How to derive general relativity from Wolfram Physics with Jonathan Gorard

Here’s a masterclass from Jonathan Gorard.

One of the most compelling results to come out of the Wolfram Physics is Jonathan’s derivation of the Einstein equations from the hypergraph.

Whenever I hear anyone criticize the Wolfram model for bearing no relation to reality, I tell them this: Jonathan Gorard has proved that general relativity can be derived from the hypergraph.

In this excerpt from our conversation, Jonathan describes how making just three reasonable assumptions – causal invariance, asymptotic dimension preservation and weak ergodicity – allowed him to derive the vacuum Einstein equations from the Wolfram model.

In other words, the structure of space-time in the absence of matter more or less falls out of the hypergraph.

And making one further assumption – that particles can be treated as localized topological obstructions – allowed Jonathan to derive the non-vacuum Einstein equations from the Wolfram model.

In other words, the structure of space-time in the presence of matter, too, falls out of the hypergraph.

It’s difficult to overstate the importance of this result.

At the very least, we can say that the Wolfram model is consistent with general relativity.

To state it more strongly: we no longer need to take general relativity as a given; instead, we can derive it from Wolfram Physics.

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Jonathan’s seminal paper on how to derive general relativity

Jonathan Gorard

People mentioned by Jonathan

Research mentioned by Jonathan

Concepts mentioned by Jonathan

From A Project to find the Fundamental Theory of Physics by Stephen Wolfram:

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Kootenay Village Ventures Inc.

[ChannelMath]

haha, great thumbnail. Dr. Gorard is one of those brilliant people that has a genuine humanity and respect for all kinds of people

[fabienleguen]

My mind is blown ! Jonathan is gifted and explain this subject clearly but the fact that this explanation can fit in a 13 minutes video shows how this is so straight forward and natural. I am hooked by this model because even if you let aside any wish to get QFT from this framework, you already have a serious candidate for a theory of quantum gravity ! And it seems to be easy and straight forward to build discrete version of a lot of the continuous mathematical tools used in GR so the theory is certainly predictive. Fascinating ! Thank you for sharing this

[harriehausenman]

oh my. that was a hard one. had to re-listen to some parts quite a few times, since Jonathan tends to speak relatively fast when getting passionate 🤗

[hyperedwin]

The impact of Jonathan's last statement was beautiful to watch.

[drdca]

Of your videos so far, I think this one is my favorite! It really makes the case for “here is why this really does give GR, under some natural conditions”!
The part about “how do you get the stress energy tensor” seemed a bit quickly glossed-over maybe? (I’m also unclear on what constitutes a “local topological obstruction” in a hypergraph)
but, I imagine it might be difficult to go into “only a little bit more detail” on that without going into a lot of detail on it.

Very nice!

Edit: also, I am a bit unclear on what it means for the net number of causal edges through the surface, converging to zero, means.
Like, what is the index that the limit is over? And, I would think that “net number of edges” would be an integer quantity, so, it converging to zero would mean that it eventually becomes and stays zero? But the surrounding language seemed to suggest that something was merely converging to zero, not being eventually always zero? Maybe the idea is “(net number of edges)/(some increasing number)”, so maybe like, if the net number of edges becomes negligible compared to something else?
Or maybe I’m totally misunderstanding that part?
In any case, I’m sure the actual papers make it clear.

[harriehausenman]

P.S.: I think you should "heart" more comments. The algorithm really seems to like that 😉

[NightmareCourtPictures]

After watching your most recent video (How to tell if Space is curved), this video now makes a little bit more sense to me because I was only going off of the preservation of Lorentz transformations due to graph isomorphism (Causal Invariance). Thank you!

[YarUnderoaker]

As I understand it, the curvature of space-time can be interpreted as a local increase in spatial dimension? For example from 3 to 3.05. A local change in quantum fields increases the dimension of space, and this effect spreads spherically, gradually decreasing, spreading over an increasingly larger volume of space, i.e. gravity.

[logofthelex]

A beautiful mind is a wondrous thing to behold. 😊

[trucid]

I'm sure that was a neat explanation for someone who has a graduate degree in relativity, but could get it one aimed at a high school student or an undergrad?

[cesarjom]

I understand Einstein's version of GR and how we can come to the EFEs. I cannot say the same about this version of derivation.

[charlesdavis]

this is intriguing, but I think it would benefit from some more detailed argument for the results.
Some slides perhaps.
Still deriving GTR from anything in under 13 minutes is a brag worth making.

[iuvalclejan]

What the heck does a topological obstruction look like in a discrete (hyper-) graph? I mean there are just rules for updating discrete values at nodes. I can't imagine what he's talking about.

[jonathanlister]

He knows what he is talking about! But how on earth would anyone who isn't fully versed in GR have any clue? So what's the bloody point???

[tim]

If I understand right, nothing here says that the graphs should have three space like dimensions and one time like dimension, right? Can you make graph rewrite rules that give the right number of dimensions?

[michaelstreeter]

Would A. Einstein understand what he's saying?

[Zeuts]

I think I understood less than 5% of this, but it was still awesome. I can't wait until AI takes our jobs so I can spend 10 hours a day learning math.

[LookToWindward]

The notion that particles are regions of locally higher dimensionality makes a heck of a lot of sense. It also accords with string theory.

[Native_love]

Loved it however too much mathematical jargon. Please explain some of your comments in the video as not only are you using unfamiliar terms, they aren't explained fully. Imagine an Arvin Ash video where he uses nothing but high graduate level theoretical physics terms and doesn't explain anything. Loved the video! Thank you!

[schmetterling]

This sounds really great... the only problem with it is that most of nature is not causal. ;-)