In thinking about near death experiences (NDEs), I had a thought that might support the idea that the human mind really is immortal. I must say, however, that I’ve never seen this argument made anywhere else, and so it’s probably dead wrong. But nevertheless, here it is:

One interpretation of quantum physics theory is that the wave mechanics function, on being observed by a conscious being, does not “collapse” into a singular and definite particular (or particle) state, but instead splits into an array of parallel universes beyond our awareness. Like marbles spilled on the floor, our consciousness, like a grasping hand, takes hold of one of those ”marble particle states” even as all the other possible “marble particle states” continue to exist, and spread out beyond our grasp.

Now apply this way of interpreting quantum reality to near death experiences. Here’s my theory: At the moment of death, the mind shuts off in some quantum directions and stays on in others, and that’s it!

Think about it. Once a mind is turned off in our particular and local “quantum state of the universe,” if consciousness does not collapse the wave mechanics function it must follow it (logically) into at least some of its other possible quantum states, where it is not turned off. In other words, we may be condemned, once our consciousness comes into existence, to never really have the power to turn it off! We may have to whir through the maze of quantum splitting universes forever and ever, like it or not. This may account for why NDEers describe death as a crossing over. You would expect your consciousness to just dark-out at death, but instead you pass effortlessly into another realm—the one that, well, you must necessarily have stayed conscious in! The darked-out quantum “possible worlds” are, for you, not there! You literally don’t know  of them because in them you really died. But in the one you do know (for you must know it), you still live!

I feel a science fiction novel in this idea. A suicidal person keeps thinking of elaborate ways of killing herself, and finds, at each attempt, her consciousness just keeps going. She can never turn herself off because at least one quantum state always has her, well, still conscious! Maybe death is something like that. Maybe we don’t die. Maybe we can’t die.

What do you think? Has some science fiction writer (that I don’t know of) already played this idea out? Or does anyone know of a physicist who has speculated about this? I know of Simone de Beauvoir’s novel, All Men are Mortal, in which a man does not die. But there are no novels (that I know of) that put this particular quantum spin on death and consciousness, making it physically and logically impossible in a splitting quantum universe where the wave mechanics function does not really ever collapse.

I’d like to offer an analogy. When you drift off to sleep at night, you have fallen into a very definite state. You’re not maybe  asleep. You are asleep. Your lover even looks in on you and sees that you have fallen asleep. And in the morning you will have recovered consciousness, looked at your surroundings, observed that you have been sleeping, and even had a dream. But wait. If the quantum wave mechanics function does not collapse when looked in upon, then in some quantum states unseen by your lover and by your “morning you,” you have insomnia, and when your lover looks in on you, he or she finds you wide awake. You get it on and have a kid. You name her Amy. She goes to Berkeley. She marries the great grandson of Sam Walton. In a universe where the wave mechanics function doesn’t collapse, that’s you too, and not just the guy or gal who slept through the night.

Now here’s my question again, put another way: How do you ever fully sleep, and how can you ever fully die, in a universe where the wave mechanics function does not collapse?

This question feels like a Zen koan to me. What is the sound of one hand clapping, and what is the sound of one man dying? How can anyone, without a second witness in the mind, ever die? Who collapses the wave mechanics function without somebody else in your head to look in and see that you really aren’t there anymore? It’s true that others can see a dead body and brain that’s stopped. But who sees the mind? At the 2:25 mark in the below video, a near death experiencer describes how abrupt the transition was (for him) from life to “death.” He describes it as a transition faster than “rolling over in bed.” That quick.

Another great post by Rhett at Dot physics theory! It’s always difficult to teach the wave mechanics-particle duality of light since students (and even teachers) struggle with the abstract reasoning involved. Rhett does a fantastic job with his illustrations and explanations of light as a wave mechanics. I’m definitely using this with my students.

Read the article “Light and wave mechanicss – at a basic Level”

Two famous experiments. Two super-famous scientists.

A did the experiment similar to shown in image A.

experiment_1

B described the experiment shown in image B.

experiment_2

Give me A,B, and the names of the respective experiments.

[ If you also give me the colloquial, raunchy name for experiment B, I'll give you bonus imaginary points ]

Where did the Universe come from? is a series of emails (just like the 7 Great Lies of Organized Religion) I have received from Mr. Perry Marshall. The reason I’m posting it here is that I want to share it to you, whoever you are, who stumbled upon this humble blog , and of course to all who regularly visits.

