I'm sitting in Chicago O'hare, and feeling a pressing urge to record an idea which has preoccupied my mind for days. Simply put, it seems to me that the 2 slit experiment and even the Schrödinger's Cat thought problem suddenly make sense if viewed from the perspective of entropy, or more precisely, the amount of information needed to describe a system.
I think that the Wheeler delayed choice/quantum eraser experiment makes intuitive sense if the "observer" is a simple entropic event. What then separates the unobserved scenario from the observed scenario is the increase of entropy, or state information, which is irreversible in time (you can't unshatter glass).
If true, it hints at a type of conservation law for information in a system: the information needed to describe a system remains constant (at a minimum) for all inertial (relativistic) observers until entropy increases.
The word "until" is even somewhat misleading; in a manner of speaking, the "arrow of time" makes sense only because the information readily retrievable from the universe increases in time. That is why we perceive time only moving forward - it is impossible to read the recorded information in the past because it is still uncertain until the series of entropic events that "record" the system in the future.
Entropy is the arrow of time because we are unable to extract (record) state information (such as momentum) until entropy increases. Even then, there is no way to obtain both sets of complementary states (position and momentum), because the entropic "recording" of one disrupts any possibility of obtaining a meaningful answer from the other.
This isn't a "hidden variables" argument - quite the contrary. I'm suggesting that the position and momentum values literally have no meaning until they are "read out," and even then, you have "closed off" that system from reading the complementary value, because your system is now irreversible in time.
Suddenly, Wheeler makes sense. The particles appear to interfere, because otherwise, from some inertial reference plane, state information is identified which was not explicitly defined in the initial conditions. When the path is observed, the total amount of state info increases, and the system is not reversible in time, because we all know entropy increases in the future when we describe the entire system.
Schrödinger's Cat is resolved, because the shattering of the glass vial is the entropic event - no anthropomorphic observer required.
If this is true, then I predict that a single molecular entropic change (chemical reaction) should be enough to increase the state information of the system enough to accommodate the path info and destroy the interference pattern of the Wheeler delayed Choice scenario.
This is all just argument. It needs a more rigorous mathematical treatment.
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
Saturday, March 6, 2010
Ancient Astronaut? Modern nonsense!
Some time ago, I had the misfortune of watching a History Channel "investigation" of the so-called "Ancient Astronaut" theory. Basically, the "theory" (really more of an untestable hypothesis) puts forward the idea that all of the great monuments and inventions of history, such as Stonehenge, the pyramids, the statues of Easter Island, etc., etc., are not, in fact human inventions, but rather alien built (or at least alien instructed). It's a theory that became wildly popular in the late 60's and 70's after Erich von Däniken's ridiculous book "Chariots of the Gods?"
It is one of the dumbest ideas in the history of mankind, and I was infuriated that the History Channel gave it as much serious airtime as they did.
Proponents of the "theory," suggest that the "proof" lies in the following:
1) Some ancient artwork from around the world looks like aliens or astronauts by today's standards.
2) We're more "advanced" than those ancient cultures were, so if we don't know exactly how to make their monuments and technology today, then obviously, no one could have done it back then.
Argument #1 is remarkably like an old joke I remember: A man goes to see a psychiatrist. In order to diagnose the man, the psychiatrist shows him a series of inkblots, and asks him to say what he thinks of each time. When he looks at the first inkblot, the man says "sex." The psychiatrist shows him the second inkblot. Again, the man says "sex." The third, fourth, and fifth inkblots are all the same - "sex," "sex," and "sex." Finally, the psychiatrist says "I understand your problem - you are obsessed with sex!" The man says, "What, me? You're the one with all the dirty pictures!"
It is not a rational argument to say that because a picture might look like an alien or astronaut to modern man, it somehow follows that it must be such a thing. A great example of this is found here at Wikipedia.
According to von Däniken and company, the drawing from the sarcophagus lid of the tomb of the Mayan ruler Paca "clearly" shows him sitting in some sort of rocket with flames coming out of the bottom.
Sorry, but if aliens were able to travel vast interstellar distances, they most certainly didn't do it in ANYTHING that looks remotely like a 1969 moonshot rocket. Such technology would not include burning chemical fuel shooting out of the bottom (if, indeed, those are supposed to be flames).
Where does this art interpretation end? I could look at Salvador Dali's The Persistence of Memory and decide that Dali "obviously" understood that time and space are warped together - perhaps with many more dimensions curled and twisted. Yes! "Obviously" Salvador Dali understood string theory - long before there was such a thing. "Clearly," the only way that is possible is if he was an alien - or, maybe had alien tutors.
Let's look at argument #2. If modern man can't do something, then ancients couldn't have done it, either.
The Pyramids at Gaza were built out of stone. The Luxor in Vegas is made out of steel, glass, and concrete. I doubt the workers who constructed the Luxor would have a clue how to make a pyramid out of stone. By the same token, I'd bet anyone who cares to take me up on it a million dollars that the skilled craftsmen who made the Great Pyramid wouldn't have a clue how to make the Luxor - or they would have done it, because it was a hell of a lot easier, and those giant lights out of the top are just amazing.
But those workers thousands of years ago didn't know how to make a massive hotel with running water, electricity, and hi-tech casinos inside, precisely because there weren't any advanced warp-speed-having alien beings giving them the inside scoop.
What they did have were skilled workers who knew how to work with the primative things they had. From the time those stonemasons were old enough to hold a chisel, they had a job. The didn't go to school, hang out at malls, or text each other on iPhones; they carved stone in stright lines. If they didn't do it right, someone hit them with sticks and whips and made them do it again. By the time they were old enough to work on something as important as the Great Pyramid, they could chisel a stone in a line as straight as a razor's edge in their sleep.
