Incompatible Arrows, IV: F. Scott Fitzgerald
Sean at 10:46 pm, April 3rd, 2008Fewer people are probably familiar with F. Scott Fitzgerald’s short story “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” than they are with the reversed-time novels by Martin Amis, Kurt Vonnegut, or Lewis Carroll. But don’t worry, you will be!
In this case, the protagonist is born as an old man who grows younger with time, eventually dying as a baby. His father, not to mention the hospital staff, are somewhat nonplussed at his birth.
Mr. Button’s eyes followed her pointing finger, and this is what he saw. Wrapped in a voluminous white blanket, and partly crammed into one of the cribs, there sat an old man apparently about seventy years of age. His sparse hair was almost white, and from his chin dripped a long smoke-coloured beard, which waved absurdly back and forth, fanned by the breeze coming in at the window. He looked up at Mr. Button with dim, faded eyes in which lurked a puzzled question.
“Am I mad?” thundered Mr. Button, his terror resolving into rage. “Is this some ghastly hospital joke?”
“It doesn’t seem like a joke to us,” replied the nurse severely. “And I don’t know whether you’re mad or not—but that is most certainly your child.”
The cool perspiration redoubled on Mr. Button’s forehead. He closed his eyes, and then, opening them, looked again. There was no mistake—he was gazing at a man of threescore and ten—a baby of threescore and ten, a baby whose feet hung over the sides of the crib in which it was reposing.
No word of what Mrs. Button had to say about the whole affair.
Fitzgerald’s story takes a different approach to running the arrow of time backwards: Benjamin Button has experiences and memories that are completely conventional (although, for expository purposes, he is born with a full vocabulary), while his physical body ages backward.
The reason why I know everyone will be hearing about the story is that “Benjamin Button” is being made into a feature film, directed by David Fincher (Fight Club, Se7en) and starring Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett. Major photography has been completed, and it’s currently in post-production, scheduled to be released late in 2008. Major Oscar buzz.
Leaked photos seem to indicate that the film will portray Benjamin as being born baby-sized (albeit old and wrinkly), rather than as a full grown human being. Different actors will be used to portray Button’s reverse aging at different stages of his life, while CGI effects insert Brat Pitt’s face onto each body.
Sean, I don’t know whether anyone else has mentioned it or not. In a short story by Jorge Luis Borges, The Other, the protagonist is an old man who has a conversation with a young man sitting beside him. At the end, the old man realizes that he is talking to the person whom he was fifty years earlier. I thought you might be interesting to you.
Another story that may not have been mentioned is “The Time of Passage” by J.G. Ballard, in, I believe, a collection Chronopolis. Again, like Fitzgerald, it is basically a story of a life in the world where everyone is moving backwards and explores the emotional responses of the characters to such momentously sad occasions as marriage, loss of memories in childhood, and birth.
Philip K. Dick’s Counter-Clock World was similarly structured, in that things run backwards, but people’s memory seems normally chronological. There’s a very disturbing passage at the beginning of a cemetary patrol finding that someone in a grave has come back to life. This is normal — all graves have loudspeakers installed so that the newly undead can call for help. While the police officer calls for someone to come dig up the grave, he unsmokes a cigarette: Smokers buy used butts, and puff them back into full cigarettes. Later, I think they are unrolled, moistened, and gradually tranformed back into tobacco plants.
Plot devices of this kind are a staple of Dick’s work. I think Now Wait For Last Year, for example, had similar ideas, but I don’t remember quite how they work in that case.
I think an episode of Star Trek had a race with a reverse aging process which caused some confusion.
Has anyone mentioned David Brin’s SF novel “The Practice Effect” ?
[ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Practice_Effect ]
If not, they have now!
Didn’t the old “Mork and Mindy” TV show (from the mid ’70’s, staring Robin Williams) also have a reverse aging plot line? Mindy gave birth to a baby who turned out to be an old man (Jonathan Winters)who lived his life in reverse.
I think this was about the time the show started really going downhill.
Sean, you really are into this!…and fascinating it is.
I was looking a a picture of a beautiful, newly born baby in Newsweeks recent article on surrogate motherhood and once again marveled about this matter of being born…and of course dying. I’m pushing 70 and living with MS, diabetes and Prostate cancer, so needless to say, I comptemplating the latter more than the former!
The fact that birth and death are morphologically so different points to a definite arrow of time. If time, like space, is marginally closed…and it well may be, what we observe about our own lives may offer clues to the true nature of existence.
One of the questions we ask- and never receive a complete answer to, from the time we are 7 until we are 70 is: “Where did I come from?” Anybody who thinks the answer is summed up in sexual relations is deluded…the question is much more profound than that. It is likely our personal origins have roots in the development of the universe itself.
The DNA in our bodies, while it has been profoundly re-arranged over the past 3.2 billion years, is still the same substance and essence of life it always has been. In that sense, the biological material in our bodies has not known death in 3.2 billion years, almost 25% of the time since the big bang. No wonder death, as obvious as it is, is incomprehensible to us!
Like consciousness itself, the development of life has been gradual…we probably could not pinpoint the exact time in the development of life where the inorganic could have been said to become organic and the inorganic become life…though we could use some arbitrary yardstick- as abilty to reproduce.
The point is that the inorganic world, while not conscious in the sense we are, is nevertheless organized and complex…a complexity which obviously begat complexity of yet a higher order and eventually led to us. If the inorganic was not organized and complex we would not be around describing same with “the laws of physics”.
We observe not only processes which lead to chaos-increase entropy- in the universe, but processes which do work…are constructive- decrease entropy. These forces exist together, just as tectonic and gradational forces exist together on the surface of the Earth. From our present frame of reference, we observe a second law…overall entropy seems to be increasing, with only small islands of well protected complexity in the unverse, but this observation, for very good reasons which I will but touch on later in this note, may be misleading.
Early man refused to accept the permanence of death. This intuitive belief in continued existence after death led to Platonism…and eventually Einstein.
If we remember this bit of history of science, we can see that human intuition, while unscientific and clouded by mysticism, cultural bias and error, nevertheless has an element of underlying “saavy” which in a general way has guided the origin and development of modern science. Mankind (at least the ones who placed food and items of living in graves!) had and has a skeptical nature, a taste for “proof” and “truth”.
The fact that observation is linked to actual existence has profound implications about our own “situation”, directly relates to possible space/time periodicity in universal development and implies engineering stability in the universal structure…stability which could well explain what we observe.
We tend to forget, but growing up as a child…getting used to life in this particular space/time continuom is a frustrating, complex and quite difficult task, which is so difficult it requires mentoring. Animals which do not care for their young must reproduce in huge numbers and consign most of their young to the food chain.
If consciousness shifts at “death”, getting used to that new situation would take getting used to, too. However such an adjustment would be easier than childhood, because in such a “hemisphere” gravity would plainly be seen as a fictitious force…it would hold us to the Earth, yet dropped objects would return to our hands and accidents would undo themselves- as in Allice in Wonderland.
If there is no awareness of another 4D particulate “Hemisphere”…reawakening as a child into a universe which is almost but not quite identical because of servo-mechanism input in the prior cycle, would be essentially replicating our eternal existence with the rest of the universe…with only tiny phylogenic change.
I believe that non-existence after death is the easiest idea…basically, “and so what”. It means nothing, there is nothing we could do about it anyway, and is an easy and obvious answer. Yet non-existence is not compatable with what we now know about the link between observation and existence or the nature of the univeral structure.
I think the final thing we must consider is the nature of the GR concept. There is nothing outside a GR universe…it is everywhere…nothing can really go anywhere to escape it. Such a structure stongly implies rigid conservation laws, matter and energy, entropy- and information/complexity. The technological veracity of GR coupled with the incredibly complex universal structure we observe lead to what I feel is an easy conclusion about the permanence of existence.
One assumption that seems to be common to all these stories is that activities in the other three dimensions are exactly reversed when time goes backwards. Is there any physical reason for this effect? Is there not enough randomness in nature that reversing time might lead, for example, to a unique year 2000, in which Dubya was not selected as president? Which makes a lot of what has happened throughout the world in the last eight years also not happening? If so, would this not be an argument for the irreversibility of time’s arrow?
Hoi polloi physics.
Everything we observe about our macroscopic reality indicates that time has a single, single-process irreversible direction.
Any form of spherical or curved geometry incorporates mathematically irrational pi. The first thing I reminded my geometry students of with regard to formuae which incorporate pi, is that the the answer to any attempted measurement is always off (low- in the same direction) depending on the number of decimal places we use in our figure for pi. When a universe structurally based on spherical geometry returns, it probably does not return to exactly the same place.
However, the “return” is so close and almost perfect, that it confers an engineering stability on the system which makes possible the storage, conservation and increasing phylogenic development of complexity. This still leaves the universe with a 2nd law, but at least that law doesn’t rage like “A fox in the proverbial henhouse”. The universe compensates for its tendency toward disorder by increasing in informational complexity…it is gradually becoming more complex at the sacrifice of a modest increase in thermal entropy. Hence, it continues to exist. This type of process explains why we exist and are able to discuss these matters!
