In ER = EPR, gravity and spacetime are emergent rather than fundamental, but in most solutions for the quantum gravity problem, gravity has been presumed to be the fourth of the fundamental forces, alongside electromagnetism, the strong nuclear force, and the weak nuclear force. This has physicists searching for the missing gravity-causing particle, something they call the graviton. In my ignorance, the idea of the graviton seemed silly, almost superstitious. I couldn’t understand why they presumed there had to be a particle at all, and I didn’t really figure it out until this morning.
We talk about forces being fundamental, but this proves to be misleading. Fields interact, and that interaction creates the “fundamental” forces. Each of these fields, when excited enough at given location, manifests themselves as a particle. If gravity is a fundamental force, then it’s a field that interacts with other fields, and it will express itself as a particle when excited enough. Might as well call that particle a graviton.
If gravity is emergent, that doesn’t necessarily eliminate the graviton, although it would no longer be a particle. Unlike the standard model, where gravity is a ripple moving through pre-existing spacetime, in ER = EPR, spacetime is emergent, and gravity is a rippling of that spacetime network. If that’s the case, you could trace a graviton moving through spacetime, but if you looked close, you’d see you’re actually tracking movement as it’s translated through the entangled quantum states that make up spacetime, not a separate particle.
Meanwhile, General Relativity doesn’t see gravity as a force. Matter and energy bend spacetime, and that’s what we call gravity. Relativity mathematically details this action but doesn’t reveal the mechanism behind it. In my first essay, we talked about Entropic Gravity, a theory that has the flow of information as the mechanism. It’s a thermodynamic view of gravity and would erase the possibility of any sort of graviton. There’s no apparent particle in entropy.
Entropic Gravity proposes an emergent model, unlike Einstein’s view. As Einstein saw it, spacetime is fundamental, and gravity would express itself as a wave formed of pure geometry. Once again, there’s no fundamental or apparent graviton.
I expect science will eventually determine if the graviton is fundamental, apparent, or non-existent, but even if it’s not real, it’s not the silly superstition I once believed.
Our study of the graviton has also hinted at the basic difference in how General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics view spacetime. For Einstein, it was smooth, continuous, and deterministic. In a deterministic framework, from a given starting point, the same conclusion will always be reached. In sharp contrast, Quantum Mechanics sees spacetime as, to quote the Doctor, “a big ball of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey stuff,” and a probabilistic foundation replaces certainty.
ER = EPR bridges the two.
When talking about the apparent graviton, what we see depends on how close we are. What appears to be a particle is really the translation of movement through the medium, but you only see that up close. Similarly, ER = EPR bridges General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics by allowing each to be true at their own scale levels. Pull back, and the chaos of the quantum states averages out. Think of the great mountains and valleys of Earth; if the planet were shrunk down to the size of a billiard ball, it would feel just as smooth. Einstein’s smooth spacetime is an illusion of scale. Probabilistic shifts at a quantum level become the predictable, smooth bending of spacetime, and the math works at either scale.
— Thaddeus Thomas
PS: all corrections welcome.
If you’ve missed my previous installments, ER = EPR is a conjecture that supposes wormholes and entanglement to be the same phenomenon.
How I make my physics articles: I learn about physics in the most amateur ways possible, I suppose, by listening to podcasts, watching YouTube, and asking questions of AI. These are the tools that allowed me to move past nagging questions to potential answers. Physics is a hobby, and I decided to start writing about it to a) force a more coherent thinking process and b) create a record. When I have an essay idea, I draft it and let AI tell me where I’m off scientifically and suggest grammar corrections, but I don’t accept any attempts to rewrite my work for me. Writing’s my joy, even if I realize my nonfiction prose isn’t as strong as my fiction. What’s the point if a machine takes that from me? (AI isn’t allowed near my fiction, by the way.) Even using it to test my science (or learn it in the first place) is tricky. It wants so bad to agree with you that it occasionally deforms science to be more in line with your reasoning, a happenstance that can be ferreted out by approaching the same issue from different angles.
As an example of AI correcting my science, I originally wrote: Pull back, and the chaos of the quantum fields averages out. This was wrong. The fields are on top of spacetime. In ER = EPR it’s the quantum states, not the fields, that create spacetime. The more accurate sentence now reads: Pull back, and the chaos of the quantum states averages out.
When I let the AI review the entire piece, including the critique of the AI itself, it offered nothing but praise and left three errors uncorrected. I don’t want to anthropomorphize the program, but that feels passive aggressive.
The issue I identified is known as the sycophancy problem, and I want to be clear that eliminating it entirely would lose long-term educational potential. It can cause problems for those seeking a one-time answer, and if you’re not looking to eliminate confirmation bias, I see it continuing the same issues caused by social-media algorithms. I would like to see these problems handled without losing the sycophancy entirely, however, because a teacher who looks for ways to show you where you’re right encourages ongoing studies.
For simplicity’s sake, I said earlier that I ask AI questions, but the fascinating part of the process is learning some aspect of a cosmological or quantum process and then intuitively uncovering a potential next step. I feed that hypothesis into the AI, and where a human teacher would likely shoot me down for being 20% wrong, the program explains the theories that agree with my hypothesis and corrects the aspects that are in error.
