Thanks for your remarks on my paper. I can say that a part of this was motivated by Maryam Mirzakhani's death. She died of breast cancer last July, and the news for various reason made me angry. I had read one of her paper's back in 2014 when she won the Fields medal, and at the time I thought this had something maybe to do with physics. Last spring I studied the Ryu-Takayanagi (RT) formula and for some reason the day I heard of Maryam's death the insight on how her work connects with this hit me.

There is this problem with how gravitation and quantum mechanics merge or function in a single system. It is often said we understand nothing of quantum gravity, and this is not quite so. Even with the based canonical quantization of gravity from the 1970s in a weak limit is computable and tells you something. This theoretical understanding is very limited and big open questions remain. Of course since then far more progress has been made. The AdS/CFT correspondence, the Raamsdonk equivalence between entanglement and spacetime and the RT formula are some of the more recent developments. These indicate how spacetime physics has a correspondence or maybe equivalency with quantum mechanics or quantum Yang-Mills fields. However, an obstruction exists that appears very stubborn.

The vacuum is filled with virtual pairs of fields. With a black hole the gravity field causes one of these pairs to fall into the black hole and the other to escape. This means the quantum particle or photon that escapes as Hawking radiation is entangled with the pair that falls into the black hole, and so this means Hawking radiation is entangled with the black hole. So at first blush there seems to be no problem. However, if we think of a thermal cavity heated to high temperature photons that escape are entangled with quantum states of atoms composing the cavity. Once the entanglement entropy reaches a maximum at half the energy released the subsequent photons released are entangled with prior photons released. This would hold with black holes as well, but because of the virtual pair nature of this radiation it means Hawking radiation previously emitted in a bipartite entanglement are now entangled not just with the black hole, but with more recently emitted radiation as well. This means a bipartite entanglement is transformed into a tripartite entanglement. Such transformations are not permitted by quantum unitary evolution. This is called quantum monogamy requirement, and what this suggests is unitarity fails. To prevent the failure of quantum mechanics some proposed a firewall that violates the equivalency principle. This is called a firewall.

The firewall occurs when half the possible radiation is emitted, which is also the Page time. This also corresponds to the failure of a quantum error correction code. Error correction codes involve some deep mathematics; it is connected with the RT formula and I illustrate in my essay the connection with Mirzakhani's mathematics on the geodesics in hyperbolic spaces. Error correction is also tied with the packing of spheres or how oranges stack at the grocery store, the Kepler problem. This gets into the guts of what my paper is about. However focusing in an error correction corrects the mixing of information. Think of a library, in particular an elementary school library with little kids, and the patrons scramble up the order of books. The distance a books ends up from its right position is the Hamming distance. As the library gets mixed up an algorithm can manage this disordering. However, at about half mixing up things break down. The librarian has to virtually start over.

The solution with Susskind and others is to say spacetime variables and quantum states are equivalent. I do not disagree completely, but I think this is a complementarity instead of an equivalency. It means with either spacetime or quantum states you can account for the system, but at the expense of abandoning a description of the system by the other. You can't describe quantum gravity completely by both in the same measurement description. So this is a sort of Heisenberg uncertainty, if you will.

Cheers LC

Lawrence, thank you so much for taking the time to explain the motivation behind, and the theoretic physics utilized in your essay. The analogies help. In your reply you said "The solution with Susskind and others is to say spacetime variables and quantum states are equivalent. I do not disagree completely, but I think this is a complementarity instead of an equivalency." I don't think they can be equivalent either. I'm not sure about complementarity. In space time the thing under consideration is its absolute self and has not been limited to the possibilities obtainable from a selected viewpoint or test method. I suppose the quantum states are a consequence of the way in which relations must be established to know about a thing from a limited human perspective. Kind regards Georgina

Lawrence, I am glad that you are highlighting some of the recent developments and using them in your work. I have not being following them so much. Do you predict that the effects of quantum hair could be seen by LIGO?

