Changing the past

I had a revelation the other day. A full up, light came on, jaw dropped open revelation of how utterly astonishing the universe is. I tried to tell my wife about it, but she just shrugged and said "I knew that".

I was thinking about the Bell continuum. This is the strange place where all things happen simultaneously, because there is no time. The name comes about from the Bell Theory, which is itself an offshoot of the Pauli Exclusion Principle. Let me explain from the start.....

Way back in the history of quantum mechanics (about the time my Dad was born), a physicist named Wolfgang Pauli explained the fact that you could never see two electrons in the same orbit around an atomic nucleus by postulating what became known as the Pauli Exclusion Principle. It states that for electrons in a single atom, no two electrons can have the same four quantum numbers, that is, if n, l, and ml are the same, ms must be different such that the electrons have opposite spins.

The Pauli Exclusion Principle is what keeps subatomic particles distinct and separate from each other. If two particles did have the same quantum numbers, they would actually be the same particle. It has applications in electronics (semiconductors) and astrophysics. By insisting that particles must remain distinct one from another, it implies that things can only be compressed by certain amounts. The Principle is in fact what prevents my fingers from passing through the keyboard I am typing on, despite that fact that both are largely empty space.

It also says (in complex math that I won’t try to do here!) that if a particle spontaneously is created, that the sum of all its attributes combined with the other particles created from the same event is zero – all the quantum numbers add up to nothing, just as my high school teachers said I would.

John Bell extended this work and postulated the creation of 2 “entangled” particles, which he then separated and sent to mythical Alice, and mythical Bob. Alice and Bob didn’t measure anything about their particles, but one stayed home while the other flew to the other side of the world.

At exactly the same time, as they have agreed to previously, they measure one of the particle’s quantum properties, such as spin (s). The strange thing is that according to quantum mechanics (the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, which I have discussed earlier), the particle that Alice has is in an undetermined state until it is measured – it doesn’t actually have a spin, it has both spins until the observer measures it. That’s how a photon can go through two slots at once. When measured, it “selects” an output, and exhibits a given spin number.

Because of entanglement, the other particle instantly has the other, opposite spin. Bob’s particle will always have the opposite spin to Alice’, no matter how far apart the particles are. Somehow, they communicate faster than light and determine their outputs. This has actually been proven experimentally to be true, over and over. Einstein didn’t like it – he called it “spooky action at a distance” and declared that “God does not play dice with the universe”.

We now know that it is true, and the hypothetical medium through which the p[articles communicate is called the Bell Continuum, and it is the place in the “Star Trek: Next Generation” series that “Q” lived.

Here’s the part that blew my mind. Distance is one thing, but we see time as being something else, something fixed in the past and changeable in the future. However, let’s suppose I look up at the night sky. A human eye is quite capable of seeing a single quantum of light energy. The impact of the quanta on my retina in effect measures the quantum attributes (numbers) of the quantum, and transmits that information to my brain where the observer lurks.

That pins down the quantum of light energy. Any other quanta with which it is entangled have to “decide” their own states as a result. Now let’s suppose that these quanta all came from a quasar stellar explosion billion of years ago, and that some of the entangled quanta have already interacted with other matter elsewhere in the galaxy (which is very likely). By capturing and observing the quantum here on Earth in 2009, I am affecting (changing?) the past all the way back to the creation of the entangled particles.

When we look at things, we are not only creating them here in the here and now (by collapsing their uncertainty waves), but we are also creating the past, and our present is being changed by people in the future as I write this.

Mouth slackly hanging open ………

Yeehaaa!

Passed the FAA Commercial Pilot written test! Now for the fun part......

Totally Blind - but instrumented

Recently we had one of those rare weekend days in Dallas with low hanging cloud cover, but little vertical development (which is pilot talk for "not stormy"). The clouds just hung low over the runway at McKinney, occasionally spitting out a little rain. Perfect!

Since becoming an instrument pilot my view of weather perfection has changed. I used to like those clear blue days after a cold front had come and gone, when the air is crisp and you can see forever. I would get in a 'plane and climb as high as I could while fitting in a cross country (I was trying to build cross-country time in preparation for the instrument rating). The view was tremendous, and once I'd climbed past around 4,000 feet the air would become glassy calm.

