Mike's Principle

I've decided that conjecture, especially exemplified by Mach's principle, is the greatest bat-tool in a good crackpot scientist's utility belt.

Mach's principle concerns junk like: Say you are spinning and looking at the stars, and "the stars are whirling around you and your arms are pulled away from your body." The conjecture in a nutshell is that there is some physical law relating the two.

What is so great about a conjecture stated as such (Mach actually expressed it differently), is that it doesn't have to explain anything or even make specific testable claims. It doesn't even have to be right to be useful. Mach's principle can be as simple as "There is some relation between my arms pulling away, and the stars spinning around me." This sounds like pure crackpot science, but if you allow the relation between arms and stars to be very indirect and very loose, then you can find some truth in it. And it is in investigating the relationship where the value of the conjecture becomes real. In the case of Mach's principle, Einstein used it as a guiding factor in developing general relativity. A conjecture might be expressed as a puzzle, a question of "why?" or "how are these things related?"; the conjecture may even be silly, while the answer to the puzzle may be immensely important.

I believe a lot of crackpots fail by trying to provide explanations for what they don't understand. They could simply side-step the lack of understanding and provide conjectures that suggest that things are related without delving into the details of their mechanisms.

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I should know not to dismiss a silly idea as worthless. The following is an idea I've mentioned before. If properly stated as a conjecture, it should allow for further development.

Preamble:
A point observer does not directly perceive distance. Distance is only extrapolated from multiple observations from different locations or times. A point observer essentially observes the universe as a 2-dimensional spherical surface around it.

The apparent size of an object (as observed visually via light) is inversely proportional to the square of the distance between object and observer. The gravitational attraction is also inversely proportional to the square of the distance. The conjecture is that the two are related according to some aspect of perception.

Or basically, it is not a coincidence that the perceived size of a mass is equal to the perceived gravitational pull. One must accept the measurement of "depth" (a third dimension that can make an object appear in size inversely proportional to the cube of the distance to the object) as unperceived or excluded from the definition of "observation".

Here's where I go back to typical crackpot science.

Time relativity suggests that time and distance might be pure fabrications of observation. They are an effect of perception, rather than an aspect of the physical nature of the universe. So it may be that the way we perceive the universe is entirely illusory. Further it may be that geometry (Euclidean geometry and possibly Cartesian coordinates) is a product of the same illusory effect.

We perceive the universe as such: Everything that is a distance of r away from me (the observer) lies on a sphere of radius r, where the area of the sphere is proportional to r². Everything that is farther away from us exists on an imaginary sphere that is larger the farther it is from us. In a way, there is "more stuff" farther away from us. Also, the same object takes up proportionally less of a farther imaginary sphere, and since all of these spheres appear the same size to the observer (they each basically take up all of the observational area all around us), farther objects appear smaller and have less gravitational attraction.

The next step involves some complicated imagination, similar to trying to visualize extra spacial dimensions. I think that the true nature of the universe (its physical geometry, if it has one) is not at all like the observational reality, where everything can be described in terms of spheres that grow with distance. ... In conclusion, uh...

TO BE CONTINUED...   ?

Gravity, how does it work? (And I don't wanna talk to a scientist)

Gravity is a mystery because it seems to be a "spooky" force acting from a distance. However, it can be explained as an effect of local spacetime (while the curvature of spacetime is affected by distant mass).

It is also weird because it seems to cause action in objects that might be completely at rest. However, nothing is ever completely at rest; it may only appear so on a macroscopic scale.


I submit for your consideration:

1. All matter is made up of energy.
2. Energy travels at the speed of light. Atoms consist of a nucleus with electrons continuously moving around it (oscillating) at the speed of light. The nucleus is made of energy that is also oscillating. No energy is at rest. Note: Since all motion is relative, does that mean that no energy is ever at rest relative to any other energy? That must mean something interesting...
3. Mass curves spacetime. Light that crosses this spacetime appears to follow a curve, but essentially it is spacetime itself that is curved, and the light is following a "geodesic": a path that is "straight" along this curved space.

Now imagine a quantum of matter as some energy oscillating up and down (limit it to 1 dimension for simplification). In the lack of a gravitational field, spacetime is "flat" and the oscillating energy remains relatively stationary horizontally. If you now consider the presence of mass, say off to the right, then spacetime is curved. The oscillating energy no longer moves straight up and down, but bends slightly to the right on each oscillation.

If you imagine watching this energy acting like a perpetually bouncing ball in a ventilation duct that widens toward the right, its oscillations will acquire a right-ward lean, and it begins bouncing to the right. It has rightward momentum, and meanwhile it is also curving more on each oscillation, and it accelerates. Stop its horizontal motion, and it will again begin to take on rightward momentum.

Rather than a force adding energy to a mass, gravity maintains the inertia of mass energy.

The more you know.


Note: The duct analogy is flawed because in it, the ball bends to the right on the bounces, while the "moving energy" it represents bends to the right while it is crossing space.

Topological relativity?

Relativity says that 2 observers can each see relative length contraction when observing the other.

In other words, I could see that I could fit your house inside my house, and you could see that you could fit my house inside yours. Practically it would be hard to do... with special relativity, it would require the houses to be moving very fast relative to each other. Parking houses is a difficult manoever at near-c speeds. With general relativity it might be possible with some weird gravity thing that I don't understand. Maybe it involves being on opposite sides of an event horizon. However, is it even possible? Or does topology give a reason why it isn't?

Seems to me, if you have one thing topologically "inside" another thing, but you have control over space so that you can compress one part of space to an infinitesimal length, and inflate another to infinite length, you should be able to turn the whole thing inside out (and even treat it as simply a change in point of view, if you had that power), without changing the topology of the set of 2 things.

So could we not then have universes inside our universe? Possibly black holes are entire universes that we see only as something infinitesimal. Perhaps even, just like 2 houses each inside the other, perhaps we are topologically inside these black hole universes. Could we be inside each of the black hole universes that are each inside of us? It's not that we're some tiny dot within the tiny speck that is a black hole singularity, each recursively within a larger version of the other, but rather we're both inside and outside of each black hole depending on which side you turn out... like a reversible jacket with billions of insides and maybe just one "outside" that one can see at a time. Your universe, whichever it may be, is always seen as the outside in the normal perspective of life.

Perhaps falling through an event horizon feels like that, like a reversibile universe turning itself inside out, so you fall into the "outside" of a different universe, and the universe from whence you came turns into an "inside", and becomes a black hole that resides within your new universe. Of course, you'd probably feel a lot like Hawking radiation, and uh... be it... which would probably put a damper on your ability to look around and contemplate how much like a jacket the multiverse seems.

They should teach topology in grade school. Then by first year of university, kids would probably know the answers to these questions.

This thing all things devours

I'm in the middle of a horribly tedious rewrite and have had a crushing thought: I don't think my definition of time jives with my meaning of light being "instantaneous". Again I get that feeling that everything I'm talking about is exactly the same as what's been known for the last 100 years, and anything different is nothing more than poor wording.

I've been completely wrong in the science, the math, the language. The only thing that endures is the idea. Will it be boiled down until it's nothing more than a repetition of what I've read? Or will it be polished till it gleams, like a beautiful delicate golden turd?

Yet more contemplation and rewriting.

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If time is distance, then a moment in time with 0 duration is a single point. That is not light.

