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Chuck Darwin<p>In the fall of 2022, a Princeton University graduate student named <a href="https://c.im/tags/Carolina" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Carolina</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Figueiredo" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Figueiredo</span></a><br> stumbled onto a massive coincidence. </p><p>She calculated that collisions involving three different types of subatomic particles would all produce the same wreckage. </p><p>“They are very different [particle] theories. <br>There’s no reason for them to be connected,” Figueiredo said.</p><p>The coincidence soon revealed itself to be a conspiracy: </p><p>The theories describing the three types of particles were, <br>when viewed from the right perspective, <br>essentially one. </p><p>The conspiracy, Figueiredo and her colleagues realized, stems from the existence of a hidden structure, <br>one that could potentially simplify the complex business of understanding what’s going on at the base level of reality.</p><p>For nearly two decades, Figueiredo’s doctoral advisor, <a href="https://c.im/tags/Nima" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Nima</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Arkani" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Arkani</span></a>-<a href="https://c.im/tags/Hamed" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Hamed</span></a><br>has been leading a hunt for a new way of doing physics. </p><p>Many physicists believe they’ve reached the end of the road when it comes to conceptualizing reality in terms of quantum events that play out in space and time. </p><p>Such language can’t easily describe the beginning of the universe, for instance, <br>when the space-time fabric likely didn’t exist in its current form. </p><p>Arkani-Hamed therefore suspects that the usual notion of quantum particles moving and interacting in space-time is an approximation of deeper, more abstract concepts, <br>which, if found, could serve as a better language for talking about quantum gravity and the origin of the universe.</p><p>A major development came in 2013, when Arkani-Hamed and his student at the time, <a href="https://c.im/tags/Jaroslav" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Jaroslav</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Trnka" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Trnka</span></a>, discovered a jewel-like geometric object that forecasts the outcome of certain particle interactions. </p><p>They called the object the “<a href="https://c.im/tags/amplituhedron" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>amplituhedron</span></a>.” </p><p>However, the object didn’t apply to the particles of the real world. <br>So Arkani-Hamed and his colleagues sought more such objects that would</p><p>Figueiredo’s conspiracy is another manifestation of abstract geometric structure that seems to underlie particle physics.</p><p>“The overall program is inching closer to Nima’s long-term dream of space-time and quantum mechanics emerging from a new set of principles,” <br>said Sebastian Mizera, a physicist who studies amplitudes at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, but was not involved in the recent work.</p><p>Like the amplituhedron, the new geometrical method, <br>known as “<a href="https://c.im/tags/surfaceology" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>surfaceology</span></a>,” streamlines quantum physics by sidestepping the traditional approach, <br>which is to track the countless ways particles can move through space-time using “Feynman diagrams.” </p><p>These depictions of particles’ possible collisions and trajectories translate into complicated equations. </p><p>With surfaceology, physicists can get the same result more directly.</p><p>“It provides a natural framework, or a bookkeeping mechanism, <br>to assemble very large numbers of Feynman diagrams,” said <a href="https://c.im/tags/Marcus" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Marcus</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Spradlin" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Spradlin</span></a>, a physicist at Brown University who has been picking up the new tools of surfaceology. </p><p>“There’s an exponential compactification in information.”</p><p>Unlike the amplituhedron, <br>which required exotic particles to provide a balance known as supersymmetry, <br>surfaceology applies to more realistic, nonsupersymmetric particles. </p><p>“It’s completely agnostic. It couldn’t care less about supersymmetry,” Spradlin said. </p><p>“For some people, me included, I think that’s really been quite a surprise.”</p><p>The question now is whether this new, more primitive geometric approach to particle physics will allow theoretical physicists to slip the confines of space and time altogether.</p><p>“We needed to find some magic, and maybe this is it,” said <a href="https://c.im/tags/Jacob" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Jacob</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Bourjaily" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Bourjaily</span></a>, a physicist at Pennsylvania State University. </p><p>“Whether it’s going to get rid of space-time, I don’t know. <br>But it’s the first time I’ve seen a door.”</p><p><a href="https://www.quantamagazine.org/physicists-reveal-a-quantum-geometry-that-exists-outside-of-space-and-time-20240925/" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" translate="no" target="_blank"><span class="invisible">https://www.</span><span class="ellipsis">quantamagazine.org/physicists-</span><span class="invisible">reveal-a-quantum-geometry-that-exists-outside-of-space-and-time-20240925/</span></a></p>