Intro to Morgan Freeman's Through the Wormhole: My Latest Visit with Dan Hansen

This weekend I dropped in to see Dan Hansen to catch up on his upcoming project. Having written about his past two shows at The PROVE and Benchmark Tattoo, I was eager to see what new ideas were spinning through the synapses of his imagination.

The visit began with Dan citing several recent mistakes Obama has made recently like when “Obama called wife Michelle Michael.”

From there we moved to current international events. "Turkey shot down one of Russia’s fighters. What do you think of that?”

He brought up how Russia is bombing Syria… Putin stepping up, taking action while Obama remains passive.

This all triggered a new thought for me. “The Internet is a new form of bread and circuses.”

Dan laughed in agreement.

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I went over in part to hear more about his next art project. Dan shared some of his ideas which will combine cosmological research, quantum mechanics, and new thoughts about time (among other things.) The current question he's been pondering is this: “Am I going to go with the Einstein space/time model or Julian Barbour’s approach where time doesn’t exist, and that there is an expanse of space in which our brains 'create' time?”

"Imagine that all there is is space and no time, and that space is infinite…. It’s all about where you put your marker on the board, and it produces a different outcome," he said.

A variety of topics passed between us or, more accurately, from he to me. Particle waves. The Copenhagen effect. String theory. And the Holographic principle in which he presented some new theory about black holes. "There isn’t information loss in black holes because the information is stored on the outside in an infinitesimally small skin… all the matter that goes in there is stored on that outside layer."

This led to the next question he posited: "What if everything in the universe was a projection on the two dimensional outside edge, which when expanded is experienced in three dimensions?"

The discussion diverted to an exploration of the notion that the universe is like a quantum computer creating life, and earth is the life created. "And we are creating quantum computers," he said.

“I’m going to learn 3-D modeling so I can have nested geometric shapes within geometric shapes…. And even biological life, from mitochondria to the organ level to cities…. Roads are like veins carrying blood cells, and buildings are like pumps pumping the economy."

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Many of our discussions result in my researching topics we'd discussed such as the Mandelbrot Set a few months ago. This weekend's takeaway was learning about Morgan Freeman's program Through the Wormhole on the Science channel. Freeman has played a lot of interesting roles in his career, including president and God, and in this show he is the narrator/host who invites us to pay more attention to the mysteries of the universe. Check out Through the Wormhole.

Meantime, don't be afraid to ask questions. It's how we learn more about life, the world and ourselves.