14 September 2019 | New Scientist | 3FUNDAMENTAL physics is in a funk. Its
guiding programme, to explain things
by inventing ever more particles, has
stalled, leaving 95.4 per cent of the stuff
in the universe – the provinces of dark
matter and dark energy – unexplained.
What is more, the underlying theory of
microscopic reality that physics serves
up, quantum theory, presents reality in
a form no one can get their heads round.
Oh, and quantum theory doesn’t play
ball with the other big theory of modern
physics, Einstein’s general relativity.
Ah yes, Einstein: one way or another,
you can’t dodge the web he created. In
seeking new answers to the age-old
question of what space and time are
(page 34), theoretical physicist Sean
Carroll has to confront Einstein’s legacy
of an interwoven, highly malleable
space-time that underlies generalrelativity. With delicious irony, Carroll’s
new ideas invoke a brainchild of Einstein,
but one he invented to be disowned:
quantum entanglement, derided by
Einstein as “spooky action at a distance”.
Einstein was both general relativity’s
progenitor and quantum theory’s
greatest critic. History may show
whether neither, one or both of his sets
of ideas were right. In the meantime, the
nature of space and time seems as good
a place to start as any to begin sortingout what’s what. Physics works by the
minimisation of mysteries, and their
current multiplication suggests that
whatever we’ve got wrong, it is
something pretty fundamental.
Carroll is far from alone in scratching
around this ball park. Recently in these
pages, theorist Lee Smolin detailed his
work that comes to similar conclusions,
albeit from the very different starting
point of trying to explain quantum
theory’s ineffability (24 August, page 34).
Zoom further out from the realms of
physics, and cognitive scientist Donald
Hoffman’s ideas suggest that space and
time are just powerful evolutionary
illusions (3 August, page 34).
Whether any of these ideas are right
or indeed necessary remains to be seen.
But remember, similar concerns swirled
around Einstein’s ideas at the time. ❚Einstein’s web
Wanted: original ideas to unpick a tangled legacy
Fathoming
the true nature
of the universe
hasn't turned out
to be easyOXYGEN/GETTYThe leader
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