Something that never fails to make me wonder is the New Scientist, and they've done it again this week with a wonderful, exhilarating article about the nature of reality itself.

New Scientist: Beyond space-time: Welcome to phase space

Now, I'm not going to claim to be 100% accurate on my interpretation of this, mostly because - well, I'm not clever enough to understand the maths - but also because this theory remains highly speculative and open to interpretation in any case, but I'm going to try...

What they are saying is that relativity (Spacetime) may only be part of the equation when trying to understand the nature of the reality in which we live. What is being proposed is that Spacetime may not be the most fundamental description of reality. Instead, physicists are looking at something called Momentum Space and a larger framework known as "Phase Space", in which both Spacetime and Momentum Space play equally important roles.

Matter, as we know and experience it, can be described not only by where it is in space and time, but also by its energy and momentum. In this picture, Momentum Space provides another way of describing the state of matter - essentially using a different set of dimensions to those we are familiar with in everyday life.

The suggestion is that reality may be better described by a larger Phase Space that combines both our familiar 4D spacetime (three dimensions of space and one of time, as defined in Einstein's Relativity) and four corresponding dimensions related to energy and momentum. The result is an eight-dimensional framework from which the spacetime we experience may emerge.

You, me, all of us could be living in a reality that is richer than the spacetime we directly perceive. A useful analogy might be torch light shining through a mist. We see only the illuminated regions where light and mist interact, yet both extend beyond what we can directly observe. Likewise, the spacetime we experience could be only part of a deeper structure that we are only beginning to glimpse.

In this picture, the Quantum (Momentum Space) and the Relativistic (Spacetime) are not necessarily competing descriptions of reality, but two aspects of a deeper framework. That could help explain why they appear so different, and why it has been so hard to join them in a "Theory of Everything".

Is this how we finally bring quantum mechanics and relativity together? Could gravity itself emerge naturally from the geometry of this larger Phase Space?

This may just help answer many of our unanswered questions but (as always) it would seem that it may pose even more than it answers. The nature of reality is, of course, not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose.

I think it's utterly fascinating.