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Page 2, News, Tuesday, August 6, 1991 Time and a random universe Do you remember back to your old high school science courses? You know, the ones where you weren't really paying any attention but some of the immutable concepts slipped through anyway. Like "The universe operates like a huge mechanical clock" or "The atom looks like a miniature solar sys- tem". Do you, however, recall hearing things like "Space and time are relative and can shrink and expand like a rubber band" or "Objects only appear as they do because you're observing them"? No? Well, the funny thing is that these last weird statements are much closer to the "truth" than the first two. My purpose is not to mire anybody down in an unwanted science lesson, but to express a certain perplexity at the hushed nature of what could amount to being one of the most fantastic scientif- ic/philosophical/theological discoveries in recent history. It occurred just after the turn of the century and was called the Quantum Theory (no, not the "Quantum Leap"). . This theory fol- lowed some dramatic revelations about space, time and gravity by Einstein called the Relativistic Theories (specif- ic and general). Together, these concepts and theo- ries have been remarkably successful at explaining our world and have been labelled as the "New Physics". Now I know what you're thinking. . . with terms like "quantum", "relativism" and "physics", this space is quickly taking the form of bird cage liner. But hold on, I don't intend to wax on about the technical aspects of these theories, so you can shelf your Mathaphobia. How- ever, I will attempt to outline a few of these "new realities" and their possible exist in this space/time map much the same way that Thunder Bay exists on your road map. Weird? Bizarre? Absolutely, but intriguingly true! Another bizarre reality is about the nature of events. Recall Sir Isaac New- ton's laws (remember him, the guy with the apple). He showed that all matter implications. conformed with set laws of motion and One of was hence the first bits 1 i completely of old clas- Chris Reid predictable: S=16 a. i i.e: 2 novo' TANG TFEAGMEUL somenin the New and position Physics laid of a particle is to rest was the concept of the absolute known (among other attributes), then its and flowing nature of time. It has been behaviour can be foretold. proven that time will shrink and expand ("pass" slower or faster) depending on the velocity at which one is travelling. For example, if reading this article in a car travelling at a certain speed, time is "going by" slower for you than somebody reading it at their kitchen table (although at these slow speeds, the change is unnoticeable). The amazing reality is that time is relative to each observer. We all carry our own person- al clocks. Time itself extends in space like the lines of length, width and height. It is like a fourth dimension. This means that all events (past, present and future, if I can use these terms) already exist and are laid out like a map: i.e. events from next year already This is a classical view and, unfortu- nately, was blown out of the water by the new physics. Events on a subatom- ic level occur randomly. It is impossi- ble to say with 100 per cent certainty where an electron or atom will appear or how it travels. As a matter of fact, it is even impossible to measure a parti- cle's position and momentum together. You can have one but not the other. This quantum reality is a world of prob- abilities (like raising children). Instead of the solid solar system-like world of the atom, many scientists now view these particles as fuzzy, nebulous ghosts that exhibit all probable characteristics at once (i.e. a tossed coin in this worid would show both heads and tails at the same time). "Hah," you laugh. "Sci-Fi claptrap," you say. Not true. These views are based on scientific experiment. In fact, a now popular view describes all appar- ent reality as observer created! In other words, objects appear as they do because we observe them. When we're not looking, matter lapses back into the fuzzy, ghostly world of quantum reality. Think of the implications! Our reality, everything we see about us, may be dependent on our con- science participation. In the absence of human presence, the deep reality about us could transform into an indescribable hodgepodge of probabilities completely alien to anything we can imagine! So, back to my original question. Where is the fanfare or the hoopla or the outrage with this New Physics? It isn't the ramblings from a Jules Verne novel, but one of the most successful and proven theories in the history of science and its philosophical and theo- logical implications are astounding. A universe that is random? Observer-cre- ated reality? Time that shrinks and expands? What's the Pope got to say about all this? Why wasn't I taught all this in high school? Where the hell is David Suzuki? If someone said that they'd found evidence of the existence of God, I'm sure people would take notice. Continued on page 11 Search On my recent summer holiday, I vis- ited my home town of Carnduff, Saskatchewan. My