14 DAY TRIAL // In a bid to separate space and time from the unified theory in which they were tied together, an American physicist is proposing that the spacetime fabric everyone is talking about is only a mirage, a figment of scientists' imagination, and nothing more.
At this point, spacetime is defined as a hypothetical fabric that can be easily influenced by the gravity of planets, stars, black holes and galaxies. Physicists oftentimes liken its behavior to that of a stretched bed sheet on which someone places a heavy metal ball.
The deformations that occur as a result change the properties of the fabric, which is no longer stretched and spread straight. Astrophysicists believe the same thing happens around large-mass objects.
But University of California in Berkeley (UCB) theoretical physicist Peter Horava believes that it's only through separating the two concepts that the field of physics will reach a unified theory of everything, Daily Galaxy reports.
Such a theory has been sought after for decades. Its goal would basically be to unite quantum mechanics, which governs the physics of small-scale interactions, with Newtonian physics, which predicts how large-scale objects will behave.
Horava says that such a theory cannot be achieved if space and time are thought of as the same thing. He says that some of his investigations are drawing inspiration from studies of graphene, an atom-thick carbon compound that has only two dimensions.
Such studies are part of condensed matter physics, which the UCB expert believes holds the key to the unified theory every physicist is looking for. Horava says that his approach eliminates the need to explain dark matter and dark energy.
Inside graphene, the hexagonal disposition of carbon atoms allows electrons to circulate unimpeded. Their motion can be explained using quantum mechanics. There is also no need to take relativity into consideration while conducting studies inside normal graphene.
But when the material is cooled to 0 degrees Kelvin, the speed of electrons gets boosted to such levels that relativistic theories are needed to explain their behavior. Another thing that lit Horava's imagination is that the Lorentz symmetry is not always apparent in the material.
So he began wondering whether this is true in the Universe as well. Though space and time have been rigorously demonstrated to be bound via Lorentz symmetry, things may have not been the same in the first few instances after the Big Bang.
It could be that the symmetry we see today is not fundamental to nature, but rather a product of the Universe cooling down. The same is visible in graphene as it cooled down to absolute zero.