Show Me The Evidence!

You will find many claims in science and religious texts that this, that and the next thing is 100% factual and true. Usually, in science at least, those claims are backed up by hard evidence, peer reviewed, and published for the entire world to read and examine. However, that’s not always the case. Claims are sometimes made that such-and-such is factual, but there’s no supporting evidence, which a) wouldn’t be so bad if that were admitted, and b) if those failing to give their evidence didn’t demand hardcore evidence from others for their claims.  

Scientists and science buffs have a near religious mantra when it comes to the claims of what they term the pseudo-sciences, pseudo-scientists and pseudoscience buffs. That mantra is “show me the evidence”; Show Me The Evidence”; “SHOW ME THE EVIDENCE” - And rightly so. In general it is a good step in the advancement of knowledge to require some minimum amount of evidence when someone making a claim that has a good probability of being wrong.

But there’s a whole pot-full of scientific claims (and for completeness, religious claims) that’s given as unquestioned ‘fact’ albeit ‘fact’ with no supporting evidence at hand. These are ‘facts’ taken on pure faith. These ‘facts’ are presented by the faithful, in whatever discipline(s) their ‘facts’ reside in or belong to, as, well ‘facts’ yet offer up nothing in the way of evidence supporting these ‘facts’.

THE DOUBLE STANDARDS

So, it is a double standard to demand evidence from someone else’s bailiwick (say from so-called pseudoscience or the paranormal) while not presenting any evidence for your bailiwick (the sciences; religion).   

In other words, there’s often a double standard, probably linked to one half of the equation having an entry ticket to the ivory tower and the other half of the equation excluded from the ivory tower. Scientists (ivory tower resident) preaching to the layman (not ivory tower resident), usually present less evidence for their convictions than they demand in turn from the layman for their convictions or worldviews.

For example:

The Catholic Church probably demands some quite definitive and sufficient evidence of a miracle as claimed by Joe Faithful, but expects Joe Faithful to swallow hook, line and sinker stories (mythological tall tales IMHO) of a virgin birth, a deity who walks on water, and that Christmas is the actual birthday of Jesus.

It’s no great secret that some scientists believe in the reality of a creator God. Yet while they will accept God-the-Creator based on zero evidence, they will demand solid slab-in-the-lab physical evidence from their peers (not to mention the great unwashed layperson) for their bailiwicks and worldviews.

Biologists confront Bigfoot: Show us the evidence!

-         Eyewitness sightings, even multiple eyewitness sightings – not evidence.

-         Physical traces, like dung or hair – not evidence.

-         Films and photographs – not evidence.

-         Plaster casts of footprints – not evidence.

-         Required: One corpse, skeleton or live specimen – now that’s evidence.

Physical scientists confront UFOs: Show us the evidence!

-         Eyewitness sightings, even multiple eyewitness sightings – not evidence.

-         Radar ‘sightings’ – not evidence.

-         Eyewitness sightings backed up by radar ‘sightings’ – not evidence.

-         Films and photographs – not evidence.

-         Professional expertise and witness quality – not evidence (unless it turns a UFO into an IFO).

-         Ground traces – not evidence.

-         Physiological effects – not evidence.

-         Electromagnetic effects – not evidence.

-         Required: Stuff to place on the slab in the lab for analysis, or even a ‘Gray’ corpse – now that’s evidence.

Alas, that sort of tin bucket definition of what is, and is not, evidence wouldn’t hold any legal or courtroom water being so full of holes. But, then again the courtroom of science isn’t the courtroom of Perry Mason.

Okay, let’s flip over the coin and see what sorts of evidence some scientists and theologians present for their established, traditional and acceptable bailiwicks. 

COSMOLOGY: SHOW ME THE EVIDENCE…

- For a Multiverse as opposed to a Universe. There is no evidence for the former relative to the latter.

- That the Big Bang actually created space as opposed to an event that happened in preexisting space. There is no evidence for the former relative to the latter.

- That the Big Bang actually created time as opposed to an event that happened in preexisting time. There is no evidence for the former relative to the latter.

- That the Big Bang actually created matter and energy out of absolutely nothing as opposed to an event that happened within the confines of preexisting matter and energy. There is no evidence for the former relative to the latter.

- That space itself is expanding as opposed to the contents within space expanding through that existing space. There is no evidence for the former relative to the latter.

- That the singularity at the heart of a Black Hole is actually infinite in density and occupies zero volume as opposed to just being very dense and something that occupies a small but finite volume. There is no evidence for the former relative to the latter.

PHYSICS: SHOW ME THE EVIDENCE…

- That there really has to be a Theory of Everything (i.e. – quantum gravity) as opposed to there being two separate and apart sets of ‘software’ running the cosmos. There is no evidence for the former relative to the latter.

- That the elementary particles are actually tiny vibrating strings as opposed to tiny little ‘billiard balls’. There is no evidence for the former relative to the latter.

- That there are an additional six spatial dimensions as opposed to the standard three (length, width and height). There is no evidence for the former relative to the latter.

- That there is such a thing as Supersymmetry (SUSY) as opposed to just normal symmetry. There is no evidence for the former relative to the latter.

- That the physical constants are indeed constant throughout all of time and space and under all conditions as opposed to really being variable depending. There is no evidence for the former relative to the latter.

- That mathematics exists independently of the human (or biological) mind as opposed to mathematics existing solely within the confines of intelligence. In other words, in a Universe before life evolved, did mathematics exist? If so, show me the evidence. There is no evidence for the former relative to the latter.

