The Russell Stannard Questions: Part Two

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 One.

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 the universe life-friendly?

A. The universe is both bio-friendly and not bio-friendly. 99.999% (add a few more 9’s here) of the cosmic environment is decidedly bio-unfriendly and would snuff you out so quick-smart you wouldn’t know what hit you. Of course the cosmos is also bio-friendly otherwise you wouldn’t be here reading this. If you reject a supernatural explanation, that leaves coincidence, a multiverse, or software. Coincidence is stretching things since there are just so many dials that have to be set to a very narrow range. The multiverse appeals to probability statistics – think of those millions of monkeys at millions of typewriters one of whom will type “Hamlet” word-for-word – eventually. That leaves software, or in other words a Supreme Programmer programing our universe in a bio-friendly way. 

Q. Are there universes other than our own?

A. If you reject the supernatural and the software and coincidence, then you are left with the multiverse scenario to explain why we are here. We are in the one successful universe that produced that word-for-word typing of “Hamlet” by those millions of monkeys.

Q. What is the nature of dark matter?

A. Dark matter doesn’t actually exist. It is inferred only because the fallible Supreme Programmer made an ‘oops’ when programming the minimum required for the cosmic background wallpaper in our Simulated (Virtual Reality) Universe.

Q. Is the universe infinite in size, and if so, what exactly does that mean?

A. The universe is infinite in size solely on the philosophical grounds that one can always ask the question ‘what is beyond’ this barrier or at right angles to where I am. There always is a beyond, even if you have to postulate a higher dimension to get there, as it inhabitants of 2-D Flatland can escape by going into the third (higher) dimension that’s so familiar to us. In the Simulated (Virtual Reality) Universe scenario, well we’ve probably all seen computer/video games that have a wraparound feature. Something goes off the screen to the right or at the top and reappears at the left or at the bottom. That’s an infinite loop. To the inhabitants, it’s an infinite size where you can go round and round the mulberry bush for all eternity.

Q. Is there extraterrestrial life, and if so, how do we humans stand in comparison as regards intellectual capacity?

A. Given the vastness of the cosmos, and the sheer number of galaxies in the observable cosmos, and the numbers of stars per galaxy with associated solar systems and the number of planets per solar system not to mention possible rogue/orphan planets and how interstellar cosmic organic chemistry associated with life is, well, cosmic, etc., you would have to be pretty brave to bet the family farm arguing Planet Earth being the proverbial cosmic IT when it comes to life. Even going up the chain from the origin of life ‘living’ molecules to unicellular life to multicellular life to intelligent life to technologically advanced life forms and advocating extreme difficulty in getting from one step to the next step on up the line, there must be – if you’re a betting person – millions of advanced extraterrestrial civilizations throughout the cosmos and a goodly number in our galaxy too. Further, we humans are the new boys on the block, so the odds are that any other extraterrestrial intelligences will have been around way longer that we have, and thus have evolved greater intellectual capacity that we have yet achieved. However, the interesting bit is that once intelligence is achieved, natural selection gives way to artificial selection, and part of that artificial selection might ultimately be the transition from biological intelligence to artificial intelligence, artificial intelligence which will further evolve via artificial selection as machine intelligence designs ever better machine intelligences.

Q. How are we to account for the observed value of the dark energy?

A. There is only ‘dark energy’ if the Universe is really accelerating when it comes to the expansion rate of the Universe. Cosmologists had to invent some sort of explanation for this anomalous observation, so why not call it ‘dark energy’ even if they haven’t the foggiest idea what it actually is. Now you know, and I know, that the Universe cannot be expanding at an ever accelerating rate due to that little factor we all acknowledge called gravity. Gravity exists; so-called ‘dark energy’ is theoretical, ad hoc, an epicycle and iffy at best. An accelerating Universe is like your car going uphill at an ever faster and faster rate without you putting the pedal to the metal. I’m reasonably certain that what has been interpreted as the expansion rate of the Universe accelerating has some other explanation. Perhaps not all type 1A supernovae are really peas-in-a-pod and thus are not the standard candles we think they are. Perhaps the velocity of light isn’t a constant after all and changes over cosmic time. That would throw one heck of a monkey wrench into the scenario. So, ‘dark energy’ doesn’t have a value since the Universe isn’t really accelerating. If, however, the [Simulated] Universe really is accelerating, then that’s obvious evidence for our Supreme Programmer screwing up the cosmic background wallpaper software. It’s just an ‘oops’, an oversight in overlooking the consequences of programming this variable at this value instead of some other variable at some other variable.

Q. Does the density of the dark energy remain constant with time?

A. There is no ‘dark energy’ IMHO so the question has no relevance. However, if the value or density of the alleged ‘dark energy’ is allowed to vary over cosmic time, then one could just about explain any observation relating to any value of the expansion rate of the Universe.

Q. Is there a connection between today’s repulsion of the galaxy clusters and the period of inflation?

A. If there was such an animal as inflation that happened quick-smart and cheek-by-jowl with the Big Bang event, well some force or other had to be responsible for blowing up that cosmic balloon. Fast forward to today and we see galactic clusters moving away from each other as if each had a bad case of B.O. Again, there must be some force acting on these clusters repelling them. I though conventional wisdom put that down to the so-called ‘dark energy’ but if there really is a ‘dark energy’ and if there really was a repulsive force that drove what we allege was cosmic inflation, it might be odd if the two repulsive forces in question didn’t share some sort of physics ancestry assuming they aren’t exact clones.

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. 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. 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 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!

To be continued.



