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Parallel Universes Are Real
It's in Scientific American, it must be true. This month's cover story:
Parallel Universes.
"The simplest and most popular cosmological model today predicts that you have a twin in a galaxy about 10 to the 1028 meters from here." That number's a lot bigger than 10 to the 101.42 meters, which are the farthest observable objects in what we call our universe. And anyway, twin or not, anyone outside my light-cone is dead to me. That's just a rule I have. If you're skeptical of the multiverse, go read our discussion of a similar article from
two days ago.
Has anyone else noticed that Scientific American has suffered some serious Omni-fication in the past couple of years?
I let my subscription lapse a couple of years ago and when I got around to re-subscribing last year I found quite a few unpleasant surprises.
The last page of the old rag was always the Connections column, which was really interesting and entertaining. It's gone.
Gone also are all of the even vaguely scientific articles. There seemed to be a slant towards ridiculous stories on the edge of pseudo-science, much like in Omni magazine (is that in print anymore?). And every issue featured a sensationalist story centered around the threat of terrorism - stories about dirty bombs, biological weapons, new wiretapping technology, etc. It felt like they were desperately trying to attract readers by featuring stories with the same kind of scare tactics that the 11:00 news (which I haven't watched voluntarily in many years) resorts to.
Needless to say, I've let my subscription lapse again. Too bad, I used to really like that mag.
- Scientists debate on wether universe is finite or infinite
- There is debate on uniformity of matter also, mostly it is thought that matter is distributed uniformaly over observable space
So the debate lives on! And i guess calling these as parallel universe is a misnomer, this is the same universe, not in another dimension(like we have the in the movie "The One")My Aurora : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o91ZsGwJYyg
FB : https://www.facebook.com/TanveersPhotography
First they say that they have found the end of the universe and that one day it may pull back on itself and implode (rubber band effect) Then they say the universe actually folds around in an endless loop. Then they say there are parallel universes. Just wait another couple of years someone will disprove this. If there are more than one universe does that mean we are a multiverse. On another note god help us if there are more than one microsoft in this multiverse.
Long time back another scientist, David Deutsch[http://www.qubit.org/people/david/David.ht ml] proposed a similar therory to explain Young's double slit experiment. This theory indicates that there exists a universe for every possibility. Every time an event could have more than one outcome there is a universe created for each outcome. In our universe a meteorite caused the extinction of the dinosaurs. A parallel universe exists in which the meteorite missed Earth, and possibly several others in which the meteorite struck another planet or was not formed at all. In a parallel universe Hitler did not invade Russia and consequently won the Second World War. In yet another, Elvis is still alive. This theory explains the double slit experiment by saying that quantum phenomena are the result of interactions across universes. When a single electron passes through a slit it interacts with the electron from a parallel universe, in which the electron went through the other slit, producing the pattern. This explains the pattern produced by passing one electron through the slit at a time.
This theory applies to time travel in how it allows for reverse time travel to accommodate paradoxes. When one travels back in time, one travels back into a universe created for the possibility of time travel. This universe runs in parallel with the universe from which the traveller came. Everything will be identical to the past in the original universe, and alterations will have the same effect as they would have if they had occurred in the original universe. However, because it is a parallel universe, and not the universe that created the traveller, the traveller will not be affected by any changes he makes. He could kill himself, his father, his grandfather or whoever, and while he is erased from the parallel universe, he continues to exist because he is not from this new universe. Thus no paradox is created, and only the destruction of himself by suicide or personal attack, or his time machine, could see him affected by the outcomes of his actions, and even then no paradox is created. This provides a method by which paradoxes can be avoided and reverse time travel allowed.
This theory has parallels such as the alternative histories approach. This theory allows reverse time travel without consequences by having the time traveller travel back onto a different timeline and thus is insulated from any actions which should in theory affect him or cause a paradox.
The full text of this theory can be found at http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0104033
What's under yellowstone?
Buddhism is the only 'old' religion (although some argue it's a philosophy as it has no god) which correlates and whose beliefs correspond with science all the way across the board.
