July 4, 2009
... GEO600 has stumbled upon the fundamental limit of space-time - the point where space-time stops behaving like the smooth continuum Einstein described and instead dissolves into "grains", just as a newspaper photograph dissolves into dots as you zoom in. "It looks like GEO600 is being buffeted by the microscopic quantum convulsions of space-time," says Hogan.
If this doesn't blow your socks off, then Hogan, who has just been appointed director of Fermilab's Center for Particle Astrophysics, has an even bigger shock in store: "If the GEO600 result is what I suspect it is, then we are all living in a giant cosmic hologram."
The idea that we live in a hologram probably sounds absurd, but it is a natural extension of our best understanding of black holes, and something with a pretty firm theoretical footing. It has also been surprisingly helpful for physicists wrestling with theories of how the universe works at its most fundamental level.
The holograms you find on credit cards and banknotes are etched on two-dimensional plastic films. When light bounces off them, it recreates the appearance of a 3D image. ...
Our world may be a giant hologram, by Marcus Chown
January 15, 2009, Newscientist.com
This next post starts off covering the year 2003 and was written in the first week of January. It was thought of due to a power outage in my neighborhood which happened in the evening and left me in the dark for a few hours. After using my laptop for light for awhile, I decided to switch to traditional candles.
Then I did what many have done since time immemorial. I put my hand in front of the candle and observed a shadow of it on the wall. I had been thinking about the concept of multiple levels of dimensions but perceiving only 3 and the candle got me thinking about 3 dimensional "shadows" of higher realities, or our perceptions being only that of a more dimensional Universe "flatted down" to a few which we could understand. After observing, thinking, pondering, and playing around with shadow puppets for awhile, the lights came back on.
The candle however was still lit, and therefore the shadows I was or had been making were still just as potentially there. It was just with the added brighter lights, there was no way to make out a shadow from a single light source as weak as a candle anymore. Yet it was still there, however faint. I moved my hand in front of the still burning candle a few times to make the point to myself, yes, the shadow must still be there, only I can't make it out anymore.
The 'single star' analogy which I used for the essay/example "Breaking Probability Waves" several days earlier (which I would use again in the Yashoe/Yashomee story) to 'filter down' an explanation of existence to the most minimal levels, one existence vs. all else, I thought of now again in terms of the candle and the lights, suddenly on again. Thinking in terms of lots of people being separate lives, separate lights, was complex, but thinking that there might be a single source of life, or single beam which makes matter or life exist, like a single candle, then there could be a metaphorical lens or prism which would break that single light into different colors, different existences, different "shadows" of existence, of which we were one of, dancing around on a 3 dimensional Universe equivalent of my 2 dimensional wall I had been making shadow puppets on.
This was not the first time I used that example (in what I was about to write at that point) of a "prism" creating "a multitude of individualizations." The poem "Prismic" from my collection, Quadranine from 1989 (20 years ago around now) made similar observations / suppositions. I am putting it here below as an example or reference.
An indomitable ray of hope and fulfillment
passes through the prism of time
spreading wide a multitude of individualizations
painting the mural of life in its prime
Colors which are pleasing to the heart
stand contrasting and complementing those that unnerve
for each part's beauty never seeks to overpower
the incomprehensibly vast mosaic they serve
Images of all that we know of or dream
float fancifully reflected in a panorama of space
playing nightly to a captive audience unseen
trying their best to savor a feast they cannot taste
The brilliance of the light cannot be known
as it far surpasses that which can be seen
and the mysterious refractor defies definitions,
not to diminish the wondrous pictures that gleam
While there are many similarities to that poem, with what I was thinking about then when the lights came back on, it was more like the thought of life itself as a beam animating and creating not only matter but each person's life as well. Again, also referencing the recently written essay at that time, "Breaking Probability Waves", in the sense of how it began, in that first few sentences...
"...Life consumes and expends energy. We, living beings, consume far more energy than can be quantified than merely from the foods we eat, the water we drink, and the air we breathe. Life draws energy to itself. It draws upon it and builds itself up from it. Food, matter, they are required only as a catalyst. Once the process is begun it is almost self-perpetuating.
So in this sense, the "lens" I was trying to define or imagine was the source of life or consciousness, and trying to play around with that concept more than just the "shadows", and trying to understand life "flowing into" each person from a higher dimensional viewpoint, or outside of the 3 dimensions we perceive point of view. Probably before the rest, then I wrote the poem's lines that summed it up at what ended up at the beginning, then most likely began the rest. I may have written it the other way around, but its not really that important which came first.
Multidimensionalism: Lenses, Interruptions and Shadows
One light can cast a single shadow on the wall
with many lights one hardly sees any shadow at all
but ever more lights breed ever more shadows to see
more shapes, more perspectives fleshing out what can be
Using the star analogy to potential, one can perceive of existence as taking place on another level. As the star spreads its light ever outwards into space until it hits something which absorbs that light into itself, it also creates an absence of that light in the direction beyond itself, a shadow. If one substitutes light for potential, or energy, or life spreading out into the Universe in all directions beyond three dimensions and time, but like light creating breaks or stoppages as it hits “things” which catch some of that potential or energy into itself causing interruptions in the design or pattern which would otherwise occur, a shadow of events in time. One could speculate such a disruption’s effect could be envisioned as a world, a universe, or an entity. For this example I will choose a particular entity or single being.
