Requiem for a dream, or Quantum future of Humankind in Infinite Universe

Right, I know it’s not exactly a memory. It’s not even a dream, but rather a requiem for one. I used to think that we live in infinite Universe. I do not have any scientific background to come up with theories or statements, but as a human being I reserve my rights for beliefs. Be it belief in Jesus Christ the Savour, spirit of improvisation, Santa Claus, infinity of space and time, or belief in myself, belief is an integral part of any sentient self-reflecting being.

This belief in infinite Universe was simply based on the fact that we can’t measure it.

Of course, we have data that our Universe is 13,73 billion years old (as of the last week :) ). So we can imagine a ball 13,73 billion years in radius (given the speed of light 299 792 458 m/s and length of 1 year as 31 556 926 seconds it will give us approx. radius of 13 730 000 000 x 299 792 458 x 31 556 926 = 129893055103132202840000000 meters… so you know). But, as it took me about 2 min. to come up with this calculation, this radius became roughly 3597509496 m bigger.

We reached the point there I got bored myself. The numbers are just too big too mean anything. If you go shopping and see something cost 3 pounds 99 pence you’ll think it’s 4 pounds, right? This is what called approximation. So 129893055103132202840000000 + 3597509496 and counting… is a number I can’t imagine. It’s something like Bill Gate’s fortune, numbers beyond my grasp. I think that approximation of 129893055103132202840000000 + 3597509496 is infinity. There’s no need for me to operate with such numbers. I remember reading some anthropological reports about some aboriginal tribes in Papua New Guinea. They had numbers 1 to 5, and then groups: 1 to 5 too, so everything could be shown on 2 hands.

20 would be 4 times 5; 25 - 5 times 5 . Everything that was over 25 was “many-many”, uncountable, infinity.

Why do we need numbers over 25, if we have only 2 hands with 5 fingers on each? How can we count them? You see, numbers are not pure matters, but rather depend on ability of our comprehension.

From the mathematical point of view, infinite is uncountable. If properties of something changing all the time, we can’t count them exactly. So, I guess I secured my point here too.

Actually, as a little historical discourse, infinite could be classified. Infinite is not the same and not equal. The Indian mathematical text Surya Prajnapti (c. 400 BC) classifies all numbers into three sets: enumerable, innumerable, and infinite. Each of these was further subdivided into three orders:

  • Enumerable: lowest, intermediate and highest
  • Innumerable: nearly innumerable, truly innumerable and innumerably innumerable
  • Infinite: nearly infinite, truly infinite, infinitely infinite

From this point of view, I’ll say that Universe is rather innumerably innumerable, than infinite. There exists another interesting, Jains concept of infinity. They recognized different types of infinities: infinite in length (one dimension), infinite in area (two dimensions), infinite in volume (three dimensions), and infinite perpetually (infinite number of dimensions).

Anyway, if we accept Einstein’s concept of timespace continuum, time is infinite as well, I guess. Probably it had it’s beginning 13,73 billion years ago, together with space or even a bit before, but my idea is far more too simple. If time is an attribute of space and vice versa, they should share same qualities. According to Jains then, Universe is infinite perpetually.

So, is our Universe innumerably innumerable or infinite perpetually? Probably both. Why do I think it’s important? Because on it will depend timespace topology. Is our Universe shaped like a ball, doughnut, Mobius stripe, coffee pot or something else actually? Coming back to the topic. If we don’t know the shape (Universe limits), we can try to measure it’s volume.

I came across this paper, called Computational capacity of the universe by Seth Lloyd, a highly influential scientist from MIT who, apart of other things, first proposed quantum computers instead of conventional computers built on binary principle today :

“Merely by existing, all physical systems register information. And by evolving dynamically in time, they transform and process that information. The laws of physics determine the amount of information that a physical system can register (number of bits) and the number of elementary logic operations that a system can perform (number of ops). The universe is a physical system. This paper quantifies the amount of information that the universe can register and the number of elementary operations that it can have performed over its history. The universe can have performed no more than $10^{120}$ ops on $10^{90}$ bits.”

Actually, in his book “Programming the Universe”, Seth Lloyd suggests that the universe itself is one big quantum computer producing what we see around us, including ourselves, as it runs a cosmic program, and probably one day, if Moor’s law is correct, Humankind would be able to build such quantum computers on a smaller scale, thus cracking this programming code and understand how the Universe works.

Now, human beings are also physical systems. Merely by existing, according to Lloyd, they register information, and evolving dynamically in time transform and process it. In February 2008 the population of Earth exceeded 6,7 billion people. It means that in a little over than 2 revolutions of our little planet around the Sun the ENTIRE age of the Universe is consciously lived out by the humans on its surface.

Average age of human beings on this planet is between 27.4 and 28.7 years, depending on the source. My calculation is simple. If it takes something like 2.04 years for the entire Humankind to outlive the Universe and given average age of a human being, entire information possessed by Humankind should contain something like 13 or 14 times more information contained in the Universe from the very beginning, the Big Bang, hatching egg, Word or Vibration… whatever you call it according to your beliefs.

OK. Light is a waveform of electromagnetic radiation. Or, to put it simple, is information career. So, in a sense, this 129893055103132202840000000 + 3597509496 meters and counting radius of sphere (?, not sure, but let’s stick to conventional thinking), representing our Universe is the size of the information it contains. It is dwarfed by the size of combined Humankind consciousness. To represent the information we dynamically obtain and process in a physical form we would need a much bigger Universe than we are having at the moment… Moreover, Universe information database contains facts. Humankind knowledgebase contains not only facts, but their infinite interpretations, depending on our beliefs, age, educational background, nationality, cultural mindframe etc.

