Looking Beyond the Edge by Gary S. Bekkum

In the news ... with a doomsday machine, who needs to wait for 2012?

2009-11-12T09:08:00.004-06:00

Recently there have been a few items of possible interest from mainstream news source:

Huge $10 billion collider resumes hunt for 'God particle' By Elizabeth Landau, CNN

As it begins to run at full energy, greater than any machine of its kind, the LHC will help scientists explore important questions about the universe. The ambitious project also has attracted its share of doubters.

Some alarmists expressed fear last year that the accelerator could produce a black hole that might swallow the universe -- a theory that LHC physicists, including Myers, dismiss as science fiction.

Another fringe theory holds that the LHC will never function properly because it is under "influence from the future," according to physicists Holger Bech Nielsen and Masao Ninomiya. They suggest in recent papers that no supercolliders that could produce the Higgs boson, an as-yet-unseen particle that would help answer fundamental questions about matter in the universe, will work because something in the future stops them.

This also explains the "negative miracle" of Congress canceling the Superconducting Supercollider project in Texas in 1993, Nielsen wrote in a paper on arXiv.org, a site where math and science scholars post academic papers.

Is there any reason to be concerned?

Here's what Bostrom at Oxford and Tegmark at MIT had to say about the doomsday scenario a few years ago:

Numerous Earth-destroying doomsday scenarios have recently been analyzed, including breakdown of a metastable vacuum state and planetary destruction triggered by a “strangelet” or microscopic black hole. We point out that many previous bounds on their frequency give a false sense of security: one cannot infer that such events are rare from the the fact that Earth has survived for so long, because observers are by definition in places lucky enough to have avoided destruction. We derive a new upper bound of one per 10 to the power of 9 years (99.9% c.l.) on the exogenous terminal catastrophe rate that is free of such selection bias, using planetary age distributions and the relatively late formation time of Earth.

You can read their paper here http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/astro-ph/pdf/0512/0512204v2.pdf

Although Bostrom and Tegmark appear to support the idea there should be little to worry about here on Earth due to human experimentation, the same cannot be said for an extraterrestrial disaster scenario: if alien intelligence accidentally crashed the vacuum state of the universe, effectively "popping the balloon" we call the universe, we would never see it coming.

A vacuum reaction would expand outwards at the speed of light, which means it is impossible to see it coming before we would be destroyed.

Bostrom and Tegmark briefly address this point in their paper:

The one disaster scenario that exploits the remaining observer bias loophole and evades all these constraints is vacuum decay, either spontaneous or triggered by a high energy event. Since the bubble of destruction expands with the speed of light, we are prevented from observing the destruction of other objects: we only see their destruction at the instant when we ourselves get destroyed.

NASA releases spectacular new images from updated Hubble space telescope

2009-09-11T21:21:00.004-05:00

It's better than ever -- and so are the images.

The refurbished Hubble space telescope continues to dazzle and amaze with a depth and detail previously unseen.

A picture is worth thousands -- no millions -- billions of words, so why not take a look for yourself?

NASA's New Hubble Space Images

New Scientist "13 more things that don't make sense"

2009-09-03T13:17:00.002-05:00

The word "phenomenology" comes to mind.

New Scientist has produced a series of articles listing 13 cases of science gone bad: unexplained data that defies standard assumptions and models about how the world and the universe at large are supposed to be:

1. Radiation left from the big bang is still glowing in the sky – in a mysterious and controversial pattern

2. Something unseeable and far bigger than anything in the known universe is hauling a group of galaxies towards it at inexplicable speed

3. Tens of millions of years ago, the average temperature at the poles was 15 or 20 °C. Now let's talk about climate change

4. Space probes using Earth's gravity to get a slingshot speed boost are moving faster than they should. Call in dark matter

5. The fusion of two distinct evolutionary lines is not supposed to work – but the seas are teeming with chimeras that prove it can

6. Fatigue? Do you feel insects under your skin? Seen any strange fibres sprouting from your body? Then you've got a disease that's not supposed to exist

7. During 1997, US undersea monitoring equipment heard a series of sounds far louder than any whale song. They were never heard again

8. The big bang should have created matter and antimatter in equal amounts – so why didn't the universe disappear in a puff of self-annihilation?

9. The universe only contains a third as much lithium as it's supposed to

10. High-energy radiation from a gamma-ray burst reached Earth 4 minutes later than the lower-energy rays. That's not how Einstein said it would be

11. Why do magnetic poles always come paired as north and south, never alone?

12. Are dud signals from a gravitational wave detector evidence that the universe is a holographic projection?

13. How a diagnosis of terminal illness can come true – even if it's wrong

Seth Shostak at SETI: Aliens will be Machines

2009-06-03T09:27:00.002-05:00

True believers in ET (extraterrestrial alien) contact think that SETI -- the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence -- is a waste of money, since the anomalous evidence says ET is already here.

Without an official disclosure of the alleged extraterrestrial presence (see my new series "Knowing the Future: 9/11, CIA, UFOs, and the Extraterrestrial Presence" for details) SETI may offer the best chance for making contact with something "out there."

SETI's search is based on conventional communication technology (radio telescopes) so any contact will probably involve technology not too much more advanced than our present day civilization.

There's plenty of debate going on about future means of communication beyond radio: gravity waves, propagating torsion (spin) fields, and sub-quantum telepathy, to name a few.

Most of these ideas are "way out" and probably "not even wrong" but it is worth recalling that gaps exist in our understanding of the unification of the physics of the very large with the very small. There is potentially a "breakthrough physics" waiting to be discovered that might lead to radical new means of communication.

