It Never Happened
06-27-10
The Orion Nebula
We have a beautiful sky. There are sunrises, and sunsets. Some love the tropical rays of noon in the bahamas, others savor the brutal cold of a winter afternoon. And yet, for all the beauty of the daytime sky, nothing has so completely captured humanity as the night sky.
NASA photographed it, Vincent van Gogh painted it, and the Mesopotamians worshiped it. The Greeks used to draw pictures with the stars, and their fantasies immortalized Orion, the mighty hunter. Christopher Columbus would have certainly been well acquainted with his sky, and used it to navigate to America, as did Vespucci and Erickson before him.
More than one couple has been comforted at night by the thought that, although separated by distance, they are united by the stars. Perhaps you wished on a star as a child. What did you wish for? Did you ever tell? Maybe you once sat with someone you loved, and whispered to each other which stars were your favorites.
Sadly, the same sky that holds so much power and history, so many dreams and memories, does not exist. What is worse, it never existed, and it never will. For many, this revelation will border on heresy, but don’t worry, by the time the sun rises on tonight’s sky, I’ll make an unbeliever out of you.
The trouble is that we humans place far too much stock on what we see. We arrogantly presume that whatever we see is what “is”. In fact, very little of what we see is real. For the most part, what we see is a very close approximation of reality, and we’ll go our whole lives without the difference creating a noticeable impact. Nevertheless, there is still a difference, and I’d rather know what is real, than be limited by what I can see.
To understand, it is important to first establish what “seeing” is. When you look at an object, you don’t actually “see” the object, you observe the light reflected off of (or emitted by) that object. Your brain interprets the light that reaches your eyes, and forms a mental image of the world around you. If the light travels from the object to you quickly, you’ll never notice the difference. Anything you can see on the planet Earth will be close enough not to matter; there is a difference, but it is measured in billionths of a second. Beyond earth however, the difference can become noticeable. Light from the moon takes about 1.2 seconds to reach the Earth. That means we don’t see the moon as it is now, we see the moon as it was 1.2 seconds ago.
The sun is even more interesting. Light from the sun takes 8 minutes to reach us. If the sun suddenly exploded for no reason, we would see the sun, bright as ever, for a full 8 minutes after it was gone. Then we would all die.
Pluto, our favorite no-longer-a-planet, is further still. Light from Pluto takes 5.3 hours to get here. If Darth Vader took a joyride on the Death Star tomorrow, and blew apart Pluto around lunch time, our scientists wouldn’t even see the carnage until dinner time.
Using these points in our solar system we can construct a scenario that shows the problem with what we see. Suppose Darth Vader DOES decide to take his anger out on Pluto, and suppose that an hour later our sun turns red from some horrible freak accident with a Stargate. (Bear with me. Samantha Carter never blew up a planet, and the Empire never took on a star, so I had to mix my movies.) Here’s how we would see this from earth, vs. the actual reality:
| Time | What Happens | Current Reality | What We See |
|---|---|---|---|
| 11:00 | All is well | Pluto still there, sun is yellow | Pluto still there, sun is yellow |
| 12:00 | Darth Vader PWNS Pluto | Pluto gone, sun is still yellow | Pluto still there, sun is yellow |
| 13:00 | Col. Carter overrides the safety protocols, and a freak accident turns our sun red. | Pluto gone, sun is red | Pluto still there, sun is yellow |
| 13:08 | 8 minutes later, light from our red sun gets here | Pluto gone, sun is red | Pluto still there, sun is red |
| 17:15 | 5.25 hours after Vader went Alderaan on Pluto, the light from the event reaches Earth. | Pluto gone, sun is red | Pluto gone, sun is red |
In this scenario we observe a paradox state, where what we see doesn’t match any past, present, or future reality. The paradox state is highlighted in red, and lasts a little over 4 hours (from 13:08 to 17:15). There was never a time when Pluto was there, and the sun was red, because Pluto was blown apart a full hour before the problem with the sun. Because of the difference in distance however, we are actually observing two different points in time at the same moment.
While this specific situation is hypothetical, the paradox is a very real part of our daily world. The stars in the sky, as you see them today, never existed in that combination and with the relative positions that you see them in. If you were to see the sky as it actually is, it would look very different from the sky we see. Some of the stars exploded millennia ago. Other stars have moved far enough that we would see them in totally different positions. Other stars have been born light-years from here, but are new enough that we just don’t see them in our sky yet. The ultimate irony? There’s a chance that your favorite star disappeared before you were born.
