Reality: Really Real, Pseudo-Real, or Unreal? Part Seven

Reality – It’s all relative; it’s reversible; it’s symmetric; it’s personal; it kicks back when you kick it; it’s conceptual; it’s theoretical; it’s actual; it’s abstract; it’s bio-friendly; it’s unforgiving; it’s emotional; and ultimately the reality of life, the Universe and everything resides in your mind.

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

Other Realities: I’ve mentioned parallel (or alternative or mirror) universes above, which are related to the Many Worlds interpretation of quantum physics. But there could easily be other less nebulous universes – a really real physical Multiverse. If Nature can create one Universe, She can create more than one. Other universes could have different physics relative to the physics we know. If that’s the case, that opens up whole cans of different reality worms! However, such universes are probably forever out of our reach.

One set of realities I haven’t mentioned yet, yet lots of people believe exist, centre around the afterlife concept – heaven, hell, a spirit world, etc. We’ll all find out for sure in or at the end. 

Appendix: Here are some of the many faces of reality. Say you see across the room the most beautiful of beautiful naked bodies you’ve ever seen of the opposite sex (or the same sex if that’s you bag). Lets call that vision “X” (but not because it’s of necessity X-rated)! Now, what is the reality of your vision?

Well, perhaps you’re involuntary dreaming of X.

Perhaps you’re voluntarily imagining X.

Perhaps you’re hallucinating X through disease, injury, a genetic defect, a biochemical imbalance (via drugs, lack of sleep, etc.).

Or, perhaps you are actually observing X and independent observers would verify the existence of X.

But, perhaps someone else is dreaming, or imagining or hallucinating both you and X.

Perhaps X isn’t a real flesh-and-blood naked body but a hologram or maybe say a perfect representation such as a wax dummy.

You’ve also got to ask yourself, does X still exist if I close my eyes or turn my head away?

Since X resides in a Universe ultimately grounded in all things quantum, X only has a probability of existing and being where you think X actually is.

Ultimately, your perception of X is filtered via your senses into your mind where it resides in a vastly reduced in size; a two dimensional representation. You only get to experience the reality of X indirectly.

To be continued…

Reality: Really Real, Pseudo-Real, or Unreal? Part Six

Reality – It’s all relative; it’s reversible; it’s symmetric; it’s personal; it kicks back when you kick it; it’s conceptual; it’s theoretical; it’s actual; it’s abstract; it’s bio-friendly; it’s unforgiving; it’s emotional; and ultimately the reality of life, the Universe and everything resides in your mind.

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

Is Your Reality Certainty or A Fluke?

If there is one thing you are absolutely certain of it’s that you exist, and I won’t dispute that (even of you are a figment of my imagination or exist only as the creation of some kind of computer software). Seriously, you exist as a three dimensional, flesh-and-blood, absolutely unique entity inside a three dimensional Universe. However, is your reality something wildly improbable or 100% guaranteed?

On the surface, you are an absolute fluke. Think of those millions of sperm that could have won that race to your mother’s egg, but didn’t. Or that winning sperm could have fertilized some other of your mother’s eggs. Either case, you’re a total nothing in anyone’s philosophy! Now think of all the males and females available at any given time and the odds are against your parents having met, courted, married, etc. Potentially, millions of other males could have married your mother; and potentially millions of other females could have married your father. And of course your mother and father are flukes because a similar argument holds for them via your grandparents, and further backwards for them to your great grandparents, etc, etc. Go back with those sorts of odds a hundred, a thousand, a million, a trillion, generations; back through your mammalian, reptilian, amphibian, etc. ancestry; back through your family tree of invertebrate ancestors (untold generations worth), right down to your unicellular ancestors. What are the odds, all those chance meetings be they sperm and egg, or male and female, of organisms that survived long enough through to a reproductive age (and relatively few, apart from humans do), that you would someday grace the world? Zillions upon zillions to one! You’re an absolute fluke! Or are you?

There appear to be ultimately three sets of either/or conditions which ultimately govern that. The first is, is there one universe, our Universe, or many universes (a Multiverse)? Secondly, is there absolute causality resulting in a deterministic clockwork Universe where once the initial set of relationships were set into play, things evolved with 100% certainty from that point on? Lastly, is there one, and only one possible physics, or could our physics have been different, or are different in another universe?

But first some definitions are in order.  

Universal Physics – One and only one kind of physics is possible, throughout all universes. If you believe in God, She didn’t have any choice in the matter!

Variable Physics – Each universe could have its own individual brand of physics, and the physics that rule our Universe could have turned out differently.

Determinism Rules – There’s 100% causality; there’s absolute certainty.

Chance Rules – Represents less than 100% causality; free will if you will.

Multiverse – Lots of separate and apart universes, perhaps even an infinite number of them.

Universe – The one and only Universe; our Universe. However, if our Universe is near infinite in space and time and stuff, then for all practical purposes it’s the same as the Multiverse since there’s enough space and time and stuff for nearly all possibilities to take place within.

Combining the various possibilities suggests how fluky you really are! But first, let’s deal with the supernatural, instead of natural scenario. If God exists and wanted you to exist, assuming there is a God of course, then you’re Probability One – no contest. You’re no fluke. Seeing however as how there is no evidence for any God (or gods), we’d better get back to all things natural and plough on.

Scenario 1: Universal Physics [+] Determinism [+] Multiverse = the exact same set of outcomes in all universes is predicted. If you exist in one universe, you exist in all universes. You’re not a fluke. But if you don’t, you don’t, full stop. However, you probably don’t since you’re existence would be equivalent to tossing a coin several billion times in a row all billion coming up heads. The assumption here is that the initial set of conditions was identical in each and every single universe within the Multiverse. If not, then they won’t be identical further on down the track. If that assumption is incorrect, you could exist in one or more universes; not exist in one or more other universes.

Scenario 2: Universal Physics [+] Determinism [+] Universe = if you exist, then you were a certainty from the get-go. If you don’t, that too was a certainty. On balance, a betting person would probably bet against your existence ever happening because only one exact set of circumstances gives the universe you, while billions of other sets of circumstances don’t.

Scenario 3: Universal Physics [+] Chance [+] Multiverse = your existence in one universe has nothing to do with your existence in any other universe. You’re a fluke in whatever universe(s) you exist in. But, the saving grace is that you do probably exist in at least one universe.

Scenario 4: Universal Physics [+] Chance [+] Universe = If you exist, you’re a fluke. The probability is extremely high given the odds against your existence such that nobody would have been willing to wager anything on your eventual behalf.

Scenario 5: Variable Physics [+] Determinism [+] Multiverse = assuming one universe has our kind of physics, then you’re existence is a 100% certainty, or 100% against. In all other universes, since the physics are different, nothing remotely like you, or anyone else, will exist. If you exist, you’re not just a fluke, but a super-fluke!

Scenario 6:  Variable Physics [+] Determinism [+] Universe = if there’s only one universe, then there can only be one physics, so assuming that that universe is our Universe, the outcome is the same as Scenario 2.

Scenario 7: Variable Physics [+] Chance [+] Multiverse = in the Multiverse, nearly all possibilities are realised (except in Scenario 1), so in at least one universe, you exist. You’re not a fluke due to the vast number of universes that could contain you. But you’re still a fluke in that you don’t exist in the near infinite other possible universes.

Scenario 8: Variable Physics [+] Chance [+] Universe = again, one universe must equal one physics. Since things however are based on a throw of the dice, if you exist, you’re a fluke.

