Freaky Physics Proves Parallel Universes Exist

[SonOfTheGods]

FOX News - never thought I would hear this on Mainstream

http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/04/05/freaky-physics-proves-parallel-universes/

 

Look past the details of a wonky discovery by a group of California scientists -- that a quantum state is now observable with the human eye -- and consider its implications: Time travel may be feasible. Doc Brown would be proud.

 

The strange discovery by quantum physicists at the University of California Santa Barbara means that an object you can see in front of you may exist simultaneously in a parallel universe -- a multi-state condition that has scientists theorizing that traveling through time may be much more than just the plaything of science fiction writers.

 

And it's all because of a tiny bit of metal -- a "paddle" about the width of a human hair, an item that is incredibly small but still something you can see with the naked eye.

UC Santa Barbara's Andrew Cleland cooled that paddle in a refrigerator, dimmed the lights and, under a special bell jar, sucked out all the air to eliminate vibrations. He then plucked it like a tuning fork and noted that it moved and stood still at the same time.

 

That sounds contradictory, and it's nearly impossible to understand if your last name isn't Einstein. But it actually happened. It's a freaky fact that's at the heart of quantum mechanics.

 

How Is That Possible?

 

To even try to understand it, you have to think really, really small. Smaller than an atom. Electrons, which circle the nucleus of an atom, are swirling around in multiple states at the same time -- they're hard to pin down. It's only when we measure the position of an electron that we force it to have a specific location. Cleland's breakthrough lies in taking that hard-to-grasp yet true fact about the atomic particle and applying it to something visible with the naked eye.

What does it all mean? Let's say you're in Oklahoma visiting your aunt. But in another universe, where your atomic particles just can't keep up, you're actually at home watching "The Simpsons." That may sound far-fetched, but it's based on real science.

 

"When you observe something in one state, one theory is it split the universe into two parts," Cleland told FoxNews.com, trying to explain how there can be multiple universes and we can see only one of them.

 

The multi-verse theory says the entire universe "freezes" during observation, and we see only one reality. You see a soccer ball flying through the air, but maybe in a second universe the ball has dropped already. Or you were looking the other way. Or they don't even play soccer over there.

 

Sean Carroll, a physicist at the California Institute of Technology and a popular author, accepts the scientific basis for the multi-verse -- even if it cannot be proven.

"Unless you can imagine some super-advanced alien civilization that has figured this out, we aren't affected by the possible existence of other universes," Carroll said. But he does think "someone could devise a machine that lets one universe communicate with another."

It all comes down to how we understand time.

 

Carroll suggests that we don't exactly feel time -- we perceive its passing. For example, time moves fast on a rollercoaster and very slowly during a dull college lecture. It races when you're late for work . . . but the last few minutes before quitting time seem like hours.

 

Back to the Future

 

"Time seems to be a one-way street that runs from the past to the present," says Fred Alan Wolf, a.k.a. Dr. Quantum, a physicist and author. "But take into consideration theories that look at the level of quantum fields ... particles that travel both forward and backward in time. If we leave out the forward-and-backwards-in-time part, we miss out on some of the physics."

Wolf says that time -- at least in quantum mechanics -- doesn't move straight like an arrow. It zig-zags, and he thinks it may be possible to build a machine that lets you bend time.

Consider Sergei Krikalev, the Russian astronaut who flew six space missions. Richard Gott, a physicist at Princeton University, says Krikalev aged 1/48th of a second less than the rest of us because he orbited at very high speeds. And to age less than someone means you've jumped into the future -- you did not experience the same present. In a sense, he says, Krikalev time-traveled to the future -- and back again!

 

"Newton said all time is universal and all clocks tick the same way," Gott says. "Now with Einstein's theory of Special Relativity we know that travel into the future is possible. With Einstein's theory of gravity, the laws of physics as we understand them today suggest that even time travel to the past is possible in principle. But to see whether time travel to the past can actually be realized we may have to learn new laws of physics that step in at the quantum level."

