WTF happened to the site?

Yeah, so I didn't mess with the site during the rollover from the original Blogger to the new Google-Blogger, and with that I lost all ways in which to access my previous account. I reposted all the old articles, but in reverse order. A couple widgets are gone now as well. All the internals and such should be functional, but I haven't really taken the time to check. Given the type of people that actually look at this site, I think I might change the format from science to general info. Just as long as I don't get arrested...

Let's jump it off...

My name is Jim Irving.  I'm building this website to present, distribute, and archive interesting articles and viewpoints that I feel that certain people need to see.  The overall theme is the presentation of science, technology, and philosophy.  If it's possible, I'll get some nice links up detailing string theory, quantum physics, and good old biology.  If the right people get together there'll be a nice discussion on our ongoing experimentation/observation with dreaming.  For today we'll start with one of my favorite pieces of media on the web.  Rob Bryanton has written a book, and more importantly for us, a flash video, giving a simple and elegant explanation of reality in 10 dimensions (of the either 10 or 11 indicated by string theory).  While you watch it, there are two things I'd like to put into your mind:

1)  According to quantum mechanics, objects only exist in a concrete position in time and space when we observe them and revert to an ethereal wave state when they're not being observed.  This has given rise to what's referred to as the Anthropomorhic Principle.  It states that no universe can exist which cannot support the existence of a being which can observe said universe.  The idea is that without an observer nothing would ever be collapsed into what we would call reality.  Furthermore, it couldn't be collapsed.  Therefore that universe could not exist.  Of course, since we're observers, a test for this theory is going to be trick to devise. 

2)  Philosophers have always had a conundrum in the conflict between free will and determinism.  The neat thing that the view that this video points out is that we are not only free to make every possible choice, but we also do make every possible choice.  In such a system, all outcomes are already determined, and therefore totally deterministic.  So now which is it?  Are we free or are we slaves?

We are all phantoms

It was once said, "We are all phantoms," when referring to the tiny amount of us that is actually solid. I believe this website puts it best, and even gives us a visual for the idea. So much of us, and our world, is nothing but empty space. If the forces that held atoms and molecules apart were to disappear for a second, we could all walk straight through walls, or more likely fallthrough the earth and not once experience a collision between the protons, electrons, and neutrons that make us up. That brings me to the point for today's post.

At the Perimeter Institute in Ontario, a team of researchers have come up with a theory of the makeup of the universe. Their idea is that the fundamental particles that make up matter are like folds in time-space. According to quantum physics, at the sub-atomic level the world is extremely chaotic and particles and their constituent sub-particles jump in and out of existence randomly. However they can be joined together in such a way that their liklihood of jumping out of existence is greatly decreased, resulting in particles that seem to be more or less permanent. For instance, look at a proton. It's made of two up quarks and a down quark, which by themselves would flit in and out of reality like the lights of fireflies. When they come together to form a proton, they're stable enough that we haven't seen one decay even after 30 years so far. The idea that this theory expounds is that these quarks are little folds in the fabric of the universe that come together to form braids. If I twisted a piece of rope and threw it through the air, it probably wouldn't be folded by the time it hit the ground, but if I braided it there's a chance it would stay that way for a while.

The two things that I specifically want to point out in this theory are as follows:

1) They've been able to derive a working theory of gravitation from it using nothing but the theory of relativity, a lot of coffee, and plenty of math. That's a big feat for any physical theory.

2) It finally gives a functional definition to space. The illusion of space is a by product of how the fundamental particles of the universe come together as a whole. The braids and folds that they make connect the universe like an enormous afghan. Everything is networked together, and while their connection is immediate, the way in which the fabric of the world is folded between any two points creates what we understand as distance. Neato, huh?

Learn quantum physics in a hurry

Today I want to mention a great little site with links to media that teaches quantum physics in a very simple and easy to understand manner.  Well, compared to how difficult we typically consider quantum physics, this is fairly simple.  This site is important enough for me to leave a permanent link to it on the links list.  You can find it here.  The lectures were delivered by Hans Bethe in 1999 and are absolutely wonderful.  Kill a couple hours and suck them down.  It'll be worth it.