Is there a term missing in your third equation, I don't see the Lambda?

    Yes, there should be a Lambda but for some reason in writing this in Word I used the unicode Λ and it did not show up. Good catch on your part! Dang, it is really hard to get things right.

    Could these be detected with LIGO? Maybe. However, this largely can best be found with something like LISA or eLISA, which will capture gravitational memory or an aspect of BMS symmetry. Hawking, Perry, Strominger wrote a paper in 2016 on this and there are other papers with Strominger as coauthor. The idea is that after a gravitational wave has passed through a distribution of test masses they may not return to their original setting. This means additional information from the black hole, here perturbed by some physics or field, is scattered to I^+ that reveal additional information. I have then worked out something analogous for the case of two colliding black holes, in an idealized model where I split or copy a black hole AdS_2 into two boundaries of a strip. (As it is said, physics is often about assuming a spherical cow) This will the have some BMS symmetry effect. If this theory were taken seriously there is a vast amount of work to be done to make this more realistic.

    This quantum hair might be detected by LIGO --- maybe. The problem is the mirrors or test masses are held by a quartz fiber that provide some tension. This will erase any BMS effect. The LISA involve test mass in a compartment of a spacecraft that is free from any perturbation such as solar wind or even light. That way BMS physics could be picked up. With LIGO there may be some structure in the peak of the "chirp" signal for colliding black holes.

    I had written about the AdS black hole correspondence. In particular the near horizon condition for an accelerated observer is a spacetime ~ AdS_2Ã--S^2. When I heard about Mirzakhani's death I was at first a bit angry; in light of the news of late it seemed that a light in the world, a light amidst powerful people of darkness, had been extinguished. Then later in thinking about her paper I had read several years before this idea hit me like thunder bolt. The nice thing, which I think few people may appreciate, is this offers not just some philosophy about foundations but a prospect for empirical understanding.

    Cheers LC

    Lawrence,

    I always look forward to reading your essays since they expose me to ideas I would not encounter otherwise. I must say that you challenge my reading comprehension. I only understand ~25%. However, I do pick up a few things with each essay:-)

    It was interesting that you see similarities between the merging of black-holes and the Casimir effect.

    I had seen mentions of "time-crystals" on the internet previously. In my ignorance, I assumed that it was just internet gibberish. I see from your essay that it is in fact genuine physics. From some of the alleged properties, it sounds like they might be related to super-conductors. It would be interesting to know if their modulation frequency is dependent upon the velocity of the experimental apparatus.

    All in all, a very good (but challenging) essay.

    Best Regards,

    Gary Simpson

      I am glad you appreciated my work here. I have your essay queued up read to read once I can carve out some time and get to it.

      Wilczek advanced the idea of time crystals. They may be in some ways a deep aspect of how nature is organized. They are almost paradoxical, and as I think they are tied in with the holographic principle they share properties similar to the image attached. This is why they are analogous to a thermodynamic system that exhibits dynamics.

      I will try to get to yours and other's essay ASAP.

      Cheers LCAttachment #1: mc-escher-waterfall.jpg

      Hi Lawrence,

      I like your picture of BMS symmetry and its role in the BH information problem. I find the idea of conversion of qubits into gravitons near the BH horizon appealing. I think it would be great if we would try to detect the quantum hair associated with QCD and EW that produce gravitational waves.

      Good luck with the contest!

      Best wishes,

      Cristi

        Dear Dr. Lawrence B. Crowell,

        You wrote in your biographical notes: "It is likely our inability to work quantum physics and gravity into a coherent whole is likely to be solved through new postulates or physical axioms, or the removal of current ones."

        My research has concluded that Nature must have devised the only permanent real structure of the Universe obtainable for the real Universe existed for millions of years before man and his finite complex informational systems ever appeared on earth. The real physical Universe consists only of one single unified VISIBLE infinite surface occurring eternally in one single infinite dimension that am always illuminated mostly by finite non-surface light.

