Lee Smolin - Why is the Quantum so Strange?

To know reality, one must confront the quantum. It is how our world works at the deepest level. What's the quantum?
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[@sharmitoboylos7585]

one of the many amazing things about this series is how brilliant Robert has to be even to talk with these folks and keep asking them the right questions! Sometimes they look at him like, How did you understand what i just said well enough to ask me that follow-up?

[@raphaelklaussen1951]

Robert Kuhn is one of the most highly-educated men in the US. The guy is fantastically knowledgeable in many fields, from biology to business to politics.

[@TheZooman22]

Yes! I was thinking the same thing, that is what gives this series so much power and direction.

[@michaelhodsdon]

Exactly what I was thinking as I was watching this.

[@Sowboi1985]

I was about to comment the same thing and saw this at the top. He really knows what he’s talking about and I’m sure has learned so much along the way in his episodes, talking with the most intelligent experts on the planet

[@JAYDUBYAH29]

A quite smart and educated man interviewing a humble and careful genius.

[@lordemed1]

Lee Smolin is not as 'careful' as you may assume. Thorough, perhaps. After all, he goes against many of his colleagues by thinking time is fundamental, not emergent. :-)

[@Pussik]

My problem with these sudoscience programs is that they never really explain the problem directly. Always mask it by saying "its too technical" or just talk around it. Anyway, my regards to Lee.

[@schmetterling4477]

@@lordemed1 That's pretty bad for him because there is absolutely no physical evidence for that.

[@nealbeard1]

How can these programs be pseudo science? They are obviously pretty basic for theoretical physicists but for the "smart others" they are enough

[@jd35711]

i think that’s accurate

[@JP-re3bc]

Lee Smolin is a great thinker.

[@micpin6810]

He just thinks. No useful results though.

[@manasraj5640]

@@micpin6810 thinking does not have a goal, especially it's usefulness. It's the work of the engineer mindset whose goal is usefulness, which is very important too.

[@micpin6810]

@@manasraj5640 Sure I agree. But looks like thinking has limit as well.

[@mitchellhayman381]

​@@micpin6810 physics has gotten into a very difficult situation. Since the late 70's, the smartest people have been working on supersymmetry and string theory. A lot of interesting mathematics, but it seems we can't get our universe in de sitter space. It's also looking like supersymmetry might not be a correct way of thinking about the fundamental forces. Physics has not advanced much in a hundred years. There's a crisis in physics that I don't know can be solved. Maybe the best we can do is mathematical approximations of reality. The idea that there's a fundamental theory is very appealing to physicists. Maybe we aren't smart enough to properly understand the question? Maybe there's just no explanation, even though the question seems to make sense?

[@micpin6810]

@@mitchellhayman381 Yes I agree. I think the problem is summed up by this great quote from none other than a giant of 20th century physics. "Physics is becoming so unbelievably complex that it is taking longer and longer to train a physicist. It is taking so long, in fact, to train a physicist to the place where he understands the nature of physical problems that he is already too old to solve them" - Eugene Wigner

[@machina_aeterna]

Wow. What a time to be alive; to have this info in the palm of our hands.

[@skydweller2049]

Geometric Genesis 🤯

[@DuncanEduardo]

What I'm always amazed by is that the great thinkers of the past, including right up to early 20th century with Einstein, were more or less working with pen, paper and deep thought. No computers or advanced machinery. They didn't have the huge advantage of deep space astronomical evidence or massive computational power. Of course one could argue that theory starts on paper versus the application coming later.

[@paulg444]

at 8:23, "which is composed of what exactly" .. friends that was priceless!

[@josephramone5805]

"Space is dynamical, which evolves, just like anything else evolves......the building" - Lee Smolin He said it in a nonchalant manner, with a straight face, and somehow the conversation kept going without a glitch or pause and, more importantly, without a question from the interviewer.

[@christianruiz7348]

I have his book. Changed my life.

[@077di6]

how

[@johntexas8417]

Interesting Christian. Guess what? Science, most especially QM's and QP's has changed my life too for the vast better

[@jamesbentonticer4706]

@@077di6 maybe it inspired him to become a physicist himself.

[@gdsm93]

I feel like this channel desperately needs a marketing overhaul and perhaps a video design one as well. It may not be *absolutely* necessary but it'd REALLY help the channel grow, improve and evolve. A few ideas off the top of my head include adding another interviewer (for video diversity), figuring out something original to add to each interview (maybe a certain question you ask everyone), and creating a new series of videos. You usually produce amazing content with very interesting/unique interviews with people most have never heard of before, on topics many never have adequately explained to them. Anyway, just the thoughts of a longtime subscriber.

