The Big Bang’s Metaphysical Baggage: Part Two

The Big Bang event is the leading scientific cosmological theory when it comes to explaining the origin and evolution of life, the Universe and simply everything. While the Big Bang event is the leading candidate and the standard model, it’s not the only one. That’s fortunate, because while a fair bit of once theoretical now verified observational evidence supports that standard cosmological model, it also comes as well with a fair bit of metaphysical baggage. It’s mainly that metaphysical baggage that concerns me.

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

BIG BANG EVIDENCE

If the Big Bang is so apparently wrong on so many fundamental counts, then what’s the positive evidence for it? What prompts cosmologists to advocate the standard model?

1) Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation (CMBR): If you have a massive hot explosion (like the Big Bang), and all that heat energy expands and expands, then you’d expect the temperature of the area occupied by that energy to drop, the temperature ever decreasing as the volume that finite amount of energy occupies increases. As the energy expands it gets diluted and thus cools, but can never reach an absolute zero temperature. And that’s just what we find on the scale of the Universe. There’s a fine microwave energy “hiss” representing a temperature a few degrees above absolute zero that’s everywhere in the cosmos. That’s the diluted heat energy of the very hot Big Bang – well it has been a long time and is now spread throughout a lot of volume. That microwave “hiss”, called the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation (CMBR), was predicted way before it was discovered, and one bona fide way of confirming evidence for a theory is to make predictions that are born out by experimental observations.

2) Composition of the Universe:  At the theoretical but expected temperatures and pressures of the Big Bang, you might expect a certain amount of some interesting nuclear chemistry to take place and generate various substances. Particle physicists used to calculating such things predicted the relative amounts and types of stuff the Big Bang event would generate, and the theory matches observations to a high degree of accuracy – nearly all hydrogen and helium will be created by a ratio of roughly three to one. All the rest of stuff (very, very minor amounts relative to hydrogen and helium) that we know and love (like oxygen and iron and gold, etc.) was synthesised via the conversion of hydrogen and helium to those heavier elements by nuclear fusion processes – cosmic alchemy – in stars and often resultant supernovae, not in the Big Bang. 

3) Expansion: If you have a large explosion, a really big bang, a violent vomit event, you’d expect the bits that received the most oomph, the bits with the most energy would be expelled the fastest; other bits with less energy would lose the race (if this were a track meet). And thus the bits of spewed stuff spreads out – fastest in front, like a marathon run. A bacterium on one of these bits would see every other bit moving away from it. Some faster bits are outpacing the bacterium inhabited bit; the bacterium occupied bit is outpacing and leaving behind the slower bits. If the bacterium assumes it is standing still, then both the faster and slower moving bits appear to be receding away from it. The bacterium observes all other bits moving away from it at speeds proportional to their distance from it. The bacterium might assume from all of this that its bit was a special bit – the centre bit – but we can see that’s not so. Any bacterium on any of the bits would conclude the same thing. They too would be wrong. Does that mean there was no centre? Of course there was. Equally incorrect would be the conclusion that there was no centre – there was, the site of the original big spew.  

Substitute our local gravitationally bound cluster of galaxies as the bacterium’s bit; all other external galaxies and clusters of galaxies that have no connection to our local galactic group are the other bits, and there’s your analogy. Do we observe these other galactic bits to be moving away from us at velocities proportional to their distance from us? Yes indeed; you bet we do; spot-on! 

As an alternative, let’s look at a marathon analogy. We have this long distance marathon that starts off with say 1000 runners at a specific point in time and space. The finishing line is at a 150 mile radius out and the runners can run in any direction they choose. They, for the sake of this analogy, run at 15, 12, 9, 6 or 3 miles per hour. Let’s look at the relativities from the point of view of the middle runner, the one running at 9 miles per hour. After one hour he sees the 15 mph runner six miles ahead running at a relative velocity of 6 mph; the 12 mph runner 3 miles ahead with a relative velocity of 3 mph; the 6 mph runner 3 miles behind also at a relative velocity of 3 mph; and the 3 mph runner 6 miles behind with a velocity relative to our 9 mph runner of 6 mph – that’s assuming all took off and headed in one direction.

But if the 9 mph runner looks at those running in the exact opposite direction, the anti 3 mph runner is 12 miles behind with a relative velocity between them of 12 mph; the anti 6 mph runner is 15 miles away with, you guessed it a relative velocity difference of 15 mph; the anti 9 mph runner is 18 miles distant, relative velocity 18 mph; the anti 12 mph runner is 21 miles away at 21 mph relative velocity; the anti 15 mph runner is 24 miles away and moving away at 24 mph. Translated, there is a direct correlation between how far away the various runners are, and how fast they are running, which you can graph for verification. After two hours the distances between any two runners moving at different velocities will have doubled; after three hours trebled; after four hours quadrupled, and so on, though each runner is maintaining their respective velocities. Again, the relationship holds for each runner; each runner might think themselves in the centre as all other runners appear to be moving away from that runner’s point of view, yet it’s not the case that any runner is the centre – yet there was a centre when the starting gun went off.

Now kindly note that there is nothing in that trilogy of evidence for the Big Bang that requires that event to have: 1) created time; 2) created space; and 3) to have been a quantum-sized happening.

WHERE’S THE RECIPE BOOK?

The ultimate recipe book that would support the Big Bang event’s causality with the creation of time and space; the origin of matter and energy, has yet to be written by those advocating that very point of view.

There’s no recipe to the best of my knowledge for how to cook up a batch of time!

Equally there’s no recipe for how to bake a cake of space!

How do you mix up a quark salad or a neutrino soup when there’s nothing in the pantry to start off with? Can anyone please give me the recipe?

From an equally empty supermarket you apparently can produce a kinetic energy pie. I want to see the recipe for that!

The Universe, it has been said, is the ultimate free lunch. But a lunch still needs a recipe book. When physicists, astrophysicists and cosmologists can actually write and publish such a cookbook, well then its Nobel Prizes all around. Till then, I think they should veer away from statements about the creation of time, space, matter and energy from nothing. Till then, my mantra remains “there is no such thing as a free lunch”.   

BEFORE THE BIG BANG

While I’m convinced there was a before the Big Bang, the nature of that ‘before’ is vague at best since the transition between before the Big Bang through the Big Bang to after the Big Bang is unknown (at present anyway), since the relevant equations break down into pure nonsense under those extremes. What’s probably reasonable is to call whatever existed pre Big Bang a ‘universe’, maybe a ‘universe’ within a larger Multiverse. If conservation laws have any meaning, that ‘universe’ (within a Multiverse perhaps) contained the same amount of stuff (matter and energy) as ours does though the mix might have been different. This pre Big Bang ‘universe’ certainly consisted of volume (space) and change (time). What’s less certain is whether that ‘universe’s’ laws, principles and relationships of physics were the same as ours. If not, just about anything goes. It’s probably more reasonable and constructive to assume their physics is our physics. Translated, to answer Einstein’s famous question, God, or Mother Nature, had no choice in the matter about how to construct or arrange a universe.

WHAT CAUSES EXPLOSIONS?

What caused the Big Bang explosion? Okay, we have a pre Big Bang ‘universe’. Something happened there that caused our Big Bang explosion. What causes explosions (ultimately a lot of kinetic energy) and could they be up to the task of causing our Big Bang spew?

Well fine particulate matter like coal dust or equivalents when in the presence of oxygen and ignited can violently explode and expand. Still, that’s hardly a sufficient means to create our Universe. However, that’s a form of chemical energy, and under the right conditions, chemical energy can be released quickly enough that for all practical purposes you have an explosion – think of gunpowder, a firecracker, sticks of dynamite, hand grenades or their mature equivalents, conventional bombs dropped from aircraft, or even the mini controlled explosions that drive your automobile engine and hence your car. You also have other explosive mixtures, like when sodium hits water, and there are lots more to boot, often the staple of high school chemistry classes. However, chemicals are very inefficient in terms of being converted to energy. Hardly any of the matter gets converted to energy. Chemical energy is not the way to proceed to generate a really big, Big Bang.

