The Big TOE

Quantum Gravity otherwise known as the Theory of Everything (TOE) is the Holy Grail of all things physics. Why? Well, there are two types of physics. There is classical physics, the physics you have to deal with in your day-to-day macro world. Then there is quantum physics, the physics of the very, very tiny; the micro worlds which for all practical purposes are, if not irrelevant, at least unnoticed in your day-to-day existence.

Another distinction is that macro or classical physics is a continuum, like a ruler. Quantum or micro physics are bits and pieces; discrete units, like money. You can have one and three quarter inches; you can’t have one and three quarter cents. So what’s the problem?

Well, there are four fundamental forces that control life, the Universe and everything. Three of these are quantum forces or operate from or within the realm of the micro-micro-microscopic. This trilogy is comprised of the strong nuclear force (which hold atomic nuclei together); the weak nuclear force (which allows atomic nuclei to break apart – radioactivity) and electromagnetism (which gives you light to see by and radio and TV to enjoy). The other and final force however is a continuum – gravity. It’s like there being three brothers and one sister!

As in the sibling’s case, physicists suspect that all four are born of one parentage. Alas, the DNA doesn’t match up!  Gravity apparently has different parents! Now that just won’t do. One Universe should allow for, indeed require, one ultimate parentage. Alas, despite all the best efforts of all the finest physics in the world over many generations, the three brothers just don’t share a common DNA with their alleged sister. My resolution is that perhaps that really is the case. The idea that there is quantum gravity is just a straightforward impossibility. There are indeed two sets of parents – one resulting in quantum triplets; the other producing an only child – gravity. The two are unrelated.

To restate the situation, we have the theory of general relativity (gravity) and quantum physics. Both are bedrocks of modern physics. Both are accurate to a high degree of experimental precision. Both aren’t compatible - with each other. Apparently, one (or both) of these theories must be wrong, or at best incomplete. That’s why the unification of the two (a theory of Quantum Gravity) is physics’ Holy Grail. However, that Holy Grail is proving as difficult to find as the Biblical Grail itself! But for the moment, it appears as if the universe has two independent sets of laws (or sets of running software) – one governing the very large (gravity); one the very small (the quantum). This makes no natural or scientific sense.

We have observations of four physical forces yet no theory which unites the three quantum forces (electromagnetism, the strong nuclear force and the weak nuclear force) with the one classical force – gravity. Theory needs to be satisfied. All of the four fundamental forces should be interconnected; some sort of unification principle must be in operation that relates all four, one to the other. However, these four fundamental forces that govern the Universe show no signs of any obvious unification – well actually the three quantum ones do (known as the GUT – Grand Unified Theory), but that’s where the unification ends. Gravity remains the wallflower. If the Big Bang theory is to be proven correct as stated, scientists must of necessity come up with a viable theory of Quantum Gravity that is an acceptable unification of the trio of quantum forces with gravity. There is, to date, no viable theory of Quantum Gravity despite thousands of physicists searching for one over many generations now. Even for the final 30 years of his life Einstein searched for his big TOE but never found it.

In summary, 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. Again, that makes no sense. It should be relatively easy to unify all four forces. Einstein and thousands in his footsteps have found out the hard way that it’s damn hard to get a TOE. Mother Nature is a bitch!

Now, the real question is what are the implications if there is no such animal as a unified theory or a TOE? What if we have a case of never have so many spent so much time and effort over so little (actually nothing)? With the passage of every day, the missing TOE appears unlikely ever to be found. Then what?

My prediction is that there will never be a TOE because there really are two incompatible sets of software governing the virtual reality cosmos.



Even More Random Thoughts In Physics

Sometimes you have a new thought, an idea, or eureka moment, but it’s not gutsy enough to expand into a reasonable length article or essay. So, here’s yet another potpourri of thoughts dealing with physics and related too good not to record, but with not enough meat available to flesh out. 

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* In reviewing several of my essays I’ve noted that I’ve occasionally said that there is just the one physics, yet I’ve often said for the record that quantum physics and classical physics (General Relativity) are incompatible and forever will be. In other words, there’s no quantum gravity and no Theory of Everything (TOE). Is this in conflict? No. There is the one physics even though you’d be hard pressed to unify thermodynamics with levers, inclined planes and pullies.

