I. TIME

Looking back on a period of time that I consider to be one of the most revolutionary and potentially really impossible to explain in terms of the leaps in human consciousness that were obtained, I had another peek at Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity, or as it was originally titled, “The Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies”.

A part of his work, that even to this day is further being unravelled and borne out through new evidence, contends that the faster that you move, the slower that time ticks by for you relative to the position of the observer. In other words, if you’re the one moving, you don’t know that anything’s happening. To you, your watch still sweeps at a normal pace, your heart still beats at a normal rate, and really, nothing directly around you is altered. It’s not a physiological thing, but rather it’s an actual property of the fabric or space and time.

So, I can watch you fly by, and as you pass by, the slower time ticks for you, although for me its passage remains at the same rate I always experienced.  And amazingly this can even be detected in something as simple as when you take a plane from one part of the world to another. In completing this voyage, time has passed differently for the both of us. It’s not something that we would ever ourselves really notice, but with sensitive enough instrumentation, it can be detected. And for you, as compared to me, time slowed down.

And not only does speed do this, but the strength of a gravitational field will have the same effect. The stronger the gravitational field, the slower time ticks for you. And if you’ve watched “Interstellar”, and seen the effects of the black hole called, “Gargantua”, then you have a sense of how this time effect takes place. And this wasn’t actually fully imagined or formulated until Einstein released his General Theory of Relativity, about ten years after his Special Relativity.

Or for a closer to home example that doesn’t involve black holes, the GPS satellite system that rests in the Earth’s medium earth geosynchronous orbit (MEO) – and farther away from the planet than even the space station that’s located in low earth orbit (LEO) – and that allows us to use mapping applications such as Waze that tell us our exact location of our cars in real time, is far enough away from our planet’s gravity that they have a measurably different space-time condition so that they experience the passage of time faster than we do on the surface of the planet. However, thanks to Einstein’s equations we’re able to make the necessary time adjustment compensations to ensure that our apps know where we are to as little as a few inches away from our present location, even as we ourselves move through a space-time continuum as fast as the speed limits on our highways and roadways allow. Basically, what this means is that Einstein proved that the more intense the gravity, the slower time moves in relation to the observer.

A One-Way Ticket to the Future?

Now, let’s imagine we’re moving at half the speed of light, then three quarters the speed of light, then 99.9999% of the speed of light. For us, moving with virtual beams of light, time is ticking slower and slower and slower. For us, we’ll see the entire future history of the universe move by in fractions of a second. But, for the observer back on earth, who saw us speed away, by the time we returned, if in fact there is even still a solar system to return to if we do even bother to come back, millions of years or even billions will have transpired in the near speed of the light time it took for us to go even a few seconds away and return.

And this is one of the reasons why speed of light travel may never truly work for us in that if we were able to move forward in time for even a few seconds at that speed, there’d be nothing for us to return to. Speed of light travel would become a truly one-way voyage.

So, in many ways, many would contend that The General Theory of Relativity is quite possibly one of the most beautiful physical theories ever disocvered. And how it came to be discovered and revealed at the time in human history that it was is almost akin to the discovery of the first monolith in the movie, “2001:a Space Odyssey.”

Now, as computational power, innovations such as AI, and myriad other advances take place and the world seems to be increasingly blazing by and possibly towards the singularity or even the end of our existence altogether once we achieve a real awareness of our presence within a simulation, it got me thinking about quantum computing and more specifically quantum mechanics.

II. QUANTUM MECHANICS

For many of us, when we hear the term quantum, we envision a gold coated machine hanging from a ceiling like some sort of Borg spacecraft’s appendage, but other than hearing about the promises that we’ve been told it can bring,  and that that it can vastly outperform even our most advanced supercomputers in computational capabilities, very few of us actually understand what the whole quantum world is about.

In fact, I came across a quote the other day by Neils Bohr who said in June of 1952 that,

“If you’re not completely confused by quantum mechanics, you don’t understand it.”

