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Showing posts with the label cycles

Is Life a Zero-Player Game?

Think about it. If life really is some sort of game and we are just characters in one giant artificial intelligence play, then... Well, let's just say that we can safely recognize not very enjoyable rules we unconscionably must obey. They are simple. We must play the game. We can't quit the game. We can't win. Oh, and yes, if life really is a game, then we are only either slaves in one master-puppeteer god-like performance, or we could be just a bunch of units interacting with each other in a sort of limited free will world or a world where free will is just an illusion. Now, if life really WAS a game, what would you prefer?

Olivia Wilde & Garrett Hedlund in 'Tron: Legacy'*

It is obvious that the first option is what we easily recognize as a religious world. If you ask me, this is a simple marionette type of world in which we, being game units, have little or no influence in the game, and we must obey divine rules and please the puppeteer. From my point of view, let's just hope this is not the case. However, the second scenario is something worthwhile to give further thought to. If life is something like one large simulation with characters playing the game independently without creator influence during the game, then we are just participating in one giant zero-player environment that started eons ago in the point of history where evolution began with a predefined start pattern. And evolution is nothing more than just a set of rules in the complex game algorithm, and time is just an iteration flow in patterns changing from one state into another by following the rules.

Confused?

Ok, let's simplify the scope and check one famous zero-player game that might help understanding the basic principle. The inventor is perhaps one of the great minds in the world, John Horton Conway, a mathematician from Princeton University, who tried to simplify the original John von Neumann idea to explain evolution with the creation of a mathematical model without explosive growth over time, using just small initial patterns with unstoppable and unpredictable outcomes with a set of rules as simple as possible, which would drive the entire system forward in time. Conway came up with a brilliant two-dimensional matrix where one dot represents one living cell. Cells obey four simple rules:

1. Any live cell with fewer than two live neighbors dies (death by underpopulation).
2. Any live cell with more than three live neighbors dies (death by overpopulation).
3. Any live cell with two or three live neighbors continues to the next generation (survival).
4. Any dead cells of exactly three live neighbors will come back to life (birth).

Conway's matrix is, just like life, infinite in size, but for demonstration purposes the following example is finite matrix that. Just FYI, as a single cell is clickable, I couldn't make it mobile or any small display friendly. To try it out, you would really need to use an old-fashioned computer screen and mouse pointer. Please feel free to play and create your own pattern and see what happens. This is, of course, a zero-player game, so your godlike intervention in this game is only to create the initial organism. The Conway's game of life then operates on its own, and you can only watch.


Conway's brilliant experiment is only a two-dimensional game with a small number of simple rules, yet it opens endless fun and endless variations in the evolution of different patterns and their interactions. Now, is it possible to create, hypothetically speaking, a very complicated game on a molecular level with complicated rules within the realm of chemistry? And instead of an endless matrix, use the three-dimensional surface of a planet? Is that what the Earth is? One giant playground with molecules in endless interactions with each other, and we are today just a snapshot in the game's current evolution stage?

It surely fits the world surrounding us and the one in the past. In this game, the world before was less complex than it is today, and the world today is less complex than the one from the future. Living units in the game are evolving due to infinite interactions, and if we go to the very beginning, to the first pattern of living cells, some 3.8 billion years ago, approximately 750 million years after Earth was formed, it is clear that we indeed might be living in a complex biological game. The game is without players and puppeteers and only with living organisms with developed conscious minds. In order to neatly describe the current stage of the game, I will just quote Stephen Hawking: "We humans are highly complex biological machines behaving in accordance with the laws of nature. Our brains create and sustain our conscious minds through an extraordinary network of interacting neurons. That consciousness creates a three-dimensional model of the outside world: a best-fit model that we call reality."

Red Pill or Blue Pill?***

You might be asking now where free will fits in the game. If we are not players per se, then do we even possess such things? Are we able, being units in the game, just by following the rules, no matter how complex they are, to choose our own course of action without constraints and fate? If the game model like this one is correct, then I am pretty sure we can stop thinking about free will. There is no such thing, at least in the raw meaning of the word. Yes, we are able to control our actions and to choose certain paths, which gives us the illusion of free will, but even if we choose one path in favor of another, we are not really capable of calculating where this chosen path really leads to or where it ends. There are simply too many unknown variables on the way. Not to mention that we are completely incapable of knowing who or what we will stumble on on the chosen path and how this new interaction will play out in the game.

