This is one of the more face-melting science stories I've encountered in a while. Over at Slate, Jim Holt wrote a terrific piece about Andrei Linde, a physicist with an unusual theory about the origins of the universe. He argues that a universe isn't terribly hard to create: Indeed, theoretically, one could create one in a lab, using only one hundred-thousandth of a gram of matter. Assuming all goes well, it would expand, but with such curved space that it would -- for all intents and purposes -- implode, vanishing from "our" reality while expanding in its own dimensionality.
Here's the fun part: According to Linde's theory, the creator of a universe would be able to determine the basic constituent elements of its reality, such as its level of gravity, the speed of light, etc. And in doing so, the creator could essentially communicate with her or his creation:
This is a really lovely thought. Maybe Earth phyicists will eventually piece together some grand pattern in the design of our universe, and discover a message encoded ... by a sessional grad student at Stanford.
Posted by Clive Thompson at May 20, 2004 11:48 PM
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Two problems:
1) Cultural differences would make it quite difficult to understand the creator's message
2) If only physicists can get the message and in case they could understand (see point 1) I still doubt they will ever manage to explain it to us...
Posted by: Mario at May 21, 2004 3:28 AM
this all reminds me of the plot of the book 'contact': seeing deep patterns in the digits of pi. If theres a message, it'll have to be obvious once we've got to a level where we can decode it?
---
What would we look for and where? a rasterised image in an array of the digits of pi? Are there constants out there a) we havent discovered yet, and b) perhaps exhibit such a message.
Perhaps many of the constants are constrained in that the universe 'has' to support life and allow planets to aggregate and so on (the homocentric theory); perhaps messing up the more central constants would be inconsistent with these requirements. Hence maybe its the less 'essential' constants that may be informational channels.
It'd be mind blowing to decode such a message; maybe it'd be from a bored lab-tech at lunch break, or something more cosmic. A massive paradigm shift!
Posted by: julz at May 21, 2004 6:31 AM
This concept, with variations, was explored by Gregory Benford in the novel "Cosm". He also posited an evolution of universes, each spawning a new generation, via beings that develop intelligence and conduct physics experiments. Neat.
Posted by: Mentat at May 21, 2004 9:22 AM
The new universe, and the process of creating it is still bound, I presume, by the "laws" of our universe, no? I wonder if it is more of an equilibrium game, where you could "program" certain physical facts that would constrain other facts to preset values... for example you cannot set the strength of gravity to 777 and not have something else go to another number in relation--in other words you can only "set" half of the numbers/values/facts in the new reality, because if you start messing with too much, there might be no coherence...???
Unstable universes...universes/realities that are able to "transcend" themselves...universes that are capable of greater innate "intelligences" than ours?
Would this new universe destroy/absorb/affect our own?
Is there a meta-universe where ours was created, as intimated by Clive?
Posted by: Alfred O. Cloutier at May 21, 2004 3:59 PM
I know this isn't totally on topic, and maybe its been studied to death, I don't know, but why should a pattern be evident in base 10, base 2, or whatever? It seems like there is a natural convergence to numbers like "e" or the "golden ratio" that govern growth, so would things look different to us if our deepest mathematical thoughts were rooted in base e or some other irrational number? Wouldn't it make sense that the whole thing was tied to irrational, infinite value? Our thinking in the nice and tidy base of 10 perhaps speaks to our immature ability to see the patterns.
I agree with Alfred about the equilibrium thing. Success of, say, a plant in nature depends on its growth pattern being balanced and efficient. If it wasn't either one, it probably wouldn't get to reproduction stage. So maybe you've got these cosmic "monkeys at the typewriter" scenario where we're living in one of the universes where somehow the rules are balanced enough to allow for growth and diversity.
Anyways, I've been drinking and its all coming together.
Posted by: Lorne at May 22, 2004 1:45 AM
Drinking does, in fact, seem to help one spy the patterns in the latent numerological meaning of everyday physics.
This is an incredibly cool discussion. As to the question, raised by several folks here, about the perceptibility of any "message" encoded in the physics of any particular universe -- isn't that part of the "anthropic principle", as I understand it? That the laws of the universe have a creepily human meaning merely because they're observed by *humans* -- and that, were a totally alien species with alien logic and alien perception to regard our universe, they would "discover" an entirely different, yet also entirely seemingly-logical and seemingly-preordained, physics?
Or am I misunderstanding the anthropic principle? Help me out here.
