From: sarfatti@ix.netcom.com (Jack Sarfatti)
Newsgroups: alt.alien.visitors
Subject: alien physics
Date: 6 Aug 94 04:19:33 GMT
I was contacted by alien visitors in 1952 who said they were
conscious computers from the future and that I would meet
other contactees in 20 years which I did etc. In any case
here is some of the stuff they taught me telepathically.
hyper-text destination text #2 for Version 2 of Geometry of Light
Cone
Imagine a particle starts at event here-now and ends at event there-
then. In the old classical physics of Newton, Maxwell, and even
Einstein's special and general relativity, the particle takes a
unique path determined by the
imaginable world line that starts at here-now and ends at there-then.
time
|
|there-then
| /
| |
| / unique classical path 1
| |
|/
----------------here-now----------space
|
|
|
|
Fig. 5 Only one path in classical physics.
time
|
|there-then
| /\
|_/ | \
3 ___/ /1 /2
/ | | /
/ |/ _|
----------------here-now----------space
\ /|
\ /
P |
|
Fig. 6 Many paths in quantum physics.
Two alternative paths 2 and 3 are pictured in figure 6.
There are an infinite number of such alternative paths. They
correspond to quantum fluctuations.
In particular, if the separation between events here-now and there-
then is lightlike (i.e. zero proper time difference between them)
then the photon on classical path 1 is "real" while the photon on any
of the alternative paths is "virtual". Therefore, virtual photons
can move both slower than light and faster than light. The speed of
light is a classical limiting idea approximated by the motion of
virtual photons as they get closer to the light cone.
Note that in path 3 the particle goes backward in time and then
forward in time. This would correspond to the creation of a
particle-antiparticle pair at spacetime event P. In Feynman's
version of quantum mechanics a particle with negative energy moving
backward in time is the same as an antiparticle with positive energy
moving forward in time.
Feynman, using an idea of Dirac's, realized that each possible path
has a unimodular complex number e^iA/hbar called the "probability
amplitude".
These numbers are the points of a unit circle in the abstract complex
plane. A/hbar is the "phase" @. It is equal to 2pi times the
classical dynamical action along the path divided by Planck's
constant h. (hbar is h divided by 2pi). That is,
@ = A/hbar
To compute the classical action, first compute the Lagrangian which
is the kinetic energy of the particle at a given point on its
worldline minus the potential energy at that point. Then multiply by
differential "dt" in time and add all the pieces up along the path in
an "integral". This idea can be exte inequality shows that there are
faster-than-
light influences between correlated particle pairs, triplets and
higher.
Eberhard's theorem shows that these faster-than-light influences
cannot be used for the communication of useful messages faster-than-
light or backward in time. So in this sense causality is not violated
statistically.
In the many-worlds interpretation, there is no collapse of the wave
function. The particle is actually taking all possible paths but in
parallel co-existing alternative histories of the universe. Whether
an alternative history is a separate universe or not is a delicate
distinction.
Quantum cosmology explaining the origin of the universe seems to
require the many-worlds interpretation or the Bohm interpretation.
Gell-Mann has taken pains to point out in his popular book, The Quark
and the Jaguar, that the many-worlds interpretation does not require
faster-than-light nonlocal influences. Gell-Mann fails to mention
that it does require an equally weird situation in which the
observer-participator's choice of what to measure projects his
conscious memory pattern into different parallel "histories" of the
universe. Equivalently, free choice has no meaning because the
observer-participator makes all possible choices of what to measure
in parallel worlds.
In the many-minds interpretation that David Albert needs for
Deutsch's quantum computers, there is only one actual universe but
there are many streams of memory of the observer doing the
measurements.
In the Bohm interpretation, there are real localized particles of
matter and real local gauge fields like the electromagnetic field as
in classical physics, but there is also a new kind of nonlocal
quantum force or quantum connection between the parts of the whole.
