Decoding the Universe
73SPACE TIME CONTINUUM - ?
The farther one looks down into the finite details of the ever-increasing depths of computer science and information, into the cybernetic arterioles of the PC and the Mac, the farther one sees out into the universe.
That has been my belief since the first time I saw a film of a UNIVAC computer. Now Charles Seife has written Decoding the Universe, affirming my opinion. This work presents in a style that is useful to students, professionals, and the lay public as well, although it helps to have a modicum of scientific understanding when reading it. It is not so simple as to bore the academic and not so complex as to put off the average person. If it were psychology (and it does affect that in making us consider new abstractions), I'd say it was somewhere on a continuum between Psychology Today and the APA Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders IV-TR. Since it is physics and mathematics, I'll have to say it lies centrally in a plane bounded by Popular Science, Engineer's Handbook, and the complete works of Stephen Hawking. It is a popular physics, both fascinating and enjoyable.
Decoding the Universe considers information science in relation to known physics, from Einstein to modern quantum, chaos, string, and "everything" theories. It eases us into the hot waters of challenging subject matter by providing an entertaining and understandable explanation for the delightful Schrödinger's (undead) cat, as well as the speed of light (which some now think is not a constant). Of course, the universe is a computer, or at least a large external hard drive. That notion hurts some people's brains, but I find it fun. We live in a universe that is a non-spherical multi-dimensional set of some kind, operating under a certain continuum of physics and mathematics laws. When we are done exploring this one, what might we find in the next hard drive? Will we ever find God's server?
For me, this book is a good review of quantum mechanics, black holes, multiple universes, paradoxes, dimensionality, and additional concepts. In addition, Seife concludes that Information Theory accepts bits of information as physical entities. Perhaps there are information electrons! This is where many brains twist up.
Information comprises concrete matter and energy that can be measured. Information has weight. It has mass and energy. This is easy to believe, since each new bit of information learned forges another wrinkle in the brain. Transmitting information also consumes energy. I know this to be true, because during the four hours of the ACT examination I took in one sitting, I lost four pounds. I also know that when my computer disk is full of information, I can't get anything else onto it. Further, conducting materials such as copper wires, fiber optic cables, and computer paper all are limited in the number of bits they can transmit. Info takes up space!
Information bits for the computer are expressed as either 0 or 1. Seife also explains DNA sequences as series of 0's and 1's (no charges and charges, off and on), and that makes perfect sense to me. I've long thought that there may be one long strand of DNA coiled up in everything organic, with only certain switches turned on (charged) in order to create a particular species. That is far-fetched, but similar to Seife's thinking.
Even more interesting is Seife's illustration that mathematical formulas for the expansion of gases (following fractal patterns, actually) are exactly like equations for the transmission of information. Fractals, fractals, everywhere and every bit is real. Let's consider the Big Bang. When the Bang occurred (or God lit a giant match), it threw out information bits that spread via explosive expansion in fractal pattern(s). When it is finished expanding and all of the bits of info are evenly distributed throughout forever-ness, the universe will be dark and empty and the light of Genesis will no longer "be". This is entropy -- until the next match strikes.
Seife also includes an interesting history of early information theory that was developed by the cryptographers of World War II. These math whizzes reduced information to its basic components in order to code the un-crackable code. Of course, they eventually needed help from the Navajo nation for complete success. The Navajo were more in tune with the abstract (and, perhaps, the universe) and made the only codes that no one on earth could crack.
This book has encouraged me to explore the topic of information further. I recommend it to anyone interested in science, science fiction, and exploring the lesser known.
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Comments
You know, it's getting easier, because my perspective has changed somehow. Hub Pages is great!
Excellent. This is a topic that has long fascinated me. I have not read this book, but I will. If you are exploring this topic, The Fabric of the Cosmos and Elegant Universe by Brian Greene and The Universe in a Nutshell and God Created the Intergers by Hawking are great also.
I will look into those Peter! Thanks for the titles.
It's been far too long since I've read a good physics book. I'll add this to my list. Thanks Patty!