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

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* We’re all taught in high school the above, that the electric charge of an electron is equal and opposite to that of a proton. The ‘why’ of the relationship is never explained in any shape, manner or form. I’ve never seen an explanation given in any popular particle or quantum physics book. Now either the explanation is so bloody obvious authors don’t feel the need to explain the ‘why’ of the matter and insult the reader’s intelligence, or else the ‘why’ is in the way, way, way too hard basket and authors avoid the question and the issue to avoid appearing ignorant about so fundamental a fact.

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* Black Holes would make excellent, in fact perfect, thermos (vacuum) flasks. Pour into a Black Hole the contents of a star, say like the Sun. All that heat is then trapped and I do mean trapped!

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* Light is a thing; gravity is a thing; things can effect each other, so when it comes to the bending of light in a gravitational field, there’s no need for all this nonsense of warped space, time or space-time, which, after all, are not-things but just mental concepts.

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* If something quantum happens for no reason at all (i.e. – unstable nuclei goes poof) why doesn’t everything micro happen for no reason at all. Or, if some quantum happenings are just probabilities, why aren’t all micro happenings probabilities.

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* An isolated neutron has a half-life of roughly 15 minutes before going poof or decaying into a proton, an electron and an antineutrino. Neutrons that ‘live’ in a community of neutrons like in the nucleus of atoms; as in a neutron star, don’t decay. They are stable in these community relations. That seems like something is screwy somewhere. Why is it so? I thought that might explain why the hydrogen atom (otherwise known as protium) had no neutron (just one electron and one proton), but then heavy hydrogen (deuterium) does have one neutron (plus one electron and one proton) so things get weirder and weirder.

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* You obviously relate to being a human in a human-sized world. You can imagine being a cat or a dog and living in their world. You can probably extend that down to the world of insects and imagine yourself as a fly or ant or butterfly. At a stretch, you might be able to relate to and imagine yourself as a micro-organism living in say a drop of pond water or in the blood stream. But what about navigating down to the worldview of a photon or an electron? That I suspect is way, way, way too alien to imagine in your wildest dreams.

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* We conceive of nanotechnology as building up from micro scratch what technology we want (say micro devices to traverse our blood vessels and clean them up from the inside) by manipulating atoms from the ground up and building whatever we want from those fundamental ‘Lego’ blocks. But what if the fundamental particles are themselves products of nanotechnology?  



Mathematics Are You

You are part of life, the Universe and everything. You and that greater whole have to be grounded in some fundamental bedrock that connects everything into a logical and unified whole. Most would say that’s the role of the laws, relationships and principles of physics. But there’s a deeper level yet. Mathematics are the ultimate foundation that make physics a logical (if not quite yet unified) whole. So ultimately life, the Universe and everything is based on maths. Maths is ultimately your reality. It’s what makes you tick!

The Universe IS just mathematics according to physicist/cosmologist Professor Max Tegmark (Department of Physics, MIT). It’s called the “Mathematical Universe Hypothesis (MUH)” or the “Ultimate Ensemble”, one of those proposals for a ‘Theory of Everything’ (TOE), that ultimate theoretical equation so beloved by physicists that describes life, the Universe and everything. It will be so concise that it can be printed on just the front of a tee-shirt. Tegmark's mathematical universe hypothesis is: our external physical reality is a mathematical structure. All structures that exist mathematically exist also physically. That is, the universe IS mathematics in a well-defined sense. Mathematics has an external reality, and since everything is built from the ground (i.e. – mathematics) up, everything ultimately is mathematics and therefore can be expressed in that ultimate theoretical TOE tee-shirt equation.

Mathematics is the universal language. Whether you’re a Frenchman or a Chinaman; an Englishman or even ufonauts like those alien LGM (Little Grey Men); a Klingon or a Romulan; you understand the Pythagorean Theorem and the quadratic equation; topology and the calculus.

The most fundamental science is physics. That’s the bedrock on which chemistry is formatted. The earth and space sciences are in turn supported and explained by those two building blocks. All of those collectively form the foundations of the biological sciences, which in turn support anthropology, psychology and the other social and behavioural sciences. Even economics and the arts have ultimate foundations in mathematics.

