Is Quantum Cosmology a Viable Path to Understanding the Universe?

[Brian S.]

I just finished reading a book called Three Roads to Quantum Gravity, and in it the author mentioned a few arguments surrounding quantum cosmology. He did not seem too fond of it, but to me (relatively inexperienced) combining the two makes a lot of sense. What are your thoughts on it?

 

[mathman]

What are they (arguments)?

 

[Brian S.]

Argument was a poor word choice, he mentioned a few topics I should say. He mentions that you must abandon a few approaches to quantum mechanics and a few other minor things. It was a small part of the book but it was very interesting so I was more or less looking for opinions on quantum cosmology as a whole.

 

[Doug Huffman]

Three Roads to Quantum Gravity by Lee Smolin (Basic, 2001) Approaches discussed include String Theory, M-Theory and Loop Quantum Gravity, then Smolin's preferred route.

Since 2001 Smolin has written The Trouble With Physics and Time Reborn, and I believe advocates most strongly for a background-independent physics as in his new (December 2014) The Singular Universe and the Reality of Time: A Proposal in Natural Philosophy by Lee Smolin and Roberto Mangabeira Unger, Cambridge University Press.

In all honesty, I have abandoned my attempt to read 'Singular Universe' after reading and enjoying Smolin's latter section of the book but foundering on RMU's first portion. I believe that RMU dictated in academic Portuguese and the translated sentence structure is too foreign to convey the complicated hypothesis.

 

[Brian S.]

That is it! Great book nevertheless.

 

[Doug Huffman]

Argument was a poor word choice, [ ... ]

Argument is a fine word. It properly means defense. It is vulgarly used as argumentative and quarrelsome.

 

[Chalnoth]

I just finished reading a book called Three Roads to Quantum Gravity, and in it the author mentioned a few arguments surrounding quantum cosmology. He did not seem too fond of it, but to me (relatively inexperienced) combining the two makes a lot of sense. What are your thoughts on it?

Quantum cosmology is more than just a combination of quantum mechanics and cosmology. Quantum cosmology is (usually) a very specific idea of using loop-quantum-gravity to estimate what would happen if we have a quantum bounce instead of a big bang singularity.

Loop quantum gravity is currently a fairly speculative attempt to reconcile quantum mechanics and gravity.