If aliens were helping the ancient Egyptians, the Great Pyramid should have been made out of diamond, with hot and cold running water and zero-point energy extraction generators. And really cool laser lights coming out of the top....
Another find which sent the "Ancient Astronaut" guys into a tizzy was the "Antikythera Mechanism," an actual ancient computer that could calculate the phases of the moon, lunar eclipses, and all sorts of cool stuff. There is a fantastic site about it here.
"Obviously," aliens must have helped the ancient Greeks make this - right? On what possible basis could anyone form such a ridiculous conclusion? There's not one scrap of advanced technology in it. No microchips or transistors - just clockwork gears which were well-known at the time; Brilliantly designed clockwork gears, clearly made by a genius - but clearly, a HUMAN genius.
Human beings - the most brilliant things ever to step foot on planet Earth - invent marvellous solutions to problems using whatever is available at the time. When new materials and technology become available, we - as a race - forget the old methods. It's just evolution applied to technology.
We forget how to do things we don't need to do anymore. The pyramids, for all their coolness, are just basically big piles of rocks.
Quick test for this one which you can try on the weekend: Go out into the wilderness, track a wooly mammoth, kill it, butcher it for meat, and use it to make your clothing, bowstrings, etc.
What?!? There aren't any wooly mammoths in your part of town? You don't know how to kill a giant beast, skin it, butcher it, and use its parts for clothing and supplies? Well, "obviously" primitive man couldn't, then. And if they did, say, hunt wooly mammoth to extinction, then "obviously" aliens must have shown them how.
My dad could take apart a carburetor and put it back together with his eyes closed. I barely understand how the things work, because the first car I ever bought had electronic fuel injection. My grandchildren won't have a clue what a carburetor even looks like, and their grandchildren will have forgotten the word. Their grandchildren, should they find one, will be utterly stunned that primative people who didn't have fusion power and anti-grav hover vehicles could ever have invented such a thing. Therefore, applying the "Ancient Astronaut" line of reasoning, "obviously," my father was an alien, and I am therefore half-alien.
Or maybe, the reasoning is faulty, and the whole "theory" is just a lot of wishful thinking. In ancient times, people attributed everything they couldn't understand to ghosts and spirits. Today, we've replaced ghosts and spirits with aliens and UFOs.
The saddest part of that is that it minimizes the brilliance of this amazing species known as homo sapiens. The human mind is the most amazing evolutionary adaption this planet has generated. To belittle that stunning bit of gray matter between our ears by saying we needed some spacemen to come tell us how to carve stones is not only sad, it's positively insulting...
It is one of the dumbest ideas in the history of mankind, and I was infuriated that the History Channel gave it as much serious airtime as they did.
Proponents of the "theory," suggest that the "proof" lies in the following:
1) Some ancient artwork from around the world looks like aliens or astronauts by today's standards.
2) We're more "advanced" than those ancient cultures were, so if we don't know exactly how to make their monuments and technology today, then obviously, no one could have done it back then.
Argument #1 is remarkably like an old joke I remember: A man goes to see a psychiatrist. In order to diagnose the man, the psychiatrist shows him a series of inkblots, and asks him to say what he thinks of each time. When he looks at the first inkblot, the man says "sex." The psychiatrist shows him the second inkblot. Again, the man says "sex." The third, fourth, and fifth inkblots are all the same - "sex," "sex," and "sex." Finally, the psychiatrist says "I understand your problem - you are obsessed with sex!" The man says, "What, me? You're the one with all the dirty pictures!"
It is not a rational argument to say that because a picture might look like an alien or astronaut to modern man, it somehow follows that it must be such a thing. A great example of this is found here at Wikipedia.
According to von Däniken and company, the drawing from the sarcophagus lid of the tomb of the Mayan ruler Paca "clearly" shows him sitting in some sort of rocket with flames coming out of the bottom.
Sorry, but if aliens were able to travel vast interstellar distances, they most certainly didn't do it in ANYTHING that looks remotely like a 1969 moonshot rocket. Such technology would not include burning chemical fuel shooting out of the bottom (if, indeed, those are supposed to be flames).
Where does this art interpretation end? I could look at Salvador Dali's The Persistence of Memory and decide that Dali "obviously" understood that time and space are warped together - perhaps with many more dimensions curled and twisted. Yes! "Obviously" Salvador Dali understood string theory - long before there was such a thing. "Clearly," the only way that is possible is if he was an alien - or, maybe had alien tutors.
Let's look at argument #2. If modern man can't do something, then ancients couldn't have done it, either.
The Pyramids at Gaza were built out of stone. The Luxor in Vegas is made out of steel, glass, and concrete. I doubt the workers who constructed the Luxor would have a clue how to make a pyramid out of stone. By the same token, I'd bet anyone who cares to take me up on it a million dollars that the skilled craftsmen who made the Great Pyramid wouldn't have a clue how to make the Luxor - or they would have done it, because it was a hell of a lot easier, and those giant lights out of the top are just amazing.
But those workers thousands of years ago didn't know how to make a massive hotel with running water, electricity, and hi-tech casinos inside, precisely because there weren't any advanced warp-speed-having alien beings giving them the inside scoop.