The Return of the Hidden Variable

There are many anomalies from the macro-world that can be ‘explained’ by resorting to a Simulated [Virtual Reality] Universe scenario, from statues that walk (on Easter Island according to the natives) to the concepts of an afterlife to those feelings of déjà vu to recollections of previous lives to crop ‘circles’ to ghosts, and so on and so forth. However, most of these anomalies can be classified as belonging to the paranormal or as a pseudoscience and dismissed. Not so easily dismissed are anomalies from hardcore particle (quantum) physics, the most experimentally verified science every known and responsible in gismos and gadgets for over one-third of the world’s economy.

The key to reality in general, including yours in particular, lies in the basics (i.e. – the Standard Model of Particle [Quantum] Physics) and how it builds from the ground up. That reality includes those anomalies and how they can be explained. It’s time to think the unthinkable, so here are a few more reasons why you might wish to consider our Universe to be pre-programmed virtual reality, where heaven knows, anything goes!

Further examples of simulation arguments if any more are necessary.       

* There’s the Pauli Exclusion Principle which notes that no two electrons can occupy the same ‘orbit’ if they have identical quantum numbers or quantum properties. Of course all electrons have the same mass and the same electric charge and the same energy (if they are in the same ‘orbit’) and if in the same ‘orbit’ the same angular momentum and orientation. Pauli came up with another property however that can differentiate between two electrons – ‘spin’. So if there is an electron in ‘orbit’ with one value of ‘spin’ and another electron with the same value of ‘spin’ tries to enter that ‘orbit’ it won’t be able to. If the electron has the opposite ‘spin’ however, then it’s allowed to join in that ‘orbit’. The question is, how does one electron ‘know’ or ‘sense’ what the ‘spin’ of a fellow electron is. That they apparently do is not in question, but it’s damn odd. Take two basketballs and place them close to each other. Spin one clockwise and the other counterclockwise. Neither basketball gives a royal stuff about what the other is doing!  

* Why are all the fundamental particles identical to each of their own kind? Aren’t all up-quarks the same? Aren’t all electron-neutrinos the same? In the macro world no two ‘identical’ products, inanimate or animate, are actually identical down to the Nth detail – not even identical twins. But in the micro world that’s not the case. All photons are identical, even when they have differing energy levels. All heavy hydrogen atoms are identical, ditto so are all those up-quarks or tau neutrinos. Why are all electrons identical? Why this should be so is not readily apparent from first principles on up the line. However, it’s easy to software code any particle, and whenever that code appears, you have an identical particle appear. 

* If something should be but isn’t (say equal amounts of matter and antimatter); or if something is and shouldn’t be (like entanglement’s spooky action at a distance), either is suggestive of artificial manipulation.

* The acceleration of the universe (Dark Energy) and Dark Matter are just the result of the Supreme Programmer not paying enough attention to the finer details when programming the software that serves as the cosmic background wallpaper. It makes sense to skimp on the bits and bytes when it comes to the background wallpaper, but that skimping can backfire.

* If I understand the standard model of cosmology, that Big Bang event, implies that first there was nothing; then there was something. That means the Big Bang event created both matter and energy out of less than thin air. That’s a free lunch. Fortunately, software has a starting point thus explaining the cosmic philosophy of some cosmologists that do indeed claim that first there was nothing; then there was something.

* That Big Bang event also created both time and space out of less than thin air. The day I see a cosmologist replicate that point of view by creating time and space in front of her professional peers (as well as a TV audience), I’ll change my tune. Meantime, IMHO it’s all bovine fertilizer, or software. 

* Apparently the density of Dark Energy remains constant while the volume of the Universe expands. That’s something from nothing. That’s also a free lunch. So how can Dark Energy create more space thus forcing space to expand and the resulting expanding space creating more Dark Energy since Dark Energy is an intrinsic property of space in an endless free lunch loop?

* Apparently, when faced with an energy barrier, particles that lack sufficient energy to surmount the barrier in classical physics, can ‘tunnel’ past the barrier and come out the other side. Now the upshot of that is that this tunneling happens instantaneously. The particle is on the left hand side of the barrier then immediately tunnels and appears on the right hand side of the barrier – instantaneously. Now quantum tunneling implies a velocity faster than the speed of light, which if true would have Einstein spitting chips. Something is screwy somewhere.

* When an electron rises or falls from one energy level to another, when in-between the electron is in limbo, in Never-Never-Land, in The Twilight Zone, in another dimension for all we know. It just can’t be anywhere that’s locatable in-between for if it was – in-between that is – it would possess an in-between energy state that it is not allowed to have. How does an electron vanish from the cosmos or go into a state of non-existence when quantum jumping from one energy state to another?

* Traditional wave-particle duality is according to one interpretation a complementary but either/or phenomenon. Sometimes light/particle experiments show results that prove a pure 100% wave phenomena is responsible; sometimes however other light/particle experiments show results that prove a pure 100% particles phenomena is the only possible interpretation. I’ve also oft seen it described that at point of origin and at the point of detection, you observe a particle. In-between emission and detection it’s a wave. That doesn’t make a great deal of sense unless there is a higher power (a Supreme Programmer) pulling the strings – or programming the program.

* Symmetry holds in 11 out of 12 cases – four forces (electromagnetism, gravity, and the strong and the weak nuclear forces) times three symmetry operations (time, charge and parity) with only the parity of the weak force being the odd one out. There’s something screwy somewhere!

* Entanglement (Spooky action at a distance): Pick and remove a card from a standard deck. Don’t look at it. Bury it in a time capsule. Send the rest of the unobserved deck of 51 cards via rocket ship off to the Andromeda Galaxy. Leave instructions. Generations upon generations later, with the deck of 51 safely in the Great Galaxy of Andromeda, you’re great, great, great (add lots more greats) grand-person can dig up and look at lone card in the time capsule. Say it is the Ace of Diamonds. You do not now need to observe the rest of the original deck in Andromeda to know 1) it contains 51 cards, and 2) that it is missing the Ace of Diamonds! That’s entanglement. And entanglement is something that Einstein called ‘spooky action at a distance’ because you can come by information/knowledge instantaneously – faster than the speed of light. Thus, Einstein was not amused!

