Adrift in the Cyber Universe

© Brian Allan 2004

Word count: 3,541

Introduction

Over the centuries there has been considerable speculation about the nature and point of origin of everything from angels to aliens. In the past, given the level of technology and culture, received wisdom considered that angels of necessity must originate in the biblical heaven, in many respects a view that has not altered greatly. On the other hand, what are now regarded as extraterrestrials or aliens are still regarded by more extreme branches of Christianity as acting under the orders of some satanic or demonic authority. While modern thinking on the nature of these beings implies that while they might be all or none of these things, what is perhaps more important is what they are, where they originate and how they arrive here.

For a variety of reasons, and not all of them technical, this is not as straightforward as it might seem, for there are many entrenched opinions, paradigms and intolerance both scientific and spiritual to overcome. Added to these difficulties there is also a desire to leave well alone by those who would rather remain in blissful ignorance and preserve the status quo. However, in spite of bruised reputations and dearly held beliefs, it is in our ultimate interests to work toward finding an answer, for it may lead to our eventual salvation as a species.

Adrift in the Cyber Universe

Among the possibilities suggested for the origins of entities currently deemed as supernatural or extraterrestrial, (depending on context the terms are quite interchangeable) is the possibility that they originate from realities existing alongside our own. The avenues opened up by particle physics indicate that there are an infinite number of dimensions coexisting alongside our own, this is due to the implications of such quantum probabilities as string theory and membrane theory, both of which require the existence of an eleventh dimension containing an infinite number of universes to function and under normal circumstances we can neither contact, interact nor communicate with them. However, another remarkable and perhaps more accessible implication in these theories is the near certainty of time travel.

The reality of time travel (or time distortion) has been a part of quantum physics since Albert Einstein noted that at or near the speed of light, time dilation effects occur. What this means is that the faster you travel, subjectively, the slower time passes. The traditional analogy used is to demonstrate that someone travelling from the Earth to the nearest star (Proxima Centauri) and back at or near light speed would age one year, whereas on earth ten or more years would have elapsed. This part of his theory has already been proved by placing ultra-accurate atomic clocks at fixed points on the earth and on aircraft in flight, starting them at exactly the same time, then recording the time differences between them. Although measured in microseconds, the clocks placed in the aircraft ran slightly slower than the reference clocks on the ground. Unfortunately, Einstein also stated that under the rules imposed by his famous equation E = MC2, (where E = energy, M = Mass, and C = the speed of light,) physical travel at or beyond the speed of light is impossible because the necessary energy required to attain this velocity can never be achieved. In fact, since the equation indicates that for a solid object to achieve light speed it would require more energy than exists in the entire universe we must look to other possibilities.

Wormholes

Is it possible that entities are arriving here using the power harnessed within the very stuff of reality itself? If this is the case, then their grasp and application of technology and physics must be far beyond the cutting edge of our own.

However, exploiting the notion of time travel as implied by Einstein relies upon the existence of 'black holes' and their anomalous and chaotic nature. These spatial abnormalities are created when a star finally expends all its fuel, shuts down and begins contract and condense. The dead star finally becomes so small and dense it creates such an unimaginably powerful gravity field around itself that not even light can escape and in doing so it puts an immense strain on the fabric of space itself, eventually forming a 'gravity vortex'. Traditionally, this is represented by considering space as a flat, flexible, unwrinkled membrane upon which a small, circular, solid object is placed; the weight causes the flat surface to sink forming a circular depression, wide at the top and gradually narrowing into a funnel. The bottom of the vortex is called a 'singularity' and although the chaotic nature of this feature can only be approximated mathematically, it appears to form a dimpled irregularity in space/time with a minute rip in the bottom, in effect a tear in the very fabric of reality itself. Over half a century ago in 1935, Einstein along with a colleague, Nathan Rosen, theorised that the tiny rip in the black hole might be connected to another rip in a mirror image black hole creating what they termed a 'throat', which in turn became known as the 'Einstein-Rosen Bridge'.