ABC NEWS has an interesting article about SETI, where Seth Shostak discusses what he believes we will find when our radio telescopes finally make contact with ET.

The article quotes Shostak:

"I think that if there's a conscious intelligence out there, it's synthetic."

There are plenty of reasons to believe that Shostak is correct. ET may very well be synthetic.

The problem faced by human EBEs -- not "Extraterrestrial Biological Entities" but "Earth-bound Biological Entities" -- is the vast gulf in technical knowledge between the human race and "synthetics" which may be millions or billions of years more advanced.

"Synthetics" will probably use some form of "telepathic Internet" for communication. One might even imagine a vast super-cosmic Internet shared by vastly differing "synthetics" with varying levels or hierarchies of access.

A cosmic Internet may require highly exotic solutions for "superluminal faster-than-light-speed" communication -- perhaps involving a radical new understanding of quantum theory.

One idea for how this might be possible comes from Antony Valentini's version of quantum pilot wave theory. If Valentini's hunch is correct, "synthetics" might utilize "non-quantum"matter to build their cosmic Internet infrastructure.

The situation here on Earth might evolve rather quickly if one of the "Synthetics" decided to experiment with EBEs, such as human brains, by interfacing them with access to a limited level of the "Cosmic Internet."

Joy Christian's Quest to Kill "Spooky Action at a Distance"

2009-05-04T12:44:00.002-05:00

Einstein never liked the spooky "action at a distance" of quantum nonlocality.

And he was not alone.

Many have tried. And failed.

The ghostliness of the quantum for all practical purposes appears to be a fundamental feature of the natural world.

Or maybe not?

Oxford's Joy Christian is making bold claims with a new paper that purports to show that "quantum entanglement is best understood as an illusion."

The paper is available at the www.arXiv.org website for downloading in PDF format.

An elementary topological error in Bell's representation of the EPR elements of reality is identified. Once recognized, it leads to a topologically correct local-realistic framework that provides exact, deterministic, and local underpinning of at least the Bell, GHZ-3, GHZ-4, and Hardy states. The correlations exhibited by these states are shown to be exactly the classical correlations among the points of a 3 or 7-sphere, both of which are closed under multiplication, and hence preserve the locality condition of Bell. The alleged non-localities of these states are thus shown to result from misidentified topologies of the EPR elements of reality. When topologies are correctly identified, local-realistic completion of any arbitrary entangled state is always guaranteed in our framework. This vindicates EPR, and entails that quantum entanglement is best understood as an illusion.

CNN: Our Galaxy "May Be Full of Earths, Alien Life"

2009-02-25T14:39:00.003-06:00

CNN is reporting that our galaxy many be "full of Earths" ... and alien life.

According to the CNN report, "As NASA prepares to hunt for Earth-like planets in our corner of the Milky Way galaxy, there's new buzz that "Star Trek's" vision of a universe full of life may not be that far-fetched."

An unnamed source to STARstream Research, with an extensive background providing intelligence to the US government, previously confirmed "three contacts" between the government and "extraterrestrial biological" beings from other worlds, beginning shortly after World War Two and returning during the 1980s and 1990s. The source did not offer to provide any substantiating evidence to support the claim of alien life visiting the Earth.

CNN also reported:

There may be 100 billion Earth-like planets in the Milky Way, or one for every sun-type star in the galaxy, said Alan Boss, an astronomer with the Carnegie Institution and author of the new book "The Crowded Universe: The Search for Living Planets."

It is interesting that the present population of human beings on our planet is roughly 1/17 of the number of Earth-like worlds postulated by Boss.

Quantum Mind: The Next Generation

2008-10-13T16:44:00.005-05:00

Although I am not quite prepared to reveal the details, sources in the U.S. and China have confirmed interest in a "next-generation" of experiments intended to test quantum mind: the idea that human consciousness is affected by quantum weirdness.

Meanwhile, Michael B. Mensky at the P.N. Lebedev Physics Institute, Russian Academy of Sciences, has been working on an idea that turns the old Penrose-Hameroff quantum mind idea on its head:

Extended Everett's Concept (EEC) recently developed by the author to explain the phenomenon of consciousness is considered. A mathematical model is proposed for the principal feature of consciousness assumed in EEC, namely its ability (in the state of sleep, trance or meditation, when the explicit consciousness is disabled) to obtain information from all alternative classical realities (Everett's worlds) and select the favorable realities.

Rather than explaining how an individual "world" of the "many worlds" in the "multiverse" maintains quantum coherence in the human brain, Mensky suggests that the mind is a "trans-universe" phenomenon (an emergent property of the many worlds?) that narrows the vast alternatives to select desirable worlds.

As Mensky explains in his abstract, "The brain serves as an interface between the body and consciousness, but the most profound level of consciousness is not a function of brain."

I can already hear Max Tegmark and David Deutsch rolling in their graves (in an alternative universe we call the future, if they are right about the structure of the multiverse and the many worlds!).

Mensky's idea fits rather neatly into the metaphysical world view of psychic remote viewing and Dan T. Smith's favorite, "The Best of All Possible Worlds."

Mensky writes:

According to EEC, the principal feature of consciousness (of human and, more generally, of any living being) is its ability, overcoming the separation of the alternatives, to follow each of them up to the distant time moment in the future, find what alternatives provide survival and choose these alternatives excluding the rest. The evolution of living matter is thus determined not only by causes, but also by the goals, first of all by the goals of survival and
improvement of the quality of life.

This, of course, is the same idea I expressed in the "Minds, Machines, and Madness" series on "human time machines."

Is the government still using psychic spies to "find what alternatives provide survival and choose these alternatives excluding the rest?"

