The Illusion of Death - Quareness Series 107th "Lecture".
Despite how utterly strange it might seem for most of us, the notion that two particles can remain connected across vast distances of space and time has been proved with countless quantum physics experiments since the earliest "odd" predictions of such back in the 1920s. In the past month researchers at the University of Glasgow have actually succeeded in photographing the phenomenon using the entanglement of photons (particles of light) with a laser-based experiment...quantum entanglement or the "spooky" pairing of particles...displaying this as a fundamental property of nature. What we now appear to have is tangible proof that two tiny particles can be paired and separated, and yet remain intimately and instantly connected across vast distances. Furthermore under our known laws of physics two particles can get entangled with a binary (either this or that) state which, however, remains fuzzy until one of those particles is measured. And immediately upon such observation the other particle takes on the opposite state of its twin (even if both are separated by lightyears of space). Like Schrodinger's famous cat experiment, if we imagine that these entangled particles were each two different boxes containing a cat, he/she would be both alive and dead at the same time until someone opened one of the boxes. Then if the cat in one box was alive, the cat in the other box would have to be dead (or vice versa) - shades of Einstein's "spooky action at a distance".
How and why small particles can get entangled makes no sense in the context of our everyday lives. However, the universe does appear to play by different rules (often seemingly paradoxical and defying reason) at tiny scales. And this mystery may suggest the possibility that being alive or dead, for example, is something purely relative?
Back in 1935 Einstein and others had shown how entanglement (= the inability to describe two quantum particles independently after they have interacted) leads to quantum nonlocality i.e. the link that seems to exist between entangled particles. If two quantum systems meet and then separate (even across vast distances), it becomes impossible to measure the features of one system (e.g. its momentum, polarity, position, etc.) without instantly steering the other into a corresponding state. And this is so despite the problem that entanglement appears to violate how the world ought to work (e.g. information cannot travel faster than the speed of light).
Until recently it seems that most experiments have tested entanglement over spatial gaps with the assumption that the "nonlocal" part of quantum nonlocality refers only to the entanglement of properties across space. And then in 2013 physicists at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem reported that they had successfully entangled photons that never coexisted i.e. entanglement also occurs across time. Could it be that in both forward and backward directions, quantum correlations span the causal void between the death of one photon and the birth of the other with "a spoonful of relativity to help the spookiness go down"?
With findings like these driving yet more wedges between our classical intuitions and the empirical realities of quantum mechanics, we are left with much puzzling over e.g. spatial nonlocality cautioning against the view that how parts fit with an overall whole presumes clear-cut spatial boundaries among underlying components, or indeed with temporal nonlocality adding more complication in how to describe an entity whose constituent parts are not even coexistent. In this rapidly developing sphere of enquiry, it's perhaps only to be expected that such ongoing discernment of the nature of entanglement may be rather unsettling for many...c'est la vie aujourd'hui.
Some physicists have suggested that the physical universe we occupy is simply one of perception and that once our physical bodies die, there is an "infinite beyond" with consciousness travelling to parallel universes after we expire here. Some also see consciousness as information stored at a quantum level...based on evidence that "protein-based microtubules - a structural component of human cells - carry quantum information - information stored at a sub-atomic level.” (Stuart Hameroff at University of Arizona and Roger Penrose of Oxford). The proposition is that if a person dies, this quantum information is released from the microtubules and into the universe. However, if they are resuscitated the quantum information is channeled back into the microtubules and that is what sparks a near death experience. Moreover “if they’re not revived, and the patient dies, it’s possible that this quantum information can exist outside the body, perhaps indefinitely, as a soul."
In his “Beyond Biocentrism: Rethinking Time, Space, Consciousness, and the Illusion of Death,” Robert Lanza theorises that we’re immortal and exist outside of time. His biocentrism postulates that space and time are not the hard objects we think. Death does not exist in a timeless and spaceless world, suggesting that death is not the terminal event we think -
“There are an infinite number of universes, and everything that could possibly happen occurs in some universe. Death does not exist in any real sense in these scenarios. All possible universes exist simultaneously, regardless of what happens in any of them. Although individual bodies are destined to self-destruct, the alive feeling - the ‘Who am I?’- is just a 20-watt fountain of energy operating in the brain. But this energy doesn’t go away at death. One of the surest axioms of science is that energy never dies; it can neither be created nor destroyed. But does this energy transcend from one world to the other?”
Exciting times ahead folks as regards the potential for uncovering some "scientific" proof for the existence of our immortal souls.
Sean.
Dean of Quareness.
July, 2019.