[@leighwiggin4139]

Why so few subscribers? This is a fantastic channel.

[@wakjob961]

leigh wiggin and a fantastic TV show on WCNY/PBS.

[@acetate909]

Agreed, the amount of amazing intellectuals he interviews is amazing. I only wish they were longer clips but I'm not complaining.

[@Oceansideca1987]

Leigh Wiggin right

[@suntzu7727]

@@ThalesPo 99% of the people will tell you that 99% of the people are idiots.

[@johntexas8417]

Yeah it is

[@patinho5589]

If you tube had existed when I was younger I would have seen these guys as heroes and wanted to be a physicist. No doubt

[@pepperrez]

This is gold.

[@LLee0]

This 9 minutes of interview really blew my mind....

[@ArisAlamanos]

awesome interview

[@KokoRicky]

The interviews with this guy are seriously interesting, I've been hobbyist researching quantum mechanics for years yet still found some interesting nuggets after listening.

[@david.thomas.108]

Wow, this was a really profound interview! Loved the ideas about the emergence of quantum space and its relation to geometry and general relativity.

[@dabonemarrow5337]

I think I got a lot out of this careful interview!! Very good

[@JoaoPedro-jr8pf]

highly underrated video

[@theroboticscodedepot7736]

Fascinating! Matter is also an emergent property so perhaps this idea is really onto something.

[@infov0y]

Nice explainer from Smolin, and good stuff of course.

[@bombdottcom111]

Yes he does well explaining :)

[@elainegionet6783]

Love lee Smolin

[@philosophermit8215]

I love this channel

[@Bondokill]

Cool

[@bombdottcom111]

Great video and discussion- I'd love to see more. Why isn't there space if there is no geographic pattern to it? Why can't it be random? Because everything is connected?

[@mxbishop]

Coming up with a theory of quantum gravity that is testable, and also figuring out why quantum entanglement works the way that it does - are, in my opinion, the two areas that will drive the next great leap in theoretical physics. Loop Quantum Gravity has an edge, in my view, because it is studying the emergence of space and time - whereas string theory, as originally conceived, starts with space and time as a given. Hopefully, we'll see some interesting experimental results in our lifetime - that points toward one theory or the other.

[@r.davidsen]

This is a truly underrated comment! A quantum theory that can be measured is the key. So far, all measurements will collapse pretty much every quantum state.

[@patinho5589]

That final zoom in lol. I had heard there is life on all the planets in this solar system as other ‘levels’. Around this earth too. This fundamental loop quantum gravity stuff seems to allow for that.

[@2010sunshine]

I am amazed by the clarity of their thought process 👍👌

[@Nasreddiin]

Where can we get the whole interview? Thanks!

[@SukmaHema]

beautiful 👍

[@VR_JPN]

I wonder if there is a difference between the "large" and "the small" in that beyond a certain "smallness" (Plank?), it's similar to entering a black hole in which the rules are 'bent' toward quantum mechanical physics. The trick then would be to look at the warping of time and space at this horizon... i.e. to find the scale at which the laws change... ?

[@jmanj3917]

7:00 So, are we experiencing the gaseous phase of space, or the liquid phase, or the solid phase? Or is it something less common?

[@Bootmahoy88]

When did this interview occur? Does anyone know?

[@barrybretz6073]

So we're other aspects of the nodes like a compressed plasma?

[@jamesruscheinski8602]

Can quantum wave frequencies and energy amplitudes be relativized?

[@imdoc7872]

Im going to have to watch this 100 times. Im a doctor and Im thinking about studying physics for my next career. However, I would love to study its application such as engineering rather than conceptualization. Any recommendations?

[@r.davidsen]

If you do not like conceptualization, then do not study quantum physics. It's all theoretical. It's all about probabilities. It has very little application in relativistic space. So far, the only thing I can think of are quantum computers, which stores its data in qubits instead of bits. A qubit is a state of superposition, meaning the binary code can be both 1 and 0 at the same time. Superposition is a probability, as famously said by Schroedinger: a cat can't be both alive and dead at the same time, but the possibility of it being so is still true in theory, as a mathematical probability. This is why computers, which mostly deals with calculations, is the only application for this kind of "physics". Quantum physics is, to sum it up: a failed reality. It can never come true, as it will always remain a probability.

[@AnthonyCandaele]

I really should start reading a publication by Lee Smolin. Can someone recommend a book of him?

