QUANTUM theory may be losing its mystery. A physicist has shown how the
bizarre behaviour of the quantum world could arise from time warps that are
created as particles interact.
Myriad strange things happen in the quantum world. For instance, the
properties of a subatomic particle, such as its position and momentum, hover in
fuzzy superpositions of various states until the moment they are measured, at
which point they become certain.
But why does a measurement have this effect? Physicists have come up with
many speculative ideas, for instance, that the transition from uncertainty to
certainty somehow arises out of the interaction of the particle with a measuring
instrument, or even with human consciousness itself.
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Mark Hadley, a physicist at the University of Warwick, claims he has cracked
the puzzle by drawing on Einstein鈥檚 suggestion that particles might be tiny
warps in space. Hadley has developed this idea, treating particles as warps or
kinks in space-time called 鈥済eons鈥�.
Inside a geon, time could loop back on itself, allowing a particle to be
influenced by events in its future as well as its past. In earlier work, Hadley
has shown how this could lead directly to all quantum weirdness鈥攆rom the
strange indeterminacy of properties like a particle鈥檚 position and momentum to
the ghostly link between particles that are separated by large distances
(鈥淎ll the world鈥檚 a time machine鈥�, New 杏吧原创, 7 March 1998, p 38).
Now Hadley says he has shown that the interaction of one geon with another
can constitute a quantum measurement. In a forthcoming issue of the
International Journal of Theoretical Physics, he points out that such an
interaction must involve a change in the shape, or topology, of space-time. For
instance, when a particle and its antimatter counterpart come together and
annihilate to leave no particles, space-time containing two knots transforms
into space-time that is flat.
Such changes would create the time loops needed to generate strange quantum
effects. Imagine a circle of space-time distorting to become two circles. When
this occurs, a timeline inevitably loops back on itself
(see Diagram).
鈥淢easurement is simply an abrupt change in the topology of space-time,鈥�
Hadley concludes. 鈥淭he peculiar thing that happens to time when particles
interact is exactly what is needed to create all quantum weirdness.鈥�
鈥淗adley鈥檚 work is quite a nifty way to show how weird and wacky things in
quantum measurement theory can be explained in a classical context,鈥� comments
Jonas Mureika, a physicist at the University of Toronto. But he urges caution
when playing games with time. 鈥淢y question is: where does one draw the line? If
the direction of time can change on a quantum scale, why can鈥檛 it change in the
large-scale Universe?鈥