{"id":2526,"date":"2009-09-10T08:56:20","date_gmt":"2009-09-10T15:56:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/cosmicvariance\/2009\/09\/10\/attack-of-the-boltzmann-brains\/"},"modified":"2013-08-22T11:13:04","modified_gmt":"2013-08-22T18:13:04","slug":"attack-of-the-boltzmann-brains","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/2009\/09\/10\/attack-of-the-boltzmann-brains\/","title":{"rendered":"Attack of the Boltzmann Brains!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It is a truth universally acknowledged that a provocative scientific idea will, before too long, end up in the hands of villains that must be fought by superheroes.  Witness <a href=\"http:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/2006\/08\/01\/boltzmanns-anthropic-brain\/\">Boltzmann brains<\/a>.  Sure, they&#8217;ve already made <a href=\"http:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/2009\/04\/27\/boltzmann-in-the-funny-pages\/\">a cameo in Dilbert<\/a>, but the stakes were pretty low.  Now <a href=\"http:\/\/www.physics.umn.edu\/people\/kakalios.html\">Jim Kakalios<\/a> (author of the excellent <em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.physicsofsuperheroes.com\/\">The Physics of Superheroes<\/a><\/em>) sends along sends along a couple of snippets from <a href=\"http:\/\/www.comicbookresources.com\/?page=user_review&amp;id=1339\"><em>The Incredible Hercules<\/em> #133<\/a> &#8212; in which our intrepid protagonists are attacked by freak observers fluctuated out of thermal equilibrium!<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/marvel.com\/catalog\/?id=12619\"><img src='http:\/\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/cosmicvariance\/files\/2009\/09\/herc-002b.jpg' alt='Boltzmann Brains in The Incredible Hercules' \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Actually here they are described as &#8220;freaky observers,&#8221; rather than the more conventional &#8220;freak observers.&#8221;  That description brings to mind <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theonion.com\/content\/columnists\/view\/smoove\">Smoove B<\/a> rather than Ludwig Boltzmann, but who knows?  Maybe unlikely thermal fluctuations tend to be pretty kinky.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/marvel.com\/catalog\/?id=12619\"><img src='http:\/\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/cosmicvariance\/files\/2009\/09\/herc-003b.jpg' alt='Boltzmann Brains in The Incredible Hercules' \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>And yes, before you all start in:  we know that Boltzmann Brains don&#8217;t really make for a credible alien menace, if you insist on being persnickety about what they supposedly really represent.  It&#8217;s not that they &#8220;perceive&#8221; a universe more chaotic than ours &#8212; it&#8217;s that they would dominate the total number of observers if the universe really were more chaotic than ours.  (Which it isn&#8217;t!)  Also, they would tend to dissolve back into the chaos from which they came, rather than staging a coordinated attack on our homeland.  Still!  What a novel challenge for the Allies&#8217; greatest hero.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It is a truth universally acknowledged that a provocative scientific idea will, before too long, end up in the hands of villains that must be fought by superheroes. Witness Boltzmann brains. Sure, they&#8217;ve already made a cameo in Dilbert, but the stakes were pretty low. Now Jim Kakalios (author of the excellent The Physics of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,31,35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2526","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-humor","category-science-and-the-media","category-time"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2526","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2526"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2526\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11434,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2526\/revisions\/11434"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2526"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2526"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2526"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}