If light is not a moving thing, then what is it? It is not a single instant, because it spans time (distance). Yet it is at all points along that distance simul... simul-what? It spans time but it does not move through time. Does it bridge time? No, it does only exist at a single time value, but that time value is different for different observers. And does it not actually exist as a line of energy, observable along its entire length as single points of light by different observers, but rather exists only at its source and its destination? One cannot "see" a light signal unless it is intercepted, and though you can intercept signals all along light's path if there are enough signals (like a laser through a smokey room), it is still only observable at source (as a loss of energy) and destination (as a gain).

Perhaps then light is simply a teleportation of energy. It slips out of existence in one observation-defined location (and time), and shows up elsewhere. Yet, the path is important because it determines where the destination will be. Energy teleportation makes sense within the idea of a singularity, but how is geometry and the difference between matter and space represented within a singularity? And is the singularity idea really needed, when there is no way to observe a light transmission occurring in a single instant?

Or something.

Special Theory of Everything

Nuts to general relativity. I'mma return to wild speculation about whatever. I still have most of 10 years to figure it all out.

Theory: All forces are an effect caused by the warping of space.

Evidence for: When you move relative to something, it gets warped. When you move relative to everything, everything gets warped. We can say, "space gets warped." This is special relativity.

Conventionally, we say "When you apply a force to an object, it moves, and its velocity causes a warping of observed space."

Instead we could say "When you warp space, you move through it." Occam's Razor favors the latter.

Not that we know how to warp space by will alone. Nevertheless, we do it all the time, simply by moving. We don't know how forces work but we use them all the time. We don't know how space warping works but we use it all the time.

Evidence against: Ain't none but tired old convention.


Theory: The universe is a singularity

Evidence for: Distance and time are observer-dependent. The shape and size of the universe is different for different observers. It seems as if shape and size, and time too, is defined by an observer. If you try to envision how a spherical light wavefront "sees" the universe under Time Relativity, you see the universe shrunk to a single point: a singularity. Without observers, there appears to be no time, and no distance, and no chronology of events or causality. Observations define the observed universe; without those observations it seems to best make sense as a singularity.

Evidence against: The above description of a universe as a singularity is an attempt to describe an observation of the universe without an observer, but still using that mathematical language of an observer. It seems more likely that it exists in some different way, with different dimensions that only appears as a singularity to our common understanding of observations. But an observation of such a universe wouldn't appear as a singularity; it would appear as the universe appears to us.

Perhaps though it is possible to describe how the universe is shaped (IE. a singularity) without being able to describe how that shape might look.

Force of ignorance

Einstein and Newton are my heroes, but if any scientific convention leads us astray, even one established by the most intelligent players in the game, it must be ignored or corrected (or my misunderstanding must be rectified).

List of junk that I don't like in science

• A frame experiencing gravity is indistinguishable from an accelerating frame
  
  Observers in each of these frames will observe a warping of space around them. A linearly accelerating frame will observe a cartesian warping, where "lines of length contraction" are parallel. Under gravity, a frame will observe a polar warping, where lines converge at the center of gravity. Across the "height" of the frame of a person standing on Earth, there will be a gravitational differential (gravity should be measurably stronger at your feet than at your head, even if the difference is minuscule).
  
  A single point of observation would still not be able to tell the difference between a linear acceleration (that can change in magnitude as the point changes position), and the force of gravity. Again, as with Time Relativity, there is the suggestion that an "inertial frame" that contains "stuff" where there is distance between the stuff, can not be consistently described as a single entity. Different points within an inertial frame will experience phenomena differently.
  
  

  Update: Einstein thought of this. I think they're expressing the same idea when they say "in mathematical terms, it is the geodesic motion associated with a specific connection which depends on the gradient of the gravitational potential. Space, in this construction, still has the ordinary Euclidean geometry. However, spacetime as a whole is more complicated." (IE. it's all curved up, yo.)

  
  
• Inertia: A body at rest tends to stay at rest
  
  To claim that the natural state of an object at rest is to remain at rest, requires one to consider the object in the absence of gravity. This requires one to consider it independent of any other matter, because otherwise there will be gravitational forces. But then you lose all definition of "at rest" verses "moving", because movement is relative. To say that the object is at rest implies that it is not moving relative to some other object. You cannot compare it to "the frame of space", which doesn't exist in relativistic physics. This object that you are considering independent of all other matter, has no way to distinguish whether it is moving or at rest compared to other things it can't observe, and its inertia or momentum is undefined.
  
  If you add another mass into the picture, then we must have that a body at rest will tend to accelerate toward other masses. To cling to the old definition of inertia, we're compelled to treat gravity as a constant force which is something that is "additional" to the underlying natural state of things. But gravity is the underlying natural state of things. Bodies that obey a more natural definition of inertia will tend to attract each other.
  
  This almost suggests that an object in free fall is not observing a "force" so much, but rather just being inert within the relative space around it. That is roughly how it feels, to the observer. Another observer that is overcoming gravity is the one who employs or experiences forces.
  
  

  Update: Einstein thought of this. "This suggests the definition of a new class of inertial motion, namely that of objects in free fall under the influence of gravity."

  
  Perhaps trying to unify the "force" of gravity with the other fundamental forces is like asking "what kind of apple is this navel orange?"
  

Foundation for a Unified Theory

The double-slit experiment immediately makes slightly more sense under the TDR model, because it allows all possible paths for the light to be evaluated in a single instant.

Single-slit and double-slit experiments are cases of light being curved. Let us consider that light appears to travel at c along this curved path. Suppose that a photon appears to travel a curved distance of d and hits a screen. The time value at the screen along the curved path is the same time value at the sender. However, due to 1/c invariance, from any perspective I will see the time difference between sender and screen according to straight-line distances. That means that the length-time that I observe or measure between sender and receiver is smaller than it is measured along the "instantaneous" curved light path. In other words, the photon has shifted into a slightly different time than the one I can observe.

However, this also suggests that I wouldn't see any photons hitting the screen, because any curved path would mean a slight shift in time. This suggests that the light event is not instantaneous after all, but has a small duration. So, though many photons appear time-shifted, those that are shifted only slightly are still visible. An interference pattern becomes apparent, as photons are shifted out of visible time to form dark spots, and others are shifted into visible time to form brighter spots.

A natural correlation between the energy and duration of a light event is that the duration of the event would be proportional to its energy. The apparent frequency of light might be illusory. An explanation of redshift or the appearance of it would need to be provided in accordance with TDR. Note that the appearance of a sinusoidal aspect of an apparent "light wave" may mean that a light event occurs similarly sinusoidal. That is, it is a "flash" of light energy that begins "dark", increases in intensity until a maximum amplitude is reached (would the amplitude be the same for all different energies of light?), and decreases back to "dark". If a light event is said to occur at a specific time, it would likely make sense that the moment of maximum intensity would be that time. Note: Several questions come up that cast doubt on this interpretation of frequency effects of light. Does that mean that part of a light event can happen before the official time of the event? Wouldn't it make more sense if higher-energy light stretched it across space (width, for example) rather than time? Either would allow wider bands for higher frequencies to be visible in the slit experiments, but the opposite effect is apparent. Therefore these ideas need to be revisited.