* Though bordering on the fringe, some bona-fide astronomers strongly suggest from actual observation that the extreme large-scale structure of the cosmos exhibits a fractal pattern (and there is some extensive literature on the subject). To me however, fractals are primarily a mathematical construction; the product of a mathematical mind, and as such, if there is a fractal cosmos, that’s very strong evidence for a Supreme Programmer. 

It’s just about time here to cite Arthur C. Clarke’s Third Law, which notes that “any sufficiently advanced technology (i.e. – a Supreme Programmer, for example) is indistinguishable from [quantum physics] magic”. 



Virtual Reality: The Simulated Universe: Part One

There really is a really real cosmos that has spawned an extraterrestrial intelligent civilization, or is home to our future descendents, or contains a dreamer, any of which has created a simulated universe that includes us as virtual reality occupants. In support of this, I postulate that the following are suggestive signs – evidence, not proof – of this idea. It all evolves around my observations that when it comes to the cosmos and human affairs, something is screwy somewhere.

THE COSMIC CONNECTION

* If someone (or something) were to create a simulated ‘universe’ called something like “The Life and Times of the Third Rock Outbound from Sol”, in of course incredibly realistic detail, one could probably skimp on the software programming that give rise to the details for the rest of that simulated cosmos – the Universe perceived by the virtual beings of that Third Rock. Why spend unnecessary bits and bytes creating a super realistic Andromeda Galaxy all those ‘light years’ away?

Modern cosmology seems to be at a stage now that the Solar System went through in terms of coming to terms with its construction. Way back then, to explain the motions of all the planets that (obviously) went around the Earth (being the centre of all things), epicycles, and epicycles within epicycles, and epicycles within epicycles within epicycles had to be postulated until the who concept became so unwieldy that it collapsed in a heap. Copernicus picked up the bits and pieces and put the Sun in the centre and put the Earth going around the Sun with all the other (known) planets and then things simplified vastly and all fell into place without the need for any epicycles at all (though Einstein still had some final tweaking to do, but that was minor).

Modern cosmology seems to be full of ad hoc epicycles. We have the observation of an expanding Universe that requires explanation. Epicycle number one, the original explanation – a Big Bang 13.7 billion years ago kick-started things off, though the energy source isn’t explained. That left some anomalies unexplained so ad hoc epicycle number two – a violent super-burst of explosive inflation immediately post Big Bang which apparently can come, like Heinz, in some 57 varieties. Okay, inflation started up and shut down just as quickly but it covers the anomalies that the Big Bang doesn’t. But then comes another anomaly, the expansion rate of the Universe is accelerating, and the collective oomph from the Big Bang and inflation isn’t enough oomph. The Universe should in fact be decelerating under the influence of gravity. So, ad hoc epicycle number three – Dark Energy. Dark Energy provides that keep-on-keeping-on additional oomph and keeps the Universe’s pedal to the metal. Unfortunately, nobody has the foggiest idea what Dark Energy actually is which is strange since Dark Energy should be everywhere, even inside your living room, so it shouldn’t be that hard to gather some up and put it on the lab’s slab and figure it out! 

The Big Bang has a couple of other epicycles attached as baggage. The first one imposed on the Big Bang is entropy, which is a measure of order vs. disorder. Low entropy is orderly; high entropy is disorderly. There are vastly more ways of something being in a state of disorder than order, as any parent knows when it comes to the state of their child’s bedroom. Left to natural forces (including the kid), a neat and tidy bedroom will ‘decay’ into a chaotic mess. That’s also an illustration of the arrow of time. Eggs do not unscramble. Unless you deliberately thwart entropy locally (tidy up the messy bedroom), but at the cost of increasing entropy elsewhere, time goes from neat past to messy future. Like the bedroom, the Universe too has an arrow of time and the Universe too is getting more, more and ever messier as it slides into increasing disorder. That means ‘in the beginning’ (the Big Bang), the Universe started off neat as a pin. But, that doesn’t follow of necessity. Which is more likely – any number of possible disordered piles of bricks and timber, or an orderly constructed house? There are vastly more ways of having an ‘in the beginning’ that was messy than one that was neat and tidy. Yet against all probability, ‘in the beginning’ was pristine. That’s so unlikely that cosmologists have to postulate and accept that ad hoc epicycle of low entropy ‘in the beginning’. 

The Big Bang also requires a epicycle called quantum gravity because existing equations trying to describe the structure and substance of the creation event, crumble into dust when faced with a realm that is (allegedly) tiny (that’s the quantum bit) and yet has immense gravity (a Universe worth of gravity). Unfortunately, to get a theory of quantum gravity requires the marriage between quantum physics and general relativity. The potential bride and bridegroom however are not, and never have been, on speaking terms. So, quantum gravity (that epicycle required for the Big Bang to bang), has remained elusive despite generations of scientific effort trying to figure it out. However, that highly theoretical mathematical concept called string theory can come to terms with quantum gravity, but it has its own ad hoc epicycle burden to bear. String theory requires an additional six spatial dimensions, which IMHO is utter bovine fertilizer. So round and round we go with no actual tail being pinned on the donkey.

