There really is a really real cosmos that has spawned an extraterrestrial intelligent civilization, or is home to our future descendents, or contains a dreamer, any of which has created a simulated universe that includes us as virtual reality occupants. In support of this, I postulate that the following are suggestive signs – evidence, not proof – of this idea. It all evolves around my observations that when it comes to the cosmos and human affairs, something is screwy somewhere.
THE COSMIC CONNECTION
* If someone (or something) were to create a simulated ‘universe’ called something like “The Life and Times of the Third Rock Outbound from Sol”, in of course incredibly realistic detail, one could probably skimp on the software programming that give rise to the details for the rest of that simulated cosmos – the Universe perceived by the virtual beings of that Third Rock. Why spend unnecessary bits and bytes creating a super realistic Andromeda Galaxy all those ‘light years’ away?
Modern cosmology seems to be at a stage now that the Solar System went through in terms of coming to terms with its construction. Way back then, to explain the motions of all the planets that (obviously) went around the Earth (being the centre of all things), epicycles, and epicycles within epicycles, and epicycles within epicycles within epicycles had to be postulated until the who concept became so unwieldy that it collapsed in a heap. Copernicus picked up the bits and pieces and put the Sun in the centre and put the Earth going around the Sun with all the other (known) planets and then things simplified vastly and all fell into place without the need for any epicycles at all (though Einstein still had some final tweaking to do, but that was minor).
Modern cosmology seems to be full of ad hoc epicycles. We have the observation of an expanding Universe that requires explanation. Epicycle number one, the original explanation – a Big Bang 13.7 billion years ago kick-started things off, though the energy source isn’t explained. That left some anomalies unexplained so ad hoc epicycle number two – a violent super-burst of explosive inflation immediately post Big Bang which apparently can come, like Heinz, in some 57 varieties. Okay, inflation started up and shut down just as quickly but it covers the anomalies that the Big Bang doesn’t. But then comes another anomaly, the expansion rate of the Universe is accelerating, and the collective oomph from the Big Bang and inflation isn’t enough oomph. The Universe should in fact be decelerating under the influence of gravity. So, ad hoc epicycle number three – Dark Energy. Dark Energy provides that keep-on-keeping-on additional oomph and keeps the Universe’s pedal to the metal. Unfortunately, nobody has the foggiest idea what Dark Energy actually is which is strange since Dark Energy should be everywhere, even inside your living room, so it shouldn’t be that hard to gather some up and put it on the lab’s slab and figure it out!
The Big Bang has a couple of other epicycles attached as baggage. The first one imposed on the Big Bang is entropy, which is a measure of order vs. disorder. Low entropy is orderly; high entropy is disorderly. There are vastly more ways of something being in a state of disorder than order, as any parent knows when it comes to the state of their child’s bedroom. Left to natural forces (including the kid), a neat and tidy bedroom will ‘decay’ into a chaotic mess. That’s also an illustration of the arrow of time. Eggs do not unscramble. Unless you deliberately thwart entropy locally (tidy up the messy bedroom), but at the cost of increasing entropy elsewhere, time goes from neat past to messy future. Like the bedroom, the Universe too has an arrow of time and the Universe too is getting more, more and ever messier as it slides into increasing disorder. That means ‘in the beginning’ (the Big Bang), the Universe started off neat as a pin. But, that doesn’t follow of necessity. Which is more likely – any number of possible disordered piles of bricks and timber, or an orderly constructed house? There are vastly more ways of having an ‘in the beginning’ that was messy than one that was neat and tidy. Yet against all probability, ‘in the beginning’ was pristine. That’s so unlikely that cosmologists have to postulate and accept that ad hoc epicycle of low entropy ‘in the beginning’.
The Big Bang also requires a epicycle called quantum gravity because existing equations trying to describe the structure and substance of the creation event, crumble into dust when faced with a realm that is (allegedly) tiny (that’s the quantum bit) and yet has immense gravity (a Universe worth of gravity). Unfortunately, to get a theory of quantum gravity requires the marriage between quantum physics and general relativity. The potential bride and bridegroom however are not, and never have been, on speaking terms. So, quantum gravity (that epicycle required for the Big Bang to bang), has remained elusive despite generations of scientific effort trying to figure it out. However, that highly theoretical mathematical concept called string theory can come to terms with quantum gravity, but it has its own ad hoc epicycle burden to bear. String theory requires an additional six spatial dimensions, which IMHO is utter bovine fertilizer. So round and round we go with no actual tail being pinned on the donkey.
But that’s not the end of the ad hoc epicycles. Apparently the galaxies are rotating too fast for the amount of gravity belonging to objects that astronomer’s can see, like stars. The galaxies should have long since flown apart, their stars, planets, dust and gas scattered throughout space. So, ad hoc epicycle number four – Dark Matter. Dark Matter is postulated to have gravity, enough gravity to hold the galaxies together and prevent them from flying apart. Okay, but Dark Matter doesn’t interact with the electromagnetic force (nor apparently the strong nuclear force), so it doesn’t emit or reflect light (or photons of any wavelength) so we can’t see it. Dark Matter is actually invisible matter. Unfortunately, no matter that we can deal with has those sorts of properties. Now like Dark Energy, Dark Matter has go to be present in your living room too so it too shouldn’t be that hard to gather some up and put it on the lab’s slab and figure it out! Now all of that wouldn’t be that serious were it not for calculations that suggest that Dark Energy plus Dark Matter make up 95% of the Universe, and we haven’t a clue what that 95% is.
Resolution: Perhaps all the anomalies that the (standard model) Big Bang, inflation, Dark Energy and Dark Matter have been postulated to explain, are merely examples of lax software programming in filling in the nitty-gritty details of the Universe associated with “The Life and Times of the Third Rock Outbound from Sol”.
To be continued…
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