In fact, the fact that the universal geometry incorporates pi probably makes motion, change and time possible. That motion and change in 4D is observed to occur, is proof positive that the universe does indeed have a dynamic component…it is NOT completely static. Einstein reminds us that time, mass, and the three spatial dimensions observed from particulate frames all vary with this process we call “observation” and the coordinates from which we observe.
This preferred direction of time and relativistic change is completely consistent with what we observe in our macroscopic and sub-microscopic reality, however CPT symmetry in the sub-microscopic must also have significant implications insofar as the structure of the universe is concerned. The fact that an arrow of time is obvious primarily in the macroscopic realm, while most of the universe by mass is sub-microscopic implies that the “arrow of time” is a frame of reference phenomenon only and is not structurally applicable cosmologically.
It is logical to expect certain violations of CPT symmetry IE Chirality in the universe. If the universe is observed from multiple (foundationally 2) 4D particulate matter/antimatter cross sections, it would be impossible for the physics to be identical as observed under “over the horizon” condiitons. The phases and states of matter would be different, thermal entropy would progessively gather (decrease) and informational entropy would increase in one hemisphere and the reverse in the other, with periodic changes in particulate polarity in each “hemisphere”.
Remember a GR universe is never completely singular. It is always everywhere. When one 4D “hemisphere” collapses, as in an hour-glass, the other 4D “Hemisphere” takes the place of that part of the universe approaching singularity- and conserves its informational complexity. The “big bang” in one Hemisphere would only be a particulate polarity reversal and gradual almost impreceptable shift in entropy direction in the other. I narrate taking the frame of observing coordinates.
The actual proper-time pulse of the general universal mass probably takes place from material to anti-material (at the baryonic quark level everywhere), at a rate of 2.8 trillion cycles per Earth second. Because of the spin of the photon, and the fact that we electromagnetically (photonically) cross-read the universe in extreme gravitational time dilation, we detect only one particulate and vast 4D cross-section of the universe at a time…the other is “over the horizon” and detectable only by mass, power spectrum and particle accelerator measurements.
The purpose of this conceptualizing is to visualize a universe which matches the conceptual parameters of our well verified models and results in conditions within the universe which make possible the existence, conservation and extension of information and complexity- without resorting to infinities and vast numbers of undetectable parallel universes.
As mentioned, if we simply extend the well verified models we have at our disposal, we may be able to experimentally verify the cosmological reality we can project from these models…a universe based on finite mass, unbounded and marginally closed spatial extent and an extremely limited and a small, but general and well defined dynamic component.
Sam,
So if this dynamic component is manifesting a series of configurations, these events go from future potential to past circumstance? So that macroscopic dimension of time is actually coming towards our point of reference, much as those islands came toward you, traveling from the future into the past?
Or is that direction the other way around and it is we who travel from the past into the future? In a relative world, isn’t it both? We travel down the road, as the road passes under us.
Hi John,
If the universe experiences a coordinated and general quantum proper time matter/antimatter pulse at the quark level, each cycle would be (as observed at that level of scale), a perfect duplicate of the former.
Just as we have CPT symmetry in the sub-microscopic with only a few chiral phenomena, at its heart the universe in this scenario would be a very rigid place- but at our macroscopic scale we could still observe a definite and very convincing arrow of time, which is real to us…we live or die by the time process we observe.
Any other hemisphere, like the opposite side of a merry go round, if we could observe it from our present coordinates, would seem to be experiencing time reversal, but actually what happens there in geometric inversion (enantiomorphy) is just a continuation of the same process we are experiencing. When we throw a ball up in the air, we expect it to come down…free fall in one direction and free fall in another direction.
By the way, I have had questions about the pivotal role of pi in the universe. Pi is after all a mathematical artifact. A wheel is a wheel. A circle is a circle. The key is that pi only becomes important when we measure, and we live in a universe which only exists as it is observed and measured. In GR, we observe from the center of the geometry, yet exist on the circumference (4D event particulate event horizon surfaces). Our observing, measuring and relating relationship with the universe, and our existence as material beings makes pi very important.
The process by which coordinate shift of perhaps the diameter of an atomic particle at each pulse (in the macroscopic) affects the universe and effects phylogenic change is of course, unknown. So is the extent to which our “choices” in life affect the overall increase in universal informational complexity.
One thing is for sure. The universe may be awesome, but it is very mechanical, even if we have a personal relationship with it! We experience cause and effect constantly, and inhabit an engineering envelope which if we push, we pay the price. If we drive around at 100 MPH we cannot expect the universe to deliver us from folly. The universe is quite feral and demanding in many respects.
I had a near death experience once from dehydration and was asked if I had some mystical experience. I told the person that as a pre-med student, everything seemed to shut down pretty much as I expected…I lost control of my bowel and bladder, my eyesight browned out and I heard a buzzing in my ears…etc.
If we have another set of particulate coordinates waiting for us, I feel certain that our existence there will be just as mechanical and particulate as the one we now enjoy…although I would suspect we would have to get used to the feeling of being held in a vise…choice as we now know it could be limited or non-existent.
Sam,
I certainly agree that time is a macroscopic effect, similar to temperature, but I think that the other side of this effect is as I’ve been describing, that reality is fundamentally dualistic between the energy and the information, whether it’s expanding energy and collapsing mass, the two hemispheres of our brains, or even the conservative civil consolidation, vs. liberal social expansion of politics, there are two sides of every coin, even though we only see(or see through, in the case of the brain) one at a time.
I have to agree that those near death experiences are like having the plug pulled on the television, although I’ve apparently continued to function for a short time afterward. I guess this is because the memory isn’t properly stored. Which is to say that all those other times I don’t really remember are a form of death. Information falls away into the past….
I think there is a little wiggle room with a mechanistic determinism, because measurement is digital, but reality is analog, so there is always some immeasurable wobble in the rotation. That we should try to pin pi down is simply evidence of the tendency to seek answers in the detail and ignore the overall. Our very sense of individuality is a function of focus, yet our connection to the whole is in the totality.
Hi John,
“that reality is fundamentally dualistic between the energy and the information,”
You refer elsewhere re death, to “pulling the plug” and I don’t think that analogy is inappropriate at all. Like appliances which have batteries to retain stored information during intermittant power failures, the body has mechanisms to prevent immediate loss of vital information-storing mechanisms, in the event of temprorary problems… IE the brain, in case “power” can be restored.
It is important to note the necessary relationship between energy and information. I’m very leery of the mystical…with all the counterintuitiveness of SRT/GR/QM and the Schwarzschild geometry, to add ghosts to the picture seems a bit too far fetched! We, and everything else living are conscious to the extent that our biological particulate complexity interacts with electromagnetic energy.
I think considering the relativistic state of modern physics, it would be hard to regard anything about the universe to be deterministic, yet at their conceptual heart, all the models are just that, and this deterministic reality is a fundamental stabilizing principle in the universe.
Duality keeps coming up…some would say, rearing it ugly head. I don’t see duality as philosophically or scientifically offensive, and I too, like you have noted similarities between the physical and social sciences…though that is definitely not hard science, yet…just interesting to note and ruminate on.
I said that the universe can be boiled down to energy plus a set of contraining principles, within which energy has formed densities and evolved compexity.
On the one hand, we have the feral universe, which while it makes our existence possible, is cold, inhospitable and quite unforgiving…I use that word “unforgiving” in an engineering sense, which reminds us that the semantics of the natural sciences intertwines with that of the social sciences!
On the other hand, we have the collective consciousness, in which the eternal photonic matrix…the electromagnetic spectrum interacts with with all past, present and future existing particulate complexity. The unique combination of particulate, energy density complexity with the electromagnetic spectrum bequeaths our individual identity, because of our personal coordinates, yet the relativistic nature of light makes us, as individuals a part of all consciousness which preceded, exists with us in the present, and will follow us in the future.
The collective consciousness is anything but feral, because it is a reflection of the way life has developed and coped with challenges over eternity, yet how it
actually affects us is conjectural. I’m not going to take the time to look up the correct spelling of serindipitous, but at higher levels of consciousness especially, there is the possiblity that beings are positively and constructively influenced by the electromagnetic energy by which we interact with our own particulate identity.
“That we should try to pin pi down is simply evidence of the tendency to seek answers in the detail and ignore the overall. Our very sense of individuality is a function of focus, yet our connection to the whole is in the totality.”
I’m not really nit picking here, just pointing out how the roots of our existence may be found in simple mathematical relationships inherent in the geometry of the universe….our very existence is made possible by a rather simple set of underlying and ordering principles- plus a very specific amount of energy.
I failed to note in my previous remarks that, if the universe could be reduced to a geometric point of infinitely small size, pi would probably be of little significance as well. However at a certain level of scale, any energy density eventually becomes singular (the Planck Realm) and event horizons form. These event horizons give the universe measurable parameters…the universe is not infinitely reducable…the “failure of reductionism”. Since the Planck Realm exists below 10 to the minus 33rd CM, the universe itself, by its very nature, when measured and observed by consciousness, is affected by the mathematical irrationality of pi. To say it another way, the universe has great resolution- to 33 places…but pi is irrational to thousands of places, perhaps infinitely, so the nature and structure of the observed universe is affected by the mathematical irrationality of pi.
