Ask the Dreadlocked Science Geek

[Linus]

To tag to June's question I was just reading this: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert..._b_810936.html

Since humans are known to contain "energy" (about 20 watts) and since energy cannot be destroyed or created but altered, then when we die where does that 20 watts go?

Robert Lanza, M.D.

Scientist, Theoretician
Posted: January 20, 2011 08:55 AM




Five Reasons You Won't Die



We've been taught we're just a collection of cells, and that we die when our bodies wear out. End of story. I've written textbooks showing how cells can be engineered into virtually all the tissues and organs of the human body. But a long list of scientific experiments suggests our belief in death is based on a false premise, that the world exists independent of us − the great observer.

Here are five reasons you won't die.



Reason One. You're not an object, you're a special being. According to biocentrism, nothing could exist without consciousness. Remember you can't see through the bone surrounding your brain. Space and time aren't objects, but rather the tools our mind uses to weave everything together.
"It will remain remarkable," said Eugene Wigner, who won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1963 "in whatever way our future concepts may develop, that the very study of the external world led to the conclusion that the content of the consciousness is an ultimate reality."


Consider the uncertainty principle, one of the most famous and important aspects of quantum mechanics. Experiments confirm it's built into the fabric of reality, but it only makes sense from a biocentric perspective. If there's really a world out there with particles just bouncing around, then we should be able to measure all their properties. But we can't. Why should it matter to a particle what you decide to measure? Consider the double-slit experiment: if one "watches" a subatomic particle or a bit of light pass through slits on a barrier, it behaves like a particle and creates solid-looking hits behind the individual slits on the final barrier that measures the impacts. Like a tiny bullet, it logically passes through one or the other hole. But if the scientists do not observe the trajectory of the particle, then it exhibits the behavior of waves that allow it pass through both holes at the same time. Why does our observation change what happens? Answer: Because reality is a process that requires our consciousness.


The two-slit experiment is an example of quantum effects, but experiments involving Buckyballs and KHCO3 crystals show that observer-dependent behavior extends into the world of ordinary human-scale objects. In fact, researchers recently showed (Nature 2009) that pairs of ions could be coaxed to entangle so their physical properties remained bound together even when separated by large distances, as if there was no space or time between them. Why? Because space and time aren't hard, cold objects. They're merely tools of our understanding.


Death doesn't exist in a timeless, spaceless world. After the death of his old friend, Albert Einstein said "Now Besso has departed from this strange world a little ahead of me. That means nothing. People like us...know that the distinction between past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion." In truth, your mind transcends space and time.



Reason Two. Conservation of energy is a fundamental axiom of science. The first law of thermodynamics states that energy can't be created or destroyed. It can only change forms. Although bodies self-destruct, the "me'' feeling is just a 20-watt cloud of energy in your head. But this energy doesn't go away at death. A few years ago scientists showed they could retroactively change something that happened in the past. Particles had to "decide" how to behave when they passed a fork in an apparatus. Later on, the experimenter could flip a switch. The results showed that what the observer decided at that point determined how the particle behaved at the fork in the past.



Think of the 20-watts of energy as simply powering a projector. Whether you flip a switch in an experiment on or off, it's still the same battery responsible for the projection. Like in the two-slit experiment, you collapse physical reality. At death, this energy doesn't just dissipate into the environment as the old mechanical worldview suggests. It has no reality independent of you. As Einstein's esteemed colleague John Wheeler stated "No phenomenon is a real phenomenon until it is an observed phenomenon." Each person creates their own sphere of reality - we carry space and time around with us like turtles with shells. Thus, there is no absolute self-existing matrix in which energy just dissipates.
Reason Three. Although we generally reject parallel universes as fiction, there's more than a morsel of scientific truth to this genre. A well-known aspect of quantum physics is that observations can't be predicted absolutely. Instead, there's a range of possible observations each with a different probability. One mainstream explanation is the 'many-worlds' interpretation, which states that each of these possible observations corresponds to a different universe (the 'multiverse'). There are an infinite number of universes (including our universe), which together comprise all of physical reality. Everything that can possibly happen occurs in some universe. Death doesn't exist in any real sense in these scenarios. All possible universes exist simultaneously, regardless of what happens in any of them. Like flipping the switch in the experiment above, you're the agent who experiences them.


