Even More Random Thoughts In Physics

Sometimes you have a new thought, an idea, or eureka moment, but it’s not gutsy enough to expand into a reasonable length article or essay. So, here’s yet another potpourri of thoughts dealing with physics and related too good not to record, but with not enough meat available to flesh out. 

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* In reviewing several of my essays I’ve noted that I’ve occasionally said that there is just the one physics, yet I’ve often said for the record that quantum physics and classical physics (General Relativity) are incompatible and forever will be. In other words, there’s no quantum gravity and no Theory of Everything (TOE). Is this in conflict? No. There is the one physics even though you’d be hard pressed to unify thermodynamics with levers, inclined planes and pullies.

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* Universal Parameters: You cannot determine from first principles what the properties of the Universe, or the fundamental particles that make up the Universe, are. They apparently can have free range. A proton is 2000 times more massive than an electron, but you can’t calculate that from the theoretical laws, principles and relationships of physics. It’s only determined experimentally. There doesn’t seem to be any reason why the proton couldn’t have been 0.2, 2, 20, 200 or 20,000 times the mass of an electron. The same applies to the relative forces. The theoretical laws, principles and relationships of physics do not require an opposite yet of equal value charge between the negative electron and the positive proton. Presumably the value of each could have been as far apart as their masses – that is a proton could have been 2000 times as positive as the electron is negative. Why not? There’s no reason why not apart from the fact that the Universe as we know it wouldn’t work, but then we wouldn’t be here to worry about that or what might have been. 

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* We’re all taught in high school the above, that the electric charge of an electron is equal and opposite to that of a proton. The ‘why’ of the relationship is never explained in any shape, manner or form. I’ve never seen an explanation given in any popular particle or quantum physics book. Now either the explanation is so bloody obvious authors don’t feel the need to explain the ‘why’ of the matter and insult the reader’s intelligence, or else the ‘why’ is in the way, way, way too hard basket and authors avoid the question and the issue to avoid appearing ignorant about so fundamental a fact.

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* Black Holes would make excellent, in fact perfect, thermos (vacuum) flasks. Pour into a Black Hole the contents of a star, say like the Sun. All that heat is then trapped and I do mean trapped!

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* Light is a thing; gravity is a thing; things can effect each other, so when it comes to the bending of light in a gravitational field, there’s no need for all this nonsense of warped space, time or space-time, which, after all, are not-things but just mental concepts.

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* If something quantum happens for no reason at all (i.e. – unstable nuclei goes poof) why doesn’t everything micro happen for no reason at all. Or, if some quantum happenings are just probabilities, why aren’t all micro happenings probabilities.

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* An isolated neutron has a half-life of roughly 15 minutes before going poof or decaying into a proton, an electron and an antineutrino. Neutrons that ‘live’ in a community of neutrons like in the nucleus of atoms; as in a neutron star, don’t decay. They are stable in these community relations. That seems like something is screwy somewhere. Why is it so? I thought that might explain why the hydrogen atom (otherwise known as protium) had no neutron (just one electron and one proton), but then heavy hydrogen (deuterium) does have one neutron (plus one electron and one proton) so things get weirder and weirder.

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* You obviously relate to being a human in a human-sized world. You can imagine being a cat or a dog and living in their world. You can probably extend that down to the world of insects and imagine yourself as a fly or ant or butterfly. At a stretch, you might be able to relate to and imagine yourself as a micro-organism living in say a drop of pond water or in the blood stream. But what about navigating down to the worldview of a photon or an electron? That I suspect is way, way, way too alien to imagine in your wildest dreams.

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* We conceive of nanotechnology as building up from micro scratch what technology we want (say micro devices to traverse our blood vessels and clean them up from the inside) by manipulating atoms from the ground up and building whatever we want from those fundamental ‘Lego’ blocks. But what if the fundamental particles are themselves products of nanotechnology?  



More Random Thoughts In Physics

* In our Universe there are two kinds of astronomical objects. There are cosmic faucets like stars and anything else that gives off or reflects electromagnetic (EM) waves. That’s the cosmic “In Tray”. Then there are cosmic sinks and drains that absorb electromagnetic waves – Black Holes, the cosmic “Out Tray”.

It would seem to me that over the course of 13.7 billion years, an awful lot of EM (light, IR, UV, radio, microwave, gamma-ray, etc.) photons, not to mention neutrinos and cosmic rays, would have gobbled up and removed from the Universe’s inventory by being sucked into and forever residing in the insides of Black Holes. Since all astronomical observations, hence conclusions about the state of the Universe, rely on the detection of that which is emitted or reflected by cosmic faucets, then it stands to reason that in order to arrive at valid conclusions, what cosmic sinks and drains remove from the Big EM Picture must be taken into account. But is it? I’ve never read any account where the removal of EM photons from the Universe’s inventory has been considered.   

One example that springs to mind is the minor temperature variations in the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMBR) – perhaps those slightly cooler spots are due to a large Black Hole between our measuring device and the CMBR that is sucking up those microwaves before they reach our measuring telescope or space probe or high altitude balloon. I seem to recall cosmologist George Gamow back in the 1940’s making a theoretical prediction that the (then undetected) CMBR would be somewhere between 5 to 7 degrees Kelvin, instead of the roughly 2.7 degrees Kelvin that eventuated. Perhaps, the overall cooler than Gamow expected CMBR is due to Black Holes sucking up lots of those CMBR photons over all those billions of years.

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* Another case of non-causality that’s oft given is when an electron gives off a photon, loses energy, and drops to a lower ‘orbit’ around a nucleus. The opposite isn’t lacking in causality however. A photon is absorbed by an electron which gives it additional energy which kicks it upstairs into a higher ‘orbit’ around a nucleus. Now it’s nuts to suggest that a process has causality in one direction while lacking causality in the exact opposite direction. We may not know why an electron gives up a photon and loses energy in the process, but there is most definitely a why causality – of that I’m convinced.

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* To be honest, I reject the idea that space itself is expanding. To me distant galaxies are expanding farther and farther apart throughout an already existing space. That makes way more sense. Expanding space appears to me to be a case of getting a free lunch – something from nothing – in violation of standard conservation principles.

Is there any actual observational evidence that proves conclusively that it is space expanding and not cosmic flotsam and jetsam moving apart through existing space? Not to my knowledge but I can think of a possible test that might conclude the issue. Two objects receding apart, like the Earth and the Moon (due to tidal forces) are going with the expanding space grain and should be separating more rapidly than otherwise would be the case due to tidal forces alone. The experiment, measuring the increasing Earth/Moon separation should be a relatively easy experiment to do. Due to the reflective mirrors left on the lunar surface by the Apollo moonwalkers we know the Earth-Moon distance to extreme precision. It should be straightforward whether the Moon is receding from the Earth faster than tidal forces can account for.  

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* The cosmos is easily divided into matter and energy related ‘things’ (products of nature) and space and time related ‘not things’ (concepts invented by humans and maybe by other animals). IMHO, ‘things’ are probably those which ultimately reside in the world of the quantum and are discrete. Many ‘not-things’ can be divided and divided indefinitely and are continuous.

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* If an electron acquired enough mass (say by being accelerated to near light speed), would it become a Black Hole, and if so, would the ‘inside’ still be an electron, which after all, is considered a fundamental particle? 

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* If you like symmetry, then the most perfect object of all things symmetrical is a sphere.