Later I got my own aircraft, and the next year, an instrument rating. Now my idea of weather perfection is one where I can fly in actual cloud, shoot some approaches, but avoid too much turbulence, especially inside a cloud. When it rains in Texas, it tends to also storm, especially in the Springtime. Rain here tends to be an event of some violence, not something to mess around with in a lightplane.

So I launched into overcast skies, with 700 feet to the cloud base, on an IFR clearance direct KARLA, a GPS waypoint about 10 miles East of McKinney. Climbing to 2000 on a heading of 90 degrees, per ATC instructions, I swam up into clear air over a sea of white as far as the eye could see in every direction. These clouds where only 500 feet thick, and flat as a pancake.

Cleared to 3000ft, ATC gave me vectors to intercept the 212 radial from the Bonham VOR (BYP), and cleared me for the VOR-DME approach. I identified the radial using my #2 NAV and CDI, plus the DME, and also, just for grins, on my GPS. Fortunately they all agreed I was in the right place and heading in the right direction.

This pleased me. Turning in the clouds had given me what pilots call "the leans", which is vertigo. Pilots cannot trust their bodies senses in clouds, they must only trust the instruments. You turn right, and the body says you are climbing and turning left. When you can see on the panel that you are level and turning right, if you trust your sense of balance which says you climbing and turning left, you will move the controls in exactly the wrong way. That's one reason it takes so long to become instrument rated, and a reason why few private pilots complete it (almost all commercial pilots are instrument rated).

Once on the radial and 12 miles from BYP, I throttled back and descended into the murk at 2200 feet, then 7 minutes later at 22 miles on the DME down to 1400 feet, and clear of the clouds. I could see the airport dead ahead, and approach handed my over the tower. I told them I would end the approach and requested the ILS to runway 17. Cleared direct to the initial approach fix at FLUET, I recontacted DFW approach, and was cleared for the ILS. This time, I stayed at 2500 feet for the outbound leg and procedure turn, which meant I stayed mostly in the clouds, only occasionally popping out of the top at a particularly low area, or between cloud cells.

Once on the inbound leg, I intercepted the ILS glideslope, and setting up for 90 kts and 450 ft/min descent rate, came out of the soup at 1700 ft. The clouds were continuing to rise - now they were 1100 feet above the runway, making the field technically VFR. I canceled the approach and requested the GPS RNAV approach to runway 35 (the other end of the same single 7000 ft long runway at McKinney). ATC cleared me for the approach, and asked me to climb to 2500 feet, but them changed their mind and asked me to make the approach at 2000. I said "OK", because that would put me back inside the clouds, and because I could hear them working a Beechcraft King Air on the same approach. I suspected they want me to stay well below him.

At 2000 ft I kept occasionally catching sight of the ground, but by now I had got completely over my vertigo, and was flying entirely on instruments, which in the case of GPS on a real IFR flight simply meant following instructions until established on the purple line, and then descending along the GPS WAAS glideslope as indicated on the #1 CDI (just like an ILS). The main difference is that an ILS becomes more and more sensitive as you get closer to the transmitter, a GPS WAAS does not, making it very slightly easier to fly.

A GPS receiver uses satellites to fix its position in space, a constellation of 24 satellites controlled by the US military. For precision approaches, GPS uses a ground-based enhancement called "Wide Area Augmentation System", or "WAAS". WAAS approaches require an airport to have no ground facilities at all - so they are rapidly replacing NDB approaches at small airports, and even VOR/DME approaches will be a thing of the past soon.

It only took a few seconds to clear the clouds once on the WAAS glideslope - I could see the runway straight ahead about 5 miles away. I flew through a short, sharp rain shower, and landed. I didn't need the 3 approaches to legal currency, but the experience was useful, and knowing that I could do this for real was invaluable. It was also fun!

The Death of Print and Mea Culpa

I heard today that RCR (I have never known what that stood for!) closed it's doors. I knew many of the people there because over my years of working in the wireless industry, I have met and briefed most of them many times. And now, like newspaper dailies, they have fallen victim to the recession and the Internet.

