Nick Inocencio: "To Chuck Wendig: Faster Than Light and Blacker Than Night"

To Chuck Wendig: Faster Than Light and Blacker Than Night

By Nicholas Inocencio

            One of the most interesting classes I’ve ever taken is Modern Physics. That class out of all that I’ve ever taken taught me as much about myself as it did about quantum mechanics—and I certainly retained the former better. I can’t tell you whether Schrodinger’s cat is dead or alive without opening its box, but I can tell you why it might have died. If it died, it wouldn’t have died because of some highly probabilistic (and convoluted) murder method, like a radiation-triggered hammer smashing into a bottle of poison gas; that would explain the means, not the motivation. Curiosity killed the cat.

            If you buy into the Copenhagen interpretation, whether the cat lives or dies is a matter of probability and speculation, at least until the observer opens the box. Of course, it’s far more complicated than that, but as interested as I am in quantum mechanics, I regret that I don’t have the understanding needed to explain it accurately or succinctly. What I can say, however, is that it would be a far more pleasant outcome if the cat lived. And so I would be troubled by having to open the box, never mind running the experiment itself, endangering the cat. I would risk seeing a dead cat when I started out with a living one. As a general rule, I avoid risks, especially those with little to no possible reward. I avoid risks because I like to at least be confident in a good outcome.

            But that isn’t to say that I am troubled by the unknown. Quite the opposite, really; I am troubled by the expansion of the universe. It’s not that I have issue with the universe’s largeness—after all, as big as it is, there should be no shortage of things to do. I love to fantasize about life among the stars, meeting alien races, partaking in strange culture and miraculous technology and seeing unbelievable landscapes on fantastic new worlds.

            Yes, the universe is fantastically big. But it’s getting bigger. Fast. Too fast for light being emitted right now from galaxies that are currently 4,740 megaparsecs away to ever reach us. And it’s only getting faster. On small time and space scales this expansion doesn’t mean much of anything. But it still seems rather lonely. Entire galaxies, just gone—not destroyed, not hidden, just gone, and going right at this moment. And if we assume that the density of dark energy—that is, whatever is making space grow—is unchanging, it’s only going to get lonelier. Imagine the Hubble Ultra Deep Field utterly empty, blacker than night. That’s what the future has in store. 

            I’m afraid of being alone, being really alone. I like to spend my time playing games, reading, and watching anime by myself, but the thought of never seeing another person again would surely drive me to insanity. The thought of the universe going dark crushes my heart. I thank my lucky stars I’m not going to live long enough to see that. I hope no one ever has to see that. 

            If no one ever sees it, then the cat will always stay in the box, never dead—and never alive. Maybe it’s closed-minded of me to keep the box shut, to never take risks, but I like what is familiar. Fantasy and sci-fi both are about the given world, as explained by Tolkien’s fantasy recovery, escape, and consolation or by Samuel R. Delany’s view that sci-fi presents “distortions of the present.” One thing stays constant: myself. Part of who I am or what I know is in all speculative fiction I come across. Whether it’s as fundamental as a physical view of the universe or as human as hating Mondays, there is always something familiar.

What scares me about the risk of a dead cat or the universe going dark isn’t really the uncertainty; it’s the loss of the known, of what I already have. Life, love, hope, wonder, dreams and days with friends—all of it is precious, from moments shared to the lights in the sky. Physics interests me, but wonder and familiarity interest me more, and nothing would trouble me more than finding those lost after opening the box. So risk your cat all you want, Schrodinger, but I think I’ll keep mine a while longer.

Figure 3. A practical understanding of quantum mechanics brought to you by Schrodinger and his cat.