Juan Maldacena: Geometry as Entanglement, and the Emergence of Spacetime
5/4/20261 hr 48 min
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- Go to https://shortform.com/toe for a free trial and an exclusive $50 OFF on your annual subscription
- I subscribe to The Economist for their science and tech coverage. As a TOE listener, get 35% off! No other podcast has this: https://economist.com/TOE Juan Maldacena wrote the most cited paper in theoretical physics, birthing AdS/CFT and realizing holography — and today, the problem keeping him up at night is wormholes. He suspects space-time isn't fundamental at all, that geometry itself might be what entanglement looks like from the inside. The singularity isn't a place, it's a name for everything we don't yet understand. I hope you enjoy it. FOLLOW:
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- 00:00:00 - Emergent Space-Time Geometry
- 00:05:28 - GR and QM Incompatibility
- 00:11:52 - The Singularity Problem
- 00:17:00 - Extremal Black Hole Thermodynamics
- 00:22:00 - The Island Formula
- 00:27:30 - Spacetime and Quantum Information
- 00:34:15 - ER equals EPR
- 00:41:51 - Traversable Wormhole Physics
- 00:47:24 - Simulating Wormholes with Qubits
- 00:52:53 - Celestial Holography and Symmetries
- 00:58:00 - dS/CFT and Dark Energy
- 01:04:24 - Quantum Error Correction Codes
- 01:10:00 - The Physicist’s Mindset
- 01:15:19 - Inflationary Gravity Wave Predictions
- 01:21:03 - Clocks and Emergent Time
- 01:26:44 - Is Space-Time Doomed?
- 01:32:00 - AI in Theoretical Physics
- 01:38:00 - Overcoming Academic Inadequacy LINKS MENTIONED:
- Juan Maldacena's Website: https://www.ias.edu/sns/malda
- Large N Limit of Superconformal Field Theories [Paper]: https://arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/9711200
- Eternal Black Holes in AdS [Paper]: https://arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/0106112
- Holographic Derivation of Entanglement Entropy [Paper]: https://arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/0603001
- Real Observers Solving Imaginary Problems [Paper]: https://arxiv.org/abs/2412.14014
- Building Spacetime with Quantum Entanglement [Paper]: https://arxiv.org/abs/1005.3035
- Entropy of Bulk Quantum Fields [Paper]: https://arxiv.org/abs/1905.08762
- Entanglement Wedge Reconstruction [Paper]: https://arxiv.org/abs/1905.08255
- Comments on the Double Cone Wormhole [Paper]: https://arxiv.org/abs/2310.11617
- Traversable Wormholes in Four Dimensions [Paper]: https://arxiv.org/abs/1807.04726
- JT Gravity as a Matrix Integral [Paper]: https://arxiv.org/abs/1903.11115
- Single-Minus Gluon Tree Amplitudes [Paper]: https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.12176
- Bulk Locality and Quantum Error Correction [Paper]: https://arxiv.org/abs/1411.7041
- Black Hole Information Paradox: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_hole_information_paradox
- Chilloquium 2023 [Lecture]: https://youtu.be/Ow81IJyzmUQ
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Clips
Transcript preview
First 90 secondsJuan Maldacena· Guest0:00
Wormholes are a bit like leaky pipes. Not everything is fitting together. The singularity is not the place inside the black hole, it's a place in the future. Yeah, I think it's common maybe not to feel good, to feel that maybe you're not good enough. But, well, eventually you'll make your contributions.
Curt Jaimungal· Host0:14
[upbeat music] Professor Juan Maldacena has spent 30 years probing deeper and deeper into what the heck spacetime is. In this episode, we explore how it comes down to the claim that geometry, in some cases, is what entanglement looks like from the inside. Today, we discuss what ER equals EPR actually means, and we discuss black hole interiors where- Singularity is just a name for, for things we don't understand. Most of us intuitively assume there's a sort of view from nowhere, that you can just do quantum mechanics from the outside, look in, and write down what's there. Professor Juan Maldacena discusses why we can't. On this channel, I interview researchers regarding their theories of reality with rigor and technical depth. My name's Curt Jaimungal. I've included further resources on my Substack at curtjaimungal.com if you're interested. Stick toward the end for advice for students, for you the listener, as we see a strikingly honest, vulnerable, and inspiring perspective from the man who wrote the most cited paper in theoretical physics. During his graduate studies, even Juan Maldacena didn't feel good enough. If you're struggling with something similar, hang in there. Keep studying, keep pushing