- That we exist in a really real reality as opposed to existence as virtual reality. That is, that our Universe actually exists and isn’t just a simulated universe – wallpaper to our ‘reality’. There is no more evidence for the former than there is relative to the latter.

BIOLOGY: SHOW ME THE EVIDENCE…

- That ETI (extraterrestrial intelligence) actually exists to give justification to all the time, effort and cost of SETI (search for extraterrestrial intelligence) to pin down ETI’s celestial coordinates as opposed to humanity being the be-all-and-end-all in terms of advanced technological civilizations. There is no evidence for the former relative to the latter.

- That human beings are the evolutionary product of natural selection as opposed to artificial selection, in either case from primate ancestors. There is no evidence for the former relative to the latter.

ANOMALIES: SHOW ME THE EVIDENCE…

- That all ‘crop circles’ are hoaxes and are the sole work of the human being as opposed to some have a more paranormal explanation. There is no evidence that the former is the case relative to the latter.

RELIGION: SHOW ME THE EVIDENCE…

- That a monotheistic deity (i.e. – God) actually exists as opposed to there being no deity at all. There is no evidence for the former relative to the latter.

- That the Bible is the literal word of that God as opposed to the recorded or written word of the human imagination. There is no evidence for the former relative to the latter.

- That Heaven and Hell are actually geographical places as opposed to having existence solely within the human imagination. There is no evidence for the former relative to the latter.

- That there really was a universal flood as opposed to accounts in mythology from around the world of separate and apart major flooding events. There is no evidence for the former relative to the latter.

- That the events (for example) in Exodus actually happened as opposed to being pure mythological fiction. There is no evidence for the former relative to the latter.

Oh dear!

Dare I say it, “extraordinary claims [and most of the above are] require extraordinary evidence”. Heck, even a little bit would be an improvement. But there are many examples where those who demand the proof of other’s pudding can’t produce any pudding when it’s their turn to cough up.

It’s unfortunate, but double standards rule.



Those Oops In Physics: Part Two

Some physical scientists – professional skeptics – are quick to jump on what in their opinion are the flaws inherent in what they term pseudoscience or the paranormal. Perhaps they should gaze at their own navels first before criticizing others, as the following hopefully points out.

Continued now from yesterday’s blog…

Oops in Causality     

Causality (the future is contained in the past), cause-and-effect, has to operate across the board if Mother Nature is to be predictable, and prediction and predictability is at the heart of what makes science, science. Yet, some scientists insist some phenomena have no causality. Lack of causality implies that what happens is the result of some sort of ‘free will’ (or variations thereof) which is absurd. That would imply that an electron or a radioactive uranium atom has an independent ‘mind’ of its own. Lack of causality alone in IMHO is nearly sufficient evidence to justify the hypothesis that we are ‘living’ in a simulated (virtual reality) universe.

# Big Bang: Apparently the creation of the Universe (the Big Bang event) happened for absolutely no rhyme or reason at all. That means there was no first cause attributable for the effect that was Big Bang event. Does that strike anyone besides me as odd, as in absolutely impossible?

# Radioactivity: That two identical radioactive (unstable) nuclei will decay (go poof) at different times despite both being in the same place, in the same environment, at the same time. That’s therefore because of the ‘fact’ that an unstable radioactive nucleus will go poof for absolutely no reason at all. If there is no causality behind radioactive decay, then obviously any two identical radioactive nuclei can go poof in a totally random way. But random events shouldn’t result in a precise mathematical relationship, which is what is claimed by observation – the concept of the half-life.

# Electrons: That an electron will drop to a lower energy level by emitting a photon for absolutely no reason at all is strange given that an electron will jump to a higher energy level by absorbing a photon’s worth of energy. There’s no causality in the downward direction; there’s causality in the upwards direction. That’s nuts!  

# Pane in the Glass:  You have one light source. You have one normal everyday clear and clean pane of glass. Some of the light (photons) from the light source will pass clear through the clear glass, but some of those identical photons will reflect off the clear surface of the pane of glass. One set of circumstances yields two differing but simultaneous outcomes. That violates cause-and-effect. That’s crazy, but it happens as you can verify for yourself. 

Oops in Probability     

# Electric Charge: The electric charge of the proton is exactly equal and opposite to the electric charge on the electron, despite the proton being nearly 2000 times more massive. There’s no set in concrete theoretical reason why this should be so.

# Fine Tuning: In fact, you tend to a violation in probability when it comes to numerous examples of fine-tuning – the fine-tuning that allows the Universe to be bio-friendly. For example, if the force of gravity were slightly stronger, the Universe would have re-collapsed into a Big Crunch rather quickly, and thus there would have been no time allowed for life to form and evolve. If the force of gravity had been slightly weaker stars and galaxies wouldn’t have formed. No stars and galaxies: thus, again, a lifeless Universe.       

Oops in Theory vs. Observation

# Matter & Antimatter: Theory predicts there should be equal amounts of matter and antimatter in the Universe. Observation shows that there is a massive predominance of matter over antimatter. Something is screwy somewhere.

# Vacuum Energy: Theory suggests a certain value for the vacuum energy. Experimental observation shows quite a different value for the vacuum energy. In fact, the difference between theory and observation is 120 orders of magnitude. Something is definitely screwy somewhere.

# Protons: Some theories suggest that like an isolated neutron, the proton is, over the long term, unstable and should go poof and decay. Alas, experiments, and there have been many of them, have failed to detect even one proton decay event. Oh well, back to the drawing board.

General Oops: WTF?