In short, the betting odds towards your existence are to count on there being a Multiverse. If you’re dealt one hand (one universe), the odds against a royal flush are extreme. Being dealt a near infinite number of hands (the Multiverse) doesn’t ensure a royal flush, but it damn well improves the odds. So, if you exist and there’s one universe, our Universe, you’re a real fluke. In the Multiverse, you might be a fluke in any one universe, but there are so many universes that in that broader context, you’re not a fluke.

Do you want to improve the odds in favor of your existence? There’s a variation that could apply to the Multiverse theme called the Many Worlds interpretation of all things quantum. In the Many Worlds scenario, absolutely all possibilities are realized within any given ‘moment’ within the timeline. In terms of eggs and sperm, at any given moment, the universe splits into as many universes such that all sperm available fertilize all eggs available, and that applies regardless of species (so all possible males that can meet and mate with all possible females do so – or vice versa); all possible seeds that could have been are, and produce viable plants somewhere. 

You might note the subtle combining of both the Multiverse and the Many Worlds concepts. Each universe within the Multiverse has the additional complication (or added attraction) of having to jump through the Many Worlds hoops.

Universes within the Multiverse can have differing timelines. Thus Cleopatra, assuming a Cleopatra, in another universe might have been born into a 21^st Century Egypt, or Australia for that matter (assuming these nations exist or existed in this other universe). Likewise, in another, that other, universe, you may have been born a slave (or as Royalty) in an ancient Egypt, again, assuming such a nation existed. So, who knows, in some other universe (modern or ancient) you and (modern or ancient) Cleopatra (or substitute any modern or historical hunk male of your choice if you’re female) have this thing going! I’m not that likely going to be, in any universe, the one to mate with Cleopatra, any more than you’re (if female) are likely to get your act together with Marc Anthony. But, unlikely becomes Probability One when you merge the Multiverse with Many Worlds. The universe that contains you and Marc Anthony, or you (or me) and Cleopatra, will split when it come to that fork in the road. Many Worlds universe #1 split #1 fork – no pairings; Many Worlds universe #1 split #2 fork – you (we) live happy ever after! That’s because all possibilities are realized; have to be realized.

That’s a real headache inducer! So, to repeat, take a near (or actual) infinity of universes, each with its own unique timeline (which will not of necessity mirror our own). Then, multiply all those existences by all the possible forks in the road encountered by each of those universes since all paths are taken. Anything not forbidden is compulsory. You’re wildest dreams may not come true in this, our Universe, and on this particular pathway you’re experiencing, but somewhere you did, or will – but ditto that your worst nightmares, so perhaps be thankful for what you got in the here and now.

Now let’s reduce that headache somewhat by unmerging again the Multiverse and the Many Worlds ideas. Say in one alternate timeline universe Cleopatra and I get our act together (‘we do’). In another alternate timeline universe we don’t (‘we do not’). In both universes, the Many Worlds forks would now have us respectfully ‘we do not’ and ‘we do’ instead. But that’s already happened in the two universes, so do we now have two universes where ‘we do’ and two universes where ‘we do not’? Rather than accept that, perhaps the Multiverse and the Many Worlds concepts are ultimately, for all practical purposes, the same thing.

Ah, but the ‘we do’ in the first alternate universe took place in an alternate Australia thus the Many Worlds fork had us ‘we do not’ also in an alternate Australia. The original ‘we do not”  in the second alternate universe too place in that alternate ancient Egypt, so that Many Worlds fork now has us as a ‘we do’, also in an alternate ancient Egypt. So the two ‘we do’ universes and the two ‘we do not’ universes aren’t the same after all.

But then again, all those four possibilities could also be catered for in four actual separate and apart universes that are part of the Multiverse, so again there’s no need to bring into consideration the Many Worlds interpretation of all things quantum! Back to square one! And this sort of adding on further qualifiers, isn’t going to ultimately alter the apparently near equivalence of the Multiverse and the Many Worlds.

I’m not however entirely sure this apparent equivalence will sit well with quantum physicists, because I’m not entirely sure this is what quantum physicists mean by the phrase ‘Many Worlds’ (indeed, lots of quantum physicists deny any such interpretation at all exists – it’s too big an ask for them). However, it seems to deal with the issue of That Cat! In two separate physical universes you have Schrodinger’s Cat (in the box) experiment. Identical cats; identical setups; identical observers (and they can be identical because the fundamental bits that make them all up are identical – all electrons (neutrons, protons, etc.) are 100% clones of each other – absolutely identical). In one unverse, the observer observes the cat alive; the other, well it’s the demise of the feline. Neither universe has to split into two. All possibilities have been exhausted without resorting to the requirement of a Many Worlds either/or split. The only real difference I can see between the Multiverse and the Many Worlds interpretation is that with Many Worlds, the outcome (all possibilities realized) is certainty; with the Multiverse it’s only probable or possible.

In conclusion, you may think our planet is an example of total biodiversity, but imagine what things would be like if all the theoretical possibilities had come to pass (the Many Worlds and/or the Multiverse)!!! How many Einstein’s were never born - on the other hand, how many Hitler’s? Then throw in all the plants and animals that never were but could have been, and you could come up with multi-trillions upon trillions of alternative Earths! Ouch!

Perhaps it’s easier to accept that there’s just one Universe (our Universe) and no such a thing therefore as a Multiverse, and no such an animal as the Many Worlds interpretation of all things quantum. You’re therefore a total fluke, and so just enjoy the company of the rest of us total flukes! That’s unless of course our Universe is near infinite enough in extent, all on its lonesome, to allow for a duplicate copy (or three or four) of you – recall those elementary particles that make you, you, can be identically assembled elsewhere to accomplish exactly that.

To be continued…

Reality: Really Real, Pseudo-Real, or Unreal? Part Five

Reality – It’s all relative; it’s reversible; it’s symmetric; it’s personal; it kicks back when you kick it; it’s conceptual; it’s theoretical; it’s actual; it’s abstract; it’s bio-friendly; it’s unforgiving; it’s emotional; and ultimately the reality of life, the Universe and everything resides in your mind.

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

Relative Reality:

The same reality can be quite different from the perspective of two different observers. But does it really matter?

Does it really matter if when you witness a sunrise whether or not it’s because the Sun goes around the Earth or because the Earth rotates while going around the Sun?

Does it really matter if you’re driving along while it’s raining vertically yet you see the raindrops hitting the windshield at an angle? Or, while driving, you see the posts go past the car, yet of course it’s the car driving past the posts.

Does it really matter if you’re flying in a plane as assume that the plane is suspended in the air and it’s the Earth’s rotation that’s bringing your destination to you?

Does it really matter if two cars are approaching each other at a combined velocity of 100 km/hour whether car one is standing still and car two is going at 100 km/hour; car one is traveling at 30 km/hour and car two is traveling at 70 km/hour; both cars are each moving along at 50 km/hour? Does it really matter if you’re in line between the two cars and thus have difficulty judging their relative velocities?

Well, ‘yes” it really does matter if you believe there is such a thing as universal or absolute truth. The Earth rotates and goes around the Sun; the raindrops really are on a vertical path downwards and would theoretically intersect the centre of the Earth; the plane is really flying and not suspended in midair; and both cars are moving at 50 km/hour.

Well ‘no’, it really doesn’t matter as long as you get to see the sun rise; you don’t get wet regardless whether or not the rain is falling straight down or at an angle; you reach your destination; and you’re not in either of the two cars on their collision course! The Universe certainly isn’t losing any sleep over this, and I bet neither will you!

But Einstein and the other relativists who followed in his footsteps care deeply about such matters because they do illustrate the principle that there are no God-given (or Nature-given) absolute frames of reference. Different strokes for different folks can produce identical results, or different results, depending..