Check out "Spies, Lies, and Polygraph Tape" where I will update the latest information on the quantum mind telepathy experiment (as it becomes releasable).

NASA: Don't be Afraid of the Dark

2008-09-24T11:59:00.002-05:00

It's been roughly ten years since astronomers and physicists were forced to face the reality of an invisible "dark energy" driving an acceleration of the expansion of the universe. Previous they had determined the existence of another dark force dubbed "dark matter," thought to hold the galaxies together.

Now, according to this release from NASA, they have a new problem to contend with:

Using data from NASA's Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP), scientists have identified an unexpected motion in distant galaxy clusters.

"The clusters show a small but measurable velocity that is independent of the universe's expansion and does not change as distances increase," says lead researcher Alexander Kashlinsky at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "We never expected to find anything like this."

The source for this latest mysterious motion of matter in the cosmos may come from "gravitational attraction of matter that lies beyond the observable universe."

Kashlinsky calls this collective motion a "dark flow" in the vein of more familiar cosmological mysteries: dark energy and dark matter. "The distribution of matter in the observed universe cannot account for this motion," he says.

The finding flies in the face of predictions from standard cosmological models, which describe such motions as decreasing at ever greater distances.

Kashlinsky and his team suggest that their clusters are responding to the gravitational attraction of matter that was pushed far beyond the observable universe by inflation. "This measurement may give us a way to explore the state of the cosmos before inflation occurred," he says.

Inflation refers to the expansion of the universe, which is now know to be accelerating due to the mysterious dark energy.

Dark energy acts like an antigravity force. Some have proposed that a similar effect might be accessible at the scale of everyday experience, and account for the alleged antigravity observations of Podkletnov and others.

Unreality Recovered: The Physics of the Impossible

2008-04-21T14:04:00.005-05:00

I haven't had a chance to read Dr. Michio Kaku's new book, which is currently sitting at the number 12 spot on the New York Times non-fiction best seller's list.

Here are a few excerpts from reviews of Kaku's book, that link back to the original review:

Teleportation and forcefields could become scientific realities within decades, and time travel will also be possible in the future, according to one of the world's leading physicists.

In fact, one of the world's foremost physicists, Michio Kaku, has put his academic mind to some of science fiction's other concepts, such as teleportation and force fields, and is convinced that they, too, can become reality.

Impossible today, but do not violate the known laws of physics. Might be possible this century or the next: force fields, invisibility, phasers and death stars, teleportation, telepathy, psychokinesis, robots, UFOs and aliens, starships, antimatter and anti-universes.

The most precious substance on Earth isn't gold or platinum. It's antimatter, valued by physicist Michio Kaku at $62.5 trillion a gram.

Kaku spoke about teleportation, pointing out that researchers have already teleported a photon from one Canary Island to another over a distance of 100 miles. In the next decade, he theorized, water molecules will be teleported and then complex molecules like DNA.

Arthur C. Clarke: Visionary Writer, Dead at Age 90

2008-03-18T21:19:00.003-05:00

Arthur C. Clarke, the visionary author whose work inspired Stanley Kubrick's cinema epic "2001: A Space Odyssey," has passed away:

From the New York Times:

Published: March 19, 2008

Arthur C. Clarke, a writer whose seamless blend of scientific expertise and poetic imagination helped usher in the space age, died early Wednesday in Colombo, Sri Lanka, where he had lived since 1956. He was 90.

Rohan de Silva, an aide, confirmed the death and said Mr. Clarke had been experiencing breathing problems, The Associated Press reported. He had suffered from post-polio syndrome for the last two decades.

Psychic Phenomena as seen by a Nobel Laureate

2008-01-21T11:58:00.000-06:00

Among the hundreds of messages in today's email in-box was a message from Nobel Prize winning physicist Professor Josephson.

Professor Josephson's message included a link to a paper he posted at the physics website arXiv.org:

String Theory, Universal Mind, and the Paranormal

Authors: Brian D. Josephson

(Submitted on 2 Dec 2003 (v1), last revised 9 Dec 2003 (this version, v3))

Abstract: A model consistent with string theory is proposed for so-called paranormal phenomena such as extra-sensory perception (ESP). Our mathematical skills are assumed to derive from a special 'mental vacuum state', whose origin is explained on the basis of anthropic and biological arguments, taking into account the need for the informational processes associated with such a state to be of a life-supporting character. ESP is then explained in terms of shared 'thought bubbles' generated by the participants out of the mental vacuum state. The paper concludes with a critique of arguments sometimes made claiming to 'rule out' the possible existence of paranormal phenomena.

A brief bio of Brian Josephson is provided by Wikipedia:

Brian David Josephson (born Cardiff, Wales, UK, 4 January 1940) is a Welsh physicist whose discovery of the Josephson effect as a 22-year-old graduate student won him the 1973 Nobel Prize for Physics, which he shared with Leo Esaki and Ivar Giaever. From Fall 2007, he is a retired professor at the University of Cambridge where he is the head of the mind-matter unification project in the Theory of Condensed Matter research group. He is also a fellow of Trinity College.

Backwards Time Arrives at arXiv.org

2008-01-08T23:05:00.000-06:00

According to the National Science Foundation Website, Dr. Paul Werbos is "NSF Program Director for the Adaptive and Intelligent Systems (AIS) area with in the Power, Controls and Adaptive Networks (PCAN) Program of ECS, and for the new area of Quantum, Molecular and High-Performance Modeling and Simulation for Devices and Systems."