The Buddhist concept of the universe's energy and rebirth of life actually tie in pretty well with science. The belief is that energy cannot be created or destroyed, it can only be converted between types.
That's why Buddhists don't believe you diw and.. that's it, game over. They believe the energy ('lifeforce' for want of a better term) merely transposes into another form of energy, which then may be mix with other energy and turn into other life or matter later on. While scientists would not particularly go for the whole reincarnation game, there is a lot of logic in it, and obviously a lot of anecdotal evidence (how do the child prodigies know stuff they shouldn't know? etc.. how comes some people remember fragments of what happened in the past and then verify it to be true? and so on)
Buddhism also presents the theory of the 'middle way'. That is, it is not good to be swung to one side or another on issues, but to steer a middle path only. Our universe shows that nothing exists in a place that is too cold, or a place that is too hot. Psychology shows major issues with people who are too egotistical and people who have no sense of self esteem. The middle way works in all disciplines. You should not be too lazy, but you should not be a workaholic either. And so on.
Another concept is experimentation, which was prevalent in Buddhism way before modern science. Buddhists do not generally believe anything blindly, the Buddha said that it is unwise to believe what someone says without knowing it is true yourself. Therefore you must experiment and prove your own truths. Yet again, another bond with the modern scientific process. Even the Dalai Lama (as a spiritual head of a branch of the religion) has changed many of his views upon being exposed to the West and our different way of life.
Religions and science may never walk hand in hand, but if you pay attention you can find a lot of close bonds and even areas where religion has helped science, rather than hindered it.
I know what I am about to write is radical, but please give it some thought before rendering an opinion on it. It's not exactly technological speculation as it is philosophical speculation on the ultimate limits (if there are any) of the technological metaphor.
Up to this point in nearly all discussions of extreme/speculative tech what we are trying to do is maximally stretch our imagination as to what is possible within the realm of currently known scientific law. And for those of us who've been frequenting transhumanist circles for any period of time, we know the current limits of science portend a lot - uploading, indefinite lifespans, traversible wormholes, jupiter brains, basement universes, etc.
Now lets assume that our current understanding of the known laws of physics are invariable. Lets assume that the Grand Unified Theory really is the grand theory they claim it to be.
I have been engaging in some discussion lately about the begining of the universe, and for the first time (amazingly enough) I pushed the 'Where did it come from' question through as far as it can go. And, not surprisingly, it doesn't go anywhere. No matter how you try to explain the origin of the universe, none of the theories can account for the cause of it. What caused the big bang? Where did 'God' come from? etc.
From this, i concluded that there cannot be a begining. If there was a begining, then something must have caused that begining, and so something was there before the begining.
This doesn't answer anything, but I am yet to see another way around the causality problem (defining something as 'acausal' doesn't solve it, it just dodges it).
Now, linked to this 'where did the universe come from?' problem is, 'Where did the incredible laws, which make our universe a coherent place come from?', which is what I think underlies it all. Once the universe began, it is easy to say 'the laws guided the evolution of everything from there'....but how did the laws come to be? Why are they so perfect? (weak anthropic principle could be an acceptable argument here).
When you think of an omniverse that has no beginning, then we are talking about something that is temporally at least infinite in duration, something ultimately beyond time itself, where concepts of a beginning and an end have no meaning. I think what this also means is that any one set of properties/laws we experience are also ultimately entirely arbitrary. If they are not then we must ask ourselves what meta-laws are behind it governing what types of laws are allowed and which are not? And then we have to ask ourselves where did these metalaws come from? And then meta-meta-laws and so on to infinity. And, not surprisingly, it doesn't go anywhere. No matter how you try to explain the origin of any laws, none of the theories can account for the cause of those laws. From this, I concluded there can be no fundamental laws.
So if there are no fundamental laws, no limts, then everything is possible. If not, why not? And we are right back to an arbitray set of laws with no explanation. And since we are used to applying the metaphor of technology to such things, we could (at least for fun) call such tech based on a lack of laws nada-technology or onto-technology. The technology of reality itself. I like to call it nadatech becuase ulitimatly it's based on nothing... no laws, no limits, nothing at all.
