306. Fear of a Black Universe (4)
1 (33m 49s):
Your thought experiment would be, if the aliens are like us, they're gonna create a virtual reality and it's gonna be so sophisticated, it's gonna consume a lot of energy that we should be able to detect that. Am I saying that right?
2 (34m 0s):
Yeah. And the detection of that is the, the measured amount of vacuum energy that we see, which is a cosmological constant. So the way, so the play on this is actually, there are few versions of what we call a cosmological constant problem. One problem, of course. Why is it the value that it is? Okay? So the name of the game is physics. We like to measure quantities that are physical interests and we think are fundamental. And this is science cosmological constant is saying something fundamental about. And the reason why is because, so why is it the value that it is? And the reason why this is interesting is that particle physicists, and in fact the language that Fineman helped create quantum field theory actually makes a prediction of this cosmological constant.
2 (34m 49s):
And it turns out that the precision processes that we could compute and test in, in, in particle accelerators predict way too much vacuum. So the question is not that, not that they're not only why is the vacuum energy or the cosmological constant, they're synonymous with each other. The value there it is, is that, you know, why is what's happening to all of the vacuum energy that should be around? And so our game is to say, oh, it's being used, That's the power supply for the video games of the advanced utilization. So it was a thought experiment. But a part of that, of that, of that chapter for example, and that thing is to show that, you know, the whole point of thought experiments in terms of developing strong theory is that sometimes you have to, you have to imagine the most absurd thing and then kind of work your way back and you know, and you know, and be your own, your own best skeptic actually.
2 (35m 51s):
You know? So the idea part of that was to show that really good theorizing is not only about trying to always trying to deny what's, you know, deny things to prove your idea wrong. It's, you can put an idea and then you figure out you have to be its own worst nightmare. Your job is to kill it. Your job is to figure out ways to kill your own theory. So right. So in fact, we have to be our own best skeptic.
1 (36m 20s):
Yeah, I always showed that video clip of Fineman lecturing at Cornell in 1964, and he has that great line about it doesn't matter what your name is, how beautiful your guess is, and so on and so on. If it disagrees with experiment, it's a wrong Yeah, absolutely. And that's all there is to it. Well, yeah. So is this your answer to the fair me paradox? Where is everybody namely that if we're not special, we're in the middle of the bell curve of evolved civilizations? There should be plenty ahead of us. And if they were, they should have been here by now, they haven't been. So where is everybody your answer is their home doing virtual reality?
2 (36m 58s):
Well, yeah, they home, that's a good one because, you know, one answer as you know, to the firm parish is that we're not interested into them. But then the question is why are we not interested in them? And then like, you know, of course, you know, some of us, some people who have a lot of faith in humanity, of course will say, because we're idiots and because human beings we're just the worst creatures out there. And you know, and there's no way anybody wanna pay attention to us who's so advanced. That's no, no. That's a reason that that is an answer to the furry paradox that I actually like. So my version is a is a, is a, a more inclusive, you know, version. You know, so it's a version that says is isn't that we're not interested, it's just they're so, they're so busy having so much fun playing their VR video games.
2 (37m 46s):
It's so advanced. If you think our games are cool, if you think, if you think our Hollywood and movies are cool, they're having such a great time using this vacuum energy.
1 (37m 55s):
Yeah. And of course a lot of people,
2 (37m 57s):
It's a Disneyland out there for them. Yeah,
1 (37m 59s):
Totally. I mean, it could be more interesting than physically exploring the cosmos, although, you know, who knows? Seems like it would be super interesting. But you know, it could be just our species likes to leave home and go and explore things. So we think, well, that's what everybody else would do. Where are they? Why aren't they here exploring? Well maybe they just don't do that. They have a different motive. Something like that. It's so hard to think of what aliens might be like since we have an n of one at least ourselves. Right. Unless you can other species. Okay, a couple other questions. What, you talk a lot about fields in your book. What is a field?
2 (38m 34s):
Ah, great, great, great. So there, so there are two types of fields I think is important to distinguish. One is a classical field and the other is a quantum field. So a classical field is the perfect great example that as a magnet. I mean, if I take two magnets, put them to that close to each other, but they don't, they don't even have to touch, right? They can exert a force on each other without ever touching each other. So there's some action at a distance happening. And it really, there's a, there's a material, it's called a magnetic feel. It's invisible, but it does exist because it has energy and it could exert a force.