[@johnrobinson4445]

Sounds much better than String Theory. How does it handle Dark Matter (or, rather, the problem that Dark Matter theory proposes to answer)?

[@stoyanfurdzhev]

What about the undefined diade of the big and small beyond the light?

[@jamesruscheinski8602]

Does quantum energy have gravitational attraction?

[@jamesruscheinski8602]

Is quantum gravity about how gravity attracts wave frequencies and amplitudes of energy?

[@chadpfister833]

Geometro Genesis - the creation of the Geo Metro.

[@paulkarch3318]

But what causes the "proto quanta" to transition to "our universe" what causes the "phase transition" is it just given enough "time" all possibilities will occur?

[@KaliFissure]

There is a classical model which will supplant QM. Photons physically are the entire probability sphere. An electron shell implodes and creates a low pressure shockwave which propagates at c in all directions. Which atom is in the right condition to absorb/detect that wave is the question. The resonant chamber has to be the right size. There is also a physical process which maintains fine tuning. Each neutron which contacts event horizon becomes vacuum energy and then Hamiltonian for Hamiltonian re emerges in lowest energy points of space. Conservation. Event horizons are one way pressure release valves venting energy pressure from highest energy pressure conditions to lowest energy density points of space.

[@GiveMeLiquidity]

And no conclusions were made.

[@fractalnomics]

I agree.

[@brigham2250]

The space -time coordinates exist in the quantum vacuum independent of black holes and quasars. Gravity is a variable of the quantum velocity squared. The unifying theory that brings together general relativity and quantum mechanics is space divided by the plank scale multiplied by the speed of light. How many times do I have to explain this?

[@vjnt1star]

lol, they just dont get it, do they?

[@legendarylightyagamiimmanu1821]

But can you produce any testible hypothesis?

[@gru8212]

hmmm interesting

[@jjcm3135]

But what are these actual "nodes" delineating actual tiny volumes of space. What they?

[@dankurth4232]

Smolin should inform himself about the results of Nima Arkani Hamed - in particular his lectures with titles including phrases like „Space-Time is doomed“, and btw for Space-Time being doomed then so is Loop Quantum Gravity. Actually what Nima Arkani Hamed means by „Space Time is doomed“ is just „Space Time“ is emergent.

[@ydin77]

Took me couple of time of listening to the intervju before i got it. Maybe thats why few subs

[@mmenjic]

There must be a "line" somewhere, everything can not be emergent property of other stuff for start, but if we take into account that now is 2021 and we did not se much progress in this direction can we now assume space is not emergent property of something else ? If not do we have some theory what is fundamental, can we imagine some experiments to detect and confirm it ? Where did strings go ?

[@schmetterling4477]

Why would space not be emergent? It has three dimensions and not seventeen. That it has such a property, that alone tells you that there is something that we don't know, yet, that sets that number to three. And why does there have to be a fundamental theory? Just because somebody said so a long time ago?

[@mmenjic]

@@schmetterling4477 I don't know I am just asking as you are but I think there is end somewhere it would be strange that everything is infinite in a sense that everything emerges from something else and there is no end to it. That would mean we can not know anything fundamentally we can just search and discover further and smaller stuff and probably will get bored from it and then stop :)

[@schmetterling4477]

@@mmenjic I don't find physics boring. You are only speaking for yourself there. Now, can everything be known? No. But then... I have never seen a contractual obligation signed by the universe that it will reveal all of its content to us. So if it doesn't, so what? So nothing. We will simply have to grow up and learn to live with partial information.

[@mmenjic]

​@@schmetterling4477 Haha no it is not boring I just want it all :)

[@schmetterling4477]

@@mmenjic And you can't have it all. That's life.

[@AAaxxxxxx84]

I think the availlibilty of instruments are the key... the problem is those instruments are super expensive, trust & funding become the greatest challanges...

[@AAaxxxxxx84]

kzbin.info/www/bejne/mpCyloSupLCimbc

[@rigelsg3087]

Of course there are more fundamental things that can't be seen , like feelings , they bit inherited in matter like they are in us who are matter, but the way the are inherited are in a different arrangement of their components just like us are an arrangement of the components that are also inherited in animals or trees but in a different way

[@mitchellhayman381]

That got crazy at the end

[@vulkan8093]

What other phases can space become?

[@juniperman]

Aren’t they still trying to get gravity electromagnetism and the strong and weak nuclear forces to fit together ?

[@MattsYoutubeChannel]

1:11 glitched out

[@Pussik]

You can see in Lee's bodylanguage the resistance to comprehend the gravity. Pity that may be its mere psychological barrier that stays in between understanding gravity better.

