General Relativity VS Quantum Mechanics | Why Are They Incompatible?

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[ChrisPattisonCosmo]

TL;DW: General relativity describes the universe as smooth and continuous, but quantum mechanics describes it as discrete and lumpy. This makes it hard to combine the theories. Also, quantum uncertainty about the position of particles and how this affects the warping of spacetime isn't accounted for by GR.

[johnpetrie]

❤ The clearest explanation of the dichotomy of two perfectly successful theories. I am comforted only by the observation that my inability to understand gravity is shared by some of the greatest minds in the world!

[davidpescod]

Hi Chris, another thought provoking video for which many thanks. Although the two theories are profoundly different, each is superb at explaining on the one hand the incredibly small scale at which is formed the ultimately weirdly ‘granular’ stuff of which the universe is made. On the other hand there is the smooth warping of the fabric of space-time by this stuff with no evidence of or need for granularity at any level. I really appreciate how you are able to poise such thought provoking questions which such clarity in a short video.
(One of my German Shepherds was called ‘Schrödinger’)

[astromos]

Because of continuity, general relativity tells us that everything is everywhere all at once, as the sudden "start" or "end" of an atom would introduce a discontinuity.
From what I understood, quantum mechanics tells us the position of an atom is probabalistic, meaning it is also everywhere at once until aquiring a definite position when observed.
If we can incorporate the "definited position when observed" part of quantum mechanics into general relativity we could get a coherence between the two.

[bryandraughn]

Great stuff man!
I've learned about relativistic effects when we're considering charged particles, but im not sure if this is just one of those analogies that gets misinterpreted.
Ill look around in your other videos.
Science education is essential for progress. Thank you for doing your part!😊😊

[canyurt]

thanks! might be the best and most clear video out there. What do you think about the probability our medium to investigate both being wrong? So for example mathematics, equations...etc.

[RandyJames]

Naïve question of the day: Could one argue that the Many Worlds Interpretation is a way to describe a superposition of states in the macroscopic multiverse world?

[seanwebber]

If you ever want to chat about this let me know. Observing influences, hence luck. Don’t know why, honestly thinking everyone is walking around projecting. Mind over matter. We might all have way more control than we know. 😅

[saturdaysequalsyouth]

The answer is most likely very simple, elegant and obvious once discovered. Which makes the problem even more frustrating. It almost feels like QM and GR are looking in two different “directions” in our reality. Imagine explaining why looking east appears different than looking west without knowing anything about geology, weather, history, animals, people and civilizations. There’s an underlying order to reality that QM and GR describing different aspects of.

[suryabhargav]

What is the smallest interval of time we can use to calculate the position of a quantum particle?

[DavidEsp]

Amusingly, the (arbitrarily chosen) resolution of the standard graphical elastic network (bent downwards by masses) made me wonder whether not only lengths but gravitation (or accelerations due to) might occur in discrete increments.

[toom]

As requested: a comment for your great video...

And now after that I will now finish my quantum gravity paper and get ready for the nobel price 😜

[onemediuminmotion]

@5:30 / 8:20> The sensory observation ("detection"; "measurement"; as you prefer) of the "particle with a lot of energy -- or 'mass'" as such, is the conscious observer's focusing of the energy (the self-relative motion - or acceleration-flow-pulse -- of the otherwise scale-uniform "spacetime continuum" superfluid) necessary to manifest the "warp" in spacetime that is the "observation" of that 'particulate' spacetime behavioral "event". Sounds scary, and perhaps philosophically disorienting (at first), but the "material universe" as we 'perceive' (are "conscious" of) it is the purely dynamic self-fractalizing, 'activity' of a horn-toroidal geometry-based fluid vortex (a.k.a. a "black hole") in an otherwise scale-uniform superfluid medium 'configuring' itself into a 'simulation' (thus the 'small' scale "uncertainty principle" lack of definition), if you will, of a self-aware self-organizing network of discrete spatially distributed 'particulate' I/O devices. The next question is, what are we "humans", as product participants in that endeavor, going to do with this newly acquired "information" -- or "linguistically encoded self-map" -- now that we have it?

[rivaldobox]

Could it be that our everyday world is still under the influence of quantum effects, but because things around us are at such large scales that the probabilistic effects are so tiny we dismiss them?

So like, maybe there is still the probabilistic effects of quantum at a large scale, but they are so skewed torwards one value that it looks deterministic?

That way the 100% probability of the object I'm observing being there is actually 99.9999...9%, so it's basically 100%, but not exactly.

[davidschools]

Nice summary but what about QFT? Wondering why that was not included.

[monikaigonzalez]

Thank you for simplifying complex theories and my question is so basic and pedestrian yet I find puzzling.
Why do we need a theory of everything?
If it were possible for us to conceive of the many other dimensions, how might our perspective change if we had receptors to see speed or hear energy? Is it possible, given the limitations of our 5 senses to comprehend all of the forces that exist beyond our ability to define them?

[alneshati]

The bottom line is that matter is made of subatomic particles of the "quantum world" and the overall combination of all the subatomic particles make up the matter and our reality of the macroscopic world. So the ER and Quantum Mechanics are connected but they are two Universes operating under some same and different rules. The equations do not have to be compatible but they can be bridged together to match our reality. Also relativity comes into play at high speeds and for low speeds it is negligible and the gravitational effect is negligible with respect to the atomic forces and short atomic distances.

[tonysales]

i dont know why we as humans, with very slow senses with slow input signals to the brain, slow think time even with light processing, from our eyes, then computed by the brain and relayed to response, do not realise that the speed of the collapse of the wave function into a higher or lower energy state, is faster than we can perceive it to have happened. it happens, but we do not notice it, we cannot notice it, we are not fast enough to notice it. if a quantum change happens in the macro world it can happen because as observers or measuring devices humans are to slow. if i jump to a new energy level it follows that all the possible energy levels higher or lower are already in existence. would i notice the change, the thing that was different, i might, or i might feel something has changed but struggle to put my finger on what exactly has changed.

[Epta_Null]

I’ve seen claims that a possible way to unify these two theories is “proving” String Theory/Super String Theory and Quantum Gravity.

[renerobles]

Why does anything follow the curve of spacetime? And why does moving against a curve require energy to do so? Why does everything want to follow a curve path, especially since it can go against it perfectly well if force is exerted to do so?