Then there is nuclear energy. Atomic energy can be controlled, released steady-as-she-goes, as in electricity-generating nuclear power plants or facilities. Or, nuclear energy can be released in real quick-smart fashion, as in uncontrolled reactions that result in ka-booms that produce mushroom clouds as in thermonuclear weapons; the A-bomb, the H-bomb, etc. Energy is released when atomic nuclei are split apart (fission) or rammed together (fusion). It’s the former that produces our electricity; both can power up those mushroom clouds. Its fusion that powers our Sun (and all the other shinning stars), which in simple form is just one gigantic bomb continuously going off. Only the Sun’s immense inward gravity contains the explosion (outward radiative pressure) keeping it confined to the circular disc we observe in the daytime sky. Alas, fuel eventually runs out, in petrol tanks and in stars. In stars, when the fuel is finally consumed, gravity wins. Stars collapse slowly, or if originally massive enough, really suddenly. These massive stars implode; rebound and explode – a supernova is born. But even a supernova pales in comparison to what the Big Bang must have been like, for even supernovae in particular, and nuclear energy in general, while more efficient in converting matter to energy relative to chemical energy, still would fail any efficiency audit.  

If you want to pass the matter-to-energy efficiency exam, there’s only one game in town: matter meets antimatter! Matter-antimatter reactions produce the most efficient means known to humans of generating explosive energy – 100% efficiency to be precise. Translated, 100% of the matter (and the antimatter) gets converted to energy. No leftovers. If a little bit of matter can generate a massive amount of energy in ultimately what amounts to a relatively highly inefficient nuclear fusion process, imagine what a massive amount of matter meets antimatter could generate!

One could image a super-lump of matter merging with an ever-so-slightly-less super-lump of antimatter. That would in theory result in a super-ultra violent explosion (the Big Bang) but giving us, our Universe, its matter dominance (over antimatter) that we observe. However, I strongly suspect that such super-sized lumps would have to be so massive that they would turn into Black Holes first, and the merger of two Black Holes, even one each of matter and antimatter, just gives you a larger Black Hole. All annihilation hell might be going on inside, but since the explosion can’t escape the pull of a Black Hole’s gravity, it’s of no consequence.

Still, as the most efficient means of generating explosive kinetic energy, getting the biggest bang for your buck, matter-antimatter annihilation needs some further thought and consideration. Is there a way of generating a Big Bang via the matter-antimatter component of a prior, pre-Big Bang ‘universe’ without the massive lumps?

To be continued…

The Big Bang’s Metaphysical Baggage: Part One

The Big Bang event is the leading scientific cosmological theory when it comes to explaining the origin and evolution of life, the Universe and simply everything. While the Big Bang event is the leading candidate and the standard model, it’s not the only one. That’s fortunate, because while a fair bit of once theoretical now verified observational evidence supports that standard cosmological model, it also comes as well with a fair bit of metaphysical baggage. It’s mainly that metaphysical baggage that concerns me.

When anyone ponders the origin and evolution of our Universe, the science of cosmology, one is confronted with the Big Bang theory – the Big Bang event. So, what did the Big Bang do, or didn’t do; what was it, or wasn’t? And, most importantly, should you put any credibility into the Big Bang scenario seeing as how 1) nobody was around to witness the event, and 2) the scenario, as given by the standard model, is grossly in violation of the very laws, principles and relationships of physics that you’d expect cosmologists to support. Are their any solutions that are out-of-the-box that can reconcile the Big Bang event without violating what scientists should hold most dear? I can think of two!

For those of you unacquainted with the Big Bang scenario, in the beginning (13.7 billion years ago) the Big Bang event created our Universe – all of space and time; all of matter and energy; all from a volume less than a standard pinhead! Now for the objections!

THE BIG BANG VIOLATES BASIC PHYSICS

1) Standard Big Bang violation number one - the Big Bang didn’t create time:

The concept of time is nothing more than a measurement of rate-of-change. If nothing ever changed, the concept of time would be meaningless. Now change suggests there must be at least two events. Event One happens; Event Two happens. The change is that difference between the state of play identified with Event One and the state of play identified with Event Two. That change equates into a time differential. Event One happens at a time separate and apart from that of Event Two. Event One if it’s the cause of Event Two, must have happened prior to Event Two. Event Two in turn, can act as the cause of Event Three, and so on. Translated, there was no first event; there was no first cause. There was no first event because there had to be a prior cause that caused that event. There was no first cause because there had to have been an earlier event that caused that cause.

Now the Big Bang event was both a cause and an effect. As a cause, the Big Bang caused the subsequent event, the kick-starting of the evolution of our Universe. As an effect, well something prior to the Big Bang must have acted as a cause of the Big Bang effect. Translated, that cause must have been prior in time to the Big Bang; therefore there is such a thing as a before the Big Bang and therefore the Big Bang event could NOT have created time.  Taken to its logical conclusion, there could never have been a first cause; there could never be a first effect, therefore time is infinite since the chicken (cause) and egg (effect) paradox is only solvable by postulating infinity.

2) Standard Big Bang violation number two - the Big Bang didn’t create space:

This supposition is easily disposed of. Can any handyman reading this think of any possibility of how they could create something, anything, be it building something from scratch, or writing words on paper, or even thinking those words or thinking about building something, without there being pre-existing space, be it space in your garage, space that exists in your exercise book, or the space that exists between your ears that conceives of building X or writing Y? No? Nothing, but nothing, springs into reality, even if only a nebulous mental reality, without there being pre-existing space. The Big Bang is a reality. It had to have been created in a reality. Any reality has a space or volume component. Therefore, the Big Bang (creation of our Universe) event happened in pre-existing space or volume; therefore the Big Bang event did not, could not, have created space. You can not create your own space, the space you yourself exist in. It’s sort of like giving birth to your own self. It’s a paradox.

3) Standard Big Bang violation number three - the Big Bang didn’t create matter/energy:

One of the most cherished conservation principles, drummed into every science student, from junior high through university, is that matter can neither be created nor destroyed, but only changed in form. Also, energy can neither be created nor destroyed, but only changed in form. Post Einstein, the two have been combined, since matter can be turned into energy and vice versa. However, the central bit is creation. Creation from nothing (or destruction into nothing) is not allowed – except for some unfashionable reason at the Big Bang according the standard model of cosmology. Why this should be the sole exception to the rule is quite beyond me.

Now there is such a thing as creation of virtual particles from the vacuum energy (quantum fluctuations). However that’s not a free lunch (something created from nothing). It’s the conversion of energy to mass (as per Einstein’s famous equation) and the virtual particles can annihilate each other and return back into energy. I just thought I’d better mention that in case some bright spark considered that process a mini version of the Big Bang. It’s not as in this case the creation (and annihilation) of virtual particles would be just a very, very tiny bang that violates nothing in terms of the conservation of matter and energy.   

4) Standard Big Bang violation number four - the Big Bang wasn’t a pinhead event:

The Big Bang wasn’t a quantum event: The Universe is expanding, ever expanding. That’s not in doubt (see below). Standard model cosmologists now play that expanding Universe ‘film’ in reverse. Travel back in time and the Universe is contracting, ever contacting. Alas, where do you stop that contraction? Well the standard model says when the Universe achieves a volume tinier than the tiniest subatomic particle! When (according to some texts) the Universe has achieved infinite density in zero volume – okay, maybe as close to infinite density and as close to zero volume as makes no odds.

Translated, in the beginning the Universe was something within the realm of quantum physics!

Now just because you can run the clock backwards to such extremes, doesn’t mean that that reflects reality. How any scientist can say with a straight face that you can cram the entirety of not only the observable Universe, but the entire Universe (which is quite a bit larger yet again) into the volume smaller than the most fundamental of elementary particles is beyond me. Either I’m nuts for not comprehending the bloody obvious, or the standard modellers are collectively out of their stark raving minds. Actually I suspect the latter because they are caught out in a Catch-22. They are between the proverbial rock and hard place.

