And the Universe Shrugged

Posted by Keith Tidman

It’s not a question of whether humankind will become extinct, but when.

To be clear, I’m not talking about a devastatingly runaway climate; the predations of human beings on ecosystems; an asteroid slamming into Earth; a super-volcano erupting; a thermonuclear conflagration; a global contagion; rogue artificial intelligence; an eventual red-giant sun engulfing us; the pending collision of the Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies. Nor am I talking about the record of short-lived survival of our forerunners, like the Neanderthals, Denisovans, and Homo erectus, all of whom slid into extinction after unimpressive spans.

Rather, I’m speaking of cosmic death!

Cosmic death will occur according to standard physics, including cosmology. Because of the accelerating expansion of the universe and the irrepressibility of entropy — the headlong plunge toward evermore disorder and chaos — eventually no new stars will form, and existing stars will burn out. The universe will become uninhabitable long before its actual demise. Eventually a near vacuum will result. Particles that remain will be so unimaginably distanced from one another that they’ll seldom, if ever, interact. This is the ultimate end of the universe, when entropy reaches its maximum or so-called thermodynamic equilibrium, more descriptively dubbed ‘heat death’. There’s no place to duck; spacefaring won’t make a difference. Nowhere in the universe is immune.

Assuredly, heat death will take trillions of years to happen. However, might anyone imagine that the timeframe veils the true metaphysical significance of universal extinction, including the extinction of humans and all other conscious, intelligent life? And does it really make a difference if it’s tens of years or tens of trillions of years? Don’t the same ontological questions about being still searingly pertain, irrespective of timescale? Furthermore, does it really make a difference if this would be the so-called ‘sixth extinction’, or the thousandth, or the millionth, or the billionth? Again, don’t the same questions still pertain? There remains, amidst all this, the reality of finality. The consequences — the upshot of why this actuality matters to us existentially — stay the same, immune to time.

So, to ask ‘what is the meaning of life?’ — that old chestnut from inquiring minds through the millennia — likely becomes moot and even unanswerable, in the face of surefire universal extinction. As we contemplate the wafer-thin slice of time that makes up our eighty-or-so-year lifespans, the question seems to make a bit of sense. That select, very manageable timeframe puts us into our comfort zone; we can assure ourselves of meaning, to a degree. But the cosmological context of cosmic heat death contemptuously renders the question about life’s purpose without an answer; all bets are off. And, in face of cosmic thermodynamic death, it’s easy to shift to another chestnut: why, in light of all this, is there something rather than nothing? All this while we may justifiably stay in awe of the universe’s size and majesty, yet know the timing and inevitability of our own extinction rests deterministically in its hands.

A more suitable question might be whether we were given, evolutionarily, consciousness and higher-order intelligence for a reason, making it possible for us to reflect on and try to make sense of the universe. And where that ‘reason’ for our being might originate: an ethereal source, something intrinsic to the cosmos itself, or other. It’s possible that the answer is simply that humankind is incidental, consigning issues like beginnings to unimportance or even nonsense. After all, if the universe dies, and is itself therefore arguably incidental, we may be incidental, too. Again, the fact that the timeframe is huge is immaterial to these inquiries. Also immaterial is whether there might, hypothetically, be another, follow-on Big Bang. Whereby the cosmological process restarts, to include a set of natural physical laws, the possible evolution of intelligent life, and, let’s not overlook it, entropy all over again.

We compartmentalise our lives, to make sense of the bits and pieces that competitively and sometimes contradictorily impact us daily. And in the case of cosmic death and the extinction of life — ours and everyone else’s possibly dotting the universe — that event’s speck-like remoteness in distant time and the vastness of space understandably mollifies. This, despite the event’s unavoidability and hard-to-fathom, hard-to-internalise conclusiveness, existential warts and all. To include, one might suppose, the end of history, the end of physics, and the end of metaphysics! This end of everything might challenge claims to any singular specialness of our and other species, all jointly riding our home planets to this peculiar end. 

Perhaps we have no choice, in the meantime, to conduct ourselves in ways that reflect our belief systems and acknowledge the institutional tools (sociological, political, spiritual) used to referee those beliefs. As an everyday priority, we’ll surely continue to convert those beliefs into norms, to improve society and the quality of life in concrete, actionable ways. Those norms and institutions enable us to live an orderly existence — one that our minds can plumb and make rational sense of. Even though that may largely be a salve, it may be our best (realistically, only) default behaviour in contending with daily realities, ranging from the humdrum to the spectacular. We tend to practice what’s called ‘manic defence’, whereby people distract themselves by focusing on things other than what causes their anxiety and discomfort.