The recession I have no responsibility for. I did not buy a house I couldn't afford, wallow in credit card debt, or package unsustainable loans for others. Fortunately my employer has a lot of cash in the bank, and has so far avoided layoffs (touch wood). So while my 401-k has suffered, it has not directly affected me (yet).

The Internet however has been a two edged sword. Before going into the wireless arena, I worked on the early days of the Internet, mostly involved with products to bring the Internet in enterprise networks. I turned down a job offer from my current employer in 1988 when they had about 100 employees - now tens of thousands.

After working on wireless cellular networks starting in 1995, I have always worked on the evolution of wireless data services, starting with 14.4 kbps on GPRS and CDMA, culminating in my last several roles with 100% focus on it with WiMAX and 4G. I have met with RCR many times to discuss the ramifications of instant access to all the world's information from wherever you happen to be, which is now reaching it's fulfillment with 3G, WiMAX and the iphone.

One result has been the death of print media, even that following the industry itself. Talk about ironic! I used to be sorry about my career's fallout when i was on vacation and was interrupted by email, voice mail or a call, but now I'm sorry because some of work friends are suffering more immediately.

Mea Cupla.

Flying with vision (kind of)

After losing the signal for the back course for runway 35 at Mesquite, I raised my foggles and looked around fro the first time. I could see what had happened – I didn’t turn in fast enough, and the back course signal is quite narrow and weak at that range. I thought about starting over, but “D” suggested that we weren’t too far from Lancaster airport, and we could get cheap fuel there.

So I turned on the GPS for the first time. GPS has revolutionized instrument flying – certainly it has changed mine. I deliberately learned without GPS, but then upgraded my panel in the summer of 2008 with a Garmin 430W, and had it coupled to my autopilot. When this means is that I could enter the designated letters for Lancaster “KLNC”, and on the screen the GOPS showed where I was, where the airport was, what course to fly, how long it would take, and drew a nice purple line on the map display. All I had to do was to program the autopilot for follow the line, hold our altitude, and then…… nothing.

Well, not quite. I still had to find the instrument approaches in the FAA instrument procedures book, but I could have flown without that if I’d wanted to. As we got within 10 miles, I selected the GPS RNAV approach for runway 31, and told Charlie to fly directly to the initial approach fix called VIYUN. These names are usually something that can be pronounced – my favorite near Hope AK is “MEEOW”. I turned Charlie onto the final approach course, and let the autopilot fly the whole approach, except that I had to work the throttle to stay on the glideslope. Piece of cake. GPS makes everything easy.

We landed, and fueled up at the FBO. Nice fuel prices – I’ll be back for more soon!

Taking off, I selected direct PQF, a non-directional beacon (NDB) that is the initial approach fix for Rockwall airport, and tuned 248 on the Automatic Direction Finder (ADF), and instrument that is rapidly going out of style, replaced by GPS. Over the beacon, I entered a right hand holding pattern. I chose not to select the NDB approach on the GPS – it makes all approaches the same (“follow the purple line”). Instead I flew an old school by the needle NDB approach – the hardest part is that you have to time the last leg while descending and correcting for wind drift. But it went well and we crossed over the airport at 900 feet above the runway. I won't say I didn't sneak a glance at the moving map on the GPS.....

After climbing back up to 3000 ft, for the 5th approach I tuned in the Variable Omni range (VOR) at Bonham (a.k.a. BYP, on 114.6 MHz), slaved the Distance Measuring Equipment (DME), and set course to intercept the approach around 10 miles from the VOR. You can do that by flying an arc of constant radius around a VOR (or ILS), because the DME tells you if you are getting to close, or too far away. If the leg is part of a published approach, you can also slect it on the GPS, but that is once again just “following the purple line”. This was more fun.

Once the CDI (yes, the same one) showed we were crossing the 212 degree radial from BYP, I turned to a heading of 212, and then nudged about 5 degrees of wind correction to 217 degrees. Descending to 2200 ft once the DME showed 12 miles from Bonham, I called the tower at McKinney to let them know where we were. “McKinney tower, Sundowner xxx, on the VOR approach at 13 miles DME, request the VOR approach”.