But what supports physics? Mathematics, that’s what. Ultimately that’s where it all begins. The Universe (including life and everything) is mathematics. You exist inside of geometry. You are receiving information about life, the Universe and everything encoded in mathematics; it takes mathematics to reveal the information. You cannot come to terms with understanding space and time, matter and energy, and the four (or more) fundamental forces that govern the Universe, hence ultimately you and your surroundings, without resorting to maths.

Your day is constantly filled with how much, how many, and how fast - mathematical relationships. ‘Where’ is maths; ‘when’ is maths; ‘what’ is often pure maths. You may not be a physicist, but economics probably rules your roost. There’s gambling (even if just on the stock market or getting away with running a red light) involving probability theory. Every day in every way you add and subtract and multiply and divide numbers. You even do fractions! Your calculator may crunch the numbers, but you press the buttons.

Music and sounds in general play a massive role in our lives. Acoustics, harmonics, sound waves, and the like are all expressible in, and based around, mathematics. Ditto for navigation and GPS and related.

Now think of the mathematics supporting the physics (or its applied alter ego, engineering) behind your home, your transport, your entertainment, your comfort conveniences, and what goes into making you able to get through your day. What holds all your bits and pieces together and holds you to the ground yet doesn’t allow you to go through it can be expressed in equations? What mathematical physics fuels the sun that ultimately gives you your daily bread? What mathematical physics keeps your home planet a goldilocks planet, not too far away from, or too close to the sun with an atmosphere over your head? 24/7/52 you are governed by time and space; matter and energy, all of which have reality as mathematical constructs. And where would sports teams*, NASA and the military be without the basic mathematics behind the basic physics that guide and govern their activities?

There’s another kind of mathematical universe apart from the one promoted by Max Tegmark, though maybe they are actually one and the same. That’s my hypothesis. There’s another way of looking at this. There’s another possible, even probable, Mathematical Universe – the Simulated Universe. Could these two universes be one and the same?

Firstly, why is a Simulated Universe our probable Universe? Well, for the exact same reason that while you suspect there is just one real Universe, the one real Universe the really real you lives in, you would be aware that Planet Earth in that really real Universe has an intelligent human population that has evolved computer technologies and has created thousands upon thousands of virtually real simulations, both for the purposes of instruction (say astronaut flight training) as well as for entertainment (video games). The ratio of virtually real landscapes to really real landscapes is therefore multi-thousands to one.

Further, in most cases there are thousands upon thousands of copies of those simulations, a sort of Multiverse, where say a character in one video game has thousands of ‘clones’ because there are thousands of copies of that game. That character of course couldn’t meet any of his or her or its identical copies, which is probably a good thing. However, if you could ask that character whether they felt they were really real or simulated, they would of course answer really real not knowing or suspecting that a human being was their creator and the creator of their simulated landscape.

Go one level up from Planet Earth and humanity’s numerous simulation creations and extrapolate and the odds are high that someone or something out there, a Supreme Programmer, created a simulation that’s our Universe. There are numerous copies of this video game simulation called say “The Life and Times of Planet Earth” created by this unknown and probably unknowable Supreme Programmer, and thus there are really numerous copies of you, but fortunately only one copy per game! Your day-to-day reality is just a virtual reality because you don’t really exist in the way you think you do.

Another way of thinking about the numerous copies of the video game “The Life and Times of Planet Earth” is that this amounts to the concept of Parallel Universes. In another copy of “The Life and Times of Planet Earth” another copy of you has led a different life and lifestyle to the you that exists in your copy or version of “The Life and Times of Planet Earth”.

Now, the interesting bit, IMHO, is what if our Universe or Max Tegmark’s Mathematical Universe which is also our Universe was just a Simulated Universe; a virtual reality computer software generated Universe? Well, what is computer software? Computer software is just bits and bytes, ones and zeros, binary code, or in other words mathematics. You can construct life, the Universe and everything via mathematics by constructing or programming appropriate computer software. Ultimately a video game ‘Universe’ or landscape is just mathematics. An astronaut’s training simulator is just a mathematical construction. If you are a computer software generated, simulated being, inside a virtual reality, then you are a mathematical construction.