But that’s not the end of the ad hoc epicycles. Apparently the galaxies are rotating too fast for the amount of gravity belonging to objects that astronomer’s can see, like stars. The galaxies should have long since flown apart, their stars, planets, dust and gas scattered throughout space. So, ad hoc epicycle number four – Dark Matter. Dark Matter is postulated to have gravity, enough gravity to hold the galaxies together and prevent them from flying apart. Okay, but Dark Matter doesn’t interact with the electromagnetic force (nor apparently the strong nuclear force), so it doesn’t emit or reflect light (or photons of any wavelength) so we can’t see it. Dark Matter is actually invisible matter. Unfortunately, no matter that we can deal with has those sorts of properties. Now like Dark Energy, Dark Matter has go to be present in your living room too so it too shouldn’t be that hard to gather some up and put it on the lab’s slab and figure it out! Now all of that wouldn’t be that serious were it not for calculations that suggest that Dark Energy plus Dark Matter make up 95% of the Universe, and we haven’t a clue what that 95% is.

Resolution: Perhaps all the anomalies that the (standard model) Big Bang, inflation, Dark Energy and Dark Matter have been postulated to explain, are merely examples of lax software programming in filling in the nitty-gritty details of the Universe associated with “The Life and Times of the Third Rock Outbound from Sol”.         

To be continued…

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!

Reality: Mother Nature Is A Bitch

Coming to terms with your reality is hard enough under ordinary circumstances, but Mother Nature’s a bitch and likes to baffle us with one hand in the observed reality this-is-nuts cookie jar while giving us with the other hand her middle finger by ignoring a more theoretical alternate reality common sense cookie jar, just to make life difficult and hard to understand for us mere mortals.

There are seemingly zillions of things that are theoretically proposed yet which makes no sense in our reality. The classic modern example is String Theory which requires six additional spatial dimensions apart from latitude (north-south), longitude (east-west or left-right) and altitude (up-down) you are familiar with. But there’s also a whole pot-load full of observations and experimental reality which equally makes no sense.

Some parts of reality have been demonstrated to death as reality yet as Mr. Spock would have it, are illogical.

For example, there is a trilogy of generations of the elementary particles. For example, there’s the electron, the heavier muon (father or son to the electron) and the even heavier tau (the electron’s grandfather or grandson). Now you’d think their relative masses would bear some sort of logical relationship like 1,2,3 units or 1,2,4 units or 1,3,9 units. But no, it’s all ad hoc like numbers determined by three spins of the roulette wheel though with vastly more numbers. Now this wouldn’t be too bad if the muon and the tau particle actually did anything. They can be created, but they decay and go ‘poof’ so quickly that they play no active role in any reality dealing with life, the universe and everything. This is the first impossible reality, or an alternate reality, you need to accept before being served breakfast.

There’s matter or mass that interacts with electromagnetism, the sort of stuff we know and deal with every day. You are that sort of matter. But, reality also has it that there is matter or mass that does NOT interact with electromagnetism, like light. You can’t see this matter. It’s invisible matter. It’s called Dark Matter. If you had a ‘basketball’ made out of Dark Matter and it was a foot in front of your face, you couldn’t see it even in a brightly lit room. That’s nuts. This is the second impossible reality, another alternate reality, you need to accept before being served breakfast.

Dark Matter makes up roughly 23% of our universe, but that doesn’t mean that 77% of the universe is composed of I’m-made-of-that normal matter. In fact only 4% of the universe is normal stuff. The remaining 73% of the universe’s stuff is Dark Energy. You can’t see Dark Energy either, but then again you can’t see most forms of normal energy either so that in itself does make Dark Energy any sort of an alternative non-intuitive reality. Why Dark Energy belongs in the realm of alternate reality is that it’s a ‘free lunch’; it’s something-from-nothing. That’s because although the Universe is expanding, its volume is getting bigger, the density of Dark Energy remains the same. Translated, as time goes by, the Universe contains more and more of Dark Energy. Where does it come from? Apparently it originates out of even less than thin air. This is the third impossible reality you need to accept before being served breakfast.

When you look around your room at all of the familiar objects contained therein, you pretty much think of stability. The objects don’t pop in and out of existence willy-nilly; all of the bits and pieces that make up the objects equally don’t pop in and out of existence willy-nilly. If you put one of your knick-knacks on a weighing scale, the weight stays constant. That’s reality. Alas, at the micro level, the quantum level, bits and pieces do just that – they pop in and out of existence seeming at random. They’re called ‘virtual particles’ since they don’t stick around long enough to contribute anything to your nick-knacks. They originate from the vacuum energy; the quantum jitters. The guts of the phenomena are that all space is permutated by energy. There’s no such thing as an absolutely pure vacuum. Energy can be converted to mass. When that happens, two virtual particles are created, equal and opposite – one matter, the other its antimatter counterpart. They quickly recombine, go poof, and return the energy borrowed to create them in the first place back to the vacuum energy bank vault. So, you have solid reality – you have nebulous virtual reality. This is the fourth impossible reality you need to accept before being served breakfast.

  

The observed value for the vacuum energy, confirmed by experiment, and the predicted or theoretical value for the vacuum energy differ by 120 orders of magnitude, so real reality and theoretical reality are on near opposite sides of the universe! Mother Nature has a sense of humour. This discrepancy is the fifth impossible reality you need to accept before being served breakfast.

Matter-Antimatter is one of those reality symmetries beloved by physicists. Theory predicts, indeed demands that at the moment of creation (that Big Bang event) matter and antimatter would be formed in equal amounts. Unfortunately for physicists, but fortunately for you, other life, the universe and everything, there’s not a heck of a lot of antimatter around. Why? Who knows? It’s the case of the missing antimatter: whodunit? It’s like tossing a balanced coin a zillion times and coming up with a zillion matter heads and no antimatter tails - Something’s screwy somewhere. This is the sixth impossible reality you need to accept before being served breakfast.