Now if cosmologists really believe the entire contents of our Universe was crammed into a small space, even one larger than quantum-sized, then of necessity you have our embryo Universe nicely, and tightly, confined within a Black Hole! Nothing can escape from a Black Hole (except Hawking radiation, but that leakage is so slow it’s like having just one drop of water come through your roof over the duration of a category five hurricane). So you can’t have a Big Bang that releases our Universe from its Black Hole prison. So there! The Big Bang had to have been of such a size that a Black Hole was not part of the picture.

CORRECTIONS TO THE BIG BANG STANDARD MODEL

1) Correction number one - the Big Bang was a macro event:

I’m not out of my stark raving mind, so it’s the standard modellers that are totally nuts. Now that’s easy to say, but basic everyday logic backs me up. Let’s start with the notion that it is impossible to achieve infinite density. There is a limit, a finite limit, to how much stuff you can cram into how much space there is available (which is what density is – mass per unit volume). Once that limit is reached, any more stuff added on will not increase the density any further, just increase the volume. Keep on keeping on piling on the stuff and it won’t take very much stuff that’s value added to increase the volume beyond the realm of the quantum. Once beyond that boundary, you’re in the realm of the macro, and macro means sizes above that of a pinhead.

In this case, I suggest the ultimate size was multi-billions of pinheads worth. Regardless, macro rules the Big Bang. In our reverse-the-expanding-universe film, try imaging doing that with an expanding hot air balloon. If you reverse that inflation, do you stop when the balloon is devoid of air (the sensible thing to do), or do you continue the contraction until the balloon is smaller than the full stop at the bottom of this sentence’s question mark? Of course you don’t go beyond the point of commonsense, yet that is what the standard modellers have done. Further, they insist we swallow their lack of commonsense (not of course that that is actually suggested by them), hook, line and cosmological sinker.

2) Correction number two - The Big Bang spewed out matter/energy into existing time and space:

If the Big Bang event was a ‘spew’ event, an event which must have had both pre-existing space and time coordinates (if you spew, you do so at a particular place at a particular time), and if matter/energy can neither be created or destroyed, then of necessity the Big Bang spew (of matter/energy) happened I repeat in already existing space and time. Nothing could be more obvious.

To be continued…

Energy: A Passport to Your Afterlife?

When you die, your energy has to go somewhere. Some say that’s your passport to the afterlife. Your energy is you after you die. I say that’s a load of codswallop!

I read a while back that because your body contains energy and because energy can’t be destroyed, when you die it’s your body’s residual (‘life force’ or ‘psychic’) energy supply that becomes the ‘you’ in the realm of the afterlife. Sorry, ‘fraid not. It’s an interesting idea but with no ultimate merit.

It is crystal clear that when you die your physical body goes nowhere; not to La-La-Land Hell; not to Never-Never-Land Heaven. More likely as not you’re buried, cremated or given to the medical students to gawk at and dissect. What about that other ‘half’ of you, your energy? Where does it go, if it in fact it goes at all?

An Energetic Afterlife: The living body is full of energy. What happens to all that energy when the living body turns into the unliving body? Energy, after all, can neither be created nor destroyed; only changed in form. Can you take your energy with you to an afterlife; in fact is it your body’s energy that becomes ‘you’ in an afterlife? Alas, no. Let’s examine the various forms of energy, see which forms apply to the living body, and what happens to those relevant forms of energy when you start to push up those daisies. I’ll start with the non-starters, for starters.

Kinetic/Potential Energy: Kinetic energy is energy of motion, but after you die, you don’t move, so your kinetic energy is zero. Your potential energy is also zero unless an outside force propels you into motion and you (well your body) gain kinetic energy, but you have no control over that motion. If you just lie forever on the slab (or in the grave), your potential energy is for all practical purposes, zero.

Gravitational Energy: Your living body has mass therefore it has gravity. Your dead body has mass, therefore gravity. Gravity stays put when you die; you don’t take gravity with you into the great unknown, or rather gravity doesn’t take you into the great unknown.

Nuclear Energy: Nuclear energy comes in two forms. Firstly, there’s nuclear fusion which does not happen inside you unless you’re a Sun God (or the Sun) or an H-bomb. Secondly, there’s nuclear fission which comes in two forms, fast and slow. Fast nuclear fission is akin to an A-bomb going boom. Slow nuclear fission is radioactivity. You are slightly radioactive since some of the carbon you ingest is radioactive not to mention radioactive stuff from nuclear fallout and the natural environment that gets into your system. But once you die your intake ceases and that radioactive energy just ticks away and decays in the fullness of time down to nothing, or at least down to non-radioactive substances. All those alpha particles, beta particles and gamma rays just go back into the environment.

Sound Energy: The energy of sound is apparent when sonic booms rattle windows and opera singers shatter wine glasses. Alas, while you may have been the biggest loudmouth on the block while alive, when you’re dead, you can hear a pin drop!

Solar Energy: Ultimately the product of nuclear fusion, you can lie in the Sun and get a nice tan and your quota of Vitamin D, but sitting in the sunshine won’t increase your athletic abilities or contribute in anyway to increasing your body’s supply of energy. If that’s what you want, eat sugar.

Thermal/Geothermal/Heat Energy: Sitting in a hot tub; soaking in a thermal hot spring may make you feel good, but such pursuits do nothing to increase your energy levels. Again, if you want more energy reserves (body fat), eat lots of sugar.

Wind & Wave Energy: You may pass wind and make waves but these forms of ultimately what is solar energy transformed contributes nothing whatever to your energy quota and is irrelevant from the point of view of any afterlife you aspire to.

And now let’s turn to forms of more energetic relevance. 

Body Heat: On average, your body is warmer than the surrounding environment, so when you die, this infrared (IR) heat energy in keeping with the second law of thermodynamics cools off and obtains equilibrium with the temperature of the surrounding environment. Your IR energy just goes into warming up the surroundings until your body and your surroundings are the same temperature. Your dead body, while you still have a body, will contain heat energy since your dead body has a temperature. But since that temperature is the same temperature as the surrounding temperature, that energy is useless for performing any actual useful function. Besides, that heat energy stays with the dead body. Now what would be impressive is that when you die your body temperature immediately drops way, way, way below room temperature as if your entire packet of body energy just packed up and moved somewhere else. Alas, that doesn’t seem to happen. In fact, to be honest, it doesn’t happen full-stop. 

Chemical/Electrical Energy: You do have lots of chemical energy within you, all manner of chemistry is going on inside you and some of that chemical energy is converted to electrical energy. What happens to that electrical energy when you die? Well, what happens to the electrical energy in a wire leading to the light bulb when you turn off the switch? Same difference. That’s in fact one definition of death – no electrical energy present.

Body Chemistry: What about all that chemistry inside you? Well, when you die, your bodily chemistry goes into reverse. Entropy resumes its natural order and increases. Your disorder increases. Your body’s chemistry breaks down and decays to less complex chemistry (giving off odours in the process), but that decay is caused by other organisms, usually microbes. Microbes decrease their disorder by causing yours to increase. You no longer eat; you are now the eaten. Your chemical/electrical energy becomes their chemical/electrical energy. You don’t take it with you; you don’t share it; you give it all away. Your loss is the gain of others. When the very last bits of you are consumed, fossilized, weathered and eroded away to dust and below down to individual atoms scattered to the four corners of the globe, then there’s no ways and means of talking about your energy – it’s gone; not destroyed, just gone.

Body Chemistry Frozen: So what if your body is put in dry ice or liquid nitrogen, etc. where no microbes can get at you? Well, you’re entropy (disorder) might not increase, but it doesn’t decrease either (you’re entire life is one long battle keeping disorder at bay). In short, once you’re dead, there’s no way to decrease disorder; the best you can hope for is a stalemate. But again, your dead body’s temperature is the same as its surroundings, so nothing useful can be accomplished; there’s no net energy flow from A to B or from B to A. What about just being put in a sterile environment at body or at least room temperature? Alas, that won’t work since your dead body will be consumed from the inside by the billions of hungry microbes already living inside of you. If you’re frozen stiff, then the microbes inside you are also frozen and can’t munch on you.