Reason Four. You will live on through your children, friends, and all who you touch during your life, not only as part of them, but through the histories you collapse with every action you take. "According to quantum physics," said theoretical physicists Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow, "the past, like the future, is indefinite and exists only as a spectrum of possibilities." There's more uncertainty in bio-physical systems than anyone ever imagined. Reality isn't fully determined until we actually investigate (like in the Schrödinger's cat experiment). There are whole areas of history you determine during your life. When you interact with someone, you collapse more and more reality (that is, the spatio-temporal events that define your consciousness). When you're gone, your presence will continue like a ghost puppeteer in the universes of those you know.



Reason Five. It's not an accident that you happen to have the fortune of being alive now on the top of all infinity. Although it could be a one-in-a-jillion chance, perhaps it's not just dumb luck, but rather must be that way. While you'll eventually exit this reality, you, the observer, will forever continue to collapse more and more 'nows.' Your consciousness will always be in the present -- balanced between the infinite past and the indefinite future -- moving intermittently between realities along the edge of time, having new adventures and meeting new (and rejoining old) friends.


"Biocentrism" (BenBella Books) lays out Lanza's theory of everything.

I highlighted the relevant part in red.

[dreadgeek]

Originally Posted by Linus

To tag to June's question I was just reading this: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert..._b_810936.html

Since humans are known to contain "energy" (about 20 watts) and since energy cannot be destroyed or created but altered, then when we die where does that 20 watts go?

[/I]

Reason Two. Conservation of energy is a fundamental axiom of science. The first law of thermodynamics states that energy can't be created or destroyed. It can only change forms. Although bodies self-destruct, the "me'' feeling is just a 20-watt cloud of energy in your head. But this energy doesn't go away at death. A few years ago scientists showed they could retroactively change something that happened in the past. Particles had to "decide" how to behave when they passed a fork in an apparatus. Later on, the experimenter could flip a switch. The results showed that what the observer decided at that point determined how the particle behaved at the fork in the past.

I highlighted the relevant part in red.

Actually Lanza gets the First Law of Thermodynamics almost *precisely* wrong. Yes, the common simplification of the law is that energy cannot be created or destroyed but that's not *precisely* what is meant and you cannot derive Lanza's conclusion from the actual, formal definition of the law.

So what does the law state? In any system where work is performed the total amount of energy of the system (work performed plus loss from inefficiencies) is conserved. What this means is that you cannot get more energy OUT of a system than you put IN to a system. The problem with Lanza's explanation is that he doesn't say that, for instance, physicists are talking about a closed (isolated) system. The total energy amount of the Universe, for example, is actually fixed. Whatever that quantity is, the Universe is a closed system (no energy can be introduced from outside), but the Earth, for example, is not a closed system. Energy is being introduced to the system all the time by way of sunlight.

The second problem is that the 20 watts he mentions can be accounted for WITHOUT it having to go to some mysterious place. The 20 watts or so that your brain uses stops (becomes potential energy) when all of your metabolic processes cease. So then various microbes and worms come along and decompose (eat) your mortal remains. They transfer all of the energy stored in your cells to *their* cells (that is what eating does, it is simply a way of taking the energy from one living thing and making it useful to another living thing). This actually satisfies the requirement that energy is conserved. The energy does not exit the Universe (because it can't be destroyed*) but neither does this energy continue to persist in some kind of coherent state. The 20 watts of energy that Dr. Lanza is invoking is a product of your neuronal activity. Once the substrate that generates that activity no longer functions, the total energy of the system that is described by your body starts to go to its most natural (i.e. disordered) state with a consequent loss of energy.

Dr. Lanza pulls one of these tricks that is always like nails on chalkboard. In the service of his ideology, he invokes some commonly recognized but not well understood (by laypeople, I mean) principle in physics and then offers what seems like a plausible explanation but is actually glossing over the issue. He then claims that this or that physics principle proves that his particular idea/ideology/belief is backed up by science.

