You and the Vacuum Energy

The electron, the proton and the quark are all entities within the realm of particle hence quantum physics. All three carry electrical charge. All three have mass. After those observations, things get interesting, or messy, depending on your point of view.

An electron has a negative charge exactly equal and opposite to that of a proton. Note: the charge is exactly equal, even though the proton has a far greater mass than the electron (some 2000 times heavier in fact, not that there has to be of necessity any relationship between mass and charge).

Now that’s strange since the electron is a fundamental particle but the positively charged proton is a composite particle, made up of a trio of quarks (as it the neutron with no net charge). The proton has two quarks each with a positive 2/3rds charge (up quark) and one quark with a negative 1/3^rd charge (down quark) for an overall balance of one positive charge. (The neutron on the other hand has one up quark with a positive 2/3rds charge and two down quarks each with a negative 1/3^rd charge, for an overall balance of zero charge – neither positive nor negative.)

Now you might suggest that an electron might be a fusion of a trio of down quarks, each with a negative 1/3^rd charge, except the electron, again, isn’t a composite particle, and the mass is all wrong for that scenario. If an electron were a composite of a trio of down quarks, each with a minus 1/3^rd charge, the electron would be thirty times more massive than it is – not something particle physicists would fail to take notice of. 

Further, the force particle that governs the electron is the photon; that which governs the quarks inside the proton and the neutron is the gluon, which further differentiates the two things – quarks and electrons. In any event, if you could have a composite particle of a trio of negative 1/3^rd down quarks, if that were the case, and it is the case, and it’s called the Negative Delta, you’d also need a composite particle that’s the fusion of a trio of positive 2/3rds up quarks for an overall charge of plus two. To the best of my knowledge there is only one such critter in the particle zoo and it’s called the Doubly Positive Delta. I’m sure you’ve never heard of these Delta particles, which goes to show how much bearing or impact they have on life, the Universe, and everything.

In case you were wondering, there would be an anti-quark of minus 2/3rds charge, and an anti-quark of a positive 1/3^rd charge, to yield an anti-proton and an anti-neutron. The anti-proton would of course have an equal and opposite charge to the anti-electron (which has a formal name – the positron). So things are equally as mysterious in the realm of the anti-world.

Question: How do you get 1/3^rd or 2/3rds of an electric charge in any event? Of course one could just multiply by three and that does away with the fractions, but that doesn’t resolve the larger issues, like for that matter, what exactly is electric charge and how does it come to be?

Presumably quarks inside of protons and neutrons, and electrons, could have taken on any old values of charge, separate and apart, but didn’t. Why? Is this evidence for a Multiverse (where anything that can happen does happen in all possible combinations); intelligent design (which does not of necessity imply a deity – just a creator, or a programmer); or just a coincidence?

Why is it so? What does it mean? Equal and opposite charges between the proton and the electron would just seem to be one of Mother Nature’s little mysteries.

But something else is odd here. The proton, as noted above, is 2000 times more massive than the electron, but if you weigh up the trio of quarks* that make up the proton, the proton should only come in at roughly 20 times that of an electron. That’s 100 times too small. So where does the other 1980 bits of mass come from? Well the gluon that holds the proton’s (and the neutron’s) quarks together, like the electron’s photon and gravity’s (theoretical or hypothetical) graviton, have no rest mass that add to the total. But the internal jiggling of the quarks and their gluon companions does add a bit more mass to the proton. Remember that motion equals energy which equals mass. Finally, that leaves the vacuum energy to fill the remaining gap.

Vacuum energy: what’s that? There’s no such state as zero energy, so there’s energy around even where you don’t expect it – like in a vacuum. If you have a finite amount of energy in a finite volume, you cannot dilute that amount of energy such that you end up with no energy present. That’s a violation of fundamental conservation laws. So this vacuum energy is present everywhere and experimentally confirmed so that’s not an issue to be debated. The next bit is to recall that Einstein’s famous equation relates the equality between energy and mass. Mass can be converted to energy and energy can be converted to mass. So this vacuum energy can produce what’s known as virtual particles, which exist for nanoseconds (actually way less than that) before recombining, going poof, and returning to the environment again as energy.

Everywhere, anywhere, all the time, these virtual particles pop into and out of existence – your basic transformation of energy into matter (mass) and back to energy again. Again, matter and energy are two sides of the same coin. A little bit of mass can create a lot of energy as the atomic bomb; a lot of energy can create a tiny bit of mass, and virtual particles are tiny, so it doesn’t take much energy to manufacture them. As you might expect, it’s cheaper (uses less energy) to create virtual ‘ping pong balls’ than virtual ‘bowling balls’, and so you get way more of the lighter particles created than the heavier ones. Further, the heavier they are the quicker they go poof again. Not that it ultimately matters but these pop-in pop-out events transpire so quickly that not even the finest and most accurate of Olympic timers could measure their duration. Quantum’s vacuum energy’s virtual pop-in pop-out is all over in the blink of a blink of a blink of a blink (add some more blinks) of an eye.

