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mysticstronomy · 3 years ago

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WHAT IS QUANTUM PHYSICS??

Blog#97

Wednesday, June 16th, 2021

Welcome back,

What is quantum physics? Put simply, it’s the physics that explains how everything works: the best description we have of the nature of the particles that make up matter and the forces with which they interact.

Quantum physics underlies how atoms work, and so why chemistry and biology work as they do. You, me and the gatepost – at some level at least, we’re all dancing to the quantum tune. If you want to explain how electrons move through a computer chip, how photons of light get turned to electrical current in a solar panel or amplify themselves in a laser, or even just how the sun keeps burning, you’ll need to use quantum physics.

The difficulty – and, for physicists, the fun – starts here. To begin with, there’s no single quantum theory. There’s quantum mechanics, the basic mathematical framework that underpins it all, which was first developed in the 1920s by Niels Bohr, Werner Heisenberg, Erwin Schrödinger and others. It characterizes simple things such as how the position or momentum of a single particle or group of few particles changes over time.

But to understand how things work in the real world, quantum mechanics must be combined with other elements of physics – principally, Albert Einstein’s special theory of relativity, which explains what happens when things move very fast – to create what are known as quantum field theories.

Three different quantum field theories deal with three of the four fundamental forces by which matter interacts: electromagnetism, which explains how atoms hold together; the strong nuclear force, which explains the stability of the nucleus at the heart of the atom; and the weak nuclear force, which explains why some atoms undergo radioactive decay.

Over the past five decades or so these three theories have been brought together in a ramshackle coalition known as the “standard model” of particle physics. For all the impression that this model is slightly held together with sticky tape, it is the most accurately tested picture of matter’s basic working that’s ever been devised. Its crowning glory came in 2012 with the discovery of the Higgs boson, the particle that gives all other fundamental particles their mass, whose existence was predicted on the basis of quantum field theories as far back as 1964.

Conventional quantum field theories work well in describing the results of experiments at high-energy particle smashers such as CERN’s Large Hadron Collider, where the Higgs was discovered, which probe matter at its smallest scales. But if you want to understand how things work in many less esoteric situations – how electrons move or don’t move through a solid material and so make a material a metal, an insulator or a semiconductor, for example – things get even more complex.

The billions upon billions of interactions in these crowded environments require the development of “effective field theories” that gloss over some of the gory details. The difficulty in constructing such theories is why many important questions in solid-state physics remain unresolved – for instance why at low temperatures some materials are superconductors that allow current without electrical resistance, and why we can’t get this trick to work at room temperature.

But beneath all these practical problems lies a huge quantum mystery. At a basic level, quantum physics predicts very strange things about how matter works that are completely at odds with how things seem to work in the real world. Quantum particles can behave like particles, located in a single place; or they can act like waves, distributed all over space or in several places at once. How they appear seems to depend on how we choose to measure them, and before we measure they seem to have no definite properties at all – leading us to a fundamental conundrum about the nature of basic reality.

This fuzziness leads to apparent paradoxes such as Schrödinger’s cat, in which thanks to an uncertain quantum process a cat is left dead and alive at the same time. But that’s not all. Quantum particles also seem to be able to affect each other instantaneously even when they are far away from each other. This truly bamboozling phenomenon is known as entanglement, or, in a phrase coined by Einstein (a great critic of quantum theory), “spooky action at a distance”. Such quantum powers are completely foreign to us, yet are the basis of emerging technologies such as ultra-secure quantum cryptography and ultra-powerful quantum computing.

But as to what it all means, no one knows. Some people think we must just accept that quantum physics explains the material world in terms we find impossible to square with our experience in the larger, “classical” world. Others think there must be some better, more intuitive theory out there that we’ve yet to discover.

In all this, there are several elephants in the room. For a start, there’s a fourth fundamental force of nature that so far quantum theory has been unable to explain. Gravity remains the territory of Einstein’s general theory of relativity, a firmly non-quantum theory that doesn’t even involve particles. Intensive efforts over decades to bring gravity under the quantum umbrella and so explain all of fundamental physics within one “theory of everything” have come to nothing.

Meanwhile cosmological measurements indicate that over 95 per cent of the universe consists of dark matter and dark energy, stuffs for which we currently have no explanation within the standard model, and conundrums such as the extent of the role of quantum physics in the messy workings of life remain unexplained. The world is at some level quantum – but whether quantum physics is the last word about the world remains an open question.

SOURCE: www.newscientist.com

COMING UP!!

(Saturday, June 19th, 2021)

“WHAT IS SPACE-TIME MADE OF??”

#Astronomy #astronomyfacts #astrophysics #astronomyclub #astronomylover #spacecraft #outer space #alternate universe #white universe #Parallel Universe #how will the universe end #marvel #quantum physics #physics #universe

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wisdomrays · 3 years ago

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TAFAKKUR: Part 360

THE SUB-ATOMIC WORLD AND CREATION

Out of the three famous papers that Albert Einstein published in 1905, On a Heuristic Point of View Concerning the Production and Transformation of Light explicitly stated the quantum hypothesis for electromagnetic radiation, and On the Movement of Small Particles Suspended in Stationary Liquids Required by the Molecular-Kinetic Theory of Heat developed the theory that led to the establishment of the sub-atomic nature of matter.

Following the classical Newtonian physics and under the spell of developments in science, physicists of the 19th century claimed that they could explain every phenomenon in the universe. E. Dubois Reymond, at a meeting held in memory of Leibniz in the Prussian Academy in 1880 was a bit humbler: 'There have remained eight enigmas in the universe, three of which we are unable to solve yet: The essential nature of matter and force, the essence and origin of movement and the nature of consciousness. The three of the rest that we can solve although with great difficulties are: The origin of life, the order in the universe and the apparent purpose for it and the origin of thought and language. As for the seventh, we can say nothing about it. It is the individual free will.

The sub-atomic world threw all scientists into confusion. This world and the 'quantum cosmology' which it introduces, rather than being a heap or assemblage of concrete things, is made up of five elements: the mass of the electron in the field where an action occurs (M), the mass of the proton (m), the electrical charge which these two elements carry, the energy quanta (h)-the amount of the energy remaining during the occurrence of the action-and the unchanging speed of light (c). These five elements of the universe can even be reduced to action or energy waves travelling through space in tiny packets or quanta. Since the quanta required for an action are special to it and exist independently of the quanta required for the previous action, it becomes impossible to predict the exact state of the universe. If the universe is in t1 state now, it cannot be predicted that it will be the same in t2 state. Paul Renteln, assistant professor of physics at California State University, writes: 'Modern physicists live in two different worlds. In one world we can predict the future position and momentum of a particle if we know its present position and momentum. This is the world of classical physics, including the physics described by Einstein's theory of gravity, the general theory of relativity. In the second world it is impossible to predict the exact position and momentum of a particle. This is the probabilistic, subatomic world of quantum mechanics. General relativity and quantum mechanics are the two great pillars that form the foundation of 20th-physics, and yet their precepts assume two different kinds of universe.' (American Scientist, Nov.-Dec, 1991, p.508)

The real nature of this sub-atomic world and the events taking place in it make it impossible to construct a theory to describe them, because they cannot be observed. One reason for their unobservability is that, as Renteln writes in an attempt to propose a theory which he calls quantum gravity to reconcile the two different worlds of classical and quantum physics, 'the events take place at a scale far smaller than any realm yet explored by experimental physics. It is only when particles approach to within about 10-35 meter that their gravitational interactions have to be described in the same quantum-mechanical terms that we adopt to understand the other forces of nature. This distance is 1024 times smaller than the diameter of an atom-which means that the characteristic scale of quantum gravity bears the same relation to the size of an atom as an atom bears to the size of the solar system. To probe such small distances would require a particle accelerator 1015 times more powerful than the proposed Superconducting Supercollider.'

At the outset of this century, electrons surrounding the nucleus of an atom were thought to orbit the nucleus like planets in a miniature solar system. However, later researches modified that view. The electron is now understood to be more of an energy field cloud fluctuating around a nucleus. The nucleus itself seemed to be composed of two smaller constituents-protons and neutrons. However, in the 1960s, physicists Murray Gell-Mann and George Zweig confirmed by experiments that protons and neutrons were made up of even more elementary particles, which Gell-Mann called 'quarks.'

Quarks cannot be seen, not just because they are too small but also because they do not seem to be quite 'all there.' Quarks are better described as swirls of dynamic energy, which means that solid matter is not, at its fundamental level, solid at all. Anything you hold in your hand and which seems solid, is really a quivering, shimmering, lacy lattice of energy, pulsating millions of times every second as billions of fundamental particles gyrate and spin in an eternal dance. At its most fundamental level, everything is energy held together by forces of incredible power. This is not all that makes us unable to predict even the nearest future of the universe. According to Werner Heisenberg's theories, at just the time when we can know either where a particle is or how fast it is travelling, we cannot know both. This is because the very act of measuring the particle alters its behaviour. Measuring the particle's speed changes its position, and measuring its position changes its speed.

However, the unpredictability in the sub-atomic world does not change anything in our everyday, predictable world. Everything works according to the basic laws of classical Newtonian physics. Why is this so and how should our view of the world and events be? Scientists who believe in the existence of God and His creation of the universe suggest that creation was not a single event. That is, God did not create the universe as a single act and then leave it to operate according to the laws He established. Rather, creation is a continuous act (creatio continua). In other words, roughly like the movement of energy or electricity and its illuminating our world by means of bulbs, existence continuously comes from God and returns to and perishes in Him. Through the manifestation of all His Names, God continuously creates, annihilates and re-creates the universe. Some medieval Muslim scholarly saints such as Muhy al-Din ibn al- 'Arabi and Mawlana Jalal al-Din al-Rumi called these pairs of acts as the continuous cycle of coming into existence and dying. Because of the incredible speed of this movement, the universe appears to be uniform and continuous. Rumi likens this to the fast spinning of a staff on one end of which there is fixed a light. When spun at speed, the light on the end of the staff appears as if a circle of light. Unable to explain the extreme complexity of existence and the events taking place, some scientists assert that everything is in chaos and attribute the formation of the universe as it is to mere chance. According to them, other universes could have formed, they simply did not, and there is no reason that the universe is the way it is. Given that it is impossible for even three or more unconscious things moving at random to come together by themselves to form even the simplest entity, it is highly questionable whether a rational person can accept that the wonderful order prevailing in the universe according to which we can direct our lives can be explained without attributing it to a supernatural intellect. A. Cressy Morrison writes:

The proverbial penny may turn up heads ten time running and the chance of an eleventh is not expected but is still one in two, but the chance of a run of ten heads is very small. Suppose you have a bag containing one hundred marbles, ninety-nine black and one white. Shake the bag and let out one. The chance that the first marble out is the white one is exactly one in one hundred. Now put the marbles back and start over again. The chance of the white coming out is still one in a hundred, but the chance of the white coming out first twice in succession is one in ten thousand. Now try a third time, and the chance of the white coming out three times in succession is one hundred times ten thousand or one in a billion. Try another time or two and the figures become astronomical. The results of chance are as closely bound by law as the fact that two and two make four. All the nearly exact requirements of life could not be brought about on one planet at one time by chance. The size of the earth, the distance from the sun, the thickness of the earth's crust, the quantity of water, the amount of carbon dioxide, the volume of nitrogen, the emergence of man and his survival-all point to order out of chaos, to design and purpose, and to the fact that, according to the inexorable laws of mathematics, all these could not occur by chance simultaneously on one planet once in a billion times. It could so occur, but it did not so occur. (Man Does Not Stand Alone, New York, pp.98-9.)

Attributing the impossible to chance is a trick of the human mind, its stubborn resistance, which confuses a theoretical possibility with the actual facts. For example, it is possible that the Pacific Ocean has now changed into milk, but actually it has not. As it is impossible to construct a building on a flowing stream, God Almighty spread over the unpredictability of the sub-atomic world the veil of the speed of its movement and made the universe dependent on what we call laws. It is for this reason that everything in the outer face of nature works according to the basic laws of classical Newtonian physics. However, it is a matter of controversy between the two schools of Ahl al-Sunna wa 'l-Jama'a whether the universe has a continuous existence working according to established laws and things accordingly have perpetual properties or God continuously creates the universe and orders each component of it what to do at every moment. The followers of the Maturidi School assert that God created the universe and set it to operate according to certain laws which He established, giving each thing certain properties. For example, fire burns because God gave it the quality of burning. Whereas, the followers of the Ash'ari School maintain that the universe does not have a perpetual, established existence and reality. Nor do things have essential qualities of themselves. God creates the universe anew each 'moment' and directs it continuously by ordering each thing to do what it must do. For example, fire does not essentially have the quality of burning, rather, God gives it the order to burn and it burns. Since according to the dictates of life in the universe, He usually orders it to burn, we think that fire essentially has the quality of burning.

As we accept the 'relative' truth of both Newtonian and quantum physics at the same time, we can also accept the truth of the views of both schools of Muslim faith. As a matter of belief and as life at the most fundamental level of existence as in the sub-atomic world points out, God is continuously active, creating the universe anew and directly administering it. While at practical level, life will be impossible for us if we do not accept or assume the uniform continuity or stability of existence. What would life be if we were conscious that the sun would not rise tomorrow morning or that we might not live a second longer, although it is theoretically conceivable both that the sun might not rise tomorrow and that we might not survive a second longer?

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random2908 · 4 years ago

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Back in the 18th and 19th centuries, a lot of scientists believed in a substance called the luminiferous ether (or aether if you’re British) permeating the universe. It was never uncontroversial, but the reasoning behind it was actually pretty sound, philosophically, based on what was known then.

Here’s what they knew.

1) A wave is a periodic (oscillatory) disturbance that propagates through a medium. For example, perhaps the most easily pictured mechanical wave: water waves are the surface of the water going up and down. They appear to propagate, in that the “up” part of the wave moves forward across the surface, but meanwhile the water itself is only ever moving up and down, never actually forward. (You can see this if you look at a buoy in the ocean.) This is very classic wave behavior: the disturbance propagates, but the medium only moves according to the disturbance, not the propagation. Another example: sound waves are air molecules compressing and decompressing. This time the disturbance is in the same direction as the propagation, but it’s still the case that the air molecules move back and forth--compress and decompress--rather than moving persistently forward, even though the disturbance is propagating forward (i.e. the sound travels).

2) Waves have certain universal behaviors and properties, regardless of the type of disturbance or the medium they’re disturbing. They all reflect, refract, and diffract. This behavior can all be calculated and traced back to basic mathematical descriptions of a wave-as-defined; that is, this behavior all follows mathematically from the basic assumption that you have a disturbance on a medium that’s propagating.

3) Light reflects, refracts, and diffracts. Therefore, math says it must be a wave.

Ok, but if light is a wave, what kind of disturbance is it? Of what medium?

Well, whatever the medium was, they decided to name it the luminiferous ether. And then they set out to figure out what exactly this ether consisted of.

