The Russell Stannard Questions: Philosophy & Metaphysics

There are many Big Questions in science, many of which go back to the ancients, even back into prehistory in all probability. One of the best modern set I’ve found recently were sidebars in a book* by Emeritus Professor of Physics at the Open University, Russell Stannard. These are my answers, thoughts and commentary to those Big Questions. Many readers might have ‘fun’ trying to come to terms with these in their own way based on their own worldview.

My answers are based mainly with the thought of our being in a Simulated (Virtual Reality) Universe that has been constructed by one or more Supreme Programmers. However, some of the answers apply regardless of what the nature of our ultimate reality is.

Q. Why is there something rather than nothing?

A. If there was nothing rather than something you wouldn’t be here to ask the question! So perhaps the fact that there is something is another case of fine-tuning! Something could be a natural condition that’s part and parcel of any conceivable universe or something could be simulated, the simulation of course arising because something existed on up the line that created the simulation. It could be a case of fine-tuning in that universes than consisted of nothing couldn’t give rise or evolve into a something that could ask the question; only a universe that consisted of a something could evolve something that wondered why there was something rather than nothing.

Q. Where do the laws of nature come from?

A. It’s hard in our ordered cosmos to imagine anything but regularity, so the better question might be where do the irregularities, the violations to those laws of nature come from. When they happen we call them miracles or anomalies or if you’re a professional skeptic, pseudoscience (except those “Twilight Zone” anomalies in quantum physics of course – that’s science). Of course anomalies might be a reflection of our not understanding the laws of nature well enough. Or, violations might be due to intelligence. Intelligence is unpredictable, and often has a quirky sense of humor. So intelligence might be behind those exceptions to the rule, so if you see or experience an exception, an anomaly, think intelligence, and if it can’t be human intelligence in the here-and-now, think Supreme Programmer.  

Q. How are we to understand the built-in creativity of the physical world?

A. Human beings are highly creative beings. We create 2-D and 3-D art and architecture; sports and games; music and storytelling; designing experiments; create new food recipes, create computer simulations, etc. We love to indulge in the ‘what if’ game. Apparently so does the Universe! From a primeval ‘fireball’ of elementary particle ‘soup’, the cosmos created forces and fields, atoms and molecules, and stuff and structures* like galaxies and stars and solar systems full of planets and associated debris, but from our biased point of view or perspective the Universe created life and us. If this creation in particular was inadvertent, it borders on a near miracle given all those pieces of the jigsaw puzzle that have to come together just so. If life was a deliberate creation then you are down to postulating either an infallible supernatural deity (or deities) or a probable flesh-and-blood and fallible Supreme Programmer. 

·        But not just galaxies but spiral galaxies and barred galaxies and elleptical galaxies and irregular galaxies; not just stars but dwarf stars and giant stars and neutron stars and quasars and Black Holes and binary star systems too as well as stars that burp and stars that explode; not just planets but gas giants and icy giants and rocky planets (and I’m sure there’s no planet ever envisioned by any science fiction writer that doesn’t have a real counterpart somewhere out in the cosmos).

Q. What significance, if any, ought we to attach to the self-ordering nature of matter?

A. The cosmos is a highly ordered place. The only real question is why it is so. There are roughly about 60 elementary particles (and antiparticles) grouped into three generations. There’s no theoretical reason why there couldn’t have been trillions of elementary particles grouped into hundreds of generations, or no generational structure at all. The fundamental particles can only combine in just so many ways – you can’t have an atom consisting of one neutron, 5 protons and ten electrons. Atoms can only combine in just so many ways. There are a lot more ways atoms can’t combine than ways they do. The same applies for molecules combining. The ancients noted this ordering by suggesting that everything has its natural place in the cosmic scheme of things. Solids (earth) seek ground level; liquids (water) go down too but rest on top of solids; gases (air) hover above solids and liquids and heat (fire) tries to rise through gases and occupy the top rung. The planets don’t orbit the Sun in a square orbit one year, then switch to a rectangular orbit the next year and switch again to a triangular orbit the year after that. The lunar cycle follows its steady rhythm; ditto night follows day that follows night that follows day, etc. Thunder follows lightning. Plants grow upwards while plant roots grow downwards. In other words, causality operates. If you have X, Y follows (but not A, B and/or C). So the fact we have ordering is significant. But, consider this. Software is the same. Your PC is predictable. If X, then Y (but not A, B and/or C).

Q. The problem of understanding things in themselves.

A. No matter what sort of thing you wish to describe, its properties, you eventually exhaust appropriate concepts and language to dig any deeper. You often hit an ultimate barrier when you come up against the ‘what’ and ‘how’ and ‘why’ questions. We know there is gravity but ‘why’ gravity at all and ‘how’ does gravity actually work. We know an electron has a negative electric charge of one unit but ‘what’ exactly is electric charge and ‘why’ does the electron have the value of electric charge that it has. The problems disappear if one suggests well, this is the programming, the software code that gives us the illusion of all things gravitational and another software code that determines that there be an negative electric charge on an electron and what the value is, also properties that are totally an illusion, or virtual reality. Ultimately those ‘what’, ‘how’ and ‘why’ questions like why introduce gravity and why have an electric charge can best be answered by those who do the (supreme) programming.

