In science as well as in metaphysics there are often competing ideas about what’s real and what’s not real but might be real – an alternate reality not yet proven. Here are a baker’s dozen of examples of what we believe is a truism today, but could easily be shown to be mistaken tomorrow. In one case, the last, tomorrow is already here!
What was reality yesterday (a Flat Earth orbited by the Sun; Unicorns and Dragons, etc.) isn’t of necessity what is accepted reality today, and what’s reality today may not of necessity be reality tomorrow. Here are a few possibilities for tomorrow-land.
1) Quantum Mechanics: The Copenhagen Interpretation (reality) vs. The Many Worlds Interpretation (alternate reality): Actually nobody has a handle on what constitutes reality in the realm of the quantum other than it is a realm of probabilities. When you have a lot of states or things that could be only a measurement or observation will turn one of these probabilities into a certainty. The other probabilities collapse and fall by the wayside once that observation is made. That’s the guts of the Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum probabilities. The alternate reality is called the Many Worlds Interpretation which suggests that all probabilities happen; none is favored; none fall by the wayside. The way that happens is that when crunch comes crunch and its time to turn the cards face up, the world splits as many times as necessary to allow for each possible outcome to achieve reality, one outcome in this world and another outcome in another world. So, right or left at Oak Street
2) Quantum Mechanics Probability (reality) vs. Quantum Mechanics Causality (alternate reality): As noted above, quantum mechanics is the realm of chance or possibilities or probabilities. One thing that is never certain in quantum mechanics is being able to predict certainty, which is certainly not the case with classical physics. There’s no doubt the Sun will rise in the morning; that you can predict eclipses hundreds of years in advance; that you can use the laws, relationships and principles of classical physics to send a space probe to the planet Mars. In classical physics, causality rules: if A, B & C then X, Y and Z will follow. In quantum physics, if A, B & C then X, Y and Z might follow, or maybe not. Not everyone accepts that. Some suggest that lurking beneath quantum’s probabilistic nature lays hidden variables that will restore quantum mechanics to the realm of cause-and-effect. In quantum physics, causality might prove to be your alternate reality.
3) Traditional Particle Physics (reality) vs. String Theory (alternate reality): Traditional particle physics views the fundamental particles (electrons, etc.) as tiny little billiard balls or for the sake of making the mathematics easier, point (zero-dimensional) particles. If all particles actually were zero-dimensional, then you too would be dimensionless since you are composed of those point particles, and zero plus zero plus zero (plus billions more zeros) ultimately equal zero. String Theory on the other hand replaces little billiard balls (or point particles) with stringy bits that vibrate. The rate of those vibrations, determine what kind of fundamental particle it is; and the particle can be either a closed string (like a doughnut or rubber band) or an open, cut string – one with two separate and apart ends. String Theory however represents alternative reality because 1) after three decades of theoretical speculation it remains just theoretical speculation – nothing experimentally confirmed, and 2) String Theory proper requires a minimum of nine spatial dimensions in order for the mathematics to maintain logical consistency.
4) Three Spatial Dimensions (reality) vs. Four [or more] Spatial Dimensions (alternate reality): You have absolutely no doubt in your mind that you wander through the weird and lurid landscape of three dimensional space. You can go back and forth; up and down; and left and right. You couldn’t exist is less than three dimensional space. You could probably exist in a four dimensional space, or five or six, even seven, eight or nine dimensions. That’s the alternative reality claim of theoretical physicists who adopt a String Theory worldview. However, in your day-in-and-day-out battle against the elements and the powers-that-be, one battle you don’t encounter is negotiating and wandering through a maze of additional spatial dimensions. If they exist, and that’s a big if, they are irrelevant to you, and you probably could therefore care less. But if for all practical purposes they are irrelevant to you, and String Theory physicists can’t provide any evidence, far less proof for their existence in any event, then for all practical purposes they don’t exist. Till they do, this alternative reality is kaput.
5) General Relativity Space-Time Gravity (reality) vs. Quantum Gravity (alternate reality): Gravity; it’s what holds you firmly to Terra Firma. If I ask you what holds you firmly to Terra Firma you’d answer “gravity”. But if then asked to explain exactly what it is and how it works you’d be stumped. The Newtonian equation of gravity makes predictions but doesn’t give explanations.
However, there are two explanations for gravity if I read the textbooks correctly. One is wrapped up in the General Theory of Relativity whereby gravity is a continuous force operating throughout space-time; the second is non-continuous gravity in the realm of the quantum.
* Gravity is just the geometry of space-time: Mass ‘tells’ space-time how to warp, and warped space-time ‘tells’ mass how to move – seemingly experimentally verified more than several times over. The movement of mass in warped space-time is what we interpret as the ‘force of gravity’, but gravity is actually the actions of mass moving in space-time geometry. If gravity is just a continuous geometry and mass deviates from the straight and narrow path because lots of other mass has warped space-time from the flatland Great Plains to the peaks and valleys of the space-time Rockies, then there’s no apparent need or reason that I can see to unify gravity with the other forces and their particles. There is no graviton. If there is no causality link with the other three (quantum level) forces, there’s no need for a Theory of Everything (TOE). There’s no need to reconcile the 98 pound of weakling gravity with the Atlas physiques of electromagnetism, etc.
* Gravity is just another force: Secondly, there are in this worldview four fundamental forces: the electromagnetic force, the strong and weak nuclear forces, and gravity. Forces have accompanying elementary particles witch convey the force. In the case of the electromagnetic force, the particle is the photon. The particle associated with gravity has been dubbed the graviton. Unfortunately, it has never (to date) been detected. Now the central issue here is trying as they might, physicists cannot unify the four forces into one whole, called that Theory of Everything or TOE. Since everything should be related to everything else, gravity should be, if not a brother or sister to the other three force-related siblings, at least a kissing cousin. Alas, it’s an unrelated hermit that wants no ancestry with the other three. If however gravity should be shown to be a non-continuous force, that is there is this unit of gravity, and that unit of gravity, but nothing in-between, or in other words, you can’t divide a graviton in half – it’s as fundamental as the electron or the gluon or the photon – then gravity will join the world of the quantum. But that happy marriage date has not yet been set, and maybe never will be.
To be continued…
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