By now we’re all familiar with Charles Darwin’s Theory of Evolution. The idea that more desirable traits get passed on to offspring while less desirable traits get weeded out over time. Natural selection beget by survival of the fittest and all that. And while there are those among us who deny the theory and instead point to Intelligent Design by a higher power the evidence at this point is really indisputable. Evolution is real. It occurs across every species we’ve ever encountered and it’s still occurring as we speak. Even in us. And as far as we can tell it’ll never stop for the simple fact that evolution is driven by one’s environment and one’s environment is always changing thereby always necessitating the need for constant adaptation.
What’s less understood scientifically are matters rooted in physics. Unexplained phenomenon that escape our understanding and Universal laws that evade our knowledge. Try as we might we just can’t figure them out. Until now that is. For we may have been looking at them the wrong way. What we really needed to do was apply principles of evolution to them. But before we get to all that we first need a little history lesson about what we know so far.
Let’s start with the guy with the crazy hair. The guy we all know and love, Albert Einstein. As Space.com puts it:
“In 1905, Albert Einstein determined that the laws of physics are the same for all non-accelerating observers, and that the speed of light in a vacuum was independent of the motion of all observers. This was the theory of special relativity. It introduced a new framework for all of physics and proposed new concepts of space and time.
Einstein then spent 10 years trying to include acceleration in the theory and published his theory of general relativity in 1915. In it, he determined that massive objects cause a distortion in space-time, which is felt as gravity.”
These theories propelled humanity forward and underpinned our understanding of how the Universe worked for years to come. In fact, his theories still hold up today. Our recent ability to detect gravitational waves providing further proof that he was right all along.
Since then we’ve come to rely on The Standard Model of particle physics. Developed in the early 1970’s this model has formed the bedrock of scientific discovery, providing mathematical proof to abstract concepts and making predictions that have ultimately been proven true as our detection capabilities have improved as the discovery of the Higgs boson in 2012 can attest to. As Science Alert explains:
“The Standard Model is a set of mathematical formulae and measurements describing elementary particles and their interactions. It’s similar to the way the Periodic Table of Elements describes atoms, categorizing them based on their characteristics, but instead the Standard Model categorizes the elementary particles – fermions and bosons.”
Adds Symmetry Magazine:
“The Standard Model is a thing of beauty. It is the most rigorous theory of particle physics, incredibly precise and accurate in its predictions. It mathematically lays out the 17 building blocks of nature: six quarks, six leptons, four force-carrier particles, and the Higgs boson. These are ruled by the electromagnetic, weak and strong forces.”
However, the Standard Model isn’t perfect. There are a few phenomenon that it can’t explain such as Dark Matter (why there is stuff in the Universe that we can detect but not observe and what it is), Dark Energy (why the Universe is expanding at an accelerated rate), why neutrinos have mass (albeit an infinitesimal amount), why there is so much matter in the Universe to begin with (Dark or otherwise), and whether or not there is a particle underpinning gravity the way a photon is associated with electromagnetism.
These unanswered questions point to two conclusions. Either the Standard Model needs to be fine-tuned, expanded just a little bit to make everything fit neatly into what is otherwise a very eloquent model that perfectly explains most of what’s happening. Or it needs to be reworked entirely. Undone by multiple fatal flaws.
It’s a conundrum that has been perplexing countless physicists for years, sending them on lifelong quests to unite all that is known into an indisputable Theory of Everything. But the problem with that approach is that everything isn’t on a level playing field. Scale matters. Universal laws of physics that hold true across the cosmos on a macro level may not hold true in the quantum realm on a micro level.
These discrepancies are hard to grasp and even harder to explain. When I pick up a rock it feels like a rock, not like the collection of atoms that it really is. When I sit down in a chair it feels like I’m really sitting there, not technically hovering over it with 1/100th of 1/1000th of a millimeter’s distance separating me from the chair. How can reality, or at least what we perceive as reality, be anything other than what we see? It just doesn’t make sense.
But that may just be because we weren’t looking at it the right way. Case in point: Schrödinger’s Cat. The famous thought experiment posited that a cat in a box would be both alive and dead simultaneously. It’s not until you open the box and observe the cat’s state that you conclusively know the answer. Up until then both possibilities have to be considered true. A quantum characteristic that we now refer to as Superposition.