“Sundowner xxx, cleared for the VOR DME approach, maintain VFR, no separation services provided. Wind 350 at 15 kts, runway 35 in use. Altimeter 30.06. How will this approach end?”

“Cleared the VOR approach, 30.06, Sundowner xxx. We’ll knock it of at 22 DME, then head south and intercept the GPS approach at ONEME.” “Roger xxx”.

Once the DMW read 22 and we were at the minimum descent altitude (MDA), I turned to a heading of 180, and climbed back up to 3000. I selected the GPS 35 approach on the GPS, and hand flew parallel to the purple line until opposite the little white triangle that represented the total mythical waypoint called “ONEME”, before turning right, then right again to follow the purple line.

“Mckinney tower, Sundowner xxx, at ONEME, request the GPS 35 approach, landing”.

“Sundowner xxx, cleared for the GPS 35 approach, maintain VFR, no separation services provided. Cleared to land number 3”.

Since I was number 3, and I was still under the foggles, I asked “D” to keep and eye open for numbers 1 and 2. GPS approaches are so easy. I hand flew this one, a WAAS approach which means it displays on a CDI like an ILS, with the same vertical and horizontal needles. The glideslope, like ILS, goes all the way to the runway, although I have to have the runway in sight at 300 feet in order to legally land. I did (with an instructor) one time fly the approach blind all the way down to 50 ft.

At 300 feet I pull off the foggles and squint at the sunlight. Pull back the power, lift the nose, lower the flaps, check the fuel one last time (I did my short pre-landing checklist at ONEME, my fixed habit – always do the checklist at the Intermediate approach fix (IAF). Touching down on the runway, 6 different approaches in bag in 2 hours of flying, I am legally current.

Strange, it feels just the same as not being current….

Flying Blind

It’s almost been 6 months since my last real instrument approach.

That one was an Instrument Landing System (ILS) approach to Erie PA, when I was visiting my parents over the summer. I flew my Sundowner from Nashua NH to Erie PA, climbing over some building cumulus cloud near Buffalo NY that took me up to 10,000 ft. As we neared the shoreline of Lake Erie, the clouds stopped, like a giant wall of orange tinted white as the sun lowered towards the Western Horizon.

Erie was reporting no ceiling (clouds), but poor visibility. So I intercepted the extended centerline (called the localizer) and descended as cleared until capturing the glide slope around 4000 feet. I followed the beam to land on runway 24. But that was in July 2008.

The FAA requires that before you can file and fly under instrument conditions, you must be “current”, which means you must have completed 6 instrument approaches and flown holds and intercepted a VOR radial within the last 6 months. So to remain current, I had to do some blind flying.

My Friend “D” owns the only other Sundowner based at TKI. It’s been in shop for a while, after a mishap with a hanger door, so he was more than happy to volunteer to be my safety pilot. Let me explain that.

When flying to currency, you can either fly in real instrument conditions (which can be hard to find in North Texas), or you fly “under the hood” – in my case, a set of goggles that fit over my spectacles, and are fogged so that I can only see downwards. So all I can see are the airplane instruments, I can’t see out. The safety pilot’s job is, well, safety. His or her job is to look for other airplanes, and to take control if the safety of flight is in doubt.

So a few Saturdays ago, “D” and I climbed into “Charlie”, my sundowner, for a few approaches. We took off from McKinney airport at 9:30am into some severe blue weather – no clouds, clear visibility due to strong winds from the North – a Texas “Blue Norther” (cold front) has blown through the night before, dashing away all the airborne pollutants and dumping them into the Gulf somewhere. I climbed in the blind to 2,500, tuned in the ILS approach for runway 17 at Mesquite and waited to intercept the glideslope.

