An Infinite Cosmos: Part Two

The nature of, the size, the shape and the duration of our Universe has been speculated and debated upon ever since humans gazed in wonder at the night sky. Though ideas have waxed and waned, and though modern cosmology is more focused than ever on actual observations, speculations, well that’s still the case today. My take, albeit slightly more philosophically inclined, is that our Universe is just part of an overall infinite in space and infinite in duration cosmos. 

Continued from Part One.

As we noted in the example of the fridge and your body, it takes energy to reverse entropy or at least hold it at bay. A reversal of entropy is sort of like that closed box with Maxwell’s Demon (representing energy) that controls a slot that the Demon can either open or close that’s in the middle of that closed box that’s of a uniform temperature.  The Demon opens the slot whenever a rapidly moving (hot) molecule heads toward the left side or when a slower moving (cold) molecule heads toward the right side. After a while, the left side of the box will be containing just hot stuff (rapidly moving molecules) and the right side cold stuff (slowly moving molecules). Maxwell’s Demon is like a kid expending energy sorting a bag of 1000 various coloured marbles (maximum disorder) into piles of reds and greens and blues and yellows (maximum order).  Of course our infinite cosmos contains no demons, and marble-sorting kids need not apply if there’s ever a job ad for restoring order to an infinite cosmos.

Okay, without demons (or entropy reversing kids), our infinite cosmos heads towards a state of maximum entropy or maximum disorder or maximum uniformity. The cosmic temperature will be the same everywhere; matter will be evenly distributed. But, can an infinite cosmos ever reach such a state? It could or should take an infinite amount of time, but that’s also assumed. 

Yet alas, what even an infinite cosmos needs is a Maxwell’s Demon. The cosmos, if it is to retain a state of vitality for an infinite duration, needs something that recycles stuff that’s at maximum entropy (maximum disorder) back to the basics of minimum entropy (or minimum disorder) where useful things can continue to happen.

* The Role of Gravity

Gravity seems to be a Maxwell Demon’s kind of force that keeps on keeping on. As long as you have two bits of matter, even just two electrons, you have gravity. Radiation (electromagnetism) could be dispersed evenly in infinite space over infinite time, but it is hard to imagine that situation with gravity. The only real way gravity could be rendered inert and useless as an energy source would be if it was 100% concentrated in just one place – like a super ultra mother of all cosmic Black Holes. The only other way gravity could be nullified would be in matter were distributed so absolutely evenly such that every bit of matter were being gravitationally pulled on absolutely evenly in each and every direction. But the slightest nudge or deviation from this ideal theoretical state (inevitable given quantum fluctuations) would throw everything out of equilibrium. But because matter is energy and energy is matter, if gravity can disrupt the distribution of matter from a state of near perfect uniformity, then energy will follow the short and curly material bits. Light (photons) reacts to gravity as much as electrons do. Further, the one extra nice property that gravity has is that it can’t be blocked. You can block out light or shield yourself from electromagnetic effects, but nothing will shield you from gravity.

* The Recycling Role of Radioactivity

Fortunately, there are several basic ways of recycling complex cosmic stuff back into the cosmos in the form of simple stuff. The first of these however has issues. Gravity can contract and pull together interstellar gas and dust into a proto-star which will ignite under pressure via thermonuclear fusion to form a radiant star. Stars however fuse lighter elements into heavier elements, and when a star goes nova, or becomes a supernovae, those heavier elements increasingly form the next generation of interstellar gas and dust. Eventually, after many generations of enrichment, interstellar gas and dust is lacking in those lighter elements (mainly hydrogen and helium) which easily undergoes fusion. Heavy elements, like iron, just won’t fuse any more and so the continued formation of radiant stellar stuff grinds to a halt. But, there is an escape clause.

Among the heavy elements; elements that stars manufacture, are radioactive elements with unstable atomic nuclei. Radioactive decay re-releases back into the cosmos those fundamental bits and pieces that can reform into those lighter elements that are the basic building blocks for forming radiant stellar objects. There is cosmic recycling from the simple to the complex and back to the simple again.

* The Recycling Role of Cosmic Black Holes

The second way of cosmic recycling is, believe it or not, via cosmic Black Holes. Astronomical Black Holes, via the vacuum energy (quantum foam or fluctuations) and quantum tunnelling, can release elementary particles back into the cosmos. As mentioned earlier, this is known as Hawking Radiation, after theoretical cosmologist/astrophysicist Stephen Hawking. Complex stuff can go into a Black Hole, but just very simple stuff ultimately comes back out again.

* The Recycling Role of Life

Life can be an entropy buster as in the case of Maxwell’s Demon, the kid who sorts the marbles, the mum who does the housework, the bird or beaver who gathers up forest debris to make a nest. But, it takes outside energy to accomplish these things and at the end you haven’t decreased complexity – the marbles are still marbles; twigs are still twigs. But microbes like bacteria, etc. can break down complex stuff (like twigs) and turn it into less complex stuff which can be recycled into hundreds of new and different complex things. So, when our home planet eventually meets its Waterloo, and gets scattered back into the cosmic winds, thanks to bacteria, there will be more simple stuff floating around than would otherwise be the case

So complex stuff gets recycled back into simple stuff, all brought together again by gravity to ultimately form complex stuff again. The cosmos receives recycled stuff back, from which it can keep on keeping on!    

* A Fly in the Ointment

In a cosmos that’s both infinite in space and infinite in duration, here’s an interesting ‘angels on the head of a pin’ question. There are two forces which in theory can extend their influence indefinitely, that is, unto infinity. They are electromagnetism (of which light is a prime example) and gravity. So, can the influence of a force cross an infinite space if it has an infinite amount of time to do it in?

Perhaps Maxwell Demon’s ‘closed box’ isn’t really an appropriate ‘container’ for an infinite cosmos. If the cosmos is infinite, can it be described as a closed system? 

The Multiple You

And so finally, consider and reconsider the quantum mantra: “Anything that isn’t forbidden is compulsory; anything that can happen will happen”. That’s even more the case when you have infinite time and space to play around with! So, I add to that mantra “and will happen again and again and again, an infinite number of times”. That actually means, or at least very strongly suggests that every possible scenario, every possible history, and every possible variation on each and every scenario or on any theme that you care to think of or think up will happen again and again and again. That, by the way, includes you. You are a scenario, and you, and every possible variation of you and your history will transpire numerous times; actually an infinite number of times. If that isn’t spooky, I don’t know what is, but it’s a logical consequence of having an infinite cosmos. 

An Infinite Cosmos: Part One

The nature of, the size, the shape and the duration of our Universe has been speculated and debated upon ever since humans gazed in wonder at the night sky. Though ideas have waxed and waned, and though modern cosmology is more focused than ever on actual observations, speculations, well that’s still the case today. My take, albeit slightly more philosophically inclined, is that our Universe is just part of an overall infinite in space and infinite in duration cosmos. 

In the infinite beginning there was something rather than pure nothing – a finite amount of something in an infinite void of nothingness. This scenario eliminates the philosophical quandary of what’s beyond the boundary - that only other alternative. This eliminates the philosophical quandary of how much stuff there is. An infinite amount of stuff doesn’t leave you much elbow room.

In the infinite beginning, well there was no beginning; there can ever be an end. No Alpha – no Omega. This eliminates the philosophical quandary of what comes before the ‘beginning’ and what comes after ‘the end’. 

Okay, having postulated an infinite cosmos in space and in duration, well, other certain and not so philosophical issues come to the fore. If they can be addressed, well that’s all to the good. If not, well it’s back to the drawing board.

