{"id":88450,"date":"2019-03-06T11:44:31","date_gmt":"2019-03-06T19:44:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2019\/03\/the-math-that-takes-newton-into-the-quantum-world"},"modified":"2019-03-06T11:44:31","modified_gmt":"2019-03-06T19:44:31","slug":"the-math-that-takes-newton-into-the-quantum-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2019\/03\/the-math-that-takes-newton-into-the-quantum-world","title":{"rendered":"The Math That Takes Newton Into the Quantum World"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/the-math-that-takes-newton-into-the-quantum-world.gif\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>In my 50s, too old to become a real expert, I have finally fallen in love with algebraic geometry. As the name suggests, this is the study of geometry using algebra. Around 1637, Ren\u00e9 Descartes laid the groundwork for this subject by taking a plane, mentally drawing a grid on it, as we now do with graph paper, and calling the coordinates <i>x <\/i>and <i>y<\/i>. We can write down an equation like <i>x <\/i>+ <i>y<\/i> = 1, and there will be a curve consisting of points whose coordinates obey this equation. In this example, we get a circle!<\/p>\n<p>It was a revolutionary idea at the time, because it let us systematically convert questions about geometry into questions about equations, which we can solve if we\u2019re good enough at algebra. Some mathematicians spend their whole lives on this majestic subject. But I never really liked it much until recently\u2014now that I\u2019ve connected it to my interest in quantum physics.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"\"><p>If we can figure out how to reduce topology to algebra, it might help us formulate a theory of quantum gravity. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><!-- Link: <a href=\"http:\/\/nautil.us\/issue\/69\/patterns\/the-math-that-takes-newton-into-the-quantum-world\">http:\/\/nautil.us\/issue\/69\/patterns\/the-math-that-takes-newto...ntum-world<\/a> --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In my 50s, too old to become a real expert, I have finally fallen in love with algebraic geometry. As the name suggests, this is the study of geometry using algebra. Around 1637, Ren\u00e9 Descartes laid the groundwork for this subject by taking a plane, mentally drawing a grid on it, as we now do [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":396,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41,2229,1617,1491],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-88450","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-information-science","category-mathematics","category-quantum-physics","category-transportation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88450","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/396"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=88450"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88450\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=88450"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=88450"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=88450"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}