That second observer, the different folk, complicates things. You on the ground assume the Sun goes around the Earth; the observer in space clearly sees the Earth rotating and orbiting the Sun. You see the rain hitting the windshield at an angle while the observer standing on the roadside clearly sees the rain falling vertically (and gets wet for his trouble). That second observer on the ground clearly sees the plane flying through the air and the hell with what you, the passenger, observe. That second observer from a distant hilltop has a side view sees and easily sees both cars in motion, both at 50 km/hour.

So, what about we hypothesize two identical twins (well it would be odd to have three identical twins!), born on the same day, say, just to be evil, on the sixth of June, 2006! They both die at the exact same time, say a century later. Trouble is, one has moved to the east coast; one has lived on the west coast. The east coaster dies local time at 1 am 6 June 2106. The west coaster dies at the same moment, but west coast local time is 11 pm 5 June 2106. Thus, when reunited and buried side-by-side, one has a headstone that reads b.2006-d.2106, age 100 years; the other’s headstone reads b.2006-d.2106, age 99 years! It would now seem to be a case of relative reality trumping absolute truth!

Does evening and night come before the dawning day, or does the dawning day before evening and night? Does winter follow summer, or does summer follow winter? You may think that Wednesday comes before Thursday, but Thursday the 3^rd comes before Wednesday the 9^th!

One final example, you’re standing on a railway platform, your partner is on the train. Now as the train passes by the platform, your better half drops from say chest height a rubber ball. You, on the platform see the pathway of the dropped but bouncing back up ball as a V. Your partner sees the ball go straight down and straight up. Is there an absolute truth here? Does it cosmically matter?

Relative reality is part and parcel of our overall reality.

To be continued…

Reality: Really Real, Pseudo-Real, or Unreal? Part Four

Reality – It’s all relative; it’s reversible; it’s symmetric; it’s personal; it kicks back when you kick it; it’s conceptual; it’s theoretical; it’s actual; it’s abstract; it’s bio-friendly; it’s unforgiving; it’s emotional; and ultimately the reality of life, the Universe and everything resides in your mind.

Reality from Two More Points of View – Squared:

Position yourself way above the Sun’s North Pole and film the motion of the solar system, or just the inner solar system ‘below’ you. You’d film the Earth revolving about the Sun in a counter clockwise direction, and rotating in an easterly direction.

If you now role that film in reverse, you’d see the Earth revolving in a clockwise direction and rotating in a westerly direction. An inhabitant of that time reversed Earth would see the Sun rise in the west and set in the east! However, that’s no violation of physical law. It’s relatively easy to picture a solar system is which the revolution of planetary bodies is the opposite of ours; planets that rotate in the opposite direction. 

Such opposites with respect to motion are what you’d see in a mirror reflection – if you had a mirror big enough. So, if you reverse time [T], you produce a mirror image of the motion (left handedness motion becomes right handedness motion and vice versa), which in physics is called parity [P]. If you look in a mirror, your right hand now looks like a left hand and vice versa – that’s parity. That applies equally on the micro scale; with the added feature that to preserve the overall symmetry, the charge [C] needs to be reversed too. So, a positive [CPT] is symmetrical with a negative [CPT]. Since the macro is made up of the micro, in our time reversed; parity (motion) reversed, Earth; said Earth would have all the charges in all the particles that made it up reversed. In short, said Earth would be an antimatter Earth!

On the micro level, a positron (positive charge), rotating clockwise (spin up) while moving forward in time at one second per second is symmetrical with an electron (negative charge), rotating counter clockwise (spin down), and moving backwards in time, at a rate of one second per second! Again, there’s no violation of physical law. The laws of physics do not make any distinction between time frames moving from past to present to future relative to time frames going from future to present to past. It’s the same reality from two different perspectives. Which version you prefer is solely up to you – either interpretation is a valid one. Most people of course prefer the classical time frames forward version – the Earth revolves counter clockwise and rotates easterly and is composed of matter and goes from past to present to future. But, you can be, if you wish to be, justifiably stubborn and reverse the CPT and accept that reality.

Again, if you reverse the time frame, you need to also reverse the image of whatever is in motion to its mirror image instead. Now that image may be hard to swallow and isn’t really a ‘reflection’ of your day to day macro world. If you look in your home mirror, and see a reflection of a grandfather clock with hands rotating and pendulum swinging, it will look odd – the hands going the wrong way around (counter clockwise) and the pendulum going right-left-right instead of left-right-left. But, physicists can handle it (at least via their abstract equations – just like the mathematics can deal with the ten or eleven dimensions required of string theory.    

So, in general, negative [CPT] and positive [CPT] are the two symmetrical sides of the same physical law reality coin.

But there are two other ways of looking at and interpreting this. There’s 1) a real mix of (a hell of a lot of) matter and (a very little amount of) antimatter all going forward in time together in step, or 2) you can postulate the concept of additional pseudo-antimatter by postulating that every now and then elementary particles of matter reverse direction in time (hence reverse charge and parity as well) thus mimicking what we call antimatter. That mimicked antimatter elementary particle can reverse time direction again and revert back to what we call normal matter. That applies equally to real antimatter reversing time’s arrow and becoming pseudo-matter. While the former (1) is the commonly accepted, commonsense point of view, it’s actually the latter (2) that has greater explanatory power in solving some of those mysteries of physics, such as entanglement, and double slit experiment weirdness and why are all electrons or positrons identical (because maybe there’s only one of each zigzagging backwards and forwards in time).

Reality Really Is A Personal Thing:

The most unique thing about you is “The You” inside you – your mind. There’s nothing unique about your sex, blood type, pigmentation, hair style, body shape, age, etc. Your genetic makeup isn’t unique if you have an identical twin. Many of your body’s organs can be transplanted into other bodies. But your mind is unique. Even if you had an identical twin, your minds would be different.

Your brain, which houses the mind, is the organ that has to absorb the sensory input we constantly receive from the outside world. While we have some limited control over the sensory barrage or onslaught reality inflicts on us, we so have some – control that is. You can often choose what you want to taste or listen to or see. You can close your eyes or stick your fingers in your ears if you want.  Another form of control is that you can choose your surroundings, maybe eventually immerse yourself in a totally artificial reality, as in the Star Trek’s holodeck programs.  So, in one sense, reality really is all in the mind as all sensory input flows into it. And since your mind is unique, your reality, or your version of reality, must be unique too.

Quite apart fro having some control over external sensory input, the inner workings of your body also can affect the mind and therefore your notion of reality. Migraine headaches can cause you to ‘see’ flashes of light where no optical input is preset. A build-up of this chemical, or lack of that substance, can cause quite considerable alterations in your perception of what’s happening – reality. Near Death Experiences (the NDE) is a case in point. Control over those inner workings is possible, in some cases, to a greater or lesser degree. However, you’re body often tends to do its own thing and mind over matter is a useless exercise!

All of which leads to the point that you can also alter your own perception of reality, not directly via sensory stimuli, but chemically. There are lots of drugs, prescription, legal and over-the-counter (alcohol, etc.), not quite so legal (LSD, magic mushrooms, marijuana, various herbs, etc.) which affect brain (mind) chemistry and how you perceive the outside world.  The question then arises, if you can alter your brain’s (mind’s) chemistry, and that alters your perception of reality, how do you know that your unaltered (normal) brain chemistry is giving you an accurate reflection of what’s out there? If you’re honest, you don’t! But you can assume that you are getting a reasonable facsimile of reality, otherwise basic survival would be highly problematic. I mean if you thing that’s a purring pussy cat approaching you when it’s actually a roaring man-eating tiger, you’re in deep shit. Or, equally in the fertilizer, that’s not really table salt you’re sprinkling on your veggies, its cyanide!

