Notes for July meeting

Steven Crow has sent me a copy of the notes for the meeting on Wednesday, and I reproduce them below.
John


Jesus and the Quantum States

Steven Crow, PhD
22 July 2009


Neils Bohr: Anyone not shocked by quantum theory has not understood it.

Dick Feynman: We do not know how to predict what would happen in a given circumstance , and we believe now that it is impossible.

Genesis 2:9: In the middle of the garden were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

Apostles: I believe ... in the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting.

Monk: Buddha solved the problem of suffering!
Crow: Jesus solved the problem of death.


History

By 1900, physics had the universe well in hand. The universe had always existed. The present state of the universe completely determined the future. Observable phenomena were all of reality.

In 1900, there was a little problem with "black-body radiation". Max Planck solved the problem with something called quanta of light.

The Christian perspective in 1900 was entirely different. The universe was created at some time in the past. Fundamental realities were "things unseen", accessible only by faith.

By 1960, the views of physics had changed completely. The universe had come into existence at an instant in the past. Fundamental realities were quantum states, not directly observable. Observed phenomena determine only probabilities of future events.

In 1960, the Christian perspective was the same as in 1900 and remains so now.


Quantum States

The fundamental reality in quantum physics is the quantum state. A quantum state is expressed as a sum of amplitudes times base states, where the base states represent mutually exclusive outcomes of an observation. The base states are fixed, and the amplitudes evolve with time according to the Schrödinger equation.
Present amplitudes determine future amplitudes, so quantum states are deterministic. Unfortunately, they cannot be observed. They are "things unseen", represented by complex rather than real numbers.


Copenhagen

So how do the quantum states relate to the "real world", meaning the world of things we can see? The "Copenhagen interpretation" of Neils Bohr and his colleagues holds that the absolute squares of the amplitudes are probabilities that the base states will be observed. Physics cannot predict the future, but only the probabilities of alternative futures.

A definite future is not merely unpredictable. It is meaningless. All of the futures interact together in the Schrödinger equation to influence the probabilities of outcomes.

God does not know what will happen to you, though he may know what will happen to your quantum state. He has designed the universe so that the idea of a specific future for you is meaningless.


Many Worlds

An alternative to the Copenhagen interpretation is the many worlds interpretation of Hugh Everett III. According to the many worlds interpretation, all possible futures occur, but they occur as separate and parallel worlds characterized by the base states of the universal quantum state. The universe comprises infinitely many worlds flowing together through time. You occupy one world at this instant but will occupy many in the future.

The base states of the universe are "coherent", so they influence each other's futures. On the other hand, they are "orthogonal", so you cannot travel from one world to another. At least not without some help from outside quantum physics.

The Copenhagen and many worlds interpretations are mathematically equivalent and make the same predictions. I shall use the many worlds language as being a little more evocative.


Schrödinger's Cat

Schrödinger's cat is a famous parable of quantum physics. You put a live cat in a box along with a radioactive nucleus, a particle detector, and a device that breaks a capsule of cyanide when a particle from the nucleus is detected. The nucleus will decay at random with some half life. When the nucleus decays, the cat will die.
You close the lid on the box and wait for awhile, maybe for the half life of the nucleus. You then open the box and look inside. The cat is alive or dead, but not both.

But what about before you opened the box? Was the cat alive or dead? As far as the quantum state of the cat is concerned, the answer is both. Before you looked, the amplitudes of the live base state and the dead base state were both non-zero. The cat was both alive and dead!

According to the Copenhagen interpretation, the probability of the cat being dead when you opened the box was the absolute square of the amplitude of the dead base state. If you saw a dead cat when you opened the box, then the quantum state "collapsed" into the dead base state.

According to the many worlds interpretation, the cat remains both alive and dead when you open the box. If you see a dead cat, then you have established that you are in the dead cat world, and you have parted company with a likeness of yourself in the live cat world. Unfortunately, the two worlds (base states) are orthogonal. You cannot revive the cat by closing the box and trying again. Once in the dead cat world, always in the dead cat world.


Garden of Eden

An even more famous parable runs along similar lines. The Lord created the Garden of Eden and populated it with a man and a woman and two trees: the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Which tree will the couple choose?

We know how the story turned out in our world, but could Eve have eaten the fruit of the tree of life in another of the many worlds in the universal quantum state? Certainly God thought about that possibility:

The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever. Genesis 2: 22.

If there were even a remote possibility that Eve could have eaten first the fruit of the tree of life, then there must be at least one world in the universe where she did so. Of course the people in that world would be immortal. Might be a pretty nice place.


Billy's Eschatology

In March 2008, I asked Pastor Billy Waters of Wellspring Anglican Church a series of questions about life, death, and immortality. Pastor Waters artfully combined elements of Christian doctrine into a self-consistent theory of death and eternal life. Here are his answers.
1. “Soul” means the same as the Greek pneuma (air) but not psyche (literally butterfly).

2. No animals have souls.

3. All humans have souls.

4. All souls are immortal, meaning that they survive physical death.

5. Upon physical death, some souls go to heaven and some to hell.

6. Heaven and hell are places.

7. Hell is akin to the Greek Hades but not to the more abstract Hebrew Sheol.

8. Heaven is the residence of God.

9. Upon death, the soul of a 1-year old infant who has never heard of Christ goes to heaven.

10. Upon death, the soul of a 30-year old adult who has never heard of Christ goes to hell.

11. Transfer of destination from heaven to hell takes place at some unknown age between 1 and 30.

12. All souls that go to hell reside there forever.

13. Upon death, the soul of anyone saved by Christ goes to heaven.

14. Residence of souls in heaven is temporary and ceases on judgment day.

15. Upon judgment day, all souls in heaven reunite with their renewed bodies on a renewed earth.

16. The new earth is made of matter like the present one.

17. The souls with new bodies and the new earth last forever.

18. The new earth is dynamic, and beings on the new earth continue to learn.


Occam's Razor

Greek stuff involving souls and heaven can be eliminated in favor of answers 12 and 15-18, which pertain to the ultimate state of new beings on a new earth. The simple formulation conforms with the last two lines of the Apostles' Creed.

15. On judgment day, all saved by Christ unite with renewed bodies on a renewed earth.

16. The new earth is made of matter like the present one.

17. The new beings and the new earth last forever.

18. The new earth is dynamic, and beings on the new earth continue to learn.


Jesus and the Quantum States

Only a little thought is needed to cast the simple eschatology into something like the many worlds model of quantum mechanics.

1. World 1 produces entropy, while world 2 does not.

2. Worlds 1 and 2 share a common time, with world 1 as the clock.

3. We are born in world 1.

4. Worlds 1 and 2 are weakly coupled, but sometimes an agency causes strong coupling.

5. In such cases the state of a being in world 1 can transfer partly to world 2.

6. For a time, entropic processes in world 1 obscure world 2.

7. In time, entropic processes reduce the amplitude of a state in world 1 to zero, leaving any amplitude in world 2 intact.

8. World 2 then becomes apparent.

A glossary will help:

World 1 Old earth
World 2 New earth
Entropic process Death
Agency Jesus Christ