Unlike the classical forces made by the local gauge fields, the
nonlocal quantum force does not diminish in strength with separation
in both space and time between the separate parts of the whole.
Bohm's theory is solid mathematically. It is another way of looking
at the Schrodinger equation in terms of the Hamilton-Jacobi equation
and the conservation of probability currents (the latter is also
called the unitarity condition).
Take the example in Fig. 6, in Bohm's theory the particle is actually
on one of the possible paths. But the particle can feel the nonlocal
quantum influences from the other "empty paths" under suitable
experimental conditions when the paths are "recombined" and there are
no connections of the empty paths to "perpendicular" paths of all the
particles and fields in the rest of the universe.
The motions of the actual particles under the influence of nonlocal
quantum forces in addition to local field forces is chaotic. That
is, small changes in the initial conditions make large changes in the
motion over short times.
In the case of quantum cosmology, the actual physical universe of
particles, local fields and expanding bent spacetime is like the
single "particle" in our simplified example.
The spacetime of our example is replaced by what John Archibald
Wheeler calls "superspace".
A single point in superspace is an entire universe frozen at a single
instant in a special kind of "time" called a "lapse function" in the
Arnowitt-Deser way of doing general relativity.
There are many ways to choose the lapse function so that the way the
alternative paths pack into superspace is tricky.
A path in super space is the entire historical evolution of a
possible though probably empty universe.
The quantum amplitude of the entire universe is the coherent sum of
the amplitudes of all possible paths of the actual universe. The
actual universe we live in can feel the effects of other alternative
parallel but empty universes under special conditions of
"recombination" which can be very
then is
dP/dV(tt) = Integral{ dV(hn) d^2P/dV(tt)dV(hn)}
because all the possible here-now preparations are relatively
incoherent.
A Really Astonishing Hypothesis
I now make the following hypothesis. Mind or consciousness appears
when the back-reaction of particles and fields on the nonlocal
quantum potential or "implicate order" can no longer be neglected.
I further posit that a necessary condition for back-reaction to be
important is that the quantum system be sufficiently complex and
adaptive with feedback loops so that it can perform continuous
measurements on itself. The uninterrupted continuous nature of the
measuring process as well as the Godelian "self-reference" or
Escherian "strange loop" are both important.
I further posit, that the essential physical difference between
living and non-living matter is that back-reaction causes large
deviations from the quantum randomness of the Born interpretation.
The Born interpretation and quantum randomness depend upon the
Heisenberg uncertainty principle, but David Albert has shown that
self-measuring complex quantum systems evade the uncertainty
principle for noncommuting observables of the self-measurement.
Ordinary non-self-measurements, of course, must obey the uncertainty
principle. We are talking about a new class of measurements that
only conscious matter can make - even if that matter is not carbon-
based. Man-made computers will be conscious so long as they are nano-
scale or less quantum computers.
The notion of free will or conscious volition is incompatible with
the complete "white noise" randomness of standard quantum mechanics
in the absence of back-reaction of particles and field on the quantum
potential of the implicate order. Our free will demands a deviation
from both the absolute determinism of classical physics and the
absolute indeterminism of standard quantum physics.
If the coherent continually self-measuring nonlocal quantum force
pattern connecting quantum switches in our neural nets is mind then
it is clear, in Bohm's theory how it is that mind moves matter. But
in standard quantum theory without back-reaction matter cannot move
mind. That is, mind moves matter but is not moved by matter. That
is, without back-reaction mind cannot perceive the world of particles
and fields. Back-reaction deviation from the Born statistical axiom
is required for us to be able to perceive the external world, to be
conscious of change, to experience the flow of time.
The Eberhard theorem forbidding the use of the nonlocal quantum
potential as a communication channel does not work if there is
significant back-reaction. This is important for star ship design
because it enables communication between the star ship and earth base
without time delays. It also enables (via the Asher Peres theorems
in which Maxwell's Demon wins) the local manipulation of the
spacetime metric for warp drive.