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* We frequently read of a “world without time” or “time standing still” or “time doesn’t exist” when it comes to that never-never-land of singularities, be then Black Hole related or that which was at the moment of the Big Bang which somehow created time. I consider that an impossibility since the absence of time means that nothing changes or conversely if nothing every changes it would be meaningless to talk about the existence of time. But the froth and bubble of the vacuum energy is omnipresent (even inside a Black Hole or the structure that was the Big Bang event) and that involves change and therefore the concept of “no time at all” is kaput.

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* It is said the electron is a fundamental particle that cannot be divided or split into simpler components. An electron can of course be converted to energy (all mass can be) say by coming into contact with a positron, the electron’s antimatter alter ego. An electron can emit and absorb a photon, but it doesn’t decay into anything simpler. So I gather if you could smash two electrons head on with as much oomph as one could muster, you’d end up with as close to as makes no odds, that is nearly, a case of the irresistible force failing to move (shatter) the immovable (un-shatterable) object. Another case illustrating the irresistible force and immovable state of affairs – it is impossible to isolate a quark (they come as a trio take all) or its force particle, a gluon.

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* Space is not the final frontier. The ultimate challenge is to ‘boldly go’ past the event horizon of a Black Hole and see what’s to be seen. 

UFOs: The Lucky Generation? Part One

There are some pro-UFO ETH (extraterrestrial hypothesis) believers who state that aliens have only recently arrived on Earth in response to modern human activities, like our nuclear weapons detonations. Sceptics counter that it’s unlikely in the extreme that 1) aliens could have gotten from there to here that quickly, and 2) the odds that we current humans would just happen by chance be the lucky generation, after four and a half billion years have passed Earth by in cosmic isolation, to now experience for the very first time on-site cosmic company are astronomically against. So, are we the lucky generation to be the first graced by E.T., or not?

It’s only in the last couple of generations that humans have had the ability to answer the question “are we alone?” Prior to the building of radio telescopes and the launching of space probes, that question rested more with philosophy and speculative science (often sci-fi) than hardcore science. So it would be coincidence beyond belief that E.T. would pop in for a visit within just those last couple of human generations that enabled us to finally search for him (or it) out there. 

If you were to throw a dart randomly at four and a half billion balloons, each balloon labeled with one year since Planet Earth came into existence (starting with one and ending up with number four and a half billion), what odds that the dart would hit any of those balloons that had dates that coincided with humanity’s time on Planet Earth, even being generous and giving us (humanity) an existence of say two million balloon years, far less hitting the one balloon that we would call 1947 (the accepted start of the modern UFO era)? Bugger all odds against! But does that of necessity negate the UFO ETH?

Aliens Are Here Because We Are Here Scenario - Otherwise Known As The 1947 UFO Scenario:

UFOs, if alien owned and operated, can only be here on (or above) Earth, in response to the on-site presence of the modern technological human. That’s actually advocated by many pro-UFO extraterrestrial hypothesis (ETH) buffs. They ask can be a coincidence that aliens have arrived here just at the same time we started playing around with dangerous toys like nuclear weapons; trespassing on their turf by going into space; and illustrating our overall stupidity by reeking environmental havoc upon ourselves.

Now the ‘aliens are here because we are here’ argument for extraterrestrial UFOs is IMHO actually the best anti-UFO ETH arguments going. Skeptics counter that for mankind to be ‘visible’ to those out there; those out there can only know about us, our ‘visibility’, via our electromagnetic (EM) signals, which propagate outwards into the cosmos at light speed. Our EM signals (optical nuclear blasts, radio/TV broadcasts, radar emissions, etc.) haven’t had much time to get very far out into the cosmos, because prior to say 1900 Earth was pretty damn quiet in terms of giving off human technological EM noise. Even our atmospheric pollution, potentially detectable from way out there via spectroscopic analysis, wasn’t really at highly abnormal levels prior to 1900. It’s only in the 20^th Century did our visibility really kick into high gear.

So, if you take 1947 as the start year of the modern UFO era – their arrival date – and assuming the aliens left home as soon as they detected our EM signal(s), then their home has got to be so relatively near to Earth as to be statistically unlikely in the extreme. Since E.T.’s home is certainly not within our solar system, then by elimination, that leaves the nearby stars. But only subluminal interstellar travel is possible (so proclaimed Einstein in his Special Theory of Relativity), and even interstellar velocities of say ten percent light speed are really pushing reasonable limits. Our closest stellar companions are over four light years away, so it would take E.T. over forty years to reach us from our closest stellar abode at ten percent light speed. Add to that the four light years it took our EM signal to reach them in the first place, well that’s about forty-four years all up. Subtract that from 1947 – well, 1903 isn’t known for our high intensity radio broadcasts; radar, TV and the light from our nuclear blasts were still future technology. Our city lights weren’t exactly going to be blinding their telescopes either. Therefore, according to the skeptics, E.T. didn’t arrive in 1947 due to any human activity, and since obviously only human activity would attract E.T. to travel here in the first place, therefore UFOs can not be anything alien! So say the skeptics. 

But the skeptic’s basic assumption here is that E.T. was out of range back at home. E.T. was in another extra-solar planetary hemisphere, country or city, across the gulf of interstellar space and far away from where the terrestrial action was. Alas for the skeptics, even if the aliens arrived out of concern to post-1900’s human activities (according to some UFO believers), that could mean the aliens were already here, if not on-site, then in our immediate solar system neighborhood, like having a lunar base, or even an orbiting space colony ship, say out in the asteroid belt, as base of operations. One doesn’t have to postulate them being a minimum of over four light years away (the distance to our nearest stellar neighbor).

So the basic assumption here by some pro-UFO ETH believers, that aliens arrived first in 1947 because of human activity is just so anthropomorphic (human centered) as to be laughable It’s an egocentric inspired, but just a coincidence, that alien UFOs are around when humans dominate Earth’s environment. As we’ve seen, the skeptic’s counter argument fares little better in the logic department.

But when taken to its logical conclusion, skeptics do provide the very answer which makes the UFO ETH nearly inevitable. Indeed, it would be utterly extraordinary in the extreme if that tiny niche of terrestrial time, say 1947 to the present, were the first and only niche of terrestrial time to host a visit by extraterrestrial intelligence(s).

Let’s forget the human element – as per the above argument for E.T. being here. Planet Earth has been noted and logged in a galactic database for a minimum of millions of years, more likely as not at least an order or two of magnitude greater – say billions of years.

The obvious answer is that there have been previous niches within terrestrial time, intervals of time, probably lots and lots of them, when E.T. paid a visit. E.T. has had billions of years to randomly (or selectively) explore our galaxy. At ten percent light speed the galaxy can be explored, even colonized in one million years. At one percent light speed it only takes ten million years to cross the galaxy edge-to-edge. Only ten million years? You might think that’s a hell of a long time, but the galaxy is ten billion years old. If there are lots of space-faring extraterrestrial civilizations, or even if there is just one, they are probably a lot closer to us than the worst case scenario of edge-to-edge, obviously, since we’re not situated on the galactic edge, we’re more like two-thirds the way out from the galactic centre.

Those who have pondered this issue and crunched the numbers, suggest that every ten thousand to one hundred thousand years is a rough guesstimate of intervals of time between random visits from E.T. 1947-to-date could easily and probably would fall outside that range. Maybe the last random visit was nine thousand years ago, or ninety thousand years ago. We’d still have a bit of a wait (one thousand to ten thousand years worth of wait) for the next call. But, and there’s always a “but”…

To be continued…

The Holographic Universe and You: Part Two

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

EXAMPLES:  I don’t know what, academically at least, is so odd, or hard to understand about, the idea of ‘Universe as hologram’. Holograms are now a familiar part of our society and our technology.

