Why has time stood still for us?
Li Po, one of China's greatest poets (701 to 762 A.D.), writes, "Sober, we're together and happy. Drunk, we scatter away into our own directions: Intimates forever, we will wander carefree and meet again in Milky Way distances."
Time stands still before our humanity. Our lightning-flash presence collapses the wave function to this one cosmic instant upon which we scrawl our constellations, our mortal destiny.
Sobered by science, we stare out into a universe drunk with expansive energy. Recent measurements reveal two trillion galaxies in our observable universe! Two trillion! Which means that every point in the sky contains a galaxy!
Sitting here in the smallness of our embracing humanity at the galaxy's edge, we might seem overwhelmed by the enormous magnitude of reality. But two recent scientific ideas argue otherwise:
The Holographic Principle's name says it all: the volume of spacetime is a hologram projected from the two-dimensional boundary surface of the universe by cosmic strings vibrating in ten dimensions. (Hello, Alice.) What we perceive as vast from our biological perspective is actually an illusion.
Studying the entropy of black holes, cosmologists surprise us with news that information is more fundamental than matter and energy! If someone on the boundary surface of the universe were to peer into the holographic illusion of galaxies in their trillions and focus not on energy and mass but on complexity of information, each human mind would shine brighter than a quasar!
Each of you, sitting here with me on the edge of the Milky Way, experiences the interstellar tilt of things in your own way. Your uniqueness, the ingenuity of your most subtle feelings (what philosophers call 'qualia'), has a destination. Unlike matter and energy, which can fall into a black hole and disappear, information is never lost. It's inscribed on the boundary surface.
Beyond the sobriety of our empirical minds, among those ten dimensions vibrating reality into existence, we have the imagination, that rarest of phenomena in the universe, to wander carefree in our own directions — and meet again where information is kept forever in Milky Way distances.
posted by A. A. Attanasio at
1:06 PM
5 Comments:
Hi there Mr Attanasio, I just wanted to let you know how much I enjoy your writing. I consider Radix one of my favorite books of all time, and am currently in the middle of Demons Hide Their Faces. Thanks for sharing your work & your thoughts, and I look forward to reading more.
I thank you, Anonymous Reader, for giving my fiction a place in world and time.
Greetings Mr. Attanasio, I just discovered your work through Wyvern, of which I am about 3/4 of the way through. Wonderful story! Best story I've read since Shantaram and it's sequel. I look forward to reading many more of your tales now that I know they exist.
My heartfelt thanks, BP! You affirm for me my destiny, which is the great heart, the great heart of humanity that we call story.
I am hungry for answers about the information/hologram theory. Not to be argumentative, but at least these questions arise:
1) Presumably the 2D “surface” that information is “inscribed” on exists at a black hole’s event horizon. If a chair falls through the event horizon, is its corresponding information suddenly distributed (randomly or in some unknowable order or apparent quantum smear) across the entirety of the surface?
2) As it falls further and disintegrates, is each phase of its disintegration stored as information? In other words, is change logged somewhere?
3) If information about the contents of a black hole is stored in the surface, and information about the universe stored at its boundaries, is the black hole information stored redundantly?
4) The theory says that the 2D reality is primary and the 3D appearance is a “projection”—does that mean that the action of the chair disintegrating is actually primarily a series of information changes at the 2D level, as in the reverse of a shadow show where the 3D hand is primary?
5) If space is in fact granular at the Planck length, then can the original rapid expansion (and ongoing) be viewed as a propagation of cells?
6) If the Big Bang started as a non-dimensional point that propagated granular space “cells,” and the subsequent formation of energy and matter was a product of information at the “surface,” where did that information come from?
7) From what I’ve read, this information is stored in binary form: what is the nature of an “on” state or an “off” state?
8) “On” states and “off” states don’t make meaningful information; arrays and networks do, generally with visual or mechanical outputs (as well as feedback to inputs). Defining the universe as “information” is elusive in terms of meaning.
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