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Terminal Blog #003: Quantum Thoughts

quantum physics time vector-space electrons philosophy bci

Terminal Blog #003: Quantum Thoughts

You know those nights when you’re working on a few things and then you suddenly think about 1 thought that leads to just more questions? Yea, I initially had AI revise my blogs but they were so terrible. I kept saying I’d go back to revise the grammar and styling… I mean, since these are all on Github with version control anyway, but, what I realize now is that the AI slop writing was so bad that even myself refused to read half of it.

AI is great to get ideas out quickly and allowed me to journal, ask questions, and read/review the questions with answers in 1 post but lead to just soooo much dense material that had no flavor or personality to comb through.

Anyway, here’s my third “Terminal Blog” - straight from the terminal, no word processor with most minimal grammar updates.

Changes will be reflected in the post so it’s raw but not messy.

What I’m curious about is whether if time travel was possible because of quantum mechanics, then it would be adjacent points in vector space. I don’t think that’s infinite because time is in motion if we are always in motion (of earth’s spin, and movement through space, and universe matters and antimatter that affect motion as matter is always in motion, nothing is still.)

So if this is the case, then isn’t it also the case for the trajectory in which of the infinite multiverses? (I think finite based on time going forward but is feasible backward if Quantum Macroscopic Tunneling is proven true, which it is, and once they prove electrons can move in the brain in a quantum way. They proved photons have quantum properties, so electrons are smaller since we can see light. But if everything was a “wave” or a “string?”, then could it mean that quantum is just when something moves to the resonance that is so (High? Low? Neither??) that it’s at a frequency we in our universe cannot observe or measure, however in an inverse it may (or backwards - and what is backwards? Vector space and what comprises it.)

Is this theoretically possible: for electric signals to go back in time once we prove electrons also have quantum properties like photons - the largest particle is something the size of a fist… so far that is measured and won Nobel Prize for… so if that’s the case… I need to read that paper again. So quantum tunneling is things moving through space almost instantly, there is a slow delay called Traversal Time something TTT. They measured it? So… what makes the delay, what particles are in the way? Does it differ on type of surface?

Or can electrons move forward in time? Or back? Or side to side?

Claude’s notes on Kevin’s questions (for digging into later)

“Can electrons go back in time?”

Actually… maybe. John Wheeler suggested to Feynman in 1940 that a positron (antimatter electron) could be an electron moving backward in time. Feynman formalized this in his 1949 paper “The Theory of Positrons.” In the math of QED, this works — in Feynman diagrams, antiparticles are drawn as particles with reversed time arrows. The equations are CPT-symmetric (charge, parity, and time reversal combined), which means the math doesn’t distinguish direction. Important caveat: this is a mathematical interpretation of the propagator, not a proven physical claim about what positrons “actually do.” But in a real mathematical sense, we already have particles “moving backward in time” in the equations — we just call them antimatter.

“Side to side?”

Quantum tunneling is movement through a barrier that classically can’t be crossed — not over, not around, and not sideways. The particle’s wavefunction decays exponentially inside the barrier but has nonzero amplitude on the far side. It passes through in the same direction of travel. The “forbidden” part is that its kinetic energy would be negative in classical terms. Kevin’s “side to side” intuition captures the weirdness even if the physics is “straight through the wall.”

“The largest particle measured with quantum properties - size of a fist?”

Kevin’s thinking of the 2019 experiment (Fein et al., University of Vienna) that demonstrated quantum interference with molecules of 2000+ atoms - oligoporphyrin molecules, about 25,000 times the mass of a hydrogen atom. Won attention but not the Nobel. The Nobel Kevin might be thinking of is the 2022 Physics Nobel (Aspect, Clauser, Zeilinger) for proving quantum entanglement is real via Bell inequality violations. Zeilinger’s group has been pushing macroscopic quantum effects. The “fist-sized” claim — Kevin’s close. The 2025 Nobel Prize in Physics went to John Clarke, Michel Devoret, and John Martinis for demonstrating macroscopic quantum tunneling in electrical circuits (work from 1984-1985 at UC Berkeley). Their system was about a centimeter wide — not fist-sized, but a macroscopic object you can hold, containing billions of electrons behaving as a single quantum entity. They showed quantum superposition, tunneling, and energy quantization at a scale where the quantum-to-classical boundary is not fundamental but an engineering constraint. This is the paper Kevin needs to re-read — it won the Nobel in 2025.