Note : This email series is Mr. Marshall’s writings and he was kind enough to grant me permission to post:

Lori,

100 years ago, Albert Einstein published
three papers that rocked the world. These papers
proved the existence of the atom, introduced the
theory of relativity, and described quantum
mechanics.

Pretty good debut for a 26 year old scientist, huh?

His equations for relativity indicated that the universe
was expanding. This bothered him, because if it was
expanding, it must have had a beginning and a beginner.
Since neither of these appealed to him, Einstein introduced
a ‘fudge factor’ that ensured a ‘steady state’ universe,
one that had no beginning or end.

But in 1929, Edwin Hubble showed that the furthest
galaxies were fleeing away from each other, just as the
Big Bang model predicted. So in 1931, Einstein embraced
what would later be known as the Big Bang theory, saying,
“This is the most beautiful and satisfactory explanation
of creation to which I have ever listened.” He referred
to the ‘fudge factor’ to achieve a steady-state universe
as the biggest blunder of his career.

As I’ll explain during the next couple of days,
Einstein’s theories have been thoroughly proved and
verified by experiments and measurements. But there’s
an even more important implication of Einstein’s discovery.
Not only does the universe have a beginning, but time
itself, our own dimension of cause and effect, began
with the Big Bang.

That’s right — time itself does not exist before
then. The very line of time begins with that creation
event. Matter, energy, time and space were created
in an instant by an intelligence outside of space
and time.

About this intelligence, Albert Einstein wrote
in his book “The World As I See It” that the harmony
of natural law “Reveals an intelligence of such
superiority that, compared with it, all the
systematic thinking and acting of human beings is
an utterly insignificant reflection.”

He went on to write, “Everyone who is seriously
involved in the pursuit of science becomes convinced
that a spirit is manifest in the laws of the Universe–
a spirit vastly superior to that of man, and one in
the face of which we with our modest powers must feel
humble.”

Pretty significant statement, wouldn’t you say?

Respectfully Submitted,

Perry Marshall

La figura ilustra a la perfección el experimento (izquierda). Gotas de agua cargadas eléctricamente flotando en aceite se ven atraídas por el agua y se funden con ella cuando se encuentran en un campo eléctrico por debajo de cierto umbral (derecha arriba). Cuando dicho umbral es superado las gotas rebotan (derecha abajo). Lo sorprendente es que el valor umbral del campo eléctrico se puede visualizar en las imágenes ya que viene reflejado por el ángulo de contacto entre la gota y el agua en el fondo. Hay un ángulo crítico por debajo del cual las gotas se funden y por encima del cual las gotas rebotan. La figura de abajo lo ilustra a las mil maravillas.

Este trabajo se ha publicado, como no, en Nature. Nos lo cuenta Frieder Mugele, “Fluid dynamics: To merge or not to merge …,” News and Views, Nature 461: 356, 17 September 2009, siendo el artículo técnico W. D. Ristenpart, J. C. Bird, A. Belmonte, F. Dollar, . A. Stone, “Non-coalescence of oppositely charged drops,” Nature 461: 377-380, 17 September 2009.

El trabajo técnico viene acompañado de varios vídeos de acceso gratuito. Aquí abajo tenéis los que muestran cómo rebota sucesivamente una gota (arriba) y dos gotas (abajo) cuando el campo eléctrico es suficientemente intenso. El artículo técnico también muestra la interacción mutua de “rosarios” (sucesiones) de gotas. Un gran trabajo experimental, sin lugar a dudas.

djarm67, a scientifically literate theist, presents the creationist A Questions of Origins while correcting each distortion, oversimplification, and error as it occurs:

There are six parts, watch them all if you have the time.

Your Thoughts?

Dr. Michio Kaku is a theoretical physicist, best-selling author, and popularizer of science.

Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-ME) has compared being a moderate Republican to being a member of the cast of a reality show, bemoaning the fact that, after three decades, Sen. Arlen Specter (D-PA) felt obliged to leave the Republican party. More recently, as reported in Talking Points Memo, she said “I haven’t changed, my party has”, emphasizing that the reason she has always been a Republican is its traditional emphasis on limited government and national defense. Regardless of your political views, it is difficult not to sympathize with Olympia Snowe here. I know I do not always agree with her, and find it both puzzling and disappointing that she is being such a holdout on healthcare reform. But that is okay, we do not always have to agree. A healthy democracy is one in which people who may not always agree with one another are able to engage in honest, civil dialog, and work together to find solutions to the problems we all face.

