Which Is Larger, The Human Brain or the Universe?

Which is Larger—The Universe or Your Brain?
I imagine the look on your face when you read the title question was the same as the look of the typical person in medieval  times to the assertion that the earth was round. It's obvious, is it not, that the human brain is smaller than the universe. Well, maybe not. Perhaps it depends on how you measure the human brain and the universe.
The measurement issue may be illustrated with a balloon. Suppose we have an non-inflated balloon. How big is the non-inflated balloon? Squeezed into a ball, it has perhaps a diameter of 3" and a spherical  volume of about .061 gallons. Now let's inflate the balloon to a spherical diameter of 5 feet. The balloon now has a spherical  volume of about 489.60 gallons. What is the correct size for the balloon, .061 gallons or 489.60 gallons? If I say 489.601 gallons, you would properly protest that my preferred measure is comprised of very little balloon and a great deal of (mostly) empty space. But that "inflated balloon" answer is the one most humans use when we compare the human brain and the universe.
You may question whether the universe is as empty as my simplistic balloon example suggests. We are told of all the galaxies and other heavenly bodies that the universe contains and imagine a very crowded universe. We are not told of the vast empty spaces out there. Adam Hadhazy, is an exception. In his article in Discover Magazine, December 2016, "Nothing Really Matters", pp. 46-53, Hadhazy contends," 'space' is certainly an apt nickname for our cosmos, since there's a heckuva lot of it out there." He illustrates the emptiness of our cosmos with the following examples: 
Between here and the moon, about a quarter-million miles away, there's virtually nothing—just stray hydrogen, helium and the odd dust particle. On far grander scales, this barrenness becomes unimaginably vast. A desolate, virtually starless, 2.5 million light-year gulf—- that's nearly 15 quintillion miles— separates our home galaxy, the Milky Way, from its nearest sizable neighbor, the Andromeda Galaxy.
How do we deal with the measurement problem that arises when we try to measure something like our universe that consists mostly of empty space. Perhaps we have to consider measurement units other than the ones we now use for length, mass, time and temperature. Interestingly, the answer may lie with a proposal by Max Planck in 1899.
 Max Planck, among other scientists of his day, recognized that measures of time and space chosen by human beings were unlikely to retain their significance for all times and for all environments, terrestrial and human or otherwise. Planck proposed that natural units of mass, length, and time be constructed from fundamental constants of nature: the gravitation constant G, the speed of light c, and the constant of action, h, which now bears Planck's name. (Planck's constant determines the smallest amount by which energy can be changed—the 'quantum'). [1]
Using these universally suitable measures of time and space, which is larger, the universe or our brain? It is not even close: the human brain is vastly larger than the universe.
The human brain gains it size from its complexity which, in turn, arises because the human brain is alive—living things are incredibly complex. For example, the number of different possible thoughts or ideas—the  number  of  different electrical patterns—that a human brain can have is I0 to the power of 70000000000. This dwarfs the number of atoms in the observable universe—a mere 10 to the power of 80.[2}
Our brains have little difficulty containing our universes. And they do precisely this. My book contends that each of us creates within our brains, within predetermined constraints, the universe in which we exist. [3}
Does it matter? Is it helpful to know that each of us creates  our own universe? The answer is a resounding yes. We are able, for example, to see clearly for the first time the relationships among  time, gravity, and inertia and thus to understand fully why people who live at high elevations and those riding in supersonic aircraft will age (slightly) less rapidly than other persons. This is just one among many examples of ways we will see our world differently when we realize that we each create our universe within our brains.

Notes
1. See the excellent book by John D. Barrow, The Constants of Nature: From Alpha to Omega—the Numbers That Encode the Deepest Secrets of the Universe (New York, NY: Pantheon Books, 2002), 24-25. See also pages 54-55 and 117-118.
2. Barrow, pp. 117-118.
3. Donald W. Jarrell, At the Edge of Time: Reality, Time, and Meaning in a Virtual Everyday World (North Charleston, SC: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2012, 2014.)

