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The Milky Way galaxy is relatively calm by the destructive standards of the rest of the Universe, and compared to its own very violent past. But just recently we discovered that its violent past was much more recent than we thought – and could even happen again.

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#space #astrophysics #spacetime

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In astronomy we talk about billions of years like it’s no big deal. But how can we be sure about timescales so far beyond the capacity for human intuition? Our discovery of what we now call deep time is very recent – as recent as our discovery of the true spatial vastness of our universe. And it came as scientists tried to measure the age of the Earth. What they found was as shocking and humbling as anything seen through the telescope.

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Normal maps are useless inside black holes. At the event horizon – the ultimate point of no return as you approach a black hole – time and space themselves change their character. We need new coordinate systems to trace paths into the black hole interior. But the maps we draw using those coordinates reveal something unexpected – they don’t simply end inside the black hole, but continue beyond. In these maps, black holes become wormholes, and new universes lie on the other side.

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If there’s one thing cooler than a black hole it’s a rotating black hole. Why? Because we can use them as futuristic power generators, galactic-scale bombs, and portals to other universes.

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Black holes are self-sustaining holes in the fabric of spacetime. Space at the event horizon cascades downwards, dragging more space behind it, sort of like how water drags itself near the edge of a waterfall. In a Kerr black hole, space above the event horizon is dragged around in a circle – so less waterfall and more whirlpool. Water spiraling down a drain in a flat sink doesn’t know about the hole – it only knows about the motion of the water around it. In fact it’s possible to construct a black hole in general relativity rotating or otherwise – without any mass. Warp spacetime so it looks like the exterior of a black hole, and that warping will persist. So what is rotating? Spacetime is rotating.

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This episode of space time is brought to you by the information flowing through an impossibly complex network of quantum entanglement, that just happens to mutually agree that you and I exist inside it. Oh, and Schrodinger’s cat is in here too.

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In quantum world things are routinely in multiple states at once – what we call a “superposition” of states. But in the classical world of large scales, things are either this or that. The famous thought experiment is Schrodinger’s cat – in which a cat is in an opaque box with a vial of deadly poison that’s released on the radioactive decay of an atom. Quantum mechanics tells us that the atom’s wavefunction can be in a superposition of states – simultaneously decayed or not decayed. So is the cat’s wavefunction also in a superposition of both dead and alive.

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The most elegant interpretation of quantum mechanics is the universe is constantly splitting
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Prof. Sean Carroll https://www.preposterousuniverse.com
His book, a major source for this video is ‘Something Deeply Hidden: Quantum Worlds and The Emergence of Spacetime’

Code for solving the Schrödinger equation by Jonny Hyman available here: https://github.com/jonnyhyman/QuantumWaves

I learned quantum mechanics the traditional ‘Copenhagen Interpretation’ way. We can use the Schrödinger equation to solve for and evolve wave functions. Then we invoke wave-particle duality, in essence things we detect as particles can behave as waves when they aren’t interacting with anything. But when there is a measurement, the wave function collapses leaving us with a definite particle detection. If we repeat the experiment many times, we find the statistics of these results mirror the amplitude of the wave function squared. Hence the Born rule came into being, saying the wave function should be interpreted statistically, that our universe at the most fundamental scale is probabilistic rather than deterministic. This did not sit well with scientists like Einstein and Schrödinger who believed there must be more going on, perhaps ‘hidden variables’.

In the 1950’s Hugh Everett proposed the Many Worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics. It is so logical in hindsight but with a bias towards the classical world, experiments and measurements to guide their thinking, it’s understandable why the founders of quantum theory didn’t come up with it. Rather than proposing different dynamics for measurement, Everett suggests that measurement is something that happens naturally in the course of quantum particles interacting with each other. The conclusion is inescapable. There is nothing special about measurement, it is just the observer becoming entangled with a wave function in a superposition. Since one observer can experience only their own branch, it appears as if the other possibilities have disappeared but in reality there is no reason why they could not still exist and just fail to interact with the other branches. This is caused by environmental decoherence.

Schrodinger’s cat animation by Ivy Tello
Wave functions, double slit and entanglement animation by Jonny Hyman
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To quote eminent scientist Tyler Durden: “On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.” Actually… not necessarily true. If the quantum multiverse is real there may be a version of you that lives forever.

