In the last few weeks, physicists made a remarkable discovery. For decades, they pinned their calculations of particle behaviour on Feynman's diagrams, simple yet potentially complex structures which gave them a basis on which to work out how particles scattered and what they might do. As you'll glean from Feynman's diagrams, the whole arena of particle interaction rests on the Uncertainty Principle, possibly the most important of the universal laws in terms of safeguarding uniqueness and stabilising mass individualism.
The Amplituhedron (or Amplutihedron in some articles) puts paid to the need for constructing Feynman's diagrams, because its structure allows for all directions to be equally valid at the same time. It has no back or front or sides. While the image here looks as though it has corners, the object is multifaceted in higher dimensions, so it's not constrained to our version of geometry. Clicking on the image itself will take you to the article explaining this.
What it represents for us ordinary people is an important step forward in recognising and validating our existence in many dimensions at once. We are after all parts of a cosmic system which involves particle interaction on a continuous basis - the fact that we move about and have an electromagnetic field means ultimately that we are scaled-up versions of the most active quantum particles. Electrons and photons are doing their stuff in our bodies, brains and minds all the time. It matters not that we've yet to establish what 'mind' actually is; what matters is that we have one, along with a vast contingent of other things - the range of which is also yet to be defined, a paradox known as the quantum mind-body problem. Mind constitutes the faculty of an observer, and the perspective of an observer can vary wildly, but in subscribing to the Uncertainty Principle, each perspective is unique, giving us independent, individual life paths (world lines) and personalities.
Image courtesy of SciBlogs NZ - Neutrino Interaction
Image courtesy of SciBlogs NZ - Neutrino Interaction
The Amplituhedron is potentially a window to the wider scale of quantum interactivity, a model without limits in the sense science has become accustomed to using them. Constraints and constants don't belong in the arena of the amplituhedron. This is one jewel which nestles safely in the darkness of places we may one day understand, but we have a long way to go before we can safely say we have reached some satisfactory conclusions.
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