Read The Fabric of the Cosmos: Space, Time, and the Texture of Reality Online
Authors: Brian Greene
Tags: #Science, #Cosmology, #Popular works, #Astronomy, #Physics, #Universe
The Fabric of the Cosmos: Space, Time, and the Texture of Reality (11 page)
The spinning bucket has had a long run. From Newton's absolute space and absolute time, to Leibniz's and then Mach's relational conceptions, to Einstein's realization in special relativity that space and time are relative and yet in their union fill out absolute spacetime, to his subsequent discovery in general relativity that spacetime is a dynamic player in the unfolding cosmos, the bucket has always been there. Twirling in the back of the mind, it has provided a simple and quiet test for whether the invisible, the abstract, the untouchable stuff of space—and spacetime, more generally—is substantial enough to provide the ultimate reference for motion. The verdict? Although the issue is still debated, as we've now seen, the most straightforward reading of Einstein and his general relativity is that spacetime can provide such a benchmark:
spacetime is a some
thing.
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Notice, though, that this conclusion is also cause for celebration among supporters of a more broadly defined relationist outlook. In Newton's view and subsequently that of special relativity, space and then spacetime were invoked as entities that provide the reference for defining accelerated motion. And since, according to these perspectives, space and spacetime are absolutely unchangeable, this notion of acceleration is absolute. In general relativity, though, the character of spacetime is completely different. Space and time are dynamic in general relativity: they are mutable; they respond to the presence of mass and energy; they are not absolute. Spacetime and, in particular, the way it warps and curves, is an embodiment of the gravitational field. Thus, in general relativity, acceleration relative to spacetime is a far cry from the absolute, staunchly un-relational conception invoked by previous theories. Instead, as Einstein argued eloquently a few years before he died,
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acceleration relative to general relativity's spacetime
is
relational. It is not acceleration relative to material objects like stones or stars, but it is acceleration relative to something just as real, tangible, and changeable: a field—the gravitational field.
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In this sense, spacetime—by being the incarnation of gravity—is
so
real in general relativity that the benchmark it provides is one that many relationists can comfortably accept.
Debate on the issues discussed in this chapter will no doubt continue as we grope to understand what space, time, and spacetime actually are. With the development of quantum mechanics, the plot only thickens. The concepts of empty space and of nothingness take on a whole new meaning when quantum uncertainty takes the stage. Indeed, since 1905, when Einstein did away with the luminiferous aether, the idea that space is filled with invisible substances has waged a vigorous comeback. As we will see in later chapters, key developments in modern physics have reinstituted various forms of an aetherlike entity, none of which set an absolute standard for motion like the original luminiferous aether, but all of which thoroughly challenge the naïve conception of what it means for spacetime to be empty. Moreover, as we will now see,
the
most basic role that space plays in a classical universe—as the medium that separates one object from another, as the intervening stuff that allows us to declare definitively that one object is distinct and independent from another—is thoroughly challenged by startling quantum connections.
WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE SEPARATE
IN A QUANTUM UNIVERSE?
To accept special and general relativity is to abandon Newtonian absolute space and absolute time. While it's not easy, you can train your mind to do this. Whenever you move around, imagine your now shifting away from the nows experienced by all others not moving with you. While you are driving along a highway, imagine your watch ticking away at a different rate compared with timepieces in the homes you are speeding past. While you are gazing out from a mountaintop, imagine that because of the warping of spacetime, time passes more quickly for you than for those subject to stronger gravity on the ground far below. I say "imagine" because in ordinary circumstances such as these, the effects of relativity are so tiny that they go completely unnoticed. Everyday experience thus fails to reveal how the universe really works, and that's why a hundred years after Einstein, almost no one, not even professional physicists, feels relativity in their bones. This isn't surprising; one is hard pressed to find the survival advantage offered by a solid grasp of relativity. Newton's flawed conceptions of absolute space and absolute time work wonderfully well at the slow speeds and moderate gravity we encounter in daily life, so our senses are under no evolutionary pressure to develop relativistic acumen. Deep awareness and true understanding therefore require that we diligently use our intellect to fill in the gaps left by our senses.
