Life, the Universe, and everything—42 fundamental questions

Allen, Roland E.; Lidström, Suzy

doi:10.1088/0031-8949/92/1/012501

Cited by 20 publications

(23 citation statements)

References 84 publications

(121 reference statements)

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“…The use of questions to focus thinking (293), (294), (295), (296) is an honorable tradition that extends back at least to Newton's Opticks, where he posed 31 queries including the following: We can only hope that the questions raised here remain equally meaningful after the passing of centuries, or at least have some significance during the course of the present century. But it is clear that quantum (and classical) optics has already undergone a historic blossoming into realms of understanding and application that are almost magical, and that the research programs of the authors in this article (and their colleagues) promise equally exciting developments in the future.…”

Section: Conclusion: the Magic Of Quantum And Classical Light 40mentioning

confidence: 99%

Light, the universe and everything – 12 Herculean tasks for quantum cowboys and black diamond skiers

Agarwal

Allen

Bezděková

et al. 2018

Journal of Modern Optics

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The Winter Colloquium on the Physics of Quantum Electronics (PQE) has been a seminal force in quantum optics and related areas since 1971. It is rather mindboggling to recognize how the concepts presented at these conferences have transformed scientific understanding and human society. In January, 2017, the participants of PQE were asked to consider the equally important prospects for the future, and to formulate a set of questions representing some of the greatest aspirations in this broad field. The result is this multi-authored paper, in which many of the world's leading experts address the following fundamental questions:(1) What is the future of gravitational wave astronomy? (2) Are there new quantum phases of matter away from equilibrium that can be found and exploited -such as the time crystal? (3) Quantum theory in uncharted territory: What can we learn? (4) What are the ultimate limits for laser photon energies? (5) What are the ultimate limits to temporal, spatial, and optical resolution? (6) What novel roles will atoms play in technology? (7) What applications lie ahead for nitrogen-vacancy centers in diamond? (8) What is the future of quantum coherence, squeezing, and entanglement for enhanced superresolution and sensing? (9) How can we solve (some of) humanity's biggest problems through new quantum technologies? (10) What new understanding of materials and biological molecules will result from their dynamical characterization with free electron lasers? (11) What new technologies and fundamental discoveries might quantum optics achieve by the end of this century? (12) What novel topological structures can be created and employed in quantum optics?

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Section: Conclusion: the Magic Of Quantum And Classical Light 40mentioning

confidence: 99%

Light, the universe and everything – 12 Herculean tasks for quantum cowboys and black diamond skiers

Agarwal

Allen

Bezděková

et al. 2018

Journal of Modern Optics

Self Cite

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“…We mentioned only few open questions and challenges standing before quantum theory. When this paper was completed we found that exhaustive discussion of various open questions was also given recently by Allen and Lidstrom [88] , by Coley [89] and by Khrennikov [90].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 75%

Quantum mechanics and modeling of physical reality

Kupczyński¹

2018

Phys. Scr.

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Quantum mechanics led to spectacular technological developments, discovery of new constituents of matter and new materials: however there is still no consensus on its interpretation and limitations. Some scientists and scientific writers promote some exotic interpretations and evoke quantum magic. In this paper we point out that magical explanations mean the end of the science. Magical explanations are misleading and counterproductive. We explain how a simple probabilistic locally causal model is able to reproduce quantum correlations in Bell tests. We also discuss difficulties of mathematical modelling of the physical reality and dangers of incorrect mental images. We examine in detail when and how a probabilistic model may describe completely a random experiment. We give some arguments in favor of contextual statistical interpretation of quantum mechanics. We conclude that we still don't know whether the quantum theory provides a complete description of physical phenomena and we explain how it may be tested. We also point out that there remain several open questions and challenges which we discuss in some detail. In particular there is still no consensus about how to reconcile quantum theory with general relativity and cosmology.Keywords: Statistical interpretation of quantum mechanics and problem of completeness,, EPR-Bohm paradox, Bell-type inequalities and quantum non-locality, locally causal explanation of quantum correlations, testing predictable completeness of quantum mechanics, problems with a description of physical reality: abstract models and incorrect mental images, quantum magic, successes and challenges of quantum theory, semi-empirical models and free parameters, infinities in quantum field theory and renormalization procedures.

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“…The cosmological constant problem and dark energy: The most important problems in physical cosmology concern dark matter and dark energy [166]. These forms of matter and energy cannot be directly observed and can only be identified by their gravitational effects.…”

Section: Cosmologymentioning

confidence: 99%

Mathematical general relativity

Coley

2019

Gen Relativ Gravit

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We present a number of open problems within general relativity. After a brief introduction to some technical mathematical issues and the famous singularity theorems, we discuss the cosmic censorship hypothesis and the Penrose inequality, the uniqueness of black hole solutions and the stability of Kerr spacetime and the final state conjecture, critical phenomena and the Einstein-Yang-Mills equations, and a number of other problems in classical general relativity. We then broaden the scope and discuss some mathematical problems motivated by quantum gravity, including AdS/CFT correspondence and problems in higher dimensions and, in particular, the instability of anti-de Sitter spacetime, and in cosmology, including the cosmological constant problem and dark energy, the stability of de Sitter spacetime and cosmological singularities and spikes. Finally, we briefly discuss some problems in numerical relativity and relativistic astrophysics.

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Life, the Universe, and everything—42 fundamental questions

Cited by 20 publications

References 84 publications

Light, the universe and everything – 12 Herculean tasks for quantum cowboys and black diamond skiers

Light, the universe and everything – 12 Herculean tasks for quantum cowboys and black diamond skiers

Quantum mechanics and modeling of physical reality

Mathematical general relativity

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