As an aside, regardless whether or not our apparent 3-D Universe is hologram, is there anything, any phenomena here on Planet Earth that can be interpreted as a hologram? Well I suppose a rainbow might qualify except it doesn’t appear very 3-D like. Mirages come to mind. The one other thing that immediately springs to mind, are ghosts (and all manner of associated ghostly images). I’ve often wondered how it could be that ghosts can apparently walk through walls, but never seem to sink through the floor! Of course if they were some sort of mirage-like hologram that might explain that. But that’s getting off topic.    

Anyway, that aside, many ancient civilizations often viewed the sky as 2-D, a sky composed of celestial crystalline spheres that surrounded their world and on the 2-D surfaces of those spheres were embedded the various celestial orbs that rotated around the Earth because the spheres rotated around the Earth.

Some what similar, albeit more current, most people have attended planetarium sessions (themselves an example of simulated reality and pseudo time travel) which project celestial objects onto a 2-D hemisphere above the audience’s heads – now just add holographic technology for a greater illusion of depth.

Artistic paintings are normally 2-D, but good artists provide the illusion of perspective, of depth, to give the impression that you’re looking at 3-D.

Our TV and computer monitors give a 2-D image, as does the big version – the silver screen. Yet you have no trouble interpreting the images as 3-D.

You can see your reflection, and things in the background, in a pane of glass, while at the same time seeing things that are outside that window pane. The window pane, a 2-D surface, is sort of like a hologram – you’re seeing a 3-D picture while looking at a 2-D surface.

If you could ask the characters in an interactive video game or those in your dreams if they are 3-D or 2-D and interact within a 3-D or 2-D (simulated) environment, they’d say ‘3-D’ – but you know better! The characters in your dream don’t walk the 3-D landscape from say the front of your brain to the rear of your brain for the duration. No, the dream drama is played out on the 2-D screen within your mind. They’d also no doubt tell you that they were acting on their own accord (they would insist they had free will) – but again, you’d know better. Your mind is controlling them and their actions. Now you however would also insist that you exist as a 3-D individual within a 3-D Universe and that you have free will. But does that make it so? Go back again and talk to your video or dream characters!

Or, thinking a farther into the future, there’s those “Star Trek” holodecks or holosuites. It isn’t too difficult that idea coming to fruition in the not all that distant future. Maybe not in your lifetime, but not many millennium away either. 

Speaking of holograms in the cinema, take a ride back in time to that hologram of Princess Leia and her plea for help, all witnessed by Luke Skywalker, and started the plot ball rolling for that very first “Star Wars” film.  Holograms are now taken for granted in many sci-fi features. They were fairly common for example in the “Stargate: SG-1” TV series.

But back to the here and now and in reality, on most credit cards, sometimes as an part of monetary banknotes (as an anti-counterfeiting security measure), sometimes used as a DVD cover, and a lot of other things (greeting cards, etc.) as well, you have the hologram, which again is basically an illusionary appearing 3-D image arising from a special technologically adapted or treated 2-D surface. Various manipulations using lasers also are used to generate illusionary 3-D holographic images. Now apply these now well known holographic technologies – those principles – to the Universe as a whole. If you wish to think of a hologram Universe this way, just imagine super-sizing your “Star Trek” holodeck up to the scale of an entire Universe. But you first have to start with Black Holes.

THE PHYSICS OF IT ALL: It’s suggested that information going into a Black Hole is actually ‘stored’ in the Event Horizon, that two dimensional (2-D) ‘surface’ marking the point of no return that surrounds the Black Hole’s Singularity – whatever that actually is. The Event Horizon concept isn’t difficult to envision – Earth’s crust/oceans is a 2-D surface surrounding the spherical 3-D planet.

Now as more and more stuff enters a Black Hole, the Event Horizon expands accordingly – obviously - just like our crust (area) would get bigger if Earth’s volume increased. The Event Horizon is also the area where Hawking radiation is emitted from. The interesting bit is that information ‘stored’ in 2-D form that is a representation of 3-D information, has a name – we call that form a hologram!

Now say you are inside a Black Hole’s Event Horizon – that’s the wrong side to be on, but this is just a thought experiment. There’s lots of trapped radiation (photons) in there with you. Those photons can struggle up, losing energy with each unit of distance gained, to reach the Event Horizon, but no farther. Their energy has exhausted itself. I gather they can just barely touch and ‘reflect’ off the underside of the Event Horizon and come back down again (in a direction towards the Singularity), picking up the energy again that they expended in their futile gesture of escape. So, you, being also beneath the Event Horizon can see the Event Horizon from the inside via these trapped photons. You can also see beyond the Event Horizon via new photons entering the Black Hole from outside the Event Horizon – photons that will join their trapped or prisoner kin. This is a situation akin – as noted in the ‘examples’ section - to seeing your reflection, and things in the background, in a pane of glass, while at the same time seeing things that are outside that window pane. The window pane, a 2-D surface, is sort of like a hologram – you’re seeing a 3-D picture by looking at a 2-D surface.

Now one could (and people have) suggested that one could consider the entire Universe as being the inside of a Black Hole – after all, nothing can escape from the Universe. You’re as trapped inside our Universe as you would be living on the inside of a traditionally thought of Black Hole. Like a Black Hole, or our Earth, our Universe has a crust or a surface or boundary or an horizon – a rose by any other name…

You can see where this is going! The upshot is that our apparent information rich 3-D environment is actually information somehow stored on the Universe’s 2-D boundary or horizon. In short, the Universe is a hologram.

Anyway, our Universe doesn’t exactly mirror a real Black Hole unless there is an outside to our Universe – a beyond the boundary or horizon that allows stuff to get into our Universe, ultimately trapping it. That actually would be a Universe more akin to the window pane analogy. But even if there is no beyond the boundary of our Universe, our Universe can still be thought of as a hologram – it applies in either case, just like an Event Horizon is a hologram to mythical inhabitants inside a Black Hole.

So, Black Holes residing inside a Black Hole Universe, which maybe residing inside…

Russian dolls within Russian dolls within Russian dolls within Russian dolls.

As an aside, the Universe as hologram scenario doesn’t invalidate the expanding Universe scenario, as one can have an expanding area as opposed to an expanding volume.

To be continued…

Can Black Holes Evaporate? Part Two

While there is a constant transfer of matter and radiant electromagnetic energy (photons) between bodies throughout the cosmos, there are sinks, ultimate final resting places where matter/energy can retire to and be removed from the rest of the cosmos. These cosmic sinks are Black Holes. But is that retirement permanent, or can stuff re-enter the cosmic workforce? Can Black Holes evaporate? The theoretical short answer is “yes”; the long answer is “no”.

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

Clearly a Black Hole isn’t isolated from the rest of the cosmos and objects therein. If you were just outside the event horizon you’d ‘see’ photons (of all wavelengths) because you’d see stars and galaxies, etc. just like you can locally. Neutrinos would still pass right through you on their way to their doom once passing through the event horizon. The Universe is full of interstellar and intergalactic atoms and molecules and dust and of course lots of larger stuff a Black Hole can snack on. Black Holes will sweep up stuff just like Earth does, only more so since it has more gravity with which to grab hold of stuff with, and also because once caught there’s no escape for the cosmic fish. Unlike Earth, everything that crosses that event horizon, that hits the Black Hole, won’t be reflected back (like photons). Neutrinos that can pass through light-years worth of solid lead without even ‘breathing hard’ will be imprisoned when they try that trick in a Black Hole’s inner sanctum. And of course atoms, molecules, interstellar dust, the big chunks will also get imprisoned.  

