Back From The Future

Jack Sarfatti · science forum Guru Joined: 29 Apr 2005 Posts: 487

Thanks Amara Smile

A few more conference on this important conference that
I attended:
John Cramer was one of the high points with his impish wry humor and his
startling comment on the Peacock-Hepburn/Dopfer Gedankenexperiment -
that the no-cloning theorem of quantum cryptography may have a loophole
in it even for orthodox micro-quantum theory. This would wreak havoc not
only on quantum information theory, but also on Lenny Susskind's theory
of information loss down black holes.

York Dobyns gave a lucid synopsis of the whole field. Exactly what we
would expect from a Princeton man!

The conference was remarkable for the many experimental papers on
retro-causation from solid scientists from Holland, Germany, Prague as
well as America.

There is much more reproducible evidence for the reality of
retrocausation than for string theory and loop quantum gravity.
Retrocausality is an example of signal nonlocality hitherto thought to
require a violation of orthodox quantum theory. Now that issue has been
muddied. In my book Super Cosmos I take the standard view that a more
general post-quantum theory beyond orthodox quantum theory is needed to
explain the observations. But if Peacock-Hepburn-Dopfer are correct I
may revert to my original position of the 1970's described by Martin
Gardner in "Magic and Paraphysics" in "Science, Good, Bad and Bogus."
This view is also in the very early edtions of "The Dancing Wu Li
Masters" by Zukav but was erased from later editions.

Elitzur from Israel also presented a quantum experiment that shows the
Russell Liar Paradox!

On Jun 23, 2006, at 2:38 PM, Amara D. Angelica wrote:

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/science/20060622-9999-lz1c22cause.html

Notice something wrong? Are our clocks ticking backward? The known laws
of physics say there's no reason why the past, present and future must
occur in that order. Backward works, too.

By Scott LaFee
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
June 22, 2006

CRISTINA MARTINEZ BYVIK
/ Union-Tribune

Are we not drawn onward, we few, drawn onward to new era?

The answer would seem to be yes, if only because time always moves
forward, drawing not just “we few” but everyone and everything “onward
to new era.”

But what if time is like the palindrome above? What if the so-called
arrow of time flies both ways, forward and back? What then? What now?
What next?

People have debated the nature of time since, well, people invented it.
Time is, in many ways, a fabrication of our minds, a superficial
construct that helps us explain the universe, plot our course through
existence and show up when we're supposed to.

“The only reason for time is so that everything doesn't happen at once,”
Albert Einstein once said.

And so it goes, one thing happens, then another – a phenomenon called
cause-and-effect. “It's a notion so deeply ingrained that it's hard to
think about things any other way,” said Daniel Sheehan, a professor of
physics at the University of San Diego.

But Sheehan does, as do other physicists who are meeting this week at
USD to discuss and debate the concept of “reverse causation,” a
fantastical notion that suggests effects can precede causes, and the
future can influence the past, assuming the past and future actually
“exist” in the first place.

(The symposium is part of the 87th annual meeting of the Pacific
Division of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.)

“I don't think we've reached any kind of consensus coherent enough to be
called a state of thinking,” said York Dobyns, a physicist at Princeton
University who is attending the meeting. “There's a tremendous amount of
disagreement about reverse causation between people who think the whole
subject is just too speculative to deal with and people who have
actually grappled with it, either theoretically or experimentally.”

This much, however, can be said: While reverse causation (also called
backward or retro-causation) may sound like science fiction, it is
firmly grounded in classical laws of physics. These laws say time is
symmetrical, that it moves – or should be able to move – in all
directions with equal ease.

Case in point: electromagnetism, one of the four fundamental forces of
nature. (The others are gravity and strong and weak nuclear force.)

In the 19th century, Scottish mathematician and physicist James Clerk
Maxwell developed equations explaining how electricity and magnetism
work in tandem. It was Maxwell, in fact, who determined that
electromagnetic energy, such as light and radio, traveled in waves
through empty space at the speed of light.

But Maxwell's equations say nothing about the direction of time. It's
irrelevant. The equations work equally well whether electromagnetic
waves arrive after or before they are transmitted. In effect, writes
Paul Davies, a physicist at the Australian Centre for Astrobiology and
author of “About Time,” the waves “are indifferent to the distinction
between past and future.”

Feeling dizzy yet?

Most physicists accept the idea of time symmetry (at least in the
context of things like Maxwell's equations). The same cannot be said of
reverse causation, which goes farther by suggesting the future can
influence the past.

CRISTINA MARTINEZ BYVIK
/ Union-Tribune
“The tendency is to ignore it, to say it's just a fact of nature that
time moves one way,” said Michael Ibison, a physicist at the University
of Texas at Austin.

If reverse causation is real, it most likely occurs at the largely
theoretical and unseen level of quantum mechanics, a place where
subatomic particles with names like mesons and quarks interact in ways
contrary to both classical physics and common sense.

To wit: Mesons exist simultaneously as both particles and waves until
they are observed. But until they are observed, they don't exist.

“Anyone who thinks they can talk about quantum theory without feeling
dizzy hasn't yet understood the first word about it,” said the late,
great Danish physicist Niels Bohr who, incidentally, invented much of
the theory.

“People know how to calculate with quantum mechanics, but that's not to
say they know what it means,” agreed Sheehan. “Quantum mechanics is like
poetry. The poem is right there, for everyone to see, but it has many
different interpretations.”