There’s also the area of electrical stimulation of the brain that can produce realities which aren’t real but which, to you, are very real indeed!

There’s an opposite side to the altering-your-mind’s-sensory-input. Instead of adding or replacing inputs, eliminate them – deprive yourself of as much sensory input as possible. I’m thinking of isolation tanks where you float in water at body temperature, there’s no light, no sound, no smell. Of course your heart still thumps and you can still think (therefore you are and therefore you still have a grip on reality, even if the sum total of that reality is just you, and only you. Regardless, it’s a far removal from your day-to-day perception of what’s real!

Lastly, while mind melds (or telepathy) are probably an ever unlikely possibility, I can se the day when there is a direct interface between a computer, an artificial intelligence perhaps, and the human mind. Perhaps that computer link might be an interface between one human mind and another. That way you could directly experience another person’s reality!

The key point: Actual reality has relatively little to do with your brain chemistry (apart from providing the matter/energy needed to run the apparatus).  Your perception of reality has everything to do with brain chemistry. That’s true even if reality is augmented by technology, from telescopes to microscopes; mass spectrometers to particle accelerators; eye glasses to hearing aids.

To be continued…

Reality: Really Real, Pseudo-Real, or Unreal? Part Three

Reality – it could vary from your mind alone as the entirety of all existence to you being the figment of someone else’s imagination. Without your five senses and brain thingy, you wouldn’t experience any reality at all. There are as many versions of reality as there are living things, up through and including ‘living’ machines – artificial intelligence (AI). But is there any reality at all in the absence of living things, including AI?

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

Personal Reality: 

For all you know, you might actually be a multi-tentacled, slimy green blob-thing living on the Planet Zork and dreaming that you are a human living on Planet Earth and deriving near infinite amount of civic pride/satisfaction and/or orgasmic pleasure in paying your way (mainly via taxes and rates). Then again, maybe your really Triffid-like, living on some extra-solar hot Jupiter, hallucinating that you’re on Planet Zork and consequently dreaming of being a Planet Earth humanoid.  

Well, maybe not. But be that as it may…

It’s probably impossible to ever know of experience absolute reality since everything external to us, in order to be experienced, has to be filtered and processed through a complex biochemical laboratory via our eyes, ears, skin, etc. hence via our nervous system up to the brain. Who really knows what kind of translation happens along the way or what’s lost (or wrongly gained) in translation. Our reality might be a total hash of actual reality! But, we do the best we can with what we get to work with.

We perceive the reality of the Universe (and its component parts) via our five senses – sight, sound, touch, taste and smell – and through instruments (technology) which, while extending the range of those senses, translate their measurements back into the range we can comprehend with our sensory apparatus. A radio telescope can see and record radio waves, but the (computer or paper) image spat out for our viewing is obviously in the visible light range to cater for our eyes. Ditto our radios translate radio waves we can’t see or hear into sound we can hear.

While there are probably differences in the perceptions of reality twixt males and females, it’s probably also true that these are so minor as to not be really worth elaborating on. 

No two people ever experience seemingly identical things exactly down to the Nth degree. That is, you and I will not experience vision, hearing, taste, smell or touch in the precise same way. That’s quite apart from relativity theory which can illustrate these differences quite dramatically. No, even in our relativity-irrelevant day-to-day life and world, for example, what’s blue to someone might appear slightly blue-green to another; what’s a perfect C-note to one is ever so slightly sharp (#) to another; what’s a hot cup of coffee to one person is only very warm to another, even though the temperature is identical in both cases. Even two people tasting the same food will perceive things slightly differently.

Yet clearly the blue/blue-green color has one and only one specific wavelength; the note has one and only one frequency; and the hot/very warm cup of coffee really has just one uniform temperature. [Note that these differences have nothing to do with individual likes or dislikes – that’s a separate category of an even more personal ‘reality’ altogether.]  

Speaking of temperature, differences in perception extends to instruments which augment our senses as well. We might be able to estimate temperature to within a degree or two. But even two seemingly identical thermometers will register ever so slight differences, perhaps to with 1/100^th or 1/1000^th of a degree, but differences nevertheless.

So what aspects of the Universe do we sense? Well, obviously things that are composed of matter and energy (which are two sides of the same coin). We can see matter and energy, we can hear energy, we can touch matter and experience its energy, and we can smell and taste matter. 

Yet, those aspects are quite incomplete. Our sense of vision is useless over most of the electromagnetic spectrum. Our sense of hearing is adequate over only a relatively small range of frequencies or octaves.

Our reality, apart from vision and hearing is also confined to a relatively narrow range of temperatures, gravitational and magnetic fields, and chemical elements. But we don’t sense Earth’s magnetic field (though apparently some animals do), which is a tad strange since we can sense or feel the Earth’s gravitational field or force.

Our senses can’t see, hear, taste, touch or smell time, and time is a fundamental aspect to our existence and to the properties of our Universe. And if string or superstring theory is correct, then we exist in a ten or eleven dimensional Universe, yet we can’t see, hear taste, touch or smell them. An extra six or seven dimensions to our Universe is not trivial, yet we’re not equipped to experience them. That’s weird! We’ve no direct awareness of the quantum world. What would our reality be like at the atomic level or below? I don’t know, but it sure wouldn’t mirror the comfortable reality we deal with in the macroverse. Although the strong nuclear force holds together all the atomic nuclei in our bodies, we don’t feel or sense it, nor for that matter the weak nuclear force

There’s strong circumstantial evidence that parallel universes should exist, yet we’ve no apparent perception of these. We’ve no perception of what it would be like to experience reality inside a Black Hole, and for that matter, we’ve only an academic understanding of the reality of the interior of a stellar object, like our Sun, not a personal reality, or for that matter most of the environments in our Universe. Think of all those realities we’ve never experienced, and probably never can experience.

What else might we lack knowledge or perception of that’s not yet been dreamt of in our philosophy or science? I shudder to think of all that we’re missing!

Personal Reality from Two Points of View:

Let’s return to our favourite imaginary couple, Jane and Clive, one of which sees blue, hears a pure C-note and perceives coffee as hot; the other a shade of blue-green, hears C#, and perceives equally hot coffee as only very warm.

Jane is aware of the idea that matter is mostly empty space. Jane knows that neutrinos can pass through light-years of ‘solid’ lead unimpeded. “Why can’t I be like a neutrino and pass through ‘solid’ matter?” she asks. Jane, being a good experimental scientist, decides to personally experiment and test the idea. Both Jane and Clive look up a physics equation, F=ma (force equals mass times acceleration).  They ponder this abstract representation linking force, mass and acceleration and how it could be translated into showing that matter was mainly empty space. Jane gets an idea of accelerating a mass (her fist) to provide a force against another mass (say a brick wall), expecting her fist mass and the other brick mass to intersect. [Boy is she going to be in for an unpleasant surprise.] Jane was aware of course that just leaning her hand on the wall wasn’t sufficient enough oomph – she needed more force. Anyway, Jane and Clive discuss this practical demonstration of Jane slamming her fist into a brick wall; Clive tries to talk her out of this experiment, but has to capitulate (a woman just has to have the last word) and just observes while a remote camera films the event for posterity.