In conclusion, all the energy that’s part and parcel of, and in you right now as a living being will get disbursed into the wider environment once you kick-the-bucket. You can’t have an energetic afterlife based on your energy reserves at time of death. There just is no association between your energy and an energetic afterlife. Sorry ‘bout that!

Evidence for Our Multi-Path Virtual Reality: Part Three

Observations don’t always agree with theory. That’s not usually a problem as theorists can often accommodate the observations as often the error bars around the measurements are wide enough to accommodate the theory. But, when observation and theory really collide, especially when it comes to those fundamental Big Questions, and also especially with the conflicts continue over many, many, years; then it’s time for Mr. Spock to raise those eyebrows! However, there is an easy solution, albeit one which won’t sit well with 99.99% of readers. The solution is that you, the reader, don’t exist! Well you do exist, just not in a real reality sense but as a virtual reality created by others. What’s the evidence?

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

UNIQUENESS: In the real world, the macro world, the classical world, no two things are identical down to the last microscopic detail – you are unique; every bacterium is unique; every house, den, nest, and ant hill is unique; so is every baseball and grain of sand. In the unreal world, the micro world, the quantum world, all fundamental particles of their own kind (i.e. electrons or positrons or up-quarks or photons) are identical to the last measurable detail. Why? Who knows!

Theory: In the macro world, no two things are identical, so in theory, the micro world should follow suit.

Observation: In the micro (quantum) world, all the individuals of any species of fundamental particle are identical to any degree of precision that you care to descend to.

Conflict: The macro world and the micro world appear to be fundamentally different, yet the macro world is built up from micro foundations which should imply that all baseballs for example should be 100% identical.

Discussion: A possibility from the ETI simulated universe hypothesis is that there is one software code or sequence of bits and bytes for each type of fundamental particle. So every time that sequence is used, you get that type of entity and only that type. All baseballs aren’t unique because as backdrop items, the software don’t construct them using the exact same number of that sequence of bits and bytes.

PHYSICAL CONSTANTS: There are constant reports of physical constants that aren’t – constant that is.

Theory: Physical constants are just that – a constant. They have just one value, everywhere, everywhen, and no exceptions.

Observation: Apparently some ‘constants’ have more than one value depending of where and/or when.

Conflict: Theory and observations (if correct) are yet again not in harmony.

Discussion: That’s totally nuts! Of course computer software is often in need of tweaking or upgrading, which is what physical constants that aren’t constant might represent – ETI tweaking their virtual reality software.

TIME TRAVEL: Time travel to the past is a staple of science fiction, but surprisingly has actual viability in modern relativity physics.

Theory: In physics, time travel to the past is theoretically possible – though damned difficult in practice. However, that means that those time travel paradoxes are possible, even likely.

Observation: No time travellers have been observed from our future; nobody from our present or past has time travelled back in time and left a proof-positive calling card that we’ve ever found in the history books or the fossil record.

Conflict: If something is possible, especially something as interesting as time travel, we would expect to see either people from our future in the here and now, or evidence that we’ve travelled to the past, like finding a human skeleton buried inside a T-Rex skeleton, as in inside the area where the T-Rex’s abdominal cavity would be! We don’t.

Discussion: Paradoxes like going back in time, say ten years, and killing yourself (which is a novel way of committing suicide), means you couldn’t have existed to go back in time in the first place in order to kill yourself, which means you’re not dead so you can go back in time and murder yourself, etc. What kind of physics is that? Maybe virtual physics, the kind generated by ETI.

MIRACLES: Miracles are part and parcel of any and all supernaturally based religions.

Theory: Miracles of the supernatural kind (and that’s the only kind of miracle that counts here) violate one or more laws, principles or relationships established by science. There can be no such thing as a supernatural miracle in theory.

Observation: There have been numerous reports of supernatural miracles.

Conflict: Reported events cannot violate the natural state of things. If they do violate that natural state of things, then they must be supernatural. There’s no known theory that can accommodate supernatural events. That’s part of the conflict between science and religion. 

Discussion: Any and all miracles, Biblical or otherwise, are explainable as easily as saying “run program”.

THE PARANORMAL: More down to earth, you have multi-observations of things like the Loch Ness Monster, those highly geometrically complex crop circles, and ghosts, yet there’s no real adequate theory that can account for their observed existence or creation.

Theory: You can theoretically debunk, or explain away, the idea that ‘sea’ serpents exist in Loch Ness; that crop circles cannot be related to any sort of natural or human activity; that ghosts can exist.

Observation: There are thousands of observations that the Loch Ness Monster exists; there’s no disputing that crop circles exist and are hard to explain as mundane events; and belief in ghosts via actual sighting accounts goes back as far in time as human records go back.

Conflict: Those who believe via the evidence suggested by actual observation are in conflict with those who state that those observations are faulty and do not represent what they would appear to because the reality that they propose is theoretically impossible. 

Discussion: The truth or otherwise of a number of other paranormal or pseudoscientific phenomena, as well as the above examples, cannot be decided either by theory or by observation. Experimental evidence is all too often impossible to come by. If something cannot be, and yet apparently is, then yet again, something’s screwy somewhere. Perhaps this is all a case of ETI having a bit of personal fun at the expense of ‘his’ virtual creations.

THE AFTERLIFE: A concept that closest to the hearts and minds of nearly all humans and human cultures past and present is what happens to us after we kick the bucket? The answer is we transcend into another life – an afterlife.

Theory: Every culture, past and present, has an afterlife concept, a life after death concept, or some sort of an eternity or immortality worldview.

Observation: None. Nobody has ever come back from the dead to prove the reality of an afterlife to the satisfaction of any unbiased referee.

Conflict: Not all of the versions of the theoretical afterlife can be correct, unless there is a multi-path virtual reality. Apart from that, idealistic theoretical expectations that when you die you won’t stay dead versus practical reality that observations show that dead things stay dead, are indeed conflicting.

Discussion: If ETI has a ‘living’ software program with you in it, then ETI may have various ‘afterlife’ programs that kicks in after you die virtually..

CONCLUSIONS: All up, perhaps some cosmic ETI computer programmer/software writer whiz with a wicked sense of humour (a trickster ‘god’?) is laughing its pointed ears off since we haven’t been able to figure it (our virtual reality) out. Of course maybe the minute we do, the fun’s over and ‘Dr. It’ hits the delete key and that’s the way the Universe ends – not with a pressure-cooker Big Crunch, nor with a Heat Death (the Big Freeze), not even a Big Rip, but with that “are you sure you want to delete this?” message! “Yes”.

Evidence for Our Multi-Path Virtual Reality: Part Two

Observations don’t always agree with theory. That’s not usually a problem as theorists can often accommodate the observations as often the error bars around the measurements are wide enough to accommodate the theory. But, when observation and theory really collide, especially when it comes to those fundamental Big Questions, and also especially with the conflicts continue over many, many, years; then it’s time for Mr. Spock to raise those eyebrows! However, there is an easy solution, albeit one which won’t sit well with 99.99% of readers. The solution is that you, the reader, don’t exist! Well you do exist, just not in a real reality sense but as a virtual reality created by others. What’s the evidence?

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

QUASARS: Quasars are ‘quasi-stellar objects’. They are ‘stellar’ because they aren’t all that large (like a galaxy). They are ‘quasi’ because they give off energy way, way, way more times greater than any star known in any astronomical catalogue. They seem to be primordial objects – they formed long ago and are now far away.

Theory: Quasars, like stars or galaxies are their own entities and if two or more show very close special causality relationships then they should show identical recessional velocities. Recessional velocities are measured by any objects’ red-shifts. Theory identifies red-shift with velocity.

