Programmed Reality

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

I had a brainstorm the other day on how we might someday be able to walk through a door.  And I don't mean from a metaphysical standpoint, I mean really physically walk through the door.  If you think about it, there really should be a way to make it happen.  After all, our bodies and the door are almost 100% empty space.  I would argue that Programmed Reality says it is completely empty space, but that topic will have to be for another post.

An electron, in Newtonian mechanics, can be stuck on one side of an impenetrable barrier.  In QM, however, its wave function can be partly on one side of a barrier and partly on the other side at the same time, which allows for the possibility of “tunneling,” a common effect in semiconductors.  In fact, were it not for the wave function nature of QM, transistors, and therefore cell phones, computers, satellites, and all other sorts of modern technologies would not even exist!

Interestingly, this theory does not only apply to subatomic particles, but also to macroscopic objects like me, you, and Donald Trump’s hair.  Since our bodies are composed of particles, each of which are just wave functions, your body is simply the superposition of these zillions of wave functions, thereby creating its own “macroscopic” wave function.  Theoretically, for this reason, you have a finite probability of passing through a wooden door, much like the electron tunneling effect.  But, don’t try it.  Because, when you sum up all of your constituent particles’ wave functions, there is a mathematical tendency for the probabilities of large-scale anomalous quantum effects to be extremely small.  It is analogous to flipping pennies.  The odds that a single penny comes up heads (electron passes through the barrier) is 50-50, but the odds that 1000 pennies all come up heads (you pass through the door) is 2^^1000 (equivalent to a 1 followed by 301 zeros, an impossible to imagine large number) to 1.  And you have a helluva lot more than 1000 subatomic particles in your body.

But what if those particles in our bodies and/or the door were made to be coherent?  That is, in our penny analogy, all pennies behave the same behavior.  Impossible?  Not so fast, Einstein.  LASERs are a great example of coherence, where all photons are of the same frequency and are in phase.  Aren't particles of matter just a different form of particle from the photons and could they be organized to be coherent as well?

Turns out that is exactly the case and it is known as Macroscopic Quantum Tunneling.  U of Illinois researchers have demonstrated such an effect with electrons (real matter) in a nanowire.  Superconductors, superfluidity, Bose–Einstein condensates are examples of properties that seem to defy conventional physics by having their constituents occupy coherent states.  Macroscopic Quantum Coherence is a predicted property, yet to be observed in the laboratory, but probably inevitable, whereby all atoms in the piece of matter observing that property are in-phase and are described by a single quantum wavefunction.  Well, that wavefunction allows for the possibility of matter being anywhere, or "tunneling" through a thin enough membrane of material.  Let's say that, not unlike a laser, we could get all of the atoms in our bodies to be coherent.  Might it not be possible to "tunnel" through a thin membrane of coherent material?  

Effectively, we would have walked through a door!

Yes, I know that all of the different atoms in our bodies might not be made to be coherent with each other.  Then again, think about radio waves of different frequencies.  In general, they can't be in phase with each other, except at one particular point.  Fourier analysis of a waveform with a discontinuity, like a step function or a delta function, has, at the point of the discontinuity, all frequencies in phase.  Could there ultimately be a way to accomplish that with the mere several dozen atomic frequencies present in our bodies (And who cares if that stray bit of Uranium in your spleen is left behind on the other side of the door.  Would you really miss it?)  So maybe the trick is to pulse the coherence into your body just as you walk through the door.

Then there is the problem of how to get each planar sliver of your body to have the same tunneling capability sequentially.  Like, so you don't end up with a door stuck in your chest, all Jeff Goldblum-like.  Seems to me that maybe it's just a matter of applying continuous pulses of coherence into your body as you walk through the door.  For each planar sliver, one of the pulses will eventually make you progress to the next sliver.  Just hope the machine doesn't break down midway through.

So, there you have it.  One, ultra high frequency multi-atomic coherence pulser.  And you're walking through walls.  

Tags: tunneling, quantum coherence, quantum mechanics
Categories: Future Tech | Nanotech | Physics | Quantum Mechanics | Science

Tachyons, entanglement, cold fusion, dark matter, galactic filaments.  Just when you thought physics couldn't get any stranger...

- THE VERY COLD: Fractional Quantum Hall Effect: When electrons are magnetically confined and cooled to a third of a degree above absolute zero (See more here), they seem to break down into sub-particles that act in synchronization, but with fractional charges, like 1/3, or 3/7.

