It is not easy to understand what all their complexities of space and time mean. We didn’t say that; Alvaro de Ruzula, a distinguished particle physicist who, among many other accomplishments, taught and led Harvard Theoretical Physics Division of CERN. He even got the chance to travel back in time Talk face-to-face with Albert Einstein (Fiction and with great grace, of course).
“Space and time are so fundamental that we can talk about them, but not identify with maximum precision what they really are. We can integrate space into a kind of dominoes, so that we can stick them together. Others are built in one plane and then put another plane on top of it in the same way. Obviously. “Space isn’t really like that, but this metaphor helps us understand its nature in some way,” Álvaro points out.
“In any case, the first thing we can do is try to understand that relationship Between space and time. If we have a flat space and two ants on it, we can draw them at a certain time, and then in a second we can draw a plane on top of it with the same two ants, but placed in different places. Positions. In this way we can create a kind of sandwich, in which space runs in the horizontal direction of my diagram and time in the vertical direction,” explains CERN’s former director of theoretical physics.
Before moving forward, and as a prelude to the story we’re about to explore, it’s worth remembering that the speed of light is absolute. To accommodate this idea, Einstein decided to change the concept of time in his theory, the rhythm of which depends on the state of motion of an object, but also proved that you are in an intense gravitational field. We explain this in more detail in our article dedicated to the physics of time travel, but what really matters is that we already have the tools we need to move forward.
A curved space-time inside a laboratory. No better toy
A team of researchers from the University of Heidelberg in Germany was able to recreate it in their lab last year. A useful space time Can be flexibly manipulated to simulate a family of curved universes. It sounds incredible. In fact, it sounds like the plot of a science fiction movie. But no. It is real. Indeed, their trial was peer-reviewed and published Nature.
The cosmological models physicists are currently working on ask how space has expanded and changed its curvature.
In the first paragraphs of this article, we have reviewed several important ideas, one of which is that space and time are intimately connected and that their structure is fixed. This knowledge served as a starting point for these scientists to design an experiment that would allow them to better understand the interactions between matter and the space-time continuum, and test the predictions of quantum field theory.
Broadly speaking, this last theoretical model proposes to use quantum mechanics, classical field theory and special relativity to describe classical field systems, for example, gravitational or electromagnetic fields. The cosmological models that physicists are currently working on ask about how space has expanded has changed its curve. And precisely, these researchers’ experiment helps us better understand how the evolution of a space-time that could have been curved at a very early stage.
So far we have been able to form a relatively accurate idea of the purpose of these researchers, but we need to examine something more important: how did they do it? How did they simulate so many warped universes in a lab with the aim of flirting with different cosmological scenarios? To bend the space-time continuum in a perceptible way, we need massive masses like a star or almost inconceivable energies. And it is clear that these physicists do not have enormous masses or enormous energies.
In this experiment the shape of a cloud of potassium atoms determines the dimensions and properties of a particular space-time continuum.
But what they did have was a quantum field simulator that they fine-tuned by cooling a cloud of potassium atoms until their temperature dropped to a few nanokelvins above absolute zero. This strategy allowed them to get A Bose-Einstein capacitorIt is a special state of matter whose properties clearly reveal even the slightest energy perturbations to which the cloud’s atoms are subjected, without going into too complicated details.
In this experiment the shape of a cloud of potassium atoms determines the dimensions and properties of a particular space-time continuum through which energy perturbations of atoms propagate in the form of waves. Also, the researchers were able to work on interactions between atoms, precisely adjusting the intensity of the magnetic field that bound them, so, in a sense, they were able to create a more flexible experimental scenario. It’s exciting. Your article is complexBut if you’re not easily intimidated and want to know more precisely what his test is, don’t hesitate to consult it.
In Xataka | The physics of time travel was explained by two great theoretical physicists
Cover Image | It is engineering
More information | Nature