I’ll start with…

Olber’s Paradox

The night sky should be as bright as the daytime sky since in whatever direction you look, sooner or later you should see a star or galaxy that’s in your line of sight. That’s Olber’s Paradox because the night-time sky isn’t as bright as the daytime sky. One resolution is that our observable Universe is finite and there are only a finite number of stars and galaxies and thus, there will be lines of sight that do not intersect with an object that’s emitting light.

But what if the cosmos is infinite in size and has existed for an infinite amount of time? Does that resurrect or reinstate the validity or viability of Olber’s Paradox? Not necessarily.

Why is there something rather than nothing? That’s been a prime philosophical question that has raged for eons. But, on reflection, overall, there is a great deal more of nothing than of something. If everything was something, it would be rather difficult to move. There would be no elbow room. In other words, just because the cosmos is infinite in duration and in volume doesn’t mean that there has to be an infinite amount of something within.

Let’s say that pure nothing is a perfect vacuum. Then something within that nothing makes for an imperfect vacuum. One could image a cosmos so dilute that there could literally be gaps of pure nothingness between the bits and pieces of something. Or, one could imagine a universe that contained just one final cosmic Black Hole that had over all the infinite eons gobbled up everything else that had been a something within the cosmos, and thus 99.99999% of that cosmos would contain absolutely nothing. 

That aside…

Stars, like people, are born, and thus their light may not have yet reached us.

Stars, like people, die, and thus their light has ceased to reach us. It has all now passed by.

In an infinite space, stars maybe so far distant that by the time their light reaches us, it’s so diluted or spread out that only one photon per hour hits the eye and that threshold is too low to stimulate the optic nerve and thus register.  

Ever present cosmic Black Holes have gobbled up a lot of the radiation that is emitted and reflected. In fact, in a cosmos that’s infinite, why haven’t those astronomical Black Holes sucked up everything that can be sucked up thus terminating any and all evolving universes within that cosmos? Well the answer is Hawking radiation which theoretically predicts, on pretty substantial grounds, that eventually Black Holes will radiate away their mass. Once input is less than Hawking radiation output, the Black Hole will slowly, ever so slowly, radiate away, giving back to the cosmos what it once took away. There will be more on the significance of that shortly.

Entropy and Cosmic Recycling

Another concept that needs addressing is entropy or the Second Law of Thermodynamics, otherwise known as the ‘arrow of time’ or sometimes as ‘time’s arrow’. If one considers an infinite universe to be a closed box or closed system, then over time, and we have an infinite amount of it, that closed box should reach absolute equilibrium and no further cosmic evolution would be possible. There would be a maximum amount of disorder, and there would be no further energy available to reverse that level of disorder.

It should be noted from the outset that in any closed box or closed system, entropy rules. Things will go from a state of order to a state of disorder without outside interference, that being an external source of energy to reverse the natural trend. The commonly cited example is if you have a closed box (the kitchen), and you turn off the fridge, the kitchen and the fridge will eventually reach absolute equilibrium, the same temperature. The kitchen warms up the fridge; the fridge cools down the kitchen, until both are at the same temperature – maximum disorder. It takes an outside energy source – electricity – to keep the fridge colder than the kitchen and thus in a state is disequilibrium or a state where entropy has not been maximalized. Trouble is, once energy is evenly spread out throughout a closed system (like the fridge in the kitchen), no matter how much of it there is, it’s useless in terms of doing useful things – like initiating change.

Another example: Your own body is a closed system. Your body’s energy is in equilibrium. You are at 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit from head to toe. Within that state of affairs, your body can not do useful things. Fortunately, there’s a larger closed system that your body is a part of (like the fridge is part of the kitchen) that enables you to disrupt your body’s equilibrium and thus provide the means for your body to initiate change. Your outside energy source is food, which is good since once you invoke that larger closed system that contains you, that larger system absorbs your body heat that gets radiated away into it. So the fridge needs outside energy to replenish its supply of cold; you need energy to replenish your body heat and to provide the ways and means to keep you keeping on. Of course as we all know, that’s just postponing the inevitable. Sooner or later the fridge breaks down with wear; ditto you too. But in the meantime, and for a little while, you can keep your body’s entropy under control.  

Now any attempt to tunnel around various laws, principles and relationships of physics might be in vain, but not a total waste of time. The laws, principles and relationships of physics are constantly being refined, even overturned as in Einstein refined Newton’s gravity; the Sun going around the Earth got overturned by Copernicus. However, anyone attempting to tunnel over, around, or through the Second Law of Thermodynamics should abandon all hope. If you try to butt heads with entropy you’ll just end up with a sore head. You’d have better luck patenting a ‘perpetual motion’ machine, itself a violation of the ways and means of the entropy concept. In fact entropy is why you can’t construct a perpetual motion machine and why any patent officer worthy of the name would refuse you a patent for one.

Still, in an infinite cosmos, a cosmos that keeps on keeping on, there probably needs to be a way to go from a state of disorder (high entropy) back to a state of order (low entropy).

  

To be continued…

Profound Things & Concepts

There are many things and concepts within the collective worldviews of humanity that are considered pretty mundane. However, there’s certainly a collection of things and ideas which rise to the top in profoundness when compared and contrasted with the ordinary everyday routine. These are the sorts of profound things and concepts which keep you awake at night, pondering the Big Issues. No two people will come up with identical lists. Without further ado, here is mine. 

1) There Is Something Rather Than Nothing! Why is there something rather than nothing? Let’s say there’s a 50-50 probability between a universe that contains nothing and one that contains something. Or even make the ratio 60-40 or 99-1 or even odds of a billion to one, as long as the probability of a something universe isn’t zero. Then, well that’s something to be said for a something universe. Now a nothing universe isn’t bio-friendly and a something universe can be, so since we’re a friendly bio-entity that must mean we live in a something universe. So, as far as we are concerned, that’s what there is something rather than nothing, because if there was nothing we wouldn’t be here to ponder the issue. Still, it’s one of the most profound and debated topics in all philosophy.

2) 95% of the Universe is Missing! If you add up all of the matter and energy in the Universe that is required to account for actual observations about the Universe, well, those in the know come up short – to the tune of 95% short in actual fact! The missing stuff is divided into Dark Matter (27%), which we know exists because of it’s gravitational influence though it doesn’t interact with electromagnetism (like light); and Dark Energy (68%) which we know exists because the expansion rate of the Universe is increasing, ever increasing. To accelerate the stuff of the Universe to ever faster velocities requires energy, hence the phrase “Dark Energy” – its energy Jim, but not as we know it. In a nutshell, we haven’t a clue what Dark Energy actually is; we have no idea exactly what Dark Matter is. Therefore, 95% of the Universe is missing, well that’s not really true. It’s not so much missing as astronomers have no rational explanation for Dark Matter or Dark Energy. What we have are two profound anomalies.

3) Black Holes! Black Holes are profound because nobody has the foggiest idea what actually transpires inside. What’s the substance and structure inside the Event Horizon? The equations break down that one normally relies upon for such insights. When the mystery is ultimately solved, no doubt the resolution will be a profound one.

4) The Universe Is Bio-Friendly! Our Universe is a Goldilocks Universe if you will – which doesn’t of necessity imply the Universe was deliberately fine-tuned for bio-friendliness, just that there are many more options for disorder than for order, so to there are many more ways to envision a bio-unfriendly not-just-right-for-life Universe than a just-right-for-life cosmos.  

