Interstellar Universe, Space and Zen

In August, I watched "Interstellar" twice in the same week. I cooperated with every tear Nolan set for the first time. At the end of the second brush, the feeling of the hero and heroine saving all mankind has disappeared, and I just want to go home and watch "A Brief History of Time and Space".

part1: coordinates named time

Murphy's bookcase helped me understand the space-time view of relativity in a concrete way. Before the advent of the theory of relativity, the traditional idea that time is absolute and linear. Hawking explained the breakthrough of relativity in "A Brief History of Time and Space": " We must accept that time cannot be completely separated from and independent of space, but must be combined with space to form the so-called space-time object ."

In the three-dimensional world in our definition, positioning is accustomed to a series of geographic coordinates such as north latitude, south latitude, and altitude. Through these coordinates, we can obtain precise spatial positioning. The meaning of time in between is to mark or record specific events that occurred in a certain space.

" There is no real difference between time and space coordinates, just as there is no real difference between any two space coordinates ."

In other words, a higher-dimensional "existence" can repeatedly see what happened in a given time and space through the dual combination of time and space coordinates. This is also the original meaning of combining the word "time" with "space" and calling it "space-time".

This also means that for high-dimensional "existence", it occurs in the entire galaxy, or even larger. If you want to read any time and space segment, it is like a human being able to drag the progress bar at will to watch a recorded movie.

Now that arbitrary times can be read, time will no longer be linear for these "beings". They may be constrained by time, unlike us, which stretches from a "line" to a "circle".

part2: no longer linear time

In "Interstellar", the male protagonist fell into the five-dimensional space and appeared in Murphy's bookcase. The appearance of his past home appeared in all directions. In order to attract Murphy's attention, the male protagonist pushed the book off the bookcase and became his past self. The "ghost" of disbelief.

In another narrative line of the shot, when middle-aged Murphy returns home and picks up his watch, he reads the Morse code between the hands, cracking the formula to save humanity.

For Murphy, the male protagonist behind the bookcase is in the future; for Murphy, the male protagonist is in the past; but for them at every point in time and space, it means the present. The present, the past, and the future exist in synchrony, and the order of getting rid of the line becomes a parallel relationship. The three points are connected, and the "circle" is born.

It should be noted that the two people no longer have a "simultaneous" relationship in this scene . Because for the male protagonist, time is many times faster than Murphy. And in a space with infinite time, whether childhood or middle age, Murphy is his past. When he was rescued by descendants, he was synchronized with Murphy's time again.

It means that the hands of the watch have been trembling for quite a long time on the earth. Fortunately, Murphy's time is much faster than the male protagonist. After the middle-aged Murphy solved the equation and successfully built the space station, he was in time to rescue the male protagonist who was about to run out of oxygen at the age of 100.

It is worth noting that Murphy waited until the male protagonist was rescued before recovering from an active slumber, fulfilling the promise of goodbye, and then facing death surrounded by descendants.

part3: What will the "circle" time look like?

Dr. Brand described the world of high-dimensional creatures to the male protagonist, "For them, going to the past and going to the future may be as simple as turning from one mountain to another."

For them who can travel through time and space coordinates at will, the present, past and future are like the same circle, and the "distance" they need to go to any point from the center is the same. Yet because the past, present, and future are lines with only one direction to us.

In their eyes, the three different concepts of time are equal relations, but in our eyes, the three are different in value. Our past is irreversible, and we can only live in the present, hopeful or hopeless about the future. Therefore, under the two temporal and spatial logics, the hierarchical order of the three values is completely different.

Part4: Worldview under the influence of space-time logic

Speaking of which, we must talk about "Arrival". The high-dimensional creature "heptapod" in the arrival has the ability to predict the future. Rather than using spoken words to express their intentions, they prefer to use their concise and perfectly symmetrical written words. Not only because spoken language is more difficult to understand for their communication counterparts, "human beings", but also because spoken language must follow the law of "linear", according to the chronological order from the first word to the last word in order to communicate.

On the other hand, even if they know that humans are about to respond to their conversations, they will still respond in order to move the "future" forward. Although they did not travel through time and space at will, in the cognition of the development of things, after there is no change in selection and order, the sequence of cause and effect still loses its effectiveness in front of them. There are only developments that need to be promoted, and the means to achieve this. ( If you want to understand the difference between this method of perceiving the world and the human world, see the original explanation for a more detailed explanation.

Looking back, if we realize that time is a circle, we don’t need to be attached to the past or look forward to the future. Because they have the same importance, the same value, and they are not one-way lines that never go back. Then you can give them the same precious value, and you can also give them the same value that is not precious.

part5: Space-time coordinates and our existence

The first chapter explains the space-time coordinates, and then talks about the relationship between matter and space-time. After understanding the fact that space-time is another coordinate, it is not difficult to realize that we are also one of the things that are recorded. To be precise, the body is also one of the elements used for recording. All people and things that exist in this time and space have similar attributes.

Now use the assumption of "watching a movie" in the first paragraph to simulate the adjustment of the time axis. You will find that to "they" who have mastered the key of time and space, we are also equivalent to something that can be watched repeatedly and closed at any time. , such as games, movies, animations, etc. our low-dimensional creations. From this, it can be disproved that material, status, beauty and ugliness, which we attach so much importance to, are no longer significant.

But as far as I know, consciousness is the only thing that isn't bound by this (even though I can't prove it's going to last forever, after all, brain science is still in its infancy). But under this assumption, the body acts as a carrier and a cultivator of consciousness. It will be the only thing we can create on our own without the influence of DNA. By the time we are left with only consciousness, we are fully consciousness itself, its own creation.

Maybe wait to participate in such a cycle again, maybe break out of the cycle, maybe nothing is left.

Whether human beings can finally escape the fate of self-destruction as in the movie may depend entirely on whether the high-dimensional existence will put a suitable wormhole in a suitable location to help this group of people.