Very interesting comments, John
It’s obviously “time” for the classic time reversal limerick (not an ET original to be sure)
There once was a lady named Bright
Who traveled much faster than light
She left the next day
In a relative way
And returned on the previous night
e.
Sam: ” had a near death experience once from dehydration and was asked if I had some mystical experience. I told the person that as a pre-med student, everything seemed to shut down pretty much as I expected” may I state that any NDE is actually the very first experience of LIFE, not actually death?
The human brain functions by energy and absorbs energy, the very first “image” recorded by the brain happens to be of the journey down the mother’s birth ing channel?..ie..you are being transported within the confined liquid womb, to that of an open space gas environment.
The “NORMAL” statement of NDE is of a :Dark surrounding tunnel volume, with a small speck of light at the end of it, the approaching light gets more intense until it bursts forth and encapsulates every thing. This is really just the very first EVENT recorded by the brain, sorry for those spiritually minded people, but it is STILL an awsome event.
The importance of the very first recorded brain event, is often replayed at times of extreme stress or danger, or event imminent death events, like a sort of precognitive “saftey valve”, nature provides a lasting memory process that makes transitional moments less boring?
Sam,
The concept of feral is a matter of perspective, that of broad perspective for that which is singularly focused on its own survival, yet all of us fall into that category out of necessity on occasion. As you point out, the universe can be a harsh environment, but it is the universal nature of the energy which composes it that is the basis of the unity of consciousness. On the other hand, the focusing and ordering of this energy that is the cause of our mental abilities and the essential impetus for evolutionary advancement, because of the inherent competition it entails, the end state of this concentration are the political wars and economic bubbles which our ambitions create. The result is a cycle of expansion and contraction, growth and collapse, each one providing lessons and opportunities for the next cycle to carry the process a little further. So the concept of good and bad are subjective. What is good for the fox, is bad for the chicken. Wars are considered the ultimate evil, yet they are a product of human success, as humanity conquers the earth and finds itself its own most effective predator.
The next stage of progression will have to find a way to incorporate this entangled duality into a conscious understanding so that we can grow with it and not simply be controlled by it. The next step in understanding nature and steering its power to our long term benefit.
Elliot,
In a universe where actually attaining the speed of light will put you everywhere, all the time, with respect to everything else, I hardly think super-luminal speeds are necessary! Basically, I would believe, “arriving the previous night” has more to do with the geometry of the universal structure, and the way energy densitities (from the photon on up) relate to one another within that structure.
The electromagnetic aspect of our existence puts the far reaches of the universe at our fingertips. The energy density, particulate part of our existence keeps our feet firmly planted on the ground! Relativistic change affects everything up to the exact speed of light. After that, the universe is photonic.
This brings up an important conceptual point. When the mass of any energy density of any size attains the speed of light, its mass, as generally considered, becomes infinite. However this is not true in a universe of finite mass. In such a universe, the energy density we select attains the mass of the universe itself…it becomes one with the whole entity, a very different conceptual idea.
Einstein considered both infinite and finite (mass) models for the universe, but his original grand proportion fits only a universe of finite mass, because the proportion will not admit infinities! He only half laughingly joked that only two things in the universe were infinite, human folly and the universe…and he was not sure about the latter.
Those proposing a universe of infinite mass use E sub 0…a massless photon and make other adjustments. However the solar calculator in my desk performs tasks under the influence of photons, in fact, the fact that photons do work is a “fact of life”. Schwarzschild’s photon is 0+…of tiny but measurable mass, and thus, itself has the ability to do work. However the Schwarzschild “mirror” geometry, works from a geometric point, a point mass…a “naked singularity” without a functional event horizon. Scale in a universe with energy densities mandates event horizon formation at an experimentally proven location in the geometry. Thus in a universe of finite mass and functional event horizons, Schwarzschilds geometry must be slightly modified to incorporate a measurable Planck Realm.
A very abreviated (and partial) summary of SR as it applies to the speed of light is as follows: as the speed of a spacecraft relative to the point of departure increases, the mass of the spaceship increases relative to that location, and viewed from the point of departure, the amount of fuel necessary to continue to accelerate the spacecraft near the speed of light would increase. In the spaceship, nothing would seem to be different at all. The same amount of fuel used to accelerate us at 1G when we left, would continue to do the job all the way to the other side of the universe…but when we looked outside, WOW!..would the universe look funny!
Paul,
As soon as the hospital got some liquid into me, I revived and actually went home the same day! In no way am I sure I would not have observed “further developments” had I been nearer death than I was. My pants sure were a mess! However, many people die instantaneously…they have no near death experience at all. The real question to me is whether our consciousness is a permanent, if changing fixture of the universes existence.
John,
When I use the word “feral”, I do so understanding the semantic limitations of that word…just as many other words. Semantics and the communication of meaning are some of the greatest of challenges we face as conscious beings. 60% of all communication between humans is non-verbal, a fact which really came in handy as I travelled in areas with 20 different languages!
However technical conceptual communication is especially difficult. We have to use adverbs and adjectives, prepositional phrases and interjections all over the place to effectively communicate.
Using a word like “feral” is bad to start with, because it implies what we call in Englsh composition, a “personification” of the inanimate unverse. I used to grade students down for that kind of stuff! Strictly speaking, feral refers to an animal, a domestic animal, which has been forced to fend for itself and has become wild. I meant to imply a certain domestication of the universe…it is friendly in the sense that did it not exist as it does, we would not exist. The universe is “wild” in the sense that it has, insofar as living beings are concerned, certain very unforgiving characteristics. It’s kind of like, “no slight intended Sam, but you are dead”, if I run into a tree at 100MPH. We can’t run to the universe and expect it to protect us if we play with crocodiles or swim with sharks. Knowlede and experience help, but sooner or later, if we push our engineering envelope, we get hurt.
I think one of the serious problems with religious thinkers is that they try to put their diety outside of a universe where nothing, by defintion is outside. They also personify the inanimate, and worst of all use appeal to diety in a plea for protection when education, even common sense would be more rational options. Most objectionable of all, cultures use their concept of diety to control and manipulate.
There well may be a collective consciousness in the universe. If there is, there may well be factors other than chance operating in the universe, and those factors would be serindipitous(ly) good, since we would be influenced directly and indirectly by everything consciousness in the universe knows, past present and future.
When I taught binomial expansion, I always warned the students to throw the coins on the floor and flip them many different ways so that the results would be random…and we could contruct our tables with increasing numbers of events and watch our results for each fractional term approach certainty…as well as the obvious fact that the sum of the fractional terms in any binomal expansion model always totals 1 (certainty) in the first place! Math is so tautological!
Students would sometime test their instructor by not flipping their coins randomly. When they showed my their outlandish results, they looked like the cat that ate the canary! We used Chi Square(d) to show them that in addition to the basic binomial expansion model, we could use other models to clearly indicate whether factors other than chance had been operating in their experiment, and that those models too had geometric aspects.
Paul Davies in his book a few years back pretty much evaluated the universe using “Chi Squared” with the idea of venturing an opinion as to whether factors other than chance had and have been operating in the cosmos. I honestly don’t agree with his conclusion that: “We are truly meant to be here”, but believe that what we have learned about the universe in the last 100 years strongly implies that factors other than chance have been and are operating in the universe. The reality of consciousness itself strongly implies that existence REQUIRES factors other than chance operate if the universe is to continue. SR/GR/QM and Schwarzchild conceptually suggest that the universe is organized to selectively encourge events of certain kinds, and discourage randomness- even though in the eternal past, the universe was likely a much more random affair than now.
Sam,
it was just a limerick.
e.
Sam,
As a comparision of energy/mass to consciousness/intellect, I’ve wondered whether we are concentrations of something far more etherial, much like the amount of energy stored in mass is enormous. It would explain why we cannot perceive any sense of awareness beyond obviously animate entities, yet still exist as a larger, interconnected organism, a Gaia model.
The problem with language isn’t just its limits, but also its lack thereof, but than it is a process and not an entity. What I was taking from the term ‘feral’ was how we seemingly apply it to what has returned to what we might consider wild, yet the same (a)moral plasticity manifests in many of our normal societal interactions, from Wall St. to Washington and many places inbetween. My larger point is the way that systems tend to self destruct, as their strength and definition turns to rigidity and limitation. Life overcomes this by regeneration, but as the individual entities, we don’t appreciate the necessity of the process. A discussion I’ve been having elsewhere concerns the nature of money and how it functions as a medium of exchange and public utility, but we primarily think of it as a store of value and personal property. The result being reoccuring credit bubbles as wealth concentrates, yet must be redistributed through lending in order to keep the system functioning. The result being a further concentration of wealth as interest is compounded, even to the point of indebting public institutions. Eventually the credit bubble bursts, the economy crashes and we have to build it back up again. If we understood it as the function of government that it is, than the cycle of wealth accumulation might be better managed to build a more fundamentally healthy society. Yet the political dynamic is managed by those who prefer to keep the status quo. In terms of a convective cycle, wealth is like water that evaporates up and precipitates back down, but the current system holds as much as possible up in the clouds until the ground is parched, than drops it as a deluge that does as much damage as rehydration. By understanding the cycle, we could direct it to where it might be the most effectively used.
