Chemistry Is Weird

Despite the fact that most of us were exposed to the subject in high school, I’d wager that 99.99% of us don’t give a passing moments thought to the reality in our world, the reality which makes you, you – chemistry. Yet, even if you did chemistry in high school, you probably never gave a passing moments thought to how weird chemistry really is. Weirdness aside, chemistry works. We all rely on that, except when it comes to the chemistry that rules the roost of that brain thingy of yours.

Chemistry is really weird if you stop and think about it. The basics from the ground up, those fundamental constituents, protons, neutrons and electrons, have the properties of charge, mass and spin and presumably exist in a solid state at STP (standard temperature and pressure) or otherwise. In other words, they have none of the properties, apart from mass, associated with any of the properties associated with the chemical elements (like being other than a solid, liquid or gas at STP (standard temperature and pressure); having colour;

Given those elementary particles, if you start to pile them up, well charge plus charge equals a greater or lesser overall charge; mass plus mass equals more mass; spin plus spin – well I’m not sure spin is a property that can be added or subtracted.

If it could be so arranged, but we’ll make it so since this is a thought experiment, a baseball-sized collection of electrons or neutrons or protons at STP would obviously have mass, and a lot of electric charge in the case of protons and electrons. But what would the colour be? What would it taste like? What would it smell like? What would it feel like? These are unanswered and probably unanswerable questions.

But assemble these fundamentals in various combinations and all of a sudden you do get all of the elements with their associated colours and tastes and so on. That’s a bit weird for starters.

How many atoms of gold (for example but any other element would do) have to come together or be assembled before you have the properties of gold? It surely has to be more than one atom worth surely. 

But even weirder is when you start to combine the various elements with associated properties into molecules that have properties totally unlike the parent elements. You have hydrogen and oxygen as dry gases at STP that make water which is wet and liquid at STP. Silicon is a solid at STP and Carbon is a solid at STP, and Oxygen is a gas at STP, but Carbon Dioxide is a gas at STP whereas Silicon Dioxide (sand) is a solid at STP, yet Carbon and Silicon are like mother and daughter in terms of similarity. Then you have Chlorine, a poisonous yellow gas at STP, and Sodium, which is a solid shiny metal at STP, and volatile enough such that if you swallow any you will really do yourself a very serious mischief. However, Sodium Chloride is just pure table salt and a compound your body requires to survive and thrive!

Carbon isn’t a poison, Oxygen you can breathe, but you’d die in a pure Carbon Dioxide environment, or even in a pure Carbon Monoxide environment.

All of chemistry is deterministic and predictable, both inorganic and organic, with the apparent exception of brain chemistry, which I’ll get to shortly. 

You’d think chemistry would be straightforward, but chemistry can act in rather weird, even unpredictable ways. I mean, if you have an atom of Sodium and an atom of Chlorine, you get a straight-forward molecule of table salt (salty). If you have two atoms of Hydrogen and one atom of Oxygen you get, in a straightforward fashion, a molecule of water at STP (wet). Combine Carbon, Oxygen and Hydrogen in a certain way and you get sugar (sweet). Another arrangement can give you chlorophyll (green).

Now how is this weird? Well, the basic constituents, protons, electrons and neutrons aren’t salty, wet, sweet or green. Sodium and Chlorine atoms aren’t salty; table salt is salty. Oxygen and Hydrogen atoms aren’t wet at STP; water is wet at STP. Carbon, Oxygen and Hydrogen atoms aren’t sweet; sugar is sweet. The constituent atoms comprising the chlorophyll molecule (Carbon, Oxygen, Hydrogen, Nitrogen and Magnesium) aren’t green; chlorophyll is green. 

So how do the properties of saltiness, wetness, sweetness, greenness, arise from those constituents that don’t have those properties? It’s not quite as strange as getting something from nothing or something happening for no reason at all, but nevertheless IMHO something’s screwy somewhere. And enigmas like these all lead back to that most fundamental of all issues – what is reality?

Or take another case – Carbon. You’d think Carbon is Carbon is Carbon, but no. Carbon can be charcoal or coal; Carbon can be graphite; Carbon can be a diamond. The various properties of these substances, all just Carbon, drastically differ. Chemistry is indeed weird.

Let’s re-ask the question: How do properties (like charge, spin, mass or presumably being either a solid liquid or gas depending on how you vary temperature and pressure) that all matter (like the fundamental particles, the building blocks of atoms/elements, in turn the building blocks of molecules/compounds) has, morph into properties that only some kinds of matter have, like sweetness, transparentness, hardness, colour, malleability, etc. or properties drastically different from their constituents – like two gases making a liquid.

I’ll just note here that while the fundamental particles, the atoms/elements and molecules/compounds have specific properties, composites like humans do not. The human body for example is collectively a solid, a liquid and a gas. Actually I don’t even tend to think of the human body as an organism but rather a colony composed of billions of micro-organisms, both the cells that make you up as well as all those other microbes that your body plays host to. But that’s an aside.

Speaking of the human body, the body (including the brain and therefore the mind) is one huge chemical processing factory. What goes in is not the same as what comes out!

When it comes to the most of your bodily bits and pieces, your body chemistry is pretty damn deterministic. You breathe in Oxygen and out will come Carbon Dioxide. If you eat X today, your digestive juices process it in the same way as when you ate X the week before. You expect your liver chemistry to detoxify those beers you had with the boys last night. If you take medication, whether it is prescription or self prescribed, you count on the fact that X + Y = Z yesterday, today and tomorrow. If your doctor prescribes various blood and/or urine tests, there’s an extremely high degree of expectation that the results of those tests will exhibit enough absolute certainty for the doctor to then follow-up on, and you will have confidence in that follow-up.

The brain is just a soup vat of chemicals, organic chemicals and bio-chemicals, but chemicals all the same. Therefore anything and everything rooted within the confines of the brain is rooted in chemistry. 

But it is absolutely amazing what chemistry can accomplish when it is part and parcel of your brain chemistry. Things don’t seem quite as deterministic then. Your brain chemistry holds sway over your sensory inputs, memory, desires, emotions, creativity, etc. and we know that those sorts of attributes in humans can be pretty unpredictable.

Still, perhaps one afternoon you smell (sensory input) your next door neighbour’s southern fried chicken cooking which then triggers off a whole potful of internal responses, all triggered in turn by your brain chemistry. The chain reaction might start off by all of a sudden feeling hungry (desire) then remembering (memory) that frozen chicken you have in the freezer and how it has been quite a while since you had a good finger-lickin’ chicken dinner but you’ll need to pop into the corner store to pick up some of those 57 herbs and spices. But then you get an inspiration (creative thought) to stuff the chicken as you would a turkey and forgo the Colonel’s secret recipe, even though you get all teary-eyed (emotions) when you recall how your significant other proposed to you at your local KFC outlet following the senior prom: all that from what’s basically just chemicals doing their chemical thing.  

If you recall something (as per the above example), presumably matter and energy are interacting since there’s no such thing as a free lunch. You don’t get something, in this case memory recall, for nothing – at no cost to you. But how can chemistry result in memory? Chemicals are products. Chemical reactions (those matter-energy interactions) produce new chemical products. Does that make memory a product (and ditto all those other nebulous mental ‘products’ like emotion, desire, morality, and creativity)? Computer memory recall isn’t chemistry of course – there aren’t any chemical reactions going on in your PC – but rather physics (energy expenditure moving electrons around, etc.) Anyway, laptops (to date anyway) don’t have those other nebulous human (and animal) traits like emotion, desire, morality, and creativity that are presumably chemistry driven. But there is more to the anomalies of brain chemistry that just equating a memory or creativity with a chemical, if in fact the two can be equated at all.