Personally, I’ve always had a hard time of accepting this idea of observation being the catalyst for what resulted. It just seems so arbitrary. So humanistic. A small-minded idea akin to thinking that the Earth is the center of the solar system. Giving ourselves way too much credit. There had to be something else going on. A better explanation. Something that we’d likely find in the revised or expanded Standard Model once we completed the puzzle.
And as it turns out there actually may be something else at play bringing us back to our friend, the Theory of Evolution. That’s right. It may be possible that the Universe is powered by evolution as well. On a quantum level.
Science Alert explains:
“One of the stranger aspects of the quantum world is superposition, the ability of a quantum system to exist in more than one state at one time. The system seemingly only snaps into one state or the other – moving from the quantum world to the classical – the moment we observe it.
That process is called decoherence, and Quantum Darwinism is an attempt to explain it.
Rather than our observation being the thing that forces the quantum system into one state or another, quantum Darwinism suggests that it’s the system’s interactions with the environment [that cause] decoherence. That, proponents say, would explain why we don’t see macro objects in a quantum state – they’re always subjected to environmental factors.
As for how the environment has this effect, according to [Wojciech] Zurek’s theory, quantum systems have ‘pointer states’. These are specific measurable characteristics, such as a particle’s location or speed.
When a particle interacts with its environment, all the superpositions of those characteristics – alternate locations or speeds – decohere, leaving just the pointer state, which many people can observe because it ‘imprints’ replicas of itself on the environment.
That’s where the idea of Darwinism comes into play: only the ‘fittest’ state – the one best suited for its particular environment – survives the process of decoherence.”
All that makes sense but also leaves plenty for further consideration as well. For instance, how is that “fittest” state being determined? Is it the environment itself that’s acting as the “predator”, killing off the less desirable states that it doesn’t want to interact with at that moment? How exactly is that happening? And how does the process of a particle imprinting a replica of itself on the environment work?
Like most scientific endeavors the answers that we seek often lead to new questions. Elusive knowledge lying just beyond our reach. Riddles wrapped in mysteries inside enigmas. It’s a long and arduous journey but we’ll get there. Eventually. But before we can delve further into these new topics we first have to make sure that we are on the right track. And to do that we have to figure out a way to test our strange new theory. A process which is just beginning.
Explains Quanta Magazine:
“Only recently, however, has quantum Darwinism been put to the experimental test. Three research groups, working independently in Italy, China and Germany, have looked for the telltale signature of the natural selection process by which information about a quantum system gets repeatedly imprinted on various controlled environments. These tests are rudimentary, and experts say there’s still much more to be done before we can feel sure that [Quantum Darwinism] provides the right picture of how our concrete reality condenses from the multiple options that quantum mechanics offers. Yet so far, the theory checks out.”
Now, I’m no scientist and I didn’t stay in a Holiday Inn Express last night. I failed high school physics and I barely even understand what I just wrote. And yet I’m also fairly certain that the Theory of Quantum Darwinism is real. It just makes sense intuitively, just feels right. But beyond that it also makes sense logically.
Evolution is no accident. The fact that it happens over and over again, everywhere we look, across every species, throughout the course of time, proves that it is a fundamental law of the Universe. If life ever arises on another planet in another solar system evolution will be responsible. It makes sense then that evolution, that the process of natural selection, would apply in a quantum setting as well, powering the way that quantum matter interacts with its environment the same way that evolution as we know it guides how life moves through its environment.
And it makes sense because there has to be an explanation for everything. Things just don’t happen. The Big Bang. The subsequent creation and dissemination of matter. The ongoing and accelerating expansion of the Universe. Gravity. Quantum phenomenon. Evolution. The inevitable emergence of ecosystems, solar systems, galaxies, and galaxy clusters. The rise of consciousness. Exponential growth. General and Special Relativity. Particle Physics. Entropy. Thermodynamics. Nuclear fusion. The list goes on and on. Everything that is happening, has happened, or ever will happen, has all been powered by something, some guiding principle, some Universal law, some form of math, some process that perfectly explains why it is happening that way that it is happening.
Quantum Darwinism is just the latest example and I’m confident that the experimental tests being conducted will bear this out. Bringing us one step closer to fully understanding the true nature of our reality. At least that is, until we discover new questions to ask.
Is Quantum Darwinism the Greatest Idea Ever?
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