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Here is abstract from the Nature Communications paper:

"The idea that events obey a definite causal order is deeply rooted in our understanding of the world and at the basis of the very notion of time. But where does causal order come from, and is it a necessary property of nature? Here, we address these questions from the standpoint of quantum mechanics in a new framework for multipartite correlations that does not assume a pre-defined global causal structure but only the validity of quantum mechanics locally. All known situations that respect causal order, including space-like and time-like separated experiments, are captured by this framework in a unified way. Surprisingly, we find correlations that cannot be understood in terms of definite causal order. These correlations violate a 'causal inequality' that is satisfied by all space-like and time-like correlations. We further show that in a classical limit causal order always arises, which suggests that space-time may emerge from a more fundamental structure in a quantum-to-classical transition."

Here is a link to the actual paper: Quantum correlations with no causal order

The most important point is that a causal order (and time as we know it) emerge in the classical limit. Ideas which actually provide insight into how what we call time arises are of great interest.

    The interior region of a Kerr-Newman black hole permits closed timelike curves. This region might be a mathematical fiction though, for the interior horizon that bounds this region exhibits a UV divergence. The breakdown of causal order does occur in general relativity where the curvature of spacetime is so large that a region can in effect curl up on itself. The ambiguity over whether event X is prior to Y or visa versa occurs classically for events X and Y on a spacelike interval. An observer on one frame can observe a different ordering of these events. These events though do not have a causal relationship, or at least field propagators and other constructions do not permit this to be causal.

    My essay proposes how three causally linked events in one null direction can have an ambiquity with respect to which can communicate to the other along another null direction if an event horizon is present. This is not quite the same physics proposed here, but does appear related.

    LC

      Hi Lawrence,

      Check out my new blog: http://fmoldove.blogspot.com/ I'll slowly introduce a new QM interpretation based on my QM reconstruction result: http://arxiv.org/abs/1303.3935

      Florin

      Florin,

      This all looks interesting. Your paper is a somewhat more formal version of what Vic Stenger does. He has a number of popular books out and I believe in the supplementary section of his book "Quantum Gods," a book that kicks against quantum quackery and mystical mumbo jumbo based on QM, he has a derivation that is similar to the start of your paper.

      I am not a big upholder of quantum interpretations. I have to read your blog page in more detail, but I notice that you make reference to MWI. The big problem I have with MWI is contextuality. The observer is free to orient a Stern Gerlach apparatus in such as way that a measurement selects an eigenbasis. Quantum physics is perfectly unitary with respect to a vector on the Bloch sphere. QM makes no such distinction. Yet with MWI the world is split off into branches according to this selection. I find that other interpretations I have looked at seem to have weaknesses.

      The elliptic composability seems to indicate, from my first blanche on this, that the quantum wave is neither epistemological or ontological. I have had similar thoughts, and I think the America philosopher Willard V. O. Quine was onto something with his idea of relative ontology.

      I do though have a bit of an idea, which is that relativity and QM are categorically similar things. Measurements in QM always (or almost always) involve energy. Electrons pass through an asymmetrical magnetic field to split spins according to energy, or a particle hits a photoplate and there is a chemical change (enthalpy etc) in an emulsion and so forth. Yet QM is funny with respect to energy, and correspondingly time. We have the uncertainty relationship ΔEΔT ~ ħ, but this emerges from Fourier analysis where the energy E = ħω is such that a Fourier sum or integral is from 0 to ∞. With momentum and position there are classical corresponding Poisson brackets and Fourier sums are from -∞ to ∞. There is also no such thing as a time operator, for such would prevent a discrete energy spectrum and prevent the energy from being bounded below. General relativity has a similar "energy rule" which is that T^{00} >= 0, or that there is a lower bound to energy. A spacetime which violates this rule has a quantum source that is unbounded below.

      I will comment on your blogs before long. I have a number of things I need to attend to this week before I can think too much about this. I am reviewing a paper on general relativity that is rather complicated.

      Cheers LC

      Lawrence,

      I do not propose MWI but a similar idea. To make it airtight I need to solve 3 technical problems one of which requires deeper advances into the infinite dimensional case updating the Grothendieck group to a Hopf algebra and this is highly nontrivial. Another one is deriving Born's rule but I think I have a very good handle on it.

      In the end I hope to show how QM is fully intuitive and follows from very natural physical postulates. I am also expanding QM beyond C* algebras into the Hilbert modules territory and I hope to arrive at the Standard Model in Connes' formulation in a very natural way.