Actually I can’t accept the proposition that a molecule (however complex) can equal a memory or be a new creative idea. There must be trillions and trillions of unique memories and creative thoughts (that probably become memories) stored within the brains of the collective of human and animal societies, yet that number would vastly outnumber the possible combos of types of molecules available. It would appear that there has to be more to memory and creativity than just chemistry – it would appear so, but is it so? 

How is it that you can ‘train’ your brain chemistry to wake you up at a certain time – no alarm clock – and it doesn’t matter what time you went to sleep and how many hours of sleep you actually had? How is it that your brain chemistry likes one piece of music but not another piece, or how you can turnoff liking a particular piece of music that used to be your favourite, or type of food, or type of animal – the list is endless. How can your brain chemistry remember X one day, but not the next day? Presumably that creative thought you had today could have been thought of yesterday but wasn’t – same brain, same chemistry (apparently), different results. How does your chemistry-driven feelings for your better half change over time? How come your brain chemistry can result in sexual arousal from viewing one image but not from another image? And it’s not just human brain chemistry either. Given seemingly identical circumstances, my cats will not of necessity perform identical actions. I’m sure there is a logical chemically driven deterministic explanation, except that it’s all so complex and interwoven that it gives more the appearance of indeterminacy and free will. If 99.99% of chemistry is deterministic, I’m sure brain chemistry will prove to be also.



Radioactive Decay And Causality

We’re all frightened by radioactivity. We associate it with high level nuclear waste; atomic weapons and the mass destruction of nuclear war; Hiroshima and Nagasaki; Three Mile Island and Chernobyl; radioactive fallout that causes cancer and biological mutations. What I’m most frightened about radioactivity is that there is no rational scientific explanation for it! That’s probably because radioactivity resides within the realm of quantum physics, and there’s no rational scientific explanation for that either.

In high school science classes, we are told about a class of elements that have nuclei that are unstable; these are the radioactive elements and they emit radioactivity – Alpha, Beta and Gamma radiation. This emission is their attempt to go from an unstable state to a less unstable state and eventually to a stable state. This progression happens at a fixed mathematical progression termed the element’s half-life. In class you get an awful lot of the what – what decays; what are the daughter products; what is the measured half-life; what is the significance, etc. But you don’t get very much, if any, explanations as to the how and the why of events. That’s probably because any attempt to actually explain and how and the why of radioactivity ends up as pure bovine fertilizer.

There are two main anomalies here. Firstly, why would two identical unstable particles in the exact same environment will decay or go poof at different times; secondly why any collection of identical unstable particles will decay or go poof while marching to the beat of a mathematical drum.

DESCRIPTION

Radioactive Decay: We all know about radioactivity (nuclear fission) and how some atomic nuclei are unstable and will at some point decay into more stable forms. So far; so good. The first issue is that nobody can predict when any particular unstable nuclei will go poof. There is no ultimate reason why one nucleus will go poof in five minutes and its next door neighbour won’t poof over the next five hundred years. There is no apparent causality involved. That alone is “Twilight Zone” stuff, but wait, there’s more. As we learn in high school, though the why is never explained, unstable (radioactive) nuclei decay or go poof in a fixed mathematical way, known by the phrase called the “half-life”.  An example would be if half of the unstable nuclei went poof in one year; one half of what remains unstable goes poof during the next year; one half of what is still unstable decays in the third year; one half of what remains after that goes poof in the fourth year, and so on down the line until all the unstable nuclei have gone poof. So if you start in the beginning with say sixteen million unstable nuclei, after one year there’s still eight million unstable nuclei; after two years there’s four million left to go; after three years two million still haven’t gone poof; after four years one million; one year later there’s still a half million left, and so on and so on.

On a human level, apart from the nasties given in the abstract, radioactivity provides an abundant energy supply without any greenhouse gas emissions as well as a ways and means of dating historical events. On a cosmic level, radioactive decay turns complex unstable parent nuclei into simpler stable daughter nuclei by emitting Alpha, Beta and Gamma radiation, the former two being nothing more exotic than helium nuclei (the Alpha) and electrons (the Beta). Gamma radiation is best avoided since it is extremely high energy photons that can do your body a mischief.

STANDARD EXPLANATIONS

The standard quantum model attributes radioactivity or radioactive decay to a magical phenomenon called Quantum Tunnelling. Translated, radioactive decay happens for absolutely no reason whatsoever. There is no causality. There is no cause and effect. Things go poof – well, things just go poof.

To get your head around the concept of Quantum Tunnelling, imagine one hundred convicts milling around a prison courtyard with twenty foot walls and no external exits. Then, for no obvious reason, fifty of those convicts vanish from inside the courtyard just to reappear somewhere outside the courtyard, and hence quickly make themselves scarce. One second they are confined within the prison walls; one nanosecond later they are scattering in all directions heading for the hills. They have tunnelled their way past the prison courtyard wall without actually physically doing any tunnelling! The escaped convicts in this analogy are of course those bits and pieces confined (or imprisoned) in the quantum realm, the Alpha, Beta and Gamma radiation part and parcel of radioactive decay. 

In the quantum realm, though the nuclei might be unstable, the bits and pieces are held in place by an energy barrier, the equivalent of the twenty foot prison courtyard wall. In the macro world, they don’t have enough energy to clear the barrier, just like a long fly ball that doesn’t have enough oomph to clear the outfield fence and become a homerun – it’s just a long out. But in the micro realm, for reasons nobody comprehends, the unstable and restless-to-escape bits of the unwieldy unstable nuclei can cheat and tunnel past the energy barrier even though they don’t have sufficient theoretical oomph to do so. Not only can they quantum tunnel through, when they do they so instantaneously. And there’s no rhyme or reason behind it. There’s no causality. One second they are inside the radioactive nucleus; the next nanosecond after they are free as a bird and outward bound.

Not that in and of itself is absurd, but absurdity is piled upon absurdity when you consider that the ‘convicts’ don’t escape not only for no reason, but they do so in a precise military precision or mathematical sort of way. So our one hundred convicts become fifty in one hour; then twenty-five of those remaining ‘tunnel’ to freedom in the next hour; thirteen of those twenty-five vanish through the wall in the third hour; six of the remaining twelve head for the hills during the fourth hourly interval; three more go walkabout in the fifth hour; two more vanish in the sixth hour; and the last one standing makes an unexplainable vanishing act in the seventh hour, leaving the prison courtyard in a pristine and very stable state indeed without an inmate in sight. 

How can you have both a total lack of causality AND maintain such military or mathematical (half-life) precision? It’s pure bovine fertilizer.  

PROBABILITY vs. CAUSALITY

The standard model suggests that radioactive decay happens for no apparent reason at all since Quantum Tunnelling happens for no apparent reason at all. It’s all pure probability, even if it dances to a precise military/mathematical tune. The idea that Quantum Tunnelling is just pure probability yet results in a really neat graph when plotted goes rather against the grain of common sense.