DIY brainwaves

Back in college I had the opportunity to do a little research into meditative states.  Along the way I ran into a few little tricks that did wierd and wonderful things.  One of them in particular was the binaural beat generator.  The way in which a binaural beat generator works is it produces tones, one to be played into the right ear and one to be played into the left ear, which are just a few cycles per second off in frequency.  You might have a 440 Hz tone in your left ear and a 446 Hz tone playing into your right ear.  The really neat thing that occurs here is that when a person has these offset frequencies played into their ears, their brainwaves synchronize to the difference in the frequencies.  If you used the frequencies mentioned in the above example, then your brainwaves should synchronize to somewhere around 6 Hz.  Brainwaves (the readings you get when you hook a person up to an EEG) are still rather cryptic, but certain frequencies have been noted to be related to certain mental states, as you can see in the nifty little graphic.  While I can't say anything about there being a direct correlation between having a particular frequency and experiencing a particular mental state, I can say that some level of mental state shift can be brought about when using a binaural beat generator.  Myself and my associates at the time performed made several observations about the effects of binaural beats on a person's mental state and it suffices to say that a good time was had by all.  If you've got a spare hour or two, go download this nice little program which does exactly what I'm talking about and give it a try.  In time, you can try programming your own presets.  If you find anything neat, post it in the forum!

Chaos vs Order

Today I was lucky enough to run across a copy of James Gleick's Chaos and its easier to understand sibling The Turbulent Mirror at a local used bookstore. A few years ago I got to read the latter and fell in love with chaos mathematics and fractaline geometry. Now Turbulent Mirror is required reading for all my friends and significant others. The other two books that I picked up today complete the rubric for today's science lesson. One was Endless Forms Most Beautiful and the other was Bioinformatics for Dummies (I love that title).

Here's the link I want to draw between the subjects that these books put forth.

1. Fractals produce objects with self similarities at different magnifications and fractional dimensions. What I mean by this is they produce structures of massive complexity from very little original information.


2. Information, such as the information encoded in DNA, gets played out in the real world into organic objects. Trees are a perfect example. Nearly every structure in a tree can be described in terms of a fractal. This can be extended to mammalian organs, nervous systems, etc.


3. When you stick a bunch of fractal structures next to each other and let them inhibit each other on contact, they can sit there and form a beautiful, flowing, self-sustaining, chaotic system.


4. We are those systems and if you study fractals, chaotic systems, and embryology you can really see some neat connections.

Episode 3: A Time Anomaly

Today I'd like to discuss retrocausality. The term retrocausality refers to the mechanism by which events in the present affect events in the past, or if we were to shift our viewpoint backwards in time, how events in the future affect events in the present. This is a radical divergence from the familiar notion of causality in which events in the present can affect the outcome of events in the future. Obviously this brings up new and interesting questions into subjects like predetermination, the presence of alternate realities, and countless other philosophical and theological issues. For now, however, let's just cover the physics of the matter.

Retrocausality does a good job of explaining one thing which is all sorts of amazing in modern physics: the instantaneous transmission of "information" (in quotes to denote the tenuous use of the word information) across space through entangled objects. For example, if you were to entangle two photons and then transport one of those photons to Alpha Centauri, any change in the superposition of one photon would instantaneously be reflected in the superposition of the other photon. This is the instantaneous transmission of information which is strictly outlawed by the Special Theory of Relativity. I point this out because many eminent scientists contend that no "information" can be transmitted via the entangled objects due to the conflict with the SToR. But does it violate the SToR? I have no clue because I'm not educated well enough! Let's look deeper.

An experiment was recently performed by John Cramer at the University of Washington which confirmed the presence of retrocausality. The experiment went something like this:

1. Generate photons.


2. Entangle and separate photons.


3. Let one photon's behavior be observed.


4. Send the other photon through several miles of fiber optic cable with a high index of refraction which effectively slows light.


5. Observe photon that has been slowed.


6. See if perturbation in the slowed photon affected the behavior of the non-slowed photon in the past.

For the sake of brevity I'll not explain how they went about checking the perturbations, but suffice to say it was very clever. The important thing is to know that the experiment worked. The choices we make in the present DO influence the past, or at least it's possible on a quantum mechanical level. Let me repeat that. INFORMATION CAN GO BACKWARDS IN TIME. WTF m8? I'll tell you wtf m8! Information can travel forwards AND backwards in time and it does so at the speed of light, which doesn't violate the SToR! When one entangled photon gets messed with, the information of that perturbation gets propogated backwards in time at the speed of light to the point in time and space where the two photons became entangled and then propogates forward in time with the paired photon to make a matching perturbation in it at the same location in time as the other photon. Therefore, we CAN transmit information instantaneously from our perspective. Hooray for the limitations of physics not being (quite as) great! Now we could hypothetically perform instant transmission of information from place to place or possibly even teleportation since matter and information are close enough to being the same. Unfortunately we're still stuck with a maximum transfer speed from our own perspective to be twice the speed of light if you were to generate the photons at the midpoint of the places you wanted to transmit between it would take speedOfLight/(distanceBetweenDestinations/2) for the photons to be in place for you to transmit with.

So, if you've got any friends that are good with teleportation, tell them to get on that or give me a call or something.

Go do great things.

Jim Irving