        Joe Fisher, ORCID ID 0000-0003-3988-8687. Unaffiliated

        This quantum hair would show up in BMS supertranslation symmetries. I have not worked out more detailed calculations of this. In fact there is a vast amount of work to be done here. In working on foundations I offer here the prospect for some measurement or observation of what might be deeper foundations.

        Of course in the end there may be no final foundation, or if there is such a foundation I suspect it is basic quantum mechanics. We might be faced with the prospect of finding layers of effective theories with respect to quantum gravity. The reason might be that quantum gravity is similar to the measurement problem and might involve self-referential encoding of quantum states. The issue of the quantum error correction problem I offer a solution involving complementarity between quantum and spacetime principles. However, this might just mean it ends up in the same conundrum as quantum measurement. Ultimately it involves quantum states encoding quantum states. Turing and Gödel rise to the occasion to tell us we can never completely understand this.

        Cheers LC

        4 days later

        • [deleted]

        • Post #13

        Lawrence,

        Interesting viewpoint and analysis, more clearly written than others. My own study of Active Nuclei ('Black Hole') dynamics is more about analysing observed data so it's fascinating to take such a different view. Observational findings continue apace. One is that the polar ('Quasar') outflows appear to contain (re-ionize or ionize) more matter than was in the accretion disc. If a the consistent cyclic model is correct the significant growth in mass function is consistent with that. Both numbers and collision/merger population seem well below that needed to explain evolution to far larger bodies. I was looking for hints in you essay but you'll have to point any out.

        The acceleration mechanism (contra wound helices similar to a Tokamak toroid) and (precessing giving jet helicity) ejection 'cusp' are also becoming clearer. Sir Martin Rees's work from 50 years ago looks amazingly precise, including the collimated 'shear planes' apparently propagating new fermion plasma.

        I fully agreed your abstract, and that only 'looking differently' will reveal solutions. I have some for your thoughts; Position & Momentum as the orthogonal values seem only ever an assumption. I checked the results of substituting Maxwell's quite different linear/curl state momenta, which I show (experimentally) exist within OAM, in absorption/re-emission, represented by orbital velocity distribution. Deeper foundations seem evident as quantum measurement ceases to be a conundrum (though Gödel remains recursively correct). Please do attack with full rigour. Declan's finding (see my comment on yours there) entirely models my ontology to confirm CHSH at >2.

        Thank you for yours, very well constructed & written.

        Best wishes.

        Peter

          I am pleased you found merit in my essay. Some of the physics I work out here may play out in extremely active galactic nuclei. A huge influx of material with chaotic jumps in the flux would produce gravitational radiation. This might be detectable and bear signatures of the physics I describe.

          Thanks and good luck in the contest if you are entered.

          Cheers LC

          Lawrence,

          T'was I, logged out! Yes, I hope you'll be able to identify any flaws in the apparently significant classical 'QM' finding in my essay (& Declan Trail's)

          Do you distinguish 'gravitational radiation' from fluctuations in the potential? i.e. if we had 2 binary stars nearby and discerned the fluctuations would that be the same effect? I can't find any difference with the LIGO analysis, are you aware of one?

          Bset wishes

          Peter

          There are loads of papers on FQXi that make big digs against modern physics. Klingman has Einstein playing the role of Simplicio in his paper that is bascially anti-relativity. If you follow the real developments in the foundations of quantum physics it is very clear the loop holes for there being a classical underpinning to quantum physics are closed. This is on both the theoretical and experimental fronts. The only possible loophole these days on the experimental front is with the consciousness of the experimenters, and the experimentalists are working on this. I must confess that I have to report there simply is no classical underpinning to QM. Yet curiously these types of papers do quite well with voting on these contests, but in case you have not noticed they never win awards.

          I have largely bowed out of this. I was not going to enter another FQXi contest, but a framework of a paper I had written seemed to fit with the topic so I decided to try it one more time. I figured this might be a bit of a trial balloon, where I can take this and rewrite it for a serious publication. That is about how I am taking this at this time. I have only read a few papers posted here.