A Search for the Primordial Concept

A Search for the Primordial Concept

Like many of you, I grew up with a fascination with dictionaries. I wondered about such questions as whether if someone knew and understood all the words in a truly unabridged and complete dictionary, would they know everything that humans could know at a given time? And, standing this question on its head, since a dictionary defines my word of interest using other words, does this mean there was a primordial word (a word that existed from the beginning of human language) and, if so, what was that original word? I believe that the answer to this last question lies with prehistoric man.
In a series of studies published in the 1950s, L. S. Vygotsky and A. R. Luria developed a set of ideas that was to become well-known as the cultural-historical theory of the higher psychological processes. Currently different aspects of this theory are enjoying increasing popularity among developmental psychologists.[1]
A basis of this theory was that concept formation in prehistoric man was used as an aid to memory long before concepts were used to allow language development. Concept development led to a wealth of concrete names for all sorts of objects stored in a prodigious memory.[1]
I have suggested that the primordial concept or word necessary for other words to have meaning would, of necessity, have existed when concept formation began. Let me illustrate this. Assume that one of the very first concepts formed by man represented a particular herbivore dinosaur and another a carnivorous dinosaur (such as the man-eating Siats meekerorum). What was the primordial concept? I would suggest "truth" or "accuracy"—errors were a matter of life and death. Like other of the many concepts in the prodigious memory of primitive man, such as concepts for edible and poisonous plants, deviations from truth or accuracy as to the meaning of these concepts were immediately punished. Offspring probably learned to live in the world of their parents by imitating the behavior of their parents (as the offspring of higher-order mammals are observed to do) forming their own unique memory bank of concepts. And the concept truth or accuracy was always there as a background presence as this prodigious memory was developed—it was the primordial concept necessary for other words to have meaning.
The path to language development using words, either spoken or written, in a structured and conventional way, was a long and tortuous path. And what happened to truth along the way? I don't need to tell you. The reward/punishment structure often made truth seem burdensome. My personal list of human activities that illustrate the compromised nature of truth would include: propaganda, politics, advertising, and religions that worship and follow the edicts of a god that seems always to tell its followers and their leaders to do what they want to do beforehand.
In fact, I believe a strong case could be made for departure from truth as the identity of the much-debated concept of "original sin" that plays such an important role in the Abrahamic religions. For those of you familiar with the Genesis Chapters 2 and 3 account of the Garden of Eden, recall that the critical event leading to mankind's expulsion from the garden is the Serpent's accusation of God of lying to Adam about whether he may eat fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Acting on the serpent's misinformation, Adam and Eve eat fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil leading to their expulsion from the Garden.
At present there seems to be a world-wide crisis of trust as people around the world are exhibiting distrust of leaders and institutions by rising up against them. Perhaps the world is more prepared than it has been in its history since the development of language to rescue the primordial concept, truth, from those activities listed above that dishonor truth and promote false beliefs. How might we do this?
The human activities that compromise truth are powerful and will not be easily persuaded to value truth. An important recent development with the potential for allowing large numbers of people around the world access to accurate information that may be used to find truth among the false data about their natural and artificial worlds is Wikipedia. Wikipedia is built on a very radical idea—a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge. Please do not dismiss lightly the potential of Wikipedia and do listen to the TED Talk by Jimmy Wales entitled "The Birth of Wikipedia." [2]
The appeal of sources of accurate information, such as Wikipedia, will be immensely enhanced by what I believe is the impending and inevitable collapse of the Trump Ponzi scheme in which each present failure to deliver on a campaign promise is an ever-more extravagant promises of future deliveries. This collapse will have world-wide repercussions including a widespread desire for accurate information.