And true to that thought, and as we’ll soon see, quantum mechanics is a puzzle wrapped in an enigma to be sure.

So to give a bit of a sense of what quantum mechanics is all about, let me compare it to Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity.

Einstein’s general relativity describes gravity as the curvature of spacetime on large scales, treating space and time as continuous and smoothly curving. Quantum mechanics focuses on the behavior of particles at the atomic level, where events occur in discrete jumps and outcomes are probabilistic. The two differing sciences, besides their focus on the size of their subjects, also experience a fundamental conflict when trying to apply both theories to extreme situations like black holes or the very early universe.

Essentially, scientifically speaking, general relativity is considered “smooth” while quantum mechanics is “chunky.”

The Battle Over Reality

When it came to Quantum Mechanics, Einstein was enormously skeptical of it and famously stated that it was inherently flawed and unlikely to be sustainable because,

“God does not play dice with the universe.”

Despite dabbling for many years with it himself, he disliked the theory’s inherent randomness and uncertainty, believing that a more complete theory should exist that was able to fully explain the underlying causes behind quantum phenomena without relying on probability alone and that would provide a more deterministic view of reality.

However, as the world began to be able to observe things such as quantum entanglement, where seemingly independent atomic particles are intrinsically linked at even tremendous distances throughout the vastness of space, it became clear that something that moves beyond Einstein’s theories needed to be applied.

One Equation to Explain It All?

The hope with quantum mechanics is that one equation, with fewer ingredients, will be able to cover the creation, movement, and existence of everything in the world. That by looking at the austere and the tiny ingredients, even smaller than at the subatomic level, that the world and by extension the universe can be fully explained.

One equation to explain everything.

And this thought, in and of itself, is quite realistically mind-boggling…

Those who support quantum mechanics will say of Einstein that General Relativity is about gravity – in and of itself a force that is still unable to be identified other than knowing the application that its presence has on other things, but whose origins or the verifiable proof of its origins is not able to be shown – while quantum mechanics is about everything.

Quantum Mechanics is a monest theory. The Greek philosopher Heraclitus some 2,500 years ago, said,

“From all things One and from One all things”.

He was describing monism, the ancient idea that all is one – that, fundamentally, everything we see or experience is an aspect of one unified whole.

From today’s standpoint, an observation seemingly millennia before it’s time.

In our study of Classical Mechanics, you have a particle here and a particle there, and you can describe them separately to be able to explain and know what is happening to each individual particle.

In Quantum Mechanics you have entanglement, and this was even pointed out by Einstein in 1935, and the theory contends that even for the same two particles you actually have a single state.  They are not separate and distinct. In fact, there is not one condition or state for one particle and another condition or state for the other particle, but rather there is simply one single state for all of the particles in the whole entire universe. This is called the “wave function of the universe”.

“From all things One and from One all things”.

This monest worldview brought forward to today flows in a straightforward fashion to the findings of quantum mechanics and the uncanny physics of subatomic particles that departs from the classical physics of Isaac Newton and how we experience it in the everyday world.

Quantum Mechanics holds that all matter and energy exist as interchangeable waves and particles, and this observation and the equations that support it has led to the invention of computers, smartphones, nuclear energy, laser scanners, and arguably and potentially the best-confirmed theories in the entirety of science.

If you were to ask a quantum scientist about this, they would contend that everything everywhere exists within the wave function of the universe but that it’s their job to be able to chop it up to be able to determine how trees and tables and chairs and people came to be.

The classic experiment to explain quantum mechanics to people is called the Stern-Gerlach experiment. At its most basic, it measures the spin of a particle. In quantum mechanics the spin is just the spin. It’s the rate at which something is rotating.

While the Stern-Gerlach experiment is considered a landmark in quantum physics, the Nobel Prize for the work was awarded solely to Otto Stern, not to his collaborator Walther Gerlach, and it was given for his other related research, specifically for Stern’s development of the molecular beam method and the discovery of the proton’s magnetic moment (approximately 2.792847 nuclear magnetons), and not specifically for the Stern-Gerlach experiment itself.

