Quantum Mechanics Friday Blog

Yup time to expand or possibly blow your mind with a little quantum theory tidbit.

Some physicists in Hanover, Germany have been doing a little experiment (GEO600) to try to detect gravitational waves. There are ripples in space-time thrown off by super-dense astronomical objects like black holes. Funny thing. So far no gravitational waves have been detected, but in the tradition of many physics discoveries, they might have found something even more nifty.

In a story that reminds me of the discovery of cosmic microwave background radiation, (remnants from the Big Bang, Edwin Hubble's theory) they have been getting noise in their detector. They just couldn't find an explanation until a coolleague at Fermilab, Craig Hogan, postulated that they might have stumbled upon the fundamental limit of space-time. That is the point where space-time stops behaving like the smooth continuum Einstein described and dissolves into "grains". Think of a photo in a newspaper when you examine it under a magnifying glass.

In a quote by Hogan that is sure to either puzzle you or make you say "what the f*&k?" the doctor makes the copmparison, "if the GEO600 result is what I suspect it is, then we are all living in a giant cosmic hologram."

Can I get another "what the f*&k?"

Ah again physics reaches a level that sounds more like either The Matrix or religion or maybe both. Alas, that is the kind of strangeness you get when space-time is examined at this kind of level. Which brings me to my next revelation. Our whole universe is quite likely just a construct of our consciousness that makes our existence easier to comprehend. The recent theory of "bio-centrism" pretty much say time and reality are simply the way our minds understand existence. This means where we should be looking to understand the universe is in our cognitive processes as well as in what we perceive as the physical world.

So to make a very very long story short, relax your reality is only an convenient illusion and eventually it will be replaced by another one. And no I haven't been smoking wacky tabaccy.

Cheers!