- THE VERY HIGH PRESSURE: Strange Matter: The standard model of physics includes 6 types of quarks, including the 2 ("up" and "down") that make up ordinary matter.  Matter that consists of "strange" quarks, aka Strange Matter, would be 10 times as heavy as ordinary matter.  Does it exist?  Theoretically, at very high densities, such as the core of neutron stars, such matter may exist.  A 1998 space shuttle experiment seems to have detected some, but repeat experiments have not yielded the same results.

- THE VERY LARGE DIMENSIONAL: Multidimensional Space: String theories say that we live in a 10-dimensional space, mostly because it is the only way to make quantum mechanics and general relativity play nicely together.  That is, until physicist Garrett Lisi came along and showed how it could be done with eight dimensional space and objects called octonions.  String theorists were miffed, mostly because Lisi is not university affiliated and spends most of his time surfing in Hawaii.

- THE VERY HOT: Quark-Gloun Plasma: Heat up matter to 2 trillion degrees and neutrons and protons fall apart into a plasma of quarks called quark-gluon plasma.  In April of 2005, QGP appeared to have been created at the Brookhaven National Laboratory's Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC).

My view on all this is that it is scientific business as usual.  100 years ago, we lived in a smaller world; a world described solely by Newtonian Mechanics, our ordinary everyday view of how the world works.  Then, along came relativity and quantum mechanics.  Technological advances in laboratory equipment and optics allowed us to push the limits of speed and validate Relativity, which ultimately showed that Newtonian Mechanics was just an approximation of the larger, more encompassing theory of Relativity at slow speeds.  Similarly we pushed the limits of probing the very small and validated Quantum Mechanics, which showed that Newtonian Mechanics was just an approximation of the larger, more encompassing theory of Quantum Mechanics at large scales.  In the 1960's, we pushed the limits of heat and energy, discovered  and found that our Quantum Mechanical / Relativistic Theory of the world was really just an approximation at low temperatures of a larger theory that had to encompass Quantum Chromodynamics.  Now, we are pushing the limits of temperature, or the slowing down of particles, and discovering that there must be an even larger theory that describes the world, that explains the appearance of fractional charges at extremely low temperatures.  Why does this keep happening and where does it end?

Programmed Reality provides an explanation.  In fact, it actually provides two.  

In one case, the programmers of our reality created a complex set of physical laws that we are slowly discovering.  Imagine a set of concentric spheres, with each successive level outward representing a higher level scientific theory of the world that encompasses faster speeds, higher temperatures, larger scales, colder temperatures, higher energies, etc.  How deep inside the sphere of knowledge are we now?  Don't know, but this is a model that puts it in perspective.  It is a technological solution to the philosophy of Deism.

The second possibility is that as we humans push the limits of each successive sphere of physical laws that were created for us, the programmers put in place a patch that opens up the next shell of discovery, not unlike a game.  I prefer this model, for a number of reasons.  First of all, wouldn't it be a lot more fun and interesting to interact with your creations, rather than start them on their evolutionary path and then pay no further attention?  Furthermore, this theory offers the perfect explanation for all of those scientific experiments that have generated anomalous results that have never been reproducible.  The programmers simply applied the patch before anyone else could reproduce the experiment.

Interestingly, throughout the years, scientists have fooled themselves into thinking that the discovery of everything was right around the corner.  In the mid-20th century, the ultimate goal was the Unified Field Theory.  Now, it is called a TOE, or Theory of Everything.

Let's stop thinking we're about to reach the end of scientific inquiry and call each successive theory a TOM, or Theory of More.

Because the only true TOE is Programmed Reality.  QED.

Tags: physics, programmed reality, cosmology, quantum mechanics, fractional quantum hall effect, strange matter, strangelets, multi-dimensions, string theory, quark-gluon plasma, quarks, qcd, quantum chromodynamics, toe, gut, grand unified theory, unified field theory, entanglement, cold fusion, tachyons, dark matter, galactic filaments
Categories: Cosmology | Future Tech | Particle Physics | Physics | Programmed Reality | Quantum Mechanics | Science

Evidence for Programmed Reality is starting to pour in from all fields.  The latest comes from Gamma-ray imaging from deep space.  Here's the deal:

Extremely high energy photons are known as gamma rays and are generated only in really cool places like Cern and supermassive black holes that power galaxies.  The cosmologically-originated gamma rays tend to come in bursts and there are special telescopes, such as MAGIC (Major Atmospheric Gamma-ray Imaging Cherenkov Telescope) that detect and measure these bursts.  According to all known laws of physics, all photons no matter their energy level travel at exactly the same speed, namely the speed of light.  Problem is that several gamma ray detectors have noticed that gamma rays from distant galaxies arrive on earth at slightly different times, which makes no sense.

