Programmed Reality

"All great truths began as blasphemies" - George Bernard Shaw

• In the 1800’s, the scientific community viewed reports of rocks falling from the sky as “pseudoscience” and those who reported them as “crackpots,” only because it didn’t fit in with the prevailing view of the universe. Today, of course, we recognize that these rocks could be meteorites and such reports are now properly investigated.

• In 1827, Georg Ohm's initial publication of what became “Ohm’s Law” met with ridicule, dismissal, and was called "a web of naked fantasies." The German Minister of Education proclaimed that "a professor who preached such heresies was unworthy to teach science." 20 yrs passed before scientists began to recognize its importance.

• Louis Pasteur's theory of germs was called “ridiculous fiction" by Pierre Pachet, Professor of Physiology at Toulouse in1872.

• Spanish researcher Marcelino de Sautuola discovered cave art in Altamira cave (northern Spain), which he recognized as stone age and published a paper about it in 1880.  His integrity was violently attacked by the archaeological community, and he died disillusioned and broken.  Yet he was vindicated 10 years after death.

• Lord Haldane, the Minister of War in Britain, said that “the aeroplane will never fly” in 1907.  Ironically, this was four years after the Wright Brothers made their first successful flight at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.  After Kitty Hawk, the Wrights flew in open fields next to a busy rail line in Dayton OH for almost an entire year. US authorities refused to come to the demos, while Scientific American published stories about "The Lying Brothers."

• In 1964, physicist George Zweig proposed the existence of quarks.  As a result of this theory, he was rejected for position at major university and considered a “charlatan.”  Today, of course, it is an accepted part of standard nuclear model.

Note that these aren’t just passive disagreements.  The skeptics use active and angry language, with words like “charlatan,” “ridiculous,” lying,” “crackpot,” and “pseudoscience.”  

This is partly due to a natural psychological effect, known as “fear of the unknown” or “fear of change.”  Psychologists who have studied human behavior have more academic sounding names for it, such as the “Mere Exposure Effect”, “Familiarity Principle”, or Neophobia (something that might have served Agent Smith well).  Ultimately, this may be an artifact of evolution.  Hunter-gatherers did not pass on their genes if they had a habit of eating weird berries, venturing too close to the saber-toothed cats, or other unconventional activities.  But we are no longer hunter-gatherers.  For the most part, we shouldn’t fear the unknown.  We should feel empowered to challenge assumptions.  The scientific method can weed out any undesirable ideas naturally.

But, have you also noticed how the agitation ratchets up the more you enter the realm of the “expert?”

“The expert knows more and more about less and less until he knows everything about nothing.” – Mahatma Gandhi

This is because the expert may have a lot to lose if they stray too far from the status quo.  Their research funding, tenure, jobs, reputations are all at stake.  This is unfortunate, because it feeds this unhealthy behavior.

So I thought I would do my part to remind experts and non-experts alike that breakthroughs only occur when we challenge conventional thinking, and we shouldn’t be afraid of them.

The world is full of scared “experts”, but nobody will ever hear of them.  But they will hear about the brave ones, who didn’t fear to challenge the status quo.  People like Copernicus, Einstein, Georg Ohm, Steve Jobs, and Elon Musk.

And it isn’t like we are so enlightened today that such pathological skepticism no longer occurs.  

Remember Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann?  Respected electrochemists, ridiculed out of their jobs and their country by skeptics.  Even “experts” violently contradicted each other:

• “It's pathological science," said physicist Douglas Morrison, formerly of CERN. "The results are impossible."  

• "There's very strong evidence that low-energy nuclear reactions do occur” said George Miley (who received Edward Teller medal for research in hot fusion.). “Numerous experiments have shown definitive results - as do my own."

Some long-held assumptions are being overturned as we speak.  Like LENR (Low Energy Nuclear Reactions; the new, less provocative name for cold fusion.  

And maybe the speed of light as an ultimate speed limit.

These are exciting times for science and technology.  Let’s stay open minded enough to keep them moving.

Tags: skepticism, pathological skepticism, truth, science
Categories: General | Philosophy | Physics | Science

It is the end of 2011 and it has been an exciting year for science and technology.  Announcements about artificial life, earthlike worlds, faster-than-light particles, clones, teleportation, memory implants, and tractor beams have captured our imagination.  Most of these things would have been unthinkable just 30 years ago.

