The New Scientist published a nice overview of the emerging theory of Loop Quantum Gravity. I’ve been following this for a number of years, ever since my friend Bram turned me onto it. It’s related in some ways to other models of discrete space-time, such as cellular automata and digital physics.
LEE SMOLIN is no magician. Yet he and his colleagues have pulled off
one of the greatest tricks imaginable. Starting from nothing more than
Einstein’s general theory of relativity, they have conjured up the
universe. Everything from the fabric of space to the matter that makes
up wands and rabbits emerges as if out of an empty hat.It
is an impressive feat. Not only does it tell us about the origins of
space and matter, it might help us understand where the laws of the
universe come from. Not surprisingly, Smolin, who is a theoretical
physicist at the Perimeter Institute in Waterloo, Ontario, is very
excited. "I’ve been jumping up and down about these ideas," he says.This
promising approach to understanding the cosmos is based on a collection
of theories called loop quantum gravity, an attempt to merge general
relativity and quantum mechanics into a single consistent theory.The
origins of loop quantum gravity can be traced back to the 1980s, when
Abhay Ashtekar, now at Pennsylvania State University in University
Park, rewrote Einstein’s equations of general relativity in a quantum
framework. Smolin and Carlo Rovelli of the University of the
Mediterranean in Marseille, France, later developed Ashtekar’s ideas
and discovered that in the new framework, space is not smooth and
continuous but instead comprises indivisible chunks just 10-35
metres in diameter. Loop quantum gravity then defines space-time as a
network of abstract links that connect these volumes of space, rather
like nodes linked on an airline route map.From
the start, physicists noticed that these links could wrap around one
another to form braid-like structures. Curious as these braids were,
however, no one understood their meaning. "We knew about braiding in
1987," says Smolin, "but we didn’t know if it corresponded to anything
physical." Read More