Another thing humans can blame themselves for:
Forget about the threat that mankind poses to the Earth: our very ability to study the heavens may have shortened the inferred lifetime of the cosmos.
In a nutshell, the theory suggests that quantum systems can exist in many different physical configurations at the same time. By observing the system, however, we may pick out one single ‘quantum state’, and therefore force the system to change its configuration.
So, simply by looking at the universe, we are shortening its lifespan. Upon hearing the news, Al Gore and the IPCC immediately blinded themselves and promised to work to ban telescopes, binoculars, eyeglasses, microscopes, etc.
Of course, I didn’t understand more than a paragraph or two of the article. What I would suggest though is that there are probably millions of other species out there – many with much more advanced “looking” technology and capability than we mere earthlings. Shouldn’t we be allowed to get to a more advanced evolutionary stage of vision before these other species tell us we’re part of the problem too? I mean, it wouldn’t be fair for us to halt our progress while the inhabitants of, say, whatever planet the Scientologists aspire to end up inhabiting keep looking and looking and looking. And what about less developed planets? Should the inhabitants of more developed planets like our own subsidize their lack of vision?
When we get to a stage of interplanetary travel, or even before for that matter, I propose a system of “Vision Credits.” Someone like me with good vision, for example, can trade credits with someone who has absolutely no vision at all.
Like, say, Giuliani or Romney.
Tim F.
Oh, Kevin Drum should be thrilled with this one. I would email the authors to point out that quantum phenomena only matter at phenomenally small size scales, but I don’t get paid enough to fix all of the stupid in the world.
Zifnab
You’re not really a Republican until you take ridiculous and nonsensical cheap shots at Al Gore. I guess Mike’s brushing up his street creds.
And before you play the “but I mocked Romney and Giuliani too” card, Republicans don’t like them either.
The Pirate
Giuliani has a vision, it’s just a terrifying one.
cleek
Prof Krauss says “I did not mean to imply causality”, yet the entire frikkin article is written as if he did. i kept waiting for a quote from Deepak Chopra about how our negative quantum energy is causing it, and that we should all focus some positive mental energy outwards, to help prevent the heat-death of the universe.
Mike
Was this supposed to be funny? It’s hard to tell sometimes.
Though usually not with John’s or Tim’s posts. Why is that, I wonder?
Michael D.
Zifnab: Lighten up. Do a search for Gore on my own site and you’ll see that, while I sometimes have fun at his expense, I have a tremendous amount of respect for him. What are you? 12?
grumpy realist
Can we somehow ban pundits from mentioning anything to do with quantum theory unless they demonstrate a knowledge of the basics? “Shortening the lifetime.” Sheesh….
ThymeZone
Hey, good for you. And sometimes we have fun at yours. Since you are badly outnumbered, I think we win.
Point to Zifnab.
Fun at Gore’s expense is like a black guy calling another black guy “nigga.” It’s only fun for the smart-alec. But in the long run, it’s really about respect, isn’t it?
Anyway, want to see some really scary material on the subject of disrespect for science?
All I can say is, OMFG.
Jake
Heh. Looks like the author has been reading his Terry Pratchett and has yet to realize it’s fantasy.
Unfortunately this “article” came out in the Telegraph so we probably won’t get to see Domestic Nuts screaming OMG! Scientists have destroyed the universe, we shoulda jest taught Creationism in schools, quick stick the 10 Commandments in the town square and put chastity belts on the wimmin!!onethousandonehundredeleven.
Neither will we be able to convince them that looking at your junk or allowing others to observe your junk causes shrinkage.
Damn.
ThymeZone
I think it depends to some extent on who’s looking.
RSA
Cool! Just by looking around, we can hasten the Rapture. I’ll make sure to be outdoors as much as possible.
Michael D.
You must really hate Saturday Night Live.
ThymeZone
I just hate lazy blogging. If I wanted laziness, I could hang around Red State.
(As for SNL, after 32 years on the air, I can assure you, there has been plenty to hate. Unevenness is the hallmark of the show. For example, you have the elegant humor of Al Franken, and the the total shit that passes for humor from Tracy Morgan.)
ThymeZone
Oh, and point to me. That makes you 0-2 for the thread.
You might want to quit while you’re ahead.
I’m your friend, trust me.
brendancalling
“Of course, I didn’t understand more than a paragraph or two of the article.”
Why are you writing about, and mocking, something you admit you don’t understand?
Oh wait, you’re a Republican. Never mind: it’s just your way. I might as well expect a frog to stop eating flies.