So, what better way to close out the year than to take stock of yesterday's science fiction in light of today's reality and tomorrow's technology.  Here is my take:

 

Tags: time travel, teleportation, cloaking, tractor beam, holodeck, memory implants, bci, cloning, brain-computer interface, ai, artificial intelligence, artificial life, ftl, faster than light, multiple dimensions, parallel realities, ufos, precognition, paranormal, bigfoot
Categories: AI | Cosmology | Future Tech | Life | Particle Physics | Physics | Robotics | Science

In “Time to Revise Relativity: Part 1”, I explored the idea that Faster than Light Travel (FTL) might be permitted by Special Relativity without necessitating the violation of causality, a concept not held by most mainstream physicists. 

The reason this idea is not well supported has to do with the fact that Einstein’s postulate that light travels the same speed in all reference frames gave rise to all sorts of conclusions about reality, such as the idea that it is all described by a space-time that has fundamental limits to its structure.  The Lorentz factor is a consequence of this view of reality, and so it’s use is limited to subluminal effects and is undefined in terms of its use in calculating relativistic distortions past c.

 

So then, what exactly is the roadblock to exceeding the speed of light? 

Yes, there may be a natural speed limit to the transmission of known forces in a vacuum, such as the electromagnetic force.  And there may certainly be a natural limit to the speed of an object at which we can make observations utilizing known forces.  But, could there be unknown forces that are not governed by the laws of Relativity? 

The current model of physics, called the Standard Model, incorporates the idea that all known forces are carried by corresponding particles, which travel at the speed of light if massless (like photons and gluons) or less than the speed of light if they have mass (like gauge bosons), all consistent with, or derived from the assumptions of relativity.  Problem is, there is all sorts of “unfinished business” and inconsistencies with the Standard Model.  Gravitons have yet to be discovered, Higgs bosons don’t seem to exist, gravity and quantum mechanics are incompatible, and many things just don’t have a place in the Standard Model, such as neutrino oscillations, dark energy, and dark matter.  Some scientists even speculate that dark matter is due to a flaw in the theory of gravity.  So, given the incompleteness of that model, how can anyone say for certain that all forces have been discovered and that Einstein’s postulates are sacrosanct? 

Given that barely 100 years ago we didn’t know any of this stuff, imagine what changes to our understanding of reality might happen in the next 100 years.  Such as these Wikipedia entries from the year 2200…

-       The ultimate constituent of matter is nothing more than data

-       A subset of particles and corresponding forces that are limited in speed to c represent what used to be considered the core of the so-called Standard Model and are consistent with Einstein’s view of space-time, the motion of which is well described by the Special Theory of Relativity.

-       Since then, we have realized that Einsteinian space-time is an approximation to the truer reality that encompasses FTL particles and forces, including neutrinos and the force of entanglement.  The beginning of this shift in thinking occurred due to the first superluminal neutrinos found at CERN in 2011.

So, with that in mind, let’s really explore a little about the possibilities of actually cracking that apparent speed limit…  

For purposes of our thought experiments, let's define S as the "stationary" reference frame in which we are making measurements and R as the reference frame of the object undergoing relativistic motion with respect to S.  If a mass m is traveling at c with respect to S, then measuring that mass in S (via whatever methods could be employed to measure it; energy, momentum, etc.) will give an infinite result.  However, in R, the mass doesn't change. 

What if m went faster than c, such as might be possible with a sci-fi concept like a “tachyonic afterburner”?  What would an observer at S see?  

Going by our relativistic equations, m now becomes imaginary when measured from S because the argument in the square root of the mass correction factor is now negative.  But what if this asymptotic property really represents more of an event horizon than an impenetrable barrier?  A commonly used model for the event horizon is the point on a black hole at which gravity prevents light from escaping.  Anything falling past that point can no longer be observed from the outside.  Instead it would look as if that object froze on the horizon, because time stands still there.  Or so some cosmologists say.  This is an interesting model to apply to the idea of superluminality as mass m continues to accelerate past c.

From the standpoint of S, the apparent mass is now infinite, but that is ultimately based on the fact that we can't perceive speeds past c.  Once something goes past c, one of two things might happen.  The object might disappear from view due to the fact that the light that it generated that would allow us to observe it can't keep up with its speed.  Alternatively, invoking the postulate that light speed is the same in all reference frames, the object might behave like it does on the event horizon of the black hole - forever frozen, from the standpoint of S, with the properties that it had when it hit light speed.  From R, everything could be hunky dory.  Just cruising along at warp speed.  No need to say that it is impossible because mass can't exceed infinity, because from S, the object froze at the event horizon.  Relativity made all of the correct predictions of properties, behavior, energy, and mass prior to light speed.  Yet, with this model, it doesn't preclude superluminality.  It only precludes the ability to make measurements beyond the speed of light. 