Wouldn’t a photon with mass in an infinite universe still create event horizons, since it would constrain how far light could travel?
Sean: If it is not on the list already, you may want to add “Hyperion” to the list of books with incompatible arrows. Specifically, The Scholar’s Tale: “The River Lethe’s Taste is Bitter” is a tragic story about a man who has to watch his daughter age in reverse, every day waking up one day younger. It is, in my opinion, the best of the six stories in the book, and one of the more heart-wrenching sci-fi stories that I’ve read.
Why non-linear equations are cool
http://www.newcomensengine.com/2008/04/soylent-green-is-people.html
Hi Elliot,
I had a response all set up, minimized it to check a couple of things- and lost it! So lets try this again!
Your post was very appropriate. If tachyons are found, we may have evidence for a universe with an “umbilical”…not closed as the GR concept proposes. This would solve certain engineering problems, and of course create others!
The speed of light in a vacuum as observed at our frame of reference is measured constant to at least 10 decimal places. However, the speed of light could and can vary…especially light can be made to slow down. Of course from the frame of reference of a photon itself, being a part of a vast entangled matrix, there is no speed of light at all. A photon coming out of my lamp is entangled with, and the same as the photons coming out of the lamp of an observer on the other side of the universe.
I used that particular illustration from Special Relativity because I wanted to lead into a good illustration of Einstein’s intuitive genius in conceptually moving from Euclidean Special Relativity to Global General Relativity.
We look at the thought experiment of the accelerating spacecraft that I briefly described and imagine that while the relativistic effects have been certainly verified in many ways, a thought experiment is really, just a thought experiment.
The shocker is that while the thought experiment is a simple illustration of an effect of Special Relativity, according to General Relativity such effects, on a much vaster scale are the essence of the world you and I live in. One of the key insights of Einstein in generalizing his relativity concept was that gravitational and non-inertial frames (our accelerating spaceship) are identical. Standing on the surface of the Earth under a constant acceleration of one gravity produces the same kind of relativistic effects (though more complex) as living in a moving spacecraft undergoing a constant acceleration of one gravity!
We need to remember that even under the slight gravitational attraction of tiny energy densities and experiencing the small accelerations due to gravity that they produce, applied constantly, relativistic effects would appear in their vicinity in only a small fraction of cosmological time- 13.7 Billion (Light) Years. To use the Earth’s gravity as an illustration, the acceleration due to gravity on our planet would produce relativistic effects as people living on the Earth observe the universe in just 20 years or so.
Einstein thus correctly concluded that the world we observe is created by and the result of relativistic effects. Information and complexity- what we call “particulate” reality- is perched on 4D event horizon surfaces at the edge of the Planck Realm. While we exist because of the information on these event horizon surfaces, (the geometric circumference), we observe reality remotely electromagnetically and photonically from the center of the geometry, many orders of magnitude removed form our actual essence.
Were the mass of the universe infinite, energy densities of the universe would forever approach, but never actually reach the speed of light (approach the particulate event horizons)…what we observe would linger on the event horizons forever. In a universe of finite mass, energy densities all simultaneously attain the speed of light, become photonic, and reverse “hemispheric” polarity at the same time, which happens to be the age and maximum observed size of the universe. This is NOT coincidental. The actual observed passage of time from macroscopic scales is a result of the finitude of universal mass and is defined by the gravitational time dilation formula.
The fact that what would, at fist glance seem impossible, or only possible in the distant future (our accelerating spacecraft approaching the speed of light) is actually not only possible, but the basis for our existence, has led me to conclude that anything in this universe which can be done, has already been done and exists at some coordinates in the cosmos. The entangled photonic matrix and the collective consciousness, in coordination with eternally stored particulate information, as I pointed out in a previous post, interact serendipitously over eternity to gradually decrease informational entropy (make the universe more complex) at the sacrifice of a slight overall increase in thermal entropy within the system.
It would seem that the SRT/GR cosmological configuration could not be ultimately eternal, but I’m personally not hasty to draw such a conclusion. Rather I prefer to consider the system as existing exactly the way Einstein conceived it, and leave it to future generations to work out the mechanisms of the universal evolution and determine how informational complexity could increase with a gradual increase in thermal entropy without de-stabilizing the cosmos. I am also inclined to feel the answer the latter question relates to increasing the longevity of existing organisms…the cosmos dare not tamper with the young without risking overall instability.
I would imagine you are starting to see just how thought provoking a short post like yours can be! Of course Sean knows that well. That is why he starts threads like this one!
John,
The massed and the mass-less photon have interesting conceptual histories. The massed photon, so far as my research indicates, demands a universe of finite mass. Those interested in infinite universal models usually use a mass-less photon. An infinite universe with a massed photon would tend to be too crowded to be observed as having vast fields (space) with only a small percentage of baryonic energy density.
The main problem with the mass-less photon is the fact that photons, both as particles and waves, do work, however infinite universe models in general have problems, which I think are more serious than those with GR style closed systems of finite mass. Also, as I have pointed out, the universe itself, by the way it is measured and observed, gives strong indications it is finite in mass and marginally closed in space and time…though of course space is necessarily observed as flat in a GR universe.
Interesting thoughts! I can tell you are interested in conceptual links between the natural and social sciences!
Best Wishes….
Sam Cox - (re 22)
Let me reiterate and clarify the physical part of your comment. I will leave the non-physical parts alone (”collective consciousness”, “entangled photon matrix”, “eternity” and so on).
The locally measured speed of light in free space (c) is assumed to be a universal constant. Free space, or perfect physical vacuum, is defined as not a medium, and has (by that definition) a refractive index of zero.
Light travels slower through a medium (i.e., non-vacuum), and can be slowed down to a crawl through media with extremely large refractive indices. This does not affect c, the photons are no longer travelling through free space.
Causal interactions mediated by photons can be delayed by expanding space along the geodesic (”shortest path”) from source to destination. This still does not affect c; the photons are still travelling through free space, but the distance itself has grown.
Finally, in GR, distant measurements of the speed of light depend on acceleration; e.g. light in lower gravitatonal potentials will appear to travel more slowly and light in higher gravitational potentials will appear to travel more quickly. However, light in free space in the same gravitational potential will always be measured at c.
These statements are consistent with observations of (among other things) the Hubble flow, gravitational lensing, observations of astrophysical ASE bodies, as well as terrestrial experience with diamond, glass fibre and analogues with even higher refractive indices, terrestrial surface-orbital interactions as with GPS, even sea level-11km measurements involving aircraft, and earth-surface mars-surface moon-surface signal comparisons.
Photons have zero rest mass. This means that the combination of the energy (E) and momentum (p) of a photon is identical to its mass (m) in a frame of reference in which the photon is at rest. In particle physics we deal with invariant mass, which is the mass of a particle that remains the same in all frames of reference; in practice invariant mass and rest mass are synonymous. Photons have zero invariant mass, but have both momentum and Energy. In free space the relationship is E = pc, as for any particle in SR, E^2=(mc^2)^2 + (pc)^2. “Relativistic mass” as a synonym for “energy” is something which should be avoided because of the tendency to confuse people. It is thus energy (former “relativistic mass”) that distorts spacetime, not rest mass.
The zero rest mass of photons has been derived experimentally. The Standard Model and gauge theory (which is important in Lambda-CDM) also predicts a massless photon, and this prediction is sufficiently critical to warrant experiments aimed at setting ever better upper limits to the mass of a photon. Repeatable experiments as of now show an upper limit of approximately 1e-52 kg/photon (or 6e-17 eV/c^2 per photon).
Lambda-CDM is well supported by observation and is consistent with particle experiments. It is not an “infinite” universe, yet requires a massless photon.
In general, any predictions requiring a photon with nonzero rest mass are on shaky ground because of experiments in quantum electrodynamics validating gauge symmetry in electromagnetic interactions. Symmetry works only if the carrier particle (the photon) has exactly zero rest mass. Carrier rest mass limits interaction distance. The electromagnetic interaction range is very large (i.e., to at least the observational horizon, ~~4.3e26 m), and retains an inverse square relationship even at large distances.
A nonzero rest mass would necessasrily limit the distance at which the inverse square relationship holds true. (For example, in the Standard Model, the weak interaction is mediated by the heavy W and Z bosons (in the high tens of GeV/c^2 per boson), and has a very short range (1e-18 m)).
Finally, “space is necessarily observed as flat in a GR universe” is hard to reconcile. Within the observable universe at the largest scales, spacetime appears flat. In practice we use an FLRW model for the universe , since it leads to reasonable approximations of calculations taking into account visible and dark structures at the largest scales. However, it is not *necessarily* true in order to preserve local physics.