Dealing with radioactive decay, well we (the observers) say the odds (probability) that an unstable atomic nucleus will go poof in say one hour (just a measure of time which is a human concept) is 50/50. Actually, it’s 100% certainty if you replace “one hour” with the phrase “sooner or later”. There is no actual probability involved. Now let’s go up one level. Each kind of unstable atomic nuclei, be it uranium (U-235 or U-238), plutonium (Pu), Technetium (Tc), Radon (Rn), Radium (Ra) and all those normally non-radioactive elements that have unstable isotopes, like radioactive carbon (C-14), and many others too numerous to mention, has its own unique half-life. That in itself tells you that causality must be operating. All differing nuclei are only different because they have different numbers of protons and neutrons that comprise them. Yet each, say U-235 nuclei, has the exact same number of protons and neutrons. That’s what makes U-235, U-235. That’s causality, not probability. And U-235 has a specific and unique half-life. That’s causality, not probability. The fact that differing configurations of protons and neutrons result in differing half-lives, and any one unique configuration results in one unique half-life, tells you that things are not random. Causality is operating; certainty follows. I have no idea what is the causality behind Quantum Tunnelling, only that I’m certain there is one.

DISCUSSION

Now IMHO that radioactive half-life decay progression makes absolutely no sense. If nuclei go poof for no reason at all, all those that go poof should do so in a totally random fashion – no fixed pattern. Since there is a fixed pattern that suggests to me that the unstable nuclei have to ‘know’ about this half-life obligation they are required to follow. They are self-aware enough to know when it is their turn to suicide (decay) in order to keep up appearances; maintain the quantum social order, and keep the half-life relationship valid.   

Regarding Quantum Tunnelling, well firstly this violates Einstein’s cosmic speed limit – the velocity light travels in a vacuum. That’s because any gap instantaneously crossed by a particle undergoing Quantum Tunnelling – well, instantaneously means infinity and infinite velocity is greater than the speed of light.

Even scientist and science writer Marcus Chown described quantum tunnelling as “The apparently miraculous ability of microscopic particles to escape from their prisons”. When a scientist starts invoking miracles, you know something is weird!

Presumably if it wasn’t for that energy barrier holding together the bits and pieces of nuclei, stable or unstable, everything within would escape all at once and the micro world would go to hell in a hand-basket, just like if there were no prison walls all the convicts would flee in the immediate here and now. But if that energy barrier (or prison wall) could be breached (via Quantum Tunnelling) the question arises, if the ‘convicts’, macro or micro, can dematerialise and rematerialise elsewhere instantaneously, why don’t they all escape at the same time?

And I fail to see how invoking the wave property nature of elementary particles helps any since that would apply equally to stable and unstable (radioactive) nuclei. The wavelength would be larger than the nucleus, or in our analogy, the convict would be so spread out such that they would be larger than their prison courtyard. Everything, all the bits and pieces in each and every nuclei, should break out and break apart and escape immediately.  

When it comes to radioactivity, apparently nothing chemical or physical can be done that will alter the nature of that radioactivity. Something that’s unstable, radioactive, will decay when it damn well feels like it. You can boil it in oil, sledgehammer it, soak it in acid, swear at it, even invoke the name of Jesus and it won’t alter anything. That in itself is more than just a little bit anomalous – not the Jesus bit but the fact that nothing you can do to an unstable nucleus in any chemical or physical shape manner or form will cause it to decay before it feels like it. 

SUMMARY

Enigma number one is why two identical non-living things in an absolutely identical environment should individually act as something possessing free will, which is acting with seemingly minds of their own. That’s just plain bizarre. If they don’t have self-awareness, and it’s absurd to suggest that subatomic nuclei have consciousness, then the alternative is that things happen for absolutely no reason at all. That’s also just plain bizarre. Further heading into “The Twilight Zone”, well the mathematical half-life behind the concept of the decay of unstable radioactive nuclei is just not the sort of natural behaviour that you’d expect. All unstable nuclei of the same type and in the same environment should all go poof at nearly, if not exactly, at the same moment. They don’t. That too is an enigma, IMHO.

A Quantum Pane In The Glass: Part Two

In quantum physics, you may deduce that those residents of the micro realm, those elementary particles, have some very strange properties bordering on a quasi-free will.  They seemingly have the ability to ‘know’ things about their external world and their relationship to that and make decisions and act accordingly. There are experiments to back this up that include an observation you can make at home to verify this. Look outside your window. What do you see? A very big mystery is what you see, if your window is anything like my window or most windows.

Continued from yesterday’s blog...

CAUSALITY & CERTAINTY vs. PROBABILITY & CHANCE

I need state the obvious here – all photons are identical; the pane of glass in question is obviously identical to itself. Therefore, knowing that and only that, one could only conclude that when photon meets window pane, one and only one outcome is possible.

We, the observer say the photon has such and such a probability of going through, or being reflected from, the pane of glass. If seven out of ten photons go through the glass window, then there’s a 70% probability the next photon will go through. Wrong. As far as that photon is concerned, we, the observer, are irrelevant, and it’s 100% certain to either go through the glass or be reflected by the glass. We can be pretty damn sure that a group of photons won’t gather together in the middle of the glass pane and do an impromptu performance of a Wagnerian opera. There’s no probability involved. It’s one or the other. There’s no superposition of state. The photons aren’t in two places at once – passing through and being reflected.

Another way we can be sure causality is operating, albeit going up one level, is that every time you go to the inside of your window pane looking outside, you see both outside and a faint reflection of you and the interior. Not once in a while; not sometimes 100% outside and no reflection; not sometimes a 100% reflection but you can’t see outside (your window isn’t a mirror after all), but 100% of the time, each and every time, you see both the exterior outside the pane and the interior reflected inside the pane. 

SUMMARY, DISCUSSION & RESOLUTIONS

In summary here, some photons from the inside pass through a pane of glass to the outside; some outside photons pass through that glass to the inside; some photons from the inside reflect off the glass back inside and some outside photons reflect off the glass back outside. The big question is, how does the photon decide what to do? Here comes Ms. Photon heading toward the pane of glass. She has to make up her mind whether to pass on through or reflect back: decisions, decisions. To reflect, or not to reflect, that is the question! IMHO, photons should all go through, or all reflect, from the same pane of clear glass at the same time.

We note from the outset that the glass hasn’t been tinted or polarized – not that that would alter the general picture. What we have here is just an ordinary pane of glass.

Further, no external forces are apparently at work here. Both the photons and the glass are electrically neutral. Gravity plays no role and the strong and the weak nuclear forces are only applicable inside atomic nuclei.

To make a long story shorter, causality rules IMHO! Photons are not in a state of superposition; they are not in two places at the same time. Clearly photons are not in a position to ‘know’ anything. Photons have no decision-making apparatus; they have no consciousness of any kind, no free will to be or not to be. That can be demonstrated by adding a little extra thickness and/or density and/or energy.

But first, one could easily suggest that since even seemingly ‘solid’ stuff is 99.999% empty space, that a photon passing through the glass is passing through that entire void, and a photon reflected has hit a glass molecule and bounced back. One exception to that is that the reflection takes place at the surface of the glass pane, none from the interior of the glass. A second exception would be that reflections off of a solid molecular bit in the mainly empty glass pane would be totally scattered in many directions which is what we don’t see. Basic optics – the angle of incidence equals the angle of reflection. Yet clearly if photons are being reflected, they are bouncing off something. Or, perhaps they are being absorbed by the electrons within the glass matrix and then reemitted, though the photon that’s reemitted might not be the exact same photon – but that’s of no consequence since all photons are identical.    