[@patinho5589]

Come on...

[@maxcohengeniuus]

Lee Smolin real scientist

[@GreaterDeity]

So space itself, which is described as a platform for everything to sit, is made of other independent geometric objects networked appropriately. If that is indeed the case, I am not surprised.

[@HardKore5250]

Shean Crane differences in other universes

[@HardKore5250]

Simulations all the way down

[@sngscratcher]

The quantum SEEMS so "strange" to us because we deluded ourselves into believing that we know what this reality is, based on our observations of the macro world. It is important that we don't allow our minds to become "trapped" in any dogmatic worldview or belief system, be it religion, materialism, etc.

[@andsalomoni]

Quantum mechanics seems strange only to those who think that reality is newtonian. We shouldn't forget that quantum effects can only be revealed at our macroscopical scale, in the sense that every quantum experiment is made with macroscopical scale experimental apparata. Quantum phenomena are about a "quantistic behaviour", not about micro- or macro-objects. The "macro world" is quantistic, we have to find how, when and in which ambit.

[@jamesbentonticer4706]

@@andsalomoni proper use of the words ambit and apparata. Nice

[@nansir]

Or even worse, the belief that money is real #ResourceBasedEconomy #EndTheMonetarySystem

[@walden-cx3bo]

La geometría del espacio a nivel subatómico. La media volá.

[@myroseaccount]

WHAT? Somebody run that by me again. It's almost as if a thunderbolt landed next to me in the High Street and nobody seemed to notice

[@willia451]

Can you have space without time? He seems to be suggesting that you can. Or at the very least he's excluding time on purpose to try to get at the foundational geometry of space.

[@junebixby7041]

Oh my goodness, I almost have it....

[@StanTheObserver-lo8rx]

So,quantum foam is made of that? Or?

[@zeroonetime]

It's your Strange perception of creation as a "strange" phenomenon.

[@DavidByrden1]

At 0:50 the interviewer says "one is a description of the very small and one is a description of the very large". No, that's not true. Relativistic effects become obvious to us on very large scales, yes, but they EXIST on all scales. When synchronising clocks on satellites, or even within a laboratory, you are faced with relativistic effects. Quantum effects become obvious to us on very small scales, yes, but they EXIST on all scales. Photons travel for billions of light years, yet their journeys are quantum events. They don't turn "classical" after the first hundred kilometers.

[@Pussik]

Srsly the current frontier of understanding is that known 3d space is emergent and in fact real universe is made out of nodes in triangular propagating shapes, analogically to any 3d geometry that we have from 30+ years? I cant grasp the fact how little they know.

[@r.davidsen]

All the possible geometries of space is just that: possibilities. All geometries of space can't be measured relativistically, only calculated. That's the problem with quantum physics.

[@pinchopaxtonsgreatestminds9591]

The Universe is background dependant, and doesn't work with general Relativity. Speed is physics, so you have to get rid of time as a dimension. The 3D geometry comes from rotations of a 2D geometry like you can spin a torus to get a sphere of least resistance with the hole in the torus, and that would be an electron. There was no Big Bang so you have an infinite 3D matrix structure already anyway.

[@pinchopaxtonsgreatestminds9591]

I started to study physics at the age of 11, and now I'm 54. It was my own study from scratch, an independent look at nature from the outside. Although I started studying at the age of 11, I didn't start my own theories until I had an Amiga computer. Then I decided to start writing everything from scratch, and I mean from nothing. I wanted to start the universe from nothing, and work upwards towards nature, and biology. It took me 3 years to figure out what nothing was, and I came up with 1 + -1 = 0. Then I had more physics from zero than I started with so that is good. 1 is a filler, and -1 is a hole, and together a hole, and a filler makes zero. You can reverse that to 0 = 1 + -1 but you have to give zero a scale. 0(1) = 1 + -1 and 0(2) = 2 + -2. So zero has scale, and you can build physics from it. It changes the big bang into a matrix of holes, and fillers. The fillers spin around the holes so you get a torus with a rotational hole which is a spherical area of least resistance, which is an electron. Gravity is a filler, and magnetism is a hole. You work out all of physics, and biology by rotating torus to change the direction, and scale of the area of least resistance. You end up with a chaos of Lego... holes, and fillers that align themselves from chaos.

[@wakjob961]

Pincho Paxton ever write a paper that was published?

[@pinchopaxtonsgreatestminds9591]

I never send anything to publishers, that's like sending your invention to some inventors.

