Glen and Astro_Bot, this is the latest example of pulling the rug out from under supposedly unviolable assumptions to see what happens. The key phrase in the article in 'The amplituhedron, or a similar geometric object, could help by removing two deeply rooted principles of physics: locality and unitarity.'
Feynman's diagrams did the same thing: visualizations replaced equations be removing the equals sign (which is, in linguistic grammar, is the function of the verb). When Feynman presented them to a meeting of physicists for the first time, Niels Bohr and Paul Dirac were so incensed at the newness and directness of it all that they stomped out of the room. (This is, of course, as Feynman tells the story.) The same thing happened when Einstein recast physical space as curved instead of linear, based on Reimann's purely mathematical constructs from forty years earlier.
A couple of other recent papers similarly recast the energy universe on a cosmic scale and the material universe on a galactic scale. You might want to have a look at Brian Lacki's take on the electromagnetic spectrum
here (see esp. Fig 4 on p.16); and Bruce Elmegreen & Yuri Efremov's paper
here about a single formation mechanism (pressure) which replaces half a dozen more complex ways of describing galaxy and cluster aggregation.
Both these papers essentially replace complicated structures with a simple one. Lacki's paper visualizes energy density the same way Feynamn visualized energy distribution. Elmegreen/Efremov recast the complexities of virial equilibrium (all inward and outward forces trying to achieve enduring balance) with a single one: pressure density.
I sense what we're really seeing in all three cases is fresh versions of axiomatic thinking. Axiomatic logic is based on the notion that we can successfully create any reality we want by (a) reducing all constructs to a single assumption which cannot be removed or further simplified, and (b) reducing all processes to a single law which also cannot be removed or simplified. Invention then becomes a matter of finding the right assumption and the right law in the complex realm of the human mind, only to find there are as many assumptions and laws as there are minds thinking of them. I think that's the way we found our way out of the trees and onto the plains.
=Dana in S Africa
