Alt text:
==COSMOLOGY==> 'Uhhh ... how sure are we that everything is made of these?'
this post was submitted on 16 May 2024
718 points (99.0% liked)
xkcd
8791 readers
130 users here now
A community for a webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Crazy thing is very similar mathematical structures is used to define the behavior of a single particle in QFT and of a huge collection of particles in condensed matter physics
It’s not crazy when you think they are both trying to model the same universe.
When you section off a small part of the universe and try to model it, there's little reason your model should look like a model for a completely different small part of the universe. Not unless they share fundamental characteristics that you're trying to model. The math that describes permanent deformation looks nothing like fluid dynamics.
They are both describing the same particles.
I mean in the case of the comic, yeah the reason for the behavior actually is tied to pretty much the same principles, but the generalized statement you made isn't, well, generalizable.
Water and ice are made up the same particles and molecules yet the mathematical structure to define the effect of force/pressure is very different - plastic deformation vs fluid dynamics as the example given above
Recursive universe theory strikes again.
Neither of them is trying to model the universe (that is the purview of cosmology). We are trying to model very particular phenomenon happening in the universe and there is no reason to expect them to modeled using the mathematical structure. The fact that they are is very fascinating.