 

And for that, you start with a very tiny paddle in a bell jar.

 

Cleland has proved that quantum mechanics scale to slightly larger sizes. The next challenge is to learn how to control quantum mechanics and use it for even larger objects. Do so -- and we might be able to warp to parallel universes just by manipulating a few electrons.

"Our concepts of cause and effect will fly out the window," says Ben Bova, the science fiction author. "People will -- for various reasons -- try to fix the past or escape into the future. But we may never notice these effects, if the universe actually diverges. Maybe somebody already has invented a time machine and our history is being constantly altered, but we don’t notice the kinks in our path through time."

 

 

slide show @ link

Edited December 9, 2013 by SonOfTheGods

[manitou]

If one buys into the notion that it's all Mind anyway, how can this not be true? There is something inside me that senses that the parallel universe concept is the way it is, because life is so contingent on mindset; the past, present, future all Here Now. The seeds of tomorrow are planted with mindset today; our fruits today were planted by mindset yesterday. Were my mindset different yesterday, my Now would be otherwise. I see no cement anywhere; only fluidity and a constantly rotating gyro of potentiality.

[Marblehead]

I think that what was proved is that they may exist. But then, they may not exist.

 

We cannot even see beyond this current universe because it is suggested that it is expanding faster than the speed of light, which is the maximum speed of observation.

[BaguaKicksAss]

We have 2 threads on this now btw, might want to check out the other one as well .

[Marblehead]

We have 2 threads on this now btw, might want to check out the other one as well .

I probably said about the same thing in the other thread too.

 

Some people claim that they have proof that aliens have visited this planet. All they have proved is that they may or may not actually believe what they claim.

[SonOfTheGods]

I probably said about the same thing in the other thread too.

 

Some people claim that they have proof that aliens have visited this planet. All they have proved is that they may or may not actually believe what they claim.

 

With the same logic (I could sit on both sides of this debate lol) - prove you are now awake and not dreaming.

 

Or, prove you actually exist, and are not just a random android in my dream.

[Marblehead]

With the same logic (I could sit on both sides of this debate lol) - prove you are now awake and not dreaming.

 

Or, prove you actually exist, and are not just a random android in my dream.

Ha! Hehehe. Well, as I am responding to a post you made on your computer on this board I am pretty sure I am not dreaming because I have never operated a computer in my dreams, which I rarely have anyway. Yeah, I could prove the first one if you were in my physical presence.

 

To the second one, although androids are becoming more human-like I doubt that anyone would create one that would behave as I do. There wouldn't be any useful purpose in that.

 

But yes, some things are very difficult, if not impossible, to prove using the scientific method. However, many people believe things only because others have told them that those things are really true (where in reality they are all false). The amount of proof we need for any belief will be determined by how great our need is to believe.

[SonOfTheGods]

Ha! Hehehe. Well, as I am responding to a post you made on your computer on this board I am pretty sure I am not dreaming because I have never operated a computer in my dreams, which I rarely have anyway. Yeah, I could prove the first one if you were in my physical presence.

 

To the second one, although androids are becoming more human-like I doubt that anyone would create one that would behave as I do. There wouldn't be any useful purpose in that.

 

But yes, some things are very difficult, if not impossible, to prove using the scientific method. However, many people believe things only because others have told them that those things are really true (where in reality they are all false). The amount of proof we need for any belief will be determined by how great our need is to believe.

 

If you ever read some of my earlier threads here, you will see I also tried to burst the "I believe it because science told me that" bubble.

 

Whether the earth was flat or a sphere. of course I know it isn't flat.

 

The gist was just not to assume blindly what "our peers" stick in our faces.

 

The longer they are believed, the harder it is to dispel.

That's why for many. it is impossible for them to let go of religion, because they really need some belief(even if it is a fallacy) - to survive.

A soggy potato chip is better than no potato chip

[Isimsiz Biri]

There are seven parallel universes. We are the third one out of seven.

