Andrzej Dragan is not one to follow the following rules. As a photographer, he uses extensive post-production to portray worlds turning out of control in disturbing ways: heads splitting in two; thriving brides and long dead cloths on their old age again proposed.
But in Dragan’s major work as a physicist at the University of Warsaw in Poland, the railing against agreement is not always appreciated. Especially when these ideas can influence the two pillars that form our fundamental understanding of the world: general relativity and quantum mechanics.
These theories are the major achievements of modern physics, which describe nature beautifully but separately. General relativity deals with the large known objects and events of the universe, while quantum mechanics covers the invisible and strange micro-world that surrounds us, where subatomic particles can tunnel through obstacles where they are not past, or where two particles are thousands of light-years away. apart can respond immediately to each other’s movements.
This setup mostly works well. When you look at how a massive star’s gravity bends light, you sweep out your general relativity handbook. And if you want to understand how electrons move through a computer chip, you need your reliable quantum physics hardcover by your side. But there are times when a bit of both is asked. Try to understand what happened in the first moments of the big bang or what takes place in the heart of black holes, for example.
In these situations, a striking problem comes into focus: general relativity and quantum mechanics appear to be completely incompatible. The smooth, continuous universal relativity describes conflict with the discrete, thick one of quantum physics. If you put their equations together, you get nonsense.
To try to reconcile them, physicists usually assume that quantum mechanics is more or less the true description of nature, and then tamper with relativity to make it similar. This approach gave the world rich and complex ideas such as string theory. But it also left physicists frustrated, and unable to fit juggernaut comparisons with reality. Dragan approaches this problem from another angle and tries to describe nature through the lens of relativity.
Decades before he began to consider the relationship between the quantum world and relativity, a relationship between special relativity (Einstein’s first theory that described space and time before adding acceleration to his general theory of relativity) was already well established. In fact, quantum field theory – which forms the basis of our modern understanding of how the building blocks of matter interact – unites quantum mechanics and special relativity. But it does so in a way they view as two independent and separate pieces of a wider puzzle.
Dragan was of the opinion that this connection should go deeper: ‘It is more than just part of the quantum field theory, deeper,’ he says. “It’s almost as if quantum theory does exactly what relativity allows and not a little more.”
In this mindset, Dragan began digging into math in 2008. He recalled that the equations of special relativity allow two branches of solutions: one leading to the known world where matter moves at the speed of light, and another where it always moves faster than the speed of light.
Because there is no physical evidence that anything can move faster than the speed of light, the faster-than-light solutions are always thrown away. But mathematically, these solutions are still valid. So Dragan thought, why do not you like the faster solutions and see what happens? As he did so, he discovered a world that would seem more familiar to quantum theorists.
In this world, instead of a particle following a well-defined path, its motion is difficult to pin down, described by low complex probabilities corresponding to different possible outcomes, much like what is called superposition in quantum physics. Moreover, if a physicist in this world tries to measure certain properties of this particle several times, they will not get the same result every time. The outcomes can be random, just like in quantum mechanics.
In essence, Dragan has shown that counter-intuitive quantum effects in a world governed by special relativity do not have to be accepted as fundamental. In other words, by including the insane ‘unphysical’ parts of the special relativity’s equations, of course, arbitrary and clear quantum – like phenomena emerge.
A few months later, when he realized how great it was that he had discovered, he laid down these thoughts and calculations on paper and submitted the work to a scientific journal. But the manuscript was rejected twice. “I was completely disappointed,” he says. “I just thought, ‘I’m not going to bother, I’m going to leave it behind.’
Dragan passed on his disappointment and was fortunately engaged in a branch of quantum computers called relativistic quantum information. Then, in 2010, he received an email from Artur Ekert that would bring him back to his thoughts on relativity and quantum mechanics. Ekert was and is a leading figure in quantum information and a pioneer in quantum cryptography, with dual Polish-British nationality and dual professors at the University of Oxford and the National University of Singapore. The email invited Dragan to Singapore to discuss links between their respective research.
Ekert and Dragan immediately realized an intellectual affinity and developed a friendship in a few visits, talking about quantum algorithms as comfortably as teasing each other with mathematical riddles.
