String Theory

Do you not dream

as I do

Of those times

long ago

Sweet memories

you said

But only memories now

and memories fade

Fade and fall away

as do the years

Do you not dream

as I do

And waking wonder

at the treachery of fate

With so many

parallel worlds

Why did our worlds

not entangle

Like subatomic

particles

Fleeing the strong force

of our separate destinies

And through empty space

Seeking action at a distance

To make each other gasp

with the shock of

Remembered passion

The long kiss

Panting at the anticipation

of supersymmetry

What's "Real" in the Story, Double Blind?

In my short story, Double Blind, the father of Jason, the boy afflicted with non-Hodgkin lymphoma, is a senior optomechanical engineer from CALTECH, who is fascinated with something called Bell’s Theorem, which is described in the story as, "a highly esoteric mathematical proof showing that if the statistical predictions of quantum theory are correct, then some of mankind’s commonsense ideas about the world are profoundly mistaken."

In our perception of physical reality, action on one particle of a widely separated entangled pair cannot instantaneously alter the physical state of the faraway partner particle. This “locality” is a condition requiring the value assigned to an operator associated with an individual particle or constituent of a composite system to be independent of what is measured on any other particle or constituent. More simply, locality is the principle that an event which happens at one place can not instantaneously affect an event someplace else. But John S. Bell, a staff member of the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) proved otherwise in a ground-breaking paper published in 1964.

Several years after quantum mechanics had been developed, Einstein, Poldolsky, and Rosen published a paper showing that under certain circumstances quantum mechanics predicted the breakdown of locality (the 1935 paper has become known by the initials of its authors, EPR). Bell later proved this to be the case and locality ceased to exist -- what happens somewhere in space-time can instantaneously affect what happens somewhere else in space time. Einstein called this “spooky action at a distance,” and indeed, it is.

So Bell's Theorem is real. Why did I include it in the story? Because something happened to Jason during his wanderings in the shrub stepp that cannot be explained within our common understanding of reality. We just can't accept the idea that Jason's encounter in the shrub steppe could be the result of "entangled particles," one effecting the other simultaneously in space-time. But there's clearly a lot about "reality" that we know very little about.

The Path without Form

I painted this after reading the book, The Dancing Wu Li Masters -- An overview of the new physics, by Gary Zukav.

Double Blind

Jason hikes through a shallow gully and up a rise dotted with sagebrush. He walks to the edge of the arroyo. He listens to the wind rustling in the birch trees. He looks out across the plains at the high, billowing clouds piled up over the Deception Mountains. The clouds are white as whipped cream on top, but dark underneath. He thinks he hears the singing then. It is very faint. He looks down and across the arroyo wondering where it is coming from.

Dancer is barking as if by habit, a constant bark, pause, bark, pause, bark, ad infinitum. The family is used to their dog’s ritual mongrel Morris Code, but it still gets on the parent’s nerves. Jason is oblivious to it, as he thumbs his hand-held game console. The father looks up from his book. He looks to his wife. She is sewing some garment he doesn’t recognize. Trying to make minor repairs. She feels his eyes and looks up at him. He wants to take her in his arms just then and tell her everything will be okay. He turns to his son and leans forward.
“Jason. Son? It’s dark out. Better put Dancer on the porch. And make sure he has water.”
“Okay, Dad.”

Jason gets up and moves slowly towards the porch, leaving his console on the floor where he was sitting. The mother starts to say something, but just stares after her son, watching him moving away from her towards the darkness.
She turns to her husband. “I don’t think you can fathom how I feel when you say something like that at the table,” the mother says, staring at her husband with her needle and thread poised above the garment she is mending.
The husband looks up from his paper. “What did I say?”
She drops her hands in her lap and shakes her head. She is trying not to cry.
He gets up and walks to her. Puts his hand on her shoulder and leans over trying to look into her face. She turns her head away. “Don’t.”
“What is it, honey?”
She looks up at him, suddenly angry. “Eat your vegetables so you’ll grow up to be a big, strong boy. He has cancer, for God’s sake!”

Steven Hawking changed his mind about information being lost when black holes expire. Work by several theoretical physicists suggests a strange universe -- a kind of hologram, in which information about what happens inside some volume of space is somehow encoded on the surface of its boundary. Ed and Sarah Hockley’s son Jason is dying. Why should they care?

Double Blind is the story of a family trying to come to grips with a bleak reality only to realize that they no longer know what is real.