So, we have Jane slamming her fist into a brick wall and Clive watches. We assume that Jane’s fist doesn’t pass harmlessly through the brick wall – empty space or no empty space. So Jane experiences the physical reality of intense pain; at best black and blue bruising; at worst, broken bones in her hand. Clive of course experiences no such pain (though he’d better show some sympathy or else he just might), but he certainly experiences the intense sound (scream) of Jane’s ‘ouch’!

So one definition of reality could be something along the line, and I’m sure Jane would now agree, is that reality is something that hits back when you hit it! Yet, there’s got to be more to reality than that.

Later on, we have Jane and Clive watch the film of Jane slamming her fist into a brick wall. Neither Jane nor Clive now experiences any actual pain, yet the mental reality of watching the film will trigger quite different memories in each of the two participants.

We have Jane and Clive just think about Jane slamming her fist into a brick wall; we have Jane and Clive dream about Jane slamming her fist in to a brick wall; we have Jane and Clive hallucinate (being somewhat under the influence) about Jane slamming her fist into a brick wall – these are all variations on the same theme.

If these mental processes (thinking, dreaming or hallucinating) happened before-the-fact that Jane slammed her fist into a brick wall then that’s going to produce quite a different mental image(s) than if these mental processes happened after-the-fact that Jane slammed her fist into a brick wall.

So you see, one scenario gives rise to many varieties of reality. There’s the abstract reality of the equation. There’s the mental reality of what might be. There’s the mental reality of what was. There’s the physical reality of Jane’s pain and Clive’s throbbing eardrum! There’s the reality of the film to remind them never to try this stunt again!

To be continued…

Reality: Really Real, Pseudo-Real, or Unreal? Part Two

Reality – it could vary from your mind alone as the entirety of all existence to you being the figment of someone else’s imagination. Without your five senses and brain thingy, you wouldn’t experience any reality at all. There are as many versions of reality as there are living things, up through and including ‘living’ machines – artificial intelligence (AI). But is there any reality at all in the absence of living things, including AI?

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

The Reality of Both Nothing and Something:

There has to be some nothing as well as some something. If everything were something, then nothing could move as all the Universe would be chockablock – like the fad of a VW, or a phone booth being stuffed full to overflowing with college kids. You couldn’t push anything out of the way as there would be no nothing to push it into!

The Reality of Something: Matter & Energy:

We live in the world of the macro and in the realm of classical physics – the physics you were taught in high school. Your homes, cars and offices are probably filled with electronic gadgets that operate in the realm of the micro – quantum physics (which you probably weren’t taught in high school). You’d think that there should be a smooth and continuous transition from the macro/classical to the micro/quantum, and vice versa, as you go up or down the scale of size. However, I’m hard pressed to think of an example in reality where both quantum and classical physical concepts or laws have to be integrated in order to explain or predict something. Again, it’s like there are two different sets of software running the cosmos!

That said, the reality of matter and energy in our macro day-to-day existence, while obvious, depends on the reality of the bits and pieces that make up the realm of the micro. So, molecules had better be real, and atoms and the particles that make them up – things like quarks and electrons and neutrinos. Thus, it’s disturbing to read in various books on particle and quantum physics that these are treated as point (dimensionless) particles. Presumably this is to make the mathematics easier or simpler (and just pick up an academic text in these subjects, open to a random page, and see what I mean). Clearly a dimensionless particle can not have reality as particles have mass. That implies of necessity that the particles must have size – a volume. If you gather up an infinite number of dimensionless particles, you could fit them into zero volume. Since macro bits and pieces have volume – you have a volume – you can not be ultimately comprised of dimensionless micro bits!

Further, we have all these high energy ‘atom smashers’ (particle accelerators) where the objective is to smash one particle into another at higher and higher energies and see what happens. If the particles, usually electrons or protons, had zero volume, they couldn’t collide! Despite phrases like ‘point particles’, particles really have three dimensions (volume), and thus objects around you, including you, have volume. Particles have reality, and so do you. And because mass and energy are interchangeable, energy has reality. If you doubt that, put your hand on a hot stove!

In addition, the very fact that we experience variety in matter tells us that there must be more than one kind of matter. If there were only one kind of stuff – say electrons and only electrons – then everything we experience would be just that stuff; only that stuff; that stuff alone. No variety – it’s all things electron! That’s clearly not the case, so there’s more to matter than just, say, electrons!

The Reality of Nothing: Time & Space: 

Go into a dark, quiet room with no sensory distractions. You know that time is passing all around you, yet you can’t detect this time with any of your five senses. You can’t see time; hear time; smell time; taste time; or touch time. To detect time, you need some intermediary mechanism – look at your watch; listen to the ticking of a clock; feel your pulse. Translated, to detect time (and by the way ditto space), you need matter/energy which time as some effect on. Put another way, if matter/energy did not exist, the concept of time would be meaningless. (Ditto space – in the absence of matter/energy you couldn’t detect space with your five senses. There’d be nothing to see, hear, taste, touch or smell.)

Space has no meaning unless there is something inside it, and/or outside it, to give it some boundary and hence reality. If there’s no matter/energy, there’s no need of any space for it to reside in. So, time and space aren’t real without matter and energy. Only matter and energy have reality.

Since time and space are meaningless concepts without matter and energy, its nonsense to talk about creating time and space. You’d automatically create time and space if you could create matter/energy. Alas, the conservation laws of physics state that matter and energy can neither be created nor destroyed only changed in form. Presumably nothing can create matter/energy – certainly no human being has ever done it – and since I reject the concept of a supernatural creator being (God), I’m forced to conclude that matter and energy, therefore space and time, have always existed and will always exist. [Eliminating a creator God from consideration simplifies things no end.]

Your Pet’s Reality:

I’ll assume that as your pet (assuming you have one or more), or some other animal you have had a relationship with or observed closely, can’t speak for itself or themselves, and as you’re totally familiar with your pet’s personality, that you’re a good spokesperson for them – as good as it’s going to get anyway.  So, if you were your pet (bird, fish, cat, whatever) how would your perception or knowledge of reality shift – if it does.

Firstly there’s a near universal reality for all higher life forms – including humans. That universality is expressed in the phrase “empty what’s full; fill what’s empty; scratch where it itches”!

Humour aside let’s start with the initial gateways – the senses.  We’re all aware that our sensory apparatus can and has been exceeded by some animals – including common household pets. Not only is vision more acute in some animals, but extends further into the ultraviolet and/or infrared than ours. Hearing is keener; sense of smell is sharper; pressure gradients more noticeable, etc. Be all that as it may, I can’t see that altering basic perceptions of reality in any significant way.

Ditto for physical abilities - birds gotta fly; fish gotta swim; horses gotta run. Again, there’s nothing significantly different in principle here. The fact that a horse can run faster than you doesn’t give the horse a whole different perspective or outlook on the world. 

Yet, on our home world, there is a life form, with a most alien of realities, at least relative to us or from our perspective. The most alien of realities, from our point of view, must be experienced by that of a fish, even a pet goldfish. Consider, we live for all practical purposes in a two dimensional world – the surface of our planet. Fish live in a three dimensional world. They, for all practical purposes, experience no weather or climate. There’s not much temperature variation. They, depending on species and depth, may never experience a day-night cycle, rather live all the time in absolute darkness. They don’t experience gravity per say as the water and swim bladders produce neutral buoyancy.  From our point of view, I guess, their reality is not only quite different, but certainly more boring – although boring is a rather emotive term. The fish may not have any comprehension of what boring is.  So, having a conversation with a fish (a thought experiment obviously) might be about the closest one could come to terms with a substantial alternative reality. Except the absolutes, the basics are still there – survival, food, sex, etc.

