r/TheoreticalPhysics
to all the gravity alternative theories
I appreciate the idea of trying to come up with an intuitive picture of gravity. But to the self studied or aspiring physicists: please read this first
Every day I see countless posts asking “what if gravity was actually a jargon jargon jargon flux???” and then an actually half decent question buried in a mountain of LLM junk. There was some idea or realization that you had that would be really cool to talk about… but then you slop it up by trying to explain it with math despite not dedicating years of your life to these really subtle questions (like academics do)
So, I wanted to talk about a few points that I regularly see in crackpot posts.
First, the graviton. For some reason, people hate the graviton and come up with ideas to try to make it go away. I think it’s just because we haven’t detected one directly… but this makes it seem like the graviton is like an electron or proton or something. that’s not what the graviton is. that’s not what a particle is.
i mean, ok it is what a particle is but that isn’t how you should think of it. what a graviton is, is the gauge boson for gravity. that means it is the force carrier. if you put two electrons near each other, they will interact. the quantized unit of interaction between them is the gauge boson (here the photon). that is what the graviton does for the gravitational force. it is simply the smallest little excitation in the gravitational field
if you assume there exists a gravitational field, and IF this field is quantized (so you get quantum mechanics) then the graviton is just the quantum of gravity. that is it. you don’t have to fight it.
now, this gravitational “field” ends up being what you think of as an aether. all of the aether posts: you’re just reinventing a field but now things interact improperly.
the way the standard model works, every point in spacetime gets a little tiny bit of information tied to it. a phase. it is undetectable*. as you move through space, imagine making a little loop. when you get back to where you started, you accumulate some phase. the amount you accumulated is the strength of the field. this is the gauge field
you don’t need an aether. you’re asking for the gauge field. it is a real thing.
if the gauge field has a symmetry, Noether’s theorem tells us there is a conserved quantity which corresponds to it. Throwing away a bunch of subtleties, this means we’re basically allowed to pick whatever symmetry of nature we want, assign it to a gauge field, and then see what physical consequence pops out. you need a lot of topology and group theory to do this right
and won’t you know it, when you break these symmetries, other stuff happens. the breaking of a very particular symmetry makes the fields “feel” some directions more than others. it makes some fields feel it more than others. the symmetry breaking of the higgs field is what makes the higgs mechanism work (you may have seen that the higgs is like a “friction” that particles feel).
to end my rant, stop trying to reinvent the wheel. you’re all making sharp and unroll-able wheels. almost every physicist throughout history made wheels that didn’t go anywhere, and it was only through the combined effort of peer review and traditional academic research that progress was made and the holes were patched up. I really hope you dedicate time to learning the absolute beauty that others have figured out rather than trying to make a name for yourself. you’ll be so much more fulfilled and understand our universe with the best of us.
Consciousness, the soul, the mind — is that what the universe was created for, or is it what created the universe itself?
In the entire universe, there seems to be only one thing that has any real value: consciousness, the soul, the mind. Everything else is insignificant and ultimately meaningless.
This means one of two things: either the Higher Intelligence is the final product of the universe, or everything in the universe is cyclical, and the universe was created by some kind of Higher Intelligence.
Particle Physics in 17 Hours
I hope that such a post is appropriate in this subreddit.
I have just found this video on youtube and looked/skipped through some of the parts. The explanations and recaps seem extremely well made.
I wanted to share this with everyone else, as this video, naturally, does not have a lot of views.
Using my axioms of zero Theory I made a almost completely lossless simulator that blows regular particle physics simulators out of the water
I made a physics simulator using my axioms of zero Theory. Check it out and let me know what you think.
Is it possible that time is actually finite?
I’ve been thinking about this for a few days and it’s bugging me. Please bear with me here lol. If we are to assume that numbers are infinite then it would make sense that time could be too.
But the smallest unit of measurement for time is a zeptosecond (10⁻²¹) and the smallest unit theoretically would be the Planck time (10⁻⁴⁴) which is the smallest unit worth measuring according to Werner Heisenberg. But if numbers are infinite then there should be a (10^-45), (10^-46,) (10^-47) etc.
So here lies question. Is there an infinite amount of time in between [ 00:01.00 ] and [ 00:02.00]? And if there is an infinite amount of time in between 1 second and 2 seconds how do we even reach the 2nd second?
Also I’m in no way a physicist so my information may not be correct and this may not even be coherent lol but this is the most straight forward I could make this without visual aide.
Physics questions weekly thread! - (August 16, 2026-August 22, 2026)
This weekly thread is dedicated for questions about physics and physical mathematics.
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What if the universe is only 3 dimensions?
