Thursday, June 30, 2011

Poll 82 - Does Info Equal Reality?


A direct link to the above video is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wgb1PTOAdDU

"The division between the quantum and classical worlds appears not to be fundamental. It is just a question of experimental ingenuity, and few physicists now think that classical physics will ever really make a comeback at any scale. If anything, the general belief is that if a deeper theory ever supersedes quantum physics, it will show the world to be even more counterintuitive than anything we have seen so far."
- from an article in the June 2011 issue of Scientific American, "Living in a Quantum World" by Vlatko Vedral

Poll 82 - "Information Equals Reality". Poll ended June 16, 2011.
68.5% agreed, while the remaining 31.5% did not.

One of the claims I've made from the outset of this project echoes Vlatko Vedral's statement quoted above. How great it is to see this idea has now officially moved into the mainstream! Five years ago when my book was published, this was one of the ideas that critics said proved I was a crackpot. As I said in Chapter Two, The Quantum Observer:
...the difficulties in determining where the dividing line between the quantum world and the macro world lies stem from the fact that it really is all part of the same continuum. Therefore the observer is functioning at both the quantum level, and as part of the physical world we see around us. This means that each of us is an observer, and each of us is creating our own unique reality, while we continue to participate in a shared consensus reality where the basic physical laws of our universe remain unchanged.
Which takes us to these words: "information equals reality". This is a highly useful phrase which I had not come across when I finished writing my book in 2006, but since then I've used it extensively in this blog. In 2009 when I created the pdf version of my book (available for download at www.tenthdimension.com/digital) I did add some addenda items to the end of each chapter to outline the progress that had been made in my ideas becoming less "out there" than they seemed at first. Here's a paragraph I added near the end of Chapter Two which helps to explain this concept:
Quantum mechanics is often portrayed as being completely unimaginable and supremely mysterious. I would propose that the way of imagining reality we are exploring here–which takes the indeterminate nature of subatomic particles and equates that idea with the simultaneously branching possibilities that we select from the probability space of the fifth dimension to create our fourth-dimensional reality–helps us to understand how both can be part of the same idea. When quantum physicist Seth Lloyd, in his book “Programming the Universe”, talks about information and reality being interchangeable, I feel a strong resonance between that statement and what we’re exploring in these pages: we are all navigating a sea of information, which from some perspectives may seem random and inexplicable. But within that sea of information we can find patterns and shapes, fractals and chaos, parts that start and parts that stop, all encoded within the underlying fabric of our observed reality.
Likewise, physicist Anton Zeilinger uses this phrase regularly, here's a few entries where I talk about his groundbreaking work: Local Realism Bites the Dust, God 2.0, The Spacetime Tree, The Past is an Illusion, and Scrambled Eggs.

There are numerous popular films that explore the idea that our reality equals information. We talked about some of those not long ago in my entry Poll 77 - What if the World's a Simulation?. A recent film about this idea, and it's one that I really loved, is Source Code. If you'd like to read an analysis of this film from a quantum physicist's perspective, here's a link from the Discover Magazine "Cosmic Variance" blog. Just a warning though, in order to discuss the underlying theories behind this movie the link I'm giving you has to reveal the surprise ending. Now that's okay, I suppose, if you've never seen the film and have no intention of doing so, but if you are thinking of watching it I'd really recommend you do so before reading this analysis.

Finally, here's a link to an exciting article published June 1st 2011 in New Scientist, which gives the seal of approval to a new paper published by Raphael Bousso and Leonard Susskind. This paper provides a formal proof for how the string theory multiverse and Everett's Many Worlds are directly equivalent. As I've admitted elsewhere, I've talked so much about this idea for the last five years that it seems a bit strange to have mainstream scientists only starting to accept it now, but once again I'm thrilled to see ways in which the "crazy" ideas I've been promoting with Imagining the Tenth Dimension are continuing to move closer and closer to the accepted mainstream. How cool is that?

Enjoy the journey!

