The memories of time

I got a weird Idea the other day....I think I'm procrastinating way too much...But still, here it is.

What is time? Does it flow? From the future to the past? What is change? How do we perceive change?

Has the past ever existed? or just our memory of it? I mean, what if the past never actually changed, continuously until it transformed into the present ? A typical answer would be,: ''well, I was there, I remember those days, and I also remember how I got here, how the time flowed transforming those days into today.''...sure you do. But the only thing left, the only thing you can actually proof is ''your memory'' of it. What you really have is the memory of once being there, the memory of time flowing, the memory of transforming, the memory of change.

And If you thing about it, your memories of changes, even if they are in agreement with a collective memory of change, even if a mob of people say the were somewhere yesterday, and then the time flowed until the night past, and then the day, and now they are here; Even if the events in the past have some consequences that you can see today, that would only prove that some of the events happened in a previous time so causality holds. But you can't prove that time actually passed, and that the events transformed to be the consequences we perceive today.

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Putting that aside, and for the sake of this blog, I would like to express my deep admiration for Quantum Theory,         I would like to flatter it's accomplishments: Like the super-accurate predictions it makes, and the fact that it is the best model we have of our world. This being said, I would also like to express my unconformity with the lack of a deterministic subatomic model... It just bothers me. 

I believe (believe, have faith in, a personal wish...) that a deterministic model can, will and must be created. Apart from weather God intended Nature to be, I bet we can come up with a deterministic model of the subatomic world. Is not here yet, that's true, but after all when we look back at the past, we see only one outcome from measurements, somehow, one and only one of the many possibilities got chosen. This gives me the feeling that with a lot, a lot  a lot of effort, in a couple of centuries perhaps, we will encounter limits to our current theories and we could consider aiming our efforts to a deterministic theory of the microscopic phenomena.

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Having this little reference to my personal expectations, I will assume that such Super-duper Deterministic Theory, or STD by it's initials in Spanish (Super-duper Teoria Deterministica...lol) exists. This will mean that given that the Universe exists at some point in it's phase space (PhS), our STD automatically, and unequivocally, will draw a line in the PhS, both in the direction of growing total entropy, and decreasing total entropy. i.e. future and past respectively.

Now, I'm not saying we will be able to calculate this line, and predict with infinite accuracy the future or stuff, although, with this STD such ''dream'' might become a real possibility again, is not in my interest to address such problem here. now. I just want to emphasize the fact that we only inhabit a universe in where the past is a straight line, and the future according to our STD will also be one and only one line.

(I might be brave/stupid enough to argue that: what we see as our future, with many possible paths in the PhS, will turn out to be a unique line if seen from further ahead in time, ahead enough so will consider it part of the past.)

Given that such line exists, its easy to see how all the phenomena are linked by the laws of physics. I mean, one event at some time can be tracked back to it's cause (or towards the future to see it's consequences), and the path that unites both events is full of physical interactions that continuously join them.

Once you get this picture, once you see how everything exists in this line, and once you comprehend that this is possible since our STD exists (As simple as that), I can start talking about the cool stuff.

So far I just stated that the existence of this STD, directly implies a unique line that extends from the past to the future containing all the events in the history of the Universe regardless of weather time flows or nor (Notice that I haven't talked yet about weather we need time to move from one point on this line to another, just that such line exists.)

Now, the cool (a little biased when affirming so...I know...) stuff I was referring to is this: We are not flowing in this line from the past to the future, we are not perceiving time flowing nor anything changes in time; Instead:

We are confined to a 3D cross section of our 4D universe, we are stuck here, and our perception of change is nothing but our memories of the past. A memory that exists simply because an STD exists. Our idea of time arises as a necessary explanation of the continuous evolution of events. My point is that, if the outcomes of all our actions are described by this STD, if the line in the PhS extends unequivocally to the future, that future is a reality, an unavoidable path, and no matter how slow or fast time flows, it will eventually come. This can be putted in another way: The existence of the future does not depend on time, or time flow, it exists because our STD says so, it exists because according to the physical interactions described by our STD can not not exist, can not exists differently.