We note that the greater the thickness or the greater the density the more the pass through to reflection ratio changes. If you look through the exact same pane of glass, but this time edgewise, no photons pass through from one edge to the other edge. The X-ray case study above shows the role of increasing density. Both are an illustration that ultimately things become so thick and/or so dense that while there might not be total reflection, there would be any pass though either. The option for the photon might then be reflection vs. partial penetration. Of course that in itself doesn’t explain the either this or that option the photon takes, at least until such time that it becomes one or the other. In a vacuum it’s 100% pass through and 0% reflection; in the case of a metre thick lump of lead, a light photon will 100% reflect and 0% pass through. Restrictions placed in the photon’s way by density and thickness just tends to confirm an earlier notation that stuff is 99.999% void such that pass through equals boldly going through that void; reflection is a collision with that rare bit of stuff that sometimes gets in your way.

But that’s not the entire story. Thickness is also related to opaqueness though they are not the same thing. Photons can pass through Earth’s entire atmosphere from the fringes of outer space to ground level, yet if you dab a smear of black paint on your pane of glass, well that will strop the photons from passing through albeit black paint is a lot less thick than the Earth’s atmosphere.

Energy plays a role too. X-ray photons are more energetic than visible light photons, which is why X-rays are better for detecting structural flaws (like tooth cavities and bone micro-fractures) which are concealed by external surfaces which are opaque to light.

Air and glass are transparent to light photons, but are generally fairly opaque to the less energetic infrared photons. That’s the general principle or concept behind both the botanical greenhouse and the environmental greenhouse effect, although in the later case not all the components found in air are equally as opaque.

Ultimately invoking variations in properties like density, thickness, energy levels and opaqueness doesn’t totally explain why identical particles, with all other factors being equal too, have this Jekyll and Hyde property whereby some do and some don’t; some will and some won’t.

But we see that while things aren’t totally explained yet, we’re well on the way to determining the real factors that decide the photon’s fate, and it’s not photon’s free will either. 

A Quantum Pane In The Glass: Part One

In quantum physics, you often deduce that those residents of the micro realm, those elementary particles, have some very strange properties bordering on a quasi-free will. They sort of possess a ‘mind’ of their own. They seemingly have the ability to ‘know’ things about their external world and their relationship to that. They make decisions with respect to those relationships and act accordingly. They are not just little inert billiard balls. There are observations to back this up that include an observation you can make at home to verify this. Look outside your window. What do you see? A very big mystery is what you see, if your window is anything like my window or most windows.

Even if you don’t know or understand very much about quantum mechanics, or quantum physics (same difference), you have probably associated it with weirdness. Unlike the certainty and causality domination of your day-in and day-out macro world, the realm of the quantum is centred on probability, chance and randomness where things happen for absolutely no reason at all and identical scenarios will yield different results. One oft given example you can (and have) witnessed – how light (photons) interacts with a common pane of window glass.

GENERAL DESCRIPTION

Here is a common happening that you have experienced at home or in the office or in the car that you probably never gave a second thought to. That unregistered oddity you experienced is seeing the reflection of AND the passing through of light waves (photons) with respect to a pane of glass simultaneously. What’s so odd about that? Well, what’s odd is that light is both passing through and reflecting from the same pane of glass at the same time. Why both? Why not one or the other scenario? What’s odder still, assuming you are inside, is that not only can you see your reflection or the reflection of what’s in your background but what’s also outside and through your own reflection. You see your reflection and the outside image, both superimposed on top of each other. So photons are both passing through the glass (you can see the outside while you are inside) from the outside to the inside and at the same time reflecting from the inside to the inside (you can see the inside from the inside) both happenings at the same spot on the glass.

And if you go outside the reverse is also true. The outside is partly reflected by the glass surface back to you while you are outside looking in while at the same time light photons from the inside are passing through the entire glass so you can see inside your room though you are standing outside, both inside and outside as superimposed images.

Further, the ratio of pass through to reflection also depends on the thickness of the glass, so presumably the photon ‘knows’ in advance what that thickness is and acts accordingly. If all of that doesn’t strike you as odd, nothing will, though it’s so commonplace it probably doesn’t strike you as odd.

OTHER EXAMPLES

This ‘do I or don’t I’ oddity doesn’t just apply to panes of glass. This applies to a wide range of transparent, even translucent stuff. The same pass through vs. reflect back applies for example to your eyeball. Some photons enter your eye and deliver their message; some photons hit the identical spot but are reflected back, but can then hit a mirror and reflect back again this time entering your eye so that you see your eye that reflected in the mirror.

Speaking of eyes, you can ‘see’ an external bright light even with your eyelids shut, yet some of the light is also being reflected off the external surface of your eyelids.

Sunglasses are another obvious example. You can see your reflection in the outer side of the lenses, but clearly the sunglasses let through without any obstruction photons too.

You can see your reflection in still water and the bottom beneath the surface too if the water is pretty clear and the bottom is fairly shallow. This should also apply to say a polished diamond or other similar gemstones or crystal(s).

Another visual example – you see sunlight reflected off of the tops of clouds when in an aircraft that’s flying above them. As you descend through them and land, though the day is now overcast, clearly some sunlight photons are passed through the clouds. It’s the same clouds; and the same sunlight; and the same observer; but differing outcomes. So the pass through vs. reflection enigma applies equally to translucent objects (like clouds) too.

Though this is an obviously visual puzzle, well that in itself is obvious since we can only see visible light photons. However, photons come in a wide range of forms, from ultraviolet to radio; infrared to microwave; gamma rays to X-rays. Presumably this pass through vs. reflection phenomena takes place with non-light photons too. The most obvious example is that radio, TV or cell phone reception tends to be better outside than inside – one reason for your TV aerial or antenna. So, some radio/TV/cell phone photons are reflected off of the outside of your solid building but some pass through too, but this has nothing to do with frequency or wavelength since these transmissions are on a very narrow bandwidth.

In a similar vein, it’s been advocated for decades that the ideal location to do radio astronomy and/or SETI, searching for alien radio signals, is on the far side of the Moon because the Moon’s bulk is 100% opaque to terrestrial and human generated radio signals that just add unwanted noise to the signals the astronomers are looking for.

One clue that the pass through vs. reflection conundrum must be density related, not just thickness related, comes from X-rays. We’ve all seen X-ray photos of the human hand. The bones stand out; the wedding ring more so, but the flesh is visible too though less so. So some X-ray photons were reflected, greater reflection related to the density of the stuff the X-ray photon was hitting. Yet clearly some X-ray photons passed through since the image of the fleshy bits isn’t as strong as the bones and the bones weren’t as solid an image as the ring. Yet it was the exact same X-ray dose that hit all three substances – flesh, bone and metal.  

THE STANDARD SOLUTIONS

The basic postulate postulated by quantum physicists is that the photon pass through vs. reflection anomaly is an anomaly because it all happens for absolutely no reason at all. It’s all random. It’s all probability. Some photons pass through via the luck of the draw; other photons get reflected by that same random luck of the draw. How is that possible given that we have, in the original example, one identical pane of glass with identical photons impacting? Well, if you don’t invoke causality, you can just about get away with anything anomalous.

The other accepted answer is that any one photon is in a superposition of states. It can be in two places at the same time, so it can both reflect, and pass through the pane of glass at the same time. Either that or the photon has awareness of its external surroundings; it has a mind of its own and decides what it wants to do!