Unless you consider that space is quantized.  Then, the photons have to work their way through the quantum "froth" and the low energy photons can do it easier than the high energy ones, much like radio waves through a low pass filter.  So says Italian physicist Giovanni Amelino-Camelia.  A couple references on this theory include an FXQi article and a recent article from New Scientist.

The reason this effect isn't normally noticed is that the influence of quantized spacetime is so small, conventional experiments will not demonstrate its impact.  However, as we probe deeper into space and increase the sensitivity of our instruments, we ultimately get to a point where we measure things that demonstrate that the status quo in physics is just an approximation, much as Newtonian physics is just an approximation of Relativistic physics at slow speeds or Quantum Mechanics at large scales.  The recent quantization noise in the GEO600 Gravity Wave Detector is a case in point.  Because it is the most sensitive instrument of its kind, it has reached a resolution limitation that may indicate the granularity of the universe.  With MAGIC, a similar situation exists.  Because it is highly sensitive, it can detect signals whose origin are so far away that they allow for propagation deviations to occur over such a vast region of space.  The 4 minute anomaly that MAGIC observed occurs over 500 million light years.  That means that it is detecting a deviation of 1 part in about 65000000000000 (65 trillion), which apparently is enough to break known laws of physics.

I'm interested in this because the underlying reason for this may very well be the quantization of space.  If so, this and the GEO600 experiments are the first to detect it.  And, for anyone who hasn't read "The Universe - Solved!" or meandered through this website, I ask the question:

Why might reality be quantized and not continuous?

It takes an infinite amount of resources to create a continuous reality, but a finite amount to create a quantized reality.  By resources, I refer to bits, the information that it takes to model reality.  In order to program a virtual reality, there must be quantization.  It is impossible to develop a program with unlimited resolution.  So the very fact that our reality is quantized may be considered strong evidence that reality is programmed.

What other reason could there be?   

   
Tags: gamma, gamma rays, deep space, programmed reality, simulation, magic, speed of light, photons, quantum froth, quantum foam
Categories: Cosmology | Physics | Programmed Reality | Quantum Mechanics | Science

Physicists tell us that gravity is one of the four fundamental forces of nature.  And yet it behaves quite differently than the other three.  A New Scientist article breaks down the oddities, a few of which are reproduced here:

- Gravity only pulls.  It doesn't appear to have an opposing effect, like other forces do.  Notwithstanding the possibility that dark energy is an example of "opposite polarity" gravity, possibly due to unseen dimensions, there appears to be no solid evidence of it as there is with all other forces.

- The strength of other forces are comparable in magnitude, while gravity checks in at 40 orders of magnitude weaker.

- The fine-tuned universe, a favorite topic of this site, includes some amazing gravity-based characteristics.  The balance of early universe expansion and gravitational strength had to balance to within 1 part in 1,000,000,000,000,000 in order for life to form.

The Anthropic Principle explains all this via a combination of the existance of zillions (uncountably large number) of parallel universes with the idea that we can only exist in the one where all the variables line up perfectly for matter and life to form.  But that seems to me to be a pretty complex argument with a few embedded leaps of faith that make most religions look highly logical in comparison.

Then there is the Programmed Reality theory, which as usual, offers a perfect explanation without the need for the hand-waving Anthropic Principle and the "Many Worlds"
interpretation of quantum mechanics.  Gravity is not like other forces, so let's not keeping trying to "force" it to be (pardon the pun.)  Instead, it is there to keep us grounded on the planet in which we play out our reality, offering the perfect balance of "pull" to keep every fly ball from flying out of the stadium (regardless of the illegal substance abuse of the hitter), to make kite flying a real possibility, and to enable a large number of other enriching activities.  While, at the same time, being weak enough to allow basketball players to dunk and planes to fly, and to enable a large number of other enriching activities.  Our scientists will continue the investigate the nature of gravity via increasingly complex projects like the LHC, unpeeling the layers of complexity that the programmers put in place to keep scientific endeavor, research, and employment moving forward. 

   
Tags: science, gravity, physics, anthropic principle, programmed reality, simulation, physics, science, cosmology, big bang, unified field theory
Categories: Cosmology | Programmed Reality | Physics | Science