Is universe a blur?
Posted: Tue Apr 27, 2010 11:16 am
There's a (silly) idea that struck my mind few days ago.
Generally one of "problems" in quantum physics is collapse of wavefunction - maybe I'm wrong but I imagine it as while particle propagates through universe it exists as a wave running from the origin in all directions - and once it interacts this whole wave displaced over large area just "disappears" and the particle "materializes" at the interaction point.
Quantum physicists seem to have no problems with it but for general audience it's a bit counterintuitive. My idea is, it might be not problem of quantum physics but how we perceive the universe. Maybe what we perceive as local phenomenon (particle interacting in particular point of space) is not local at all?
From image processing many of you have sure heard about deconvolution algorithms - generally algorithms that can remove blur from a blurred image. They work well if an image got blurred by faulty optics (e.g. in early Hubble data) but they also work on data that are not result of faulty optics. If you get any blurry image even if manually created with smear brushes, these algorithms create a crisp image from them too - but this time they don't reveal any real details because no such details were ever there.
Maybe similar kind of deconvolution is what's in fact running in our brains too, making points out of things that were useful seen as points for our evolution ... but they don't really have to be points?
Imagine every point in our universe being a closed curve on paper. They may be arbitrarily long - even infinitely - and they may cross any number of times with other curves. Things that are close to each other in our universe are curves of similar shapes lying near each other on this paper. Moving particles are curves that change their shapes over time - and interaction occurs if the curve matches exactly with another curve. Things lying far apart in our universe don't have to be curves far apart on this paper universe, they just need to be dissimilar enough - time needed for a photon to mediate interaction between distant parts is equal to time that photon's curve needs to change shape appropriately.
If we live in such universe, we may continue discovering smaller and smaller particles indefinitely. We can always find a deconvolution algorithm that would resolve certain set of shapes as points and we may continue making the original blur crisper and crisper thinking we are discovering something new - without discovering anything real.
Generally one of "problems" in quantum physics is collapse of wavefunction - maybe I'm wrong but I imagine it as while particle propagates through universe it exists as a wave running from the origin in all directions - and once it interacts this whole wave displaced over large area just "disappears" and the particle "materializes" at the interaction point.
Quantum physicists seem to have no problems with it but for general audience it's a bit counterintuitive. My idea is, it might be not problem of quantum physics but how we perceive the universe. Maybe what we perceive as local phenomenon (particle interacting in particular point of space) is not local at all?
From image processing many of you have sure heard about deconvolution algorithms - generally algorithms that can remove blur from a blurred image. They work well if an image got blurred by faulty optics (e.g. in early Hubble data) but they also work on data that are not result of faulty optics. If you get any blurry image even if manually created with smear brushes, these algorithms create a crisp image from them too - but this time they don't reveal any real details because no such details were ever there.
Maybe similar kind of deconvolution is what's in fact running in our brains too, making points out of things that were useful seen as points for our evolution ... but they don't really have to be points?
Imagine every point in our universe being a closed curve on paper. They may be arbitrarily long - even infinitely - and they may cross any number of times with other curves. Things that are close to each other in our universe are curves of similar shapes lying near each other on this paper. Moving particles are curves that change their shapes over time - and interaction occurs if the curve matches exactly with another curve. Things lying far apart in our universe don't have to be curves far apart on this paper universe, they just need to be dissimilar enough - time needed for a photon to mediate interaction between distant parts is equal to time that photon's curve needs to change shape appropriately.
If we live in such universe, we may continue discovering smaller and smaller particles indefinitely. We can always find a deconvolution algorithm that would resolve certain set of shapes as points and we may continue making the original blur crisper and crisper thinking we are discovering something new - without discovering anything real.
