Quantum Space Theory: the short version

Quantum space the­ory is unique and fas­ci­nat­ing because it offers us a com­pletely new geom­e­try by which to com­pre­hend the intri­ca­cies of Nature. Up until now, human­ity has framed its quest to under­stand Nature with a geom­e­try that we all find intu­itive — the Euclidean three dimen­sions of space plus one dimen­sion of time. Because our inves­ti­ga­tions of the mys­ter­ies of Nature have all started from the assump­tion that there are only four dimen­sions, we have been forced to explain the forces of Nature by super­im­pos­ing them on top of the geom­e­try we have assigned to space­time. qst takes a dif­fer­ent approach by intro­duc­ing us to another intu­itive geom­e­try — an eleven-dimensional geom­e­try (nine space dimen­sions and two time dimen­sions) in which all the forces of Nature are already included.

At first it takes some prac­tice to tran­scend from our habit­ual four-dimensional way of see­ing things to this new eleven-dimensional frame­work, but once you get the pic­ture in your head you find that all of the arcana of gen­eral rel­a­tiv­ity and quan­tum mechan­ics sim­ply exist as require­ments of Nature’s geom­e­try! This new geom­e­try makes the great­est secrets of mod­ern physics intu­itively acces­si­ble and delight­fully comprehendible.

To start grasp­ing this higher-dimensional intu­itive pic­ture check out the book excerpts in the book excerpts sec­tion. If you are more ana­lyt­i­cally inclined you may desire to skip ahead to the con­stants of Nature sec­tion where you will dis­cover how 27 con­stants are pre­cisely deter­mined by the eleven-dimensional geom­e­try of qst. Or you could visit the pre­dic­tions sec­tion where over 20 pre­dic­tions of this new geom­e­try are laid out. Or you can exam­ine the for­mal­ism sec­tion where the foun­da­tional math­e­mat­ics from which qst extends is explained.

Generally put, qst is a the­ory that welds gen­eral rel­a­tiv­ity and quan­tum mechan­ics together into one intu­itively acces­si­ble eleven-dimensional geom­e­try. The focus of Thad Roberts’ book Einstein’s Intuition is to intro­duce us to this new geom­e­try and to cre­ate a con­cep­tual, intu­itive bridge back into mod­ern physics. This new geom­e­try allows us, as human beings, to recon­nect with the physics of the very small and very large. It allows us to finally under­stand the most baf­fling mys­ter­ies of our era (Heisenberg uncer­tainty, particle/wave dual­ity, what the insides of black holes are like, the cause of the Big Bang, why the con­stants of Nature are what they are, and much more) and it gives us intu­itive access to an all-encompassing view of the uni­verse (or omni­verse as the case may be.)

The prob­lem:

As Thad Roberts states in chap­ter one of his book, Einstein’s Intuition, we need to return to a place akin to where the young Einstein found him­self, a place where the senses allowed a deep con­nec­tion to Nature, facil­i­tat­ing Einstein’s envi­sion­ment of the prop­er­ties of light and time. Thad goes on, “this … high­lights a fun­da­men­tal prob­lem in the approach taken by mod­ern physics. For the past sev­eral decades, the­o­rists and math­e­mati­cians have been work­ing on con­struct­ing a frame­work of Nature that is capa­ble of math­e­mat­i­cally com­bin­ing the descrip­tions of gen­eral rel­a­tiv­ity and quan­tum mechan­ics under the same rubric. … But their efforts have been focused on orga­niz­ing Nature’s data into a self-consistent assem­bly — like the ones and zeros of a dig­i­tal pic­ture. The prob­lem is that this induc­tive approach does not encour­age, let alone require, the dis­cov­ery of a con­cep­tual portal.”