The experiment proved that for a single electron (if in fact they exist at all as that is presently being debated in other scientific avenues) or a single neutron, it’s either spinning clockwise or counterclockwise. These are the only two measurable outcomes possible. Speed doesn’t matter, position in space doesn’t matter, it’s either spinning in one direction or the other. 

But one of the bedrocks in quantum mechanics is that if you were to take a single neutron, before it’s observed, it is considered to be in a state of superposition, that is to say that its neither spinning purely clockwise or counterclockwise. The determination of its direction won’t be revealed until you actually look at it. Somehow the act of looking at it determines the direction that its spinning because before you measured it, it existed in a state in which it was moving simultaneously in both.

This is a fundamental challenge in quantum mechanics when trying to explain it in that how the system is described when it isn’t being looked at is different from what it is when its measured.

So, using the Copenhagen way of thinking, the actual act of measuring the spin of the neutron causes a radical change in the physical state of the particle.

Does Reality Exist If No One’s Watching?

The simple act of looking at it, spontaneously collapses it from being in a state of superposition to then engaging in a spin of being either clockwise or counterclockwise.

And, seemingly just as randomly as a perfect coin flip, you can guess the probability of which way it will be spinning once you look at it, but the best that you can ever hope for is no more than a probability.

It’s like black or red on a cosmic roulette wheel comprised of only those two colours, whose ball will land just as equally on either spot uninfluenced by any form of outside impositions other than the very instant in which you actually look at it to see what slot the ball landed in.

Why it happened, how it happened, when it happened, none of it can be clearly defined as yet, called the “measurement problem”, and the solution to it is still to be discovered.

It’s the Schrödinger’s cat experiment thought process in that the cat contained within a box containing a potentially leaking toxic gas container is neither alive nor dead until you actually take the top off of the box to look inside and see what happened to the cat.

From a quantum mechanics point of view, the experiment basically says that tiny particles (or in Schrödinger’s case the cat) can exist in two states at once until they’re observed, and then, and only then, will you be able to determine what state it’s in. Or in the cat’s case, alive or dead.

So, now that we know how we can determine the condition of the neutron once we look at it, what does it mean to be able to measure the spin of the neutron?

Without going into the too much minutia, if the neutron were in a state where it was observed at the time of first looking to be spinning in a 100% clockwise direction, in quantum mechanics we want the measurement to say that we saw it spinning clockwise. We want the observer to be able to be able to conclusively say that it was spinning clockwise.

The same, of course, holds true if it were spinning in the opposite direction.

The Schrödinger equation says that if you want to measure the neutron when it’s either spinning clockwise or counterclockwise, then when it starts out in its superposition – that is that it’s in a state of existence where its spinning in both directions at once – what will happen is that the observer and the neutron will “entangle” with each other once they look at it.

And here, in the world of quantum mechanics, the entangled state of the universe in that very exact instant that the neutron was observed evolves into a part of it saying that the neutron was spinning clockwise and I saw it, and a secondary other part saying that it was spinning counterclockwise and I saw it.

Because it was in a state of superposition, spinning in both directions at once, when it’s observed to be spinning in one direction by one observer, that means that it’s being observed spinning in the other direction by another observer.

III. MULTIVERSE

Science Fiction or Quantum Fact?

This entangled duality leads to the “many worlds theory” of quantum mechanics, because if entanglement means that at least two observers saw it spinning at that exact same moment in opposite directions, then there must be more than one universe or “space” within which they both exist simultaneously.

Okay, now might be a good time to grab a mind-altering substance like a cup of coffee or a friendly dried mushroom. At the very least, an active and engaged imagination.

Amazingly, everyone in the world of quantum mechanics absolutely agrees with this consequence of the Schrödinger equation. It is uncontroversial and readily accepted.