That is, of course, unless we can figure out how to make measurements utilizing a force or energy that travels at speeds greater than c.  If we could, those measurements would yield results with correction factors only at speeds relatively near THAT speed limit.

Let's imagine an instantaneous communication method.  Could there be such a thing? 

One possibility might be quantum entanglement.  John Wheeler's Delayed Choice Quantum Eraser experiment seems to imply non-causality and the ability to erase the past.  Integral to this experiment is the concept of entanglement.  So perhaps it is not a stretch to imagine that entanglement might embody a communication method that creates some strange effects when integrated with observational effects based on traditional light and sight methods.

What would the existence of that method do to relativity?   Nothing, according to the thought experiments above.  

There are, however, some relativistic effects that seem to stick, even after everything has returned to the original reference frame.  This would seem to violate the idea that the existence of an instantaneous communication method invalidates the need for relativistic correction factors applied to anything that doesn't involve light and sight.

For example, there is the very real effect that clocks once moving at high speeds (reference frame R) exhibit a loss of time once they return to the reference frame S, fully explained by time dilation effects.  It would seem that, using this effect as a basis for a thought experiment like the twin paradox, there might be a problem with the event horizon idea.  For example, let us imagine Alice and Bob, both aged 20.  After Alice travels at speed c to a star 10 light years away and returns, her age should still be 20, while Bob is now 40.  If we were to allow superluminal travel, it would appear that Alice would have to get younger, or something.  But, recalling the twin paradox, it is all about the relative observations that were made by Bob in reference frame S, and Alice, in reference frame R, of each other.  Again, at superluminal speeds, Alice may appear to hit an event horizon according to Bob.  So, she will never reduce her original age. 

But what about her?  From her perspective, her trip is instantaneous due to an infinite Lorentz contraction factor; hence she doesn't age.  If she travels at 2c, her view of the universe might hit another event horizon, one that prevents her from experiencing any Lorentz contraction beyond c; hence, her trip will still appear instantaneous, no aging, no age reduction. 

So why would an actual relativistic effect like reduced aging, occur in a universe where an infinite communication speed might be possible?  In other words, what would tie time to the speed of light instead of some other speed limit? 

It may be simply because that's the way it is.  It appears that relativistic equations may not necessarily impose a barrier to superluminal speeds, superluminal information transfer, nor even acceleration past the speed of light.  In fact, if we accept that relativity says nothing about what happens past the speed of light, we are free to suggest that the observable effects freeze at c. Perhaps traveling past c does nothing more than create unusual effects like disappearing objects or things freezing at event horizons until they slow back down to an "observable" speed.  We certainly don't have enough evidence to investigate further.  

But perhaps CERN has provided us with our first data point.

Tags: relativity, time travel, faster than light, quantum mechanics, entanglement, einstein
Categories: Cosmology | Particle Physics | Physics | Science | Time Travel

Special Relativity.

Causality.

Faster than light (FTL) travel.

Most physicists says that you can only hope for at most two of these three concepts to hold.

Special Relativity has the advantage of 100 years of supporting experimental evidence.

Causality has the advantage of 1000s of years of philosophic thought, and daily experience (at least until very recently - see Rewriting the Past)

Which seems to be bad news for faster than light travel.  But we all so much want FTL travel to be true.  How else are we supposed to communicate with ET?

Well, Special Relativity may have received its first chink in the armor.  Particle physicists at CERN recently released a report on the experimental evidence of FTL neutrinos.  The 6-sigma quality factor reported implies that the margin of error for this experiment is insignificant, meaning that these results may need to be taken seriously.

So, which concept falls by the wayside: Special Relativity (sorry, Albert)?    Or Causality (sorry, Aristotle)?  Alternatively, maybe the "2 outta 3" rule needs revision.

As usual, I have an opinion.

And it is...

1. Special Relativity holds for the moment.  But we need to stop using circular logic for relativistic effects.  We need to stop drawing FTL paths on Minkowski diagrams that are based on the assumption that FTL is impossible.  And, finally, we have to come to terms with the fact that Special Relativity has to do with subluminal speeds and is UNDEFINED at FTL.

