Wednesday, August 24, 2011

Derren Debunks



Derren Brown is a brilliant mentalist from the UK, and an atheist. In this video he recruits a man to pose as a faith healer in order to show how it can be done by anyone. It serves as a PSA on the dangers of believing in greedy religious charlatans that promise too much.

Thursday, July 21, 2011

Mysterious Matter

So, I have a theory as to what "dark matter" might be (I know I'm wrong, but it's still fun to speculate and then share my delusions).

Quantum Multiverse Theory

My theory begins by assuming the quantum multiverse theory; a theory in which the big bang was one of many (an infinitude?) resulting from quantum fluctuations of a singularity at the beginning of time.

Quantum physics tells us that particles the size that this singularity would have been have an existence that is probabilistic in nature; therefore our universe could be just one of a multitude of possible outcomes of these fluctuations.

According to the theory, all other possible universes were also created, but in alternate dimensions/universes; and by the anthropic principle we exist in this universe because it is the one that is conducive to life exactly as we know it.

Quantum Gravity and the Zero-Point-Field (ZPF)

My theory also assumes a quantum account of gravity. More specifically, it sees gravity as an effect of thermodynamic disequilibrium in the zero-point-field (ZPF) caused by the presence of material existence in a specific dimension/universe which draws its energy of existence from the ZPF.

The ZPF is kind of like the zero dimension; since it is just pure energy, it does not require time or space to exist in, it just is. Material existence is just organized energy at its core, this energy is constantly borrowed and returned to and from the ZPF in small quantities, or "quanta."

Quarks (the smallest known constituents of matter) flicker extremely fast in and out of existence as they borrow and return energy from the ZPF; each of these flickers introduces another instance of randomness in which the quark returns to existence in one of the possible points at which it can return according to the wave distribution of the probability of it being at any given point.

In most cases, it returns close to where it was before, but not always. In fact if you try to control where a particle is at any given time by closing it in a smaller and smaller box, it gets claustrophobic and will eventually appear outside the box by traveling through the ZPF; this quantum claustrophobia is characteristic of what is known as the Heisenberg uncertainty principle.

Because material existence "here" borrows energy from the ZPF it causes a vacuum of energy "there" (in the ZPF), causing surrounding energy to rush in to fill the gaps (as per second law of thermodynamics, entropy). It is the movement of this underlying energy of existence towards the center of the vacuum there (center of gravity here) that effectively distorts the probabilistic projections of each and every quark it rushes by, changing the distribution of material "here".

The projections of probability for each quark go...


The probability curves of the possible/probable locations available to each quark as it flickers back into existence after its brief exchanges of energy with the ZPF are slanted towards the direction of the gravity, causing each quark to tend to move towards the center of gravity. (This is the two-dimensional version .. more realistically it would be a change from a spherical distribution to a rain-drop-shaped one.)

So, for each quark's probabilistic wave distribution, the deck is stacked in favor of popping back into existence (after its exchange of energy with the ZPF) in a place that is closer to the center of gravity than where it popped out of existence before the exchange, creating the effect of motion through space-time.

Dark Matter

Dark matter, as we know it so far, is characterized by ambient gravity with not much else in observable phenomenon to be measured or studied. Around super-clusters of galaxies, this ambient gravity creates a gravitational lens which bends light around the cluster of galaxies, creating ring shaped images of galaxies "behind" the cluster (relative to the observer). These ring shaped images are known as Einstein rings since he was the first to theorize their existence.


A galactic super-cluster with Einstein rings around it.

Our universe happens to have a cosmological constant that allows matter to form in the way that it does. In the quantum multiverse theory, there would be numerous alternate universes in alternate dimensions with similar cosmological constants (and therefore matter) and ours is but a typical universe among them. If these universes are all pulling the energy necessary for their existence from the same ZPF, then we would expect to see the effects across all of the universes. Given a quantum account of gravity like the one above, this effect would be in the form of ambient gravity.

This gravity would permeate all the universes, and create a general trend to pull galaxies "towards one another" in respect to the ZPF. This would create large general areas of overlap of position (relative to the ZPF) of galaxies in the different universes. The large spheres of ambient gravity that are observed by the Hubble telescope could be representative of a normative distribution of galaxies in different dimensions being drawn to the same general areas of the ZPF; and as each galaxy gets closer: the centralization of the gravity increases, therefore increasing the trend to move towards the center of gravity.


"As far as I'm concerned, if something is so complicated that you can't explain it in 10 seconds, then it's probably not worth knowing anyway."
~Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Waterson

Tuesday, June 28, 2011

Considering Consciousness

As a psychology student, the nature of consciousness is not only a source of personal pondering, but an area of interest in my academic studies. It was in my Intro to Cognitive Science class that I was first introduced to the notion of consciousness as an emergent property. This has remained my favorite way of considering consciousness.

An emergent property is that which is more than the sum of its parts, but rather more of a product of intricate functional interactions of many simpler properties or parts. A good example is a computer: many simple parts (transistors), serve simple functions (binary logic gates) which, when combined in an organized manner, give emergence to a functionality that is far greater than the sum of its parts.

Consciousness can be thought of in the same way. Our brains utilize binary coding of information similar to that of computers. Instead of transistors that produce 1's and 0's , we have neurons that either fire or do not fire. The rate at which a neuron fires corresponds to the strength of the signal it is carrying. Our neurons are intricately interlaced, connecting and communicating with one another via dendritic synapses (akin to a computer's logic gates).

Our brains have about 100 billion neurons. This sounds like enough to give rise to some pretty astounding processes already, but the real processing power of our brains comes from the fact that each of these neurons are directly connected to an average of 7,000 other neurons via dendritic synapses. Meaning that if any one random neuron fired a signal to another neuron it's connected to, there are
7.0 × 1014 (that's 700 trillion) possible ways this ONE signal could happen. Now consider that each synapse fires at an average of 200 times per second, and that each synapse can perform processes independent of others. That makes for an average of 1.4 × 1017 (14 quadrillion) processes per second.

It's not just about brute processing power though. It's also about the organization and connection of the simple parts and their functions that gives rise to higher products, or higher forms of emergent properties such as consciousness. These functional connections are what make consciousness an emergent property, and gives us our subjective, phenomenological experience of life.

"
Chandelier cells," which are the most intricately intertwined neurons found in the human brain, are found in the neocortex, an area of the brain involved in higher functioning and higher forms of consciousness. These more intricately connected cells are able to perform more meaningful processes due to their organization and give rise to more complex forms of emergent consciousness. Because of their high levels of innervation, chandelier cells are able to combine and incorporate more individual information processes together in a way that allows them to interact and give rise to a product of processes and not just a summation of processes.

Sebastian Seung
is working on a project to map the connections of the brain's synapses in an attempt to reveal the working brain as it gives rise to consciousness. He calls it the "connectome." I think he's on to something.

"I've been visualizing the conceptualization process, that's the hard part."
~Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Waterson