# Inflation: In addition to the above, the Big Bang event as a standalone event raised lots of problems, collectively known as the flatness problem; the horizon problem; and the monopole problem. To resolve those issues, a secondary theoretical and rather ad hoc expansion event, termed Inflation, was proposed. Alas, it lacks any shred of actual independent and observational evidence (apart from dealing with the Big Bang issues as noted), and has its own set of problems, not least of which there are many variations on the Inflation theme; how and why Inflation started and how and why Inflation stopped. If the Big Bang were really a comprehensive theory of everything with respect to the origin and early evolution of the cosmos, there wouldn’t be a horizon, flatness and monopole problem requiring an ad hoc tack-on.

# Dark Matter: There apparently isn’t enough mass contained within our galaxy (and others as well) to account for its structure and how it stays together as a collective conglomerate of stars, planets, interstellar dust, etc. So, with a wave of a magic physics wand, physicists and astrophysicists invent out of thin air an ad hoc explanation – all that missing matter must be “dark matter”, matter which we can’t see, can’t detect, and haven’t a real clue as to what it might be

# Cosmic Rays: Cosmic rays tend to be very high energy particles like electrons and positrons, protons and antiprotons, alpha particles and other atomic nuclei that originate from beyond our solar system. After that, things get iffy. Their actual point(s) of origin are anywhere and everywhere and to be honest their origin(s) are rather mysterious. You name the astronomical object and someone will have tagged it as a, if not the, source of cosmic rays. Among the candidates are supernovae, active galactic nuclei, magnetic variable stars, quasars, gamma-ray bursts, even the Crab Nebula (a pulsar) and the radio galaxy Centaurus A. It all seems to be a case of picking a number out of a hat or throwing a dart at a dartboard labeled with astronomical structures. Your guess (and that’s what they are) is as good as mine.

# The Fine Structure Constant: The mysticism over the number 137 (i.e. - actually 1/137) – the Fine Structure Constant – has the same sort of cultist fascination and impact on some physicists and the physics community in general as the dimensions and mathematical relationships and their significance inherent in the Great Pyramid (at Giza, Cairo) has to occultists, numerologists, mystics and pseudo-archaeologists. Then there’s all that endless numerological speculations on and significance of 666 to Christians. A rose by any other name applies here.

Conclusions

As we have seen, there are many ghosts that haunt the academic corridors of academic physics. Physicists need to exorcise those demonic spirits first, before trying to inflict their exorcisms on the rest of the irrational world.

* What can escape from a Black Hole is called Hawking radiation, but in that massive a Black Hole, the one required for a pinhead sized start to the cosmos, that radiation leakage would take a very, very, very long time to ooze out; hardly what you’d call an explosive event.

     

Some Interesting Reading

Baggott, Jim; Farewell to Reality: How Modern Physics Has Betrayed the Search for Scientific Truth; Pegasus Books, New York; 2013:

Jones, Sheilla & Unzicker, Alexander; Bankrupting Physics: How Today’s Top Scientists Are Gambling Away Their Credibility; Palgrave Macmillan, New York; 2013:

Smolin, Lee; The Trouble With Physics: The Rise of String Theory, the Fall of Science and What Comes Next; Penguin Books, London; 2006:

Woit, Peter; Not Even Wrong: The Failure of String Theory and the Continuing Challenge to Unify the Laws of Physics; Vintage Books, London; 2007:



Those Oops In Physics: Part One

Some physical scientists – professional skeptics – are quick to jump on what in their opinion are the flaws inherent in what they term pseudoscience or the paranormal. Perhaps they should gaze at their own navels first before criticizing others, as the following hopefully points out.

Some people for example claim that some UFOs are actually extraterrestrial spacecraft and get bucketed for their point of view. No evidence; no proof is the mantra of the skeptic – usually a physical scientist. However, IMHO, some physicists (or other equivalent physical scientists like astronomers) make even greater outrageous claims without a shred of evidence, far less proof. The attitude of some scientists seems to be along the lines of ‘do as I say, not as I do’.

Physics tends to be a subject that lots of ordinary folks shy away from, probably because physics tends to rely heavily on mathematics, and usually highly complex mathematics at that, advanced mathematics that aren’t taught until well into third or fourth year at university and into gradate school. However, even when modern physics is explained minus the mathematics, in what I guess would be termed layman’s language, physics turns out to be really, really weird. The mathematics tends to hide the weirdness from the uninitiated (since everything is double Dutch to them) but it’s there all the same. These are some of the examples I’ve come up against – a wall that one tends to bang one’s head against in frustration. The frustration tending to be in the first instance, what’s wrong with me that I can’t do an end run around the (only apparent) weirdness? Once one accepts that it’s not you, but the physics that’s weird, well that doesn’t eliminate the frustration or the feeling that one still needs to bang their heads against the wall! Of course maybe it’s not the physics that are weird but the physicists. It wouldn’t be the first time – but that’s another story.

Oops in Common Sense - Theory

Now I am aware that common sense is not an acceptable criterion in science, but there is a limit to what pills I will swallow. With the exceptions of the speed of light and neutron decay (see below under observations) there is no observational or experimental evidence for any of this theoretical nonsense.

# Point Particles: Particle physicists often use the term “point particles” when talking about the fundamental or elementary particles that make up matter, like electrons, etc. However, a point particle has zero dimensions, and as such takes up zero volume. The upshot is, if particles have no dimensionality, then matter cannot exist. Matter is made up of these elementary particles, and if each particle has zero volume, well zero plus zero plus zero equals zero. All of matter would have zero volume and that’s clearly not the case. Alternatively, point particles couldn’t smash together in say the Large Hadron Collider or in any other particle accelerator.