There is no physical proof that the universe is more than 3 dimensions but a lot of mathematical proof.
sono perplesso sulla quantistica , serve davvero?
perchè esiste la quantistica?
cioè non bastava la relatività?
le stelle sono lontane in distanza
gli atomi in tempo
ma entrambi sono spazio tempo accorciato da una parte e allungato dall'altra.....
mi sto perdendo qualcosa ?
AGGIUNTA: capisco che quantizzare (discreto) possa essere utile per studiare un fenomeno, ma il creare una forma discreta della relatività non è la realtà è solo un punto di vista, l'inizio e la fine di una fase è imposta quando invece la realtà è continua.
se in quantistica un oggetto ha 4 fasi con 4 formule diverse... poi toccherà unificarle che ovviamente sarà un problema, mentre se le spieghi in relatività le hai spiegate del tutto
per di più un team di fisici dell'Università di Yale guidato da Zlatko Minev è riuscito a "filmare" un salto quantico usando circuiti superconduttori dimostrando il continuo
quindi la vera domanda è: è sensato continuare con la quantistica ? non penso lo sia per la fisica dell'universo ma magari per i PC si.
quindi tanto vale chiamarla fisica quantistica informatica e fisica relativistica per la descrizione dell'universo
SECONDA AGGIUNTA
la realtà è comunque continua... e se è continua si poteva spiegare con la relatività... i quanti sono nati come scienza informatica... ma una descrive l'informatica l'altra l'universo
forzare una scienza informatica a spiegare l'universo mi sembra abbastanza paradossale visto che funzionano in modo ortogonale
per carità.. probabilmente si può fare anche una correlazione relativistica informazione - spaziotempo trattando l'informazione come dimensione extra visto che durante il movimento subisce la gravità...
poi per carità l'informatica diventa un blocco di continuità forzato sullo spaziotempo , praticamente è una scienza che blocca le informazioni in un punto dando un significato preciso per creare una dimensione immaginaria
il che apre la questione buchi neri.. forzano l'informazione in un punto per creare una dimensione immaginaria o semplicemente visto che gli assi si scambiano la spara fuori un una dimensione superiore... ma in kaluza klain le dimensioni superiori descrivono ordini di magnitudo inferiori
e non è neanche tanto immaginaria visto che possiamo comunicare a distanza... tecnicamente pure internet potrebbe essere una dimensione... o meglio l'accesso a una dimensione
il che potrebbe portare ad affermare che abbiamo accesso a 5 dimensioni...
il che spiegherebbe l'entanglement avendo accesso un canale delle comunicazioni potrebbe scambiarsi dati
Recent Trends In HEP: Quantum Observables for Collider Physics
I've noticed a growing trend in HEP about Calculating quantum information tools at high energy colliders and I'm trying to understand what's actually going on. https://indico.cern.ch/event/1603106/timetable/
QFT computes scattering amplitudes and cross sections from Feynman diagrams — essentially, how often a process happens. Quantum information computes things like entropy, entanglement, Bell Inequality violation, and concurrence for the quantum state of the outgoing system in the same scattering process. These feel like two very different questions being asked about the same event.
1)Aren't these just two separate toolkits? Why should cross-section physics care about entanglement or Bell violation at all?
2)What's actually being connected here? Is QI revealing information that was always hiding inside the amplitude but got thrown away in a standard cross-section calculation, or is it something genuinely new?
3)When we compute these QI variables at colliders, what are we actually probing? Is there new physics sensitivity here, or is it more a proof-of-concept that QI ideas can be measured at a collider?
Is there a need for a unified theory of time
It has always riddled me was their time before the big bang or not , or what is time itself and how is time related to the 4th dimentsion etc etc.But come to think of it , is there a need for a theory of time for hundreds of years no physicist has made an attempt.
Mathematical/physical approaches to origin-of-life research
Hello everyone,
I am exploring research ideas related to origin of life and astrobiology particularly involving physical and mathematical modeling of prebiotic systems.
I am interested in areas such as:
Statistical physics ,Information theory ,Nonequilibrium systems ,Chemical dynamics ,Prebiotic chemistry, Mathematical models of early chemical systems
I would really appreciate hearing perspectives from researchers, or anyone with experience in these areas.I am mainly interested in knowing whether this seems like a reasonable and scientifically meaningful direction to explore, and whether there are important considerations I should be aware of before developing it further.
If anyone with experience in this area would be willing to share their perspective or have a brief discussion, I would really appreciate it.
Thank you
Did somebody just prove Newton’s Second Law?
Not a physicist. Can somebody explain what this paper actually establishes and whether it’s significant?
A possible maximum-compression limit for spacetime from vacuum backreaction
Like please tell me chat and I are being dumb. Cause if this is true I actually need to do something.
A possible maximum-compression limit for spacetime from vacuum backreaction
The stronger version of the idea isn’t really “a Casimir bubble survives inside a black hole.”