But we can imagine an idealized cosmos where all Black Holes have swallowed up all existing radiated particles (photons), all the atoms,  molecules, the dust and all the bigger stuff – all those stars and planets; asteroids and comets; even all that mysterious ‘dark matter’. So you have a cosmos of just Black Holes and the vacuum energy (well maybe a few bits and pieces escaped, but so few to be of no consequence).  Of course there is one further logical extension. Black Holes can swallow other Black Holes. Black Holes can merge to form bigger Black Holes. The final product is that the cosmos consists of one Black Hole – the Mother of all Black Holes – plus the vacuum energy!  So you end up with one Black Hole left standing with nothing left to eat.

Okay, so the only scenario now possible is that this Mother of all Black Holes evaporates via Hawking radiation. It might take trillions upon trillions upon trillions of years, but evaporate it does. Since matter and energy can neither be created nor destroyed, once the Mother of Black Holes has finally gone ‘poof’, the Universe is right back where it started from – full of stuff from photons to fundamental particles which them undergo chemistry to form atoms and molecules and stars and planets and perhaps life – and new Black Holes!

Perhaps this is a new and improved version of a cyclic/oscillating universe! - But then again, maybe not. There’s a fly in that ointment (but I had you going for a while back there!). That “idealized cosmos” was only a ‘what if’ thought experiment.

Firstly, it’s actually very, very unlikely all the Black Holes in the Universe will ever merge together as long as the Universe keeps expanding. Since the galaxies are getting farther and farther away from each other due to that expansion, the collection of Black Holes contained within each galaxy keep getting further and further apart from other clusters of Black Holes contained within other galaxies. It’s like the passengers in one car get more and more remote from the passengers in another car when each car is going at different velocities and heading in different directions.

Now the collection of all Black Holes in any one galaxy could well coalesce into one super Black Hole galaxy. You have a galaxy that instead of containing billions and billions of stars and debris and particles now consists of just one Black Hole – the car only has one occupant. You have a pure Black Hole galaxy, or a galactic sized Black Hole. 

One might end up with a Universe composed of just these pure Black Hole galaxies, all spreading farther and farther apart over time. 

But secondly, there’s another fly in the ointment. All the space that separates these pure Black Hole galaxies from each other isn’t a perfect vacuum, quite apart from the vacuum energy. All the radiating stars and stuff may have been gobbled up within each galaxy, but all of interplanetary space, all of interstellar space, and all of intergalactic space, isn’t pure vacuum. There’s still the ‘it’s everywhere, it’s everywhere’ Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation (CMBR).

So what’s this CMBR?  If you have a massive hot explosion (like the Big Bang event is alleged to have been), and all that heat energy expands and expands, then you’d expect the temperature of the area occupied by that energy to drop, the temperature ever decreasing as the volume that finite amount of energy occupies increases. As the energy expands it gets diluted and thus cools, but can never reach an absolute zero temperature for reasons already noted. And that’s just what we find on a universal scale. There’s a fine microwave energy “hiss” representing a temperature a few degrees above absolute zero that’s absolutely everywhere in the cosmos. That’s the diluted heat energy of the very hot Big Bang – well it has been a long time since the Big Bang event (13.7 billion years worth of time) and that energy is now spread throughout a lot of cosmic volume. That microwave “hiss”, called the CMBR, was predicted way before it was discovered. There’s no doubt that it exists.

Since the CMBR is just photons with very long wavelengths, Black Holes could suck up the CMBR photons as easily as light photons. Removal of CMRB photons, already representing a temperature just slightly about the theoretical minimum – absolute zero – would mean the Universe gets even colder, which it would anyway since the Universe is ever expanding and thus available electromagnetic energy (photons) is ever diluting. Combining the two effects and the Universe is a chilly place indeed and will get even colder.

However, it’s probably not possible for Black Holes collectively to swallow up all of the CMBR since there will come a point of diminishing returns. What happens when the temperature of Black Holes equals the temperature of the Universe at large – the CMBR? The answer is thermal equilibrium like when your hot cup of coffee cools off to room temperature. Input into Black Holes from the CMBR will equal output via Hawking radiation. For every photon emitted via Hawking radiation, a CMBR photon gets sucked in. What does that mean? It means a Black Hole can not evaporate.

What about very tiny (micro) Black Holes that are relatively ‘hot’? Might they go ‘poof’ before thermal equilibrium is achieved? Will the contents of the Black Hole evaporate into the surrounding cosmos before they can equate to the surrounding temperature? The analogy might be like a hot drop of water could evaporate into the cold atmosphere before the liquid water drop can attain the temperature of its surrounding environment.

Even so, I still imagine that in the current matter and radiation dominated Universe, incoming would still exceed outgoing.

Of course if you could take a Black Hole, isolate and shield it from the rest of the cosmos and all that it contains, so all you have is the Black Hole and its internal energy (including the all pervading vacuum energy therein). An isolated Black Hole would be in a setting equivalent to putting it into an absolute zero temperature environment. If that’s the case then outgoing would exceed incoming since there could be no incoming, and therefore that Black Hole would then radiate and slowly evaporate and eventually go ‘poof’. BUT, and there’s always a BUT, I can not envision any scenario where a Black Hole can exist in such a theoretical isolation. So, Professor Hawking is quite correct – in theory. In practice, in the here and now, input exceeds Hawking radiation output, and even in the unimaginably far distant future equilibrium will be established where input equals output. 

Can Black Holes Evaporate? Part One

While there is a constant transfer of matter and radiant electromagnetic energy (photons) between bodies throughout the cosmos, there are sinks, ultimate final resting places where matter/energy can retire to and be removed from the rest of the cosmos. These cosmic sinks are Black Holes. But is that retirement permanent, or can stuff re-enter the cosmic workforce? Can Black Holes evaporate? The theoretical short answer is “yes”; the long answer is “no”.

Black Holes are astrophysical objects that are so massive, that have gravity so high, that their escape velocity (some seven miles per second on Earth) exceeds the ultimate cosmic speed limit – the speed of light (186,000 miles per second). Since nothing can travel faster than the speed of light, nothing (matter and/or energy) once inside a Black Hole can ever get out again – or so the seemingly ironclad logic went.

However, that’s all according to classical physics. A physicist by the name of Jacob Bekenstein came up with the idea of applying quantum physics to Black Holes (upon a suggestion by his mentor John Wheeler – who incidentally coined the phrase “Black Hole”), and once that was done, well lo and behold, Black Holes apparently exhibited entropy, and therefore had a temperature and therefore must radiate and therefore can vomit out stuff. His ideas were mulled over and over again and finally agreed to and expanded on by the celebrated astrophysicist/cosmologist Stephen Hawking. That stuff that a Black Hole can regurgitate now goes under the name of Hawking radiation, or to give credit where credit is due it is technically Bekenstein-Hawking radiation. However, it’s usually just called Hawking radiation so I’ll stick with that convention.

Of course if Black Holes have a temperature, then they must follow the same laws of thermodynamics as any other object with temperature. One key point in thermodynamics is that energy exchanges between objects are at least partly determined by one object’s temperature compared to another object’s temperature. The temperature of a hot cup of coffee will stay hot longer the higher the temperature of the environment that surrounds that hot cup of coffee. A Black Hole’s temperature must be compared to whatever temperature surrounds the Black Hole when considering the fate of the Black Hole. So how does a Black Hole get temperature?