While relativity represented a monumental break with traditional ideas about the universe, between 1900 and 1930 another revolution was also turning physics upside down. It started at the turn of the twentieth century with a couple of papers on properties of radiation, one by Max Planck and the other by Einstein; these, after three decades of intense research, led to the formulation of
quantum mechanics.
As with relativity, whose effects become significant under extremes of speed or gravity, the new physics of quantum mechanics reveals itself abundantly only in another extreme situation: the realm of the extremely tiny. But there is a sharp distinction between the upheavals of relativity and those of quantum mechanics. The weirdness of relativity arises because our personal experience of space and time differs from the experience of others. It is a weirdness born of comparison. We are forced to concede that our view of reality is but one among many—an infinite number, in fact—which all fit together within the seamless whole of spacetime.
Quantum mechanics is different. Its weirdness is evident without comparison. It is harder to train your mind to have quantum mechanical intuition, because quantum mechanics shatters our own personal, individual conception of reality.
Every age develops its stories or metaphors for how the universe was conceived and structured. According to an ancient Indian creation myth, the universe was created when the gods dismembered the primordial giant Purusa, whose head became the sky, whose feet became the earth, and whose breath became the wind. To Aristotle, the universe was a collection of fifty-five concentric crystalline spheres, the outermost being heaven, surrounding those of the planets, earth and its elements, and finally the seven circles of hell.
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With Newton and his precise, deterministic mathematical formulation of motion, the description changed again. The universe was likened to an enormous, grand clockwork: after being wound and set into its initial state, the clockwork universe ticks from one moment to the next with complete regularity and predictability.
Special and general relativity pointed out important subtleties of the clockwork metaphor: there is no single, preferred, universal clock; there is no consensus on what constitutes a moment, what constitutes a
now.
Even so, you can still tell a clockworklike story about the evolving universe. The clock is your clock. The story is your story. But the universe unfolds with the same regularity and predictability as in the Newtonian framework. If by some means you know the state of the universe right now—if you know where
every
particle is and how fast and in what direction each is moving—then, Newton and Einstein agree, you can, in principle, use the laws of physics to predict everything about the universe arbitrarily far into the future or to figure out what it was like arbitrarily far into the past.
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Quantum mechanics breaks with this tradition. We
can't
ever know the exact location and exact velocity of even a single particle. We
can't
predict with total certainty the outcome of even the simplest of experiments, let alone the evolution of the entire cosmos. Quantum mechanics shows that the best we can ever do is predict the
probability
that an experiment will turn out this way or that. And as quantum mechanics has been verified through decades of fantastically accurate experiments, the Newtonian cosmic clock, even with its Einsteinian updating, is an untenable metaphor; it is demonstrably
not
how the world works.
But the break with the past is yet more complete. Even though Newton's and Einstein's theories differ sharply on the nature of space and time, they do agree on certain basic facts, certain truths that appear to be self-evident. If there is space between two objects—if there are two birds in the sky and one is way off to your right and the other is way off to your left—we can and do consider the two objects to be independent. We regard them as separate and distinct entities. Space, whatever it is fundamentally, provides the medium that separates and distinguishes one object from another. That is what space does. Things occupying different locations in space are different things. Moreover, in order for one object to influence another, it must in some way negotiate the space that separates them. One bird can fly to the other, traversing the space between them, and then peck or nudge its companion. One person can influence another by shooting a slingshot, causing a pebble to traverse the space between them, or by yelling, causing a domino effect of bouncing air molecules, one jostling the next until some bang into the recipient's eardrum. Being yet more sophisticated, one can exert influence on another by firing a laser, causing an electromagnetic wave—a beam of light—to traverse the intervening space; or, being more ambitious (like the extraterrestrial pranksters of last chapter) one can shake or move a massive body (like the moon) sending a gravitational disturbance speeding from one location to another. To be sure, if we are over here we can influence someone over there, but no matter how we do it, the procedure always involves someone or something traveling from here to there, and only when the someone or something gets there can the influence be exerted.
Physicists call this feature of the universe
locality,
emphasizing the point that you can directly affect only things that are next to you, that are local. Voodoo contravenes locality, since it involves doing something over here and affecting something over there without the need for anything to travel from here to there, but common experience leads us to think that verifiable, repeatable experiments would confirm locality.
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And most do.
