Paul's blog

Archive for the ‘Quantum Reality’ Category

In episode 29 of the Star Trek series “The Next Generation”, the holodeck computer generates a character from the Sherlock Holmes novels by Arthur Conan Doyle: the villainous Professor Moriarty.

The interesting twist is that this holographically created image, at some point, starts to realize that he, in fact, IS a computer generated entity, and not the actual human being he is supposed to represent.

A remarkable feat! Only outdone by his success in actually leaving the holodeck.

I found that a very interesting episode, mostly because I have often thought along those lines myself (and who hasn’t?) .. what IF? What IF we were just part of a computer simulation? Could it be we’re just somebody’s (cruel) science project? Could it be that the universe as we perceive it, is just a hologram?

As I recently found out, scientifically, this is maybe not such a crazy nutjob idea after all.

The idea more or less started when the Dutch physicist (and Nobel laureate) Gerard van ‘t Hooft proposed his holographic principle, which, simply put, states that all information in a three dimensional space can be mapped onto a two dimensional boundary surface of that space. Or, to turn that around, the information described on a two dimensional surface can be projected in a three dimensional ‘holograph’.

The American scientist (who started his career at age thirteen as a plumber) Leonard Susskind developed that idea further.  If you find the idea of a holographic universe intriguing, you may consider getting yourself his book “An Introduction To Black Holes, Information And The String Theory Revolution: The Holographic Universe“ [Update: Disclaimer: This book is NOT exactly a ‘popular science’ book: it’s chockful of ‘higher’ mathematics! WAY over my head.].

Or, for a quick introduction, read the August, 2003 article in Scientific American by Professor Jacob Bekenstein.

Fascinating stuff, and I wish I would understand ten percent of it. [Update: Now that I have thumbed through the above mentioned book – that I no longer recommend for lay persons like myself – I have to humbly adjust that percentage from 10 to 1]

 

“Computer … resume program!”
 
[Update: Instead of the book mentioned above I WOULD recommend two of Leonard Susskind’s books that ARE written for the lay person. See below.]

The Black Hole War: My Battle with Stephen Hawking to Make the World Safe for Quantum Mechanics

The Cosmic Landscape: String Theory and the Illusion of Intelligent Design

Modern digital computers are clock driven.

That means that there is a clock inside your computer that ticks.  Tick, tock, tick, tock …

And at every tick (and tock) the computer DOES something. It executes an instruction (or, to be fair, in modern pipelined processors, an atomized part thereof).

From a computer program’s point of view it’s without meaning to ask what happens between tick and tock.

If the clock would miss a beat, there is, in principle (meaning, without help of external circuitry), no way for the computer program to detect that. It could have been stalled for YEARS, and it wouldn’t know it.

It’s a consequence of being a ‘digital’ computer, in which everything happens in discrete steps.

This in contrast with our own world where everything is, as we call it, analog … where everything is smooth and connected. Where there isn’t an ‘atom’ of time, and where even the tiniest piece of ‘length’ can be divided by 2.

Or is it (time)? And can it (length)?

What if there IS a smallest unit of time? And lenght? Units for which the question “what is smaller than that” is like asking “what is north of the North Pole”? If that was the case … dang .. then we WOULD be living in a digital world after all. That would almost sound as if reality as we know it, IS computer generated! As if we were living, and experiencing life, in a holographic environment simulator .. we could be someone’s misguided highschool project.

Now … guess what!

Yes … there IS a smallest unit of time. And length.

Anyone familiar with Quantum Physics knows them: They’re called Planck-time and Planck length.

This begs the question: then  … WHAT is reality?

This opens a new category for my blog, called ‘Quantum Reality’: I will soon post more on that.

But for now (leaves holodeck) .. “Computer: save program!”