As you probably know, they never found it. In the mid-19th century, they figured out that light waves were a disturbance of electromagnetic fields. They weren’t really sure what to do with this information, in the context of the ether. Was there just electromagnetism everywhere? (Late 20th century scientists might say yes.) But--ignoring that--the thing is, if the ether is everywhere in the universe, and the Earth is orbiting the sun, surely the Earth must be moving through the ether. This, they thought, would make it seem like--from the perspective of someone standing on the surface of the Earth--there was an “ether wind” on the surface of the Earth, blowing in the opposite direction of the Earth’s orbit. And if there was a wind, then light should propagate faster in the direction of the wind, and slower perpendicular to it. So they set out to do a careful experiment to measure the difference in the speed of light against the motion of the Earth vs perpendicular to it, and found... nothing.

This pretty much killed the ether theory, leaving nothing in its place. This, in turn, led to, about 15 years later, Albert Einstein saying “well, maybe the speed of light isn’t relative to motion at all” which led to a mathematical reworking of literally everything, called Special Relativity, with some truly bizarre results, such as magnets. I won’t get into that in this post, because I’m talking about the ether.

In the early 20th century, the theory of Quantum Mechanics was invented, and it had a concept of wave-particle duality: that a single entity could, in some contexts, act like a particle, and in other contexts, act like a wave. This basically permanently laid the ether to rest, from a philosophical point of view. If light was both a wave and a particle, you didn’t need a medium for your disturbance, because a particle can just travel ballistically through vacuum. It doesn’t rule out ether, but it does obviate it. And simplicity is always better, so why tack on a concept of ether if it isn’t necessary.

But now, in the 21st century, some people who may not be cranks want to bring the theory of ether back. Because the problem is we’ve got this stuff called dark matter and dark energy. And, dark matter, ok, I don’t really have a problem with dark matter. I feel like there’s a lot of really good evidence for it, and it’s just a thing, just a thing we haven’t discovered in a lab yet, so we can’t put a name to it. Dark energy, though, that’s a separate issue. That’s not a thing (and that bothers the hell out of me). What it is is a fudge-factor in an equation because the universe is, on full-universal scale, behaving in a way people think doesn’t make sense. (Namely, it’s expanding, but at a rate that varies over time.) So they just add “dark energy” in as a placeholder for “doesn’t make sense.” That’s bad. Worse than ether. But I read an article a few months ago about how someone has an ether theory that can explain away dark energy (and maybe dark matter, too, although I’m less invested in that). And quite frankly I don’t believe in dark energy, so I’m going to side with whatever theory axes it. So: ether’s back on the table!

[Caveat, blah blah blah, I have a PhD in physics, but cosmology is not my subfield, so you shouldn’t necessarily consider “I don’t believe in dark energy” to be an expert’s opinion. Sometimes I’m giving you my expert opinion, like when I say, “I don’t believe in Planck lengths,” that’s pretty basic philosophy of science that even I--a scientist, not a philosopher--can weigh in on. When I say, “I don’t believe the universe splits into two every time a measurement happens” that’s also my expert opinion but I mean that in the same way I mean “I don’t believe in Jesus,” like, my objections to it are largely aesthetic and cultural but I know damn well it’s completely unfalsifiable and just a matter of faith. When I say “I don’t believe in dark energy” I’m mostly just being salty.]

#physics #luminiferous ether

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themadvigilantist · 5 years ago

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things about time lords that was new to me and/or i forgot about that i’m now going to consider canon for basically every time lord in a fight:

Time Lords' physical forms are only fragments of much vaster multi-dimensional ones existing in a realm invisible to humans; this aspect is able to create coincidences around a Time Lord. (and everyone is so surprised by how strong they are. gallifreyans are (possibly) stronger than the hulk and captain marvel full force. k bye)

While the human eye was just a dish of light-sensitive cells, leaving the brain to do all of the processing, the Time Lord retina was capable of thinking on its own. As a result, on Gallifrey, the retina replaced fingers as the main method of communicating with machines. (a brain for the skull and a brain for each eye and just holy shit. they can feel people with their eyesssssss.) Gallifreyan eyes were better at seeing in general, as well as in the dark, as they could gather and enhance available light. They could notice incredible amount of detail from distances of at least one hundred yards away, as well as people that were well beyond the human line of sight. Gallifreyans had incredibly precise control of their eyes (which explains a shit ton on why the doctor’s eyes just get bigger when they can’t find a companion and have to resort to yelling their name. it’s like that meme about yelling something to get them to respond but extreme sports edition. like extreme marco polo or waldo like holy shit).

Gallifreyans could survive some falls which would shatter the bones of humans.

If pushed from a height into a liquid, a Time Lord body was capable of protecting them, sealing up the lungs to conserve air for a short period (see Hell Bent and 12′s constant diving)

Gallifreyans could survive extreme cold, due to having a "souped-up metabolism"; they could even withstand exposure to a vacuum for a few minutes with the only consequence being blindness rather than death. They could also survive extreme heat. They could even survive the subzero temperatures and extremely low pressure of vacuum for around six minutes, and survive electric shocks that would be fatal to humans.

Röntgen radiation affected Gallifreyans so minimally that Gallifreyan children were routinely given radioactive toys in the nursery. They could, at will, absorb very high doses of Röntgen radiation, transform it into a form harmless to humans, and expel it from their bodies. Radiation of other kinds could be fatal, but even then a Gallifreyan could handle much higher doses than a normal human could, and could hold out much longer than even most terrestrial life-forms, although a unique form of radiation around the Lakertyan System was only fatal to Time Lords while being harmless to humans.

Gallifreyans needed less sleep than humans, and could make do with as little as an hour.

A Gallifreyan who was severely injured without actually needing to regenerate to heal the damage would generally slip into a healing coma, and devote all his or her energy to healing the injury. While in the coma, they would appear to be dead.

Time Lords also seem to have an increased resilience to higher frequencies of sound.

Gallifreyans could be disabled by a blow to the left shoulder, which possessed a vulnerable nerve cluster.

Gallifreyans were capable of resisting attempts to disintegrate their bodies, despite being shown capable of disintegrating other organisms.

Early Gallifreyans deliberately infected themselves with the Yssgaroth taint to give themselves a biological advantage.

Time Lords occasionally displayed, or referred to, the ability to fly. (cough cough mary poppins, saxon, missy, that time lord messenger, tenth doctor when he got back to normal and cradled the master and cried after lucy shot him cough cough)

Even without regeneration, Gallifreyans had considerable lifespans. Within one regeneration, Gallifreyans could live for hundreds of years, yet look much younger than a human of equivalent age. (which means the curator in the 50th Anniversary of Doctor Who is 500 yrs old in that face so like imagine young tom baker but with just the short curly cut like wow)

Physical stress could cause Gallifreyans to age.

the Time Destructor may have contributed to ageing

Gallifreyan children grew at about the same rate as humans of the same age. After this point, ageing would slow, with the Gallifreyan looking like a teenager for decades. ( @girl-in-the-tardis @gallifreylegacy so basically those kids end up being like twilight minus the disco ball vampirism when they graduate college and get the highest occupation of their job. like they could be considered both the youngest president but also the oldest being visually a teenager but actually 90 yrs old. like No. 5 from Umbrella Academy)

90 is teens, 750 is middle-aged and senility age when one time lord gets over 12,000 years old (depending on the regeneration i guess???)

Gallifreyans had all the senses possessed by humans, and to generally superior degrees. Gallifreyans also had extraordinary reflexes and precision timing, literally superhuman.

In the space of four nanoseconds, a Time Lord can move fast enough to dodge shots fired at them whilst devising a plan to escape. (so that trailer where 13 is like a speedster? fucking canon y’all)

Gallifreyans showed great hand-eye coordination and dexterity with a wide variety of tool and weapons.

Gallifreyans (in "younger" bodies) were, consequently, very physically able and highly athletic

A time lord perceived sounds from the TARDIS, while located several sections away in a larger spacecraft or planet.

Gallifreyans were capable of identification by taste. (see all of tenth doctor) The Gallifreyan sense of smell was equal to their sense of taste. They could do a chemical analysis of the air using their sense of smell. On some occasions Time Lords were also able to judge what time period and location they were in by the smell of the air. (this explains that comic where rose was possessed by the ninth doctor and she basically became the ninth doctor for that strip while also talking to him out loud as he responded in her head: basically 9 was remy the rat and rose was linguini the hair-controlled human k thanks. so that’s a thing)

Gallifreyans were better at coping with sudden changes in position than humans and were harder to disorient.

As well as the senses shared with humans, Gallifreyans had further senses, with at least a sixth sense. Gallifreyans had time- and spatial-related senses and physical attributes; they were able to resist fields of slow time, notice distortions and jumps in time, retain perception of local time flow, including a secondary "backwards" consciousness during jumps back in time that could overwrite the one prescribed by forward time, directly perceive the interstellar motions of cosmological bodies or their inhabitants — including sensing the "shape" of the world to the extent that they were aware when trapped in pocket dimensions — and perceive all possible timelines. Due to their time sensitive nature, Gallifreyans could retain memories of negate or alternative timelines. (so basically the whole ‘i won’t remember this’ schtick from 50th was a sham. which explains why tenth doctor was looking for rose the second he heard bad wolf but he was on gallifrey and not earth. this boy was looking for the moment but like she just didn’t appear and then the button changed into a rose shaped one like wow ok bye) The form of eidetic short-term memory, able to recall every insignificant detail of even the most moments in time (holy shit there’s no way you can win an argument with them. that’s fucking sad...for any human anYWAY). on a quantum level, their brain could receive information from possible futures, possibly without even realising it consciously. (ahaha do you mean that the tenth doctor saw different futures where he saw all outcomes of doomsday which makes all those edits where he’s living life with rose and donna as his sister fucking true but it’s also true that canonically he went, ‘nah, have tentoo im gonna skidaddle’ and left THEM OKAY BYE AGAIN). Time Lords shared a special mental connection to the structure of history. The chakras of the Time Lord nervous system could detect contours in the Time Vortex and also felt an instinctive gut revulsion towards fixed points in time.

The Time Lord brain was much larger and more complex than the human brain. The size differences effectively ruled out brain transplants from a Gallifreyan to a human, having one, two or three brainstems (so basically that whole plot in Get Out would have backfired so fucking hard. now that would have been a wild movie.) Time Lords could also separate the hemispheres of their brain, allowing them to multitask easily. Records on some planets indicated isolated cerebral hemispheres as a characteristic of Time Lords. Time Lords had an additional brain lobe dedicated to mechanical and other bodily functions, freeing the other lobes for intellectual endeavours. The autonomic functions could be artificially supplanted with a special device, allowing the Gallifreyan to think with their autonomic brain.

Gallifreyans could sense the presence of others of their own species, with the sense being specific enough to allow identification of one another just by sight, regardless of potential recent regeneration. (v and vin tend to turn this off because they like being surprised. surprises are fun.)

Body temperature of Gallifreyans are fucking Arctic or near Pluto levels, hence the layered clothing in the most hottest climate possible like what the fuck. it explains so much on why tenth doctor still donned that luau necklace thing because that was just a nice warm spring to him okay. which means if they get sick, you need oven gloves and a heat resistant suit. that’s what im gonna assume. like holy shit. no wonder that ice didn’t do shit for 10 in the 42 ep. good to know

Time Lords displayed the ability of touch-enabled mental manipulation; this manifested itself in a number of different ways, including hypnosis, mind-reading, thought sharing, the ability to relieve dementia, putting others to sleep, influence on others' dreams, memory erasure and could also transfer knowledge quickly to another person by headbutting them. In addition, they were telepathically linked to one another and could join the entire Time Lord intelligence as one. They could hold telepathic conversations over distances, but this was more difficult. They could converse with each over the astral plane, although this ability required intense concentration, and an interruption might have fatal consequences for the Time Lord. Their telepathy extended to less intelligent animals. Perhaps because of this, they had an innate ability to understand any language. In ancient times, Gallifreyans who were capable of blocking out the telepathic thoughts of other Gallifreyans were called Individuals. They usually had red-gold hair and often went on to become Young Heroes. (THAT’S ��🏾WHY 👏🏾THE 👏🏾DOCTOR 👏🏾WANTS RED 👏🏾HAIR 👏🏾👏🏾 THEY 👏🏾 WANT 👏🏾 TO 👏🏾BE 👏🏾A 👏🏾INDIVIDUAL 👏🏾👏🏾) They were highly resistant against, if not immune to, other forms of mind control. However, they were vulnerable to more powerful forms of mind control. (so basically Jessica Jones episodes 1 thru whatever episode Kilgrave doesn’t find out about Hogarth trying to inject herself with his DNA, they are immune but, episode where kilgrave injects himself with it and becomes powerful might be vulnerable to it if that same kilgrave did what cartoon kilgrave did with tony stark and used the stark tower to boost and spread his control over everyone...or you know, maybe can withstand wanda vision’s control. maybe. i have to consider pythia and the karn so, it’s a good 50 - 50 chance on kilgrave and wanda being able to mind control a time lord. like properly. so jot that down)

Gallifreyans (Time Lords) don’t have prostates.

#mv: decretum #mv: longpost #mv: reference #ooc #doctor who #egyptroyal #c: 10 #vc: 11 1/2 #oc: the scientist #c: 0 #oc: allura #oc: the technician #oc: the sargeant

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lastsonlost · 7 years ago

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Professor Stephen Hawking, the renowned British physicist and author of A Brief History of Time, has died at the age of 76.He died peacefully at his home in Cambridge in the early hours of Wednesday morning.In a statement to the Press Association, his children Lucy, Robert and Tim said: "We are deeply saddened that our beloved father passed away today.

"He was a great scientist and an extraordinary man whose work and legacy will live on for many years.

"His courage and persistence with his brilliance and humour inspired people across the world. He once said, 'It would not be much of a universe if it wasn't home to the people you love.' We will miss him forever."

The world-renowned theoretical physicist and cosmologist was best known for his work on black holes. Hawking theorized that, contrary to the prevailing scientific belief that black holes were inescapable for all forms of matter and energy, they actually emitted a form of radiation ― now known as Hawking radiation. He also played a key role in the mathematical effort to unify Einstein’s general theory of relativity with the emergent field of quantum physics.

Hawking used his position as one of the world’s most famous scientists as a platform to discuss a wide range of issues, from the existence of extraterrestrial life to the nature of philosophy. He skyrocketed to public prominence in 1988, when he published his first general-audience book, A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes. The cosmology treatise has sold approximately 10 million copies worldwide, making it one of the best-selling science books of all time.

In 1963, when he was just 21 years old, Hawking was famously diagnosed with the debilitating motor neuron disease amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. Though 80 percent of those with ALS die within five years of diagnosis, and Hawking’s own doctors gave him roughly two years to live, he survived for decades, perhaps longer than any other patient with the disease in medical history. Hawking used a wheelchair to move around and a sophisticated computer system to speak for much of his time as a public figure.

The physicist’s inspiring ― and turbulent ― personal story was dramatized in the 2014 movie “The Theory of Everything,” which was based on a memoir by Hawking’s first wife, Jane Wilde. Actor Eddie Redmayne’s portrayal of Hawking in the film won him an Oscar for best actor.