GR does not require flatness on any scale; it is in fact a tool which is useful for analysing and predicting behaviours in non-flat spacetime (otherwise, we’d just use SR). It does not require that the universe have a closed topology at the largest scales, and in fact there is substantial observational evidence in favour of a very flat or very slightly open topology at the largest scales.
“I can tell you are interested in conceptual links between the natural and social sciences”
Who isn’t? One recurring problem is that specialists on one side or the other tend to make wild speculations in areas in which they are not exceptionally well informed. Often these wild speculations have been tested and retested for decades and found to be inconsistent with reality as we know it. This is true in both directions. It’s somewhat sad (and obviously frustrating) that many of these speculations are on their face reasonable, logical extrapolations of well-tested, well-understood theories that apparently lack sufficient predictive power to derive the implications of the speculations to the point where they at least seem a little less wild…
Sy,
This is a point I keep raising with regard to the concept of “expanding space,” as used by Big Bang theory to explain why we are not at the center of the universe, due to other galaxies being redshifted directly away from us. I keep pointing out that if space itself is expanding, than the speed of light would increase proportionally, otherwise it is an increasing distance of stable space, not expanding space. If it is only increasing distance, then an expanding universe model would mean that we are at the center of the universe. It has been my contention that redshift is due to an opposite curvature of space then that caused by gravity and these opposing curvatures balance out, leaving an overall flat space.
So would light traveling at c actually constitute a particle/photon, or is this a consequence of measuring? To use an analogy, if we were to describe a lightning bolt in terms of the spot it grounds at, we might understand it in terms of that spot and think of it as a ball. Could photons be something similar; The spot where the energy of the wave of light grounds to the contact field? This could help explain how it is massless, other than momentum and energy. That they have specific energy could be a function of transition. Similar to the size of a drop of water being determined by surface tension and gravity, not that water has to be that exact amount.
I do realize I’m applying other fields to physics and cosmology, but for someone who does take an interest in the broad range of human endeavor, some of the models being used in these fields have characteristics of a kluge, where patches are added to match theory with observation, yet cause more problems further along the process. The tendency to engage in this goes to the subconscious level and prevails across many aspects of human, as well as physical behavior, where pressure builds until a phase transition point is reached and the structure implodes or explodes.
Sy,
Thanks for taking the time to summarize all this. I think you clarified and defined these issues very well. If course when my solar calculator works, we are not dealing with photons at rest, but it is very obvious why cosmologically photons would overall be “at rest”…and should conceptually be considered that way. I especially appreciated your final comments on cosmological speculation and extrapolation.
When I spoke of GR requiring “the flatness of space” I was not referring to GR itself, which is, as a concept global and curved by its very nature, but rather the way the observer sees space in that kind of geometry.
Sam Cox
John Merryman -
“otherwise it is an increasing distance of stable space, not expanding space.”
Metric expansion of space affects the spatial dimensions (X,Y,Z) in all directions equally at the largest scales. At smaller scales, the expansion is apparently retarded by gravitation and the other forces.
“If it is only increasing distance, then an expanding universe model would mean that we are at the center of the universe.”
The expansion is happening everywhere and in all directions, very nearly homogeneously.
The result is that any vantage point will observe the Hubble flow (large structure redshift increases with distance in every direction, isotropically when at rest with respect to the CMB) and a nearly homogeneous arrangement of large structures (galaxies and clusters, just about everywhere).
In other words, any observer anywhere might guess that he/she/it has a privileged view and is at the centre of the visible universe.
‘It has been my contention that redshift is due to an opposite curvature of space then that caused by gravity”
Kind-of. The nature of the “dark energy” responsible for fuelling the metric expansion of space may be similar to gravity; it certainly appears to oppose gravitation. We don’t know a lot about it yet, unfortunately, other than that it has extremely small density but fills up all (or at least most) of otherwise empty space.
The redshift of large objects is consistent with Doppler shifting seen with much nearer objects whose distances and speeds can be measured by triangulation (e.g. RADAR on things here on Earth, rapid accelerations of blackbody radiators of known temperature, RADAR while approaching and departing planets and moons in the solar system, studies of eclipsing binary stars, and so forth). Close large structures have Doppler shifts consistent with peculiar motions towards or away from our general location, while further-away large structures have a significant redshift.
One of the key points of Doppler shifts in either direction is the preservation of spectral absorption and emission lines, and it is well defined spectra which are searched for.
Independent of cause, H2 spectrum searches allowed the derivation of the Hubble constant of 71 +- 4 km/s per Mpc.
We are not at rest with respect to the CMBR (there is a dipole anisotropy), but correcting for that gives us an isotropic redshift of objects whose distance we can also calculate by a variety of longer-range standard candles.
The redshift is identical to that produced by receding at that velocity, so “everything is moving away from us, with further away stuff moving away faster”. It is hard to construct scenarios other than an essentially uniform long-term metric expansion of space that also anticipates the same well defined spectra we see in telescopes.
“Could photons be something similar; The spot where the energy of the wave of light grounds to the contact field?”
Kind-of, yes. A photon is a discretization of a field — that’s the “quantum” in QM (or, more precisely, quantum electrodynamics). The field’s highest energy peak fluctuates randomly across the field (thus, its position and momentum has some uncertainty at the smallest scales). However, the quantization of the field into a point-like particle with discrete energy and discrete momentum reproduces all of its measurable behaviour. In part this is because the field does not divide — the whole field participates in an interaction with an arbitrarily small system, or none of it does — and we have not found any internal structure or component parts.
So light (which always travels at c in free space) comprises indivisible quantizations of energy and momentum called photons. The quantization energy was arrived at empirically through studies of blackbody radiators and the photoelectric effect, and is related to the frequency; the quantized momentum is its energy divided by c.
Accreted kludges aren’t pretty, but they (hopefully!) are more accurate nonetheless. We test for accuracy experimentally, and attempt to refine or reject models which are inaccurate. This is important if one’s goal is to describe and predict material events with ever greater accuracy, even if it doesn’t always offer neat insights into the nature of the real underlying processes so modelled.
Usually new insights start as some sort of intuition or wild speculation, which then must survive rigorous scrutiny in the form of regression testing against known observations, followed by a search for deviations from existing theory which can be tested experimentally at some point in the future.
I hope I haven’t messed up the editing again. I wish there was a preview feature!
Cy and John,
With regard to Dark Energy, space has a temperature of roughly 2.7 degrees Kelvin. The singular antipode of energy densities exhibits gravity as operating in the manner with which we are familiar.
Since the CMB (CBR) is detected as a “temperature” of space, it would, I think, be reasonable to assume that at the photonic antipode of the universal geometry, as opposed to the singular energy density related antipode, gravity would seem reversed from our coordinates.
I appreciated both of your additional comments…
Sam
Sy,
The initial point where I began to question Big Bang Theory was with the observation that “Omega=1″ or is very close. If the expansion is balanced by contraction of gravity, it seemed some form of convection cycle of expanding energy and collapsing mass made more sense.
So if the universe were to expand to twice its current size, than two galaxies x lightyears apart would be 2x lightyears apart? If so, that isn’t expanding space, it’s an increasing distance in stable space. If it remains x lightyears, how would we know it’s expanding?
Just as if it was an optical effect. Sort of like the light has to run up the down escalator. It travels further, but the source and destination are not actually moving apart.
If it is an optical effect, the further light travels, the more the effect would be compounded, so the faster the source would appear to recede. Eventually it would appear to exceed the speed of light and this would create a horizon line, beyond which visible light couldn’t travel, so the sources would vanish, but lower spectrum radiation would continue over this line, creating a black body effect, similar to the CMBR. At least ths way, we don’t say space is expanding, but then measure it against a stable measure of space.
Just like with lightning. It draws energy from the entire cloud, hence the branching effect. Carver Mead wrote some interesting stuff on working with electrons, that they can be up to three feet long.
Sam,
Is that gravity reversed from energy?
What, no mention of Merlin? He supposedly lived backwards in time, at least in TH White’s version of the tale.
Hmm, Seems like a live body is editing this at the moment. It’s been real. Sort of. Bye.
John asked, Sam
“Is that gravity reversed from energy?” (#27)
When we look outward in the universe, the universe becomes younger and smaller. At the “big bang”, 13.7 billion light years out, the unverse, everywhere at the astronomical antipode (360 degrees) is completely singular.
The CBM is the astronomical map of conditions in a much younger, and smaller universe, shortly after the big bang.
Space presently is not empty but has a photonic temperature of 2.7 degrees K. If it were empty, of course, it would have no temperature at all. The temperature of space everywhere is a measure of our present coordiates in space time, because, as measured from our frame, the universe had a very hot temperature, and necessary density at its origin.
This hot dense universe shortly after the big bang, which we are measuring had a great gravitational attraction (towards the big bang). Although the universe has cooled fown to 2.7 degrees K, this gravitational attraction toward the “bang” still exists in the direction of the astronomical antipode.