But a class of experiments performed during the last couple of decades has shown that something we do over here (such as measuring certain properties of a particle)
can
be subtly entwined with something that happens over there (such as the outcome of measuring certain properties of another distant particle),
without
anything being sent from here to there. While intuitively baffling, this phenomenon fully conforms to the laws of quantum mechanics, and was predicted using quantum mechanics long before the technology existed to do the experiment and observe, remarkably, that the prediction is correct. This sounds like voodoo; Einstein, who was among the first physicists to recognize—and sharply criticize—this possible feature of quantum mechanics, called it "spooky." But as we shall see, the long-distance links these experiments confirm are extremely delicate and are, in a precise sense, fundamentally beyond our ability to control.
Nevertheless, these results, coming from both theoretical and experimental considerations, strongly support the conclusion that the universe admits interconnections that are not local.
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Something that happens over here can be entwined with something that happens over there even if nothing travels from here to there—and even if there isn't enough time for anything, even light, to travel between the events. This means that space cannot be thought of as it once was: intervening space,
regardless of
how much there is,
does not ensure that two objects are separate, since quantum mechanics allows an entanglement, a kind of connection, to exist between them. A particle, like one of the countless number that make up you or me, can run but it can't hide. According to quantum theory and the many experiments that bear out its predictions, the quantum connection between two particles can persist even if they are on opposite sides of the universe. From the standpoint of their entanglement, notwithstanding the many trillions of miles of space between them, it's as if they are right on top of each other.
Numerous assaults on our conception of reality are emerging from modern physics; we will encounter many in the following chapters. But of those that have been experimentally verified, I find none more mind-boggling than the recent realization that our universe is not local.
To get a feel for the kind of nonlocality emerging from quantum mechanics, imagine that Agent Scully, long overdue for a vacation, retreats to her family's estate in Provence. Before she's had time to unpack, the phone rings. It's Agent Mulder calling from America.
"Did you get the box—the one wrapped in red and blue paper?"
Scully, who has dumped all her mail in a pile by the door, looks over and sees the package. "Mulder, please, I didn't come all the way to Aix just to deal with another stack of files."
"No, no, the package is not from me. I got one too, and inside there are these little lightproof titanium boxes, numbered from 1 to 1,000, and a letter saying that you would be receiving an identical package."
"Yes, so?" Scully slowly responds, beginning to fear that the titanium boxes may somehow wind up cutting her vacation short.
"Well," Mulder continues, "the letter says that each titanium box contains an alien sphere that will flash red or blue the moment the little door on its side is opened."
"Mulder, am I supposed to be impressed?"
"Well, not yet, but listen. The letter says that
before
any given box is opened, the sphere has the capacity to flash either red or blue, and it
randomly
decides between the two colors at the moment the door is opened. But here's the strange part. The letter says that although your boxes work exactly the same way as mine—even though the spheres inside each one of our boxes
randomly
choose between flashing red or blue—our boxes somehow work in tandem. The letter claims that there is a mysterious connection, so that if there is a blue flash when I open my box 1, you will also find a blue flash when you open your box 1; if I see a red flash when I open box 2, you will also see a red flash in your box 2, and so on."
"Mulder, I'm really exhausted; let's let the parlor tricks wait till I get back."
"Scully, please. I know you're on vacation, but we can't just let this go. We'll only need a few minutes to see if it's true."
Reluctantly, Scully realizes that resistance is futile, so she goes along and opens her little boxes. And on comparing the colors that flash inside each box, Scully and Mulder do indeed find the agreement predicted in the letter. Sometimes the sphere in a box flashes red, sometimes blue, but on opening boxes with the same number, Scully and Mulder always see the same color flash. Mulder grows increasingly excited and agitated by the alien spheres but Scully is thoroughly unimpressed.
"Mulder," Scully sternly says into the phone, "
you
really need a vacation. This is silly. Obviously, the sphere inside each of our boxes has been programmed to flash red or it has been programmed to flash blue when the door to its box is opened. And whoever sent us this nonsense programmed our boxes identically so that you and I find the same color flash in boxes with the same number."
"But no, Scully, the letter says each alien sphere
randomly
chooses between flashing blue and red when the door is opened,
not
that the sphere has been preprogrammed to choose one color or the other."