Hawking was born on Jan. 8, 1942 ― the 300th anniversary of Galileo’s death ― in Oxford, England, to Frank, a physician specializing in tropical disease, and Isobel, a medical secretary. He and his three younger siblings grew up mostly in the town of St. Albans, just north of London, in what has been described as a highly intellectually-engaged home.

At the St. Albans School, Hawking was an indifferent student, preferring to spend his time playing board games and tinkering with computers. But he nonetheless gained admittance to his father’s alma mater, University College at Oxford University, in 1959, at the age of 17.

Upon arriving at Oxford, Hawking toyed with the idea of studying either math or medicine before eventually settling on physics. His attitude toward academic work remained lackadaisical in college. He rarely attended lectures and has said that he spent only 1,000 hours on studies during his three years at Oxford, or just an hour a day.

Still, Hawking’s natural brilliance started to shine through as an undergraduate ― and he apparently felt that his tutors resented him for doing so well with so little work. When he submitted his final thesis, it was given a grade on the border between first-class honors and second-class honors, so Hawking had to face an oral exam that would determine his grade. Knowing his reputation, he reportedly told his examiners, “If you award me a First, I will go to Cambridge. If I receive a Second, I shall stay in Oxford, so I expect you will give me a First.”

He got a First. And, as promised, Hawking enrolled in graduate school at Trinity College, Cambridge in 1962, studying under the physicist Dennis Sciama and the famed astronomer Fred Hoyle. He became interested in the then-nascent study of black holes and singularities, the existence of which had been implied by Einstein’s general theory of relativity.

While studying at Cambridge, Hawking met Wilde, a fellow St. Albans native who was a student in modern languages at Westfield College in London at the time. Before the two started dating, Hawking collapsed while ice skating and couldn’t get up. His mother made him go to the doctor, who diagnosed him with ALS and estimated he had just over two years to live.

Years later, during a symposium at Cambridge on his 70th birthday, Hawking reflected on how much he struggled to stay motivated after his diagnosis. Why work so hard for a Ph.D. when you could be dead in two years?

However difficult life may seem, there is always something you can do, and succeed at. It matters that you don’t just give up.Stephen Hawking, as he celebrated his 70th birthday

“Remember to look up at the stars and not down at your feet,” he said. “Try to make sense of what you see and about what makes the universe exist. Be curious. And however difficult life may seem, there is always something you can do, and succeed at. It matters that you don’t just give up.”

Hawking’s motor control deteriorated rapidly; he was soon walking to class on crutches. Yet the disease spurred him to deepen his relationship with Wilde quickly. They married in 1965.

After receiving his doctorate in cosmology, Hawking stayed at Cambridge to continue studying some of the most essential questions about the structure of the universe. In 1968, a year after Jane gave birth their eldest son, Roger, Hawking took a post at the Institute of Astronomy at Cambridge and began the mature phase of his academic career.

Over the next decade, Hawking published a string of groundbreaking papers on cosmology and theoretical physics that made him a celebrity in the scientific community.

He and English mathematician Roger Penrose wrote key papers in the late 1960s that related the Big Bang ― the event that created the universe ― and black holes, proving that both were the result of singularities in the fabric of space-time. In the early 1970s, Hawking and several other physicists co-wrote a proof of the hypothesis that all black holes can be described in terms of just their mass, angular momentum and electric charge.

It was in 1974 that Hawking proposed what is widely considered his most significant theory: that black holes can emit subatomic particles, now known as Hawking radiation. Prior to his paper, physicists had been sure that nothing could escape the crushing gravity of a black hole. The existence of Hawking radiation also implies that black holes can eventually wither away and die, something that had previously been inconceivable to scientists.

Soon after publishing his paper, Hawking, just 32 years old, was named a fellow of the prestigious Royal Society. He briefly taught at the California Institute of Technology before assuming the position of Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge, a post dating back more than 400 years that was once held by Isaac Newton.

Though Hawking’s family life flourished during this time ― he and Jane Hawking went on to have two more children ― his health did not. He reluctantly started using a wheelchair in 1969, and by the mid-70s, he could no longer feed or clothe himself.

In 1985, Hawking contracted pneumonia while on a trip to Switzerland. Doctors performed a tracheotomy that allowed him to breathe but rendered him unable to speak naturally. At first, he communicated using word cards, which was agonizingly slow. But in 1986, computer scientist Walter Woltosz gave him a device that would vocalize words he typed using a joystick. Hawking called this system, which has since been upgraded several times, “The Computer.” Its electronic voice was an integral part of the physicist’s public image.

Hawking first came up with the idea of writing a book about cosmology for a general audience in 1982. He said he conceived of the project to “earn money to pay [his] daughter’s school fees.” The first draft of A Brief History of Time was finished in 1984, but Hawking’s publisher felt it was too difficult for laypeople to understand, so he went back to work. The revision process became more complicated after Hawking lost his voice in 1985, but he managed to publish the book in 1988.

It was a massive hit: The book was on The New York Times’ best-seller list for three years and The Sunday Times’ U.K. best-seller list for nearly five. Its publication propelled Hawking to international fame that’s endured to this day. He published five additional general-audience books on science, plus one memoir and four children’s books. He also guest-starred on both “The Simpsons” and “Star Trek: The Next Generation.”

Stephen and Jane Hawking separated after several years of tension in 1990, which Jane said was exacerbated by her husband’s newfound “fame and fortune.” The physicist began a relationship with Elaine Mason, one of his nurses. After his divorce from Jane Hawking, he married Mason in 1995.

Hawking and his ex-wife did not speak for several years, but they started communicating again after he and Mason got divorced in 2007. Stephen and Jane Hawking later began living around the corner from one another in Cambridge.

In 2011, Hawking appeared on the Discovery Channel TV series “Curiosity,” in which he reflected on the origins of the universe and rejected the likelihood of both a God and an afterlife. (He once dismissed the latter as “a fairy story for people afraid of the dark.”) Only in confronting the finite nature of death, he said, do we appreciate the remarkable beauty of life in the present.

“There is probably no heaven, and no afterlife either,” Hawking said. “We have this one life to appreciate the grand design of the universe, and for that, I am extremely grateful.”

In addition to his two former wives, Hawking is survived by three children and three grandchildren.

GODS SPEED....

#stephen hawking #R.I.P.

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scifigeneration · 7 years ago

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Stephen Hawking: Martin Rees looks back on colleague's spectacular success against all odds

by Martin Rees, University of Cambridge

Lwp Kommunikáció/Flickr, CC BY-SA

Soon after I enrolled as a graduate student at Cambridge University in 1964, I encountered a fellow student, two years ahead of me in his studies, who was unsteady on his feet and spoke with great difficulty. This was Stephen Hawking. He had recently been diagnosed with a degenerative disease, and it was thought that he might not survive long enough even to finish his PhD. But he lived to the age of 76, passing away on March 14, 2018.

It really was astonishing. Astronomers are used to large numbers. But few numbers could be as large as the odds I’d have given against witnessing this lifetime of achievement back then. Even mere survival would have been a medical marvel, but of course he didn’t just survive. He became one of the most famous scientists in the world – acclaimed as a world-leading researcher in mathematical physics, for his best-selling books and for his astonishing triumph over adversity.

Perhaps surprisingly, Hawking was rather laid back as an undergraduate student at Oxford University. Yet his brilliance earned him a first class degree in physics, and he went on to pursue a research career at the University of Cambridge. Within a few years of the onset of his disease, he was wheelchair-bound, and his speech was an indistinct croak that could only be interpreted by those who knew him. In other respects, fortune had favoured him. He married a family friend, Jane Wilde, who provided a supportive home life for him and their three children.

Early work

The 1960s were an exciting period in astronomy and cosmology. This was the decade when evidence began to emerge for black holes and the Big Bang. In Cambridge, Hawking focused on the new mathematical concepts being developed by the mathematical physicist Roger Penrose, then at University College London, which were initiating a renaissance in the study of Einstein’s theory of general relativity.

Using these techniques, Hawking worked out that the universe must have emerged from a “singularity” – a point in which all laws of physics break down. He also realised that the area of a black hole’s event horizon – a point from which nothing can escape – could never decrease. In the subsequent decades, the observational support for these ideas has strengthened – most spectacularly with the 2016 announcement of the detection of gravitational waves from colliding black holes.

Hawking at the University of Cambridge. Lwp Kommunikáció/Flickr, CC BY-SA

Hawking was elected to the Royal Society, Britain’s main scientific academy, at the exceptionally early age of 32. He was by then so frail that most of us suspected that he could scale no further heights. But, for Hawking, this was still just the beginning.

He worked in the same building as I did. I would often push his wheelchair into his office, and he would ask me to open an abstruse book on quantum theory – the science of atoms, not a subject that had hitherto much interested him. He would sit hunched motionless for hours – he couldn’t even to turn the pages without help. I remember wondering what was going through his mind, and if his powers were failing. But within a year, he came up with his best ever idea – encapsulated in an equation that he said he wanted on his memorial stone.

Scientific stardom

The great advances in science generally involve discovering a link between phenomena that seemed hitherto conceptually unconnected. Hawking’s “eureka moment” revealed a profound and unexpected link between gravity and quantum theory: he predicted that black holes would not be completely black, but would radiate energy in a characteristic way.

This radiation is only significant for black holes that are much less massive than stars – and none of these have been found. However, “Hawking radiation” had very deep implications for mathematical physics – indeed one of the main achievements of a theoretical framework for particle physics called string theory has been to corroborate his idea.

Indeed, the string theorist Andrew Strominger from Harvard University (with whom Hawking recently collaborated) said that this paper had caused “more sleepiness nights among theoretical physicists than any paper in history”. The key issue is whether information that is seemingly lost when objects fall into a black hole is in principle recoverable from the radiation when it evaporates. If it is not, this violates a deeply believed principle of general physics. Hawking initially thought such information was lost, but later changed his mind.

Hawking continued to seek new links between the very large (the cosmos) and the very small (atoms and quantum theory) and to gain deeper insights into the very beginning of our universe – addressing questions like “was our big bang the only one?”. He had a remarkable ability to figure things out in his head. But he also worked with students and colleagues who would write formulas on a blackboard – he would stare at it, say whether he agreed and perhaps suggest what should come next.

He was specially influential in his contributions to “cosmic inflation” – a theory that many believe describes the ultra-early phases of our expanding universe. A key issue is to understand the primordial seeds which eventually develop into galaxies. Hawking proposed (as, independently, did the Russian theorist Viatcheslav Mukhanov) that these were “quantum fluctuations” (temporary changes in the amount of energy in a point in space) – somewhat analogous to those involved in “Hawking radiation” from black holes.

He also made further steps towards linking the two great theories of 20th century physics: the quantum theory of the microworld and Einstein’s theory of gravity and space-time.

Declining health and cult status

In 1987, Hawking contracted pneumonia. He had to undergo a tracheotomy, which removed even the limited powers of speech he then possessed. It had been more than ten years since he could write, or even use a keyboard. Without speech, the only way he could communicate was by directing his eye towards one of the letters of the alphabet on a big board in front of him.

But he was saved by technology. He still had the use of one hand; and a computer, controlled by a single lever, allowed him to spell out sentences. These were then declaimed by a speech synthesiser, with the androidal American accent that thereafter became his trademark.

His lectures were, of course, pre-prepared, but conversation remained a struggle. Each word involved several presses of the lever, so even a sentence took several minutes to construct. He learnt to economise with words. His comments were aphoristic or oracular, but often infused with wit. In his later years, he became too weak to control this machine effectively, even via facial muscles or eye movements, and his communication – to his immense frustration – became even slower.

Hawking in zero gravity. NASA

At the time of his tracheotomy operation, he had a rough draft of a book, which he’d hoped would describe his ideas to a wide readership and earn something for his two eldest children, who were then of college age. On his recovery from pneumonia, he resumed work with the help of an editor. When the US edition of A Brief History of Time appeared, the printers made some errors (a picture was upside down), and the publishers tried to recall the stock. To their amazement, all copies had already been sold. This was the first inkling that the book was destined for runaway success, reaching millions of people worldwide.

And he quickly became somewhat of a cult figure, featuring on popular TV shows ranging from the Simpsons to The Big Bang Theory. This was probably because the concept of an imprisoned mind roaming the cosmos plainly grabbed people’s imagination. If he had achieved equal distinction in, say, genetics rather than cosmology, his triumph probably wouldn’t have achieved the same resonance with a worldwide public.

As shown in the feature film The Theory of Everything, which tells the human story behind his struggle, Hawking was far from being the archetype unworldy or nerdish scientist. His personality remained amazingly unwarped by his frustrations and handicaps. He had robust common sense, and was ready to express forceful political opinions.

However, a downside of his iconic status was that that his comments attracted exaggerated attention even on topics where he had no special expertise – for instance, philosophy, or the dangers from aliens or from intelligent machines. And he was sometimes involved in media events where his “script” was written by the promoters of causes about which he may have been ambivalent.

Ultimately, Hawking’s life was shaped by the tragedy that struck him when he was only 22. He himself said that everything that happened since then was a bonus. And what a triumph his life has been. His name will live in the annals of science and millions have had their cosmic horizons widened by his best-selling books. He has also inspired millions by a unique example of achievement against all the odds – a manifestation of amazing willpower and determination.

Martin Rees is Emeritus Professor of Cosmology and Astrophysics at the University of Cambridge.

This article was originally published on The Conversation.

#science #Stephen Hawking #Astrophysics #Big Bang #science communication #Black HOles #Cosmology #RIP Stephen Hawking #science news

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finlaylawesarcadegame · 4 years ago

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Week 1 Multi Verse Work

What is a multi verse?

A multi verse is where there is a replicated version of our world in a parallel universe. There could be other versions of ourselves living completely different lives than what we’re living in now.

The Cosmological Multiverse

The Cosmological Multiverse: The idea that the universeve expand in a super fast speed of a fraction of a second after the big bang. After this happend there were quantum fluctuations that caused sperate bubble universes to pop in existence. Each one of then started inflating itself and creating more bubbles. These universes were no longer connected with one another so they were free to develop in different way’s.

String Theory

String theory is one way physicists have attempted to unite the universe under one set of very complicated rules. However, it requires some serious theoretical reimagining of reality to make it work and it predicts a frankly ridiculous number of universe, 10 to 500 or more, all slightly different physical parameters. The calculations make sense in theory, but it’s notoriously difficult to test these ideas in reality.

The Quantum Multiverse

Hugh evertt created this theory that quantum effects cause the universe to constantly split. it could mean that decisions we make in this universe have implications for other versions of ourselves living in parallel worlds.

The Backwards Universe

The big bang might have actually created two different universes - one made mostly matter -that’s us- and one made mostly antimatter. If this theory is correct, it predicts that there should be new type of particle called a right handed neutrino. Now two observations from an experiment in antarctica may have seen one. Alternative explanations have been put forward to account for these observations, but all of them have been ruled out. What’s left is a theory suggesting a topsy- turvy universe was created in the same big bang as our own exists in parallel with it. Mirror world. In this mirror world, positive is negative, left is right, up is down and time runs backwards. It could be the most mind-melting idea ever to have emerged from Antarctic ice-but it might just be true.

