Anthropic Principle
First, to set a bit of the scene - this is gonna be a long entry. I've got a bottle of scotch that I'm just getting into at 2:00 in the morning for the very purpose of seeing how my writing is affected as I get more and more inebriated. For anyone who is interested, I'm drinking a Bowmore single malt. Its an islay, so its a little sweeter than I'm used to, but after two sips its grown on me. I just got back from Transformers. I have to say, I was pretty impressed. Not only did it not suck, but it was pretty cool. My nails are currently nubs.
Anthropic Principle for the Bored and Increasingly Inebriated
My thoughts on how the universe works (or rather why it works) have always been a little off. I've always had trouble subscribing to a straight scientific version of the universe - things are too... exact for that. Pi doesn't equal 3, it equals somewhere around 3.1415926 and some smaller change. I've often sat around and wondered exactly why that is. What would a circle who's pi = 3 look like? I've also had a lot of trouble with subscribing to the idea of an intelligent designer who at one point, existing somewhere outside of our universe thought to himself "hey, this sounds like a good idea, and I'll throw humans in just for the fuck of it as well" (in a very british accent, because I've always imagined God using a cockney rhyming scheme.)
Well pi is a constant. Its a universe-wide number that (though we can only approximate it to what... a few million digits or so?) rings true for all of existence. Whether you are here, or somewhere near Betelgeuse, if you see a circle or sphere, the radius of that object will wrap around the solid exactly twice. That said, as humans we will never see a circle with a radius which doesn't conform to the 2 pi rule. We may define pi to be more and more exact, but we will never be able to change the way circles behave as pi defines them.
I'm sure by now you've heard of string theory, brane theory, and M theory... if not, you've at least heard of string theory. If you don't know what it is, it basically says that any matter in our universe is but a single point anchored in the aether of space, and that all matter is made of "strings" which traverse multiple planes of existence. Lots of string theories (and there are a lot of them) state that there are multiple universes. Millions of them, in fact. A lot of people think that these millions of universes are our key to faster than light travel, as any quark (or whatever is smaller) in my body could be linked to any point in our universe billions of light years away by passing through x other 3 dimensional universes on the fourth dimension to get there.
You look confused. I'm sorry. I'll get back to my point. String theory is messy anyway.
Pi. We will never be able to see observe a universe where pi = 3. Anthropic Principle goes so far as to state that we could not exist in such a universe, and as such, the universe could not exist because we could not observe it.
Not really, but that's the long and short of it. Lets meander over to quantum physics.
There's a lot we don't understand about our universe, and quantum physics is at the forefront. As you might recall, I posted a rant a few months back about how quantum computing is finally making its debut. Exciting and scary stuff. I know. There are odd bits to quantum theory though - take this example:
Assume you have a pitching machine that throws baseballs covered in paint at a wall. There's a bit of variation in where the baseballs will end up, so if you were to point it at a screen x feet away, you would get a rough sphere after a while. Assume that if you put a screen in front of it with a slit in the screen big enough for a baseball to pass through. What pattern would be made on the wall? Exactly, a straight line. Easy enough to follow so far. With 2 slits, there would be 2 lines, and so on, even though the baseballs are only passing through one slit at a time - because the machine is left on for a while, we get that pattern on the wall.
That's how we used to think that matter worked.
Light or sound (each a wave) works slightly differently. If you were to fire one of these through a single slit, you would get a very fuzzy line when it hit the wall, but still roughly a line. When fired through two slits however, an interference pattern forms (if you want a physical demonstration of this, strike a tuning fork then place it near your ear and rotate it slowly. It will alternate between being louder and softer due to the interference between the two prongs.) As a result, you would get multiple lines on the wall. With me so far?
A while back, scientists fired a particle cannon through two slits. Now, with our old understanding of matter, we would expect two lines to appear on the wall, however they instead found an interference pattern. Even when slowed down to fire only 1 particle at a time, an interference pattern eventually formed. This led them to think that inherently a particle must be a wave existence. In order for the particles to create the interference pattern, they would have to leave the barrel of the cannon, split into two seperate entities, pass through each slit independently and interfere with itself on the way to the screen. This isn't so far fetched if you've ever read anything on Hawking Radiation.