Dr. Werbos has released a new paper at the Physics Archive arXiv.org that explores the possibility of backwards time flows and a 'backwards time telegraph' concept:

Bell's Theorem, Many Worlds and Backwards-Time Physics: Not Just a Matter of Interpretation

Authors: Paul J. Werbos

(Submitted on 8 Jan 2008)

Abstract: The classic "Bell's Theorem" of Clauser, Holt, Shimony and Horne tells us that we must give up at least one of: (1) objective reality (aka "hidden variables"); (2) locality; or (3) time-forwards macroscopic statistics (aka "causality"). The orthodox Copenhagen version of physics gives up the first. The many-worlds theory of Everett and Wheeler gives up the second. The backwards-time theory of physics (BTP) gives up the third. Contrary to conventional wisdom, empirical evidence strongly favors Everett-Wheeler over orthodox Copenhagen. BTP has two major variations -- a many-worlds version, and a neoclassical version of partial differential equations (PDE) in the spirit of Einstein. Section 2 discusses quantum measurement according to BTP, focusing on how we represent condensed matter objects like polarizers in a Bell's Theorem experiment or in tests of Hawking's cosmology. The Backwards Time Telegraph, though speculative, is discussed.

Biography:

Dr. Werbos has core responsibility for the Adaptive and Intelligent Systems (AIS) area within the Power, Controls and Adaptive Networks (PCAN) Program of ECS, and for the new area of Quantum, Molecular and High-Performance Modeling and Simulation for Devices and Systems. He is the ECS representative for the CLEANER initiative, for biocomplexity (MUSES), and for Collaborative Research in Computational NeuroScience. He is one of the two ECS representatives for cyberinfrastructure. He has special interest in efforts to exploit higher levels of true computational intelligence in these areas, and in efforts which can seriously increase the probability that we achieve global sustainability. In 1994, he initiated an SBIR topic on fuel cell and electric cars which he coordinated for several years. He was part of the group which proposed and led NSF's earlier initiative in Learning and Intelligent Systems, and assisted the follow-on in Information Technology Research. He has at times handled the ECS areas in electric power and wireless communications when there were gaps in those areas.

Dr. Werbos is an elected member of the Administrative Committee (AdCom) of the IEEE Computational Intelligence Society, which he represents on the IEEE-USA Energy Policy Committee. (See www.ieeeusa.org/policy/energy_strategy.ppt.) He also serves on the AdCom of the IEEE Industrial Electronics Society, and the Governing Board of the International Neural Network Society (INNS). He was one of the three original two-year Presidents of INNS. He is a Fellow of the IEEE, and has won its Neural Network Pioneer Award, for the discovery of the “backpropagation algorithm” and other basic neural network learning designs. He also serves on the Planning Committee of the ACUNU Millennium Project (see www.stateofthefuture.org), whose annual report on the future tends to lead global lists of respected reports on the long-term future. In 2002, he and John Mankins of NASA initiated and ran the NASA-NSF-EPRI initiative on enabling technologies for space solar power (search on “JIETSSP” at www.nsf.gov). In 2003, he participated on the interagency working group for the Climate Change Technology Program. At the 2005 Space Development Conference in Arlington, he was invited to present a new strategy for sustainable exploration and development of space, drawing in part on previous work funded by NSF.

In addition to his core interests at NSF, Dr. Werbos has interest in larger questions relating to consciousness, the foundations of physics, and human potential; see his personal web page, www.werbos.com for details. His 1974 Harvard Ph.D. thesis has been reprinted in its entirety, along with related papers, in his book The Roots of Backpropagation: From Ordered Derivatives to Neural Networks and Political Forecasting, Wiley, 1994. Some of work on high performance computing is described in P. Werbos, Backwards differentiation in AD and Neural Nets: Past Links and New Opportunities. In Martin Bucker, George Corliss, Paul Hovland, Uwe Naumann & Boyana Norris (eds), Automatic Differentiation: Applications, Theory and Implementations, Springer (LNCS), New York, 2005.

Prior to arriving full-time at NSF in 1989, Dr. Werbos worked since 1979 at the Energy Information Administration (EIA) of the Department of Energy. He initially worked in the evaluation of energy models, forecasts and analyses; this required spanning the gamut from decoding undocumented FORTRAN to evaluating the implications for the future of humanity. He later became lead analyst for long-term energy futures, and developed the econometric models used in EIA’s Annual Energy Outlook for industrial and transportation energy demand and for oil and gas production. He served on Carter’s Global 2000 Phase II interagency task force. His model of industrial energy demand played a major role in the Stanford Energy Modeling Forum study of industrial demand, and resulted in several papers, including two in Energy: The International Journal, March/April 1990. Before that he spent a year as an IPA at the Census Use Research center as a mathematical statistician, and taught for 3 and a half years at the University of Maryland in the public policy area. Before teaching, he spent two years at the MIT Cambridge Project adding new capabilities for data mining and modeling to a user-oriented software package written in FORTRAN and PL/1 for the Multics operating system.

He holds four degrees from Harvard and the London School of Economics in: (1) economics; (2) international political systems, emphasizing European economic institutions; (3) applied mathematics, with a major in quantum physics and a minor in decision and control; (4) applied mathematics for an interdisciplinary PhD. Prior to that, during high school, he obtained an FCC First Class Commercial Radiotelephone license, and took undergraduate and graduate mathematics courses at Princeton and the University of Pennsylvania.

Is the Universe a Virtual Simulation?