So, you see, the sky is a clever sleight of hand, courtesy of light and time, the ultimate Santa Claus, so convincing that old men die believing. But now you have been enlightened, so go, don’t believe in Santa. Share the news, and crush the fantasies of young children and old men. In the name of science of course.
Danger, Will Robinson. The apparent paradox arises because simultaneity is an illusion. You can’t separate space and time. Because the speed of light and the laws of physics are invariant to all frames of reference, it doesn’t make sense to ask “did that configuration exist at a certain instant.” The question is incomplete. It should be: “did that configuration exist at a certain instant as measured by any observer.” Your “Current Reality” and “Time” columns, are only Newtonian and therefore inaccurate. There is no preferred frame of reference within our spacetime, no absolute “12:00″ when Vader nukes Pluto. Only your right-hand column is legitimate!
See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relativity_of_simultaneity
HOWEVER, I am wrong when I say “all frames of reference” have constant laws and lightspeed. Those rules only apply to observers bound by our spacetime. To an observer within an 5+ dimensional spacetime, these constraints may not apply, hence the popular scifi concept of hyperspace and faster-than light travel. In that case, there is still no paradox–only a difference of how time and simultaneity is measured between that realm and our flatland-like existence. Because of our local lightspeed constraint, an outside observer could live in our (effective) future and therefore see our past, present, and future at will, even when reality is still playing out for us as we make very real choices within our current frame of reference.
Amazingly, the concept “truth” is defined in scripture as precisely as “point,” “line,” and “plane” are in geometry, and that definition is startling in view of everything above. Here is the grand, relativistic surprise:
“And truth is a knowledge of things as they are, and as they were, and as they are to come.” (DC 93:24.)
“Truth,” to fully meet the definition, is not about a specific point in time from a particular point of view. It combines all frames of reference and all observers, just as the principles of relativity implies. All frames of reference,taken together, comprise the “truth” of the situation.
Perhaps this partly explains why an “infinite” (beyond our finite realm) atonement is needed to actually remove sin, why just stopping isn’t enough. The “reality” of our lives is the sum of all we choose in our time: past, present, and future, and God lives (and we can live eventually) in a frame of reference outside our limited spacetime, where “all things … are manifest, past, present, and future.” (DC 130:7.)
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@Kevin, I don’t think there is actually a conflict here. A minor alteration to the experiment can show how and why. Via entanglement it is possible to transmit information between two points without having to wait for light to travel between those points. Suppose you have two cameras, one orbiting Pluto, and one orbiting the sun. These cameras each establish a quantum communication channel with receivers on Earth, via entangled laser emitters at the point of bisection. The receivers are attached to a pair of monitors, effectively creating a quantum surveillance system.
When Pluto explodes, it would be seen immediately on the monitor, but looking through the telescope you would still see Pluto there for the next 5 hours. Similarly, you’d see the sun change color on the monitor as soon as the malfunction occurred, but it would be 8 minutes before the light allowing casual observation of the event reached the general population. The receipt of information over a quantum connection establishes an absolute time at which an event occurs *relative to a given frame of reference*. We know that this quantum information will arrive from Pluto 5 hours before the light that tells the same story. This isn’t a conflict with SR, because you have a constant point of observation, so time of these discrete locations relative to that point proceeds in a well defined sequence.
The paradox itself is not a paradox of reality but one of perception, an artifact of observation based on the latency of light.
I think the whole point being made here is that our eyes (and other senses) are not as trustworthy as we assume. Maybe John should have used a smaller-scale example (in which relativity wouldn’t have been a consideration) to make the point, but I think the point comes through clearly, whether or not the analogy is accurate!
@TJ, relativity is always a consideration, but in this case there shouldn’t actually be a conflict, because everything is measured relative to a single point of reference (Earth). I suppose the article could have been a lot more clear on that though.
Interesting. Entanglement, as a quantum concept, demands a new look at relativistic concepts of time, space, and “favored” viewpoints.
Also, I’d like to point out that there is ALSO a moment of “reality” that is never actually observed: Pluto is gone, Sun is still yellow.
Finally, I would like to randomly point out that faster-than-light travel does NOT necessarily demand moving in multi-dimensional space; it merely requires that you SKIP the moment where you hit the speed of light…or that you get new physics to describe what actually happens at those speeds.