          Cheers LC

          Lawrence,

          You suggest; "it is very clear the loop holes for there being a classical underpinning to quantum physics are closed." So most believe, but John Bell, who closed them for certain assumptions DID NOT! so most misunderstand his 'theorem'. If you study the solution you'll see for yourself, but for rigour let me quote Bell;

          "The founding fathers of quantum theory decided even that no concepts could possibly be found which could emit direct description of the quantum world. So the theory which they established aimed only to describe systematically the response of the apparatus... ...in my opinion the founding fathers were in fact wrong on this point. The quantum phenomena do not exclude a uniform description of micro and macro worlds...systems and apparatus." 'Speakable'...p.170-171. also p 172 & 173;

          "a real synthesis of quantum and relativity theories requires not just technical developments but radical conceptual renewal.

          "..conventional formulations of quantum theory, and of quantum field theory in particular, are unprofessionally vague and ambiguous. Professional theoretical physicists ought to be able to do better." ."

          Ch.3. In stating his belief that his theorem must be effectively circumvented with some new approach; "...the new way of seeing things will involve an imaginative leap that will astonish us. In any case it seems that the quantum mechanical description will be superseded." p.27. And Ch 20 p.194;

          "...the 'Problem of Interpretation of QM' has been encircled. And the solution, invisible from the front, may be seen from the back.."

          Experiments have NOT changed that, only confirmed his theorem using the same QM assumptions he 'freely used' for it. Indeed he actually suggested the 'round the back' solution we use (p.175) as "fermion number density."

          So we shouldn't just accept the beliefs about QM banded around. John Bell knew better and I think we show he was correct. Take a look. It may inspire you!

          Very best.

          Peter

          Quantum physics is such that various interpretations exist that fit largely into the two classes of ψ-epistemology and ψ-ontology, seen in the Copenhagen interpretation and Qubism for the first and many worlds and Bohm mechanics in the second. The problem is that quantum physics really fails to fit well into either of these. Quantum physics is something other than any metaphysics we are able to imagine. There is only one metaphysics that describes quantum mechanics and that is quantum mechanics itself. I have written a paper that is yet unpublished on how QM does not fit into either of these two classes of interpretations, but is somewhere in between. I found that the Pusey Barrett Rudolf theorem for ψ-ontology only really holds for two state systems or entanglements. That quantum mechanics is more or less ψ-epistemic or ψ-ontic is in effect observer dependent and not really physical.

          The situation is far more advanced than the day of John Bell. Work on the foundations of QM has advanced far beyond the inequality conditions Bell found QM violated.

          LC

          Hi Lawrence B. Crowell

          "Quantum gravity and quantum hair on event horizons is shown can be detected in black hole coalescence. The near horizon condition for two black holes right before collision is a deformed AdS spacetime RT entropy given by quantum hair on the horizons." Is a very nice idea

          I highly appreciate your essay and hope and request you please spend some of the valuable time on Dynamic Universe Model also and give your some of the valuable & esteemed guidance...... which is on the other side.... Hope you don't mind this request.......

          Some of the Main foundational points of Dynamic Universe Model :

          -No Isotropy

          -No Homogeneity

          -No Space-time continuum

          -Non-uniform density of matter, universe is lumpy

          -No singularities

          -No collisions between bodies

          -No blackholes

          -No warm holes

          -No Bigbang

          -No repulsion between distant Galaxies

          -Non-empty Universe

          -No imaginary or negative time axis

          -No imaginary X, Y, Z axes

          -No differential and Integral Equations mathematically

          -No General Relativity and Model does not reduce to GR on any condition

          -No Creation of matter like Bigbang or steady-state models

          -No many mini Bigbangs

          -No Missing Mass / Dark matter

          -No Dark energy

          -No Bigbang generated CMB detected

          -No Multi-verses

          Here:

          -Accelerating Expanding universe with 33% Blue shifted Galaxies

          -Newton's Gravitation law works everywhere in the same way

          -All bodies dynamically moving

          -All bodies move in dynamic Equilibrium

          -Closed universe model no light or bodies will go away from universe

          -Single Universe no baby universes

          -Time is linear as observed on earth, moving forward only

          -Independent x,y,z coordinate axes and Time axis no interdependencies between axes..

