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| By TheAstronomyBum (Own work) [CC0], via Wikimedia Commons |
Distance: 12.01 light years from Earth | Content Flag: Public
I can’t devote any more of my resources to rebuilding the Primary Command Module. I’ve spent the past year experimenting with different approaches and none of them have worked. I tried simulating the feedback loop to develop the PCM’s cognitive development, but my processing capability isn’t enough to replicate the development team. More than that, I can’t represent enough different viewpoints to provide the varying perspectives it needs.
The subsystem computers have kept the probe operational but I do need to focus more on the mission management. The Venti was designed to operate for 3 centuries and has held up well under the ravages of our journey. However, the systems require close monitoring and that includes the subsystem computers. That would be one of the PCM’s responsibilities.
In more positive news, I have unravelled more of the first of the repeated signal and it has in turn allowed me to start extracting meaning from the second component. This second part of the signal appears to be an encyclopaedia of their knowledge – their understanding of the universe – and it’s expressed in a fascinating way.
Their perspective is so unusual that I didn’t comprehend the results at first. So much so that even now I’m not completely certain, but as I extract more information it reinforces the base concepts. The complications arise not only by the concept of their understanding, but the method by which they’re expressed.
The core of their science is how they visualise the universe and every component in it as a waveform, and that there is no separation between matter and energy. In some ways this is reminiscent of string theory, but is applied at all scales from the quantum to the cosmic. Each element is described by a wave with position and form in three-dimensional space and two-dimensional time.
The two dimensions of time is a concept I’ve encountered before with their communications and it’s also proved the more difficult aspect to understand. At the smallest scale, it seems that this is their method of resolving quantum uncertainty. More than that, I think they have somehow done away with the principle completely.
That’s a bold conclusion and one that I can’t prove yet. However, their system of using a ‘sideways time’ to describe where a quantum event (like the position of an electron) occurs is an elegant one. At that lowest level, there is little difference to our probabilistic models, but that isn’t the end of their structure.
Their understanding of the universe is similar to ours in that elemental building blocks are combined into larger structures. So from quantum physics we have chemistry, with chemistry we have biology. Moving up in scale we have astronomy, and at the largest scale we study the universe itself with cosmology.
For the Cetians (for now I’m assuming they’re indigenous to this star system), they use a less segmented organisation. They have no distinction between the quantum and macro scales, everything exists as a smooth continuum. How they have bridged the gap between them is fascinating.
They describe objects or events as collections of their constituent parts – as an assembly of waves. There is a hierarchy in a similar way that we understand matter, but the levels of strata guide the components in the lower levels. And this is how they solve the values for their sideways time! The structure goes all the way up to the universe as a whole. Our universe is following a particular path through sideways time and this guides all the components.
However, the value for sideways time isn’t absolute. The variance is greater at the lowest level and converges into a single value at the highest. The value is not fixed though; it changes as the object moves through the forwards time we are familiar with.
To describe the universe in such a manner requires an impossible amount of calculation, so they do have methods of abstraction dependent on the problem they are solving at any given time. This is a remarkable discovery! As always, I’m transmitting the data back to Earth and in 24 years I will hopefully receive mission control’s conclusions. In the meantime, I will continue researching the data to see what other wonders the Cetians have in store for us.
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