NOTES:
1. René Van Der Veer, "The Anthropological Underpinning of Vygotsky's Thinking", openaccess.leidenuniv, 1991.
2. The information cited above, according to Wikipedia rules, requires no attribution. The source of the information about Wikipedia, however, should be watched by as many people as possible: Jimmy Wales, "The Birth of Wikipedia", TED Talk Subtitles and Transcript,  TED.com.html

Why Can We Understand the Universe?

Why Can We Understand the Universe?

Beginning in 1999, the University of Pennsylvania School of Arts and Sciences, has produced The 60-Second Lecture Series, a compilation of  lectures by various school faculty. One of these, The Knowable Universe,  inspired this post. The question raised by the lecture is: Why is the human mind capable of understanding this incredible universe of which we are a part." Einstein said, "The most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible" by the human mind.[1] He pointed out that, "a priori, one should expect a chaotic world, which cannot be grasped by the mind in any way." And, certainly, one would  expect a chaotic universe if the universe is a "one-and-done" creation. 

If, however, the world is not a one-and-done creation but is being continually created, some blueprint to guide the creation process and thus an underlying order would seem to be necessary.  The possibility now arises that, if the human mind is capable of understanding order, it may discover this order. That the universe is being continually created guided by an underlying order, and that the human mind is discovering this order is a necessary consequence of the way our universe is brought into being, in particular what time is and the way passage of time occurs.

As demonstrated in my book, At the Edge of Time [1] (see especially pages 77-79), our world is presented to us as frames of time similar to the way frames of a movie in our everyday world are presented. (This idea also has been suggested by physicists Paul Davies, Brian Greene, and Henry Margenau.[2].) Each frame is a new creation of our world.

A logical consequence of this premise of time presented in frames is that there can be no causal relationship between frames. Stated another way, the conditions of frame X can have no direct influence on what occurs in the next frame in the sequence, frame Y. Yet we know that our lives are not fragmented across time, that there is a carryover from one time period to the next. A likely explanation is that our universe is following a “cosmic blueprint” as it unfolds, as Paul Davies has suggested in his excellent book by the same name.[3]

And how can our universe follow a cosmic blueprint as it unfolds? The cosmic blueprint must be following a computer-like program, a set of executable instructions that produce an underlying order. And to the astonishment of scientists, we do understand this order. In an article widely accepted (and quoted) by both mathematicians and physicists, Eugene Wigner has called the appropriateness of the language of mathematics for the discovery of this order “a miraculous gift … which we neither understand nor deserve.”[4] The scientific method is so remarkably successful at explaining our everyday world that it seems very likely that the organizing principle used by the mind to assemble and present to us our everyday world is the very rules of logic and mathematics we use in inductive reasoning.

Why, then, is the human mind capable of understanding our incredible universe? Because the organizing principle used by the mind to assemble and to present to us the script for our everyday lives appears to be the logic of inductive reasoning. Our everyday world is inherently logical in its structure—it cannot be other­wise—and it can therefore be understood by humans thinking logically. It goes without saying that the scientific method should be successful at explaining our world if the logic we use to understand that world is the logic used to present that world to us.

NOTES

1. Donald W. Jarrell, At the Edge of Time: Reality, Time, and Meaning in a Virtual Everyday World (North Charleston, SC: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2012, 2014.)

2. Paul Davies, “The Mysterious Flow of Time,” Scientific American, September 2002, 32-37, esp. p. 34; Brian Greene, The Hidden Reality: Parallel Universes and the Deep Laws of the Cosmos (New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 2011), 238; and Henry Margenau, The Nature of Physical Reality: A Philosophy of Modern Physics (New York, NY: McGraw-Hill, 1950), 155-159.

3. Paul Davies, The Cosmic Blueprint: New Discoveries in Nature’s Creative Ability To Order the Universe (New York, NY: Simon and Schuster, 1988).

4. Eugene P. Wigner, “The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences,” in The World Treasury of Physics, Astronomy, and Mathematics, Timothy Ferris (ed.) (Boston, MA: Little, Brown, 1991), 526-540, esp. 540.

