Random Reality

Author and astronomer Marcus Chown on the early history of the universe, quantum reality, and the origins of information.

In Song of Myself, Walt Whitman wrote: “Let your soul stand cool and composed before a million universes.” Of course, he never meant it literally; he was using poetic license. But, remarkably, today, we know it is actually possible to stand cool and composed before a million universes. In my hand I am holding a 1-gigabit flash memory drive. You will have to trust me about that! A moment ago I fished it from my pocket and now it dangles on my key-ring. Believe it or not, it has the capacity to store the information for 1 million universes.

I too was pretty incredulous to discover this. But, before I explain, I should say that one consequence of all this is that Einstein was wrong when he declared: “God does not play dice with the universe.”  In other words, atoms did not do things unpredictably—completely at random—as the widely accepted theory of the microscopic world maintained. In fact, Einstein could not have been more completely, utterly, spectacularly wrong. And it is not often you can say that about the great man.

Enough of these teasers. Some essential background. The universe is currently expanding. Its basic building blocks—galaxies like our own Milky Way—are flying apart from each other like pieces of cosmic shrapnel in the aftermath of the big bang explosion from 13.7 billion years ago. Imagine, if you can, this expansion running backwards like a movie in reverse. Of course, the universe gets smaller and smaller.

However, it turns out that, as the universe gets smaller, there is less and less room for all the stuff within it. This is because we live in a fundamentally grainy universe. Ultimately, everything comes in tiny, indivisible chunks, or “quanta.” Matter comes in quanta, energy comes in quanta, time comes in quanta—and so does space. Imagine the space of the universe, then, as a giant chessboard, with the spaces as locations for putting stuff like matter or energy. Because the squares cannot get any smaller, in the past, when the universe was tinier, there were less of them.

Here we come to the crux of the matter. The universe is believed to have begun in epoch of super-fast expansion called “inflation.” And, prior to that, according to calculations by Stephen Hsu of the University of Oregon in Eugene, there were a mere 1000 locations—1000 chessboard squares, if you like—for stuff. Each of those 1000 locations could either contain energy or no energy. Describing its exact state would take just 1000 binary digits, or “bits,” of information. A gigabit flash memory drive, like the one on my key-ring, can store 1000 million bits. Hence, if Hsu is right, my key-ring drive can store the information describing the initial state of 1 million universes.

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U.S. 'secret war' expands globally as Special Operations forces take larger role

Beneath its commitment to soft-spoken diplomacy and beyond the combat zones of Afghanistan and Iraq, the Obama administration has significantly expanded a largely secret U.S. war against al-Qaeda and other radical groups, according to senior military and administration officials.

Special Operations forces have grown both in number and budget, and are deployed in 75 countries, compared with about 60 at the beginning of last year. In addition to units that have spent years in the Philippines and Colombia, teams are operating in Yemen and elsewhere in the Middle East, Africa and Central Asia.

Commanders are developing plans for increasing the use of such forces in Somalia, where a Special Operations raid last year killed the alleged head of al-Qaeda in East Africa. Plans exist for preemptive or retaliatory strikes in numerous places around the world, meant to be put into action when a plot has been identified, or after an attack linked to a specific group.

The surge in Special Operations deployments, along with intensified CIA drone attacks in western Pakistan, is the other side of the national security doctrine of global engagement and domestic values President Obama released last week.

One advantage of using "secret" forces for such missions is that they rarely discuss their operations in public. For a Democratic president such as Obama, who is criticized from either side of the political spectrum for too much or too little aggression, the unacknowledged CIA drone attacks in Pakistan, along with unilateral U.S. raids in Somalia and joint operations in Yemen, provide politically useful tools.

Obama, one senior military official said, has allowed "things that the previous administration did not."

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World arms spending soars

By Louise Nordstrom, The Associated Press

STOCKHOLM — Despite the global financial crisis, world military spending almost doubled in the past decade to reach $1.53 trillion in 2009, a Swedish think-tank said Wednesday.

