Physicist Yasha Neiman has proposed a new way to create a Theory of Everything, combining quantum mechanics with the theory of gravity. To quantize space-time, he proposes to combine various physical concepts, including anti-de Sitter space, strings, and twistors. Writes about this Phys.org.
Anti-de Sitter space (ADS) is the opposite of de Sitter space, which describes an exponentially expanding universe with positive curvature, where the sum of the angles of the triangle is greater than 180 degrees. Contemplative stretching of the ADS on a two-dimensional plane will increase the size of the central regions and reduce the regions at the edges, as a result of which the space will resemble Escher's painting The Limit of Circle III. This curvature creates a gravitational field that attracts objects to the center of space, and nothing can touch the boundaries of the ADS.
Theoretical physicist Juan Maldacena in 1977 showed that ADS, consisting of three spatial dimensions and one temporal dimension (the "3 + 1" world), is equivalent to the "2 + 1" world. To do this, he considered a flat two-dimensional surface called a D2-brane, along which particles in the form of strings move. In a stack of several D2-branes stuck together, the behavior of strings resembles the properties of protons, mesons and gluons in the ordinary world. Although the world "2 + 1" is devoid of gravity, it is an alternative way of describing ADF with gravity, if we imagine that the stack of branes is a "boundary" on which everything that happens in the latter is displayed. This concept, which is the origin of the holographic principle, is known as AdS / CFT matching.
However, according to Neumann, the holographic principle cannot be applied in a universe that is expanding rapidly. The scientist developed a mathematical apparatus based on the higher spin gravity, developed by physicist Mikhail Vasiliev in the 80-90s, and the theory of twistors, proposed by Roger Penrose in 1967. Higher spin gravity considers the existence of hypothetical fundamental particles with high spin values (3,4,5 to infinity) and can be viewed as a general case of string theory, which also contains higher spins.
Higher spin gravity, as shown by physicists in 2001, can be described using the holographic principle. In addition, its equations contain twistors - mathematical objects that represent points in spacetime as rays of light. With the help of twistors, it is convenient to describe quantum-mechanical phenomena occurring in multidimensional space. Thus, using the theory of higher spins, it is possible to link the holographic principle and the Penrose theory.