Quantum “Magic” and Black Hole Chaos Could Help Explain the Origin of Spacetime

Spacetime Wormhole Concept

RIKEN physicists suggest that a quantum property called ‘magic’ may be the key to understanding how spacetime emerged, based on a new mathematical analysis that connects it to the chaotic nature of black holes.

Physicists relate the quantum property of ‘magic’ to the chaotic nature of black holes for the first time.

A quantum property dubbed ‘magic’ could be the key to explaining how space and time emerged, a new mathematical analysis by three RIKEN physicists suggests.

It’s hard to conceive of anything more basic than the fabric of spacetime that underpins the Universe, but theoretical physicists have been questioning this assumption. “Physicists have long been fascinated about the possibility that space and time are not fundamental, but rather are derived from something deeper,” says Kanato Goto of the RIKEN Interdisciplinary Theoretical and Mathematical Sciences (iTHEMS).

Supermassive Black Hole M87 in Polarized Light

A view of the M87 supermassive black hole. RIKEN theoretical physicists have related the chaotic nature of black holes to the quantum property of magic for the first time. Credit: EHT Collaboration

This notion received a boost in the 1990s, when theoretical physicist Juan Maldacena related the gravitational theory that governs spacetime to a theory involving quantum particles. In particular, he imagined a hypothetical space—which can be pictured as being enclosed in something like an infinite soup can, or ‘bulk’—holding objects like black holes that are acted on by gravity. Maldacena also imagined particles moving on the surface of the can, controlled by quantum mechanics. He realized that mathematically a quantum theory used to describe the particles on the boundary is equivalent to a gravitational theory describing the black holes and spacetime inside the bulk.

“This relationship indicates that spacetime itself does not exist fundamentally, but emerges from some quantum nature,” says Goto. “Physicists are trying to understand the quantum property that is key.”

Kanato Goto

Kanato Goto and two colleagues have performed an analysis using wormholes that sheds light on the black-hole information paradox. Credit: © 2022 RIKEN

The original thought was that quantum entanglement—which links particles no matter how far they are separated—was the most important factor: the more entangled particles on the boundary are, the smoother the spacetime within the bulk.

“But just considering the degree of entanglement on the boundary cannot explain all the properties of black holes, for instance, how their interiors can grow,” says Goto.

So Goto and iTHEMS colleagues Tomoki Nosaka and Masahiro Nozaki searched for another quantum quantity that could apply to the boundary system and could also be mapped to the bulk to describe black holes more fully. In particular, they noted that black holes have a chaotic characteristic that needs to be described.

“When you throw something into a black hole, information about it gets scrambled and cannot be recovered,” says Goto. “This scrambling is a manifestation of chaos.”

The team came across ‘magic’, which is a mathematical measure of how difficult a quantum state is to simulate using an ordinary classical (non-quantum) computer. Their calculations showed that in a chaotic system almost any state will evolve into one that is ‘maximally magical’—the most difficult to simulate.

This provides the first direct link between the quantum property of magic and the chaotic nature of black holes. “This finding suggests that magic is strongly involved in the emergence of spacetime,” says Goto.

Reference: “Probing chaos by magic monotones” by Kanato Goto, Tomoki Nosaka and Masahiro Nozaki, 19 December 2022, Physical Review D.
DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevD.106.126009

10 Comments on "Quantum “Magic” and Black Hole Chaos Could Help Explain the Origin of Spacetime"

  1. Spacetime and blackholes as singularities of spacetime are originated from Einstein’s relativity which is fatally wrong and can be easily disproved with just a few paragraphs:

    We know that a physics variable can only be defined once and double definitions will either lead to contradictions or redundant. As time has already been defined by physical clocks, there is no freedom for Einstein to redefine it through Lorentz Transformation. Here is a simple disproof of special relativity:

    Let a series of vertically standing candles as clocks with the same initial height and burning rate move at different constant horizontal velocities relative to an inertial reference frame of (x, y, z, t) where x, y, z, t are relativistic positions and relativistic time. Thus, at any moment t of the relativistic time of the reference frame (x, y, z, t), all candles have the same height H relative to the reference frame of (x, y, z, t) and the height H represents the physical time of the clocks. Therefore, we have the simultaneous events measured in both relativistic time t and physical time H relative to the frame of (x, y, z, t):

    (Candle1, x1, y1, H, t), (candle2, x2, y2, H, t), …, (CandleN, xN, yN, H, t)

    When these events are observed on anther horizontally moving inertial reference frame (x’, y’, z’, t’), according to special relativity, these events in the reference frame of (x’, y’, z’, t’) can be obtained through Lorentz Transformation:

