How to Walk Through a Door

September 27, 2009 2 Comments

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

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

tunneling

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

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

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

Effectively, we would have walked through a door!

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

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

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

walkingthroughawall

Filed under Future Tech, Nanotech, Physics, Quantum Mechanics, Science Tagged with , ,

Just when you thought Physics couldn’t get any Stranger

September 7, 2009 1 Comment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Because the only true TOE is Programmed Reality.  QED.

Filed under Cosmology, Future Tech, Physics, Programmed Reality, Quantum Mechanics, Science Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Non-locality Explained!

May 8, 2009 6 Comments

A great article in Scientific American, “A Quantum Threat to Special Relativity,” is well worth the read.

Locality in physics is the idea that things are only influenced by forces that are local or nearby.  The water boiling on the stovetop does so because of the energy imparted from the flame beneath.  Even the sounds coming out of your radio are decoded from the electromagnetic disturbance in the air next to the antenna, which has been propagating from the radio transmitter at the speed of light.  But, think we all, nothing can influence anything remotely without a “chain reaction” disturbance, which according to Einstein can not exceed the speed of light.

However, says Quantum Mechanics, there is something called entanglement.  No, not the kind you had with Becky under the bleachers in high school.  This kinds of entanglement says that particles that once “interacted” are forever entangled, whereby their properties are reflected in each other’s behavior.  For example, take 2 particles that came from the same reaction and separate them by galactic distances.  What one does, the other will follow.  This has been proven to a distance of at least 18 km and seems to violate Einstein’s theory of Special Relativity.

Einstein, of course, took issue with this whole concept in his famous EPR paper, preferring to believe that “hidden variables” were responsible for the effect.  But, in 1964, physicist John Bell developed a mathematical proof that no local theory can account for all of Quantum Mechanics experimental results.  In other words, the world is non-local.  Period.  It is as if, says the SciAm article, “a fist in Des Moines can break a nose in Dallas without affecting any other physical thing anywhere in the heartand. ”  Alain Aspect later performed convincing experiments that demonstrated this non-locality.  45 years after John Bell’s proof, scientists are coming to terms with the idea that the world is non-local and special relativity has limitations.  Both ideas are mind-blowing.

But, as usual, there are a couple of clever paradigms that get around it all, each of which are equally mind-blowing.  In one, our old friend the “Many Worlds” theory, zillions of parallel universes are spawned every second, which account for the seeming non-locality of reality.  In the other, “history plays itself out not in the three-dimensional spacetime of special relativity but rather this gigantic and unfamiliar configuration space, out of which the illusion of three-dimensionality somehow emerges.”

I have no problem explaining all of these ideas via programmed reality.

Special Relativity has to do with our senses, not with reality.  True simultaneity is possible because our reality is an illusion.  And there is no speed limit in the truer underlying construct.  So particles have no problem being entangled.

Many Worlds can be implemented by multiple instances of reality processes.  Anyone familiar with computing can appreciate how instances of programs can be “forked” (in Unix parlance) or “spawned” (Windows, VMS, etc.).  You’ve probably even seen it on your buggy Windows PC, when instances of browsers keep popping up like crazy and you can’t kill the tasks fast enough and end up either doing a hard shutdown or waiting until the little bastard blue-screens.  Well, if the universe is just run by a program, why can’t the program fork itself whenever it needs to, explaining all of the mysteries of QM that can’t be explained by wave functions.

And then there is “configuration space.”  Nothing more complex than multiple instances of the reality program running, with the conscious entity having the ability to move between them, experiencing reality and all the experimental mysteries of Quantum Mechanics.

Hey physicists – get your heads out of the physics books and start thinking about computer science!

(thanks to Poet1960 for allowing me to use his great artwork)

Non-locality explained

Filed under Philosophy, Programmed Reality, Quantum Mechanics Tagged with , , , , , , , ,

Change the Past, Change the Future Simply by Forgetting

April 21, 2009 2 Comments

Here’s an interesting idea.  To avoid an impending disaster, all you have to do is forget your past.  So says physicist Saibal Mitra at the University of Amsterdam.  Even changing the past seems to be possible, believe it or not.

His idea is predicated on accepting our old friend, the Everett interpretation of Quantum Mechanics, aka the Many Universes theory.  According to Mitra, if the collective observers memory is reset prior to a cataclysmic event, such as a species ending asteroid impact, the state of the universe becomes “undetermined.”  As a result, it has an equal likelihood of following any of the many subsequent paths, most of which should have nothing to do with an asteroid impact.  And so, by selectively forgetting our past, we can avoid certain doom by starting with a clean slate of future outcomes.  See this New Scientist article.

There is something unsettling about the logic, but his paper seems to be on firm footing: http://arxiv.org/abs/0902.3825.  And the implications are fascinating.  Not happy with how last year’s Superbowl turned out?  Keep a single copy of the event, erase everyone’s memory, replace all archived bits of history relating to the game, and then we can all sit back and watch the recording again.  Mitra says if we do that, there’s a good chance Arizona will win.  Watching the same tape!  Well, maybe not the same tape.  Because once the universe became undetermined again, the physical tape could have encoded any number of outcomes.

This a vaguely reminiscent of “Last Thursdayism,” which is one of the possible aspects of Programmed Reality.  Once the universe is reset from an observational standpoint, we would never know the difference and an entirely different future course of events is possible.  If you make the restart point somewhere in our current past, then the recent past can be changed too.  Programmed Reality explains it all!

Future, Past, Present

Filed under Philosophy, Programmed Reality, Quantum Mechanics Tagged with , , , , , , ,

LOST, Time Travel and Quantum Mechanics

April 8, 2009 1 Comment

For those who have been following the TV show, LOST, I hope you are not as LOST as I am!  Still, the topics that they touch on are on the fringe of the scientific fringe, which is perhaps why I enjoy the show.