If one follows the analogy of life emanating from a single source such as energy or light emanates from a star, and that life or potential of events can take a myriad of forms, just being potential, none more definite or definitive than any other, such as light containing all colors. When we think of this world as being where life hits something or is actualized from potential into existence, striking some “thing” to break down the multiple potential colored “light” or energy into individual existences, one is looking at the effects and not necessarily the cause. If you in turn step beyond that to conceptualize that just as life flows into us and our Universe from an indistinguishable unchartable point from our current existence's points of view, the actual diffusing of potential into actual, from all that can be into what is, is taking place between us, our world, and the light / life source, whatever it is that creates or sustains what it is that we are and use to build up some concepts of ourselves. Imagine your body or your world as a three-dimensional shadow created by the interruption of infinite time and infinite space emanating outwards from some central point. Though that point would not be in actuality, from our points of view, in any one place and time, using a star as an analogy one can conceive of it as such.
So using that limited analogy of life or potential coming from a definitive pin-pointable place in space and time such as a star, though this whole analogy is not accurate limiting it in space and time, imagine you or consciousness as something in-between the source of existence and the physical Universe able to absorb some of that essence of potential into itself, causing a disruption, a shadow of what could occur, and from that shadow creates what will occur, at least from that line of sight (timeline) between the source, and the effect, existence. Moving your hand in front of a light, if there is another source for the light to hit beyond your hand, and the light source sufficiently bright or all other sources of light are sufficiently dim, you will see a shadow of your hand upon another surface. You can see how the rest of the light would hit and the disruption you can move or control, and how this reacts with that area. If life emanates into ourselves from an outside source and we are capable of capturing or transmuting that energy, life, or potential into ourselves creating effects or events across time which we choose, it is possible to imagine that we stand in-between the source of this potential, and the effects which play out upon the background, in our case not a two-dimensional wall, merely a three-dimensional universe plus time.
Since I have stressed this analogy is flawed, to imagine the source of all life or potential as existing in one single point of space and time, I will try to expand upon it a little. Even if one does believe in one god as the source of all life, it is still quite a stretch to envision it as existing in a single point in space and time. This is just an analogy to illustrate a point, a lens, an obstruction in potential and time, and the effects that would appear across a static world, a shadow of events with that potential, from a single viewpoint or line of sight.
As difficult as this can be to imagine, I will now make it even more so. Imagine not a single source of life or potential emanating from a single direction but instead a multitude of different lights or potential sources around the inside of a giant ball and the obstruction or refractor absorbing that energy into itself casting many shadows simultaneously upon many surfaces at the same time. It shows one shape on one surface, a different one upon another surface from a different angle. Likewise any movement or intended effects upon one surface shows as different, backward, or opposite on another surface. This example is at the heart of understanding both multidimensionalism and different realities of time. For time, imagine all the lights around the inside of the ball firing in a particular order, one at a time. What creates the shadow or effect would control to some degree its shape or movements but so too would the differing lights firing create a movement to and across differing backgrounds opposite that source.
To imagine multidimensionalism, imagine all the lights on at once, all shadows would always be present all at the same time, though not visible since each would be obscuring its visibility coming from so many different light sources, but each shadow would still be there. Each movement, each action taking place against one background is simultaneously taking place, having a seemingly different effect as it is being seen from a different angle or plane upon all other lines of sight. Use the ball to represent time and imagine one light seemingly stronger at one point in time, at each moment in time. Though there would be visual or conceptual movement through time, a shadow appearing to be moving across different frames, yet at that same moment differing versions of other shadows not as bright would be telling different perspectives upon other lines of sight. And since as I said for this example, each line of sight represents a different time, not a different dimension per se, each event or moment happening at any time would also be casting a different shadow back upon itself at every other time.
Now change the inside of the ball casting shadows of potential, not to represent time, but instead three-dimensional space. Each breakage or disruption within the potential can be occurring or disrupting multiple points in space at the same time, appearing as one form from one perspective, having one type of intended effect upon one reality, and having a quite different impression by that motion or disruptive patterns simultaneously occurring in other points in space at the same time.
Now imagine the inside of the ball to represent consciousness. Each idea, each thought, each notion would be occurring in a different way, affecting multiple shadow consciousnesses simultaneously. The intended effect upon one thinking that one at that moment is the current or real one, as if one moment was more real in the time analogy because one light seemed brighter or the others appeared dimmer, that same idea, notion, or abstraction can appear quite differently to another consciousness simultaneously as a direct consequence of that intended action upon another line of sight, with each thought being seen by all shadow consciousnesses differently all at once all the time.
Now imagine the inside of the ball to represent all of these, time, consciousness, and three-dimensional space, all lights on all the time, every action or intention affecting every other event, time, and place, in every consciousness' potential perception in every possible dimension and timeline. Everything done at every time by anyone ever anywhere any when casting a faint shadow upon everything else also always occurring. The key to understanding it may not be in the source from where or how existence originates but in-between that primal primordial cause and every possible effect, every shadow, every stoppage of all possibilities into single occurrences of single realities. Most think time is this fulcrum, that something in time, in each moments present, regulates each occurrence from what did not occur but time is not thought to be a consciousness, merely a regulator of what appears as actuality to one given perspective, one line of sight, one given timeline. And if from a different perspective time itself can be thought to be multiply occurring in different ways at once, what may exist in the center appearing simultaneously yet differently across every moment in time to every possible consciousness in every possible reality may be even more elusive to understanding time or life itself.
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