      I am looking forward to your comments, but in a few days I will be going on vacation overseas with probably spotty internet access and I will not be able to reply right away or write new posts for my blog (I'll be back middle of July).

      Best,

      Florin

      While the scientific community dismisses quantum interpretations as "quantum mumbo jumbo", one must remember that scientists are fallable and are capable of misunderstanding nature. The two slit experiement continues to baffle science; the big bang appears to have come from nothingness (according to science). Furthermore, the wave-function which appears to be connected to particles (bosons/fermions) and geometry (two slit diffraction), yet is ignored because we can't measure it. But does that truly mean it does not exist? I would say doubtful.

      It is more likely that the big bang came from a very special type of nothingness. A nothingness very similar to wave-functions (in that we can't detect it) yet is quite capable of manifesting a big bang.

      I think this is an inescapable conclusion.

        A big bang from nothingness is a sure bet that there is a lot more that we can't see or measure. There is a lot more to the universe and the laws of physics that is beyond our reach.

        Fred,

        If we think of time not as a linear progression from past to future, but change causing future to become past, it does make a lot more sense. Then time is not a factor, but an effect.

        Cause and effect is not sequence, but energy transfer. Yesterday doesn't cause today, rather light shining on a spinning planet causes events called days and they go from being in the future to being in the past. In this sea of energy, there are myriad relations and how we subjectively interact within them does affect our perceptions of ordering.

        Florin,

        I happen to be working at the moment on a cobordism between subspraces with knots that form a portion of a subchain of a manifold. This is Grothendiek's theory of categories and groups. The subchains are knots, and in the Jones polynomial defines Hopf links.

        Spacetime has within it all quantum field theoretic data when curvature is present.

        Cheers LC

        Jason,

        Just as a thought experiment, what if the something from nothing is just quantum fluctuations in areas where there is very little of anything. Thus it would occur most often in intergalactic space, creating the effect of expanding space. Since this is balanced by gravity, gravity is the corresponding collapse of this fluctuation. Since we can only detect light that travels between galaxies, the light from the most distant galaxies travels across this positive fluctuation, creating the impression of expansion, but we neglect to add the contraction of gravity that keeps space overall flat.

        Just a thought experiment, but one which doesn't need inflation or dark energy, or possibly even dark matter.

        John,

        I take Hubble redshift at face value. In other words, I believe that photons really do redshift as a linear function of how far away their source is. I interpret the cause differently than the text books. I assume the vacuum of space is filled with wave-functions (existent things). I think that photons travel along these wave-functions. Since the big bang was an outward explosion, I'm not surprised that galaxies are still moving away from one another. This ocean of wave-functions has to compensate for the expansion of the universe (universe getting bigger). It does so by elongating all of the wave-functions in the quantum vacuum (increasing their wavelength). That's how I look at it.

        Jason,

        Which goes to another point I keep raising; If space is what you measure with a ruler and the intergalactic ruler is lightyears, how is it that this expansion is presumably to be measured in increasing numbers of them? It would seem this is an expansion IN space, not OF space, as measured in lightyears. If there is this stable metric of space, how is it that every point is the center and not just one point?

        What does get overlooked is that galaxies are not just inert points of measure, presumably they are gravitational wells, presumably curving/pulling space in.

        And of course, radiating light back out across that void of intergalactic space.

        "For instance, if you input 1, 2 and 3 into the box and get out 3, 5 and 7, you could calculate that the box multiplies by 2 and adds one."

        This assumed result highlights one of the problems with experimental mathematics. The black box might just as well interpret {1,2,3} as the set {6} and output {3,5,7} as the set {15}, implying 2{X} 3.

        Classical arithmetic rational functions do not necessarily apply to the behavior of linear superposition.

        Tom

        John,

        I think nature uses a trick to measure space and time, a trick never thought of by the scientific community. The trick goes like this. Wave functions are existent, but are unmeasurable. The vacuum of space is filled with wave functions of all EM frequencies/wavelengths energies and directions. These wave-functions are intrinsically the cause of the speed of light, permittivity and permeability of free space. These wave functions are entangled into a "weave of space-time" which give it a gravitational constant as well. The evolution of time is emergent from all of the wave-functions. Inertia is just the effect of one's particles using a particular set of these wave-functions. Einstein equivalence forces are the effect of transitioning from one set of wave-functions to another set (with a different momentum).