2. Causality holds for the moment.  At least in the context of our conventional space-time.  Throw in inter-Hilbert Space travel or Programmed Reality and all bets are off for Causality. (again see Rewriting the Past for more on the latter)

3. Given the caveats in #1, maybe we can get 3 outta 3.

Here's just one example where it seems to fit:

Imagine a supersonic jet travelling at twice the speed of sound (2S meters/second) in the land of the blind.  A blind observer stands at 10*S meters from the jet at t=0.  At t=0, an audible event (call it Event A, the cause) occurs on the jet, such as an explosion on board the plane.  The sound waves from Event A reach the observer in 10 seconds.  At t=1 second, the entire jet explodes as the gas tanks catch fire (Event B, the effect).  At t=1, the jet is 8*S meters from the observer since it is traveling at 2S, so the observer hears Event B eight seconds later.  In other words, the observer hears event B at t=9 and event A at t=10.  Therefore the observer observes the effect before the cause.

But that doesn't mean that the effect happened before the cause.  It only appeared to happen that way in the observer’s reference frame.  Similarly, anyone on the jet (who could actually hear things happening outside) would observe a full sequence of events happening backwards in time.  Is this time travel?  No.  No one is going back in time.  They are just experiencing a sequence of events in reverse chronological order happening in someone else's reference frame.  Is there any reason to assume that the same arguments would not also hold in the domain of light?

In fact, the same thing might happen if you hopped aboard the tachyonic neutrino express.  First of all, I should note that there is some debate about this whole idea of time unfolding in reverse at superluminal speeds.  Much of it stems from the nature of the Lorentz factor:

This is the factor that gets applied to time and distance to calculate time dilation and Lorentz contraction effects at relativistic speeds.  It is also the factor applied to mass in general relativity.  It can easily be seen that as the velocity approaches c (the speed of light), the factor under the square root sign approaches zero, causing the Lorentz factor to approach infinity.  For this reason, time stands still, mass goes to infinity, and the apparent size of the rest of the universe shrinks to zero at the speed of light.  Or, more accurately, “apparent size” as you would SEE it.  But, what happens if you go past the speed of light?  In that case, the factor under the square root sign is negative.  For mathematics, this is not allowed for real numbers.  However, trigonometry has a trick, which is to define an entity i that, by definition, is the square root of -1.  Numbers containing i are considered “imaginary” or complex numbers.  In the real world, these numbers actually have a great deal of use in fields like electrical engineering, where they are used to determine the phase between periodic signals, or in physics, where they are used to determine the relative angle between field vectors.  But what they might mean to relativity is really anybody’s guess.  But it is for this reason that many physicists claim that you can’t accelerate past light speed; that is, that it would necessitate mass exceeding infinity or becoming “imaginary”.  Thus, the entire idea of traveling back in time is just one interpretation of what happens when the Lorentz factor goes imaginary. 

So, let’s go with that idea on our tachyonic neutrino express, for the moment.  If you had hurtled through space superluminally in 1804 toward Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton, you would watch Hamilton "fall up" into a standing position, the bullet flying out of his stomach and back into Aaron Burr's gun.  The assassination would still have taken place in their reference frame.  Once you arrived in Weehawkin, NJ and got off the transport, your reference frame would have shifted back to theirs.  

One might wonder what happens when you land.  Does the sequence of events go forward again, in which case you could predict the future?  No, that would truly violate causality.  What happens is that you have to decelerate to stop, and as you approach light speed, the backwards time effect slows down.  When you cross over into subluminal, it reverses and the events start forward again from whatever point in the "past" was hit at light speed.  Then, you get to watch the events unfold again in the normal temporal direction.  By the time you decelerate and land, you are at the same point in time as Burr's reference frame, well ahead of the event that you just witnessed.  Hamilton would be dead, of course.  No time travel, no ability to interact with the past.  No grandfather paradox to solve.  All relativity equations still make sense, from the standpoint of the observations that we can make via known observational methods.  We would still experience time dilation and Lorentz contraction up until we hit light speed.  After that, what happens is anybody's guess.  But I have a theory.

It's just going to have to wait until Part 2.