The effect of "which path" observations on the slit experiments destroys the appearance of interference. A couple possible explanations come to mind:

• The detection of light anywhere along the path changes the light event from a single curved-path event, "splitting" it into multiple straight-path light events.
• The detection of light involves an interaction with matter. That matter has size, which means the interaction takes time. This time might be random enough that it removes the otherwise precise correlation between time and locations on the screen.

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Revisiting the Time-shift explanation for interference patterns...

Consider conservation of energy as it relates to number of photons. We would think that any photons that "disappear into another time" would be replaced by an equal number that appear from another time. However, a single-photon light-event will always be detected. So something is wrong.

The model of a single light event is a line (possibly curved). But the double-slit experiment suggests that light propagates as a spherical wavefront.

It could be that light does indeed propagate along that entire round wavefront, and in fact interacts with the entire area it "sees". However, every location that it interacts with exists in a different time, while any observer only exists in a single time. An observer will see light interact with only a single point at which its observed time matches the light event's time. An observation from the exact location of a light sender, could "see" that that light in fact hits everywhere, and not just a single point. This reinstates the instantaneousness of light.

It also suggests an experiment which may predict that observers in frames that have relative movement will see a different diffraction pattern, because each observer will have different measurements between the light source and locations on the screen. However, it could instead be that the pattern is defined by the ratio of curved-path distance to straight-path distance, which might be the same for any observer.

There must be something that was missed or incorrect in all this speculation.

The above describes single-slit interference, but doesn't cover double-slit.

One last wild speculation: What if time is meaningless to a light event? The "time" at which it occurs depends on a definition of time, which is time-frame location dependent. Perhaps the light event exists as a wave through all of time, and we only see the single location and time of that event that matches our observed time-frame's time definition of that event. In this case, when a single photon follows a curved path, we see it shifted in time depending on location and straight-line distance between sender and receiver. So with less curvature, we observe events similar to if they were straight-line light events, and at locations involving more curvature, a photon appears to disappear into another time, and elsewhere we see more or less (depending on location) that the photon is visible as it appears due to it having been sent at a different time value than the one that our time frame says it was sent at.

Confusing.

Gravity

I had an idea about gravity that turned out to be complete crap after struggling with the math for awhile. I'd written a couple pages about it, but they were lost in a fire when I tripped on the cord and the computer shut off. No sense repeating the theory or explaining how the math schooled my ass. But I'll try to retell the parts I want to keep.

[Well I'll mention the theory in a nutshell, for the sake of... I don't know what. The theory was that gravity wasn't due to some force acting from afar, but rather due to the difference of the apparent "force" of gravity across some fundamental constant distance. This idea basically describes gravitational gradients, which by the way is what causes tides. So rather than being pulled by something an astronomical unit away, we are pulled (or pushed) by some difference say between one side of a neutron and the other. My hope was that calculations based on existing measurements would produce an alternate formula for gravity, with a new constant analogous to G but which would have to be much much greater (to produce the same forces that the existing formula calculates for r², but for the much much smaller delta r²). If the resulting constant was similar in value to the other fundamental force constants, that might suggest some exciting new hidden relationship. Unfortunately, the math shows that while gravity is inversely proportional to the square of the distance from a mass, the gradient is roughly inversely proportional to the cube. Fairly simple geometry can show why. In other words the calculations differ depending on which r you choose, so no such constant can be found. Or, the "fundamental constant distance" would need to grow proportionally to r. A good candidate for an idea that needs to be abandoned when shown to be wrong.]

The force of gravity exerted by a mass at a distance of r, is inversely proportional to r². The magnitude of the force is the same at all the points on a sphere with radius r centered on the mass. Interestingly, the area of a circle with a radius of r is also inversely proportional to r². This suggests that the force of gravity can be "spread evenly" across that sphere, making the "total force" on the sphere the same for any different value of r. As when blowing up a balloon, its radius increases and the latex is spread thinner, but the total amount of latex remains the same. If you imagine a gravity wave propagating like an expanding bubble ;) from the mass, it is similar to sound (pressure) waves, whose energy across some fixed area also is inversely proportional to r². This is because the total energy of a single pressure wavefront remains the same, but gets spread evenly over the total area of the wave's expanding sphere. As a side note, I think this requires the wave to move at a constant speed (c for gravity waves; the speed of sound for pressure waves)... otherwise, a slowing bubble expansion might allow energy to build up, or allow the wave to be compressed laterally and compensate with an increase in amplitude.

So, gravity gets weaker as you move farther from a gravitation body, as its force gets spread across a larger area. I'd drawn a bunch of triangles to show the ratios involving a slice of a sphere around a gravitational body, and another body (a spaceship, say) that is affected by it. I realized that the force would be the same for any r, if the spaceship grew in size relative to r... in 2 dimensions that is. Then, the spaceship at r would cover the same area relative to a sphere of radius r, as the different-sized spaceship at r₁ would cover relative to a sphere of radius r₁. And so it would experience the same gravitational force at the different distances. A conical "slice" of gravity shares the same total gravitational force across the (curved) base of the cone, for any cone height. This is a consequence of simple ratios.

The idea occurred to me to try to visualize a spaceship that expands as it moves away from a mass, in a way that keeps the apparent size of the spaceship the same, by warping space so that lines that radiate away from the mass become parallel. In such a view, a "normal" spaceship would appear to decrease in size as it moved away from the mass. At this point I felt that now-familiar feeling that things were getting too abstract to be conceivable. Another idea came to mind of modifying gravity by somehow warping its field this way possibly through some sort of gravity lens (a lens that warps gravity, not the more familiar lens that warps light using gravity).

An interesting idea that comes out of this is that a spaceship decreasing in size as it moves away from a gravitational mass, is exactly what appears to happen to the object when viewed from the gravitational mass. The apparent area that an object takes up relative to my entire field of view, is once again inversely proportional to r². This suggests a theory that the gravitational force on an object is related to how that object is "seen" by the mass. Interestingly, all of these ideas may be converging on some Theory of Everything that centers around the effects of observation as the core mechanism for describing physical interaction. Things affect me relative to how much I am aware of them.

Note that I'm not talking about simple visual observation. You can't hide from the sun's gravity by ducking behind a planet. The mass can "see" through matter, and can "see" the various layers or depth of matter (so a long rocket with the same visual area as a short rocket will not experience an equal force), and it can "see" the density of the matter.

As an example, consider the Sun and the Moon. From Earth, they appear to be roughly the same size. The Sun is about 400 times as far away as the Moon is, and also has a radius about 400 times the Moon's (anything that appears the same size should have the same proportion). However, it is about 0.42 times as dense. So, compensating for density, the Sun has approximately 400*0.42 = 167 times the gravitational "depth" as the Moon. Since they occupy roughly the same area in the sky on Earth, we would expect the Sun's gravitational pull to be roughly 167 times the Moon's, which it is (The actual factor is about 178).

Final Thought

I've been working on some things that make you go hmmm involving defining time in terms of distance (of which the apparent speed of light propagation is a side-effect) and may one day relate it back to this gravity stuff. One idea to explore is this: perhaps the increase in mass experienced in objects traveling at relativistic speeds, is some consequence of length stretching, which makes the object appear "larger", as far as gravity is concerned. It may even involve removing mass from one time (where it appears smaller) and moving it to a time where it appears larger, or being relative to the "rate of time", but either way obeying some "conservation of mass over time" law.

