Just A Thought... (A Long Thought...)

Welcome back everyone! I'm sorry that I haven't updated in awhile (part lack of material, part being busy with everything else). So I've been thinking recently about the end of the universe, not the depressing kind of thinking either. More along the lines of modern thinking relative to how the universe moves within time and space. Now, there is a classic poem that hopefully will be familiar in some aspects. This is Fire and Ice by Robert Frost.



Fire and Ice

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice. 

As wonderful as this poem is in the literary sense, it actually has some real-world implications. This poem is very apt to the universe's motion within spacetime. We know from studies of redshifting that every galactic body is moving away from us at an accelerating rate, but not in the conventional sense. To clarify, let me explain redshifting and the "conventional sense" of expansion.

Redshifting

The concept of redshifting is a bit tricky to understand without background knowledge of basic light and wave physics. But let's make it easy here. Light as we know it travels in two forms, depending on the experiment you perform. The first form is packets of light, known as "quantas" of light (hence where the term Quantum Physics was derived). These behave as singular particles, and have been known to experimentally exist. The quanta of light has a specific amount of energy which then defines other properties such as the color and behavior of the light. The second form is in a wave (think like a repetitive ocean wave), and travels as such. The size (amplitude) and frequency (how small the individual waves are) of the wave determine roughly the same properties as the energy of a quanta does. Redshifting concerns the second form of light as the properties of a wave can actually be affected by something that quanta cannot: the speed and direction of the source. Here's the easiest way to understand this. If you have ever paid attention to the sound of a firetruck as it moves past you with sirens blaring, you will probably be familiar with hearing the siren as higher in pitch as it comes towards you and then lower as it passes you. That is called the Doppler Effect and in more technical terms it means that the frequency of a wave (the pitch of the tone for a sound wave or the color of the light in a light wave for example) can be affected by the speed of the source in which the wave is emitted from. For sound it is fairly easy to change the pitch as sound moves through air at about 330 m/s whereas light moves through space at about 300 million m/s (a factor difference of approximately 10^6). A truck moving at 20 m/s affects the frequency of sound way more than the frequency of light. Make no mistake, the speed of the source does not affect the speed of the light, but it does affect the frequency. The frequency of sound affects the pitch (how high or low), and the frequency of light affects the color (a slower frequency means larger waves and more red color. A faster frequency means shorter waves and a more blue color.). There are other types of waves as well that are changed in different ways by the frequency, but here we shall only consider light. 

So what is redshifting then? Redshifting is merely another name for the Doppler Effect changing the frequency of light. This means when a source that emits a frequency of light moves away from the observer (e.g. us) the frequency of the wave decreases and becomes more red. So how does that help us? Well it is a very useful method to find out how fast something moves away from us. If the color of the light of a star or galaxy remained the same, we could say that the star or galaxy did not move relative to us. However we have observed that for many interstellar objects they actually seem to be redder over a period of time. What this means is that many stellar objects are moving away from us! But the interesting thing that the scientific community has noticed is that the degree at which these bodies become redder is not constant, but increasing, meaning that objects light frequency does not increase by a fixed amount, but an increasing one! This all amounts to the fact that the universe around us moves away from us at an accelerating rate. This is what redshifting is and why it is important.


Expansion
Now's the more difficult part, which is understanding what I mean by expansion. I will have to explain this better in another post as there are other important concepts to define but I will explain how this relates to the poem at least. When we normally say expansion, we mean things are moving away from each other in space. This would imply that all objects in the universe move away from each other in a fixed space. Strangely this is not true because it is not under this concept of expansion. Rather, it is not the bodies expanding in a fixed space, but fixed bodies in an expanding space! This is a strange concept to absorb, because it is hard to imagine that the bodies are moving, but not moving. It sounds like some really badly-worded Star Wars quote, but let's make it easier shall we? Imagine that you have a balloon, and you draw two dots on it with a marker maybe an inch apart. Now you blow up the balloon. The dots have not physically moved on the balloon, have they? No of course not! But you must admit that upon visual inspection they are definitely further apart from each other. That is because the actual space that the dots are in has expanded, which pushes them away from away from each other. If you replace the dots with two stars and the balloon with the universe, that is something close to what I am trying to explain. The universe itself is expanding, but the stars themselves are not actually moving away from each other (to get a little more technical, it is the dark matter and energy in the universe that expands in a very strange way that we don't entirely understand).


So what's the point of all this? Well let's take a look at the poem mentioned in the beginning of this post! When the universe expands, it also cools down (not as much radiation reaches the surfaces of planets, etc.). So when Robert Frost mentions the world ending in ice, it actually is somewhat apt to one way that the world (and the universe) is hypothesized to end, which is that the universe will expand so greatly that it will cool beyond the point that is sustainable for everything. So it seems that Robert Frost was not only a celebrated poet but also an unknown and unintentional physicist! The other concept of ending in fire is also apt, as there is another theory that the expansion of the universe will soon slow down to the point where the intra-galactic gravitational forces will pull all stellar bodies into one point, super-heating them and causing what could be considered an inverse of the Big Bang.


It truly is interesting to see how accidental and yet how acuminous it is. And hopefully you will be stunned at how much of an accidental and intentional genius Robert Frost was! And as always, leave any likes, comments, and/or questions you deign to do so! And thanks for reading. Hopefully I will see you soon in a new update!


--J

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:
......................................................................................................................................................
It's actually there. Don't worry.
......................................................................................................................................................


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