The alternative — to capitulate, falling back upon self-indulgent nihilism — is untenable, insupportable, and unsustainable. We are, after all, quite a resilient species. And we live every day with comparatively attainable horizons. There remains, moreover, a richness to our existence, when our existence is considered outside of extraordinary universal timeframes. Accordingly, we go on with our lives with optimism, not dwelling on the fact that something existential will eventually happen — our collective whistling past the graveyard, one might say. We seldom, if ever, factor this universal expiry date into our thinking — understandably so. There would be little to gain, on any practical level, in doing otherwise. Cosmic thermodynamic death, after all, doesn’t concern considerations of morality. Cosmic death is an amoral event, devoid of concerns about its rightness or wrongness. It will happen matter of factly.

Meanwhile, might the only response to cosmic extinction — and with it, our extinction — be for the universe and humanity to shrug?

On Quanta and Trees

Does Observation Create Physical Reality?

Image found on Mythapi Facebook page. Author unknown

Posted by Keith Tidman

The intervention of conscious observation into the quantum world — that observing an object to be in a particular location causes it actually to be there — is one of the core tenets of quantum theory. A tenet rigorously upheld through multiple experiments. The observer — his or her consciousness — cannot be separated from that physical reality. There is no reality independent of observation. 

As the visionary quantum physicist John Wheeler stated it, “No . . . property is a property until it is observed.” Which seems to apply as much to macro-sized objects — things in everyday life — as to micro-sized objects.

Three hundred-plus years ago, the philosopher George Berkeley prefigured the spirit of quantum theory’s then-future influence on the nature of reality, declaring, esse est percepi [to be is to be perceived]. Perception, he presciently advocated, is the essential benchmark — the necessary condition — for existence. The reality of things thus emerges from perception. As long as conscious observation is involved — a manifestation of the observer's capacity to consummate physical reality — all objects, large and small, acquire their existence.

So, how does this work? Quantum theory explains that until observation occurs, a potential object was in what’s called a state of ‘superposition’. An object, while in superposition, can be in any number of places, with observation causing it to be in just one location. There was no object isolated in space before it was observed or measured. Upon being observed, the object went from potentiality to actuality in that one location, the same for everyone.

What’s in superposition is the so-called ‘wave function’ — a mathematical description of all the possible states of an object. Only upon being observed does the wave function instantaneously and irreversibly ‘collapse’, causing the object to be in just one location. There is no distinction between the wave function and the object. According to the physics, the wave function is the object — in one-to-one correspondence with the physical thing.

The effect of observation and measurement has also been demonstrated by the so-called ‘double-slit experiment’. A stream of photons (light particles) passes one at a time through a screen with two slits. Behind the screen is a photographic plate, to capture what comes through the slits. In the absence of an observer, each photon will have appeared to pass through both slits simultaneously before creating a distinct interference pattern on the back plate — acting, in other words, like a wave, able to pass through both slits at once. However, in the presence of an observer — a person or detecting device in front of or behind each slit to see which slit the photon goes through — the interference pattern no longer shows up. Each photon appears to have passed through only one slit or the other. The photon has no location in spacetime until it’s observed or measured.

As suggested by both examples — the collapse of a wave function and the double-slit experiment — observation may be performed by a person directly and in real time. Or, observation may be accomplished by an apparatus (detector), whose measurements are observed by scientists later. In either case, observation remains critical, as explained by physicist and philosopher Roger Penrose:

“Almost all the interpretations of quantum mechanics . . . depend to some degree on the presence of consciousness for providing the ‘observer’ that is required [for] the emergence of a classical-like world.”

Meanwhile, the effects of these events also play into what’s known as quantum entanglement — what Albert Einstein famously dubbed ‘spooky action at a distance’. Quantum entanglement occurs when two particles remain ‘connected’, without regard to time and distance — that is, instantaneously, even at enormous distances — in such a way that actions performed on one particle are observed to have an immediate and direct effect on the other. This curious phenomenon, spooky or not, has been confirmed.

So, to the point, what does all this tell us about physical reality?

Causing the reality of an object by observation points to this initial moment of creation being subjective. It’s where an observer first intervenes — until which there is only ‘potential reality’. Accordingly, ‘initial reality,’ as we might call it, requires intervention by an observer — either a person or measuring device. Again, that initial moment of reality is subjective.

However, once initial conscious observation has occurred, the object henceforth exists for everyone. Further instances of observation change nothing about the physical reality already having been created. Reality is thus locked in for everyone — everywhere. Everyone who looks will find the object there, already existing. At that moment, reality is objective — the initially observed object remains so, existing for everyone.

In sum, then, the key takeaway is the presence of both a subjective and objective aspect to reality, depending on the moment — initial observation followed by subsequent observation.

