Thursday, March 4, 2010

Wormholes of Wonder

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As long as we are doing spooky physics – here’s another thought that shoulders its way into my consciousness occasionally.  In much of what I read out there in “Spookyphysicsland” I encounter the notion that in the grand [and modest] scheme of things, size is unimportant.  Thresholds seem to be germane - the event horizon of a supermassive black hole, the vibration rate of a string – thresholds, yes, important; size, not so much so.

OK, so consider yourself as a fixed vantage point.  With telescopes of all stripes we can peer into the vastness of space – a “zoom out” of inconceivable proportions.  Massive structures, millions of light years across, and billions of light years “away.”  Now, come back to yourself and turn the observation inward, “zoom in” – looking within toward the incredible tininess of strings perhaps eventually observable with Hogan’s Noise [I’m still not sure how something that has been around since the birth of the universe gets named for one guy – that’s always bothered me – but I digress, again.] Still, looking inward, at structures possibly as small as the outward view is huge; who is to say that we are encountering a different reality? Physics should be physics everywhere right? Symmetry?

If it is all one continuum, and "human-sized" sits toward the middle of the scale, that’s when things could get really spooky.  If one explanation for nothing coming out of black holes is that everything is being funneled out the “other side” into another universe, could that not be happening on our inward journey as well?  Maybe tiny black holes in the brain through which little grains of consciousness slip into different or parallel universes? Are dreams fantasies about this universe or fractured glimpses of another? And can we imagine the exportation of our internal maladies?  Supernovae as cosmic heartburn? Colic in the star-birthing regions of space? Can a galaxy get the swine flu? Hallucinate?

Ah, weirdness – ya gotta love it!

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