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TEDx Talks
Published: 2010-12-28
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aSz5BjExs9o
everybody here capital posted alright well thank you all for your time and your space good I'm glad that one worked here alright imagine a world inhabitants live and die leaving only the existence of two spatial dimensions plain these Flatliners gonna see some pretty strange things happen things that are impossible to explain within the constraints of their geometry for example imagine that one day some flat lender
scientists observe this sort of colorful lights that appear to randomly appear different locations along the horizon no matter how hard they try to make sense of these lights he'll be unable to come up with a theory that can explain them some of the more clever scientist might come up with a way to probabilistic we describe the flashes for example for me for seconds there's eleven percent
chance that a red flash will occur somewhere on the line but no flatland they will be able to determine exactly when or where the next red light will be seen as a consequence you start to think for the world contains a sense of indeterminacy the reason these lights cannot be explained as the at the fundamental level nature just doesn't make sense are they right does the
fact that they were forced to describe these lights probabilistic we actually mean that the world is in deterministic the lesson we can learn from flatland is that when we assume only a portion of nature's full geometry deterministic events can appear fundamentally in deterministic however when we expand our view and gain access to the full geometry of the system indeterminacy disappears as you can see we can
now determine exactly when and where the next red light will be seen on this line we are here tonight to consider the possibility that we are like the flat landers because as it turns out our world is riddled with mysteries I just don't seem to fit inside the geometric assumptions we have made mysteries like warp space time black holes quantum tunneling the concepts of nature dark
matter dark energy etcetera list is quite long how do we respond to these mysteries well we have two choices we neither cling to our previous assumptions and invent new equations exist somehow outside of the metric and as a vague attempt to explain what's going on over we can take a bolder step throw out our old assumptions and construct a new blueprint for reality one that already
includes those phenomena it's time to take that step because we are in the same situation as the flat letters the probabilistic nature of quantum mechanics has our scientist who leaving deep down the world is indeterminate the closer we looked the more we will find the nature just doesn't make sense I'm perhaps all of these mysteries are actually telling us but there's more to the picture the
nature has a richer geometry than we have assumed maybe the mysterious phenomena in our world could actually be explained by a richer geometry more dimensions this would mean that we are stuck in our own version of flatland and if that's the case how do we Popper souls out at least conceptually well the first step is to make sure that we know exactly what a dimension it's
a good question to start with is what is it about X. Y. and Z. that makes them spatial dimensions the answer is that a change in position in one dimension does not imply a change of position in the other dimension dimensions are independent descriptors of position Z. is a dimension because an object beholding still an X. and Y. well it's moving in Z. so to suggest
that there are other spatial dimensions is to say that it must be possible for an object beholding still an X. Y. and Z. it's still moving about in some other spatial sense but where my these other dimensions speed to solve that mystery we meet need to make a fundamental adjustment toward geometric assumptions about space we need to assume that space is literally and physically quantized but
it's made of interactive pieces if space is quantized that it cannot be infinitely divided into smaller and smaller increments once we get down to a fundamental sides we cannot go any further still be talking about distances in space let's consider an analogy imagine we have a chunk of pure gold that would mean to cut in half over and over we can entertain two questions here how
many times can we cut will be having half and how many times can we cut will be have in house and still have goals these are two completely different questions because once we get down to one atom of gold I cannot go any further without transcending the definition of goals space is quantized from the same thing applies we cannot talk about distances in space that a
lesson the fundamental unit of space for the same reason we cannot talk about amounts of gold for less than one atom of gold quantizing space brings us to a new geometric pitcher one like this with a collection of these pieces these quanta come together to construct the fabric of explains the this geometry is eleven dimensional so if you see in this yard I got its like
to be but beyond we just need to make sense of what's going on notice that there are three distinct types of volume that all volumes of three dimensional distance between any two points in space becomes equal to the number of quanta there instantaneously between them the volume inside each quantum is inter spatial and the volume that the quantum of about in super speed notice how having
perfect information about X. Y. Z. position only enables us to identify a single quantum of space also noticed that it's now possible for an object to be moving about inter spatially or super spatially without changing its X. Y. Z. position at all this means that there are nine independent ways for an object move about that makes nine spatial dimensions three dimensions of X. Y. Z. volume
three dimensions of super special volume of three dimensions of interest Basil volume then we have time which we defined as the whole number of resignations experience at each quantum super time allows us to describe the motion through superspace okay I know this is a whirlwind whole lot fashion and likes to it has so many details we go into this a significant advantage to being able to
