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14 Aug 2024
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Why the Flow of Time Is an Illusion

 

In his book Our Mathematical Universe: My Quest for the Ultimate Nature of Reality, Max Tegmark writes that “time is not an illusion, but the flow of time is.” In this month’s issue of Nautilus, which looks at the concept of flow through various portals in science, we revisited our 2014 video interview with Tegmark (transcribed below for the first time), in which the professor of physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology explains why the feeling of time is one thing and the math quite another. That Tegmark, also the author of 2017’s Life 3.0: Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence, takes the keenest pleasure from peering into the world through the kaleidoscope of his physics toolbox is amply clear. During our interview, leaning out of his chair, waving his arms, pouring his water bottle onto the carpeted hotel floor to drive home a point, he was in a constant state of animation, much like the objects (both microscopic and gargantuan) that he studies.

You say time doesn’t flow, but our subjective perception is that it does. Where do we go wrong?

It certainly feels to us like time is flowing. Yet that’s not the only way of looking at this reality. I could say that 10 to the power of 29 particles constitute me, and they are moving around in some very complicated patterns. Einstein pointed out that the most elegant way of describing this mathematically is to say, Let’s look at where each particle is in the three-dimensional space at each time, and draw this in a four-dimensional spacetime, where time is the fourth dimension.

If I have a particle that is part of my knee, which hasn’t moved, that particle corresponds to a line. At all times, it’s at the same place. If I look at a particle that’s part of a red blood cell, which has been constantly orbiting around my circulatory system, it’s making a super fascinating shape in spacetime. If I look at all my red blood cells together, they would make a braid pattern, making this incredible tangle in spacetime. If you look at the electron in my brain while I’m thinking, it’s even more complicated. But it’s still just a four-dimensional pattern. So I can either say that reality is a complicated pattern of four dimensions, or I could say it’s this stuff that feels like it’s changing and moving around. Which is more fundamental? Which is more correct? These are just two different ways of describing the same thing.

 

It’s funny how physics, like any field, has a small number of hot-button issues that people get very emotional about

 

Is it part of the scientist’s job to explain why things feel the way they do?

We’ve seen a lot of examples of how things feel very different from the way they look in the equations. I would argue that almost all of the big breakthroughs in physics have this as their most difficult element. If you rewind to when Einstein came up with special relativity, you would find people like Lorentz and Minkowski had already written down a lot of the math. But Einstein was the guy who managed to figure out what it was going to feel like. He said if these are the equations, the way it’s going to feel is if you go near the speed of light, you’re going to feel time slowing down. And people said, Whoa, that’s really weird! Then they did the experiment and it’s correct. I had a fun conversation with physicist David Wineland. He told me that he’d built two atomic clocks that are super precise, and put one of them one foot below the other, and was able to measure that it runs slower!

Then quantum mechanics came along. It’s so complicated people still argue about it 100 years later! The math, though, is beautiful and clean. Randomness is fundamentally an illusion because there is no randomness in the math, even though it might feel random. I’m saying the same thing about time. Even though the flow of time is fundamentally an illusion, there is nothing flowing about the math, the equations aren’t changing, there is just a single four-dimensional pattern, albeit a very complicated and beautiful one, in spacetime. If you study it carefully, you’ll realize it’s going to feel like a flow of time. As physicists, that’s ultimately what we need to explain: Why does everything feel the way it does? We shouldn’t be so naive as to think that things will always feel the way they actually are, because the history of physics is a long sequence of examples of where we realize that the ultimate nature of things is very different from how they feel.

If time doesn’t flow, how do we understand the second law of thermodynamics, which says that time flows in the direction of increasing entropy?

It’s funny how physics, just like any field, has a small number of hot-button issues that people get very emotional about. Time and specifically the so-called second law of thermodynamics is one of them. It’s a simple statement that on average things keep getting messier. That lets you define the direction of time. But there has been a lot of controversy about it. On the one hand, there are people like Arthur Eddington, who tend to view this as almost a holy principle. It’s sacred and shouldn’t ever be questioned. He has this famous line where he says, Well, all sorts of things might turn out to be wrong, but if some theorist ever challenges the second law of thermodynamics, then too bad for that theorist, because there’s no hope for him other than the utmost humiliation! On the other hand, a lot of other people say, Look, we shouldn’t have any holy cows in physics, everything must be questioned, including the second law of thermodynamics.