[Marblehead]

If you ever read some of my earlier threads here, you will see I also tried to burst the "I believe it because science told me that" bubble.

I am with you here. You know that I am a Materialist, right? But I don't blindly accept everything I am told by the scientific community. In most cases I will ask for "show and tell" time. In other words, after I am told something I want someone to show me how it works. If they can't find and define any additional universes then there will remain doubt in my mind.

 

Even the "Big Bang", with all its logical support, is still up for questioning because it can never be shown to be true even though the circumstantial evidence is over-whelming.

 

If a person tells me that a child was born out of a virgin I would naturally question that idea. (Yes, I have pissed some people off by questioning it.)

[Marblehead]

There are seven parallel universes. We are the third one out of seven.

Actually, if I were to accept that there are parallel universes, seven would be the correct number based on my understandings. I haven't even considered which one our is.

 

But, if we can't find the other six there would be now way of dating the age of any of them escept for our own, with the presently accepted age of 13.67 billion years old.

[Isimsiz Biri]

Actually, if I were to accept that there are parallel universes, seven would be the correct number based on my understandings. I haven't even considered which one our is.

 

But, if we can't find the other six there would be now way of dating the age of any of them escept for our own, with the presently accepted age of 13.67 billion years old.

As previously discussed, our planet is 28 billion years old, all the rocks renewed each 7 billion years.

 

Parallel universes exist at the same time. So totally there are seven Marbleheads. I hope the other six are not atheist. :-)

[Marblehead]

Well, I'm still not ready to accept the age of this universe as being 28 billion years old. And I'm not ready to accept the 7 billion year renewal cycle.

 

I will accept the probability that, if there are parallel universes, they do all exist at the same time, just following different physical laws.

 

No, we don't even want to have six more Marbleheads. That somehow needs to be fixed.

[Zhongyongdaoist]

If you understand physics and the history of physics you don't need 'freaky physics' and a big laboratory to understand that there is something funny going on in the world. All you need is Fermat's Principle. Just about everyone has seen this demonstrated many times, the most common observation being that a stick placed in water seems to be bent. These observations go back to antiquity, being noted both by Hero of Alexandria and the astronomer/astrologer Ptolomy. They were formulated by Fermat in the mid-Seventeenth Century into a principle called 'least time', meaning that light always travels in such a way as to take the least time to its 'destination'.

It was noted at the time that there was no proper 'mechanical' explanation for this principle. To quote from the Wikipedia article on Fermat's Principle:

... Fermat's principle can not be the cause, for otherwise we would be attributing knowledge to nature: and here, by nature, we understand only that order and lawfulness in the world, such as it is, which acts without foreknowledge, without choice, but by a necessary determination. (Claude Clerselier)

Which can be found here:

Fermat's Principle on Wikipedia

The Principle of Least Time was generalized in the early Eighteenth Century by Maupertuis as the 'Principle of Least Action'. Two hundred years later George Fitzgerald was to express his dismay with the Principle of Least Action to his friend Oliver Heaviside, complaining that it seemed to make the present depend on future states, which of course implies that the past depends on the present, but Fitzgerald did not mention that. Maybe it hadn't occurred to him. Max Planck was to make observations about photons seeming to possess knowledge and make calculations. In the 1970s Arthur Young was to take these observations and write The Reflexive Universe, a very suggestive book, though perhaps a little too much influenced by the Mahatma Letters and the Cappadocian Fathers and not enough influenced by Plotinus for my taste.

The problem presages later developments in Quantum Physics which arise in the 'double slit' experiment, which you can read about here:

The Double Slit Experiment on Wikipedia

The double slit experiment is one of the prime examples of 'quantum weirdness'.