Q. Is the task of science to describe the world-in-itself, whether or not it is being observed, or must it confine itself to speaking only of our observations of the world?

A. Ideally, science tries to account for those actual observations one makes of the world-in-itself. However, there are numerous bits and pieces in scientific texts that rely on speculation and theory and what ifs and extrapolations and mathematical equations. We can’t observe inside the core of the Sun or inside a Black Hole. Nobody has actually observed an electron or a quark. There are many theoretical things we haven’t observed yet like monopoles or gravity waves or supersymmetric particles or extraterrestrials, yet they too are considered a legit part of science.

Q. Does the world-in-itself exist between our discontinuous observations?

A. This is a case of does the Moon exist even if no one is looking at it. Presumably, the answer is yes, even if the observer is just phytoplankton that absorbs photons reflected off the lunar surface. Presumably water must be observing the Moon as it does its tidal thing, a thing it wouldn’t otherwise do if the Moon wasn’t there. So hairy issue number one is what exactly is an observer? An observer can be anything. An electron observes another electron when the two come in close proximity and repel each other. Hairy issue number two is how does the Moon know it is being observed? It can’t, therefore it cannot respond to a state of non-observation by vanishing. What about software? Do those video game characters exist when the game isn’t being played and sitting on your shelf? If we’re simulated beings in a Simulated (Virtual Reality) Universe and the Supreme Programmer leaves the room and does not observe us, presumably we keep on keeping on. So the answer is that the world-in-itself exists whether real or simulated. If real, well the world-in-itself (i.e. – the Universe) got along very nicely before there were observers as we traditionally define them and we traditionally define them as living things that react (observe) to their surroundings. The simulation exists as long as the software exists whether it’s running or not. 

Q. Can one prove mathematically that science will be forever incomplete?

A. I don’t know about a mathematical proof, but science cannot ever be complete if for no other reason than there is always something over that next hill which we haven’t seen and explored yet. Further, there are just some restrictions on what we can know about, like the fact that there is probably more to the Universe than just the observable Universe, since what we observe or cannot yet observe is related to and by the speed of light. If light from Object X hasn’t had time to reach us yet, will science can’t yet deal with the nature of Object X. The same philosophy applies to say the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, whereby, through no fault of our own, the very act of observing something changes the properties of that something. Other parts of the cosmos might forever be inaccessible to our sciences, like say exploring the insides of a Black Hole. One could explore the inside of a Black Hole but forever be forbidden from getting the nitty-gritty scientific details of what they found out to a wider peer-reviewed audience.

Q. What is the status of mathematics?

A. Mathematics has no status outside of the human mind. Mathematics is an invention of the human mind (since I know of no other life form that makes use of mathematics in any abstract sort of way) to assist humans in dealing with the many (also invented) complexities of human society (like trade, commerce and economics). Mathematics provides practical applications like navigation and provides ordering and predictability in the natural world that rule the human roost. Mathematics is a not-thing since it has no physical properties and cannot be detected via any of your sensory apparatus. Of course if we’re in a Simulated (Virtual Reality) Universe then we totally exist as, and in, a mathematical construct.

*The following questions (Q) are taken verbatim from those poised by Russell Stannard in his 2010 book The End of Discovery [are we approaching the boundaries of the knowable?]; Oxford University Press, Oxford. I consider these typical of the sorts of modern Big Questions that are part and parcel of the philosophy of modern science, especially physical science.



The Russell Stannard Questions: Time & Space

There are many Big Questions in science, many of which go back to the ancients, even back into prehistory in all probability. One of the best modern set I’ve found recently were sidebars in a book by Emeritus Professor of Physics at the Open University, Russell Stannard. These are my answers, thoughts and commentary to those Big Questions. Many readers might have ‘fun’ trying to come to terms with these in their own way based on their own worldview.

The following questions (Q) are taken verbatim from those poised by Russell Stannard in his 2010 book The End of Discovery [are we approaching the boundaries of the knowable?]; Oxford University Press, Oxford. I consider these typical of the sorts of modern Big Questions that are part and parcel of the philosophy of modern science, especially physical science.

My answers are based mainly with the thought of our being in a Simulated (Virtual Reality) Universe that has been constructed by one or more Supreme Programmers. However, some of the answers apply regardless of what the nature of our ultimate reality is.

Q. How are we to understand the true nature of space?

A. Space is a not-thing. You cannot see, hear, touch, taste or smell space. Space is a concept, actually a mathematical concept called volume. Volume is the third dimension, and dimensions are also a concept – a not-thing. Space is the container that holds within real things, like you and me. So the true nature of space is the exact same as the true nature of Wednesday.

Q. Is space infinitesimally divisible?

A. Since space is a not-thing, that is just a concept invented and used by the human mind (as well as within the minds of numerous non-human life forms) to measure the mathematical concept of volume and to assist with navigation, then space is infinitesimally divisible since it has no physical properties that are so fundamental that they can’t be divided one more time.

Q. How many dimensions are there? And why are some curled up, and others extended?

A. There are no dimensions at all. Dimensionality is a human invention, attributing magical meaning to right angles, which do have a practical value in navigating around the world and the universe. Dimensions are a useful construct, just like addition; subtraction; algebra; trigonometry and the calculus are useful constructs. Since dimensions are mathematical constructs, and therefore not-things (you cannot detect points, length, area or volume – even the so-called fourth dimension of time - with any of your five senses) then how many dimensions there are is a pretty meaningless question.