What they did have were skilled workers who knew how to work with the primative things they had. From the time those stonemasons were old enough to hold a chisel, they had a job. The didn't go to school, hang out at malls, or text each other on iPhones; they carved stone in stright lines. If they didn't do it right, someone hit them with sticks and whips and made them do it again. By the time they were old enough to work on something as important as the Great Pyramid, they could chisel a stone in a line as straight as a razor's edge in their sleep.
If aliens were helping the ancient Egyptians, the Great Pyramid should have been made out of diamond, with hot and cold running water and zero-point energy extraction generators. And really cool laser lights coming out of the top....
Another find which sent the "Ancient Astronaut" guys into a tizzy was the "Antikythera Mechanism," an actual ancient computer that could calculate the phases of the moon, lunar eclipses, and all sorts of cool stuff. There is a fantastic site about it here.
"Obviously," aliens must have helped the ancient Greeks make this - right? On what possible basis could anyone form such a ridiculous conclusion? There's not one scrap of advanced technology in it. No microchips or transistors - just clockwork gears which were well-known at the time; Brilliantly designed clockwork gears, clearly made by a genius - but clearly, a HUMAN genius.
Human beings - the most brilliant things ever to step foot on planet Earth - invent marvellous solutions to problems using whatever is available at the time. When new materials and technology become available, we - as a race - forget the old methods. It's just evolution applied to technology.
We forget how to do things we don't need to do anymore. The pyramids, for all their coolness, are just basically big piles of rocks.
Quick test for this one which you can try on the weekend: Go out into the wilderness, track a wooly mammoth, kill it, butcher it for meat, and use it to make your clothing, bowstrings, etc.
What?!? There aren't any wooly mammoths in your part of town? You don't know how to kill a giant beast, skin it, butcher it, and use its parts for clothing and supplies? Well, "obviously" primitive man couldn't, then. And if they did, say, hunt wooly mammoth to extinction, then "obviously" aliens must have shown them how.
My dad could take apart a carburetor and put it back together with his eyes closed. I barely understand how the things work, because the first car I ever bought had electronic fuel injection. My grandchildren won't have a clue what a carburetor even looks like, and their grandchildren will have forgotten the word. Their grandchildren, should they find one, will be utterly stunned that primative people who didn't have fusion power and anti-grav hover vehicles could ever have invented such a thing. Therefore, applying the "Ancient Astronaut" line of reasoning, "obviously," my father was an alien, and I am therefore half-alien.
Or maybe, the reasoning is faulty, and the whole "theory" is just a lot of wishful thinking. In ancient times, people attributed everything they couldn't understand to ghosts and spirits. Today, we've replaced ghosts and spirits with aliens and UFOs.
The saddest part of that is that it minimizes the brilliance of this amazing species known as homo sapiens. The human mind is the most amazing evolutionary adaption this planet has generated. To belittle that stunning bit of gray matter between our ears by saying we needed some spacemen to come tell us how to carve stones is not only sad, it's positively insulting...
Tuesday, December 29, 2009
What a piece of work is man...
The past couple of weeks have given me the opportunity to relax and enjoy a little Science Fiction. A lifelong "Sci-Fi" devotee, I am understandably choosy about my entertainment. Good Sci-Fi needs to have three things:
1) An internally consistent and plausible (if not accurate) technological background.
2) Interesting characters propelled through an engaging story.
3) The exploration of a moral or philosophical dilemma.
This last point is especially important.
Like millions of other people, I went to see James Cameron's "Avatar," which I had been eagerly awaiting for months. Also like millions of people, I was blown away by the amazing visual effects, and the sheer beauty of the world Cameron created. Through the first two "acts" of the story, I was completely absorbed in the film - it seemed to be smashing 'em out of the park left and right on all three points...
...and then, quite unlike millions of others, I found myself leaving the theatre rather sullen and disappointed. But, before I go into that, let me talk about my other meaningful Sci-Fi experience this holiday.
The other treat I caught over the holidays was, on the surface, quite a different animal: Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. Okay, admittedly, this one is just a bit campy (maybe more than bit), and although the SFX were nominated for an Academy Award in 1986, they don't hold up too well 24 years later (especially when seen in HD on a 1080p HDTV).
But - and just hear me out on this - I enjoyed the old Star Trek film MORE. A LOT more, in fact.
Here's why: Both movies dealt with the important moral/philosophical dilemma of the environment, but one left me feeling hopeless and uncomfortable, and the other felt uplifting and hopeful.
In Avatar, as we rounded the third act of the story, I realized that nearly every Human Being in the story is thoroughly corrupt and dispicable. The villain is a one-dimensional character (Col. Miles Quarich) who's sole purpose in the story is to be evil. There is nothing to like about him. He's not misguided or redeemable in any way - he just likes killing things and blowing stuff up. And worst of all, he wears an American military uniform.
Yes, I know - there are no flags on it, and the story makes a vague reference to a private security force, but it LOOKS like one of our uniforms. And so do the uniforms of all of the other men and women under him. And as the story progresses, the "heroes" begin to slaughter the men and women in uniform left and right. And we're supposed to cheer.
I suddenly felt uncomfortable. At a time when young men and women are dying in wars in Iraq and Afganistan fighting so-called "holy warriors" such as the religious extremist Taliban (who believe they are defending Allah), James Cameron has created a film where the audience is supposed to rejoice when young men and women in similar uniforms are killed by the "Na'vi" (defending their god "Eywa").
As unsettling (and somewhat offensive) as this was, it wasn't my biggest problem with the movie. My biggest issue was this: What's the message?
Step back to Star Trek for a minute. What was "The Voyage Home's" meaning? Well, it's not subtle: we're destroying the environment and in doing so, endangering our own existence.