What’s the appeal of a Simulated Universe? It explains a lot that’s currently unexplainable.

Why are all electrons (or positrons or up and down quarks, etc.) identical? Because all electrons have the exact same binary code, that’s why. Forget vibrating strings as the reason. String theory isn’t even in the hunt. Any and every anomaly is explained as easily as “run program” as there is no such thing as the concept of impossibility in a simulation or a video game. Joshua can indeed make the Sun and the Moon stand still in the heavens! You can even have a virtual reality afterlife! In fact, for the physicist, a Simulated Universe scenario should be pleasing since in fact there are two separate sets of incompatible mathematical software running the Simulated Universe – gravity software and quantum physics software. I bring this up because physicists have been trying to marry those two branches of physics for decades now into a Theory of Everything, and haven’t scored a run yet.

In conclusion, our Universe is a Mathematical Universe; a Simulated Universe is a Mathematical Universe. Therefore, it’s possible or even probable as I noted above, that our Universe is a Simulated Universe and you therefore live in a virtual reality landscape that exists as a mathematical construct!

*There’s an entire book, for example, devoted to the physics of baseball, and no doubt many “How To Play…” books focus on the physics behind the scenes and the mathematics behind the physics. Baseball can be reduced to pure mathematics apart from the mathematical physics relating to bat and ball, which will come as little surprise to most baseball fans, players and managers. There’s percentages this; statistics that, all of which make baseball about the most mathematical oriented sports on the ground.

More Anomalies: Another Top Baker’s Dozen: Part One

From the cosmic to the quantum; from the macro to the micro; from the natural world to the human world, enigmas are everywhere. Here’s another baker’s dozen worth.

You may not be happy with the world as it is, but at least it’s orderly and makes logical sense. Walk, don’t walk, green yellow red; money trickles in, money flows out; friends and politicians come and go, enemies and stuff accumulate; the sun rises and sets, the moon waxes and wanes; people are born, people die; the days, weeks, months, seasons. and years come and go with regularity. But dig a bit deeper beneath the surface and the world and the cosmos it inhabits, is one anomalous place.

THE BIG BANG EVENT: This is no doubt a concept that nearly everyone has heard about, and swallowed hook, line and cosmological sinker because scientists present this creation of the Universe scenario as fact. It’s not fact; just the most viable theory of many theories and it has serious flaws. The accepted theoretical account of the creation or event that kick-started our Universe off not only has that event a something that created all of matter and energy, but all of time and space as well, and this creation event, to boot, all took place in a volume less than that of a pinhead (something in the realm of the quantum) and for no apparent reason at all. First there was nothing; then there was something. Wow!

At best observations that support this are indirect being made some 13.7 billion years after-the-fact. Those indirect observations that provide evidence for the Big Bang event are the fact that the Universe is expanding; the Universe has a temperature – the remnants from the hot Big Bang called the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMBR) and the amounts and ratio of hydrogen to helium. In reality there are no direct observations as nobody was present at Ground Zero all those billions of years ago.

There are really a couple of anomalies present in the standard Big Bang account. 1) You have a violation of causality – something (space, time, matter and energy) created from nothing which is a violation of several conservation laws or relationships. 2) You have a violation of pure common sense that tells you that you can not stuff the contents of the entire Universe into the realm of the quantum, something actually way less in volume in fact than a pinhead. If that’s not anomalous, I don’t know what is!

SPEED OF LIGHT: The anomaly here is that in any other scenario, velocities can be added and subtracted, except the velocity that’s known as the speed of light. Within Relativity Theory, if there is anything unintuitive it is the fact that in the entire Universe, it is the speed of light alone that is absolute or fixed, not something like space or time. It’s unintuitive in that all other bits and pieces that are in motion can be added or subtracted. So, if you are in a train that is moving at say 100 km/hour and you throw a ball at 10 km/hour in the direction at which the train is moving, to an observer outside the train, your ball is travelling at 110 km/hour. If you throw the ball towards the rear of the train, an outside observer will measure the ball as moving at 90 km/hour. If on the other hand, you shine a flashlight in the train, an outside observer will see the velocity of the resulting light beam moving at the speed of light – not the speed of light PLUS the velocity of the train, or the speed of light MINUS the velocity of the train, but at the speed of light! That’s nuts, but it’s scientifically nuts and been proven again and again in any experiment you care to devise.