Cheers
Aj

[betenoire]

From one Atheist to another (unless I'm remembering wrong and you're not one, in which case I apologise but still want you to answer cuz I think this is wicked fun):

How does one explain "manifestations of the Holy Spirit" (ie - "slain in the spirit" "speaking in tongues" etc) without the existence of God?

I was raised in a charismatic evangelical church (Pentecostal) so that stuff was an every day occurrence around me (well, Wednesdays and Sundays since those were the days that I went to church) and I don't for a minute believe that anybody was consciously faking anything. We're talking about people who on the basic level were sincere and well-meaning and convinced.

So how does it happen? Is it like a group-think thing (which I guess is more about psychology than about science, although I guess psychology is a kind of science, and now I'm confusing myself) or a "mind over matter" thing (like if you believe something hard enough the brain can do all sorts of neat things) or a really emotionally exited neurons firing around thing, or kinda like hypnotism?

[Venus007]

Dear Hot Dr Sciences,

What exactly is the deal with quantum foam and do you think it is real?

Bonus question NASA scientists reciently discovered that lightening storms create small bits of antimatter, why doesn't this cause anhilation as I thought that if matter and antimatter got together it would be a cataclysm because of the enormous energy produced.
http://newsfeed.time.com/2011/01/12/...ng-antimatter/

[dreadgeek]

Originally Posted by Venus007

Dear Hot Dr Sciences,

What exactly is the deal with quantum foam and do you think it is real?

Bonus question NASA scientists reciently discovered that lightening storms create small bits of antimatter, why doesn't this cause anhilation as I thought that if matter and antimatter got together it would be a cataclysm because of the enormous energy produced.
http://newsfeed.time.com/2011/01/12/...ng-antimatter/

I'll take these separately. I'll talk about quantum foam first because, ironically, it's actually the easier of the two subjects.

Prior to the first third of the 20th century, both space and time were thought to be separate entities and to be smooth, inert and constant. Starting with relativity theory and continuing with quantum theory, the picture changed dramatically. Firstly, Einstein demonstrated that space and time were neither smooth, inert or constant. Matter, for instance, curves space-time. In fact the best operational definition of gravity, so far, is the warping of space-time by the presence of matter. Quantum theory demonstrated that ALL our intuitions about the way the Universe 'really is' break down at the sub-atomic level. Cause and effect, for instance, are not quite so straightforward at the subatomic level. Particles--actually virtual particles--pop into existence and then just as quickly pop out of existence. These virtual particles are highly energetic.

The idea behind quantum foam is this. At the finest possible resolution (known as the Planck length which is ~1.612*10^-35) the structure of space-time is not smooth and continuous but is actually like foam with virtual particles popping into existence and then being annihilated. I wouldn't go so far as to say that quantum foam exists---in the sense that it has an independent existence but it is more of a concept to explain the energetic turbulance of space-time at the smallest scale.

There is one big problem, however. The issue is that mass (or energy) warps space-time (which, you'll recall, is what gravity is) and at present there is not a working theory of quantum gravity. All the other forces are carried by a particle (called a messenger particle) and there is a hypothesized particle called the graviton which would be the messenger particle for gravity. Except, we haven't observed it. The issue is that gravity is weak, REALLY weak. I know it doesn't seem like that every time you fall but consider this...when you walk, with each step, you are overcoming the force of gravity to lift your foot. Every time you pick something up, you are overcoming the force of gravity. You can even overcome the force of gravity to pick up a piece of paper using only a comb and static electricity. So the search for the graviton is the search for the most weakly interacting particle of them all! Until the graviton is found, there's no way to account for the warping of space-time that would be the 'froth', if you will, of the quantum foam.

As far as the anti-matter is concerned, it's not that ANY anti-matter would cause massive annihilation it's that sufficient quantities of it would. A small number of anti-protons encountering protons would annihilate one another and release a lot of gamma radiation. A large number of anti-protons would create a far larger release of energy with more destructive power. Fortunately, antimatter is very rare at this stage of the universe.

This was not always the case, in the very early Universe (before things had cooled down enough for atoms to form) there were almost, but not quite, equal amounts of matter and antimatter. LOTS of collisions took place in a massively energetic holocaust of explosions. The matter we see in the Universe now is the result of there being a slight bias in favor of matter so when all was said and done there was still some matter while all of the antimatter had been destroyed. This was actually good for the Universe because had this not happened the Universe would have had much more density than it does and so the formation of stars would have been much less likely.

