Quantum Gravity Theory Prediction is Cool Since Proven in Lab

By Doug Matzke

Originally written for Physics Today Sci-Fi Contest Dec 1997

This laboratory proof of a mathematically based quantum gravity theory is the first of its kind since work started on quantum gravity over 40 years ago. More astounding is this result has profound ramifications regarding the structure of the universe, as well as practical applications in consumer and industrial products. The team has already filed for patents and investors are lining up to help develop this strategic technology.

The key result of this prediction is the relationship between the supersymmetry structure of matter and it's effective blackbody temperature. Scientists have historically thought of temperature as a macroscopic property of the energy in a system of molecules. In reality, this research proves temperature has its roots in topological quantum field theory and therefore can be directly manipulated with the correct application of electromagnetic and gravitational fields.

The laboratory heat engine proved this theory, by lowering a test chamber containing helium gas to near absolute zero by applying time varying EM fields and rotationally induced gravitational fields. According to the theory introduced last year, this technique can also be used to produce other effects including quantum heating, time acceleration, and weightlessness for starters, but the detailed announcements are waiting on the filing of the international patents.

In retrospect, this result should not be surprising since work by Schiffer [3],Bekenstein, Hawking, and Unruh in late 1980s showed there was a relationship between black hole mechanics, thermodynamics, and information theory. This research predicted a direct correlation between the strength of a gravitational field acting as if it were a temperature based noise source. 

The history behind quantum gravity theory prediction is an interesting tale. In 1980s and 1990s a steady amount of research occurred on combining quantum mechanics and general relativity. During that process of unifying these two theories, it became evident that thermodynamics and information theory must also be included to account for consistency of black hole mechanics with the 2nd law of thermodynamics. John Wheeler's famous paper entitled "It from Bit" [4] described this relationship.

The outcome of this work unexpectedly proved information bits were as physical [5] as matter or energy and not just a mathematical abstraction. When a bit is thrown into a black hole, the surface area of the event horizon increases by a discrete amount (about Planck's area) since black hole surface area is defined as its entropy. So the black hole surface area represents the absolute amount of organization of matter, energy, and information. This fact was not widely understood or applied for over a decade, but directly relates to these latest results. Quantum gravity based order (not just explicit matter and energy) can have an impact on the physical world.

During the 1990s many unified quantum gravity theories used spin network mathematics. All of these approaches soon showed that the spacetime manifold was discrete and identical to matter/energy solutions. Based on topological analysis of spin networks, it was mathematically apparent to the Dallas team that the alignment ordering of the spin networks is related to the Bekenstein bound in black hole mechanics.

This fundamental understanding regarding the polarization or "alignment" of spin networks was thermodynamically relevant. As one would expect from superconducting and superfluids research, specialized coherent quantum states require low temperatures. But when dealing with quantum mechanics, cause and effect are some times reversed. So by aligning or "polarizing" certain axis of the spin networks, they became driven into a specialized state with the corresponding drop in temperature.

This appears at first glance to defy the 2nd law of thermodynamics except in this model the spin states are those related to time. Alignment of these states is shown to have a characteristic non-linear temporal resonance. This non-linearity allows the flow of "energy" into (or out of) the zero-point energy reservoir by unbalancing the Lorentz invariant aspect of spacetime manifold. Apparently this is now easy to accomplish since the Dallas QG theory predicted the resonant frequency and how to align the fields to nudge the temporal spin states.

Needless to say, physics community greeted last year's paper at PhysComp'12 with much skepticism, since no one has ever seriously predicted controlling time before. There was even more skepticism regarding the prediction to build a cryogenic cooling engine. The laboratory equipment proves this working in practice. No possibility of fraud was detected since nothing else can create such low temperatures from such "simple" equipment. This proof is one of the most significant discoveries since relativity. The Dallas team has not made any announcements regarding other related technology, but last year's theoretical paper made other temporally related predictions as well.