But there's a deeper message here. Our protagonists are humans (yes, and one half-Vulcan). Our antagonists are also human - but they're not evil, nihilistic monsters. They're us - ignorant, unenlightened ordinary human beings. The message is simple: we can be more than we are. We can learn to save ourselves. Humanity is worth saving, because one day we will be a peaceful species who explore the universe responsibly.
What's Star Trek's proposed solution to our environmental ills? Educate and enlighten yourself. Be responsible.
What's the message of Avatar? Humans are evil - especially those "first world," westerners, who, in their greed and lust to obtain power and wealth (in the film, represented by the groan-inducing name, "Unobtainium") are destroying the environment and other species. There is a special irony in this message - created by a Western Millionaire, costing around $300 MILLION to produce, with zillions of plastic toys and video games being sold to promote it.
What's Avatar's solution to the planet's ills? Kill the humans. Forget education and advancement. Let's go back to living in caves and trees and worshipping primative earth-goddesses (although, admittedly, Avatar has a neat twist- the goddess Eywa is actually real - a vast colleciton of living tree/neurons). And make no mistake about it, Avatar says it's PERFECTLY OK to kill anyone who doesn't believe the same way you do.
Star Trek says that through science and peaceful exploration, the human race will become better than it is, and will find solutions to our problems. There's some objective reason to believe this is true, if you just look back at about 50-year intervals. For example:
1810 - It's perfectly legal to own another human being - particularly one from Africa.
1860 - Conflict between abolitionist states and slave states rises to the point that war seems likely.
1910 - Slavery is no more, but the "Separate but Equal" segregation doctrine has been upheld by the Supreme Court (Plessy v. Ferguson - 1896)
1960 - Brown v. Board of Education has overturned "Plessy," but the Civil Rights movement is troubled, and conflict abounds.
2010 - Though racism is by no means over, a black man of African descent is President of the United States - the result of a peaceful election, not a military coup.
There's none of that namby-pamby peace talk in Avatar. There's no way to reach an environmentally responsible agreement between the humans and Na'vi. The soldiers under Quarich don't refuse their immoral orders and arrest their commander because they realize they are basically good people. Nope - kill the nonbelievers! Destroy modern technology! Praise Eywa!
James Cameron says he has planned two sequels to Avatar. Here's hoping he decides to spend some time watching some cheesy old Star Trek before he puts anything on film. Otherwise, I'll pass....
Praise Roddenberry - "The Great Bird of the Galaxy."
1) An internally consistent and plausible (if not accurate) technological background.
2) Interesting characters propelled through an engaging story.
3) The exploration of a moral or philosophical dilemma.
This last point is especially important.
Like millions of other people, I went to see James Cameron's "Avatar," which I had been eagerly awaiting for months. Also like millions of people, I was blown away by the amazing visual effects, and the sheer beauty of the world Cameron created. Through the first two "acts" of the story, I was completely absorbed in the film - it seemed to be smashing 'em out of the park left and right on all three points...
...and then, quite unlike millions of others, I found myself leaving the theatre rather sullen and disappointed. But, before I go into that, let me talk about my other meaningful Sci-Fi experience this holiday.
The other treat I caught over the holidays was, on the surface, quite a different animal: Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. Okay, admittedly, this one is just a bit campy (maybe more than bit), and although the SFX were nominated for an Academy Award in 1986, they don't hold up too well 24 years later (especially when seen in HD on a 1080p HDTV).
But - and just hear me out on this - I enjoyed the old Star Trek film MORE. A LOT more, in fact.
Here's why: Both movies dealt with the important moral/philosophical dilemma of the environment, but one left me feeling hopeless and uncomfortable, and the other felt uplifting and hopeful.
In Avatar, as we rounded the third act of the story, I realized that nearly every Human Being in the story is thoroughly corrupt and dispicable. The villain is a one-dimensional character (Col. Miles Quarich) who's sole purpose in the story is to be evil. There is nothing to like about him. He's not misguided or redeemable in any way - he just likes killing things and blowing stuff up. And worst of all, he wears an American military uniform.
Yes, I know - there are no flags on it, and the story makes a vague reference to a private security force, but it LOOKS like one of our uniforms. And so do the uniforms of all of the other men and women under him. And as the story progresses, the "heroes" begin to slaughter the men and women in uniform left and right. And we're supposed to cheer.
I suddenly felt uncomfortable. At a time when young men and women are dying in wars in Iraq and Afganistan fighting so-called "holy warriors" such as the religious extremist Taliban (who believe they are defending Allah), James Cameron has created a film where the audience is supposed to rejoice when young men and women in similar uniforms are killed by the "Na'vi" (defending their god "Eywa").
As unsettling (and somewhat offensive) as this was, it wasn't my biggest problem with the movie. My biggest issue was this: What's the message?
Step back to Star Trek for a minute. What was "The Voyage Home's" meaning? Well, it's not subtle: we're destroying the environment and in doing so, endangering our own existence.
But there's a deeper message here. Our protagonists are humans (yes, and one half-Vulcan). Our antagonists are also human - but they're not evil, nihilistic monsters. They're us - ignorant, unenlightened ordinary human beings. The message is simple: we can be more than we are. We can learn to save ourselves. Humanity is worth saving, because one day we will be a peaceful species who explore the universe responsibly.
What's Star Trek's proposed solution to our environmental ills? Educate and enlighten yourself. Be responsible.