5) Extraterrestrial Life! Either we are alone in the Universe or we have cosmic company. Either scenario has profound philosophical implications. Related to that profound concept is the profound observation that advanced intelligent extraterrestrial civilizations, assuming advanced intelligent extraterrestrial civilizations, should be bloody obvious, having already visited us. Where is everybody? That’s the profound observation (or lack of observation) known as the Fermi Paradox. If they exist, we should know about it. 

6) Now! “Now” is the only period where anything can happen. The past (what has happened) is unchangeable; the future (what will happen) is yet to be. And there are more “now” moments in one standard second than all the numbers of all the humans who have ever lived and are currently alive to boot. That only “now” has any real significance is a pretty profound idea. Fortunately, “now” is an ongoing process.

7) Why Is It So? The electron and the proton have an equal and opposite electromagnetic charge. You cannot determine from first principles what the properties of the Universe, or the fundamental particles that make up the Universe, are. They apparently can have free range. A proton is 2000 times more massive than an electron, but you can’t calculate that from the theoretical laws, principles and relationships of physics. It’s only determined experimentally. There doesn’t seem to be any reason why the proton couldn’t have been 0.2, 2, 20, 200 or 20,000 times the mass of an electron. The same applies to the relative forces. The theoretical laws, principles and relationships of physics do not require an opposite yet equal value of charge between the negative electron and the positive proton. Presumably the value of each could have been as far apart as their masses – that is a proton could have been 2000 times as positive as the electron is negative. Why not? There’s no reason why not apart from the fact that the Universe as we know it then wouldn’t work, but then we wouldn’t be here to worry about that or what might have been. 

8) Wave-Particle Duality! The general picture here is that when a particle is given off, it is in fact a particle – a little billiard ball is emitted. When a particle is absorbed or detected it is in fact a particle that’s detected – a little billiard ball. What about the in-between times? Well, then apparently the little billiard ball undergoes a phase transition into a wave. Now I don’t believe for a moment that the particle actually turns into a nebulous or undefined maybe-here-maybe-there smeared out wave. It’s weird enough that it waves around though truth be known the ‘wave’ is actually a wave of probability. The little billiard ball, well it’s most likely to be in this vicinity or in this volume of space, a bit less likely to be over there, though some say that means there’s a tiny percentage of probability that it’s now on the other side of the Universe – which is nuts since that would imply superluminal velocities. The best analogy that springs to mind is that when the baseball leaves the pitcher’s hand, it’s a particle and when it impacts the catcher’s mitt, it’s a particle, but in-between it’s like a wave – a knuckleball, a slider, a spitter, a curve, etc. The batter (and sometimes the catcher) has to estimate the probability of where that baseball-particle actually is so as to placing the bat (or the mitt) in the right place at the right time. 

9) The Concept of Infinity! There are many things claimed to have (or have had) the property of infinity, though that cannot be. Things like infinite temperature at the Big Bang, or infinite density of the singularity inside a Black Hole. Nonsense isn’t profound. What is profound however - concepts that logically could be infinite. I refer in particular to the concepts (not things) that we call space and time. There’s no reason that if you headed off in a particular direction, that you could not just keep on keeping on without end. There’s no reason that if you headed off in a particular direction, that you could not just keep on keeping on for all eternity. There’s no requirement for there to be an alpha or omega in space or in time. In general you cannot indefinitely divide things, but you can when it comes to non-things or concepts, like the idea of a line that can be chopped into smaller and smaller segments indefinitely, or say of time. Of course not all not-things make logical sense in terms of dividing them. You can’t split Xmas indefinitely or the concept of a car.  

 

10) Self-Awareness! It’s not too difficult to comprehend increasing levels of complexity, from fundamental particles to atoms to molecules to 3-D structures of substance. However, while one branch of increasing complexity (or organisation) – dust and gas, debris, stars and planets, galaxies, clusters of galaxies – doesn’t achieve self-awareness (to the best of our knowledge anyway), another branch undergoes a phase change on the organisational road that’s ever upwards. That’s a change from structures with substance that have no self-awareness (like a rock) to structures with substance that are self-aware (like a bird or mammal). Exactly how that phase change has been accomplished is still one of those profound mysteries. Related, your brain, and my brain, in fact all normal human brains, share one thing. The brain is the only organ capable of studying itself! Now that’s profound!

11) The Simulated Universe! The human species, especially since the proliferation of the computer and associated technologies, have created thousands of simulated landscapes and virtual beings, from the humble Microsoft office assistant to pilot training simulators to video games that cater to all types of interests and age groups. Entire movies are now computer generated simulations – no actual on-location travel required; no humans need apply in hopes of earning an eventual Oscar for best actor. In view of the explosion of simulation technologies, and it’s only going to increase and get ever more realistic than it already is, the question has arisen, if we can create virtual worlds, might not we in turn be virtual beings ‘living’ in a simulated landscape programmed for some purpose or other, by other beings which might be futuristic humans recreating their past history, or ET’s video game version of “The Life and Times on the Third Rock in the Sol Planetary System”. It’s a best seller on Krypton! Though once just sci-fi speculation, that profound idea that we don’t really exist is now taken very seriously indeed.

12) Man Not On the Moon! Humans from Earth landed on the Moon and returned safely to Earth during the period 1969-1972. Three further missions were scrubbed for economic reasons – sort of like buying the car then not driving it because you couldn’t afford gasoline. Since then, economics apparently haven’t improved since we’ve never been back. That we haven’t returned in over 40 years is unprecedented in the history of manned exploration. It’s like if Charles Lindbergh had flown the Atlantic in 1927 and nearly 90 years on there was still no sign of any trans-Atlantic air travel on the horizon. There are currently no plans yet set in concrete for a lunar return mission(s). It’s one of the most shameful and ill-profound examples of human stupidity yet on the public record. There is no logical reason humans shouldn’t have established at least one lunar colony 20 years ago; there’s no logical reason why humans shouldn’t have already landed on Mars.   

Honourable Mention! How is it profoundly possible that the Boston Red Sox (the wild card entry no less) could end up beating the New York Yankees four straight games after being behind three games to zip in the 2004 ALCS? It’s profoundly good if you’re a Boston fan (which I’m not) and profoundly bad if you are a Yankee’s fan (which I am). But no matter which way you slice it, the end result was profound as it was the first time in Major League Baseball playoff history that a team lost the first three games and went on to win the next four to prove victorious in an overall best of seven game series. It’s still a nightmare episode out of “The Twilight Zone” as far as I’m concerned.

More Random Thoughts In Physics

* In our Universe there are two kinds of astronomical objects. There are cosmic faucets like stars and anything else that gives off or reflects electromagnetic (EM) waves. That’s the cosmic “In Tray”. Then there are cosmic sinks and drains that absorb electromagnetic waves – Black Holes, the cosmic “Out Tray”.

It would seem to me that over the course of 13.7 billion years, an awful lot of EM (light, IR, UV, radio, microwave, gamma-ray, etc.) photons, not to mention neutrinos and cosmic rays, would have gobbled up and removed from the Universe’s inventory by being sucked into and forever residing in the insides of Black Holes. Since all astronomical observations, hence conclusions about the state of the Universe, rely on the detection of that which is emitted or reflected by cosmic faucets, then it stands to reason that in order to arrive at valid conclusions, what cosmic sinks and drains remove from the Big EM Picture must be taken into account. But is it? I’ve never read any account where the removal of EM photons from the Universe’s inventory has been considered.   