 

It’s like the ending of Life of Brian, where they say, “You come from nothing, you’re going back to nothing. What have you lost?”

 

What’s questionable about the second law of thermodynamics?

It’s turned out you can derive the second law of thermodynamics from more fundamental things. Let’s say I did something clumsy like spill water on the carpet. If I played a video of it backward, and you saw the water come off the carpet and go into the bottle, it would look totally wrong. But if you just zoom in and look at the motion of the particles flying through the other particles of the air, it would look perfectly reasonable backward, just like a bunch of bowling balls bouncing the other way. After 100 years of thinking about this, we’ve come to realize the explanation is surprising. It has to do with what happened 13.8 billion years ago. The reason our universe keeps getting messier is because it started in a tidy state yesterday, which was even tidier the day before, and even tidier 13.8 billion years ago.

Why did the universe start in such a tidy state?

What I think that means is there is no holy era of time. It emerged. If, in the distant future, we find ourselves in a universe where all the stars have burned out, and all the black holes have evaporated, and all the radiation has been diluted by the dark energy that expanded our universe, and all we have is some very cold bath of photons here and there—basically thermal equilibrium; de Sitter space, as we call it—there will be no sense of time anymore. There will nothing you can do to determine whether time is going one way or the other. Time will then have un-emerged again. It will be like the poem, This is the way the world ends / Not with a bang but a whimper.

What if I looked at my wristwatch then? Would it tick forward?

There wouldn’t be a wristwatch because all the atoms, or all the protons in your wristwatch, would’ve decayed. All the particles that had decayed would’ve left the cosmic horizon. If there were a wristwatch, and it’s functioning, there will be a sense of time and change. But just like there hasn’t always been a wristwatch, there will not necessarily always be one.

How is measuring time related to the existence of time?

It sounds crass to say that time is what we measure with a clock. But it is a very deep fact that if there are no clocks—bearing in mind that every atom is a clock, in the sense that something is going around something else, which you can think of as a clock—then it’s not change which has gone but the whole ability to define time, and the whole ability to perceive time will also be gone. So in that way, time could’ve emerged from nothing, and might also go back to nothing. It’s like the ending of one of my favorite movies, Life of Brian, with Monty Python, where they say, “You come from nothing, you’re going back to nothing. What have you lost? Nothing!” Well, we’ll see!

 

 

Original article here

10 Aug 2024
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Why You Can Smell Rain

When those first fat drops of summer rain fall to the hot, dry ground, have you ever noticed a distinctive odor? I have childhood memories of family members who were farmers describing how they could always “smell rain” right before a storm.

Of course rain itself has no scent. But moments before a rain event, an “earthy” smell known as petrichor does permeate the air. People call it musky, fresh – generally pleasant.

This smell actually comes from the moistening of the ground. Australian scientists first documented the process of petrichor formation in 1964 and scientists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology further studied the mechanics of the process in the 2010s.

Petrichor is a combination of fragrant chemical compounds. Some are from oils made by plants. The main contributor to petrichor are actinobacteria. These tiny microorganisms can be found in rural and urban areas as well as in marine environments. They decompose dead or decaying organic matter into simple chemical compounds which can then become nutrients for developing plants and other organisms.

A byproduct of their activity is an organic compound called geosmin which contributes to the petrichor scent. Geosmin is a type of alcohol, like rubbing alcohol. Alcohol molecules tend to have a strong scent, but the complex chemical structure of geosmin makes it especially noticeable to people even at extremely low levels. Our noses can detect just a few parts of geosmin per trillion of air molecules.

During a prolonged period of dryness when it has not rained for several days, the decomposition activity rate of the actinobacteria slows down. Just before a rain event, the air becomes more humid and the ground begins to moisten. This process helps to speed up the activity of the actinobacteria and more geosmin is formed.

