quantum mechanics

I suspect most loyal Mindscape listeners have been exposed to the fact that I’ve written a new book, Something Deeply Hidden: Quantum Worlds and the Emergence of Spacetime. As I release this episode on Monday 9 September 2019, the book will officially be released tomorrow, in print, e-book, and audio versions. To get in the mood, we’ve had several podcast episodes on quantum mechanics, but the “emergence of spacetime” aspect has been neglected. So today we have a solo podcast in which I explain a bit about the challenges of quantum gravity, how Many-Worlds provides the best framework for thinking about quantum gravity, and how entanglement could be the key to showing how a curved spacetime could emerge from a quantum wave function. All of this stuff is extremely speculative, but I’m excited about the central theme that we shouldn’t be trying to “quantize gravity,” but instead looking for gravity within quantum mechanics. The ideas here go pretty far, but hopefully they should be accessible to everyone.

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The end of this episode includes a bonus, a short snippet from the audio book, read by yours truly. Audio excerpted courtesy Penguin Random House Audio. And here are links to some of the technical papers mentioned in the podcast.

• Something Deeply Hidden: Quantum Worlds and the Emergence of Spacetime
• “Thermodynamics of Space-Time: The Einstein Equation of State” (Jacobson)
• “Space from Hilbert Space: Recovering Geometry from Bulk Entanglement” (Cao, Carroll, and Michalakis)
• “Bulk Entanglement Gravity without a Boundary: Towards Finding Einstein’s Equation in Hilbert Space” (Cao and Carroll)
• “Mad-Dog Everettianism: Quantum Mechanics at Its Most Minimal” (Carroll and Singh)

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There are many mysteries surrounding quantum mechanics. To me, the biggest mysteries are why physicists haven’t yet agreed on a complete understanding of the theory, and even more why they mostly seem content not to try. This puzzling attitude has historical roots that go back to the Bohr-Einstein debates. Adam Becker, in his book What Is Real?, looks at this history, and discusses how physicists have shied away from the foundations of quantum mechanics in the subsequent years. We discuss why this has been the case, and talk about some of the stubborn iconoclasts who insisted on thinking about it anyway.

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Adam Becker received his Ph.D. in physics from the University of Michigan. He is currently a science writer and a Visiting Scholar at the Center for Science, Technology, Medicine & Society at UC Berkeley. His book What Is Real? The Unfinished Quest for the Meaning of Quantum Physics comes out in paperback on Sept. 3, 2019.

• Web site
• Berkeley web page
• What Is Real?
• Talk on the history of quantum mechanics
• Interactive explanation of Bell’s Theorem
• Wikipedia
• Twitter

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Leonard Susskind is a professor of theoretical physics at Stanford University and he’s regarded as one of the fathers of string theory.

He’s written several books including: The Black Hole War, The Cosmic Landscape, and the Theoretical Minimum series.

He also has over 100 lectures on YouTube.

The YC podcast is hosted by Craig Cannon.

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Topics

0:26 - Being perceived as an outsider physicist
   
4:26 - The perils of becoming too mainstream

6:11 - Where his ideas come from

7:26 - Claudio asks - Do you think the graviton can be experimentally found?

10:11 - The origins of String Theory

15:41 - Why should there be a grand unified theory?

16:56 - Quantum mechanics and gravity
  
20:16 - Large unanswered questions in physics

27:56 - Holographic principle

38:26 - Simulation hypothesis

40:41 - Richard Feynman on philosophy

42:26 - Feynman and the bomb

46:26 - Improving the world by discovering what the world is

49:26 - ER and EPR - Black holes and entanglement

56:26 - Noah Hammer asks - Could quantum teleportation be used in the future as a means of intergalactic communication?

58:26 - rokkodigi asks - How do you think quantum theory will shape technology in the future?

1:01:56 - Why teach physics for the public?

What is quantum immortality? How do we get from quantum physics to thought experiment suicide machines and what does it all say about the nature of our reality? In this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Robert Lamb and Joe McCormick dive into the multiverse. 

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The pull of gravity (the force, not the movie) is irresistible as Neil deGrasse Tyson and Leighann Lord grapple with weighty fan questions about matter and the curvature of spacetime.
Read more and listen to the full episode at http://www.startalkradio.net/show/cosmic-queries-gravity/