Superposition of state has been experimentally demonstrated via the classic quantum double slit experiment whereby particles, like a photon (but any type of particle will do, like an electron) fired one at a time at two parallel slits, will pass through both slits and thus will interfere with itself and cause a classic wave interference pattern on a target board behind the slits. The only logical conclusion has to be that one particle was in two places at the same time. Personally, I find that absurd, but it’s hard to debate hardcore experimental results.

The one flaw I find in that standard pane of glass situation explanation is that if the photon is in two places at the same time, then both the inside reflected image and the external image – the pass through the glass image – should be equally as vivid. Usually the pass through the glass image is the more obvious of the two superimposed images assuming just one light source, say external sunshine, or the reflected image is the stronger, assuming the prime light source is inside, like say at night.

To be continued…

Virtual Reality: The Simulated Universe: Part Two

There really is a really real cosmos that has spawned an extraterrestrial intelligent civilization, or is home to our future descendents, or contains a dreamer, any of which has created a simulated universe that includes us as virtual reality occupants. In support of this, I postulate that the following are suggestive signs – evidence, not proof – of this idea. It all evolves around my observations that when it comes to the cosmos and human affairs, something is screwy somewhere.

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

THE COSMIC CONNECTION (continued)

* Why are all (spin-up or spin-down) electrons, etc. identical? I mean can you think of many objects that are identical down to the absolute last decimal place? No two of anything apart from elementary force and matter particles are absolutely identical, so why are they the exception to the rule? Even ‘identical’ atoms aren’t of necessity identical (since their electrons can be in different energy states); that’s even more so with molecules (some of which can come in left and right-handed forms). However, you could have a software code of bits and bytes that specifies a spin-up electron so each time and place that code appears, you get an absolutely identical spin-up electron. Simple!

* Why is the vacuum energy, experimentally confirmed, 120 orders of magnitude less than theory predicts? This is in fact the worst discrepancy in all of modern physics. However, software programmers can’t think of everything so when they programmed in the value of the vacuum energy, they neglected to program in the theory that would lead to the observed value. 

* Why in various physical happenings, like radioactivity, is there an abandonment of operational cause-and-effect mechanisms? Causality is the absolute fundamental bedrock of just about anyone’s worldview. You have got to have 100% confidence that if X happens, Y follows. However, there are some areas within physics where that does not apply, like radioactivity. In one case, X happens (or doesn’t happen) and radioactive Y decays; in the other case X happens (or doesn’t happen) and radioactive Y doesn’t decay. It’s like sometimes the Sun rises in the morning and sometimes it doesn’t. Now that’s nuts, and only, IMHO, can a software program create such a scenario.

* Why when it comes to various physical happenings, like the Big Bang event or Dark Energy, are there postulated the creation of something-from-nothing in violation of standard conservation laws? Well, when it comes to virtual reality, if you’ve observed and/or played human-created or software-programmed video games, you’ll note that violations of standard physical laws, principles and relationships are frequently the norm.

* Why do we have physical constants that aren’t – constant that is? Have you ever known any software program not to be upgraded, upgraded, and upgraded some more. Computer software is not exempt from the standard “new and improved” spiel that marketing and advertising executives spew out as often as possible. Any software tweak (improvement) is bound to result in tweaks to the virtual reality that software is projecting.

* Why do waves behave like particles and particles behave like waves (wave-particle duality)? For WTF readers, look up the double-slit experiment. The standard explanation is that when emitted, an electron is a particle. When an electron is detected, it is a particle. In-between emission and detection, the electron is a wave, or actually a wave of probability or probability wave, where probability refers to the possibilities where the electron actually is while in transit. Since it can be in just about an infinite number of places at the same time, well that’s more characteristic of a wave than a particle – a wave is something that’s smeared or spread out over an area. Computer software can easily morph a particle into a probability wave and back to a particle again.

* Against all the odds, why do we find ourselves in a Goldilocks universe? I mean, if any of several dozens of variables had even slightly different values, physics as we know it; chemistry as we know it; hence biology as we know it wouldn’t; couldn’t, exist. The cosmos would either be too this or too that and not just absolutely right. Well, a computer programmer programming virtual reality entities in a simulated universe have got to mesh the two into some form of mutual compatibility.  There’s got to be some consistent logic in the simulation in order for the programmer to have a realistic scenario in which to interact with. Creating entities that are programmed as complex composites of matter and energy thus cannot logically exist in a programmed universe where nuclear forces, for example, haven’t been considered and hence never been programmed in.

* How can one explain the total incompatibly between General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics? Normally General Relativity (gravity) deals in the realm of the macro. Quantum Mechanics deals in the realm of the micro. There’s not usually much overlap. However, there is overlap when it comes to micro volumes with macro gravity – singularities that exist at the heart of Black Holes and at the time of the Big Bang event some 13.7 billion years ago. A definitive theory of quantum gravity, otherwise oft called a Theory of Everything (TOE), has proved elusive to thousands of theoretical physicists over many, many decades (ever since the era where Quantum Mechanics and General Relativity crawled out of the woodwork – the early years of the 20^th Century). Perhaps TOE just wasn’t meant to be. But on the other hand, there could be two separate and independently apart software programs running our programmer’s simulated universe!

* How is it possible that an electron can occupy just this orbit around an atomic nucleus, or just that orbit, but can quantum jump from one to the other (giving off or absorbing energy), yet cannot ever be found in the in-between space between the two? It’s like if you take the orbits of all eight planets (sorry ‘bout that Pluto) and each planet could jump to the orbit of any other (i.e. – Jupiter to Saturn’s orbit; Saturn to the orbit of Venus; Venus to Jupiter’s orbit, etc.) without ever having to cross the interplanetary space in-between. Well, you can imagine a film where the first few frames have Uranus and Neptune in there appropriate orbits, then the next few frames switch the two so that Neptune is in the orbit of Uranus and vice versa, and the next few frames exchange Jupiter’s and Saturn’s positions with that of Neptune and Uranus, and then the next few frames restore everything back to normalcy. The point is, there are no frames showing Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune anywhere except in a standard orbit, never in-between any two standard orbits. Now what a motion picture can show, computer software programming can equally accomplish.

* How can a fundamental electron particle and a composite proton particle have an equal and opposite electric charge? What are the odds that just by chance, the two balance each other out and so you have electrically neutral atoms? Presumably there’s no natural reason why their charge values couldn’t have been vastly different, as for example are their masses (a proton being some 2000 times more massive than an electron). Of course if there was intelligent design behind those values, the intelligence being that of our software programmer, well, that answers that.

* Neutrinos come in three types or a trilogy of generations. There’s the electron-neutrino; the muon-neutrino; and the tau-neutrino. While that’s straightforward enough, apparently as they all wind their way throughout the cosmos they can oscillate or morph or shape-shift from one kind to another. That’s weird! It’s in fact weird enough having three generations of particles without having them constantly exchanging Halloween masks! If the electron, muon and tau exchanged identities here on Earth, it would play havoc with the electric power grid systems (and home appliances). Well, we’ve all seen shape-shifting in the movies or on TV or in video games. Special effects that seemingly violate common sense are standard operating procedures in the entertainment industry.  

* A cyclic universe is more philosophically satisfying than one that just fades away into an eternal cold state where nothing happens and entropy has reached maximum. A simulation can account for a cyclic universe – the software just loops around and around and so again you get another go and another and another and another though in this case not everything that can happen does happen if the software isn’t reprogrammed.