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Apologies to Einstein Not Necessary—Reply to Paul

Apologies to Einstein Not Necessary—Reply to Paul

(Normally I would reply to a comment using the reply button at the end of the post. Unfortunately, my reply exceeds the 4,000-character limit for replies so I am publishing my reply as a new post which sets no character limits on post size.)

Paul's Comment to Post 8, Apologies Aren't Necessary—Einstein Was Right
It is comforting to learn that Einstein continues to be correct. It seems that physicists for a long time were trying to show that Einstein was wrong about something so that it would lead to fame and fortune.
But if Einstein’s being correct depends on the existence of other universes, suspicions are aroused.
In the case cited I understand that scientists in an alternate universe try the same experiment and their particle appears in our universe. Clever.
However, is there any proof of this amazing performance? Where is this alternative universe? If an alternative universe is created each time there is a decision point, there must be an infinite number of such universes. Given that our universe is ever expanding and is infinite in size itself, all the alternative universes must be infinitely large as well.
Why would God do this? To see if a perfect universe could develop? What would be the characteristics of such a universe? Perhaps for some other reason we do not know?
Now I suppose that the mathematics require the existence of alternate universes. But mathematics is a language. Where is the experimental proof?
Reply, please

Thanks for the comment, Paul. These are tough questions, as I have come to expect from you. They strike at the heart of the hypothesis proposing the multiverse.
I share your respect for Einstein. His knowledge of quantum physics was underrated by many in the scientific community and much of that failure to appreciate that knowledge was a widespread misunderstanding of what he said and believed about the behavior of entangled particles. To my knowledge, he never stated that entangled particles do not exhibit coordinated behavior—that is, when one is measured, the other immediately displays anticorrelated behavior.[1] What he did say, is that there is no "action at a distance"—a measurement of one particle does not cause the correlated behavior of the other particle. This belief was grounded in his extraordinary understanding of and respect for our universe's laws of physics. He knew, better perhaps than any other of his generation, that such a causal connection would require the effect he ridiculed as "spooky action at a distance" and that such action was not allowed by those laws. Unfortunately, Einstein died in 1955, two years before the publication of Hugh Everett's Doctoral Dissertation introducing the theory underlying the multiverse. Einstein could not have considered whether Everett's version of multiverse theory offered an alternative explanation for action at a distance that would not require a violation of the laws of physics.
On to your comment, let me make an important correction to your understanding of what happens when alternate universes are formed. Yes, scientists in an alternate universe perform the same experiment but the particle they observe does not appear in our universe. Nor does the particle our scientists observe appear in their universe. The reason this cannot occur is that measurement of the particle in either universe results in immediate collapse of the associated entangled wave function resulting in a loss of all other information about particles associated with the wave.
So your immediate rejoinder, I'm sure, would be: then how do we know that the particle in the alternate universe displays a value anticorrelated with the measurement in our universe—for example, that it displays an opposite spin—if we cannot observe that particle? That this anticorrelated value occurs has been shown by bringing the teams of scientists together, so to speak, in a laboratory setting, in order that they can operate on their entangled particles conjointly.[2] In order to acquire information about the spins of both particles without collapsing their respective wave functions, application of a unitary transformation (a transformation that preserves their entangled states) is required. This transformation allows each team to rotate the entangled basis of their particle. They can then measure their entangled particles separately to acquire the information they seek and to infer, but not to observe, the value of the other team's measurement. (A similar procedure was used in the Delft University experiment to produce event-ready electrons [3] and is used by computer programmers using a quantum computer. (For an explanation of the relationship between quantum computing and the multiverse, see At the Edge of Time, especially pages 118-121.) [4] Note that this result, while guided by mathematical computations, is obtained by a reproducible experiment, not by mathematics alone.[5]
Where is the proof for the multiverse? We are at the stage in our exploration of the frontiers of knowledge when we will no longer be able to definitively prove or disprove many emerging concepts. However, as with the hypotheses of dark energy and dark matter, we know the multiverse exists because it satisfactorily explains aspects of our cosmos not otherwise explainable.[6] Instantaneously correlated behavior of widely separated particles is one example of a behavior that cannot otherwise be explained.[7]
Are there too many universes for the space they must occupy? Isn't an infinite number just too many? I try (with some success) to avoid using the term "infinite" for I don't find it helpful; the term literally means "beyond number" and yet we treat it, as in my phrase "too many" as a number. I use instead the phrase "beyond number" to remind myself that we don't know how many of something there are. Further, to ask if there are too many universes for the space they must occupy, I think, puts the cart before the horse: the universes are there so there must be space for them.
Why would God create multiple universes? I agree with you that the multiverse was created with purpose; that this is so has become the elephant in the room and arguments to the contrary are becoming increasingly lame and unsatisfactory. One way to view this is attributed to Aristotle: "nature does nothing in vain". Does it not appear that evolution is steering life and the universe inerrantly toward fulfillment of a purpose? You suggest that the purpose of multiple universes is to see if a perfect universe could develop? I would not quarrel with this as a possible purpose.[8]
I welcome other points of view.