Blog posts on scientists:

Hugh Everett (Many worlds interpretation):

Fifty years ago Hugh Everett devised the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, in which quantum effects spawn countless branches of the universe with different events occurring in each.The theory sounds like a bizarre hypothesis, but in fact Everett inferred it from the fundamental mathematics of quantum mechanics. Nevertheless, most physicists of the time dimissed it, and he had to abridge his Ph.D. thesis on the topic to make it seem less controversial. Discouraged, Everett left physics and worked on military and industrial mathematics and computing. Personally, he was emotionally withdrawn and a heavy drinker.He died when he was just 51, not living to see the recent respect accorded his ideas by physicists.

Max Tegmark (Four Levels theory):

According to MIT cosmologist Max Tegmark, there are four levels of parallel universes: Level 1: An infinite universe that, by the laws of probability, must contain another copy of Earth somewhere. Level 2: Other distant regions of space with different physical parameters, but the same basic laws.

Brian Greene (Nine types theory):

Dr. Brian Greene (born February 9, 1963, New York City, New York) is a Columbia University physicist and string theorist known to the general public for popularizing physics with his books The Elegant Universe, The Fabric of the Cosmos and Icarus at the Edge of Time, as well as related television specials.

Neil DeGrasse Tyson:

Neil deGrasse Tyson is an American astrophysicist, author, and science communicator. Since 1996, he has been the Frederick P. Rose Director of the Hayden Planetarium at the Rose Center for Earth and Space in New York City

Stephen Hawking:

In the 1980′s Stephen created an idea that the big bang didn't just lead to one universe but to infinite universes, each different from the other. In parallel universes things like dinosaurs could still be alive, people could be living different jobs e.t.c but the difficulty with that is that if all things are possible there’s no way to predict what the laws of physics should be in out own universe. but after drawing on new mathematical tools hawking's showed that in fact there aren't infinite variety of universes. In fact they’re not as weird and wonderful as he first thought, rather the multiple universes are similar to our own and so the laws of physics are the same.

What do you think about the idea of the Multiverse? Do you think it's real? Or not? Does it matter?

I personally think that given the information I have read there could quite possibly be a multiverse but I cannot not be entirely sure because I am no scientists so I don't know every detail behind this theory to make a proper decision.. But where ever or not it matter’s I don't think it’s something that matters too much because even if it was real we couldn't connect with that multiverse so our life's wouldn’t be affect too much.

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laceyspencer · 4 years ago

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A Comparison of BCM with BBCM-Juniper Publishers

Introduction

Today, the most prevailing cosmological model for the observable universe is the Big Bang cosmological model (BBCM) [1]. The Big Bang hypothesis states that all the current and past matter in the Universe came into existence at the same time, roughly 15 billion years ago. At this time, all matter was compacted into a very small ball with infinite density and intense heat called a Singularity. Suddenly, the Singularity began expanding, and the universe as we know it began. This model has been confronted to a variety of observations that allow one to reconstruct its expansion history, its thermal history and the structuration of matter. In order to explain new phenomena observed, new concepts such as Dark Matter (DM) and Dark Energy (DE) have been introduced, but after many decades of search, there is no clue what DM and DE are [2,3]. pointed out that at least two obvious questions exist in the Big-Bang model.

The first question remained as to how the matter and energy were in this superdense elementary particle? The second question arose from the insolvency of ideas about the explosion of a kind of “cosmic egg”, which was the explosion of the largest nuclear bomb. This point of view boils down to the assertion that “space” exploded, and not a material object. At the same time, the authors of this idea do not bother explaining what they think is a “space” and what can explode in an empty space? Therefore, many people are still working on the improvement of the Big-Bang model or the construction of other totally new cosmological models.

All the modern sciences including the BBCM are based on the materialism which holds that matter is the fundamental substance in nature, and that all things, including mental aspects and consciousness, are by-products or epiphenomena of material processes without which they cannot exist. According to this doctrine the material creates and determines consciousness, not vice versa. Now this philosophy cannot explain many life phenomena, e.g. [4,5] has discussed in quite detail about the ten dogmas of modern science based on materialism and some people even claim that it is the time now to end the materialism, e.g. [6]. The most difficult question for the materialism believers is how the first matter comes from and what is the source of forces which cause every object to move in the universe

In order to resolve these paradoxes, a novel cosmological model based on Buddhist philosophy was recently proposed by the present author [7] and therefore, we call this model as the Buddhist Cosmological Model (BCM). From this author’s judgement, BCM seems conceptually clear and logically consistent and it can explain many phenomena which belongs to the frontier problems of modern sciences. The purpose of this paper is to carry out a detailed comparison between BCM and BBCM and wish to bring the discussion to this important question further. The whole paper is divided into five sections. Section 2 summarizes the paradoxes about the materialism and BBCM. Section 3 summarizes the main points of BCM. Section 4 gives a detailed comparison between two models in a table format. Finally, section 5 makes a summary and draws some conclusions.

BBCM and its paradoxes

Following Karl Popper’s famous opinion, “All science is cosmology, I believe”, that is why I start my discussion from cosmology. Cosmology is intrinsically linked with mythology and religion as a quasi-rational elaboration of the former. As is wellknown, the Big Bang theory is still the currently most prevailing cosmological model for the observable universe [1], but it still exists many un-answered questions such as the existence of the Singularity and the reason for a sudden explosion. It is wellknown that BBCM is based on materialism in which it is stated that matter is the fundamental substance in nature, and that all things, including mental aspects and consciousness, are results of material interactions [5]. With this philosophical monism, many paradoxes can be found, and the most famous ones are Zeno’s paradoxes [8]. From my point of view, the most difficult problem should be the “creator problem” [9].

How was the first matter created and where did the force come from for creating this matter? This problem also exists in the modern string theory such as what are the strings in the universe and who makes them vibrate? [10]. As a matter of the fact, since the discovery of Einstein’s famous equation, E=mC2, it has already been proved that the fundamental assumption made in materialism is wrong since matter can be transformed into energy. Schramm [11] has pointed out that very few physical theories are in such a paradoxical situation as Big-Bang cosmology which is completely based on materialism. In this monism, there are no clear definitions of matter and consciousness. In order to explain the redshift phenomenon observed, concepts such as dark matter and dark energy had to be introduced [12], but we are still unclear what they are after many decades’ research [2,13]. Frank Wilczek [12] has optimistically told us that in theoretical physics, paradoxes are good, and paradoxes focus our attention, and make us think harder.

This is also true for me why I started to doubt the materialism. Through reading, I have found many criticisms to materialism, e.g. [5,6]. Due to this reason, I has made a comparison of different philosophies and found that only Buddhist philosophy can match the logical consistency requirements of modern sciences and so I constructed a parallel cosmological model based on Buddhist philosophy (Buddhist cosmological model, BCM) in replacing the Big-Bang cosmological model (BBCM) [7]. I found that BCM can overcome all the paradoxes encountered by BBCM. It is very interesting to me that Einstein had reached the same conclusion: “The religion of the future will be cosmic religion. The religion, which is based on experience, which refuses dogmatic. If there’s any religion that would cope the scientific needs, it will be Buddhism...” [14].

However, I don’t think Einstein fully understood Buddhism and he was fundamentally still a believer of materialism since all the sciences he learned at that time were implicitly based on materialism. Otherwise, he should not lose the debate to Bohr in the explanation of the quantum phenomena [15]. The reason why Einstein mentioned Buddhism because he admired Spinoza. Spinoza’s concept of religion is considered as pantheism. Pantheism is alien to European cultural sphere and is more appropriate to relate to Buddhism, which is not based on the concept of personal God at all. “Einstein was from the very youth inclined to question unquestionable, suspect self-evident, test trivial. His ideas on space (commensurability) and time (simultaneity), put into the formulae that will be called Special Theory of Relativity, were fruit of some five years meditations, as recognized by Einstein himself” [16].

A Brief Introduction to BCM

Every cosmological model needs the concepts of space and time. In BCM, it is specifically emphasized that all concepts or theories including space and time are created by our human beings and they are only of meaning to our human beings and no other types of life. Human beings are accustomed to describing any phenomenon in the space-time framework. We adopt the same definitions for space and time as BBCM which was provided by Kant: “Space and time are the framework within which the mind is constrained to construct its experience of reality” Kant [17].

Different from BBCM which assumed matter is the fundamental substance in nature, BCM assumes that energy is the fundamental essence of the universe. The universe consists of two types of energy, explicit energy and dark energy. Dark energy is defined as the essence of a life corresponding to the alaya consciousness in Buddhist theory [18,19], it has the capability to accumulate the explicit energy into matter and decompose the matter into explicit energy. Explicit energy is the lifeless energy which can be accumulated by the alaya consciousness to be explicit matter or dark matter and then to bodies or objects. The level can be sensed by our human beings is defined as the explicit matter and the rest is defined as the dark matter

Both explicit energy and dark energy in the universe always exist and satisfy the conservation law, but not the matter. This is the fundamental assumption made in BCM. Through this assumption, the awkward questions of the origins of life and matter in the universe can be avoided. All matter is accumulated by the dark energy (the alaya consciousness). This answers how the first matter comes from and the source of all types of forces in the universe which cause all the movements and changes of the universe. However, it must be emphasized here that what we have observed by our eyes are only small part in the world we are living and not the whole universe.

In the BBCM, it is very clear that the universe is finite in time but unclear whether it is finite or infinite in space. In the present BCM, it is specifically defined that the universe is of infinite nature in both space and time. The world is defined of finite nature in both space and time and their relationship is expressed by the following equation:

Each world is cyclically operated according to the process of formation, the steady state, deterioration and explosion to emptiness. In BCM, the Big Bang is the origin of the world we are living but not the universe. Using this definition, the awkward question of the origin of the universe can be avoided.

According to Buddhist philosophy [18,19], there are three types of life in the universe, the alaya consciousness only, the alaya consciousness with an insensible body (also dark matter to our human being) and the alaya consciousness with a sensible body (being animals and human beings) and these three types of lives can also be divided into six categories according to their happiness, Heaven, Asura, Human being, Animal, Ghost, Hell. Only human beings and animals are with a sensible body by our human beings. Non-existence of other types of lives is also a belief or an over-claim rather than a scientific proof. Lives with only the alaya consciousness only exists in the Heaven, they are the highest level of life in the universe while the lives in the Hell is the lowest level in the universe. So according to this BCM [7], human beings are not the most intelligent creatures in the universe but in the middle level. All the matter used by other four types of lives and together with their bodies belong to dark matter.

Everything in the universe including all the worlds and each individual life is operated according to the Causal-Effect law. This can be regarded as the second assumption of this BCM. For any lifeless object in the world we are living, no matter whether we can see (explicit matter) or not (dark matter), it will experience the cycle of formation, the steady state, deterioration and destroy and for each individual life, no matter whether we can see (human beings and animals) or not (other four types of lives), she/he will be reincarnated within the six types of lives in the universe. Here it must be pointed out that according to the causal-effect law, reincarnation of my live is not confined to this world I am living, but in the whole universe. Even for the alaya consciousness only life in the Heaven, she/he will also have a life span and can be reincarnated into other five types with a body in the universe, not necessarily in the same world as he/she lived in a previous life. Reincarnation of all lives is a law of nature [20]. So, in this BCM, parents provide only the bodies to their children and not the life. We are very soon reached a stage that we can clone our bodies, but the essence of life does not change, and any lives produced this way should have the same rights as us.

Human’s consciousness includes 8 types, they are consciousness at eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body and mind, the manas consciousness, and finally the alaya consciousness. When one is dying, the consciousness at eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body and mind will be lost. The function of the seventh consciousness whose formal name is called the manas consciousness, is the bridge between the former six consciousness with the eight whose formal name is called the alaya consciousness. Only the alaya consciousness will continue to exist and it is the source of life forces and it stores all the karmas in the previous life history. The dying process is a process of the separation of the alaya consciousness with the body. For the detailed theory of Buddhism, one can refer to references [18,19].

A Comparison of BCM with BBCM

Now let us compare these two models’ item by item and they are listed in (Table 1). From this comparison, one can see that BCM gives clear definitions to all the main concepts used while in BBCM most of concepts are unclearly defined and the conservation laws thus used are fundamentally wrong. For example, matter conservation and momentum conservation should not be the general rules and may be valid for a very limited range. The energy conservation also needs to consider the contribution from dark energy. Without the participation of dark energy, no reaction or transformation from energy to matter or from matter to energy is possible. No matter accumulating energy into matter or decomposing matter into energy, it must have the participation of dark energy. Therefore, Einstein’s famous equation should be modified as

It is obvious that the requirement of Edark is different for different substance.

Different from the materialist world view, the essence of the universe is not matter but energy. There are basically two types of energy, one is the explicit energy which is the essence of all matter, no matter explicit matter which we can see or feel or the dark matter which we cannot see or feel, and the other is dark energy which is the essence of life. This is called the alaya consciousness in the Buddhist philosophy. With this BCM model, it avoids many awkward questions related to the origin of universe and life in the universe and it answers the important questions of the origin of matter and the source of forces behind. It has automatically revealed the most difficult part of modern physics about dark matter and dark energy. It can easily explain many other phenomena in the world we have observed. To my own knowledge, this model seems to be able to explain all the anomalous phenomena mentioned in Ref. [4]. The detail can be found in Ref. [7].

I think Buddhist philosophy is better than materialism to act as the scientific foundation for modern sciences and it can eliminate many difficulties faced in many disciplines of modern sciences. I am particularly welcome all the criticisms to BCM. If BCM can stand in comparison with BBCM, it may be a time to consider the end of materialism and update the modern sciences on the Buddhist philosophy

In a recent paper in PNAS, authors addressed the importance of philosophy to science and from their perspective, philosophy’s contribution to science can be found at least from four aspects: “the clarification of scientific concepts; the critical assessment of scientific assumptions or methods; the formulation of new concepts and theories; and the fostering of dialogue between different sciences, as well as between science and society” [21]. This is a very rare but important opinion I found nowadays and most of the present-day scientists often perceive philosophy as completely different from, and even antagonistic to, science. While the present author fully agrees with these opinions, I wish to bring the discussion a step further. It is really the time for us to consider seriously what philosophy should modern sciences need?

Summary and Conclusion

All the modern sciences are based on the materialism which are critically questioned nowadays [5,6]. The most important representation of modern sciences is the Big-Bang Cosmological Model (BBCM) and this model has been confronted to a variety of observations which are called paradoxes. In order to resolve these paradoxes, a novel cosmological model based on Buddhist philosophy (BCM) was recently proposed by the present author and in the present paper a detailed comparison between these two models has been carried out. Through this comparison, the following conclusions can be drawn [22,23].

a) The fundamental reason for most of paradoxes related to materialism or BBCM is due to the unclear definitions of many fundamental concepts, such as universe, world, matter and consciousness.

b) The essence of universe should be defined as energy rather than matter and it can avoid many awkward questions related to the origin of universe and life in the universe and it answers the important questions of the origin of matter and the source of forces behind.

c) There are basically two types of energy, one is the explicit energy which is the essence of all matter, no matter explicit matter which we can see or feel or the dark matter which we cannot see or feel, and the other is dark energy which is the essence of life. This is called the alaya consciousness in the Buddhist philosophy.

d) The energy conservation is the only law which can be assumed but it needs to consider the contribution from dark energy. Without the participation of dark energy, no reaction or transformation is possible. No matter accumulating energy into matter or decomposing matter into energy, it must have the participation of dark energy.

e) It seems that BCM is conceptually clear and logically consistent and it can explain many phenomena which belongs to the frontier problems of modern sciences. It may be the time to seriously consider replacing materialism by Buddhist philosophy to act as the scientific foundation for modern sciences and it could eliminate many difficulties faced in many disciplines of modern sciences, especially life science.

