Waves

How Judson Vail Sleeps At Night

Dear Republic,

Just in case yesterday’s excellent piece was a little bit of a bummer, we remind you that some people, as they drift off at night, think of surfing — and then, as one does, of Schrödinger’s undulating mechanics of quanta.

-ROL

WAVES

After I’ve spent a day out in the ocean surfing, I see waves when I close my eyes at night. The images are a bit shadowy and nebulous, but they are certainly waves. They appear clearest when I first close my eyes, and then become less so if I try to focus on them. There is some sort of uncertainty principle at play, in which nothing can be observed without being altered. These closed-eye hallucinations are the result of the day’s visuals on the water searing themselves into my brain, the interplay of light, eyeballs, and neurons.

There is a concept in surfing that you should appreciate every wave you paddle into and ride, no matter how short, weak, or un-surfable it feels. The idea is that the wave has likely traveled a long distance to get to the beach and finally break for you, and to dismiss it as poor or lame is to be ungrateful and oblivious. A wave crashing on the sands of California may have originated somewhere around New Zealand, 10,000 kilometers away. The journey must be respected, even if you don’t care so much for the shape or feel of the end product. The wave is a kind of sacred energy moving through the ocean that finally, when coming up against a physical barrier at a certain depth, such as sand, coral, or stone, will gather all the water molecules at that location and pitch them over themselves. A show of force sometimes small and sometimes mighty, it is always to be honored.

But what’s in a wave? These waves dancing behind my closed eyes. More waves, it turns out. The blue and green and turquoise light glistening off the rising and falling water is delivered to our eyes through electromagnetic waves, photons moving within a spectrum that we are able to visually process. Violet light travels in shorter wavelengths, red light in longer ones, and green-yellow light somewhere in between. The light waves roll through our corneas, pupils, lenses, and into our retinas, where cones and rods turn them into electrical signals for our brains to process. The countless photons per second entering our eyes give color and shape to the world around us, traveling in waves at the speed of 299,792,458 meters per second, approximately 1 billion kilometers per hour. Light waves from the sun take 8.3 minutes to reach our eyes. Those from the Andromeda Galaxy take 2.5 million years, sweeping steadily across the universe until they wash up onto our planet.

I like a noise machine at night. Our brains didn’t evolve to fall asleep in total silence, and the hushed roar of a noise machine can be quite analogous to the ancient sounds of the lapping sea, rolling whitewash, frothing foam. When an ocean wave finally reaches its destination, it curls and crashes, transforming from silent radiant energy into a symphony of stirring water. It’s the chorus of millions of densely packed bubbles bursting, compressed air exploding, and water and air molecules colliding. This noise is also traveling in waves. When water and air molecules vibrate against one another, a chain reaction occurs, making pressure waves. These waves travel into our outer ear, down the ear canal, and against the eardrum, which transmits them into the cochlea. This seashell-shaped cavity is filled with fluid that begins to ripple, creating a traveling wave along the cochlea membrane. Sensory hair cells ride this membrane wave, and in turn send electrical signals to your brain.

Indeed, in order to process any of this — the feeling, sight, and sound of a wave — our brains have to be working. Our neurons have to be oscillating, rhythmically fluctuating. We’ve got to be making brainwaves, tiny electrical charges measuring just a few millionths of a volt. There are five main frequencies of brainwaves, each associated with different brain states: Gamma — concentration; Beta — anxiety dominant, active external attention, relaxed; Alpha — very relaxed; Theta — Deeply relaxed, inward focused; Delta — sleep. Neurons wiggling at one another, or just wiggling to themselves, create little waves that resonate through our entire central nervous systems, and bring the external world into the world of our mind, our being. When we are concentrating, Gamma waves are pumping like Pipeline in winter, at high frequency, processing as much information as possible. When we are sleeping, Delta waves are rolling gently through the seascape of our dreams.

Peculiar that two very different frequencies might provide me with similar visuals: honed-in Gamma waves when concentrating out in the ocean, and lethargic Theta waves while deeply relaxed, reimagining the day on the water as I lie in bed. It calls into question the nature of reality, conscious experience. Uncertainty not just a principle but a universal constant, much like the speed of light. How do we know that the light of our dreams is any less real than the light of day, when all we have is our own mind to know either with? How does a brain consult with itself? A dog chasing its tail, a neuron surfing its own wave.

As I drift deeper into sleep things are less and less as they appear. The three dimensions of space and the single one of time begin to fuse into one continuum and then radiate out in gravitational waves at one billion kilometers per hour. Spacetime ripples, black holes yawn, the universe bends and forms. My neuronal oscillations slow to a frequency of one hertz, half a hertz, from inward focus to sleep. I understand none of this and cannot fathom what is happening. I’m an elementary unit of being, a wandering neutrino. What I’m seeing looks like the universe just after the Big Bang.

I’m bobbing along on an undulating sea, my destination eight hours hence. The behavior of matter cannot be fully described by particles alone. We need waves. Photons are particles and waves, electrons are waves and particles. I’m riding on one of de Broglie’s wave packets full of particles. I’m surfing Schrödinger’s undulating mechanics of quanta. Everything is composed of waves, from the stars in heaven to the stones at the bottom of the sea. From the cones in our eyes to the drums in our ears to the electric pulses in our heads. The seemingly taught sinews of our hearts. Every aspect of the universe exists in rolling frequencies, from the electron of an oxygen atom to an 86 foot Atlantic Ocean swell ridden at Nazaré, Portugal by Sebastian Steudtner. From the Big Bang to Gabriel’s horn. I’m adrift on a wave that was born with the universe and will die with it. When it finally breaks upon the shores of eternity it will have traveled the length of all time at the speed of light and I will look down at the whitewash dissipating at my feet and say: Thank you, that was a good ride.

Judson Vail is a carpenter and writer who focuses on conservation, ecology, and the ways in which the natural world lends itself to storytelling. He writes Catfish Caviar.

Image by Elisabeth Olver.