Metapost

Dear diary,

I've wondered about my willful choosing of ignorance over research, the choice to contemplate ridiculous ideas about junk rather than trying to understand what science has already determined about said junk. Part of this is a fear that any idea I have will have already been thought of and disproved, thus robbing me of any feeling of creativity unless I ignore what's out there. Part is a fear that I won't understand what I read about, and I'd rather feel smart than struggle to actually be so. I've also recently heard of the belief that creativity requires that you don't know too much about a topic, basically because you will be lead far down the path of existing knowledge, and miss some possible new and hidden branch somewhere way back on the path.

At best thinking and figuring stuff out yourself might be good practice. Also, you can think of something until you get stuck, and then look it up for enlightenment, and your brain should be more willing to accept new knowledge than it would be if you just tried to force-feed it all in without the puzzling curiosity. However, this approach can be futile; Imagine trying to figure out the cosmos by watching the night sky and ignoring all of humanity's existing astronomical knowledge. You might not get past something like,"the stars appear to be fixed on a sphere that rotates around the earth".

But this is a blog, not a textbook. So it will be stupid at times (hopefully about average as far as blogs go), and incorrect too. It is about my exploration of the realms of metaphysics, and as much about the struggle to understand, or about bad ideas, or good, as my experiences with each warrant.

One of the basic tenets of science goes something like this: an idea, no matter how good it is, must be abandoned if it is proven to be wrong. Trying to fit all ideas to one central idea or belief = timecube.com. And so stupid ideas will come and go, and be revisited now and then, and conflicting ideas will get mixed up and others resolved, until I either get that nobel prize on my shelf, or give up, or go mad.

The theory of Instantaneous Information Transfer

Note: This theory as-is is disproven, but leads to the basis of other compelling theories

Long ago, everything was about matter. Everything was about stuff interacting with stuff. Even light was thought of as a bunch of tiny particles moving at extreme velocities.

Then everything was about energy. Einstein showed that matter and energy are equivalent, that E=mc². In effect, matter is made up of energy.

Now, the new big thing is information. The transfer of energy is a transfer of information. Stuff interacting with stuff is a transfer of information.

c, the speed of light in a vacuum, is the nominal speed of information travel in the universe. There is nothing inherently special that I know of about light that would make light the defining thing of the universe. c is more than just the speed of light; it is the speed of the universe itself. Electricity flows as a wave carried by adjacent electrons at c. Gravity waves travel at c. No matter or energy or information can travel faster than c. Calling it "the speed of light" severely undervalues its importance, and makes it seem confusing that it should have such a pivotal role in the workings of the universe. After all, what's so special about light?

For matter to travel at c, it would need to have an infinite amount of energy. What if we were to consider c to be an infinite speed, and redefine space and time as we need to, around that assumption? Then, light would be transmitted at infinite speed. Instead of light being some piece of energy that moves like matter does, it is energy or information that is conveyed instantly. It is emitted and absorbed in the same instant. Since we know from experience that light in fact takes a certain amount of time to cross a certain distance (at speed c), we must redefine "time" to allow these 2 events in different locations to be "simultaneous" even though they appear not to be.

This would mean that if you observed a star exploding 100 light years away, that is happening "now" where you are. But "now" would not be the same in all locations, as an observer 50 light years away would seem to see it 50 years earlier, according to our notion of light taking one year rather than an instant to cross a light-year. But it would mean that despite this apparent difference in time, according to me and my observations, the 3 events of the star exploding, the closer observer seeing it, and myself seeing it, all occur at the same time. (Note: Since my observations are based on the propagation of light, it is clear that all 3 events would be observed simultaneous from where I am -- but does simultaneous observation imply simultaneous occurrence?)

This is shown to be confusing, if not just plain wrong, when you consider something like reflecting a laser off the moon. According to this theory, an observer on the moon would see the laser on Earth turned on at the same time that the light hits the moon, which is then instantly reflected back. An observer on the Earth would see the light reflecting off the moon and instantly being seen on Earth. However, the observer on Earth would not see the laser being turned on and then being instantly reflected by the moon. There would be a delay, equal to the time it would take if the light was traveling the return distance at c. This means that time and simultaneity are not the same between different locations. 2 events that occur between the Earth and the moon may seem to occur with different timing, when seen by each.

So why bother considering this confusing idea, when everything makes sense if we just return to the idea of light being something that travels at a given speed? What do we gain with this concept? I started by arguing that light is nothing special, so why then treat it so specially? Compare it to sound... if for example we hear the crack of a bat hitting a baseball after we see it, we wouldn't consider that the events we see and hear occurred at different times. Wouldn't light propagation being instant make it special?

Well, the answer is no. It would simply mean that light is an instantaneous transfer of information, while sound (like all information transmitted through the movement of matter) is not. What we gain is this notion of instantaneous information transfer, which we can apply to a myriad of interactions that appear to occur at a speed of c.

General Relativity already allows for such a redefinition of time and the loss of universal simultaneity, between 2 observers who are traveling at different speeds relative to one another. That is a necessary weirdness, however, to allow for things that would otherwise be impossible with a notion of universal time. The theory discussed here, on the other hand, adds unintuitive weirdness to common everyday events that otherwise appear not weird at all, and can be intuitively explained with existing simple classical physics.

The theory of instantaneous information transfer (IIT) implies that all events observed through information that arrived at an apparent speed of c, occurred at the time they were observed, according to the observer. That means that light from the moon arrives instantly. It means that to an observer on the moon, light from Earth arrives instantly, but it does NOT mean that according to an observer on Earth, light sent to the moon arrives instantly. Although light propagates instantly, there is no valid concept of universal time that says that what happens in one place happens at the same time in another place. Remember that this theory implies that the appearance of propagation of light at a fixed speed is a side-effect of a re-definition of time as something that is not fixed, as it seems to be. To an observer on Earth, light is sent to the moon, and though I am seeing the moon as it is "now", it receives the light in a different time. When that happens, it immediately reflects the light back, which I instantly see.

That would imply that information transmitted across a distance is sent into the future.

Okay so much for Occam's razor. The theory of IIT will likely be tossed out well before the next trash day. Well it was a valiant attempt at any rate.

Note that IIT doesn't break the law of causality or even imply faster-than-light travel, because time and distance are redefined based on c in a way that maintains causality.

So we have events happening in various locations, and light instantly conveying information about those events. Then we have time defined as a factor of distance such that it appears that events 1 light-second away occurred 1 second ago. (Or, we could have distance defined as a factor of time, such that it appears that events that happened 1 second ago appear to be 1 light-second away -- however I think this is actually TOO complicated to bother contemplating at the moment).

It could then be that all of our perception of the passage of time is nothing but an effect of the distances between everything.

Now then, what were those interesting consequences of this theory?...

Consistency

I've touched on the idea that separate observers each experience "their own reality", but when they come together and compare notes, they will always find their experiences are mutually consistent. This is the Law of Consistency.

Basically, if all that you can be certain of is only what you know and what you observe, then everything else is defined only by probabilities. Some quantum mechanics junk says that it can't be known any more than that, I think. But a separate observer may make observations of what you can't observe, meaning that they have a different definition of what is real and what is only probability.

When you and the other observer share information, you gain knowledge. What was previously just probable is now actual. Probability waveforms collapse, and this propagates "backward through time", in that observations of the present depend on observations of the past, and what you know to be real now makes what it is based on in the past, real in the past.

