Technology and other Physics

[anderscolingustafson]

I was thinking technology has allowed people to live in environments that people otherwise could not survive in. For instance it has allowed people to live in places below freezing even though without clothing a person cannot survive in temperatures below freezing for very long. It has allowed people to go into outer space to spite the fact that a naked person in the vacuum of space could not survive for longer than a few minutes at most.

Could people ever use technology to survive in a Universe in which the laws of Physics are different enough that people could not naturally live in that Universe?

[quickfur]

How would we get to that universe in the first place?

[anderscolingustafson]

How would we get to that universe in the first place?

Using a wormhole perhaps.

[quickfur]

Wormholes, at least as far as general relativity is concerned, connects two points in spacetime of the same universe, so it won't lead to radically new universes.

Unless you're positing the scifi variety of wormholes, in which case anything is possible, and in that same vein, how we could survive in a foreign universe is just another case of "anything is possible".

A fundamental issue that most fiction fail to address when it comes to interfacing two radically different universes, is that even the definition of existence may not be compatible between them, so how does something "travel to" another universe is never explained. Consider this. Suppose there's a "magic wormhole" that leads to a 4D universe from somewhere on earth. What then? If you step through that wormhole, you suddenly find yourself in a 4D universe -- where atoms don't exist. Before you can even blink an eye, all the atoms in your body have completely disintegrated. Now suppose you build a machine, like a spacecraft of some sort to protect yourself -- but the same thing happens: when you arrive in the 4D universe, all the atoms in your spacecraft (and your body) spontaneously disintegrate, because atoms are inherently unstable in 4D.

But this still presumes that it is even meaningful to talk about "travelling" to a 4D universe, because the atoms that we are made of (and that machines are made of) are composed of electrons, protons, and neutrons, and protons and neutrons are composed of quarks bound by the strong nuclear force. Both electrons and quarks arise from their respective quantum fields as solitons -- you may say that they are "permanent vibrations" in the "soup" of their quantum fields. This means they are inherently bound to their quantum fields, and have no existence outside of it. Just as water waves can only exist where there's water, and it's impossible to "take the waves" out of their watery medium and put them somewhere else, so it's impossible to take electrons and quarks "out of" their inherent 3D quantum fields and transfer them into whatever the equivalents are in a 4D universe. The main issue here is that we're not just talking about taking "fish out of water", as it were, but of taking water waves out of the ocean and putting them on land without the water. The problem is that the waves are made of water, and where there's no water, there's no water waves either. 3D atoms don't have existence apart from the quantum fields they arise in; you can say that in a sense they are "made of" these fields. It doesn't make sense to talk about taking them "out of" their quantum fields -- remember that in 4D, whatever the equivalents of these fields are, they are not the same fields, so trying to travel to a 4D universe is like water waves trying to exist without water.

The only way to "travel to another universe" is if there's some commonality between them, and the object travelling only consists of the common phenomena between the two universes. But that implies that it's not possible to travel to another universe where "we cannot exist", because that means there's no commonality between that universe and ours.

[ICN5D]

This is actually related to some of the thought experiments I have dwelled on. The possibility, or rather a reasonable explanation of alternate universes. Not so much identical universes, with alternate history, but perpendicular universes with adjusted physics. I like to borrow my analogies from what we discovered in String Theory. We discovered so many equations and universe models that made the same outcome, that we didn't know where to start. These initial equations had an even deeper underlying symmetry, in higher dimensions. Upon expanding into them, the multiple similar equations began to unite, showing themselves as being part of one, even more complex formula. The real universe, or omniverse, has the wave function of all simultaneous equations in string theory. All possible solutions overlapping into one function.

This brought me to the conclusion that the real object that contains all that there is, the real universe, is much further reaching, containing much more. If we extend our definition of what we consider to be the universe, then we exist on a cross section at some depth, angle, and thickness. The real universe will then contain all possible cross sections, and thus all planes of a manifested reality. Some will contain life, where others will not. All universes that do contain some form of loosely defined " life "will be a case of where the particulars are different, but the result is the same. The laws of physics are different, but they interplay and converge into alternate harmonic modes of vibration. It's like a similar musical note from an entirely different musical instrument. Or, perhaps a symphony of different instruments playing the same musical piece, producing the same notes. The underlying mechanics is completely different, but can manifest into a similar version.

As for travelling to these other reality planes, well, it would have to be done with some sort of super-advanced ship that had this capability. It can pinch itself off into a miniature hypersphere, and navigate this bubble miniverse to other cross sections. The issue with energy structure compatibility is a big deal. Once you step outside the bubble, you will evaporate into nothing. You would have to be converted into a native energy structure in order to survive, or interact with anything. That means, complete dematerialization, followed by reconstruction into a stable atomic pattern. It's not so much how to do it, but whether or not you have the guts to do it

[anderscolingustafson]

Would it be possible to survive in a Universe in which everything was the same except that that Universe had a fifth fundamental force? I mean if there was a Universe in which there were the same forces that exist in our Universe but there was one extra force that doesn't exist in our Universe would it be possible to survive in that Universe?

[ICN5D]

I have no idea

[quickfur]

It's the butterfly effect. In a system as complex (and as delicate) as the universe, adding a new force would fundamentally change the way things interact with each other in a major way. The initial effects may be seemingly small (if you postulate a very weak 5th force, for example), but they would percolate throughout all scales, and in all likelihood rule out the existence of galaxies and stars and planets. All it takes is to change the mass of the proton by 0.01% (or something like that), and water will cease to have its unique properties, meaning that life as we know it would not exist.

[ICN5D]

Well, physicists now think an actual 5th force may exist. It would mingle in the ways of " dark matter ". They have been imaging the core of our galaxy, and they say it emits more gamma rays than it should, in some way or another. Check it out:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/next/physi ... of-nature/

[quickfur]

I thought the gamma rays were due to the supermassive blackhole at the center of the galaxy? Or is this somewhere else in that region? In any case, sounds like this 5th force is still pure speculation at this point.

[ICN5D]

Apparently, it's something else, so they say. It's still so mysterious at this point. All we know, is there's something going on in the core of all big galaxies. We see stars zipping past an invisible object that has incredibly high mass. Most think it's a blackhole, and they could be right. But, who knows! A giant blackhole could have something to do with the unique rotation of galaxies: The strange redshift patterns that clue in on their defiance of Newtonian gravity laws. I feel it may be a supermassive blackhole, it would help explain the aggregation of the spiral arms, and the speed of stars at the edge. Even moreso, the extra rule-breaking bar-spiral galaxies would require this gravity wave accretion. It's always very fascinating when we see things working differently on another size scale. It shows us we still have much to learn, albeit currently in an infancy stage, in my opinion.