Astrophysics

Can new universes be created? (# 32)

When the origin of our universe can be shown to be the result of eternal mathematics, the question arises as to whether it would be possible to use mathematics to create new, personalized, universes. Article 20 - What happens inside a black hole? - drew on Professor Susskind’s research at Stanford University. The equations he derived are part of a thought experiment about how two entangled black holes create a wormhole that could be used to send information. This article draws on the part of Susskind’s research that shows how a new universe could be created.

Creating a wormhole

Once consciousness arises in AdS bulk space, that consciousness could set up a ‘mathematical’ laboratory in the boundary of AdS space. In this laboratory, two black holes are seeded with information about their laws of physics. The merger of these two entangled black holes creates a wormhole. The contents of the wormhole are described by the equations in Susskind’s Second Law of Quantum Complexity. Conscious agents or minds that might inhabit our mathematical universe could be portrayed inside such a wormhole.

Wormholes could be designed to help achieve the goals of consciousness in AdS bulk space. For example, when a goal of consciousness is ‘what can happen, will happen’, wormholes could be created to explore new possibilities.

One of Susskind’s papers, ER=EPR, describes what happens when two entangled black holes are created and then merged to create a wormhole. Susskind’s research describes the possibility of creating two entangled black holes in a laboratory to send information across the laboratory. One black hole is the sender of the information, the other is the receiver. In another paper, Susskind describes what could happen when a black hole is split by creating a ‘daughter’ black hole. The smaller black hole would be highly entangled with the remaining large black hole.

In his ER=EPR, GHZ paper, Susskind describes a scenario where a laboratory has three observers and two black holes which are maximally entangled and connected via a wormhole but physically far apart. Alice, one of the observers, measures all the components (computational qubits) of the black hole being observed by Bob. Alice has a memory system large enough to record all the observations. Once the measurement is complete, Alice says Bob’s black hole is in a pure state and no longer entangled with a second black hole being observed by Charlie. In other words, Alice concludes that, after the measurement, there is no wormhole connecting Bob’s and Charlie’s black holes.

Daisy, a friend of Alice, knows the whole system but has not interacted with any of the observers since before Alice made the measurement. Daisy describes the system as two black holes with Alice’s memory in a tripartite state. Furthermore, Alice’s memory could be compressed into a black hole so the tripartite system could comprise three black holes. According to Daisy, the three black holes are entangled so that there must be some kind of wormhole connecting them. There seems to be a contradiction between Alice’s and Daisy’s conclusions.

Borromean rings

Susskind argues that the contradiction between Alice and Daisy’s conclusions can be overcome by recognizing the existence of ‘GHZ entanglement’. Under GHZ entanglement between three black holes, no two black holes are entangled with each other but each black hole is entangled with the union of the other two black holes. Geometrically, this arrangement is like Borromean rings as described in the Efimov effect mentioned in previous articles.

After arguing that three black holes can be GHZ entangled, Susskind presents a scenario involving Bob and Charlie each being an observer of one of two entangled black holes. Charlie then starts observing another black hole that is not entangled with either of the other two black holes. This black hole contains what Susskind calls ‘Charlie’s big bag of complexity’.

Charlie wants to get rid of his big bag of complexity. He merges his two black holes and now his bag of complexity is entangled with Bob’s black hole.

Charlie can re-configure the contents of the black hole containing his big bag of complexity to identify (measure) (i) those parts of the bag that he wants to keep; and (ii) those he wants to give away.

After allowing time for the merger of the two black holes to come to thermal equilibrium, Charlie can snip off his end of the merged black hole by making a complete measurement of the union of the two black holes in the computational basis. This snip destroys the wormhole connecting Bob and Charlie leaving Bob ‘holding’ Charlie’s big bag of (unwanted) complexity. Charlie retains those parts of the bag that he wants to keep.

With this ‘smaller’ bag, Charlie can create another universe (black hole) out of just the parts he wants to retain.

In the context of the original AdS bulk space, minds (consciousness) organize events in the AdS bulk space such that the boundary contains a laboratory where three black holes can be created. Charlie’s big bag of complexity describing the evolution of a universe is seeded into one of the black holes. The other entangled two black holes become the new owner of Charlie’s unwanted big bag of complexity. This process can be repeated many times with different content being selected to be removed from Charlie’s big bag of complexity each time.

Role of our universe

Our universe has been created to help identify and select suitable content (minds) for a new universe. Once enough like-minded minds have been identified, a new universe is created with just those minds. The new set-theoretic universe is not entangled with the other ‘universes’ that were used to create it.

Minds in our universe have free will. The objective of the selection process is to identify minds which appear to have the desired characteristics for the new universe without eliminating their free will. The new universe will be designed to explore new possibilities arising out of the free will decisions of its inhabitants.

The question for this article is:

Can you tell when you are exercising free will?

To view the headings of all the articles to be published in this series please click on https://michaeledalton.medium.com/orbiting-stars-and-origin-of-our-universe-338906930f51

To obtain a copy of the book ‘Orbiting Stars’ which contains the first drafts of all these articles, please visit https://www.amazon.com