Take the recent episode entitled “He’s Our You,” which aired on 3/25/09.  To make an intricate plot-line even more confusing, the writers have decided to throw time travel into the mix this season.  Which of course brings about our old friend, the “Grandfather Paradox,” a hypothetical scenario whereby you go back in time and kill your grandfather, negating your own existence, all Back-to-the-Future-like.  Seems like such an idea would make time travel impossible.

But, the Everett (aka “Many Worlds”) interpretation of Quantum Mechanics comes to the rescue.  Because in that theory, every quantum mechanical decision, every possible outcome of a particles movement forks a new universe.  In one, the particle moves, spins, or whatever, in one direction.  In the other, it goes in the other direction.  It solves the time travel paradox because as soon as you kill grandpa, reality forks a new universe, in which he is dead and you are never born.  Who is the guy who killed him?  Somebody from another universe.  Entirely self-consistent.

So don’t worry that Ben Linus’ path in the past will affect the gang in the future.  Not if Hugh Everett had anything to say about it.

Oh yeah, and check out my Powers of 10 simulation.  It just might hold the key to the show.

Filed under Quantum Mechanics Tagged with , , , , ,

Reality Doesn’t Exist, according to the latest research

July 7, 2008 6 Comments

A team of physicists in Vienna has conducted a set of “reality” experiments that prove to a level of 80 orders of magnitude that reality doesn’t exist unless you observe it.  In other words, in case you ever doubted the Schrodinger’s Cat thought experiment, doubt no longer.  It seems that experimental evidence has confirmed that we create our own reality by looking at it, measuring it, or observing it.  The detail are here.

The results of many of recent experiments twist our perceptions of reality even more.  Studies by Helmut Schmidt, Elmar Gruber, Brenda Dunne, Robert Jahn, and others have shown, for example, that humans are actually able to influence past events (aka retropsychokinesis, or RPK), such as pre-recorded (and previously unobserved) random number sequences.  No huge surprise to me, who questions everything about our conventional views of reality.  But I still think the evidence is fascinating and probably a bit unnerving to say the least, to the majority of those out there who don’t typically consider such things.  Cause and effect, and reality are certainly not what they seem.

What could be the explanation?  Certainly, more experiments to probe the depths of reality are needed.  But that doesn’t stop us from speculating.  Once again, Programmed Reality offers a perfect explanation.  Assuming that the programmed construct can detect “observation” (which, in principle, does not appear to be that difficult of a process), all the program has to do is the following:

if(observed)
select result from a subset of coherent results
else, randomize result

For example, in the classic reality experiment, pairs of photons are generated which are “entangled” by virtue of the fact that they were generated from the same reaction.  Those photons can be separated by large distances and then a property of one of them is measured.  The act of measuring the property of one photon immediately determines the property of the other photon, even if it is so far away that it precludes “knowing” about what is happening to its twin photon because of the limitations of exceeding the speed of light.  However, in the Programmed Reality model, the properties of the two photons can be related programmatically.  Once an experiment determines one property, the program sets the other photons property accordingly.  The program is aware of the observation and could be in full control of the properties of the paired particles.

For the RPK effect…

when(observed)
set result from archive to a subset of coherent results

For an example of this effect, imagine a set of random numbers generated programmatically and stored in some sort of archive.  The archive, of course, being a product of Programmed Reality, is under full control of the program.  The archive is not observed prior to the experiment and the subjects perform mass consciousness experiments on the data.  The program measures the level of “coherence” of the consciousness in the experiment and then sets the correlation of the stored numbers according to some algorithm, formula, or table.  When the experimenters unveil the data, lo and behold, they are not truly random, but rather, appear to be affected by the consciousness experiment.  A simple software algorithm can make this work!

The interesting question, though, is “What is the motivation behind the program?”  Why would it have such an effect?  Perhaps the answer lies in the idea that sentient beings do truly create their reality.  Much like “Sim City,” where the players create their reality, perhaps our reality is created accordingly to a complex set of rules and algorithms, which include such attributes as intent and observation.

This doesn’t prove the validity of Programmed Reality, but I have to wonder, how many anomalies does the theory have to solve, for it to be seriously considered?  Wink

IQOQI Reality Test Experiment

Filed under Programmed Reality, Quantum Mechanics Tagged with , , , , ,

Is Quantum Mechanics Deterministic after all?

March 23, 2008 1 Comment

Could Albert Einstein finally be vindicated?  His famous comment “God does not play dice” (actually, the correct and extended version, from a letter to Max Born in 1926, was “Quantum mechanics is certainly imposing. But an inner voice tells me that it is not yet the real thing. The theory says a lot, but does not really bring us any closer to the secret of the ‘old one’. I, at any rate, am convinced that He does not throw dice”) referred to his belief that physical reality was deterministic at its core and that “hidden variables” that would describe deterministic reality were masked by the probablistic nature of Quantum Mechanics.  Most physicists have come to accept that quantum reality is probablistic.  But there have been a silent minority who maintained faith in the hidden variable idea.  A recent article in New Scientist discusses new research that may show that “quantum reality isn’t random, it just looks that way.”  Hoorah for determinism.

IMHO, I have always expected as much.  A random number generator appears random, but is fully deterministic.  Aren’t Boltzman’s laws of entropy probablistic on the surface but deterministic deep down?  We most certainly are not through uncovering the mysteries of subatomic particles.  The hidden variables may very well ultimately explain anomalies like entanglement.  And they may very well be the result of a programmed reality!

Filed under Programmed Reality, Quantum Mechanics Tagged with , , ,

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