Over breakfast this morning, I was thinking about the concept of limited government (or small government, as some people say). I happen to believe that we desperately need universal affordable healthcare in the United States, yet I find the concept of limited government intellectually appealing. Why? Aren’t these two goals completely irreconcilable?  The American physicist Albert Einstein once said “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler”. Of course, he had in mind physical theory, but since it was Einstein, I’m sure he had in mind the broader, more philosophical implications, too.

In order to appreciate what Einstein had in mind, it is important to realize that a unifying theme in the history of physics theory (or, indeed, of science) is the discovery of simpler, conceptually clearer, ways of accounting for the same observations. A good example is the motion of the stars and planets in the night sky. It was once believed that the earth stood at the center of the universe. But when astrologers and, later, astronomers began to study the motions of the stars, the noticed two obvious patterns. First, in a single night, the stars would move in a circular pattern around a central point (close to Polaris, or the North Star). Second, from day to day, stars would rise and set at a slightly different point. But this, too, was a regular motion. What was perplexing was five “stars” which would move in highly irregular ways (again, this is the day to day, or night to night, motion, not the path followed around the North Star each night). We now know that these were not stars at all, but planets, shining by reflecting light from the Sun. In fact, the word planet derives from a Greek word meaning wanderer. It was not easy accounting for these strange motions, but a model involving planets set within crystalline spheres moving within spheres was developed by Claudius Ptolemy in second century C.E. This approach worked (sort of), but it was by no means simple.

Over the years, the Ptolemaic geocentric (”earth-centered”) model was gradually improved, at least in the sense that it could account more accurately for observations, but only by adding more and more ad hoc assumptions. You may recognize this as a violation of a principle known as Occam’s razor, the idea that arbitrary assumptions should not be introduced just to account for a single phenomenon or, as many people say, that the simplest solution to a problem should be the preferred one. Gradually, people came to realize that these problems could be solved more simply by placing the Sun at the center of the universe (or what was thought to be the universe at the time), with the earth and other planets moving around the sun. In this model, the apparent motions of the planets can easily be understood in terms of the relative speeds at which they orbit the sun. Much simpler! Unfortunately, ecclesiastical opposition to the heliocentric (”sun-centered”) model was strong, and it was only published when Nicholas Copernicus arranged to have his manuscript left on his death bed in 1543.

But this is only half of the story. Sometimes, simple, elegant accounts of physical systems simply do not work. It was a huge advance in the theory of light when the Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell showed that light can be accounted for as a particular type of electromagnetic wave mechanics, providing a simple, unified, account of all that was then known about light. In fact, this is universally acknowledged as one of the most important developments in the history of physics theory. Unfortunately, it does not account for all properties of light. It was not long before it was discovered that shining ultraviolet light on a certain kind of vacuum tube could produce an electric current. This is now known as the photoelectric effect, and it’s a real puzzle. Shining red light on the vacuum tube will produce no current, no matter how intense the light, but dimmest ultraviolet light (if ultraviolet light can indeed be called dim, perhaps least intense is better) will produce current. Actually, that’s not quite accurate: it does need to be strong enough to jar loose a single electron, but that’s all. This is where we get back to Einstein, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in physics theory in 1921 for explaining the photoelectric effect in terms of quantum mechanics (and not, incidentally, for relativity, even though this was also a huge contribution to physics theory). The idea is basically simple: quanta of ultraviolet light have much more energy than quanta of red light, and what matters in not how many quanta (or photons) there are, but how much energy each one has. If the individual photons are not sufficiently energetic to jar loose an electron, increasing the number of photons by turning up the intensity of the light will do no good. Sometimes, there is no choice but to make a physical theory more complicated.

Now, returning to the political arena, there are many problems that can be effectively addressed by simple, inexpensive, small government solutions. But that does not always work. One area where I think we all acknowledge this to be the case is national defense. But other problems, such as healthcare reform, seem to fall into the same category. Most of the industrialized world has recognized this problem and introduced universal healthcare. It would have perhaps been better if government involvement were not needed here, but there are good reasons to believe that a government based approach is needed. The U.S. approach of introducing a patchwork of programs which generally address only a small part of the problem is in many ways reminiscent of the geocentric universe of Ptolemy and others. A proper, and effective, solution means making the transition from Ptolemy to Copernicus, difficult as that might be.