If the Universe Is a Hologram, This Long-Forgotten Math Could Decode It
An editorially independent publication supported by the Simons Foundation.
J ohn von Neumann came about as close as humanly possible to embodying the Platonic ideal of a genius. Conversant in ancient Greek by age 6, the Hungarian made significant mathematical advances in his teens. Then, as an adult, he invented game theory and helped design the atomic bomb and the modern computer.
Along the way, as a young man in 1932, von Neumann rewrote the rules of quantum mechanics, formulating the strange new theory of particles and their fluctuating, probabilistic behavior in the mathematical language used today. Then he went further. He developed a framework known as “operator algebras” to describe quantum systems in a more powerful but more abstract way. Unlike his earlier work on quantum theory, this framework was hard to understand and did not catch on widely in theoretical physics. It was literally a century ahead of its time.
Over the past few years, however, more physicists have been dusting off von Neumann’s ideas. His operator algebras are now helping them see their way around the most mysterious quantum system yet: the substructure of space and time.