Sheehan offers a couple of scenarios to ponder:

First, imagine a large boulder at the top of a hill. The boulder begins
rolling downhill. Now freeze the action with the boulder midway along
its descent. Call this the boulder's present. At this point in time,
Sheehan says the boulder is being influenced both by its past (when it
was atop the hill) and by its future (when it will come to rest at the
bottom of the hill). The boulder's current position midway down the hill
cannot happen without the effect of both the past and the future.

“The present is always a negotiation between the past and the future,”
said Sheehan.

Or think about this: You're invited to a Saturday wedding. On Friday,
you go to the barber for a haircut. As you sit in the chair, the future
is influencing the present. The wedding hasn't happened. It may not
happen at all. And yet its possibility changes what will be the past.

The best evidence for reverse causation – perhaps the only evidence,
said Sheehan – comes from parapsychology, which investigates phenomena
not explained by the known laws of science, such as telepathy,
clairvoyance and psychokinesis (the alleged ability to move matter with
the mind).

Numbers in limbo

In 1992, a paranormal investigator named Helmut Schmidt set up a
radioactive decay counter to generate sequences of random numbers, both
positive and negative. The numbers were recorded, but not seen by any
person. Several months later, these numbers were shown to a group of
students who had been asked to use their “mind power” to skew the
sequences in favor of positive numbers. Elaborate precautions were taken
to prevent cheating

According to fundamental physical laws, there should have been an equal
number of positive and negative numbers. But Schmidt reported that the
students saw more positive numbers; the probability of that happening
was less than 1 in a 1,000.
Did the students actually influence the outcome of radioactive decay
rates recorded months before? Henry Stapp, a theoretical physicist at UC
Berkeley, thought so.
Stapp was one of the independent monitors of Schmidt's experiments. Two
years later, he published a possible explanation for what had happened.
In essence, he suggested that human consciousness had interacted with
the numbers, effectively altering the past (when the numbers were recorded).
The idea, which Stapp and others have since expanded upon and promoted,
is that human consciousness is an unexplained, nonlinear force of
nature. Like subatomic particles in quantum mechanics, the numbers in
Schmidt's experiment existed in a sort of limbo in which they were
positive, negative and neither until the students saw them. At that
point, human consciousness and intent (instructions to think positive)
induced the numbers to assume a specific condition or quantum state.
The physics of consciousness is controversial, to say the least. And
Stapp is first to say much more study and experimentation is necessary,
especially by respected scientists in well-regarded scientific journals.
“You'd think people would want to either refute or confirm some of these
reports,” said Stapp, “but the only people willing to test them are
people who already tend to believe them. Most mainstream labs shy away
for fear of sullying their reputations, as if they would be dirtying
their hands by even imagining some of this is possible.”

Mind games

For Stapp, who now works at the Lawrence Livermore National
Laboratories, it's not inconceivable that quantum mechanics plays some
role in alleged paranormal phenomena like extrasensory perception (ESP)
and remote viewing, which is the projection of one's consciousness to
distant locations.

These abilities may be a consequence of nonlocality, a well-established
quantum concept that says entities far-flung in distance or time are
still entangled and interact via a faster-than-light, quantum mechanical
connection.

Einstein called this phenomenon “spooky action at a distance.” He
couldn't explain it, didn't like it and regarded it as quantum trickery.

In recent decades, nonlocality has been repeatedly observed, tested and
measured in experiments. In one seminal experiment in 1982, physicist
Alan Aspect at the University of Paris noted that by changing the
polarity of one speeding photon (a particle of light) he could induce
another photon from the same source speeding in the opposite direction
to change its polarity. The interaction happened faster than light, with
sufficient distance between the photons that they shouldn't have “known”
what was happening to the other. And yet, inexplicably, there was some
sort of link.

In contrast, paranormal phenomena like ESP and remote viewing are not as
well-substantiated. Supporting evidence tends to be anecdotal.
Purposeful deception and fraud are common.

In the 1970s, the U.S. Army and the CIA spent millions investigating the
potential of remote viewing, but that effort apparently went for naught
and funding ceased. In 1979, the Princeton Engineering Anomalies
Research (PEAR) program began investigating interaction between human
consciousness and the physical world. Over the years, PEAR has produced
a wealth of data indicating human intent by itself, without any physical
connection, can alter the behavior or results of unthinking machines.
The PEAR experiments, many similar to Schmidt's 1992 random number
generator test, produced only small effects, but they were observable,
measurable and repeatable.

PEAR's operations, however, are now in the process of closing down, with
researchers moving on to other institutions.

Dobyns, an analytical coordinator for PEAR, said he still thinks
“parapsychology and related areas are useful places to look for evidence
(of reverse causation).”

But he is not optimistic that many mainstream physicists will ever take
up the cause. “They say it's impossible because there's no evidence and
there's no evidence because it's impossible.”

But physicists like Sheehan say what we do understand about the universe
fundamentally depends upon the idea that time is fluid and dynamic. “To
say that it's impossible for the future to influence the past is to deny
half of the predictions of the laws of physics,” he said.

Nobody's predicting a speedy or conclusive resolution to the question of
reverse causation. Sheehan says it's the journey that counts, how we get
from Point A to B to C – or, perhaps, from C to B to A.

Jack Sarfatti · science forum Guru Joined: 29 Apr 2005 Posts: 487

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Thanks Amara Smile

A few more conference on this important conference that
I attended:

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Thanks Amara Smile

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