   
Tags: relativity, special relativity, ftl, faster than light, tachyons, neutrinos, cern
Categories: Particle Physics | Physics | Time Travel

People generally associate the idea of cold fusion with electrochemists Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann.  However, similar experiments to the ones that led to their momentous announcement and equally momentous downfall were reported as far back as the 1920s.  Austrian scientists Friedrich Paneth and Kurt Peters reported the fusion of hydrogen into helium via a palladium mesh.  Around the same time, Swedish scientist J. Tandberg announced the same results from an elecrolysis experiment using hydrogen and palladium.
 
Apparently, everyone forgot about those experiments when in 1989, Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann from the University of Utah astonished the world with their announcement of a cold fusion experimental result.  Prior to this it was considered impossible to generate a nuclear fusion reaction at anything less than the temperatures found at the core of the sun.  Standard nuclear reaction equations required temperatures in the millions of degrees to generate the energy needed to fuse light atomic nuclei together into heavier elements, in the process releasing more energy than went into the reaction.  Pons and Fleischmann, however, claimed to generate nuclear reactions at room temperatures via a reaction that generate excess energy from an electrolysis reaction with heavy water (deuterium) and palladium, similar to those in the 1920s.  

When subsequent experiments initially failed to reproduce their results, they were ridiculed by the scientific community, even to the point of driving them to leave their jobs and their country, and continuing their research in France.  But, since then, despite the fact that the cultish skeptic community declared that no one was able to repeat their experiment, nearly 15,000 similar experiments have been conducted, most of which have replicated cold fusion, including those done by scientists from Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the Russian Academy of Science.

According to a 50-page report on the recent state of cold fusion by Steven Krivit and Nadine Winocur, the effect has been reproduced at a rate of 83%.  “Experimenters in Japan, Romania, the United States, and Russia have reported a reproducibility rate of 100 percent.” (Plotkin, Marc J. “Cold Fusion Heating Up -- Pending Review by U.S. Department of Energy.” Pure Energy Systems News Service, 27 March, 2004.)  In 2005, table top cold fusion was reported at UCLA utilizing crystals and deuterium and confirmed by Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 2006.  In 2007, a conference at MIT concluded that with 3,000+ published studies from around the world, "the question of whether Cold Fusion is real is not the issue.  Now the question is whether or not it can be made commercially viable, and for that, some serious funding is needed." (Wired; Aug. 22, 2007)  Still, the mainstream scientific community covers their ears, shuts their eyes, and shakes their heads.

So now we have the latest demonstration of cold fusion, courtesy of Italian scientists Andrea Rossi and Sergio Focardi from the University of Bologna, who announced last month that they developed a cold fusion device capable of producing 12,400 W of heat power with an input of just 400 W.

The scientific basis for a cold fusion reaction will be discovered.  The only question is when. 

Tags: cold fusion, pons and fleischmann
Categories: Future Tech | Physics | Science

Famous astrophysicist, Stephen Hawking, made the news recently when he called for us to stop attempting to contact ET.  No offense to Dr. Hawking and other scientists who have similar points of view, but I find the whole argument about dangerous ET's, to use a Vulcan phrase, "highly illogical."

First of all, there is the whole issue around the ability to contact ET.  As I showed in my post "Could Gliesians be Watching Baywatch", it is virtually impossible to communicate with any extraterrestrial civilization beyond our solar system without significant power and antenna gain.  The world's most powerful radio astronomy dish at Arecibo has a gain of 60 dB, which means that it could barely detect a 100 kilowatt non-directional signal generated from a planet 20 light years away, such as Gliese 581g, but only if it were pointed right at it.  More to the point, what are the odds that such a civilization would be at the right level of technology to be communicating with us, using a technique that overlaps what we know?

Using the famous Drake equation, N=R*·fp·ne·fl·fi·fc·L, with the following best estimates for parameters: R*= 10/year, fp= .5, ne= 2, fl= .5, fi= .001 (highly speculative), fc= .01, L=50 (duration in years of the radio transmitting period of a civilization), we get .0025 overlapping radio wave civilizations per galaxy.  But if you then factor in the (im)probabilities of reaching those star systems (I used a megawatt of power into an Arecibo-sized radio telescope), the likelihood of another "advanced technology" civilization even developing radio waves, the odds that we happen to be  pointing our radio telescope arrays at each other at the same time, and the odds that we are using the same frequency, we get a probability of 1.25E-22.  For those who don't like scientific notation, how about .0000000000000000000000125.  (Details will be in a forthcoming paper that I will post on this site.  I'll replace this text with the link once it is up)

So why is Stephen Hawking worried about us sending a message that gets intercepted by ET?  Didn't anyone do the math?

