Colloquium – Heinrich Paes

Heinrich Paes, TU-Dortmund

The One – How an Ancient Idea Holds the Future of Physics

If quantum mechanics describes the universe, quantum entanglement merges the entire cosmos into an all-encompassing, indivisible, unified whole or “One”. It is the perspective of the observer, by means of decoherence, that lets her experience this unity as a plurality of objects in space and time. Such monistic consequences of a realistic quantum interpretation have been pointed out before, for example by physicist David Bohm, or philosophers Jonathan Schaffer and Jennan Ismael. But what does such a monistic foundation entail for the pursuit to answer the big questions in particle physics, cosmology, and other areas of fundamental research? The talk sketches some ground-breaking consequences, from emergent spacetime and symmetries over UV/IR mixing (the non-separability of energy scales in quantum field theory) to quantum aliens and holistic experiences.

Sept 7, 2023 @ 4:00pm Central in Stevenson 4327; reception beforehand at 3:30pm in Stevenson 6333

Host: T. Kephart; co-hosted by VandyGRAF

To join via Zoom, please contact Reina Beach (reina.beach@vanderbilt.edu) to request the Zoom link.