But back in the day when this was first proposed, Neils Bohr, a Danish theoretical physicist who made foundational contributions to understanding atomic structure and quantum theory, for which he received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1922, came along before he announced being able to split the uranium atom in 1939, and said, “And then at that instant of the observation of the neutron, part of that wave function disappears, but you can’t predict which part, only the probability.”

It was a big statement as it spoke to entropy and an escape of information from the universe. Things that were still being discussed as no one really contemplated whether the universe had a memory and within it all things were forever stored.

Hugh Everett, a graduate student in the 1950’s, imagined a better outcome. He contended that part of the wave function does not disappear, but rather it stays there. He concluded that because he himself was in a superposition – a thought that no other experimenter had ever considered – of either seeing or not seeing the neutron either spinning one way or the other until he actually looked, that while one part of the wavelength says that it was clockwise, it would then be unaffected and counterbalanced by the other part of the wavelength that says that it was spinning in the opposite direction.

Because the observer was now also considered to be in a state of superposition, along with the neuron, you yourself are now actually the person that saw it spin clockwise or the person that saw it spin counterclockwise, and now, in effect, there are also two people, in balance, looking at different outcomes.

And again, this points to the “many worlds” aspects of quantum mechanics.

So, as the observer, now all you have to do is locate yourself correctly to know which universe that you’re in within the wave function.

So now, if you extrapolate a bit and start to think about it, the number of worlds soon becomes infinite.

The worlds don’t exist within the same “space”.

“Space” exists separately within each world.

This concept is known as Hilbert’s space, where each quantum state is represented as a vector – or all possible states of a system. This means that in many quantum systems, the Hilbert space is considered to be infinite-dimensional, and this allows for potentially an infinite range of possible quantum states to exist simultaneously.

To even make it more trippy, in this thought process there is no order that we can put these “spaces” into – like one universe lined up right next to the other in a giant cosmic row – because the “spaces” only exist within the quantum created worlds themselves.

Therefore, each world exists within its own “space” and that “space” is separate and apart from each and every other “space”.

Yet all of these separate worlds exist simultaneously, born from the exact moment of the first spin direction defining observation.

So, in this thought process whereby an infinite number of “spaces” exist within an infinite amount of “spaces” there is, of course, the very real assurance that there are exactly an infinite amount of “you” doing exactly the very same thing that your present “you” is doing at this very moment as well as simultaneously an infinite amount of “you” doing an infinite amount of different things simultaneously.

It kind of touches on the old axiom that says that an infinite amount of chimpanzees typing on an infinite amount of typewriters will eventually create the exact duplicate works of Shakespeare.

And while it is not directly related to the study of quantum mechanics, there are some “wise people” who have existed within various cultures throughout time who believed that with the proper training a person could move their “active consciousness and awareness” to another identical body within an alternative “space”.

Although from a quantum mechanics point of view, there presently exists the thought that movement between the wavelengths is not possible.

Now, many people will say at this point, or possibly even earlier, that quantum mechanics sounds more and more like the product of someone on an acid laced tetrahydrocannabinol trip. And who knows, in some “space” it probably is. But here’s the thing, the equations seem to consistently bear out the realities of what’s being proposed.

And remember, there are already a vast assortment of things that we all take for granted in our everyday lives that are a direct result of quantum mechanics. For example, Anything with transistors in it like; computers, cell phones, the internet, the phone network, cable TV, digital cameras, modern radios and televisions, disk drives and flash memory, iPods, iPads, WiFi, Bluetooth, USB, and lots more.

So, at some point, and as it’s been kicking around since at least 1919 in the purest of scientific forms using our current understandings of the “scientific method”, there must be at least a kernel of truth to the reality in the theories.

If anything, the most annoying part of quantum mechanics for some people is the thought that when someone makes a quantum mechanical measurement in their “space”, that instantaneously in another “space” within the greater universal boundary of all this is, that  there then become potentially infinite descendants of that person stemming from the exact moment in which they first made their quantum mechanical measurement.