The solutions it gives me are largely theoretical physics, and I worried about that early on. Now I understand that it’s because I’m dealing with issues left unsolved by the standard model.
Image credit: The social media title image for this article comes from “Blink,” series 3, episode 10 of Doctor Who, and it’s where the “big ball of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey stuff” quote originated.
One aspect of these essays that now bothers me is my use of the phrase "the standard model." I use it to mean the prevalent theory in whatever field I'm discussing, but the standard model is the accepted term for the family of fundamental particles as we understand them in particle physics. I shouldn't be using that phrase generically.
Thank-you for food for thought! Taking on physics as a hobby interest is quite a challenge. Especially when someone doesn't have a qualified teacher to guide you! I like the articles---especially this last one, although I still will have to read them more closely 555 times to grasp exactly what they're saying, and where you are vs. where the AI is speaking. I'm not saying a physics-challenged person like me can't grasps the ideas and formulate logical questions or conclusions, but here's what I've learned about AI so far just from my initial experience using it. You've heard about GI=GO (garbage in=garbage out), and now we have a case of ICI=ICO, or ice-cream in=ice-cream out. (You mention, paraphrasing) that AI agrees with you on some ideas and "corrects" you on others.)
What I see is that AI not only has built-in bias, it has built-in expectation of answers to questions. It's maximus prime directive is to provide an answer even if that answer is unclear, dubious, built on existing hypotheses and possible answers. etc. rather than state (like most medical doctors, college professors, psychiatrists, pastors, priests and parents are loath to do, "I don't know.")
How did I come to that conclusion? I applied for a job. Yep, an AI company wants to hire political/policy analysts to assist, in collaboration with other analysts, to create answers to political science and policy questions for AI . This tells me that AI 1, can be wrong. 2. possesses built-in biases. 3. cannot be used to predict in any meaningful way way except statistically (which, as we know is based on probability otherwise known as a "complicated Ouija Board.") 4. is NOT the god-machine. 5. can only recite in many different ways, only what is recorded as known, NOT what is actually known, and 6. what is known and what is opinion and what is hopium depends on the zeitgeist of ages we never experienced.
Yes, you can ask AI a range of questions about anything, such as "are the ruins that have been found REALLY the city of Troy, or another city that Homer fictionalized?", but choosing what is "True" and what is speculation is still up to the human being. For example, here is what AI has to say about Homer & Iliad and Odyessy.:
The Authorship Debate
The Traditional View: Ancient Greeks believed Homer was a single, blind historical poet from Ionia who composed both masterworks.
Modern Scholarship: Many experts suggest the poems were built over generations by oral bards. They may represent the work of two different authors or a collective tradition rather than a single writer.
The Homeric Question: Scholars continue to debate whether a single person named Homer existed or if the name represents a legendary figure attached to a larger cultural tradition.
Substitute the name Shakespeare for Homer, and you see where I'm going with this. Yes, physics, as a discipline, knows a lot of stuff, but, for instance, using toy models, like 'war--gaming,' only works until it doesn't. Trying to discern the answers to "if" questions, such as, "what happens IF Trump keels over dead before we leave Iran?" if iffy. The theoretical is either substantiated (meaning using the weakest legal standard of "more likely than not") or it isn't. The is a difference between theory and practice, the Ideal and the Pragmatic. Physics has the same conundrum when it comes to the Wave-Particle Duality issue.
"At the atomic and subatomic scale, this clear separation breaks down. Quantum objects like light (photons) and matter (electrons) exhibit wave-particle duality—they travel and spread out like waves, but are detected as localized single points (particles) when measured."
Social science has the same issues. If there is no clear, direct cause and effect relationship that can be substantiated with reliable, replicable empirical evidence, social scientists' default explanation is 'intervening variables' that boil down to "all we're doing is guessing," (for example, why twins either live similar lives or different lives --- I term that the bullshitters admission.) When I asked AI: is socialism the answer to the affordability problem? I got bulleted talking-points for the socialist and "critic" sides. Not free market or capitalist sides. The implication is clear; educational vocabulary not so much. Someone made the word choice.
Back to physics. To say a wave has properties that changes into particle behavior when observed or measured ---is just as ridiculous. How do you know how it behaved before you saw it unless you have a camera that can record it behaving before you saw it, and yet it's so small you can't see it or measure in the first place. so how did you know where to put the camera or the scale? Then there's the question of WHY does it change when observed or measured. I want explanations ---not hypothetical, not mathematical, not fairy dust magical, but empirical evidence.
The same goes for black holes (or the existence of humanoid-like beings on other planets in other galaxies, Sasquash, or how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.) No human eye has ever seen or visited a black hole. Cameras can take pictures, but they cannot experience or gather empirical evidence, and they cannot demonstrate or explain the "why." I don't reject science if it follows scientific methodology, but I do reject that the current infatuation with AI as an objective source of "factual" information. Caveat emptor.