NOTES
1, See also: Quantum Entanglement, Abstract, line 4.
2. The following explanation is unavoidably complex given the way characteristics of elementary particles are measured. See how do we measure spin
3. See Delft University News and Zukoski, et al, Abstract.
4. Donald W. Jarrell, At the Edge of Time: Reality, Time, and Meaning in a Virtual Everyday World (North Charleston, SC: CreateSpace Pub., rev 2014)., 120-121..
5. For a more complete explanation of this process, see the online version of Cal Tech's Course, Physics 219, Particle Theory, by copying and pasting the following URL into your browser::
http://www.theory.caltech.edu/people/preskill/ph229/notes/chap4.pdf
6. See Vilenkin and Tegmark.
7. Other examples are presented in Jarrell,
8. I defer here to Chapter 5 of Ibid., esp. p. 140.

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How Do We Structure the Knowledge We Accumulate?

How Do We Structure the Knowledge We Accumulate?

A friend recently suggested to me, "I believe most of us have given thought to how we structure the knowledge we accumulate." [1]
For those of you who, like me, have a bent for living Socrates' examined life, that certainly is true. 
A so-called tree structure of layers of increasing specificity is employed to store information contained in a computer or found online. For example, a computer folder named Time Plans may contain folders for a range of years and within that folder may be folders for each year, and so on, ending at a plan for a particular week. Without this simple and intuitive tree structure, most of the information entered in our computers would, for practical purposes, be lost since each access to information would require a probably lengthy search.[2] 
The database of the mind is vastly larger and includes kinds of information that cannot be stored in a computer database or online. Consider a computer plan for the week a person meets a significant other. This plan typically will contain little of the information stored in the mind such as the sensations and emotions experienced during that week. That this type of information is very important is evidenced by the recent discovery that positive emotions can trigger the "good medicine" of nostalgia. 
http://bioscience.oxfordjournals.org/content/50/10/861.full
Do some of you share the following view? If not, how do you structure information?  
I organize what I know in successively more abstract layers in what seems to me a continual, largely subconscious, search for meaning. I have a great deal of very specific concrete information of a factual nature in my mind. This concrete information is collected within more abstract concepts that make sense of some of this concrete information. I then discover even more abstract ideas that pull these second tier ideas together and provide meaning for them, and so on. 
This way of viewing my accumulated information has served me well, leading to insights that I could not otherwise have experienced. One such example is this: In my early life in rural America, It seemed to me that the cows, geese, and other animals owned by my family displayed affection for their young in much the same way that humans do.[3] This observation worked for me, as a way to understand much animal behavior and saved me from many a flogging as a young child that would have been occasioned by straying too close to a goose protecting her goslings. Later, I came to see this anthropomorphic view of animals as just one application of a principle: accept a theory if, and only if, it helps to understand and predict events in your world. 
Exactly how do we add those layers of abstraction? Unlike the layers of specificity mentioned earlier, which tend to be built, at least in large part, from the top down, layers of abstraction are built by a process of discovery from the bottom up. We collect extensive information and one day, in an "aha" moment of insight, we discover an abstract idea that assigns meaning to some of our accumulated knowledge. A later moment of discovery may occur when we discover an even more abstract idea that assigns meaning to several of these second tier layers of abstraction. Einstein and Infeld described these discoveries as "free creations of the human mind."[4]
An interesting and important point concerning these layers of abstraction is that successive layers of more abstract information are successively less complex. Einstein and Infeld suggested this relationship in connection with their story of a man who is trying to understand the mechanism of a closed watch:
In our endeavor to understand reality we are somewhat like a man trying to understand the mechanism of such a closed watch. He sees the face and the moving hands, even hears its ticking, but he has no way of opening the case. If he is ingenious he may form some picture of a mechanism which could be responsible for all the things he observes, but he may never be quite sure his picture is the only one which could explain his observations. … But he certainly believes that, as his knowledge increases, his picture of reality will become simpler and simpler and will explain a wider and wider range of his sensuous impressions. He may also believe in the existence of the ideal limit of knowledge and that it is approached by the human mind. He may call this ideal limit the objective truth.[5]
Where do these ever-more abstract discoveries end? As Einstein and Infeld suggest in the above quotation, inquiring minds ultimately approach discovery of the first principles of thought: being, meaning, reality, and truth. These first-principle ideas are the highest tier of abstraction possible for the human mind.

Notes:
1. Much of the information contained in this post is from Donald W. Jarrell, At the Edge of Time; Reality, Time, And Meaning in a Virtual Everyday World (North Charleston, SC: CreateSpace, 2012, rev. 2014.) See At the Edge of Time.
2. We also use this tree structure to store much of the information in our minds. The information stored in this manner plays a relatively minor role in furthering advances in our knowledge. 
3. That animals have emotions such as love is now a widely accepted view in science.) 
4. Albert Einstein and Leopold Infeld, The Evolution of Physics; The Growth of Ideas from Early Concepts to Relativity and Quanta (New York, NY: Simon and Schuster, 1961) (Original copyright, 1938), 31.
5. Einstein and Infeld, 31.

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Apologies Aren't Necessary—Einstein Was Right [1]

