Cosmological Emergence Consortium

Emergence at all scales

What are the building blocks of space, time and matter? Can we understand the mind-boggling variation in properties emerging when Lego is played with billions of fundamental particles, atoms, molecules and little chunks of materials? These questions are amongst the deepest, and the scientists asking them do research into emergence. We want to understand emergence at all scales: from the terribly tiny to the cosmologically colossal. Our goal is the discovery of the general laws of emergence, written in the language of mathematics. We are joined on this journey spanning sixty-orders of magnitude by citizen-scientists, artists, school-kids, and cool cocktail-mixologists.

NWA ORC funding allocated by NWO: 7.1 million euro

Consortium: Freudenthal Institute, ICLON, IMC Weekendschool, Kyiv Academic University, New Scientist NL, Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen, Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, Stichting InScience, Stichting Paradiso Amsterdam, Technische Universiteit Delft, Technische Universiteit Eindhoven, The Science and Cocktails Foundation (Denemarken), Universiteit Leiden, Universiteit Utrecht, Universiteit van Amsterdam, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, AMOLF, CBS, Nikhef.

Gravity and dark structure

UPAC is involved in work package 5.1, together with the Universities of Amsterdam and Groningen.

"Emergent gravity and the dark universe"
This project will investigate the theoretical and philosophical aspects of the emergence of the gravitational force and its implications for our understanding of the nature of dark energy and dark matter. The theory part is aimed at developing a precise understanding of the emergence of the gravitational force (Verlinde, 2017) in a universe with a positive cosmological constant by generalizing the concept of holography, and to study its implications for phenomena associated with dark energy and dark matter. The second part concerns the role of emergence in reshaping the current cosmological paradigm from a philosophy of science perspective (De Haro et al., 2015). When the fundamental nature of spacetime and the gravitational force are being questioned and put in the new perspective of emergence, what does this say about the apparent success of the Lambda-CDM paradigm? How have emergent laws in cosmology been identified, and what is their explanatory role in model building in cosmology?

Hosting institution: UvA

PhD candidate: tbd

Leads: Erik Verlinde, Sebastian de Haro (UvA/philosophy/physics)

Collaborators: Jeroen van Dongen (UvA/philosophy/history), Niels Martens (UU/philosophy), Edwin Valentijn (RUG/astronomy).