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If we can’t ever peer into these other realities that are used to explain quantum mechanics, how do we know they exist? In order to understand what happens to those different branches, and to understand why we find ourselves in one of them, we need to embrace one of the interpretations of quantum mechanics. For example the Copenhagen interpretation, which says that the wavefunction branches that we don’t observe somehow vanish at the moment of measurement. Or the Many Worlds interpretation, which states that those other branches are just as valid as ours – implying that reality may split and multiply in all possible ways. In that case we only see one branch because we live in that branch, and the others are rendered inaccessible by decoherence. But today I’m going to offer a test. Admittedly NOT a very useful one – but one that’s fun to think about. We’ll call this test quantum immortality. It’s based on the famous Schrodinger’s cat thought experiment.

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Why is it that we can see these multiple histories play out on the quantum scale, and why do lose sight of them on our macroscopic scale? Many physicists believe that the answer lies in a process known as quantum decoherence.

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Does conscious observation of a quantum system cause the wavefunction to collapse? The upshot is that more and more physicists think that consciousness – and even measurement – doesn’t directly cause wavefunction collapse. In fact probably there IS no clear Heisenberg cut. The collapse itself may be an illusion, and the alternate histories that the wavefunction represents may continue forever. The question then becomes: why is it that we can see these multiple histories play out on the quantum scale, and why do lose sight of them on our macroscopic scale? Many physicists believe that the answer lies in a process known as quantum decoherence.

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#space #quantummechanics #astrophysics

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It’s not surprising that the profound weirdness of the quantum world has inspired some outlandish explanations – nor that these have strayed into the realm of what we might call mysticism. One particularly pervasive notion is the idea that consciousness can directly influence quantum systems – and so influence reality. Today we’re going to see where this idea comes from, and whether quantum theory really supports it.

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The behavior of the quantum world is beyond weird. Objects being in multiple places at once, communicating faster than light, or simultaneously experiencing multiple entire timelines … that then talk to each other. The rules governing the tiny quantum world of atoms and photons seem alien. And yet we have a set of rules that give us incredible power in predicting the behavior of quantum system – rules encapsulated in the mathematics of quantum mechanics. Despite its stunning success, we’re now nearly a century past the foundation of quantum mechanics and physicists are still debating how to interpret its equations and the weirdness they represent.

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What does the strong nuclear force, the fundamental symmetries of nature, and a laundry detergent have in common? They’re all important parts of the tale of the axion – a tale whose end may take us beyond the standard model and solve one of the most vexing mysteries in astrophysics.

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The story of the axion is a classic physics tale: intrepid scientists delve deep into trackless mathematics in search of answers to a mystery. And there, against all expectations, they find the hint of a completely new and unexpected denizen of the natural world. In this case the mystery was a subtle inconsistency in the behavior of the fundamental forces. And the unexpected discovery? A brand new particle – the axion – which, while not proven to exist, may explain a much more famous conundrum. The axion may explain dark matter.

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Hypernova Supporters
Chuck Zegar
Danton Spivey
Donal Botkin
Edmund Fokschaner
Hank S
John Hofmann
John Pollock
John R. Slavik
Jordan Young
Joseph Salomone
Julian Tyacke
Justin Ash
Mathew
Matthew O’Connor
Syed Ansar
Timothy McCulloch

Gamma Ray Burst Supporters
A G
Adrian Hatch
Adrien Molyneux
AlecZero
Andreas Nautsch
Angela Prigge
Bradley Jenkins
Brandon labonte
Brian Blanchard
Craig Stonaha
Dan Warren
Daniel Lyons
David Bethala
DFaulk
Douglas Cantrell
Eric Kiebler
Frederic Simon
Geoffrey Short
Graydon Goss
John Funai
John Robinson
Jonathan Nesfeder
Josh Thomas
Kevin Lee
Kevin Warne
Kyle Hofer
Malte Ubl
Michael Conroy
Nick Virtue
Nick Wright
Nickolas Andrew Freeman
Patrick Sutton
Paul Rose
Protius Protius
Robert Ilardi
Scott Gossett
Sean Warniaha
Shane Calimlim
Sipke Schoorstra
Steve Bradshaw
Tatiana Vorovchenko
Tim Stephani
Tonyface
Tybie Fitzhugh
Yurii Konovaliuk
Randall Sylvia