So you have your reality, and the other has their reality, and where those overlap is a shared reality. This reality will always be consistent. Your shared reality will have a common shared history. The events you shared will appear the same under any observation. At least, they will within the bounds of causality. For example, the chronology of causally unrelated events may not be agreed upon by separate observers. This may be a major clue about the Law of Consistency, but I'll put it aside for a moment.

Consistency appears on the surface to be a source of weirdness, in that there is an appearance that some mechanism "corrects" or "sorts out" observers when they come together, or somehow simultaneously restricts separate observers while they are apart. On the other hand, consistency may be what saves us from the otherwise weird aspects of quantum mechanics.

Take the example of entangled particles. When both particles are considered by a common observer, there are some "weird" aspects apparent, like "spooky action at a distance". Consistency requires that the observation of other laws, such as conservation of spin, is observed for both particles. However, the observer of only a single particle sees no weirdness. They see only a single particle behaving as a single particle. The expectation that a message can be passed from an observer of one particle to the observer of the other is false, because only an observer of both particles can observe an effect that depends on both particles (such as any effect of entanglement). This again may appear weird, because the common observer can include an observer who gains information from one or both separate particles at a later time. That is, I may gather the results from 2 separate observations, and notice that they display weird aspects of entanglement, but neither I nor anyone else will observe any effects of entanglement until we've made observations of (that is, gained information about) both particles.

And so Consistency simultaneously displays weirdness, and makes it not weird (because it is by definition consistent). That is to say, it is only because things must be consistent that they appear to be weird, in cases like this. The weirdness cannot be exploited in ways that break laws (FTL message passing breaks the law of Causality, notably).

Trying to exploit entanglement involves trying to make things inconsistent, but the only way to attempt that is to separate the observers, and in doing so, consistency between the observers no longer applies, and the effects of consistency (such as entanglement) can no longer be observed.

Theories

I've had a lot of vague thoughts lately but neither the time nor focus to develop them well.  Here are some ideas of things I'll have to reconsider later in depth.

These are some theories that I can't prove, but I think may be true due to clues and gut feelings.

Theory: It is impossible to observe alternate universes except in terms of probability wavefunctions.

The idea of an "alternate universe" from our perspective, is that it is part of a superposition of all potential realities.   It exists only as wavefunctions describing the probability of any specific aspect of a potential reality being an actual reality.

However, QM experiments and interpretations suggest that making observations of something "makes it real".  In QM terminology, an observation collapses a probability wavefunction.  To oversimplify and demystify, we might say that "anything that is possible is always possible, but as soon as we know anything about it, only what we know is possible."

However, if we gain any knowledge of alternate reality, that constitutes making an observation.  The more certain we know anything, the more real it is.  But this suggests that it becomes "real" in "our" reality (the reality from which it is observed).  Thus, possibly by definition of reality, the only reality that we can observe is our own.

A rephrasing of the theory is: It is impossible to transfer information between physically separate realities, without physically joining them.

Theory: It is not possible to transfer information faster than the speed of light through the use of quantum entanglement.

This is really just based on gut feelings and evidence from the history of science that basically suggests to us, over and over, that there's no free lunch and you can't cheat the universe.  Conservation laws, causality... these suggest that the universe ultimately runs in a logical manner with a strict set of rules.

I have no proof.

The basic idea for using quantum entanglement for FTL (faster than light) message passing, is that making a measurement of one entangled particle immediately tells you some corresponding information about the other particle, due to conservation laws, regardless of distance.  To break causality laws, this would mean that the observation of one particle somehow changes it (which must also instantly change the other).  So, if FTL information transfer is impossible, which I think it is, this must mean that making an observation of the particle doesn't "change" it in an immediately measurable way.

I believe that the results of any experiments done, will have a caveat that any information that can be obtained from one particle, requires additional context information from the other particle before it can be in any way useful.  In other words, any message passed would effectively be "encrypted" with additional information that is not available at both particles simultaneously.  Experiments may show things like, "When results from both particles were compared, it showed that a message was instantly transferred, however it wasn't until the results from both particles were brought together that the message could be understood."  -- An example of this idea is the "quantum eraser" experiment, which hints that information has traveled faster than the speed of light, however that information is only available retrospectively, meaning that causality is not violated.

In vague terms, this would mean that observing a particle "locks" it to a particular reality, but it doesn't "determine" what that reality is.  You can't control reality through cleverly manipulative observations.

If 2 separate observers are making observations of their realities, they should each see a reality that is independently consistent and isn't affected by anything they can't observe (IE anything outside of the scope of causality).  Then when the 2 observers meet, they should find that their separately observed realities are consistent with each other.  I'm not sure yet exactly how this will be exemplified in the case of entanglement.

Addendum (trying to wrap my head around this):

In my last post, I showed how a misunderstanding of the Quantum Eraser experiment can lead to conclusions like that one can control what is observed in the present by what one does in the future.  But this is not the case.  Both the present and the future each exist consistently, in the Quantum Eraser experiment.  In "the future", the context of the observations may let you observe things from the past differently, but that future context doesn't exist in the present and is not usable as information now.

The same should be seen with entanglement.  Information will seem to be passed instantaneously when observing the results in a context that contains information from both particles, but individually, each particle will allow observations that let it be observed only as if it is an independent particle.

So it's not so much that an observation "makes" a probabilistic event "real".  It is that an event will seem "real" and precise and deterministic when viewed in a context that makes use of deterministic observations, and it will seem only probabilistic when viewed in a context without that information.  The two exist simultaneously, consistently, but can't both be seen simultaneously.  And so making an observation doesn't physically change a system.  You should be able to make precise measurements of a particle's position, and make separate precise measurements of a particle's momentum.  However there should be no possible way to combine these measurements such that the two retain independent meaning or precision.  They should combine with destructive interference, or (as in the case of the quantum eraser) constructive interference that destroys information.

Within the multiverse theory of individual realities for individual observers, it means that there must be some flexibility between separate observers, so that when they come together, there is a certain amount of "blurring" of the combined reality.  It may turn out that this is required for consistency.

I also have a gut feeling that quantum "weirdness", when understood properly, will prove to be not that weird at all.  Perhaps the next generation of high school students will grasp this as intuitively as we grasped the concepts of velocity and acceleration.

Theory: The Uncertainty Principle (or complementarities) applies to a wide range of things either on a variety of size scales, or in a "real world" scale.

Specifically, it seems that the idea of coupled complementary aspects of knowledge apply to elements of thought and consciousness.  This is purely philosophical.  The idea might stem from the acceptance of the uncertainty principle leading me to think about other aspects of life in similar ways.

Some unscientific ideas based on this are things like, the more precisely you focus on one thought or subject or object, the less you are able to focus on a large range of the same.  You can either observe much with little precision, or little with much precision.  Another example is that the more precisely you try to imagine what someone is thinking, the more errors your imagination is likely to produce, and the less you 'get' them.  You can either 'get' someone accurately and not care about the details, or try to get them precisely, and not be accurate.

These could be simply analogies, or perhaps there is some fundamental aspect of the uncertainty principle that applies equally to real-world junk.

Quantum forgetfulness

I wrote this on an anonymous science forum, concerning the question "Can probability waveforms re-form from collapsed, observed realities?":

I believe waveforms must reform, because otherwise you'd have all previously observed particles traveling through space and time being inherently different from unobserved ones.