QUANTUM GRAVITY AND THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING: We have the Theory of General Relativity (gravity) and Quantum Physics. Both are bedrocks of modern physics. Both are accurate to a high degree of experimental precision. Both aren’t compatible - with each other. Apparently, one (or both) of these theories must be wrong, or at best incomplete. That’s why the unification of the two (a theory of quantum gravity) is physics’ Holy Grail. However, that Holy Grail is proving as difficult to find as the Biblical Grail itself! But for the moment, it’s like the universe has two independent sets of laws – one governing the very large (gravity); one the very small (the quantum). This makes no natural or scientific sense.

We have observations of four physical forces yet no theory which unites the three quantum forces (electromagnetism, the strong nuclear force and the weak nuclear force) with the one classical force – gravity. Theory needs to be satisfied. All of the four fundamental forces should be interconnected; some sort of unification principle must be in operation that relates all four, one to the other. However, these four fundamental forces that govern the Universe show no signs of any obvious unification – well actually the three quantum ones do (known as the GUT – Grand Unified Theory), but that’s where the unification ends. Gravity remains the wallflower. If the Big Bang theory is to be proven correct as stated, scientists must of necessity come up with a viable theory of quantum gravity that is an acceptable unification of the trio of quantum forces with gravity. There is, to date, no viable theory of quantum gravity despite thousands of physicists searching for one over many generations now. Mother Nature is an anomalous bitch!

QUASARS: Quasars are ‘quasi-stellar objects’. They are ‘stellar’ because they aren’t all that large (like a galaxy). They are ‘quasi’ because they give off energy way, way, way more times greater than any star known in any astronomical catalogue. They seem to be primordial objects – they formed long ago and are now far away.  Quasars, like stars or galaxies, are their own entities and if two or more show a very close and special causality relationships then they should show identical recessional velocities (since the Universe is expanding and they are part of the Universe and that expansion). Recessional velocities are measured by an object’s red-shift. Theory identifies red-shift with velocity. However, you apparently have some observations of causality connected quasar pairs with vastly differing red-shifts (measurements of their recessional velocities). The anomaly, in an analogy, is that you can not have a runner running at 15 miles per hour holding hands with another runner running at 3 miles per hour!

MASS: There are three fundamental properties of particles (like the electron, neutrinos, the numerous quarks, etc.) and their anti-particles (like the positron). They are charge, spin and mass. As the song goes, two out of three ain’t bad, but that still leaves one out of three out of joint. In this case, it’s mass. Nobody can predict from first principles what the masses of the fundamental particles should be. That’s fairly disturbing for something as fundamental as mass. Despite the relatively large number of particles (including their equal and opposite anti-particles), there are only a few allowed values for charge and spin, values pretty much confined to the physics infield. But, for some reason, the mass (usually expressed in equivalent energy units – Einstein’s famous equation) of the various particles are not only scattered throughout the physics ballpark but are all over the city map and beyond. They take on values (albeit one value per type of particle) over many orders of magnitude without any apparent pattern or regularity or relationship between them – and nobody has the foggiest idea why, not a validly theoretical idea, or even a ‘far out’ idea. Why should mass differ so greatly from the other fundamental properties part and parcel of those elementary particles? It’s like someone just drew a few dozens of numbers out of a hat containing multi hundreds of thousands of values and assigned them to the few dozens of particles willy-nilly. Something is screwy somewhere because something so fundamental shouldn’t be so anomalous.

PHYSICAL CONSTANTS: There are constant reports of physical constants that aren’t – constant that is. Physical constants are just that – a constant. They have just one value, everywhere, every-when, and no exceptions. But apparently some ‘constants’ have more than one value depending of where and/or when. Theory and observations (if correct) are yet again not in harmony and that’s totally nuts!

TIME TRAVEL: Time travel to the past is a staple of science fiction, but surprisingly has actual viability in modern general relativity physics. In general relativity physics, time travel to the past is theoretically possible – though damned difficult in practice. However, that means that those time travel paradoxes are possible, even likely.