Since this attaction toward the bang goes in an opposite direction to the energy density particulate generated gravity of our universe, it seems reversed, like a vacuum energy to us. All this relates to what is almost certainly a modified Schwarzschild bi-particulate two-sphere geometry with two three-spaces…our reality.
Ned Wright has some great stuff posted on his site about the veracity of various cosmological models.
Best, Sam
Sam,
Sorry for dropping the thread. What little internet time I have had recently has been absorbed just keeping up on the various political and economic events.
We do look to the past as we move to the future. Are events scrolling away from us as motion produces them, or are we proceeding along a fundamental pathway? I’ve been raising this very basic question/observation for some months and have been unable to draw a similarly basic response, either negative or affirmative. I seriously doubt anyone is concerned about offending me, so I suspect that if there was some clear mistake, it would have been pointed out. Given this, I tend to look askance as to how much modern science has really proven and how much is natural human tendency to extrapolate into the unknown. Reality is most likely infinitely complex and there are no end of patterns to find and examine, but how much are our explorations a product of our own assumptions?
I’m still not sold that the default absolute space is the dimensionless point.
Which is in every direction, the stage of last scattering after Inflation created conveniently flat space. I still think it is flat space because the featureless void is the actual default absolute space and light is optically redshifted, creating a horizon line for the visible spectrum, so that only black body radiation travels over it.
I read through some of Ned Wright’s site some years ago and responded with some of my own ideas, to no response.
As I’ve stated, I do think modern physics is based on a reductionistic assumption that reality can be explained in terms of a perfect model, not a wholistic one. This search for the physical Platonic ideal is not only backward, since form is effect, not cause, but it is actually behind the times, not ahead of them. I think much of modern society has gone on over the last hundred years to understanding that “it” is flow, not object. As I’ve pointed out in my arguments over time, position is always only approximate, since without motion, nothing effectively exists, since it cannot be measured. That I get no feedback from members of the scientific establishment doesn’t surprise me, as we are in different time zones.
As for the search for the Higgs, I think the answer lays in all the data that gets thrown out. The secret is the oyster, not the perfect pearl.
Obviously I could be all wrong, but it’s an intellectual endeavor, not a financial one, so I can afford to be.
Hi John, You have some interesting thoughts here. I’ll put my responses in caps so you can identify my reaction….
Sam,
Sorry for dropping the thread. What little internet time I have had recently has been absorbed just keeping up on the various political and economic events.
YES, A LOT HAS BEEN GOING ON. MY HEALTH IS NOT GOOD ENOUGH TO PERMIT ACTIVE PARTICIPATION, BUT I AM INTERESTED TOO- AND AM INVOLVED IN THE SIMPLE WAYS I CAN. I CAN TELL BY SEAN’S THREAD CHOICE HE, (AND EVERYONE ELSE) IS (ARE) INTERESTED TOO.
When we look outward in the universe, the universe becomes younger and smaller.
We do look to the past as we move to the future. IN THE QUASI-STATIC MODEL IMPLIED BY GR AND INITIALLY ASSUMED BY EINSTEIN, WE OURSELVES TO NOT ACTUALLY MOVE OUT OF THE PAST AND INTO THE FUTURE. TIME IS A HOLOGRAPHIC AND QUITE ILLUSORY PROCESS WHICH WE EXPERIENCE ONLY BECAUSE OF THE WAY WE, AS PARTICULATE COMPLEXITY, ELECTROMAGNETICALLY OBSERVE THE UNIVERSE AT CERTAIN PERMANENT COORDINATES. Are events scrolling away from us as motion produces them, or are we proceeding along a fundamental pathway? LIKE THE UNIVERSE, WE PERSONALLY DEVELOP SLOWLY (IN THE MODEL) OVER ETERNITY. I’ve been raising this very basic question/observation for some months and have been unable to draw a similarly basic response, either negative or affirmative. I seriously doubt anyone is concerned about offending me, so I suspect that if there was some clear mistake, it would have been pointed out. I THINK SOME OF THE GUYS FEEL YOU ARE QUITE CONFIDENT OF THE SOUNDNESS OF YOUR PHILOSOPHICAL POSTION AND SEE NO REASON TO RE-STATE THEIR POSITIONS. AFTER ALL, THE UNIVERSE, HOWEVER IT EXISTS, EXISTS BY DEFINITION. INSOFAR AS OUR SPECULATIONS ASSIST US IN FORMULATING A TESTABLE HYPOTHESIS, OUT DISCUSSIONS ARE MEANINGFUL. OTHERWISE MOST PEOPLE ON THE BLOG ARE NOT REALLY INTERESTED IN A GENERAL DISCUSSION. I HAVE BEEN VERY IMPRESSED WITH THIS BLOG. MOST OF THE PEOPLE HERE ARE WELL KNOWN SCIENTISTS LOOKING FOR, AND SHARING IDEAS. REST ASSURED THEY HAVE NOTED YOUR IDEAS, EVEN THOUGH THEY MAY NOT SHARE YOUR PERSPECTIVE. EVERYONE HERE, WITH PRECIOUS FEW EXCEPTIONS IS VERY POLITE. Given this, I tend to look askance as to how much modern science has really proven and how much is natural human tendency to extrapolate into the unknown. Reality is most likely infinitely complex and there are no end of patterns to find and examine, but how much are our explorations a product of our own assumptions?THIS IS WELL STATED JOHN AND REFLECTS BACK TO MY COMMENTS IMMEDIATELY PRECEDING THIS COMMENT OF YOURS. THESE GUYS ARE LOOKING FOR TESTABLE IDEAS, AND IN QM/SR/GR/AND THE SCHWARZSCHILD GEOMETRY, THEY HAVE THEM. THEIR POINT OF VIEW IS DETERMINED BY A KIND OF ENGINEERING ENVELOPE WITHIN WHICH THESE WELL VERIFIED IDEAS CONCEPTUALLY FIT.
The temperature of space everywhere is a measure of our present coordiates in space time, because, as measured from our frame, the universe had a very hot temperature, and necessary density at its origin.
I’m still not sold that the default absolute space is the dimensionless point.
I DON’T THINK THERE ARE MANY PEOPLE ON THIS BLOG WHO BELIEVE IN EITHER ABSOLUTE SPACE- OR THE DIMENSIONESS POINT. THE HEART OF RELATIVITY IS THE IDEA THAT TIME AND SPACE ARE RELATIVE, NOT ABSOLUTE, AND THAT AT THE LOWEST LEVELS OF SCALE, SPACE AND TIME CEASE AND EVENT HORIZONS FORM. SOME OF THESE PEOPLE TINKER WITH THE REGION BENEATH THE EVENT HORIZON, BUT I WOULDN’T THINK MANY SPEND A LOT OF TIME WITH SUB-EVENT HORIZON “MECHANICS”. THIS ALSO RELATES TO THE INFORMATION PARADOX, WHICH, IT IS PRETTY MUCH AGREED, DOES NOT EXIST. WE KNOW THAT BLACK HOLES “EVAPORATE” BUT THIS PHENOMENON IS COMPLETELY CONSISTENT WITH A UNIVERSAL MODEL OF SPACE AND TIME WHICH HAS EXTRA DIMENSIONS BEYOND OUR 4D MODEL.
Although the universe has cooled fown to 2.7 degrees K, this gravitational attraction toward the “bang” still exists in the direction of the astronomical antipode.
Which is in every direction, CORRECT the stage of last scattering after Inflation created conveniently flat space. FLAT SPACE IS NOT JUST CONVENIENT, IT IS THE WAY THE UNIVERSE WOULD BE EXPECTED TO BE OBSERVED FROM CIRCUMFERENTIAL PARTICULATE 4D EVENT HORIZONS- YET EXPERIENCED AT THE CENTER OF A MARGINALLY CLOSED GR GEOMETRY. I still think it is flat space because the featureless void is the actual default absolute space and light is optically redshifted, creating a horizon line for the visible spectrum, so that only black body radiation travels over it.ALL THE EVIDENCE OUT THERE IS THAT SPACE IS NOT A “MEDIUM” IN THE CLASSICAL SENSE OF THE WORD…IT IS NOT REFRACTORY AND DOES NOT HAVE ANY RELATIVISTIC POSITION WITHIN THE MANIFOLD, YET SPACE IS NOT ULTIMATELY EMPTY AND IT DOES HAVE MASS.
I read through some of Ned Wright’s site some years ago and responded with some of my own ideas, to no response.NED IS A GREAT GUY…AN EXCELLENT TEACHER AND RESEARCHER, BUT HE IS VERY BUSY. SOMETIMES HE HAS TIME TO RESPOND, BUT HE GETS SO MANY INQUIRIES IT IS ALMOST IMPOSSIBLE TO REPLY TO EVERYONE.
