Quantum beaches

"Quantum mechanics describes what a system might do in the future, whereas classical mechanics describes what it has done in the past." This is a quote attributed to Freeman Dyson in an early 1990's lecture. [CC, p.272]

Right or wrong, every now & then you hear a line that brings ideas together in a provocative way. One of the central quirks of quantum mechanics is that things are undecided until an observation is made, but it's not really clear what constitutes an observation. Surely there isn't a list of "valid devices for observation."

What if the elusive observer is universal? What if it is simply the arrival of the present moment? In other words, all quantum waves collapse at the present moment, making the past a deterministic record of what has happened. The waves crash on the quantum beach.

There are one other big idea here. One is the illusion(?) of the flow of time in one direction. This is now solved ... once the quantum waves have crashed, they are irreversible, there's no going back to an unobserved state. Water doesn't form itself into waves and rush off into the distance.

Food for thought.

Reference:
CC. Ian Stewart & Jack Cohen, "The Collapse of Chaos" (Viking Books, New York, 1994)

Food for thought: DNA is not the whole story

DNA is not the blueprint for life. Sorry. If you put a piece of DNA in a jar, it will do nothing. It's only part of the picture. In order to function, DNA needs to be in a compatible living cell where all the required chemicals are available. But if you take a fertile living cell and put it in a jar, under most conditions it will die. Each cell can only survive in a certain range of temperature, pH, gravity and pressure, and needs just the right nutrients to survive.

Does DNA contain the information to create its own optimum environment? No. It is only part of the blueprint of life, and it has a lot of dependencies. It is certainly where most of the information is stored, but there's a bigger picture to ponder.

DNA is badly misused in science fiction, especially in TV and movies where everything has to happen in a hurry. If we beamed a human genome to an alien civilization, would they be able to make human? No. But if we beamed them a complete scan of a cell, and how to nurture it, maybe (just maybe) there would be a chance of success.

Food for Thought: Sex and mutations

Sexual reproduction is a line of defense against mutations. If one parent has a damaged gene, the other parent (hopefully) has an undamaged gene. If all genes had equal weight, there would be a 50/50 chance of the offspring getting the undamaged gene. In reality, genes can be dominant or recessive, and other factors are probably at work.

The natural next question is how creatures started shooting genetic material at each other in the first place.

There are many events in the ocean of massive releases of genetic material. That some creatures found ways to get up close and make a more personal delivery does not surprise me.

I have seen pine trees release clouds of pollen at the touch of the wind. It boggles my mind that some of those spores might land on a receptive cone and start the long process that makes a seed. It seems like such a waste to have the rest of the cloud fall dead somewhere. It is also pretty wild that I can pick up seeds when I walk in the woods, and hold entire potential trees in my hand.

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Note: "Food for thought" is going to be an ongoing series of speculations and science commentary.

2009 resolved

Comically, after splitting up my blogs last year, trying to make more sense out of them, I ended up with no place to put my sci-fi/fantasy/weird clips and news. Sure, the dark stuff goes in Dark Windows (which has now posted over 70,000 words!), and the "weird news" goes into Unlikely Times. But there's this big gap. And I resolved to resolve it in 2009, so here it is ... while I may still add strange science notes here, I can put futuristic/odd story, dream and poem bits here as well.

I also decided to be bold and launch my blog of word lore ... WordFixx!

I hope this whole mash-up keeps you entertained.

Just a Cheezburger

Oh no, if there's one thing you don't want, it's to give me a tool where I can add smartass comments to photos ...


moar funny pictures

Just a light moment. More of my oddities can be found here.