HUMAN AFFAIRS

* Mythologies sharing many, many common themes are absolutely universal throughout all human cultures. Mythologies tend to be interwoven composites of horror, fantasy, and sci-fi featuring all manner of totally implausible entities like human-animal hybrids, animal-animal hybrids, shape-shifters, those with super-human abilities, and populated with other strange humanoids like giants, the Cyclops and the wee people. Then too there’s all manner of otherworldly places from the depths of Hades to the summit of Mount Olympus and that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Of course to us modern humans, there’s nothing strange about faraway places with strange sounding names and monsters and superheroes. There’s no doubt a film playing at your local cinema right now that features some of the above. The upshot is that Mother Nature is hard-pressed to account for what’s featured in nearly all mythologies; a Supreme Programmer just sits back, relaxes and says “run program”.

* Why are ghosts clothed even though they shouldn’t be? Well, there are G-rated video games and then there are X-rated video games and no doubt our Supreme Programmer wanted a family-friendly rating for their “Life and Times of Planet Earth” software program. Thus, though ghosts should be starkers, sensitivities took precedence and thus our virtual reality reveals our ghosts to be suitably dressed for the occasion.

* How can those Easter Island statues walk on their own accord to their assigned positions? How can Superman fly? How can Captain Kirk beam down thanks to Mr. Scott? CGI special effects rule, OK?

* How did our uniquely human characteristics (i.e. – bipedal gait) naturally come to pass? The high number of rather highly improbably human characteristics just begs for an explanation, explanation lacking IMHO from within the academic confines of physical anthropology. A high IQ, baldness, relative nakedness (furless-ness), facial features, and racial features being other examples, can be easily accounted for if we’re the product of someone’s (or something’s) software design; not so easily explained by natural selection (though artificial selection is another possibility).

* Why Déjà vu? Is this phenomenon perhaps a case of run computer program; then rerun computer program? 

* Why is there such universe belief in an afterlife? Apart from the fact that most of us are nervous about trading in our life for a non-life, and therefore we eagerly clutch at any straw that trades in our life for a life-after-death, there’s no rational or logical reason why you should get another go-round following your allotted (roughly) three score and ten. Near death experiences are not convincing evidence of an afterlife since there never seems to be independent witnesses and alterative biochemical explanations are plausible. In other words, nobody who was a normal mortal has ever made an appearance after they kicked-the-bucket to confirm an afterlife. While the clutching-at-straws explanation is probably satisfactory as a be-all-and-end-all that-explains-that, computer software, if it’s responsible for your life, can also be responsible for your afterlife. So, if a universal belief in an afterlife suggests such a concept, then that concept can be accounted for by computer software. 

* How can one explain miracles? Miracles are basically violations of the known laws, principles and relationships that have been established by the scientific method over the past several centuries. In general, miracles are attributed to supernatural beings and their associated powers. However, there’s no problem showing miracles in film, TV and video games. Violations of the known laws, principles and relationships that have been established by the scientific method over the past several centuries are absolutely commonplace in nearly all sci-fi, fantasy or horror productions, from Saturday morning cartoons to epic Hollywood blockbusters. It would be difficult for you to go down to the seaside and part the waters. It would not be difficult for you to create a CGI film of you heading seaside and parting the waters enabling you to walk from New York City to London without getting your feet wet!

* How can one account for cryptozoology where there are sightings of unknown animals yet we have forever and a day an inability to ever catch them?

Now, if all of these anomalies were trivial ones, they could be easily dismissed, but most aren’t. Some, like miracles and the concept of an afterlife are taken very seriously by a significant proportion of the world’s population although there’s no rational explanation for them. A simulated universe can provide a plausible explanation, even more plausible than that other copout, “God works in mysterious ways”.

Virtual Reality: The Simulated Universe: Part One

There really is a really real cosmos that has spawned an extraterrestrial intelligent civilization, or is home to our future descendents, or contains a dreamer, any of which has created a simulated universe that includes us as virtual reality occupants. In support of this, I postulate that the following are suggestive signs – evidence, not proof – of this idea. It all evolves around my observations that when it comes to the cosmos and human affairs, something is screwy somewhere.

THE COSMIC CONNECTION

* If someone (or something) were to create a simulated ‘universe’ called something like “The Life and Times of the Third Rock Outbound from Sol”, in of course incredibly realistic detail, one could probably skimp on the software programming that give rise to the details for the rest of that simulated cosmos – the Universe perceived by the virtual beings of that Third Rock. Why spend unnecessary bits and bytes creating a super realistic Andromeda Galaxy all those ‘light years’ away?

Modern cosmology seems to be at a stage now that the Solar System went through in terms of coming to terms with its construction. Way back then, to explain the motions of all the planets that (obviously) went around the Earth (being the centre of all things), epicycles, and epicycles within epicycles, and epicycles within epicycles within epicycles had to be postulated until the who concept became so unwieldy that it collapsed in a heap. Copernicus picked up the bits and pieces and put the Sun in the centre and put the Earth going around the Sun with all the other (known) planets and then things simplified vastly and all fell into place without the need for any epicycles at all (though Einstein still had some final tweaking to do, but that was minor).

Modern cosmology seems to be full of ad hoc epicycles. We have the observation of an expanding Universe that requires explanation. Epicycle number one, the original explanation – a Big Bang 13.7 billion years ago kick-started things off, though the energy source isn’t explained. That left some anomalies unexplained so ad hoc epicycle number two – a violent super-burst of explosive inflation immediately post Big Bang which apparently can come, like Heinz, in some 57 varieties. Okay, inflation started up and shut down just as quickly but it covers the anomalies that the Big Bang doesn’t. But then comes another anomaly, the expansion rate of the Universe is accelerating, and the collective oomph from the Big Bang and inflation isn’t enough oomph. The Universe should in fact be decelerating under the influence of gravity. So, ad hoc epicycle number three – Dark Energy. Dark Energy provides that keep-on-keeping-on additional oomph and keeps the Universe’s pedal to the metal. Unfortunately, nobody has the foggiest idea what Dark Energy actually is which is strange since Dark Energy should be everywhere, even inside your living room, so it shouldn’t be that hard to gather some up and put it on the lab’s slab and figure it out! 

The Big Bang has a couple of other epicycles attached as baggage. The first one imposed on the Big Bang is entropy, which is a measure of order vs. disorder. Low entropy is orderly; high entropy is disorderly. There are vastly more ways of something being in a state of disorder than order, as any parent knows when it comes to the state of their child’s bedroom. Left to natural forces (including the kid), a neat and tidy bedroom will ‘decay’ into a chaotic mess. That’s also an illustration of the arrow of time. Eggs do not unscramble. Unless you deliberately thwart entropy locally (tidy up the messy bedroom), but at the cost of increasing entropy elsewhere, time goes from neat past to messy future. Like the bedroom, the Universe too has an arrow of time and the Universe too is getting more, more and ever messier as it slides into increasing disorder. That means ‘in the beginning’ (the Big Bang), the Universe started off neat as a pin. But, that doesn’t follow of necessity. Which is more likely – any number of possible disordered piles of bricks and timber, or an orderly constructed house? There are vastly more ways of having an ‘in the beginning’ that was messy than one that was neat and tidy. Yet against all probability, ‘in the beginning’ was pristine. That’s so unlikely that cosmologists have to postulate and accept that ad hoc epicycle of low entropy ‘in the beginning’. 