aunt and uncle, John and Ada, were celebrating their 40th wedding anniversary. As a pudgy- cheeked curly-haired 3 year old, I had been the ring bearer at their wedding. Nearly all the original wedding party came back for the 40th - my mother the matron of honour, the bridesmaid Louise - only the best man, my uncle Bob, was unable to attend because of his work at General Motors in Oshawa, Ontario. All four of John and Ada's daughters came home from the far corners of the earth - two from Alberta, one from New Zealand and one from Rhode Island. It was the kind of extended family event that happens all too rarely these days: a search for roots that aren't quite there any more - a quest for a spirit of belonging to something bigger than our own lives. . I left with only an inkling of those roots and that spirit. We now have fresh memories and photographs of each other - older, more responsibilities, new circumstances. But such memories seem superficial. A spirit of belonging wasn't captured, if indeed it had been there 40 years ago when we all lived in the same small town. Whatever we shared back then has been lost in the mists of time and fading memories. That personal odyssey made me remember Mike Wanakamik, from Pays for Ma-Kuh - Memories and Rossport on the north shore of Lake Superior. Mike died this past winter, I've been told. Only 63. I interviewed him in May of last year, at his home beside the river. At the age of seven, he'd been sent away to an indian residential school in Thunder Bay from his original home on the Whitesand reserve, near Armstrong. He grew up believing his mother sent him to the school because she couldn't look after him. When he was kicked out of school of his soul. In later life, he tried to recapture his lost roots. He attended a ceremony in Thunder Bay with a medicine man, or traditional healer - a shaman, or holy man. He sought out the healer because of a persistent pain in his chest. At the ceremony, gifts such as tobacco were presented, then the lights were turned off and the windows blacked out. The shaman made a small ball out of some tobacco and some other things Mike 'NORTHERN wasn't quite at 14, he sure what thought his z INSIGHTS they were. "It mother was | by Larry Sanders was really dead. -- He dark, .+-.real took jobs in hospital laundromats and in dry cleaning stores, before moving back into the bush. He cut pulp all over the north, then settled down with a wife and guarded forest fire towers for 18 summers. As a young adult, he learned that his mother was indeed still alive, had remarried, had three children, and had moved to the hamlet of Auden, on the CN north line, east of Armstrong. He told me he went back once, "but we didn't get along. I left after a month." -- Mike's loss of roots was much more violent than mine. The residential school, he told me, strapped anyone "with a leather belt about an inch thick" if they were caught speaking Ojibway. "Now," he said, "I can't talk Indian any more." I got the feeling that more than just Mike's original language had been beaten out of him - he'd also lost apiece pitch dark...and he said some words, and he hit the little drum and then we Saw these sparks coming...from the side, from the steps, all around the peo- ple. And that spark just sat over that guy's head. You couldn't see him." The shaman then announced "in the old country, there's a lady sick down there." On command, "all that silver stuff (the sparks) went right out through the door and disappeared."| Mike snapped his fingers together to indicate how quickly it happened. Then the room went still, and stayed that way for two hours - the silence broken only now and then by the shaman quietly beating the small drum. After about two hours, Mike said "He threw this ball to me. I don't know how he knew where I was sitting, because it. was so dark. He threw the ball right to me and he said 'there's a guy there who's got'a sore chest.' And all-the heat went right through my body, right through my arms. I thought some- body put a match to me and I was scared. Then after a while we hear this eagle flying around the room -you could hear the wings." Mike made a swooshing sound and waved his hands back and forth, remembering the eagle in the darkened room. "Two minutes after that, there was a Claw behind my back. a bear claw. He looks after me now. The bear, -he's my friend. He's my guardian angel." The bear Mike met that night is called Ma-Kuh. Mike met Ma-Kuh one more time, at a sweat lodge ceremony. Ma-Kuh, Mike said, "keeps an eye on me when I go through the bush. He wouldn't touch me or tackle me or any- thing." Other people, Mike said, also have a spirit guardian, like his Ma-Kuh. Some have found a deer, some a raven, some a moose. Mike also believed that years ago, his Anishnabek ancestors who summered on the Rossport Islands found their spiritual selves in rock pits built on the beach - pits still there today, puzzling archaeologists about their real purpose. After three or four days of fasting alone in one of the pits, an ado- lescent would be visited by an animal, like Mike's Ma-Kuh. That animal then became the adolescent's identifying continued on page 10