One example that springs to mind is the minor temperature variations in the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMBR) – perhaps those slightly cooler spots are due to a large Black Hole between our measuring device and the CMBR that is sucking up those microwaves before they reach our measuring telescope or space probe or high altitude balloon. I seem to recall cosmologist George Gamow back in the 1940’s making a theoretical prediction that the (then undetected) CMBR would be somewhere between 5 to 7 degrees Kelvin, instead of the roughly 2.7 degrees Kelvin that eventuated. Perhaps, the overall cooler than Gamow expected CMBR is due to Black Holes sucking up lots of those CMBR photons over all those billions of years.

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* Another case of non-causality that’s oft given is when an electron gives off a photon, loses energy, and drops to a lower ‘orbit’ around a nucleus. The opposite isn’t lacking in causality however. A photon is absorbed by an electron which gives it additional energy which kicks it upstairs into a higher ‘orbit’ around a nucleus. Now it’s nuts to suggest that a process has causality in one direction while lacking causality in the exact opposite direction. We may not know why an electron gives up a photon and loses energy in the process, but there is most definitely a why causality – of that I’m convinced.

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* To be honest, I reject the idea that space itself is expanding. To me distant galaxies are expanding farther and farther apart throughout an already existing space. That makes way more sense. Expanding space appears to me to be a case of getting a free lunch – something from nothing – in violation of standard conservation principles.

Is there any actual observational evidence that proves conclusively that it is space expanding and not cosmic flotsam and jetsam moving apart through existing space? Not to my knowledge but I can think of a possible test that might conclude the issue. Two objects receding apart, like the Earth and the Moon (due to tidal forces) are going with the expanding space grain and should be separating more rapidly than otherwise would be the case due to tidal forces alone. The experiment, measuring the increasing Earth/Moon separation should be a relatively easy experiment to do. Due to the reflective mirrors left on the lunar surface by the Apollo moonwalkers we know the Earth-Moon distance to extreme precision. It should be straightforward whether the Moon is receding from the Earth faster than tidal forces can account for.  

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* The cosmos is easily divided into matter and energy related ‘things’ (products of nature) and space and time related ‘not things’ (concepts invented by humans and maybe by other animals). IMHO, ‘things’ are probably those which ultimately reside in the world of the quantum and are discrete. Many ‘not-things’ can be divided and divided indefinitely and are continuous.

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* If an electron acquired enough mass (say by being accelerated to near light speed), would it become a Black Hole, and if so, would the ‘inside’ still be an electron, which after all, is considered a fundamental particle? 

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* If you like symmetry, then the most perfect object of all things symmetrical is a sphere.

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* We frequently read of a “world without time” or “time standing still” or “time doesn’t exist” when it comes to that never-never-land of singularities, be then Black Hole related or that which was at the moment of the Big Bang which somehow created time. I consider that an impossibility since the absence of time means that nothing changes or conversely if nothing every changes it would be meaningless to talk about the existence of time. But the froth and bubble of the vacuum energy is omnipresent (even inside a Black Hole or the structure that was the Big Bang event) and that involves change and therefore the concept of “no time at all” is kaput.

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* It is said the electron is a fundamental particle that cannot be divided or split into simpler components. An electron can of course be converted to energy (all mass can be) say by coming into contact with a positron, the electron’s antimatter alter ego. An electron can emit and absorb a photon, but it doesn’t decay into anything simpler. So I gather if you could smash two electrons head on with as much oomph as one could muster, you’d end up with as close to as makes no odds, that is nearly, a case of the irresistible force failing to move (shatter) the immovable (un-shatterable) object. Another case illustrating the irresistible force and immovable state of affairs – it is impossible to isolate a quark (they come as a trio take all) or its force particle, a gluon.

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* Space is not the final frontier. The ultimate challenge is to ‘boldly go’ past the event horizon of a Black Hole and see what’s to be seen. 

Scientists’ Doublespeak: Part Two

Even the very best of scientists can exhibit some sort of scientific sleight-of-hand and bamboozle their lay audience with absurdities. Actually, this approach often is just taking a lazy way out. Explaining things in sufficient detail, to avoid the absurdities, would either be too involved or take up too much text. At least I hope that’s the case. If some scientists actually believe what they write, then something is rotten in academia.

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

Dark Energy: Something from Nothing: This is really an extension of both the above and below in that apparently space is constantly being created as you read this and that explains why the Universe is expanding: more on that below. But the bit of creation that keeps on keeping on is with respect to Dark Energy which actually provides the oomph that drives bits of space further apart thus making available more volume to have additional space be created in. Since Dark Energy is a property of space, it all becomes very circular. Dark Energy creates more space and more space creates more Dark Energy and it’s all a sort of positive never ending feedback mechanism. It’s also something from nothing and you cannot create energy out of nothing. Wouldn’t it be great if the energy you use – gasoline, electricity, etc. – was available for free since you could create an endless supply of it out of nothing? Dark Energy is a free lunch – that’s an extraordinary claim!

Cosmology and the Expansion of Space: We are all aware, at least since the early 20^th Century, that our Universe is expanding in volume. That’s the result of a rather messy trilogy of oomph events. The initial Big Bang explosion; a secondary extremely sudden and short-lived burst of ‘inflation’ that transpired almost immediately after the Big Bang; and finally a mysterious force called Dark Energy (named but not explained) that keeps shoving the already expanding Universe to ever greater and greater velocities. In other words, our Universe is not only expanding but the expansion rate is accelerating. Okay, that’s pretty much based on observational evidence. But that still leaves two scenarios. Following on from the above “keep it simple, stupid” rule, the obvious scenario is that all of the stuff of the Universe is expanding through existing and pre-existing space and time. However, standard model cosmologists, in keeping with their “something from nothing” rule, suggest that space itself is expanding; space itself is constantly being created (out of nothing), and thus space itself is causing the stuff of the Universe to spread farther and farther apart, the bits and pieces being dragged apart kicking and screaming somehow glued to their particular patch of space like dots painted or glued on the surface of a balloon that’s being inflated. Again, no cookbook is on offer that gives a recipe for expanding space or how you too at home can expand your space or create more space in which to store your knick-knacks. That space is currently being created out of nothing – that’s an extraordinary claim!

The Atomic Structure of Space-Time (Planck scales: lengths, volumes, etc.): By the very act of suggesting that space and time or space-time has a structure, one is suggesting that space and time are things, and like all things, at extremely tiny scales are subject to the laws, principles and relationships of quantum physics. In other words, space and time (like matter and energy) come in quanta – indivisible discrete units. It is proposed that these fundamental units of space and time or space-time are Planck units which they suggest are the shortest possible length (hence area hence volume) you can have; and a Planck length of time is the shortest measure of time that can exist. Now you will certainly find reference to these Planck units in the scientific literature. That’s not in question. What is in question is the interpretation. It is my understanding that Planck units are the smallest units possible where one can discuss meaningful events or happenings. There comes a time where a volume is too small for any meaningful physics to happen therein. There comes a point where a length of time is too brief for any meaningful event to happen within that time frame. That doesn’t mean that one can’t further divide a Planck unit into smaller and smaller segments unto infinity. It just isn’t meaningful to deal with such smaller units since nothing of significance can happen within them. So, space and time are not things. They can be subdivided indefinitely until the cows come home. There just is however a threshold value below which it’s not overly meaningful to discuss happenings there. If something meaningful is an elephant, it’s not meaningful to talk about an elephant inside a shoebox, though clearly shoebox volumes exist. If it takes a baseball one second to reach home plate from the pitcher’s mound, and it takes the batter say one-tenth of a second to react, then it is not meaningful for any discussion of that scenario to focus on billionths of a second time frames, though a billionth of a second is a legit division of time. That space and time can be constructed or formed out of discrete space or time quanta units – that’s an extraordinary claim!