The anomaly are those lovable paradoxes like going back in time, say ten years, and killing yourself (which is a novel way of committing suicide), which means you couldn’t have existed to go back in time in the first place in order to kill yourself, which means you’re not dead so you can go back in time and murder yourself, etc. What kind of physics is that?

The second anomaly however is that no time travellers have been observed from our future. You would think various significant historical events would be swarming with historians and tourists from the future where time travel is possible. Nobody from our present or past has time traveled back in time and left a proof-positive calling card that we’ve ever found in the fossil record or recorded in the history books.

If something is possible, especially something as interesting as time travel, we would expect to see either people from our future in the here and now, or evidence that we’ve travelled to the past, like finding a human skeleton buried inside a T-Rex skeleton, as in inside the area where the T-Rex’s abdominal cavity would be! We don’t.

To be continued…

The Nature of Gravity: Part One

Gravity – we all feel it; it limits much that we can do or build; and we don’t understand it!

Say you drop something and it falls, as you’d expect, vertically to the ground. A routine happening! You can easily explain what happened (and where and when), but can you explain how it happened, or why that something fell vertically down and not in some other direction? You probably can not.

Gravity is associated most strongly with two physicists – Newton and Einstein. Post Newton, gravity just had something (mathematical) to do with how massive objects are and how far apart they are. There was no real explanation of why or how. Gravity was just the way it was, and Newton’s Laws of Gravity were mainly predictive, not explanatory. [At least the ancients had an explanation. Objects (air, earth, fire and water) sought their natural place in the ordered scheme of things – as if they had minds of their own obeying cosmic laws. Thus, solids were at the bottom and rocks fell down because their place was with solids; water fell down but sat atop of solids; air rose to sit above water; and fire wanted to rise above the air to be with the sun, an obvious ball of fire in the sky.]

Post Einstein, gravity was just a phenomenon that was attributed to joint interactions between mass and space-time. Gravity was a property of the geometry of space. Mass distorts the shape of space-time, and so other objects move in accordance with that warped shape just like moving objects on the surface of the Earth follow the contours – the warps.

Today, physicists are trying to absorb gravity (which is a continuous phenomenon) into the now well established realm of quantum physics (which is not continuous). So far, no dice, but it’s not for lack of imaginative trying. The basic reason for trying to merge the two is that there are several things in nature that can only be adequately explained by unifying the two – primarily the singularities at the heart of Black Holes and the Big Bang.

So what exactly is gravity? Well, at first glance, gravity is obviously a force – it forces you to fall downwards or conversely, you have to apply a force to overcome it.

Traditional physics texts list four known forces at work in the Universe – gravity, electromagnetism, and the strong and weak nuclear forces. Unfortunately, gravity is pretty much now the exclusive property of Einstein’s General Relativity Theory while the other three are based around quantum physics. Physicists have as a first Holy Grail the desire to link as one the three quantum forces, or GUTs (Grand Unified Theories), and have just about succeeded – at least in combining convincingly the weak nuclear and the electromagnetic forces – electroweak theory. The second Holy Grail is to link all four into a TOE – a Theory of Everything, or in more common physics language, finding a quantum theory of gravity or quantum gravity as mentioned above.

Alas, despite intense effort (over several generations by theoretical physicists), no such link has ever been experimentally shown. The only thing to date that has achieved this TOE is the solely mathematical theory of strings, which, alas, has no experimental runs on the board some thirty years on. Even so, it takes string theory to require some ten or eleven spatial dimensions to achieve this, again something for which there are no experimental (and no common sense) evidence. It’s proving an interesting area for nerdy thinkers, but it (string theory) remains, 30 years on, theory, Theory and more THEORY!

What if one assumes the opposite (for a refreshing change)? So perhaps it just isn’t possible to relate or link gravity (hence General Relativity) to the other three known (quantum) forces. TOE is not only elusive, it’s impossible. Gravity and the other three forces can’t be combined any more than one can turn an apple into a pear. [“Heresy, heresy” I hear you cry!]

So how is gravity different? Perhaps gravity is just so different that it not only stands alone, it must stand alone.