What's the message of Avatar? Humans are evil - especially those "first world," westerners, who, in their greed and lust to obtain power and wealth (in the film, represented by the groan-inducing name, "Unobtainium") are destroying the environment and other species. There is a special irony in this message - created by a Western Millionaire, costing around $300 MILLION to produce, with zillions of plastic toys and video games being sold to promote it.
What's Avatar's solution to the planet's ills? Kill the humans. Forget education and advancement. Let's go back to living in caves and trees and worshipping primative earth-goddesses (although, admittedly, Avatar has a neat twist- the goddess Eywa is actually real - a vast colleciton of living tree/neurons). And make no mistake about it, Avatar says it's PERFECTLY OK to kill anyone who doesn't believe the same way you do.
Star Trek says that through science and peaceful exploration, the human race will become better than it is, and will find solutions to our problems. There's some objective reason to believe this is true, if you just look back at about 50-year intervals. For example:
1810 - It's perfectly legal to own another human being - particularly one from Africa.
1860 - Conflict between abolitionist states and slave states rises to the point that war seems likely.
1910 - Slavery is no more, but the "Separate but Equal" segregation doctrine has been upheld by the Supreme Court (Plessy v. Ferguson - 1896)
1960 - Brown v. Board of Education has overturned "Plessy," but the Civil Rights movement is troubled, and conflict abounds.
2010 - Though racism is by no means over, a black man of African descent is President of the United States - the result of a peaceful election, not a military coup.
There's none of that namby-pamby peace talk in Avatar. There's no way to reach an environmentally responsible agreement between the humans and Na'vi. The soldiers under Quarich don't refuse their immoral orders and arrest their commander because they realize they are basically good people. Nope - kill the nonbelievers! Destroy modern technology! Praise Eywa!
James Cameron says he has planned two sequels to Avatar. Here's hoping he decides to spend some time watching some cheesy old Star Trek before he puts anything on film. Otherwise, I'll pass....
Praise Roddenberry - "The Great Bird of the Galaxy."
Monday, October 19, 2009
Schrödinger's Grandfather
I wrote the below as part of an email exchange with Dr. Dave Goldberg, who wrote a very entertaining and thought-provoking article about "The Time Traveler's Wife" which you can read: HERE
I decided to publish it here on Blogspot after this article appeared on MSN today
Fundamentally, I don't believe you can get around uncertainty. Not with time travel, or anything else.
My rules of time travel?
Schrödinger, Einstein and Heisenberg are drinking in a pub called "The Time Traveler's Mistress," when an argument arises over the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum physics.
"My thought experiment," Schrödinger begins, "clearly demonstrates the absurdity of -"
"Oh, not the dammed zombie cat, again, Erwin," Heisenberg shoots back, "Seriously, what kind of messed up stuff did you do as a kid, anyways?"
Einstein frowns. "God does not play dice-"
"Heard it, Al. I swear, some day people will sell T-Shirts with all your one-liners on them. What I KNOW is that exact values for things like position, momentum, and spin DO NOT EXIST until they are measured."
"This cannot be," Einstein says, "If that were the case, then every event in history has been nothing but a collection of random nonsense. How could the stars, planets, and the Earth arise without observers there to collapse Erwin's wave-function?"
"I'm not saying conscious observers. This isn't an anthropomorphic argument." Heisenberg sighs, "Anything that has an irreversible reaction - like something tied to entropy - could collapse the function. But not every wave function need collapse to describe history."
"That just leads to chaos," Schrödinger objects. "Particles have to have a definite state. We just can't see it because our act of measuring it disturbs the measurement. The Universe cannot be composed of fuzzy balls of probability!"
"God does not play fuzzy dice with-"
"Oh can it, Al!" Schrödinger and Heisenberg shout at once.
"Let me be clear," Heisenberg lectures, "If it were possible to go back in time-"
"It is, theoretically," Einstein interrupts.
"Yeah, yeah... If you measured the position of an electron, and then went back in time to measure the momentum, your answers wouldn't describe the reality of the state of the particle at any time. No matter how many times you did it, your answers wouldn't add up. I don't care if it's spin, energy, position, radioactive decay - anything. You'd just get a different answer each time."
"That's crazy!" Einstein insists. "The Universe would be chaos! Not even God would know how it all turns out!"
Heisenberg sips his beer, "That's exactly what I'm saying. The Universe doesn't care if you think you know or remember something. The Universe only cares about each coin toss, one at a time. You never get the same lottery number twice."
"If that were true," Schrödinger muses, "One could use time travel to create an infinite number of paradoxes! That's like saying I could go back and time and kill my father or my grandfather!"
"The only alternative," responds Heisenberg, "Is that every quantum event is completely describable, and it is possible to know every single variable in an experiment. Years of experiment right back to the discovery of radioactivity prove that's not the case."
Schrödinger blinks at Heisenberg through an alcohol-induced haze. "You're saying I could go back in time, put my grandfather into the quantum cat-trap, and there would actually be a possibility that he could die before I was ever born?"
Heisenberg peers thoughtfully for a while into his glass. "Yup. You bet."
Einstein shakes his head. "No, some force would stop you before you ever even saw your grandfather - history would otherwise be inconsistent, and the resulting paradox would violate causality."
"Al, your own Special Relativity shows that different observers can have different - and equally correct - interpretations of the timing of events. You proved that there is no such thing as simultaneity. This is no different. From the perspective of the fundamental quanta, there is no paradox, because all possible arrangements of particles are, at least, somewhat probable - even ones that seem to be paradoxical. There is always a non-paradoxical explanation, and Occam's Razor says we have to select it."
"Well, I have absolute faith that I cannot change my own history," says Schrödinger, "Too bad there is no such thing as a time machine to test this out, because I'd make you eat your words."