Black Holes: Crossing the Event Horizon: For some inexplicable reason, I’ve noted several times some scientific author suggest that an external observer (call him Clive) will note that someone (call her Jane) about to crossover a Black Hole’s event horizon, will not only be travelling slower and slower by Clive’s clock as Jane approaches that event horizon, but in fact at contact with the event horizon, again as recorded by Clive, time will have stopped for Jane. In other words, Clive will never witness Jane’s crossover from outside the Black Hole to inside the Black Hole. Jane will appear to be frozen in time at the event horizon, yet as far as Jane is concerned, everything is normal in terms of time flowing at one second per second.

Now that’s a major paradox. Jane can’t be crossing the event horizon at one second per second while at the same time being frozen in time at the time of crossing according to Clive – the external observer. Of course the paradox is bullshit. To an external observer, Clive, time only comes to a screeching halt for someone like Jane, external to them, if they witness Jane travelling at the speed of light. That’s a physical impossibility. There’s no reason to believe that someone like Jane can be crossing the event horizon at light speed. There’s no absolute requirement that Jane is in fact crossing the event horizon at the speed of light. So, in actual reality, our observer Clive will see someone, anyone, including Jane, cross the event horizon, albeit at a slower rate than Jane herself, because Jane is travelling and doing the event horizon cross-over at less than light speed. That time stands still at the Black Hole’s event horizon – that’s an extraordinary claim!

Conclusions: Scientists are extremely fond of invoking the mantra that “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence”. Unfortunately, I’m damned if I find any evidence, far less any extraordinary evidence, for the above statements or alleged truisms. The only way I know of that could give you something for nothing, or disregard causality with reckless abandon, would be if we were all products of a virtual reality, just existing in a software-generated simulated universe where anything goes. But that too is an extraordinary claim!

Baby Universes & Black Holes

There are numerous ways of theoretically generating a collection of separate and apart universes, commonly called a Multiverse. One such novel approach uses two accepted entities, a universe and a Black Hole to generate each other in turn in either a linear or a cyclic fashion. While the linear approach runs out of puff, the cyclic version doesn’t, but only if you postulate a form of time travel!

You exist somewhere on Planet Earth, which orbits a rather average star we call the Sun, which in turn orbits around the centre of the Milky Way Galaxy which is but one of billions and billions of galaxies within our observable Universe. That’s what you’d include in any description of your reality.

However, perhaps the observable Universe itself exists within a Black Hole. That’s an alternative reality, or at least an extension of your reality. Just what rationale might lead one to suggest that our observable Universe and a Black Hole could be in parallel?

Since you cannot escape from the prison we call the Universe; and since you could not escape from the inside of a Black Hole – another type prison – perhaps they are one and the same sort of prison. Perhaps not only do Black Holes exist inside our Universe but the Universe itself resides inside a Black Hole with perhaps no end of the inside-the-inside-the-inside in either direction. In a manner of speaking, that’s a Multiverse!

Actually you can in theory escape this Universe by hopping down into a Black Hole, but if, and it’s a very big ‘but if’, you survive, you’ve just traded in one maximum security prison for another.

Let’s explore this concept a little further and see where, if anywhere, it leads us.

Our Universe and Black Holes certainly share some things in common.

A Black Hole can expand and surprisingly contract (due to Hawking radiation; the technicalities need not concern us here). Our Universe is expanding, but in theory could also contract if there was enough stuff, matter, hence gravity to slow down the expansion to an eventual halt hence reverse direction and start to shrink.

A Black Hole has temperature (that Hawking radiation); our Universe has a temperature (the cosmic background microwave radiation).

A Black Hole has mass (hence gravity); our Universe has mass (hence gravity).

A Black Hole could have a net charge; our Universe could have an excess of one kind of charge over another, but to the best of our knowledge our Universe is electrically neutral, and we suspect, so might an average Black Hole be too.

A Black Hole may be spinning; our Universe maybe rotating but the only way of knowing if you are rotating is if something else in your line of sight isn’t rotating or rotating at a different rate. If everything in our Universe is rotating together at the same rate, then there’s no way of telling since there isn’t anything else to relate that rotation to. 

Now the question arises was there a prime cause; a first universe inside a Black Hole  that gave birth to millions more Black Holes each of which generated an interior universe each of which spawned million more Black Holes hence interior universes and so on and so on and so on. It’s all very circular in that Black Holes generate universes which generate more Black Holes which generate more universes, etc. But that is something circular in a very linear sort of way for what you end up with is like an ongoing (maybe infinite) series of funnels. Sooner or later all the stuff that existed in the first cause Black Hole universe will funnel down into the first generation of Black Hole universes and all the stuff there eventually finds its way down into the second generation of Black Hole universes, hence funnelled down to the third, and fourth and down unto infinity. Now the point here is that there was only a finite amount of stuff (matter/energy) in that first cause Black Hole universe. All that stuff is constantly being diluted as one passes from one generation to the next generation. The stuff of the prime cause first Black Hole universe is dispersed unto millions and eventually billions of later universes. Eventually every baby universe in some umpteenth generation of universes would be so dilute no further Black Holes could form and that’s then the end of that.

But, what if things were cyclic or really circular? All of these universes do not exist in separate and apart timeframes, just like great grandpa; grandpa; father and son do not of necessity exist in separate and apart timeframes but can co-exist at the same time. When you talk of Black Holes, you can also go the one yard further and talk wormholes, which I guess is really that passageway from a Black Hole to the baby universe it generated. But if that first Black Hole universe generates say a million Black Holes each generating a baby universe, what’s to say that a Black Hole created in that baby universe might not funnel back stuff, not to a newer next generation, but dump their contents back to the original first cause Black Hole universe. Wormholes can, in theory, under the right conditions, serve as time machines. So it’s almost akin as if the son travelled back in time and fathered what would ultimately become his great grandpa. Cyclic! If cyclic, the amount of stuff (matter/energy) is still fixed (that which existed in the original Black Hole universe), but never gets diluted enough to bring things to a halt. Now about those quasars, gamma ray bursts and related ultra-energetic astronomical enigmas – White Holes perhaps; the exit of the Black Hole entrance – impregnations by those baby universe Black Holes?  

Where actually do these new (and improved?) baby universes reside? I doubt that a Black Hole opens up a portal and creates a never-before-in-existence arena of space-time where stuff pouring into a Black Hole, hence exiting this portal, finds a ready made newly constructed house to live and evolve in. Rather, the baby universe IS the interior of a Black Hole. A Black Hole forms, a new baby universe forms inside that Black Hole, and that universe in turn produces new Black Holes that form new baby universes, etc. But everything takes place, generation after generation, inside that first Black Hole (which just might be our Universe). The baby universes spawned inside say Black Hole generation #3 in turn creates Black Hole generation #4 which also exist within the earlier Black Hole generation #3 as do the generation #4 baby universes. So instead of a series of dolls sitting all-in-a-row on a long shelf, it’s more akin to those Russian dolls, one inside the other inside the other inside the other. But, as suggested above, one of the smaller dolls can ultimately funnel stuff back up into one of the larger dolls. 