I guess what I'm saying is that if you look back at the past, you only have memories about it, and you assume (that's right! you assume!) time passed, and now you are where you are. As an example, you might remember turning on your PC, opening your browser, typing in google: Most boring Blog Ever, clicking on this one, start reading a bunch of mumbo-jumbo about time, and then reaching the end of the blog. And finally, you jump to the conclusion that time flowed, things changed, stuff moved, and then you got to the present. If you really think it trough, you can't prove that you were in some past time, and then, after time passed by, you got to the present, since all you have is the memories of being there. And even if, like I said before, a whole crowd of people can give faith of such thing, all they rely on is their memories too. 

We are stuck in a single point in the PhS-trajectory of our universe and our memories, those chemical bounds in our brains whose presence can also be tracked back (or forward) using the STD, are there only because there is no way there wound't be there. And at a certain point in this trajectory, as you would expect, only some of all the chemical bounds have been created, certainly not those ahead, only those in the past, which is nothing but the impossibility of foreseeing the future.

If you are getting serious about anything in science, you get to the point where you take a deep breath, gather some courage, and ask: what about it's falsifiability? can I attempt to prove my idea wrong, and fail? can I attempt to prove it at all?

Furthermore: what about the implications of this idea, what would be different if this idea was to be correct, and the old notion of time change wouldn't? What will be different? Is there any way of proving one right and one wrong?. 

Put in words of Ben Goldacre, the idea is just bad science. In words of Kuhn, outside the body of science. However, if you look at the normally accepted concept of time flow, you will see that it underlies every scientific concept, is well embedded into our scientific paradigm, just like absolute time and absolute space once did. And those were also bad science at the time, those were also not falsifiable concepts at the time. And even then, the lied inside every conjecture made in classical mechanics. All physical theories together, were not enough to offer any insight into this question; It was not until somebody carefully looked at the latest advances in Electrodynamics, which pointed directly to Einstein's well renowned conclusions, that these underling ideas became part of the arena, we were finally able to discern about the falsehood of an absolute time or space. 

So it took technological advances together with alternative explanations to clean that corner of our knowledge. These two are not here, not now. But who knows. Probably somebody trapped in a distant point in the PhS will remember learning about 21st century people struggling with stupid questions instead of planing a trip to Paris....they will also remember to have laughed at us. 

Cheers. I'm off to bed. It's 4 am....

Columbus Day

Hello again.

Today is October the 12th, 2011. If my memory isn't wrong, on the same day, in 1492 an Italian sailor spotted for the first time, in recorded-mainstream western history a piece of land never seen before.

A lot of things changes because of him, and his little ''capriccio'' of proving a new way to the indies. To say that some of them are good and some bad depends of the 3+1 coordinates where you where born, kinda aleatory isn't it?

It is, if you think about. But I didn't star this blog to bore you with my ill defined, yet not complete, version of morality. I wanted to think for a bit what are we celebrating for. Just to mention the facts, without judging them., can that be done? Sure. Can that be done by me? Ill give it a shot.

When Columbus put his eyes on this part of the earth, I'm sure he had no idea what the consequences were. Furthermore, he might have died not knowing he had discovered a whole new continent!. After all, the name of continent came to be America, not Colombia, which means Land of Colon/Columbus.

Let's start with the facts related to the New World, and it's future; Well I would start with the enslavement, and religious indoctrination that followed. The lost of their sovereignty, and the degradation of their cultural statuses to the level of barbarians. Was this wrong? Would it be wrong today? If you carry with you a key to the truth, wouldn't you do what you can to tell people about it? Why not to spread the good news? Why not to tell the Indians about the good news? Why not make them understand the greater purpose they have in life that you already know, and they don't!. The means to do that, might have been a bit extreme, but for the sake of the argument, Ill give them the benefit of doubt; I mean, being 3months by boat away, is a great limitation when it comes to maintaining standards of colonization (here I assume there were), and keeping the ''Conquista'' from becoming the blood shed we know today.

Being the carrier of such a great truth is not simple.What do you feel your duty is when you are right, and everybody else is wrong? I guess in a way, Spanish Conquistadores could have felt the same. They could have felt like missionaries. Missionaries on charge of spreading the ''European ways'', why not. And taking some gold as their well deserved salary...again...why not.

  

What about the future of the Old World? Well it considerably changed....it was the equivalent of winning the lottery, finding oil in your backyard, solving one of Hilbert unsolved problems...the bad things are negligible. They got tons and tons of gold and silver, slaves by the thousands, fertile land by millions of acres (I know...mks), and the people who offered any resistance were poorly armed, and had no system of ownership (Opposed to the ''My flag stands, My home now'' European system).

