can the universe think I wrote a chapter on this for my second book in which I explain why I believe it's possible a disconcertingly large number of people thought I'm trolling but not so the usual argument for why the universe can't think goes like this we don't really know what intelligence or Consciousness means but going by the examples that we know of it requires the transmission of information lots of information if you don't like the term information maybe we can at least agree that thinking requires the transmission of something from somewhere to somewhere else and
that's really all you need to understand why any sane physicist will tell you that the Universe can't think it's because Einstein's theories of space and time tell us that nothing can go faster than the speed of light this means that if you want any system to be good at transmitting a lot of information between its parts quickly it needs to be small the universe is about 10 billion light years wide so it would take at least 10 billion years to send even one signal from one side to another even if you look at the Milky
Way we're still talking about a 100,000 light years it's Highly Questionable that Galaxies have sufficient structure for information processing but we don't have to make it that complicated just going by the speed of signals Galaxy are too big to think they could at most send as many signals from one end to the other as the human brain does in about a day and that would leave aside the question of how such a system would have evolved to become intelligent so if you want something that thinks it shouldn't be too big it shouldn't be too small
either because the smaller the system the less structure you'll have inside of it and the more difficult it'll become to store information the smallest structure that we know how to store information in our atoms for example in spin States maybe there is a way to store information in atomic nuclei that we just don't know of but eventually you reach the scale of Elementary particles and they have no substructure at least for all we know this is why in a Nell we find complex systems in this intermediate range the one that we see around us planets
humans and so on the of systems able to think is ultimately determined by the constants of Nature and by the structure of space and time and this is why I don't think this is a good argument what I mean by structure of space and time is locality that means that something in one location can only affect that what's right next to it influencers can't jump from one place to another without going along a path in between if they did that would be non-local we don't know why the universe is that way but we know from
our experience that the universe is local leaving aside the Eternal mysteries of washing machines things don't just vanish the universe has this nice order with three dimensions of space and one dimension of time as Einstein said and yet we also know that Einstein's theory of general relativity is incomplete because it's not compatible with quantum physics somehow the two must fit together and quantum physics infamously is not local if I make a measurement on a superposition of a particle that's in two places at once then the influence from that one place seems to non-locally jump to
the other yes I've said myself that this is a misinterpretation of the maths but even so it tells us that there is something about locality that we don't quite understand even in Einstein's own Theory locality is far more complicated than the simp Le order of some grid where things are either next to each other or not this is because if space and time can bend then two locations may have several different connections between them of different lengths yes I'm talking about worm hose a wormhole is often depicted as a kind of long tunnel but this
isn't what it is at all a wormhole has no length that's the entire point is really a portal you go in one end and come out elsewhere at a place that would be very far away if you hadn't gone through the portal and wormholes are compatible with Einstein's theories we don't know how to create them and even if we knew we wouldn't know how to keep them open but they are mathematically possible and in quantum physics everything that's possible can happen and does happen what this means is that if you take into account that we
need a Quantum description of space and time that it in inevitably screw up our neat and orderly notion of locality space that have a lot of teeny tiny wormholes and those would not respect any notion of locality there could be a minuscule Wormhole right in front of you connecting to andrometer you never know because you're too big to go through they' be too small even for elementary particles to go through so we wouldn't have noticed but they'd be connecting the universe with itself I'm not saying that this is so I'm just saying that the question
of self-c connectivity of the universe at a short distance scale falls into a regime where we have neither a theory nor data there is no way to rule it out the argument that signals can't travel faster than light is also deeply flawed I explained this in detail in an earlier episode but to make a long story short Einstein's theory doesn't rule out faster than light motion it merely C we can't go from speeds below that of light to speeds Above So signals faster than light could well exist indeed physicists have given names to the particles
that will carry them they're called tons you'll sometimes hear physicists claim that faster than I Shel would create causality paradoxes but this isn't correct these paradoxes can't happen because entropy increase determines One Direction of time as forward you can go faster than light but not backwards in time so that entropy would seem to decrease if the universe can have all these self connections or if faster than light particles exist information could have zipped around between Galaxy clusters for billions of years the universe could naturally have evolved subsystems that are considerably more intelligent than us subsystems
that would not be localized anywhere in particular but that are each spread all over the cosmos I guess by now you understand why people say Sabina can't possibly be serious and yet I am you see I'm very aware that I'm getting old and I've seen what happens to scientists as they age they often not always but often settle on a particular model of the world that they believe to be right it's usually the model that they've grown up working with in the foundations of physics this model has the locality and causality is at the basis
of everything faster than light travel is impossible and space and time are a smooth orderly background I can't prevent that I'm getting older but I can make a conscious effort to stay open-minded and so I'm trying to remind myself that we don't actually know that space respects locality at distances shorter than what we have tested and that could indeed mean that the Universe can think don't get me wrong I'm not saying that the Universe does think I'm not that crazy yet I'm merely saying we don't know that it doesn't think and sometimes I wonder if
the universe thinks what is it thinking does it know of us does it answer prayers is dark energy just the universe's way of trolling us if the universe can think could Atomic nuclei also think let me know in case you want to hear more about this if you want to improve your own thinking about s science maths and all related matters I recommend you check out brilliant whose mission is to help you learn science in the easiest and most engaging way possible brilliant offers courses on a large variety of topics in science Computer Science and
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also covers interference the uncertainty principle and B theorem and after that you can continue maybe with a course on Quantum Computing or differential equations sounds good I hope it does you can try brilliant yourself for free if you use my link brilliant.org Saina or scan the QR code that way you'll get to try out everything brilliant has to offer for a full 30 days and you'll get 20% off the annual premium subscription so go and give it a try I'm sure you won't regret it thanks for watching see you tomorrow