Q. What is time?

A. Time is a not-thing. Time is a concept that resides in the mind and cannot be detected with any of your senses. Time has no physical properties. Time is mathematics (a human invention), a way of measuring a particular thing. That thing is change, or rate-of-change. If there is no change, it is meaningless to talk about time. Time does not exist independently of change.

Q. Is time infinitesimally divisible?

A. Since time is a not-thing, that is just a concept invented and used by the human mind (as well as within the minds of numerous non-human life forms) to measure and deal with change, then time is infinitesimally divisible since it has no physical properties that are so fundamental that they can’t be divided one more time.

Q. Does the loss of simultaneity for events separated by a distance invalidate the notion that only the presence exists?

A. This is one of those ‘paradoxes’ of those Theories of Relativity whereby, since things are relative, to one observer A happens before B; to another observer A and B are simultaneous happenings; and to yet a third observer, B happens before A. Since all observers are correct according to their specific frame of reference, the concept of ‘now’ is flexible. There is no absolute ‘now’. Another example is that whatever you observe, you observe ‘now’ yet what you observe actually happened in the past. The sunlight you see ‘now’ is now eight minutes old. However, it’s quite conceivable that you could instigate a universal ‘now’ and freeze the universe by snapping your fingers “STOP NOW”. That “STOP NOW” message would propagate instantaneously throughout the entirety of the universe. You, being immune from that “STOP NOW” command, would be free to navigate and explore the cosmos and see the universe as it appeared at that one ‘now’ instant – ‘now’ being of course the present. Only the present, the universal snapping your fingers ‘now’ exists. The interesting thing is that ‘now’ is such a short interval that your definition of the length of ‘now’ is vastly longer than what ‘now’ exists in in reality.

Q. Does the perceived flow of time require there to be two types of time?

A. The two types of time in question are physical time (the tick-tock of a clock; the cycle of the lunar phases) and mental time (where an hour can seem like a minute; a minute can seemly last for an hour). So there is real time, and subjective time. But time in any guise is a not-thing; an illusion; a concept. Only change is real and the rate of change, real or perceived, is what we call time – physical or mental. One could, if one wanted make a variable rate of change into a constant. Normally we hold physical time as a constant – tick-tick-tick-tick – at a rate of one-second-per-second (or one-day-per-day, etc.). We can count the number of ticks between say two red cars passing by on the road in front of our house. But you could say the interval between any two red vehicles is a constant. It is one unit or one tick per interval of red car time. That means that everything you associate as being regular like one-second-per-second or a 24-hour-day would become irregular. One ‘day’ might equate to 100 red car interval ticks. The next ‘day’ it might be 200 red car interval ticks long (since there happen to be double the number of red cars passing by on ‘day’ two as compared to ‘day’ one). If you define a ‘day’ as say 100 red car interval ticks, then ‘day’ two above would really be ‘day’ two plus ‘day’ three. Well, you can see how that sort of reckoning would screw up your biological clock! You’d have a ‘day’ off work between 1000 and 1100 red car interval ticks; the next ‘day’ off work between 2000 and 2100 red car interval ticks, etc. In the case of the 1000-1100 interval, that might be a long and restful ‘day’ but the 2000-2100 interval could be extremely short! You could do the above time experiment, at least as a silent and private intellectual exercise. Otherwise people would carry you off to the funny farm! However, if time were really real, then time couldn’t be manipulated as per the red car interval example. But time isn’t real so you can twist it around your little finger. Thus, the flow if time is indeed perceived, but that doesn’t make it something of substance. So, one kind of time, two kinds of time – it’s irrelevant. 

Q. Does four-dimensional spacetime imply that the future is, in some sense, fixed?

A. If causality rules like I think it does, then yes.

Q. Does this in turn compromise our sense of free will?

A. Free will? What’s that? We think we have free will but that’s an illusion. No doubt a character in a video game believes she has free will, but we know better, don’t we!



The Russell Stannard Questions: Physics

There are many Big Questions in science, many of which go back to the ancients, even back into prehistory in all probability. One of the best modern set I’ve found recently were sidebars in a book by Emeritus Professor of Physics at the Open University, Russell Stannard. These are my answers, thoughts and commentary to those Big Questions. Many readers might have ‘fun’ trying to come to terms with these in their own way based on their own worldview.

These are the Russell Stannard Questions* on or about physics:

All Things Classical Physics

Q. Do the physical constants change with time?

A. There is apparently some evidence for this as well as a lot of theoretical speculation that some of the beloved physical constants, like the speed of light, may not be constant but variable over those immense cosmic time frames. In the Simulated (Virtual Reality) Scenario, one could argue, based on experience, that computer code or software needs tweaking every now and then. If fact, we’re all used to getting those software upgrades. So, perhaps our Supreme Programmer, as the simulation scenario unfolds, decides that some tweaking or upgrading is required and we observe that as a change in one or more physical ‘constants’.