(It's hard to find an convincing angle from which this might seem like a bad thing.) 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qAOQtp-3b48

I guess I have excessively gave the benefit of doubt in this blog. Hardly any of my non-existent followers (If you reed this, remember I said ''hardly'') will agree with me on what I said. But that's ok. I also grew up with history textbooks written in a whiny-style. I guess here come handy our natural disposition to dissipate the feelings in the bad memories, and do the opposite for the good times.

Let's just remember what happened, and commemorate the facts, not their judgment. Celebrate it if you thing they are good, but do not deny them if you don't like them.

Anyway, happy 12th of October.

Vacuum Industry

So yeah. Steve Jobs is dead, and although he was a great business man, founder of a multi-bilionare company; Comparing him to Newton, putting him above Tesla, saying that he changed the world, or revere him as if he was some sort of deity i.s. j.u.s.t. t.o.o. m.u.c.h....jezzz

Aaaanywhore, I had an a idea, long ago, about using my background preparation to go into the vacuum business. As plain as that.

Im not sure why should I talk about that, but I its been a while since I posted anything here, anything at all. And in spite of having on my repertoir a great bunch of other ideas (nobel price, here I come!...yeahhh right...pfff) Im still polishing the edges, and thinking about the details. This Vacuum Industry idea, seems to be short, and a good introduction to the rest of the blogs that are about to come. And in a sense, the Vacuum Industry idea is complete.

So, what is vacuum? Well philosophically, vacuum has always been consider to be an empty space, empty of all kinds of matter. In a more sophisticated way, a space where no molecules have left inside, no subatomic particles, no quarks, no EM radiation, no nothing. Of course, this turned out to be quite a challenge as I will explain later.

Why would anybody wanted to create vacuum? Yeah, this could have been a tough one a couple of years ago. To be honest, this is what I can think of.:

This is a very old painting, it depicts probably one of the earliest uses of vacuum chambers. The picture illustrates a biologist who proved that air is essential to life, by pumping out  the air in a glass bottle with a dove inside. After the dove dies, and everybody cries uncontrollably for the poor dove (like Steve Jobs non-blood-related deluded customers), he proofs his idea to be right.

The vacuum, as defined before, has never been achieved. Ideally, the pressure inside a chamber  in perfect vacuum, would be equal to 0. However, nowadays we know that the vast interplanetary regions have more or less 10 molecules per cm3, the interstellar regions 1 molecule per cm3, and the intergalactic regions 10^-6 molecules per cm3 (wikipedia). This means, that not even these far away regions exists in total vacuum.

Vacuum has some very useful characteristics. Vacuum chambers, and more precisely vacuum pumps, are widely used in almost every type of industry. With the growth of nanotechnologies, the necessity to evacuate impurities from the working space has become part of the routine. New technologies, like nuclear fusion, are very sensitive to impurities. These impurities appear even after the chamber has been evacuated, the reason is that the walls release, spontaneously, molecules to the medium. This rate of ''evaporation'' occurs all the time, with any material, under any circumstance. However, inside a fusion reactor, the temperature, the neutron bombardment, and the possible disruptions inside tokamaks can accelerate this process, making it a significant challenge for industry to stop it.

And why would I like to go into it? Well I designed a vacuum pump when I was 12 (one of my most productive years scientifically speaking, no kidding!) and I have been intrigued by these mechanisms since then. One of the most boring class on my past Master program, Vacuum technologies, was full of amazing new concepts (and boring descriptions of them). I didn't like the professor, but I love the patents. Its really amazing how advanced is the vacuum industry!.

But, what do I have to offer to this industry? is it just a teenage fixation? have I really though this through? .....Well, no. (If you thought this post couldn't get any more boring...you were wrong) I don't have any revolutionary concepts that could change or revolutionize that industry. But come on, like my Dad says: you shouldn't fall in love with the goal, but with the road. I think vacuum industry is an exciting challenging field, I wouldn't mind making a living out of it. It would be a great job for me!, and eventually, if the timing is right, a good revolutionary vacuum mechanism wouldn't hurt anybody...would it?.

Now, I haven't decided it yet, right now my concern is about this master degree. We will talk about this again, but not yet.

Im in the arena of life now, I gotta earn my way up.

Fight!