Rob Bryanton

Next: Five Years Ago Today

Tuesday, June 28, 2011

Top Ten Tenth Dimension Blogs - June Report

Previous lists:
. April 08 . May 08 . June 08 . July 08 . August 08
. September 08 . October 08 . November 08 . December 08 .
. Top 100 Blog Entries of 2008 . May 09 . June 09 . July 09
. August 09 . September 09 . October 09 . November 09 .
. December 09 . Top 100 Blog Entries of 2009 .
. January 10 . February 10 . March 10 . April 10 . May 10 .
. June 10 . July 10 . August 10 . September 10 . October 10 .
. November 10 . December 10 . Top 100 Entries of 2010 .
. January 11 . February 11 . March 11 . April 11 . May 2011 .


Based upon number of views, here are the top blogs for the last thirty days.

1. The One-Dimensional Universe
2. Mobius Strip Roller Coaster!
3. Proof that Multiverse Equals Many Worlds   
4. New Video - Time Travel Paradoxes
5. Each in our Own Filter Bubble?
6. Turtles and Timelike Entanglement
7. Why Did I Choose the Red Shirt?
8. New video - Photons and Free Will
9. Insidious Trends
10. Proof that Spacetime is Flat?


And as of June 26th, 2011, here are the twenty-six Imagining the Tenth Dimension blog entries that have attracted the most visits of all time. Items marked in bold are new or have risen since last month.

1. Jumping Jesus (1)
2. What's Around the Corner? (2)
3. Mandelbulbs (3)
4. An Expanding 4D Sphere (4)
5. Just Six Things: The I Ching (5)
6. The 5th-Dimensional Camera Project (7)
7. Roger Ebert on Quantum Reincarnation (6)
8. Vibrations and Fractals (9)
9. Creativity and the Quantum Universe (8)
10. Light Has No Speed (10)
11. How to Time Travel (11)
12. Is Reality an Illusion? (12)
13. Our Universe Within the Omniverse (13)
14. Dancing on the Timeline (14)
15. 10-10-10 Look Before You Leap (15)
16. Magnets and Morality (16) 
17. Monkeys Love Metallica (18)
18. Poll 44 - The Biocentric Universe Theory (17)
19. Consciousness in Frames per Second (19)
20. Simultaneous Inspiration (20)
21. Gravity and Love (22)
22. Polls Archive 54 - Is Time Moving Faster? (21)
23. Changing Your Brain (new)
24. Complexity from Simplicity (23)
25. Bees and the LHC (25)
26. Flow (26) 


Which means that this worthy submission is leaving our top 26 of all time list this month.

24. Poll 43 - Is the Multiverse Real? (24)

By the way, if you're new to this project, you might want to check out the Tenth Dimension FAQ, as it provides a road map to a lot of the discussions and different materials that have been created for this project. If you are interested in the 26 songs attached to this project, this blog shows a video for each of the songs and provides more links with lyrics and discussion. The Annotated Tenth Dimension Video provides another cornucopia of discussion topics to be connected to over at YouTube. And as always, here's a reminder that the Tenth Dimension Forum is a good place to converse with other people about these ideas.

Enjoy the journey!

Rob Bryanton

Next: Poll 82 - Does Information Equal Reality?

Saturday, June 25, 2011

New Video: Poll 74 Twins Photons and Mass


A direct link to the above video is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5iACKDPXtH4

Next: Poll 82 - Does Information Equal Reality?

Wednesday, June 22, 2011

Poll 81 - Is Light at Right Angles to Spacetime?


A direct link to the above video is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wgb1PTOAdDU

Poll 81 - "Light is at right angles to spacetime. Do you agree with this point of view?"
Poll ended May 20 2011. 59.9% agreed, while 40.1% disagreed.

This poll question concludes a series of questions that all tied back to "Light Has No Speed", and a diagram I've shown a number of times about the two kinds of "Now" that our reality is created from in the fifth dimension.