But the beautiful thing in this mind experiment called "Game of Life" is that even though we only have limited free will, as it seems, there is no fate as well. And even though the rules are definite and inexorable, due to the enormous size of the game level and complexity of the rules and the infinite number of organisms and molecules, it is really impossible to calculate the outcome of the game or any of the game's parts separated either in space or in time. At least from the inside of the game. And as it appears, there is no outside of the game as well. If there was, then, like in Conway's game embedded in this post above, there could be a "reset" button somewhere. "The button" that has perhaps been pressed about five times so far.****


But, like in any game, there might be glitches, lags, and bugs (like fabulously portrayed in Tron movies and series*). And I definitely had that in mind when last summer Viktor and I filmed a short movie with the same name** that exploits this very scientific thought. It's our first and only movie so far, so it's full of imperfection, but to sum it up, its plot tells a story about a young boy who's following a glitch in the system, presented in real life as a firefly, through numerous portals to the place where he meets a man with the final orb, the artifact that seems to be a way in for full understanding of life itself, its origin, and the rules it is built on. The entire movie is embedded above, and for more about all the filming and production, please find the referenced link within.

Image refs:
* http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1104001/,
** http://www.milanzivic.com/2016/08/game-of-life.html
*** Cornell Math Explorers' Club

Code ref:
** https://codepen.io/RBSpatz/pen/rLyNLb

Refs:
**** http://www.milanzivic.com/2015/06/the-sixth-great-dying.html
http://www.bitstorm.org/gameoflife/lexicon/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway_Game_of_Life
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-player_game
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Horton_Conway
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_von_Neumann
http://www.hawking.org.uk/videos.html
http://www.physicsoftheuniverse.com/topics_life.html
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK9841/
http://www.iep.utm.edu/freewill/
 

The Sixth Great Dying

Just like a single ant who's lost in the large expanse of Brazilian Casino Beach (Praia do Cassino, 250 km in length, considered to be the largest beach on Earth) and feels as small as possible in the surrounding space, we humans are experiencing a similar sensation when it comes to space and especially time. But, contrary to ants, we have the ultimate tool, called science, that is allowing us to see beyond the horizon. If we could place ourselves in an ant's shoes, we would find clues and evidence all around us, and, metaphorically speaking, no matter the large quantities of sand grains, we would know that we were on the beach.


And with time, when it comes to the history of life, all the clues lie in fossil records of coral reefs. The main study, performed by J.E.N. Veron in his publication "A Reef in Time", identified five periods in Earth's history with major extinction of corals that built reefs. In all five periods, fossil records of the reefs show that it took millions of years for reef systems to recover fully, and these five periods in time are now called "reef gaps". In simple words, five major events attacked life on Earth in the previous 500 million years, and corals successfully recorded them all. We now recognize these time periods as "The Five Mass Extinction Events" that successfully wiped out 99.9% of all species that ever evolved and lived on Earth. That includes all marine life, plants, and animal species crawling on the surface. We and everything that moves and considers itself alive today are just descendants of those 0.01% that survived five great cataclysms. Here's a short glimpse of all five events and their cruel aftermath.

1. 430+ million years ago, the first great mass extinction event took place at the end of the Ordovician, with 60% of both terrestrial and marine life being exterminated.

2. 360+ million years ago in the Late Devonian period, the second armageddon was probably the sum of several extinctions over a short period rather than just one massive one. 70 percent of marine species died, but due to the long-lasting nature of the multiple events, terrestrial plants and animals were largely unaffected.

3. The third extinction happened 250+ million years ago, and it was the most devastating one so far. It is nicknamed "The Great Dying", as up to 96% of all species went extinct. Reefs didn't reappear for about 10 million years, and everything that exists today is a remnant of those 4% who survived it.

4. The end The Triassic mass extinction, which happened 200+ million years ago, was the Pangea splitting event due to a large amount of volcanic eruptions and lava floods. Around 80% of all land quadrupeds also went extinct in the process of forming the Atlantic Ocean.