        The wavelengths of the whole range of frequencies in space-time establish a standard of length/distance for nature. These wave-functions oscillate and therefore establish a progression of time. Since all standard model particles are just creations of wave-functions with energy, like kinks in a string, then time is automatically built into the particles via its group of oscillating wave-functions.

        A sufficiently advanced civilization would be able to build a hyper-drive space-ship that can detach its particles from the space-time continuum ()sever the connection to the wave functions of the space-time continuum). It then becomes an object in hyperspace, subject to the laws of physics of hyper-space (faster c). The space-ship would just vanish. Hyperspace has its own clock and laws of relativity.

        A detection of gravitational discontinuities might be a way to detect the use of hyper-drive technology. If a 100 ton space-ship suddenly vanishes from the space-time continuum, then so too will its gravity vanish as well. It would have to. Otherwise, we would be able to watch this gravitational halo traveling across the universe at multiples of the speed of light.

        Jason,

        If you sever the connections, you "un-kink" the string and the particles are just their constituent energy? It seems to me the result would be to just radiate away, like ripples on a pond.

        As for the point I keep trying to make, that the theory of an expanding universe contradicts its own premise by relying on a constant speed of light, no one refutes it, but no one accepts it. As I recall, Lawrence has been about the only one to even try, by arguing C is only measured locally, which is obvious, as we have no interstellar or galactic measuring devices, but the point is we use lightyears(aprox 6 trillion miles) as the cosmic ruler. Space is what you measure with a ruler. Anyone care to argue that? So if intergalactic space expands, wouldn't that mean the unit used to define it should expand as well? Otherwise it isn't expanding space, but an increasing amount of stable space, ie. an expansion IN space, not OF space. This isn't theory or experiment, just clarifying the concepts being used.

        2+2 does not =5. This is a very naked emperor.

        "A key idea to achieve such a situation involves the fact that quantum mechanics allows objects to exist in superposition, so that they can be in two or more contradictory states simultaneously;"

        QM does not *allow* objects to exist in a superposition, or otherwise. Objects exist however they exist, irregardless of the existence of the Theory of Quantum Mechanics. QM merely *describes* objects as existing in a superposition. However, the fact that such descriptions are both possible and accurate, does not imply that the objects actual exist as a superposition. Superposition is merely a sufficient description, but it has never been demonstrated to be a necessary one, or that objects actually exist in a superposition.

        Rob McEachern

          John,

          I agree with Lawrence that the speed of light is measured locally. In fact, I believe that the speed of light, permitivity and permeability exist as characteristics of existent wave-functions. This way, a quantum physicist might calculate a wave-function for a quantum system, but some invisible phenomenon of nature, at the quantum level, actually behaves like the calculated wave-function. That same invisible phenomenon might be small, but it interacts with others like itself in the quantum vacuum. Over the distance of a light year, I think there are invisible wave-functions that pop into existence (and then vanish); such wave-function phenomena should be highly reactive and responsive to the changing conditions of the world (like opening and closing of slits). They would be conductors of energy (like EM waves), but there existence is ghostly. They are there to facilitate the laws of physics.

          As horrific as this idea sounds to atheists, it's almost as if some creator of the universe, God, decided to make the laws of physics operate in a certain way, and then used a spirit like thing (the wave-function) to enforce the existence of the laws of physics. Beyond that, there is no natural reason why the physics constants (h, c) would be what they are. I'm not so sure that G isn't an emergent quantity based on the "aetherial material" used to create space-time.

          Now that I've put forward a magical (God did it) explanation, I assume someone will shoot back with a logical/natural reason why singularities just come out of nothingness.

          What is the aetherially ghostly invisible substance that space-time geometry and wave-functions are made of? To me, it looks like some kind of magic or miracle that the scientific community ignores.

          Jason,

          I agree with Lawrence as well, but it has nothing to do with disproving my point.

          Singularities drew out of a mathematical description of gravity, so think about gravity for a moment. It pulls you down to earth, but if you were to go to the very center of the earth, you might be crushed to a point by all the actual pressure, but wouldn't the actual effect of gravity be centrifugal, rather than centripetal, since the mass would all be above you? Now take that to the center of the galaxy and what do you have; A very tight vortex that is shooting jets of electrons out the poles. It seems to me that this singularity isn't some collapse into another dimension, but a torsion/tornado like process that is ejecting whatever falls in, back out across the universe in some larger cycle of collapsing mass and expanding energy.