula photons could only be moving through a fluid space-time if that fluid presented absolutely no resistance to movement. Thus, the researchers conclude that if space-time is a fluid, it must be a superfluid – that is, a fluid like liquid helium, with zero viscosity and a seeming disrespect for principles like gravity and surface tension.
Treating space-time like a fluid may unify physics
The emergence of a classical spacetime from any quantum gravity model is still a subtle and only partially understood issue. If indeed spacetime is arising as some sort of large scale condensate of more fundamental objects, then it is natural to expect that matter, being a collective excitation of the spacetime constituents, will present modified kinematics at sufficiently high energies. We consider here the phenomenology of the dissipative effects necessarily arising in such a picture. Adopting dissipative hydrodynamics as a general framework for the description of the energy exchange between collective excitations and the spacetime fundamental degrees of freedom, we discuss how rates of energy loss for elementary particles can be derived from dispersion relations and used to provide strong constraints on the base of current astrophysical observations of high-energy particles.
originally posted by: mbkennel
a reply to: ChaoticOrder
Uh, if you actually read the journal article, it's the other way around. Experimental results have ruled out a significant class of models which try to make space-time emergent from more fundamental entitites, and are consistent with the standard model of space-time being fundamental.
journals.aps.org...
The emergence of a classical spacetime from any quantum gravity model is still a subtle and only partially understood issue. If indeed spacetime is arising as some sort of large scale condensate of more fundamental objects, then it is natural to expect that matter, being a collective excitation of the spacetime constituents, will present modified kinematics at sufficiently high energies. We consider here the phenomenology of the dissipative effects necessarily arising in such a picture. Adopting dissipative hydrodynamics as a general framework for the description of the energy exchange between collective excitations and the spacetime fundamental degrees of freedom, we discuss how rates of energy loss for elementary particles can be derived from dispersion relations and used to provide strong constraints on the base of current astrophysical observations of high-energy particles.
originally posted by: bluemooone2
Could another name for this be the Aether?
In a groundbreaking experiment, the Paris researchers used the droplet setup to demonstrate single- and double-slit interference. They discovered that when a droplet bounces toward a pair of openings in a damlike barrier, it passes through only one slit or the other, while the pilot wave passes through both. Repeated trials show that the overlapping wavefronts of the pilot wave steer the droplets to certain places and never to locations in between — an apparent replication of the interference pattern in the quantum double-slit experiment that Feynman described as “impossible … to explain in any classical way.” And just as measuring the trajectories of particles seems to “collapse” their simultaneous realities, disturbing the pilot wave in the bouncing-droplet experiment destroys the interference pattern.
originally posted by: NorEaster
I was pretty surprised when I didn't find any thread here about this paper.
originally posted by: Thorneblood
Cool, let's put a crazy straw in it and blow bubbles. Trip on that thought Science!