Acknowledgement

This work was supported by the State Key Program of National Natural Science of China “Structural Reliability Analysis on the Spherical Hull of Deepsea Manned Submersibles” (Grant No. 51439004), the General Program of National Natural Science of China “A study on the water absorption property of the buoyancy material for the full ocean depth manned submersible” (Grant No. 51879157), the “Construction of a Leading Innovation Team” project by the Hangzhou Municipal government, the Startup funding of New-joined PI of Westlake University with grant number (041030150118).

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frederickwiddowson · 4 years ago

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The writings of Luke the physician starting with his version of the gospel - Luke 18:15-17 comments: faith like a little child a prerequisite for admission into the kingdom of God

Luke 18:15 ¶ And they brought unto him also infants, that he would touch them: but when his disciples saw it, they rebuked them. 16 But Jesus called them unto him, and said, Suffer little children to come unto me, and forbid them not: for of such is the kingdom of God. 17 Verily I say unto you, Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child shall in no wise enter therein.

Literally, this is a pretty clear statement. Children want to believe and trust those in authority in their lives and they often do unless and until something happens that breaks that trust. I can remember a time as a little child that my parents were like gods. Every word that proceeded out of their mouths was truth and power to me. One day, though, during one of their many, awful arguments with shouting and throwing things I came to a sudden realization that they were simply people, weak and uncertain in many ways. But, to this day I can remember a time when, even if I disobeyed, I still did not doubt them.

Jesus tells us here that the faith and trust of a child is what is required to enter the kingdom of God. It is not entered into by skeptics who want to argue and debate with God. I just read an article on how the science of Physics seems to be stalled in its attempt to uncover a unifying ‘theory of everything’. Each time they come to a spot where they see that the universe looks like it is deliberately fine-tuned to very narrow parameters they proceed in a different direction attempting to discount that notion. It seems that they will go to the greatest lengths and the greatest expense to invent any reason to not believe in God. God, who is right in front of them staring them in the face in the evidence at hand, cannot be even considered as a possibility.

These scientists think they have found that the Higgs-Boson particle they believe they have seen in action, allows things to have mass. But it cancels out all other of what they call quantum fluctuations and is calibrated so precisely, as they put it, to an accuracy of one in 10 to the 16th power, a phenomenal result. That is the conclusion they’ve come to, but since they cannot accept such a monstrous thing in their imaginations they then go on to presume that there must be other more certainly atheistic explanations, although even under their breaths these neo-pagans know they dare not mention God.[1]

These people are like someone looking at a flashlight beam and since they cannot allow themselves to believe there is a flashlight they imagine the ways the beam could create itself.

I have an Astronomy textbook from the 1970s put out by the respected scientist, and atheist, Fred Hoyle. In it, he writes;

However, [refers to a diagram of the universe] would demand a special relation of our own galaxy to the universe, since in this figure we have taken our galaxy to be located in the center of a nonuniform distribution of galaxies. It hardly seems plausible that our galaxy would be in any such privileged position. So we answer the above question [would anywhere appear to be the center making the universe acentric?] affirmatively on intellectual grounds rather than because such an answer is determined by observation.[2]

Do you see what is going on here? This isn’t about critical thinking or any such noble intellectual attempt to get at the truth behind our reality. This is about denying the evidence if the evidence points to a Biblical proof, most notably God. As Hoyle said, they draw many of their conclusions, “on intellectual grounds rather than because such an answer is determined by observation.”

This mentality will not, cannot, come to Christ because the conscience and reasoning ability is so seared. But, God asks through Isaiah;

Isaiah 1:18 Come now, and let us reason together, saith the LORD: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.

And tells us through David;

Psalm 19:1 « To the chief Musician, A Psalm of David. » The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament (outer space, the universe, as the heavens described in Genesis 1 and here by the words heavens and firmament contrasted and united by and) sheweth his handywork.

David also noted;

Psalm 14:1 « To the chief Musician, A Psalm of David. » The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God. They are corrupt, they have done abominable works, there is none that doeth good.

A Christian must seek to trust and to believe in God, the essence of saving faith.

Hebrews 11:6 But without faith it is impossible to please him: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him.

Of course, there are some who say we will be children in Heaven. Those who remember their childhoods as joyful will like that notion but those who had painful childhoods of want and abuse and neglect will regard that idea as hideous.

If we do not come to Christ as a little child, trusting and seeking His will in simple trust, we will not enter in. Salvation is predicated upon belief and faith, a faith the skeptic cannot muster in anything or anyone but himself or blind chance. We are called to reach up to take God’s hand and let Him lead us through this wilderness called life.

[1] Ben Allanach, “Going Nowhere Fast: After the success of the Standard Model experiments have stopped answering to grand theories. Is particle physics in crisis?” Sally Davies, ed. Aeon Magazine, 30 Mar 2019. https://aeon.co/essays/has-the-quest-for-top-down-unification-of-physics-stalled?fbclid=IwAR3RXFRWdUUn5oZ_0U0VDv9KibPJalurJnE2hP6fp-SIWJIgjtZK77Q7BuU.

[2] Fred Hoyle, Astronomy and Cosmology: A Modern Course (San Francisco: W.H. Freeman & Co., 1975), 87.

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scepticaladventure · 7 years ago

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9 Light - Some Important Background 18Aug17

Introduction

We observe the Universe, and physics within the Universe, and we try to make sense of it. There is often tension between our natural impression of the physical world and what our models and mathematical logic tell us.

Consider the most important of our senses – sight. Our eyes detect photons of light and our brain composes this information into a visualization of the world around us. That becomes our subjective perceived reality.

Nearly all the information we receive about the Universe arrives in the form of electromagnetic radiation (which I will loosely refer to as ‘light’).

However, light takes time to travel between its source and our eyes (or other detectors such as cameras). Hence all the information we are receiving is already old. We see things not as they are, but as they were when the light was emitted. Which can be a considerable time ago. Which means that we are seeing the objects when they were much younger than they are “now”. In other words, we are seeing back in time to what they looked like then.

Light from the sun takes nearly ten minutes to reach us. Light from the nearest star about 4 years. Light from the nearest spiral galaxy (Andromeda) is about 2 million years old (but Andromeda is becoming closer at about 110 km/sec). Light from distant galaxies and quasars can be billions of years old. In fact our telescopes can see light (microwaves actually) that is so old it originated at the time the early universe became transparent enough for light to travel at all.

Imagine we are at the centre of concentric shells, rather like an infinite onion. At any one moment, we are receiving light from all these shells, but the bigger the shell from which the light originated, the older the information. So what we are seeing is a complete sample of history stretching back over billions of years.

It would be mind boggling exercise to try to reimagine our mental model of what the universe is really like “now” everywhere. The only way I can think to tackle this would be some sort of computerized animation.

Even then there are a range of other distortions to contend with. All the colors we see are affected by the relative speeds between us and the sources of the light. And light is bent by gravity, so some of what we see is not where we think it is. There are other distortions as well, including relativistic distortions. So, in short, what we see is only approximately true. Believing what we see works well for most purposes on everyday earth but it works less well on cosmological time and distance scales.

Light is vital to our Perception of Nature

Electromagnetic radiation is by far the main medium through which we receive information about the rest of the universe. We also receive some information from comets, meteorites, sub-atomic particles, neutrinos and possibly even some gravitational waves, but these sources pale into insignificance compared to the information received from light in all its forms (gamma rays, x-rays, visible light, microwaves, radio waves).

Since we rely so heavily on this form of information it is a concern that the nature of light has perplexed mankind for centuries, and is still causing trouble today.

Hundreds of humanity’s greatest minds have grappled with the nature of light. (Newton, Huygens, Fresnel, Fizeau, Young, Michelson, Einstein, Dirac … the list goes on).

At the same time the topic is still taught and described quite badly, perpetuating endless confusion. Conceptual errors are perpetuated with abandon. For example, radio ways are shown as a set of rings radiating out from the antenna like water ripples in a pond. If this were true then they would lose energy and hence change frequency with increasing distance from source.

Another example: It is widely taught that Einstein’s work on the photoelectric effect shows that light must exist as quantized packets of energy and that only certain energy levels are possible. I think the equation e = h x frequency (where h is Planck’s constant) does not say this at all. The frequency can be any integral number or any fraction in between. The confusion arises because photons are commonly created by electrons moving between quantized energy levels in atoms, and photons are commonly detected by physical systems which are also quantized. But if a photon arrives which does not have exactly one of these quantised levels of energy and is absorbed, the difference simply ends up in the kinetic energy of the detector. Or so it seems to me.

The Early Experimenters

Most of the progress in gathering evidence about light has been achieved since the middle of the 17th century. Galileo Galilei thought that light must have a finite speed of travel and tried to measure this speed. But he had no idea how enormously fast light travelled and did not have the means to cope with this.

Sir Isaac Newton was born in the year that Galileo died (1642 – which was also the year the English Civil War started and Abel Tasman discovered Tasmania). As well as co-inventing calculus, explaining gravity and the laws of motion, Newton conducted numerous experiments on light, taking advantages of progress in glass, lens and prism manufacturing techniques. I think Newton is still the greatest physicist ever.

In experiment #42 Newton separated white sunlight into a spectrum of colors. With the aid of a second prism he turned the spectrum back into white light. The precise paths of the beams in his experiments convinced him that light was “corpuscular” in nature. He argued that if light was a wave then it would tend to spread out more.

Other famous scientists of the day (e.g. Huygens) formed an opinion that light was more akin to a water wave. They based this opinion on many experiments with light that demonstrated various diffraction and refraction effects.

Newton’s view dominated due to his immense reputation, but as more and more refraction and diffraction experiments were conducted (e.g. by Fresnel, Brewster, Snell, Stokes, Hertz, Young, Rayleigh etc) light became to be thought of as an electromagnetic wave.

The Wave Model

The model that emerged was that light is a transverse sinusoidal electro-magnetic wave, with magnetic components orthogonal to the electric components. This accorded well with the electromagnetic field equations developed by James Clerk Maxwell.

Light demonstrates a full variety of polarization properties. A good way to model these properties is to imagine that light consists of two electromagnetic sine waves travelling together with a variable phase angle between them. If the phase angle is zero the light is plane polarized. If the phase angle is 90 degrees then the light exhibits circular polarization. And so on. The resultant wave is the vector sum of the two constituent waves.

Most people are familiar with the effect that if you place one linear polarizing filter at right angles to another, then no light passes through both sheets. But if you place a third sheet between the other two, angled at 45 degrees to both the other two filters, then quite a lot of light does get through. How can adding a third filter result in more light getting through?

The answer is that the light leaving the first filter has two components, each at 45 degrees to the first sheet’s plane of polarization. Hence a fair bit of light lines up reasonably well with the interspersed middle sheet. And the light leaving the middle sheet also has two components, each at 45 degrees to its plane of polarization. Hence a fair bit of the light leaving the interspersed sheet lines up reasonably well with the plane of polarization of the last sheet.

Interesting effects were discovered when light passes through crystals with different refractive indices in different planes (see birefringence). Also when light was reflected or refracted using materials with strong electric or magnetic fields across them (see Faraday effect and Kerr effect).

Young’s Double Slit Experiment

Experiments performed by Thomas Young around 1801 are of special interest. Light passing through one slit produces a diffraction pattern analogously to the pattern a water wave might produce. When passed through two parallel slits and then captured on a screen a classic interference pattern can be observed. This effect persists even if the light intensity is so low that it could be thought of as involving just one photon at a time. More on this later.

The Corpuscular Model Returns

At the start of the 20th century, Albert Einstein and others studied experiments that demonstrated that light could produce free electrons when it struck certain types of metal – the photoelectric effect. But only when the incident light was above a characteristic frequency. This experiment was consistent with light being a sort of particle. It helped to revive the corpuscular concept of light.

Arthur Compton showed that the scattering of light through a cloud of electrons was also consistent with light being corpuscular in nature. There were a lot of scattering experiments going on at the time because the atomic structure of atoms was being discovered largely through scattering experiments (refer e.g. Lord Rutherford).

The “light particle” was soon given a new name - the photon.

Wave Particle Duality

Quantum mechanics was being developed at the same time as the corpuscular theory of light re-emerged, and quantum theories and ideas were extended to light. The wave versus particle argument eventually turned into the view that light was both a wave and a particle, (see Complementarity Principle). What you observed depended on how you observed it.

Furthermore, you could never be exactly sure where a photon would turn up (see Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, Schrodinger Wave equation and Superposition of States).

The wave equation description works well but certain aspects of the model perplexed scientists of the day and have perplexed students of physics ever since. In particular there were many version of Young’s double slit experiments with fast acting shutters covering one or both slits. It turns out that if an experimenter can tell which slit the photons have passed through, the interference pattern vanishes. If it is impossible to determine which slit the photons have passed through, the interference pattern reappears.

It does not matter if the decision to open one slit or the other is made after the photons have left their source – the results are still the same. And if pairs of photons are involved and one of them is forced into adopting a certain state at the point of detection, then the other photons have the equal and opposite states, even though they might be a very long distance away from where their pairs are being detected.

This all led to a variety of convoluted explanations, including the view that the observations were in fact causal factors determining reality. An even more bizarre view is that the different outcomes occur in different universes.

At the same time as all this was going on, a different set of experiments was leading to a radical new approach to understanding the world of physics – Special Relativity. (See an earlier essay in this series.)

The Speed of Light

Waves (water waves, sound waves, waves on a string etc.) typically travel at well-defined speeds in the medium in which they occur. By analogy, it was postulated that light waves must be travelling in an invisible “lumiferous aether” and that this aether filled the whole galaxy (only one galaxy was known at the time) and that light travelled at a well defined speed relative to this aether.

Bradley, Eotvos, Roemer and others showed that telescopes had to lean a little bit one way and then a little bit the other way six months later in order to maintain a fixed image fixed of a distant star. This stellar aberration was interpreted as being caused by the earth moving through the lumiferous aether.

So this should produce a kind of “aether wind”. The speed of light should be faster when it travelling with the wind than if it travelling against the wind. The earth moves quite rapidly in its orbit around the sun. There is a 60 km/sec difference in the velocity of the earth with respect to the “fixed stars” over a six month period due to this movement alone. In addition the surface of the earth is moving quite quickly (about 10 km/sec) due to its own rotation.

In 1886 a famous experiment was carried out in Ohio by Michelson and Morley. They split a beam of light into two paths of equal length but at right angles to each other. The two beams were then recombined and the apparatus was set up to look for interference effects. Light travelling back and forth in a moving medium should take longer to travel if its path lines up with an aether wind than if its path goes across and back the aether wind. (See the swimmer-in-the-stream analogy in an earlier blog).

