Saturday, May 22, 2010

Gravity Research

This year's Gravity Research Foundation first prize goes to Van Raamsdonk's stringy paper about building spacetime with entanglement. It seems that the popularity of quantum information theory is rapidly growing amongst stringers. Other winning essays include Marolf's, on extreme black holes, and Mathur's membrane paradigm paper.


  1. A dumb comment.
    If spacetime emerge there must be a creation of new atoms all the time. Also a growing of atom weights. The entanglement builds networks (needs new matter) that goes tighter and tighter, until the max entanglement in a black hole? This is max. entropy? I would say min. entropy (max entanglement).

    The atoms are 'eternal' but that cannot be true.

  2. Ulla, when people talk about the emergence of spacetime, they are not talking about the continual creation of more absolute space. They are talking about the very meaning of space. However, it is roughly true that entanglement and black holes are closely related, with the caveat that entanglement is a concept from ordinary quantum mechanics, which in itself is not even remotely good enough to understand black hole geometry, as Lubos would tell you.

  3. How can a space emerge without creation? It seems to be only an abstract construction without meaning. Like nonsense :) The very meaning of space? What is it if not creation?

    I must see what Lubos say. This is a field that he knows very well.

    Verlinde also had an emerging of spacetime.

    Sometimes I think physists are nuts:) They are creating fantasies :) and they believe in them :) But I'm only a simpleminded biologist that talk too much.

    See how many T. Banks references (with the same ideas as Matti Pitkänen, for some peculiar reason. Van Raamsdonk belongs to the same group. Others are getting prizes for their research, why wouldn't even Matti be mentioned?).
    Entanglement and gravity, emergent space.

  5. T. Banks this year.
    ..implies direct gauge mediation of SUSY breaking and a model for dark matter as a hidden sector baryon, with nonzero magnetic dipole moment.

    Now I shall shut up :D