describe space as a medium that can possess density distortions and ripples for example we can now describe Einstein's curved space time without dimensionally reducing the pitcher curvature is a change in the density of the space Quanah the dance of the court to get the less they can freely resonate so experienced less time and in the regions of maximum density on the quads are all part completely
together black holes may experience no time gravity it's simply the result of an object traveling straight curved space going straight through X. Y. Z. space means both your left side on your right side travel the same distance interact with the same number of quanta so when a density gradient exist in space the straight path is the one that provides an equal spatial experience for all parts
of the travelling object okay this is a really big deal if you've ever looked into a graph of Einstein curvature before spacetime curvature you may have not noticed that one of the dimensions was only able to we assumed we took a plane of our world and any time there was mass in that plane will stretch it if there's more mass we stretch it more to show
how much curvature there is but what's the direction we're stretching in we got rid of the Z. dimension will blow over that every single time in our books here we didn't have to get rid of the Z. dimension we got to show curvature in its full form this is a really big deal other mysteries a pop out of this map like quantum tunneling Roberta Flack lenders
we'll see a red light appear somewhere on the horizon and it'll disappear and as far as they're concerned it's gone from the universe different light appears again somewhere else on the line they might call it quantum tunneling the same way when we watch electron and then it disappears from the fabric of space and reappear somewhere else and that someone else can actually beyond a boundary that
is not supposed appeal to get beyond Hey can you use this picture now solve that mystery can you see how the mysteries of our world can transform into elegant aspects of our new geometric pitcher all we have to do to make sense of those mysteries to change our geometric assumptions I quantize face okay this picture also has something to say about what the contents of nature
come from Spiegel light planes because in the gravitational constant so on since all units of expression Newton's Jules Pascal's except her can be reduced to five combinations of length mass time ampere in temperature quantizing the fabric of space means that those five expressions must also coming quantized units so this gives us five numbers the stem from our geometric map natural consequences of our map with units
of one two of the numbers in our map numbers that reflect the limits of curvature PI can be used to represent the minimum state of curvature or zero curvature well a number we are calling Judah can be used to represent the Maximo state of curvature the reason we now have a maximum is because we've quantize space we can't infinitely continue to go on one of these
numbers do for us well this long list here's the constants of nature and if you notice in the fly by pretty fast they're all made up of the five numbers that come from a geometry in the two numbers that come from the limits of curvature that's a really big deal by the way to me it's a really big deal this means the contents of nature homa
from the geometry of space they're necessary consequences of the model okay this is a lot of fun because of so many punch lines it's sort of know exactly who's gonna get hardware but our matin this new map allows us to explain gravity in a way that's totally conceptual now you get the whole picture in your head %HESITATION black holes quantum tunneling the constants of nature and
in case none of those caught your fancy are you've never heard of him before him deftly just barely heard about dark matter and dark energy those two are geometric consequence dark matter when we look at distant galaxies and watch the stars that orbit about in this galaxy the stars out of the edges are moving too fast they seem to have extra gravity how do we explain
this we couldn't so we say the must be some other matter they're creating more gravity making those effects but we can't see the matter so we call it dark matter and we define dark matter something you can't see which is fine it's a good step it's a good start me here in our model we don't have to take that kind of a leap we took a
leave prison spaces quantized but everything else fell out from that here we're saying space is made of a fundamental parts the same way we believe air is made out of molecules if that's true then automatic requirement is you can have changes in density Mrs where I'm gravity comes from but you should also have phase changes and what stimulates a phase change well sure when someone gets
cold enough its geometric arrangement will change and it'll change phase a change in the density here have the outer regions of galaxies is going to cause a gravitational field because that's what gravitational fields are changes in density okay told to skip through all that and now we go to dark energy fifteen seconds %HESITATION look under the cosmos we see the distant light is red shifted okay
but it loses some of its energy as us travelling to us for billions of years now how do we explain that red shift well currently we say it will it means that the universe is expanding Hey all of our claims of the universe is expanding come from this from measurements of how the red shift change out of this distance this distance at that distance Hey in
which we measure the expansion that way but there's another way to explain red shift just like there be another way to explain how if I had a tuning fork tuned to middle see and I went in a tunnel and you could hear a B. note sure you could say it's because I'm moving away from you inside the tunnel but could also be because the pressure of
the atmosphere is decreasing while the sounds travel into your ear here that's a little far fetched because pressure atmosphere pressure doesn't decrease fast we're talking billions of years of light traveling through space all we need is the quantum themselves Dallas small amount of elasticity and red shift is eminent all right now is a lot more to explore in this because they're interested feel free to check