Gravity is different #1: Unlike the other three forces, gravity has an opposite – antigravity, or in today’s cosmology, ‘dark energy’ which is causing the Universe’s expansion rate to ever increase or accelerate. You’d be hard pressed to come up with a concept of an anti-strong or anti-weak nuclear force, or an anti-electromagnetic force! What would an anti-magnetic field be? Could you have anti-light? Such concepts only induce headaches!

Gravity is different #2: Two of the three quantum forces operate over atomic (or sub-atomic) lengths. Both gravity and electromagnetism (EM) can, in theory, extend their influences to infinity. But, while EM can be blocked (at least for a while) by placing an object or insulator in front of the EM source, gravity can’t be. No known physics can block gravity. Place a sheet of metal in front of a lamp, and you block the light. Place the same sheet between you and the Earth, and you won’t start floating upwards! 

Gravity is different #3: What can gravity do that quantum forces can’t – bend light – that’s a pretty neat trick! [See below for more details.]

Gravity is different #4: Of all the four known forces, gravity is by far and away the weakest of the weak. If gravity were on the beach, gravity would get sand kicked in its face! Now you may not think gravity is all that weak while in freefall from a 12 story building roof heading for the concrete sidewalk far below, but it is – relative to the rest. [In fact it’s the electromagnetic force that terminates your 12 story fall, and presumably you!] I mean it is easier to lift up a paperclip from your desk with the entire mass of the Earth trying to stop you, than it is to separate that same paperclip from a reasonably strong magnet. In fact you could use that magnet to pick the paperclip up in the first place. Magnet one; Earth’s gravity zero! And you certainly would have to use a lot more force trying to walk through brick walls, or other solid objects, so the electromagnetic forces acting between the atoms and molecules holding them together as a solid must be pretty strong. And don’t even think about trying to pull apart the nucleus of an atom or to separate the quarks that make up a proton or neutron. No, we may think of gravity as a giant force, but it’s still the smallest of the four giants, sort of like a gnat compared to elephants.

Gravity is different #5: If string/membrane (brane) theory is right, then gravity alone of the four known forces can ‘travel’ off our brane (actually termed a braneworld) to another braneworld (and vice versa) through what is termed ‘the bulk’. The other three forces are stuck to our braneworld, and presumably, those three forces would also be glued to another braneworld. Thus, relative to the other three forces, gravity is diluted and thus is experienced as being a weaker (the weakest) force. It also explains how two braneworlds can attract one another and collide. Such a collision results in a Big Bang for each braneworld, but a Big Bang that occurred in pre-existing space and time. [Look up ‘Ekpyrotic Universe’ for the nitty-gritty details.]

Gravity is different #5 (continued): Invoking the braneworld concept and associated forces further helps to explain ‘dark matter’, which one recalls has positive gravity, yet is invisible or ‘dark’ (apparently it has no association or interaction with electromagnetic energy). Anyway, the idea is that ‘dark matter’ is in fact just ordinary matter, but on another braneworld (or in another universe – part of the Multiverse). We feel ‘dark matter’s’ gravity cause gravity can travel through ‘the bulk’ or leak between braneworlds, but we can not see ‘dark matter’ because electromagnetic energy can not travel across ‘the bulk’ that separates braneworlds. (String theory may still be, thirty years on, only pure mathematics and theory, but it can explain some real physics phenomena! Now if only someone could figure out how to slot ‘dark energy’ into this scenario, they’d be a candidate for the Nobel Prize!)

To be continued…

Physics: Is There A Fifth Force?

Physical forces rule our cosmos, and since we’re a part of the cosmos, they govern our existence as well. Even if we’ve never studied physics, we all know about gravity, and to a lesser extent, electromagnetism. We don’t tend to have any obvious day-to-day perception or connection with the two nuclear forces, but rest assured, if they didn’t exist, you wouldn’t either. Is that it, the sum total of all the forces that rule the Universe?  Perhaps there awaits the discovery of a fifth, or more forces - or perhaps not.

We know a great deal about the various forces that control our Universe – there’s gravity, electromagnetism, the strong nuclear force (which binds the atomic nucleus together) and the weak nuclear force (responsible for radioactivity). Are they collectively adequate to explain life, the Universe and everything – especially life?

