Latest / Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe / Is time pixelated?
Transcript
- 0:01Speaker 1: Hey, Jorhan Daniel here, and we want to tell you
- 0:03Speaker 1: about our new book. It's called Frequently Asked Questions about
- 0:07Speaker 1: the Universe because you have questions about the universe, and
- 0:09Speaker 1: so we decided to write a book all about them.
- 0:12Speaker 1: We talk about your questions, we give some answers, we
- 0:14Speaker 1: make a bunch of silly jokes as usual, and we
- 0:17Speaker 1: tackle all kinds of questions, including what happens if I
- 0:20Speaker 1: fall into a black hole? Or is there another version
- 0:22Speaker 1: of you out there that's right? Like usual, we tackle
- 0:25Speaker 1: the deepest, darkest, biggest, craziest questions about this incredible cosmos.
- 0:29Speaker 1: If you want to support the podcast, please get the
- 0:31Speaker 1: book and get a copy, not just for yourself, but
- 0:34Speaker 1: you know, for your nieces and nephews, cousins, friends, parents, dogs, hamsters,
- 0:39Speaker 1: and for the aliens. So get your copy of Frequently
- 0:42Speaker 1: Asked Questions about the Universe is available for pre order now,
- 0:46Speaker 1: coming out November two. You can find more details at
- 0:49Speaker 1: the book's website, Universe f a Q dot com. Thanks
- 0:53Speaker 1: for your support, and if you have a hamster that
- 0:55Speaker 1: can read, please let us know. We'd love to have
- 0:57Speaker 1: them on the podcast. Hey Daniel, I have a question
- 1:09Speaker 1: for you about time? All right? I got time for that,
- 1:12Speaker 1: all right. So you do a lot of things, right,
- 1:14Speaker 1: you're a professor, you have a podcast, and you're always
- 1:17Speaker 1: switching between them. That's true. It's a lot of different
- 1:20Speaker 1: things to manage, all right. So then what do you
- 1:22Speaker 1: think is the shortest useful unit of time? Like, can
- 1:27Speaker 1: you get something done in five minutes? Or do you
- 1:30Speaker 1: need like an hour just to dig into something? Well,
- 1:32Speaker 1: you know, sort of depends on what it is. Is
- 1:34Speaker 1: it serious research or just like writing bad jokes for
- 1:38Speaker 1: the podcast? What do you mean? All right? Well, which
- 1:41Speaker 1: one takes more time? Oh? Bad jokes for sure? I
- 1:44Speaker 1: mean at some point you just can't scrape that barrel
- 1:46Speaker 1: any deeper. What if you just give you more time?
- 1:48Speaker 1: As long as you're writing jokes about time, they basically
- 1:50Speaker 1: just right themselves. Hi, I'm Jorge. I'm a cartoonist and
- 2:08Speaker 1: the creator of PhD comics. I'm Daniel. I'm a particle
- 2:11Speaker 1: physicist and a professor, and I never seem to have
- 2:15Speaker 1: enough time. Really, can't you just make time in your
- 2:18Speaker 1: particle collider? I mean, right, it's called space time. Can
- 2:21Speaker 1: you just transform some space into time? You know? What
- 2:24Speaker 1: I need to do is to speed up the rest
- 2:26Speaker 1: of the world near the speed of light, so it
- 2:28Speaker 1: runs slowly, and then I can just get all my
- 2:31Speaker 1: work done while everybody else is frozen. Oh that's a
- 2:33Speaker 1: good idea. But then you'd be left behind. Everyone would
- 2:35Speaker 1: be really far away, you'd be light years away, but
- 2:39Speaker 1: you would catch up and work. I would made all
- 2:41Speaker 1: my deadlines even though I'd be in the neighboring star system. Yeah,
- 2:45Speaker 1: there you go. And then how do you turn your
- 2:46Speaker 1: work in? You can't. I knew there was a flaw
- 2:51Speaker 1: on this plan. Yeah, you paradox yourself into unemployment. The
- 2:55Speaker 1: twin professor paradox. But welcome to our podcast. Daniel and
- 2:58Speaker 1: Jorge explained the Universe say production of I Heart Radio,
- 3:01Speaker 1: in which we take that mental journey around the universe,
- 3:05Speaker 1: speeding your brain up to near the speed of light,
- 3:08Speaker 1: so that we can try to understand the very nature
- 3:11Speaker 1: of the universe that we find ourselves in, this incredible,
- 3:14Speaker 1: glittering cosmos with all of its wonderful questions that it inspires,
- 3:18Speaker 1: the things that make us go, huh, why is it
- 3:20Speaker 1: like that? Why couldn't it be like this other thing?
- 3:23Speaker 1: We dig into all of that on this podcast. We
- 3:26Speaker 1: stare right into the abyss of our ignorance, and we
- 3:28Speaker 1: ask why, and we do our best to explain what
- 3:31Speaker 1: we do and don't know to you. Yeah, because it
- 3:34Speaker 1: is a pretty wonderful universe, but it's also kind of
- 3:37Speaker 1: a weird universe. We grow up thinking that space is
- 3:40Speaker 1: fixed and firm and never changes, but actually it sort
- 3:43Speaker 1: of does. It's it's squishy and also kind of ripley.
- 3:46Speaker 1: I'm glad it's a weird universe, though, What would it
- 3:49Speaker 1: be like if we were doing physics and discovering Yeah,
- 3:52Speaker 1: the universe is basically exactly as you thought it was
- 3:55Speaker 1: and kind of boring. After all, you would have to
- 3:57Speaker 1: switch careers to just writing joke. I don't think I
- 4:02Speaker 1: could have that as a career. But I wonder sometimes
- 4:05Speaker 1: about how, you know, we find the universe beautiful, We
- 4:08Speaker 1: find nature beautiful, and we also find it mysterious and interesting,
- 4:12Speaker 1: And I wonder if that's an accident or a product
- 4:15Speaker 1: of the way the human mind works, that we just
- 4:17Speaker 1: find beauty and mystery everywhere around us. Yeah, or even
- 4:20Speaker 1: like the word weird, like why is it weird to us? Right? Like?
- 4:24Speaker 1: What makes us the overall judges of what is weird,
- 4:27Speaker 1: and what is not? Like, maybe the universe is offended
- 4:29Speaker 1: by us calling it weird. Yeah, and then the word
- 4:32Speaker 1: weird itself is weird? Mean you say it enough times,
- 4:34Speaker 1: it sounds pretty weird. It's got an E and I
- 4:36Speaker 1: in it, like weird, weird, weird, it's a pretty weird word. Yeah. Yeah,
- 4:40Speaker 1: but that's the English people's fault. Blame it on the Brits.
- 4:44Speaker 1: So yeah, it is a pretty, let's say, interesting universe.
- 4:47Speaker 1: You think the universe would be offended if we called
- 4:49Speaker 1: it interesting, sort of like living in interesting times. No,
- 4:52Speaker 1: I think it's good. I think we are lucky. It's
- 4:54Speaker 1: one of the things that makes life worth living. You know.
- 4:56Speaker 1: People sometimes ask me this question, like why should we
- 4:59Speaker 1: fund particle physics? What good is it? And I hear
- 5:02Speaker 1: my colleagues making arguments like, well, you know, we might
- 5:05Speaker 1: have spinoff technologies or we invented the Worldwide Web. But
- 5:08Speaker 1: for me, the true answer is that it explores the universe.
- 5:11Speaker 1: It explores the nature of the human existence, sort of
- 5:13Speaker 1: the same way like art does you ask an artist like,
- 5:16Speaker 1: and why should we pay for art? Why should people
- 5:18Speaker 1: write books? Well, it's you know, just part of the
- 5:21Speaker 1: joy of life. Is unraveling the mystery of the universe
- 5:24Speaker 1: we find ourselves in. That's it, and that's enough. Well,
- 5:27Speaker 1: I'm not sure you want to be in the same
- 5:28Speaker 1: position that the arts are in trying to get funding
- 5:31Speaker 1: using that argument, So I would stick with the Worldwide
- 5:34Speaker 1: Web and useful technology for now. To be honest, I
- 5:37Speaker 1: think you just haven't asked big enough, Like why don't
- 5:39Speaker 1: you pitch your ten billion dollar cartoon to the government.
- 5:42Speaker 1: You know, the more you ask for, the more you get.
- 5:45Speaker 1: I'm not sure the time is right for that crazy idea,
- 5:48Speaker 1: the large hay drawing cartoon. Yeah, there you go. It
- 5:50Speaker 1: will break open the universe probably and create imaginary black
- 5:53Speaker 1: holes of ink that will swallow up the Earth. That's right,
- 5:56Speaker 1: that sounds good. I'd read that my pitching my tax
- 5:58Speaker 1: dollars for that. Anyway, we love for the universe is mysterious,
- 6:01Speaker 1: and it presents us with really fun, interesting, basic questions,
- 6:05Speaker 1: things that we don't understand about, you know, the very
- 6:08Speaker 1: like ABC's of reality. Yeah, because I guess you know,
- 6:11Speaker 1: we grow up experiencing the universe in one way and
- 6:14Speaker 1: we think it works in a certain way in our brains.