As I’ve stated, I do think modern physics is based on a reductionistic assumption that reality can be explained in terms of HY perfect model, not a wholistic one. IT IS CLEAR TO MOST SCIENTISTS THAT REDUCTIONISM HAS DEFINITE LIMITS. THE MODEL WHICH SCIENTISTS SEEK IS A HOLISITIC MODEL, AND SR/GR/QM AND THE SCHWARZSCHILD GEOMETRY DO, IN COMBINATION FORM A GOOD, WELL VERIFIED BASIS FOR A HOLISTIC COSMOLOGICAL MODEL.This search for the physical Platonic ideal (EINSTEINS IDEAS ARE VERY PLATONIC) is not only backward, since form is effect, not cause, but it is actually behind the times, not ahead of them. I think much of modern society has gone on over the last hundred years to understanding that “it” is flow, not object. As I’ve pointed out in my arguments over time, position is always only approximate,THIS IS CORRECT, IN A QUASI-STATIC UNIVERSE THINGS ARE RIGID BUT AS A RESULT OF A COSMIC AND VERY RAPID PROPER TIME PULSE, COORDINATES DO SLOWLY (AND ALMOST IMPERCEPTIBLY) CHANGE. THIS SLOW CHANGE IS THE BASIS FOR OUR GREATLY EXAGGERATED SENSE OF TIME PASSAGE. since without motion, nothing effectively exists, since it cannot be measured. THERE IS NO EXISTENCE WITHOUT A PERCEPTION OF TIME. I DON’T REALLY THINK MANY PEOPLE ON THE BLOG WOULD DISAGREE WITH THAT IDEA. That I get no feedback from members of the scientific establishment doesn’t surprise me, as we are in different time zones. THEY NOTE EVERYONES IDEAS AND MOVE ON IN A CONTINUING SEARCH FOR NEW AND TESTABLE IDEAS.
As for the search for the Higgs, I think the answer lays in all the data that gets thrown out. The secret is the oyster, not the perfect pearl.THERE IS ALWAYS THE POSSIBILITY THAT WE ARE LOOKING IN THE WRONG PLACES FOR OUR ANSWERS. THE REASON WHY THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD IS SO GREAT, IS THAT IT PRODUCES RESULTS; AN EXPANDING TECHNOLOGY AND UNDERSTANDING OF THE UNIVERSE…HOWEVER COUNTERINTUITIVE IT SEEMS. MANY TIMES WE MISS IMPORTANT CLUES IN DATA…THAT IS VERY EASY TO DO. IT IS ALSO EASY TO OVERLOOK CLUES IN THE DATA WHICH POINT TO THE POSSIBLE VERACITY OF OTHER IDEAS- WHICH WE WOULD PREFER TO OVERLOOK FOR PERSONAL REASONS. SCIENTISTS ARE, AFTER ALL, HUMAN. THAT IS WHY THEY QUESTION EACH OTHER AND POST IDEAS ON BLOGS LIKE THIS ONE. THE IMPORTANT THING IS TO REMAIN INTELLECTUALLY OPEN.
Obviously I could be all wrong, but it’s an intellectual endeavor, not a financial one, so I can afford to be.YOUR POINT IS WELL TAKEN AND I KNOW SEAN AND EVFERYONE ELSE WOULD AGREE THAT BEING ON “THE PAYROLL” HAS CERTAIN POTENTIAL DISADVANTAGES. NEITHER YOU NOR I HAVE ANY “AXE TO GRIND” BUT THAT INTELLECTUAL FREEDOM DOESN’T NECESSARILY MAKE OUR IDEAS ANY MORE TRUE THAN THEIRS! THE BOTTOM LINE IN SCIENCE IS EXPERIMENTAL VERACITY.
Sam,
Just copy the block quote tag *blockquote>IN THE QUASI-STATIC MODEL IMPLIED BY GR AND INITIALLY ASSUMED BY EINSTEIN, WE OURSELVES TO NOT ACTUALLY MOVE OUT OF THE PAST AND INTO THE FUTURE. TIME IS A HOLOGRAPHIC AND QUITE ILLUSORY PROCESS WHICH WE EXPERIENCE ONLY BECAUSE OF THE WAY WE, AS PARTICULATE COMPLEXITY, ELECTROMAGNETICALLY OBSERVE THE UNIVERSE AT CERTAIN PERMANENT COORDINATES.
I realize the point I’m making is a simple statement of how relativity treats time, as you describe it, but it isn’t always taught that way and many people who have spent a great deal of time studying it seem convinced that time really does exist as an additional dimension of space, rather then simply being modeled as one. Also it doesn’t seem recognized that if we understand time as a model of motion and not the basis for it, then this narrative timeline is actually going future to past. Maybe it is so taken for granted and obvious among physicists that they don’t feel it worth commenting on, but it is the kind of point that the general public, such as myself, can grasp and understand why intuition and logic are not always identical. You would think those who do understand the importance of public relations might get this, but it doesn’t seem to be the case.
That is also a point that needs to de reconsidered. As I keep pointing out with the two directions of time, there is the measurement and what is being measured. (Energy going to the future. Information going to the past.)There is a strong tendency to carry this to one extreme and argue that it is all only the measurement/information. Max Tegemark comes recently to mind.
I no doubt they are being polite, but the recent issue Sean raises concerning “The Truth, Respectfully,” comes to mind. They could easily shut me up and I wouldn’t take it too hard if someone could give me a clear example of how the points I’ve raised have been previously refuted or taken into account. Yes, Lawrence did make the effort, but beyond the jargon, he still seemed to mostly wander off the specific point I was raising. Admittedly I’ve also raised arguments that are not pc for this audience, but I don’t try to hide my background, lack thereof, or general perspective. Yes, I realize this negates their potential respect for my position, but I do understand basic human psychology enough to not play politics, since this is presumably about raising basic questions concerning the nature of reality and it is a public forum, to some extent.
The fact is that physical hypotheses have gone far beyond what is testable. Maybe it is time to double back and reconsider some of those original premises, many of which are several generations old. The Copenhagen Interpretation comes to mind.
Abmittedly I wander off the deep end in questioning Big Bang Theory, but that’s where I went off the reservation to begin with; The idea that if gravity and the expansion of space are effectively opposing factors, how can there be any expansion of the universe? From this everything else I’ve raised flows, from two directions of time, to why doesn’t the speed of light increase proportionally with the expansion of space.
I haven’t argued that it is a medium. They most I’ve said about space it that it represents the absolute state and this is not represented by an initial point, but a featureless void, or lack of any such original reference. Lets just say the singularity was a quantum fluctuation. Would it be possible to say this fluctuation is constantly occurring and we are inside it, so that space expands of itself and only collapses to potential points/black holes, since the material generated does have physical definition. This way we have expansion that is similar to what is observed and doesn’t need dark energy to supplement the singularity. The Big Bang universe does constitute a narrative unit from start to finish, so that at the beginning it was in the future and eventually it will be in the past, just as any narrative unit does. As usual physics is only focused on the measurement and not what is being measured, the energy which goes from one unit to the next, just as the sun and earth go from one day to the next.
I better get back to work…
Regards,
John
I knew I shouldn’t have messed with trying to put that tag in there;
Sam,
Just copy the block quote tag above the text box and paste it about as many quotes as you will need, then copy what you want to quote and paste it into them, between the middle arrows>IN THE QUASI-STATIC MODEL IMPLIED BY GR AND INITIALLY ASSUMED BY EINSTEIN, WE OURSELVES TO NOT ACTUALLY MOVE OUT OF THE PAST AND INTO THE FUTURE. TIME IS A HOLOGRAPHIC AND QUITE ILLUSORY PROCESS WHICH WE EXPERIENCE ONLY BECAUSE OF THE WAY WE, AS PARTICULATE COMPLEXITY, ELECTROMAGNETICALLY OBSERVE THE UNIVERSE AT CERTAIN PERMANENT COORDINATES.
It seems to be the arrows which cut off text…
Hi John, Pardon me for just recapitulating a few reflections, with which I know you were and are familiar.
The only thing I wanted to address in this response was your concern about the Big Bang. Believe me there are many scientists with reservations about the “Big Bang”. It is most important to realize that everything we deduce about the bang may in fact be quite real, and verifiable…it is a “bang” as observed from OUR particulate 4D existence….hot, with early nflation, great gravity and unimaginable density- everything…but as observed from OUR frame of reference!
We deduce the bang by working backwards from our coordinates in space-time and we describe it within those parameters, which may be OK from our local frame…in fact we may be able to build a technology on this information, yet the universe may in fact be quite different structurally.
Remember our astronauts accelerating away from the Earth? What observers on the Earth observe is completely different from what the astronauts observe as they look out the window of their spacecraft. Their universe really looks different than the one they knew on the Earth when they departed.
The KEY is, the astronauts could build a workable technology out of the universe they observe from their accelerating spacecraft. Living on the Earth with a gravitational acceleration of 1G produces multiple (not single direction) accelerations, which give us the universe we observe. Our world, just like the universe in an accelerating spacecraft, is the result of relativistic effects. Our world seems “normal” to us. Little do we know that we are observeing the universe in a very unique and particular way, on particulate 4D event horizon surfaces, in extreme gravitational dilation…from the center of a marginally closed spherical geometry.