In retrospect, how this happens is obvious (as are all great ideas when applying hindsight).

There is no such thing as the perfect vacuum. That could only be achieved at a temperature of absolute zero where and when everything is 100% frozen stiff. Alas, such a state violates one of the most fundamental principles of quantum physics – the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle – where it is impossible to know both the momentum and position of anything with 100% precision. If something were at absolute zero, frozen stiff and standing still, you’d know both the momentum (which would be zero) and position (at a standstill) of that something with absolute precision.

Since there is always a minimum state of energy anywhere in the Universe (something above absolute zero), and since energy and mass are equivalent (Einstein’s famous formula/equation), then that energy state, the false not-quite-absolute-zero vacuum, the vacuum energy*, can generate mass – virtual particles. However, the particles come in matter-antimatter pairs, which usually immediately annihilate and return to their former pure energy state. BUT, and there is always, a BUT – there’s an exception to the rule – that normal state of affairs can be thwarted.

The vacuum energy, that which can generate particle-antiparticle pairs, exists everywhere where existence has any meaning. Part of that existence is an area called the event horizon**, which is a concept related to the concept we call Black Holes. All Black Holes have an event horizon which surrounds them.

The event horizon surrounding a Black Hole is that somewhat fuzzy region that separates the region (below the event horizon) from which gravity rules over the speed of light, and that region (above the event horizon) where gravity’s escape velocity can’t quite dominate that speed of light velocity. I say its “fuzzy” since it’s not razor sharp, albeit nearly so.

The vacuum energy is part and parcel of the space surrounding the event horizon, above, below and spot-on. Now, what if that vacuum energy generates a pair of virtual particles, one each popping into existence above the event horizon; one below the event horizon. Then, the particles will be unable to annihilate and recombine into pure energy. One will stay within the Black Hole. The other, being above the event horizon, can be dealt a ‘get out of jail’ card. And thus, slowly, ever so slowly, but ever so surely, the Black Hole loses mass, thus energy, and evaporates.

Here’s the general picture. Black Holes can only radiate from the event horizon region which, in a very large Black Hole is going to be very cold because it’s not radiating very much, so initially only things like the mass-less photon escapes. Assuming there’s no incoming to replace the loss, the Black Hole shrinks, and as it gets smaller it warms up slightly (that’s what things that shrink tend to do) and can radiate particles with small mass – say neutrinos. When the Black Hole is tiny, it’s very warm, in a relative sense, and it can go out with a ‘bang’, maybe emitting an electron or positron which is way more massive. When there’s no more Black Hole, the vacuum energy still produces at random virtual particle pairs, but there’s no more event horizon from which to separate those virtual particle pairs and thus its all back to normal – the two annihilate and return to their vacuum energy state. That’s where the popular accounts end. End of story. The ultimate fate of Black Holes will be to evaporate via Hawking radiation, even if it does take trillions of years.

Alas, the written texts forget to mention that radiation emission (and other forms of emitted stuff) is a two-way street, not a one-way street. Black Holes can acquire stuff, as well as radiate stuff. If deposits exceed withdrawals, then Black Holes will always have a positive ‘stuff’ balance and thus won’t fully evaporate. Now this is perhaps why Hawking radiation hasn’t been observed. The tiny amount of Hawking radiation (outgoing) will be swamped by the greater, many orders of magnitude greater, amounts of incoming radiation and other stuff impacting the Black Hole.

Forget Black Holes (and their massive gravity) for a moment and concentrate on Planet Earth. Even at night, you see lots of suns – stars. You see them because they are radiating photons – particles of electromagnetic energy of which visible light is a small part. In fact you only detect a tiny fraction of visual photons because your visual detection devices (eyes) aren’t that efficient. Optical telescopes pick up a lot more of them, but they’re still just as real. You are also being hit by photons in the infrared, the ultraviolet, in radio wavelengths, X-ray photons, gamma-ray photons, etc. Though Earth’s atmosphere shields us from some of these photons (ultraviolet photons are far greater in number at the top of our atmosphere than at the bottom), you still get impacted by multi-billions of them; Planet Earth many orders of magnitude more. Some of the photons get reflected back into space; these don’t add to Earth’s energy/mass balance. Overall, there are roughly one billion photons for each and every fundamental particle with mass, like electrons and neutrinos.

Now in addition Earth (and you too) gets hit with cosmic rays, neutrinos, and cosmic dust. Even if you luck out, Planet Earth gets impacted by meteors and other outer space debris, sometimes debris large enough to not only hit the surface but do considerable damage. Planet Earth’s mass increases by many tons a day, all due to Earth’s sweeping up of the interplanetary dust and small rocks that intersect Earth’s orbit. The trillions of neutrinos that hit us are so ghostly that nearly all pass right through you and the entire planet as well despite them having a tiny amount of mass, so as far as our planet is concerned, they are of little significance. 

Now what about a Black Hole?

To be continued…

*If it helps to conceive of the concept of the vacuum energy, here’s an analogy. Think of the invisible but energetic atmosphere as the vacuum energy. Part of that atmosphere consists of invisible water vapour. But, all of a sudden, and for reasons that must have been mysterious to the ancients, part of the atmosphere undergoes a phase change into something you can see; into something solid – like a particle. You get mist/fog (clouds), rain drops, snow, sleet, hail, etc. Then, equally mysterious, those solid bits eventually undergo another phase change (evaporation standing in for annihilation) back to invisible water vapour in the equally invisible atmosphere. And so you have the invisible vacuum energy that generates particle-antiparticle pairs which annihilate back into the vacuum energy.

**The surface area of the event horizon is the same for both incoming and outgoing so there is no need to take that (non) variable under consideration.

The Nature of Gravity: Part Two

Gravity – we all feel it; it limits much that we can do or build; and we don’t understand it!

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

Presumably for there to be gravity there has to be mass (or matter), so an electron has gravity; you have gravity; the Planet Earth has gravity – and so on. But a photon, that ‘particle’ that carries the electromagnetic force, doesn’t have gravity since it can’t have any mass (because it travels at the speed of light and only something without mass can do that).

So gravity can deflect the electromagnetic force. We’ve all read about that famous experiment where the positions of stars were pinpointed that should be very near the limb of the Sun during a solar eclipse. The starlight from those stars was deflected by the Sun’s gravity and thus, during the eclipse, the stars seemed slightly out of position in the sky. This was in accordance with Einstein’s General Relativity predictions and the merger of theoretical prediction and observational reality elevated the physicist from that of a scientist known and respected by colleagues to that of international superstar known to the masses – the scientist who overthrew Newton’s Theory of Gravitation. There’s another astrophysical effect of the deflection of electromagnetic radiation by gravity, and that’s known as gravitational lensing. While predicted by Einstein, he felt it would never have any practical applications. But today’s astrophysicists have used the phenomena – that of massive (high gravity) objects in space deflecting and focusing the light (like a lens) from more distant objects behind them – to study same. It’s by this technique that the presence of ‘dark matter’ has not only been confirmed, but mapped, as ‘dark matter’ has gravity and can act as a gravitational lens!

Can gravity deflect gravity? In Newtonian physics, the gravitational force travels instantaneously. If the Sun were to somehow vanish now, we’d feel the Earth orbital effects, now. In Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity, gravity travels at the speed of light, and thusly gravity and EM (of which light is a part) share a common bond. Thus, if the Sun were to somehow vanish now, it would be eight minutes before we’d notice Earth’s orbit being perturbed. Experiments have to date only proved gravitational influences travel at very close to light speed, but as yet, not an exact match. Close, but no cigar. Of course it’s only fair to point out that these experiments are incredibly difficult to carry out, and the final verdict is still far off.