Roughly three out of five visitors to my blog were willing to agree with this poll question's very broad statement, which is admittedly a challenging concept to wrap our heads around at first.  I'm glad to see how many people are coming along for the ride.

In a couple of weeks I will be publishing the video that accompanies Poll 76 - No Space, No Time, No Mass, there's some visuals in that entry which might also help people to visualize this idea. Ultimately, what we're trying to get to here is a way of imagining the underlying fabric from which our universe or any other springs. We're going to talk about this idea more next week as we look at Poll 82 - Does Information Equal Reality?

Enjoy the journey,

Rob Bryanton

Next: New video - Twins, Photons and Mass

Thursday, June 16, 2011

Poll 80 - What is "NOW"?


A direct link to the above video is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wgb1PTOAdDU

Poll 80 - "What is 'now?
#1. Even though I know it took years for a star's light to reach me, that light is reaching me 'now'.
#2. 'Now' is what's entangled with this very instant, and that's how the quantum world's 'spooky action at a distance' effects occur."
Poll ended April 23 2011. 21.2% choose answer #1, while the remaining 78.8% chose answer #2.

I already remarked in my blog entry for Photons and Free Will that I was cheating a bit on this question, as in my opinion the correct option -- #3 "both of the above are correct" -- wasn't even provided as a choice. In my experience, whenever there's an "all of the above" choice in a poll question like this, that's the more likely one to be correct, and that's why I didn't provide that option here, because I wanted people to think carefully about their answer.

After all, what's wrong with answer #1? Isn't a distant star's light reaching me "now", even though I know that the light I'm seeing is actually from an image of that particular star that's many years in the past? I could have stated answer #1 more forcefully, to ask if people agree that the "now" of when that photon was generated, and the "now" of when it reaches my eye are (from the photon's perspective) both simultaneous. I wonder how much that would have changed the results?

Here's that video for Photons and Free Will again, which was just posted to YouTube last month.



Next up is the new video for Rebecca Black and QWOP. Enjoy the journey!

Monday, June 13, 2011

New video - Novelty


A direct link to the above video is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_ANS2k97IM

Next- Poll 80: What is "NOW"?

Sunday, June 12, 2011

More Dancing in the Dimensions

Here's a new track I was just sent by a Netherlands artist called Philatelic (click here to see their channel). You'll hear samples from my video Light Has No Speed in this track. Thanks for sending me this, Philatelic!


A direct link to the above video is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIpnEPeRZHI

(Just a warning, the other tracks we're looking at here are mixed more aggressively than the above one so you might want to turn your speakers down a bit now.)

When I posted the above video to my facebook page, my friend Sprosh Gomez responded with another track I hadn't heard before, by two fellows from Hungary calling themselves Chemical Spoon: this track is called Dimensions, and you'll hear samples from my original animation throughout.

A direct link to the above video is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2TkCn-jRYgE

Here's another slightly different version of that same Chemical Spoon track, this one's labeled "Dimension Psynostra", and we looked at this version previously in an entry called Dancing in the Tenth Dimension:

A direct link to the above video is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jYiJZzENLkU

While we're looking at dance tracks incorporating samples of my voice, this one has samples from my video Imagining the Omniverse, which coincidentally has just passed 100,000 views on YouTube. This track is from Netherlands music producer Scope DJ, and we looked at it before in my blog entry Dancing in the Omniverse:

A direct link to the above video is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G_bqkKRQxno

I'm always grateful when artists who have sampled me provide links back to my work, as Scope DJ and Philatelic have done. Enjoy the journey out there on the dance floor!

Rob Bryanton

Next: New Video - Novelty

Thursday, June 9, 2011

Poll 79 - Does Gravity Come from the 5th Dimension?


A direct link to the above video is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iM41wQM2yGk

Poll 79 - "In Einstein's view of the universe, gravity is pictured as a bending of the 'rubber sheet' of our spacetime. If our 'sheet' was a 2D plane, we'd see this bending as being through the 3rd dimension. This shows us gravity comes from the 5th dimension." Poll ended March 28 2011.   63.3% agreed, while 36.7% did not.