Observation: You have observations of quasars with vastly differing red-shifts (measurements of their recessional velocities) yet pairs of quasars which appear to be causality connected.

Conflict: You can not have a runner running at 15 miles per hour holding hands with another runner running at 3 miles per hour!

Discussion: If the observations are correct, then something really is screwy somewhere! If red-shifts have no actual relationship with velocity, then the entirety of accepted cosmology is right down the gurgler. Of course ETI is probably most interested in the virtual creation of us, not so much the wider environment we observe like the relations between two quasars, and so that’s one of those backdrop ‘oops’.

VACUUM ENERGY: Since a temperature of absolute zero, that is a state in which there is no available energy that exists, is impossible because of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle – a rock solid foundation of quantum physics. So there is always a minimum amount of energy available that pervades the Universe. It’s called the ‘vacuum energy’.

Theory: The vacuum energy should exist with such-and-such a value.

Observation: The vacuum energy exists (is has been observed and it has been experimentally confirmed) with such-and-such a value.

Conflict: You have a 120 order-of-magnitude (that’s one followed by 120 zeros) discrepancy between the observed vacuum energy and the theoretical value of the vacuum energy.

Discussion: This discrepancy is the most embarrassing ‘oops’ in all of modern physics and nobody can figure out how to resolve the discrepancy. Oops indeed!  Of course all manner of ‘oops’ can exist when creating or simulating a cosmic backdrop.

WAVE-PARTICLE DUALITY: You have particles that behave both as a wave and as little billiard balls – observed but theoretically impossible in classical physics.

Theory: You have waves – obviously. You have particles – obviously. You theoretically don’t have waves that behave as little billiard balls – obviously. You theoretically don’t have particles that wave all over the place and interfere with each other – obviously.

Observation: You have waves that behave as little billiard balls. You have particles that wave all over the place and interfere with each other. That’s just nuts!

Conflict: There’s no way you can turn a little billiard ball into a wave; you can’t turn a wave into a little billiard ball.

Discussion: There are two theories to explain wave-particle duality. The first is that at point of origin or emission the bit in question is a little billiard ball – a particle. At point of impact or termination the bit is a little billiard ball – a particle. In-between, the pathway, the flight of the bit, well the bit has transformed into a wave. The second idea owes its genesis to the late quantum physicist Richard Feynman who stated that everything is particles – no waves. But, to account for the wave behaviour, he invented his ‘sum over histories’ approach to explain wave-particle duality. Any one particle that travels from Point A to Point B traverses each and every possible pathway between A and B simultaneously. It’s like you can go from home to work in dozens of different ways; alternate routes. Only you take each and every route possible at the same time! As far as I’m concerned, neither idea solves the Big Question. Why wave-particle duality at all?  Perhaps our hypothetical ETI can explain.

MASS: Speaking of particles, there are three fundamental properties of particles (like the electron, neutrinos, the numerous quarks, etc.) and their anti-particles (like the positron). They are charge, spin and mass. As the song goes, two out of three ain’t bad, but that still leaves one out of three out of joint. In this case, it’s mass.

Theory: Nobody can predict from first principles what the masses of the fundamental particles should be. That’s fairly disturbing for something as fundamental as mass.

Observation: Despite the relatively large number of particles (including the equal and opposite anti-particles), there are only a few allowed values for charge and spin, values pretty much confined to the infield. But, for some reason, the mass (usually expressed in equivalent energy units – Einstein’s famous equation) of the various particles are not only scattered throughout the ballpark but are all over the city map and beyond. They take on values (albeit one value per type of particle) over many orders of magnitude without any apparent pattern or regularity or relationship between them – and nobody has the foggiest idea why, not a validly theoretical idea, or even a ‘far out’ idea.

Conflict: Why should mass differ so greatly from the other fundamental properties part and parcel of particles? It’s like someone just drew a few dozens of numbers out of a hat containing multi hundreds of thousands of values and assigned them to the few dozens of particles willy-nilly.

Discussion: Something is screwy somewhere because something so fundamental shouldn’t be so anomalous. But looking at our own virtual reality video games, there tends to be more than just a few bits and pieces that are anomalous between our virtual characters and their abilities and the operational physics that should constrain those abilities - Superman anyone?    

PARITY: In physics, parity deals with left-right, mirror image, symmetry. Parity is one of a trio of symmetries, the other two being charge (positive and negative) and time. At the most basic of levels, physical forces and their operations aren’t changed just because you could reverse the flow of time; change all relevant charges to their opposite; or you alter left with right.

Theory: In theory, each of the four fundamental forces, gravity, electromagnetism, the strong nuclear force and the weak nuclear force should reflect and obey the three symmetries of time, charge and parity. 

Observation: The weak nuclear force is asymmetrical with respect to parity (which potentially accounts for why the discrepancy between the amounts of matter versus antimatter in the cosmos).

Conflict: Why is this parity violation by the weak nuclear force the lone exception to the otherwise ironclad rule?

Discussion: Who knows? It’s just one of those cosmic quirks. Perhaps it was just an unintended oversight ‘oops’ on the part of our proposed ETI or a glitch in their software program.

To be continued…

Evidence for Our Multi-Path Virtual Reality: Part One

Observations don’t always agree with theory. That’s not usually a problem as theorists can often accommodate the observations as often the error bars around the measurements are wide enough to accommodate the theory. But, when observation and theory really collide, especially when it comes to those fundamental Big Questions, and also especially with the conflicts continue over many, many, years; then it’s time for Mr. Spock to raise those eyebrows! However, there is an easy solution, albeit one which won’t sit well with 99.99% of readers. The solution is that you, the reader, don’t exist! Well you do exist, just not in a real reality sense but as a virtual reality created by others. What’s the evidence?

You do exist, just not in a real reality sense but rather in a virtual reality created by others; you are generated as part and parcel of computer software programming by someone, or something else, as is the entirety of life, the Universe and everything else you perceive with your five senses. Because a simulated or virtual reality can be manipulated or rerun, that leads to a multi-path ‘reality’.

Okay, that’s an interesting idea, but how do you prove it? Presumably the beings that we create in our virtual reality simulations and video games have no comprehension that they are only virtually real. If you could interview them, they would no doubt verify their really real existence, even though we, their creators, know better. In parallel, why would our existence and our perception of that existence, if we are virtual beings created by others, be any different? If we have no comprehension that our reality is a virtual one, what might alter that perception? Well, perhaps by looking at all of the impossibilities and paradoxes that are part and parcel of our reality. If they cannot be understood and resolved, then that might provide an “eureka” moment that we are virtual; we exist in a virtual, not real cosmos.

In baseball terminology, here’s the knuckleball! There’s only one way I know of to generate convincing impossibilities – virtual reality; a simulated universe where there need be no connection at all between what you observe and what theoretically caused the various things that you observe.

If you construct a simulation or virtual reality of any kind, the backdrop against which the real interest or action is played out is just loosely sketched in. You don’t waste time, energy, expenses and resources on what’s aesthetically pleasing but relatively minor and not overly relevant in what transpires. That’s very obvious say in animated or cartoon features. And so we note that most theory versus observation anomalies tend to be background ones. So while you don’t expect gross violations or anomalies in physics in your day-to-day affairs (you get out of bed, you don’t float out of bed) that doesn’t apply to your background environment where attention to detail isn’t as relevant and so that’s where anomalies are probably going to occur. Translated, the required details in the software that generate you and all of what impacts on you directly must be not only highly detailed but consistent. What’s not overly relevant can be generated with much less detail and thus you will get an ‘oops’ now and then.    

So I’ll start with my universal “Resolution” to theory versus observation anomalies - Our reality, our Universe starting with the Big Bang (and leading up to ultimately you) is nothing but a computer-generated program, software created by some entity, probably an extraterrestrial intelligence (ETI). Having set up the parameters, it’s just a matter of ETI hitting the ‘start program’ key and seeing what happens. We humans have already done this sort of virtual creation activity; not just video games but for all sorts of  practical applications as well – like training exercises and simulating interesting like  ecosystems for example - so there’s nothing implausible about this possibility.