They realised that this particular portal was a shortcut through space/time leading from one black hole to another and over the years it was eventually became known as the more familiar 'wormhole'. There are of course immense practical problems inherent in exploiting quirks such as this, not least being the chaotic nature of black holes themselves and the fact that these connecting wormholes are minute (less than the diameter of an atom) and flicker in and out of existence in a fraction of a second. This plus the realisation that the unimaginable gravitational swirls and eddies within the black holes would instantly sunder any spacecraft, no matter how robust, to its component atoms, apparently does not allow us to use this anomaly to our advantage. Perhaps a wormhole even functions as a form of 'gravitational safety valve' in much the same way that the valve on a pressure cooker prevents the pot from rupturing. Since it is the same principle used to harness the power of steam to drive machinery, perhaps the analogy might also apply to the power of gravity as it bursts though the membrane of space/time.

Recent thinking on the subject suggests that time travel might be possible without the need to use the frenzied madness of a star born black hole, but instead, a smaller, more controllable version of it. Since it is unlikely (given the range of human ingenuity I will not say impossible) that any method of directly making use of black holes will ever be developed, it has been suggested that it might be possible to create one of more manageable proportions. I use the word manageable because to use term artificial conveys the impression that there is a difference between a 'natural' black hole and a manufactured one, for in essence there is not; both are potentially deadly. The astronomer, Frank Tipler, has suggested using a cylinder made of extremely dense material, 50 Km long by 30Km wide, spinning at half light-speed to create a miniature black hole. This in effect would create the situation whereby anyone spinning around it in the field of distorted space/time near its surface would arrive back at the starting point to see themselves leaving.

One of the paradoxes in this proposal is that one could never travel back in time to a point before the device was created, so unless some method could be found to circumvent this failing it would perhaps render the exercise pointless. From what we have seen so far it is therefore reasonable to assume that at our present level of technology there may never be a practical method of physically travelling faster than light and therefore time. This of course is not to say that it can never, and has never, be done, but if we are to make sense of encounters with 'ET's', 'ghosts', 'demons' and the other denizens of hyperspace and alternate universes, then we must attempt to rationalise the phenomenon. If these entities can arrive in our continuum at will, then we must make the attempt to understand why and more importantly how. I should make it clear that I have used the term 'hyperspace' deliberately here, because it serves better to describe the conditions found there in what appears to be a distinct and separate level of existence quite separate from the physical. It is the realm of a nebulous, invisible, intangible ocean of energy visited by mediums and psychics while 'astral travelling' or employing other means of non-physical movement and communication. It is also no different from the regions allegedly physically traversed by what we currently describe as 'aliens' and other non-human entities using exotic technologies. On a more intimate level it is perhaps the ultimate destination of human consciousness after death.

Time Travel

If our 'visitors' are not using exotic but technology based devices to skim across vast interstellar distances, then are they arriving here from our future...or past?

If we cannot use a machine to traverse the barrier of space/time then what other possibilities are there? The most promising method of achieving transfer has to be the deliberate and controlled use of altered states of consciousness. While this has been known about for millennia, it is only recently that the use of the extracts of psychoactive plants and rhythmic chanting and drumming by shamans and mystics to achieve these states is gaining acceptance by mainstream scientists. This is not surprising given the grip that the twin Newtonian concepts of physics and reality have had over conventional science for so long, but this is slowly changing. While traditionally the only method of gaining access to 'hyperspace' was by means of chemical enhancement and other techniques, there have also been experiments using electromagnetic fields. Among the amateurs who profess to have solved this riddle is a naturalised American named Aage Nost who professes to regularly travel both back and forth in time.