Ted
I follow the astrophysics news religiously, and I honestly wish Krauss would just shut up. His entire hypothesis is grounded on a premise of Quantum physics that is not at all settled and still in dispute. Krauss has a history of this sort of attention-getting declaration. Bit of a media whore, actually.
gypsy howell
Would it be wrong to hijack this thread into a flamewar critique of “What the Bleep Do We Know?”
I submit to you, it would be wrong NOT to!
Andrew
I would just like to point out that SNL has defined unfunny for more than a decade.
Also, what happened to Tracy Morgan? He was, by far, the lest funny person of all time on a comedy show for his entire stint at SNL. However, he’s actually pretty damn funny on 30 Rock now. I suppose it’s because he’s playing a parody of himself but may not realize it.
Don
“Quarantine” by Greg Egan explored this concept, actually, with Earth getting put inside a bubble, of sorts, in order to keep it from further ‘destroying’ the universe by collapsing everyone else’s eigenstates. As the light reached Earth the observations suddenly locked down the people in the rest of the universe who lived in a less determined structure.
Was kind of a fun little book, as I recall.
Buck
that ought to do the trick.
Zifnab
:p I’d hoped the Giuliani/Romney quip put enough snark in my post.
That said, after the epic levels of Gore-bashing witnessed in the wingnut blogosphere, Al Gore humor ranks right up there with Michael Moore fat jokes and Jimmy Carter hates Jews laugh lines on the list of things that make conservatives not funny.
ThymeZone
Yes, that, and the fact that 30 Rock has first class writing.
Bruce Moomaw
My God. When Greg Egan, one of Australia’s more avant-garde (and frequently incomprehensible, at least to me) new SF writers, proposed just this possibility in his 1992 novel “Quarantine” — in which one of the races out there seals off the Earth from any ability to observe the stars, because we were accidentally slaughtering trillions of beings every time we looked in their direction, thanks to our unique ability to quantum-collapse reality by observing it — I assumed he was just being deliberately outrageous. So now we’re all going to have to spend the rest of our lives stumbling around with our eyes closed to keep from committing genocide?
Psycheout
Great al-Gore joke! But didn’t he invent telescopes?
Bruce Moomaw
I see somebody else read “Quarantine”, too (and enjoyed it more than I did; the book left me alternatively befuddled and depressed).
By the way, Tim, the consequences of quantum phenomena are emphatically NOT inevitably limited to the microscopic realm. The design of Schroedinger’s box — which kills a cat at a time wholly set by the random decay of a nucleus — is just one example. A far more spectacular one is the fact that the galaxies themselves are now generally supposed to have been created by microscopic quantum-generated chance fluctuations in the density of matter the instant after the Big Bang occurred, magnified to utterly gargantuan dimensions an instant after that by the phenomenon of Cosmic Inflation. I suppose the phenomenon Krauss is talking about — if he’s right — could be a similar reflection of quantum phenomena onto the scale of the macroscopic.
Psycheout
I couldn’t understand some parts of this article, but it sounds interesting.
Punchy
OT–
I’m not sure if I should be impressed or disturbed by this, but another truism comes to light: farmers are some rugged, tough sons ‘o bitches.
Face
I have to be honest. I did not see this example coming. Lepoard/spots, maybe. Old dog/new tricks, perhaps. But surely not amphibs/insects.
Zifnab
Is that why everything costs so much?
Ted
No one here is surprised.
MNPundit
Science is determined to make everything no fun at all.
Fucking Truth.
LiberalTarian
Bwahahaha.
But which earth at what time is looking at which universe?
Geez.
Still.
Bwahahaha.
The whole notion makes me chuckle. So, how about if we listen to the universe? What happens is we wave our hands about and feel molecules? Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know, we are to the universe as something much smaller than the nutrino is to us, but sure, WE MATTER!!!
BWAHAHAHAHA.
Now that’s some funny right there.
Dug
I’m glad others have mentioned “Quarantine” as well. Greg Egan is so good at hard sci-fi, my head actually gets hotter when I read his stuff. “Diaspora” is a must-read.
lethargytartare
I’m always disappointed by the media’s ability to willfully misrepresent scientific discoveries/debates. In this case, both Michael D. and the telegraph for some reason have chosen to completely ignore this direct quote from Krauss, which appears in the article itself:
bizarrely, despite this direct refutation, the Telegraph goes on to say in the very next paragraph:
(all emphasis mine)
Modern cosmology and quantum theory are confusing enough for us laypeople without adding this sort of lazy sensationalism into the mix.
But I guess if the telegraph can’t be bothered to verify that consecutive sentences in their article aren’t completely contradictory, maybe Michael deserves some slack for running gleefully into inanity with that contradiction…
BIRDZILLA
Theres always someone comming up with some crazy crack-pot theory based on their total insanity and plain wackiness and signs thier out of their minds