Does the Past Exist Yet? Evidence Suggests Your Past Isn’t Set in Stone

Excerpt from robertlanza.com
By Robert Lanza 

Recent discoveries require us to rethink our understanding of

history. “The histories of the universe,” said renowned physicist

Stephen Hawking “depend on what is being measured, contrary to the usual

idea that the universe has an objective observer-independent history.”

Is it possible we live and die in a world of illusions? Physics tells

us that objects exist in a suspended state until observed, when they

collapse in to just one outcome. Paradoxically, whether events happened

in the past may not be determined until sometime in your future – and

may even depend on actions that you haven’t taken yet.

In 2002, scientists carried out an amazing experiment, which showed

that particles of light “photons” knew — in advance — what their distant

twins would do in the future. They tested the communication between

pairs of photons — whether to be either a wave or a particle.

Researchers stretched the distance one of the photons had to take to

reach its detector, so that the other photon would hit its own detector

first. The photons taking this path already finished their journeys —

they either collapse into a particle or don’t before their twin

encounters a scrambling device.
Somehow, the particles acted on this

information before it happened, and across distances instantaneously as

if there was no space or time between them. They decided not to become

particles before their twin ever encountered the scrambler. It doesn’t

matter how we set up the experiment. Our mind and its knowledge is the

only thing that determines how they behave. Experiments consistently

confirm these observer-dependent effects.

More recently (Science 315, 966, 2007), scientists in France shot

photons into an apparatus, and showed that what they did could

retroactively change something that had already happened. As the photons

passed a fork in the apparatus, they had to decide whether to behave

like particles or waves when they hit a beam splitter. 
Later on – well

after the photons passed the fork – the experimenter could randomly

switch a second beam splitter on and off. It turns out that what the

observer decided at that point, determined what the particle actually

did at the fork in the past. At that moment, the experimenter chose his

history.

Of course, we live in the same world. Particles have a range of

possible states, and it’s not until observed that they take on

properties. So until the present is determined, how can there be a past?

According to visionary physicist John Wheeler (who coined the word

“black hole”), “The quantum principle shows that there is a sense in

which what an observer will do in the future defines what happens in the

past.” Part of the past is locked in when you observe things and the

“probability waves collapse.” But there’s still uncertainty, for

instance, as to what’s underneath your feet. If you dig a hole, there’s a

probability you’ll find a boulder. Say you hit a boulder, the glacial

movements of the past that account for the rock being in exactly that

spot will change as described in the Science experiment.

But what about dinosaur fossils? Fossils are really no different than

anything else in nature. For instance, the carbon atoms in your body

are “fossils” created in the heart of exploding supernova stars. 
Bottom

line: reality begins and ends with the observer. “We are participators,”

Wheeler said “in bringing about something of the universe in the

distant past.” Before his death, he stated that when observing light

from a quasar, we set up a quantum observation on an enormously large

scale. It means, he said, the measurements made on the light now,

determines the path it took billions of years ago.

Like the light from Wheeler’s quasar, historical events such as who

killed JFK, might also depend on events that haven’t occurred yet.

There’s enough uncertainty that it could be one person in one set of

circumstances, or another person in another. Although JFK was

assassinated, you only possess fragments of information about the event.

But as you investigate, you collapse more and more reality. According

to biocentrism, space and time are relative to the individual observer –

we each carry them around like turtles with shells.

History is a biological phenomenon — it’s the logic of what you, the

animal observer experiences. You have multiple possible futures, each

with a different history like in the Science experiment. Consider the

JFK example: say two gunmen shot at JFK, and there was an equal chance

one or the other killed him. This would be a situation much like the

famous Schrödinger’s cat experiment, in which the cat is both alive and

dead — both possibilities exist until you open the box and investigate.

“We must re-think all that we have ever learned about the past, human

evolution and the nature of reality, if we are ever to find our true

place in the cosmos,” says Constance Hilliard, a historian of science at

UNT. Choices you haven’t made yet might determine which of your

childhood friends are still alive, or whether your dog got hit by a car

yesterday. In fact, you might even collapse realities that determine

whether Noah’s Ark sank. “The universe,” said John Haldane, “is not only

queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose.”

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Does the Past Exist Yet? Evidence Suggests Your Past Isn’t Set in Stone