Now I’ve often wondered if some great extraterrestrial computer programmer (our ETI)  specializing in generating or simulating virtual reality worlds and universes would leave enough clues to his (its) created ‘subjects’ that they in fact were just software generated virtual beings in a simulated universe. One such type of clue, as hinted above, would be their simulations, their software, isn’t sophisticated enough through design or accident to reconcile their creation’s observation with their creation’s theories when it comes to the backdrops. One such case, of many, is the case of the Big Bang event backdrop which I’ll get to momentarily.

So what follows are a number of theory-versus-observation anomalies coupled with four bits that come before the already given virtual reality ETI “Resolution” – “Theory”, versus “Observation”, the resulting “Conflict” and a what-does-it-all-mean “Discussion”. We’ll start with the biggest of all the Big Questions – the origin and evolution of life, the Universe and everything via the Big Bang event.

THE BIG BANG EVENT: This is no doubt a concept that nearly everyone has heard about, and swallowed hook, line and cosmological sinker because scientists present the scenario as fact. It’s not fact; just the most viable theory of many theories and it has serious flaws.

Theory: The creation or event that kick-started our Universe off not only created all of matter and energy, but all of time and space, and this creation event all took place in a volume less than that of a pinhead.

Observation: At best observations that support this are indirect being made some 13.7 billion years after-the-fact. Those indirect observations that provide evidence for the Big Bang event are the fact that the Universe is expanding; the Universe has a temperature – the remnants from the hot Big Bang called the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMBR) and the amounts and ratio of hydrogen to helium. In reality there are no direct observations as nobody was present at Ground Zero all those billions of years ago.

Conflict: The conflict is three-fold. You have a violation of causality. You have a violation of several conservation laws or relationships. You have a violation of pure common sense that tells you that you can not stuff the contents of the Universe into the realm of the quantum.

Discussion: What if the Big Bang is a theoretical impossibility of physics pure and simple, despite the observational evidence? My scenario: the expansion; the CMBR; the ratio of hydrogen to helium, are all simulated evidence, probably by ETI.

QUANTUM GRAVITY: We have observations of four physical forces yet no theory which unites the three quantum forces (electromagnetism, the strong nuclear force and the weak nuclear force) with the one classical force – gravity. Theory needs to be satisfied.

Theory: All of the four fundamental forces should be interconnected, some sort of unification principle that relates all four.

Observation: There are four fundamental forces that govern the Universe and no observation of any obvious unification.

Conflict: If the Big Bang theory is to be proven correct as stated, scientists must of necessity come up with a viable theory of quantum gravity that is an acceptable unification. There is no viable theory of quantum gravity despite thousands of physicists searching for one over many generations now.

Discussion: It’s like there are two sets of different software running the Universe. Well, how many sets of software collectively operate all of your PC operations?

MONOPOLES: We all know about magnetic fields having two sides, whether it’s a bar magnet or the Earth’s magnetic field (or those part and parcel of many other astronomical bodies) – there’s a south pole and a north pole; a positive and a negative. It will probably come as a surprise that there should also be a monopole – a magnet with just one pole, north OR south; positive OR negative.

Theory: One of the many Big Bang ‘in the beginning’ predictions of theoretical things is magnetic monopoles – magnets with either a south pole or a north pole, but not both.

Observation: Alas, we’ve never ever found and confirmed the reality of even one monopole.

Conflict: Theoretical prediction and observation are not in harmony.

Discussion: So strange is this anomaly that a new concept states that the very early Universe underwent an additional oomph of very rapid inflation which so diluted the Big Bang created monopoles that there are no longer any monopoles in our neck of the woods. That does appear a bit like clutching at straws. Of course resorting to ETI and virtual reality is also a clutch, but equally as viable, maybe more so.

To be continued…

Our Multi-Path Virtual Reality: Part Two

If, as the James Bond song title goes, “You Only Live Twice”, then you experience more than just one of life’s pathways in one form or another. There’s one life for yourself as apparently real reality; one life for your dreams, which is a form of self-created virtual reality. And so the main themes to follow are the intermixing of not only a multi-path reality, but a reality which might be instead virtual, but not as in a wetware dream state, but as the product of software, software generated by someone, or something else.

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

Probability is just another way of saying that there are not just known variables at work, but also  hidden variables we don’t know enough about in any, or even if there is any, detail. That’s why they are hidden and those hidden variables operate at the level of the human mind, on down to the lab rat and the plant seed and the weather and uranium atoms even down to mathematics where seemingly identical operations can yield more than one type of result.

So any multi-path reality of cosmic scenarios contains lots of variables, some plain and visible, some hidden. I suspect that one of those hidden variables is an extraterrestrial computer programmer, and if that’s the case, it’s possible to have causality and a multi-path reality. But I’m getting ahead of myself. 

One common area where the variables within scenarios are manipulated is collectively termed experimentation. You start by setting up some sort of experiment and just see what happens. Now you vary this bit and see what happens. Next you vary another bit and see what happens. Then you vary a third bit and see what happens. 

In fact what these experiments are doing is preforming simulations on how the cosmos works. If you have X, Y & Z objects and A, B & C forces that can act on them, what happens after you allow A, B & C to naturally strut their stuff on X, Y & Z? Having gotten an answer to that, then what happens when you add or subtract or alter any of the objects and/or forces? Slowly but surely you build up a Big Picture of a multi-path reality cosmos.

One tool useful for performing experimental simulations that just cannot be preformed in a laboratory is the computer and associated software.

Here are some of the types of ‘experimental’ simulations using computer software. We’ve probably seen simulations of the gravitational interactions between two colliding galaxies. The physical relationships between two binary stars that are orbiting one another over time have been explored via simulations by varying the masses of the stars and the distances between them and seeing what transpires. The weather is an obvious area where simulations can produce probable outcomes based on an initial set of atmospheric conditions. We can simulate the drifting continents into the future. These are just a few of the thousands of applications of computer-generated simulations applied to ‘what if’ problems that can’t actually be explored via an actual laboratory experiment.  

Apart from that, there are practical applications of this sort of computer-generated experimental approach. One can take a standard scenario and alter the various values or parameters or variables that are part and parcel of that scenario. That’s something that’s again akin to a multi-path reality.

Take pilot training for example. Before you put a prospective pilot in a real aircraft and cockpit, you subject them to simulations, so if they ‘crash’, no one gets hurt; no property gets damaged. Okay, so you have this wannabe hotshot top-gun who’s going to be initially trained in a computer simulated aircraft and cockpit. The first simulation or experiment is the standard routine takeoff – smooth flight – perfect landing – no problems scenario. It’s repeated several times. Once Mr. Wannabe gets that part down pat, the flight instructor supplements textbook theory by altering some of the many variables Mr. Wannabe will likely encounter – sooner or later. Those variables might include simulating a blown tire on takeoff or landing; varying the output of one or more of the engines, maybe having one or more catch on virtual fire. The instructor can simulate an out-of-control dive or how to react to a stall scenario. By the time the flight instructor is through with all the standard variations or variables the Mr. Wannabe trainee should be ready to get behind the wheel of a real aircraft and be fairly confident of his/her ability to handle all those variables – the probabilities that this, that and the next thing might happen without warning.

You can extrapolate the above to medical training, driver training, astronaut training, and so on and so forth.

Another non-practical but equally valid simulation experience is by varying variables in a video (virtual reality) game. You play the game and get a result. You play again and alter your strategy and get a different result.

Now take all the multi-thousands of unique video games that have been, are now, and will be on the market worldwide. Now take the multi-thousands of copies of each unique video game. That’s a lot of virtual reality. In fact, in a related form of virtual reality, virtual and real realities are no longer easy to tell apart. 

 

When watching a recent movie or TV show loaded with special effects, I now find it impossible anymore to distinguish what was filmed as real reality images and what was added on as computer-generated virtual reality images.