- 6:16Speaker 1: But really, when you sort of drill down into it,
- 6:18Speaker 1: or you scale up to bigger things. There are big
- 6:21Speaker 1: surprises and it doesn't work the way we think it does. Yeah,
- 6:24Speaker 1: I think of the universe is sort of like a ladder.
- 6:26Speaker 1: You know, if you look at it at one distance
- 6:29Speaker 1: scale and one time scale, it works a certain way.
- 6:31Speaker 1: If you look at another distance scale, like if you're
- 6:34Speaker 1: looking at particles or if you're looking at water droplets
- 6:37Speaker 1: or galaxies, there seem to be different rules that apply
- 6:41Speaker 1: at these different distance scales, and that's fascinating. It makes
- 6:44Speaker 1: you wonder, like, are any of these fundamental Are we
- 6:46Speaker 1: learning anything really deep and true about the universe? Or
- 6:49Speaker 1: does it all just depends on the questions you're asking?
- 6:51Speaker 1: And so it's not just scientists who have questions about
- 6:54Speaker 1: the universe and about the nature of the universe. It's
- 6:56Speaker 1: also our listeners and everyday people just like you. That's right,
- 7:00Speaker 1: because remember that science is just people asking questions, and
- 7:03Speaker 1: the investigations we do are motivated by the individual questions
- 7:07Speaker 1: of individual scientists wondering things about the universe, and that
- 7:11Speaker 1: includes you, because we are all out there wondering about
- 7:14Speaker 1: the universe and trying to figure it out. So today
- 7:17Speaker 1: we are tackling a question that we got from a
- 7:19Speaker 1: listener who comes from Sweden. It's Henrik, and Henrik is
- 7:23Speaker 1: a pretty interesting question about time. So here is Henrick's question. Hi,
- 7:29Speaker 1: I'm Henrik from Sweden and I have been wondering if
- 7:32Speaker 1: time could be pixelated? Is there any minimum unit of time?
- 7:37Speaker 1: Or could it be infinitely short? And when I listened
- 7:41Speaker 1: to your episode about space being pixelated or not, I
- 7:45Speaker 1: started wondering if time could be pixelated while space isn't,
- 7:49Speaker 1: or vice versa. Thank you guys. All right, it's a
- 7:52Speaker 1: pretty interesting question from Henry. So today on the podcast
- 7:55Speaker 1: will be tackling is time pixelated? That's a pretty strange question,
- 8:05Speaker 1: Is time pixelated? I don't usually associate pixels with time. Yeah,
- 8:10Speaker 1: it's a wonderful question, and I love hearing Henrik do physics.
- 8:14Speaker 1: You know, he is absorbing what we're talking about and
- 8:17Speaker 1: he's taking it to the next natural consequence. And that's
- 8:19Speaker 1: what you got to do with the theory. You say,
- 8:21Speaker 1: all right, well, this describes what I'm thinking about or
- 8:23Speaker 1: describes what I've seen. Can I extrapolate from it to
- 8:26Speaker 1: the rest of the universe or what are the consequences
- 8:29Speaker 1: of it? How can I test and explore this? So
- 8:32Speaker 1: that's exactly doing physics. So kudos to you, Henrick, for
- 8:35Speaker 1: doing some physics in your mind. Yeah, Daniel will be
- 8:37Speaker 1: sending you a check in the mill right now, right
- 8:40Speaker 1: after this podcast. I'm gonna email you some Swedish fish,
- 8:43Speaker 1: my favorite Swedish candy. All right. So then it's a
- 8:45Speaker 1: pretty interesting question. And Henrick was saying that he listened
- 8:48Speaker 1: to an episode that we had about whether or not
- 8:50Speaker 1: space is pixelated. So there's this idea that space could
- 8:53Speaker 1: be pixelated, meaning like it's not smooth and continuous, maybe
- 8:57Speaker 1: it's like a grid or something, or it's disc rate
- 9:00Speaker 1: at the very smallest level. And his question is whether
- 9:03Speaker 1: or not it applies to time as well. That's right,
- 9:06Speaker 1: because we often talk on the podcast about how space
- 9:08Speaker 1: and time are related, and then in relativity at least
- 9:11Speaker 1: we see them as parts of space time a four
- 9:15Speaker 1: dimensional object. So it's a very natural question. Yeah, and
- 9:18Speaker 1: so what did we conclude in that podcast episode about
- 9:20Speaker 1: space being pixelated? We concluded that we don't know, and
- 9:23Speaker 1: we might never know, but there are good reasons to
- 9:26Speaker 1: think that space might be pixelated, right, due to like
- 9:30Speaker 1: quantum physics and they're being like a theoretical plank scale
- 9:33Speaker 1: to the universe as well. Right, exactly, we don't know
- 9:36Speaker 1: how small the pixels of space are if they exist,
- 9:39Speaker 1: and we have a very simple, kind of bad estimate
- 9:42Speaker 1: for how small they might be, just by multiplying constants
- 9:45Speaker 1: of the universe together. And it's very very small number,
- 9:48Speaker 1: like ten to the minus thirty five meters. That's not
- 9:52Speaker 1: a measurement of how small the space pixels are or
- 9:54Speaker 1: proof that space pixels exist. But if you have no
- 9:57Speaker 1: other information about how to estimate it, this is all
- 10:00Speaker 1: you can do. It gives you a sense for like
- 10:02Speaker 1: what the neighborhood of the size might be, all right,
- 10:04Speaker 1: So then if you're curious, you can look up that
- 10:06Speaker 1: episode in our archive. But today we're talking about time
- 10:10Speaker 1: and whether it's pixelated, and so, as usually, we were
- 10:12Speaker 1: wondering how many people out there have thought about this
- 10:15Speaker 1: question or had had time to think about this question
- 10:17Speaker 1: at least a pixel of time and maybe had an
- 10:20Speaker 1: answer for it. So Daniel went out there into the
- 10:22Speaker 1: internet to ask listeners is time pixelated? And so if
- 10:26Speaker 1: you have time to donate your thoughts on random physics
- 10:30Speaker 1: questions for future podcast episodes. Please don't be shy, right
- 10:34Speaker 1: to me. Two questions at Daniel and Jorge dot com.
- 10:37Speaker 1: So think about it for a second. Do you think
- 10:38Speaker 1: there is a minimum amount of time in the universe?
- 10:42Speaker 1: Here's what people had to say. I guess if you
- 10:44Speaker 1: zoomed in far enough, time might be pixelated, like if
- 10:49Speaker 1: you imagined it as a film strip, if you zoomed
- 10:52Speaker 1: in just millions and millions and millions of times, that
- 10:59Speaker 1: it would beam moving sort of in frames, as if
- 11:02Speaker 1: like a movie kind of thing. Tom, pixelation, haven't heard
- 11:06Speaker 1: of it? Um, tell me about it. Sounds crazy, Yes,
- 11:14Speaker 1: it's a usual thing. So do you think it's pixelated
- 11:17Speaker 1: or continuous? Okay, it's continuous? Okay? Wow? Man, I don't
- 11:26Speaker 1: even know how to wrap my head around this question.
- 11:29Speaker 1: Is time pixelated? What does that even mean? Is it
- 11:33Speaker 1: just like if a second is a pixel or even
- 11:35Speaker 1: nano second is a pixel. I have no idea how
- 11:38Speaker 1: to answer this question. I really don't know what that
- 11:41Speaker 1: question means. Maybe like, is is time quantized in some form? Honest?
- 11:49Speaker 1: I have no idea time. It's very strange. A lot
- 11:53Speaker 1: we don't know. I'm not sure. I think that there
- 11:57Speaker 1: are some theories that suggest it might be, but I
- 12:00Speaker 1: don't know that we've measured that definitively. My understanding of
- 12:04Speaker 1: the measuring of time is that it's not infinitely divisible,
- 12:08Speaker 1: that it is hypothesized that ultimately you'll get two units
- 12:15Speaker 1: of time that are so short you can't get any short.
- 12:18Speaker 1: And I think it's referred to as plunk time pixilated
- 12:23Speaker 1: like all the video games. I'm not sure about. The
- 12:31Speaker 1: term doesn't seem right. I'm probably not. I have no
- 12:36Speaker 1: idea from a physics standpoint, but from a perception standpoint,
- 12:42Speaker 1: I feel like it is um and I think deja
- 12:46Speaker 1: vu has something to do with that. It's like it
- 12:49Speaker 1: arrives into my brain in little packets and then my
- 12:54Speaker 1: brain goes and smooths it all out after the fact,
- 12:58Speaker 1: so that it in my memories it seems like it's
- 13:01Speaker 1: all smooth, and I can't actually sense what's going on
- 13:05Speaker 1: in real time. I have no idea what that means.