Reality is ultimately perceived and processed by our brains, and our companion animals have brains, just as we do. Animals have a “The You” component to them. Pets clearly can think, make (to them anyway) intelligent decisions; they can and do dream. They have emotions. They can learn; they have memories. They have a world view.

Yet, I’m sure that 99.9% of the time your pets and mine have absolutely no comprehension of what you are doing or why. They may like warmth, but have no idea of what thermodynamics is. They like sex but the purpose and genetics of it all is beyond them. They like food but have no comprehension of agriculture and manufacturing and transport and distribution and money and shopping and all those bits and pieces that put doggie food in the doggie bowl. Yet your activities, warmth, sex, food is of course part of their reality, although not part of their understanding.

Now our companion animals are fairly closely related species to us. Felines, of which I have two, have a worldview. However, their worldview, concerns, philosophy, science, etc. revolves around whether there’s food in their food bowl; do they have a clean litter box to access; am I around when required to open doors for them and where are the mice hiding! I often envy their relatively uncomplicated lives. No pondering the great issues like looking at a star and wondering if an alien cat is looking back in this direction; no comprehension of taxes or money so-called compulsory voting or politics.

Four billions of years of evolution (assuming an origin of life within 500 million years of Earth’s origin) made no demands or requirements for living things to comprehend abstract things like philosophy or science (like cosmology or quantum mechanics) or mathematics, not to mention politics and economics. The sum total of our (meaning life, not just humans) concerns, over those four billion years, our worldview, or our reality, centered on food, shelter, sex and just plain survival. That’s also true for the hundreds of thousands of years, all through human evolution, into what we’ve become now. And that’s true today. I’m sure 99.9% of good folks (meaning humans) today pay near zero attention to these abstract non-essentials in their day-to-day existence. It’s bad enough that our lives have been enhanced by the abstractions of government and taxes and bills and nine-to-five jobs (or lack thereof).

So herein lays my fundamental question. If our companion animals can’t come to terms with the Big Picture, ultimate reality, relative to us, but we ourselves are only just that little bit further along in evolutionary (brain-related) advancement (call that advanced IQ or whatever) relative to them, then, what makes you think that the entire vista of reality is comprehensible to you? I sometimes wonder if we’re yet fully biologically or mentally equipped to ponder the great abstracts – comprehend the fullness of reality, not just the few bits and pieces that we have come to terms with and think as being the near be all and end all of what’s real. Perhaps our worldview of these things are not only limited, but of necessity will be limited. Translated, perhaps further eons yet worth of brain development might be necessary to fully comprehend our reality; what we comprehend currently might be, relatively speaking, just a tiny bit in advance of what our animal friends comprehend! There’s a long, long, road to hoe. 

To be continued…

Reality: Really Real, Pseudo-Real, or Unreal? Part One

Reality – it could vary from your mind alone as the entirety of all existence to you being the figment of someone else’s imagination. Without your five senses and brain thingy, you wouldn’t experience any reality at all. There are as many versions of reality as there are living things, up through and including ‘living’ machines – artificial intelligence (AI). But is there any reality at all in the absence of living things, including AI?

Reality:

Reality! It’s second nature to us. It is what we live our entire lifetime in and are forever within that lifetime surrounded by. Reality isn’t just interacting with matter and energy (and associated forces); ditto time and space, but in lots of less intangible ways like comprehending the names of objects and their nature; dates, and their importance; and places (we’ve never been to). And there are other concepts you can’t really grasp in your hand yet which you’d consider real – like Wednesdays and blueness and freshness. And there are also your mental realities of memories and knowledge and emotions, etc.  You often interact with reality in degrees of ignorance just because that reality is just the way things are, and are done, even if you don’t know the full evolution of why it came to be that way.

But is reality really real in the sense that it would still be an identical reality even if you didn’t exist, or yet exist, or that your equivalent halfway across the world, or the Universe or as someone generations ago or to come experiences it? You’d probably agree – surely rain a million years ago has the same wet reality as rain you or your equivalents experience. The stars would still shine even in a lifeless Universe. You believe it, but can you prove it?

Reality must also be an individual’s experience. You can experience something creative – a painting, a song, a book, a garden, interior decorations, or a work of common or extraordinary architecture. That’s one reality. But you can’t share or come to terms with the nature of the reality experienced by the creator part and parcel in creating that work. So your perception of reality is somewhat limited. As the song title goes, “Is that all there is?”  The answer is “No”. Your reality isn’t another person’s or species reality, and further more, your day-to-day reality is but a small subset of all possible realities, reality here equated to environments, past, present and future and just beyond your event horizon. It’s self evident that a NASA astronaut has a quite different day-to-day reality relative to that of an Australian drover who road the range a century before.

While you of course have some say in expanding your personal reality event horizon, you could change jobs or move halfway around the world, or win the lottery, some environments and associated realities are forever beyond your reach. You can’t experience life a thousand years ago, or in the future; you can’t currently live on Mars; if you weren’t born an American citizen, even though you’re now an American citizen, you can’t become President of the United States. Of course if there is such a thing as reincarnation (which I seriously doubt), then you might eventually experience other realities, elsewhere and else-when. Then too, if there is a Multiverse, then in other universes you might just be living and experiencing other lives and lifestyles and times. Who can say?

But wait. What if reality is all in the mind – your mind? You are the sum total of all there is. Then anything you want is yours. If you imagine living on Mars, then Mars is your home! Assuming however you’re not the be all and end all of life, the Universe, and everything, an associated question might be if you have never heard of it, or experienced it, or imagined it, does ‘it’ have reality? Even if you have heard, but forgotten about it; experienced it, but not at this very moment; even if you have imagined it, but not currently, does ‘it’ have reality?

Before getting to the nitty-gritty of reality, I’ll just point out that there are various components to reality. There are lots of ways those components can be put together – as Black Holes, as planets, even as people. But the most mysterious component of all is probably mind – a construct of reality and by reality that can comprehend reality. You are an example of reality’s way of comprehending reality – or some of it anyway!

Is Reality Observer Dependent or Independent?

One of the most important players in all things quantum is the observer – that person or instrument that makes a measurement will decides between all possible outcomes. Even though the Copenhagen Interpretation says that Mother Nature only makes up Her mind – collapses the wave function of possibilities to a specific outcome – when an observation or measurement is made, and until then all possibilities are, well, possible, then I have to ask, how on Earth (or in the Universe) did anything happen before any life (and associated mind) evolve? Taken to its logical conclusion, the Copenhagen Interpretation would say that prior to the origin and evolution of life, the Universe didn’t exist because there was nothing with sensory equipment and a comprehending mind around to observe it and give it existence. [Of course if the Universe (actually Multiverse) has always existed and therefore if life has always existed somewhere or other, that would take care of that little problem quick-smart.] Regardless, how does Nature make up Her mind today in those parts of the Universe where there are no observers? Observers, to my mind, are an irrelevance and while a part of reality, do not determine what reality actually happens. Reality exists – it is what it is and what it is exists independently of any observer or mind or consciousness.

Another important player in all things quantum is the concept of probability, or chance, or randomness or uncertainty or indeterminacy. That’s in stark contrast to classical physics where all things are predetermined and where cause and effect rule the roost.

Now to my manner of thinking, quantum uncertainty, the core of which is the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, is only uncertain because there are observers trying to measure things, although fundamentally they can not ever get a precise measurement, no matter how good their instruments are, or ever will be. You can’t measure things in the micro realm without affecting the every thing you are trying to measure. However, remove the observer from the picture and things are as certain and predetermined in the micro world as they are in the macro (classical) world. An electron might jump around like a flea as it is pummelled with photons of all wavelengths and energies from radio to gamma, and to an observer trying to measure the electron’s position and velocity finds it is always somewhat uncertain, nevertheless, at any specific point in time, it’s somewhere with precise coordinates, and it’s travelling at a specific velocity.