"Mulder," Scully sighs, "my explanation makes perfect sense and it fits all the data. What more do you want? And look here, at the bottom of the letter. Here's the biggest laugh of all. The 'alien' small print informs us that not only will opening the door to a box cause the sphere inside to flash, but any other tampering with the box to figure out how it works— for example, if we try to examine the sphere's color composition or chemical makeup before the door is opened—will also cause it to flash. In other words, we can't analyze the supposed random selection of red or blue because any such attempt will contaminate the very experiment we are trying to carry out. It's as if I told you I'm really a blonde, but I become a redhead whenever you or anyone or anything looks at my hair or analyzes it in any way. How could you ever prove me wrong? Your tiny green men are pretty clever—they've set things up so their ruse can't be unmasked. Now, go and play with your little boxes while I enjoy a little peace and quiet."
It would seem that Scully has this one soundly wrapped up on the side of science. Yet, here's the thing. Quantum mechanicians—scientists, not aliens—have for nearly eighty years been making claims about how the universe works that closely parallel those described in the letter. And the rub is that there is now strong scientific evidence that a viewpoint along the lines of Mulder's—not Scully's—is supported by the data. For instance, according to quantum mechanics, a particle can hang in a state of limbo between having one or another particular property—like an "alien" sphere hovering between flashing red and flashing blue before the door to its box is opened—and only when the particle is looked at (measured) does it randomly commit to one definite property or another. As if this weren't strange enough, quantum mechanics also predicts that there can be connections between particles, similar to those claimed to exist between the alien spheres. Two particles can be so entwined by quantum effects that their random selection of one property or another is correlated: just as each of the alien spheres chooses randomly between red and blue and yet, somehow, the colors chosen by spheres in boxes with the same number are correlated (both flashing red or both flashing blue), the properties chosen randomly by two particles, even if they are far apart in space, can similarly be aligned perfectly. Roughly speaking, even though the two particles are widely separated, quantum mechanics shows that whatever one particle does, the other will do too.
As a concrete example, if you are wearing a pair of sunglasses, quantum mechanics shows that there is a 50-50 chance that a particular photon—like one that is reflected toward you from the surface of a lake or from an asphalt roadway—will make it through your glare-reducing polarized lenses: when the photon hits the glass, it randomly "chooses" between reflecting back and passing through. The astounding thing is that such a photon can have a partner photon that has sped miles away in the opposite direction and yet, when confronted with the same 50-50 probability of passing through another polarized sunglass lens, will somehow do whatever the initial photon does.
Even though each outcome is
determined randomly and even though the photons are far apart in space, if
one photon passes through, so will the other.
This is the kind of nonlocality predicted by quantum mechanics.
Einstein, who was never a great fan of quantum mechanics, was loath to accept that the universe operated according to such bizarre rules. He championed more conventional explanations that did away with the notion that particles randomly select attributes and outcomes when measured. Instead, Einstein argued that if two widely separated particles are observed to share certain attributes, this is not evidence of some mysterious quantum connection instantaneously correlating their properties. Rather, just as Scully argued that the spheres do not randomly choose between red and blue, but instead are programmed to flash one particular color when observed, Einstein claimed that particles do not randomly choose between having one feature or another but, instead, are similarly "programmed" to have one particular, definite feature when suitably measured. The correlation between the behavior of widely separated photons is evidence, Einstein claimed, that the photons were endowed with identical properties when emitted, not that they are subject to some bizarre long-distance quantum entanglement.
For close to five decades, the issue of who was right—Einstein or the supporters of quantum mechanics—was left unresolved because, as we shall see, the debate became much like that between Scully and Mulder: any attempt to disprove the proposed strange quantum mechanical connections and leave intact Einstein's more conventional view ran afoul of the claim that the experiments themselves would necessarily contaminate the very features they were trying to study. All this changed in the 1960s. With a stunning insight, the Irish physicist John Bell showed that the issue could be settled experimentally, and by the 1980s it was. The most straightforward reading of the data is that Einstein was wrong and there can be strange, weird, and "spooky" quantum connections between things over here and things over there.
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The reasoning behind this conclusion is so subtle that it took physicists more than three decades to appreciate fully. But after covering the essential features of quantum mechanics we will see that the core of the argument reduces to nothing more complex than a Click and Clack puzzler.