5. The end of the Cretaceous mass extinction, 65 million years ago, is the most famous dinosaur killer event. Virtually no large land animals survived. 16 percent of marine families, 47 percent of marine genera, and 18 percent of land vertebrate families, including the dinosaurs, died.

In addition to reef records, a couple of other studies help and give us a clearer picture of what really happened and how exactly all those armageddons came to take place at all. The major one is the astronomical study of Earth's complex motion over time. The theory is known as Milankovitch Cycles I wrote about before in the post "Ice Age vs. Global Warming". In short, it summarized several planetary motions that lead to periodical dramatic changes of the climate. The main period is identified as a 100,000-year cycle that forces our planet to go into glacial periods, or what we are familiar with as "The Ice Ages". As it seems, reef gaps don't correspond to this cycle at all. They don't even match the recognized 400,000-year cycle we today know as carbon dioxide variations in oceans, but the first thing we notice in the below chart is the period of more or less 100 million years between two extinctions. Does there really exist some kind of cycle, or was it just a cosmic coincidence? We don't know, but it seems that planetary cycles are not enough to trigger such a big event. I am guessing that several conditions should be met in order to make it happen. In addition to the regular cycle, the smoking gun could also be a massive supervolcanic event or an extraterrestrial collision with a large comet or mountain-sized rock from space.


Recently, and what triggers me to write this post, I read a couple of articles that are claiming we are dangerously close to or even living in the sixth extinction event that will have the power to get rid of us entirely. I am not really convinced at this point. Of course, there's the fact that many species have already vanished due to human activities (like some bird species due to deforestation or the Japanese sea lion that was harvested to the last one by fishermen). The energy needed to sustain all life on Earth is definitely limited, but nobody knows exactly where the red line is. According to Dr. Hans Rosling and his research, nature has already started to reduce the human population, and its peak is supposed to be within next decades from now, considering observed fertility rates so far. After that, the human population might start degrading in numbers and be more or less regulated by nature. The same goes with other species that could be following natural equilibrium as well. However, these are just speculations and scientific guesses, and it remains to be proven in the near future. On the other hand, industrialization and pollution are two completely different issues. Something we need to take more seriously. They are ultimately dangerous.

Perhaps centuries ago, just like the ant from the beginning of the story, humans were also small in numbers, but today we have grown enormously and become, considerably and astronomically speaking, the most dangerous player for our own home. We saw that the smoking gun in a couple of previous mass extinctions was large and massive volcano eruptions and/or solar system collisions, but in the potential upcoming sixth event, as it seems, we would not need any inner or extraterrestrial excuses. CO₂ and other greenhouse gases we keep producing and letting out in the air could be enough. Atmospheric CO₂ concentrations that I checked two years ago are slightly bigger today, and the curve has been going up ever since measurement started. In May 2015 it was 403.70 ppmv (parts per million volume), and it was 150+ ppmv higher than normal. Sixty years ago the number was 320 ppmv.


Global warming, which is a direct consequence of the risen gases in the atmosphere, is the least of our worries. A further problem with CO₂ is that all the water in planetary oceans is acting as one giant CO₂ eater. It was calculated that ppmv of greenhouse gases should not be over 240±5 ppmv in order for normal glacial-interglacial cycles to function. The substantial increase in CO₂ concentration in the atmosphere, over a short amount of time, that we are facing right now is dramatically reducing the pH of the oceans, and it is happening right now. Even if we stop emitting CO₂ completely, the process might continue to the point of fatal acidification effects in the face of dramatically reduced oxygen in water.

And we will have dead corals again. All over the place. Life will try to adapt, but whether or not it will be successful, we will definitely bring ourselves a worldwide catastrophe, if not another and this time mortal event with the "civilization killer" nickname written all over it.