Q. Why is there no evidence for the existence of magnetic monopoles?

A. Just like theory suggests there should be one heck of a lot of antimatter around, theory also suggests that magnetic monopoles (magnets with only a north pole or a south pole) should be in abundance. That fact that we do not see magnetic monopoles is given as evidence for cosmic inflation, which, due to extreme expansion, diluted the number of magnetic monopoles down to such a very few per volume of space that as far as our volume of space is concerned, magnetic monopoles are as rare as hens’ teeth. Inflation ‘explains’ why we have no evidence for the existence of magnetic monopoles, but only of course if you accept that inflation actually happened, and there was nobody around to cover that event and report it on CNN.

All Things Particle Physics

Q. Why is there more matter than antimatter?

A. Theory says that there should be equal amounts of matter and antimatter ‘created’ at the time of the Big Bang event. There’s not. Anytime you have a situation where something should be but isn’t (or conversely something shouldn’t be but is), then something is screwy somewhere. The missing antimatter can’t be adequately explained naturally, but a Supreme Programmer could have programmed that difference deliberately, since programming equal amounts of matter and antimatter would have resulted in a pure energy virtual reality cosmos, which, truth be known, would be rather boring.

Q. Why are there three generations of particles?

A. Only the bottom generation of particles plays any role in our day-to-day perception of life, the universe and everything. The second and third generation have bugger-all to do with life, the universe and everything. There is something screwy somewhere! Mother Nature went over-the-top and made way too much of a good thing which is not how we tend to view Mother Nature. Mother Nature is frugal, not extravagant. However, all these additional generations of particles might be the consequence of programming. Natural or software, it’s a mystery that has no obvious rational explanation which suggests to me the irrationality of intelligence. A common theme when it comes to intelligence is that if it is worth doing, it is worth overdoing.

Q. Is it possible to account for the values of the parameters featured in the Standard Model?

A. No. One cannot determine what the values of the physical parameters should be for the particles in the standard model of particle physics from first principles. You cannot calculate from scratch what the mass or the charge, etc. of an electron, proton, neutron, etc. should be. The values can only be determined experimentally, and having done that, determine that there is no rhyme or reason to what those values are. There is no theory that explains why a proton has a mass nearly 2000 times that of an electron, for example, and not some other value.

Q. Is there a Higgs particle?

A. Apparently that has been confirmed by the Large Hadron Collider (LHC).

Q. How are we to account for the masses of the particles?

A. The masses of the particles cannot be calculated from first principles and can only be determined experimentally. Having done that, explaining why the particles have the value they do is apparently explained by resorting to the Higgs Boson and Higgs Field which does the trick. I gather the analogy is that all things Higgs are akin to a mass of people at a party randomly placed, but when a famous particle like an electron enters the room, the mass of people are no longer randomly placed but crowd around the celebrity electron and hinder its passage across the room. That hindrance, like treacle placed in its path, slows the particle down, or as we interpret it, gives the particle mass.

Q. Does supersymmetry hold and if so, why have we not as yet seen any of the supersymmetric partners?

A. Supersymmetry (SUSY) is one of those dearly beloved concepts that could, if confirmed, put the icing on the cake for string theorists. SUSY basically suggests for every force particle there is a corresponding ‘kissing cousin’ matter particle and for every matter particle there is a corresponding ‘kissing cousin’ force particle. IMHO, string theory confirms the idea of GIGO – [string] garbage in; [supersymmetry] garbage out. The garbage out is SUSY, and, as if confirming that garbage, there has been no verification of SUSY at all. The supersymmetric partners haven’t been detected – they are conspicuous by their experimental absence. Why? Because SUSY is garbage and SUSY is garbage because string theory is garbage.

Q. Shall we ever be able to verify proton decay?

A. If protons theoretically decay, akin to how neutrons can decay, and you have a large enough collection of protons (that’s easy to accomplish) then it is a straightforward exercise to verify proton decay, even if on average it takes any one proton trillions of years to go poof since if you have trillions of protons on hand, you should see several go poof every year. Such experiments have come up empty. Protons don’t decay so there’s something screwy with the theoretical concept somewhere.

All Things Stringy Physics

Q. Is there any way of proving the validity of some form of string theory?

A. IMHO string theory has no validity on the grounds that it has been examined to death over the past three-plus decades without the slightest experimental run being put on the board. Verifying supersymmetry (SUSY) is the closest string theorists can come to putting their money where their mouths are, but any hope of that has apparently gone by the boards as the Large Hadrn Collider (LHC) hasn’t verified any SUSY at all.

Q. Is there an M-theory, and if so, what is it?

A. M-theory is just a consolidation of various string theories that now require even one more additional spatial dimension! IMHO, this is all a case of GIGO – garbage in; garbage out.

All Things Quantum Physics

Q. Is there any value in Everett’s many worlds hypothesis?

A. The Many Worlds Hypothesis (MWH) is an alternative to the Copenhagen Interpretation (CI) of quantum physics. The CI says that when faced with many possible possibilities or outcomes to a situation, once an observation is made, the many possibilities collapses down to just one outcome. For example, the value of the top card in a shuffled deck of card has 52 possible possibilities. Once an observation is made, only one of those 52 possibilities is realized. The MWH however suggests that all possibilities are realized – one possibility realized in our world; the rest in newly established worlds. So, when you observe the top card, your world divides into another 51 other worlds, each new world corresponding to each possible value of the top card that wasn’t observed when you looked. I guess there is value in that approach, but it’s sort of a sledge hammer approach. When you consider all of the forks-in-the-road the cosmos faces each and every nanosecond, well accepting the MWH means that there are multi-trillions upon trillions upon trillions upon trillions of worlds that have a really real existence somewhere out there and they are increasing at a rapid rate of knots to boot.