Cheers
Aj

[Venus007]

Thanks AJ for your excellent replies. That quantum foam thing has tripped me up and you helped very much to clarify!

As to the antimatter, clearly I watch too much Star Trek.

Originally Posted by dreadgeek

As far as the anti-matter is concerned, it's not that ANY anti-matter would cause massive annihilation it's that sufficient quantities of it would. A small number of anti-protons encountering protons would annihilate one another and release a lot of gamma radiation. A large number of anti-protons would create a far larger release of energy with more destructive power. Fortunately, antimatter is very rare at this stage of the universe.

Thanks again!

PS this thread is SO giving me a brain wood

[Melissa]

I've always been curious....

Does "Electroweak Breaking" Affect the Macroscopic World?

[dreadgeek]

June:

Actually, this is not quite correct. The Earth forms and then over a period of time, gets bombarded by comets (which is where the most likely came from). Now, as far as mass being added by the living things actually that's not the case. All of the mass in your body and in the bodies of other living things was already present on the planet. Here is where the conservation of energy comes in. Right now, chances are, one of the oxygen atoms you've just inhaled was breathed by a Caesar, or some Roman slave from the time of Caesar. All of the activity you've spoken of--comets and asteroid collisions notwithstanding--redistribute the mass of the planet without actually adding or reducing the total mass.

Originally Posted by June

Dear Giver of Science Wood, (Hah!)

Okay, secondary to worrying about the sun exploding in my lifetime, is this 'nother thing.

So, the earth gets formed and begins cooling, and then condensation occurs and eventually, we get a weather system that creates rain, then over time, the oceans get filled up and the original land masses begin tearing apart slowly and clusters of cells begin evolving into different species. Yadda, yadda.

The original earth mass gets added on to. Millions of years of vegetation and decay, birth and death of humans, animals and plant matter -- All of this 'stuff' adds to the total weight of the earth, right?

Strictly speaking, we should talk about the *mass* of the Earth and not its weight. The weight of an object is a function of the gravitational field the object is in. So if you are, say, 180 lbs on Earth on the Moon you would weight just 30 lbs. So in order to talk about the weight of the Earth we would have to know what gravitational field we're talking about. The mass of the Earth, however, is more or less a constant. We gain trivial amounts of mass from dust blown at us by the solar winds and we gain slightly more (but still trivial) amounts of mass from asteroid impacts (large ones actually cause us to lose mass).

But, my real question is: Could we at some point create so much flotsam and jetsam here that it actually will slow down our rotation, creating longer days and nights or other more catastrophic events?

Actually, the Earth IS slowing down but not because of its mass. Remember that any body in motion will continue in motion unless acted upon by another force. The Earth's rotation is slowing down but not because of OUR mass but because of the mass of the Moon. Some of the energy of Earth's rotation is transferred to the Moon. There is also friction from space dust.

It will take a few billion more years before a day on the planet gets appreciably longer though.

Cheers
Aj

[Daywalker]

Dear AJ,


Is it possible that the very Matter that surrounds
us...is our creator and we are indeed it's Organisms?

[dreadgeek]

Originally Posted by Daywalker

Dear AJ,


Is it possible that the very Matter that surrounds
us...is our creator and we are indeed it's Organisms?

Well, it depends upon what you mean. You, me, everyone in fact most *interesting* features of the Universe are made from the remains of supernova. As a very massive star goes through its end-game it makes all of the heavier elements on the periodic table (everything heavier than Helium). So all of the carbon in your body was once in a supermassive star that exploded. All of the oxygen you are breathing came from the same kind of source. So in a very limited and technical sense yes, all of the matter that we are made of and that sustains us is our creator. We are its creation. Billions of years ago some star burned its fuel, fell into the run-away iron-cycle end-game and then exploded. In the fullness of time that material became the Earth and the other planets.

