The Theory That Could Rewrite the Laws of Physics

[Music] i study this field called quantum physics which is one of the most fundamental theories that we have about physical reality so microgreen is in in quantum computing which is a theory that was proposed a while ago to use the effects of quantum theory to power computing machines quantum computers have become more or less a mainstream thing so theoretical thesis like me are interested in looking at what's ahead of that and out of this field of quantum computing came a number of new proposals to take the laws of physics forward from from that where they are now and one of them is this thing called constructor theory which is the theory that i'm working on at the moment and broadly speaking this is a new mode of explanation to understand physical reality in a way that's deeper and broader than what physics has done so far the deepest question is whether it's possible to find a more fundamental mode of explanation for physical reality than the one we already have currently the best you can do if you're a theoretical physicist is usually to find a dynamical law that can be applied to the whole universe and given the initial conditions of the universe can let you know what the universe will do at some point in the future or in the past this is a very powerful scheme so it's been around since you know galileo's and newton's times but it does not capture some aspects of physical reality that are very important they require an explanation they exist out there but they can't quite be fit into this mold and one of these things is information so the the traditional way of explaining physics um can talk about information in in ways that are approximative and not very exact we can't quite capture the the laws that underlie information itself so i think this was one of the the the key motives behind the you know proposing constructor [Music] theory the most important part of physical theory is in what it forbids a universe where everything is allowed is not as interesting as one where only some things are around another are not the reason why that is is that as soon as you say that something isn't allowed or is is impossible um then there is an explanation that comes with that and um this explanation is is laden with significance it has a lot of insight in into physical reality there are a number of examples that you can think of one is law like first law or thermodynamics that says that energy has to be conserved okay and this law says that something is impossible meaning a perpetual motion machine is impossible and it has a very powerful very wide reach because just by stating that without actually working out trajectories of atoms or specific particles you can rule out a whole set of phenomena just because if they existed they would permit a machine of that kind which is not allowed and so this is the same logic that is behind behind constructed theories laws and and principles so constructors here instead of using dynamical laws and trajectories and initial conditions takes statements about what tasks or transformations are possible and what are impossible and why as fundamental ones and then it derives explanations about the rest from those statements taken as fundamental so this is a very powerful switch and it can achieve a number of very interesting things all in one go just because you change the mode of explanation we can capture phenomena that with the traditional conception we could only capture in approximative ways so these are phenomena related to information phenomena related to life so regularities underlie production and organization of information within biological systems and phenomena that have to do with work and heat and then another thing can happen there is this problem that we don't have yet a unique proposal for a successor for both quantum theory and general relativity because these two theories that are the most fundamentals we have at the moment clash with each other and there are some regimes where experimentally both are important but because they clash we need a a different theory that merges both to to be able to make predictions so the principles of constructive theory are very useful in these regimes because given that they don't rely on a specific dynamical law allow you to still make predictions and explain what's going on this is very promising because it can allow us to design new experimental demonstrations that we wouldn't otherwise be able to conceive of and the the bet that we are now trying to win in a way is to make progress in some of these areas where the traditional approach doesn't quite work by using this different radical switch that constructed theory has in formulating the laws of physics and if that works then you know this is a great step forward because we have a whole new array of tools that we can use in order to understand physics and physical reality [Music]

Channel: Quanta Magazine

Views: 589,247

Rating: 4.8179312 out of 5

Keywords: science, quanta, quanta magazine, explainer, science explainer, science video, educational video

Id: yb0y6MRwmd4

Length: 5min 42sec (342 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 29 2021