Refs:
https://www.co2.earth/co2-ice-core-data
https://hiddencause.wordpress.com/the-fate-of-corals/
 

Ice Age vs Global Warming

Do you know what one significant difference is between Uranus and all the other planets in the solar system? Unlike the other seven planets, which, more or less, rotate in a "normal" up-down position (or down-up in the case of Venus), Uranus is quite abnormal. Its north-south pole rotational axis lies almost in the ecliptic because it is tilted by 97.8 degrees and rotates in an almost vertical direction toward the orbiting plane. In simple words, Uranus is one giant rolling ball where, if you are located on its pole, you would be experiencing only one day and one night during its 84-year-long orbit, while if you are settled near the equator, thanks to the ultra-fast rotation time (for a giant planet) of 17 hours, you would be experiencing fast switching between day and night, and during both solstices, the Sun would always be on the horizon. Thanks to this strange position of Uranus' axis (probably due to some cosmic collision that happened in the early solar system), the weather and climate on Uranus are always dramatic in the form of huge apocalyptic storms one after another.

Uranus—a hypothetical view from the nearest moon

Of course, we don't have to go that far outside the Sun's habitable zone to prove that the position of the rotational axis can cause dramatic climate changes on the planet's surface. Let's look in our own front yard and see how a couple of main astronomical properties influence the climate on Earth. Is it possible that even a slight change in, for example, Earth's orbit can cause some dramatic climate changes over the years? I am sure this question was exactly what was itching Milutin Milankovitch's mind almost a century ago when he first read James Croll's bold idea of the effects of variations of the Earth's orbit on climate cycles. Croll's theory was generally rejected by the scientific mainstream at the time, but this didn't stop Milankovitch from expanding his idea and eventually creating a mathematical model capable of calculating the time frames of all climate changes that happened in the past half a million years and further. Today this theory is well known as Milankovitch Cycles or Insolation Theory, with approximately 100,000 years of cyclicity between ice ages.

Unfortunately, Milankovitch died some 20 years before his model was proven in 1976, when one geological study confirmed consistency of the calculated data with the examined deep-sea sediment cores. Past records of temperature measurement provided by the Foresight Institute recovered from a Greenland ice core also show a drop in temperature for the past 50,000 years similar to the Milankovitch graph shown below. The last curve in the graph represents stages of glaciation, or, in simple words, turning the Earth into a giant ice ball in the past million years. The peaks (hot and cold) are called interglacial and glacial periods. Right now we are living in the fourth interglacial period in the past 400,000 years, and soon, astronomically speaking, we are going to start heading back toward another ice age. Exactly when it is going to happen is hard to predict, but before speculating about future time frames, let's first try to understand the first three curves.


The basics under the theory are so-called insolation calculations based on orbital cycles (cycled amount of sunlight hitting the Earth). Milankovitch used Ludwig Pilgrim's orbital calculations to make a detailed model of insolation periods initially for the previous 130,000 years (later expanded to 650,000 years). Three orbital variations are used in this complex math. The first one is changes in Earth's orbit around the sun (eccentricity), the second is the tilt of Earth's axis (obliquity), and the third represents the wobble of Earth's axis (precession).

The Eccentricity Cycle (Elliptical Cycle)
Due to other planets' gravitational influences, Earth's orbit has an approximate 100,000-year cycle of slight changes. It goes from a nearly circular orbit toward a mildly elliptical one. During the "elliptical" period, Earth is receiving less solar radiation compared to the "circular" part.

The Obliquity Cycle (Axial Tilt)
We saw in the beginning how Uranus' unusual axial tilt can cause dramatic climate. With the exception of Mercury and Venus with their almost vertical no-tilt position of rotational axis (if we disregard Venus's almost 180° tilt positioning the planet upside down), all other planets are tilted around 25 degrees. This means that a planet's hemispheres can be tilted toward or against the Sun, giving the planet seasons with different amounts of sunshine during one orbit cycle. The lower angle means that sun rays are penetrating the atmosphere better, warming the surface more compared to the planet's other hemisphere, where the angle is higher. Now if we add the fact that the axis angle is changing over time, and in Earth's case this goes from 22.1° to 24.5° and back again over a period of 41,000 years, it is obvious that when this axial tilt changes over time by as little as 1 degree, it can cause serious effects to the global insolation mentioned above.

The Precession Cycle (Wobble)
The last, but not the least, motion in this equation is Earth's wobbling. Not only is that axis changing its angle over time, but it also, like some spin-top toy, wobbles. This "feature" is positioning Earth's axis today almost directly toward Polaris, commonly known as the "North Star", and in half a period of time it will be pointing directly to Vega. This is caused by the planet not being a perfect round ball and also by the close vicinity of the Sun and the Moon with their strong gravitational forces. This cycle is the shortest, and it occurs every 26,000 years.