An interesting experiment would be to recreate the double-slit experiment with a particle detector at one of the slits, but then purposefully ignore or "forget" the output of the detector. In a sense, you'd be putting the results into a "quantum cat box" in a way that it's impossible for you to observe the results. I believe that all "forgotten" observations = "reformed" wave functions, so I believe that the interference pattern would be visible again, if you did it right.

I was clued-in to the Quantum eraser experiment, and followed up...

So the expected result is seen ("erasing" the effect of observations restores the photon's probabilistic nature, or whatever). But the real-world consequences displayed by the experiment are still mind-bogglingly unintuitive.

As for time... "(delaying deciding) whether to measure or destroy the 'which path' information ... appears to have the bizarre effect of determining the outcome of an event after it has already occurred." -- In other words, what you see now depends on what you do later. This is balls as nuts!, but a more intuitive way to put it might be, "The experiment will display probabilistic effects now if there is no way to make 'which path' observations in the future (IE no useable information), and will display deterministic effects now if there is."

It would seem that having deterministic information now about events that occurred in the past, does indeed make those events deterministic in the past. Or perhaps in other words, we can make observations now of events that happened in the past???

... and having information now about events from the past makes those events deterministic in the past.  Wikipedia says so, folks!

...

Let's get philosophical about the idea of determining the result of an event in the future.  That is, what I see now is apparently the result of what I do tomorrow.  I say "determining" instead of deciding, and "apparently", because it might not actually be the case that I'll be causing an effect in the past.  It could simply be that I can predict now whether or not there will be information available in the future, to be able to make an observation then about what I'm doing now.  The bizarre part is that in the case of the quantum eraser experiment, I can control in the future whether or not there will be information (by measuring or destroying the 'which path' information).  So does that mean the experiment predicts what I will do in the future?  Or that there is an effect that travels backward through time?  Or perhaps the experiment would require such short time periods and such great distances, that "now" and the "future" that I speak of are no longer causally linked (at least in the backward direction), and it is all irrelevant?

I assume the latter option.  I assume this fits with the "rules" of causality in a way that makes the time travel of information impossible.

However let's assume that I can tell today from the experiment, whether a measurement will be made tomorrow or sometime in the future (by me or anyone else), or whether the information will be destroyed first.  Then I can set up a meta-experiment in which I manipulate how the experiment is done, for example to send a message back in time from the future (lotto numbers, say).  I would set up a series of timed experiments or perhaps multiple apparatuses, and code a massage in binary, using the observations of whether or not I see double-slit interference patterns today, to represent the 2 states.  Tomorrow I would measure or destroy the 'which-path' information appropriately.

In the end, I would still expect not to be able to send a message back in time.  In the meta-experiment, observing the result of the series of experiments constitutes an observation, thus collapsing the probability waveform describing the meta-experiment.  This would leave me no way to randomly change what I do tomorrow (whether I measure or destroy).  Since it seems impossible that I could lock myself into a particular action, I think the more likely result is that none of the apparatuses would display interference patterns.  They would all act as if the information would be measured in the future.  In some way, the observation of the meta-experiment would be linked to the 'which-path' information, and observing an outcome of any kind would collapse the waveforms and no interference pattern would be seen.

This still doesn't make sense, so unless I missed something, there is likely some other factor that prevents "impossible" results.  It is likely that there is no way to set up the experiment within the scope of causality.  For example, say you wanted to destroy the 'which-path' information, and then observed that the interference pattern was visible, so you quickly changed your mind to measure the information instead, creating a paradox -- This could probably never happen because the observation of the interference pattern would likely need to be causally disconnected (via very small time or very large distance), so that you could never "change your mind" fast enough based on the observation, as to whether or not to destroy or measure the information.  In other words, you would never be close enough to say for certain that the observation of the interference pattern did in fact happen before the act of measuring or destroying the path information.  The very best possible that you could ever say was that they appeared to happen at the same time.

This is all conjecture.  Personally I think the second explanation is more likely, unless we can find a direct link between observations in the meta-experiment, and information involved in its apparatuses.

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Addendum

After reading about the Delayed choice quantum eraser, a simpler explanation is given for why this could not be used to send a message back in time.  Interference patterns are only visible in the "past" portion of the experiment when combined with information from the "future" part.  I think basically you could say that multiple possible outcomes that could create a destructive interference pattern in the "past", combine constructively to create no interference pattern at all.  You need information from the "future" to be able to filter out the possible interference patterns of the past.

Makes sense.

Bubbles

Idea: Bubbles
Conjecture: 85%

The double-slit experiment with single photons seems to suggest that a photon interacts with its surroundings over an area, not just as a single point (or particle).  Rather than traveling in a straight line from source to destination, a photon behaves like a wave that "travels" through all the possible points that photon could travel through.

I imagine photons "moving" as bubbles that expand at the speed of light.  Where these bubbles intersect, events or interactions can occur.  The photon can hit a screen or otherwise be detected.  I imagine reality consisting of a huge number of bubbles, expanding, colliding, and popping.

If these bubbles represent the possibility of any event occurring, and there is a set speed at which bubbles expand (c), then this immediately makes c the speed limit for everything... particles, information, energy, whatever.  No matter could exceed c because it would have to "leave its bubble behind", like a sonic boom, and then it couldn't interact with anything ahead of its bubble.  It couldn't be seen or felt... basically it wouldn't be there.  If what things "are" are these bubbles, then by definition nothing could travel faster than the bubbles expand.

If "bubble expansion rate" determines everything, then light doesn't move in a classical sense, with a velocity that determines its change in distance over time.  Everything would be determined by these bubbles.  So, time itself would be defined by the behavior of the bubbles.  c isn't so much a speed of something, but the maximum rate at which anything in the universe happens.  Likely, distance too would be defined by the behavior of the bubbles.

At the very least, it seems right that c is more than just a cosmic speed limit.  It seems right that time and distances are some consequence of c, and not the other way around, because in the classical sense of things, there is no good reason why there would be a speed limit at all.

This may be more important than the bubble idea, so I'll repeat it: It seems reasonable that time is defined by the speed of light.  It is the rate at which information travels, and so it defines the rate at which particles can interact.

...

Unfortunately, the bubble idea fails in several ways.  First, the bubble should "pop" when it interacts with the slits.  To get around this, I imagined a single "point" on the bubble, which represents a single possible point of interaction.  This point can move freely across the bubble, moving like the probability of the point being at that particular place and time.  So the point can slide through the slits.  The bubble becomes as small as the slit, and continues expanding from there (just like blowing a soap bubble through a multiple layers of plastic mesh).

Secondly, the destructive interference patterns seen in the double-slit experiment don't represent probability waves interfering with themselves at exactly the same time (which would be constructive interference), but at slightly offset times (with opposite phases in wave-like propagation of light).  This means that the spherical surface of a bubble would interact either with an interior part of the bubble's area (as in a solid sphere rather than a 2D surface), or it would interact with itself in multiple different times.

At this point the idea becomes too abstract and unreal to try to figure out.

The Lost post

This is a post that started as an explanation of how multiple coexisting realities can occur, which was a theory of what was going on early in the final season of Lost. The explanations quickly untangled into further puzzles, like "Are there infinite copies of me out there?", and "How was Desmond able to observe one reality from the other?"