Scientists were intrigued by this however, and decided to measure the amount of particles passing through each slit. Particle counters of some such were placed on each slit, and the experiment was re-ran. Suprisingly, two lines appeared on the final sheet - no interference pattern. So, when the particles were observed, they behaved as particles, and not waves. That's the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle at work - by observing something, we change the state of the thing being observed.
You can find a pretty cool demonstration of this on youtube somewhere. Just look up quantum physics. Something to note here though, is that when the particle left the particle cannon, it was a particle, even though it was yet to be observed. After all, one could deduce with Occam's Razor that the particle does not leave as a wave, "smile for the camera" and then remain that way until it hits the sheet. So a future observation forces the past to change.
Here's where Anthropic Principle comes in. We're living beings. We're observing the universe and changing the state of things by doing so.
Is your mind blown yet? Lets talk about black holes for a second or four.
There's a blog I like to read (on an almost daily basis) called "bad astronomy." You can find it at http://www.badastronomy.com . Anyway, he had a pretty cool blog entry at one point about how black holes can not exist.
I'll summarize: Essentially, black holes are supermassive. The event horizon is where escape velocity equals the speed of light. For anyone who studies computer science, think of a black hole as a giant divide-by-0 exception in the universe. Lots of mass x, in 0 space - the singularity: x / 0 = error. Anyway, this can never really happen, x / 0. Black holes get really close to this, but some space is always taken up with a black hole. Here's where that kook Einstein comes in with special relativity. Time is a part of our universe. And just as any other part of our universe, it is affected by its surroundings. Someone somewhere proved that time slows down in major gravitational fields. So imagine a gravitational field of infinite proportions such as that in a black hole - time effectively stops - that is to say, it slows until it nearly stops. Hawking Radiation kills the black whole long before time = infinity, and the black hole disintigrates.
I know that this sounds entirely tangent, but its not.
The "big bang" is a pretty commonly accepted theory now. The universe is expanding, and has been ever since T = 0. Philosophically (Ah! There it is) we are all privvy to ask "what happened before the big bang? Was there a universe before us? Are we the result of a big bounce? Did God sneeze us out?" Anthropic Principle states that the universe is here because living things observe it. The more we define pi, the more clearly definied pi will be in the eyes of the universe. Its a cool thought really, and there are a few books on it, but here's where scientits opinions end, and my opinion begins.
Months ago when i was watching "The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya" - an anime that touched on Anthropic Principle - I didn't quite get it, but its starting to come into focus for me. Relativity, Quantum Mechanics, Anthropic Principle - these are all aproximations on how the universe works - in our eyes. As we come to better and better understanding of what these are and what they clearly define, some are refuted and some are proven. Touching back on the article at badastronomy.com - there are certain laws of physics which don't compute within a black hole - one can also assume that these laws of physics did not exist when we (the universe) was teensy i.e. the singularity before the big bang.
This is where I take issue with all of it. Our universe? Right now? Its fucking teensy. Its a singularity from a certain point of view. Hell, spend any amount of time with a telescope and you'll be a little inclined to say 'I feel pretty insignificant to all of it.' But if we were each the size of our universe, would we have any concept of what an atom is? Would we even have a concept of what a planet is for that matter? Or is all we would be able to determine the existence of is the supermassive black holes at the center of each galaxy? The truth of the matter is, barring a little bit of gravitational resistance, we are still moving at the same rate we were coming out of the big bang. The only difference is that time is speeding up, where it was observably stopped before the big bang. Its a little hard to imagine that at some point, zoomed way out, we look like a big bang - a fleeting glimpse of the beginning of the universe.
As I break to refill my glass - yes, this is the first time. Its a big glass - let me pause and say: i'm trying to steer clear of a theological discussion, though that IS one of my favorite drunken topics, I'd like to stay away from it tonight.