Now for the Bang…it is, like the rest of the universe we observe, but a relativistic effect…real, YES…to us. However to conceive of the big bang as a massive explosion from a geometric point is downright foolish, in the light of what we know about relativity and relativisitic effects. Even from our frame of reference, it is better to start in the right place, with ourselves, for the universe exists the way we observe it. We stay, in GR, at the same coordinates forever. It is space and time which collapse, making us one with everything else which also exists in the cosmos at their own permanent locations.
Take Organic Evolution…again a relativisitc effect, produced by the way we observe the universe on event horizon surfaces in extreme gravitational dilation. Is Organic Evolution correct? Of course it is correct, for organic evolution is the way we observe life to originate and develop from our frame of reference. Like all other relativistic effects which make up our world, we can build a technology from what we observe in the processess of organic evolution.
However, GR tells us bluntly, that what is so logical to us (what we see out the window of our spaceship Earth) is only the tip of the cosmological iceberg. There are cosmic principles and forces involved far more profound than organic evolution which we can infer by what we know about physics…the equivalence of non-inertial and gravitational frames of reference, in this case.
Take my word for it John, we live in an amazing universe. I for one, do not even pretend to really understand what is happening…but I think mankind is learning, and will not only understand, but control and be a part of those cosmological principles which have brought us to this blog, at these coordinates in space and time.
Best Wishes, Sam Cox
Sam,
I do have some grasp of relativity. My point about the big bang is that gravity is collapsing space at AT THE SAME TIME AND AT THE SAME RATE as it is expanding. Think of it in terms of my observation that our proceeding forward in time from past to future is relative to its passing by us going the other way, from future to past. These factors of expansion and contraction are happening at the same time. So as with the two directions of time, what we would seem to have is an equilibrium, with the illusion of relative motion.
Hi John,
Absolutely. What is observed as expanding from one frame, is observed as collapsing from another, 180/360 degrees removed in space and time but particulately superposed as pulsating energy, matter/antimatter occillations at the quark level of scale which cosmologically occur at a rate of 2.8 trillion times per Earth second.
Thinking this through it is easy to understand the quasi-static universe! Everything stays eternally in the same place…obviously! By gravitational time dilation, and observing electromagnetically and remotely, we see an almost instantaneous pulse as taking the vast age (and space) of the universe. In the sky, at the astronomical antipode, (The CMB) we read this sub-microscopic pulse (one half of it) as the “power spectrum”.
By the way, all this follows from the fact that a wad of keys and a bowling ball accelerate at the same rate when released at the same distance from the center of the Earth. Gravity is a fictitious force (Merry go Round- like) which results from a “curvature” of space/time induced by the presence of energy densities. This curvature is, at macroscopic scales, unrelated to the individual mass of energy densities in the vicinity of the Earth for example.
The “curvature” we call gravity is an induced manifold which appears in the presence of information and complexity on multiple 4D event horizon surfaces. These 4D event horizon surfaces form as a result of the fact that the very existence of energy densities prohibits their existence- or that of space/time at a certain place in scale, and that these scale/anergy density relationships vary with great complexity, depending on the mass of the energy denisties and how, and from what place within the manifold they are observed.
What makes all this worth talking about is its experimental veracity. All this is not some dumb conjecture of a weirdo, unless we consider Einstein, and a concept which is predictive to 33 decimal places to be weird! GR works right down to the event horizon. Some people try to take it further, but as you can see from what I have just said, taking GR below the event horizon is not conceptually consistent…that is, indeed, a bit “weird”.
Best, Sam Cox
Sam,
Maybe the reason GR doesn’t go beyond the event horizon is because it is reflected back as “the other side of the merry-go-round,” caused by release of energy.
Think of it this way; Gravity curves space inward, but from what frame of reference? Flat space? No, because there is no such thing as objective flat space, so it must be curving it in from the opposite effect of expanding space and whatever is the intermediate level between these two directions is the equilibrium. Sort of if you took a bulldozer and pushed all the hills into all the valleys, what is left is flat. So how would these hills between the gravitational valleys be detected in the first place? Since this effect doesn’t have a gravitational focal point, it wouldn’t bend the path of light. It would be pervasive across all space, so how would it affect light crossing this space which is expanding as surely as gravity pulls light in? Logically by redshifting the light. If the space is actually expanding, why wouldn’t the source be actually receding? Given that space is measured by its contents and all such measurable “stuff” is falling into gravity, even the light falling onto the lens of our telescopes, the pressure of this expansion is relieved by gravity. So while the expansion is one side of the merry-go-round going one way, gravity is the other side going the other way, AT THE SAME TIME. The more space that light crosses, the more the effect is compounded, so the faster the source appears to recede. When the source is far enough away that it appears to recede at the speed of light, the effect is a horizon line for visible light and only black body radiation goes over this horizon line. That’s why the CMBR comes from all directions and why those visible sources are redshifted directly away from us without the earth being the center of the universe and without having the speed of light increase as space expands, since the same objects will remain in view, much as light bending around a gravity field doesn’t actually cause the source of this light to be pushed to the side of the field, but is an effect on the transmission of the light, rather then the position of the source.
Therefore redshift is due entirely to this form of cosmological constant which balances gravity, just as one side of the merry-go-round balances the other side and there is no need of an initial singularity.
Hi…A couple of thoughts…
Particulate energy densities, by defintion become singular, depending on their mass as we “descend” in scale, larger particles first, then smaller and finally the smallest. Certainly the entire universe below 10 to the minus 36th Cm is and must be by definition, singular. I laughed once at a well known scientist’s comment that “there isn’t much down there”….very well stated.
However, over the universe as a whole, the singular Planck realm makes up 73% of the mass of the universe.
The point is, the whole SR/GR concept of space, time and gravity limits the existence of energy densities to certain scale ranges. Its a matter of definition- that is how the concept plays out.
I like your analogy of filling in the holes with the piles of dirt extracted from them in the first place…pretty good!
However, gravity, just because it seems to act like a vacuum as in the CMB does not really operate in reverse…it, in effect pulls down everywhere in the universe. As you mention, our Merry Go Round is moving in the same direction on both sides, it only seems to move in different directions because of the way gravity is observed…what coordinates we observe from.
That does not mean that gravity on the “other side” of a twin universe would not take some getting used to! We would stand on the ground, yet the initial sensation would be that of paralysis. Never the less, what we needed would come to us “automatically”. It would be an easier world, but as someone already mentioned on the blog, a world of decreasing thermal entropy would be accompanied by increasing informational entropy…IE we would become more childlike.
“there is no need of an initial singularity.” I would venture you phrased that incorrectly, because the universe actually exists as it is observed. If we observe the universe to exist a certain way…that is what exists…IE there IS an initial singularity. One of the things about a GR universe we need to remember is that it exists in a near infinite variety of ways. If you doubt that, consider the different frames of all the plants, animals and people in this world. My world is really real to me and your world is really real to you. Our coordinates are similar enough we can communicate, but even in the case of humanity, we can’t change coordinates too far in space and time without having difficulties with our communication of meaning!
800 years ago, were we to move backward in time, learning English as it existed then would have been a project like us learning the German language today. In linguistics we study “mutual intelligbility” and “word correspondence”. We try to translate ancient languages, read the geological record and study the history of evolution by the study of fossels. In reality, we are attempting not only to understand the universe, we are attempting a kind of communication. Obviously we can communicate with humans, even other living things, but some might argue we cannot communicate with the inanimate. I know using such words as communicating with the inanimate seems a contradiction in terms, but I think there is value in the idea.
Math, Physics and Engineering stand at the pinacle of science. When we discover such a fundamental truth as that the universe exists as it is observed, and we experimentally confirm that concept, we establish a link between the natural and even social sciences which we can identify even in the semantic nomenclature they share.
Yes, the universe is much more profound structually that the initial singularity. I spent quite a bit of time on the blog reviewing the reasons why that is true. In that sense you are correct. However we are conceptually on very thin ice in a GR universe, when we assert there was no initial singularity.
Best, Sam Cox
Sam,
A major part of the other side of the merry-go-round, the source of these hills, is the radiant energy expanding out of gravitational wells, across the visible universe. A singularity would be a point of infinite density, but if there are limits to this density, black holes would be the eye of gravitational vortexes into which matter falls, before it reaches the wall beyond which it cannot fall further and is radiated back out.
The universe exists as observed because an objective perspective is an oxymoron.
You don’t really address my point that if gravity and expansion are opposite factors and are in general equilibrium, then it describes a cycle of collapsing mass and expanding energy, a convective process where one side expands until it cools down and starts to collapse until the pressure heats it back up and it starts to expand again. It was in Hawking’s Brief History of Time that I first came across the point that expansion and gravity must be in close balance for the universe to be as stable as it is and experiments since apparently prove it.
Is that because it really doesn’t make sense, or because it’s like entering a mac program on a pc and it just does not compute. I realize that professional physicists are extremely focused, but if there is some conceptual mistake buried in the foundations of their theories, are they capable of deconstructing what has become the essence of their being, much as any adherent of a system is both master and slave to the paradigm?
Hi John,
All the evidence points to a big bang. The standard model is founded on it, and the standard model is an excellent (though significantly not perfect) predictor of the evolution of the universe following a ba