# Dimensions: That there are up to ten spatial dimensions (not three) if Superstring Theory or M-Theory is correct. In the words of the late physicist Wolfgang Pauli, that’s “not even wrong”. 

# Big Bang: That the first nanosecond of creation crammed the contents of our observable Universe into a volume less than a pinhead. In any event, if you could squeeze the contents of the observable Universe down into a pinhead’s volume, you’d end up with the Mother of all Black Holes from which nothing* would escape. Therefore there would be no Big Bang and thus our Universe would not have been brought into existence. 

# Big Bang: That the Big Bang event created time itself. This can’t even be done in theory, far less in actual practice. Pull the left leg!

# Big Bang: That the Big Bang event created space itself. This too is beyond the theoretical limits of modern physics and certainly cannot be duplicated in the laboratory. Now pull the right leg!

# Theory of Everything (TOE): There are three quantum (micro) forces that rule the roost – the strong nuclear; the weak nuclear; and electromagnetism. All three have been unified into the Standard Model of particle physics that’s called the Grand Unified Theory (GUT). There is also one force that rules that rules supreme in the classical (macro) world – gravity. Since the micro and the macro are both part of the larger picture – Mother Nature – it should seem obvious that gravity can and should be unified with the Standard Model to provide what’s known in the trade as a Theory of Everything (TOE). Alas, despite the best minds working on unification over many, many decades, nothing of substance has surfaced. The realm of the micro and the realm of the macro are incompatible, like two different sets of software that are separate and apart but collectively run the cosmos. That makes no sense. It should be relatively easy to unify all four forces.    

# Gravity: Centuries after Isaac Newton, the puzzlement that is gravity has still not been completely solved. There appears to be two competing theories. One, gravity is geometry, otherwise wrapped around Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity. Mass tells space how to curve; curved space tells mass how to move. Two, gravity is a force somewhat akin to electromagnetism in that it has an associated particle that conveys the gravitational force, like a photon conveys the electromagnetic force. That hypothetical or theoretical particle is termed the graviton, and remains to date undetected. You’d think by now the issue would have been settled. 

# Observation/Measurement: That the lack of observation or of measurement (same difference) has a bearing on the reality of what’s not being observed or not being measured is absurd. That’s like saying the Moon doesn’t exist, or may or may not exist, or exists and yet doesn’t exist at the same time, if nobody is looking at it. In any event, to but the worms back into that can, during the early history of our Universe, there were no observers (i.e. – no life forms of any kind) and the cosmos got along just hunky-dory. The Universe doesn’t give a rat’s ass about observers. Things either are, or they are not.

# Electrons: 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.

Oops in Common Sense - Observations  

# Velocities: Velocities maybe added or subtracted. If you are on a treadmill that’s moving left at 5 MPH, and you’re on it walking to the right at 5 MPH, to an external observer you are waking yet standing still. Now the exception to that universal rule is the speed of light. The velocity of light is a constant to an external observer no matter what. Why that should be no one knows, but it is so. However, my take on this can of worms which as a consequence require both time and length to be flexible, is one should always be a bit suspect when it comes to the lone ranger, the exception to the rule. There’s something weird afoot here.  

# Neutron Decay: One isolated neutron will decay in roughly 15 minutes into an electron, a proton and an antineutrino. That’s probably why a hydrogen atom hasn’t a neutron you’d think; there’s only one electron around a nucleus of one proton. Unfortunately heavy hydrogen is heavy because it has one neutron, so that blows that idea. Apparently therefore, any neutron inside or part of a nucleus is stable. So obviously two or more neutrons together (i.e. – part of a nucleus or within a neutron star) will not decay. Why one isolated neutron is unstable, yet a neutron or neutrons (two or more together) as part of a nucleus or as a neutron star are stable, is to me a mystery that defies logic. I mean, by analogy, an isolated radioactive (unstable) nucleus behaves no differently than its clone or twin that is cheek-by-jowl with others of its kind. 

Oops in Conservation Laws – The Free Lunch     

# Dark Energy: Apparently the density of Dark Energy remains constant while the volume of the Universe expands. That’s something from nothing. That’s a free lunch.

# Big Bang: 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 also a free lunch.

To be continued…



Time To Question Time: Part Two

Time is the most mysterious concept that you are likely to think about. You know exactly what time is, unless you actually have to explain it and then things bog down. If you admit that time is pure puzzlement, well you’re not alone as the nature of time has been endlessly debated by thinkers, good, bad and average, ever since humans had the ability to think. Okay, I’m a thinker, so here are my thoughts in Q & A form about time.  

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

Q. Is time travel to the future possible?

A. Time travel to the future is easy – you’re doing it right now at the rate of one second per second – boring – or when you fall asleep (or pass out drunk), next thing you know you are in the future, ahead by several hours. You’ve skipped or jumped over some interval of time. That’s what one usually means by travel to the future. It is jumping over some significant interval of time without having to experience or live through it, like say going from 2013 to 2015 and avoiding 2014 entirely. Of course when you arrive in the ‘future’, be it the following morning or by skipping 2014, it’s no longer the future but the present – the ‘now’. It’s actually impossible to be in or to exist in the future, it’s only possible to head towards the future, which you do anyway at the rate of one minute per minute. 

I guess you could construct a philosophical argument that relative to your point of view of yesterday, if you say skipped a day and landed in tomorrow, you are now in the future, but such convolutions don’t get us very far since the you that existed yesterday no longer has any existence or meaning either today or tomorrow or post tomorrow. In fact, the person you call “you” that existed one second ago has now come and gone and passed away into history. The only you that has any reality is the person you call “you” that exists right now.