- 13:09Speaker 1: I guess not because I think it's continuous with the
- 13:14Speaker 1: way that Madam moves in space. All right. Not a
- 13:19Speaker 1: lot of ideas here. Maybe people didn't spend enough time
- 13:22Speaker 1: thinking about it. They only thought one or two units
- 13:25Speaker 1: of time on this and they should have at least
- 13:26Speaker 1: been ten or two. Yeah, it's a tough question. It
- 13:29Speaker 1: seems to have puzzled people. Most people just throw their
- 13:31Speaker 1: hands up in the air and said, I don't know. Yeah,
- 13:33Speaker 1: it seems a little bit more foreign to people than
- 13:36Speaker 1: the idea that space is pixelated, like you're familiar with
- 13:39Speaker 1: looking at a screen, the idea of locations being a
- 13:43Speaker 1: grid that makes some sense. But the idea of time
- 13:46Speaker 1: being pixelated, that you know that there are discrete units
- 13:49Speaker 1: of time as we move forward, that we're stepping forward
- 13:53Speaker 1: instead of sliding forward, that seems to be a little
- 13:55Speaker 1: bit more alien. Yeah, so let's maybe tackle this one
- 14:00Speaker 1: kind of idea at a time. So, first of all,
- 14:01Speaker 1: what would it mean for time to be pixelated? Would
- 14:04Speaker 1: it mean like you can cut up time or you
- 14:06Speaker 1: can step through time in small increments, but at some
- 14:09Speaker 1: point there comes a point where you can take smaller
- 14:12Speaker 1: steps in time. There's sort of two very different but
- 14:16Speaker 1: closely related ways for time to be discreet, for there
- 14:20Speaker 1: to be like a minimal, sensible unit of time. The
- 14:23Speaker 1: first is what you were just talking about. This idea
- 14:26Speaker 1: of pixelization, and pixelization is something we think about for space, right,
- 14:30Speaker 1: like pixels on the screen. You can either be at
- 14:33Speaker 1: x equals seven or x equals eight, but you can't
- 14:36Speaker 1: be at x equals seven and a half. So that's
- 14:39Speaker 1: very natural sense for space and for time. The idea
- 14:43Speaker 1: would be that things step forwards in time, that you
- 14:47Speaker 1: could be like time equals one point seven or time
- 14:50Speaker 1: equals one point eight, but there is no time equals
- 14:52Speaker 1: one point seven and a half. That the universe just
- 14:55Speaker 1: goes from one point seven boom to one point eight.
- 14:58Speaker 1: It's like ticks on a clock, but there's no moment
- 15:01Speaker 1: in between the ticks, Like you can't have a half
- 15:03Speaker 1: of a second or something like that. Yeah, and you know,
- 15:06Speaker 1: obviously seconds aren't the minimum immunity of time. You can't
- 15:09Speaker 1: have half of a second. If time units exist, but
- 15:11Speaker 1: there's a minimum discrete chunk of time, it would be
- 15:14Speaker 1: super duper small. So that to us it seems continuous, right,
- 15:18Speaker 1: and you think it doesn't exist or like what happens
- 15:21Speaker 1: in between those two times? Yeah, well what does it
- 15:24Speaker 1: mean for the universe to be in between those times?
- 15:27Speaker 1: It's like it doesn't have a meaning, Like time is
- 15:31Speaker 1: here and time is there, but in between there isn't anything.
- 15:34Speaker 1: It just doesn't exist. This is something that's sort of
- 15:36Speaker 1: familiar to us from learning quantum mechanics, that not everything
- 15:41Speaker 1: has like a smooth classical path, you know, like an electron.
- 15:44Speaker 1: You measure it here and then you later you measure
- 15:47Speaker 1: it over there. Does that mean that it went from
- 15:49Speaker 1: here to there? No, it just means it was here
- 15:52Speaker 1: and then it was there. It doesn't have to have
- 15:54Speaker 1: a location in between. We think of everything as smooth
- 15:59Speaker 1: and continuous because that's the way it seems to us,
- 16:01Speaker 1: because we're kind of big and slow. But the universe,
- 16:05Speaker 1: as you were saying earlier, could be drastically different from
- 16:07Speaker 1: the way we experience it, all right, So that's one
- 16:10Speaker 1: possibility that time just doesn't exist in between time pixels,
- 16:14Speaker 1: like there's a grade of the time in the universe.
- 16:17Speaker 1: And that's actually something that makes sense to us sort
- 16:19Speaker 1: of numerically, like when we simulate things in the computer.
- 16:23Speaker 1: You want to describe, for example, how a hurricane moves
- 16:26Speaker 1: or how galaxies form, and we want to simulate them.
- 16:29Speaker 1: That's exactly how we do it. We make a grid
- 16:31Speaker 1: in time, and we step our simulated universe forward. We say,
- 16:35Speaker 1: something's happening right now, what's going to happen at the
- 16:37Speaker 1: next time step, and you can decide is it going
- 16:39Speaker 1: to be a nanosecond in the future or ten minutes
- 16:41Speaker 1: in the future. Depends on how much computing time you have.
- 16:45Speaker 1: But it's very natural to step things forward in time
- 16:47Speaker 1: in simulations, right, You do simulations with time steps. But
- 16:51Speaker 1: simulations are not perfect, right, and that that's one of
- 16:53Speaker 1: the main reasons is that they do have sort of
- 16:55Speaker 1: a resolution. It doesn't do it continuously like the universe
- 16:58Speaker 1: sort of seems to be. Yeah, exactly, they're not continuous,
- 17:01Speaker 1: they're discreet. And you're right that you want really small
- 17:03Speaker 1: time steps so that you're extrapolating in a reasonable way.
- 17:07Speaker 1: But it might be that the universe actually does have
- 17:09Speaker 1: the same sort of time steps, and if you did
- 17:11Speaker 1: your simulation with a time step equal to that of
- 17:13Speaker 1: the universe, then it would be perfect. But wow, that
- 17:17Speaker 1: would be weird, right, Like the universe would be operating
- 17:19Speaker 1: at the minimum possible time step because but the computer
- 17:23Speaker 1: is in the universe, so that would blows my mind
- 17:26Speaker 1: a little bit. But all right, So that's the first
- 17:28Speaker 1: kind of time pixelization. What's the second. The second is
- 17:31Speaker 1: that time isn't actually pixelized in the sense that you
- 17:35Speaker 1: could have any value of time. It's not like values
- 17:39Speaker 1: in between one point seven and one point eight are disallowed.
- 17:42Speaker 1: If you try to measure like when did something happen?
- 17:45Speaker 1: You could get any number between one point seven and
- 17:47Speaker 1: one point eight. All those values are real and possible.
- 17:51Speaker 1: In this idea, though, there's a minimum resolution, like you
- 17:54Speaker 1: can't measure differences in time that are smaller than a
- 17:57Speaker 1: certain number, Like if you measure something twice, you can't
- 18:00Speaker 1: get two measurements that are closer than a certain minimum distance,
- 18:04Speaker 1: but you can get any value. So it's sort of
- 18:06Speaker 1: like you have this minimum resolution, but it can slide
- 18:09Speaker 1: up and down the time scale where and land wherever. Okay,
- 18:13Speaker 1: I think I know what you're saying. You're saying that
- 18:14Speaker 1: maybe like every possible time step exists or is possible,
- 18:18Speaker 1: like you can have one point oh three seconds and
- 18:21Speaker 1: up one point two four seven seconds, but maybe at
- 18:26Speaker 1: some point, at some scale of smallness and time, it
- 18:29Speaker 1: just kind of becomes random or fuzzy or sort of unknowable. Yeah, exactly,
- 18:34Speaker 1: And we can think about that because we think about
- 18:36Speaker 1: quantum particles in exactly that way. Like an electron is quantized, right,
- 18:41Speaker 1: it's a single object quantized of the electron field. So
- 18:45Speaker 1: it's got a certain like natural width to it, below
- 18:49Speaker 1: which you can't really probe where its location is, but
- 18:52Speaker 1: it could be anywhere. It can live in continuous space.
- 18:56Speaker 1: If space is continuous, you can still have discrete objects
- 18:59Speaker 1: in side of it. And in that same way, time
- 19:01Speaker 1: might be like fundamentally continuous, but there might be a
- 19:05Speaker 1: minimum basic resolution of time below which the time difference
- 19:08Speaker 1: between two events has no meaning, no meaning, but it exists,
- 19:12Speaker 1: but it's sort of random. And because it's random, you're
- 19:15Speaker 1: saying it doesn't have any meaning. But is that really
- 19:17Speaker 1: pixelated though? Like it's so it doesn't fit our idea
- 19:20Speaker 1: of a pixel, right, It's more like there's no pixel,
- 19:23Speaker 1: but it's sort of fuzzy at a certain scale. Yeah, exactly.