Gravity reality and quantum reality exist as two separate and apart realities. There’s no doubting the reality of each. However, as both are part and parcel of our natural Universe, you’d think that there would have to be some reality connection between the two. There’s not. To unify the two is the Holy Grail of physics; a Nobel Prize is a certainty for accomplishing it. Alas, it appears that flapping your arms and flying to the Moon is a more realistic objective. This is the seventh impossible reality you need to accept before being served breakfast.

Wave-particle duality is one of those quantum realities that quantum physicists tear their hair out about because it just doesn’t jive with real reality where bullets don’t wave all over the place and sound waves don’t behave like bowling balls. To make a very long story short, little fundamental particle bullets, like electrons, when fired at a target with a barrier but also with an opening in front pass through the opening and impact the target in just one place: so far, so good. However, when these little electron bullets are fired at the same target, with the same barrier in front, only now with two openings, the impacted target shows a smear of  areas of high impacts (plural) alternating with areas of near zero impacts – a classic wave interference pattern. This also happens when the electron bullets are fired at the double set of holes in front of the target one at a time! It’s like the electrons ‘know’ when there’s just one hole, or two holes in front of the target, and change their behavior from bullets to waves accordingly. Thus, the description of wave-particle duality since particles behave like waves and waves can behave like particles.  This is the eighth impossible reality you need to accept before being served breakfast.

The observed speed of light is constant – 186,000 miles per second. That in itself isn’t so bad, except the speed of light is REALLY constant and that is counter intuitive based on everyday experiences where velocities can be added and subtracted. If a train is moving eastwards at 100 miles per hour, and someone on the train throws a baseball at 100 miles per hour in an eastwards direction, an observer on the outside railway platform will clock the baseball as moving at a velocity of 200 miles per hour in an eastwards direction. If the baseball is thrown westward at 100 miles per hour, the outside observer will see the baseball apparently standing still and floating in midair as the train thunders past. If you now substitute a light beam for the baseball, when beamed eastwards you’d think the beam’s velocity would be 186,000 miles per second plus the 100 miles per hour of the train, and if pointed westwards the velocity would be 186,000 miles per second minus the 100 miles per hour of the train as viewed by that person on the railway platform. Negative! The beam of light viewed from inside the train, outside the train, or from a jet plane in the distance will be 186,000 miles per second. Now that’s a constant! Unfortunately, the counterintuitive aspects don’t stop there. To accommodate that quirk, something else has to bend, and that something is actually a trilogy: to an external observer, as you increase your velocity your mass increases; as you increase your velocity your length shrinks; as you increase your velocity time (rate of change) slows down. So, if you could travel at the speed of light, your mass would be infinite; your length would be zero; and time would stop for you. That’s why you can’t travel at the speed of light. All of this has been absolutely verified by experiment, but still, it’s the ninth impossible reality you need to accept before getting your breakfast.   

The Twin Paradox: Following on from the above, say you have a twin sister. Say you decide to boldly go and take an interstellar voyage to some stellar system thousands of light years away, travelling at velocities some considerable fraction of the speed of light. Your twin sister stays put on Terra Firma. Because you’re going closer to light speed than your stay-at-home twin, time passes at a slower rate for you. So by the time you return home, though you still are relatively young, say still of childbearing age, your twin sister might now be a great grandmother!  It’s a form of time travel to the future at a faster rate than just getting there the usual way, at one second per second. And so it’s the tenth (and for now last) impossible reality you need to accept before getting your breakfast.   

A Multiverse of Braneworlds: Part Two

For millennia, New Age devotees have related observations of nebulous exotic entities from apparently alternative realities like Parallel Universes that have made a crossover into our reality. Rational people suggest that’s just so much bovine fertilizer. Or is it? Perhaps theoretical physics and String Theory might just support such an exotic scenario, the scenario of the Braneworld.  

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

Anomalies aside, another 3-Braneworld could be, well millimeters away from our 3-Braneworld along with their ‘shadow entities’ or ‘higher beings’ or ‘aliens’ and we’d never know it except through their gravitational contribution, what we call ‘Dark Matter’ which, because it doesn’t actually exist  in our own 3-Baneworld universe, can never have its identity ‘discovered’ in our labs or high-energy particle accelerators like CERN’s Large Hadron Collider.

It should be pointed out that even though two 3-Braneworlds could be millimeters apart, they are not intersecting, just as your home and your next door neighbor’s home don’t overlap. 

So another question obviously arises. If our 3-Braneworld in that five dimensional space-time Bulk is in extremely close proximity to another 3-Braneworld also in that five dimensional space-time Bulk, and there’s gravity twixt them and us, well, what happens when two 3-Braneworlds collide in the higher dimensional Bulk?

If two 3-Braneworlds are attached by sharing gravity via those open strings, then they in fact can collide. It’s our Big Bang event of 13.7 billion years ago explained. The Big Bang was just a massive supply of kinetic energy supplied at one location; one set of coordinates, caused by our 3-Braneworld impacting another 3-Braneworld at that one specific point. The two 3-Braneworlds then rebounded, but of course could collide again at a later (unpredictable) date. It’s an interesting variation on the concept of a Cyclic Universe.

The standard 3-Braneworld model likens them to very flat and thin rubbery membrane sheets parallel to each other, sort of like thin LP albums cheek-by-jowl with only tiny separations between them on a shelf. They can approach (under gravity), collide (not everywhere at once as they are not 100% mirror smooth due to random quantum fluctuations if nothing else) then rebound. I think that’s imposing a rather artificial and rigid set of conditions though I gather if you crunch the numbers two membrane thin and parallel 3-Braneworlds are the most likely and stable geometric configuration you can get (but I still think that’s unsatisfactory). Normally when you think of something like the Universe, and something that’s expanding, you think of round things – not flattish membrane sheets. So how about an elastic balloon-ball analogy?