As George Dvorsky of BetterHumans.com notes:

“On the surface humanity appears to be spreading outward, venturing across continents and into space. Yet in actuality, we are journeying towards one another. Our globe has never appeared smaller and our proximity to each other has never been closer. This trend shows no signs of slowing down, pointing the way to a remarkable interconnected future.”

This is what we will have, I think. “Humans, know yourselves”, as ancient Greeks used to say, could be a motto of now-day Geeks, pushing ideas of technology and hive mind to they limits.

The first step would be integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Human Intelligence (HI). This process will be accelerated and smoothen by the advance of biotechnology, acceptance of genetic standards (protocols) and practical implementations of nanotechnology. Probably, organic and non-organic forms of intelligence would be cross-wired via nervous system.

The second would be integration of this AI/HI into one social network, there all the humans are the part of the whole computing grid.

The third will be using our combined processing power. Binary mentality and perception of the world would be dumped altogether. No + and -, no Man and Woman, no Good and Evil, and probably no 2-string DNA. We will have true variety of life forms, unified by those genetic and computing protocols, as we will embrace duality as unity.

Our combined consciousness will operate not with outdated binary concept of using for calculations 0’s and 1’s, but qubits. Whereas a bit must be either 0 or 1, a qubit can be 0, 1, or a superposition of both:

Blochsphere

Talking about topology. This is a Bloch sphere, a geometrical representation of the pure state space of a two-level quantum mechanical system, or, in another words, one cubit. (I am not sure what the shadow of this sphere represents though :) ).

For me this picture represents Universal consciousness: omnipresence of Being.

Forget about beliefs. Dump your idols and prophets or rather dump and embrace them all both. Quantum computing, here we come!

Now, there’s an interesting point. If we accept timespace concept, we accept that we live in 4 dimensions. Sphere, obviously, is a 3-dimensional object. So, how would sphere look like if we will introduce one more dimension (e.g, time or magnetic field, which I believe, are of the same nature, to it). Here we go, it called Hopf fibration. There’re few papers on the topic, should you be interested in pure maths rather than my speculations, such as “Geometric Aspects of Quantum Mechanics and Quantum Entanglement” by Dariusz Chruscinski, which can be found here.

So this is how Hopf fibration can (can, as it can look differently depending on given attributes) look like:

Hopf Fibration

 

Or, like this in simplified form:

Hopf Fibration 2

And actually here we come to the point of quantum holography, or brain function and memory organization. If our brain function on holographic principles, as many scientists tend to believe, it can be represented by Hopf Fibration. Look, for instance at an article here, taken from a page of British Computer Society/Cybernetic Machine Specialist Group. Hopf fibration and image description of it ends with this footnote: “light echo phenomenon of extragalactic quantum holography with radiation from the core of the galaxies serving as the reference radiation”.

Don’t ask me, what it could mean. I wonder myself.

Boris Kislitsin

 

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2 Responses to “Requiem for a dream, or Quantum future of Humankind in Infinite Universe”


  1. Gravatar Icon 1 abraxus

    Here’s another take if you like.
    Have a look at this article: “How things ‘become’. Part1, The infinity of definition:

    …Like any parasitic virus, language, and its forms, multiply and subsume their host – hijacking its nervous system for their own ends. Consciousness is subsumed by language, therefore the human universe is defined through language, just as part of a bat’s universe might be said to be defined through sonar(or sound).
    http://spacecollective.org/obvious

    And then another (http://cosmicvariance.com/2006/05/22/the-universe-is-structured-like-a-language), referring, actually, to Lloyd too. It’s an interesting read about Slavoj Zizek and his ideas with plenty of good comments. As you can see from the the name of the article, Zizek believes that universe is structured like language:

    …the universe is structured like a language. It is not just a random configuration of particles typed out by tireless monkeys; it is a quantum computer, following the rules of its algorithms. And by following these rules the universe manages to generate configurations of enormous complexity. Examples of which include science, poetry, love, meaning, and all of those aspects of human life that lend it more interest than we attach to other chemical reactions.

    What I’m trying to point at,is: Lloyd and you believe that reality surrounding us is a code, a piece of program run by Universe. It means that this program implements language: set of the rules and ideas. If we will be able to “crack” this code, to learn this language, we would be able to communicate it.

    Meaning, humans will master the Universe. But, on another hand, Humankind has its limitations too. So if we will “master” the Universe, we will impose these limitations on it. So it will… become human, coming back to ancient greeks and analogies between micro- and macro- cosm.
    Welcome to the loop of consciousness. Is this your dream, or what?

  2. Gravatar Icon 2 abraxus

    1: Spatial infinity must have no perpetual starting point and no definitive ending point.

    If you put your pencil on a piece of paper and draw a spiral that goes on forever, it is NOT infinite because there will always be a recognizable starting point.
    However, a three-dimensional spiral that spirals out in opposite directions from one point IS spatially infinite. It’s beginning point will soon become obsolete and become indistinguishable from the rest of the spiral.

    2: Temporal infinity is defined the same way as spatial infinity; no beginning and no end.

    The three-dimensional spiral that is spatially infinite, is NOT temporally infinite because it did, in fact, begin. There will always be a moment in time in which it was first formed and therefore the spiral does not adhere to this argument’s definition of infinity.

    Thesis: “Infinite” and “finite” are not mutually exclusive. It is possible for a subject to be both infinite and not infinite at once. Alternately, just because something is NOT infinite does not necessarily mean that it IS finite and vice versa.

    Yup, space and time in the quantum universe are also existing in quantum states, not as numbers. What about life then? Are we dead or alive or dead/alive the same time?
    Let’s say lucid dreaming is about being aware of dreaming while you dream.

    Does anybody have a clue what’s lucid living then?

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