2008-01-05T21:26:00.000-06:00

Here's a new paper that expands on the theme that life, the universe, and everything we experience is a simulation:

The Physical World as a Virtual Reality

Authors: Brian Whitworth

(Submitted on 2 Jan 2008 (v1), last revised 5 Jan 2008 (this version, v2))

Abstract: This paper explores the idea that the universe is a virtual reality created by information processing, and relates this strange idea to the findings of modern physics about the physical world. The virtual reality concept is familiar to us from online worlds, but our world as a virtual reality is usually a subject for science fiction rather than science. Yet logically the world could be an information simulation running on a multi-dimensional space-time screen. Indeed, if the essence of the universe is information, matter, charge, energy and movement could be aspects of information, and the many conservation laws could be a single law of information conservation. If the universe were a virtual reality, its creation at the big bang would no longer be paradoxical, as every virtual system must be booted up. It is suggested that whether the world is an objective reality or a virtual reality is a matter for science to resolve. Modern information science can suggest how core physical properties like space, time, light, matter and movement could derive from information processing. Such an approach could reconcile relativity and quantum theories, with the former being how information processing creates space-time, and the latter how it creates energy and matter.

Road to the Superbomb?

2007-11-29T22:00:00.000-06:00

"If the “mass gap” can be violated, there is no reason in principle why we could not convert protons and neutrons completely to energy – a “third generation of nuclear energy” orders of magnitude beyond fission and fusion; thus if QCD and Sawada’s calculations both happen to be correct, it would be very important to know this. New experiments would be crucial to finding this out, if it should be true."

Frank Tippler at Edge.org:

"I am very much afraid that the particle physicists are wrong about this Standard Model pure energy conversion process being forever irrelevant to human affairs. I have recently come to believe that the consistency of quantum field theory requires that it should be possible to convert up to 100 kilograms of ordinary matter into pure energy via this process using a device that could fit inside the trunk of a car, a device that could be manufactured in a small factory. Such a device would solve all our energy problems — we would not need fossil fuels — but 100 kilograms of energy is the energy released by a 1,000-megaton nuclear bomb. If such a bomb can be manufactured in a small factory, then terrorists everywhere will eventually have such weapons. I fear for the human race if this comes to pass. I very hope I am wrong about the technological feasibility of such a bomb."

Dr. Paul Werbos, from his recent paper:

"Empirical data from CERN has confirmed fundamental discrepancies in the conventional form of the constituent quark approach to hadron masses. At Lawrence Livermore (and then later, in retirement), Malcolm MacGregor has shown how to resurrect the constituent quark approach, with much higher accuracy than earlier studies, but only by assuming that the quarks in baryons have different masses from those in mesons like pions and kaons. His results also show that α, the fine structure constant for electromagnetism, seems to dominate all the masses of hadrons, as well as the muon and τ lepton. Recent calculations by Sawada, using new recent high-precision empirical data on p-p scattering and π-π scattering at low energies, support earlier indications of a long-range Vanderwaals component in strong nuclear forces. Earlier detailed calculations by Feinberg and Sucher showed that such long-range effects cannot be reconciled with QCD, unless we make fundamental changes in our present understanding of QCD; in particular, we must assume a violation of the “mass gap” assumption, which is fundamental to our present understanding. If the “mass gap” can be violated, there is no reason in principle why we could not convert protons and neutrons completely to energy – a “third generation of nuclear energy” orders of magnitude beyond fission and fusion; thus if QCD and Sawada’s calculations both happen to be correct, it would be very important to know this. New experiments would be crucial to finding this out, if it should be true."

An Exceptionally Simple Theory of Everything

2007-11-15T10:43:00.000-06:00

TELEGRAPH (UK): An impoverished surfer has drawn up a new theory of the universe, seen by some as the Holy Grail of physics, which as received rave reviews from scientists.

Authors: A. Garrett Lisi

(Submitted on 6 Nov 2007)

Abstract: All fields of the standard model and gravity are unified as an E8 principal bundle connection. A non-compact real form of the E8 Lie algebra has G2 and F4 subalgebras which break down to strong su(3), electroweak su(2) x u(1), gravitational so(3,1), the frame-Higgs, and three generations of fermions related by triality. The interactions and dynamics of these 1-form and Grassmann valued parts of an E8 superconnection are described by the curvature and action over a four dimensional base manifold

http://arxiv.org/abs/0711.0770

David Deutsch on Quantum Constructor Theory

2007-11-03T21:19:00.000-05:00

"There will presumably be a constructor generalization of the universal quantum computer, namely the universal quantum constructor, a machine that can be programmed to construct any quantum object that can be constructed, or any quantum object with any achievable properties."

I consider this brief, non-technical paper a "must-read" for anyone interested in the vision of David Deutsch, a leader in the field of quantum computing and the theory of parallel universes.

A few of the key points raised by Deutsch:

The laws of physics allow for a machine — a universal quantum computer — with the property that its possible motions correspond in a suitable sense to all possible motions of all possible physical objects. Therefore the whole of physics and more — the study of all possible physical objects — is just isomorphic to the study of all programs that could run on a universal quantum computer.

Because of universality, the nature of computation and the laws governing it are independent of the underlying hardware. Therefore those laws, and that theory, can’t explain hardware. Explaining hardware, however, is obviously part of science. Hence there must be something to physics beyond the quantum theory of computation. I think we have to conceive of the quantum theory of computation as a special case of a bigger theory: quantum constructor theory, which is the theory of what physical objects can be constructed, using what resources. Here I don’t mean abstract resources, like the number of computational steps or the amount of memory, but physical resources like atoms and energy and entropy and so on.

The full quantum constructor theory will incorporate the particle physicists’ ‘theory of everything,’ including quantum gravity, as well as the quantum theory of computation and thermodynamics. We may hope that it would be able to answer exotic questions like: can we build a black hole and spin it up until it becomes a time machine? Can we collapse a black hole and have it form new universes which we can design, and if so what are the constraints on that?