Coming to terms with (for lack of a better phrase) a fifth force, call it a ‘life-force’, I would have to superficially agree that assuming the existing four forces (and their associated particles) aren’t sufficient to adequately explain life, evolution, the mind, memory, sleep and dreams, musical creativity (be it bird songs, whale songs, or human songs), a sense of self, intelligence/intellect, morality, emotions, curiosity, and all those other bits and pieces we associate with living things, then we may indeed have to postulate yet another force – a ‘life-force’.

In other words, is there a fifth force needed or required to bridge the gap between non-life and life? Finding another force in the Universe isn’t all that unprecedented – I mean we didn’t know about the nuclear forces until the (roughly) third decade of the last century, less than 100 years ago.

Many cultures have or currently think there is a ‘life-force’, some sort of mystical vitality force or unspecified bio-energy fields, that’s required to breathe life into otherwise inanimate objects, objects otherwise composed of the same sorts of chemicals that make up rocks and things. It tends to be a relatively New Age or Eastern (Asian) philosophy. However, believing in a fifth force, a ‘life-force’, and proving it are two entirely different things. Biologists, biochemists, etc. haven’t exactly rushed to update their textbooks with a chapter on a ‘life-force’ that underpins their field of study.

But if there is some sort of ‘life force’, then presumably it ultimately can be detected and measured. There would also have to be some sort of ‘life force’ particle – all the other universal forces have associated particles (electromagnetic forces have the photon particle; gravity has the theoretical graviton; the strong nuclear force has gluons). Of course, such a force particle may have properties that are beyond our technology to detect – so far anyway. By analogy, there are lots of massive particles theoretically postulated to exist by particle physicists. Those ultra-massive particles are theoretically predicted via the concept of super-symmetry (SUSY). But, even if SUSY is correct, our atom smashes or particle accelerators don’t yet have the required energies to produce them and thus verify the SUSY particle theory.

Unfortunately, I’ve yet to come across any scientist, say a physicist or a cosmologist that speculates on there being yet another unknown physical force in the universe (as opposed to a ‘life-force’, which of course would also have to be a physical force, a physical property of the Universe). Finding a Theory of Everything (TOE), the Holy Grail of physics that unites the existing forces as separate manifestations or phase transitions of one ultimate force, is proving hard enough with only four forces to deal with. A fifth force would surely put the cat among the pigeons! You’d need to ask yourself would this hypothetical fifth force operate over long distances (like gravity and electromagnetism), or tiny distances (like the two nuclear forces). What would be the properties of any associated particle(s)? My knowledge and abilities aren’t adequate to figure all that out, but perhaps there are those who might like to run with the idea.

Okay, an elusive and theoretical ‘life-force’ aside, following some speculation on the nature of ‘dark energy’, that force which is causing the expansion rate of the Universe to accelerate, I strongly suspect that ‘dark energy’ implies the existence of a fifth force in our Universe. Recall that the four known forces are 1) gravity; 2) electromagnetism; 3) the strong nuclear, and 4) the weak nuclear. The strong and weak nuclear forces operate on much too short a distance scale (atomic lengths) for either to account for ‘dark energy’. “Dark energy’ operates over large scale distances. ‘Dark energy’ is unlikely to be electromagnetic in nature – otherwise it wouldn’t be ‘dark’ (photons anyone?). ‘Dark energy’ could hardly be due to gravity (pull pressure) since ‘dark energy’ is antigravity (push pressure).  Now the theoretical particle that is assumed to convey the gravitational force is called a ‘graviton’. Perhaps there is such a thing as an anti-graviton particle, but then we haven’t even trapped a graviton yet – it’s still a beastie in the crypto-zoology realm of theoretical particle physics, so an anti-graviton is heaping speculation on another speculation. Anyway, if one assumes that none of the known forces adequately accounts for the nature of ‘dark energy’; then the unification of physics, the Holy Grail ‘Theory of Everything’ has gotten near infinitely more complicated!  All of this sounds like a good area for observational cosmologists and theoretical particle physicists to have a serious chinwag over several rounds of drinks to come to terms (if possible) with the elusive elements – extra types of forces and the associated matter related particles that convey those forces.