However, no matter which way the experiment was oriented, no interference effects could be detected. No aether wind or aether wind effects could be found. It became the most famous null experiment in history.

Fizeau measured the speed of light travelling in moving water around a more or less circular path. He sent beams in either direction and looked for small interference effects. He found a small difference in the time of travel (see Sagnac effect), but not nearly as much as if the speed of light was relative to an aether medium through which the earth was moving.

Other ingenious experiments were performed to measure the speed of light. Many of these involved bouncing light off rotating mirrors and suchlike and looking for interference effects. In essence the experimenters were investigating the speed of light over a two-way, back-and-forth path. Some other methods used astronomical approaches. But they all came up with the same answer – about 300 million meters/second (when in a vacuum.)

It did not matter if the source of light is stationary relative to the detection equipment, or whether the source of light is moving towards the detection equipment, or vice versa. The measured or inferred speed of light was always the same. This created an immediate problem – where were the predicted effects of the aether wind?

Some scientists speculated that the earth must drag the aether surrounding it along with it in its heavenly motions. But the evidence from the earlier stellar aberration experiments showed that this could not be the case either.

So the speed of light presented quite a problem.

It was not consistent with the usual behaviour of a wave. Waves ignore the speed of their source and travel at well defined speeds within their particular mediums. If the source is travelling towards the detector, all that happens is that the waves are compressed together. If the source is travelling away from the detector, all that happens is that the waves are stretched out (Doppler shifts).

But if the source is stationary in the medium and the detector is moving then the detected speed of the wave is simply the underlying speed in the medium plus the closing speed of the detector (or minus that speed if the detector is moving away).

The experimenters did not discover these effects for light. They always got the same answer.

Nor is the speed of light consistent with what happens when a particle is emitted. Consider a shell fired from a cannon on a warship. If the warship is approaching the detector, the warship’s speed adds to the speed of the shell. If the detector is approaching the warship then the detector’s speed adds to the measured impact speed of the shell. This sort of thing did not happen for light.

Lorentz, Poincaré and Fitzgerald were some of the famous scientists who struggled to explain the experimental results. Between 1892-1895 Hendrik Lorentz speculated that what was going on was that lengths contracted when the experimental equipment was pushed into an aether headwind. But this did not entirely account for the results. So he speculated that time must also slow down in such circumstances. He developed the notion of “local time”.

Quite clearly, the measurement of speed is intimately involved with the measurement of both distance and time duration. Lorentz imagined that when a measuring experiment was moving through the aether, lengths and times distorted in ways that conspired to always give the same result for the speed of light no matter what the orientation to the supposed aether wind.

Lorentz developed a set of equations (Lorentz transformations for 3 dimensional coordinates plus time, as corrected by Poincaré) so that a description of a physical system in one inertial reference frame could be translated to become a description of the same physical system in another inertial reference frame. The laws of physics and the outcome of experiments held true in both descriptions.

Einstein built on this work to develop his famous theory of Special Relativity. But he did not bother to question or explain why the speed of light seemed to be always the same – he just took it as a starting point assumption for his theory.

Many scientists clung to the aether theory. However, as it seemed that the aether was undetectable and Special Relativity became more and more successful and accepted, the aether theory was slowly and quietly abandoned.

Young’s Double Slit Experiment (again)

Reference Wikipedia:

“The modern double-slit experiment is a demonstration that light and matter can display characteristics of both classically defined waves and particles; moreover, it displays the fundamentally probabilistic nature of quantum mechanical phenomena.

A simpler form of the double-slit experiment was performed originally by Thomas Young in 1801 (well before quantum mechanics). He believed it demonstrated that the wave theory of light was correct. The experiment belongs to a general class of "double path" experiments, in which a wave is split into two separate waves that later combine into a single wave. Changes in the path lengths of both waves result in a phase shift, creating an interference pattern. Another version is the Mach–Zehnder interferometer, which splits the beam with a mirror.

In the basic version of this experiment, a coherent light source, such as a laser beam, shines on a plate pierced by two parallel slits, and the light passing through the slits is observed on a screen behind the plate. The wave nature of light causes the light waves passing through the two slits to interfere, producing bright and dark bands on the screen, as a result that would not be expected if light consisted of classical particles.

However, the light is always found to be absorbed at the screen at discrete points, as individual particles (not waves), the interference pattern appearing via the varying density of these particle hits on the screen.

Furthermore, versions of the experiment that include detectors at the slits find that each detected photon passes through one slit (as would a classical particle), and not through both slits (as a wave would). Such experiments demonstrate that particles do not form the interference pattern if one detects which slit they pass through. These results demonstrate the principle of wave–particle duality. “

In this author’s view, there is so much amiss with this conventional interpretation of Young’s Double Slit Experiment experiment that it hard to know where to begin. I think the paradox is presented in an unhelpful way and then explained in an unsatisfactory way. It is presented as a clash between a wave theory of light and a particle theory of light, and it concludes by saying that light therefore has wave-particle duality.

Deciding that a photon has “wave-particle duality” seems to satisfy most people, but actually it is just enshrining the problem. Just giving the problem a name and saying “that is just the way it is” doesn’t really resolve the issue, it just sweeps it under the carpet.

In this author’s view, what the experimental evidence is telling us is that light is not a wave and that it is not a particle. Neither is it both at the same time (being careful about what that actually means), or one or the other on a whimsy. It is what it is.

Here is just one of the just one of this author’s complaints about the conventional explanation of the double slit experiment. In my opinion, if you place a detector at one slit or the other and you detect a photon then you have destroyed that photon. Photons can only be detected once. To detect a photon is to destroy it.

A detector screen tells you nothing about the path taken by a photon that manages to arrive at the final screen, other than it has arrived. You have to deduce the path by other means.

Wikipedia again: “The double-slit experiment (and its variations) has become a classic thought experiment for its clarity in expressing the central puzzles of quantum mechanics. Because it demonstrates the fundamental limitation of the ability of an observer to predict experimental results, (the famous physicist and educator) Richard Feynman called it "a phenomenon which is impossible […] to explain in any classical way, and which has in it the heart of quantum mechanics. In reality, it contains the mystery [of quantum mechanics].” Feynman was fond of saying that all of quantum mechanics can be gleaned from carefully thinking through the implications of this single experiment.”

There is a class of experiments, known as delayed choice experiments, in which the mode of detection is changed only after the photons have begun their journey. (See Wheeler Delayed Choice Experiments, circa 1980’s – some of these are thought experiments). The results change depending on the method of detection and seem to produce a paradox.

Reference the Wikipedia article on Young’s slit experiment, quoting John Archibald Wheeler from the 1980’s: “Actually, quantum phenomena are neither waves nor particles but are intrinsically undefined until the moment they are measured. In a sense, the British philosopher Bishop Berkeley was right when he asserted two centuries ago "to be is to be perceived."

Wheeler went on to suggest that there is no reality until it is perceived, and that the method of perception must determine the phenomena that gave rise to that perception.

They say that fools rush in where angels fear to tread. So, being eminently qualified, the author proposes to have a go at explaining Young’s Double Slit Experiment. But first he would like to suggest a model for photons based on the evidence of the experiments, Einstein’s Special Relativity and some fresh thinking.

#Speed of Light #Wave-Particle duality #Young's Double Slit Experiment #Photons #Experiments on light #WaveParticleDuality #Young'sDoubleSlitExperiment #ExperimentsonLight

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junker-town · 7 years ago

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What is time at the Super Bowl?

Let’s talk with theoretical physicist Ronald Mallett about the nature and perception of time.

Time is not on your side. Or mine. Time takes no sides.

Time does not care about us no matter how much we care about it. We try to manage time. We try to make the most of time. We try to make up for lost time. We even invent timeouts. We care a lot about time, especially the time of the Super Bowl.

To better understand how the reality of time relates to our perception of it, we talked with Ronald Mallett, a theoretical physicist who is a research professor at the University of Connecticut and the author of Time Traveler: A Scientist’s Personal Mission to Make Time Travel a Reality. His primary research interests are general relativity and gravitation, black holes, relativistic astrophysics, and quantum cosmology.

“I’m a theoretical physicist and my speciality is Einstein’s theory of relativity,” Mallett told SB Nation hours before the big game. “My perspective comes from that direction — what Einstein had to say and the notion of time as the fourth dimension. Whenever we talk about an event, an event doesn’t just take place in space, it takes place in time as well, which of course the Super Bowl is going to be at particular time and place.”

Super Bowl 52 will start shortly after 5:30 pm local time in Minneapolis on Sunday, February 4. At that time, clocks will show it to be an hour later in New York City. It will be three hours earlier in Los Angeles when the kickoff occurs than it is in New York. In Australia, the game will take place on Monday. Tomorrow. Also today. This will all be the same time. But we’re not here to talk about time zones, which can also be confusing.

We’re here learning about time itself.

”In a way, there are actually really two broad perspectives on time: One is the physical, the other is psychological,” Mallett says. “By the physical, what I mean is the perspective that physics has on it, which is independent of us. In a sense, you might say time in a physical sense began with the Big Bang which was over 10 billion years ago. The thing is that that particular perspective is, as I said, something that happened independent of human beings. That happened a long time ago and the universe has been evolving in time independent of us.”

In the Super Bowl, time provides opportunity if you need a comeback. That can be seized. It can be squandered. Time also represents a liability if you need to protect a lead. Just ask the Atlanta Falcons. Anything that can happen will happen in time.

”Well, we were trying to hurry up,” Andy Reid said after his team seemed to squander its time in the final minutes of Super Bowl XXXIX . “It was the way things worked out.”

Sometimes time feels like it moves slowly. Sometimes times feels like it moves fast. But time doesn’t care how we feel about it.

”In a sense, there’s two things that are going on at the time of a game — which is to say the physical time which is what the clocks are measuring, but then there’s the psychological perspective, that is to say how people in the audience are perceiving time,” Mallett explains patiently. “In other words, it might seem like the game is going long for them or it seems like it’s going on too short for them and those things are relative to them.”

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phynxrizng · 8 years ago

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AN INTERESTING LOOK AT REINCARNATION

