Quantum space related to space-time (Introduction)

by David Turell , Saturday, January 30, 2016, 00:34 (3001 days ago) @ David Turell

A very complex article with some hints that quantum activity underlies space-time and that time changes can be present during quantum events:-https://www.quantamagazine.org/20160119-time-entanglement/-"Bizarre quantum bonds connect distinct moments in time, suggesting that quantum links — not space-time — constitute the fundamental structure of the universe.-"Quantum physics offers a way. In 2012, Jay Olson and Timothy Ralph, both physicists at the University of Queensland in Australia, laid out a procedure to encrypt data so that it can be decrypted only at a specific moment in the future. Their scheme exploits quantum entanglement, a phenomenon in which particles or points in a field, such as the electromagnetic field, shed their separate identities and assume a shared existence, their properties becoming correlated with one another's. Normally physicists think of these correlations as spanning space, linking far-flung locations in a phenomenon that Albert Einstein famously described as “spooky action at a distance.” But a growing body of research is investigating how these correlations can span time as well. What happens now can be correlated with what happens later, in ways that elude a simple mechanistic explanation. In effect, you can have spooky action at a delay.-"These correlations seriously mess with our intuitions about time and space. Not only can two events be correlated, linking the earlier one to the later one, but two events can become correlated such that it becomes impossible to say which is earlier and which is later. Each of these events is the cause of the other, as if each were the first to occur. (Even a single observer can encounter this causal ambiguity, so it's distinct from the temporal reversals that can happen when two observers move at different velocities, as described in Einstein's special theory of relativity.)-***-"In Brukner's original experiment, the path of each individual photon is placed into a “superposition” — the photon goes down a quantum combination of the Alice-first path and the Bob-first path. There is no definite answer to the question, “Which filter did the photon go through first?”— until a measurement is carried out and the ambiguity is resolved. If, instead of a photon, a gravitating object could be put into such a temporal superposition, the apparatus would put space-time itself into a superposition. In such a case, the sequence of Alice and Bob would remain ambiguous. Cause and effect would blur together, and you would be unable to give a step-by-step account of what happened.-"Only when these indeterminate causal relations between events are pruned away — so that nature realizes only some of the possibilities available to it — do space and time become meaningful. Quantum correlations come first, space-time later. Exactly how does space-time emerge out of the quantum world? Brukner said he is still unsure. As with the time capsule, the answer will come only when the time is right."-Comment: There is no way to pick out meaningful parts of this essay. The article describes experiments that show entanglement and relationships to time but I came away totally confused. Quantum mechanics must be the basis of space-time, but how?