But taking it a step further, what if you didn’t actually have to observe things on a subatomic level for this effect to take place. What if any simple observation, taking into account any sized object, created the same effect?

It stretches the meaning of quantum, but eventually, as the science evolves, size may not prove to be the sole determining factor.

For others, there is great comfort in the thought of dependents born from the moment of observations, as it means that no one can ever actually truly ever die. Their essence will persist in other quantum realities, although which one is base zero may never ever have the chance of ever being definitively known. This thought whereby a version of yourself can never cease to exist within at least one other sea of “spaces” can provide for some, great comfort.

As crazy as some of this might seem, the many-worlds theory as well as quantum mechanics comes about from the invention of the Schrödinger equation that helped to explain the data that was being produced regarding the spectrum of different atoms to explain their emission and absorption results produced during experiments.

The entire field is, in fact, grounded in solid, highly verified mathematical statements and proven calculations.

If you don’t like the thought of quantum mechanics, fine, neither did Einstein on many of its levels. The challenge then becomes, alright if quantum mechanics doesn’t work for you then come up with something better that consistently fits the data being generated in absolutely legitimate ways.

Regardless of how solid and advancing the theories and proofs are, here’s perhaps the greatest challenge to quantum mechanics:

Other than those directly involved in the science, in order for it to take hold within society it requires a radically new way of thinking about things. It requires new philosophies, it requires new ways of considering probability, predictions, identity, religion, faith, and in some ways the very core belief in what constitutes one’s self.

Many might say that this leap is simply a leap too far. That for this society, on this planet, at this time, in this “space”, that quantum mechanics is simply a step too far. But the thing is, as time goes on, more and more equations and outcomes are evolving and proving themselves to be correct, and with each discovery the boundaries get pushed.

If it makes you feel any better, at this moment there’s a portion in Einstein’s equations on General Relativity that unambiguously points to a singularity, a moment in the past from which the universe we inhabit had a defined starting point, infinite curvature, infinite energy, an infinite expansion rate, and the entirety of the seeds from which we and everything else sprang. It also points to a moment that existed before time, in which there were no other moments that came before. This is the purpose of the origin of the big bang.

Yet quantum mechanics recognizes that while this may prove to definitely be a General Relativity specific thing, it might also prove to be a quantum mechanics thing.

Where General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics meet is that the two function through an arrow of time where things move constantly forward in a linear direction.

It’s also possible that before the time of our Big Bang that there was a time and a “space” that evolved into our big bang, or that some in quantum mechanics might say came into being as a result of an observation made in another “space”.

The truth is no one really knows how any of this came into existence.

And even for those who may say that all of everything is the creation of the Gods or even a singular and all-powerful God, the next question that begs to be answered is,

“So, where did that God come from?”

Perhaps a greater question to determine our origins might be:

“is time emergent or fundamental?”

Is time just an “always is”, or did it have a starting point?

Is time the actual real “fabric” that comprises the universe and is the foundational building block from which all else sprung, the substance from which even “space” formed?

And if it is, then just what the hell is time?

Or for that matter (for lack of a better word) what the hell is gravity and what’s it comprised of?

But ultimately the question becomes, is there anything outside of our universe?

Even quantum mechanics doesn’t know. But it’s still pushing the boundaries as it seeks to create the one equation that answers it all.

If our universe is really the totality of everything, then potentially there is no outside. Even a multi-worlds and infinite “spaces” existence might then also all be contained within the one thing we call the universe.

The thing is though, the universe doesn’t have to obey our rules or even our thoughts or even our imagined constraints.

So while we may ceaselessly question and ask,

“Why is there something rather than nothing?”

We may have to resolve ourselves to the answer that…

It just is.

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Michal Prywata: Inventor, entrepreneur, and multidisciplinary engineer with a focus on frontier technologies. Founder of ventures in fintech, healthcare, biotech, & space. On a relentless quest to solve complex problems and extend the boundaries of human potential.