All the four forces have particles associated with them – particles that convey the force from Point A to Point B. In the case of the electromagnetic force, it’s the mass-less photon. The strong nuclear force has the gluon. In the case of gravity, the assumed theoretical particle (it hasn’t been actually detected yet) is the graviton.

If the particle assumed to carry the gravitational force (the graviton) travels at light speed, it should be mass-less, and with analogy with the photon, be deflected by another gravitational field. If a photon passes near a Black Hole (a high gravity object), its pathway will be bent. If a graviton (say part of a gravitational wave – something predicted by Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity) were to pass near the same Black Hole, its pathway should be equally bent. If a graviton has some mass and thus travels at somewhat less than light speed, that too will show up as a change in its pathway as it passes close to a Black Hole. Equally, a graviton, if there is such an animal, should be sucked into a Black Hole if it hits the Black Hole’s bulls-eye.

It might be surprising that if gravity can deflect gravity as well as radiation, then how can gravity ‘escape’ from a Black Hole and radiation* can’t? Of course gravity is an intrinsic property of mass, and there’s certainly lots of mass in a Black Hole, so obviously a Black Hole has gravity and it’s not as if it were escaping or leaking out. Of course one could, perhaps should, argue that gravitational waves are just ripples in space-time geometry, and gravity is just geometry, and geometry can’t be sucked into a Black Hole the way matter/energy can be. Translated, gravity again is just different – it’s not a force like the other forces, it shares no commonality with electromagnetism or the strong and weak nuclear forces, its just geometry in which case there might be no need for a gravitational force particle.

An interesting side question is can light deflect light? Unfortunately, light doesn’t stand still, but what if, as a thought experiment, one fired a laser beam in one direction and another laser beam at right angles to it, but say just a fraction higher (so the two beams don’t make contact). Would the pathways of the two laser beams alter as they crossed? Would two laser beams fired off in parallel slowly be drawn together and eventually merge? How about two laser beams fired head on towards each other? I suspect the two beams would just pass through one another. To the best of my knowledge, light only interacts with light as wave phenomena, not as particle phenomena, causing constructive or destructive interference. So, two beams at right angles, or fired in parallel, wouldn’t display any particle sorts of properties – that is, deflections. Again, the photon is mass-less so shouldn’t have any sort of deflection influence on other photons. That’s my guess anyway. So…

John’s musings one: gravity is a quantum phenomenon; gravity is not a continuous phenomenon; there is a unit of gravity that can not be subdivided; the graviton is the fundamental particle that conveys the force we feel as gravity. There will eventually be an experimentally verified Theory of Everything.

John’s musings two: gravity is a consequence of geometry. Mass distorts space-time’s geometry (which would be absolutely flat in the absence of any mass) which in turn distorts how mass moves (which would be in a straight line in the absence of any geometry other than flat space-time geometry). Gravity has bugger-all to do with quantum physics and just can not be reconciled with it. There is no fundamental unit of gravity and no need for a gravity-bearing particle.

Now this mass/space-time dynamic is very interesting. Mass tells space-time how to curve or warp (which determines the geometry); space-time geometry tells mass how to move, movement which in turn alters the geometry, which in turn alters the motion, and so on, and so on. Very dynamic! It’s also very circular, sort of like the chicken and egg question.

How exactly does space-time affect the motion of mass? Well, that’s pretty straight forward – I think. It’s one of the fundamental axioms of physics that an object once set in motion, stays in motion, and travels in a straight line – unless acted on by an external force. If you hit a hockey puck across the ice, it keeps on going on (if you ignore friction) in the direction you hit it. If some other player then hits the puck, the puck (probably) changes both speed and direction. But, what if, instead, the puck hits a slight slope in the ice. The puck will change direction. Geometry has affected the motion of a mass. Geometry has mimicked a force. Or, take the unfortunate S.S. Poseidon sailing along on a smooth sea until a sudden rogue wave rudely alters her course and speed in real quick-smart time. The sea’s geometry changed, resulting in, in this case, a good cinema experience!

So how exactly does mass warp space-time? I don’t know exactly (in case you were expecting a revelation at this stage). You might think the entire concept crazy. I mean we’ve all seen the Sun and the Moon, and the Apollo astronauts have seen the Earth from afar, and we know these objects have mass and hence gravity, but have you, or the astronauts, seen any warping of space-time in the vicinity of the Sun, Moon and the Earth (unlike that – by analogy – the bowling ball on the rubber sheet illustration beloved in all physic’s texts)? Okay, there’s noting apparent to the naked eye that anything is warped, there’s no psychedelic effects apparent, no distortions, etc.  The Moon doesn’t appear as a shimmering now-you-see-it-now-you-don’t object. But then, we do have that starlight defection experiment verified during solar eclipses (tick to Einstein). Perhaps these worlds aren’t massive enough to imprint their distortions on our retinas. The more the mass, the more dramatic would be the result, and anyone who has seen long duration time exposure photographs of massive galactic-sized objects, the gravitation lens at work, witnessed the formation of Einstein’s Rings (or arcs), has certainly seen space-time warping or the pathway of light deflected by mass (tick to Einstein). 

I suspect the answer as to how exactly mass warps space-time is probably straight forward. As the Earth travels in its orbit around the sun, space (or space-time) has to give way to accommodate our planet. Or, if you toss a ball through the air, the air is displaced as the ball passes through. The air has been slightly, and briefly, warped. Or, back to the S.S. Poseidon, her sailing along on calm seas causes displacement in the ocean and generates bow waves causing the ocean’s geometry to change. The bow waves, radiating outwards (like gravity waves?) hence cause a rocking of a small rowboat far away.

So, experimental conclusions (to date): Einstein one; quantum physics/string theorists zero.

In matters of theoretical physics and accompanying mathematics, one must temper the ‘thought experiment’ results with liberal does of healthy common sense – attention string theorists. In matters of observational and verified experimental physics, healthy common sense must take a back seat to confirmed results. Despite gravitational lensing, etc. gravity (the how and the why) still seems to reside largely in the theoretical realm, and I’m sure we’d all like to see this very mysterious force emerge in the light of total understanding based on a lot more experimental data. In the meantime, in the here and now, string theorists, and those proposing models of quantum gravity, better get their experimental act together!

A further recommended reading about gravity:

Schutz, Bernard; Gravity from the Ground Up: An Introductory Guide to Gravity and General Relativity; Cambridge University Press, Cambridge; 2003:

*Actually theoretical astrophysicist Stephen Hawking showed that Black Holes weren’t entirely black; some radiation can escape from them, know known as Hawking Radiation. It’s actually a now and then quantum phenomena. Normal everyday electromagnetic radiation can’t escape from a Black Hole once trapped behind the Black Hole’s event horizon. However, the energy associated with a Black Hole, via Einstein’s famous equation relating mass and energy, can morph into virtual particles outside the Black Hole’s event horizon – that region and below of no escape.

Don’t Beam Me Down, Scotty!

‘Beaming’, the near instantaneously conversion and transport of matter to energy and back to matter again is a staple of science fiction. Beaming technology is used extensively in “Star Trek”, but also for example in the TV series “Stargate: SG-1” as well, and no doubt in other sci-fi shows, films and novels. While obviously an extremely useful device in speeding up the action (just like faster-than-light warp drives and related), is it possible or is this just pure Hollywood sleight of hand? Alas, I find all sorts of problems with the physics, even the philosophy of this “Beam me down, Scotty” scenario.

