ABOUT FACTS NET Else

One of the things I found very interesting about the Matrix was the premise that living, breathing people were not really living the life that they believed they were. Let me explain this to the small minority of people that may not have seen the film. People were put into a sort of dream state by a master computer and led to believe that they were leading normal lives, but it was all an illusion, they were really laying in a pod filled with liquid and their body's electricity was being gathered and used to power machines.

This is not the first time that a theory such as this has been put forth, only this one included computers and the tapping of a body resource. Philosophers through out the ages have asked the question "are we really alive and doing everything we think we are or are we merely dreaming an Existence?". We can sleep and dream and think we are awake and everything may seem quite real to us until we wake. We may even have such a realistic dream, that we might carry it as a true memory for the rest of our life. Could it be that these dreams are part of a greater dream, the dream of life? I am not saying that I believe this to be true, I am merely playing the Devil's advocate here and bringing up the possibility of truth. Actually many people would think that I was quite cracked for even bringing up this idea. But regardless of what others think, I believe that every possibility should be explored.

I think we all have to admit that there is something strange going on here on this planet and it is called life. When asked what life is, the scientists would gladly tell you it is a mixture of chemicals and minerals that somehow got animated and in some cases is totally self aware. But this doesn't nearly begin to explain how life truly started. It is true that the human mind is a wondrous thing, but it is still limited as far as we know. I say, as far as we know, because we still only use a small portion of it and really don't understand the capabilities of the rest of it. Be this as it may, most of us would have to believe that somewhere in the beginning of time there had to be nothing. It is just too hard to comprehend that there was always something. I am talking about space, planets, stars, even mass. We as humans can't help but feel that everything had to come from somewhere. Even scientist believe that the universe started with an explosion. The Big Bang Theory states that essentially all matter was compressed and exploded from the pressure and this is why everything is traveling away from us at incredible speeds. But even this theory doesn't explain where the matter came from originally. One of the great laws of science is that you can't get more energy out of something than you put into it. So if you started with nothing, how could you now have something? This would suggest that there was always something out there, but as humans we find this offensive to our thinking.

Taking this a step further, things are not working out as neatly as the scientists would like. For years they have been telling us that the telescope is like a time machine and the further out they see, the further back in time they are going. This is based on the fact that it takes light longer to reach the lens on a telescope on this planet, the further away the object is. Light travels at 186,000 miles per second, which is 700 million miles per hour. Einstein said that nothing could travel faster than the speed of light. Now here is the rub, astronomers have just discovered some of the most distant objects in space. Guess what, they are very old galaxies? This shouldn't be, as a matter of fact, the opposite should be true. So what is going on here? Are our ideas of what the universe is and how it was formed completely wrong? This might very well turn out to be true.

It seems we neither truly understand the cosmos or the life in it. But just because we don't understand something doesn't mean we can't use it to our benefit. We have been using electricity for many years, yet there is no one that can tell you exactly what it is, although the way it works is well understood. Maybe once we truly understand this force it will unlock the secrets of other forces in the universe. Since the way electricity works is understood, it can be easily utilized. But the universe just keeps getting weirder and weirder As we get more advanced we discover some mighty strange things. Quantum Physics has taught us that it is possible to alter the state of an atom in front of us which will alter another sympathetic atom instantly anywhere in the universe. Now I don't know about you, but I have a very hard time with this. Just to complicate things a little more, lets talk about Quantum Computing. Your ordinary desktop computer is capable of computing either a 0 or a 1. Try and not get a headache here. A Quantum Computer can represent both a 0 or a 1 or both a 0 and 1 at the same time. This means one bit can be both 0 and 1 at the same time. Confused, sure you can't help but be, after all we all learned that you can't be in two places at the same time, now we are finding out that this may not be entirely true. Now get this, a Quantum Computer uses a qubit instead of the traditional bit. In certain situations, if someone is watching, the qubit won't change. I know, your head is beginning to hurt and so is mine.

Getting away from Quantum Computing we can easily find something else that won't make sense to most of us. Einstein said we could never travel faster that the speed of light because it would require too much energy input. Scientists state however that this may not stop us of zipping all over the universe almost instantly. This doesn't make much sense does it? If you can't fly faster than light and given the huge distances between stars how is this possible? Simply they say we will just move things closer. I know the headache is starting again. They liken space travel to a trip in your car. You want to drive to California from New York but the trip is 3,000 miles and you only have 15 minutes to get there. What do you do? You get out and fold the road over so that the end with New York on it, is over the end with California over it. Now you can drive there instantly. Talk about mind blowing theories. For the average person this idea is so crazy that if you suggested it while having a beer in a bar, you would probably get beat up. Here is another point, what if there is other life in the universe. Do you think that they might mind if we fold them up for awhile to make our trip easier? What if we fold space and can't get it to go back? What if spaces fold differently than we thought it would or what if we destroy the fabric of space in that area? Oh there are so many questions.

Life just seems to be getting crazier and crazier. Either I am getting really stupid or we have reached the point where we are finding out that things like space and time are not really what we thought they were.