This text was initially revealed at The Dialog. The publication contributed the article to Area.com’s Skilled Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.
For greater than a century, physics has been constructed on two nice theories. Einstein’s common relativity explains gravity because the bending of area and time.
Quantum mechanics governs the world of particles and fields. Each work brilliantly in their very own domains. However put them collectively and contradictions seem – particularly with regards to black holes, darkish matter, darkish vitality and the origins of the cosmos.
My colleagues and I’ve been exploring a new strategy to bridge that divide. The concept is to deal with info – not matter, not vitality, not even spacetime itself – as probably the most elementary ingredient of actuality. We name this framework the quantum reminiscence matrix (QMM).
At its core is a straightforward however highly effective declare: spacetime shouldn’t be clean, however discrete – product of tiny “cells”, which is what quantum mechanics suggests. Every cell can retailer a quantum imprint of each interplay, just like the passage of a particle and even the affect of a drive reminiscent of electromagnetism or nuclear interactions, that passes by way of. Every occasion leaves behind a tiny change within the native quantum state of the spacetime cell.
In different phrases, the universe doesn’t simply evolve. It remembers.
The story begins with the black gap info paradox. In keeping with relativity, something that falls right into a black gap is gone ceaselessly. In keeping with quantum idea, that’s unimaginable. Data can’t be ever destroyed.
QMM gives a approach out. As matter falls in, the encircling spacetime cells document its imprint. When the black gap finally evaporates, the knowledge shouldn’t be misplaced. It has already been written into spacetime’s reminiscence.
This mechanism is captured mathematically by what we name the imprint operator, a reversible rule that makes info conservation work out. At first, we utilized this to gravity. However then we requested: what concerning the different forces of nature? It seems they match the identical image.
In our fashions assuming that spacetime cells exist, the robust and weak nuclear forces, which maintain atomic nuclei collectively, additionally go away traces in spacetime. Later, we prolonged the framework to electromagnetism (though this paper is at present being peer reviewed). Even a easy electrical subject modifications the reminiscence state of spacetime cells.
Explaining darkish matter and darkish vitality
That led us to a broader precept that we name the geometry-information duality. On this view, the form of spacetime is influenced not simply by mass and vitality, as Einstein taught us, but in addition by how quantum info is distributed, particularly by way of entanglement. Entanglement is a quantum function through which two particles, for instance, could be spookily linked, that means that when you change the state of 1, you robotically and instantly additionally change the opposite – even when it is mild years away.
This shift in perspective has dramatic penalties. In a single examine, at present beneath peer evaluate, we discovered that clumps of imprints behave identical to darkish matter, an unknown substance that makes up a lot of the matter within the universe. They cluster beneath gravity and clarify the movement of galaxies – which seem to orbit at unexpectedly excessive speeds – without having any unique new particles.
In one other, we confirmed how darkish vitality may emerge too. When spacetime cells are saturated, they can not document new, unbiased info. As an alternative, they contribute to a residual vitality of spacetime. Apparently, this leftover contribution has the identical mathematical type because the “cosmological fixed“, or darkish vitality, which is making the universe develop at an accelerated fee.
Its dimension matches the noticed darkish vitality that drives cosmic acceleration. Collectively, these outcomes recommend that darkish matter and darkish vitality could also be two sides of the identical informational coin.
A cyclic universe?
But when spacetime has finite reminiscence, what occurs when it fills up? Our newest cosmological paper, accepted for publication in The Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics, factors to a cyclic universe – being born and dying again and again. Every cycle of enlargement and contraction deposits extra entropy – a measure of dysfunction – into the ledger. When the certain is reached, the universe “bounces” into a brand new cycle.
Reaching the certain means spacetime’s info capability (entropy) is maxed out. At that time, contraction can not proceed easily. The equations present that as an alternative of collapsing to a singularity, the saved entropy drives a reversal, resulting in a brand new section of enlargement. That is what we describe as a “bounce”.
By evaluating the mannequin to observational information, we estimate that the universe has already gone by way of three or 4 cycles of enlargement and contraction, with fewer than ten remaining. After the remaining cycles are accomplished, the informational capability of spacetime could be absolutely saturated. At that time, no additional bounces happen. As an alternative, the universe would enter a closing section of slowing enlargement.
That makes the true “informational age” of the cosmos about 62 billion years, not simply the 13.8 billion years of our present enlargement.
Up to now, this may sound purely theoretical. However now we have already examined elements of QMM on right this moment’s quantum computer systems. We handled qubits, the essential items of quantum computer systems, as tiny spacetime cells. Utilizing imprint and retrieval protocols based mostly on the QMM equations, we recovered the unique quantum states with over 90% accuracy.
This confirmed us two issues. First, that the imprint operator works on actual quantum methods. Second, it has sensible advantages. By combining imprinting with standard error-correction codes, we considerably lowered logical errors. Which means QMM won’t solely clarify the cosmos, but in addition assist us construct higher quantum computer systems.
QMM reframes the universe as each a cosmic reminiscence financial institution and a quantum laptop. Each occasion, each drive, each particle leaves an imprint that shapes the evolution of the cosmos. It ties collectively a number of the deepest puzzles in physics, from the knowledge paradox to darkish matter and darkish vitality, from cosmic cycles to the arrow of time.
And it does so in a approach that may already be simulated and examined within the lab. Whether or not QMM proves to be the ultimate phrase or a stepping stone, it opens a startling risk: the universe might not solely be geometry and vitality. It’s also reminiscence. And in that reminiscence, each second of cosmic historical past should still be written.