It’s:
Spacetime may possess a quantum-vacuum backreaction whose resistance to further localization grows faster than the classical tendency toward gravitational collapse. If so, curvature could have a finite upper bound rather than reaching a singularity.
Suppose during collapse the effective inward gravitational stress scales approximately like:
P_grav(R) = A / R^p
while some Casimir-like or quantum-vacuum backreaction opposes it and scales like:
P_vac(R) = B / R^q
If:
q > p
then regardless of how small B initially is, sufficiently strong compression eventually makes the vacuum contribution dominate.
The crossover scale would occur when:
A / R_*^p = B / R_*^q
which gives:
R_* = (B/A)^(1/(q-p))
Below R_*, further compression makes the resisting vacuum term increase faster than the collapsing term.
So schematically:
collapse -> increasing vacuum response -> increasing stiffness -> finite minimum scale
rather than:
R -> 0
"Maximum curvature" is more precise than "maximum compression"
In general relativity, there isn't a coordinate-independent quantity corresponding simply to "how compressed space is."
A better statement is that some curvature invariant has an upper bound.
For example, the Kretschmann scalar is:
K = R_abcd R^abcd
Classical Schwarzschild GR predicts:
K -> infinity as r -> 0
The hypothesis instead predicts something like:
K -> K_max < infinity
Equivalently, there may be a fundamental length scale l_* such that approximately:
K_max ~ 1 / l_*^4
That would make this a local and potentially universal property of spacetime rather than something peculiar to black holes.
The same mechanism could become relevant anywhere curvature becomes sufficiently extreme.
The interesting catch
In three ordinary spatial dimensions, the simplest scaling argument gives gravitational self-energy:
E_G ~ -G M^2 / R
while a one-scale Casimir vacuum energy generically has the dimensional form:
E_C ~ C hbar c / R
So both scale as:
1/R
That means the simplest Casimir effect does not automatically outrun gravity during compression.
Their ratio is approximately:
|E_G| / |E_C| ~ (G M^2) / (hbar c)
up to geometry-dependent coefficients.
So in 3 spatial dimensions this is a marginal case: shrinking R alone doesn't make either side win by having a steeper exponent.
For the maximum-compression mechanism to work, something extra must happen at extreme curvature.
For example:
q_effective > p_effective
or the coefficient of the vacuum term itself could increase with curvature:
P_vac ~ B(K) / R^p
with:
B(K) increasing strongly as K increases.
That is where curved-spacetime quantum field theory matters. The quantum vacuum near enormous curvature is not simply the flat-space parallel-plate Casimir effect. The quantum stress-energy depends on curvature, field content, topology, quantum state, and boundary conditions.
The crucial question therefore becomes:
Does the quantum vacuum stress-energy acquire a defocusing component that grows faster than gravitational focusing as curvature approaches some critical value?
If the answer is yes, then a singularity may never physically form.
Instead:
classical collapse -> critical curvature -> nonperturbative vacuum backreaction -> limiting curvature
This would imply something stronger than "black-hole singularities don't exist."
It would mean:
Infinite localization may be physically impossible because spacetime has a finite compressibility.
Possible connection to G
If the limiting scale turned out to be related to the Planck length:
l_P^2 = hbar G / c^3
then equivalently:
G = c^3 l_P^2 / hbar
This suggests an alternative physical interpretation of G.
Instead of thinking only of G as "the strength of gravity," it may also encode the scale at which classical spacetime's ability to be compressed breaks down.
So the speculative picture is:
geometry determines how collapse scales
G determines when the quantum/geometric regime becomes unavoidable
and:
vacuum backreaction prevents curvature from diverging
The thing that would make or break the idea is therefore not merely the existence of Casimir energy.
It's the sign and high-curvature scaling of the renormalized quantum stress-energy tensor.
If its defocusing contribution becomes supercritical before classical curvature diverges, then spacetime could possess a genuine maximum-compression / limiting-curvature principle.
If you had to do a PhD in one of the following domains of Theoretical Physics which one would it be? (In terms of your research area)
reddit.comhave you ever thinked on the Vedic idea of Indra's jewels and relation on time?
originating in early Indian thought (appearing in texts like the Atharva Veda and later central to Huayan philosophy and the Avatamsaka Sutra). It describes an infinite, multi-dimensional web where a glistening jewel sits at every vertex. Because every jewel reflects all the other jewels in the net, each individual part contains the whole, and every event is linked to every other event.
Just thought to ask it here.
Information logic for vacuum
Could the fine structure constant tell us more about the structure of the vacuum than just the strength of electromagnetism?
All feedback and discussion appreciated.
Studying along the new theoretical framework; reading aid added:
Should I follow it??
Can I follow cengage for maths and pg for physics galaxy and daily solve it??
Is it good?