But there is a second science/sci-fi meme that I also find highly illogical.  And that is that malevolent ETs may want to mine our dear old earth for some sort of mineral.  Really?  Are we to believe that ET has figured out how to transcend relativity, exceed the speed of light, power a ship across the galaxy using technology far beyond our understanding, but still have an inability to master the control of the elements?  We have been transmuting elements for 70 years.  Even gold was artificially created by bombarding mercury atoms with neutrons as far back as 1941.  Gold could be created in an accelerator or nuclear reactor at any time, although to be practical from an economic standpoint, we may need a few years.  However, if gold, or any particular element, was important enough to be willing to fly across the galaxy and repress another civilization for, then economics should not be an issue.  Simple nuclear technology can create gold far easier than it can power a spaceship at near light speeds through space.

Even if our space traveling friends need something on Earth that can't possibly be obtained through technology, would they really be likely to be so imperialistic as to invade and steal our resources?  From the viewpoint of human evolution, as technology and knowledge has developed, so have our ethical sensibilities and social behavior.  Of course, there is still "Jersey Shore" and "Jackass," but by and large we have advanced our ethical values along with our technological advances and there is no reason to think that these wouldn't also go hand in hand with any other civilization.

So while I get that science fiction needs to have a compelling rationale for ET invasion because it is a good story, I fail to understand the fear that some scientists have that extraterrestrials will actually get all Genghis Khan on us.

Tags: et, extraterrestrial, seti, arecibo, contact, radio astronomy, stephen hawking, gliese 581g, drake equation
Categories: Cosmology | Future Tech | Philosophy | Physics | Science

"I don't believe in yesterday, by the way."
-John Lennon

The past is set in stone, right?  Everything we have learned tells us that you can not change the past, 88-MPH DeLoreans notwithstanding.  

However, it would probably surprise you to learn that many highly respected scientists, as well as a few out on the fringe, are questioning that assumption, based on real evidence.

For example, leading stem cell scientist, Dr. Robert Lanza, posits that the past does not really exist until properly observed.  His theory of Biocentrism says that the past is just as malleable as the future.

Specific experiments in Quantum Mechanics appear to prove this conjecture.  In the "Delayed Choice Quantum Eraser" experiment, "scientists in France shot photons into an apparatus, and showed that what they did could retroactively change something that had already happened." (Science 315, 966, 2007)

Paul Davies, renowned physicist from the Australian Centre for Astrobiology at Macquarie University in Sydney, suggests that conscious observers (us) can effectively reach back in history to "exert influence" on early events in the universe, including even the first moments of time.  As a result, the universe would be able to "fine-tune" itself to be suitable for life.

Prefer the Many Worlds Interpretation (MWI) of Quantum Mechanics over the Copenhagen one?  If that theory is correct, physicist Saibal Mitra from the University of Amsterdam has shown how we can change the past by forgetting.  Effectively if the collective observers memory is reset prior to some event, the state of the universe becomes "undetermined" and can follow a different path from before.  Check out my previous post on that one.

Alternatively, you can disregard the complexities of quantum mechanics entirely.  The results of some macro-level experiments twist our perceptions of reality even more.  Studies by Helmut Schmidt, Elmar Gruber, Brenda Dunne, Robert Jahn, and others have shown, for example, that humans are actually able to influence past events (aka retropsychokinesis, or RPK), such as pre-recorded (and previously unobserved) random number sequences

Benjamin Libet, pioneering scientist in the field of human consciousness at  the University of California, San Francisco is well known for his controversial experiments that seem to show reverse causality, or that the brain demonstrates awareness of actions that will occur in the near future.  To put it another way, actions that occur now create electrical brain activity in the past.

And then, of course, there is time travel.  Time travel into the future is a fact, just ask any astronaut, all of whom have traveled nanoseconds into the future as a side effect of high speed travel.  Stephen Hawking predicts much more significant time travel into the future.  In the future.  But what about the past?  Turns out there is nothing in the laws of physics that prevents it.  Theoretical physicist Kip Thorne designed a workable time machine that could send you into the past.  And traveling to the past of course provides an easy mechanism for changing it.  Unfortunately this requires exotic matter and a solution to the Grandfather paradox (MWI to the rescue again here).