Apart from your normal modes of time travel into the future, you can accelerate the process. There’s also Einstein’s Relativity twin paradox whereby relative to an outside observer, time, as in rate of change, slows down for someone who is travelling at velocities that are approaching some goodly fraction of the speed of light. So, a twin who heads off at a rapid rate of knots and boldly goes, when returning to meet and greet her stay-at-home twin, will find that though twins they might be, their ages are now different. The stay-at-home twin has aged more quickly, or the boldly going twin has aged more slowly depending on your ‘relativity’ point of view, which isn’t really a paradox, rather the consequences of what happens when you travel at a very rapid rate of knots relative to someone who doesn’t.

However, the same philosophy or argument from those several paragraphs above applies in that you, in this case the you that’s the boldly going twin, is never in the future, only in the now or existing in what passes for the present (along with your stay-at-home twin). That applies even if that present is tens of thousands of years after you were born, which is possible (and thus your stay-at-home twin has long since died and returned to dust). No matter which way you slice and dice things, you only have reality in the present that you find yourself in. 

Q. And what do you conclude about the viability of time travel to the future from the above?

A. Ultimately, to my way of thinking, time travel, even to the future (by skipping over periods of time), is impossible since again time is a concept and not a thing, like a road or a river you have to travel continuously on, up and down on. If time is just a concept, then time travel is illogical.

Q. Is there any other likely impediment to time travel?

A. Yes there is. When you visualise standard time travel stories or films to the past or to the future, your time machine or device keeps you firmly attached to the same set of terrestrial coordinates from which you started, so if you say start in New York City (2013) and go plus or minus say 200 years either to the future (2213) or to the past (1813), you’ll end up in the New York City of that time. That’s bonkers! In that 200 years, either way, Planet Earth on which New York City is attached, but you are not, has moved. Planet Earth is attached to the Sun (gravitationally) and the Sun is in orbit around the Milky Way Galaxy, which itself is moving in space, so when you materialize 200 years in the past or future, the odds are extremely likely that you will materialize into the depths of outer space! Even if you ignore all that, the Earth will not make an exact number of solar orbits and axis revolutions over 200 years to bring you back into exact alignment with the terrestrial coordinates you started out from. So, you just might materialize smack dab in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. Oops! What one really needs is a time and space machine like the Doctor’s TARDIS where you can also set spatial coordinates. 

Q. Have all billionaires been time travellers to the past?

A. Maybe! It’s easy to imagine looking up say all the long shot horses who won their races in say over one particular year. Now travel back in time to that year and start placing reasonable bets on each ‘long shot’ (that proved a sure thing), make a super-bundle of loot, and hop back to your own era; your own present day and start living the good life. Of course there are many, many variations on this go-back-in-time and get-rich-quick schemes.

Q. We spend our entire lives in the “now” moment, and eternal “now”, yet each “now” moment lasts way less than a nanosecond before the “now” you vanishes into the limbo-land of the past only to be replaced by the future you that was just a theoretical probability that now becomes reality, for just a nanosecond before that you too slips away into the unreachable past. That’s confusing!

A. There’s no real mystery here. There are many examples from daily life of the difference between the continuum and the part of the continuum.

You’re driving along the road in your car. Your car is the continuum since you’re always in your car for the duration (that eternal “now”); the specific section of road you are travelling over is your nanosecond “now” which changes from nanosecond to nanosecond.

You’re swimming with the current in a river. The surrounding water is your eternal “now”; the section of riverbed you’re passing over is your nanosecond “now”. Or, you can reverse the scenario. If you swim exactly against the speed of the river current or flow, the part of the riverbed you are stationary over is now your eternal “now”, while the patch of water around you is ever changing and thus becomes your nanosecond “now”.

If you walk across the stage with the spotlight on you, the light is your eternal “now” but your place on the stage is constantly shifting – your nanosecond “now”.

If you lie in bed all day (and night), the bed is your eternal “now”, but the ticking of the clock, even if only via the changing position of the sun (in the day) and the stars (in the night), or that change from sunrise to sunrise, is your nanosecond “now”.

Note that all of the examples involve motion. Motion is change and change is what the concept of time is all about.  

Q. Does God exist within time or outside of time?

A. There is no God (or gods) so the question is immaterial, irrelevant and has no bearing on the proceedings. But if there is a God(s) they would exist inside of time since to exist is to undergo change and time is nothing but a measure of change. 

Q. When do I exist?

A. Now, and only now. The “you” that existed an hour, even a minute ago is no longer. That past you, actually all those entities you called you (plural) that existed in the past have been consigned to the history books. The “you” that (probably) will exist an hour or even a minute from now, actually all those entities you will call you (plural) that will exist in the future do not yet have reality of any substance.

Q. So again, what is time?

A. One heck of a metaphysical mess!

Time To Question Time: Part One

Time is the most mysterious concept that you are likely to think about. You know exactly what time is, unless you actually have to explain it and then things bog down. If you admit that time is pure puzzlement, well you’re not alone as the nature of time has been endlessly debated by thinkers, good, bad and average, ever since humans had the ability to think. Okay, I’m a thinker, so here are my thoughts in Q & A form about time.  

Are you confused about time? If so, join the crowd. I’m part of that crowd, and I’m confused, but I’ll try to work through my befuddlement via this hypothetical question and answer session which hopefully will enlighten me and you too. 

