Multidimensional Philosophy

Let me just open with this to make it all clear: Humans from the minute they are born are trained to think in three dimensions. This is never intentional, but all the same it happens. Human eye perception is taught by getting infants to recognize objects through third-dimensional viewpoints. We develop a more acute sense of distance as time passes. We use corrective lenses to appropriately adjust our vision. We have difficulties seeing with crossed eyes. This merges into other senses such as hearing. We grow adapted to using the different signals received by our ears to more accurately pinpoint locations of sounds surrounding us. Basically we live in a three dimensional world. You probably are rolling your eyes or saying "Duh, 'cause we are." I'm not saying you're wrong. I wholeheartedly agree with you actually.

Here's where things get tricky. I've been thinking about time travel a lot recently and been considering principles  such as Causality and how they can be implemented/exploited. I'll explain in another post, but I basically have come up with a theory as to my idea why time travelling backwards cannot physically work without violating the core principles of Causality. What that essentially means is that you cannot travel back in time without having the possibility that you're actions will result in you not time-travelling backwards at the exact moment that you did in the "future". Confused yet? Just wait. The difficult part is that you now have to start thinking in a fourth dimension.

Technically there are two fourth dimensions. The first is the fourth spatial dimension which is incredibly complicated to explain in the third dimension (again, I will explain it in a different post). The second is something called a temporal dimension, or a fourth dimension relative to time. This is where it can be tricky,as we have to visualize what might be called a series of third dimensions, a chain if you will. But this is not a conventional chain. It's almost like a strand of fishing wire: you can't see the individual connections because they are so small, so the wire looks like a solid piece.

So now let's get technical.

Let's start with a somewhat simple exercise (well, at least relatively). Imagine a box on a flat surface (let's say for argument's sake a table). When someone pushes that box, what do we see? We see a box moving across a flat surface. We only see the box in what we call a singular instance at a time. We do not see any "lag". A way to conceptualize lag is to take your computer cursor and move it really fast across your screen. Depending on your settings you can sometimes see a trail of cursors behind yours. We do not see this with the box. No matter how fast you move it (within reason) you only see it one "box" at a time.

To begin to visualize the fourth dimension you have to alter the settings in your mind, if you will. You have to begin to add that lag for yourself. Now lets look at moving the box again. As it moves in your mind, take mental pictures every second. Overlay the images into one. You should end up with the same box replicated a number of times with a regular interval between each one. Now do the same process again, but take a picture every half-second and overlay it. Same box, shorter intervals between them. Eventually if you keep doing this over and over again, you will find something interesting. Let's assume the box is a cube of width 1 meter. If the box moves at one meter per second, and you take a picture every second, there will be no interval between each box instance. This results in a weird phenomenon. While the box physically exists each second, when you look at the overlay image there is one seamless box. No matter how much shorter you take the time intervals at that point there will still be the same box. This overlay image even with the smallest possible time interval is the fourth temporal dimension. It is the continuous box. If you practice this exercise you can start to build up perception in a fourth dimension. Eventually you can easily and effectively visualize something like your hand moving through space in the fourth dimension. It looks like a solidly-outlined blur.

But I'm going to throw a monkey wrench into it. You can't simply say that to reverse time travel you pick out that one particular slice of the rectangular prism. You can only assume that our prism is rectangular because of how you perceive the world now. Here's the thing: everything moves in the universe. Including earth. You might already guess what that means. Yup! As it slides across the table, it also moves in space. This could give a prism of many possible shapes depending on how the surface it moves upon moves in spacetime. So  that is the fourth dimension and the problems with simple isolation. If one were to try to pull a slice of that third dimensional existence, you can't merely calculate the position on earth. You would have to calculate where in the universe it was. I think that may be how it ties into Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle. Theoretically you can eliminate the tiny movement through spacetime by taking only a tiny time difference. But if the difference is exponential, then only that tiny time frame would give a definite an accessible distance away in spacetime (instead of across the entire universe). However I have reason to believe that that short time period falls in what I call the "instantaneous period" or the minimum uncertainty percentage allowable under Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle for time.

That is all I can say for now in my undeveloped theory's state. However I do believe that there needs to be a new field in physics to start to study human perception and its link with physics. I move that there be a new field entitled "Multidimensional Philosophy" which covers working on perceiving other dimensions. and getting past third-dimensional "training".

As always, thanks for reading. Questions and comments go in the comment box or in my Facebook inbox. Feel free to do either one!

--J

Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle (wait, is it?)

Alright, so relative to what I'm learning about and relative to a presentation I'm developing with a friend, I thought I'd give an introduction to and a mind-blowing example of a basis of Quantum Mechanics. This, as the title suggests, is called the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. And this is also where physics leaves the realm of something called Classical physics and enters the realm of Quantum and Theoretical physics. Beyond Atomic (and some of Particle) physics, everything becomes theoretical or approximate. A large majority of theoretical and quantum physics is not based on physical instances, but rather based on probabilities; well, if you are a Copenhagen-ist. The Copenhagen theory is that all particles have a wavelength associated with them, and that upon observation that wavelength collapses (in fact that wavelength isn't real. It's just an interpretation of the probability that a particle will have any one particular value in any one instance). Observation doesn't just mean looking at something, it means that when the particle interacts physically with another particle that has been "observed" in some fashion, it collapses the wavefunction (the wavelength).

Take this test:

1) Without moving, look in front of you.

