Pith Number

pith:2UVOCU4H

pith:2026:2UVOCU4HVEETKUJRWHOUJZLKSI

not attested not anchored not stored refs resolved

What does it mean to have a quantum gravitational theory of de Sitter Space?

Tom Banks

If de Sitter space is a finite quantum system then all models of it are ambiguous

arxiv:2605.13490 v1 · 2026-05-13 · hep-th · gr-qc

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\usepackage{pith}
\pithnumber{2UVOCU4HVEETKUJRWHOUJZLKSI}

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Record completeness

1 Bitcoin timestamp

2 Internet Archive

3 Author claim open · sign in to claim

4 Citations open

5 Replications open

✓ Portable graph bundle live · download bundle · merged state

The bundle contains the canonical record plus signed events. A mirror can host it anywhere and recompute the same current state with the deterministic merge algorithm.

Claims

C1strongest claim

if de Sitter space is indeed represented by a finite dimensional quantum system, then semi-classical considerations, combined with the fundamental principles of quantum measurement theory, imply that any theoretical model of it is ambiguous.

C2weakest assumption

That de Sitter space is represented by a finite dimensional quantum system and that our universe asymptotes to such a de Sitter state.

C3one line summary

De Sitter space modeled as a finite quantum system yields ambiguous theories, with local experiments accessing only a tiny fraction of its total information content.

References

11 extracted · 11 resolved · 5 Pith anchors

[2] Banks, Cosmological breaking of supersymmetry?, Int 2001 · doi:10.1142/s0217751x01003998

[3] Towards a quantum theory of de Sitter space 2006 · doi:10.1088/1126-6708/2006/12/004

[4] Effective field theory, black holes, and the cosmo- logical constant 1999 · doi:10.1103/physrevlett.82.4971

[5] Recurrent nightmares? Measurement theory in de Sitter space, 2002 · doi:10.1088/1126-6708/2002/12/062

[6] JT de Sitter gravity as a model of Coleman-de Luccia tunneling, 2025 · doi:10.1007/jhep12(2025)085

Receipt and verification

First computed	2026-05-18T02:44:41.186019Z
Builder	pith-number-builder-2026-05-17-v1
Signature	Pith Ed25519 (`pith-v1-2026-05`) · public key
Schema	pith-number/v1.0

Canonical hash

d52ae15387a909355131b1dd44e56a9201f2444fdb3e186ec24205ac0d722fe2

Aliases

arxiv: 2605.13490 · arxiv_version: 2605.13490v1 · doi: 10.48550/arxiv.2605.13490 · pith_short_12: 2UVOCU4HVEET · pith_short_16: 2UVOCU4HVEETKUJR · pith_short_8: 2UVOCU4H

Agent API

Resolver JSON Graph JSON Events JSON Schema Signing key

Verify this Pith Number yourself

curl -sH 'Accept: application/ld+json' https://pith.science/pith/2UVOCU4HVEETKUJRWHOUJZLKSI \
  | jq -c '.canonical_record' \
  | python3 -c "import sys,json,hashlib; b=json.dumps(json.loads(sys.stdin.read()), sort_keys=True, separators=(',',':'), ensure_ascii=False).encode(); print(hashlib.sha256(b).hexdigest())"
# expect: d52ae15387a909355131b1dd44e56a9201f2444fdb3e186ec24205ac0d722fe2

Canonical record JSON

{
  "metadata": {
    "abstract_canon_sha256": "d2e1a53a61401639c3c4cfedab21574fb111aa17f5c15f9476220bdd8d26e138",
    "cross_cats_sorted": [
      "gr-qc"
    ],
    "license": "http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/",
    "primary_cat": "hep-th",
    "submitted_at": "2026-05-13T13:16:01Z",
    "title_canon_sha256": "e2d9179e87cab3f7a7bd88ae90f67628d55fb9126911f89d92a503d1af03cf80"
  },
  "schema_version": "1.0",
  "source": {
    "id": "2605.13490",
    "kind": "arxiv",
    "version": 1
  }
}