-M.
I hope you enjoy it! It cetrtianly kept me interested. Connections between arts and science become ever more certain to me as well.
Thanks for highlighting these books. I will read them. Lately, Physics is a subject I really can get into...have you read any more good one on the subject latey? Debi
Hi debrakcarey; I am reading more from Paul Davies of Australia. There is also one I must obtain about the oppostie of the Big Bang, how the Universe will expand to a certain point and then collapse into a pinpoint. Cannot recall author.
<<<smiles>>> Mind candy, I love it..! Thank you for sharing.
Fun to think about and conceptualize...
Thank you for sharing. Good.
Patty,
Do you believe that matter can not be created nor destroyed?
Do you think that because we don't have a unifying physics theory, that we really don't know what is going on in the universe, especially the Big Bang?
Another manifestation that we don't know what is going on is that we have a lot of critical constants in key formulas. In my view, this is the same thing that generates multiple dimensions in the String Theory. The theory doesn't compute so you add a dimension to make it fit.
Do you think that time can be traveled?
I thought that I might stir up some of your visitors.
This is with only good intentions.
I was told once by a physics professor that as long as your theory cannot be dispelled by the time you utter it, then it is valid until someone can dispel it.
For example, there are many theories on how our Sun burns. As long as your theory has the Sun still burning, then it is valid.
Thanks
issues veritas - I like your style of posting.
Let's start here - I do thnk that {matter - energy} total set is constant at this time, because the Universe seems to be mathematically based, with certain limits in place. If the Unvierse is an open set, then matter or energy might come in.
I do think there are dimensions of existence between which travel is possible -- I think that is from where notions of ghosts and spirits arise, even heaven and Hell. Now, if matter and energy can be created in our Universe, might it not be becasue it pops in from another dimension?
The John Glenn Institute here and aother installation, in Northern Ohio, are working right now to break the speed of light. Time travel - so far, we seem to be able to approach the speed of light, but not to reach it, because accelerations bring us 1/2 of the speed left to the speed of light closer to that threshold, with increases of speed. We cannot break the speed of light under our physics laws by acceleration. If possible under our physics laws, then there is another way. There has also been evidence in the last 5 years that speed of light is not constant, but can itself increase in speed in space. And perhaps it will turn out that time travel is not at all connected to the speed of light.
Patty,
Thanks for the detailed reply.
I am interested in an example of energy created rather than transformed.
I had a hub where I used the theory that matter cannot be created nor destroyed and suggested that black holes were the recyclers of the universe. Depending on your believe of who or how the universe was created if could be God's recycler or just a device to retrieve the basic elements and get them ready for a new form.
If the universe is an open set then one would have to ponder on what is outside of the universe. Big bang is a good explanation to explain how the universe expended and why it looks the way it does now, but it doesn't explain the source. It doesn't explain the mechanism that generated the tremendous forces need to move matter across the universe.
Not being a scientist, my view of time travel could only occur as a difference in the interpretation of time difference, such as time zones on earth. This would make the translation or difference in time calculation appear as time travel. For example, if you could travel from London to Los Angeles in a few seconds you would appear to have traveled back in time by 8 hours. But back in London it is the same as you left it. Traveling right back to London in another few seconds you would find it pretty much the way you left it.
My opinion is also that time is monitoring a change in motion. When an electron goes around in a atom it is fast but it does take time to traverse a distance. To me the sub atomic vibrations are the essence of time. Time then only marks and synchronizes the movement. If these sub atomic particles stopped vibrating there would no time and the universe would be a three dimensional art exhibit.
To have true time travel, that is real and not a difference in calculations it would be more like movement in a VCR tape. Moving the tape forward moves the time and moving it backward moves the time. In order to do that on a simple video still requires that the VCR tape has the stored value of what happened at the instant of time that the camera recorded to the tape.
To do time travel in that context, there would have to be some way for the universe to remember where everything was a that time. The position of each electron and even down to the anti matter and maybe even particles that we don't even know exist. All the matter sucked into the black holes would have to be reversed and restored.