Now it is clear that there are a lot more virtual landscapes, worlds, even universes in existence within our reality than that reality. You can interact with thousands of virtual realities; you can even create your own virtual reality, even realities, yet you’re stuck with just being able to interact with only one real reality.

Now extrapolate that idea to encompass the wider cosmos and all the intelligent life forms it contains. Let’s just call that collection a generic ‘ETI’ for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence(s). Assuming they might be somewhat akin to us, perhaps they too have found it useful to create simulations and virtual realities for practical reasons as well as for amusement. How many hundreds of thousands, millions, even billions of virtual realities might have been created within the one real reality we call our Universe? If that is logical, then the obvious question arises is what odds are we residing in one of those virtual realities as opposed to existing in the one real reality? Okay, the odds are as close to certainty that we, our planet, our perceived cosmos is just a virtual reality residing the computer system of an ETI.

So of course if ETI created us as virtual beings on a virtual planet in a virtual cosmos, then they more likely as not would probably be somewhat akin to us, or rather we, their creation, akin to them. Alien they might be, but not too alien that they would be beyond comprehension.

So what has all of this got to do with our multi-path reality, virtual or otherwise?

I’ll assume first that we’re not the product of a training simulation. But, if we are an experimentally simulated life form, then our ETI ‘scientist’ will no doubt alter variables either in-situ or by rerunning their program from the start. We have no way of knowing what the ‘start’ point is in our perceived time frame. It could be the Big Bang event from 13.7 billions years ago or much later where all prior historical evidence, evidence of our past before the actual ‘start’, is just planted virtual evidence. For all we know their ‘start’ time associated with our calendar could have been just seconds ago and your memories and knowledge of events of anything before that was just implanted into the virtual reality software program hence into what you think of as your memory. We would have no way of knowing anything to the contrary. If ETI does reruns, perhaps that might provide a clue to our often common sensing or experiencing Déjà vu.

And even if our ETI is just a nerdy video game fanatic, and the game is called “Planet Earth” or some such, that still leads to a similar result.

But whether it’s ETI as a scientist or as a nerdy video gamer, whether they are rerunning the program, or tweaking it while it’s running, we still end up having a multi-path existence in a virtual reality.  

Our Multi-Path Virtual Reality: Part One

If, as the James Bond song title goes, “You Only Live Twice”, then you experience more than just one of life’s pathways in one form or another. There’s one life for yourself as apparently real reality; one life for your dreams, which is a form of self-created virtual reality. And so the main themes to follow are the intermixing of not only a multi-path reality, but a reality which might be instead virtual, but not as in a wetware dream state, but as the product of software, software generated by someone, or something else.

There are many versions of reality, some of which I’ll cover in future essays. I’d like to focus this time of what I’ll term ‘single-path reality’ versus ‘multi-path reality’. Some definitions and examples are in order. A single-path reality has a unique beginning, a unique middle, and an unique ending, and if you rewind the clock, turn back the book or e-book to page one, or start the film again at the beginning (or the DVD or CD), then proceed forward, the exact same sequence of unique events happen in the exact same unique order. The Novel “1984” starts with “It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen” and ends with “He loved Big Brother.” Every time, for every reader, Winston Smith takes a single unique path, with no variations.

Khan, from the motion picture “Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan” picks the exact same fight in the exact same manner with the exact same people and ends up getting blown up every single time. You never get the alternative where Khan wins and Captain Kirk, the Enterprise and crew get blown up. All the characters and events are in a single-path ‘reality’ – a virtual reality of course. 

A CD plays the exact same tracks in the exact same order with no variations (providing no human intervention in picking and choosing track order) each and every single time – again, a single-path reality.

A multi-path reality is one where replays do not of necessity give identical results. If George Orwell rewrote “1984”, maybe Winston Smith wouldn’t love Big Brother at the end. “1984” would then have a multi-path reality and the reader could pick which version they wanted.

If someone remakes “Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan”, maybe Khan will live to fight another day – again, a multi-path virtual reality will then exist.

A rerecording of the CD might alter the track order, or add new selections and delete others, or have a different artist(s) provide the contents. Again, a multi-path reality has been generated.

Now, extrapolating from recorded medium to the reality we perceive in the here-and-now, are we in a single-path reality or a multi-path reality? And is that real reality or virtual reality? Unlike a novel or movie or piece of music, you can’t rewind the cosmos and start again ‘in the beginning’ and see what transpires. If you could, perhaps events will play out again exactly as they already have – a single-path reality. Perhaps Mother Nature might create an altered or second version of events – a multi-path reality might ensue where there might not be either you or I or even a Planet Earth. There’s no real way of telling for absolute sure.

I’d like to believe that our reality is a single-path reality; a single-path reality being the be-all-and-end-all of cosmic physics. That’s because I’m a firm convert to causality – cause and effect. If you start with X, Y & Z bits and they are subjected to A-laws and B-principles and C-relationships, then you end up with say #####. If you rewind the clock back and start all over again, you should end up with ##### and not say *****.

I suspect however that our reality is a multi-path reality, for reasons quite apart from invoking parallel universes, an infinitely cyclic universe, the Multiverse or the Many Worlds Interpretation of quantum physics (all of which do lead to multi-path realities).

Since we can’t rewind the clock, the next best thing is to take apparently identical situations and re-run the scenario, one after the other. For example, take the same two chess players, the same chess pieces, the same chess board, the same geographical location, time of day, all the nitty-gritty bits-and-pieces down to the last detail. The second game will most likely be different than that of the first encounter. And that’s not something confined to sports, or only humans who apparently have a metaphysical concept imbedded between their ears called ‘free will’.

It’s common knowledge in biology that under identical experimental conditions, the lab rat will do as it damn well pleases! You can’t predict with 100% confidence that the same animal will do the exact same thing under seemingly identical conditions the second or third or fourth time around. Scientists tend to learn to expect the unexpected. So, maybe lab rats also have a form of ‘free will’.

Two seemingly identical seeds will not of necessity respond in identical fashion to identical stimuli. And weather conditions seemingly identical – same pressure, same temperature, same humidity, same wind direction and velocity – might produce two decidedly and drastically different outcomes by the conclusion on each of two consecutive days. No one thinks that plant seeds or the weather has any form of ‘free will’. 

If you take two identical uranium atoms and leave them alone, after a period of time, one will and one will not have decayed – gone ‘poof’. Even in mathematics there’s a branch where quantity A plus quantity B does not equal quantity B plus quantity A. You may think that strange because you normally think of mathematics as a single-path reality. Two plus three equals three plus two, with no variations allowed on the theme. But mathematics can mirror the ‘real’ world and in the ‘real’ world the order of things makes a difference. There’s a decided deference if you put your bra on first, and then your blouse, vis-à-vis putting your blouse on first and then your bra! Or, you can jump off a bridge and then die, but it’s rather more difficult to die and then jump off a bridge. 

Translated, it would appear that our cosmos seems to be probability based from the human level right down through some branches of mathematics. There are variables that operate in every conceivable scenario so there are differing outcomes in apparently initially identical scenarios.

To be continued…

Six Impossible Physics Things

We all like lists: The ten best this, the top dozen that; the five worst ranking next thing. That’s why the popularity of the Guinness Book of Records. In “Alice through the Looking Glass”, the White Queen believed in six impossible things before breakfast. Exactly what those impossible things were is not stated – so here’s mine that reside in the land of physics.

The public’s perception of physics is that everything is pretty cut-and-dried; all the basics are known and it’s now just a routine matter of getting to that next decimal place in accuracy as well as dotting a few more of this and crossing a few more of that. The days of revolutionary physics that we saw in the early 20^th Century with quantum mechanics and relativity are long gone now. Well, all that’s not quite the case. There’s a lot that’s proposed, even accepted by most physicists, that’s not really set in concrete. I think some mainstream physics, even some proposed challenges to the mainstream, are so far off the beaten track, way down south in La-La Land, as to be, for all practical purposes, as near to impossible as makes no odds. I think physics is in for a few more revolutions yet.   

