Quantum gravity, teleportation, wormholes, etc.!

[AntennaGuy]

As Rod Serling used to say... "Submitted for your approval," and as Alice cried, "curiouser and curiouser," see
Quantum Gravity in the Lab:Teleportation by Size and Traversable Wormholes
https://arxiv.org/pdf/1911.06314.pdf
as cited by https://www.technologyreview.com/s/6147 ... f-reality/
Hmmm.

This is another one of those analogy/model thing type papers, where an experiment or idea that is being investigated is meant to share the behaviors of interest with something else that is physically quite different, so it is hoped that by studying one, you learn something about the other. Like studying sound waves to learn more about electromagnetic waves, perhaps, and not saying they are actually the same thing. I find this sort of endeavor quite confusing. ....Yes, it appears they are saying their work "mimics" the phenomena of interest, so that is consistent. Geez. This is akin to the whole notion of how analog computers work, such as the "electrolytic plotting tank." You replace one system with a another one that has some convenient physics that (hopefully) obeys the same equations. E.g., https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/en ... ytic-tanks Okeydokey then, I suppose.

[notFritzArgelander]

Ah well. Embracing my inner churlishly skeptical curmudgeon, I'm skeptical.

In the famous analogies of the mechanical pendulum with friction with the spring loaded dashpot (i.e. old fashioned shock absorber) and with the passive electrical circuit containing only inductances, resistances, and capacitances we know that the the equations describing the three systems are identical. So studying one is like studying any of the others and an analog computer can faithfully replicate all.

Since we have no clue what the equations of quantum gravity are at all this is all speculative handwaving.

Besides there are impossibility theorems in GR for traversibility of wormholes, so there's that too.

:shrug:

[AntennaGuy]

Ah well. Embracing my inner churlishly skeptical curmudgeon, I'm skeptical.

In the famous analogies of the mechanical pendulum with friction with the spring loaded dashpot (i.e. old fashioned shock absorber) and with the passive electrical circuit containing only inductances, resistances, and capacitances we know that the the equations describing the three systems are identical. So studying one is like studying any of the others and an analog computer can faithfully replicate all.

Since we have no clue what the equations of quantum gravity are at all this is all speculative handwaving.

Besides there are impossibility theorems in GR for traversibility of wormholes, so there's that too.

:shrug:

It seems to me that this approach is especially effective at generating popular-science articles with excessively-exciting and misleading headlines. I don't recall seeing so much of this going on when I was younger, but then, I suppose some of it was going on, just not on the internet. After all, consider the title of the article for the masses: "How a tabletop experiment could test the bedrock of reality." Hype much?

[notFritzArgelander]

Ah well. Embracing my inner churlishly skeptical curmudgeon, I'm skeptical.

In the famous analogies of the mechanical pendulum with friction with the spring loaded dashpot (i.e. old fashioned shock absorber) and with the passive electrical circuit containing only inductances, resistances, and capacitances we know that the the equations describing the three systems are identical. So studying one is like studying any of the others and an analog computer can faithfully replicate all.

Since we have no clue what the equations of quantum gravity are at all this is all speculative handwaving.

Besides there are impossibility theorems in GR for traversibility of wormholes, so there's that too.

:shrug:

It seems to me that this approach is especially effective at generating popular-science articles with excessively-exciting and misleading headlines. I don't recall seeing so much of this going on when I was younger, but then, I suppose some of it was going on, just not on the internet. After all, consider the title of the article for the masses: "How a tabletop experiment could test the bedrock of reality." Hype much?

Partly it's out of frustration that making progress is getting harder. The difficulties of the needed experiments outstrip our technological capabilities. That said I'm pretty grumpy that folks try to take silly hype ridden short cuts like this. Much fanfare, sound and fury, signifying nothing.

[GCoyote]

It's mostly the need for new content 24/7 vs real progress which is far more episodic and not supportive of editorial deadlines.