Any radioactive substance decays at a known rate – the half-life. If you have 1000 atoms of a radioactive substance, and the half-life is one year, do you really need to interrupt your holidays after one year to check that there are still 500 radioactive atoms left?

Now apparently an isolated neutron will decay into an electron, a proton and (I believe) an antineutrino within roughly ten minutes. If you could put an isolated neutron in an impenetrable box, and put it on your closest shelf, do you really need to open the box – other than to satisfy personal curiosity – ten years later to find out what’s in the box? If you believe the Copenhagen Interpretation, there’s a possibility that there is still just a neutron in the box. Me, I think that’s so unlikely a possibility that you could stake the family fortune on the outcome and win hands-down. To flog a dead horse, the Copenhagen Interpretation says that you have to actually observe something in order for it to have reality. Until you observe, all possibilities are, well, possible. Mother Nature makes up her mind when you observe. But it does seem to be possible to know the reality of something without measuring or observing it because of entanglement, where knowing the state of one object, immediately gives you information on the state of something intimately associated with it, but which you don’t actually observe.

To be continued…

Dark Energy: The Ultimate Free Lunch

Science is full of surprising discoveries. One that recently won the Nobel Prize in Physics was the discovery that the Universe is not just expanding, but that expansion rate is accelerating. The cause is a mysterious and unexplained ‘dark energy’ which is ever increasing right along with the accelerating Universe. But if the Universe contains all that is and ever will be, where is this extra ‘dark energy’ coming from and is this creation out of nothing a gross violation of the basic laws and principles of physics? If yes, perhaps there’s an even more surprising alternative.

If you toss a ball into the air, there are two basic forces at work acting on the ball (ignoring atmospheric friction or drag of course but one can pretend there’s no atmosphere). There’s the oomph (kinetic) energy you give the ball in the upwards direction; there’s the gravitational force that pulls on the ball in the opposite direction. There are two outcomes. 

If you toss a ball up into the air, you expect just one thing to happen – the ball will go up; the ball will slow down; the ball will stop; the ball will fall back to the ground. Why? Earth‘s gravity, that’s why.

If your name is Hercules and you really toss that ball up into the air, maybe, just maybe, the ball won’t fall back down to the ground. You have given the ball enough oomph energy to overcome, though not avoid, Earth’s gravitational pull. But, even if it doesn’t fall back to ground level, even if it keeps on going up, up and away for all time, it will still be forever slowing down. Why? Earth’s gravity, that’s why.

In both scenarios the oomph you give the ball can never be enough to enable the ball to escape Earth’s gravity entirely. The ball must slow down. That’s because the gravitational pull of the Earth on the ball (and also the ball on the Earth) extends to infinity. At no point does gravity cut out. You can’t escape gravity though your energy oomph can be enough to prevent its domination – the ball doesn’t have to fall back to Earth.

Now, the absolutely one scenario you would never expect, is that if you toss the ball into the air, even if the ball didn’t fall back down to ground level if it was given really lots and lots of oomph, that the ball would somehow not only fail to slow down but would in fact speed up. If you witnessed that you’d suspect that your mind or vision was faulty. The only way the ball could accelerate away from you is if it had some sort of additional, internal energy supply (like a rocket). Since it doesn’t, it can’t.

Now apply that logic to the Universe as a whole. In the beginning the Big Bang (the explosive event of the creation) gave a certain finite amount of oomph to all the bits and pieces that make up the Universe. And thus the Universe is expanding – a standard scenario when you have an explosion. When a bomb explodes, the result is an expansion of bomb-stuff. Now all those bits and pieces have a certain finite amount of gravity. The Universe as a whole therefore has a certain finite amount of gravity.

And so we have a similar contest as per the ball’s oomph and Earth’s gravity. Now, either the combined universal gravity of all those bits and pieces will be enough to overcome the finite amount of oomph provided by the Big Bang, and the Universe, like the ball, will slow down, stop and reverse direction (becoming a contracting Universe) or the oomph will prove greater than all those combined bits and pieces gravity and the Universe will expand forever, though that expansion rate will slow down over time. The expansion rate may never reach zero, but the gravity of the bits and pieces must drag forever and ever on the overall initial oomph. The Universal expansion will slow down, albeit never to zero. Okay, like the ball and the Earth, it’s pretty much one or the other. You, as per the ball and the Earth, wouldn’t expect the expansion rate of the overall Universe to increase. That defies logic, everyday experience and basic physics.

For the Universe to accelerate, it would have to be supplied with extra energy from outside, but the Universe is everything and contains everything, there is no outside, so where can additional energy come from? It can’t, not without violating one of the most basic of all basic fundamental physical principles – you can change one form of energy into another form, but you can’t create energy from nothing. Wouldn’t it be nice to just snap your fingers; wave a magic wand, and presto, your empty gas tank is now full or your cold house is now snug and warm! You don’t get something from nothing! The common phrase is that “there’s no such thing as a free lunch!”

So the fundamental question cosmologists (astronomers who study the Universe as a whole) were interested in finding out was whether the Universe’s expansion rate was slowing down enough to cause the Universe to grind to a halt and then reverse; or not. There was never any question that the expansion rate was slowing down. It was just a question to what order of magnitude and was it enough to ultimately cause a Big Crunch.

And so it came to pass that two competing teams of astronomers embarked on a study to crunch the deceleration rate numbers; answer that question of whether the Universe will eventually cease expanding and undergo a contraction (like that ball falling back down to Earth) or not (like the ball that Hercules tossed). Nobody on either team would have bet a nickel, far less the family farm, that the answer would be none of the above. Somehow or other, the bits and pieces that make up the Universe gave the middle finger to gravity. The unthinkable became thinkable, in fact, it became fact. The Universe’s expansion rate was accelerating; therefore energy must be being created out of nothing to provide that extra gravity-defying oomph; there was such a thing as a free lunch after all! The mysterious and unknown energy source behind this unexpected phenomenon was termed ‘dark energy’.

There’s little to dispute in terms of observational evidence for the existence of ‘dark energy’, or rather the fact that the expansion rate of the Universe is accelerating. Evidence has gone from strength to strength.

This discovery was so great, and so totally unexpected, that the team leaders were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics (2011) for it. But, it must be pointed out that the recognition was for the discovery, not for the explanation. There is no explanation. You can’t adequately explain a free lunch! You need extra energy oomph to power up the acceleration rate of the Universe just like you need an extra surge of gasoline to accelerate your car. Where does that extra energy come from and keep on keeping on coming on from? Just calling that addition source ‘dark energy’ provides no explanation for the free lunch it is. There is a fundamental problem here.

How so a free lunch? Well if I have my facts right, the way ‘dark energy’ works is this. Dark energy is an intrinsic property of space that exerts a pressure that causes that space to expand, which in turn creates new space which has ‘dark energy’ as an intrinsic property which results in that space expanding thus creating more space and thus more ‘dark energy’ and so on and so on. More space means more ‘dark energy’ which means more space, etc. It’s creation out of nothing, or, it’s a free lunch. Now this notion of an expanding space alone puts me at odds with the establishment of modern cosmology. We part company here since I remain convinced the Universe is expanding through existing space. But that still leaves the acceleration rate to the expanding Universe, even if through existing space, as an anomaly.