In its 2010 yearbook, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, or SIPRI, said that spending between 2008 and 2009 grew 5.9 percent.

The United States remains the biggest spender, accounting for some 54 percent of the increase, the report said. China, which became the second biggest military spender in 2008, retained that position last year. France was third.

Data also showed that Asia and Oceania are increasing their military expenditures the fastest.

The global financial turmoil had little effect on governments upgrading their armed forces, even in countries whose economies were hit the hardest, SIPRI spokesman Sam Perlo-Freeman said.

"Although military spending wasn't usually a major part of the economic-stimulus packages, it wasn't cut either," said Perlo-Freeman, who heads the think-tank's military-expenditure project.

"For major or intermediate powers — such as the USA, China, Russia, India and Brazil — military spending represents a long-term strategic choice, which they are willing to make even in hard economic times," he said.

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Gaza flotilla activists were shot in head at close range

Israel was tonight under pressure to allow an independent inquiry into its assault on the Gaza aid flotilla after autopsy results on the bodies of those killed, obtained by the Guardian, revealed they were peppered with 9mm bullets, many fired at close range.

Nine Turkish men on board the Mavi Marmara were shot a total of 30 times and five were killed by gunshot wounds to the head, according to the vice-chairman of the Turkish council of forensic medicine, which carried out the autopsies for the Turkish ministry of justice today.

The results revealed that a 60-year-old man, Ibrahim Bilgen, was shot four times in the temple, chest, hip and back. A 19-year-old, named as Fulkan Dogan, who also has US citizenship, was shot five times from less that 45cm, in the face, in the back of the head, twice in the leg and once in the back. Two other men were shot four times, and five of the victims were shot either in the back of the head or in the back, said Yalcin Buyuk, vice-chairman of the council of forensic medicine.

The findings emerged as more survivors gave their accounts of the raids. Ismail Patel, the chairman of Leicester-based pro-Palestinian group Friends of al-Aqsa, who returned to Britain today, told how he witnessed some of the fatal shootings and claimed that Israel had operated a "shoot to kill policy".

He calculated that during the bloodiest part of the assault, Israeli commandos shot one person every minute. One man was fatally shot in the back of the head just two feet in front him and another was shot once between the eyes. He added that as well as the fatally wounded, 48 others were suffering from gunshot wounds and six activists remained missing, suggesting the death toll may increase.

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Nigeria's agony dwarfs the Gulf oil spill. The US and Europe ignore it

John Vidal reports in The Observer:

We reached the edge of the oil spill near the Nigerian village of Otuegwe after a long hike through cassava plantations. Ahead of us lay swamp. We waded into the warm tropical water and began swimming, cameras and notebooks held above our heads. We could smell the oil long before we saw it – the stench of garage forecourts and rotting vegetation hanging thickly in the air.

The farther we travelled, the more nauseous it became. Soon we were swimming in pools of light Nigerian crude, the best-quality oil in the world. One of the many hundreds of 40-year-old pipelines that crisscross the Niger delta had corroded and spewed oil for several months.

Forest and farmland were now covered in a sheen of greasy oil. Drinking wells were polluted and people were distraught. No one knew how much oil had leaked. "We lost our nets, huts and fishing pots," said Chief Promise, village leader of Otuegwe and our guide. "This is where we fished and farmed. We have lost our forest. We told Shell of the spill within days, but they did nothing for six months."

That was the Niger delta a few years ago, where, according to Nigerian academics, writers and environment groups, oil companies have acted with such impunity and recklessness that much of the region has been devastated by leaks.

In fact, more oil is spilled from the delta's network of terminals, pipes, pumping stations and oil platforms every year than has been lost in the Gulf of Mexico, the site of a major ecological catastrophe caused by oil that has poured from a leak triggered by the explosion that wrecked BP's Deepwater Horizon rig last month.

That disaster, which claimed the lives of 11 rig workers, has made headlines round the world. By contrast, little information has emerged about the damage inflicted on the Niger delta. Yet the destruction there provides us with a far more accurate picture of the price we have to pay for drilling oil today.

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