What we still don't
know
Astronomer Royal Sir Martin Rees investigates ...
Are we alone? |
Why are we here? | Are we real?
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Are we real?
Programme Contents:
1. The Question Posed
2. God’s or Nature's Laws?
3. Too Fine-tuned for Chance
4. Multiverse
5. Intelligence – Ours and
Others’
6. The Matrix in a Multiverse
‘The simulation hypothesis, that we are currently living in a computer simulation, should be understood literally, it’s not just in a metaphorical sense whereby one could view the universe as a simulation, but literally we would be living in a simulation created by some advanced civilization in a computer they built in their universe. And everything we see and our brains themselves would just be parts of this simulation.’ Oxford University philosopher Dr Nick Bostrom echoes the thoughts of sci-fi writers and scientists alike. The simulation hypothesis is not sci-fi, it’s serious academic thought.
In Are We Real? Martin Rees navigates the extraordinary territory between science fact and science fiction. He reveals the logical steps that have led cosmologists and philosophers to the shocking conclusion that The Matrix scenario cannot be safely relegated to our storybooks. Whether it’s true or not, and it might be, here is a story that is altogether more serious and more deeply disturbing than any sci-fi fantasy could ever be.
Cosmologist Professor Max Tegmark from the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology warns us that ‘We humans have undergone a series
of demotions, a series of blows to our ego.’ Prepare yourself for another.
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According to the scientists’ version of creation, we ultimately owe our existence to the fundamental laws of nature. In many ways, cosmologists see this as rather a simple affair. From a few natural laws and an inert gas, comes all the diversity and complexity of life, the universe and everything.
Indeed, Professor John Conway of Princeton University showed beyond doubt that simple rules can create complex patterns. He invented a simple mathematical game consisting of a grid of squares, which he called Life. Some squares are filled with counters, whose fate is determined by three basic rules that correspond to birth, life and death. When this game is run on a computer, what transpires is a pattern that looks as though it were purposeful enough to have been designed.
‘My little Life game is surprising because from the simple rules one wouldn’t expect to find things that move in a sort of purposeful manner. It mimics life to that tiny extent. Like a little mini universe,’ says Conway.
The notion that the universe was created with purpose
begins to disintegrate in the face of a greater understanding about how complex
systems can emerge from randomness. And they do so with no further input than
a few simple rules.
Another view emerged as the laws of nature came under increasingly detailed mathematical scrutiny and it became apparent that tinkering with them just slightly could make life impossible. It looked as though the laws of nature had been accurately set purposely to encourage the evolution of life.
The laws of nature can be defined by a set of numbers that provide the parameters for the evolution of the universe as we know it. One of these numbers in particular, the so-called cosmological constant has to be very tiny if the universe is to grow old enough and big enough to contain stars, and life.
The cosmological constant can be considered as the intrinsic mass and volume of empty space, which Einstein had suggested was not zero. It turns out that this number needs to be set to an accuracy of one part in a trillion, trillion trillion, trillion trillion, trillion trillion, trillion trillion, trillion. Any minuscule variation and life is a non-starter.
This raises all kinds of dilemmas for physicists who
understandably shrank from the conclusion that pointed toward Intelligent Design.
Martin Rees has remained steadfast: ‘Some people are satisfied with a
religious explanation, whereas I think it is a scientific question, which deserves
to be addressed by cosmologists.’
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How about the suggestion that the universe we inhabit is only one of many? If there are many universes, then there must have been many Big Bangs creating them and each could have resulted in a universe with a different set of natural laws. So we would be existing in a universe that is one of many, each with its own peculiar set of laws to define it. If this were the case then it wouldn’t be at all surprising to find that one of the many universes was finely tuned enough for the evolution of life.
Martin Rees explains: ‘If you go into a clothes shop and there’s a large stock, you’re not surprised to find one suit that fits you, whereas if there’s only one suit in stock, then you are surprised to find it fits. So, many universes governed by different laws would remove any reason for surprise at the apparent fine-tuning in our universe.’
In one bountiful leap of imagination, the problem
of Intelligent Design is swept aside. Martin Rees has coined the term ‘multiverse’
to describe the whole ensemble of universes. The next leap of imagination takes
us even further into the outreaches of sci-fi, or is it sci-fact?
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At present, our brains are the most complex thing that we know of in the universe. It has taken nearly four billion years of evolution to get from simple single-celled life to humans. Our Sun has another six billion years before it dies in a flare-up that promises to engulf all the planets around it, including Earth. That’s another six billion years of evolution – how much bigger could our brains possibly get and how much more intelligent would that make us?
Neuroscientist Dr Michael Hofman of the Netherlands Institute for Brain Research has compared the brain structures of primates to try and understand what would happen if our brains were to become much bigger. According to Hofman, we humans have hit the limits of our intelligence – if our brains got any bigger, they’d actually get slower: ‘After a particular brain size, something strange happens. There is some maximum in intelligence, in processing power, in cognitive abilities, but beyond that point you find a decrease.’
If we have reached a glass ceiling in brain power,
could we or other life forms in the universe ever become more intelligent? Philosopher
Dr Nick Bostrom from Oxford University thinks so: ‘It’s not evolution
any longer, but it’s our cultural development that has taken over …
Scientific and technological and medical development, that’s where the
action is right now. If we become more intelligent it is because we will learn
to use technology or maybe medicine, to enhance our intellectual capacities.’
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6. The Matrix in a Multiverse
Dr Nick Bostrom believes that we are about to enter the trans-human phase of
our development. In decades to come, technology will take us into the realms
of super-intelligence, perhaps by taking drugs, perhaps by surgical replacement
of brain parts with silicon. The detail doesn’t matter, the principle
does: life probably can supercede biological evolution and enhance its own intelligence.
‘We obviously can’t conceive of what a super-intelligence might be able to achieve any more than a dog can appreciate quantum mechanics,’ Martin Rees notes. But we can envisage that in a multiverse that contains an infinite ensemble of universes, there would almost certainly be intelligences that have evolved beyond are own, whether they have evolved biologically or technologically.
And if they are so very intelligent, these intelligences are bound to have asked themselves what the outcome would be if they could tinker with the laws of nature. They might have done some equations on paper first, but if their intelligence goes way beyond our own, they are also likely to have computers that go way beyond our own too – computers that could be used to discover the underlying law that allowed the laws of nature to be so precisely set as to create an exquisitely crafted home for life.
To test whether their discoveries are correct and their fine tuning is fine enough, they could use their super-computers to simulate a universe as complex as our own. Then they really have created The Matrix. And we really could be the inhabitants of a computer simulation. What this means is that we are just an elaborate experiment. We are not real.
But, let’s face it, that is what we still don’t
know.
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Are we alone? |
Why are we here? | Are we real?
Find out more | Home
page | Graphical Version