Posted by: Clive at May 23, 2004 2:33 AM
Just so, Clive: the anthropic principle says that we can often explain what appears to be human meaning in the universe because humans are products of the universe. As Carl Sagan observes, we should not marvel that the shape of the earth in a ditch conforms perfectly with the shape of the puddles of water lying in it; it is the puddles which conform to the earth.
Posted by: Jonathan Korman at May 25, 2004 5:20 PM
I can totally see how our mind set colours our perception of the cosmos, but does the anthropic principle apply to pure mathematics?
Our vision of the universe has always been rather imaginative over the years, and in retrospect we can see some pretty blatant conceptual errors. To my knowledge, though, our mathematical concepts and logic have never really been "incorrect" per se, only disorganized or incomplete. Ancient cultures knew that pi wasn't exactly 3, or 22/7, for example, they just varied in their ability to express it.
I've always felt that the beauty of pure math lies in its being independent from reality. Is it possible for a completely alien mathematical system, complete with a different set of logical principles, to exist? Wouldn't "pi" be "pi" in any universe? Wouldn't a pattern always appear as a pattern?
Or is the anthropic principle saying that it is the importance that we place on the patterns that is arbitrary?
Posted by: Lorne at May 25, 2004 11:03 PM
Well, it depends on what you mean by "arbitrary." As I understand it -- and I might be wrong -- the anthropic principle means that when humans look at the world around them, they'll see math that is perceivable to humans. When aliens look around, they'll see alien math that's different from human math, but which, like human math, is internally consistent and explains physical phenomena, etc. Thus, the maths are not "arbitrary" -- the values we place on things like gravity, etc., are very real -- but they're just different from the ones aliens would perceive. Put another way, there are many possible maths and physics -- but the ones you see are the ones you're wired to perceive.
I might be wrong about that description, though.
Posted by: Clive at May 26, 2004 3:03 PM
I'm joining in very late, but I wanted to chime in on one point, raised by Lorne, who asked, "Is it possible for a completely alien mathematical system, complete with a different set of logical principles, to exist? Wouldn't "pi" be "pi" in any universe?"
Clive's reply to your comment is right on. Pi could indeed look very different to us if rendered in an alien system of mathematics. Because we have ten physical digits to count with (*highly* simplified historical explanation!), we've developed a base 10 system of numeration, in which pi looks like 3.14159.... But expressed in a some other base n system of numeration, pi would look completely different. Indeed, it's entirely possible that some system of numeration may exist, yet to be discovered and formalized, in which pi could be expressed in some non-irrational form, perhaps as a straightforward fraction. The fact that pi is a simple ratio suggests the logic of this supposition. Now we just have to find that system, hehe ...
Posted by: Jason at July 6, 2004 2:07 PM
Two problems:
1) Cultural differences would make it quite difficult to understand the creator's message
2) If only physicists can get the message and in case they could understand (see point 1) I still doubt they will ever manage to explain it to us...
Posted by: Mario at May 21, 2004 3:28 AM
this all reminds me of the plot of the book 'contact': seeing deep patterns in the digits of pi. If theres a message, it'll have to be obvious once we've got to a level where we can decode it?
---
What would we look for and where? a rasterised image in an array of the digits of pi? Are there constants out there a) we havent discovered yet, and b) perhaps exhibit such a message.
Perhaps many of the constants are constrained in that the universe 'has' to support life and allow planets to aggregate and so on (the homocentric theory); perhaps messing up the more central constants would be inconsistent with these requirements. Hence maybe its the less 'essential' constants that may be informational channels.
It'd be mind blowing to decode such a message; maybe it'd be from a bored lab-tech at lunch break, or something more cosmic. A massive paradigm shift!
Posted by: julz at May 21, 2004 6:31 AM
This concept, with variations, was explored by Gregory Benford in the novel "Cosm". He also posited an evolution of universes, each spawning a new generation, via beings that develop intelligence and conduct physics experiments. Neat.
Posted by: Mentat at May 21, 2004 9:22 AM
The new universe, and the process of creating it is still bound, I presume, by the "laws" of our universe, no? I wonder if it is more of an equilibrium game, where you could "program" certain physical facts that would constrain other facts to preset values... for example you cannot set the strength of gravity to 777 and not have something else go to another number in relation--in other words you can only "set" half of the numbers/values/facts in the new reality, because if you start messing with too much, there might be no coherence...???
Unstable universes...universes/realities that are able to "transcend" themselves...universes that are capable of greater innate "intelligences" than ours?