Q. What is time?

A. Time is a concept, like Wednesday is a concept.

Q. A concept of what?

A. Change. Without change the concept of time is meaningless.

Q. What properties does time have?

A. Time has no properties, just like Wednesday has no properties. Time has no structure or substance; no mass or energy, no colour or spin or charge, it has no associated field, and it exerts no force and has no fundamental particles associated with it. 

Q. Does time have a beginning? Will time ever end?

A. No. Time is eternal. An eternal time removes those nasty philosophical questions of what came before; what comes after?

Q. Can time be created?

A. The concept of time can be created, but only by the mind blessed with some degree of sophistication, but that does not give substance and structure to time itself, any more than the JFK concept of ‘landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to Earth before the end of the decade’ in and of itself made it so. The concept of a lunar landing is not a real lunar landing. Time itself cannot be created like a soufflé since there are no ingredients that collectively comprise time.

Q. Can time be destroyed?

A. Since time cannot be created, time cannot be destroyed. While that is similar to existing conservation laws, there is no conservation law in existence for time like there is for matter and energy since, unlike matter and energy, time cannot be altered from one form to another, since time is not a thing.

Q. Was the Big Bang event 13.7 billion years ago the start of time?

A. No. Since time cannot be created, the Big Bang banged in existing time which means there was a before the Big Bang. Something had to cause the Big Bang (a change) and that something could only have been an earlier event which happened in already existing time, since an event, a change, defines what time is.

Q. Where does time exist?

A. The concept of time exists only where change exists, and change only exists within that ongoing, yet ever paper-thin slice that we can the “now”. Change neither exists anymore in the past nor does it exist yet in the future.

Q. Are time’s related terms also concepts?

A. Absolutely. None of the following can be placed on the lab’s slab; none of the following are ‘things’, just mental concepts and conventions: past, present, and future; when, now and then; before and after; second, minute, hour, day, week, month, seasons, year, decade, century, millennia, and eon; any of the named days of the week; any of the names of the seasons; any digit that represents a year (i.e. – 2013); any date; yesterday, today and tomorrow; birthday, anniversary and holiday; weekend and weekday; noon and midnight.  A clock or calendar or metronome can be put on the lab’s slab, but a clock, etc. isn’t time, just like a thermometer isn’t temperature, and a Geiger counter isn’t radioactivity.

Q. Is time travel to the past possible?

A. Yes and no.

Einstein’s concepts of General and Special Relativity allow for time travel to the past (and the future), the usual scenario is via a rapidly rotating massive object that can twist space-time around in a loop where the starting point that joins up with itself to form the loop, like a snake swallowing its tail, isn’t any longer at the same point in time. However, the flaw I find with all of that is that this requires space and time, or space-time, to be a thing, which IMHO it is not. Space-time is a concept without substance and structure because both space and time are concepts without substance and structure. Be that as it may.  

The basic argument against going back in time is the creation of a paradox, something along the lines of killing your mother when she was a young girl thus preventing your very existence which means you couldn’t have gone back in time and murdered your mother, etc. Hells, bells, why not just do the suicide properly and go back in time a few months and kill your own self! But any trip back in time will create conditions back then that did not originally exist, and however minor, not only will they become an established part of history, but have that butterfly or ripple effect on down the line – chaos theory. If those new conditions, thanks to your time travelling presence, did not originally exist and now they do, that’s also a paradox as something cannot be and yet be at the same time, and that contradiction extends on down the line as history unfolds differently.

Further, you MUST go back in time (no free will in the matter) to ever create and ensure the conditions that came to pass back when, new conditions that you initially caused – only you never initially caused them since there’s an infinitely recycling causality loop here. You went back in time which caused a certain set of conditions which become a part of established history which means at some point in your life you are required to go back in time to create that certain set of conditions which become a part of established history, all to be endlessly repeated for all eternity. Presumably you couldn’t even commit suicide before you travelled back in time and thus break the cycle.

Of course if the past were somehow changed, then presumably you’d never know it since all records, including those of your memory, would be altered accordingly. But things would be messy if millions of people each travelled back in time and altered this, that and the next thing. History textbooks and other records would be rewritten and altered to conform to all those alterations every second. Then too, what if someone went back in time and altered history to the extent that mankind went extinct as a result – that’s the ultimate going back in time and killing your mother as a young girl!

Here’s a novel concept. Say it is the 10^th of the month. Go back in time to the 1^st of the month and meet and greet yourself. The both of you now wait until the 10^th of the month and then go back in time to the 2^nd of the month where you both can now meet and greet and join up with the other two of you that existed then. Then the four of you wait until the 10^th of the month and the four of you travel back in time to say the 3^rd of the month where the four of you link up with the four of you that existed on the 3^rd. The eight of you now wait until the 10^th of the month and then travel back in time to the 4^th of the month where you group together as a crowd of sixteen. Wait until the 10^th of the month and the sixteen of you travel back to the 5^th and join up with the other sixteen to form a mob of thirty-two, and so on and so on. Starting with just you, you could create an entire army of you!

Q. Where’s the paradox in creating an army just out of you?

A. The paradox here is that you are getting something for nothing, in this case extra copies of you. Where in fact does the extra matter and energy come from that creates that you army?

Q. Anything else?

A. Another reason time travel to the past is suss is that we don’t see any time travellers from our future paying us a visit. Though Einstein’s Special and General Relativity allows time travel to the past, and although the laws of physics are time invariant (they are valid from past to future and future to past), no visitors. Either our descendents don’t have any interest in us, or perhaps there aren’t any – descendents that is – if we go extinct or go back to the Dark Ages sooner rather than later. Or, perhaps time travel just isn’t possible after all or is in the too hard basket.