    (Candle1, x’1, y’1, H, t’1), (Candle2, x’2, y’2, H, t’2), … , (CandleN, x’N, y’N, H, t’N),

    where t’1, t’2, …, and t’N are relativistic times of the events in the frame of (x’, y’, z’, t’). It is seen that after Lorentz Transformation, these events in the frame of (x’, y’, z’, t’) have different relativistic times:

    t’1 ≠ t’2 ≠ … ≠ t’N

    That is they are no longer simultaneous measured with relativistic time in the frame of (x’, y’, z’, t’), but the heights of the candles remain the same H because the vertical heights here do not experience any Lorentz contraction. As the heights of the candles represent the physical time, these events still have the same physical time, i.e., they are still simultaneous measured with the physical time H. Therefore, the physical time is Lorentz invariant, absolute, independent of inertial reference frames, which is different from relativistic time. It is because Lorentz Transformation has redefined time and the newly defined time is no longer the physical time measured with physical clocks. Based on such an artificial meaningless time, special relativity is wrong.

    Some people may argue that atomic clocks won’t behave like that. Please just think, all atomic clocks can use the height of a stick to represent their accurate time without any problem and make them behave exactly the same as a candle clock. As long as it is a physical clock, its display won’t change with the change of reference frame.

    • Low dimensional spatiotemporal matter is the foundation of high-dimensional spatiotemporal matter. Topological vortices are points in a two-dimensional field. If you want to understand Relativity and Quantum Mechanics correctly, via topological vortices may be more appropriate than candle, stick, or cat.

      • Please be aware that you should use the simplest model without losing generality to deliver the convincing logical reasoning.

  2. Fixed gravity for you. | April 20, 2023 at 12:46 am | Reply

    “Magic” is a great word choice, no doubt, but still I prefer “philosophically royal slickness” or “naturally counter-historical gravitational marxism.”

    • Fixed gravity for you. | April 20, 2023 at 1:22 am | Reply

      “… he imagined a hypothetical space—which can be pictured as being enclosed in something like an infinite soup can, or ‘bulk’—holding objects like black holes that are acted on by gravity. Maldacena also imagined particles moving on the surface of the can, controlled by quantum mechanics. He realized that mathematically a quantum theory used to describe the particles on the boundary is equivalent to a gravitational theory describing the black holes and spacetime inside the bulk.”

      The natural response here is to treat black holes as “black-face” holes.

      • Fixed gravity for you. | April 22, 2023 at 2:40 pm | Reply

        Hard to imagine Orwell didn’t have a social opinion about whitewashing, word-gaming, revisionist, royal gravity theory supremacists, in other words.

  3. Ralph Johnson | April 20, 2023 at 9:38 am | Reply

    Seeing that the spacetime theory has been built into every physics equation since Einstein’s. The first commenter has it correct in the math and theory, Physicists just can’t think that simple, there is a rumor that Einstein was so smart he could not tie his shoe laces, if true he probably thought that action wasn’t important. I worked with a person that was studying Physics and we had to close out the days consumption and his simple math was constantly wrong he thought it was not that important. Einstein knew that to have the ear of renown Physicists their principals had to be incorporated into the theory of Relativity. Magic no, My assumption of Time is just a little different, Time is a Ghost in human reality the Big Bang sparked the universe creating Motion of time, Time has no physical form, starting at the Big Bang, Time is motion in our kinetic energy universe like the path (down to subatomic) of a moving sphere you can’t retrace the (exact) path back to the Big Bang all we can do is fallow the path forward and guess the next move.

  4. “He realized that mathematically a quantum theory used to describe the particles on the boundary is equivalent to a gravitational theory describing the black holes and spacetime inside the bulk.”

    Yeah, that’s totally obvious.

  5. Fixed gravity for you. | April 21, 2023 at 3:36 am | Reply

    “mathematically a quantum theory used to describe the particles on the boundary is equivalent to a gravitational theory describing … spacetime inside the bulk”

    Translation: find a large rubber tramp surface, place a ceremonial weight on it in the middle, proceed to religiously swirl marbles around the depression created by the ceremonial rubber tramp surface, pretend the tramp is practically flat in 3D so consider stacking them up like slices of space, and pretend the ceremonial mass is a black hole circled by quantum matter or whatever floats the interstellar boat, except don’t worry about needing to swerve around gravity hills, except maybe when in anti-desitter state spaces of the multiverse, especially ghostly galaxy-sized hills filling space around visible galaxies.

Leave a Reply to Fixed gravity for you. Cancel reply

Email address is optional. If provided, your email will not be published or shared.