Aside #1: Now you may feel that any baby universe inside a Black Hole in our Universe is going to be a pretty small universe indeed. Well I’m not aware that the definition of a universe comes attached with a one size fits all clause. Universes might well come is small, medium, large and extra-large sizes. Maybe a baby universe inside a Black Hole is like Dr. Who’s TARDIS – bigger on the inside than on the outside. Truth is, nobody, and I do mean nobody has a clue what’s inside the event horizon of a Black Hole. Once inside the event horizon all the laws, principles and relationships of physics break down. Nobody and no measuring instrument have ever been inside to have a look at what’s what and report back. It’s akin to those maritime charts of the ancient seafarers – here be dragons! It’s the greatest of the great unknowns. If space is the final frontier, the inside of a Black Hole is the Absolutely Final Frontier. Now there’s no reason of necessity why any of these baby universes need be inhabited. Extraterrestrial intelligence isn’t part of the definition of a universe either. A universe is really a self-contained space where matter and energy interact; where things happen; where there is change from moment to moment. The interior of a Black Hole is self-contained. There’s matter and energy but whether there’s activity or not, well IMHO the answer is affirmative since the Black Hole isn’t static. It’s either expanding as matter and energy enters and passes the event horizon or contracting thanks to the abovementioned Hawking radiation. Actually both incoming and outgoing are going on simultaneously.

Aside #2: Something about this entire concept reminds me of the old sci-fi pulp magazine era. It was a staple plot of shrinking down to the atomic level only to discover a civilization on a ‘planetary’ electron orbiting a ‘stellar’ nucleus.

Aside #3: A Black Hole that might spew out another universe might have that universe stillborn in that that universe may not in turn be able to give rise to internally created Black Holes and thus another generation of baby universes. Not all universes will of necessity have the same physics, physics that allow the creation of Black Holes, and so some universes will be eternal bachelors or spinsters.

Aside #4: Yet another interesting question is what happens to the two baby universes when and if their parent Black Holes merge, as most certainly can happen. That would seem to be a rather nasty scenario for inhabitants of either of the baby universes!

Now clearly this is all speculation, but then speculation, that “what if” scenario, is the bread-and-butter staple of science fiction, and how often has science fiction evolved into science fact? It’s an oft quoted saying, attributed to J. B. S. Haldane (1924) that “The Universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose.”

A Voyage To A Black Hole: Part Two

Suicide missions are hardly unknown happenings, so presumably it wouldn’t be too hard to find a volunteer to take a long walk off a short pier and dive into the heart of a Black Hole. Well, let’s trade in the walk and the pier for a spaceship, with our suicidal pilot crewmember willing to boldly go. What might she expect? For that matter what might a chickenhearted outside observer expect to see?

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

Now for the speculation: Let us suppose that our suicidal voyager survives her voyage (curses, foiled again) and gets to play tourist. What will she see or will she see anything at all? Well, yes, she will – see that is. The event horizon is like a one-way mirror. Light can pass through the event horizon into the interior of the Black Hole, but light cannot pass from the interior of the Black Hole through the event horizon to be witnessed by an outside observer. Okay, let there be light, and there was light. Light is energy, so there’s energy inside a Black Hole. It’s also been shown that a Black Hole has entropy, or in other words a temperature. That too is energy. 

There’s matter (mass) inside a Black Hole – obviously, since there’s gravity. Now the big unknown is what kind of matter is that matter? We don’t know. Outside of a Black Hole matter exists in four states – solid, liquid, gas and plasma. The transition from one state of matter to another is called a phase change, as in ice to water to steam. One speculation is that the matter inside a Black Hole undergoes a phase change to something even more solid and denser than, well a dense solid.

We sort of observe this in a Neutron Star, a star extremely massive with extreme gravity, but just short of enough gravity to form an event horizon and turn into a Black Hole. Why is it called a Neutron Star? Well, the gravity is so great that the bits and pieces of the atom, electrons, neutrons and protons are squashed together into one big glob. The positive protons fuse with the negative electrons – these electric charges thus cancelling out – to make neutrons, hence join with the already neutral neutrons, so everything forms into just one huge glob of neutron soup, or a Neutron Star. Rapidly spinning Neutron Stars are also known as Pulsars.

Now if atoms lose all sense of identity, there is no atomic structure, no isotopes, no molecules, no elements, no compounds, no electrons and no protons, then I’d have to define that as a phase transition, but one we don’t witness on Earth. Given the even more extreme gravity inside a Black Hole, would that same phase transition to a neutron soup hold sway, or might there be another beyond that found in Neutron Stars? 

Neutrons are not fundamental particles. A glob of neutron soup is ultimately a glob of quark soup, as quark trios comprise the identity we call a neutron. Neutrons are actually composite particles. However, as quarks are fundamental particles, it’s unlikely they can be crushed or fused together. Electrons too are fundamental, but it is well known – to particle physicists at least – that an isolated neutron will in fairly quick-smart order decay to a proton, an electron and an antineutrino. Reactions are reversible so it is straightforward to create a neutron if the ingredients are brought together with sufficient energy.

Since a Neutron Star is just one coin short of a Black Hole dollar, the inside of a Black Hole could well be akin to a Neutron Star, only slightly more massive. One thing is certain IMHO, the interior will not be matter crushed down to the infinitely small (i.e. – zero volume); the interior will not be infinitely dense.

What lies at the heart of a Black Hole? The traditional answer is a ‘singularity’ – a point of (near) infinite density and (close to) zero volume, matter crushed down to the final, ultimate limit – or maybe not.

Start with a hunk of matter. Keep on keeping on adding more and more and more matter (mass) to it. Your original hunk grows larger, ever denser; its gravity swells in proportion. Finally it’s just a fraction away from achieving Black Hole status – meaning its gravity is so strong not even light can escape from its grasp. It’s that Neutron Star entity.

So you are a thimbleful of salt away from crossing the not-quite-yet a Black Hole to an actual Black Hole boundary. You can (barely) still see your now super-sized hunk of Neutron Star stuff. Now toss in that final thimbleful of stuff onto the hunk. No light now reaches you – you’ve crossed the threshold or boundary and have got a Black Hole. But do you doubt that lurking on the other side of the not-quite-yet a Black Hole to an actual Black Hole boundary, though unseen, you still have that super-sized hunk of stuff, not a singularity, but a really real solid 3-D hunk of stuff? Or, in other words, if the escape velocity of your hunk is 185,999 miles per second, no Black Hole and no singularity, but if it climbs to 186,001 miles per second you have a Black Hole and your hunk morphs into a singularity? A two mile a second difference makes that much difference? I don’t think so.

The other issue though is this really going to be a one-way trip for our boldly going voyager, dead or alive? One of the 64,000 $64,000 questions: Can you pour stuff down a Black Hole indefinitely, or does the Black Hole have a finite capacity and ultimately or eventually will have to spew stuff out the ‘other side’ (i.e. – producing a White Hole) as you keep pouring in more and more and more? I’d wager the conservation relationships and principles of physics and chemistry hold sway here. What goes in ultimately comes out. That doesn’t mean there’s not a temporary holding vessel. Or, in more human terms, you fill what’s empty; you empty what’s full, but in-between those two there’s storage in the stomach and the intestines; the lungs and the bladder.

Let’s adopt that point of view that what goes in, ultimately has to come out.

