Good Thing Of The Day

The jeans I bought in early March, which were size 42 and pretty comfy, are now uncomfortably baggy. Enough so that I suspect I might be down to a size 40 and maybe even a 38.

That means that, in the last year, I’ve lost somewhere between 8-10 inches off my waistline.

This makes me very happy, though I’m going to have to go buy new pants again soon!

4-dimensional manifolds and n-dimensional objects

Re: that last piece of rambling…I did some research this afternoon.

To rephrase my earlier statements: my conjecture is that the universe is a four-dimensional manifold that has Euclidean neighborhoods, but which itself exists inside of a non-Euclidean n-dimensional set (n being an unknown number higher than four). Quanta are n-dimensional objects that pass through a four-dimensional manifold at multiple points. Within that four-dimensional manifold, these objects are represented as multiple discrete objects that do not coincide within the manifold, though they may coincide in n-dimensional space. The state of this n-dimensional quanta is always internally consistent, but since it cannot be seen as a single object within that manifold, it appears to be multiple non-coinciding objects with non-local coherence.

Does that make more sense? 🙂

(I’m still not sure if I’m explaining this properly. If you’re a physicist or a topologist, it would be great if you could contact me via the contact form and explain which bits of this sound like complete nonsense. It’s not, I assure you, but I may be using the wrong terminology for what I’m trying to convey.)

Random Thought Of The Day

Quantum entanglement: it occurred to me today that the only ways quantum entanglement works is if a) space-time is a four-dimensional object that is folded around itself in n-dimensional space (n being a number higher than four), and what appear to be two entangled quanta are not actually four-dimensional particles but a single y-dimensional (y being a number equal to or higher than n) structure which happen to pass through four-dimensional space in two different places.

Or b) when the probability waveform of an entangled quanta collapses, it retcons the other particle’s waveform, backwards in time, so that it appears that the two quanta’s behavior is simultaneous — “spooky action at a distance” — when in fact, they are not. One follows the other. Just not in the direction we’re expecting.

Which makes me wonder about the whole concept of time and cause-and-effect. I wonder sometimes if the whole “first cause, then effect” thing isn’t merely a function of how humans perceive time — in a straight one-way line, when in fact that might not be the case at all. We may only perceive time as a one-way arrow. There’s nothing in physics that insists that this must be true, famously. And perhaps unidirectional time is an epiphenomenon which only really happens at the Newtonian scale. We know that the flow of time is relative at Einsteinian scales (very big, very fast). And we know that cause-and-effect breaks down at a quantum level.

Schrodinger’s Cat, for example, suggests that the observation of a quantum event collapses the probability waveform of that event: until one opens the box, the cat is neither alive nor dead. Both waveforms exist within the unobserved confines of the box.

However, here’s the interesting part: the cat doesn’t suddenly live or die when you open the box. If the cat is dead, the cat has already been dead for a while by the time you open the box. But it’s just as possible the cat is alive, and was alive the whole time.

Which suggests that the act of observation — which collapses the probability waveform inside the box — not only changes the present, but the immediate past (i.e. all of the time since the experiment began and the cat was either killed or not killed). It suggests that cause-and-effect may be localized, inside the box and outside it.

I’m very sleepy. I’m going to go to bed now.