None of this is a huge surprise to me, since I question everything about our conventional views of reality.  Consider the following scenario in a massively multiplayer online role playing game (MMORPG) or simulation.  The first time someone plays the game, or participates in the simulation, there is an assumed "past" to the construct of the game.  Components of that past may be found in artifacts (books, buried evidence, etc.) scattered throughout the game.  Let's say that evidence reports that the Kalimdors and Northrendians were at war during year 1999.  But the evidence has yet to be found by a player.  A game patch could easily change the date to 2000, thereby changing the past and no one would be the wiser.  But, what if someone had found the artifact, thereby setting the past in stone.  That patch could still be applied, but it would only be effective if all players who had knowledge of the artifact were forced to forget.  Science fiction, right?  No longer, thanks to an emerging field of cognitive research.  Two years ago, scientists were able to erase selected memories in mice.  Insertion of false memories is not far behind.  This will eventually perfected, and applied to humans.

At some point in our future (this century), we will be able to snort up a few nanobots, which will archive our memories, download a new batch of memories to the starting state of a simulation, and run the simulation.  When it ends, the nanobots will restore our old memories. 

Or maybe this happened at some point in our past and we are really living the simulation.  There is really no way to tell.

No wonder the past seems so flexible. 

Tags: time travel, mwi, quantum mechanics, rpk, retrocausality, retropsychokinesis, biocentrism, double slit, delayed choice quantum eraser, benjamin libet, programmed reality, mmorpg, kip thorne, stephen hawking, nanobots, cognitive science, gaming, saibal mitra
Categories: Cosmology | Future Tech | Gaming | Nanotech | Philosophy | Physics | Programmed Reality | Quantum Mechanics | Science | Time Travel

Scientists are endlessly scratching their heads over the paradoxes presented by quantum mechanics - duality, entanglement, the observer effect, nonlocality, non-reality.  The recent cover story in New Scientist, "Reality Gap" (or "Is quantum theory weird enough for the real world?" in the online version) observes: "Our best theory of nature has no roots in reality."

BINGO! But then they waste this accurate insight by looking for one.  

Just three days later, a new article appears: "Infinite doppelgängers may explain quantum probabilities"  Browse the website or that of other popular scientific journals and you'll find no end of esteemed physicists taking a crack at explaining the mysteries of QM.  Doppelgängers now?  Really?  I mean no disrespect to our esteemed experts, but the answer to all of your mysteries is so simple.  Take a brave step outside of your narrow field and sign up for Computer Science 101 and Information Theory 101.  And then think outside the box, if even just for a few minutes.

Every anomaly is explained, thusly:

Duality and the Observer Effect: "Double Slit Anomaly is No Mystery to Doctor PR"

Entanglement: "Quantum Entanglement - Solved (with pseudocode)"

Non-Reality: "Reality Doesn't Exist, according to the latest research"

Nonlocality: "Non-locality Explained!"

Got any more anomalies?  Send them my way!

Tags: programmed reality, simulism, simulation, quantum mechanics, reality, entanglement, observer effect, nonlocality
Categories: Philosophy | Physics | Programmed Reality | Quantum Mechanics | Science

One of the keys to understanding our reality is found in a very unusual and anomalous experiment done over 200 years ago by Thomas Young.  The philosophical debate that resulted from this experiment and its successors during the quantum era of the 20th century may hold the key to understanding everything - from bona fide scientific anomalies to cold fusion and bigfoot sightings.

If you are unfamiliar with this experiment, please watch the Dr. Quantum cartoon on the Double Slit Experiment.  It provides a good explanation of two paradoxes that have puzzled scientists for many years.  In summary, here is the conundrum:

1. If you fire electrons at a screen through a single slit in an otherwise impenetrable barrier, there will be a resulting pattern on the screen as you might expect - a single band of points.

2. If you fire electrons at a screen through a barrier with two slits, the pattern that will build up on the screen is not one of two bands of points, but rather an entire interference pattern, as if the electrons were actually waves instead of particles.  

This is one paradox - that electrons (and all other particles) have dual personalities in that they can act like both waves and particles.  Further, the personality that emerges matches the type of experiment that you are doing.  If you are testing to see if the electron acts like a particle, it will.  If you are testing to see if the electron acts like a wave, it will.  

3. Even if the electrons are fired one at a time, eliminating the possibility of electrons interfering with each other, over time, the same pattern emerges.

4. If you put a measuring device at the slit, thereby observing which slit each electron passes through, the interference pattern disappears.  