OVERVIEW: Dr. Leonard H. (“Bones”) McCoy, late of the USS Enterprise (NCC 1701), always had an aversion to having his atoms converted to energy hence scrambled to the four winds while awaiting beam-down on the transporter pad in the USS Enterprise’s Transporter Room – not that he lacked faith in beam-down officer Chief Engineer Montgomery Scott (“Scotty”) – rather his gut feelings told him this ways and means of transport was somehow unnatural and somewhat dangerous. McCoy’s feels were more spot-on than even he could have ever realised. 

Physics Problem Number One: One common nightmare faced by those being subjected to having their atoms scattered to the four winds only to be reassembled elsewhere, an everyday scenario faced by cast and crew of the Starship Enterprise, is that elsewhere might be smack dab into a ‘solid’ structure. You wouldn’t want to be rematerialised inside a brick wall; it would sort of ruin your day.  However, being beamed down into an atmosphere is still being beamed into stuff, less dense than a brick wall admittedly, but still stuff. You’re being reassembled not in a vacuum but inside (atmospheric) stuff and non-you stuff is being incorporated into you as you rematerialise. At the minimum you’ll get a sort of bloated feeling.

DIRECT MATTER TRANSFER: Before considering the conversion of matter to energy and back to matter, which is what the “Star Trek” transporter technology does, what about the more direct matter transfer approach, the sort that we tend to do when we want to go from Point A to Point B? Can be somehow ‘beam’ matter (like you) directly to your destination without means of some sort of conveyance vehicle, like an automobile or a shuttlecraft? Of course you have to be taken apart first if you’re going to be beamed elsewhere.

Physics Problem Number Two: When you get disassembled, you’re taken apart, not just anatomical organ by organ, or tissue by tissue, or even cell by cell; not even molecule by molecule or atom by atom, but fundamental particle by fundamental particle. You’re stripped down to all those electrons and quarks that comprise you. Since a trio of quarks make up individual neutrons and protons, quarks are fundamental particles but protons and neutrons are not. Protons and neutrons are just composite particles, and therefore not fundamental or elementary.

Alas, this leads to a problem. You cannot separate out and isolate individual quarks because of the strong nuclear force. It’s those strong nuclear force gluons that corral the trio of quarks into one location thus making up your basic neutron or proton. You see, unlike the electromagnetic force or the force of gravity which gets weaker with increasing distance, the strong nuclear force gets stronger with increasing distance. The more you try to pull the trio of quarks apart, the more they resist that pull. It’s like a rubber band. If there’s no pull, the rubber band is in a relaxed state. But as you increase the pull, the rubber band gets increasingly uptight and pulls back with an equal and opposite force. Translated, nobody has ever been able to isolate one individual quark. So, you cannot pull apart a proton or a neutron – however an isolated neutron will ‘decay’ in about 15 minutes into an electron, a proton and an antineutrino, but the quarks are now in the newly created proton.   

Now what if all that’s a tad too complicated or downright impossible? Then at what level in the hierarchy does Captain Kirk or Mr. Spock get disassembled? It has to be below cellular level since not even cells could be transmitted through seemingly ‘solid’ matter like the hull of the Enterprise itself. In fact, not even 100% of molecules; atoms; or even electrons, neutrons and protons will make it through the hull right on down to the surface, but I’m easy here for this is just a ‘what if’ thought experiment – so, let’s go with molecules; or atoms; or the trilogy of electrons, neutrons and protons. 

Physics Problem Number Three: If you beam out the fundamental bits (quarks and electrons); or the trilogy of electrons, neutrons and protons; or atoms; or molecules, well then you have differing masses. Quarks and electrons have different masses; electrons, protons and neutrons have different masses; an oxygen atom has a different mass from a carbon atom, etc.; and of course you are comprised of hundreds of different types of molecules, each with a unique mass. A protein molecule is much heaver than a water molecule for example. So why is this some sort of problem? Because, if all these bits with different masses are subjected to the same amount of “energise” oomph, they will arrive at their destination, at the same place, but at different times. If you kick a bowing ball and a billiard ball with the same force, the billiard ball at point-of-kick will arrive at point-of-destination faster than the bowling ball. That sort of problem is going to raise all sorts of havoc when it comes time for Captain Kirk to be reassembled!

MATTER TO ENERGY BACK TO MATTER TRANSFER: This is the approach actually used in various sci-fi beaming scenarios. You convert your matter stuff to energy stuff (photons) then reassemble the energy stuff back into the original matter stuff. Does that work or are there more difficulties? Well, IMHO, while it’s ‘easy’ to convert mass into pure energy, it’s no small matter to freeze that pure energy back into mass.

Physics Problem Number Four: If you can’t beam out particles or atoms, etc. with differing masses without screwing things up, then perhaps all those bits and pieces of mass can be converted to bits and pieces of pure energy, as per Einstein’s most famous of equations that equates mass with energy and vice versa. Converting a bit of mass into energy is routine – the atomic bomb, a flashlight, a laser, even lighting a match converts some mass into energy. This sort of approach seems to be in sync with the Star Trek beam-me-down command, “energise”.

If all the matter bits and pieces were converted to say electromagnetic energy or radiation (photons) that moved at light speed, then all and sundry bits and pieces of you would start off at Point A and arrive at Point B at the exact same time. But, and there’s always a but, you need to convert ALL of the mass you wish to transport into energy. Alas, to convert pure matter into pure energy with 100% efficiency requires the annihilation of equal amounts of matter and antimatter. None of our “beam me down” characters are composed of any amount of antimatter, nor is the “beam me down” technology equated with turning Captain Kirk into pure energy by irradiating said Captain with an equal but opposite (anti) amount of matter – or antimatter. And how does one then convert that pure energy back into matter Captain Kirk and not into say antimatter Captain Kirk or for that matter any other form of matter or antimatter?

Physics Problem Number Five: You’ve got a really Big Problem in reversing the matter to energy scenario. You can convert some tiny bit of mass into energy, but can you convert that energy back into that original bit of matter? Turn on your flashlight. A tiny bit of matter that makes up that flashlight (well the matter in the batteries and/or the glowing filament in the bulb) is converted to the radiant energy that is the flashlight’s light beam (photons). Now, can you gather up the light (those photons), ‘freeze’ them and thus recover that tiny bit of lost flashlight mass? Good luck and let me know if you succeed! 

Physics Problem Number Six:  If those unfortunate to be “energised” and have their ‘you’ bits and pieces beamed from Point A to Point B, there’s always the possibility, in fact a rather high probability, that some of those energetic bits and pieces (photons) are going to interact physically / chemically with some other non-you bits and pieces before they reach their intended destination, say a planet’s surface. Thus, when you rematerialise on some alien planet’s surface, some of your bits and pieces won’t be there! That sort of argument applies equally if it’s just your molecules; atoms; or that trilogy of electrons, neutron and protons that are beamed on their way. 

YOU HAVE A DEATH WISH! Beaming technology is a rather unique way of (temporarily) killing someone, or committing suicide!

Physics Problem Number Seven: If you are separated into your billions of fundamental, or even composite bits and pieces, ‘you’ could hardly be said to be still alive. That’s true whether I disassemble you into bits and pieces of matter or convert you to pure photonic energy! If you are disassembled in the Transporter Room of the USS Enterprise, beamed down and reassembled on the alien planet’s surface, then you have in fact died on the transporter pad, only in this case to be resurrected at planetary Ground Zero! But your brief ‘death’ is just the start of your problems. Quantum physics, often dominated by the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, means that you’re never reassembled back to the exact same configuration or specifications that your were in prior to being disassembled. The Transporter Room ‘you’ and the ‘you’ on the alien planet’s surface are not the same ‘you’. You haven’t been so much reassembled as imperfectly reconstructed. Your ‘death’ and your new identity raise all sorts of interesting philosophical, metaphysical and even ethical questions!