So what do we do with nada- or onto-technology?
Anything. Everything.
Either way, the ultimate lack of any fundamental laws implies that everything is possible and probably already exists exists in a timeless standing quantum probability wave in eternity.
Planet P Blog - Liberty with Technology.
www.enthea.org
Anything that tries to trivialize natural phenomena with common sense immediately sets of alarms in my head, ie. like:
How could space not be infinite? Is there a sign somewhere saying "Space Ends Here--Mind the Gap"?
And what about Olber's paradox which asks the question that why is the sky dark? If universe is infinite and reasonably uniformly distributed with matter, we should see a star at every point in the sky. The article seems to cover this by making up some mind-boggling distances between the universes so that our light cones do not overlap. However, having "universes" distributed uniformly in same infinite space would mean that there are infinite amount of universes, too. And this would mean that the probability of not having another universe (in fact, infinite other universes) close enough to see approaches zero.
In other words, glancing upwards and noting the, well, space between stars is enough to undermine the foundations of the article, thus reducing it to a load of crap.
How do they manage to include both of these in the same theory? So the Universe started from nothing 14 billion years ago, and has expanded to fill an infinite non-curved space?
If this were true, why is it the case that science developed greatly in the Christian world (that has now been become secular) and not in the Buddhistic world?
That's an excellent point. I think you may have answered your own question though. Science has only become revered and far reaching in secular societies.
The other reason is that while Buddhism accepts science and, in some cases, follows it, it is ultimately a faith whose believers are trying to break away from the 'human realm'.
Why do we spend so much time on science and discovery? Even if we made contact with aliens, managed to grow crops on the moon, and all had cellphones, what good is that? When you're dealing with faith, issues of science and technology are almost irrelevant. Buddhists are trying to reach Nirvana, not NYC on their cellphones.
So while Buddhism may comfortably live alongside science, compared with other religions, it does not actively participate in developing it.
Let us not forget that while Europe was plunged into ignorance because of the Christian Church's suppression, the Islamic world was making amazing advances in math, science, and medicine.
Al-Khwarizmi invented algebra around 780 (both "algebra" and "algorithm" are arabic words).The Bagdad physician, al-Razi, (865-925) produced a medical textbook that was the standard throughout the Islamic world. And Avicenna (Ibn Sina) was like the Isaac Newton of the Islamic world, who in 980 was making advances in medicine, physics and philosophy.
Many agree that many of the advances made in the Western World during the renaissance owe their beginnings to the science, math, and rational thought of the Islamic World.
In one of my favorite scenes from Lawrence of Arabia, Lawrence is talking with Prince Feisal of (Saudi) Arabia, the point is made:
Feisal: Do you know, Lieutenant, in the Arab city of Cordoba were two miles of public lighting in the streets when London was a village?
Lawrence: Yes, you were great.
Feisal: Nine centuries ago.
and there are 10^90 particles in the universe ... the entire universe goes on forever
So, if the universe contains a finite amount of matter in an infinite amount of space, does that mean that it has an effective density of zero?
My Karma: ran over your Dogma
StrawberryFrog
This whole "there are so and so many particle positions" is crap. If for nothing else then because bosons (like the photon) does not obey the Pauli principle of exclusion. This means that it is possible to have infinitely many photons in the same quantum state.
All we can talk about is really how many different ways we can pack the fermions (e.g. electrons, nuclei), but the fermions are not the whole picture.
2 cents from a particle physicist
If you were a little atom looking at a sea of cells around you, it would probably seem plausible that somewhere in that huge sea there was someone a bit like you fighting the same battles you fight every day, but in a slightly different way, or with different hormones.
Of course this wouldn't matter since you would never meet your counterpart.
You'd have a vague idea that maybe the universe was not infinite because perhaps it was one day going to end. But something would tell you that it was somehow cyclic, and it would come back.
So in a sense it would be infinite.