You can read the full paper here.

Chiao Suggests Possibility of Gravity Radio

2007-10-30T09:15:00.000-05:00

"This would open up observations of the gravitational-wave analog of the Cosmic Microwave Background from the extremely early Big Bang, and also communications directly through the interior of the Earth."

http://xxx.lanl.gov/pdf/0710.1378

Authors: Raymond Y. Chiao

(Submitted on 8 Oct 2007 (v1), last revised 28 Oct 2007 (this version, v4))

Abstract: The 2-body system of a superconducting sphere levitated in the magnetic field generated by a persistent current in a superconducting ring, can possibly convert gravitational waves into electromagnetic waves, and vice versa. Faraday's law of induction implies that the time-varying distance between the sphere and the ring caused by the tidal force of an incident gravitational wave induces time-varying electrical currents, which are the source of an electromagnetic wave at the same frequency as the incident gravitational wave. At sufficiently low temperatures, the internal degrees of freedom of the superconductors are frozen out because of the superconducting energy gap, and only external degrees of freedom, which are coupled to the radiation fields, remain. Hence this wave-conversion process is loss-free and therefore efficient, and by time-reversal symmetry, so is the reverse process. A Hertz-like experiment at microwave frequencies should therefore be practical to perform. This would open up observations of the gravitational-wave analog of the Cosmic Microwave Background from the extremely early Big Bang, and also communications directly through the interior of the Earth.

arXiv Paper Declares Arrival of "Spookytechnology"

2007-10-19T16:54:00.000-05:00

Yes, “the spooks” (NSA, etc.) fund a lot of spookytechnology. The control and ability needed
to construct a large quantum computer device is the extreme example of quantum technology engineering based on the spooky properties of the quantum world.

Charles Tahan, of the Cavendish Laboratory at Cambridge University, has declared the beginning of a sexy new era in emerging quantum science: new technologies based on the exotic properties of quantum mechanics, like quantum entanglement.

Tahan proposes that a new "public-friendly" name be given to the application of weird and counter intuitive aspects of quantum theory:

"SPOOKYTECHNOLOGY"

"Spookytechnology" encompasses all functional devices, systems, and materials whose utility relies in whole or in part on higher order quantum properties of matter and energy that have no counterpart in the classical world. These purely quantum traits may include superposition, entanglement, decoherence (along with the quantum aspects of measurement and error correction) or new behavior that emerges in engineered quantum many-body systems.

The king of spooky quantumness is quantum entanglement. As physicists define it, “entanglement” refers to a peculiar quality of the known universe whereby quantum objects in certain situations cannot be described separately, even though they may be separated in space. In other words, if an atom in London is entangled with an atom in Tokyo, they are still one quantum system, which can only be understood together. Entanglement is a multi-object generalization of quantum superposition, another astounding quantum trait, where a particle can exist in two states at once (here and there, up and down). Both properties have been
experimentally confirmed.

The spooky side of Quantum Mechanics has been invoked countless times to explain everything from consciousness (Penrose-Hameroff theory) to some of the strangest of the weirdness reported in the paranormal world.

Tahan points out this is NOT his intention, but appears to be a realist who accepts that quantum mysticism is here to stay:

We don’t necessarily want a word that creates crazy speculation or adds to the ignorance
of the general population. But quantum already does this. In general, more interest is better than less. If spookytechnology better invites the question: “What is that?,” than it has more educational value.

We couldn't agree more. If we somehow manage to survive the 21st Century, it's going to be "spookytechnology" from here on out.

If you want to have a look at Tahan's short paper, you will find it here.

Dark Energy Effects in Rotating Superconductors

2007-10-15T21:04:00.000-05:00

I haven't had a chance to look at this paper except to glance over the last few paragraphs, but it sounds intriguing for the antigravity spinning superconductor crowd (thank you to Dr. Jack Sarfatti for sending us the link):

Possible Measurable Effects of Dark Energy in Rotating Superconductors

The considerations presented in this paper, if confirmed by further independent experiments, would imply that the dark energy of the universe produces measurable effects not only on cosmological scales but also in the interior and the vicinity of superconductors. This opens up the way for a variety of new possible laboratory experiments testing the nature of dark energy and constraining the interaction strength with Cooper pairs. In our model gravitationally active vacuum fluctuations underlying dark energy lead to a strong enhancement of gravitomagnetic fields, in quantitative agreement with the anomalies seen in the experiments of Tate et al.[9] and Tajmar et al.[10, 11].

Oxford's Dr. David Deutsch Draws a Line Between Worlds

2007-10-11T10:50:00.000-05:00

David Deutsch has drawn a line in the sand.

Well, actually, he has drawn a line between worlds.

It's not a secret that I'm a fan of the "Many Worlds" interpretation of the "Multiverse."

(I am also considering the "simulation-argument" in the context of a multiverse scenario.)

Here's an extremely over-simplified explanation of the issues involved:

As technology penetrates the material world at smaller and smaller scales, we discover the need for a 'realist' interpretation of quantum theory, to explain the nature of the real world that quantum theory corresponds to. It is no longer acceptable to merely view the quantum theory as a tool used to make accurate predictions.

As a result, the interpretation of quantum theory -- the explanation behind the predictions made by the theory -- requires taking the picture of the world that emerges from the theory seriously.