Q. You lie! What about the Second Law of Thermodynamics?

A. Ah yes, what about the Second Law of Thermodynamics which is held responsible for time’s arrow or the arrow of time (i.e. – things proceed from past (which you remember) to future (which you don’t remember). But the Second Law of Thermodynamics is misnamed since the second ‘law’ isn’t really a ‘law’, just a statement of probability, albeit extremely high probability. When things happen in a statistically probable way (eggs break or scramble; eggs don’t un-break or unscramble) that’s the arrow of time that we perceive. Put in a more thermodynamic context, a boiled egg cools off and heats up the kitchen until both are at the same temperature; the kitchen doesn’t cool down and transfer that energy to the raw egg and cook it.

Q. Anything else?

A. Yes, another postulate has it that one cannot travel further back in time than the time the time machine was constructed. So if our descendents come up with a first ever time machine in the year 2113, they couldn’t come visit us in 2013, though those living in the year 2213 could go back to 2113 (but no farther back).

The way out of that is what about an advanced extraterrestrial civilization’s time machine, say built in 2013 BCE, or over 4000 years ago. Say, what about those pesky UFOs? Instead of ET coming here from out there in their and our present, they come here from there in our present but from their future! The only problem with that is that UFO events and flaps are not clustered around what we would call historically important events, like say the Trinity A-Bomb test in 1945 or the launch of Apollo 11 in 1969 or the sinking of RMS Titanic in 1912. Of course, that they are conspicuous by their absence, well that just maybe our parochialism coming to the fore. Time travelling aliens may have a differing agenda. 

Aliens aside, you could easily imagine a time travelling Travel Agency existing several hundred years from now conducting guided tours to important historical events of their (and our) past, say tours in groups of one hundred per. After several thousand such tours, say to the battle of the Alamo or to Custer’s last stand at the Little Big Horn, things would be getting a mite crowded since each tour has to show up at the same place and date!

Q. And what do you conclude about the viability of time travel to the past from the above?

A. Ultimately, to my way of thinking, time travel, at least to the past, is impossible since time is a concept and not a thing, like a road or a river you can travel up and down on. You can travel in a car, but not in the concept of an automobile.

To be continued…

My Personal Ongoing Worldview: Part One

Everybody has his or her own particular worldview, philosophy, a set of truisms, a concept of reality, and overall, a degree of certainty on just how the world works. Equally true, that worldview evolves as you grow older. Santa Clause was probably part of your worldview when you were five years old, but unlikely at fifty-five. I’m no exception to the rule, so here are my latest ‘set-in-cement’ thoughts on how the world operates.

After posting some 250-plus essays, it wouldn’t be surprising if I hadn’t solidified some sort of worldview. While not yet the be-all-and-end-all of my worldviews, it’s a good start, and a good exercise. When setting down all your fundamental beliefs, at least based on my doing so, I found out that I’ve sometimes ended up trapping myself into believing two entirely contradictory things. That in turn required a total re-examination of my overall set of worldviews. As I said, it’s a useful exercise and an ever ongoing one (#).   

Normally one has certain fundamental principles that form the bedrock foundation of their worldview on life, the universe and everything. I’ve boiled my fundamental principles down to two absolutes.

ABSOLUTE BEDROCK FOUNDATIONS

* Something cannot be created from absolutely nothing. Conservation laws rule.

* Something cannot happen without any reason at all. Causality rules too.

THE COSMIC CONNECTION

* 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.

                              

* Since I have shown (to my satisfaction anyway) that space, time and matter/energy cannot have been created by a Big Bang event (or by any other means), then of necessity the Big Bang event happened in existing space, time and with matter/energy already in existence too. Therefore there was a before the Big Bang and if there was one such before the Big Bang event there could have been more than one, in fact an infinite number of before the Big Bang events, or in other words, an infinite number of Big Bangs.

* The Big Bang could not have been a micro event, as to stuff the contents of our Universe into a tiny volume would result in the Mother of all Black Holes and while a Black Hole can evaporate, our Universe condensed down into a Black Hole would result in a Black Hole of large enough size that it would take trillions upon trillions of years to do so. That’s in contrast to the standard model of the Big Bang event which suggests it was more akin to a ‘wham-bam thank you ma’am’ quickie. I like to think of the Big Bang more as the Mother of all Pseudo-Supernovae. I say ‘pseudo’ because the Big Bang wasn’t literally a supernova since the ratios of elements created in the Big Bang don’t parallel that created by real supernova. I see the pseudo-supernova more akin to zillions upon zillions of people all increasingly squeezing together while madly rushing the department store front door at the start of the post-Xmas sales (collapsing universe) then fanning out again (Big Bang and expansion) once past the door and into the store proper, rather than an actual explosion. 

* Though I personally consider both time and space to be concepts, and not things, others believe that time and space are indeed things. Be that as it may.

* To avoid awkward questions regarding space and time, as in what’s beyond and what came before, I just plain postulate an infinite time and space without any quantum ‘atomic structure’. In other words, both time and space are infinitely divisible into smaller and smaller segments. There is no ultimate structure involving time and space that cannot be further divided. If you don’t care for the word “infinite” then substitute “forever” or “eternal”. 

* That an infinite cosmos exists in both time and space makes sense since there are forces which (in theory) can extend their influence out to infinity in time and in space – gravity and electromagnetism. If you shine your flashlight, beam it out into space, there’s nothing to stop it going on indefinitely through space and in time.

