Why Do We Remember the Past, And Not the Future: Part I
I read an article on Loop Quantum Gravity, which is currently being developed in the scientific community as an alternative to String/M Theory. String/M Theory is still the most viable theory to merge quantum mechanics and Einstein's Theory of Relativity, but it suffers from overwhelming complexity and huge leaps of conceptualization, and is often criticized for being untestable. It's a theory, and for what it offers, that is all it will remain.

In brief, quantum mechanics is the physics of the very, very tiny, and Relativity is the physics of the very, very large (massive). The problem is that Relativity breaks down at the quantum level, and quantum mechanics don't apply on a larger scale. How can two separate, irreconcilable laws of physics apply in one universe? String/M Theory and Loop Quantum Gravity are "theories of everything" because they try to reconcile the quantum and relativistic realms.

Loop Quantum Gravity is so simple that in comparison it makes String/M Theory look like, well, rocket science. It's so simple that even I understood the basic idea. Loop Quantum Gravity also makes predictions that will be testable within a few years.

Mind you, I don't really understand the physics of either String/M Theory or Loop Quantum Gravity at all, and I won’t go into it. I just read about the ideas and concepts, the popular interpretation of the theories, and get fascinated without any real grasp of the technicalities and specifications of the theories.

Maybe it’s sorta like appreciating classical music without analyzing the music theory involved. You can appreciate the music aesthetically, but the theory is a whole nother dimension of appreciation, and not many people are willing to go through a piece phrase by phrase to discover how it works.

That's alright, though. Half the game is conceptualization, the ideas. The other half, the meat of the physics and why mathematicians and physicists get paid is the hardcore theory and the math. Lots of upper level math. The concept behind String Theory was around for a while, but it didn't come of age until the math worked. Loop Quantum Gravity isn't at the stature of String/M Theory because they are still working on the math.

The Loop Quantum Gravity article I read was included in two Special Editions put out by Scientific American, one on the “frontiers of physics”, and the other one I mentioned before on time. I think that gives an idea of the promise Scientific American believes Loop Quantum Gravity holds. Especially since, although the article mentions time, it is hardly the focus of the article.

Its inclusion in the time edition is what got me thinking, since that’s what’s been on my mind recently. I once did a mind exercise, imagining the planet Earth as the size of an atom, or as an atom. Either shrink the planet down to the quantum level, or make the Earth an atom and blow it up to its current size.

Somehow in the mind exercise, time got speeded up. With the Earth as an atom, we and our lives become subatomic particles, governed by Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, zipping in and out of existence so fast that our lives cannot be pinpointed as having a location or speed (or was it direction? I forget) at the same time. Only by some function of probability can we be said to have existed.

Expand the perspective out some more, and it’s 80 odd years of our lives occurring in the blink of a microsecond. That’s our planet revolving around the sun 80 times in that microsecond! But it’s our planet revolving around the sun – Relativity. Looking a little quantum, maybe?

So is our current irreconcilability of quantum mechanics and Relativity not just a matter of size and mass, but time? We already know how screwy time is in Relativity. How screwy is time on a quantum level? Does time even exist on the quantum level or is it also subject to Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle? Can the difference between quantum and relativistic be a matter of time?

iTunes soundtrack:
1. Packt Like Sardines in a Crushed Tin Box (Radiohead)
2. Before You Cry (Camera Obscura)
3. Cowbirds (Throwing Muses)
4. Father, Son (Peter Gabriel)
5. The Bed's Too Big Without You (The Police)
6. Next ("Pacific Overtures" - Sondheim)
7. Donna Lee (Jaco Pastorius)
8. Say Goodbye (Throwing Muses)
9. Les Boys (Dire Straits)
10. Paradox (Kansas)