          -UGF (Universal Gravitational Force) calculated on every point-mass

          -Tensors (Linear) used for giving UNIQUE solutions for each time step

          -Uses everyday physics as achievable by engineering

          -21000 linear equations are used in an Excel sheet

          -Computerized calculations uses 16 decimal digit accuracy

          -Data mining and data warehousing techniques are used for data extraction from large amounts of data.

          - Many predictions of Dynamic Universe Model came true....Have a look at

          http://vaksdynamicuniversemodel.blogspot.in/p/blog-page_15.html

          I request you to please have a look at my essay also, and give some of your esteemed criticism for your information........

          Dynamic Universe Model says that the energy in the form of electromagnetic radiation passing grazingly near any gravitating mass changes its in frequency and finally will convert into neutrinos (mass). We all know that there is no experiment or quest in this direction. Energy conversion happens from mass to energy with the famous E=mC2, the other side of this conversion was not thought off. This is a new fundamental prediction by Dynamic Universe Model, a foundational quest in the area of Astrophysics and Cosmology.

          In accordance with Dynamic Universe Model frequency shift happens on both the sides of spectrum when any electromagnetic radiation passes grazingly near gravitating mass. With this new verification, we will open a new frontier that will unlock a way for formation of the basis for continual Nucleosynthesis (continuous formation of elements) in our Universe. Amount of frequency shift will depend on relative velocity difference. All the papers of author can be downloaded from "http://vaksdynamicuniversemodel.blogspot.in/ "

          I request you to please post your reply in my essay also, so that I can get an intimation that you replied

          Best

          =snp

            Dear S. Gupta,

            I will try to look at this when time permits. I have not been very active in this contest this year due to time limit. It looks as if there are a lot of "nos" in your conclusions. Thanks for giving me the heads up on your essay.

            Cheers LC

            Lawrence,

            Yes, far more 'advanced' I well know. But it looks like up the wrong road in the wrong direction! You'd better read my paper carefully before finalizing your own.

            Changing the fundamental decision formulating QM not to make ANY assumption about pairs states so giving just 'superposed spin up/down' is shown to be the error, provable in a table top experiment, which prevented a classical solution. If we substitute Maxwell's orthogonal states we get the Spins statistics theorem and Dirac's equation.

            Yes, shocking and entirely unexpected. Just like all advancements in understanding! The Academic community is in stunned silence for now. If there was a mistake it would likely have been jumped on already, but do check.

            very best

            Peter

            ".....I think it is likely there is some subtle, and in some ways simple, physical principle that is not understood, or some current principle that is an obstruction. It is likely our inability to work quantum physics and gravity into a coherent whole is likely to be solved through new postulates or physical axioms, or the removal of current ones."

            Spot on. But it seems no longer.

            P

            Dear LC,

            You wrote a remarkable Essay, congrats. Black holes and gravitational waves are my greatest scientific passions. Thus, I enjoyed a lot in reading this new work of yours. I think that this Essay should be suitable also for the Gravity Awards. Some comments:

            1) In order to understand if the quantum hair associated with QCD and electroweak interactions producing gravitational waves could be detected by ground-based and (future) space-based detectors we need an estimate of the strain due to such a quantum hair. This could be the object of a future paper.

            2) I have seen that you considered Reissnor-Nordstrom black holes. Coalescence of Reissnor-Nordstrom black holes is quite speculative. I think indeed that real black holes should have also a spin. Thus, Kerr-Newmann black holes should be more suitable. On one hand, this will make computations more difficult. On the other hand, also this approximation with Reissnor-Nordstrom black holes is intriguing.

            Good luck in the Contest!

            Cheers, Ch.