The Big Bang also requires a epicycle called quantum gravity because existing equations trying to describe the structure and substance of the creation event, crumble into dust when faced with a realm that is (allegedly) tiny (that’s the quantum bit) and yet has immense gravity (a Universe worth of gravity). Unfortunately, to get a theory of quantum gravity requires the marriage between quantum physics and general relativity. The potential bride and bridegroom however are not, and never have been, on speaking terms. So, quantum gravity (that epicycle required for the Big Bang to bang), has remained elusive despite generations of scientific effort trying to figure it out. However, that highly theoretical mathematical concept called string theory can come to terms with quantum gravity, but it has its own ad hoc epicycle burden to bear. String theory requires an additional six spatial dimensions, which IMHO is utter bovine fertilizer. So round and round we go with no actual tail being pinned on the donkey.

But that’s not the end of the ad hoc epicycles. Apparently the galaxies are rotating too fast for the amount of gravity belonging to objects that astronomer’s can see, like stars. The galaxies should have long since flown apart, their stars, planets, dust and gas scattered throughout space. So, ad hoc epicycle number four – Dark Matter. Dark Matter is postulated to have gravity, enough gravity to hold the galaxies together and prevent them from flying apart. Okay, but Dark Matter doesn’t interact with the electromagnetic force (nor apparently the strong nuclear force), so it doesn’t emit or reflect light (or photons of any wavelength) so we can’t see it. Dark Matter is actually invisible matter. Unfortunately, no matter that we can deal with has those sorts of properties. Now like Dark Energy, Dark Matter has go to be present in your living room too so it too shouldn’t be that hard to gather some up and put it on the lab’s slab and figure it out! Now all of that wouldn’t be that serious were it not for calculations that suggest that Dark Energy plus Dark Matter make up 95% of the Universe, and we haven’t a clue what that 95% is.

Resolution: Perhaps all the anomalies that the (standard model) Big Bang, inflation, Dark Energy and Dark Matter have been postulated to explain, are merely examples of lax software programming in filling in the nitty-gritty details of the Universe associated with “The Life and Times of the Third Rock Outbound from Sol”.         

To be continued…

The Trilogy of Universes: Problem Solved

There are three possible universes we inhabit. The first is the Natural Universe where the laws, principles and relations of physics, chemistry and biology rule the roost. The second is the Supernatural Universe where one or more supernatural deities reside and miracles are commonplace and the laws, principles and relationships of science can be overridden or suspended. The third is the Simulated Universe where what we perceive as life, the universe and everything is just programmed software and we are virtual beings in a virtual reality. Now, which one of the three possibilities is the one we can actually call home?

A while back I examined the trilogy of possible universes we could inhabit and examined numerous fundamental or universal beliefs part and parcel of nearly all human societies or cultures with the goal of trying to figure out which universe best explained those universals.

The answer to this dilemma has puzzled me for decades. Both a Simulated and a Supernatural Universe better explained the human belief systems better than a Natural Universe. However, the ultimate solution finally yielded itself. At the time I opted for the Simulated Universe. Here I now go into a bit more detail as to why.

 The solution will come as a surprise to most; it certainly came as a shock to me. What decides the issue, IMHO, are ghosts, animate and inanimate! The Simulated Universe rules, and to show why this is so we need something impossible to account for in the Natural Universe, something which is totally illogical in the Supernatural Universe, but absolutely logical and predictable in the Simulated Universe. Ghosts fit the bill.

Now it is easy to say “ghosts don’t exist” or “I don’t believe in ghosts”, and in fact I haven’t ever seen one and to be honest I don’t ever expect to, but there’s massive amounts of eyewitness testimony to the contrary that needs to be taken into account. It’s the classic standoff between “it can’t be therefore it isn’t” and “I know what I saw”. When it comes to the debate between theory and observation, observation has trumped theory too many times not to be taken seriously. Theorists frequently have to “go back to the drawing board” to take into consideration another bona fide observation that contradicted their theoretical worldview.

What do we know about ghosts according to the “I know what I saw” crowd?

* They have been observed by all societies and all cultures since recorded history began, and no doubt prehistoric humans would have ghostly tales to tell too. The total number of observations now must number in the multi-millions. All of this testimony needs to be taken with more than just a grain of salt. The cultural acceptance of ghosts has been more than adequately demonstrated by the popularity of ghostly happenings related in literature, film, and other art forms.

* Ghosts have been captured on film and other manifestations of a non-visual nature have been recorded as well such as audio recordings, temperature readings, etc.

* Since ghosts can be seen, heard and interact with the environment, they must be products of matter and energy.

* Ghosts are not just animated beings, including animals, but have been observed as phantoms of inanimate objects, something the trilogy of universe options needs to deal with.

* The animated ghosts of Homo sapiens - that is ghosts of former living human beings - are observed dressed, that is clothed.

Okay, how does each one of the given trilogy of potential universes deal in turn with the above?

There is absolutely no way known to any sort of physics, chemistry and biology that’s part and parcel of the Natural Universe that can turn 100% deceased human remains (comprised of matter and energy) into an animated ghost of that person (also comprised of matter and energy). The key is accounting for the fact that the above mentioned deceased human remains, remains. The newly dead body hasn’t decreased by any significant amount of mass (or energy) to account for the newly created material ghost. It’s like generating something out of nothing. The Natural Universe has got to account for millions of observations of that which cannot exist by natural science as we understand it.

You’d think the Supernatural Universe would account for ghosts, after all the Supernatural Universe is the universe of the afterlife, and aren’t ghosts proof of life after death? Problem one is how to account for ghostly visions of purely inanimate objects – you can’t. Problem two is that if ghosts are images of a biological human life form, then that image should be starkers! That image should be appearing in their ghostly birthday suit! Why? It’s the biological entity that died, not the clothes they were wearing, so why the ghostly clothing? If the Supernatural Universe cannot deal or come to terms with ghostly manifestations of inanimate objects like ghost ships, then presumably animated objects like ghostly humans cannot be associated with inanimate accoutrements. That is to say, apart from no clothes, human ghosts shouldn’t still have their tooth fillings, hearing aids, peg legs, artificial hip joints or contact lenses.

To the rescue, the Simulated Universe conquers all.

Why would our Supreme Programmer write software subroutines for ghosts and phantom trains, etc.? Who knows? Why do we incorporate the fantasy elements we do into some of our video game creations? That aside, we might though expect the Supreme Programmer’s virtual reality software to generate ghosts that wear clothes!

But there is a second possibility relating ghosts to a Simulated Universe. Alterations or overwrites of existing software, once written, might not always produce 100% deletions and thus might provide unintended effects, ghostly effects of a previous software’s content.

The fly in the Simulated Universe ointment, the one thing that the Simulated Universe cannot give you, is free will. But there’s no way you can verify you have free will. Let’s just say that philosophers and metaphysics professors have been arguing that point: do you or don’t you have free will, for thousands of years. As the saying goes, “you have to believe you have free will; you have no choice in the matter.” It’s illogical to reject a Simulated Universe just because you firmly believe you have free will. That belief or conviction could easily be the result of the software programming. You wouldn’t be any the wiser. You are programmed to believe what you believe.

Summary

If, and only if, you accept the reality of those human belief systems that lend credibility to “I know what I saw” observations of ghosts and related phantom phenomena then the following are the pluses and minuses that are suggestive of what sort of universe we inhabit.