These are clearly naval strength drinks. I knew these glasses were big, but I didn't know they were THAT big. Of course now I've completely lost my train of thought on the subject, but looking back I think I've said what I want to say. Instead I think I'll go watch some Haruhi, and you know... just appreciate the space/time we're living in. It won't be here forever.
Anthropic Principle for the Bored and Increasingly Inebriated
My thoughts on how the universe works (or rather why it works) have always been a little off. I've always had trouble subscribing to a straight scientific version of the universe - things are too... exact for that. Pi doesn't equal 3, it equals somewhere around 3.1415926 and some smaller change. I've often sat around and wondered exactly why that is. What would a circle who's pi = 3 look like? I've also had a lot of trouble with subscribing to the idea of an intelligent designer who at one point, existing somewhere outside of our universe thought to himself "hey, this sounds like a good idea, and I'll throw humans in just for the fuck of it as well" (in a very british accent, because I've always imagined God using a cockney rhyming scheme.)
Well pi is a constant. Its a universe-wide number that (though we can only approximate it to what... a few million digits or so?) rings true for all of existence. Whether you are here, or somewhere near Betelgeuse, if you see a circle or sphere, the radius of that object will wrap around the solid exactly twice. That said, as humans we will never see a circle with a radius which doesn't conform to the 2 pi rule. We may define pi to be more and more exact, but we will never be able to change the way circles behave as pi defines them.
I'm sure by now you've heard of string theory, brane theory, and M theory... if not, you've at least heard of string theory. If you don't know what it is, it basically says that any matter in our universe is but a single point anchored in the aether of space, and that all matter is made of "strings" which traverse multiple planes of existence. Lots of string theories (and there are a lot of them) state that there are multiple universes. Millions of them, in fact. A lot of people think that these millions of universes are our key to faster than light travel, as any quark (or whatever is smaller) in my body could be linked to any point in our universe billions of light years away by passing through x other 3 dimensional universes on the fourth dimension to get there.
You look confused. I'm sorry. I'll get back to my point. String theory is messy anyway.
Pi. We will never be able to see observe a universe where pi = 3. Anthropic Principle goes so far as to state that we could not exist in such a universe, and as such, the universe could not exist because we could not observe it.
Not really, but that's the long and short of it. Lets meander over to quantum physics.
There's a lot we don't understand about our universe, and quantum physics is at the forefront. As you might recall, I posted a rant a few months back about how quantum computing is finally making its debut. Exciting and scary stuff. I know. There are odd bits to quantum theory though - take this example:
Assume you have a pitching machine that throws baseballs covered in paint at a wall. There's a bit of variation in where the baseballs will end up, so if you were to point it at a screen x feet away, you would get a rough sphere after a while. Assume that if you put a screen in front of it with a slit in the screen big enough for a baseball to pass through. What pattern would be made on the wall? Exactly, a straight line. Easy enough to follow so far. With 2 slits, there would be 2 lines, and so on, even though the baseballs are only passing through one slit at a time - because the machine is left on for a while, we get that pattern on the wall.
That's how we used to think that matter worked.
Light or sound (each a wave) works slightly differently. If you were to fire one of these through a single slit, you would get a very fuzzy line when it hit the wall, but still roughly a line. When fired through two slits however, an interference pattern forms (if you want a physical demonstration of this, strike a tuning fork then place it near your ear and rotate it slowly. It will alternate between being louder and softer due to the interference between the two prongs.) As a result, you would get multiple lines on the wall. With me so far?
A while back, scientists fired a particle cannon through two slits. Now, with our old understanding of matter, we would expect two lines to appear on the wall, however they instead found an interference pattern. Even when slowed down to fire only 1 particle at a time, an interference pattern eventually formed. This led them to think that inherently a particle must be a wave existence. In order for the particles to create the interference pattern, they would have to leave the barrel of the cannon, split into two seperate entities, pass through each slit independently and interfere with itself on the way to the screen. This isn't so far fetched if you've ever read anything on Hawking Radiation.