At the moment of causing the object to exist, the observer also causes that object’s entire history to exist. Observation causes both the current reality and related past realities (history) to exist. Whether this is so for literally all observed things remains debatable — quantum mechanically, cosmologically, and philosophically.

Might the notion include, for example, the whole universe — the ultimate macro-sized object? As Wheeler postulates, in our looking rearward to the universe’s beginnings, might our observations result in selecting one out of alternative possible cosmic quantum histories, back to the Big Bang almost fourteen billion years ago? And, in line with the ‘anthropic principle’, might that quantum history account for the many finely tuned features of the universe essential for its and our existence — resulting in an objective macro-reality, the same for everyone, throughout the universe?

Accordingly, Berkeley argued that observation accounts for what gives material things their experienced qualities — an object’s initially experienced reality (its presence and qualities) as well as an object’s subsequently experienced reality.

Where Berkeley’s philosophy converges with the core of this discussion regarding the basis of objects’ reality is his argument for observation — perception — being essential for something to exist. What has been characterised as Berkeley’s empirical idealism. Berkeley argued that material objects are dependent on, not independent of, observation. In this important sense, observation and existence are the same. That is, they ‘cohere’.

Picture Post #20 Olber's Paradox raising insoluble questions

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'Because things don’t appear to be the known thing; they aren’t what they seemed to be neither will they become what they might appear to become.'

Posted by Martin Cohen and Tessa den Uyl

A NASA  image from the Hubble Telescope looking into the 'Deep Field'

This is a patch of BLACK sky - empty when initially seen - even through the largest earthbound telescopes. Yet, with the  Hubble space telescope and a long-enough exposure time, even the darkness of space soon comes to glowing life. The point is, every bit of sky is actually packed with light - not merely with stars but with uncountable distant galaxies.

Heinrich Olbers (1758–1840) was a Viennese doctor who only did astronomy in his spare time, but realised that there was a bit of a logical problem about the night sky. And ‘O’ is for ‘Olbers Paradox’*,  which can be summed up by saying that if the universe is really infinite in size, the the night sky should not only be bright – but should be infinitely bright. Put short, we should see stars everywhere we look. So why don't we and why isn't the night sky all lit up ?

The paradox touches upon profound issues in cosmology, or the study and theory of the origins of the universe. Simply saying that most of the stars are too far away to see is not enough. Certainly it is true that starlight, like any other kind of light, dims as a function of distance, but at the same time, the number of light sources in the ‘cone of vision’ increases – at exactly the same rate. In fact, on the mathematics of it, given an infinite universe, with galaxies and stars distributed uniformly, the whole night sky should appear to be not black, not speckled, but white!

Olbers’ paradox is a ‘thought experiment’ in the very good sense that most of the reasoning is done by hypotheticals. What if the universe is infinitely large? And infinitely old? If the stars and galaxies are (on average) spread out evenly?

Various possible explanations have been offered to explain the paradox. Such as that stars and galaxies are not distributed randomly, but rather clumped together leaving most of space completely empty. So, for example, there could be a lot of stars, but they hide behind one another. But in fact, observations reveal galaxies and stars to be quite evenly spread out.

What then, if perhaps the universe has only a finite number of stars and galaxies? Yet the number of stars, finite or not, is definitely still large enough to light up the entire sky…

Another idea is that there may be too much dust in space to see the distant stars? This seems tempting, but ignores known facts. Like that the dust would heat up too, and that space would have a much higher. The astronomers who took this image claim it shows some kind of spectral shift into the red specturm. Or is it only the dust? The questions are not really resolved, even yet.

So what is the best answer to Olbers’ riddle? The favoured explanation today is that although the universe may be infinitely large, it is not infinitely old, meaning that the galaxies beyond a certain distance will simply not have had enough time to send their light over to fill our night sky. If the universe is, say, 15 billion years old, then only stars and galaxies less than 15 billion light years away are going to be visible. Add to which, astronomers say that the phenomenon of red shift may mean some galaxies are receding from us so fast that their light has been ‘shifted’ beyond the visible spectrum.

After reading this, and then standing here on planet Earth and watching the night sky, one might feel a little trapped by the questions. Our sight is limited and it always will be but maybe this is our hope for we can continue to philosophise: afte rall, what are we thinking? The picture above might as well represent pieces of coloured glass, under water visions where fluorescent life flows in deep dark sees, a pattern for printed cloth. Our brain only represents what we think we see, not necessarily the reality in which we live? In the incredible immensity of space, mankind has always been aware of this, even if, once in a while, the tendency is to forget.

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* Although the paradox carries Olbers’ name,  it can really be traced back to Johannes Kepler in 1610.  In Wittgenstein's Beetle and Other Classic Thought Experiments, Martin’s book, which talks a little more about all this,