The Certainty Principle

Pondering on the misery of early programming language builders, I realized the problem they faced in making the computer spit out random numbers. No matter if they seed the random function or even water the seed, a computer cannot and never will be able to generate a totally random or an unpredictable number. Because a computer cannot think, the number it generates depends on a set of pre assigned instructions on the function.

             Then I realized that the word ‘random’ has no meaning at all because of the uniformity of our universe. No electrons with double the charge of a standard electron exists and no proton with half the mass of a standard proton. To understand this, let’s rewind time and return to the early universe that has just seen a big bang. If we start time again, in the normal direction, we may surmise that this ‘rewind and play’ wouldn’t return the universe to its original state because there’s far too high probability for the universe to follow a different chain of events and eventually end up in a state that is totally different. But let’s not be oblivious about the fact of the uniformity of universe. If in the first time, an ancient proton had repelled another of its kind with certain amount of force so that it digressed from its path and then interacted with an electron to form an atom (which may now be inside you), there’s an absolute certainty that same would happen in the second time, too. As proton’s charge and mass is always the same, and the digression due to the electrostatic force of repulsion in between the protons would be the same regardless if the interaction takes place a single time or a trillion times. Other interactions and reactions, due to every fundamental force and between each and every fundamental particle, in every step, would similarly repeat themselves too and so, from the very beginning, the universe would follow the same path it had followed earlier and would end up exactly in the state it was when we planned to rewind it.

           From this fact, we can assume that everything that would happen in the future was already fixed before we, or anything else, even existed. I writing this and you reading this right now was already destined to happen at the time of big bang when every particle’s and wave’s characteristics was endowed to them. Even what you are thinking right now was predetermined. Also, as the pulses that the electron in the atoms that make up your brain relay, do not travel in random directions but only follow a single path in which a definite and uniform interaction would force them to go through, there’s no randomness in the pattern of your brain waves that help you to generate a so-called ‘random’ number’. From this, we can conclude that, as the laws of the universe cannot be broken, even we humans cannot generate anything that’s random and the words such as random, probability and chance  are nothing but absurd.

                     The incongruity of chance and probability opens up a new world of possibility. Travelling to the future may not be possible, but as everything that has occurred and will occur was and is already ascertained, predicting future however, at least theoretically, is possible. Scientifically speaking, future of anything that exists in this universe is the four dimensional space time coordinates along with the knowledge of all forms of energy that is associated with it. If each and every interaction between extremely large bunches of atoms is computed and sped up, their future positions and energy states can be calculated and the outcome of this calculation is the future itself. From our present knowledge of science and the advancement of technology, we can easily calculate, with some accuracy, the smaller pieces of a grand puzzle. For instance, we can calculate the trajectory, and thus, the future position of a projectile or we can calculate the change in energy of atom when its electrons undergo certain transitions. To predict future however, we will have to consider each and every fact and phenomenon--small and large-- like exemplified above, in a grand scale. For the sake of accuracy, even phenomenon with almost non-existent significance cannot be neglected. In such large calculation--which also involves smallest of the details-- a single mistake, even if it is of extremely small order, can totally spoil a prediction. So, the device used in prediction of future, if ever invented, may have processing capabilities of such unimaginable complexity that it may not even be possible to use atoms in this universe to build it. So future prediction may lie out of the scope of the fastest processing devices we will ever build or beyond the capabilities of the atoms present in this universe. 

                 In science, possible and practical are two words that share the least similarities. Science has given us too many possibilities but not practicalities. The matter we discussed is one of many cases where science hasn’t been considerate. However, it would be unwise and totally erroneous to rely on these unworldly ideas and assert that, because everything is fixed and unchangeable, we don’t have to worry about our life. Our life is always what we make of it, regardless of the atoms and energies that govern it.  

By Riwaz Poudyal

Nepal