1) String Theory is one of those proposed challenges to the mainstream and replaces the standard model of particle physics by substituting tiny vibrating strings for all those particles, like electrons and quarks and neutrinos, etc. that we know so well. Different vibration rates determine whether something is an electron or an up-quark or a down-quark or a neutrino, etc. That in itself isn’t too bad an alteration. Where string theory falls off the rails IMHO is that in order to work, the Universe has got to be comprised of not the standard three special dimensions and the one dimension in time we’re used to existing in, but a total of ten, even eleven dimensions. Sorry, it’s those extra dimensions that tip the weirdness quotient off the scales. String Theory wouldn’t be too bad were there the slightest tad of experimental evidence for string ‘particles’ and those additional dimensions. There isn’t. That wouldn’t be all that unusual if String Theory were something that was brand new. Alas, the theory has been around for way over three decades now, and it still just resides as pure hypothetical, albeit elegant (and extremely difficult to understand), mathematics. String Theory just is not going anywhere. It’s a dead end. As far as I’m concerned, String Theory is impossible physics until such time as even the tiniest shred of experimental evidence is on the board. I’m not holding my breath.

2) The standard model of particle physics often states that elementary particles are ‘Point Particles’. So what are ‘Point Particles’? These are the fundamental particles that are in existence not as little billiard balls but as geometric points, points that are without extension (volume). In other words, a point has zero dimensions – no length, no width, no height, no area and no volume. There’s really something screwy somewhere if that is to be believable! The fundamental flaw is that particles, like the electron, have mass. You cannot cram mass, however tiny, into zero volume! So, an electron must have a volume, therefore an electron cannot be a ‘Point Particle”. So what’s the rational? Though never explicitly stated, I suspect it has an awful lot to do with keeping the maths simple! It’s easier to deal with a ‘Point Particle’ when crunching the numbers than adding in all sorts of other variables and complications like mass and volume. Unfortunately, I’ve read way too many physics tomes where the concept of zero volume seems to be taken literally – at face value. If that’s the case, then those who apparently advocate such a position are akin to the White Queen.

3) Lack of causality in a process really bothers me. It’s akin to getting something from nothing – a free lunch. There are two such ‘free lunches’ advocated. One is the Big Bang scenario that kick-started our Universe off. After a lot of physics and chemistry, that ultimately led to biological entities - you and me. I’ll have more, much more to say about the Big Bang’s free lunch later on.

Meantime, free lunch number two - radioactive decay. The standard scenario goes that one has an unstable atom, or unstable atomic nucleus actually. To achieve greater stability, the atomic nucleus spits out various bits and pieces – alpha particles, beta particles and/or gamma rays. The problem is, there is no rhyme or reason to exactly why and when, especially when, those bits and pieces get spat out. You can take two identical radioactive atomic nuclei. One might go ‘poof’ after a few seconds; the other ‘decides’ to hang tight for several millions of years before undertaking that change of pace. Physicists argue that if there is no rhyme or reason why both don’t behave in identical fashions, seeing as how they are identical atomic nuclei, then causality doesn’t operate. There is no external trigger. There is no overriding cause-and-effect in operation.

Nuts to that! If an atomic nucleus goes ‘poof’, there is a cause-and-effect reason. If two go ‘poof’ at different times, there is a cause-and-effect reason for this too. While the two atomic nuclei might be identical, their surrounding environment isn’t, IMHO. That’s the hidden variable. Take two identical human twins; one stays at home safe and sound while the other goes off to war, bullets flying around him. Though identical, one goes ‘poof’ before the other. There is cause-and-effect in operation. And so it is with unstable atomic nuclei. A ‘bullet’ hits one; no ‘bullet’ hits the other until much, much later on down the track. What that ‘bullet’ is, is open to question, but there’s a ‘bullet’ out there somewhere. Unstable atomic nuclei don’t decay or go ‘poof’ for absolutely no logical reason at all. There is a trigger. Radioactive decay, with no causality attached, as a free lunch, is IMHO an impossibility of physics.     

4) Quantum Gravity (the Theory of Everything) is the Holy Grail of all things physics. Why? Well, there are two types of physics. There is classical physics, the physics you have to deal with in your day-to-day macro world. Then there is quantum physics, the physics of the very, very tiny; the micro worlds which for all practical purposes are, if not irrelevant, at least unnoticed in your day-to-day existence. Another distinction is that macro or classical physics is a continuum, like a ruler. Quantum or micro physics are bits and pieces; discrete units, like money. You can have one and three quarter inches; you can’t have one and three quarter cents. So what’s the problem? Well, there are four fundamental forces that control life, the Universe and everything. Three of these are quantum forces or operate from or within the realm of the micro-micro-microscopic. This trilogy is comprised of the strong nuclear force (which hold atomic nuclei together); the weak nuclear force (which allows atomic nuclei to break apart – radioactivity) and electromagnetism. The other and final force however is a continuum – gravity. It’s like there being three brothers and one sister! As in the sibling’s case, physicists suspect that all four are born of one parentage. Alas, the DNA doesn’t match up!  Gravity apparently has different parents! Now that just won’t do. One Universe should allow for, indeed require, one ultimate parentage. Alas, despite all the best efforts of all the finest physics in the world over many generations, the three brothers just don’t share a common DNA with their alleged sister. My resolution is that perhaps that really is the case. The idea that there is quantum gravity is just a straightforward impossibility. There are indeed two sets of parents – one resulting in quantum triplets; the other producing an only child – gravity. The two are unrelated.

5) The Big Bang event is the proposed theory for the origin of our Universe some 13.7 billion years ago. It is supported by various observations: so far so good. Where it falls off the rails is that it also apparently requires, according to the standard Big Bang model, that the creation of our Universe wasn’t from something, but from nothing. That nothing not only spawned matter and energy (two sides of the same coin), but also created both time and space. Oh, and all of this happened in a created space way less than the volume of your standard atom. Now that’s small!

Now number one, IMHO it’s impossible to create from scratch matter and energy. It’s a violation of the basic physics drummed into every high school science student – “matter (and energy) can neither be created nor destroyed but only changed in form”.

Number two is that causality demands that a cause creates an effect – the Big Bang was an effect, something caused it, and that something could only have preceded it in time. Therefore the Big Bang did not, could not, create time. The Big Bang happened while the clock was already ticking.

Number three is that you cannot create a something within a zero volume. Therefore the Big Bang did not create space. It happened in existing space.

Lastly, it’s absurd in the extreme to believe that our entire Universe – everything – could be squeezed into a volume of atomic dimensions. So, yes there was a Big Bang, but there is a lot of associated baggage which is totally impossible by anything approaching what’s taught in Logic 101.  

6) Your own reality probably isn’t what you think it is. Take your favourite character from your favourite video game or simulation. That character would be blissfully unaware that they ‘lived’ in a virtual reality. They would be blissfully unaware that there were thousands of copies (or clones) of them (since presumably more than one copy of the game or simulation exists). They would be blissfully unaware that there were thousands of other video games and simulations (universes) in existence.

Now the 64 cent question is, how can you be sure that you too aren’t someone else’s simulated video game or virtual reality character? You can’t be – you’re blissfully unaware or ignorant one way or the other. Maybe you are; maybe you aren’t.

But if your favourite character had to calculate the odds that they and their universe were unique, they would, at gut-level, say they were a one-off. Their universe was a one-off too. But you know better. You know there are thousands of clones of your character and thousands of universes – one universe per unique video game title or simulation. 

So is there just one you and one Universe – our Universe – or, one step on up the line are you someone else’s (or something else’s) favourite character; their puppet who’s pulling your reality strings? The odds are vast indeed in favour of what you think is physical reality is actually, while not impossible, highly improbable. That’s because there are many, many, many scenarios that could create a virtual you; only one scenario that would create a really real you. The upshot is that you probably don’t exist in the manner you think you do!

In conclusion, I suspect the applecart of physics will be upset yet again, and again, and again.