* Natural Universe: The natural universe, the universe where Mother Nature rules the roost, cannot easily account for universals such as an afterlife, a home for afterlife retirees, animated ghosts, inanimate phantoms and variations on that theme. These concepts cannot be accommodated in Mother Nature’s realm.  

* Simulated Universe: With the sole exception of free will, a Simulated Universe can account for, well, life the universe and everything, and especially animated ghosts with clothes and inanimate phantoms.

* Supernatural Universe: With the exception of animated ghosts who shouldn’t be wearing clothes, and inanimate phantoms, a Supernatural Universe can accommodate everything regarding life, the universe and everything universal. 

When crunch comes to crunch, it seems to be a tossup between a Supernatural Universe (with supernatural deities) and a Simulated Universe (with flesh-and-blood computer programmers). If you’re the end product, does it matter much if it’s a god or a programmer that’s responsible? It’s “In the beginning God created” vs. “In the beginning the Supreme Programmer created”.

Anyway, the choice apparently boils down to free will vs. ghosts. Both a Natural Universe ruled by classical (cause-and-effect) physics and a Simulated Universe can remove free will from any consideration. Ghosts on the other hand have been seen and recorded for thousands of years by millions of people – “I know what I saw”. Ghosts have a greater reality quotient than free will. Therefore, I have to give an extra tick to a Simulated Universe scenario which can give you a believable ghost, but not free will vs. a minus-tick to a Supernatural Universe which cannot give you a believable ghost but a free will that cannot be verified.

However, there’s a philosophical reason as well to choose the Supreme Programmer over the Supernatural Deity. It’s my personal bias that natural is preferable to supernatural, lock, stock and barrel. Ultimately, a Simulated Universe has to be positioned within some form of Natural Universe, a universe where mathematics, physics, chemistry, ‘flesh-and-blood’ biology and all things technological reside. That sort of Natural Universe however may be vastly different to what we think of as our really real Big Bang Natural Universe in the same way as our video game universes often bear only superficial resemblance to the reality inhabited by the human programmer who created that video game in the first place.

If however you reject the ghost-filled Simulated Universe scenario, then you slide on down the steep slope to the Supernatural Universe minus ghostly manifestations option. If you reject the Supernatural Universe, even though it gives you allegedly free will, then it’s down the slippery slope to the ghostly realm of the Simulated Universe. If you reject both in favour of the Natural Universe, then you have a lot of spooky enigmas that require some very deep thought and explanations.

For example, take those massive quasi-human appearing statues found on Easter Island, some of which are as tall as a four storey house and weigh as much as 30 to 40 tons. How did they get from where they were quarried to where they now reside, in a land without the wheel or beasts of burden? Well, according to the natives, the finished multi-ton stone statues apparently walked by themselves from their quarry to their final location! That’s the native’s story# and they are sticking to it, and no, I’m not making this up. These animated statues that ‘walk-by-themselves’ are just an impossibility in a Natural Universe; have no real relevance in a Supernatural Universe but are as easy to account for as “run program” in a Simulated Universe.

In fact anything and everything that violates the known natural order (of physics, chemistry and biology), from magic to miracles, can easily be accounted for as just another subroutine of the virtual reality software programming.

# Heyerdahl, Thor; Aku-Aku: The Secret of Easter Island; Rand McNally & Company, Chicago; 1958.

Theory vs. Observation: Part Two

There’s many a conflict that rages between observation and theory. What is observed cannot be; what cannot be alas is observed. Sceptics, those supporting theory, dump down on those who contradict theory because they witnessed something to the contrary. “It can’t be therefore it isn’t.” The witness dumps down on the sceptic with the statement, “I know what I saw”. Impasse! Perhaps there is a third option, one where both theory and observation can coexist.

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

If you observe something that is impossible, and it really is impossible, and if the observation can’t be faulted, and the impossibility of the theory can’t be faulted, what possible resolution can there be? Well one possibility is that some as yet undiscovered genius marries theory and observation and both live happy ever after. That’s certainly happened before and no doubt will happen again. The other is that there needs be a realm where both theory and observation can illogically both exist, same time; same place. That incompatibly of theory and observation, side-by-side, being ultimately compatible is itself a contradiction. Fortunately, there are such realms apart from Alice’s looking glass wonderland.

Now one such realm is your dreams. Though I haven’t experienced it, apparently dreaming of yourself flying (as in Superman, not as in a aircraft) is a common scenario. You’re not Superman; you can’t fly. Your dreams however provide contrary observational evidence that you did fly. And so something both is (observation), and is not (theoretical logic), at the same time. In your dreams you can accomplish six impossible things before breakfast – that is before you wake up.

Even when wide awake it’s relatively easy to imagine images from within your own wetware (that mind within the brain) that can contradict what you know to be impossible with images of doing just that, like for example pitching a perfect game in the seventh game of the World Series and also hitting the winning home run in the bottom of the ninth inning with thousands of female fans rushing onto the field to (well it’s your imagination so fill in the blank)!

Cinema provides another medium. Well there are Superman movies after all, one with a tag line, if I recall correctly along the lines of “you really will believe a man can fly”. Theory: in space no one can hear you scream, yet you hear (that’s a form of observation) the sound of spaceships battling it out with their photon torpedoes and phasers on the big screen.

Closely related, video games or something cut from the same cloth, computer or other simulations. You’re an astronaut simulating a lunar landing. Oops, you slipped up and crashed on the Moon and should have died, but you didn’t really crash and you most certainly didn’t die. You live to simulate another day. Just about any action-oriented video game (observation) will contain so many massive physics anomalies (theoretical impossibilities) as to cause any physics professor to take up the bottle in despair.

And so, if we have mediums that can reconcile theory and observation though both are incompatible, then who’s to say the contradictions we note and log in ‘real’ life may not be really real at all (well we know they can’t be) but perhaps the result of someone else’s dreams or video games and thus we’re not really real at all either! If we exist in a simulated universe, then, as the song title goes, “Heaven knows, anything goes”.

Let’s assume for the moment that the concept of a simulated universe or a virtual reality is actually via computer software, say something akin to a video game or a simulated reality as used for training purposes.

It’s unlikely that your virtual reality can be the product of quasi current day technology, although it’s possible that some human(s) in the 25^th Century have concocted up a 25^th Century equivalent of an ancient history video game titled 21^st Century Planet Earth. That aside, perhaps the programmer is not human at all but an extraterrestrial! Perhaps that extraterrestrial(s) has inserted itself into our virtual reality as our ‘ancient astronauts’ concept, otherwise known as those mythological polytheistic deities part and parcel of nearly all cultures, but could incorporate the more ‘modern’ monotheistic concept as well.

Anyway, one subset of all those thousands of polytheistic deities are those trickster gods known throughout all polytheistic mythologies. As the name suggest, these were deities who weren’t quite always on the up-and-up, but loved to play tricks, sometimes nasty and malevolent tricks. The bottom line is that trickster gods couldn’t be trusted.

But I can imagine that our virtual reality computer programmer fashions itself in the guise of a trickster god. Such a being would delight in creating our virtual reality that contains all of the anomalies we note and log in our seemingly real reality. What better trick than to create dozens of anomalies along the lines of conflicts between theory and observation; that something can both be and not be at the same time, and having ‘his’ created subjects try to figure it all out! What delicious fun enjoying their befuddlement!

Common or well known trickster gods of ancient mythology include Satan (Christianity), Loki (Norse), Maui (Polynesia), Raven & Coyote (North America), and Eros, Prometheus and Hermes (Ancient Greece).