Space: what is it? It's a pretty important question, really, and it turns out that since Einstein we have learned space is not just an empty stage, waiting for something to happen. Space itself can be stretched, curved, and expanded. We've learned time is an equal part of it, so it's better described as "spacetime." And if time can be sped up and slowed down (and it can, we know it) then so can space. In fact it has to be expanded and contracted to accomodate time dilation; can't have one without the other.
In the most recent attempts to reconcile space and gravity with quantum mechanics, several new approaches have been thought up and are being worked on: that space, like the oceans of water on Earth, is an emergent property. For example, take one molecule of water: it can't carry the force in a wave. It doesn't boil, it doesn't freeze. It doesn't expand when it freezes and shrink when it melts, because none of those properties apply to an individual molecule of H2O. ONLY when you get quadrillions of H2O molecules collected together, do get the emergent behaviors of freezing, boiling, carrying waves, etc.
Likewise, one "grain," for lack of a better term, of space, does not stretch, contract, or show any effects of time dilation. But fill a universe with untold septillions of such grains? Now you have spacetime, now you have expansion, contraction, frame dragging, planets and other bodies precessing in orbits around other bodies, apples falling on the heads of sons of British farmers, the inverse-square law ... the whole thing.
We have identified two quantum properties which may, in fact, be one and the same thing: quantum entanglement and quantum wormholes. One of the conclusions that fell out of Einstien's Special Theory of Relativity is the idea that black hole interiors could be one and the same between what, to us in the outside of the universe, looks like two different black holes.
Quantum entanglement describes how two equal and opposite particles can be created, and what affects one, will instantly affect the other, no matter the distance between them.
Both entanglement and wormholes were developed from Einstein's theories of Special and General Relativity. Einstein & Rosen proposed wormholes, first. Then a few years later, Einstein, Rosen and Podulsky came up with particle entanglement at the quantum level. Einstein _hated_ both ideas. All the time he spent working on them to further develop them (the rest of his life, the last 40 years of it), he was hoping to finally find something to conclusively dis-prove them, he hated them so much. But sadly, he couldn't. And that may have been a lucky thing, because:
New research (not proven, but looks promising) seems to indicate spacetime is an emergent phenomena that happens once you get a certain minimum amount of universe within which to work. That spacetime is a direct result of a bunch of "grains," (or qubits, or voxels (my favorite)) with all it's underlying wormholes and entanglement tying them together in ways we don't yet fully comprehend. Entanglement and wormholes may be one and the same thing, and they appear to be much more basic to the universe than even spacetime itself. They may be that from which spacetime emerges.
In the most recent attempts to reconcile space and gravity with quantum mechanics, several new approaches have been thought up and are being worked on: that space, like the oceans of water on Earth, is an emergent property. For example, take one molecule of water: it can't carry the force in a wave. It doesn't boil, it doesn't freeze. It doesn't expand when it freezes and shrink when it melts, because none of those properties apply to an individual molecule of H2O. ONLY when you get quadrillions of H2O molecules collected together, do get the emergent behaviors of freezing, boiling, carrying waves, etc.
Likewise, one "grain," for lack of a better term, of space, does not stretch, contract, or show any effects of time dilation. But fill a universe with untold septillions of such grains? Now you have spacetime, now you have expansion, contraction, frame dragging, planets and other bodies precessing in orbits around other bodies, apples falling on the heads of sons of British farmers, the inverse-square law ... the whole thing.
We have identified two quantum properties which may, in fact, be one and the same thing: quantum entanglement and quantum wormholes. One of the conclusions that fell out of Einstien's Special Theory of Relativity is the idea that black hole interiors could be one and the same between what, to us in the outside of the universe, looks like two different black holes.
Quantum entanglement describes how two equal and opposite particles can be created, and what affects one, will instantly affect the other, no matter the distance between them.
Both entanglement and wormholes were developed from Einstein's theories of Special and General Relativity. Einstein & Rosen proposed wormholes, first. Then a few years later, Einstein, Rosen and Podulsky came up with particle entanglement at the quantum level. Einstein _hated_ both ideas. All the time he spent working on them to further develop them (the rest of his life, the last 40 years of it), he was hoping to finally find something to conclusively dis-prove them, he hated them so much. But sadly, he couldn't. And that may have been a lucky thing, because:
New research (not proven, but looks promising) seems to indicate spacetime is an emergent phenomena that happens once you get a certain minimum amount of universe within which to work. That spacetime is a direct result of a bunch of "grains," (or qubits, or voxels (my favorite)) with all it's underlying wormholes and entanglement tying them together in ways we don't yet fully comprehend. Entanglement and wormholes may be one and the same thing, and they appear to be much more basic to the universe than even spacetime itself. They may be that from which spacetime emerges.