Q. How are we to understand quantum entanglement, i.e. ‘spooky action at a distance’?

A. We can’t understand quantum entanglement if the Universe is an ordered and comprehensible place. That’s why Einstein railed against it because it was ‘spooky action at a distance’ and there was no place in an ordered Universe for spooky events, but if there were spooky events, well they happened outside of an ordered and comprehensible Universe and thus weren’t understandable. Of course software can be programmed to produce as much spookiness as the programmer wants.

Q. Can we ever be sure that GUT is correct if we cannot experimentally test it at the appropriately high energy?

A. A GUT is a Grand Unified Theory, some sort of unification between the three quantum forces – the strong nuclear force, the weak nuclear force, and electromagnetism. One suspects that at the time of the Big Bang event all three forces were unified, only separating or undergoing phase transitions into distinct entities as the universe expanded and cooled. Unfortunately, the energy levels at the point of the Big Bang are such that they are beyond our abilities to achieve and thus any GUT cannot be experimentally confirmed, only theoretically ‘confirmed’. So, if there are competing GUTs, it will be difficult to separate the men GUTs from the boy GUTs. No, unless there’s a breakthrough in experimental high energy physics, the answer is “no”.

Q. Will we ever be able to formulate a fully satisfactory theory of quantum gravity?

A. No. Quantum gravity is the Holy Grail of physics, the Theory of Everything or TOE. It’s, to date, been another case of ‘never have so many worked so hard for so long for so little results’. The quantum is the realm of the discontinuous unclassical micro; gravity is the realm of the continuous and classical macro. They are, ultimately two entirely different sets of software running the cosmos. If the Universe were really real, a TOE should leap out of the woodwork since there would have to be one unified natural nature. The fact that there is no TOE strongly suggests that the Universe isn’t really real and does not have a unified natural nature. That is, the Universe is virtually ‘real’ and the Supreme Programmer has written two separate and apart sets of software to run it – the micro software and the macro software.

*The following questions were taken verbatim from those poised by Russell Stannard in his 2010 book The End of Discovery [are we approaching the boundaries of the knowable?]; Oxford University Press, Oxford. I consider these typical of the sorts of modern Big Questions that are part and parcel of the philosophy of modern science, especially physical science.



The Russell Stannard Questions: Part Four

There are many Big Questions in science, many of which go back to the ancients, even back into prehistory in all probability. One of the best modern set I’ve found recently were sidebars in a book by Emeritus Professor of Physics at the Open University, Russell Stannard. These are my answers, thoughts and commentary to those Big Questions. Many readers might have ‘fun’ trying to come to terms with these in their own way based on their own worldview.

Continued from Part Three.

Q. Why is there no evidence for the existence of magnetic monopoles?

A. Just like theory suggests there should be one heck of a lot of antimatter around, theory also suggests that magnetic monopoles (magnets with only a north pole or a south pole) should be in abundance. That fact that we do not see magnetic monopoles is given as evidence for cosmic inflation, which, due to extreme expansion, diluted the number of magnetic monopoles down to such a very few per volume of space that as far as our volume of space is concerned, magnetic monopoles are as rare as hens’ teeth. Inflation ‘explains’ why we have no evidence for the existence of magnetic monopoles, but only of course if you accept that inflation actually happened, and there was nobody around to cover that event and report it on CNN.

Q. Is it possible to account for the values of the parameters featured in the Standard Model?

A. No. One cannot determine what the values of the physical parameters should be for the particles in the standard model of particle physics from first principles. You cannot calculate from scratch what the mass or the charge, etc. of an electron, proton, neutron, etc. should be. The values can only be determined experimentally, and having done that, determine that there is no rhyme or reason to what those values are. There is no theory that explains why a proton has a mass nearly 2000 times that of an electron, for example, and not some other value.

Q. Is there a Higgs particle?

A. Apparently that has been confirmed by the Large Hadron Collider (LHC).

Q. How are we to account for the masses of the particles?

A. The masses of the particles cannot be calculated from first principles and can only be determined experimentally. Having done that, explaining why the particles have the value they do is apparently explained by resorting to the Higgs Boson and Higgs Field which does the trick. I gather the analogy is that all things Higgs are akin to a mass of people at a party randomly placed, but when a famous particle like an electron enters the room, the mass of people are no longer randomly placed but crowd around the celebrity electron and hinder its passage across the room. That hindrance, like treacle placed in its path, slows the particle down, or as we interpret it, gives the particle mass.

Q. Does supersymmetry hold and if so, why have we not as yet seen any of the supersymmetric partners?

A. Supersymmetry (SUSY) is one of those dearly beloved concepts that could, if confirmed, put the icing on the cake for string theorists. SUSY basically suggests for every force particle there is a corresponding ‘kissing cousin’ matter particle and for every matter particle there is a corresponding ‘kissing cousin’ force particle. IMHO, string theory confirms the idea of GIGO – [string] garbage in; [supersymmetry] garbage out. The garbage out is SUSY, and, as if confirming that garbage, there has been no verification of SUSY at all. The supersymmetric partners haven’t been detected – they are conspicuous by their experimental absence. Why? Because SUSY is garbage and SUSY is garbage because string theory is garbage.

