Perhaps there is a moment when time stands still. Checking out the moon phase I find it on WillyWeather. Sure enough, Santa Clara is just 24 hours away from full -- 100% visible. Sometimes the midnight sun calls up not werewolf premonitions, but the start of a journey. Though it seems odd to feel anticipation in the face of a Public Safety Power Shutoff.
Or perhaps you were entertained by the movie, Back to the Future. I was, but so far haven't been interested in From Here to Eternity. It mostly seems episodic. The theater of time requires a playground. As Einstein said, it's relative to space, which dwindles to almost nothing in the submicroscopic quantum realm. An ancient Chinese script says: “A one-foot stick, every day take away half of it, in a myriad years it will not be exhausted.”
Also, finally the Higgs boson has been confirmed. And just behind the curtain, waiting in the wings, sits an easel with a placard:Plums – 49 cents a pound, this week only.
Act Two, scene one, the realm, a soliloquy:
“Here protons have their locations and velocities statistically appreciated. But the two measurements can't be done simultaneously. Measuring one makes data from the other unavailable. And, even though classical physics describe protons as particles, in the quantum realm they manifest sometimes as waves, or sometimes behave like both waves and particles at the same time, and how they appear might change depending on whether or not a measurement is being made at the time. Such puzzling results have been repeatedly confirmed by numerous experimenters, provoking arguments that end in the reluctant admission that it always happens.”
To be, or not to be . . .
A suspension of disbelief is required. Space-time is required for gravity, says Einstein. When the play ground is warped by mass, things “fall.” Our sun, very massive, continuously emits electromagnetic radiation in a variety of wavelengths. Some are felt as heat, some are beautiful sunsets we see, some are detected that we can't sense with our biological organs. The mass of our sun bends light, as predicted and proven during observations made during a solar eclipse. Light has mass because photons have energy and momentum. Exact results are obtained in our measurements, repeated every time.
Such certainty is not obtained in the quantum realm. Nonetheless, it is the ground of macroworld experience, and our measurements of water, solar eclipses, plums at the supermarket. To be measured, or not . . .
Science can not be hermetic, and its method is not final. I claim equal time for an enlargement of the discussion.
In my case, in any case, it's based on experience for which mathematical equations are no substitute. I'm talking about the phenomenon of precognition. Suspension of disbelief is irrelevant. Something else is happening which does not rely on electromagnetic sensing, though it does not preclude such sensing. Precognition operates where the usual constraints of now are gone, when customary blinders do not operate. The phenomenon is like lifting a corner, just a hint, of another experience without boundaries. Some will recognize what this is. Some scientists will take the hint of precognition in their investigations of psi, some will dismiss it as speculation, some will attack it as heresy. It's an outrider.
Science must have a broader perspective at this stage of our evolution, if it is to continue. It has served us well, or ill, depending on which results we've implemented. Aren't we all scientists? Much of what we learn comes from trial and error, an idea from that, a trial of the new idea. Many of us, self-described scientists or not, also experience intuitive insights, hunches, inexplicable guesses that turn out to be right.
I am here with the afternoon of a safari, though I've not been to Africa and have no plans. I can almost see the chair on the elephant's back, hear the monkey jungle trees, find strange birds. None of this will I actually do. Maybe the bird. Maybe something on my keyboard.
In a wild speculation, Publisher's Clearing House and Survivor decide to surprise me. I answer the door and there's a TV crew to catch my unrehearsed surprise. It is depressing. I don't want to become an ad. Any more than I want to go to Africa. The whole thing could stretch into a trip to the airport, the traffic maze, cameras with facial recognition. I would become a possible terrorist.
I'm a reasonable person. Our backyard is better. Surveying the prospect of a swaying basket in comparison with my lawn chair, the choice is obvious. And of course the usual purpose of a safari is to hunt something. I don't think of my wild friends that way. Rather, we're getting to know each other.