Interesting fact: what is the speed of gravity? Most physicists agree that it's equal to the speed of light. The thought experiment often used around this conundrum is "what would happen if the sun suddenly ceased to exist?". Since the light from the sun takes roughly eight and a half minutes to travel from the sun to the earth, this means it would take that length of time before we were plunged into darkness. But what about the gravitational attraction that keeps the Earth in orbit around the sun? It turns out that the answer is the same: if the sun suddenly disappeared, it would take roughly eight and a half minutes until the Earth would be flung out of the solar system, since the gravity of the sun would no longer be there to keep us orbiting.

Here's a link to a New Scientist article from 2003 about the first measurements taken that prove this concept. How does all this relate to my approach to visualizing the dimensions? Let's return yet again to a diagram I've been showing you this year which seems to sum all this up nicely:


Both the speed of light and the speed of gravity are illusions, created by the non-continuous nature of our reality. The jury's still out on whether gravitons really exist, but if they do they would be just like photons: from their perspective, past present, and future are simultaneous. But from our perspective, reality is divided at the fifth dimension into a series of "Now"s that are each one planck frame after another. This is why for us looking into the night sky filled with stars is looking into the past, and why it would take eight and a half minutes for disaster to strike if the sun's gravitational pull on planet Earth were to suddenly disappear.

According to my approach to visualizing the dimensions, our observed universe is an interference pattern, a holographic projection, created at the fifth dimension by the interaction of gravity and light.

For more about all this, read my blog entry The Holographic Universe, or click here for a collection of all my blog entries tagged with that topic.  And enjoy the journey!

Rob Bryanton

Next - More Dancing in the Dimensions

Monday, June 6, 2011

New video - Language and the Mind

Over on YouTube, people have been asking why I've got myself represented as some kind of weird-looking giant in this video. My response: "this is me messing with your perception of reality". :)


A direct link to the above video is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hO-F3OVWO4k

Next: Poll 79 - Does Gravity Come from the Fifth Dimension?

Friday, June 3, 2011

Poll 78 - Will the LHC reveal extra dimensions?


A direct link to the above video is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZDs43U115U

Poll 78 - "The CERN LHC will provide evidence of extra dimensions before the end of 2011. " Poll ended March 1 2011. 46.9% agreed, while 53.1% disagreed.

In Bees and the LHC, I quoted from an article published last year in Scientific American which suggested that the LHC might finally reveal evidence of extra dimensions, and that was what inspired this poll question.  Here we are half way through 2011 now, has there been anything definitive from the LHC yet? Not so far as I know. There were hints a couple of months ago that the LHC may have caught a fleeting indication of the Higgs boson, but more recent results are not confirming the sighting. In May there was a New Scientist article reporting news from the soon-to-be-shut-down Tevatron, about hints of a new particle which would not fit within the Standard Model, and arxiv.org references a paper suggesting that such a particle could be straddling extra dimensions.

This lovely little animation of vibrating Calabi-Yau manifolds comes from the blog of Czech physicist Luboš Motl. Luboš declares himself to be conservative in his viewpoints, but even he, in an entry from last November, accepts the possibility that the LHC is going to reveal evidence of extra dimensions. He even goes so far to say that he believes this revelation to be much more likely to occur than the possibility that climate change will cause significant problems to the biosphere or for mankind in this century! To be clear, he places the possibility of the LHC revealing extra dimensions at only one to two per cent, saying in the conclusion of his detailed and informative blog entry that even if the LHC fails to reveal extra dimensions this year there are still very good reasons for physicists to continue to believe they exist.

Luboš also links to articles from Popular Science and ZDNet about the possibility of  the LHC revealing extra dimensions in 2011. Will it come to pass? The clock is ticking.

Enjoy the journey!

Rob Bryanton

Next: New Video - Language and the Mind

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