Q. Does the world-in-itself exist between our discontinuous observations?

A. This is a case of does the Moon exist even if no one is looking at it. Presumably, the answer is yes, even if the observer is just phytoplankton that absorbs photons reflected off the lunar surface. Presumably water must be observing the Moon as it does its tidal thing, a thing it wouldn’t otherwise do if the Moon wasn’t there. So hairy issue number one is what exactly is an observer? An observer can be anything. An electron observes another electron when the two come in close proximity and repel each other. Hairy issue number two is how does the Moon know it is being observed? It can’t, therefore it cannot respond to a state of non-observation by vanishing. What about software? Do those video game characters exist when the game isn’t being played and sitting on your shelf? If we’re simulated beings in a Simulated (Virtual Reality) Universe and the Supreme Programmer leaves the room and does not observe us, presumably we keep on keeping on. So the answer is that the world-in-itself exists whether real or simulated. If real, well the world-in-itself (i.e. – the Universe) got along very nicely before there were observers as we traditionally define them and we traditionally define them as living things that react (observe) to their surroundings. The simulation exists as long as the software exists whether it’s running or not.  

Q. Is there any value in Everett’s many worlds hypothesis?

A. The Many Worlds Hypothesis (MWH) is an alternative to the Copenhagen Interpretation (CI) of quantum physics. The CI says that when faced with many possible possibilities or outcomes to a situation, once an observation is made, the many possibilities collapses down to just one outcome. For example, the value of the top card in a shuffled deck of card has 52 possible possibilities. Once an observation is made, only one of those 52 possibilities is realized. The MWH however suggests that all possibilities are realized – one possibility realized in our world; the rest in newly established worlds. So, when you observe the top card, your world divides into another 51 other worlds, each new world corresponding to each possible value of the top card that wasn’t observed when you looked. I guess there is value in that approach, but it’s sort of a sledge hammer approach. When you consider all of the forks-in-the-road the cosmos faces each and every nanosecond, well accepting the MWH means that there are multi-trillions upon trillions upon trillions upon trillions of worlds that have a really real existence somewhere out there and they are increasing at a rapid rate of knots to boot.

  

Q. Is the task of science to describe the world-in-itself, whether or not it is being observed, or must it confine itself to speaking only of our observations of the world?

A. Ideally, science tries to account for those actual observations one makes of the world-in-itself. However, there are numerous bits and pieces in scientific texts that rely on speculation and theory and what ifs and extrapolations and mathematical equations. We can’t observe inside the core of the Sun or inside a Black Hole. Nobody has actually observed an electron or a quark. There are many theoretical things we haven’t observed yet like monopoles or gravity waves or supersymmetric particles or extraterrestrials, yet they too are considered a legit part of science.

Q. How are we to understand quantum entanglement, i.e. ‘spooky action at a distance’?

A. We can’t understand quantum entanglement if the Universe is an ordered and comprehensible place. That’s why Einstein railed against it because it was ‘spooky action at a distance’ and there was no place in an ordered Universe for spooky events, but if there were spooky events, well they happened outside of an ordered and comprehensible Universe and thus weren’t understandable. Of course software can be programmed to produce as much spookiness as the programmer wants.

Q. How many dimensions are there? And why are some curled up, and others extended?

A. There are no dimensions at all. Dimensionality is a human invention, attributing magical meaning to right angles, which do have a practical value in navigating around the world and the universe. Since dimensions are mathematical constructs, and therefore not-things (you cannot detect points, length, area or volume – even the so-called fourth dimension of time - with any of your five senses) then how many dimensions there are is a pretty meaningless question.

Q. Is there an M-theory, and if so, what is it?

A. M-theory is just a consolidation of various string theories that now require even one more additional spatial dimension! IMHO, this is all a case of GIGO – garbage in; garbage out.

Q. Is there any way of proving the validity of some form of string theory?

A. IMHO string theory has no validity on the grounds that it has been examined to death over the past three-plus decades without the slightest experimental run being put on the board. Verifying supersymmetry (SUSY) is the closest string theorists can come to putting their money where their mouths are, but any hope of that has apparently gone by the boards as the Large Hadrn Collider (LHC) hasn’t verified any SUSY at all.

Q. Will we ever be able to formulate a fully satisfactory theory of quantum gravity?

A. No. Quantum gravity is the Holy Grail of physics, the Theory of Everything or TOE. It’s, to date, been another case of ‘never have so many worked so hard for so long for so little results’. The quantum is the realm of the discontinuous unclassical micro; gravity is the realm of the continuous and classical macro. They are, ultimately two entirely different sets of software running the cosmos. If the Universe were really real, a TOE should leap out of the woodwork since there would have to be one unified natural nature. The fact that there is no TOE strongly suggests that the Universe isn’t really real and does not have a unified natural nature. That is, the Universe is virtually ‘real’ and the Supreme Programmer has written two separate and apart sets of software to run it – the micro software and the macro software.