And if you could travel really far, maybe you'd come to the end of the sea of cells. But you'd have to travel so far that you can safely say that your sea of cells is infinite as far as you're concerned.
Ale
However, when defining a system you have to start with a set of primitive concepts and axioms which govern them. You could say that these primitive concepts are "outside" the system, but really they are the core of the system.
For example, arithmetic on the natural numbers is usually defined in terms of Peano's axioms:
You can apply these axioms without actually knowing what a number or a successor is (although these can be defined in terms of set theory, but set theory just boils down to some primitive concepts and axioms). Using the concept of a successor you can define addition. With addition you can define multiplication and subtraction. With those you can define the rational numbers and the negative numbers and so on.
The important thing to remember is that in order to apply logic, you must first have some axioms which are assumed to be true. You can make whatever axioms you like, but it usually helps if they are consistent and are actually relevent to something.
My only political goal is to see to it that no political party achieves its goals.
Despite my exceedingly limited scientific knowledge (A-level physics... nothing out of the ordinary), I've come to completely disbelieve in the idea of parralel universes where any possible outcome is played out.
Why? Mostly bccause the arguments provided for them, at least on a layperson's level, are arrogant sci-fi that tend to fall into one of two categories. Either they just "assume" that another path is possible, e.g. life never formed and Earth is barren now, or they assume that universes differ through human choice, e.g. you choose not to go to the cinema, or whatever.
The first suffers as it completely ignores why anything happens. This would mean that there are universes created at every moment of time as gravity switches, or elements gain different properties. Why limit what can or can't happen?
The second suffers as it suddenly places the human freedom of choice at the center of its reasoning. This would mean that the human mind/soul/id was somehow *above* physical properties. Would new universes be created if an animal decided to do something differently? How about plants? As the lifefor, gets less complex, this rapidly decends into a form of the first argument - that some things can change, but others can't.
Maybe there's another way to work infinite multiverses into life, but I'm not convinced by anything I've seen so far, even if blinded by science and big numbers.
My 2-layman-pence, anyway.
Lawrence of Arabia was one of the biggest assholes of all time. He peddled the lies of the british to the arab tribes to turn them against the Othman (ottoman) empire and thus lead to the creation of the artificial arab nations we see today that bicker with one another and are ruled over by western forces.
It was simple divide and conquer. The hashemite kings were put in power and since then the arabs have been suffering under one dictator or puppet regime after another. The intellectual society of science and literature is gone. This downfall thanks to one asshole running around the desert on a horse.
Yet science has not (to my knowledge) always explained what causes those neurons to fire, has it? Sure, neurons fire because other neurons connected to them fire... that only goes so far.
One of the things that I've found most fascinating is the theory that the mind can influence things at the subatomic level. During the 60s/70s, the USSR did some experiments with people who rumour said had strong psychokinetic abilities (ESP). Now, the Ruskies were into all kinds of bizarre things, they researched things that Western science wrote off as ridiculous.
Anyway, they found some pretty interesting things. Like, they didn't find anybody that could move objects with their mind, or anything like that. But, they did find a few who could apparently alter the rate of nuclear decay. As you're probably aware (you read slashdot after all), subatomic decay is essentially random according to todays science. What they found was that these "psychics" could, in controlled conditions, speed up or slow down a number of a screen that measured decay. I can't recall if they were told what the number meant or not, but they could seemingly control the process at will.
Interesting. Could the mind impose itself onto low level randomness? If so, that could be the missing link between mind and body.
I once saw a documentary with Dr Robert Winston, if you're in the UK you'll probably know who I mean. It described the internals of a neuron quite well, pity I can't remember any of the names. The one thing that struck me though was that a part at the core was described as being in a state of quantum instability - it's small enough to be affected by uncertainty.
If mind can affect quantum probabilities, and our brains are in a state of quantum instability .... aah. You have mind controlling body. Such a thing would answer many questions.
I spent my late teens exploring various religions and philosophies, looking for something that made sense.