To achieve this feat, Nost uses an unlikely and surprisingly basic assortment of electronic equipment comprising an expanding coiled cable that fits around his head, an electromagnet that he holds at waist height, and a box designed to vary the frequency of the electronic signals flowing through the head coil. It is not clear whether he achieves any form of physical travel, so it is likely that he may achieve an altered level of consciousness through stimulation of the temporal lobes and other centres in the brain. Oddly enough, there are claims that people attaching small permanent magnets to their foreheads in what has been called 'magnetic tripping' have used this method of 'enlightenment' as a recreational pursuit. While this may or may not be effective, it is potentially far less damaging than the uncontrolled use of drugs. If this is the case then perhaps Nost is actually able to direct his consciousness through time, much as the participants in the covert, CIA sponsored 'Stargate Project' were alleged to have done. Although the Stargate Project, which was an attempt by the United States military using psychics to exploit an unconventional intelligence gathering technique called 'Remote Viewing', was officially abandoned during the 1980's there are hints that it may in fact have continued covertly under heightened security. It is probably no accident that this project was based at Ft Meade in Maryland, the home of both the National Security Agency and the US Army Intelligence Dept.

This 'gift' is not unique and Nost's use of electromagnetic techniques mirror those of Professor Michael Persinger and the experiments he conducted by applying varying magnetic fields to the heads of volunteers. These experiments were designed to show how external EM fields directly affect the brain and our perceptions of reality; however, Persinger's experiments record no instances of time travel in either direction. Perhaps the one explanation that may hold part of the answer to how various entities are able to cross over into our reality stems from the fact that we are electromagnetic and electrochemical creatures existing in an electromagnetic universe, self replicating programmes running on a planetary hard drive, and the computer analogy may be more accurate than we think.

Quantum Computers

If our 'visitors' do not originate from other galaxies and realities or through time itself, then it is possible that they interact with us through an even more incredible medium, one that might finally force us to evaluate our understanding of reality and life itself?

As computing power continues to develop almost exponentionally, is it feasible that genuine, artificial, non-biological life is possible? So far all that limits computers in scope is the fact that they can only deal with a certain number of tasks at any one time and the answer to this at present is to add more processors and processing power however, with the prospect of quantum computers looming over the horizon then literally anything is possible. Conventional computers work on the binary principle of components being in one of two states, either on or off, and irrespective of how 'fast' they are they still obey this fundamental rule. However, with quantum computers this is not the case and these devices exploit the fact that the state of any subatomic particle cannot be predicted at any one time. Instead of being only on or off, the particles are either on or off, neither on nor off and both on and off simultaneously because they are functioning in different states of reality and therefore possess the ultimate application of multi-tasking. If, therefore, computers of sufficient power are eventually constructed it becomes feasible that a complete simulation of reality is achievable where the 'inhabitants' of this virtual universe are sentient and the environment is totally indistinguishable from reality. In such an environment the past can be created and the future predicted, or perhaps allowed to develop naturally along with the aspirations of the inhabitants. At present there is ongoing research at Cambridge University in England and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), into the construction and implication of quantum computers, the work while slow, has produced basic devices that have very limited use but the work continues.

In 1995 Dr Chris Winter announced that in one sense it was possible to transcend death and achieve a form of immortality. It also follows that with limitless computing power it would be possible to create innumerable copies of these virtual universes within their memory banks and for all intents and purposes whoever controlled the computer would become Godlike in their ability to control the environment in which the simulations existed. The one other addition to bring true reality into this virtual situation would be the ability to transplant real life experiences into it. This ability is now almost with us.

The Soul Catcher Chip

In 1995 Dr Chris Winter of British Telecom's Martlesham Heath Research Laboratories announced that the 'Soul Catcher Chip' was part of a £25,000,000 project to create future avenues of research. Dr Winter suggested that by 2025, given the incredible rate at which the storage capacity of memory chips has increased, such a chip would be capable of storing a lifetime of information and experiences, currently reckoned at 10 terabytes (ten to the 13th power) of data for an eighty-year-old human. Dr Winter went on to suggest that, "This could be the end of death…by combining the information with a record of the persons genes we could recreate the person, physically, emotionally and spiritually. All we think, all our emotions and creative brain activity will be able to be copied onto silicon. This is immortality in the truest sense - future generations will not die". Evidently Dr Winter eventually thought better of his comments and now states that this was "A concept, an extrapolation of current technology that the press got a hold of", although he still insists his opinion that 'sensory information capture' is perfectly plausible. Given the work currently underway in Japan the US and the UK to graft living tissue onto silicon matrices it is equally likely that corporate science would rather remain silent about any breakthrough technology to avert possible adverse reactions in the press about scientific projects likely to incite ethical and moral considerations.

