Carlo Rovelli Says Nothing Exists on Its Own

Carlo Rovelli, one of the founders of loop quantum gravity, has an unusual reading of quantum physics: a thing's features, like where it is or how it spins, only exist in relation to something else. About 1,800 years ago, the Indian philosopher Nagarjuna said something similar, and a Tibetan knot with no loose ends still stands for it. We start with a ball thrown on a train, follow Wigner's friend and two entangled particles, set the physics beside the knot and Nagarjuna, and check honestly where the match holds and where it stops. It's one way of reading quantum physics among several, and the film says so. If you took away every relation you have, what do you think would be left? Tell us in the comments. CHAPTERS 0:00 Does physics say you don't exist? 1:03 Who is Carlo Rovelli? 1:25 How fast is a ball thrown on a train? 2:20 What was Rovelli's big idea in 1996? 3:23 Can two people see different facts? 4:46 How do entangled particles agree? 5:54 What does a Tibetan knot have to do with physics? 6:42 Who was Nagarjuna? 7:57 What do colliding galaxies show? 8:49 Where does the match hold, and where does it stop? 10:29 So what are you? 11:20 What can a flock of starlings show us? 12:37 What happened on Helgoland in 1925? 13:20 What's left if you take every relation away? KEY SOURCES (the full list is in the pinned comment) • Rovelli (1996), Relational Quantum Mechanics, Int. J. Theor. Phys. 35, 1637: https://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/9609002 • Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Relational Quantum Mechanics: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qm... • Adlam & Rovelli (2023), Information is Physical: Cross-Perspective Links in Relational Quantum Mechanics: https://arxiv.org/abs/2203.13342 • Pienaar (2021), A Quintet of Quandaries (a critique): https://arxiv.org/abs/2107.00670 • Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Nagarjuna: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/na... Pictures: the endless knot (Wellcome Collection, CC BY 4.0), Nagarjuna (Cleveland Museum of Art; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, public domain), monasteries in Bhutan and Tibet (dave massie, CC BY 4.0; Ondřej Žváček, CC BY 2.5), Carlo Rovelli at the British Library (British Library, CC BY), Galileo (public domain), NASA, ESA/Hubble, ESA/Webb and ESO (CC BY 4.0), CERN and NIST labs, Helgoland (BAW, CC BY 2.0; Timo Kamph, CC BY 2.0; DimiTalen, CC0), mycelium (Madi Gan, CC BY 3.0), and stock footage from Pexels, all credited on screen. Clips of Carlo Rovelli and Jim Al-Khalili (The James Altucher Show, Talks at Google, New Scientist, 5x15, Harvard Science Book Talks, The Futurology Podcast, the Institute of Art and Ideas) are used under fair use for commentary and education. MUSIC 'Adrift Among Infinite Stars' by Scott Buckley - released under CC-BY 4.0. www.scottbuckley.com.au 'Passage Of Time' by Scott Buckley - released under CC-BY 4.0. www.scottbuckley.com.au 'Unraveling' by Scott Buckley - released under CC-BY 4.0. www.scottbuckley.com.au 'Permafrost' by Scott Buckley - released under CC-BY 4.0. www.scottbuckley.com.au 'Shoulders Of Giants' by Scott Buckley - released under CC-BY 4.0. www.scottbuckley.com.au Pictures labelled "Illustration" stand in for an idea; scenes labelled "Model" are our own code-built 3D models with computed physics. Stock footage of people is an illustration, not the real events. The Cosmic Ouroboros sets old symbols beside the newest physics, and follows them as far as the truth goes. #CarloRovelli #QuantumPhysics #Nagarjuna