Q. Does complete understanding require more than solely physical explanations?

A. By complete understanding, one has to incorporate those seemingly nebulous things that reside within the time, thinks that seem far removed from the physical world of forces and fields and particles and actions and reactions, etc. These so-called nebulous things revolve around consciousness and the subconscious, thinking (that’s clearly a neurochemical process), memory (clearly chemically encoded), creativity, emotions (definitely chemically driven), morals and ethics, right and wrong, a soul, spirituality, free will, etc. However, all these sorts of concepts reside in the brain or in a part of the brain normally identified as the mind. Whether mind-in-the-brain, or just in or a part of the brain, the brain is ultimately composed of fundamental particles that make up atoms that make up molecules that ultimately make up your neurochemistry and thus your brain and structures within. The proof of the pudding that these so-called nebulous concepts reside in the realm of the physical is that these concepts or things can be altered by physical things – physical happenings like injury (you can be knocked unconscious) or lose consciousness in sleep; chemical things like drugs, lack of sleep, the aging process and related can have decided effects on aspects of your personality, etc.; biological happenings like disease also can have profound effects on some of those so-called nebulous things. They can also be altered by your own self, being creative and via thinking deep thoughts which is an electrochemical process (you might think ‘morals be damned, crime does pay’) and of course closely related, the lifelong learning process (as in learning and altering your learning about say morals/ethics; right/wrong) – as you learn, you may find that what you thought was crystal clear, black and white, is really murky and grey. The learning process (formal or otherwise) can have profound effects on your belief systems and worldviews. Learning clearly has foundations in neurochemistry.    



The Russell Stannard Questions: Part Three

There are many Big Questions in science, many of which go back to the ancients, even back into prehistory in all probability. One of the best modern set I’ve found recently were sidebars in a book by Emeritus Professor of Physics at the Open University, Russell Stannard. These are my answers, thoughts and commentary to those Big Questions. Many readers might have ‘fun’ trying to come to terms with these in their own way based on their own worldview.

Continued from Part Two.

Q. Does the loss of simultaneity for events separated by a distance invalidate the notion that only the presence exists?

A. This is one of those ‘paradoxes’ of those Theories of Relativity whereby, since things are relative, to one observer A happens before B; to another observer A and B are simultaneous happenings; and to yet a third observer, B happens before A. Since all observers are correct according to their specific frame of reference, the concept of ‘now’ is flexible. There is no absolute ‘now’. Another example is that whatever you observe, you observe ‘now’ yet what you observe actually happened in the past. The sunlight you see ‘now’ is now eight minutes old. However, it’s quite conceivable that you could instigate a universal ‘now’ and freeze the universe by snapping your fingers “STOP NOW”. That “STOP NOW” message would propagate instantaneously throughout the entirety of the universe. You, being immune from that “STOP NOW” command, would be free to navigate and explore the cosmos and see the universe as it appeared at that one ‘now’ instant – ‘now’ being of course the present. Only the present, the universal snapping your fingers ‘now’ exists. The interesting thing is that ‘now’ is such a short interval that your definition of the length of ‘now’ is vastly longer than what ‘now’ exists in in reality.

Q. What is time?

A. Time is a not-thing. Time is a concept that resides in the mind and cannot be detected with any of your senses. Time has no physical properties. Time is mathematics (a human invention), a way of measuring a particular thing. That thing is change, or rate-of-change. If there is no change, it is meaningless to talk about time. Time does not exist independently of change.

Q. Does the perceived flow of time require there to be two types of time?

A. The two types of time in question are physical time (the tick-tock of a clock; the cycle of the lunar phases) and mental time (where an hour can seem like a minute; a minute can seemly last for an hour). So there is real time, and subjective time. But time in any guise is a not-thing; an illusion; a concept. Only change is real and the rate of change, real or perceived, is what we call time – physical or mental. One could, if one wanted make a variable rate of change into a constant. Normally we hold physical time as a constant – tick-tick-tick-tick – at a rate of one-second-per-second (or one-day-per-day, etc.). We can count the number of ticks between say two red cars passing by on the road in front of our house. But you could say the interval between any two red vehicles is a constant. It is one unit or one tick per interval of red car time. That means that everything you associate as being regular like one-second-per-second or a 24-hour-day would become irregular. One ‘day’ might equate to 100 red car interval ticks. The next ‘day’ it might be 200 red car interval ticks long (since there happen to be double the number of red cars passing by on ‘day’ two as compared to ‘day’ one). If you define a ‘day’ as say 100 red car interval ticks, then ‘day’ two above would really be ‘day’ two plus ‘day’ three. Well, you can see how that sort of reckoning would screw up your biological clock! You’d have a ‘day’ off work between 1000 and 1100 red car interval ticks; the next ‘day’ off work between 2000 and 2100 red car interval ticks, etc. In the case of the 1000-1100 interval, that might be a long and restful ‘day’ but the 2000-2100 interval could be extremely short! You could do the above time experiment, at least as a silent and private intellectual exercise. Otherwise people would carry you off to the funny farm! However, if time were really real, then time couldn’t be manipulated as per the red car interval example. But time isn’t real so you can twist it around your little finger. Thus, the flow if time is indeed perceived, but that doesn’t make it something of substance. So, one kind of time, two kinds of time – it’s irrelevant.  