Scientists: I hope this rambling isn't so tl;dr as to prevent the little bits of Einsteinian genius from being found and contemplated further. Perhaps one day it will be figured out, and repeated in a concise, sensible blog post.

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Schroedinger's Poor Cat -- Explaining the paradox

... or, New(?) ideas on the propagation of probability waves

... or, I never met a lasagna I didn't like.

Take a box. Add: 1 cat; 1 sealed vial of catpoison; 1 molecule of radioactive material that has say a 50% chance of decaying over the next year; 1 radiation detector connected to an apparatus that will break the vial of poison if the radioactive particle's decay is detected. Now close up the box, wait a year, crack it open again, and see if you don't have yerself a dead cat.

This is the basic idea behind the famous Schroedinger's Cat Paradox, a thought-experiment conceived by the actor Arnold Schroedendinger. It was originally suggested to point out the absurdity of the theory and consequences of the Uncertainty Principle in Quantum Mechanics. The principle says that the state of a subatomic particle is impossible to predict and is only determined when it is observed. The particle's state is only a "probability waveform", that collapses into a specific state of reality when observed.

The "cat" thought experiment takes random events in the subatomic realm and through cause-and-effect has results in the human scale of things.


Without clarifying the details of the experiment, it is easy to set it up so that it's clearly ridiculous. You can't just throw the cat in a cardboard box, or shake the box to see if it's alive without opening it. Any clue that can be examined to determine whether the cat is alive or dead, should be considered an observation. And there must always be a probability that the cat can be alive. You can't throw it in without food and wait until you know it must starve.

Speaking of what constitutes an observation, what then constitutes an observer? Must it be a human conscious? No, and it need not even be alive. Anything that can record the state of the cat can be considered an observer. So, the cat too is an observer. It can tell whether it is alive or dead, it doesn't need a human to look at it before its life is determined. The particle detector is an observer too. Anything can be an observer: If the particle decays and emits radiation that has an effect on something else, then that something else is an observer. If the effect can be determined, then the state of the particle is no longer a probability waveform; it has collapsed into a real state. (This suggests the question, what about effects that aren't lasting? Can an event be observed, then completely forgotten, and does this then somehow reinstate a probability waveform? This question might be answerable later in this essay. (See nugget 1, below))

Of course, if the cat is an observer, then its aliveness is never in question, so there should be no probability waveform that collapses when the box is open, and the experiment is not valid. But this need not be the case. If there is no observation made of anything inside the box, then its state is indeterminate to an outside observer, so it is still possible that its state exists only as a probability waveform. How is this possible? One way is through "simultaneously existing alternate realities" in a multi-dimensional "multiverse" thing. The particle may decay and it may not. It may be that each case is played out, simultaneously, in alternate realities. Every such possible event in the universe may occur simultaneously, branching into 2 or more different results, in a sense continuously "spawning" new universes where every possible outcome exists in its own universe. This would require an infinite (or infinitely growing) number of universes, and questions like "Where would they all fit?" make it hard to conceive. Surely, as time goes on, more and more universes would have to exist?

A different way of thinking about this is to consider that the universe exists in multiple dimensions, not all of which we can "see", and rather than say that 2 distinct universes exist, one in which the cat is dead and one in which it is alive, instead both exist in one universe as the superposition of 2 distinct possibilities. The universe would simultaneously contain all possible outcomes of every event ever, not existing as distinct realities as we understand them, but as probabilities of all possible states. The reality that I know and observe would simply be me seeing only the possibilities that make up one combination of all possible states. But being a part of the universe myself, I would also exist only as part of a probability superposition of all possibilities, and so there could be an infinite number of realities I could see, IE. an infinite number of "me"s. (See nugget 2)

Let's just assume for awhile that all of this is true. I'm sure later we'll be able to devise an experiment to test it. It is useful to make assumptions like this, and think about what consequences will result. This leads to thought experiments, which in the past have brought about leaps in understanding ideas that were hard to verify physically.

So by having a particle detector observe the state of the particle, the particle's waveform collapses into either a decayed or not-decayed state, and the cat either dies or lives, respectively. The cat has observed the state of the poison, simply by living or dying. For it, the probability waveform for the particle has collapsed.

Outside the box, if the state of the cat has had no effect on the world, and it is possible that the cat is either alive or dead, then both possibilities still exist in a probability waveform that isn't collapsed until the box is opened. In the multiple universe theory, the cat lives in some universes and dies in others, and we don't know which one we're in until we open the box. This doesn't quite make sense because the act of opening the box can be seen as an event, that should split the universe into multiple realities, but if the cat can still be truly alive or dead, then this may suggest "jumping" between realities... a split occurred earlier for the cat, and now occurs again for the opener of the box.

In the universal superposition theory, instead it means that to us the external observer, the cat has simultaneously lived and died in superposition, and we only observe a single reality from that superposition set when we open the box. If the cat is dead, other realities still exist where it is alive, in the superposition of all things.

Now imagine that you're inside the box. Use your home as an example. Just as anything outside that isn't affected by our state in the box can view us only as a probability waveform, so too do we see everything outside the box as such. We can still measure things like light and gravity penetrating the walls of the house, so some things can be observed between inside and out, and so some waveforms collapse to set a certain reality. As well, we have reasonable expectations of what is possible, so we can be sure that the stars have not suddenly rearranged themselves into a connect-the-dots image of the Mona Lisa, while we were stuck in our cat boxes. More generally, all events outside the house have probabilities, so we can be fairly sure of some things and uncertain of others, to varying degrees. But, it may just be that the reality that exists outside of our houses, that is beyond observation from within, is not determined until we actually go outside and observe it.

This could be happening for every individual who ever puts their self in a probability box with respect to another. We may each have our own specific realities. That is, each reality may be a specific observation of all possible configurations of the universe. Each would be based on prior observations and the possibility of all observable events, and all unobserved events with unobserved consequences still exist only as probability waveforms. As well, the probability value of any waveform should be different in different realities, as past events will make future events more or less likely.

* Idea #1 (with conjecture rating of 95%) Imagine the universe as a world in darkness, and you have a flashlight that follows you around and illuminates every observed part of space-time. Each of us has one of these flashlights, and when we cross paths our realities match as much as needed... I exist in my own reality and you exist in yours, but you also exist in mine, and any part of your reality that can have an effect on mine also exists as reality for me. However, any part of your reality that hasn't yet been observed in mine may still exist only as a possibility in mine. This must be true when we are not connected through possible observation; you may be a cat in a box and are certainly either alive or dead, but to me both cases may be possible.

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Some rules for this new universe.

1. The universe is finite. Or, perhaps the universe is infinite. This is not known. If there are only a finite number of particles, and each has a finite set of possible quantum states, then there is only a finite (though mind-bogglingly large) number of possible configurations for the universe.

2. Not everything is possible. Almost anything is possible, because matter can wink into existence. It may be possible, if not statistically impossible (meaning it's unlikely to ever happen within the average age of the universe), for example that a full-grown whale suddenly appears in space. If this has greater than zero probability, it will happen in some alternate reality. There will be alternate realities occurring for each position in space, and each point in time, and for half-whales and for every combination of whale or penguin or piano, of everything and everything in between. As long as it is possible. If there is zero probability of something happening, it won't happen in any reality. You can't say for example imagine a particular universe, and then say "consider that but with one extra particle", and use mathematical induction to deduce an infinite number of universes. If it is not possible, it doesn't exist in any reality nor probability waveform. The superposition of all states includes only those that are possible.