--Congratulations! You passed the first part! What you are doing when you look forward is the photons (which technically have not been observed yet) interact with the particles in front of you (that also technically have not been observed yet) and then you are "observing" them. You may already be confused. You may be asking Why can an unobserved particle, upon interacting with another unobserved particle, be observed and collapse both wavefunctions? The answer is initially easy, but very hard to wrap your mind around when you really think about it. Wavefunctions can "entangle" with each other, meaning that even though the photon in the previous explanation may not be touching the particle when the photon is observed, but the wavefunction of the photon is "entangled" with the wavefunction of the particle. So the collapse of the photon leads to the collapse of the particle (otherwise the particle would just appear nonexistant). This is called a Von Neumann chain, which is the idea that observing something that has entangled with another unobserved particle can, upon observation, collapse both wavefunctions.There is one really cool implication about this, which pertains to how far back a Von Neumann chain can go. Considering the speed of photons (travelling at the speed of light), it doesn't take long for a normal Von Neumann (hereby referred to as a VN) chain to collapse, as the photons involved travel relatively quickly. However, there is no limit to how long a VN chain can go on. It is possible (but not probable) that there are enough unobserved elements in a system to have a VN chain several minutes in delay (meaning that the first unobserved particle-unobserved particle interchange happened a few minutes ago, but only now is just observed). If you think about it, the particle wasn't collapsed a few minutes ago. But when you observe the tail end of the VN chain, that particle is instantly observed and "created". Think about it, aren't you creating history? If the particle didn't exist in a certain state let's say 3 minutes ago, and you observed it now, which makes the particle (through the VN chain) collapse back to 3 minutes ago, didn't your observance create its existence? Technically yes.

2) Without moving, don't look behind you.

--Easy right? Well think about this now. Is there a "behind you"? Is there that "scary monster" behind you that will "Sneak up on you and eat your soul if you don't send this email to 20 more people."? Well something has to be observed to exist right (under Copenhagen theory)? And if you are not observing what is behind you, how do you know it is there?

Spoiler:
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It's actually there. Don't worry.
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The photons that are entangling with all the particles behind you are hitting the back of your head. Remember how I stated what observation was? Still applies here. So yes, everything behind you does exist.

All of this is just based on probability. Weird, huh? Heisenberg (and Von Neumann) are really fascinating sometimes. And sometimes you just have to wonder whether they said all this just to mess with people's minds...

Anyway, thank you for reading/hopefully enjoying. You know what to do! Comments, questions, etc, all go in that little comment function below the post or you can send them straight to my Facebook!

Thanks!

--J

Continuation (Theory) on Dimensional Theory

Well. I've been thinking. I know that you're wondering why I'm putting three posts in three days. But I have been considering what I wrote last night concerning how an object in one dimension cannot physically exist in another dimension. So what I've been thinking about is related to a cool property about the creation of matter.

Conservation of Mass and Energy state that matter cannot be spontaneously created or destroyed from pure "nothingness". What this means is that according to classical physics, an atom cannot just appear randomly. Well before you solidify that notion in your head, just know that matter can basically appear from nowhere. No one really knows exactly how it happens, but it does occur.

To give you a bit of background, there are two types of matter, matter and antimatter. Matter is what we know, it is what everything and everyone is made up of. Antimatter is exactly as it sounds, the opposite of matter.

Everything including matter and antimatter is made up of quarks (usually two or three), and every quark has one of three spins, classified by up/down, top/bottom, strange/charm (shortened to u/d, t/b, s/c). Particles (such as protons, neutrons, and electrons) have 3 quarks in them, which usually have combinations along the lines of uud (Up, Up, Down), etc. An antiparticle to uud then would be ddu (the exact opposite spins). When a particle and an antiparticle come together, it is a process known as "annihilation" where the particles basically disappear, but the energy released by the annihilation is released in the form of a pair of photons (essentially pure energy with particle/wave-like properties).

So what do we know about particles appearing out of nowhere? Well, we know that a particle and its antiparticle can be created from nothing (or rather appear from nothing), but since they have such a close proximity, they always annihilate and create a pair of photons from nothing (my theory is that spacetime has a certain energy level relevant to the Universal Entropy [more to come on that in another post] and when it gets too energetic, some raw energy is converted into a particle-antiparticle pair and then a pair of photons). This has many implications, especially in terms of black holes. I will post at a later date about black holes in depth, but all you need to understand at the moment is that black holes have something called an "event horizon" or a circumference, beyond which (towards the center of the black hole) matter cannot escape because of the strength of the gravity. So if a particle-antiparticle creation-annihilation happens on the event horizon what happens? The particle-antiparticle pair cannot annihilate if one of the two are beyond the event horizon. So that means black holes would be emitting random unpaired particles or antiparticles. Technically this is creating matter from nothing. Note: this is called Hawking Radiation and is theoretically very possible.

So what does this have to do with dimensional theory. Well. I don't think it's possible that particles and their antiparticles just appear out of nothing. The entropy-energy relationship is possible, but maybe there's more to it. I was wondering: since there's a small space between the particles and antiparticles when they're created, is it possible that there is some particle in the fourth dimension that basically "breaks down"? Could a particle just lose a dimension like that? (Imagine as if you had a cube that suddenly became two two-dimensional squares, the lines that are in the third dimension disappear). Think about this: If you look up at a fan rotating above your head, it rotates either clockwise or counter-clockwise. If you look at it top-down, the fan is rotating in the exact opposite direction. Relatively, the fan is spinning in one regular direction, but it could be said that the fan is spinning in two different directions in the third dimension. If you eliminated the third dimension, you would be left with two different fan images! Since it is spinning in two different directions dependent on your position in the third dimension, if there is no third dimension, it is still spinning in two directions, but the only way for it to do that is if there were two images of it (i.e. a fan and an anti-fan). So could a particle and an antiparticle be the result of some elimination of a dimension for a fourth (spatial) dimensional particle? I don't know, but I thought it was an interesting thought...

Anyways, questions/comments/ideas, you know what to do!

Thanks!

--J