I think it's spirituality, not science (or science fiction) at all.
Science is defined by what can be measured. "Consciousness" isn't measurable. Therefore consciousness is not within the realm of science. Neither is faith.
A person can believe something without evidence--that's faith. Science requires evidence. (I'll come back to this idea more at the end.)
To answer some of your questions, a lot of what science has discovered implies that the universe doesn't need anything magical in order to exist--when things behave a certain way, there has always been a (physical) reason why. Science may not have all the answers yet, but personally I don't see any reason why we should need to add "consciousness" to our science to make our explanations work. Spookiness and hand-waving have never been necessary before. (Not even in quantum mechanics, which can get pretty weird.)
Einstein-Rosen bridges are what most people call wormholes, and although they're related to black holes, they are not the same thing.
A wormhole connects two distant points in space-time through a relatively short "tube" of space-time. A black hole is like a hole in space-time with a well-defined bottom. A black hole doesn't go anywhere, whereas a wormhole does.
That said, wormholes have never been observed and most physicists will say they likely don't exist. Black holes, however, definitely do exist.
Us living in a 10-dimensional universe is something string theorists suggested. Currently, string theory is considered a curiosity. Its math is too hard to solve and thus no one can predict anything useful from it. Thus, it's almost not right to call it science. There's no reason to discount string theory yet, but at the same time, there's no reason to believe in it either.
If wormholes could be made to exist, they could in principle allow space travel or time travel. However, calculations show that wormholes would be too unstable to exist for measurable lengths of time (which is probably why they don't appear to exist), and that the universe might effectively screen out the possibility of time travel by increasing such a wormhole's instability.
I think consciousness is the key to the Theory of Everything: the missing piece of the equation.
Here is the thing: If you make a claim, the burden of proof is on you. That means you're free to believe something (to have faith) with no evidence, but if you expect someone else to believe it also, then you must supply evidence that satisfies them (i.e. it's not enough for the evidence to satisfy you.)
To convince most scientists that such a claim is true, you'd have to supply evidence that satisfied them. And that would have to be either an unambiguous mathematical proof or an unambiguous experimental result that other people (even ones who don't believe you) could reproduce.
So these are all cool ideas, but until there's some way to test them, science has nothing to say about them. Like religion, they lie outside the realm of what science can meaningfully talk about.
You're very welcome! I do find the idea of consciousness problematic as a scientific concept, but that's probably because I have no trouble believing in an empty universe--one where no one needs to observe it for it to exist. However, that's simply my matter of faith. :-)
Current evolutionary arguments centre on the question how did consciousness arise from matter?, but while we still have time to be blissfully naive and ignorant regarding the ultra hardcore facts, we might equally ask (and have), how did matter arise from consciousness?.
For fiction writers, these two solution fetches generate a sliding scale of possibilities.
Plus, while I have you on the subject of ultra hardcore physics, whats the best ABC book of things quantum, yanno, for dummies like me?
Whirlochre: I actually can't because most of the texts I've read were for people who actually to learn the icky math. The best book I ever had in that regard was "Introduction to Quantum Mechanics" by David J. Griffiths (it has a drawing of a live cat on the front cover and a dead cat on the back.)
If you've got first year university level science, you might try looking through a first year physics textbook. They often have a good, understandable introduction to quantum mechanics.
Alternately, I'm thinking that for this Monday's "meaty" post, I'll do a proper question and answer post for writers. Would that help? I could also give little lectures on how some of the cooler fields of physics work.
10 comments:
Einstein was the answer on today's jeopardy. :-)
I think it's spirituality, not science (or science fiction) at all.
Science is defined by what can be measured. "Consciousness" isn't measurable. Therefore consciousness is not within the realm of science. Neither is faith.
A person can believe something without evidence--that's faith. Science requires evidence. (I'll come back to this idea more at the end.)
To answer some of your questions, a lot of what science has discovered implies that the universe doesn't need anything magical in order to exist--when things behave a certain way, there has always been a (physical) reason why. Science may not have all the answers yet, but personally I don't see any reason why we should need to add "consciousness" to our science to make our explanations work. Spookiness and hand-waving have never been necessary before. (Not even in quantum mechanics, which can get pretty weird.)
Einstein-Rosen bridges are what most people call wormholes, and although they're related to black holes, they are not the same thing.
A wormhole connects two distant points in space-time through a relatively short "tube" of space-time. A black hole is like a hole in space-time with a well-defined bottom. A black hole doesn't go anywhere, whereas a wormhole does.
That said, wormholes have never been observed and most physicists will say they likely don't exist. Black holes, however, definitely do exist.
Us living in a 10-dimensional universe is something string theorists suggested. Currently, string theory is considered a curiosity. Its math is too hard to solve and thus no one can predict anything useful from it. Thus, it's almost not right to call it science. There's no reason to discount string theory yet, but at the same time, there's no reason to believe in it either.
If wormholes could be made to exist, they could in principle allow space travel or time travel. However, calculations show that wormholes would be too unstable to exist for measurable lengths of time (which is probably why they don't appear to exist), and that the universe might effectively screen out the possibility of time travel by increasing such a wormhole's instability.
I think consciousness is the key to the Theory of Everything: the missing piece of the equation.
Here is the thing: If you make a claim, the burden of proof is on you. That means you're free to believe something (to have faith) with no evidence, but if you expect someone else to believe it also, then you must supply evidence that satisfies them (i.e. it's not enough for the evidence to satisfy you.)
To convince most scientists that such a claim is true, you'd have to supply evidence that satisfied them. And that would have to be either an unambiguous mathematical proof or an unambiguous experimental result that other people (even ones who don't believe you) could reproduce.
So these are all cool ideas, but until there's some way to test them, science has nothing to say about them. Like religion, they lie outside the realm of what science can meaningfully talk about.
You're very welcome! I do find the idea of consciousness problematic as a scientific concept, but that's probably because I have no trouble believing in an empty universe--one where no one needs to observe it for it to exist. However, that's simply my matter of faith. :-)
Yes, "Why is there something instead of nothing?" is still the question in science. And it's not one that has a reasonable answer yet.
Current evolutionary arguments centre on the question how did consciousness arise from matter?, but while we still have time to be blissfully naive and ignorant regarding the ultra hardcore facts, we might equally ask (and have), how did matter arise from consciousness?.
For fiction writers, these two solution fetches generate a sliding scale of possibilities.
Plus, while I have you on the subject of ultra hardcore physics, whats the best ABC book of things quantum, yanno, for dummies like me?
Whirlochre: I actually can't because most of the texts I've read were for people who actually to learn the icky math. The best book I ever had in that regard was "Introduction to Quantum Mechanics" by David J. Griffiths (it has a drawing of a live cat on the front cover and a dead cat on the back.)
If you've got first year university level science, you might try looking through a first year physics textbook. They often have a good, understandable introduction to quantum mechanics.
Alternately, I'm thinking that for this Monday's "meaty" post, I'll do a proper question and answer post for writers. Would that help? I could also give little lectures on how some of the cooler fields of physics work.
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