Doctor Who in one of the episodes said that he was capable of feeling all these motions as they happen, but hopefully and thankfully, in the real world, we humans are too small in both size and time frame of our individual existence; otherwise, I am not sure what the exact consequence would be if we could really sense planetary motions. Sci-fi aside, all these three motion cycles can cause changes in the quantity of sunlight hitting the Earth's surface, and insolation theory in a nutshell is basically one mathematical model capable of calculating solar forcing (yellow line in the above graph) for any chosen latitude at any point in time, considering the orbital position of the Earth and the condition of the planetary axis. Of course, even though this theory has overwhelming support in mainstream science, it's still far from being perfect. There are problems and concerns posted in previous years and decades, and the main one is that it doesn't include the inclination of the earth's orbit to the ecliptic, which is another 100,000-year cycle, more or less. Also, in observed glacial data, even though the 100ky cycle is recognized, the temperature records do not correlate perfectly with insolation theory. There are more suggestions, like including the longest eccentricity cycle or 400,000 years of carbon dioxide variations in oceans and even including consequences of "artificial" production of greenhouse gases since the early 19th century and the birth of the industrial revolution. In other words, the theory has plenty of room for improvement, and its perfection is expected.

One thing is for sure: this research is one of the most complex sciences out there. There are simply too many inputs and variables. One historical data point I read in Wikipedia was that Milankovitch needed 100+ days to manually calculate cycles for the past 650,000 years and only for three latitudes.

Leonardo DiCaprio's Before the flood

Ok, now that we know how Earth "works" in relation to its own climate, I think it is the perfect time in this post to ask the obvious question(s). As we know for sure that we have been living for some time now in the peak of an interglacial period, is it possible to use the theory and glacial data to predict the next ice age? More importantly, are humans capable enough to postpone the next ice age with emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases? In the Nature Geoscience paper named "Determining the natural length of the current interglacial" they concluded that, according to all we know about insolation and CO2 forcing, the next ice age is very close, and it should start happening within the next 1500 years. The only condition is for atmospheric CO₂ concentrations to be lower than 240±5 ppmv.

Guess what? On this very day it is 400 ppmv (May, 2013).

Well, now is the time for an even more obvious question. Did we cross the point of no return? Did we manage to cheat natural astronomical cycles and actually head toward global warming instead of an ice age? Or the oceans will prevail one more time and over the next millenniums will manage to absorb a record amount of carbon dioxide in the previous million years and introduce the next ice age with little delay this time? Again, some facts are pointing toward two cruel possible scenarios. If the next ice age eventually comes, it will ultimately pose a significant threat to mankind in the form of a lack of energy, food, and enough landmasses to sustain a large human population, not to mention all other species. On the other hand, if CO₂ levels uncontrollably continue to rise, the resulting global warming is equally or even more dangerous. Melted ice will raise ocean levels and sink large coastal cities all over the world. About 10% of people live in low-elevation coastal zones. Just imagine the migration of 600 million people in the potential scenario of global warming.

The Expanse—Flood blockage in futuristic NYC

This is the lottery we cannot win. It seems that time is running out, and within the next decade, we need to find a solution for ultimate control of greenhouse gases. Additionally, with all potential hazards on the way, it seems that we can't allow nature to take us in some dramatic ice age or global warming.

It's a simple matter of pure survival.

No pressure.

Original post date: June 2013, Updates: November 2016, December 2017

Image ref:
https://www.beforetheflood.com/
https://sites.google.com/a/isd47.org/rogersesci2015third/home/20-the-weirdest-tilt
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3230854/

Story refs:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milankovitch_cycles
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0436992/

More references:
http://www.universetoday.com/19305/seasons-on-uranus/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_age
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-16439807
http://co2now.org/
http://ossfoundation.us/projects/environment/global-warming/milankovitch-cycles
http://muller.lbl.gov/pages/IceAgeBook/IceAgeTheories.html
http://www.eoearth.org/view/article/154612/
http://frank-davis.livejournal.com/39586.html