There is no satisfactory mechanistic explanation for any of this, only one in wave 'mechanics', and for centuries the question of Fermat's Principle was 'solved' by the idea that wave phenomena happen among the myriad light rays reaching the eye creating the phenomena, but the 'single photon' version of the double slit experiment was to shatter that explanation, for it demonstrated that a single photon would act 'as if' it were in company of a mass of waves, even though it was the only one reaching the target any any one time. One possible explanation is the idea that the missing waves exist in multiple surrounding 'realities' which are interfering with each other, trillions of them if not an infinite number of them, but definitely more than seven, and creating the wave phenomena. One can take the simple fact that the stick in the water seems bent as experimental proof for their existence. No 'freaky physics' is necessary.

There are other issues that have came up in the above discussion, such as retro-causality and and apparent calculations being performed and maybe I will address them at another time. All of which would please manitou, but give Marblehead an attack of the conniptions. He wants that old time science, if it was good enough for Nietzsche, it's good enough for him.

However, my fundamental point stands, since the inception of mechanistic materialism in the Seventeenth Century there has been counter evidence that rests on a common everyday observation. The physics of the Twentieth Century all revolves around a phenomena observed and formalized in the Seventeenth Century and the results of Twentieth Century physics can be viewed as a type of Reductio ad Absurdum refutation of mechanistic materialism. QED.

Oh, as a curious side note, ants just love Fermat! Maybe ant nests are even more elegant proofs of his conjecture than the book length one that appeared a decade or so ago:

Ants do the darnedest things.

[Marblehead]

... Marblehead .... He wants that old time science, if it was good enough for Nietzsche, it's good enough for him.

 

 

You pretty much got that right. But I do listen to the new ideas. And then most are discarded.

[Creation]

Zhongyongdaoist,

 

I don't see anything acausal about Fermat's principle. The calculus of variations shows that given a function assigning numbers to paths that is given by an integral of a function of the path's positions and tangents, extremal values of this function will occur at paths satisfying a second order differential equation. When solving a second order differential equation, you can give an initial position and velocity and evolve forward in time, a final position and velocity and evolve backward in time, or initial and final position and find the solution path connecting them. The math doesn't choose one or the other. We normally think of physics predicting future from past, but that is because the apparent arrow of time makes that the most useful for our purposes. It is not a violation of causality to interpolate the path between initial and final positions, or to retrodict past from present.

 

In the case of Fermat's principle, you already know the initial and final "position" of the light (the thing you are seeing and your eye) and want to find the path. The light ray didn't "know" to take this path to your eye when it bounced off the object you are seeing, it just happened to be the ray that bounced off the object in the right way that the path it followed took it to your eye.

Edited December 11, 2013 by Creation

[Creation]

As to the original article, I am aghast at such sloppy science reporting. Good riddance.

 

What those scientists did was create a macroscopic quantum superposition.

 

In one interpretation of quantum mechanics, whenever a superposition is collapsed by measurement, all possible outcomes of the measurement "exist" as parallel universes. The reasoning is as follows: When a measurement of a superposition occurs, the combined wave function of the measured object and measuring apparatus splits into non-interacting branches. If you take the wave function of the entire universe as the one and only thing with ontological reality in quantum theory (that is the interpretation part), this means that "reality" is a constantly branching universal wave function, and the things in one branch will not be aware of the existence of other branches (until they discover quantum mechanics and interpret it in this way and infer the existence of other branches, I suppose).

 

But that is merely one way to interpret the meaning of quantum mechanics. It does have a certain naturalness to it, but that is because of how I framed it. Basically, with interpretations of quantum mechanics you get out what you put in, i.e. philosophical assumptions etc. Those who come the interpretation of quantum mechanics with other ideas about what they are looking for will think this interpretations is totally crazy.

 

Now, for all the popular science enthusiasts out there, this idea of parallel universes is completely different that the "brane world" hypothesis that you see connected with string theory. There are many ways for there to be many worlds.

 

More to the point regarding the article, none of this has a single bit to do with time travel.

Edited December 11, 2013 by Creation

[RongzomFan]

You gotta dumb that down for me.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ioYJNjFBs24

[Marblehead]

... with interpretations of quantum mechanics you get out what you put in,

That's like saying "garbage in, garbage out", right?

... "brane world" hypothesis

I haven't accepted that one either.