- 19:25Speaker 1: It sets a scale which I think that the physicist
- 19:28Speaker 1: is interesting because it means that you can't infinitely divide time.
- 19:32Speaker 1: That was the other part of Hendrick's question, like can
- 19:34Speaker 1: you have infinitely small slices in time? Does it make
- 19:37Speaker 1: sense to think about things happening at one moment and
- 19:40Speaker 1: then tend to the minus one thousand seconds later, Like
- 19:44Speaker 1: does their universe really evolve things step by step at
- 19:48Speaker 1: that granularity. And what this would tell you is not
- 19:51Speaker 1: that things are locked into specific numbers, but that it
- 19:54Speaker 1: makes no sense to think about steps in time that
- 19:57Speaker 1: are that small. You can just make stuff u It's
- 20:01Speaker 1: unknown and it's undetermined, right in the same way that like,
- 20:05Speaker 1: not all the information about an electron is knowable, not
- 20:08Speaker 1: just because we can't measure it, but because it's not
- 20:11Speaker 1: specified as undetermined. In that same way, pieces of time
- 20:15Speaker 1: smaller than like whatever is the minimum resolution and time
- 20:18Speaker 1: are not known or knowable. All right, Well, those are
- 20:21Speaker 1: the two ways in which time could be pixelated, and
- 20:23Speaker 1: so let's get into why we think it might be
- 20:26Speaker 1: pixelated and whether or not we'll ever know if it
- 20:29Speaker 1: is or not. But first let's take a quick break.
- 20:44Speaker 1: All right, we're asking the question is time pixelated? And
- 20:48Speaker 1: so we had a whole episode about whether space was pixelated,
- 20:51Speaker 1: and we had all those reasons there. But now we're
- 20:54Speaker 1: asking if time is pixelated, And so the question is
- 20:57Speaker 1: why do we think time might be pixelated? It seems
- 20:59Speaker 1: pretty continuous and smooth to me. It does seem continuous
- 21:03Speaker 1: and smooth, but you know, our intuition breaks down when
- 21:06Speaker 1: we try to apply it to things that are much
- 21:08Speaker 1: much faster or much much smaller, and they reveal that
- 21:12Speaker 1: the rules of the universe are really pretty different. Of course,
- 21:14Speaker 1: when you zoom out to things like our skill, those
- 21:17Speaker 1: rules do sort of coalesce to recover our experience. So
- 21:21Speaker 1: it's amazing that you can have like one set of
- 21:23Speaker 1: rules for the very tiny particles and it can all
- 21:26Speaker 1: sort of work together to conspire to give a very
- 21:29Speaker 1: different kind of universe at the human scale. Right, So
- 21:31Speaker 1: then maybe step us through. What are some of the
- 21:33Speaker 1: arguments for saying that time is pixelated and what are
- 21:36Speaker 1: maybe some of the arguments against it being pixelated? Well,
- 21:39Speaker 1: I think there's a few elements here. One is, you know,
- 21:42Speaker 1: what is more natural? Like what do we expect to
- 21:45Speaker 1: be the truth? Like, is continuity of time really the
- 21:49Speaker 1: most natural thing? Or in the end, is discreete this
- 21:53Speaker 1: more natural? What would make more sense to us was
- 21:56Speaker 1: the sort of default position. And I think a lot
- 21:58Speaker 1: of people out there would assume, well, continuousness, right, like
- 22:01Speaker 1: time should flow smoothly. It seems to flow smoothly to me,
- 22:05Speaker 1: But you know that doesn't mean that that's the case.
- 22:08Speaker 1: You know, you watch TV and it seems to flow continuously,
- 22:11Speaker 1: but you know deep down that it is actually discreete.
- 22:13Speaker 1: Your television is not updating infinitely many times per second.
- 22:18Speaker 1: And that's the key, is that continuity, having continuous time,
- 22:22Speaker 1: implies a sort of infinity, and we just don't see
- 22:25Speaker 1: infinities in nature very often, right, Yeah, I guess like
- 22:28Speaker 1: if you showed it a four K, you know, high
- 22:31Speaker 1: resolution television to somebody from the you know, a tenth century,
- 22:35Speaker 1: they would probably be fooled into thinking like there's actually
- 22:38Speaker 1: something magical, real going on inside of it to be
- 22:40Speaker 1: but really it's you know, flashing, you know, twenty nine
- 22:43Speaker 1: times a second, and it's really only like two thousand
- 22:46Speaker 1: by two thousand pixels exactly. And continuity is really strange,
- 22:50Speaker 1: Like to imagine an infinite amount of information as the
- 22:53Speaker 1: universe evolves forwards, it's sort of like Zeno's paradox, Like
- 22:57Speaker 1: how do you even get from one second to two
- 22:59Speaker 1: seconds if you have to go through an infinite number
- 23:02Speaker 1: of sub seconds to get there? You know, it feels
- 23:05Speaker 1: like at some point you've got to take an actual
- 23:07Speaker 1: step forward, and to do that, you can imagine a
- 23:10Speaker 1: minimum unit of time where the universe is finally like
- 23:14Speaker 1: ticking over Otherwise, how does it even leave the one
- 23:17Speaker 1: second mark if it's always taking a smaller and smaller
- 23:19Speaker 1: and smaller and infinitely smaller step forwards. So you're saying
- 23:22Speaker 1: that a continuous universe sort of makes sense to us
- 23:25Speaker 1: from our experience, but it starts to break down when
- 23:27Speaker 1: you really drill into it, because you come up with infinities.
- 23:30Speaker 1: You do, you come up into infinities. And what we've
- 23:33Speaker 1: discovered is we look around us in the universe, is
- 23:35Speaker 1: that discreetness is actually much more natural. Like the things
- 23:39Speaker 1: that we see around us that seem continuous are actually discreet.
- 23:43Speaker 1: Like that chair you're sitting on right now. It seems
- 23:45Speaker 1: like it has a smooth surface, right, but it doesn't.
- 23:48Speaker 1: It's actually a lattice. A lattice is a network of
- 23:51Speaker 1: points that are tied together to approximate a smooth surface.
- 23:56Speaker 1: And if you zoom out, of course it looks smooth,
- 23:58Speaker 1: but if you zoom in far enough, it looks like
- 24:00Speaker 1: a chain link fence, you know, and a beam of
- 24:03Speaker 1: light that is shining on your plants, it's actually a
- 24:06Speaker 1: bunch of packets of photons. So the world around you,
- 24:09Speaker 1: though it seemed continuous, almost everything about it is actually discreet.
- 24:14Speaker 1: I see you're saying, because maybe the space and physical
- 24:17Speaker 1: things around this are sort of pixelated in a way
- 24:20Speaker 1: through discrete, then it would sort of make sense for
- 24:23Speaker 1: time to also be pixelated, exactly. And that's sort of
- 24:25Speaker 1: a natural intuitive argument, right, And it doesn't really hold
- 24:28Speaker 1: that much water. It's just sort of to get you
- 24:30Speaker 1: in the mindset of thinking, maybe discreete is the more
- 24:33Speaker 1: natural outcome instead of continuous. Right, then you need to
- 24:36Speaker 1: be persuaded against being discrete instead of being persuaded against
- 24:40Speaker 1: it being continuous. Right. But I guess the universe doesn't
- 24:42Speaker 1: care about what we think are our opinion of it.
- 24:45Speaker 1: So what are sibility I guess more of physically robust
- 24:48Speaker 1: arguments for or against time pixelation. Right. And so it
- 24:51Speaker 1: turns out that when you drill down into the very
- 24:54Speaker 1: small time and the very small space, what you do
- 24:57Speaker 1: is you run into questions about how gravity works. You know,
- 25:01Speaker 1: in very very small spaces. Now you have things like
- 25:04Speaker 1: particles moving around, and you get into questions of like
- 25:07Speaker 1: what are the forces between those particles? And if you
- 25:10Speaker 1: have very very short time, then you're talking about very
- 25:12Speaker 1: very high energy gravity kicks in and in the end
- 25:15Speaker 1: you need to know something about how quantum gravity works,
- 25:19Speaker 1: like what are the gravitational effects for very high energies
- 25:23Speaker 1: and very short distances, And people who are working on
- 25:26Speaker 1: quantum gravity these theories of like, you know, what is
- 25:29Speaker 1: the fundamental nature of space? Is it sliced up into
- 25:32Speaker 1: pieces or not? Are there gravitons? All these fun questions.