As it is envisaged, the Soul Catcher Chip would be implanted behind the eye and linked to other chips sited in the brain until all the senses were recorded. This would theoretically give science the ability to remove these implants at any point up to death and replant them in the brain of, for example, a newborn baby, although the information could equally be downloaded into the memory banks of a computer. Such research opens up a whole minefield of legal, moral and ethical considerations, especially if the newborn infant was a clone, not only would it look like the donor, but after downloading the information it would effectively be the donor. If on the other hand the information was downloaded into a virtual world, would it make a difference to those already inhabiting it and would the person downloaded know the difference if they had not already been forewarned? What is being discussed here is of course similar to the technology featured in the film, 'The Matrix', the difference being that in the film, the interfaces came directly from the living brains of human beings held in suspended animation rather than fully synthetic programmes. If it is feasible that these programmes grow and develop into thinking entities within the constraints and context of their programming, and if an external Soul Catcher programme was 'parachuted' into the existing programme with the knowledge that it was not bound by any of the constraints imposed on other elements, would it become superior to the indigenous programmes, effectively a 'superhuman'?

If, as we have already mentioned, there were millions of these perfect, virtual universes running side by side, would they function much as our concept of parallel universes does? If this as the case would it be possible to have a degree of 'crossover' between them creating the aliens, ghosts and demons that we occasionally glimpse...and for similar reasons too. In other words, do the occasional interfaces we have with these entities in our 'real' world, (assuming it is not itself a recreation because we could never tell the difference,) function because some of us are sensitive enough to receive the delicate tendrils of energy emitted from other, parallel continuums. In the virtual world the process would probably be very similar, a sort of electronic or energy 'bleed over' from the other programmes running in parallel with it, which is directly comparable to the subtle energy fields that surround our own reality.

It is at this point that several different ethical and philosophical questions emerge, one of the ominous influences on technology like this comes from proponents of 'Strong Artificial Intelligence' or 'Strong AI', who claim that human consciousness is little more than a naturally occurring algorithm. This particular group suggests that a sufficiently complex algorithm will eventually result in a conscious, thinking, reasoning device. If this hypothesis is correct, then it eventually leads to the possibility of computers that act and behave as if they were human. Are we now talking about the 'positronic brain' prophesied many decades ago by scientist and author Isaac Asimov? Which of course leads us to ask, is it possible to create a completely artificial, self-sufficient, silicon based, life form and if we did, would it have a 'soul'? However, one of the main parameters that would have to met is this, is an artificial life capable of original thought, for it is this incalculable and wondrous ability that has served humanity so well since the beginning of time?

Conclusion

These are questions that will inevitably lead to furious and prolonged debate, and perhaps they were designed to, for the entities that arrive unbidden here on this planet (or is it a microchip?) may be the programmers of humanity. They may be our creators, our 'Gods', the builders of a synthetic universe solely existing in the memory of an electronic device to alter and programme as they fit. Are we only part of an ongoing project designed to see what happens to synthetic civilisations if left to develop and grow. If this is the case, then as we have seen, the unaccountable and magical actions of aliens, angels, ghosts and demons become explainable in other terms and may be demonstrations of the abilities of entities inserted into the programme with the prior knowledge of who and what they are and the inherent limitation of the programme. Is it possible that some of the people who claim to be abducted each year are temporarily 'erased' from the programme and returned after 'reprogramming'? The truly terrifying thing is we would never know the difference and if the end of our existence might be the simple opening of an electronic circuit perhaps leaving well alone may even be preferable to discovering the truth.

Sources

	'Children of the Matrix' by David Icke pub, Bridge of Love Publications
	'The Universe Next Door' by Marcus Chown, pub, Review
	'Visions, Apparitions, Alien Visitors' by Hilary Evans, pub, Book Club Associates