Say we have two 3-D elastic balloon-balls in 4-D ‘space’ (I think they actually call this hyperspace as well as the Bulk) or a five dimensional space-time realm. There could in reality be a dozen 3-Braneworld balloon-balls all in close proximity, but two’s enough for now to illustrate things. These 3-D elastic balloon-balls in collision can expand and contract and ripple, though they remain tethered together by those spring-like interbrane forces (those open string gravitons).

Each 3-Braneworld balloon-ball has a mix of radiation, matter and Dark Energy which dominates that balloon-ball in turn as the 3-Braneworld evolves cyclically by experiencing a collision, the Big Bang; an expansion; dilution of each component element in turn – otherwise called entropy; cooling; and contraction back to its original state ready for another collision and Big Bang. That term entropy is nothing more than the concept that order tends towards disorder, or in other words, all that original high ordered radiation, matter and Dark Energy becomes more disordered and all ends up ultimately as a uniform but very dilute ‘soup’ until the next injection of kinetic energy – the next collision and Big Bang in an endless cycle.

So, the story thus far: Two 3-Braneworld balloon-balls in higher dimensional space-time (the Bulk, which isn’t a static ‘observer’ but an active participant in these events), slowly, ever so slowly start to gravitate towards each other, slowing but surely picking up speed over time. Okay, so they approach each other under their joint mutual gravitational attraction. They hit (that’s our Big Bang); they ring or reverberate like a bell; they compress and each balloon-ball heats up die to that initial compression and expands; the two balloon-balls rebound but quickly slow, stop and set the evolving conditions in each balloon-ball recycle back for a repeat performance.

Another way of putting that evolution is that the kinetic energy of motion resulting in the Big Bang event at time and point of collision was converted to radiation, matter and Dark Energy which then dilutes over time as the 3-Braneworld expands, finally cools, slows down, contracts back to it’s original balloon-ball configuration.

Those extra-dimensional spring-like dynamics keeps the 3-Braneworlds apart but tethered though both are individually expanding or contracting or rippling and both are on the rebound from the other. When things settle down, and maximum entropy rules the roost, they can come together again still connected to its neighboring counterpart by those open graviton strings.

Fly-In-The-Ointment #1: Even if other entities are just millimeters away in their 3-Brane Universe, they are as separated from us by the five-dimensional space-time Bulk as we are from them. How can they use gravity to get from their 3-Braneworld to its next door neighbor 3-Braneworld (that’s us) through higher dimensional space-time? One can’t just hike across gravity like it was a bridge. There’s gravity between the Earth and the Moon but you can’t walk-the-walk between the two.

How then does an otherworld, a 3-Braneworld ET or the ‘higher beings’ that exist there get to our 3-Braneworld and then appear as those New Age ‘shadow beings’ from those mystic Never-Never Lands they like to go on, and on, and on about? Well, about the only viable scenario I can think of is excessive gravity translates into Black Holes which can, in theory, translate into Wormholes (for lack of a better word or concept) and Wormholes can be used, in theory, as a transit system. On the plus side, entities intelligent enough to manipulate gravity to create a wormhole transit system with entrance and exit portals will have no need of intergalactic or interstellar spaceships and million year journeys.

Fly-In-The-Ointment #2: String Theory, Branes (“p” or otherwise), the Bulk (or hyperspace), etc. well it’s all just pure (and highly technical) mathematical theory. There’s not one shred of experimental evidence; there’s not one single run on the board that Strings and Branes exist. Till some theoretical physicist turns experimental physicist and hits a homerun, well I’m afraid all of the above will have to reside in New Age La-La Land, however fascinating the scenarios are.

Natural Philosophy: Some Random Thoughts

There’s nothing too controversial about the idea that other universes in a Multiverse could have differing laws, relationships and principles of physics than our own. It’s one way of explaining why our Universe is a Goldilocks Universe. If you have billions and billions of universes each with a unique or differing set of laws, relationships and principles of physics, well probability suggests that one universe should just right for life – a Goldilocks Universe. Since we can only exist inside a Goldilocks Universe, well that explains that. But what if the laws, relationships and principles of physics in our Universe changed over time, or over space, or both! Then it’s probably time to turn out the lights, shut and lock the lab door and go home. It’s time to find a new career. But amazingly, there is (controversial) evidence that that is just that. Physical constants aren’t. 

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If whatever powers-that-be are simulating our universe, then they could be simulating others as well – a simulated Multiverse! And each and every simulated universe of that Multiverse could have simulated parallel universes. That’s a simulated Megaverse!

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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.

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You are all no doubt well aware of the General Theory of Relativity which holds that light (in a pure vacuum) always travels at constant velocity (300,000 km/sec), no matter what frame of reference you are viewing that light in – totally contrary to experience and expectations, but true nevertheless. That translates into length and mass and rate-of-change (time) all being variables, variations depending on what frame of reference you are in. Light of course is one manifestation of the electromagnetic force. That suggests to me that magnetism must also propagate at 300,000 km/sec. Two north magnetic poles or one north and one south magnetic pole, suddenly brought into existence, 300,000 km apart, won’t feel any mutual repulsion or attraction respectfully until one-half of one second after-the-fact, when the two forces meet in the middle and start doing their thing.

But that constant speed of a force, must equally apply to gravity. If the Sun were to suddenly in a split of a split of a split second vanish, it would be eight minutes before Planet Earth would be rudderless, or rather orbitless. No matter what your frame of reference, you’d ‘see’ gravity propagate outwards at 300,000 km/sec. The same must apply to ‘dark energy’, that anti-gravity force. I imagine the same would apply to the propagation of the strong and the week nuclear force as well.

Of course one cannot turn on and turn off gravity (or the strong and weak nuclear forces) like you can a light (or radio, UV, IR, etc.) beam or magnetic field, which is a bit of a bummer in testing the relativistic properties of a gravity beam.

