O is for Omniverse G to J

G and H:

A direct link to the above video is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m7rEY6VeSak

G

"g is for genes, another branching tree
from a root in the past to a huge diversity
seeing this from timelessness we learn the connection
of all living things -- through time in each direction"

Some of my favorite blog entries that link to how this idea ties in include: The Long Undulating Snake, Placebos and Nocebos, Now vs. the Future, The Biocentric Universe, Evolution's Fast Lane, and You Have a Shape and a Trajectory.

H

"h is for hypercube, a way for us to see
a higher dimension than our usual three
watch as it turns and try to imagine
a shape in four dimensions, moving through time
3D sections, all in a line
to make a 4D object, like a spime"

Bruce Sterling coined the word "spime" to refer to the data set representing an object's existence in space and time - Wal-mart, for instance, is famous for being able to keep such detailed information about everything in their inventory across all their stores, so the data representing a pair of pants on a shelf in a specific store would include the record of when and where those pants were created, how and when and through what path they were transported, and so on... and that entire data set would represent that pair of pants as a space-time object - a "spime". Visualizing the connection between hypercubes (a 4D cube), each of us as a "long undulating snake", and Bruce Sterling's concept of the "spime" is an important key to thinking about our reality. Which leads us to our next letter.

I and J:

A direct link to the above video is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HA_epL_rEW4


I

"information and reality
equal each other, can this be?

if information (a word that starts with i)
equals reality, try to visualize
how patterns and shapes that flow within
and behind and around create what we're in
energy or mass, genes, memes or spimes
waves and shapes, fractals and lines

i is also for indeterminacy
the unobserved state that underlies reality
where all possible states enfold together
and find their balance -- in perfect symmetry"

By now I hope it's clear to everyone that these poems are the text equivalent of a fugue - themes keep restating themselves, recombining with other themes, creating an overall structure that is larger than the single elements used in its construction. When I first saw quantum physicists using the phrase "information equals reality" I immediately embraced it - it sums up the way of visualizing reality we're playing with in the project, and the field of Digital Physics definitely ties into this idea as well. My song "The Unseen Eye" expressed the same idea, although I wrote that song many years before I heard the phrase "information equals reality" which sums this large idea up so compactly. Here's a video for "The Unseen Eye":

A direct link for the above video is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oK29fTLXEf0

and here's the first verse and chorus of this song, written back in 2002, and with many themes that connect strongly to what we've been talking about here as we work through our Omniverse Alphabet:

In the universe of all universes
Anything is possible
Everything has happened, and will happen again
In the universe of all universes
Grey and formless
Till you choose a point, to become the first -- when
You can think of it as data
This dark and shapeless void
Unrealized potential
In the static and the noise
Till in the universe of all universes
The unseen eye
Opened and collapsed the wave, and we entered on in

Now we know it’s the act of observation
That gives the world its how and why
So the big bang is just an illusion
It’s just the opening of the unseen eye

The idea that "information equals reality" ties to the school of Digital Physics, which we first talked about in this series back at letter "A". Here's some of the blog entries where we've talked about all this further:
Information Equals Reality, John Wheeler and Digital Physics, The Big Bang is an Illusion, and The Holographic Universe.

J

"j is for John Wheeler, a famous physicist
who drew a strange eyeball looking at its tail
as a way to imagine how some branches or our line
might be changed in the past as we look back from today
so the branching tree that extends from now
is even more surprising: it branches either way!"

I talk about Wheeler's delayed choice experiment in detail in The Flexi-Laws of Physics. Understanding that events from the future can affect "now", which means that events "now" can affect the past, takes some getting used to, no question! Other blogs where we've looked at what this "retro-causality" means to our perception of reality include: Alien Mathematics, The Statistical Universe, The Quantum Solution to Time's Arrow, Norway's Reverse Deja Vu, The Long Undulating Snake, The Biocentric Universe Part 2, The Biocentric Universe, The Past is an Illusion, The Flipbook Universe, and Local Realism Bites the Dust.

Enjoy the journey,

Rob Bryanton

Next - O is for Omniverse K and L


A direct link to the above video is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AjR69ddBK78