From the Oxford Companion to Cosmology (2008) we have this snippet: “The simplest dark energy model is the cosmological constant*, which maintains a fixed density as the Universe expands. … Thus far the cosmological constant has proven capable of explaining all relevant observational data, and thus is the chosen ingredient of the standard cosmological model.”

What’s wrong with this statement? It postulates a free lunch, that’s what.

Let’s drop down a notch in scale and look at something more familiar.

To illustrate, take a pure ice cube which has a density slightly less than the pure fresh water from which it came (which is why ice cubes float in water). Say the ice cube is one inch by one inch by one inch or one cubic inch in volume. Now double the dimensions to two inches by two inches by two inches. The ice cube is now eight cubic inches in volume. The ice cube has expanded in volume -so far so good. The density of the ice cube hasn’t changed, so you have to account for the creation of the extra seven cubic inches of ice. If you can’t account for the additional seven cubic inches then something is amiss. The alternative is that the original ice cube has expanded, but no additional ice has been added, so the density of the ice cube has decreased – same amount of ice but spread over a greater volume. But that’s equally screwy. You can’t change the density of ice and still have ice. Density is a fixed parameter of the substance we call ice.

Now change the ice to water vapour and you can alter the parameters. One cubic inch of water vapour can expand to eight cubic inches of water vapour. If you don’t add extra water vapour then the density of your original cubic inch of water vapour obviously decreases in the expansion. You have less water molecules per unit of volume than you had originally. Now the Universe is like water vapour. The Universe is not one solid lump like our ice cube; rather it’s zillions of bits and pieces (like water molecules) that occupy and spread throughout an ever expanding volume. The same amount of stuff expanded into a greater volume means of necessity less density. Any high school student knows that.

You cannot have the concept of density without also talking about the density of a something (like the cosmological constant). It’s meaningless to talk about the density of nothing. That something could be matter, energy or more likely a mixture of both since it’s hard to conceive of energy-less matter or matter in an energy-less state. In fact it’s physically impossible.

But note the Oxford phrase above: “the cosmological constant, which maintains a fixed density as the Universe expands” - something’s screwy somewhere.

If we can’t accept creation of this mysterious cosmological constant ‘dark energy’ out of nothing, whatever is driving the accelerating expansion of the Universe (call it ‘dark energy’ if you must) must also be getting thinner and thinner on the ground, but that would be like easing your foot off the accelerator pedal of your car. You car would cease to accelerate and ease back to a constant velocity (in Universe terms a steady expansion rate) or a deceleration (which is what our two teams of cosmologists were trying to measure in the first place). So it’s a Catch-22. We can’t have creation out of nothing (a free lunch) – that is just not acceptable - but without it you can’t have an expanding and ever accelerating Universe which has been experimentally observed.

I used to think that ‘dark energy’ must be a variation on the theme of the vacuum energy, but I couldn’t figure out how to get a free lunch out of the vacuum energy. For the perplexed, the vacuum energy just means that even when you seemingly have nothing, a vacuum, you still have some energy present. Translated, you can’t have an absolute state of nothingness which would be a theoretical temperature of absolute zero. At the micro or quantum scale, since energy and mass are equivalent (Einstein’s famous equation), energy can be converted to mass  – usually a pair of matter-antimatter particles, which annihilate each other quick-smart returning the energy back to the environment that created them in the first place. Mass can be converted to energy. There’s no free lunch. Conservation laws and principles rule the vacuum energy roost.

Has the Universe always been expanding at an ever accelerating rate? No. There are two competing forces at work. Gravity, a pull force, and this ‘dark energy’, a kind of antigravity or push force. Over time, so the story goes, the amount of ‘dark energy’ increases as space expands. But gravity doesn’t increase. The amount of gravity the Universe has now is the amount the Universe had way back when. At the start gravity was king of the hill because there wasn’t that much space, therefore that much ‘dark energy’. However, with every passing second the amount of ‘dark energy’ increased until it finally overran gravity which was standing still or constant. At that point of intersection the acceleration began in earnest. Apparently that was some five or so billion years ago. Prior to that, the Universe was expanding but at a decelerating rate.

There are two related offshoots to this ‘dark energy’ puzzlement. One is the Big Bang itself. Now the standard cosmological model has it that the Big Bang took place in a small space; a very, very, very small space. In fact the space available was something atomic sized. You couldn’t even see our Universe with the unaided eye a micro-second prior to the Big Bang Ka-Boom it was that tiny, yet anything and everything that exists today, existed then in that tiny volume. Now the problem is that when you try to figure out the state of play with the mass of the Universe (gravity) crushed down to the size of an atom, (the realm of the quantum), the equations break down. You have no idea what the state of play was. In a broader context, the physics of gravity (general relativity) cannot be reconciled with the physics of the quantum. Thousand have tried over many decades. They were just banging their heads against a brick wall. To this day, nobody can fit the hand of gravity into the glove of quantum physics. The way I like to put it is that you apparently have two different and incompatible sets of physics software running the cosmos. That’s nuts! That too needs an explanation.

The other – well there’s an awful lot of Universe for just little old us, and an awful lot more was created (that accelerating Universe) in the time it took you to read that. It’s like having a flea housed in Buckingham Palace that’s adding additional rooms on at a rapid rate of knots. For the flea, it’s a lot of wasted space. There’s an awful lot of just about empty space between the planets; between the stars; between the galaxies; between clusters of galaxies, etc. Why do we, and any other extraterrestrial life forms that may exist, need with so much empty space and pretty much worthless real estate, nearly all of which we can’t even reach? That’s nuts. That needs an explanation, like maybe most of the Universe is just visual holographic wallpaper and has no more reality than the images on your bedroom wallpaper. Is the Universe in fact just a simulation; a virtual reality?   

The way to befuddle an artificially (simulated) intelligent ‘life’ form is to give it an unsolvable problem like dividing a number by zero; calculating the square root of a negative number; coming up with the definitive final value of Pi; or solving an unsolvable paradox like something that both is and is not at the same time; how many angels can dance on the head of a pin; or create a spherical cube. The possibilities are numerous and it’s been used many a time in sci-fi plots to demonstrate the superiority of wetware (brains) over software (silicon chips).

But what if we weren’t wetware (any more than the characters in your dreams are), but in reality software – say a simulated being – an artificial intelligence being given unsolvable puzzles to solve like quantum gravity; why is there so much Universe; why are all electrons identical; why ghosts; and how come crop circles; how can dragons and griffins be real creatures without any fossil remains; and how can a viable breeding herd of lake ‘monsters’ exist in Loch Ness for so long without absolute verification, along with other anomalies that make no apparent sense, like why the expansion rate of the Universe is accelerating.

Conclusion: There’s no disputing the observations that the expansion rate of the Universe is accelerating. While that appears to be wildly improbable, a violation of natural law, that is creation from nothing – a free lunch in other words – it’s not difficult to do as a simulation. So, do we live in a simulated Universe as virtual beings?

*The cosmological constant was a concept invented by Einstein. He knew that the Universe should be contracting under its mutual gravity yet he and nearly everyone else knew (or assumed) that the Universe was static. So he needed a constant outward pressure (the cosmological constant) to balance gravity just-so to enable the Universe to be static – unchanging. So, when Einstein learned, along with the rest of the world later on down the track that the Universe wasn’t static but expanding, he called his ad hoc cosmological constant mechanism the greatest blunder of his career in science. However, the concept, though dormant post-Einstein, has never been too far from the minds of those who could resurrect it in a flash if it served their purpose, like explaining the accelerating expansion rate.