- 25:35Speaker 1: They make a lot of arguments about space being discreete
- 25:38Speaker 1: and we can dig into those in a minute. And
- 25:40Speaker 1: almost all of those arguments also apply to time because
- 25:44Speaker 1: space and time are very closely related. So the physical
- 25:48Speaker 1: arguments that there might be a minimum unity to space,
- 25:51Speaker 1: a lot of those same arguments you can use to
- 25:54Speaker 1: make minimum unit of time. Yeah, because I guess in
- 25:58Speaker 1: physics there is this idea that time is just another
- 26:02Speaker 1: dimension maybe or it's like you know the fourth leg
- 26:05Speaker 1: and the table that is space time, and that it's
- 26:08Speaker 1: somehow like the same thing, right, you sort of think
- 26:10Speaker 1: about it that way in physics. Yeah, and it's even
- 26:13Speaker 1: more closely connected. Let me give you an example. You
- 26:15Speaker 1: can make a pretty simple argument that there should be
- 26:18Speaker 1: a minimum unit of space, and then you can take
- 26:21Speaker 1: the same argument and use it for time. So it
- 26:23Speaker 1: goes like this. You say, let's, for example, try to
- 26:26Speaker 1: measure a particle. What happens if you try to measure
- 26:28Speaker 1: a particle really really precisely, so you know it's position,
- 26:32Speaker 1: like basically exactly well. Quantum mechanics says, if you know
- 26:36Speaker 1: something's position really really well, then you don't know it's
- 26:39Speaker 1: momentum very very well. Right that the more precisely you
- 26:42Speaker 1: measure the position, the less you know about the momentum.
- 26:45Speaker 1: That means that this particle now has a huge uncertainty
- 26:48Speaker 1: on its momentum, so much so that it might have
- 26:52Speaker 1: enough momentum basically enough energy to create a black hole.
- 26:57Speaker 1: And once you create a black hole, well, then you
- 26:59Speaker 1: can no longer measure something about this particle because it's
- 27:01Speaker 1: inside a black hole. So, like, these very simple arguments
- 27:05Speaker 1: suggest that there's a minimum distance below which you can't
- 27:09Speaker 1: measure something because if you did, it would turn into
- 27:11Speaker 1: a black hole and prevent you from measuring it. So
- 27:14Speaker 1: that's the argument about space, And you can make a
- 27:16Speaker 1: very similar argument about time. WHOA, you just kind of
- 27:22Speaker 1: skipped through a few time steps there. You're saying the argument,
- 27:24Speaker 1: like one argument for space being pixelated is that you know,
- 27:28Speaker 1: if you don't have a pixel to the universe. Then
- 27:30Speaker 1: basically kind of like um, things can be anything at
- 27:34Speaker 1: a certain level, and one of those things could be
- 27:36Speaker 1: a black hole, and that's that's impossible or is that's
- 27:38Speaker 1: weird or are you saying that we don't see that.
- 27:40Speaker 1: I'm saying that the universe has a mechanism to prevent
- 27:43Speaker 1: you from knowing something very precisely, because if you knew
- 27:47Speaker 1: it that precisely, it would turn into a black hole,
- 27:49Speaker 1: and then censored that information. So it's sort of like
- 27:52Speaker 1: a fundamental limit there, because if you ask questions deeply enough,
- 27:56Speaker 1: basically the universe responds by covering things up with black holes.
- 27:59Speaker 1: And we don't see that, thankfully, which means that the
- 28:02Speaker 1: universe does have sort of like a fundamental maybe a
- 28:06Speaker 1: pixelation of space. Yeah, although we can't really do this experiment,
- 28:09Speaker 1: like how could you measure a particle with such precision
- 28:12Speaker 1: that it's momentum would be so uncertain that it might
- 28:14Speaker 1: turn into like a microscopic black hole. So that's not
- 28:17Speaker 1: an experiment we could do. We'd love to do that
- 28:19Speaker 1: experiment and observe microscopic quantum black holes. Wow, we would
- 28:22Speaker 1: learn so much. It's just really sort of a thought
- 28:24Speaker 1: experiment that demonstrates how if you ask precise enough a question,
- 28:28Speaker 1: the universe sort of counters with a black hole to
- 28:31Speaker 1: prevent you from learning about it. But how do you
- 28:33Speaker 1: know those black holes aren't there? Maybe they are there,
- 28:34Speaker 1: but they're so small you can't see them. Yeah, maybe
- 28:37Speaker 1: they are there, but it still means that you can't
- 28:39Speaker 1: know the position of this particle to a certain resolution
- 28:43Speaker 1: because it turns into a black hole, and you can't
- 28:45Speaker 1: measure what's inside a black hole. Okay, so that's an
- 28:48Speaker 1: argument for space being pixelated. So then how do you
- 28:50Speaker 1: translate that into time? Well, the relationship and quantum mechanics
- 28:54Speaker 1: between position and momentum, there's exactly the same relationship between
- 28:58Speaker 1: energy and time. And if you want to make a
- 29:00Speaker 1: bunch of measurements of a particle at very very small
- 29:03Speaker 1: time steps like now, and then tend to the mind
- 29:06Speaker 1: is one hundred seconds later, that introduces uncertainty in the
- 29:10Speaker 1: particle's energy. So time and energy have the same relationship
- 29:14Speaker 1: and quantum mechanics as position and momentum. It's another of
- 29:17Speaker 1: the Heisenberg and certainty principles. And so if you measure
- 29:20Speaker 1: a particle trajectory in time very very precisely. Then you
- 29:24Speaker 1: create the same uncertainty in its energy, which allows it
- 29:27Speaker 1: to potentially have enough energy to create a black hole,
- 29:29Speaker 1: and boom, cosmic censorship rises again. I see, But isn't
- 29:34Speaker 1: it maybe even the same argument, right, because I feel
- 29:37Speaker 1: like momentum is sort of related to velocity and velocities
- 29:40Speaker 1: like distance divided by time, So it really aren't you
- 29:43Speaker 1: just making the same argument twice, except that you know
- 29:46Speaker 1: you're using the fact that time and space and velocity
- 29:50Speaker 1: are related to each other to carry over the argument, right, Like,
- 29:54Speaker 1: couldn't maybe space be pixelated but time not pixelated. But
- 29:58Speaker 1: because they're related when you're trying to measure velocities, then
- 30:02Speaker 1: it implies that time is pixelated. That's exactly the argument. Yeah,
- 30:06Speaker 1: it says that space and time are very closely connected,
- 30:09Speaker 1: and therefore an argument you can use to pixelate space
- 30:12Speaker 1: is going to also give you pixelization of time. Right,
- 30:15Speaker 1: But maybe time is fundamentally not pixelated. It just appears
- 30:18Speaker 1: pixelated because spaces or maybe space is not fundamentally pixelated,
- 30:23Speaker 1: but time is. Right, Yeah, that's what I mean. I
- 30:26Speaker 1: feel like, Yeah, I feel like that's not really an
- 30:28Speaker 1: argument four time being pixelated, right, I see that's interesting.
- 30:31Speaker 1: That's a philosophical question. I think that it shows you
- 30:34Speaker 1: that the two things have the same relationship, so it
- 30:37Speaker 1: makes the most ends for them to both be pixelated
- 30:40Speaker 1: or not. In this case, quantum mechanics suggests that they
- 30:43Speaker 1: both are. But I see that other interpretation. Yeah, all right,
- 30:45Speaker 1: So there is an argument for time being pixelated, and
- 30:49Speaker 1: it has to do with quantum mechanics, and so that
- 30:52Speaker 1: sort of the uncertainty principle. So then, but do you
- 30:54Speaker 1: have then have a reason of why space and time
- 30:56Speaker 1: are pixelated like that? And it all comes down to
- 31:00Speaker 1: what happens at these very very small distance scales when
- 31:02Speaker 1: you have a lot of energy, and this is the
- 31:04Speaker 1: province of quantum gravity. And unfortunately, we don't have a
- 31:08Speaker 1: strong theory of quantum gravity, Like we don't have a
- 31:11Speaker 1: theory that works that describes what happens when gravity comes
- 31:15Speaker 1: into play with quantum objects and that gravity is strong.
- 31:19Speaker 1: If we did, then it would lay out for us
- 31:21Speaker 1: what is the minimum unit of time, what is the
- 31:23Speaker 1: minimum unity of space if there is one at all,
- 31:26Speaker 1: And the different flavors of quantum gravity that we're considering,
- 31:30Speaker 1: the different ideas people are working on for what's going
- 31:32Speaker 1: on at the very smallest scale and how this all works.
- 31:35Speaker 1: Have sort of different approaches to dealing with minimum distance
- 31:39Speaker 1: and minimum time. But I guess, couldn't you take the
- 31:43Speaker 1: sort of theoretical size of the space pixel and then
- 31:47Speaker 1: convert that to a time pixel because you're saying they're
- 31:50Speaker 1: sort of related or tied together. Yes, exactly, and that's
- 31:53Speaker 1: what's done, for example, in loop quantum gravity. Loop quantum
- 31:57Speaker 1: gravity says maybe the universe is not continuous in space.