When raindrops fall on the ground, especially porous surfaces such as loose soil or rough concrete, they will splatter and eject tiny particles called aerosols. The geosmin and other petrichor compounds that may be present on the ground or dissolved within the raindrop are released in aerosol form and carried by the wind to surrounding areas. If the rainfall is heavy enough, the petrichor scent can travel rapidly downwind and alert people that rain is soon on the way.

The scent eventually goes away after the storm has passed and the ground begins to dry. This leaves the actinobacteria lying in wait – ready to help us know when it might rain again.

 

 

Original article here

06 Aug 2024
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Too much sleep results in cognitive decline, researchers find

We’ve been hearing about the dangers of too little sleep for years. With 70 million Americans suffering from sleeping disorders, risks of depression, obesity, anxiety, and psychological disorders increase when we get less than seven hours a night. Even memory problems form when we don’t dream enough, which relies on achieving enough cycles of REM sleep—also dealing with duration.

There’s always two sides to every story. You can die of thirst or drink too much water. Same goes for sleep. The world’s largest sleep study has just wrapped up, offering balance to how we usually treat sleep: Too much is no good either.

Published in the journal Sleep (where else?), the researchers gathered data from over 10,000 people from across the planet. Western University Brain and Mind Institute researchers launched this study in June 2017; over 40,000 volunteers initially signed up. They filled out questionnaires and performed a series of tests to monitor their cognitive abilities. As Western researcher Adrian Owen (located in London, Ontario) says:

 

People who logged in gave us a lot of information about themselves. We had a fairly extensive questionnaire and they told us things like which medications they were on, how old they were, where they were in the world and what kind of education they’d received because these are all factors that might have contributed to some of the results.

 

The study cites a survey of over a quarter-million people, in which 29.2 percent of respondents claimed to sleep less than six hours per night; even partial sleeping disorders cost the Canadian economy $21.4 billion each year. Since basic cognitive functioning requires collaboration from numerous systems, reasoning and verbal skills suffer when you sleep too little—or too much, they note. Sure, less than seven hours per night is problematic, but so is more than eight hours, they found.

The Cambridge Brain Sciences 12-point online test covers a wide application of cognitive abilities, including spatial working memory, reasoning, planning, cognitive flexibility, and visuospatial working memory. A total of 10,886 participants, including 6,796 women and 4,013 men (average age of 41.7 years), were assessed. The optimal amount of sleep for reasoning, verbal, and overall abilities, turned out to be 7.16 hours.

Interestingly, despite a popular myth, age does not have an impact on required sleep. We don’t actually need less sleep as we grow older; in fact, the authors write, sleeping less as you age could aid in diseases of dementia and age-related cognitive decline. As researcher associate and lead author Conor Wild says, it’s all about how long you spend unconscious.

 

We found that the optimum amount of sleep to keep your brain performing its best is 7 to 8 hours every night and that corresponds to what the doctors will tell you need to keep your body in tip-top shape, as well. We also found that people that slept more than that amount were equally impaired as those who slept too little.

 

One bright spot for those who like to sleep in: A single night of “oversleeping” results in better-than-usual performance on these tests. And the bad news for those suffering from lack of sleep continues: Sleeping less than four hours per night is the equivalent of aging almost eight years.

These results matter, not just for one’s general health, but for the functioning of society. As the authors conclude:

 

These findings have significant real-world implications, because many people, including those in positions of responsibility, operate on very little sleep and hence may suffer from impaired reasoning, problem-solving, and communications skills on a daily basis.

 

Original article here

 

 

03 Aug 2024
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Can Humanity Address Climate Change Without Believing It? Medical History Suggests It Is Possible

 

Strange as it may seem, early germ theorists could tell us a lot about today’s attitudes toward climate change.

While researching for a new book about the history of emerging infections, I found many similarities between early debates over the existence of microbes and current debates over the existence of global warming.

Both controversies reveal the struggles of perceiving an unseen threat. Both reveal the influence of economic interests that benefit from the status quo. But most importantly, both reveal how people with different beliefs and interests can still agree on key policies and practices for tackling a global problem.