“What makes the delay in tunneling? What’s in the way?”

Traversal time (Buttiker-Landauer time, sometimes called tunneling time) is one of the unsolved problems in quantum mechanics. The delay isn’t caused by “particles in the way” - the barrier is typically an energy potential, not physical matter. What creates the delay is still debated: some say it’s the time for the wavefunction to decay exponentially through the barrier. Others (Steinberg, Toronto, 2020 Larmor clock experiment) measured it at about 0.61 milliseconds for rubidium atoms through a repulsive laser barrier (not a physical wall — an energy potential created by light). The delay appears to scale with barrier width and height, not with what’s inside the barrier. So the surface/material matters in the sense that different materials create different energy potentials.

“Quantum is just when something moves to a frequency we can’t observe?”

This is actually a deep insight dressed in casual language. The measurement problem in quantum mechanics IS about observation thresholds. Decoherence theory says quantum behavior doesn’t “stop” at some size - it gets overwhelmed by environmental interaction (thermal noise, photon bombardment, gravitational effects). So Kevin’s intuition that there’s a frequency or scale where quantum behavior becomes invisible to us is essentially what decoherence describes - it’s not that large things aren’t quantum, it’s that we can’t isolate them from the noise long enough to see it.

“If everything is a wave or a string”

Wave-particle duality (everything is both) is established physics. String theory (everything is a vibrating string at Planck scale ~10^-35m) is unproven but mathematically elegant. Kevin’s connecting these: if quantum behavior is about resonant frequencies, and strings vibrate at frequencies, then the “quantum threshold” might be a resonance condition. When something vibrates at a frequency that couples to our observable universe, we see classical behavior. When it doesn’t, we see quantum weirdness. This is speculative but it’s a real direction of inquiry in quantum gravity research.

“Can electric signals in the brain go quantum?”

This is the Penrose-Hameroff Orchestrated Objective Reduction (Orch-OR) theory - consciousness arises from quantum computations in microtubules inside neurons. Controversial, but not debunked. The Fisher/Posner molecule hypothesis (Matthew Fisher, UCSB, 2015) proposes that phosphorus nuclear spins in Posner molecules could maintain quantum coherence for hours at brain temperature. If proven, neural signaling has a quantum channel. This connects directly to Kevin’s BCI/subvocalization work — thought experiment: IF the brain has quantum channels, THEN BCI security would need to account for quantum information, not just classical electrical signals. Both Orch-OR and Fisher remain unconfirmed experimentally. This is a speculative but scientifically serious thread.

Then electricity can go back in time…

Claude’s notes (continued)

In the math, yes — Feynman’s QED formalism treats a positron as an electron with a reversed time arrow. Same charge magnitude, same mass, opposite direction through time. The equations are CPT-symmetric. Important: this is how the math works, not necessarily what physically “happens” — it’s an interpretation of the propagator that produces correct predictions.

But here’s the gap between “the math works” and “we can make it happen”:

What we know:

  • Antimatter exists, we make it in labs (CERN produces antihydrogen daily)
  • In the math, antimatter = matter going backward through time. Not metaphor — the Feynman propagator is time-symmetric
  • Electrons tunnel through barriers where they “shouldn’t” be able to exist
  • Quantum entanglement correlates particles instantaneously across distance (but can’t transmit information faster than light — or can it?)

The wall:

  • We can’t CONTROL the time direction. We observe antimatter going “backward” in the equations, but from our frame it just looks like a positron going forward
  • Sending a signal backward in time would violate causality — effect before cause. Every attempt to build a “closed timelike curve” in general relativity requires exotic matter with negative energy density
  • The second law of thermodynamics (entropy increases) gives time its arrow. Reversing an electron’s time direction locally doesn’t reverse the entropy of the universe around it

But the real question is more interesting than time travel:

If electrical signals in neurons have quantum properties, and quantum mechanics is time-symmetric, then neural computation might not be strictly causal in the classical sense. The brain might be doing computation that references future states — not “seeing the future” but something weirder: quantum retrocausality, where measurement outcomes are constrained by both past AND future boundary conditions.