Rather than to think of an impossibly large number of universes, each with some weird specific set of features, think of the whole thing all at once, where these weird features have probabilities. All these universes with spontaneously spawned whales and pianos have infinitesimal probabilities, and conceptually, they can be fit into a very small part of the superposition of all universes.


Experimentation:

Experimenting on this theory is difficult, because possible results of the experiment represent collapsed waveforms. If you imagine 2 people experiencing different possible realities, when you bring them together to compare experiences, you are left with one single observed state of the universe. If they did have different experiences, they will have collapsed into multiple distinct realities, in each of which the two observers experienced only the one shared reality.

There are areas where probabilities are observable. The double-slit experiment is an example where the effects of probability can have observable effects in our reality. I consider this experiment to be the most important that I can think of, and holds a treasure trove of puzzles regarding the probabilistic and uncertain nature of reality. And possibly some of the answers.

Is it possible to devise similar experiments in the larger world? Is it possible to combine 2 separate observations of reality, and to notice the effects of probability wave interference (where certain areas of reality are measurably more probable than others)? More on this some other day.

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This idea shrinks the multiverse (and all possible universes) into a conceivable, understandable, small mental model. Things don't exist in specific places, where multiple copies exist elsewhere, each one a little different, and we're left wondering where it all is. Things exist as a superposition of possible states, not as a multiple of single states. It is only observations that limit things to specific states.

How can you conceive of such a universe? How would you store this, if you were modeling it? In a computer simulation of a Newtonian universe, you might store data for each particle in the model: its position, velocity, and anything else like spin or mass that you would need. Then you can run a simulation on the set of data for all particles.

In a simulation of a multiverse with a fixed number of particles, you would do a similar thing, except that instead of storing specific (collapsed) positions and other values, you would store a probability waveform for a particle's position. I'm not sure what that would look like, or how complex it would be. Roughly how many bits of information would it represent? Would it be smooth? IE. would "adjacent" universes have all particles adjacent? Or would there be abrupt differences, such as "particle has decayed" vs. "particle has not decayed", in "adjacent" universes, with no other possibilities in-between? If positions and probabilities can be quantized, it may be that there is no smooth middle "in-between" 2 given possible universes.

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Further Nuggets...

(1) Can probability waveforms re-form from collapsed, observed realities?

I think the answer must be yes. I don't think that all subatomic particles are indeterminate until observed, and then spend the rest of their existence in the universe being actualized observed particles.

I think the definition of "observed" would be something involving the ability to have any kind of effect on the observer. Any event that you witness is clearly observed. Any memory of any event is observed. Anything felt, anything that made a mark, anything that caused another observed event, is observed. But anything which is completely unknown, and for which it makes absolutely no difference how it may have turned out, is not observed. A cat in a sealed box is not yet observed. And I believe that anything that is forgotten, is no longer observed. In a way, if you died and any evidence of any kind that you existed was destroyed and forgotten (from photographs to the states of any subatomic particles with which you ever interacted), then it no longer matters if you actually existed or not. Perhaps it is just a probability waveform again?

So if you measure a particle and then let it go and lose track of it, never again being able to correlate that particle with the measurement, then a probability waveform is restored. You won't have someone a thousand years in the future observing a particle and saying "Oh! I see that you've been involved in an experiment before!" Such thinking suggests that we can turn a probabilistic universe into a classical one simply by observing it (which actually might be exactly what we do every day) -- and that the transformation is permanent.


(2) There are an infinite number of "me"s in the multiverse.

When we think of multiple universes, we like to think of copies of ourselves doing different things, being different people in some specific way, living different lives. We also imagine ourselves being able to travel to these alternate realities and meet our alternate selves.

I think there are several problems with this line of thought.

1. As with the cat-in-a-box ideas, an alternate universe isn't a fully formed universe as big as anything that ever existed; it is only as big as the box. A particular reality only consists of those waveforms that have collapsed. So stepping into another reality would be no different than exploring new areas of your existing reality, except for where the waveforms have collapsed (things that you would know are different).
2. The "distance" between realities must grow very fast, in multiple measurable dimensions. A reality where a subatomic particle has decayed may be very close to a reality where it hasn't, but a reality in which Germany won WWI would be inconceivably distant from our reality. It would likely be that much harder to visit, assuming visiting alternate realities was in any way possible. Likewise, a reality where some formative event in your youth occurred differently, would also be inconceivably distant.
3. As such a vast number of things can change very quickly over time, it is likely that an alternate "you" would not be "you" in another reality. This argument would require a lot more work, delving into what it means to be "me", and is this entity unique in my own reality, and am I the same "me" as I always was, and always will be? Too many unknowns. However, I don't believe that there is something real, unique, and persistent enough about this "me" that I would be able to identify with corresponding objects in an alternate reality. I don't consider there to be an infinite number of alternate "me"s, because I don't think those alternates are "me".

First post

Dear Diary,

This is my first entry in the Metaphysics Diary, in which I will try to post regularly (about every week, unlike some bloggers who start a blog and then just stop writing) about my philosophical investigation into the true nature of reality. This blog has 2 eventual goals:

1. To be able to explain modern physics (quantum mechanics and relativity and stuff) in a way that makes intuitive sense. Classical physics makes sense. Modern physics is so bizarre and counter to our basic understanding of reality, that it seems impossible or just wrong. I started thinking about the physics of multiple universes as a way to explain how the alternate reality in Lost was possible. I quickly came up with more questions than answers (perhaps fitting for the show). In the end it turned out that Lost has no useful science in it, however it would still be nice to be able to explain the more bizarre aspects of reality without getting stuck.

2. To uncover the true nature of reality, and in doing so, win a nobel prize. This is sort of a buddhist goal, to understand the universe. Also the nobel prize includes a cash award that is currently over a million dollars. So yes, it really is just a get-rich-quick scheme.

Though I don't expect it to be quick, nor easy. The timeline for these goals is somewhere on the order of 10 years. Will they still have blogs in the future?

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Wikipedia states that "Metaphysics is a branch of philosophy that investigates principles of reality transcending those of any particular science." To be clear, the content of this blog is philosophy and not science. It will be rambling thoughts (for which blog format is ideal), with hopefully some interesting ideas now and then, that may one day lead to new explanations of scientific junk. But until that one day comes, it is a diary, not a thesis.

Nevertheless, philosophical thought still has a place in science. When aspects of quantum mechanics were discovered and figured out, physicists had to explain new things in a way that made the most sense to their existing understanding of the world, which consisted of classical science and the philosophy of the day. Because their intuitive, philosophical understanding of reality didn't match the results of experiments, modern physicists had to come up with "interpretations" of the science to make it fit. We still have multiple possible interpretations, because the science of reality and current philosophy of reality do no match seamlessly. If the science is sound, our philosophy needs to be updated. There is still much room for discovery.

New philosophical ideas may lead to new thought experiments, which may lead to new theories, and physical experiments to test them, and in this way metaphysics can turn into science.

This is not a new approach, however. Out of necessity, the pioneers of modern science were forced to consider new metaphysical ideas, and doubtlessly millions have tried to figure it all out since. So admittedly, the hope that this blog will lead to anything valuable is a long shot.