2 (39m 15s):
So a feel is some kind of extended entity material, let's say a fluid like material. If you want to give it some kind of characteristic that has extent, right? It's extended, it's not just localized like a particle. It has extent and it can warp and bend and the action of its warping. And bendon could actually carry energy and exert forces on, on objects. Like, so if anything would charge or mass, you know, the, the feel associated with massive objects is the gravitational fuel. That's a weird feel because that feel itself is space time itself as a Einstein taught us, and space time can bend because the feel of space time can bend.
2 (39m 55s):
And that's where we get gravitational forces from. We are moving along the contours of a warp space, space that is created by the sun bending the gravitational feel, and the earth is just moving along the contours. And we call that a gravitational force. No, Einstein says it's really just the gravitational feel, which is space itself that is walked and it's invisible. So those are classical fields and we're very familiar with it. Our, a lot of our modern technology is about the manipulation of electromagnetic fields, you know, so we understand quantum fields of when we think about fields that are actually intrinsically quantum mechanical.
2 (40m 37s):
And so that I'm actually teaching our graduate level, I teach our graduate level year long sequence at Brown on quantum field theory. So I should know something about it. But it's, it's, you know, it's a two year sequence, you know, so it's, it, it's, it's very heavy stuff. But in essence, one way to think about what a quantum feel is, and you know, my friend Sean Carol has a nice podcast, not pod, but a discussion on, on videos on online where he does a really good job. But let me see if I can do some justice it. So let's take our magnetic feel, right? And that's, imagine that his magnetic feels now a quantum magnetic field.
2 (41m 22s):
Actually, that's a bad example. Let me, let me, There are certain fields, and you can use a picture now of a magnetic field, but there are certain fields where the, what makes it quantum, What makes a quantum is that feel, a feel can vibrate, right? You can imagine a feel actually undergoing some oscillatory undulation. And it turns out that by, if these, these vibrations on a quantum feel could actually be quantized, meaning that they can carry, right? There's, they, they have discreet vibrations so they can, their vibrational pattern. It's like a musical note, right? Like I have a C to D, it's discreet, right?
2 (42m 2s):
So the vibrational pattern of a feel can vibrate in a discreet way. And it turns out that those discrete vibrations, right, is responsible for the feel to create a particle. So the feel concept is the mother, it's sort of like, it, it's the overarching concept in, in, in physics. So from fields you get both waves and particle. So you probably learn that in quantum mechanics you have wave particle duality. So the feel now explains what that duality really is. The feel itself can undergo wavelike vibrations.
2 (42m 42s):
Those wave vibrations can be quantized. And when, when they're quantized, those fields would actually generate a particle from the void, from the vacuum, right? And so different vibrational patterns of a field can create many particles. And then these particles depend on the field configuration can, and the field interactions can now collide and, and, you know, annihilate or get created or do interesting things. And that's exactly that picture what's developed by Richard Fineman and his colleagues and Fineman came up with a diagrammatic way of representing that, that that idea feel vibrations feels moving in and colliding.
2 (43m 26s):
And they're called fineman diagrams.
1 (43m 29s):
Yes. Well, the next time you're in town, remind me, and I'll take you to see Fireman's van with the fineman diagrams on it. There's a, there's a long story.
2 (43m 36s):
Oh, please. I would love that.
1 (43m 37s):
There's a long story about, it's, it's safely stored in a, a storage unit now, but yeah, it's, it's great. So there's a video of fineman at the Eson Institute in Big Sur where he's, you know, talking about science and spirituality or whatever, too much of New ages. But he's explaining why I think if I recall, like for example, why doesn't the chair leg fall through the floor since Adams are mostly empty space? And he said because they're jing he used the word jing, I think when he met is what you just said, right? The it's fields.
2 (44m 7s):
That's right. It is excellent. The field picture, right? It is a, it is a mother language of, of physics, like everything basically. Now even, so all the forces at some level, at a fundamental level, we be, you know, we as a field that's a unifying idea. That's unify
1 (44m 26s):
Principle. So, and if I followed you correctly, then there, there were no particles and then, then there were particles that came out of the field. So would it be, would it be correct to say something came from nothing, but it's not nothing cuz there's a field.
2 (44m 41s):
That's correct. That's correct. I would say that these fields are all around, they were not materialized, meaning the field could exist, but what, what we call the vacuum or nothing, meaning no particles. But then, you know, the feel could actually generate those particles due to due to feel interactions. So you can have fields, but then these fields can interact with each other, right. And the nature of these interactions can generate of course the particles, which are the field vibrations.