"I might be able to help you there," says the bartender, who has been quietly observing this debate. "Here at the Time Traveler's Mistress, we have a coin-operated time machine. It can go back to at least the late 18th Century - when this place was built.
Heisenberg raises an eyebrow. "Awesome. Do we have a bet?"
Schrödinger remembers that his Grandfather (conveniently) lived not far from the bar, and recalls that he once spoke of watching a total eclipse when he was a boy. Schrödinger and Heisenberg quickly assemble a bomb out of a photocell, a mildly radioactive substance, a Geiger counter, and a hefty amount of TNT. During the darkness of the eclipse, the trigger is active. Over a period of about 7 minutes, there is a 50% probability that the Geiger counter will detect a radioactive discharge.
The group uses the Time Machine to travel back to the day of the eclipse. With the bomb hidden behind Schrödinger's Grandfather's childhood home, the three scientists retreat to the bar to observe the eclipse from a safe distance.
"I am 100% positive that nothing will happen to my grandfather," Schrödinger announces, "because I am obviously still here. There is no 50% chance of an explosion. I KNOW the state of the radioactive substance, and there is no random chance to it."
Einstein shrugs. "I believe fate will prevent the bomb from exploding. You may or may not know the state of the atoms, but even if you are wrong, some other unseen force will prevent a change in history."
"Sounds like 'Spooky action at a distance,' to me, Al," Heisenberg jokes. "I think you fellas should be prepared to lose."
A short while later, the skies darken. For seven agonizing minutes, all three sit quietly, but no explosion is heard.
"See!?" exclaims Schrödinger. "I am still here, as is my grandfather!"
"Best three out of five," says Heisenberg with a smile. "Jump back 10 minutes? After we planted the bomb, but before the eclipse?"
Einstein checks his pockets and finds two more quarters. "That should just work," he says.
A short while later, the three emerge from the Time Machine. "Odd," says Schrödinger, "I expected to see our other selves at the bar."
"Of course not," Einstein and Heisenberg say together.
"C'mon, Erwin, if the atoms in our body were in two places at once, the solutions to your own wave equation becomes nonsensical, with Phi being described as a function where one of the variables - r - has multiple values for the same 't'."
"I was thinking more simply of Epicurus: 'The sum total of things was always such as it is now, and such it will ever remain'," says Einstein.
"Got that on a T-Shirt, do we?" scoffs Heisenberg.
"I mean to say that if we could meet ourselves, we could all return to the machine repeatedly, until there were an infinite number of physicists in this establishment."
"Heaven forbid," quips Heisenberg.
Einstein ignores him, "You could construct a time machine experiment where mass would increase exponentially until it collapsed into a singularity."
"What about consistent histories," challenges Schrödinger, as the sky darkens outside.
Einstein frowns. "I must confess I fail to see how an unseen force might prevent such a construction, given that time travel obviously exists."
The conversation is interrupted by the sound of a huge explosion not far away. Schrödinger, Heisenberg and Einstein rush to the scene of the explosion, finding Schrödinger's grandfather's house utterly annihilated.
"But history has changed," Schrödinger objects. "This is impossible!"
"Don't have kittens," Heisenberg says, "We can just repeat this sequence again until there is no explosion. If we repeated this experiment a million times, approximately 500,000 times, we'd blow up the house. Sometimes right away, sometimes near the end of the eclipse. Either way, there is a non-paradoxical explanation."
"How?!? I will now NEVER BE BORN! If I am never born, I can never go back in time!"
"Your error is in believing that being born has anything to do with the existence of each particle in your body - they existed long before you were born, and they will exist long after you die. I can pick them up, rearrange them in any order I wish, and they will obligingly stay around forever in some form. YOU perceive that you stepped back in time and changed history. The people here simply witnessed a perplexing - but not paradoxical rearrangement of matter."
Schrödinger stares at Heisenberg in disbelief. "But I went back through the time machine - the same as you!"
"No - arguably, INFORMATION about us from 'A' future was transmitted by the Time Machine to rearrange the atoms composing your body into this form, but you could never prove that - any 'knowledge' you think you have of the future is useless. Think of the Time Machine as a big probability machine, stretched across an era of time. It can rearrange matter according to probable future states, but it cannot create or destroy it. Neither can it create a paradox, or allow you to measure an exact quantum state for every particle in existence. If such were possible, then it would theoretically be possible to exactly measure the quantum states of a particle - and that is forbidden by the non-local nature of quantum mechanics."
Einstein brightened, "We tried to hold QM hostage by threatening it with macroscopic paradox in order to force a QM system into a classically calculable state."
"Exactly. Given that time travel is possible, then either the 'unseen force' stops us from changing ANYTHING (meaning we can't even observe or interact gravitationally, electromagnetically, or otherwise with the past - and so effectively are not here), or our presence is nothing more than a highly improbable, but not impossible rearrangement of atoms. We can never prove with any certainty that we have knowledge of the future, because even macroscopic events (such as eclipses), if measured to the smallest detail, will not agree PRECISELY with our future knowledge."
"Then of what practical use is time travel?" complained Schrödinger.
"None whatsoever - except to help me win bets..."
I decided to publish it here on Blogspot after this article appeared on MSN today
The article references a concern that the current LHC failures are somehow the result of future mega-disasters caused by the LHC - which somehow keep breaking the collider in the past.
Well, I think the answer to whether or not this is possible is a resounding "no." I further predict that University of Washington physicist John Cramer's experiments to communicate backward in time will fail for much the same reason: you can't mess with Heisenberg.