Scientists were intrigued by this however, and decided to measure the amount of particles passing through each slit. Particle counters of some such were placed on each slit, and the experiment was re-ran. Suprisingly, two lines appeared on the final sheet - no interference pattern. So, when the particles were observed, they behaved as particles, and not waves. That's the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle at work - by observing something, we change the state of the thing being observed.
You can find a pretty cool demonstration of this on youtube somewhere. Just look up quantum physics. Something to note here though, is that when the particle left the particle cannon, it was a particle, even though it was yet to be observed. After all, one could deduce with Occam's Razor that the particle does not leave as a wave, "smile for the camera" and then remain that way until it hits the sheet. So a future observation forces the past to change.
Here's where Anthropic Principle comes in. We're living beings. We're observing the universe and changing the state of things by doing so.
Is your mind blown yet? Lets talk about black holes for a second or four.
There's a blog I like to read (on an almost daily basis) called "bad astronomy." You can find it at http://www.badastronomy.com . Anyway, he had a pretty cool blog entry at one point about how black holes can not exist.
I'll summarize: Essentially, black holes are supermassive. The event horizon is where escape velocity equals the speed of light. For anyone who studies computer science, think of a black hole as a giant divide-by-0 exception in the universe. Lots of mass x, in 0 space - the singularity: x / 0 = error. Anyway, this can never really happen, x / 0. Black holes get really close to this, but some space is always taken up with a black hole. Here's where that kook Einstein comes in with special relativity. Time is a part of our universe. And just as any other part of our universe, it is affected by its surroundings. Someone somewhere proved that time slows down in major gravitational fields. So imagine a gravitational field of infinite proportions such as that in a black hole - time effectively stops - that is to say, it slows until it nearly stops. Hawking Radiation kills the black whole long before time = infinity, and the black hole disintigrates.
I know that this sounds entirely tangent, but its not.
The "big bang" is a pretty commonly accepted theory now. The universe is expanding, and has been ever since T = 0. Philosophically (Ah! There it is) we are all privvy to ask "what happened before the big bang? Was there a universe before us? Are we the result of a big bounce? Did God sneeze us out?" Anthropic Principle states that the universe is here because living things observe it. The more we define pi, the more clearly definied pi will be in the eyes of the universe. Its a cool thought really, and there are a few books on it, but here's where scientits opinions end, and my opinion begins.
Months ago when i was watching "The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya" - an anime that touched on Anthropic Principle - I didn't quite get it, but its starting to come into focus for me. Relativity, Quantum Mechanics, Anthropic Principle - these are all aproximations on how the universe works - in our eyes. As we come to better and better understanding of what these are and what they clearly define, some are refuted and some are proven. Touching back on the article at badastronomy.com - there are certain laws of physics which don't compute within a black hole - one can also assume that these laws of physics did not exist when we (the universe) was teensy i.e. the singularity before the big bang.
This is where I take issue with all of it. Our universe? Right now? Its fucking teensy. Its a singularity from a certain point of view. Hell, spend any amount of time with a telescope and you'll be a little inclined to say 'I feel pretty insignificant to all of it.' But if we were each the size of our universe, would we have any concept of what an atom is? Would we even have a concept of what a planet is for that matter? Or is all we would be able to determine the existence of is the supermassive black holes at the center of each galaxy? The truth of the matter is, barring a little bit of gravitational resistance, we are still moving at the same rate we were coming out of the big bang. The only difference is that time is speeding up, where it was observably stopped before the big bang. Its a little hard to imagine that at some point, zoomed way out, we look like a big bang - a fleeting glimpse of the beginning of the universe.
As I break to refill my glass - yes, this is the first time. Its a big glass - let me pause and say: i'm trying to steer clear of a theological discussion, though that IS one of my favorite drunken topics, I'd like to stay away from it tonight.
These are clearly naval strength drinks. I knew these glasses were big, but I didn't know they were THAT big. Of course now I've completely lost my train of thought on the subject, but looking back I think I've said what I want to say. Instead I think I'll go watch some Haruhi, and you know... just appreciate the space/time we're living in. It won't be here forever.