What You Can’t See Might Hurt You

Seeing is believing, and until the mid-19th century, it was very difficult to see the tiny organisms responsible for our so-called “fever” diseases.

Although the indirect evidence was compelling, many people remained skeptical of “animalcules” – as microorganisms were once called – until the microscope was sufficiently developed. Even then, acceptance was gradual. The once-dominant ideas about disease-causing gases, called miasmsas, persisted for several decades before most people acknowledged that the fevers had a living cause.

Climate change presents similar challenges of visibility. Although everyone can see and feel the weather, it is often difficult to observe its larger patterns and longer trends without the aid of technical charts.

 

 

Even when people acknowledge the bigger picture, the case for human responsibility is complicated by the fact that the carbon emissions from our engines, like the germ infections within our bodies, are unseen by the naked eye. It is hard to achieve human solutions when the evidence of human cause is invisible.

Economics Can Outweigh Evidence 

Adding to these challenges, economic interests often confound scientific recommendations.

In the case of germ theory, early recommendations to prevent the spread of infection included reinstating quarantines at shipping ports and border crossings, thus impeding the international flow of trade.

In the case of climate theory, recommendations to slow global warming include reducing the consumption of carbon-based fuels, thus reducing the flow of oil. These strategies can threaten livelihoods as well as profits, so it is not surprising to find labor unions divided over green initiatives and energy executives spreading misinformation about climate science.

Beliefs And Interests Need Not Coincide

But people’s beliefs and interests need not align if everyone finds some benefit in the recommendations.

This was the case in the latter decades of the 19th century, when germ-denying surgeons nevertheless adopted the antiseptic techniques of Joseph Lister.

They did so mainly for the practical reason that their patients fared better under the new methods. But if an explanation was needed, many of these die-hard skeptics claimed Lister’s methods prevented the transmission of miasmas rather than living organisms.

 

Responding to these claims, Lister stated:

 

If anyone chooses to assume that the septic material is not of the nature of the living organisms, but a so-called chemical ferment destitute of vitality … such a notion, unwarranted though I believe it to be by any scientific evidence, will in a practical point of view be equivalent to a germ theory, since it will inculcate precisely the same methods of antiseptic management.”

 

Lister was more concerned with saving lives than winning arguments. As long as the surgeons adopted his methods, Lister cared little about their justifications. When it came to preventing infection, it was the behaviors rather than the beliefs that counted.

 

 

Changing Behaviors Through Complementary Interests

The same could be said for global warming: Changing behaviors is more important than changing beliefs.

Case in point, there is a large and growing environmentalist movement among evangelical Christians. Organizations such as Green Faith and the Creation Care Task Force cite Biblical scripture to promote environmental stewardship as a sacred duty.

While many of these groups acknowledge human-based climate change, some of their core beliefs contradict the evolutionary theories that my colleagues and I employ as scientists. But we need not agree about fossils to wean the world off fossil fuels.

The same goes for priorities and economic interests.

A recent national Pew survey found that a large majority of Americans support the development and use of renewable energy. This includes a slight majority of Republicans, though their motives tend to differ from those of Democrats.

 

 

Republicans are more likely to prioritize the economic benefits of renewable energy than Democrats, who tend to list global warming as their driving concern.

The economic benefits could explain why red states produce the largest share of America’s wind energy and why three of these states are among the nation’s top five producers of solar energy. Their adoption correlates with the geography of the wind and sun belts, where farmers see favorable returns for producing power and a stable source of income to buffer the price fluctuations of weather-sensitive crops. Livelihood is a powerful motivator.

 

 

Finding Common Ground Could Change The World

None of these examples address climate change on all its fronts. And among Democrats as well as Republicans, there are different opinions about how fast and how far the transition to renewable energy should go.

But we can take another hopeful lesson from the 19th century: Although people did not agree on all disease-preventing actions, they nevertheless found enough common ground to achieve the greatest mortality decline in recorded history.

 

Original article here

 

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