Three primary contenders for the "realistic interpretation" of quantum theory are:

[A] Pilot wave interpretations, like David Bohm's theory (and the original de Broglie interpretation) -- and recent speculative extensions, like Anthony Valentini's research

[B] The Many Worlds interpretations, which originate with Everett's relative state interpretation

[C] Dynamical "collapse" theories, like Sir Roger Penrose's idea of "objective reduction" (OR)

The pilot wave picture imagines real particles on real trajectories, which are guided by a new kind of information wave, that Bohm called the quantum potential. Bohm's theory requires two fundamental physical elements: real particles, and a real quantum information pilot wave.

The Many World's interpretation claims that the interference seen in experiments, and predicted by the quantum formalism, is caused by "shadow particles" that exist in other universes (In Bohm's theory it is the pilot wave guiding the particle that results in the interference patterns seen in quantum experiments.)

Dynamical collapse theories invoke other effects at the boundary of our understanding of how quantum theory and Einstein's General Relativity behave at scales where both effects are important. For example, where a quantum experiment might result in Yes OR No, Penrose's objective reduction claims that nature makes a choice: subtle differences in the curvature of spacetime due to energy differences would force nature to make a choice of one OR the other. (In Bohm's theory the location of the particle determines one OR two, and the particle path
is guided by the pilot wave. In Many Worlds theory the world splits, as does the observer doing the experiment: thus, in one world the observer sees "yes," and in the other world he sees "no." What connects the two observers, now in different parallel universes, is their common history.)

If we ignore the dynamical collapse theories, we are left comparing the pilot wave theories with the Many Worlds.

And here is where things get interesting, because of two predictions of possible effects that distinguish the theories.

Anthony Valentini has shown that pilot wave theories exist that violate the fundamental rule of quantum probability, which is called the Born rule. Matter that violated the Born rule would allow superluminal communication: signals transmitted and received faster than the speed of light in a vacuum. The speed of light determines causality: In other words, the light speed limit is what allows for an event A to occur before an event B, which is fundamental to the everyday idea of cause and effect.

Many Worlds theory allows for self-consistent time machines: paths between different universes, because "other times are special cases of different universes." In the Many Worlds theory, if you build a time machine today, and your grandson pops out of the machine from fifty years into the future -- and then destroys the machine, in order to prevent himself from entering the machine in the first place -- there is no paradox involved with his appearance in our world.

When the machine was built, it was connected to an alternative future, one of many worlds of possible futures where your grandson entered the machine. When he appeared in the present moment, and destroyed the machine, he broke that connection. He is still trapped in the present
moment, some fifty years in the past of the world that he left behind.

From the point of view of that alternative future world, your grandson entered the time machine, and disappeared. The time machine continues to exist in that alternative world, but the connection to the past is with the world that branched into universes where your grandson decided not to destroy the time machine.

So which of these ideas is correct?

There is no physical evidence for matter that violates the Born rule and allows for superluminal communication. There is no physical evidence for time machines.

I wrote to David Deutsch and asked if there was common ground between the realist interpretations, since he is on the record as stating his opinion that Bohm's theory is "Many Worlds in denial."

Deutsch responded, "With or without such loops, distributions deviating from the Born Rule are not compatible with Everett [many worlds] quantum theory. If such distributions were
observed, they would refute Everett and strongly suggest that something like the Bohm theory can be made to work."

Sounds like David is reconsidering his original position that Bohmians are "Many Worlders in
Denial"?

I have requested further clarification from Dr. Deutsch.

Stay tuned!

Many Worlds Interpretation Passes 50th Anniversary

2007-09-26T13:58:00.000-05:00

The "Many Worlds" theory of parallel universes existing in a multiverse is 50 years old.

The birthday party for Everett's interpretation of the unitary wave function of quantum theory, which leads to a branching multiverse of all possible outcomes, was recently held at the Perimeter Institute.

According to the Perimeter Institute web site:

Many Worlds interpretations aim to provide a simple, natural and realist understanding of unitary quantum theory without invoking wave function collapse or any special role for measurement. But, fifty years after Everett's original paper, there is still no consensus on whether they succeed. The meeting will bring together leading supporters and opponents of Many Worlds, in order to establish where the arguments currently stand and to enable sustained discussion and debate.

Meanwhile, media reports are circulating, fueled by a story in New Scientist, that "Parallel Universes exist" and "Parallel universe proof boosts time travel hopes."

Parallel universes really do exist, according to a mathematical discovery by Oxford scientists that sweeps away one of the key objections to the mind boggling and controversial idea.

Now new research confirms Prof Deutsch's ideas and suggests that Dr Everett, who was a Phd student at Princeton University when he came up with the theory, was on the right track.

Commenting in New Scientist magazine, Prof Andy Albrecht, a physicist at the University of California, Davis, said of the link between probability and many worlds: "This work will go down as one of the most important developments in the history of science."

New Dark Matter Discovery Deepens Cosmic Mystery

2007-08-17T22:37:00.000-05:00

"It's a strange world."

In the 1986 film Blue Velvet, by David Lynch, the mystery begins with the discovery of a severed ear in a field.

In 2007, the mystery appears to be the severed dark matter core left by a "cosmic train wreck "observed in a massive galaxy cluster called Abell 520.

Image credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/UVic./A. Mahdavi et al. Optical/lensing: CFHT/UVic./H. Hoekstra et al.

New Scientist summarized the discovery with this understated opening line, "Disturbing evidence has emerged from the wreckage of an intergalactic pile-up suggesting that the already mysterious substance known as dark matter may be even less well understood than astronomers thought."

In Lynch's Blue Velvet, the calmly surreal normality of a suburban landscape is shown to be the veneer that hides an ugly truth. Perhaps mainstream physics is about to experience a similar revelation about the nature of the observable universe?