This post is a response to a New York Times article of October 21, 2015, entitled "Sorry, Einstein. Quantum Study Suggests ‘Spooky Action’ Is Real". The Times article reports a study conducted at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands that questions Einstein's defense of the "locality" principle, which insists that an object can be influenced only by events in its immediate surroundings. Einstein had famously labeled any claim to the contrary as "spooky action at a distance." I feel Einstein is correct despite the findings of the Delft experiment. However, in order to understand what is involved in this difference of interpretation, it is necessary to understand three important characteristics of particles and waves: particles in superposition, entanglement of elementary particles, and collapse of a wave function.
One of the simplest ways to illustrate these characteristics is to conduct a two-slit experiment, as described In the post of October 24, 2015. In the classic version of the two-slit experiment, first done more than 200 years ago, light rays passing through two parallel slits displayed characteristic wave behavior (think here of water waves) by interfering with each other, creating a pattern of light and dark patches on a photosensitive screen positioned behind the slits. The patches corresponded to the points on the screen where the peaks and troughs of waves diffracting out from the two slits combined with one another either constructively or destructively. Light patches occurred when the crests of two light waves came together while dark patches occurred when the crest of one wave met the trough of another wave.
Other research findings suggested that under some circumstances light consisted of elementary particles of light called photons. In the twentieth century, physicists performed a variation of the classic two-slit experiment with low-intensity light to show that this interference pattern was evident even when particles of light (photons) passed through the apparatus one at a time. This finding indicated that the photon was interfering with itself by passing through both slits at once! This phenomenon came to be called quantum superposition—the particle simultaneously existed in two possible states at once.
Surprisingly, for the time, when a variation of the two-slit experiment was performed placing detectors at the slits to determine through which slit a particle was passing the wave pattern disappeared and a single photon was observed. (This was an early indication that our world exists only when it is observed.) This interference of the light waves with each other became known as "entanglement" and the particles associated with them became known as "entangled particles". Disappearance of the wave function and the display of an elementary particle when an attempt was made to detect a particle became known as "collapse of the wave function". (These experiments can also be done with other subatomic particles such as the electron with the same results.)
A characteristic of entangled particles that defied common sense and has proven to be very difficult to explain is the central question involved in the Delft University study: when one of two such entangled particles is observed, for example its spin (a characteristic of elementary particles having nothing to do with actual spinning) is measured, the other entangled particle will Instantaneously display the opposite spin. This has proven to be true even as the distance between the entangled particles has increased. Increasing the distance between the entangled particles has been done, for example, by splitting the beam of light with a mirror and, in the Delft study, by using two diamonds with entangled