- 32:01Speaker 1: It quantizes space itself, right, instead of trying to quantize
- 32:04Speaker 1: gravity is a maybe gravity is a quantum theory and
- 32:08Speaker 1: you're exchanging gravitons. It says, takes space itself and imagine
- 32:12Speaker 1: it not to be smooth and continuous, but like a
- 32:15Speaker 1: big foam, like a bunch of tiny little bubbles that
- 32:17Speaker 1: are all linked together as these loops. And so it's
- 32:21Speaker 1: very natural to think about space as having a minimum
- 32:23Speaker 1: distance in loop quantum gravity. It's actually essential because in
- 32:27Speaker 1: loop quantum gravity, if space has no minimum distance, then
- 32:31Speaker 1: a bunch of the calculations they do give nonsense results.
- 32:34Speaker 1: You get like infinities and craziness. So it sort of
- 32:36Speaker 1: saves the whole theory to have these minimum values, so
- 32:40Speaker 1: they rely on that, and the same arguments can be
- 32:43Speaker 1: used in loop quantum gravity to argue for minimum steps
- 32:46Speaker 1: in time, so like maybe space is pixelated or foamy,
- 32:50Speaker 1: but gravity is maybe continuous. But this would sort of
- 32:53Speaker 1: merge quantum mechanics and relativity together exactly. And I actually
- 32:57Speaker 1: asked Carlo Ravelli about this yesterday. He's an expert in
- 33:00Speaker 1: loop quantum gravity, and I asked him if in looke
- 33:03Speaker 1: quantum gravity you could have a theory that is patilated
- 33:07Speaker 1: in space but continuous in time, or if you absolutely
- 33:11Speaker 1: had to have discrete time as well, And he said
- 33:15Speaker 1: that he thinks that the theory is on solid footing
- 33:18Speaker 1: from the point of view of space pixels that you
- 33:21Speaker 1: can represent areas having discrete units. So that's very solid
- 33:25Speaker 1: and very confident about that. And he says that you
- 33:27Speaker 1: can do something similar with time, but there are some
- 33:29Speaker 1: complicated jumps you have to make in the argument, and
- 33:32Speaker 1: he wasn't a confident in it. But he also said
- 33:36Speaker 1: that he would be very surprised if anything that included
- 33:40Speaker 1: time and it's a measurement could really have a continuous
- 33:42Speaker 1: spectrum because from his point of view, the world is quantum,
- 33:46Speaker 1: everything about the universe is discrete, and then he would
- 33:49Speaker 1: be very surprised if time was any different. It seems
- 33:51Speaker 1: like the theorists don't think time is continues, that it's
- 33:56Speaker 1: maybe more likely or would make more sense, that it's
- 33:59Speaker 1: pixelated exactly in loop quantum gravity, it makes most sense
- 34:02Speaker 1: for time to be pixelated in the same way that
- 34:05Speaker 1: space is. Now there are other theories of quantum gravity,
- 34:09Speaker 1: theories like string theory, that have a different approach on
- 34:12Speaker 1: minimum units of time. Well, I guess maybe the question
- 34:16Speaker 1: that a lot of people might be thinking at this
- 34:18Speaker 1: point is that would it makes sense for time to
- 34:20Speaker 1: be pixelated or could it still be continuous? And one hand,
- 34:23Speaker 1: it makes perfect sense for time to be chopped up
- 34:26Speaker 1: in the minimum units, because, as we say, quantum mechanics
- 34:30Speaker 1: tells us that the universe is discrete, right, But there's
- 34:33Speaker 1: a problem when you do that. Introducing like a minimum
- 34:36Speaker 1: time scale or a minimum length scale is tricky because
- 34:40Speaker 1: we know from the other great theory of the universe relativity,
- 34:44Speaker 1: that things like distances and times are not universal. So like,
- 34:48Speaker 1: for example, if we're in the laboratory and we're measuring
- 34:51Speaker 1: the universe down to its minimum distance. We have some
- 34:54Speaker 1: pair of tweezers that can work at the plank length.
- 34:57Speaker 1: For example, what happens if somebody is zooming by the
- 35:00Speaker 1: spaceship and they're watching our experiment, They see us like
- 35:03Speaker 1: length contracted. They see everything shortened because they're moving at
- 35:07Speaker 1: a fast speed relative to us. So then they would
- 35:10Speaker 1: be seeing things at smaller than the minimum distance. So like,
- 35:13Speaker 1: having a minimum distance breaks special relativity in a really
- 35:17Speaker 1: important way. Right, what do you mean It doesn't break
- 35:21Speaker 1: relativity in a way. It just means that it's it's
- 35:24Speaker 1: all sort of relative. Right, Like to someone moving at
- 35:26Speaker 1: a certain speed, the minimum distance in the universe would
- 35:29Speaker 1: be this much, and to someone not moving at that speed,
- 35:32Speaker 1: it would be this much, but it would still have
- 35:33Speaker 1: a minimum distance. Yeah, if you assert the primacy of relativity,
- 35:37Speaker 1: then you're giving up an absolute minimum distance. You're saying
- 35:39Speaker 1: minimum distance is not really minimum, it's relative. But if
- 35:42Speaker 1: you start from the other direction, you say, no, there's
- 35:44Speaker 1: an absolute minimum distance anybody can measure, no matter how
- 35:48Speaker 1: their speed. Then that would break relativity. If you can't
- 35:51Speaker 1: have the two things at the same time, you can
- 35:53Speaker 1: have one, but then it breaks the other one. So
- 35:55Speaker 1: you're saying that a pixelated universe, even a space pixelated universe,
- 36:00Speaker 1: would break relativity or it's not consistent with relativity exactly.
- 36:04Speaker 1: It's inconsistent with special relativity, which we thought until now
- 36:07Speaker 1: was like pretty well established, Like we have measured it
- 36:10Speaker 1: out the wazoo and it works pretty well. But you know,
- 36:13Speaker 1: these directions in quantum gravity really do suggest that there
- 36:16Speaker 1: might be space pixels. But that's fundamentally inconsistent with special relativity.
- 36:21Speaker 1: So that's a big puzzle to work out. I see,
- 36:23Speaker 1: safe relativity is true, as Einstein said, then the universe
- 36:28Speaker 1: is not pixelated, or it can't be pixelated, or it
- 36:30Speaker 1: doesn't make sense for it to be pixelated. Yeah, and
- 36:32Speaker 1: you know we're focusing today on pixels in time. There's
- 36:35Speaker 1: another consequence of having pixels in time. You know, if
- 36:38Speaker 1: the universe is not continuous, if it's discreet, right, if
- 36:42Speaker 1: you can have like time equals one point five seconds
- 36:45Speaker 1: and one point six seconds but not time equals one
- 36:47Speaker 1: point five five seconds, that means the time is not
- 36:50Speaker 1: smooth and the universe sort of cares what time you're
- 36:53Speaker 1: at that you can't like do the same experiment halfway
- 36:56Speaker 1: between time pixels, and that actually has a really important consequence.
- 37:00Speaker 1: As we've talked about once on the podcast before. This
- 37:02Speaker 1: basic concept that energy in the universe is conserved that
- 37:06Speaker 1: relies on an assumption, and that assumption is that space
- 37:09Speaker 1: has a symmetry in time, that space always looks the same,
- 37:13Speaker 1: that the universe doesn't care when you do an experiment.