Well, I think the answer to whether or not this is possible is a resounding "no." I further predict that University of Washington physicist John Cramer's experiments to communicate backward in time will fail for much the same reason: you can't mess with Heisenberg.
If you look too closely at one measurement, the other just plain gets crazy.
As the Wheeler Delayed-Choice Quantum Eraser experiment showed us years ago, info may appear to go back in time (in this case the fact that you will LATER erase the path information seems to determine how a photon behaves), but it isn't useful. If it were, you could figure out a way to measure the position and momentum of any arbitrary particle down to an arbitrary accuracy - and that's just not going to happen.
Fundamentally, I don't believe you can get around uncertainty. Not with time travel, or anything else.
My rules of time travel?
- You can't send matter back in time, only state-information. The matter you want to send back already exists there. Otherwise, you could fold some sort of time-jump into, say, the LHC, and cause multiple instances of the same particle - possibly even an infinite number of the same particle to exist at a given time (your LHC is gonna collapse into a massive black hole).
- The knowledge of the "future" is useless. You might travel back in time (really, send information back in time commanding the atoms which are currently located into your body to spontaneously jump from whatever their previous location was into an arrangement that resembles you - potentially messy, if you think about the steak dinner you had last night was part of a cow three weeks ago), but it doesn't get you around Heisenberg. The second you start reobserving phenomena, each quantum roll of the dice is brand new again - and nothing you "knew" before matters. As the microscopic differences begin to add up rapidly in a process known as chaos, your lottery number selection isn't going to work anymore...
- What you think of as a paradox probably isn't. If you pull a molecule of water out of a stream, you might think it "had" to have traveled from the melting snow at the top of the mountain - but it might just be that some random passing camper dumped his coca-cola into the stream. You will never be able to tell. Using time travel to kill your own grandparents (or to stop your time machine from working, for that matter) isn't paradoxical, because there is a non-paradoxical explanation that - from the point of view of people experiencing it in the past - might seem strange (or VERY improbable), but not impossible. Further, if people in the past carefully tested for 1 and 2 above, they would find a consistent history that would not involve time travel. Following up on the missing matter in their own time (including spontaneously mutilated cattle), they would find just enough missing matter to account for your body, and every test they gave you ("what's tomorrow's lottery number?") would indicate you were lying about being from the future. Their only conclusion? You were spontaneously formed from an incredibly unlikely (but not imposible) rearrangement of matter.
With all that said, I give you my humble contribution to the debate, "Schrödinger's Grandfather."
THE BET
Schrödinger, Einstein and Heisenberg are drinking in a pub called "The Time Traveler's Mistress," when an argument arises over the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum physics.
"My thought experiment," Schrödinger begins, "clearly demonstrates the absurdity of -"
"Oh, not the dammed zombie cat, again, Erwin," Heisenberg shoots back, "Seriously, what kind of messed up stuff did you do as a kid, anyways?"
Einstein frowns. "God does not play dice-"
"Heard it, Al. I swear, some day people will sell T-Shirts with all your one-liners on them. What I KNOW is that exact values for things like position, momentum, and spin DO NOT EXIST until they are measured."
"This cannot be," Einstein says, "If that were the case, then every event in history has been nothing but a collection of random nonsense. How could the stars, planets, and the Earth arise without observers there to collapse Erwin's wave-function?"
"I'm not saying conscious observers. This isn't an anthropomorphic argument." Heisenberg sighs, "Anything that has an irreversible reaction - like something tied to entropy - could collapse the function. But not every wave function need collapse to describe history."
"That just leads to chaos," Schrödinger objects. "Particles have to have a definite state. We just can't see it because our act of measuring it disturbs the measurement. The Universe cannot be composed of fuzzy balls of probability!"
"God does not play fuzzy dice with-"
"Oh can it, Al!" Schrödinger and Heisenberg shout at once.
"Let me be clear," Heisenberg lectures, "If it were possible to go back in time-"
"It is, theoretically," Einstein interrupts.
"Yeah, yeah... If you measured the position of an electron, and then went back in time to measure the momentum, your answers wouldn't describe the reality of the state of the particle at any time. No matter how many times you did it, your answers wouldn't add up. I don't care if it's spin, energy, position, radioactive decay - anything. You'd just get a different answer each time."
"That's crazy!" Einstein insists. "The Universe would be chaos! Not even God would know how it all turns out!"
Heisenberg sips his beer, "That's exactly what I'm saying. The Universe doesn't care if you think you know or remember something. The Universe only cares about each coin toss, one at a time. You never get the same lottery number twice."
"If that were true," Schrödinger muses, "One could use time travel to create an infinite number of paradoxes! That's like saying I could go back and time and kill my father or my grandfather!"
"The only alternative," responds Heisenberg, "Is that every quantum event is completely describable, and it is possible to know every single variable in an experiment. Years of experiment right back to the discovery of radioactivity prove that's not the case."
Schrödinger blinks at Heisenberg through an alcohol-induced haze. "You're saying I could go back in time, put my grandfather into the quantum cat-trap, and there would actually be a possibility that he could die before I was ever born?"
Heisenberg peers thoughtfully for a while into his glass. "Yup. You bet."
Einstein shakes his head. "No, some force would stop you before you ever even saw your grandfather - history would otherwise be inconsistent, and the resulting paradox would violate causality."