To the degree I am at all deistic, it is that the Universe is the creator. Now, I don't think that the Universe notices we are here other than in the limited sense that living organisms interact with one another. In as much as you are part of the Universe and I am part of the Universe and we are aware that the other exists, the Universe is aware of our existence. In as much as I love my wife and my wife loves me, the Universe cares about my continued existence. But outside of those interpersonal interactions, I don't think the Universe is intelligent or aware of our existence. Supernovae happen not so that there can be life, it's simply a by-product. Earth isn't here so that there *can* be life, life exists because Earth happens to have a range of environments and is stable enough for life to have a chance to get going.

Cheers
Aj

[dreadgeek]

Originally Posted by June

Dear Anti-Matter Specialist,

Some people worry about losing their jobs, but one of the things I worry about the most is the Sun going out. "They" say it will be a few billion years before that happens, but how do they really know? Isn't it entirely possible that it could break into a zillion flaming pieces hurtling outward at any time? What exactly is holding it together, and what do they base the "Billions" theory on?

Is it *possible* that the Sun could break up? Yes, but it would take a truly extraordinary set of circumstances for that to happen. Anything that would cause that (and I can think of only two off the top of my head--a black hole or another very massive star wandering into the neighborhood) would also make life on Earth very interesting and intense--for a very short period of time.

So how do we know that the Sun has a few billion (5 or 6) years left? Largely because of the mass of the Sun. To understand how this relates, we have to digress and talk about stars generally.

A star is simply a ball of plasma (matter in a very energized state) held together by gravity. The energy is provided by the fusing of hydrogen into helium. At the heart of a star, there is a wrestling match--gravity wants to collapse all of the mass of the star into the smallest possible space while heat wants to expand the star. Stars on what astronomers call the 'main sequence' are happily fusing hydrogen into helium. However, in ANY process there is is loss due to inefficiency. So as the star burns it begins to lose mass. Remember that mass is what is creating the gravity so as the star loses mass, pressure begins to win.

Because our Sun is a very ordinary star (it is a G-type dwarf star, the second or third most common type star in the universe) we have a lot of observational data from different stars like ours at different stages of life. Given a particular burn rate (and we know the burn rate of the star by the spectral lines--the light we see from the Sun is only part of the EMF spectrum being put out by it) we can determine at what rate the Sun is losing mass.

The end-game for a star is determined by its mass. For an ordinary dwarf star like ours, the end-game looks like this:

Around 5 or 6 billion years the Sun will have lost enough mass that pressure will, temporarily, have the upper hand. The outer shell of the Sun will then expand out to 1 AU (Astronomical unit which is 93 million miles). This is inconveniently the orbit that Earth occupies. It will then be a red giant star. Over the course of another billion years or so, it will burn off the rest of the helium and slowly collapse back into a white dwarf. This will basically be only the core of the Sun and will be about the size of Earth (although MUCH more massive than Earth is). Over the next few billion years, it will cool down through a brown-dwarf phase until it is a black-dwarf.

Within a reasonable margin of error (say 1% either way) we're pretty certain when the Sun will begin its end-game because of its present mass and heat.

Just because it is SO cool, I'll take you through the end-game of a much more massive star than ours.

REALLY massive stars (like Betelgeuse) have a much more interesting life cycle. They still stay on the main sequence H --> He but once they reach the Helium stage (where that's the only fuel that is left) it will begin fusing Helium into Carbon. This transformation keeps happening until the core becomes Iron. At that point, there's no place else to go. No natural force and fuse Iron into a heavier element and gravity gets the upper hand. The core collapses into itself and the resulting energy release is called a supernova. The star *literally* blows itself apart. If the star has sufficient mass, after the cataclysm of the supernova a black hole or a neutron star will result. A black hole results if the remaining core has sufficient mass to continue collapsing. Otherwise all that is left is a superdense core of neutrons known as a neutron star. These completely exotic objects are some of the strangest things in a very strange universe. They are so dense that a single teaspoon of the stuff would weigh as much as the Earth!

Cheers
Aj

[Melissa]

Why are scientists having problems curing viruses like the common cold virus and AIDS?

Melissa

[dreadgeek]

Originally Posted by betenoire

From one Atheist to another (unless I'm remembering wrong and you're not one, in which case I apologise but still want you to answer cuz I think this is wicked fun):

How does one explain "manifestations of the Holy Spirit" (ie - "slain in the spirit" "speaking in tongues" etc) without the existence of God?