According to a story from Space.com:

"It blew us away that it looks like the galaxies are removed from the dark matter core," said study team member Hendrik Hoekstra, also of the University of Victoria. "This would be the first time we've seen such a thing and could be a huge test of our knowledge of how dark matter behaves."

So what's next? Stay tuned ...

More about Ori's Time Machine

2007-08-12T12:11:00.000-05:00

Roger Highfield, science editor for the UK's Telegraph, has posted a nice pop overview of time machine research called "Time travel could be possible ... in the future."

Of course our opinion is that the odds are in favor of time travel being possible right now -- given the vastness of the multiverse. Never mind that the keepers of the time machine are probably not humans, although that doesn't preclude the possibility of time traveling humans from the future hitching a ride on an alien time machine. I suspect that somewhere here-now a brilliant entrepreneur is working out the details of how to profit from catering to tourists from the future. (And yes, that last link is more tongue in cheek than anything else, folks, although it was forwarded to me from a source at the Defense Intelligence Agency.)

Anyway, here's what Highfield had to say in his article:

Prof Ori’s theory, set out in the prestigious science journal Physical Review, rests on a set of mathematical equations describing hypothetical conditions that, if established, could lead to the formation of a time machine, technically known as “closed time-like curves.”

In the blends of space and time, or spacetime, in his equations, time would be able to curve back on itself, so that a person travelling around the loop might be able to go further back in time with each lap.

Speaking of tourists from the future, Highfield quotes Stephen Hawking:

Tongue in cheek, Prof Hawking added that there is experimental evidence that time travel doesn’t exist: “We have no reliable evidence of visitors from the future. (I’m discounting the conspiracy theory that UFOs are from the future and that the government knows and is covering it up. Its record of cover-ups is not that good.)”

That's funny, Professor Hawking, because we keep hearing about the time traveling machines from the future, from associates of a high-ranking intelligence intelligence official with a specialty in Measurement and Signature Intelligence. We've even seen a paper involving semi-covert questioning of unwitting participants to gauge their reaction to the reality of time travel, done at a major university, and a cover-story involving a treatment for a Hollywood science fiction trilogy.

If you want more of the sordid business behind these real-life X-files, check out our Spies, Lies, and Polygraph Tape blog.

Time Machines in the News, Again

2007-08-04T10:43:00.000-05:00

It's almost becoming popular for theoretical physicists to research and write papers about time machines.

Examples include Kip Thorne's rotating wormhole and Robert Mallett's ring of light. The latest idea brought to our attention comes to us via a story in the Jerusalem Post:

Ori, a physicist from the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa, has come up with what he says are practical solutions to overcome the hindrances that experts have long regarded as stopping us from traveling back in time.

In a paper published in the latest issue of the Physical Review journal, the scientist offers a theoretical model, based on mathematical equations describing conditions that, if established, could help lead to the development of a time machine of sorts. But rather than building an actual device, Ori explains that "the machine is space-time itself."

A quick search reveals several other articles on line about Ori's work:

http://www.popsci.com/popsci/science/83c4e288d12c6010vgnvcm1000004eecbccdrcrd.html

http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20050716/fob7.asp

http://www.nature.com/news/2005/050711/full/050711-4.html

http://www.newswise.com/articles/view/532037/

Here are a few links to Ori's papers posted at the physics archive at www.arxiv.org :

Formation of closed timelike curves in a composite vacuum/dust asymptotically-flat spacetime

Authors: Amos Ori

(Submitted on 3 Jan 2007 (v1), last revised 7 Jun 2007 (this version, v3))

Abstract: We present a new asymptotically-flat time-machine model made solely of vacuum and dust. The spacetime evolves from a regular spacelike initial hypersurface S and subsequently develops closed timelike curves. The initial hypersurface S is asymptotically flat and topologically trivial. The chronology violation occurs in a compact manner; namely the first closed causal curves form at the boundary of the future domain of dependence of a compact region in S (the core). This central core is empty, and so is the external asymptotically flat region. The intermediate region surrounding the core (the envelope) is made of dust with positive energy density. This model trivially satisfies the weak, dominant, and strong energy conditions. Furthermore it is governed by a well-defined system of field equations which possesses a well-posed initial-value problem.

A new time-machine model with compact vacuum core

Authors: Amos Ori

(Submitted on 17 Mar 2005)

Abstract: We present a class of curved-spacetime vacuum solutions which develope closed timelike curves at some particular moment. We then use these vacuum solutions to construct a time-machine model. The causality violation occurs inside an empty torus, which constitutes the time-machine core. The matter field surrounding this empty torus satisfies the weak, dominant, and strong energy conditions. The model is regular, asymptotically-flat, and topologically-trivial. Stability remains the main open question.

Tragedy in Minneapolis

2007-08-01T22:22:00.001-05:00

Some of you are aware that I am based in the Minneapolis/St.Paul Twin Cities area, where we have just experienced a major disaster, the collapse of the Mississippi River bridge on Interstate 35W. Our governor has described this tragedy as "catastrophe of historic proportions."

According to local NBC affiliate KARE11, "The entire span of the 35 Bridge collapsed about 6:05 p.m. where the freeway crosses the river near University Avenue. Traffic in both directions was affected. At least 50 cars, along with tons of concrete, metal and were sent crashing into the Mississippi River. "

Numerous government agencies, including the FBI and Homeland Security were on the scene. According to media reports, there are no indications that the collapse was due to an act of terrorism.

As a fellow Minnesotans, our thoughts and prayers are with the victims and their families, and with the heroic efforts of citizen first responders and rescue workers.