photons and placing the diamonds on opposite ends of the Delft University. This separation, 1.3 km (approximately 0.81 miles) constituted a distance the scientists conducting the Delft study felt insured that the particles could not influence each other without violating fundamental laws of physics. Nevertheless, as reported in the NY Times article cited above (See New York Times), scientists involved in the Delft experiment (see Delft study) concede that other attempts to close loopholes may follow their study but they clearly feel that their study is sufficient proof that the spookiness Einstein derided is real, that action at a distance must be occurring. There is, however, a more credible and satisfactory explanation for what is happening here that does not require action at a distance and is consistent with the known laws of physics: the "many-worlds" interpretation of reality.
The Many-Worlds Interpretation of Reality
A remarkable theory developed by Hugh Everett III, is called the many-worlds interpretation (also called the many-universes interpretation) of quantum mechanics.[2] The many-worlds interpretation views reality as a many-branched tree, wherein every logically possible quantum outcome is realized. All logically possible alternative histories and futures are considered to be real, each occurring in an actual “world” (or “universe”), each with its own observer.
In lay terms, many-worlds posits that as we make certain critical choices in life, branching occurs such that a number of worlds emerge, one for each of the choices we could have made. Everything that could have happened in our future, but will not, will occur in the future of some other world and everything that could have happened in our past, but did not, has occurred in the past of some other world.
To illustrate the application of the many-worlds interpretation to the question of whether action at a distance occurs, assume that we are a group of scientists conducting an experiment. We have two entangled particles and we measure, say, the spin, of one of the entangled particles. We have made a choice and branching occurs so that one of the entangled particles is in our world and the other is in the world of a group of counterpart scientist. In our world we make one measurement—there is no action at a distance since only one measurement is made in our world. We know this, for when we measure a particle in superposition we find only one particle. And none of the fundamental laws of physics of our world are violated. Meanwhile our counterpart team of scientists in another world also make one measurement and again there is no action at a distance since only one measurement is made in their world.
Should you accept the many-worlds interpretation as physics or is it metaphysics. Max Tegmark contends:
"The frontiers of physics have gradually expanded to incorporate ever more abstract (and once metaphysical) concepts such as a round Earth, invisible electromagnetic fields, time slowdown at high speeds, quantum superpositions, curved space, and black holes. Over the past several years the concept of a multiverse has joined this list. It is grounded in well-tested theories such as relativity and quantum mechanics, and it fulfills both of the basic criteria of an empirical science: it makes predictions, and it can be falsified." [3]
You have a choice. You may believe in action at a distance and its difficulties given the fundamental laws of physics or you may believe in the many-worlds interpretation that, while it is not a widely accepted concept with the general public or with the physics community at large,  it offers a credible and satisfactory explanation for the relationship between entangled particles.


