Carcassi's entropy work targets quantum gravity — SkimNews
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- Assumptions of Physics — the University of Michigan project run mainly by Gabriele Carcassi and Christine Aidala seeks equivalent two-way definitions between physical assumptions and mathematical objects across all of physics; over 11 years it has broken essentially all of classical physics into equivalencies that can be crossed in either direction.
- Gabriele Carcassi — a trained engineer whose interest was sparked by his physicist wife Christine Aidala's books says the programme's tagline is to find a minimal set of physical assumptions from which the laws can be rigorously re-derived: 'When the maths is derived from the right physical assumptions, the physical assumptions can be derived from the maths.'
- Entropy — the team showed that restricting any change in a system's entropy is equivalent to previously known rules for how that system evolves over time, and its list of assumptions treats classical physics as quantum physics with entropy made high.
- Quantum field theory — Carcassi is now attacking the theory, where path integrals used to predict particle-accelerator outcomes remain poorly defined mathematically and infinitely large numbers are known to crop up.
- Quantum gravity — Carcassi says reverse physics can help researchers marry quantum physics and general relativity by showing both can be built from a shared mathematical base, a route he says is indifferent to multiverse and cosmic-entanglement fights because it targets what all quantum frameworks share.
- Gabriele Carcassi — estimates that adequate funding and a large enough team would complete the reverse physics programme within a decade, naming the shortage of funding and broad interest in foundations-level work as the main obstacle.
Why it matters: Carcassi's team has spent 11 years turning classical physics into rigorous two-way equivalencies, and he estimates adequate funding and a bigger team would finish the programme within a decade. Quantum gravity has gone decades without fruit, so research funders now decide whether this foundations-first route keeps running at all.
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