The theories of quantum mechanics and gravity are notorious for being incompatible, despite the efforts of scores of physicists over the past fifty years. However, recently an international team of researchers led by physicists from the University of Vienna, the Austrian Academy of Sciences as well as the University of Queensland (AUS), and the Stevens Institute of Technology (USA) have combined the key elements of the two theories describing the flow of time and discovered that temporal order between events can exhibit genuine quantum features.
According to general relativity, the presence of a massive object slows down the flow of time. This means that a clock placed close to a massive object will run slower as compared to an identical one that is further away.
However, the rules of quantum theory allow for any object to be prepared in a superposition state. A superposition state of two locations is different from placing an object in one or the other location randomly – it is another way for an object to exist, allowed by the laws of quantum physics.
One of the open questions in physics is: What happens when an object massive enough to influence the flow of time is placed in a quantum superposition state?
This is a controversial topic: some physicists claim that such scenarios are fundamentally impossible – some new mechanism must block the superposition from forming in the first place – while others develop entire theories based on the assumption that this is possible.
“We started by tackling a question: what would a clock measure if it was influenced by a massive object in a quantum superposition state?” explains Magdalena Zych from the University of Queensland.
The scientists were expecting to face the roadblocks making the scenario impossible, but surprisingly, using standard textbook physics they were able to exactly describe what happens.
They so discovered that when a massive object is placed in a quantum superposition in the vicinity of a set of clocks, its time order can become genuinely quantum, defying any classical description.
Caslav Brukner, coauthor from the University of Vienna and the Austrian Academy of Sciences added that the regime where quantum time order could arise is quite remote from our everyday experience, “but the most important insight from our work is that quantum time order is at all possible and that it results in new physical effects.”
To illustrate what happens, imagine a pair of starships training for a mission. They are asked to fire at each other at a specified time, and immediately start their engines in order to dodge each other’s attack. If either of the ships fires too early, it will destroy the other, and this establishes an unmistakable time order between the firing events. If a powerful agent could place a sufficiently massive object, say a planet, closer to one ship it would slow down its counting of time. As a result, the ship farther away from the mass will fire too early for the first one to escape.
The laws of quantum physics and gravity predict that by manipulating a quantum superposition state of the planet, the ships can end up in a superposition of either of them being destroyed. Such a superposition state, involving two systems, is called entangled. The new work shows that the temporal order among events can exhibit superposition and entanglement – genuinely quantum features of particular importance for testing quantum theory against alternatives. The result can now be used as a theoretical testing ground for frameworks for quantum gravity, and thus help to move forward in formulating the correct theory of quantum gravity.
The study will also be relevant for future quantum technologies. Quantum computers that exploit the quantum order of performing operations might beat devices that operate using only fixed sequences. Practical implementations of quantum temporal order do not require extreme conditions—such as planets in superposition—and can be simulated without the use of gravity. The discovery of quantum properties of time can lead to better quantum devices in the upcoming era of quantum computers.
Reference: “Bell’s theorem for temporal order” by M.Zych, F.Costa, I.Pikovski, and Č. Brukner, 21 August 2019, Nature Communications.
DOI: 10.1038/s41467-019-11579-x
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6 Comments
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Interesting theoretical find. Great that it doesn’t contradict either quantum or relativity, but not enough to establish any factual occurrence. As far as I am aware, no one has ever observed quantum measurements in succession wherein their own relative time and that of the measurement over multiple such deviated from the expected characteristics of the measured phenomenon in a way that confirmed time is quantum statistically distributed for entangled objects. Seems even if the experimenter in this case didn’t know about this theoretical conclusion that some one would have notice a statistical spread in measurement states different from that predicted by the measurer’s relative time for that phenomenon. Still, very interesting article. I hope many empirically try to prove this true or not. Its intriguing!
The starship near the planet must correct for the time distortion in order to obey its orders. That this is possible is attested constantly by the success of the GPS system, which is based partly on keeping track of “real universal time”. The whole “relativity of simultaneity” thing is based on this misunderstanding–in GR appearance seems to shift, but it is in principle possible to correct for all distances, speeds, and gravitational potential to come out with a consistent order of events for all observers. This consistent account is the real universe, not the confused appearance seen by naive observers.
Our limited based world is constructed using space where time has a limited function. The denser the space the more it has slows down the passage of time (Space + Time = 1). An object can only change location in space at clock time (t).The quantum world is based on time where space has a limited function. This means any super massive object in the quantum based time world would exist in units of time rather than space. So here in the quantum time world it would bend space rather than slow time.
Space is the name that we give to describe “nothingness”—Time is a concept. Putting them together with a hyphen does NOT make them a “thing”
How can you “bend” nothing?