A LAYMAN'S MUSINGS ON THE NON-DETERMINISTIC NATURE OF THE UNIVERSE AND THE FRUSTRATION OF NOT BEING ABLE TO EXPLORE IT
The tyranny of interstellar distances. A quote from one of the books in Dan Simmons's Hyperion Cantos where humans have populated a large part of our spiral arm of the galaxy, referring to the collapse of an interplanetary society after the sabotage of their versions of star-gates. Every planet suddenly in isolation, travelers marooned hundred of light years away from home with no means of returning.
As an unqualified cosmology enthusiast, this line has stuck with me since I first read the books in the 90s. I sometimes feel trapped on earth in spite of not having seen 99.9% of this beautiful rock, but more on this later.
I have often caught myself where it feels like the universe has some built-in mechanism to deliberately isolate and prevent possible civilizations from making contact. Thoughts like these are immediately quelled of course because there exists absolutely no evidence for it and it is impossible to prove.
The universe seems at times to be deterministic and to people with limited knowledge about the natural order of things, it is easiest to take this as an axiom. In fact, more than half the world's population believe it to be so.
But take a mathematical and scientific look and it is obviously random with no evidence of any outside directive. In fact, our universe does not allow for anything to enter or to leave. It is an isolated system, completely self-contained and its total energy is the same as it was a nanosecond after the Big Bang and will always be the same, even if protons started to decay after trillions of years, each spread far apart by the expansion of space.
Then there is entropy. A highly underrated physical law to the person on the street. To most, it is a synonym for disorder and decay. It is indeed, but it also drives and facilitates complexity. It allows for an isolated system such as the universe to consist of energy dense open subsystems with room to move, where it then acts like a power supply for amazing things to happen.
Take our sun; it is currently in quite an ordered state, but it's the slow death of our local star, the transition from order to disorder, which drives smaller systems of great complexity (life on earth comes to mind). We are powered by decay.
Regarding living systems, it's algorithms all the way down. We also have a host of other immutable laws and constants and weird uncertainties, but the big picture tells a story of a universe that is creative in and out of itself and by chance. If it was created with intent, it's definitely a set-and-forget project with no interference so far.
And that concludes my argument against a deterministic universe to those who are still reading. The distances between worlds is a result of us being tiny. And that stupid governor better known as the speed of light. And to make things even worse, The Hubble Constant where space is expanding and of course it doesn't end there because the expansion is actually accelerating!
I would really like to experience much more of the universe. The shit out there must be insane. Lifeforms adapted to completely different conditions. Even non-living systems. Imagine beholding the biggest star in the known universe?
How about visiting the relatively nearby Trappist system with its seven terrestrial planets. It's only 40 light-years away, yet impossible to ever reach. All sci-fi films and series employ the deus ex machina of the warp or jump drive. I don't see such technology to ever exist. Maybe in a century we can power a ship to 10% of the speed of light. That could come in handy within the confines of our own solar system, but would still take 400 years to get to Trappist. And if you get there, any communication with earth will have an 80 year delay.
But here I am, stuck as part of a very peculiar species. Evolved from the dirt of planet earth and adapted to it and it alone. I am grateful though for my human brain. It can take me anywhere when I'm in the right mood or engrossed in some hard speculative sci-fi.
Still a bummer to only experience an immeasurably small fraction of reality.