Q. How are we to understand the built-in creativity of the physical world?

A. Human beings are highly creative beings. We create 2-D and 3-D art and architecture; sports and games; music and storytelling; designing experiments; create new food recipes, create computer simulations, etc. We love to indulge in the ‘what if’ game. Apparently so does the Universe! From a primeval ‘fireball’ of elementary particle ‘soup’, the cosmos created forces and fields, atoms and molecules, and stuff and structures* like galaxies and stars and solar systems full of planets and associated debris, but from our biased point of view or perspective the Universe created life and us. If this creation in particular was inadvertent, it borders on a near miracle given all those pieces of the jigsaw puzzle that have to come together just so. If life was a deliberate creation then you are down to postulating either an infallible supernatural deity (or deities) or a probable flesh-and-blood and fallible Supreme Programmer. 

·        But not just galaxies but spiral galaxies and barred galaxies and elleptical galaxies and irregular galaxies; not just stars but dwarf stars and giant stars and neutron stars and quasars and Black Holes and binary star systems too as well as stars that burp and stars that explode; not just planets but gas giants and icy giants and rocky planets (and I’m sure there’s no planet ever envisioned by any science fiction writer that doesn’t have a real counterpart somewhere out in the cosmos).

Q. What significance, if any, ought we to attach to the self-ordering nature of matter?

A. The cosmos is a highly ordered place. The only real question is why it is so. There are roughly about 60 elementary particles (and antiparticles) grouped into three generations. There’s no theoretical reason why there couldn’t have been trillions of elementary particles grouped into hundreds of generations, or no generational structure at all. The fundamental particles can only combine in just so many ways – you can’t have an atom consisting of one neutron, 5 protons and ten electrons. Atoms can only combine in just so many ways. There are a lot more ways atoms can’t combine than ways they do. The same applies for molecules combining. The ancients noted this ordering by suggesting that everything has its natural place in the cosmic scheme of things. Solids (earth) seek ground level; liquids (water) go down too but rest on top of solids; gases (air) hover above solids and liquids and heat (fire) tries to rise through gases and occupy the top rung. The planets don’t orbit the Sun in a square orbit one year, then switch to a rectangular orbit the next year and switch again to a triangular orbit the year after that. The lunar cycle follows its steady rhythm; ditto night follows day that follows night that follows day, etc. Thunder follows lightning. Plants grow upwards while plant roots grow downwards. In other words, causality operates. If you have X, Y follows (but not A, B and/or C). So the fact we have ordering is significant. But, consider this. Software is the same. Your PC is predictable. If X, then Y (but not A, B and/or C).

Q. The problem of understanding things in themselves.

A. No matter what sort of thing you wish to describe, its properties, you eventually exhaust appropriate concepts and language to dig any deeper. You often hit an ultimate barrier when you come up against the ‘what’ and ‘how’ and ‘why’ questions. We know there is gravity but ‘why’ gravity at all and ‘how’ does gravity actually work. We know an electron has a negative electric charge of one unit but ‘what’ exactly is electric charge and ‘why’ does the electron have the value of electric charge that it has. The problems disappear if one suggests well, this is the programming, the software code that gives us the illusion of all things gravitational and another software code that determines that there be an negative electric charge on an electron and what the value is, also properties that are totally an illusion, or virtual reality. Ultimately those ‘what’, ‘how’ and ‘why’ questions like why introduce gravity and why have an electric charge can best be answered by those who do the (supreme) programming.

 

Q. Why are there three generations of particles?

A. Only the bottom generation of particles plays any role in our day-to-day perception of life, the universe and everything. The second and third generation have bugger-all to do with life, the universe and everything. There is something screwy somewhere! Mother Nature went over-the-top and made way too much of a good thing which is not how we tend to view Mother Nature. Mother Nature is frugal, not extravagant. However, all these additional generations of particles might be the consequence of programming. Natural or software, it’s a mystery that has no obvious rational explanation which suggests to me the irrationality of intelligence. A common theme when it comes to intelligence is that if it is worth doing, it is worth overdoing.

Q. Can we ever be sure that GUT is correct if we cannot experimentally test it at the appropriately high energy?

A. A GUT is a Grand Unified Theory, some sort of unification between the three quantum forces – the strong nuclear force, the weak nuclear force, and electromagnetism. One suspects that at the time of the Big Bang event all three forces were unified, only separating or undergoing phase transitions into distinct entities as the universe expanded and cooled. Unfortunately, the energy levels at the point of the Big Bang are such that they are beyond our abilities to achieve and thus any GUT cannot be experimentally confirmed, only theoretically ‘confirmed’. So, if there are competing GUTs, it will be difficult to separate the men GUTs from the boy GUTs. No, unless there’s a breakthrough in experimental high energy physics, the answer is “no”.

Q. Shall we ever be able to verify proton decay?

A. If protons theoretically decay, akin to how neutrons can decay, and you have a large enough collection of protons (that’s easy to accomplish) then it is a straightforward exercise to verify proton decay, even if on average it takes any one proton trillions of years to go poof since if you have trillions of protons on hand, you should see several go poof every year. Such experiments have come up empty. Protons don’t decay so there’s something screwy with the theoretical concept somewhere.

To be continued.