When Dragan finally shares his ideas on how quantum randomness can result from special relativity, Ekert likes to share. “I thought it was beautiful,” he says. Until then, Dragan had only explored his ideas in a toy world with one space dimension and time. Ekert encouraged and assisted Dragan to go further and see if it still works in the real world of four-dimensional space-time.
“Like two jazz players who get together every now and then and perform together,” Ekert says of the couple’s meetings in Singapore. During the summer of 2019, Dragan and Ekert compiled a paper summarizing their new theory.
With memories of rejection turning in his mind, before giving it to the New Journal of Physics, Dragan gave Ekert one last chance to return before publishing their results: “Are you not afraid to jeopardize your reputation?” Dragan asked. Ekert was blunt in his response: “Screw reputation.”
Unlike Dragan’s previous solo efforts, the paper passes its first test with academic judges of the magazine unharmed. And although it went viral with the publication in 2020 and more than 30,000 downloads were downloaded and counted – by far the most out of all the articles published in the magazine last year – the duo had a battle around their hands (and still) seriously by the scientific opinion court.
One physicist who was immediately drawn to Dragan and Ekert’s ideas is the scientist of quantum information, Vlatko Vedral. After reading the article, Vedral – whose official PhD mentor Ekert was in the past – invited Dragan to give a virtual talk to his group at the University of Oxford. “It was very exciting,” he says. ‘What I like about the approach is that we often think about enforcing quantum mechanics on everything; how does our relativity conform to quantum mechanics? But they try to distort it. ‘
But for every Vedral who wants to hear unorthodox ideas, there are many others who are suspicious of any approach that does not put quantum physics at the center. Not only are cracks with wild, non-physical concepts abundant in this physics environment, but deeply rooted in the community is the idea that the mind-bending elements in quantum physics simply cannot be further explained. They are just.
Critics of this camp question both the assumptions and methods used by the Polish couple to reach their conclusions. When Dragan, for example, discussed these ideas with one of the founders of string theory, Holger Nielsen, the Danish physicist’s main criticism was that faster than light matter would be unstable and therefore unphysical. Another theoretical physicist, who asked to remain anonymous, thought that the few used mathematics that change the vantage point from which you observe physics to change the actual underlying physics itself, which it should never do.
However, this critique often boils down to two points: that no one has ever discovered something that rushes beyond the speed of light, and that if something were to travel so fast, time travel is possible. Time travel leads to the so-called causal paradoxes. The best known of these is the grandfather paradox – the idea that if you travel back in time and kill your grandfather, your own birth will be impossible.
Dragan and Ekert argue that these critics miss the point. ‘We are not saying there are objects that move faster than light; there may be, but it does not come into our arguments, ”says Ekert. “What we are saying is that you can look at the world from a perspective that is beyond the speed of light.”
From this vantage point faster than light, you can swap the order of cause and effect. This is an important result, because the underlying physics must remain the same regardless of whether you are watching events that take place above or below the cosmic speed limit. And if this is true, the pair argue that the sequence of events no longer plays a fundamental role in the theory.
Dragan says it all means there are no paradoxes to answer at all. ‘If you look closely, you will find that the rules of causality are changing. But they are not completely destroyed, they are adapted exactly as quantum theory tells us. ”
Both Dragan and Ekert admit that the article is far from the end of the story, and that they do not know if they will be able to derive the quantum theory from special relativity. But if they can, it will approach the way researchers approach reconciling the big brother of general relativity, general relativity, with quantum mechanics. “If you convince me that quantum mechanics is the result of relativity, I may need to reconsider what the fundamental entities are in my theory,” says Vedral. “And perhaps the path to a quantum version of general relativity is very different.”
If Covid-19 had not stirred the world, Dragan and Ekert would now be working on it in Singapore. But for the time being, they are glad that merely the railing against agreement has found interest in alternative ways of solving one of the most damaging problems in modern physics. “Definitely more work needs to be done, but what I like about this newspaper is that it’s not boring, is it?” says Ekert. “It will create emotions in some way and serve as an opening page for further investigation.”
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