THE REINCARNATION EXPERIMENT™ "Promoting Scientific Reincarnation Research" Web Hosting powered byNetwork Solutions® THE EXPERIMENT'S PURPOSE IS: To Determine if Science Can Prove Reincarnation Reincarnation in Historical Context This experimental project looks at traditional perspectives of reincarnation from a 21st-century view of consciousness studies, neuroscience, behavioral psychology, and quantum physics. Its research also attempts to shed light on concepts like life-after-death, soul transcendence, memory and archetypes, and shared/entangled consciousness. This link provides a quick review of reincarnation in history. Psychologist Carl Jung, a 20th century legend, seeded the modern field of scientific reincarnation research. Psychiatrist Ian Stevenson caused it to flourish. Introduction of Illustrative Reincarnation Cases Present Incarnation Likely Past-Life This subject’s facial biometrics differ from her apparent past-life facial bone structure by only .09 percent difference warranting full-fledged assessment. Click here for more about the case. Present Incarnation & Likely Past-Life Reincarnation of a Poetic Soul with Artistic, Spiritual, and Activist Traits?? Our evaluation of the case that the soul-genome of the 19th-century poet Elizabeth Barrett-Browning reincarnated a century later. Click for a summary here .......... Life-After-Death Research Supports Reincarnation and Vice Versa The consciousness that survives death is a soul genome filled with the experience of an individual's lifetime, which in time returns into a new physical body. For examples of life-after-death evidence see Paul Davids' DVDs of The Life After Death Project, including Paul Von Ward's comments on this thesis here. Belief in the phenomenon we call reincarnation — a process where the core substance of an individual is reborn in a future lifetime — has existed in all major historical cultures. It has largely been rooted in dreams, hypnosis and psychic clues. Recently, more objective evidence has included memories of events or knowledge apparently based in the lives of deceased individuals. New research suggests that physical and personality traits may be inherited from the past. REXP seeks to evaluate areas of empirical evidence suggesting reincarnation and determine its reliability for identifying past-life connections in individual cases. Truth in this area is an illusion, but it can be approached through use of 21st-century science's concepts and tools. Hear how the Reincarnation Experiment started, its purpose, and its results. IF REINCARNATION IS REAL, IT CAN EVENTUALLY BE PROVEN. TYPICAL POTENTIAL CASES ANALIZED BY THE EXPERIMENT I. Many clues may suggest possible past-lives: Dreams with historical images or information. Recognizing people or places never seen before. Unexplained emotions related to new places or people. Knowing an untaught foreign language or fact. Precocious abilities in any field. Parallel physical features. Drawn to strange people and places. II. Several types of possible past lives submitted to us: WW-II service in Germany, UK, Italy, and Japan or Civil Wars as in America or Spain. Past-lives ended by violent accidents, ship wrecks, murders, or drugs. Well-known musicians or other artists and writers. Past lives from other races or cultures. Famous figures or ordinary citizens. Previous incarnations from early or ancient times. Regina Meredith of Gaiam TV Interview with Paul Von Ward on the Reincarnation Experiment and its implications for understanding our personality and behaviors. Check TV Interview here and claim 10-day free Gaiam TV membership. Hear introduction to the Reincarnation Experiment on Coast to Coast AM Radio Host George Noory Interviews Paul Von Ward on The Soul Genome Listen to hour interview and following call-ins by clicking icons below. Hear Weekend Host George Knapp with Paul on another occasion. New Article: Reincarnation Experiment and Science This experiment attempts to link mainstream science with the more illusive aspects of the reincarnation theory. It tests the hypothesis that knowledge, talents, and experiences in one life-time can be found in individuals who have no direct biological link with the deceased person. Adding to the comparisons between two individuals separated overtime, we use independent research relevant to the soul genome concept. If memories from a specific life can survive through the epigenetic field that transcends physical death, they may also be available to people outside the DNA tree of that life. Read about the Spanish memories of a Sephardic Jew expressed by a distant Catholic descendant. TheSoul Genome Paul Von Ward Best Price$4.14 or BuyNew $17.69 PrivacyInformation TheSoul Genome Paul Von Ward BuyNew PrivacyInformation Purchase Your Copy of The Soul Genome Print version to the left for $13.92 Kindle version to the right for $5.99 Researcher Vera Tallmadge says: "My favorite book in the last five years was your The Soul Genome." Paul was chosen to present his natural cosmology involving human evolution beside more advanced beings at Edinburgh, Scotland 2014 Symposium. Click here. Now postponed. Do Newborns Have A Past-Life Legacy? Hear Paul Von Ward's TV Response. More than half of the world's people believe in reincarnation, and polls suggest at least a quarter of U.S. citizens do. What is the basis of this belief? Is it rooted in delusions or wishful thinking? Or, is there a tangible basis for such ideas? It is beyond the current tools of science to definitively prove the general theory of reincarnation to a skeptical public. Likewise, it is also beyond the tools of modern science to disprove it. However, this project is designed to test whether empirical evidence exists that can plausibly account for the apparent non-parental link involved in robust reincarnation cases. In other words, it challenges the assertion that all of the newborn's psychophysical inheritance can be completely accounted for by its immediate parental genomes. Read More.... Click on the newborn's picture to the right for a excellent video of Paul Von Ward's clear and concise responses to a TV journalist's questions about the concept of reincarnation and the Reincarnation Experiment. SCIENCE CAN VALIDATE BELIEF BASED IN OBSERVATIONS OF NATURE. Early human and later aboriginal societies based their beliefs in reincarnation on observations of their contemporaries that revealed similarities with known people who had lived and died before those being observed were born. Over several generations, people collected many persuasive correspondences between the present personalities and various ancestors that they posited some carry-forward of legacies from the past. As an example, an African tribe used the terms "babatunde" and "yetunde" to indicate the possible reincarnations of boys and girls, respectively, from earlier individuals two generations removed. The cases described on this website and in the book The Soul Genome provide credible examples of such observable data which cannot be more plausibly explained than by a reincarnation hypothesis. We attempt to be as careful as the team who ultimately concluded two-year-old Lhamo Dhondup is the reincarnation of the 13th Dalai Lama. From a comparable secular approach, The Soul Genome's author's perspective places the experiment in the context of emerging research findings in physics, biology, neuroscience, and evolutionary studies. C2C Host George Noory With Paul Von Ward on REXP Listeners to C2C Talk with Paul SCIENCE CAN CORROBORATE SPIRITUAL BELIEFS? The Eastern metaphysics of Hinduism and Buddhism, their religious derivations, and early Judaism and Christianity describe reincarnation in terms that cannot be easily, if at all, tested by the nonbeliever. Such supernatural beliefs require unquestioning credulity. A historical overview of some of these religious and spiritual beliefs can be seen by clicking here — which also links to a good introduction to Jewish and Christian beliefs. Science cannot prove any aspects of these spiritual beliefs without measurable evidence of their veracity. Fortunately, several areas of the physical and behavioral evidence that led to such ancient beliefs can be found linking the lives of people living today with people who died leaving documented information about themselves and their behaviors. The Reincarnation Experiment is the first-ever effort to treat reincarnation as a natural process that can and should be subjected to scientific analysis. For that reason alone, it provides a credible data base for interdisciplinary discussions and evaluations of the psychoplasm (or soul-genome) hypothesis. A MOVE FROM SUBJECTIVE TO OBJECTIVE RESEARCH: The objective evidence that led nature-oriented societies to postulate a process like reincarnation includes physical features and psychological factors. Facial architecture, body types, hair patterns, ear forms, hand-finger proportions, voice, and odor have been noted to correspond in two separate lifetimes. Some physical similarities also include special markings, birthmarks and deformities. Matching psychological traits include levels of mental development, emotional patterns, styles of interacting with others, and areas of creative interest. (See analysis of reincarnation-case facial comparisons with random matches.) All these factors seem to make up a psychoplasm (an information-rich, energetic field) that enfolds and animates the genomic material synthesized at conception. When we have a better understanding of the interaction between the genome and the epigenome, this project will test the psychoplasm concept by comparing a subject's relevant DNA sequences with the genome from his or her alleged previous incarnation. Could some of the 21,000 human, protein-producing genes play a role in reincarnation as well as in culture? Read more.... Much empirical date now suggests that what a person accomplishes in terms of self-development and learning becomes a legacy the soul genome/psychoplasm transmits to the next generation. The question is whether it is passed individually or some collective consciousness. Click here to see the forms that can be used to develop a scientific data base for a particular case. They can be used for one's own case or for someone else's. INDIVIDUAL PARTICIPATION IN REINCARNATION EXPERIMENT If your reincarnation research efforts are compatible with the experiment's methodology, there are several options for your participation: 1. Submit a Self-Developed Case. 2. Propose A New Tentative Case for Evaluation. 3. Use Our Methodology for Self-Discovery. Regardless of your location and professional background, if one of the three interests you, click here more details. CLUES LEADING TO POSSIBLE PAST-LIVES Many people receive hints of possible past lives that cannot be considered as definitive proof of reincarnation or of a specific past-life connection. Some come through extrasensory channels such as dreams, visions, intuitive feelings, or hypnosis. Some may come from other-dimensional sources such as psychic readings or through channeled messages from apparent disincarnate beings. Since neither such sources nor the information from them can be accessed by independent observers, they provide only potential clues that require validation by third parties. Nevertheless, they should not be dismissed out-of-hand as they may lead to verifiable evidence to support the posited past-life connection. Skillful use of regression hypnotherapy can assist in recovering details that can be later verified. FINANCIALLY SUPPORT COSTS OF SCIENTIFIC EQUIPMENT, SOFTWARE, AND ANALYSIS Professionals involved in this project do so on a pro bono basis. Certain expenses for measurement equipment, data processing software, and technical analysis is paid for by participants and supporters like you. If you appreciate the project's approach, facilitate the DNA and biometric comparisons necessary for credible research with a donation made below. Home Research Collaborators Overview/Periodic Updates Illustrative Cases Cases in Progress Croatian Project German WW-II Initiative Past-Life Clues Past-Life-Based Coaching Public Events/Interviews Book and Peer Reviews Soul/Psychoplasm Book Purchases/Comments Video & Audio Links Research Forms Have Questions?

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lesaffaireslocalestech · 6 years ago

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Anthropic Cosmology: Fine-Tuning By Design?

The Cosmos would appear to have a degree of design and fine-tuning underlying its structure that allows things of structure and substance that are more complex than just the bits and pieces part and parcel of the standard model of particle physics. An unrelated hypothesis suggests that virtual reality worlds will vastly outnumber really real worlds and thus suggest that probably we might be virtual beings ‘existing’ in a computer / software programmed, hence simulated landscape. Programmed computer software has to be both designed and fine-tuned. So Cosmic design and fine-tuning also points towards the reality of our just being bits and bytes, not electrons and quarks. In scientific circles, especially biological circles, the concept of “intelligent design” is usually given the extreme thumbs’ down because of the supernatural and theological connotations. I intend to steer well clear of that can of worms, focusing on another kind of ‘design’ with accent on the physical, not the biological sciences. Fortunately, when it comes to ‘design’, there’s more than just the God Hypothesis option. There’s the Mother Nature Hypothesis option – life, the Universe and everything is the way it is because that’s the way it is. You got one role of the cosmic dice; one deal of the cosmic cards, and this is what came up, like it or lump it. There’s the Multiverse Hypothesis which negates fine-tuning and design by stating that some universes (like ours) are more special when it comes to the random laws, principles and relationships that enable stuff, including living stuff to survive and thrive (just like Earth is more special when it comes to being bio-friendly relative to most other planets). Finally there’s the Simulation Hypothesis which replaces God with a mortal, fallible, flesh-and-blood computer / software programmer that has created a ‘video game’ called “The Life and Times of Planet Earth and Associated Cosmos”. COSMIC ‘DESIGN’ The Cosmos exhibits some degree of ‘design’ because: There is something rather than just a pure nothing (although pure nothing also ‘exists’). There is more than one fundamental something (electrons, quarks, photons, neutrinos, etc.). And while an external design and designer isn’t required* to explain the diversity of life, natural selection (Darwinian evolution) being more than adequate, the range of body plans appears rather limited. You have an awful lot of left-right symmetry relative to back-front or top-bottom symmetry, albeit there are several examples of radial symmetry. Sensory organs tend to be front-and-centre and towards the top. * Though that in itself doesn’t rule it out. Artificial selection is well known and as biotechnology and genetic engineering advances, artificial selection is becoming more that rule than the exception. In fact an excellent case can be made for the human species being the product of unnatural or artificial selection by an unknown agency. I’d like to focus on two specific examples of apparent cosmic design, radioactive decay and the solar eclipse. There are numerous ways the rate of radioactive decay could proceed, not the least being something akin to all-over-the-map since the process is apparently a totally random process – a random walk scenario. How two identical radioactive (unstable) atomic nuclei can sit side-by-side with one decaying within a minute while the other hangs around for decades is totally anomalous. Even stranger, all this randomness happens apparently without any causality involved. That alone tells you that there must be a hidden program operating behind the radioactive decay process since things just don’t happen for absolutely no reason at all. Something, or someone is guiding this. To pile on the weirdness, random, a-causal radioactive decay apparently follows a strict mathematical relationship or progression (the half-life relationship). That just reinforces the design theory since purely random a-causal chance doesn’t normally select for precise mathematical relationships. If randomness of necessity results in a half-life relationship, then all non-cyclic phenomenon that is random should exhibit a half-life relationship. For example, follow the pathway of 1000 babies born in one city on one day of the week. If half die (decay) in 70 years, does that mean that another 250 will have died when 140 years have elapsed leaving 125 more to die before another 70 years have passed, and so on? Okay, that might be a bit phony since we’re all apparently hardwired to die (decay) shortly thereafter our three-score-and-ten years has come and gone. But take 1000 black pebbles on a white sandy beach. Sooner or later someone is going to throw one of those pebbles back into the sea. Say 500 get tossed after one year. Will there still be 250 left after two years and 125 left after three years? What are the odds? If half of 1,000 brand new light bulbs burn out after one year, will 250 still be operational after two years has elapsed and 125 after the third year? If a battery sitting on the shelf uses up half its chemical energy potential after 10 years, will it still have a quarter left after 20 years? Of course in the case of the babies / humans (biology) and the light bulbs (physics) and the battery (chemistry), we’re talking about pre-programmed shelf life. Unstable radioactive nuclei have in theory no shelf life since there’s no causality involved in their decay, yet they decay away in a precise way anyway. Something’s screwy somewhere! Speaking of design, isn’t it amazing that the apparent diameters of the Sun and the Moon (which is slowly moving farther away from the Earth) just happen to coincide just at the time when modern humans evolved for them to appreciate the resulting solar eclipses!!! FINE-TUNING There appears to be some degree of fine-tuning within the Cosmos, not just to allow life to exist but to also allow non-living things of structure and substance to come to the fore – atoms, molecules, and conglomerates of these. If there were just one or two or even three examples of fine-tuning, one might dismiss the idea and put it all down to chance. But when there are numerous examples, one needs to sit up and take notice and engage in a “please explain”. For example: # The vacuum energy is 120 orders of magnitude less than that predicted. # The electric charge on the electron is exactly equal and opposite of that on the proton. # The exponents and coefficients in mathematical equations tend to be simple low value whole numbers or simple fractions thereof. # The Pauli Exclusion Principle which states that no two electrons with the same quantum configurations can occupy the same ‘orbit’. Were that not the case there would be no solidity to matter; no structure to the atom; no stellar stability; and as to the rules that govern chemistry – well just forget about it. Basically it allows multi-electron atoms to exist, otherwise all electrons would occupy the lowest possible energy state and refuse to enter into chemistry. So, no Pauli Exclusion Principle; no you. # The just-so resonance that allows for the high probability that the creation of carbon will proceed inside stars. If there’s no carbon, then there are no diamonds to be a girl’s best friend – in fact no girls either. # The versatility of the carbon atom. # One might easily imagine a Cosmos where all of the first generation stars just exhausted their fuel supply and slowly faded away into white dwarfs, red dwarfs and ultimately stone cold dead black dwarfs; neutron stars; even black holes. There would be no physics producing novae or supernovae and thus no creation of the heavier elements and no recycling of interstellar materials into second and third generation stars all with elements required to generate life. # The Cosmos is on an extreme knife edge between being an Open Cosmos and a Closed Cosmos. That ‘edge’ is the Flat Cosmos (where triangles have 180 degrees). A Flat Cosmos requires a just-so gravity or critical density of matter / energy. If gravity had been a tiny bit weaker nothing would have clumped together and we would have an Open Cosmos. If gravity had been a lot, or even a tiny bit stronger, the Universe would have immediately collapsed back on itself (a Closed Cosmos) with a post Big Bang event like a stretched rubber band snapping back to its original configuration. # Rather against-the-grain, ice floats on water. That’s essential for life. # Cycling and recycling: imagine the consequences if water didn’t evaporate; if plants didn’t replenish oxygen and animals carbon dioxide; if nothing consumed insect exoskeletons and bird feathers; if erosion wasn’t counter-balanced by mountain building; and just the general concept that problems are just opportunities and that one thing’s garbage / waste is another thing’s treasure / food. EMERGENCE Examples of relative complexity arising or emerging from relative simplicity abound. Here are a few examples. # Wetness from a union of hydrogen and oxygen. # Different chemical properties emerge from different configurations of electrons, neutrons and protons. [I’m still not sure have that works exactly. How can adding an extra electron, proton and neutron turn carbon (6) into nitrogen (7); sulfur (16) into chlorine (17); or gold (79) into mercury (80)?]. Or the reverse, say radioactivity where one element, like uranium, sheds stuff like alpha and beta particles and thus eventually morphs into lead. I mean electrons, neutrons and protons have no chemical properties of their own, just mass, charge and ‘spin’. Chemistry isn’t supernatural, but it sure is spooky. # Life from organic chemistry. # A haystack from sticks of straw. # An automobile from an assemblage of metal, plastic, rubber, glass, etc. or a chair from wood and cloth. # Consciousness from brain chemistry / chemistries. ENIGMAS ARISING There doesn’t seem to be any physical principle that requires the emergence of anything new arising from the parts. Grains of sand on a beach just remain grains of sand on the beach unless someone comes along and purposely builds a designed sand castle. Basically, if there is no requirement set in stone for the fundamental particles (neutrons, a quark trilogy; protons, another quark trilogy; and electrons) to hop into bed and procreate other more advanced non-fundamental things (like atoms and molecules) then emergence is stopped in its tracks before it begins. Now two (or more) neutrons are just two (or more) neutrons. Two (or more) electrons are just two (or more) electrons who would prefer to go their separate ways since they have the same charge. Two (or more) protons are just two (or more) protons who also would prefer to go their separate ways since they have the same charge. A mixture of neutrons and protons are thus that – a mixture. Of course a mixture of two protons and two neutrons comprise a helium nucleus, otherwise called an alpha particle when spat out in radioactive decay. But of course a helium nucleus isn’t the same as helium itself. A collection of neutrons and electrons are just that. Lastly, a collection or combination of electrons and protons appears promising, except – when a neutron decays you get out a proton and an electron (plus energy and an anti-neutrino). So doesn’t an electron mixing it up with a proton just produce a neutron (if you add those minor missing ingredients of course)? Of course one might argue that protons and neutrons are themselves emergent particles that emerged out of a trio of up and down quarks. But I’m not sure that helps much since no one has been able to isolate a quark and put it on the slab in the lab for detailed analysis. While dealing with some enigmas, here’s another one that’s puzzled me. Why is it that when matter meets anti-matter you get this big old Ka-Boom, an annihilation into pure energy? You think that when a negative electron meets and greets a positive positron, that you’d end up with a neutral particle with twice the mass of an electron (or a positron). I mean by comparison, when a negative electron meets and greets a positive proton, there’s no Ka-Boom. Would you get a Ka-Boom if an electron’s second-generation way more massive kissing-cousin, the muon (one negative charge) met a positron (one positive charge)? So there’s more to this sad tale than just equal but opposite electric charges meeting and greeting. So again, there’s a question – might there be some fine-tuning design behind this seeming enigma? Finally, the biggest enigma of all. How is it that the electric charge on the electron is EXACTLY equal and opposite of that on the proton, when these two particles are otherwise as alike as chalk-and-cheese? MATHEMATICS The Cosmos is a mathematical Cosmos. The Cosmos can be expressed by mathematics which suggests that some thought went into the ‘design’ of the Cosmos. The whole point of mathematics is to design or come up with a pre-designed equation(s) that in turn will give you a fine-tuned answer. You can’t really separate mathematics out from the concept of design or fine-tuning. For example, consider the mathematical relationship between mass and energy; or pressure, volume and temperature. Then there’s both Einstein’s and Newton’s gravity; Newton’s laws of motion; Maxwell’s equations dealing with electromagnetism; the Pythagorean Theorem; the quadratic equation, various quantum mechanical relationships, etc. If you want the relationship between mass and energy you got just one fine-tuned option. There’s no cosmic grab-bag of possible equations you can use instead of E = mc-squared. Therefore the relationship between mass and energy is fine-tuned. So if you want to know the volume of a box that’s say 5 units by 7 units by 3 units, do you have a grab-bag of options at your disposal? The short answer is “No”. So the method of calculation is designed and fine-tuned and the answer is fine-tuned. For some further examples consider: # The value of Pi is the same no matter how big the circle is. # All Euclidean (those on a flat surface) triangles have 180 degrees, no matter what. # Kepler’s laws regarding planetary motion where equal time equals equal areas swept out. # Many facets of our social / economic systems as well as those of the natural world can be described mathematically via inverse power laws which are elegantly simple and deeply mysterious! SYMMETRY While anything that has a 3-D structure has to have a left – right; top – bottom (up – down); and back – front, there’s no requirement that there be symmetry. More likely as not your house or apartment, etc. is not symmetrical, especially internally. But your car has for all practical purposes left – right symmetry and that’s by design. There doesn’t have to be anti-matter. There doesn’t have to be equal and opposite electric charges (gravity can do the clumping); there doesn’t have to be male and female (and often there isn’t both – asexual reproduction). However, all these symmetries and many more exist, and one can put that down to deliberate design as opposed to pure chance. Here is a partial list of some symmetries. # DNA molecule. # Crystals; snowflakes. # Plus – minus (mathematics). # Matter – antimatter. # Action – reaction. # Attraction – repulsion; north pole – south pole (magnetism); negative charge – positive charge. # Cause – effect. # Male – female. # Heads – tails. # Spheres (planets, stars, etc.). # Buckminsterfullerene (Bucky-balls). # Yes – no. # Back – front; top – bottom (up – down); left – right. # Cosmic isotropy – Cosmos looks the same in all directions. # Cosmic homogeneity – all points within the Cosmos are equivalent. But there are limits to symmetry. There’s no anti-gravity (unless you wish to count Dark Energy as a form of anti-gravity); there’s no anti-time. SCIENTISTS Scientists, being after all humans, often give in to the rather unscientific use of certain words in describing their scientific description of life, the Universe and everything scientific. They often use words such as deep, meaningful, beautiful, exquisite, and simple (think of Ockham’s Razor). For example, Einstein’s mass – energy relationship technically just is. It exists as a cold-as-stone hardcore scientific fact. But scientists often tend to give that relationship those value-added words like elegant. But it doesn’t stop there. Scientists, probably without even realizing the unscientific consequences of doing this, often ascribe a personality to Mother Nature / the Cosmos. The Universe hates this; nature abhors a vacuum; Mother Nature has an extraordinary fondness for and loves beetles; nature desires this or that or the next state of affairs. I’ve seen scientists use words / phrases to describe Mother Nature / cosmos as capricious; violent (red in tooth and claw); uncaring and indifferent; clever; lovely; strange; and that she often prefers. We’ve all heard the phrase that “Mother Nature is a bitch”. On the other hand, a computer / software programmer could easily like or loath and be all and be a programmer of all of the other things too. Now seemingly when one designs something by choice, say a video game, novel or a house, one does not design that video game / house / novel to be complex and ugly and shallow and without meaning / purpose and inelegant. So the fact that scientists, who should know better, lapse into describing life, the Universe and everything scientific in such flowery terms, well this suggests that perhaps there was a deliberate and planned design behind it all. The designer’s mindset and the scientist’s mindset tend to be in parallel. DISCUSSION So how are we to explain all of this? Firstly, there doesn’t have to be a real purpose to the Cosmos in order for design and fine-tuning to be true. If you reject the God Hypothesis (which I do) and the Multiverse Hypothesis (which has the exact same amount of evidence going for it as the God Hypothesis – none), that leaves the Mother Nature Hypothesis (pure chance) or the Simulation Hypothesis. I vote for the Simulation Hypothesis. Now one concept strikes me as obvious. Programmed software, in order to be something really useful with some degree of order, logic, rules, laws, principles, precise relationships and predictability has to be both designed and fine-tuned. That’s the case when you consider all of our video / computer games and training simulators (concept: puppets on the string) as well as all of our ‘what if’ simulation scenarios (concept: cast your fate to the wind). RATIONALE Software, almost by definition has to be designed and fine-tuned. Otherwise it serves no useful purpose. Software can account for all of the design and fine-tuning elements, including emerging elements, discussed above. There is nothing impossible, improbable, or even unlikely about the Simulation Hypothesis since we humans have created our own versions of simulated landscapes and virtual beings, more and more and more of them ever faster, cheaper and better with every passing year. What we can do, others have done – better, faster, and cheaper. # A great deal has been written and speculated about the abilities of ultra-super advanced technological societies actually creating an entirely new universe from scratch, say by manipulating quantum fluctuations. Aside from the dangers of doing so, like being at Ground Zero and at the focus of a new Big Bang event, wouldn’t it just be easier – and safer – to simulate one? So, once upon a time in a galaxy far, far away, natural selection evolved a highly technologically advanced extraterrestrial civilization who loved creating hypothetical simulations about the existence of other extraterrestrial life forms based on the characteristics of the extra-solar planets they discovered. [That’s something we’ve obviously done too.] One of their multi-millions of simulated scenarios was called “The Life and Times on the Third Rock from the Star Sol”! # Natural selection evolved the human species as per the standard anthropological model and in the year 2525 CE their computing technology advanced to the stage where they could create highly detailed and realistic ancestor simulations – that’s us. [Well, we create simulations of Civil War battles, so why not humans in the year 2525 CE simulate parts of their history?] So, based on pure probability, there will be vastly more virtual reality worlds inhabited by virtual reality beings in ‘existence’ than really real worlds inhabited by really real beings. Now the essential point to remember is that it’s not the absolute number of highly advanced technological civilizations or societies on offer but the RATIO of virtual worlds to really real worlds, and taking us as typical, well the RATIO is multi-thousands to one when you consider all of the video ‘games’ that we have created right around the world, past and present. POSTSCRIPT Are you asleep, perchance to be dreaming? There’s a logical alternative to the above – dreams. Assuming that you’re a really real being, when you dream, you dream up simulated virtual reality beings. Now over the course of your lifetime, you will have over 100,000 dreams. So, one really real person creates hundreds of thousands of virtual beings. Now, what are the odds you are that really real person and not a virtual being in someone else’s dream?