"Al, your own Special Relativity shows that different observers can have different - and equally correct - interpretations of the timing of events. You proved that there is no such thing as simultaneity. This is no different. From the perspective of the fundamental quanta, there is no paradox, because all possible arrangements of particles are, at least, somewhat probable - even ones that seem to be paradoxical. There is always a non-paradoxical explanation, and Occam's Razor says we have to select it."
"Well, I have absolute faith that I cannot change my own history," says Schrödinger, "Too bad there is no such thing as a time machine to test this out, because I'd make you eat your words."
"I might be able to help you there," says the bartender, who has been quietly observing this debate. "Here at the Time Traveler's Mistress, we have a coin-operated time machine. It can go back to at least the late 18th Century - when this place was built.
Heisenberg raises an eyebrow. "Awesome. Do we have a bet?"
THE EXPERIMENT
Schrödinger remembers that his Grandfather (conveniently) lived not far from the bar, and recalls that he once spoke of watching a total eclipse when he was a boy. Schrödinger and Heisenberg quickly assemble a bomb out of a photocell, a mildly radioactive substance, a Geiger counter, and a hefty amount of TNT. During the darkness of the eclipse, the trigger is active. Over a period of about 7 minutes, there is a 50% probability that the Geiger counter will detect a radioactive discharge.
The group uses the Time Machine to travel back to the day of the eclipse. With the bomb hidden behind Schrödinger's Grandfather's childhood home, the three scientists retreat to the bar to observe the eclipse from a safe distance.
"I am 100% positive that nothing will happen to my grandfather," Schrödinger announces, "because I am obviously still here. There is no 50% chance of an explosion. I KNOW the state of the radioactive substance, and there is no random chance to it."
Einstein shrugs. "I believe fate will prevent the bomb from exploding. You may or may not know the state of the atoms, but even if you are wrong, some other unseen force will prevent a change in history."
"Sounds like 'Spooky action at a distance,' to me, Al," Heisenberg jokes. "I think you fellas should be prepared to lose."
A short while later, the skies darken. For seven agonizing minutes, all three sit quietly, but no explosion is heard.
"See!?" exclaims Schrödinger. "I am still here, as is my grandfather!"
"Best three out of five," says Heisenberg with a smile. "Jump back 10 minutes? After we planted the bomb, but before the eclipse?"
Einstein checks his pockets and finds two more quarters. "That should just work," he says.
A short while later, the three emerge from the Time Machine. "Odd," says Schrödinger, "I expected to see our other selves at the bar."
"Of course not," Einstein and Heisenberg say together.
"C'mon, Erwin, if the atoms in our body were in two places at once, the solutions to your own wave equation becomes nonsensical, with Phi being described as a function where one of the variables - r - has multiple values for the same 't'."
"I was thinking more simply of Epicurus: 'The sum total of things was always such as it is now, and such it will ever remain'," says Einstein.
"Got that on a T-Shirt, do we?" scoffs Heisenberg.
"I mean to say that if we could meet ourselves, we could all return to the machine repeatedly, until there were an infinite number of physicists in this establishment."
"Heaven forbid," quips Heisenberg.
Einstein ignores him, "You could construct a time machine experiment where mass would increase exponentially until it collapsed into a singularity."
"What about consistent histories," challenges Schrödinger, as the sky darkens outside.
Einstein frowns. "I must confess I fail to see how an unseen force might prevent such a construction, given that time travel obviously exists."
The conversation is interrupted by the sound of a huge explosion not far away. Schrödinger, Heisenberg and Einstein rush to the scene of the explosion, finding Schrödinger's grandfather's house utterly annihilated.
"But history has changed," Schrödinger objects. "This is impossible!"
"Don't have kittens," Heisenberg says, "We can just repeat this sequence again until there is no explosion. If we repeated this experiment a million times, approximately 500,000 times, we'd blow up the house. Sometimes right away, sometimes near the end of the eclipse. Either way, there is a non-paradoxical explanation."
"How?!? I will now NEVER BE BORN! If I am never born, I can never go back in time!"
"Your error is in believing that being born has anything to do with the existence of each particle in your body - they existed long before you were born, and they will exist long after you die. I can pick them up, rearrange them in any order I wish, and they will obligingly stay around forever in some form. YOU perceive that you stepped back in time and changed history. The people here simply witnessed a perplexing - but not paradoxical rearrangement of matter."
Schrödinger stares at Heisenberg in disbelief. "But I went back through the time machine - the same as you!"
"No - arguably, INFORMATION about us from 'A' future was transmitted by the Time Machine to rearrange the atoms composing your body into this form, but you could never prove that - any 'knowledge' you think you have of the future is useless. Think of the Time Machine as a big probability machine, stretched across an era of time. It can rearrange matter according to probable future states, but it cannot create or destroy it. Neither can it create a paradox, or allow you to measure an exact quantum state for every particle in existence. If such were possible, then it would theoretically be possible to exactly measure the quantum states of a particle - and that is forbidden by the non-local nature of quantum mechanics."
Einstein brightened, "We tried to hold QM hostage by threatening it with macroscopic paradox in order to force a QM system into a classically calculable state."
"Exactly. Given that time travel is possible, then either the 'unseen force' stops us from changing ANYTHING (meaning we can't even observe or interact gravitationally, electromagnetically, or otherwise with the past - and so effectively are not here), or our presence is nothing more than a highly improbable, but not impossible rearrangement of atoms. We can never prove with any certainty that we have knowledge of the future, because even macroscopic events (such as eclipses), if measured to the smallest detail, will not agree PRECISELY with our future knowledge."
"Then of what practical use is time travel?" complained Schrödinger.
"None whatsoever - except to help me win bets..."
THE END
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