And so, our intrepid voyager might well exit elsewhere, maybe even elsewhen. The exit could be deemed the opposite of a Black Hole, or a White Hole; the passageway from Black Hole entrance to White Hole exit is that staple of sci-fi, albeit based in the realm of theoretical physics, the Wormhole. That the exit could be elsewhen is based on the theoretical ‘fact’ that a wormhole could be manipulated in such a manner as to allow for time travel. If that’s too far out for you, then a Wormhole elsewhere shouldn’t be. The apt analogy is with an apple. Mr. Worm can crawl around the outside of the apple to get from one side to the other, or Mr. Worm could take a shortcut and worm his way through the apple to get to the other side, or elsewhere.

Now the question arises, is there any observational evidence that White Holes and associated exits exist? Astronomers and cosmologists would argue in the negative, but I’m not convinced. What would be the signature of a White Hole? Well, it would be roughly stellar-sized, not planetary or galactic. It would be vomiting out one heck of a lot of stuff including lots of energy. Does the cosmos contain such beasties? Obvious candidates are quasars – quasi-stellar objects. Quasars are roughly stellar in size, but violently emitting the froth and bubble of nearly an entire galaxy worth of stuff and energy. The other high-energy astrophysical anomaly is gamma ray bursts. They occur way out back of beyond, in the outer fringes of the cosmos, which is all to the good for if a gamma ray burst happened in our stellar neck of the woods, the results would be akin to Kentucky Fried Humans! Still, we don’t know enough squat about them to be able to predict exactly where and when one will happen. So, astronomers who are into studying these cosmic critters are akin to sleeping fireman who never knows when they will be rudely awakened to respond to that rare five-alarm event.

So, in short, we have Black Holes that are your ultimate in garbage disposals; Quasars and gamma ray bursts that are your ultimate in, IMHO, recycling that garbage back into useful cosmic stuff – matter and energy. In other words, they are the exit to the Black Hole’s entrance. 

No matter. Either our boldly going voyager has snuffed it going into a Black Hole; is forever trapped in a Black Hole; or has been turned into a Kentucky Fried Human and vomited back out again via a White Hole quasar or gamma ray burst to become as one with the cosmos. We all started out as starstuff – and so shall we (or what’s left of our remains) all ultimately return to become starstuff again a millennia of millennia from now. 

A Voyage To A Black Hole: Part One

Suicide missions are hardly unknown happenings, so presumably it wouldn’t be too hard to find a volunteer to take a long walk off a short pier and dive into the heart of a Black Hole. Well, let’s trade in the walk and the pier for a spaceship, with our suicidal pilot crewmember willing to boldly go. What might she expect? For that matter what might a chickenhearted outside observer expect to see?

Space isn’t really the final frontier; rather the inside of a Black Hole that’s inside of space really is the final frontier. Only the insanely suicidal need boldly go and explore, as it’s unlikely that the innards of a Black Hole will become a popular tourist attraction for many a millennia to come – if ever.

Okay, we have a depressed, suicidal, boldly going spaceship pilot, and she’s determined to go out in a blaze of glory and make her mark in the history books. No ordinary suicide for this woman! It’s across the event horizon threshold and down the hatch of a Black Hole. I need point out here and explain that technical term ‘event horizon’ – it’s just that location that divides the ability to return home safely from the point of no return, ever.

Countdown: Five, four, three, two, one – we have lift-off on the maiden voyage to boldly go and see what’s to be seen from the inside of a Black Hole.

As far as our suicidal pilot is concerned, everything from launch to crossing the event horizon is as normal as taking the cross-town bus to work. Time will tick by at one second per second; her mass will register normal; length ditto. However, due to Einstein’s concepts in all things being relative, an external observer will see our boldly going pilot’s reality slightly differently. 

An external observer, say relaxing back on Earth with a super powerful telescope, follows ionization trail of the boldly going voyager’s spaceship to the nearest Black Hole. Basically, what this person sees is that as the suicidal voyager blasts off from Earth, picks up speed, her ship and contents (including herself) start to shrink in length, increase in mass, and her rate-of-change (time) ticks by more slowly compared to Mr. Stay-At-Home’s own. Okay, that’s in keeping with Einstein’s relativity proclamations. 

But for some inexplicable reason, I’ve read several times some scientific author suggest that to an external observer, the suicidal pilot will not only be travelling slower and slower by the external observer’s clock as she approaches the event horizon, but in fact at contact with the event horizon her time, again as recorded by the external observer, will have stopped. In other words, the external observer will never witness the pilot’s crossover from outside the Black Hole’s event horizon to inside the Black Hole’s event horizon. The pilot will appear to be frozen in time at the event horizon, yet as far as the pilot is concerned, everything is normal in terms of time flowing at one second per second.

Now that’s a major paradox. The pilot can’t be crossing the event horizon at one second per second, while at the same time being frozen in time at the time of crossing, according to our stay-at-home observer. Of course the paradox is bullshit. To an external observer, time only comes to a screeching halt for someone external to them if they witness that someone travelling at the speed of light. Firstly, that’s a physical impossibility. There’s no reason to believe that our suicidal pilot is crossing the event horizon at light speed. There’s no absolute requirement that our suicidal pilot is crossing the event horizon at the speed of light. She in fact might have fired her retro-rockets to slow down just prior to crossing the event horizon in order to better savour the moment! So, in actual reality, our observer will see the pilot cross the event horizon, albeit at a way slower rate than the pilot herself because the pilot is travelling, hence doing the event horizon cross-over at less than the speed of light. IMHO, some ‘experts’ need to go back and redo Physics 101. 

In any event, once the external observer observes our boldly going suicidal voyager cross the event horizon, the show is over for him. Nothing that’s part and parcel of the voyager, not her ship’s reflected or emitted light, not her radio signals nor information signalling of any kind, will recross the event horizon in the outward bound direction and heading back to Earth. Our external observer can pack away his telescope and get back to more interesting pursuits, like watching daytime television. But that’s not quite the end of the story. 

And so it’s now over to the (never-to-be-revealed) recorded flight log of the voyager on her one-way trip to the Black Hole’s never-never land. Up to and including the crossover from the safe side of the event horizon to the ‘abandon hope all who enter here’ side of the event horizon, all is logged as 100% normalcy. Nothing shrinks, nothing grows in weight (increases in mass), and time does its one second per second thing as it always has done. It’s as easy as a trip from your home driveway to the supermarket parking lot, only once in the grip of the supermarket parking lot, forever in the grip of the supermarket parking lot. It’s a one-way ‘enter’ gate without a corresponding ‘exit’ sign.

Since we have no idea what the inside of a Black Hole actually is, since theoretical physics, quantum and relativity physics, break down into a mathematical mess, what our intrepid voyager will actually observe or experience is anybody’s guesstimate. There does appear to be one consensus however. Gravity rules, OK? Almost by definition there’s a hell of a lot of gravity to contend with once inside the supermarket parking lot – oops, sorry, inside the event horizon.

Now here on Earth, when standing up, gravity is pulling at your feet ever so slightly greater than it is tugging at your head – because your feet are slightly closer to Earth’s centre of mass. Earth’s gravity however is so weak that you don’t know or can’t feel the difference, but tests or experiments with extremely accurate atomic clocks show that this is true. Rate of change – time – is affected by gravity, so a clock atop a tall building runs slightly faster than an identical clock in the building’s basement. Now the gravity of a Black Hole is many, many, many orders of magnitude stronger than it is here on Terra Firma. So, it is speculated that if you are inside a Black Hole, say in free-fall, and say in a vertical position, then the gravity pulling on your feet will be not only vastly greater than if you were on Earth, but also the differential between feet and head will be orders of magnitude greater. Translated, gravity inside a Black Hole is going to stretch you out like a piece of taffy. Like in one of those fun house mirrors, you will be very, very, very tall and very, very, very thin. Ultimately you will be akin to a piece of string or spaghetti, but by that time you’ll be very, very, very dead as the human body wasn’t designed to be viable under such a state of affairs. Okay, that’s the consensus.