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shirlleycoyle · 4 years ago

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What the End of the Universe Will Really Be Like, According to a Theoretical Cosmologist

Apocalyptic visions have always percolated in humanity’s collective imagination, whether it’s the Rapture, Ragnarök, or a future asteroid impact like the one that killed the dinosaurs. In recent decades, however, scientists have managed to establish some rough parameters around the ultimate Doomsday: the death of the universe itself.

Katie Mack, a theoretical cosmologist at North Carolina State University, explores these terminal diagnoses for the cosmos in her new book The End of Everything (Astrophysically Speaking), which packs a huge amount of scientific research into forecasting the eventual fate of our universe.

“It doesn’t end well,” she warned in a call.

Before you scribble “end of universe” onto the list of things keeping you up at night, take comfort in the fact that the really bad stuff will happen in the far-future of the cosmos, at least tens of billions of years from now. You will be long dead, as will Earth and the Sun. The senescent universe will be a time and place totally alien from our own surroundings, far more fantastical than any the feverish apocalyptic visions of myth or fiction.

“I get asked a lot: How do you deal with thinking about these big topics, like ultimate destruction? How does it affect your outlook?” Mack said. “I think all you can do is go to the absurd in the sense that there’s no way to conceptualize this stuff with daily experience.”

“It’s like the universe is laughing at this idea that we can have an orderly and safe environment in which to live,” she added. “It very much upends our notion of stability in our world. I don’t know how to respond to that other than just laughing at it, because it’s not personal.”

We asked Mack to unpack a few of the juiciest apocalyptic scenarios in The End of Everything (Astrophysically Speaking), which is out from Scribner on Tuesday.

Heat Death: When time ceases to matter

The universe will most likely perish in a state of total disorder known as Heat Death, when the direction of time as we experience it ceases to matter and just about anything may be possible, according to cosmologists.

In this scenario, space just keeps expanding until galaxies fall apart, all the stars burn out, and even atoms decay and disintegrate. At this point, the universe will have reached a point of maximum entropy, or disorder, rendering the “arrow of time”—the difference between the past and the future—meaningless.

“Time still happens, but you have lost the directionality in some sense,” Mack explained. “It’s based on the fact that the way we define past and future, from a strictly physics perspective, is that the only thing we know about that really cares about the difference between past and the future is the second law of thermodynamics, which is entropy.”

“If you can get to a point where entropy is maximized, where you can’t create more entropy, then it’s hard to say that time is really meaningful in a global sense anymore,” she said.

Needless to say, some trippy stuff could end up happening in a universe that has maxed out on entropy and faded into a vast and eternal bath of thermodynamic equilibrium. For instance, Mack describes the Boltzmann Brain problem, which involves “disembodied sentient brains popping in and out of existence,” according to the book. This, and anything else—a whale materializing next to a bowl of petunias, or a piano assembling itself from nothing—becomes increasingly likely in such a scenario.

Such wild imaginings stem from the sheer slowness of the Heat Death, a decay that could take a googol (10 to the power of 100) years to really get rolling. Those huge timescales boost the odds of totally bizarre random events occasionally happening in a fizzled-out cosmos—including, potentially, the birth of a new universe.

“The nice thing about the Heat Death is that you have a lot of time,” Mack said. “If you want to make sure that you get a lot done in your universe before it goes out on you, then maybe the Heat Death is the best option.”

The Big Rip: When gravity breaks and the Earth explodes

The Heat Death is the probable outcome of the accelerated expansion of the universe, but cosmic expansion may also lead to a less likely, yet far more violent, end of everything: the Big Rip.

In this scenario, objects in the universe don’t drift apart and decay into maximum entropy. Instead, a point is reached at which the expansion of the universe ultimately tears apart the fabric of spacetime itself, like a cloth sheet that splits when stretched, causing the force of gravity to lose its trademark grip.

In a chilling section of the book, Mack describes exactly what this fate would look like to us on Earth if it was approaching in the near-future. “Our night sky begins to darken,” she writes, “as the great Milky Way swath across the sky fades. The galaxy is evaporating.”

“We begin to find that the orbits of the planets are not what they should be, but are instead slowly spiraling outward,” she continues. “Just months before the end, after we’ve lost the outer planets to the great and growing blackness, the Earth drifts away from the Sun, and the Moon from the Earth. We too enter the darkness, alone.”

It sounds lonely, I know, but take heart: we would only have to bear this isolation for a few hours before the Earth blows up.

The explosion of Earth due to shredded spacetime certainly makes for a cinematically exciting scene. But if we are fated for a Big Rip, it is not likely to happen for about 200 billion years. That’s a lot sooner than the standard Heat Death scenario, but it is well beyond the lifespan of our solar system, Earth, and (probably) humanity.

That said, there may well be alien civilizations in the future, or perhaps descendants of our own species, that could have to face this horrifying reality. “I think it’s entirely possible that there could be life still around on those timescales,” Mack said.

If there are still sentient beings at that point, and the Big Rip does come to pass, all we can do right now is offer our sincere condolences to them from the distant past.

Vacuum Decay: A sudden end

Heat Death would kill the universe slowly and softly, while the Big Rip is a much swifter assassin. But if you’re looking for the fastest end to existence, Vacuum Decay is the cosmic Doomsday for you.

“I have a special place in my heart for Vacuum Decay,” Mack said. “Partly, because it’s just so out of left field and such a bizarre possibility that has only really been very seriously talked about in the last few years.”

“But also because it’s quick and painless and you don’t notice it,” she added. “So that’s nice.”

This outcome is a bit of a dark horse, though its profile has been raised thanks to the recent discovery of the Higgs boson particle by the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland. One of the implications of this breakthrough is that our reality may not be all that fundamentally stable in ways that could have rather abrupt consequences for life, the universe, and everything.

The universe could be a “true vacuum,” which means that objects in it are always able to find their lowest energy state, creating some level of cosmic stability. However, the Higgs field appears to be “metastable,” which raises the possibility that the universe may be a false vacuum.

Theoretically, this means that if the Higgs particle were to sense a true vacuum, it would be attracted to that environment. This is very bad for us, because it would trigger the spontaneous destruction of the universe in what Mack calls “a bubble of quantum death.”

Unlike the creeping dread of the Heat Death or the Big Rip, the Vacuum Decay apocalypse would kill us all in a snap. The death bubble would simply expand its borders at the speed of light, incinerating everything in its path with ruthless efficiency.

“In terms of the aesthetics of it, or the practical implications of what actually happens to you, maybe vacuum decay is a nicer option,” compared to the Heat Death or the Big Rip, Mack said.

In principle, Vacuum Decay could happen at any time, but cosmologists think it is far more likely to happen tens of billions of years into the future, similar to the other end-times scenarios. We will need to keep pushing the boundaries of particle physics and cosmology in order to develop the idea, but it’s not considered a probable end to the universe at this time.

“It’s just a super fun thing to work on because the implications are so big,” Mack said. “We can learn a lot about our cosmos by assuming that it could happen.”

*****

The universe will likely continue to exist for several hundred billion years to come. But thinking about its ultimate end seems particularly resonant in 2020, a year that has taken on its own identity of apocalyptic mayhem.

It’s understandable to be exhausted by the horrors of the Covid-19 pandemic and the economic devastation it has wrought, or by the rapid onset of climate change with its myriad disasters, or by the threat of authoritarian leaders and brutal state violence.

Reading about the ultimate death of the universe may not assuage those fears, but it will immerse you in the astonishing weirdness of our wider surroundings, and remind you of the ingenuity of scientists who have spent centuries trying to read the cosmic tea leaves.

“There is a kind of luxury about being able to think about things that are disconnected from you and not just everyday survival,” Mack said. “It’s real and it’s destructive and everything is torn apart, but maybe that’s a way to displace some of the feelings of angst and desperation that you might have in daily life.”

What the End of the Universe Will Really Be Like, According to a Theoretical Cosmologist syndicated from https://triviaqaweb.wordpress.com/feed/

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