I was raised in a charismatic evangelical church (Pentecostal) so that stuff was an every day occurrence around me (well, Wednesdays and Sundays since those were the days that I went to church) and I don't for a minute believe that anybody was consciously faking anything. We're talking about people who on the basic level were sincere and well-meaning and convinced.

So how does it happen? Is it like a group-think thing (which I guess is more about psychology than about science, although I guess psychology is a kind of science, and now I'm confusing myself) or a "mind over matter" thing (like if you believe something hard enough the brain can do all sorts of neat things) or a really emotionally exited neurons firing around thing, or kinda like hypnotism?

You remembered correctly, I'm also a non-theist. Although I wasn't raised in a Pentecostal church, I was raised in both the AME (African Methodist Episcopalian) and Southern Baptist traditions. In the early 1980s until I came out in the early 90s I was a Pentecostal. The issue of speaking in tongues is interesting. And perhaps in describing what I think was going on for me, it will shed some light on why I am so committed to the idea that there is *some* kind of reality and that this reality is naturalistic. It's not because I don't *want* to believe that there's something else, it's because I do.

I do not think I was consciously fooling myself. I don't think that people are consciously fooling themselves. In 1980, when I had my first experience of speaking in tongues, I truly felt born-again. I was part of God's family and my having the gift of tongues was a sign of that. No matter how bad my home life was, no matter how mercilessly my fellow students picked on me, it didn't matter because my reward was in heaven and I was filled with the Holy Spirit. I believed it with every fiber of my being and if there was any doubt in me, I knew that was just the Enemy trying to turn me away from the Light. At the time, I knew that for a fact. I was more certain of that than I was that the Sun would come up tomorrow. God could decide, at any point, that the Sun wouldn't come up tomorrow but God was constant and could be relied on.

I'm sure the language sounds familiar. There are times that I miss believing so hard that I knew and I knew *why* I knew. I knew because it was self-evidently true. I couldn't make these things up, could I? I wasn't making them up. I really did believe these things to be true.

It was in the process of deprogramming myself and walking myself back from a world where there really were demons (yes, I believed in demons) that I had to find something to hold on to, some way to orient myself. I decided that this would be the physical world. The physical world is what every one of us inhabits. You can believe what you wish, you can believe that this is all the Matrix but at the end of the day, if you walk up to the top of a tall building and step off of it, everyone here knows what is going to happen and using a pretty simple equation, we can describe the arc of the last few very exciting moments of your life. You can, in fact, actually count on that and no ideology or religious belief changes that. The most dedicated devotee of The Secret or the most fervent follower of Jesus is notgoing to step off of a building. This is what I call the point of least common agreement. You and I may be atheists, someone else reading this may be a Christian or a Jew or Tibetan Buddhist or Dianic Wiccan but we *all* agree on what happens when you step off a building. We may not even agree on *why* it happens, but we all agree that it happens. At base, that is reliable enough for us to treat it as reality. That became my life raft and with it I came back to the shores of the real world.

It was because I was able, so easily, to make myself believe that my being queer as a three-dollar bill was a result of a demon that I had to start small. It took me a good ten years, into my early thirties, before I felt like I had some kind of grip on the real world. I no longer look over my shoulder or wake up in the middle of the night worried "what if you're wrong and the Rapture is going to happen this next minute".

In the process, I came across the idea of the mind as a belief engine. I read that and it seemed elegant--in the sense that it was a relatively simple idea with deep explanatory power. What follows is based upon that simple and powerful idea.

I think what is happening is, in part, social phenomena. We want to belong. No matter how individualistic we like to think of ourselves, in the end we really want to belong to a group. In the church I attended one of the rites of passage, if you will, was being possessed by the Holy Spirit. I think that we *convince* ourselves something is happening when it isn't. One cannot help but notice that speaking-in-tongues never actually yields an actual human language. The sounds are what people might *think* as ancient (read Biblical) languages but they're all wrong. It's largely just random sounds more akin to the babble of a baby than even a rudimentary pidgin or creole language.

The human brain is an extraordinarily powerful organ and, for better or worse, it is stuck within itself. By this I mean that we can only use our minds to understand our minds.

Cheers
Aj