To be continued…

Reality: Heads or Tails? Part Two

In science as well as in metaphysics there are often competing ideas about what’s real and what’s not real but might be real – an alternate reality not yet proven. Here are a baker’s dozen of examples of what we believe is a truism today, but could easily be shown to be mistaken tomorrow. In one case, the last, tomorrow is already here!

What was reality yesterday (a Flat Earth orbited by the Sun; Unicorns and Dragons, etc.) isn’t of necessity what is accepted reality today, and what’s reality today may not of necessity be reality tomorrow. Here are a few more possibilities for tomorrow-land.

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

6) Black Holes (reality) vs. White Holes (alternate reality): Black Holes are known to exist, though once they were just a theoretical construct of Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity (and Einstein himself only thought of them as an abstract concept, not an actual thing). They were originally termed ‘dark stars’ though the later phrase Black Holes was proposed, and being catchy, took on with both the academic and general communities. Now Black Holes are objects with so much mass, and therefore so much gravity, that not even light (at 186,000 miles per second) can escape the clutches of such an object. You can’t see a Black Hole, hence the descriptive ‘black’. That’s the reality part. The alternative reality bit is the opposite of a Black Hole, obviously a White Hole. If a Black Hole sucks in stuff, a White Whole spews stuff out. The turning point is, can a Black Hole become so bloated with incoming stuff that it ultimately has to exit elsewhere?  One of the 64,000 $64,000 questions: Can you pour stuff down a Black Hole indefinitely, or does the Black Hole have a finite capacity and ultimately or eventually will have to spew stuff out the ‘other side’ (i.e. – producing a White Hole) as you keep pouring in more and more and more? I’d wager the conservation relationships and principles of physics and chemistry hold sway here. What goes in ultimately comes out. That doesn’t mean there’s not a temporary holding vessel. Or, in more human terms, you fill what’s empty; you empty what’s full, but in-between those two there’s storage in the stomach and the intestines; the lungs and the bladder.

7) You Exist Within Our Galaxy (reality) vs. The Universe Exists Within A Black Hole (alternate reality): Since you cannot escape from the jail cell within the prison we call the Universe; and since you could not escape from the inside of a Black Hole – another type of a jail cell within a prison – perhaps they are one and the same sort of prison. Perhaps not only do Black Holes exist inside the Universe but the Universe itself resides inside a Black Hole with perhaps no end of the inside-the-inside-the-inside in either direction. In a manner of speaking, that’s a Multiverse! Actually you can in theory escape this Universe by hopping down into a Black Hole, but if, and it’s a very big ‘but if’, you survive, you’ve just traded in one jail cell for another, or one maximum security prison for another.

8) Big Bang (reality) vs. Before the Big Bang (alternate reality): The standard cosmological model postulates based on observable evidence that our Universe began roughly 13.7 billion years ago as a Big Bang event that created all of matter, energy, time and space. The Universe was created out of nothing. There was no ‘before the Big Bang’ since the Big Bang started the universal clock ticking. Fortunately, for those who find such a scenario unsatisfactory, like me, there are alternative proposals that postulate, indeed require a ‘before the Big Bang’. But while the Big Bang rests on solid evidence, all ‘before the Big Bang’ proposals are highly theoretical and remain alternative realities. 

9) There’s Just One You (reality) vs. There’s Many of You (alternate reality): Even if you have an identical twin, that twin is not you. You are unique with a unique set of experiences and memories with individual brain chemistry and a hardwired neural network. Of all the people, who have ever lived, are living now, and who will exist in the future, you are unique – that’s a reality you and the world have to deal with; right? Maybe not; there are legit scenarios that allow for another you, even an infinite number of you. The most oft quoted possibility is if our Universe is infinite in extent and/or duration, another you just isn’t possible or probable, but mandatory. If our Universe is finite but part of an infinite set of universes – a Multiverse - another you just isn’t possible or probable, but mandatory. If the Many Worlds Interpretation of quantum mechanics is correct, another you just isn’t a possibility or a probability, but mandatory. If one accepts the basic mantra of quantum mechanics which is anything that can happen, does happen then another you just isn’t possible or probable, but mandatory. If we exist in a simulated universe as virtual reality, and there are many copies of this piece of software in existence another you just isn’t possible or probable, but mandatory. At least the saving grace is that you’ll never have to meet yourself – oops, that might not be true either if time travel is ever realized!

10) Really Real Reality (reality) vs. Virtual Reality (alternate reality): You obviously believe that you are part and parcel of Really Real Reality (RRR). The world socks it to you; you do your best to sock it to the world! However, there are two forms of an alternate reality, or virtual reality, that you might be part and parcel of. Firstly, it comes as no surprise that you create versions of alternate/virtual reality all the time. If you stop and think about it, your dreams create virtual worlds and characters. As you dream up an alternate reality landscape, and animate it, perhaps you too and your landscape (what your worldview accepts as RRR) is a dream-world of someone or something else! Secondly, you’d be aware of computer simulations, software programs that also create virtual worlds and characters. You might be an active participant, if not creating same, then engaging with those programs, like playing video games. As you create and/or participate in an alternate reality animated landscape, perhaps you too and your landscape (what your worldview accepts as RRR) is an animated video game or simulated world of someone or something else! 

11) Free Will (reality) vs. No Free Will (alternate reality): You have free will. You absolutely know you have free will. But you can’t prove you have free will. Any action(s) you perform which you state exhibits your free will; well the ‘no free will’ counterargument is that you have no choice but to believe in your own free will. It’s an illusion which you have been pre-programmed to accept as given, just as a pocket calculator has no choice but to calculate that 2 + 3 = 5. But as long as you believe you have free will, well, there’s no harm done.

12) We Are the Proverbial It (reality) vs. ETI [ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence] Is Teeming Throughout the Cosmos (alternate reality): Despite all the decades of active SETI [Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence], including lots of computer crunch power at their command including SETI @ Home; despite over six decades of UFO investigation, both official and private; plus all manner of amateur insights into the possibility of ‘ancient astronauts’; and those thousands of books written on these subjects (plus essays/articles, blogs, TV shows, DVD documentaries, etc.) no ETI smoking gun – proof positive – has surfaced of their existence to the satisfaction of all and sundry. But tomorrow is another day.

13) Your World (reality) vs. Your Cyber-World (alternate reality): You of course exist in a four space-time dimensional reality. You were born into it; you live your life in it; you’ll die in it. However, recent advances in technology have given us the ways and means to disconnect from that reality for lengthy periods of time and voluntarily adopt a cyber-world reality for a large part of our time. Many people and you see them all the time on the bus, in the mall, at the dinner table, at a social gathering, walking the dog, first thing awake, last thing before sleep, ignoring to the best of their ability their real surroundings for their cyber-surroundings. Between their PCs and tablets and smart-phones and emails and Twitter and Facebook and texting, while totally immersed in their tiny little cyber-world, they are near totally oblivious to their immediate surroundings and the real world immediately in front of them, which is one reason you get ‘funny’ videos of people so engrossed in their cyber-world that they totally fail to observe their surroundings and fall down stairs or into ponds of water or walk in front of buses. Reality has a way of biting back!