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Quantum physicist Erwin Schrodinger had a lot of trouble accepting some of the weirder philosophical concepts inherent in quantum physics. Specifically, that something, a fundamental particle like an electron, could both be, and not be, at the same time – in a state of superposition – that was only resolved when an observation or measurement was made. Schrodinger decided to replace the electron with a cat-in-a-box that was in a superposition of states being both dead and alive at the same time, the resolution of either/or decided when an observer actually observed the cat-in-the-box.

Now my idea is to replace the cat-in-the-box with you-in-a-sealed-room in a 50/50 dead/alive state of superposition. To someone not in the room, you are both dead and alive at the same time – until they take a peek in your room and at you. The question is, you know perfectly well you are not both dead and alive at the same time; you are your own observer. Presumably the cat is its own observer, and by extension an electron is its own observer. But how can an electron be self-aware? 

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Gravity; it’s what holds you firmly to Terra Firma. If I ask you what holds you firmly to Terra Firma you’d answer “gravity”. But if then asked to explain exactly what it is and how it works you’d be stumped. Giving the Newtonian equations makes predictions but doesn’t give explanations.

However, there are two explanations for gravity if I read the textbooks correctly.

Gravity Is Just Another Force: Firstly, there are in this worldview four fundamental forces: the electromagnetic force, the strong and weak nuclear forces, and gravity. Forces have accompanying elementary particles witch convey the force. In the case of the electromagnetic force, the particle is the photon. The particle associated with gravity has been dubbed the graviton. Unfortunately, it has never (to date) been detected. Now the central issue here is try as they might, physicists cannot unify the four forces into one whole, called a Theory of Everything or TOE*. Since everything should be related to everything else, gravity should be, if not a brother or sister to the other three force-related siblings, at least a kissing cousin. Alas, it’s an unrelated hermit that wants no ancestry with the other three.

Gravity Is Just the Geometry of Space-Time: The second is that mass ‘tells’ space-time how to warp, and warped space-time ‘tells’ mass how to move – seemingly experimentally verified more than several times over. The movement of mass in warped space-time is what we interpret as the ‘force of gravity’, but gravity is actually the actions of mass moving in space-time geometry. If gravity is just geometry and mass deviates from the straight and narrow path because lots of other mass has warped space-time from the flatland Great Plains to the peaks and valleys of the space-time Rockies, then there’s no apparent need or reason that I can see to unify gravity with the other forces and their particles. There is no graviton. If there is no causality link with the other three (quantum level) forces, there’s no need for a TOE. There’s no need to reconcile the 98 pound of weakling gravity with the Atlas physiques of electromagnetism, etc. 

Gravity is highly anomalous. Apart from the fact that gravity is the 98 pound weakling of all the forces (you can pull a paperclip up into the air with just a tiny magnet even though the entire Planet Earth’s gravity is tugging back); and that the graviton hasn’t been spotted anywhere, anytime, anyhow; and that TOE is a no-go; but lastly there are those cosmic twin anomalies, Dark Matter and Dark Energy.

We can’t see, or even detect directly, 96% of the Universe! We have no idea what 96% of the Universe is composed of. If that’s not anomalous, I don’t know what is. Both however have revealed themselves indirectly via their gravity (in the case of Dark Matter) or their antigravity (in the case of Dark Energy). Some of that ‘missing’ part of the Universe is matter of unknown composition, but like all good matter, has gravity. It’s the gravitational effect on matter we can see that gives the game away. Some more (way more) of that ‘missing’ part of the cosmos is Dark Energy which is that unknown stuff which is accelerating the expansion rate of the Universe and if that’s not anomalous, I don’t know what is since by rights the expansion rate of the Universe should be decelerating under the force of gravity. The fact that it’s accelerating suggests that Dark Energy is a form of antigravity, a repulsive force driving things apart at ever faster and faster rates. Though antigravity is really outside the accepted realm of physics (though not sci-fi), there is a symmetrical parallel with the electromagnetic force, which is both attractive like gravity (north pole to south pole) and repulsive (north pole to north pole, or south pole to south pole).

So, gravitational anomalies abound.

*The exception is that the highly theoretical (read purely mathematical) String Theory, Superstring Theory or M-Theory can produce a TOE. The downside is that it takes a whole potful of highly theoretical (read purely mathematical) extra dimensions of which we have no awareness of and can’t (yet) detect. That’s just a bit too ad hoc for me, though many a theoretical physicist goes to sleep by counting their strings instead of their sheep.

Our Simulated Universe: Part Three

Introduction: You don’t exist! I don’t exist either! At least we don’t exist in the way that we think we do. We’re simulated beings, maybe wetware simulated (as in someone else’s dream), more likely as not software simulated, like the characters in a video game.

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

What’s the Best Piece of Evidence? If the Universe and all it contains; its physics (relationships, principles, laws, etc.), were created by either Mother Nature (i.e. – naturally) or via an all-knowing, all-powerful, creator God (i.e. – supernaturally), then presumably everything physics would mesh/interlock and be comprehensible, understandable, with no paradoxes, contradictions, anomalies, etc. Translated, one Universe, one set of hardware; contains just one set of unified physics, one set of software. Now your computer hardware runs on not one, but many sets of software – various functions; various sets of software. So, is the Universe like the way the Universe should be, or is it more akin to your computer programs? Unfortunately, the Universe is like your computer. The Universe’s physics contains two programs; two sets of software. They don’t mesh/interlock; they can not be unified; they are not compatible. Its relativity (macro) software; its quantum mechanics (micro) software and never the twain shall meet. The two are like your basic square peg in a round hole. That’s a flawed creation – it’s an ‘Oops #3’ (see above) – the work of a flawed creator, like of the flesh-and-blood kind. The sort that churns out video game programs – like a Supreme Simulator.