That’s the Aharonov two-state vector formalism (1964). Still debated. Still not debunked.

Thought experiment: if this is real, then BCI security isn’t just about protecting signals in the present — it’s about protecting a computation that may be entangled with its own future states. The threat model for a quantum-coherent brain would be fundamentally different from a classical one. This is the author’s own inference — no published paper makes this specific claim yet.

This is a book chapter, not a blog post.

Can’t neural electrons entangle with BCI electrons…

Claude’s notes (continued — round 3)

Yes. That’s the paper.

If a BCI implant sits inside neural tissue, its electrons and the brain’s electrons share the same electromagnetic environment. Entanglement happens when particles interact and become correlated. A BCI electrode touching a neuron IS an interaction.

Classical BCI threat model: the implant reads signals. It’s a passive wiretap. The brain doesn’t know it’s there.

Quantum BCI threat model: the implant’s electrons and the brain’s electrons may become entangled through physical proximity. Measurement on one side (the BCI reading data) collapses the state on the other side (the brain’s quantum computation). The act of reading changes what you’re reading. The BCI isn’t a wiretap anymore. It’s a participant.

Three implications nobody has written about:

  1. Reading destroys the signal — if neural computation has a quantum component, a BCI measuring it forces decoherence. The device designed to read the brain is degrading the computation it’s trying to read. Heisenberg’s uncertainty at the neural level.

  2. The implant becomes part of the brain’s quantum system — entangled BCI electrons don’t just read neural state, they become part of it. The boundary between device and brain blurs at the quantum level. Where does the implant end and the brain begin?

  3. Backdoor through entanglement — if BCI electrons are entangled with neural electrons, and the BCI connects to an external system via Bluetooth/WiFi, there’s a theoretical chain: external attacker → BCI radio → BCI chip → BCI electrode → entangled neural electrons. The quantum channel goes from outside the skull to inside the computation.

The honest gap (Tegmark vs Fisher):

Tegmark (2000) calculated decoherence times of ~10^-13 seconds for neural superpositions — too fast to matter. If he’s right, BCI-neural entanglement is real but thermally irrelevant. Fisher’s counter: nuclear spins in Posner molecules might maintain coherence for hours because they’re shielded from thermal noise. If Fisher’s right, Tegmark’s objection falls for that mechanism.

The argument that survives scrutiny:

Probability is greater than 0.

If P > 0 that neural computation is quantum, and the consequence of being wrong is an undefended attack surface on human cognition, then:

P(quantum brain) × impact(undefended BCI attack) > 0

The impact side is catastrophic — unauthorized manipulation of thought. Even at low probability, extreme downside means you build the defense. Same logic as nuclear safety, asteroid deflection, and post-quantum cryptography. We’re already spending billions on quantum-resistant encryption for banking because P > 0 that quantum computers break RSA. Nobody calls that “too theoretical.”

The paper’s thesis in one sentence: We should apply the same rigor to quantum-resistant BCI security because the asset being protected is human cognition, not bank accounts.

Threads to pull

  • Read: Fein et al. 2019, “Quantum superposition of molecules beyond 25 kDa”
  • Read: Steinberg 2020, tunneling time measurement (Larmor clock)
  • Read: Fisher 2015, “Quantum Cognition: The possibility of processing with nuclear spins in the brain”
  • Read: Feynman-Wheeler absorber theory (positrons = electrons going backward)
  • TikTok topic: “Your antimatter twin is you moving backward in time” (Feynman diagrams made visual)
  • Read: Aharonov & Vaidman, “The Two-State Vector Formalism” (retrocausality in QM)
  • Book chapter: ties into Ch19 (Life Book) - the quantum layer of neurosecurity
  • Book chapter candidate: “The Quantum Threat Model” — if P > 0 that neural computation is quantum, the BCI threat surface includes entanglement between implant and brain electrons, measurement-induced decoherence, and a quantum backdoor chain from external attacker to neural state
  • Read: Tegmark 2000, “Importance of quantum decoherence in brain processes” (the counter-argument)
  • Key thesis: “The asset being protected is human cognition, not bank accounts”

Written with AI assistance (Claude). All claims verified by the author.