Time is so fundamental to all of physics, that being able to control it, even a little, would revolutionize our understanding and technology. Quantum mechanics and relativity have always had different non-ordinary models of time. Since the days of Einstein's simple thought experiments, normal acceleration and gravity have always been known to be equivalent. It is well known that mass and acceleration both distort spacetime. The quantum ether produces no gravity under constant velocity (Lorentz invariance), but simple acceleration tips the temporal spin state in exactly the same manner as a mass. So the knowledge relating time and gravity spans over a century.

One key point to remember is gravity always slows down the local time frame, or time dilation. Since this theory is quantum mechanical, cause and effect can some times be reoriented. If it was possible to control the temporal spin states by tipping them in "faster" direction (as the theory predicts) then two obvious applications emerge.

1) Reduce the weight of an object by placing it in a faster local time frame. This is consistent with Einstein since relativity's symmetry suggests the universe is in effect "accelerating" away, with its corresponding time dilation, compared to the local faster time frame.

2) Build faster computers or other temporal acceleration (such as rapid radioactive decay) by placing them in faster local time well.

Of course other undisclosed application areas are waiting for filing of international patents. These applications expect to also have wide spread use.

The inventors of the cryogenic cooling engine have assigned the trademarked name of "microfreeze," since that was the name given such an invention in an old timecop scifi series from 20 years ago. Another interesting fact is the old Star Trek series from the same era developed a fan club and generated mock specifications for their ship board computers. Reportedly, a "warp bubble" enclosed these scifi computers to give it a "faster" local time frame than any "normal" computer. Scifi writers have apparently had an intuitive understanding of the usefulness of temporal frameworks for decades, and now it appears science has caught with their imagination.

Even Einstein's century old thought experiment (about the twin astronauts) describes the benefits of time dilation for slowing down human aging. If twin computers were instead sent on this imaginary space trip, the onboard time dilated computer would compute more slowly than the earth bound computer. High gravitational fields are therefore "good" for slowing down biological aging, but "bad" for slowing down any kind of computer. Until this announcement, no practical way was proposed for local time acceleration that is consistent with relativity.

This idea about speeding up computers by using non-ordinary time frames received attention in the mid 1990s when Peter Shor [6] proposed an algorithm for quantum computer that would solve certain classes of computationally hard problems in linear time. This new class of computational complexity was called Quantum Polynomial Time and was based on the parallelism in quantum superposition, occurring in the non-ordinary time of quantum mechanics.

Unfortunately, nothing practical every resulted from this work because the amount of parallelism due to superposition (dubbed qbits) increased at the same rate as the decoherence of the many coupled states. Purely quantum mechanical based speedup was not going to occur unless the "noise" of decoherence could be controlled or eliminated.

This search for the noise source of decoherence led the Dallas team to look at spin network solutions from quantum gravity, knowing full well that gravity field strength also acts like a temperature related noise source. Their insight and perseverance will appear to start a new era of technological marvels. Obviously, any technology can be misused and breakthrough technology of this caliber should hopefully neither be misapplied (nor suppressed) by big business nor big government. Time will tell if our society has moved beyond the days of the Manhattan Project.

1) D Cron et al, "Quantum Gravity based heat displacement engine disclosed", Science, Nov. , 2013.

2) D Cron et al, "Spin Networks and Temporal Mechanics", Proceedings of Workshop on Physics and Computation, PhysComp12, Oxford (2012).

3) M Schiffer, "The Interplay Between Gravitational and Information Theory", Computer Society Press, Los Alamitos, CA (1993).

4) J Wheeler, "It From Bit", Proceedings of the 3rd International Symposium on Foundations of Quantum Mechanics, Tokyo (1989).

5) R Landauer, "Information is Physical", Physics Today, Page 29, May 1991.

6) P Shor, "Algorithms for Quantum Computation: Discrete Logarithms and Factoring", Proceedings of 35th Annual Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science, IEEE Computer Society Press, Los Alamitos, CA, p 124, (1994).