* If time and space are infinite then that implies a cyclic cosmos in that everything that can happen does happen and infinite number of times. So, you get another go and another and another and another. However, because you have no consciousness of time between the time of your demise and the time of your next hatching, which could be millennia later in a distant galaxy far, far away, your existences are pretty continuous.  However, you’d never know the nitty-gritty of your previous existences, though perhaps it might explain senses of déjà vu. But, in addition to multi-universes in the same space, but over time, there is multi-universes spread out in space at the same time. That follows if the cosmos is infinite in volume. Of course if the cosmos is infinite in volume then right now there are up to an infinite number of you in all possible variations. My use of “you” refers not so much to your various physical forms and lifestyles but to your mind which gives you our sense of “you”. Your mind after all really is what defines “you”.

* Because space is infinite in time, and time is infinite in space, there was no first cause; therefore, there’s absolutely no requirement for any supernatural deity or deities to act as a creator.

* Cyclic universe: As suggested above, there was a Big Bang but there was also a before the Big Bang. IMHO there was a Big Bang before that and another before that. Despite the observation that our Universe is ever expanding, and ever expanding at an ever faster rate, there are ways and means, alternative cosmologies, that can result in, and require, a cyclic universe scenario, which, if you wish to count each universe as separate and apart, results in a Multiverse at least over the time dimension. As hinted above, there would be an infinite number of these cyclic universes.

* There is a Multiverse; that follows of necessity if you postulate an infinite yet dynamic cosmos in time and space. Apart from a cyclic Multiverse as per above, there can also be a spatial Multiverse – universes existing not as discrete universes at the same point in space at differing times, but discrete universes existing in differing points in space but at the same time.

* The interior of a Black Hole is the absolute final frontier of all final frontiers left as the undiscovered country. Here there are dragons for sure!

* Causality rules as per my absolute bedrock foundations – there is absolute predetermination (therefore no free will). No matter what happens, that happening had a cause, and more likely as not, that happening will in turn be the cause of a further happening, and so on down the line (or up the line if you run the film backwards). In cosmology terms, the Universe did not, could not, create itself because a cause cannot cause or bootstrap itself.

* Causality rules in classical (macro) physics. Probability rules in quantum (micro) physics, at least that’s the standard micro model as proposed by physicists. However, quantum mechanics has IMHO deeper cause-and-effect principles. Probability as a concept is observer dependent. In a universe without any observers, without any life, would it be meaningful to invoke the idea of quantum probability or uncertainty? It’s not that difficult to imagine a universe without life. In fact that no doubt was the state of our universe for several billion years post the Big Bang event. Before any life evolved anywhere, the cosmos ticked along in clockwork (cause-and-effect) fashion very nicely, thank you very much. If it did so before humans were thought of in anyone’s philosophy, it can and will continue to do so despite humans being now present and accounted for and befuddled by the realm of indeterminacy exhibited by quantum mechanics. Ultimately quantum physics will be founded in causality just like classical physics.

* There are no free lunches as per my absolute bedrock foundations – no creating something-from-nothing is allowed. That’s because IMHO conservation laws governing the creation and destruction of matter and energy, even time and space, are absolute.

* String Theory as an alternative to the standard model of particle physics is absolute nonsense and will remain so until proponents put some experimental runs on the board.

* General Relativity and Quantum Physics have been, are, and forever will remain separate and apart. They are incompatible in theory as well as in practice and never the twain shall meet. Translated, there never will be a unified theory of quantum gravity.

* There is no meaning or purpose to the cosmos – it just is. That puts the kibosh on the Strong Anthropic Principle which suggests that the Universe was designed to be the way it is in order to give rise to life and intelligent life. It was the Universe’s way of being able to contemplate its own navel.

* The Weak Anthropic Principle is however stating the bleeding obvious, which is that because life exists in the Universe, the Universe must possess laws, principles and relationships that make the Universe a bio-friendly or Goldilocks Universe.

* In infinite time and space and a Multiverse, extraterrestrial intelligence will have come to pass if at least one such universe is a Goldilocks universe, which is actually required since in an infinite Multiverse anything that can happen does happen – an infinite number of times. 

* The Universe is the way it is. Whether the Universe is good, bad or ugly; indifferent or malicious, there’s nothing you can do about it, so cross it off your ‘need-to-worry-about-this’ list.

(#) It recently struck home how often we shift our worldviews. We have no worldview at birth. Our worldview at five is one that’s full of self, Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy, imaginary friends, and parties with lots of cakes, cookies, soda pop and presents. All of that certainly changes, and drastically so, when you hit the teens when your worldview shifts to the opposite sex and sex and rebellion against all things adult. Maybe somewhere there’s an easing in period, a first stirrings, where you start to acquire a worldview of a God and heaven and angels and all things bright and beautiful (that’s probably imposed on you by parents and social mores). Then you get thrust out (usually by choice) into the adult world that’s full of bills and responsibilities and employment and/or family life raising your own brats. During all of this you probably never really think of the ‘natural’ cosmic context you find yourself in. But that tends to come as you pass the half-way mark and start heading downhill. The Big Questions come more to the fore and you start to adopt a worldview that makes comforting sense away from the normal routine worldview of taxes and nasty bosses and your kids in trouble with the police again. Again, for most, that tends to revolve around God and heaven and angels, etc. But some people start thinking more outside the comforting religious box and more about space and time, and before and after, and finite vs. infinity and what non-religious Big Picture makes the most philosophical and logical common sense. And whatever specific you come up with can also shift as you reflect on your earlier reflections without end as new concepts and connections come into being or focus which you’ve got to ponder and fit into the master worldview jigsaw puzzle you’ve established.

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!

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.