This Saturday morning, I am in the mood to reup one of my favorite posts from six years ago dated November 25, 2016. It is about my long hypothesized idea of us humans as quantum particles.
It is frequently that I feel debilitated by the trivial and oppressive banalities of human existence. It felt particularly intense in my teenage and it is returning with some force all over again. At times like this one returns to one’s favorite playground—physics and the universe.
I was watching a breathtaking NASA fly-through movie of the Orion Nebula and was reminded of one of my lifelong passions—humans as quantum particles. The video of the nebula, located 1350 light years from us and 24 light years across, is a necessary viewing for all those who get routinely lulled by the trivialities of life.
Apart from everything else, as a recently emerging painter, I am also captivated by how arrestingly beautiful the nebula is. As NASA explains, “By combining the visible and infrared capabilities of the Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes, astronomers and visualization specialists from NASA’s Universe of Learning program have created a spectacular, three-dimensional, fly-through movie of the magnificent Orion Nebula, a nearby stellar nursery. Using actual scientific data along with Hollywood techniques, a team at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland, and the Caltech/IPAC in Pasadena, California, has produced the best and most detailed multi-wavelength visualization yet of the Orion Nebula. The two-minute movie allows viewers to glide through the picturesque star-forming region and experience the universe in an exciting new way.”
I strongly recommend you spare three minutes to watch the video linked to the image above.
Once you do that, it might be useful to read what I wrote on November 25, 2016 that I republish below. The scale of of our Milky Way, let alone the neighboring Orion and the rest of the universe, should give a context to what I am saying.
November 25, 2016
For as long as I remember I have considered humans as quantum particles in relation to the universe. Just consider this one fact. If the sun was hollow, it could fit 1.3 million earths inside. Now imagine an average human’s size in relation to earth within those 1.3 million earths inside the sun which is but a mediocre star as stars in our Milky Way galaxy go. You begin to get some measure of how minuscule an average human is. We are quantum particles in relation to our own galaxy, let alone our galactic neighborhood and eventually the entire universe.
Having established that scale, now on to a theory I have long nurtured. If humans are quantum particles, they ought to display quantum characteristics, a fundamental one of which is quantum superposition. We all live in the human version of quantum superposition. I define human superposition as living in all possible emotional or unemotional states at all times until such time as an external stimulation triggers a response. Then we assume a specific state the way quantum particles do.
When we are measured (interacted with) in a manner of speaking, we reveal a specifically identifiable state which collapses into superposition as soon as that act of measurement or interaction stops. Until such time as I am interacting with a particular individual I can never tell what state that person is in. That means the person is in all possible states, including dead, without my interacting (measuring) them. It is only when specific information related to that specific person is accessed by an act of measurement or interaction, do we get to access one particular state. The idea that from one’s extremely limited knowledge, the rest of the universe is a mere speculation can be an unsettling one.
In a strange way I am reminded of my theory when someone famous or accomplished passes away; someone whose existence I was not aware of to begin with. It is only because I came to measure or interact or to be revealed to of that person’s death, do I know that that person existed. I say famous or accomplished because those deaths are publicly reported. Tens of millions of people die every year (One number is about 55 million people die every year) whose lives or deaths we are not aware of and hence their existence remains speculative for us for all practical purposes.
Coming back to my idea of human superposition, once you apply that theory to humans you can explain a lot of what goes on in the world. Some human particles jiggle much more than the others and therefore reveal their existence more assertively. Most lead an existence of low energy and therefore tend to fade away without making much impact beyond their immediate neighborhood.
There is some comfort—at least for me—in thinking of ourselves as quantum particles in relation to the universe. In some sense, the state of being human quantum particles liberates oneself from being tethered to value judgment. If I reveal something of my existence or a particular state, it is only because someone, somewhere measured it.
I must clarify I use measure not in a literal sense of measuring something the way physicists measure the quantum world but as an act of human interaction.
As useful ideas go, what I have just written about is rather useless in so much as it affects one’s daily life. On the other hand though, the moment you look at fellow human beings as fellow quantum particles forever in all possible states they can be until such time they are measured, life becomes easier.