Physics Problem Number Eight: As related in Physics Problem Number Seven, if I separated you into your billions of fundamental, or even composite bits and pieces, ‘you’ could hardly be said to be alive. You’re now a dead billion piece jigsaw puzzle. But if I could somehow reassemble those billions of jigsaw puzzle bits and pieces back into ‘you’ (and violate the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, but who’s looking), then you have in a manner of speaking returned from the grave! So every time Captain Kirk says “Beam me down, Scotty”, he’s being executed and resurrected, but that resurrection is a slight-of-hand bit of magic.

Unlike a real jigsaw puzzle which can be assembled and reassembled in just one way, the billion jigsaw puzzle bits and jigsaw puzzle pieces that made you, you, can be reassembled in more than one way. In fact your bits and pieces at the atomic level or below can be reassembled into anything and everything since anything and everything else is also made up of those same fundamental bits and pieces. It’s like taking apart a billion Lego pieces and putting them back together in a totally different configuration.

Since that reassembly – not that there has to be any of course; once scattered to the four winds the bits and pieces might stay scattered to the four winds – could be anything, you are really taking quite a chance that ‘you’ will reassemble back into ‘you’. Put it this way, if you take a billion Lego blocks assembled as a replica of the USS Enterprise, then scatter them in a heap, then put them back together again blindfolded, well odds are you won’t reconstruct a Lego USS Enterprise. Further, there are vastly more ways to assemble a billion Lego blocks into an unstructured mess than a structure with a high amount of organisation or symmetry or complexity or something even remotely recognizable (like the USS Enterprise). In the real world of fundamental bits and pieces, disassembly hence reassembly into something organised, include something living, is highly remote; and that something living would be a reconstructed ‘you’ is as close to impossible as makes no odds. If you are disassembled and beamed down, the reassembly will probably be just what’s most highly probable – an unorganised mess.

CONCLUSION: The USS Enterprise won’t be abandoning shuttlecraft technology anytime soon, and only a complete idiot would say “Beam me down, Scotty”. I wouldn’t want to be so rash as to predict that beaming technology will forever be unobtainable, only that it probably won’t yet be a practical reality even by Captain Kirk’s 23^rd Century.

Gamma-Ray SETI

Gamma-ray bursts are cosmic phenomena. As far as terrestrial astronomers go, they are unexpected (you can’t point your telescope in advance knowing where and when one will happen) and they are short-lived (so when one is detected you have a rather limited window of opportunity to point your telescope). Now, the question arises, are they all totally natural phenomena, or could some be manufactured, and like artificially generated radio waves, perhaps contain a message in a cosmic bottle? - A message of interest to those who seek out new life and new civilizations.

SETI (Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence) scientists search for ET’s intelligent messages in the radio spectrum; and also in the visible region of the electromagnetic spectrum. Should they, despite the inherent difficulties, take the opportunity to analyse gamma-ray bursts for a signal in the gamma radiation noise? If they in fact they already have been examined for a signal I’m unaware of it or any such analysis and conclusions. It’s those unexpected and short-lived aspects that make gamma-ray SETI difficult in the extreme. It’s like sometime in the next 24 hours, on just one radio station, in some unspecified part of the world, lasting for only ten seconds, you will hear a voice. Good luck picking it up.

Gamma-ray bursts were discovered accidentally by the Vela series of satellites. The Vela satellites were sent up by the Americans to keep tabs on those naughty commies and to make sure they didn’t violate the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. The Vela satellites indeed picked up one of the telltale signatures of atmospheric nuclear explosions (gamma-rays), except they weren’t coming from Terra Firma or within our atmosphere, but somewhere out there – way, way, way out there. Though first detected in 1967, the anomalous nitty-gritty details weren’t made public until about six years later – well these after all were top secret military spy-in-the-sky satellites.

Anyway, it was quickly realized that these cosmic gamma-ray bursts were coming from really, really far away. They weren’t sourced locally; they weren’t sourced at interplanetary distances, or even at interstellar distances. They were happening in galaxies far, far away, so far, far away that they happened a long, long time ago too (since it takes electromagnetic radiation, of which gamma-rays are a part thereof, finite times to cross finite distances). To cross such vast distances with such energy intensities suggested that gamma-ray bursts were not akin to a galaxy what a firecracker is to Planet Earth. Rather, it was more a galactic case of, well a terrestrial super-duper nuclear explosion on Planet Earth. 

Now gamma-rays are very high energy electromagnetic photons, more energetic than ultraviolet and X-rays. Even before the detection of those intergalactic gamma-ray bursts, we knew about gamma-rays since they are a natural product of electron – positron annihilation and of some radioactive decay processes.

So much for some background on gamma-rays and astronomical bursts of gamma radiation, how might that apply to SETI? Let’s assume that there is at least one highly advanced technological extraterrestrial civilization somewhere out there, who wishes to draw attention to themselves via a signal of some sort (which is not quite the same thing as actual one-on-one communication).  That desire might be akin to a more relevant terrestrial analogy like an anonymous show-off graffiti artist – “here I am; I exist”. How would, or at least could, our ET do it?

Now what’s the biggest cosmic bang advertisement for your buck you can get? My understanding would be matter-antimatter annihilation. If an electron meets a positron, you get a gamma-ray. So, I wonder whether the rather anomalous and unpredictable gamma-ray bursts that are somewhat common, but not too common in the cosmos, might, or at least some of them might, be artificially created by that highly technological extraterrestrial civilization or perhaps, if plural, those extraterrestrial civilizations. An alien ‘message’ (as it were) or signal, in plain sight.

Here’s another possible scenario. Say once upon a time, billions of years ago, you had various, even numerous, high-tech extraterrestrial civilizations in various galaxies. In the classification scale of ET civilizations they would fall somewhere between a Type II (mastery of the energy output of a stellar object) and a Type III civilization (mastery over the energy resources of an entire galaxy). They shared information (‘communication’ in real time being out of the question due to the intergalactic distances involved) via radio waves, laser beams, etc. It’s efficient to send an electromagnetic packet of info in a tightly compressed, and short-lived, burst. In-person travel to and on-site visitations, possible in interplanetary and interstellar scenarios, are impossible when it comes to intergalactic scenarios. The distances are just too vast.

Now, Cosmology 101, the expanding universe, tells us that most galaxies are moving away from most other galaxies. To keep intergalactic ‘communications’ or data sharing viable over the long term, you need to shout louder as time goes by; as your neighbouring or nearby galaxies gets farther and farther away from you. Gamma-ray bursts are ‘louder’ than most other energetic phenomena in the Universe. The basic data sending principle is the same. If you can use light waves or radio waves, etc. to send a message, why not a gamma-ray?

The drawback is that this is really high-energy expenditure. But, if you are a Type II or Type III civilization, ‘burning’ this amount of energy is akin to a billionaire lighting a match.

Now the odds are very high that in all probability, gamma-ray bursts are a totally natural phenomenon, albeit still a very mysterious one. But, you never know. I think it premature to rule out ET, at least until such time as we have a better grounding in the theory behind them and/or do a detailed analysis of a typical gamma-ray burst happening looking for some signal in the cosmic noise but not finding any.