There are other anomalies that physical sciences are having a hard time coming to terms with – that is, explaining them. For example, the concept of ‘dark matter’ must exist in order to explain the rotation and structure of galaxies. However, no one can see this ‘dark matter’. ‘Dark matter’ doesn’t interact with any part of the electromagnetic (EM) spectrum, yet it has gravity. There’s also about five times more ‘dark matter’ in the Universe than there is ordinary matter – ordinary matter is the kind of matter that has gravity and does interact with the EM spectrum, things like you and I and Planet Earth. “Dark matter’ has been in vogue for decades now, yet no one has a real clue what it is – if it is. Maybe it’s simulated.

Then there’s ‘dark energy’. If ordinary matter and ‘dark matter’ make up about a quarter of the mass/energy content of the Universe, ‘dark energy’ makes up the other 75%. And we haven’t the foggiest idea what ‘dark energy’ is. The apparent detection of ‘dark energy’ is over a decade old now. This concept has been introduced to explain why the expansion rate of our Universe is accelerating, contrary to all expectations (the expansion rate should be decelerating because of the Universe’s gravity). So ‘dark energy’ is apparently a kind of antigravity that’s stronger than ordinary gravity that nobody understands, not the least of which is that the expansion of space itself produces ever more ‘dark energy’, ‘dark energy’ being a property of space itself. More space means more ‘dark energy’. That’s like the concept of the ‘free lunch’ and since when can energy be created out of nothing? That’s a violation of the basic physic’s principle of the conservation of matter and energy. So, how weird is the concept of antigravity created out of nothing – just expanding space? Now simulation is also weird!

Basically some 96% of the entire Universe consists of ‘dark matter’ and ‘dark energy’ and nobody has any idea what they are. They are at the present, just labels. The idea that this is all simulated makes about as much sense as anything any physicist has dreamed up to account of this 96% of the cosmos. And of course if 96% is simulated, then no doubt 100% is – including you and I and Planet Earth.

Apart from the above observed anomalies, our simulated Universe theory is also potentially testable. While I can think of no way to prove I’m not a simulated being, one can find evidence that we do live in a simulated universe, and by implication that we too are simulated beings.  No computer software is perfect. Computer software – from our experience – is always being upgraded / updated. If the same applies elsewhere, we could perhaps notice it if we’re a product of that software. So, if there are any software upgrades, they might be detectable as anomalous phenomena in some context or another. Like say one of the physical constants were tweaked and altered ever so slightly (and there is some evidence for that – the fine structure constant for example has apparently changed over astronomical time periods). If physical constants aren’t – constant that is – but variable, then we got troubles with a capital T.

One of the, no, in fact THE most fundamental bedrock of all cosmology is that the physics of the universe are the same everywhere. If that’s not the case, and apparently it’s not seeing as how there’s evidence that the fine structure constant doesn’t have the same value in all parts of the cosmos, then cosmologists are forced to go back to square one. Nothing in terms of what the universe is and what governs it can now be taken anymore as gospel.

Can you really imagine either a supernatural God or a natural Mother Nature creating a cosmos where the physics therein aren’t uniform? If your answer is ‘no’, then you are nearly forced into accepting a third alternative – the universe as we know it is a simulation by a hardly all powerful flesh and blood (supreme simulator). Since the value of the fine structure constant is critical in terms of the Universe being bio-friendly, if it’s not constant, then parts of the Universe are bio-unfriendly. So our Supreme Simulator is apparently happy to create a software detailed pocket of bio-friendly universe within a far larger software un-friendly cosmos. That makes sense to create a small pocket of the simulation to be bio-friendly and just have the rest of the bio-unfriendly Universe simulated by way less sophisticated software as a sort of background wallpaper to the bio-friendly part.

The Multitudes of You: If we exist via a simulation, there of course could exist in turn more than one copy of that simulation; lots, and lots, and lots of copies. If so, there’s more than one copy of you. It’s a kind of parallel universe scenario. The saving grace is that you don’t ever get to meet yourself!

What Are the Odds I’m A Simulated Entity? I think it’s fair to say that based on the level of sophistication of my simulation scenario, you and I aren’t part of a dream, or someone else’s overactive imagination, nor a terrestrial computer software package. So, no terrestrial Supreme Simulator has created us. The possible exception to that observation is the assumption that the simulation that creates us is the product of the terrestrial 20^th or 21^st Century. Of course it’s possible that our simulator is in the terrestrial 30^th or 31^st Century. The simulation’s time period doesn’t have to reflect the same time period as that of the simulator. That aside however, and assuming a non-terrestrial origin, that leaves the rest of the Universe and an extraterrestrial(s) Supreme Simulator(s).

The apparent bottom line, using Planet Earth’s supposed reality as a guide, is that any one real world and real inhabitants can create, wetware and software combined, more, vastly more, nearly infinitely more, simulated worlds and inhabitants with varying degrees of complexity and duration. How many dreams (or active mentally imagined scenarios) have humanity collectively racked up? How many video games have been, are now, and will be on the market? Certainly it’s way more than just one. So, one real world and just one real entity can ultimately create hundreds (maybe thousands plus) of simulated worlds and hundreds (maybe thousands plus) of simulated entities. If that logic applies to Planet Earth’s supposed reality and her actual simulation (wetware and software) packages, then what of those extraterrestrial abodes and advanced civilizations? If there are hundreds, thousands, maybe millions of extraterrestrial technological advanced civilizations out there and each create hundreds, thousands, maybe millions of simulated worlds and beings, well, what odds we’re one of the rare real worlds relative to the massive number of simulated ones?

To be continued…

Dark Energy: The Ultimate Free Lunch

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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