Notes
1. This Post is adapted from Donald W. Jarrell, At the Edge of Time: Reality, Time, and Meaning in a Virtual Everyday World (North Charleston, South Carolina: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2012, rev 2014), 66-68. See At the Edge of Time.
2. Hugh Everett III, The Many-Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics: The Theory Of The Universal Wavefunction, doctoral dissertation, Princeton University, 1957, 9. Everett’s doctoral dissertation may be downloaded as a pdf file at www.pbs.org.
3. Max Tegmark, "Parallel Universes", Scientific American, April 14, 2003.

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Is the Quantum View of our World Believable?

Is the Quantum View of our World Believable? [1]
Quantum physicists have a saying: "If you don't think quantum physics is weird, you don't understand quantum physics." In spite of the fact that quantum physics comes to some conclusions that seem weird by everyday world standards, I choose to believe that its major findings are correct. In particular, I believe a central finding of quantum physics: we bring the everyday world into being by our observations.
Three variations of the famous two-slit experiment (also called double-slit experiment) point to this conclusion. The classic version of the two-slit experiment, done more than 200 years ago, demonstrated that light traveled as a wave. Light rays passing through two parallel slits displayed characteristic wave behavior (think here of water waves) by interfering with each other, creating a pattern of light and dark patches on a photosensitive screen positioned behind the slits. The patches corresponded to the points on the screen where the peaks and troughs of waves diffracting out from the two slits combined with one another. Light patches occurred when the crests of two light waves came together while dark patches occurred when the crest of one wave met the trough of another wave. Thus, in the classic version of the experiment light was demonstrated to travel as a wave.
However, other research findings suggested that under some circumstances light consisted of discrete quantized packets and in the twentieth century, physicists re-performed the classic two-slit experiment with low-intensity light to show that this interference pattern was evident even when particles of light (photons) passed through the apparatus one at a time. Light, therefore, was shown to exhibit both particle-like and wave-like properties. (These experiments can also be done with other subatomic particles with the same results.)
The second experiment was a modest but important variation of the classic two-slit experiment. In this version, detectors were placed at the slits to determine through which slit a particle was passing. It was found that using detectors destroyed the interference pattern on the screen. The behavior of photons thus was changed depending on whether or not an attempt was made to observe them.
The most astonishing of this important triad of experiments, the delayed-choice experiment, was proposed by John Wheeler in 1978.[2] In this experiment the decision whether to turn on or off the detector was delayed (from our perspective) until after a photon had passed the detector. The astonishing part: it was found that the later decision determined what happened at the earlier time. [3]
Wheeler's conclusion: "[W]e, by observing the universe, contribute to the ongoing creation of not just the present and the future but the past as well."[4] Another way to express this same idea: elementary particles (and the real-world items "composed of" elementary particles) are not there waiting for us to observe them but rather are brought into being by our observations. By our thoughts we bring our world into existence.

Notes
1. This Post is adapted from Donald W. Jarrell, At the Edge of Time: Reality, Time, and Meaning in a Virtual Everyday World (North Charleston, South Carolina: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2012, rev 2014), 2-5 and 27-29. See At the Edge of Time.
2. John Archibald Wheeler, “The ‘Past’ and the ‘Delayed-Choice’ Double-Slit Experiment,” in Mathematical Foundations of Quantum Theory, A. R. Marlow (ed.) (New York, NY: Academic Press, 1978), 9-48.
3. It may be helpful in understanding the double-choice experiment to read an alternate explanation by Paul Friedlander at AlternateExplanation.
4. Tim Folger. Interview with John Wheeler, “Does the Universe Exist if We’re Not Looking?”, Discover, June 1, 2002. See WheelerInt.

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