- 37:16Speaker 1: It's just could happen now or later or yesterday. You know,
- 37:20Speaker 1: it doesn't care about your deadlines. And discrete time breaks
- 37:23Speaker 1: that it says there are special values of time that
- 37:26Speaker 1: makes sense, and so that would throw conservation of energy
- 37:29Speaker 1: out the window. So if you have discrete units of time,
- 37:33Speaker 1: then basically you break conservation of energy. That seems like
- 37:37Speaker 1: an important rule in the universe. Yeah, so we're breaking
- 37:39Speaker 1: all the rules today. All right, Well, I guess what
- 37:42Speaker 1: I'm getting is that it makes sense for time to
- 37:45Speaker 1: be pixelated by some arguments like loop quantum theory and
- 37:49Speaker 1: thinking about space being pixelated, but it doesn't make any
- 37:51Speaker 1: sense for it to be pixelated from other points of
- 37:54Speaker 1: view like relativity or conservation of energy. All right, well,
- 37:57Speaker 1: let's get into our last question, which is how would
- 37:59Speaker 1: we even know if time is pixelated. Could we device
- 38:03Speaker 1: an experiment to tell us whether or not it's true
- 38:05Speaker 1: or whether it will be a mystery until the end
- 38:08Speaker 1: of time? But first, let's take another quick break. All right,
- 38:24Speaker 1: is time pixelated? I guess Daniel, The biggest question is
- 38:27Speaker 1: how would we know? Like, are we trapped in the
- 38:30Speaker 1: matrix and we think times smooth and continuous, and are
- 38:33Speaker 1: we always gonna be trapped in this matrix thinking that
- 38:36Speaker 1: it's continuous or will we ever be able to step
- 38:38Speaker 1: outside of time and see that it's actually you know, discrete. Unfortunately,
- 38:42Speaker 1: we might never know. You know, it might be that
- 38:46Speaker 1: time is continuous and we are hunting forever for the
- 38:49Speaker 1: minimum unit and not finding it, but not finding it
- 38:52Speaker 1: doesn't mean it doesn't exist. So there's a possibility that
- 38:55Speaker 1: we could always be frustrated, sort of like you know,
- 38:58Speaker 1: finding the smallest particle. You never really know if it's
- 39:01Speaker 1: the smallest particle or if there's a smaller particle inside
- 39:04Speaker 1: that that's so small you can't see it. But that
- 39:07Speaker 1: would be sort of a limitation of our technology, right
- 39:10Speaker 1: or is that always gonna be true because you know,
- 39:13Speaker 1: you're sort of like you can't prove a negative kind
- 39:16Speaker 1: of or you know, since infinity is forever, there's no
- 39:19Speaker 1: way we can never get down to the small enough
- 39:22Speaker 1: level to be sure that it's not pixelated. You know,
- 39:24Speaker 1: I think there are ways that we could like convince
- 39:26Speaker 1: ourselves that it probably is pixelated, but it'd be pretty
- 39:30Speaker 1: hard to prove that it's not, you know, pretty hard
- 39:33Speaker 1: to prove that it's infinitely continuous. I think you need
- 39:36Speaker 1: some pretty elaborate theory of physics that requires that that
- 39:39Speaker 1: has some other consequences somehow that I can't even imagine
- 39:42Speaker 1: that you could then confirm. So I think it's easier
- 39:44Speaker 1: to prove that it is discrete than to prove that
- 39:47Speaker 1: it's continuous. But you just gave me some arguments for
- 39:50Speaker 1: why space might be pixelated, right with the whole infinitely
- 39:53Speaker 1: small black holes. Couldn't we come up with a theory
- 39:55Speaker 1: or some sort of way or some sort of consequence
- 39:58Speaker 1: over the theory of the equation to say that, look it,
- 40:01Speaker 1: time has to be pixelated. Yeah, exactly. I think that's
- 40:03Speaker 1: the best way forward. If we come up with a
- 40:06Speaker 1: rigorous theory of quantum gravity and it requires, because of
- 40:10Speaker 1: its very nature, you know, for time to be pixelated,
- 40:13Speaker 1: and then that theory holds together and makes a bunch
- 40:15Speaker 1: of predictions. You know, maybe not directly showing us the
- 40:18Speaker 1: clock ticks of the universe, but having other consequences of
- 40:23Speaker 1: that it's inherent nature. Then we can be pretty confident
- 40:26Speaker 1: that the universe is pixelated when it comes to time.
- 40:29Speaker 1: All right, Well, then how could we hope to prove
- 40:32Speaker 1: that it is pixelated? Then? What kinds of experiments can
- 40:34Speaker 1: we make or what experiments have been made so so far?
- 40:37Speaker 1: The edge of our knowledge is basically particle colliders. Particle
- 40:42Speaker 1: colliders smash particles together at very very high energy, which
- 40:46Speaker 1: is the same thing as saying that they're studying things
- 40:48Speaker 1: at very very small distance scales. Remember that the energy
- 40:52Speaker 1: of an object controls its effective wave function right at
- 40:56Speaker 1: the width of its wave function, and really really high
- 40:58Speaker 1: energy object is one with very high frequency, which means
- 41:02Speaker 1: that you can localize it to very specific place. And
- 41:05Speaker 1: so with very high energy particles you can probe things
- 41:08Speaker 1: really small distances. Or think about it another way, the
- 41:11Speaker 1: more you crank of the energy of your particle colliders,
- 41:14Speaker 1: the smaller the particles you can discover, because you can
- 41:17Speaker 1: break them open and see small things inside them. So
- 41:20Speaker 1: we've made a lot of progress there, and we are
- 41:22Speaker 1: studying things that are like tend the minus twenty meters wide,
- 41:27Speaker 1: you know, quarks that are inside the proton. So that
- 41:29Speaker 1: sounds pretty small, right, It's like ten to the minus
- 41:32Speaker 1: twenty meters is a very small slice of the universe.
- 41:36Speaker 1: But you know it's ten to the fifteen times bigger
- 41:39Speaker 1: than what we think is the Plank scale, which is
- 41:41Speaker 1: tend of the minus thirty five meters. And that's a
- 41:44Speaker 1: big ratio, right, Yeah, you just need more money, tenie,
- 41:48Speaker 1: just as the taxpayers for more money. Yeah, we should
- 41:51Speaker 1: siphon funds out of your ten billion dollar comics project.
- 41:55Speaker 1: You can't touch that. Some some things are more important
- 41:57Speaker 1: than understanding the nature of the universe, that's right. But
- 42:00Speaker 1: that's a limited distance, right, that's not quite the limited
- 42:03Speaker 1: time or is it the equivalent you're saying. I'm saying
- 42:06Speaker 1: their equivalent because these experiments also happened really really fast,
- 42:09Speaker 1: and to be really really fast you have to have
- 42:12Speaker 1: really really high energy also, and so fundamentally, these high
- 42:15Speaker 1: energy experiments are probing short times and small distances at
- 42:20Speaker 1: the same time. But unfortunately they're like way too weak
- 42:24Speaker 1: to probe really the fundamental nature of the universe and
- 42:27Speaker 1: to make them big enough and powerful enough to probe
- 42:30Speaker 1: that distance scale you need like a collider the size
- 42:33Speaker 1: of the Solar System or maybe even the galaxy. So
- 42:36Speaker 1: it's not even something we even imagine asking for a
- 42:39Speaker 1: little too expensive to make a collider of the size
- 42:41Speaker 1: of the Solar system. So then what can we do? What?
- 42:44Speaker 1: What are alternatives to break in the bank here to
- 42:46Speaker 1: find the answer? So people are trying to come up
- 42:48Speaker 1: with tabletop experiments, things you can do in a single
- 42:51Speaker 1: laboratory to probe either directly, like the discrete nature of
- 42:56Speaker 1: space and time, or to try to like do really
- 42:58Speaker 1: subtle experiments to understand quantum gravity. There's some really cool
- 43:02Speaker 1: ideas developing experiments that might really work and could actually
- 43:06Speaker 1: help us understand how things work at the smallest scale.
- 43:09Speaker 1: The first idea was proposed about ten years ago by Bekenstein.
- 43:12Speaker 1: He's a guy who worked closely with Stephen Hawking to
- 43:15Speaker 1: develop the understanding of black holes that we have today,
- 43:18Speaker 1: so definitely a smart person. And he had this crazy
- 43:21Speaker 1: idea of shooting a single photon at a crystal. And
- 43:25Speaker 1: the idea is that what happens when you shoot a
- 43:27Speaker 1: photon at a crystal. It's a quantum object. Either it
- 43:30Speaker 1: gets absorbed or it doesn't. And if it gets absorbed,
- 43:33Speaker 1: then you know where does its momentum go like pushes
- 43:36Speaker 1: the crystal a little bit, the same way we talk about,
- 43:39Speaker 1: you know, like solar sales, shooting photons from the sun
- 43:43Speaker 1: and hitting a sale of pushing a spacecraft forward. This
- 43:46Speaker 1: is like a mini version of that, where you shoot
- 43:48Speaker 1: a single photon at a crystal and if it gets absorbed,
- 43:51Speaker 1: it needs to like move forward a little bit. And
- 43:54Speaker 1: so the idea is to like tune the energy of
- 43:56Speaker 1: the photon so it matches like the basic minimum distance
- 44:01Speaker 1: of the universe, so you can measure somehow if this
- 44:05Speaker 1: crystal like slides forward a tiny bit. All right, So
- 44:09Speaker 1: you're shooting a photon, and I guess you make the
- 44:11Speaker 1: photon small enough that maybe you'll see that jump between
- 44:14Speaker 1: like oh it hit the crystal and oh it didn't
- 44:17Speaker 1: hit the crystal, which would sort of tell you that
- 44:19Speaker 1: the universe is not continuous. Is that kind of what
- 44:22Speaker 1: the experiment would be doing. Yeah, that's the idea that
- 44:25Speaker 1: you have like lots of these little photons and they're
- 44:27Speaker 1: interacting with elements of the crystal. If you tune in
- 44:30Speaker 1: just right, they have like just enough energy to move
- 44:33Speaker 1: it one like quantum universe step forwards. And so this
- 44:37Speaker 1: is an idea that beckn Seem proposed about ten years ago,
- 44:41Speaker 1: and some people thought it was very exciting, like, oh wow,
- 44:43Speaker 1: maybe we could measure quantum gravity on a tabletop. Other
- 44:46Speaker 1: folks I've asked have frankly said it's probably bullcrap and
- 44:48Speaker 1: would never work. I see, all right, so that's a
- 44:51Speaker 1: no no. What are other ways in which we could
- 44:53Speaker 1: maybe figure out if time is pixelated? Well, the really,
- 44:56Speaker 1: I think the most promising way to figure out if
- 44:58Speaker 1: time is pixelated is to try to get it these
- 45:01Speaker 1: theories of quantum gravity, to understand, you know, basically the
- 45:04Speaker 1: nature of space and time itself, and to do it
- 45:07Speaker 1: all at once. So these aren't experiments where you can
- 45:09Speaker 1: like see the universe take forward in time, but they
- 45:12Speaker 1: are experiments that might help reveal the very nature of
- 45:15Speaker 1: space and time, which we give us clues about whether
- 45:18Speaker 1: space and time are pixelated. And the way to make
- 45:21Speaker 1: progress there is to try to see gravity having influence
- 45:24Speaker 1: on individual particles, because we don't know how gravity works
- 45:28Speaker 1: when it comes to little particles like we know how
- 45:30Speaker 1: gravity works when it comes to the Earth and the Moon,
- 45:33Speaker 1: or the Earth and the Sun for example, or even
- 45:36Speaker 1: black holes. But we don't know what happens between two particles.
