Lorenz Gödel and Penrose: new perspectives on determinism and unpredictability, from fundamental physics to the science of climate change

The 9th Dennis Sciama Memorial Lecture, looking at chaos theory and climate change Lorenz is one of the pioneers of chaos theory. However, over 50 years before Lorenz, Poincaré discovered the sensitive dependence on initial conditions that characterises chaos. So what makes Lorenz’s contribution so important? I argue it is the discovery of the fractal invariant set in state space: the Lorenz attractor. Quite amazingly, properties of the Lorenz attractor can be shown to link the calculus of dynamical systems theory to deep and diverse areas of mathematics such as Wiles’ proof of Fermat’s Last Theorem and Gödel’s incompleteness theorem. But more than this, I argue that the fractal invariant set has implications for physics – not only for practical problems such as climate prediction, but also for the deepest problems of fundamental physics. In particular, I will put some meat on the bones of Penrose’s suggestion that “the correct theory of quantum gravity might be a deterministic but non-computable theory” by treating the universe as a dynamical system with fractal invariant set. The result is a novel perspective, not only on the quantum gravity programme, but also on quantum physics in general. Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales; http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/uk/

Om Podcasten

The Department of Physics public lecture series. An exciting series of lectures about the research at Oxford Physics take place throughout the academic year. Looking at topics diverse as the creation of the universe to the science of climate change. Features episodes previously published as: (1) 'Oxford Physics Alumni': "Informal interviews with physics alumni at events, lectures and other alumni related activities." (2) 'Physics and Philosophy: Arguments, Experiments and a Few Things in Between': "A series which explores some of the links between physics and philosophy, two of the most fundamental ways with which we try to answer our questions about the world around us. A number of the most pertinent topics which bridge the disciplines are discussed - the nature of space and time, the unpredictable results of quantum mechanics and their surprising consequences and perhaps most fundamentally, the nature of the mind and how far science can go towards explaining and understanding it. Featuring interviews with Dr. Christopher Palmer, Prof. Frank Arntzenius, Prof. Vlatko Vedral, Dr. David Wallace and Prof. Roger Penrose."