I just read TIMELINE by Michael Crichton, wherein they use an LZW-style compression technique to compress the human body (thus destroying it) using a quantum
computer, and when the human body is then worm-holed through the quantum foam it arrives and is “re-built” in another time, bringing along with it the human consciousness. Multiverse time travel!
Crichton mentions in TIMELINE that light particles (in their particle, not wave behavior) form patterns when shined through slits, patterns that could only result from interference from another quantum universe.
Wow. Well, it got me thinking about the dream-state,
where we sometimes have vivid or lucid dreams that are very real, with their own “realities” that we are somehow familiar with… Could it be, possibly,
that our consciousness is travelling to, fluctuating around, or at the very least being influenced by “nearby” quantum realities?
Could consciousnesses wind up in other quantum realities within the multiverse during a lucid dream?
Anyone else read TIMELINE and got boggled over this?
Crichton has a habit of taking some cutting edge science to some pretty far-fetched extremes. Nothing wrong with that, wild ideas are the raw ore of new theories.
I’m not sure your can take it too seriously though.
If I remember correctly Crichton’s mechanism for time travel , was kind of counterfeit. You didn’t actually go back in time, rather your body was destroyed and something like a fax of yourself was reassembled at your destination. The “real” you was dead.
Your destination wasn’t another time, but an alternate universe a la Schroedinger’s cat that was concurrent with the time you wanted to travel to.
Again, if I remember correctly, the engineers in Timeline couldn’t figure out how to reassemble somebody, so they just detoured you to an alternate universe that had for reassembly (this being the ultimate in outsourcing.)
I wouldn’t take it to seriously.
Occam’s razor and common sense says that a far simply and reasonable explanation for dreams exists than interface with an alternate universe.
I guess anything is possible though.
If you figure it out let me know, I would like to contact a couple of dozen of my alternate selves and see how they’re doing.
Yeah, all of your recollections of the story are accurate, I believe; that it is not really time travel, but that’s the intended experience.
But either Crichton played fast and lose with his definition of consciousness, or there may be quantum events that our consciousness could be made aware of, no? In other words, why would the consciouness follow the faxed body, and if it could, why does it need a faxed body to make a quantum leap?
Oh man! The possibilities are endless…
But no, I’m not taking it too seriously, I’m just a dreamer.
By shooting the moon at Venus to bring it into an Earth-like orbit, creating a paradise, no doubt. Did he start talking about how the entire universe is simply a gigantic plutonium atom?
“Quantum universe?” Does that actually mean anyting?
What I’ve seen of Chrichton is that he’s very good at using scientific buzzwords to support his story in ways totally unrealistic to anyone who knows what they actually mean. Did he write for Star Trek?
A “quantum universe,” as I understand it, is a parallel existence to our own that is created whenever an variable event occurs. Yes, infinite versions.
Example: You’re late, but you take one last sip of coffee, get in your car and drive to work, just missing an accident. At the time you sipped your coffee, a “parallel” quantum event occurred where you realized you were too late to take that sip, got in your car and drove, and got into the accident. This universe, where your life takes a much different course, is part of the ever-expanding multiverse.
In Crichton’s novel, they discover how to access these parallel dimensions and invoke a sense of time travel, zipping to dimensions that represent a version of our past.
Great reading. Call them buzzwords if you like, but it IS science fiction based on glorious cutting-edge technology (and creative license ;))