This is the more mysterious paradox - that the mere act of observation changes the result of the experiment.  The implications of this are huge because they imply that our conscious actions create or modify reality.

Dr. Programmed Reality will now provide the definitive explanation that Dr. Quantum could not:

1. Electrons, along with photons, all other particles, and ultimately everything, are really nothing but information.  That information describes how the electron (for example) behaves under all circumstances, what probabilities it will travel in any particular direction, and how it will reveal its presence to our senses.  That information, plus the rules of reality, fully determine how it can appear sometimes like a particle and sometimes like a wave.  Because it is really neither - it is JUST information that is used to give us the sensory impression of one of those personalities under various circumstances.  Paradox 1 solved.

2. The great cosmic Program that appears to control our reality (see my book "The Universe - Solved!" for evidence), is also fully aware of the state of consciousness of every free-willed observer in our reality.  As a result, the behavior exhibited by an electron under observation can easily be made to be a function of the observation being made.  Paradox 2 solved.

If you don't believe that, here is the piece of pseudo-code that could represent the part of The Program that controls the outcomes of such experiments (each state of each object consists of all spatial coordinates, plus time, and directional vectors):

while(time!=EndTime) {
   ...
   for n=1 to AllParticlesInTheUniverse {
   ...
      Object=Particle(n)
      CurrentState(Object)=AcquireState(Object);
      ObservationState(Object)=CollectObservationalIntent(AllObservers(Object));
      NextState(Object)=CalculateNextState(CurrentState(Object), ObservationState(Object));
      ApplyNextState(NextState(Object));
   next n
   }
}

It's all there - full control of the outcome of any experiment based on the objects under test and the observational status of all observers.  Any known quantum mechanical paradox fully explained by 1970s-vintage pseudocode without the need for the hand waving of collapsing wave functions or zillions of parallel realities.

Tags: double slit experiment, wave/particle duality, quantum mechanics, wave function, program, thomas young, information, programmed reality
Categories: Physics | Programmed Reality | Quantum Mechanics | Science

Ah yes, the good old 2nd Law of Thermodynamics. The idea that the total disorder of a system, e.g. the universe, always increases.  Or that heat always flows from hot to cold.  It's why coffee always gets cold, why money seems to dissipate at a casino, why time flows forward, why Murphy had a law, why cats and dogs don't tend to clean up the house.

Ultimately, due to this rather depressing physical law, the universe will die by "heat death," where it reaches a state of absolute zero, no more heat, no motion of particles.  Don't worry, that's not predicted for another 10^100 (or, a Googol) years.  But, I always wondered, is it always always the case, or can entropy decrease in certain circumstances?

Got a spare fortnight? Google "violations of the second law of thermodynamics."  Personally, I rather like Maxwell's idea that it is a statistical argument, not an absolute one. "Maxwell's Demon" is that hypothetical device that funnels hot molecules in one directions and cold ones in the opposite, thereby reversing the normal flow of heat.  Could a nanotech device do that some day?  Yes, I know that there has to be energy put into the system for the device to do its work, thereby increasing the size of the system upon which the 2nd law holds.  But, even without the demon, aren't there statistical instances of 2nd Law violation in a closed system?  Not unlike the infinitesimal probability that someone's constituent atoms suddenly line up in such a manner that they can walk through a door (see recent blog topic), so could a system become more coherent as time moves to the future.

What about lowering temperature to the point where superconductivity occurs?  Isn't that less random than non-superconductivity.  One might argue that the energy that it takes to become superconductive exceeds the resulting decrease in entropy.  However, I would argue that since the transition from conductive to superconductive occurs abruptly, there must be a time period, arbitrarily small, during which you would watch entropy decrease.

There are those who cite life and evolution as examples of building order out of chaos.  Sounds reasonable to me, and the arguments against the idea sound circular and defensive.  However, it all seems to net out in the end.  Take a puppy, for instance.  Evolutionary processes worked for millions of years to create the domestic dog.  Entropy-decreasing processes seem to responsible for the formation of a puppy from its original constituents, sperm and an egg.  But then the puppy spends years ripping up your carpet, chewing the legs of the furniture and ripping your favorite magazines into little pieces; in short, increasing the disorder of the universe.  Net effect?  Zero. 

Tags: thermodynamics, entropy, heat death, nanotech, superconductivity, life, evolution
Categories: Cosmology | Life | Nanotech | Physics | Science