Dear Reader

Have you ever had one of those things that just happened. Something that materialized in your minds eye for no other reason but that it was there! The image below is one of those! Not the first...not the last, but one that has stayed with me with its own special relevance... Yes, a white and green 25 window VW Microbus!

Put yourself in Asmara, Ethiopia. You've been hitchhiking across Africa for 8 months. More than 6,000 miles! You've had malaria twice...and not just malaria... It's time to get out of Africa! Getting home is on your mind. You see it clearly...a green and white, 25 window VW Microbus with a sunroof!

Fast forward. You're at your folks home in New Jersey. You haven't given it much thought, but you need a vehicle to make the drive back to Colorado. You're looking through the classifieds in the local paper...'The Suburban Trends' as I recall. The first item under 'Autos For Sale' is a VW bus. It's not far away. I borrow Mom's car and head down the hill. And there it is! Just as in my minds eye! I bought it on the spot!

I've always wondered. Was it a coincidence...déjà vu...or something else?

And if something else...what? And if we accept the 'what,' we are still left with the why! Was it something meant to be before it actually happened? Something come seemingly out of nothing? Could the answer lie in quantum possibility, a state within quantum mechanics?

Having asked myself that question many times and having used quantum possibility in my sci-fi trilogy, I thought I would address the notion of 'coincidence.' The Oxford Dictionary defines coincidence as: "a remarkable concurrence of events or circumstances without apparent causal connection."

Let's pick this apart, shall we? First off, in my case the image in my minds eye, a prior 'event,' was certainly not concurrent with the outcome or any circumstances other than, I was witness to both. There was no concurrence at all in the classical sense of time in our everyday world, there being more than a month between the two events.

At this point, some of you may be saying, "Oh come on, the first event wasn't an event at all, just your imagination...and the actual event was the thing itself. The VW Microbus!"

Seems reasonable, but the neuroscientist might say that the experience of both was rooted in electrochemical processes in the brain; electrochemical events, differentiated within a sense of time predicated on a sequence of such electrochemical events. And I would say, at this point they both pretty much exist in the same place! But the question in my mind has always been; did the one cause the other?

So let's get back to quantum possibility shall we and by extension quantum probability? What do we mean by that? Let's assume the following as generally accepted: "that quantum possibility describes how quantum systems, unlike classical ones, (our everyday world) exist in a superposition of all potential outcomes simultaneously until a measurement is made, at which point the system 'chooses' one specific state."

Wow... "a superposition of all potential outcomes simultaneously!" What if we consider that the image in my minds eye, way back there in Asmara, Ethiopia, was a thought in 'superposition?' One with all potential outcomes! And what about the ad in the Suburban Trends classifieds? Was that random possibility trending towards probability of some sort? Well, it didn't take long to find out! But the question is, was the finding out, the 'measurement,' the 'choosing,' in fact the observation that caused the original image in my minds eye, that thing in superposition, to become the thing, that VW Microbus, now in its own 'specific state?' The quantum event!

And now we're getting to the nub of it, the thing of it, if you will! Like most things it's not so simple, but here are the two main interpretations of a so called, quantum event: on the one hand we have the Copenhagen Interpretation; and on the other, the Many-Worlds Interpretation. You can pursue the complexities via the two links, but let's simplify our discussion by getting back to how each interprets coincidence.

In the Copenhagen interpretation, the one most commonly taught, when observed, a coincidence, is simply two or more very low-probability events occurring at the same time in our specific reality, the "coincidence" being a manifestation of the underlying probability of what is called 'wave function collapse.' In the Many-Worlds interpretation there is no wave function collapse, the universe simply splits when a quantum event has multiple possible outcomes, every possible outcome being realized in a different world of a many world universe. This is often referred to as the 'Multiverse' which posits parallel universes, but we are not going there in this newsletter. The fundamental difference is the wave function collapse: the wave function being the state of the VW Microbus in 'superposition;' the image in my minds eye being in a position of possibility; and the wave function collapse being the final state, when I actually encountered or in quantum terms, observed the thing itself. The VW Microbus!

So, which interpretation? In my view there was no coincidence, but I like the wave function and superposition because it demonstrates a means for realizing things in our lives in a way that calls for trust in the universe. In a literary sense I also like the many-worlds thing, not just because it allows for multiple scenarios at the same time, but because it provides a means for solving the paradox of time.

Well that's all pretty heady stuff and we are going to get a lot more into it in the future, but I thought I would start with a basic grounding in quantum physics and by extension quantum reality which doesn't refer to any one specific theory but rather the philosophical side of things. This is the side of reality rather than the mathematics of the theory, that informs the main themes of all three books of The THING Trilogy.

Here is a taste of it from book 3, Thing BEYOND REASON. Jason is talking to James Orr, President of the United States.

“But you understand that your circumstances are different than mine, yet we are both here in the same time.”

“It would seem so…”

“Jim, let me be as clear as I can be. You and Janet, and all these frozen ones are in a dome. I entered this dome of the frozen from the Dome, as you call it, on Mars.”

“As you have said.”

“And yet you have come here from somewhere on Earth.”

“It would seem so.”

“And let us say it is so.”

“OK…”

Jason chuckled as James Orr’s thoughts went back to the dialogues with him and Plato in the before time at the White House.

“So, not sure.”

“How can I be sure? It’s…it’s so inconceivable.”

“Ahh, it is… Inconceivable!”

“What is inconceivable?”

“Where.”

“You mean two places?”

“Not two places.”

“But how can that be?”

“It can’t!”

“It can’t!” thought James Dudley Orr, back in the moment and shaking his head. Inconceivable and yet it was so.

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All for now, but lots more to come on this whole thing of quantum reality and superposition. Oh and we didn't even mention 'entanglement,' another whole dimension of quantum that I use in our "journey through the fabric of time."

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Quote from Richard Feynman, physicist: "If you think you understand quantum mechanics, you don't understand quantum mechanics."

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Welcome to the inconceivable! Until next time, be well and safe journeys.

Sincerely,

Kendall Williams, Author

​kendallwilliamsauthor.com​

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