SMC

 CURRENT research 



 “Never make a calculation until you know the answer. Make an estimate before every calculation, try a simple physical argument (symmetry! invariance! conservation!) before every derivation, guess the answer to every paradox and puzzle. Courage: No one else needs to know what the guess is. Therefore make it quickly, by instinct. A right guess reinforces this instinct. A wrong guess brings the refreshment of surprise. In either case life as a spacetime expert, however long, is more fun!”
― John Archibald Wheeler
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Some of the current topics of research supported by the Center


- The centre has been the recipient of a large grant from the John Templeton Foundation to set up a research consortium comprising several prestigious universities and institutes, in order to investigate the Quantum Information Structure of Spacetime. See the website qiss.fr for further information. 

- The quantum transition to white hole from black hole. This is a phenomenon predicted by Loop Quantum Gravity.  It is of great theoretical interest because it is a genuine quantum gravitational phenomenon.  It is also of astrophysical interest because it might be related to dark matter, or to certain astrophysical signals like Fast Radio Bursts, or very high energy cosmic rays. The research is currently articulated in two main directions: computing the effect of the Hawking radiation on the metric of the interior of the black hole, in order to better understand the internal geometry.  And computing the quantum transition amplitude for the horizon of the black hole to tunnel into the horizon a white hole; this is mostly in order to understand if the transition happens only at the end of the Hawking evaporation of the hole or earlier.
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- Agency in the physical world. Agency is the capacity that have certain "agents", like animals, of deciding their behaviour. How agency can be understood in a physical world and in naturalistic terms is an open question.  Agency is a strongly time oriented phenomenon; as such, it must be grounded in thermodynamics, because time orientation emerges only thermodynamically in nature, and must exploit the entropy gradient.   The research at the center aims at modelling the emergency of agency from a thermodynamical gradient.  

- Laboratory detection of quantum superposition of geometries 

- Laboratory detection of the discreteness of time

- Investigations in Quantum Causality 

- The arrow of time in operational approaches


Some of the people participating in the research supported by the Center for Space, Time and the Quantum

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THE SAMY MAROUN CENTER FOR SPACE, TIME AND THE QUANTUM
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  • Home
  • About the Center
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