“Even if physi­cists were one day to con­clude that their assem­bly was math­e­mat­i­cally cor­rect, it would not actu­ally increase our abil­ity to truly com­pre­hend Nature unless it was trans­lated into some sort of pic­ture. Therefore, since it is really the pic­ture that we are after, maybe it is time for us to con­sider whether or not our efforts will bear more fruit under a dif­fer­ent approach. Specifically, to max­i­mize our chances of com­plet­ing our goal of intu­itively grasp­ing Nature’s com­plete form, maybe we should fol­low the lead of young Einstein and return to a deduc­tive con­cep­tual approach. Perhaps it is time for us to place our focus on con­struct­ing a richer map of phys­i­cal real­ity. If we don’t, then all of Nature’s elab­o­rate arrange­ments may very well remain for­ever hid­den in obscure math­e­mat­ics and impen­e­tra­ble sequences of data.”

But, how do we actu­ally do this? We are told, over and over, by the pro­fes­sional physi­cist that it is impos­si­ble to visu­al­ize more than three spa­tial dimen­sions. Yet, the lead­ing the­o­ries of today rou­tinely sug­gest or even require that there are indeed more than three spa­tial dimen­sions. At first blush, this seems absurd, or maybe this is just an arti­fact of the intri­cate math­e­mat­ics of the­o­ret­i­cal physics, as some sug­gest, and should not be taken as an indi­ca­tion of the “actual” exis­tence of these extra dimen­sions. It is in response to this reac­tion that Thad Roberts comes in loud and clear.

The the­ory:

qst pro­poses that these extra dimen­sions are real, as real as the x, y, z and t dimen­sions we expe­ri­ence every day. qst fur­ther elab­o­rates a hier­ar­chi­cal struc­ture to these extra dimen­sions that allows us to com­pre­hend, and even visu­al­ize, the super and intra dimensions.

Another often over­looked (under-visualized) rem­nant of mod­ern physics is that space appears to be quan­tized, that is, made of tiny, indi­vis­i­ble pieces (quanta). This flies in the face of our common-sense expe­ri­ence of Nature (of the con­tin­u­ous three dimen­sions of space that we usu­ally try to assign to Nature), but quan­tum mechan­ics clearly points to this fact (if it can be said to point to any­thing). In the act of embrac­ing the quan­tized nature of space­time and cou­pling that real­iza­tion with the extra dimen­sions, a sim­ple, ele­gant pic­ture of real­ity emerges. qst is that picture.

Put sim­ply, qst pro­poses there are eleven dimen­sions: three spa­tial dimen­sions, one tem­po­ral dimen­sion, three super­spa­tial dimen­sions, one supertem­po­ral dimen­sion and three intraspa­tial dimen­sions — that’s eleven dimen­sions! The num­ber eleven is far from arbi­trary. The same num­ber of dimen­sions is pro­posed by the most mod­ern incar­na­tion of super­string the­ory, M-theory, super­sym­me­try, and super­grav­ity theories.

Problems solved?

Creating this struc­ture allows us to solve sev­eral prob­lems. Most poignantly, the dis­joint between gen­eral rel­a­tiv­ity and quan­tum mechan­ics evap­o­rates in eleven dimen­sions. As a result, many other prob­lems gain straight­for­ward, deduc­tive, and intu­itive solu­tions. More impor­tantly, an expla­na­tion of why the phe­nom­ena occur in the first place is offered in this eleven-dimensional model. Some of the prob­lems or phe­nom­ena qst explains are:

• The ori­gin of the con­stants of Nature
• The uni­fi­ca­tion of the forces
• Heisenberg uncer­tainty
• Particle/wave dual­ity
• The ori­gin of matter
• The nature of dark matter
• and, what caused the Big Bang (no less)…

This is a lot to claim. Thad argues qts’s solu­tions to these prob­lems, and more, in great detail in the third part of his book. What is most inter­est­ing is the nat­u­ral­ness (obvi­ous­ness?) of the expla­na­tions that essen­tially fall out after these long-standing ques­tions are viewed through the lens of the intu­itive eleven-dimensional pic­ture offered by qst. Thad is cer­tain that he, at the least, has a new take on these prob­lems. Furthermore, even if he is wrong, he believes steer­ing the dis­cus­sion towards intu­itive, deduc­tive solu­tions that pro­vide expla­na­tion can only ben­e­fit sci­ence in the long term (as well as spark lively and inter­est­ing debate in the short term.)

We invite you to join the debate.
We invite you to read the upcom­ing book.
We invite you to learn how to visu­al­ize eleven dimensions!