My post of August 28, 2015, asked a series of questions about those ripples in a garden pool that many of us enjoy creating at one time or another. The ripples travel the length of the pool and return, over and over—for how long? If no one else makes waves in the pool, would our ripples continue traveling back and forth from one end of the pool to the other forever?
The intuitive answer, I believe, is "yes". In the absence of some opposing equal or greater force, the ripples will continue to diminish forever, never reaching, but always approaching, the zero point. That intuitive answer, I believe, is correct, but the logic for the answer is faulty because it fails to take into account an important point—we live in a quantum world. Let me explain.
It is important to establish first that the waves are waves of energy, not waves of water—no water travels the length of the pool—only the energy provided by your initial push travels the length of the pool and returns. (To see this for yourself, drop a cork in the water prior to starting the ripples—the cork will remain at the end of the pool where you dropped it.)
This is important because we live in a quantum world and one of the most important features of a quantum world is that energy is made of fundamental units, indivisible packets, rather than being divisible to a vanishing point. As the successive waves lose more and more of their energy, they eventually will reach that minimum size necessary for energy to exist in our time-and-space world and at that point will simply disappear. Are they gone forever?
It is well-established that at the quantum level time does not pass but is. Just as in our three-dimensional world you do not say that space passes, it simply is, in the many-dimensional quantum world time (one of the many dimensions) does not pass but is.[1] Those ripples will be there forever, tucked away in their own segment of time. But I must attach a proviso to this answer.
The proviso: The ripples will be there as long as our time-space world continues to exist. Is that forever? I will answer that question pragmatically: It is forever in every sense that matters to us as creatures of time and space.
That established, does it matter that the ripples will be there forever? Very much so since, by extension, we can say that all those "ripples" created by things we share our world with—now, in the future, and in the past—will continue to exist forever. Our ancestors and descendants and the "ripples" they create, will continue to exist "forever".
I would very much enjoy discussing this "forever" question with you. Please comment.
Note 1. See Donald W. Jarrell, At the Edge of Time, 2014, p. 34. See At the Edge of Time.
Next post on a bi-weekly schedule: October 9, 2015.
How to comment, for first-time commenters: With the blog page open in front of you, find the post that you would like to comment about. Go to the end of the post and click on "comments" which will allow you to read previous comments (if any). You will be invited to enter your comment in a "comment" window.
2 comments:
Each little segment of time is unique. Energy in one segment moves to the next but as the segments pass, the energy is attenuated. Finally even the last smallest unit of energy disappears. So too, the ripples are gone. The universe is ever changing. The process of entropy is basic. What is once organized gradually is disorganized.
The ancient Greeks discussed this. They sat around and said that if one moved half the distance to the goal at each step, one could never reach the objective, for half the distance would always be left. Then one member of the group, Zeno, I think his name was, got up, walked to the wall, and touched it. This, in my judgment, is analogous. The last little unit just disappears in its segment of time.
There are, it seems to me always limits. A tree grows only so high. An elephant gets only so big. And so on.
Reply to Paul's comment
I like this comment. And the bit about Zeno getting up, walking to the wall and touching it drives home the point that the best way to decide a question in our world frequently is simply to take action and observe the results. Zeno's act of walking to the wall; and touching it seems to disprove the idea that you could never reach the wall if you went only half the remaining distance each time since half the distance will always remain. And Zeno's act certainly provides an accurate picture given the nature of our world from a macro viewpoint.
From the vantage point of the very, very small—from the quantum view—a quite different picture emerges. As pointed out in the post, the energy expended to walk to the wall is not divisible to the vanishing point; quantum units of energy are indivisible. Therefore, while it would not be measurable or obvious to those Greek philosophers, when there are an odd number of quantum units of distance remaining, for example assume 3 units, it is impossible to walk exactly one half the remaining distance to the wall. And when the walkers are one quantum unit from the wall, they can walk no further.
How is it then that, if Zeno can never actually touch the wall, or, by extension, if you cannot touch the chair you are sitting in, why do we feel as though we touch these things in our world? In the world of Paul's comment, the everyday world, we would say that even though the atoms of seemingly solid items are known to be almost entirely empty space, the solid feel of these items is caused by a repulsive force between electrons in the wall and electrons in, for example, Zeno's hand.
But it is important to remember, as explained in my last Post (Are We Being Overwhelmed by Complexity?), that in the quantum view, our universe is not made of matter but of information and that elementary particles are not tangible objects but are bits of information only. What is "seen" at this level is a "transaction" between these bits of information, between these so called "particles". An exchange of information occurs and Zeno "feels" the wall!
Does this explanation seem weird to you? It should. Quantum physicists have a popular saying: "If you don't think quantum physicist is weird, you don't understand it." So, since quantum physics is weird, and since it differs from the everyday world view presented by Paul, can you dismiss it as the viewpoint of a few maverick scientists? I will discuss this question in an upcoming post.
Post a Comment