Buddhism was the most seriously pursued philosophic framework, and this was because it did not directly conflict with things I already knew to be true - such as the energy/matter/energy pattern. In fact, I once wrote:
"Energy can neither be created, nor destroyed. It is eternal, unchanging. Thus, you were never born and you will never die. You are a wave of energy, a temporary yet eternal pattern. Everyone is you, and you are no one."
The first half, as mentioned, is one of the reasons I enjoyed Buddhist thought so much. The second half is why I eventually moved on (and found something much more appealing and applicable).
The problem with Buddhism is that it is almost entirely focused on the *negation* of self. The rejection of identity. The philosophy I discovered after a year or two of Buddhism is one I have held firmly for most of a decade - and it is entirely focused on self and reality.
Buddhism advocates two things, albeit in different ways than other religions/philosophies: faith and not-self. Objectivism is the direct opposite: existence and identity.
Buddhism is inherently flawed. Almost all other philosophies are, too, and in the same way. It's a little difficult to explain in a short slashdot post, but here goes:
Buddhism attempts to reject the existence of the self, and the mind, and speaks against the validity of desires. But in doing so, it uses those very things. A Buddhist says "I want to seek Nirvana" - and destroys the fundamental tenets of his own faith in the process.
First, he says "I" - a declaration of self. Second, he says "want to seek" - indicating a desire, and what's more, a mind capable of desire. In two strokes, he has destroyed 3 of his ideas.
It's like a man saying "I have no mouth". There is an excellent and concise statement of this:
"Existence exists. And the act of grasping that statement implies two corollary axioms: that something exists which one is aware of; and that consciousness exists, consciousness being the faculty of perceiving that which exists. If that which you claim to perceive does not exist, what you possess is not consciousness." (Ayn Rand, _Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology_)
I will give Buddhism credit, however, for being very original, creative, and intellectually challenging. I also appreciate the fact that so many Buddhists are so very open to reason, to fact, to proven science. I would much prefer to deal with a Buddhist than with most(all?) other religions.... except for the ridiculous rejection of self.
If you do not have your self, what do you have? A mass of carbon and water and heavy elements acting like a computer, accepting input and spitting out whatever society and environment has programmed? I don't like this view - I prefer to own my self, and to write my own internal software.
As an engineer, philosopher, occultist, and someone who's taken issue with RealMike, I sincerely resent this statement. I do think, however, that because I prefer rigor to things that "feel deep", many would assume I want proof now in diagram form.
The original point that we don't know what happens in the brain, we don't really understand consciousness -- that is certainly isn't getting a fair shake around here.
There may not be a universal model of consciousness, but thanks to the work of people like Daniel Dennett, reasonable modes of inquiry and discourse are forming. Regardless of that, though, I don't know that understanding the "nature" of consciousness is necessarily all that paramount.
We ARE self-aware.
This is where rigor comes in. It's not clear to me that humans are necessarily self-aware. It may be that humans perceive self-awareness, though, as an illusion of the intelligence their brains give them.
We spend 6-8 hours a night DREAMING.
Not all sleeping time is spent dreaming, so you're off unless "we" spend 10-12 hours a night asleep. I get a good 4-6 hours a night, myself...
Either way, that's not uniquely human. Dreaming seems to be pretty nominal for mammals and, from what I understand avians.
We can get measurably better taking PLACEBOS.
For certain symptoms in certain cases (especially pain control and minor injury), yes.
But the fact is that YOU exist, you have a brain which shapes your moods, shapes your perception, shapes your store of information ... but it isn't YOU. That goes deeper than brain.
A lot of this is rather debatable, honestly. You're dogmatically setting up a consciousness/brain duality so that consciousness escapes the same demands of inquiry, which I consider to be a very serious pitfall on the road to understanding the human condition. DesCartes' duality of self still lingers unchecked in statements like yours, but it's still circular, evades the problem, and considered by many modern minds to be thoroughly problematic.
I'm all for going to a deeper level, but I say that a good reason is needed for it. A really good reason. Inventing "deeper levels" that evade standard modes of inquiry to enforce one's perceptions or dogma is not a good reason.