Stress, excitement, and indigestion are common causes of interrupted sleep — for most of us, that is. Not so for physicists, whose insomnia stirs for far less pedestrian concerns, as cataloged in this month’s New Scientist as the Seven Questions that Keep Physicists Awake at Night.
“In their pursuit of nature’s fundamental laws, physicists have essentially been working under a long standing paradigm: demonstrating why the universe must be as we see it. But if other laws can be thought of, why can’t the universes they describe exist in some other place?”
I’ll be honest, I double-majored in philosophy because I was pumped up on French existentialist novels. Ironically, they were the last novels I ever read in a philosophy class. Instead, I ended up reading essays on multiple worlds and van Inwagen’s Doctrine of Arbitrary Undetached Parts. While I’m flattered to have spent so many sleepless nights mulling over the same topics as professional physicists, I feel they may have been confused on a slightly higher level.
The question is this – if I postulate a set of laws for a world (other than this one), and I’m able to imagine/reason how things work in that world without contradicting those laws, then who’s to say that this world could not exist?
Though the scenario is rather complex, the exercise is as simple as imagining a world in which I start my day at 4:30 instead of 6:30(oops)…. Meaning that, though the concepts are over most of our heads, it’s a reminder that the ability to imagine different worlds is available to us all.
For a lighter look at parallel worlds, check out this Nova special “Parallel World, Parallel Lives,” featuring Eels frontman Mark Everett. (The rest of the show is available on YouTube.)
“Ordinary matter” is classified here as “atoms, galaxies and stars.”
Ponder this: if ‘ordinary matter’ only accounts for four percent of the universe’s total energy, what’s the other 96 percent?
As evil as it sounds, dark matter simply designates matter whose light either does not reach us, or particles which are not emitting light to begin with. We know dark matter is out there because we can see its effects, such as the continued expansion of the universe. It’s not the stuff from the X-Files that lets aliens take control of you body … or scientists are keeping that part on the low.
3. How does complexity happen?
4. Will string theory ever be proved correct?
5. What is singularity?
6. What is reality, really? (see also: The Sixth Sense, The Machinist, Identity, The Fountain and others of
the “it was all a dream, or was it” ilk)
7. How far can physics take us?
This last question is the wildest one of all. What it suggests is that physics, the (scientific) language by which we make sense of our world, may have its own limits. I think I’ll mull that one over the next time I can’t get to sleep…
Article By: Forest Taylor