- 45:39Speaker 1: Are they like passing little gravitons back and forth? Are
- 45:42Speaker 1: they bending space? Is space discrete? There? Like? What we
- 45:46Speaker 1: need to do is see really strong gravitational effects on particles.
- 45:50Speaker 1: The problem, of course, is that particles have almost no
- 45:53Speaker 1: mass and so they have almost no gravity. But we've
- 45:56Speaker 1: gotten pretty good recently at building larger quantum of objects,
- 46:00Speaker 1: like getting a whole bunch of particles and getting them
- 46:03Speaker 1: like in sync together into one quantum state like a
- 46:07Speaker 1: Bose Einstein condensate or something similar, where you can make
- 46:10Speaker 1: like larger and larger objects that have quantum properties, and
- 46:14Speaker 1: maybe we can make them large enough that we can
- 46:17Speaker 1: start to see the gravitational effects between like clumps of
- 46:20Speaker 1: quantum objects. I see, like if you make a big
- 46:23Speaker 1: enough quantum object, you would see how anything quantum interacts
- 46:26Speaker 1: with gravity. Because right now we don't really know, right
- 46:29Speaker 1: like our theories breakdown when you try to make quantum
- 46:33Speaker 1: particles interact with gravity. We just don't know what happens
- 46:36Speaker 1: when quantum particles are feeling gravity. And so what we've
- 46:40Speaker 1: done so far is made things like Bose Einstein condensates
- 46:44Speaker 1: that have like, you know, maybe up to a thousand
- 46:47Speaker 1: atoms in them, these tiny little blobs of stuff. And
- 46:50Speaker 1: that's really not big enough to observe any gravity, because remember,
- 46:53Speaker 1: gravity is the weakest force out there. But we're making progress,
- 46:57Speaker 1: and it's the kind of thing where like in ten
- 46:58Speaker 1: years undergrads will be doing that in their freshman physics lab.
- 47:02Speaker 1: It'll be very easy or be like on a computer
- 47:04Speaker 1: chip kind of thing, And in the basements of research
- 47:07Speaker 1: facilities they will be like having quantum diamonds and superpositions
- 47:11Speaker 1: and doing crazy experiments. But I guess maybe the question is,
- 47:14Speaker 1: you know, that might help us figure out if gravities quantized,
- 47:17Speaker 1: but how does that help us know if time is
- 47:19Speaker 1: quantized or pixelated. Yeah, it will tell us if gravity
- 47:22Speaker 1: is a quantum theory or not, you know, or if
- 47:25Speaker 1: space is quantized or not. So it will sort of
- 47:27Speaker 1: help us get direction theoretically for how to tackle this
- 47:32Speaker 1: very question about the nature of space and time. So
- 47:34Speaker 1: it won't directly tell us if time is pixelated, it
- 47:37Speaker 1: will give us a lot of clues about how to
- 47:39Speaker 1: build a theory of quantum gravity, and gravity of course
- 47:42Speaker 1: very closely connected to space and time, so it'll sort
- 47:45Speaker 1: of like help us lay the foundations to maybe eventually
- 47:48Speaker 1: get there. But it's you know, it's nice to know
- 47:51Speaker 1: that we might be able to do some experiments that
- 47:53Speaker 1: can help us figure out if gravity is quantum or not,
- 47:57Speaker 1: so that we can try to get our heads around
- 47:59Speaker 1: these basic questions. Is about the nature of space and time, right,
- 48:02Speaker 1: But even if you find out the gravity is quantized
- 48:04Speaker 1: and spaces quantized, you still wouldn't technically right. Maybe possibly
- 48:07Speaker 1: now if time itself is also quantized, like we said earlier,
- 48:11Speaker 1: it could be the one of the is quantized on
- 48:12Speaker 1: the other one is not. But it depends on the
- 48:14Speaker 1: details of your quantum theory. Right, So if you discover,
- 48:17Speaker 1: for example, string theory is right, then string theory says, well,
- 48:20Speaker 1: time is sort of continuous, but there are is a
- 48:22Speaker 1: minimum resolution below which it doesn't make sense to ask questions.
- 48:26Speaker 1: Or if you discover oh no, it looks like loop.
- 48:28Speaker 1: Quantum gravity is correct and Carlo Revelli was right and
- 48:31Speaker 1: time is also quantized, So it might help you because
- 48:34Speaker 1: it would reveal the quantum theory that describes space and time,
- 48:38Speaker 1: which might require time to be continuous or smooth, or
- 48:42Speaker 1: it might show us that none of our ideas are
- 48:44Speaker 1: correct in something else totally weird and new is required,
- 48:47Speaker 1: and time might not be quantized. It might be something
- 48:49Speaker 1: else totally different than we haven't even imagined. It might
- 48:52Speaker 1: be a different time. It would be time for a
- 48:55Speaker 1: new idea. It will be a timely discovery. Yeah, so
- 48:58Speaker 1: I would say that in summary. You know, it's not
- 49:00Speaker 1: something that we're gonna be able to directly probe very easily,
- 49:03Speaker 1: but we can get around to it's sort of at
- 49:04Speaker 1: the back by trying to build a consistent theory of
- 49:07Speaker 1: space and time, which requires understanding quantum gravity. Because you
- 49:11Speaker 1: don't think there is there could ever be an experiment
- 49:13Speaker 1: that could test it directly. I think those experiments require
- 49:17Speaker 1: such enormous energy they're effectively like creating black holes, and
- 49:22Speaker 1: so it's hard to imagine you ever doing experiments at
- 49:24Speaker 1: that scale, right, Who would ever make a black hole
- 49:27Speaker 1: on purpose? I would. I totally would sign me up.
- 49:32Speaker 1: I'm not saying I wouldn't want to. I'm just saying
- 49:34Speaker 1: I don't think it's possible. I think maybe it's time
- 49:36Speaker 1: to cut short this episode now before we introduce too
- 49:40Speaker 1: many bad ideas into a physicist brain. All right, well,
- 49:43Speaker 1: I guess the question is yet to be determines. There
- 49:45Speaker 1: are their arguments for time being pixelated and arguments against
- 49:48Speaker 1: time being pixelated. It sounds like we might never know.
- 49:51Speaker 1: But if we make enough progress just in basic, you know,
- 49:54Speaker 1: fundamental theories of the universe, maybe it'll come up. Hopefully
- 49:57Speaker 1: it will come up. Is that kind of the planned there,
- 50:00Speaker 1: Let's focus on something else and let's procrastinate, and maybe
- 50:04Speaker 1: we'll come up on its own. Let's figure out the
- 50:06Speaker 1: foundations of everything, and maybe along the way we'll solve
- 50:09Speaker 1: this other problem. All right, and maybe we'll find more
- 50:12Speaker 1: time for you, Daniel, to do all the things we
- 50:14Speaker 1: wanted to all right, Well again, I think it's an
- 50:16Speaker 1: interesting reminder of how much we don't know about the universe,
- 50:19Speaker 1: about basic things like space and time, and it's time
- 50:22Speaker 1: that we figure them out. It's always a good time
- 50:24Speaker 1: for for physics, right, It's always a good time, and
- 50:27Speaker 1: there's always a good time for physics, and physicists are
- 50:30Speaker 1: always a good time and that's the But that's a
- 50:32Speaker 1: theoretical conjecture there, Daniel that's never been proven in the lab.
- 50:36Speaker 1: No experiments have proven that. I think unfortunately that's true.
- 50:40Speaker 1: Maybe we should collige physicist together and just see what
- 50:42Speaker 1: happens that. Now, that sounds like fun. That sounds like
- 50:44Speaker 1: a good time to you. All right, Well, we hope
- 50:46Speaker 1: you enjoyed that. Thanks for giving us your time, See
- 50:49Speaker 1: you next time. Thanks for listening, and remember that Daniel
- 50:59Speaker 1: and or Hey Explain the Universe is a production of
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