The ILS displays on an instrument called the CDI, or “course deviation indicator”. The CDI is round, and has a vertical needle that shows which direction to fly to intercept the extended runway centerline, called the "localizer". The ILS version also has a horizontal needle for the glideslope. The pilot’s goal on an ILS is to keep the needles crossed in the center of the dial, by following the needles – if the needle is to the right, turn slightly right. If the horizontal needle is low, increase your descent rate until it is back in the center. You can fly very accurately on the ILS – airliners can even use it to land completely blind. My airplane can descend as low as 200 feet above the runway using my system.

The only problem was that with the wind from the north, we were approaching the wrong end of the runway! So I abandoned the approach a bit higher than normal to stay out of the way of departing airplanes, and climbed back to 2,500 over the runway to set up for the back course approach to runway 35.

The ILS is set up for an approach to a specific end of a runway. Some runways have an ILS for each end, usually those that host airline traffic. At some airports, you can use the back side of the ILS to fly an approach – it’s tough to do because everything is reversed – instead of flying towards the needles, you must remember to turn away from them. Some airplanes have a button that can reverse the CDI sensing – mine does not. In the real world I would probably use my autopilot on a BC approach, because it can set up to fly it with reverse sensing, but for practice, I did it the hard way.

Too hard in fact. I lost the signal right on the turn in from the course reversal turn. I did this approach perfectly when I was doing my test ride back in October 2007. But the rules don’t say you have complete the whole approach for it to count, so when I abandoned the approach at 2000 feet, that was 2 down. I needed 6.

The Matrix

In “The Matrix”, the main character, Neo (which means “new”), learns that his entire reality to date has been the result of a sophisticated computer generated simulation, and that he, and everyone else, has lived his life in a pod, and used as a human battery.

This is not so far from the situation we all face, but without knowing it. We think we live in the real world, but we don’t, we live in a personal sim.

Our brains do not perceive the real world. What they receive is a set of electrical impulses, generated by sensory organs – the eyes, ears, nose, skin and tongue, representing sight, sound, smell, touch and taste. The brain creates a model of what it thinks the real world is like based on those impulses.

There is no way to prove that the brain’s working sim is the same as anyone else’s. In the old saw, how can we prove that what I see as yellow, you do not see as blue? There is not way to tell that is not the case, and it really doesn’t matter as long as your brain model is internally consistent and coherent. When I eat a cheeseburger, how can you tell that my experience of eating a cheeseburger is the same as yours?

Worse, there is no way to prove that your internal model aligns with external reality. Or even that there is an external reality. Thoughts have varied over the years on this subject. Ancient Greeks like Artistotle believed in a world that was more real than our own, they saw the heavens as the source of all pure reality, while the Earth was a pale and corrupt representation of the heavenly pureness. This is similar to the idea that there is a more real world out there, represented internally by a simulation.

Modern thinkers such as Descarte (1596–1650) attempted to prove the existence of the world and of God starting from the deduced fact of their own existence (“Cogito, Ergo Sum” – “I think, therefore I am”). Actually, he wrote in French “Je pense donc je suis", and only later in Latin. He started by eliminating all things in the universe that he could not prove, and ended with only the fact that he was observing something, and thinking about it, so he must exist. But he could not convincingly prove that anything else exists!

What this means for us is that there is no way to say with confidence that we understand the Universe, or even that there is a Universe. All we can say is that we own a consistent and coherent model that might represent the way things are. In fact, I suspect that there is no reality as such. I think that the only real thing is mathematics – the world is a set of mathematical principles encoded in what we perceive as matter and energy, but in fact all we can determine is how they interact with the brain, and with the consciousness encoded in the brain.

This takes away a lot of the issues related to quantum mechanics – the idea that the Universe is somehow interacting with me, the observer. Everything is an interaction. The Moon literally doesn’t exist when I’m not looking at it – it is a set of mathematical equations that resolve when I resolve them – the act of creation for me. The unobserved tree that falls in a forest literally doesn’t make a sound – because it doesn’t have an independent reality.

When Schrondinger’s cat is neither alive nor dead in the experiment I discussed earlier, it is neither alive nor dead because until I observe it, it doesn’t exist (for me). This is the ultimate in Relativity – not only is time relative to the observer, but so is everything else! The whole of existence is relative.

You can choose your friends, but you can't choose your relativity! Or can you?