The speed of light research at John Glenn is interesting. Photons, wave or particle and space is filled with ether or something else? Would a possible faster speed of light in space still come up with just a higher value? In which case there was no change in physics but that space provided no resistance to the light. It would be like an Ohms law for light speed. Is it possible for us to travel a light speed without having the properties of light?
In many instances, science does a great job of understanding what something does, even to being able to predict when and how it will do it. They can do this even without knowing why or how it does it. Is there something faster than light? The answer could be defined in another dimension but I would define these dimensions as things we just can't see. For example, I could say that radiation is a dimension because we can't see it with just human perception. The fact that we can use instruments to detect radiation means we don't have to make it a dimension. If we propose that there is something faster than the speed of light but we can't see it or detect it, then we could call it a dimension. Dimension in that context is something that we cannot see. The added dimensions in the string theory are used to explain things that we really don't have the answers for.
Again, this is just my theory..
While we have come up with a value for absolute zero, basically all the motion is stopped, to my knowledge we haven't come up with the absolute hottest temperature possible. At that temperature nothing could be more active. Would that be an explanation on something that could be faster than light?
tag your it.
This is a long post that I will need to read again. However, the first thing that struck me is a comment I read in a scientific article that states that if a person continues to move from east to west, they are stopping time by avoiding the new day of the sun rising in the east.
And very interestingly - what IS the hottest temperature possible? That very well might be the explanation for faster than light speeds.
Patty,
Thanks for the intelligent consideration.
Your comment about moving East to West brought to mind how Superman would go back in time. He would fly around the Earth real fast. I never really wondered what that was about until your statement. I guess it would depend
Another interesting thought came to mind with your East West statement. At the Equator, the time zones are the largest distances, and as we go North or South latitudes to the poles, these distance shrink.
That means that if you traveled at approximately one thousand miles per hour at the Equator to go around the earth, time would would virtually stop. The farther that your starting point was away from the Equator, the slower the speed needed to stop time, because the distance around the Earth is less than at the Equator while the time zones are fixed at 24.
Don't you just wish that there was an answer book that we could refer to sometimes?
Thanks
Remember the Twilight Zone episode in which the astronaut left his stasis unit and aged, only to return to Earth and find his fiance had used a sleeper unit and not aged at all? I recall theories that there is no time in outer space and no aging, but I think they were disproved.
I don't know about an answer book - just a couple of hints might do, perhaps.
I'm fascinated with space, and hubs like this don't do much for breaking that addiction! Great hub.
Welcome to the thread, mdvaldosta. Fun to talk about these ideas.
Patty
I don't remember that episode but it sounds interesting.
Seems to me that this would have been about suspended animation rather than time travel. Which would be like preventing the cells from being active. While inactive they can't age.
Then again if the story premise cannot be invalidated, then it could just as well be true.
Theories are like imaginary roads that people can travel on to find a real road.
If they don't lead to the real road, then they were interesting detours.
It is interesting to note that if you counted up from one to a billion 1,000,000,000 at the rate of 1 number per second, it would take you approximately 31,7 years to finish.
Even counting to 1,000,000 would take 277 hours.
The fact that we have identified and studied many objects in our universe is a tremendous accomplishment.
Even decoding DNA was a huge project.
Although each individual repeating unit is very small, DNA polymers can be very large molecules containing millions of nucleotides. For instance, the largest human chromosome, chromosome number 1, is approximately 220 million base pairs long.[
We couldn't have done it without the aid of fast and powerful computers, but humans created that tool so that is also a scientific accomplishment.
So there is no telling what else we can develop to allow us the find the real roads.
Yes, what else will we indeed develop.
I recall attempting to graph a fractal equation by hand: 3 points in 2 hours.
thats a good picture..............
This is an awesome hub. love the pictures, and your writing is great. Keep up the good work
Deborah Dera says:
2 years ago
I just want to say that I love your writing and hubpages. I can tell you put alot of time and effort into formatting your pages!
Deborah
www.therhythmofwrite.com