Would this new universe destroy/absorb/affect our own?
Is there a meta-universe where ours was created, as intimated by Clive?
Posted by: Alfred O. Cloutier at May 21, 2004 3:59 PM
I know this isn't totally on topic, and maybe its been studied to death, I don't know, but why should a pattern be evident in base 10, base 2, or whatever? It seems like there is a natural convergence to numbers like "e" or the "golden ratio" that govern growth, so would things look different to us if our deepest mathematical thoughts were rooted in base e or some other irrational number? Wouldn't it make sense that the whole thing was tied to irrational, infinite value? Our thinking in the nice and tidy base of 10 perhaps speaks to our immature ability to see the patterns.
I agree with Alfred about the equilibrium thing. Success of, say, a plant in nature depends on its growth pattern being balanced and efficient. If it wasn't either one, it probably wouldn't get to reproduction stage. So maybe you've got these cosmic "monkeys at the typewriter" scenario where we're living in one of the universes where somehow the rules are balanced enough to allow for growth and diversity.
Anyways, I've been drinking and its all coming together.
Posted by: Lorne at May 22, 2004 1:45 AM
Drinking does, in fact, seem to help one spy the patterns in the latent numerological meaning of everyday physics.
This is an incredibly cool discussion. As to the question, raised by several folks here, about the perceptibility of any "message" encoded in the physics of any particular universe -- isn't that part of the "anthropic principle", as I understand it? That the laws of the universe have a creepily human meaning merely because they're observed by *humans* -- and that, were a totally alien species with alien logic and alien perception to regard our universe, they would "discover" an entirely different, yet also entirely seemingly-logical and seemingly-preordained, physics?
Or am I misunderstanding the anthropic principle? Help me out here.
Posted by: Clive at May 23, 2004 2:33 AM
Just so, Clive: the anthropic principle says that we can often explain what appears to be human meaning in the universe because humans are products of the universe. As Carl Sagan observes, we should not marvel that the shape of the earth in a ditch conforms perfectly with the shape of the puddles of water lying in it; it is the puddles which conform to the earth.
Posted by: Jonathan Korman at May 25, 2004 5:20 PM
I can totally see how our mind set colours our perception of the cosmos, but does the anthropic principle apply to pure mathematics?
Our vision of the universe has always been rather imaginative over the years, and in retrospect we can see some pretty blatant conceptual errors. To my knowledge, though, our mathematical concepts and logic have never really been "incorrect" per se, only disorganized or incomplete. Ancient cultures knew that pi wasn't exactly 3, or 22/7, for example, they just varied in their ability to express it.
I've always felt that the beauty of pure math lies in its being independent from reality. Is it possible for a completely alien mathematical system, complete with a different set of logical principles, to exist? Wouldn't "pi" be "pi" in any universe? Wouldn't a pattern always appear as a pattern?
Or is the anthropic principle saying that it is the importance that we place on the patterns that is arbitrary?
Posted by: Lorne at May 25, 2004 11:03 PM
Well, it depends on what you mean by "arbitrary." As I understand it -- and I might be wrong -- the anthropic principle means that when humans look at the world around them, they'll see math that is perceivable to humans. When aliens look around, they'll see alien math that's different from human math, but which, like human math, is internally consistent and explains physical phenomena, etc. Thus, the maths are not "arbitrary" -- the values we place on things like gravity, etc., are very real -- but they're just different from the ones aliens would perceive. Put another way, there are many possible maths and physics -- but the ones you see are the ones you're wired to perceive.
I might be wrong about that description, though.
Posted by: Clive at May 26, 2004 3:03 PM
I'm joining in very late, but I wanted to chime in on one point, raised by Lorne, who asked, "Is it possible for a completely alien mathematical system, complete with a different set of logical principles, to exist? Wouldn't "pi" be "pi" in any universe?"
Clive's reply to your comment is right on. Pi could indeed look very different to us if rendered in an alien system of mathematics. Because we have ten physical digits to count with (*highly* simplified historical explanation!), we've developed a base 10 system of numeration, in which pi looks like 3.14159.... But expressed in a some other base n system of numeration, pi would look completely different. Indeed, it's entirely possible that some system of numeration may exist, yet to be discovered and formalized, in which pi could be expressed in some non-irrational form, perhaps as a straightforward fraction. The fact that pi is a simple ratio suggests the logic of this supposition. Now we just have to find that system, hehe ...
Posted by: Jason at July 6, 2004 2:07 PM