[@justinwhite368]

Time would seem to be the processes related to the activity of photons.

[@vrus91]

Light moves at the speed of causality.

[@HakWilliams]

Boom.

[@ellisfmorton4086]

from the thumbnail i read his name as smegol

[@mikenorval6331]

Time time time. Do we have enough time to figure out time?

[@luisurgelles2631]

That was some deep shit.

[@xavieraguerrevere9716]

here is the where the spacetron comes in !!!!

[@wail9652]

Logic = strong .

[@AmalAlmanaa]

please send your talking in writing, It will better to understand

[@phillippalmer3124]

Why is the quantum so strange? Still waiting for an answer.

[@bubayou]

Why are they talking about Quantum Gravity isn't it really Quantum Space ?

[@claudegray2759]

Well as I'm sure you know there's no such thing as gravity as distinct from space.

[@aqu9923]

Robert was far better interviewer the then!❤

[@wrathofgrothendieck]

Geometric Unity da god

[@everose606]

Gravity is a super energy molecule. Its invisible to us. These molecules interact with all the other energy and most particles at virtually all times. Think about magnets and how they attract opposites. Gravity particles attract to our bodys for example, but they are able to attract the particles in our bodys with a force but still weigh down on us and everything else at the same time. The earths core is a big factor.

[@olyolu2337]

Indeed an unfathomable God and there I was thinking space must exist full stop. How wrong I was cause I was trying to tie God down

[@EXoTjC]

The fundamental nature of reality are two: energy and information (intelligence), everything else is emergent phenomenon. Time and Space are the same thing, two sides of the same coin, one cannot exist without the other, they has to co-exist, co-evolve, like ... like ... chicken and egg.

[@DrDress]

The thumpnail lpoks like when the alien jumps Dallas.

[@larrybeckham6652]

Okay, the Quantum World IS strange. But WHY? This is description, i do believe, not prescription.

[@fieldandstream9362]

Can you make a black hole we can throw jerks into that attack nerds???

[@jamesbentonticer4706]

Lol that would be sweet.

[@drbonesshow1]

Lee Smolin isn't quantum. However, he is strange. That is, relatively strange to resurrect Einstein.

[@lordemed1]

Fascinating that Lee Smolin believes space is emergent, but time is fundamental. But what is 'fundamental'? Oh my god! haha

[@wail9652]

Strange =movement by precarious No. 4.5/5.0. My opinion.

[@colinball6407]

Maxwell started...surely?

[@narad8165]

Gravity has disproportionate influence on large bodies. Theory of everything is impossible.

[@DrakeLarson-js9px]

Lee's down a semi 'rabbit hole' without inversion physics!!... and has not listened to Edward Teller compared to other academics in this field!! I suggest that Lee not examine 'Spin-Network' - but look to geophysics super-rotation of the inner core data (Mary Fowler's input) and Rob Clarke's wisdom...

[@Minister1Little]

The universe is quantum to God

[@wesbaumguardner8829]

The reason it and general relativity are weird is because they were both founded by the same erroneous equation from Max Planck's 1901 paper. The equation E=hv where E is energy in ergs, h is Planck's constant in ergs*seconds, and v is the frequency of light in Hertz or light waves per second. This is an unbalanced equation that cannot be correct and true when a unit analysis is performed. The unit analysis provides ergs=(ergs*seconds)*(light waves/second) which reduces to ergs=ergs*light waves which further reduces to light waves=1. This should never happen in a unit analysis, which proves the equation cannot be correct and true. There is another problem with this equation, as well. Both the energy and the frequency were both measured in a one second time interval during the blackbody experiment from which Planck derived h, k, and the equation E=hv. Thus, the value for E is actually 1 second's worth of light instead of being "the energy of a single light wave" or "the energy of a single photon." Thus, the equation should be E/1 second =h*(light waves/1 second. However, this equation is even more unbalanced, which means there is a problem with Planck's constant itself.

[@wakjob961]

ever notice that most smart men have receding hair lines? probably why I'm a DF.

[@jamesbentonticer4706]

You can't be that dumb if you are interested in watching videos like this.

[@jeffreykalb9752]

You cannot unify gravity and quantum mechanics until you deconstruct algebra. There is no background. Only matter.

[@jamesbentonticer4706]

Then what is the stage that matter plays on?

[@RWin-fp5jn]

No...nature is not one....nature is deeeeeply dual, otherwise no symmetry. QP and GR are just mathematical approximations. QP for ST positioning , GR for the effect of radial contraction of ST as per restmass . Just math and not two comparable theories even....