Oh, one other thing to note, when the vacuum energy creates these virtual particles, they are created in pairs – matter-antimatter pairs to be precise. Now why, when virtual particles are created are they in that form? Matter-antimatter pairs are the only viable way of returning to the vacuum energy the energy that was ‘borrowed’ to create the particles in the first place. It’s like borrowing money from the bank. You’ve got to repay it. If the vacuum energy created, say a pair of electrons, well the energy debt couldn’t be repaid since two electrons can’t annihilate each other back to pure energy. The bank’s money wouldn’t be repaid and there’d be hell to pay instead!

This constant froth and bubble is commonly called quantum fluctuations or the quantum jitters. All that activity, those virtual matter-antimatter particles, completely accounts for the missing mass – the differential between the proton’s quarks’s mass and the proton’s mass. In a similar way, presumably all matter is more massive as a result of these quantum jitters that take place in the vacuum energy, jitters which even permeate the insides of protons and neutrons. So, and I hope you’re sitting down while reading this, a large part of your mass is due to the jittery happenings of the vacuum energy!  

Given the above, I can’t help now but wonder what affect this constant froth and bubble, the quantum jitters, has on the biological body – your biological body. In theory, barring external agents like accidents, there is no real reason why we should age and die. Some diseases are obviously caused by outside agents like bacteria and viruses, but others have more mysterious origins. There are external agents like smoking, alcohol, radioactivity and ultraviolet light which can have detrimental effects. But if you exclude all nasty external agents, why would we age and ultimately snuff it?

The body, your body, my body, your pet’s body, is ultimately a composite of the fundamental particles that make up life, the universe and everything. These fundamental or elementary particles are subject to quantum phenomena. These particles have a volume for those phenomena to operate in. Even in space external to those particles, quantum phenomena operate all the time, anywhere and everywhere. The vacuum energy isn’t somewhere ‘out there’ in never-never-land. It’s everywhere including inside you from head to toe. Virtual particles are being created and destroyed inside you even as you read this, like it or not. All of this too-ing and fro-ing, the constant creation of virtual particles and hence their annihilation (literally a matter-antimatter annihilation) – energy to matter and matter back to energy – must have some sort of wear and tear on biological systems starting at the quantum or micro level and moving on up the line. If something goes wrong at the micro level, it has an obvious ripple effect on up that line to the macro level. Perhaps modern medicine should pay closer attention to quantum and particle physics!

There are probably multi hundreds of thousands of monographs exploring and explaining the workings and maladies of the human body from conception to ultimate demise; from the whole of physiology and anatomy down to the individual organ systems (i.e. – digestive system, respiratory system, nervous system, etc.); the individual organs (stomach, lungs, spinal cord); the tissues that comprise these; the cells that make up the tissues and the biochemistry that works its magic inside the cells. But I doubt if you’ll find in any medical library too many tomes on particle and quantum physics. Yet without particle and quantum physics there could be no cellular biochemistry on up to gross physiology and anatomy.

If all those quantum jitters, those now-you-see-them now-you-don’t virtual particles consisting of matter-antimatter annihilations inside you weren’t bad enough, the micro world isn’t quite through with you. You’re being bombarded 24/7/52 by millions of cosmic rays and neutrinos every second, though fortunately nearly all pass right through you as if you didn’t exist at all. However, the same can’t be said for those matter-antimatter annihilations. There’s no way I can see the creation and destruction of virtual particles (in matter-antimatter pairs) having any beneficial effect on your body, hence my postulating that these quantum jitters might have some, even if partial, effect on some diseases, infirmities, the ageing process, even ultimately death.

There’s no point is worrying about this for there’s not a damn thing you or anyone, not even your family doctor or a particle physicist, can do about it.        

The one saving grace is that the virtual energy is 120 orders of magnitude less than theory predicts, otherwise you and the Universe would be ripped apart – well actually you and the Universe would never have formed in the first place.

*There is some degree of uncertainty in the exact mass of those various quarks because they cannot be weighed in isolation. However, the estimates are probably pretty close to the mark. The error bars aren’t that great.

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.   

Theory vs. Observation: Part One

There’s many a conflict that rages between observation and theory. What is observed cannot be; what cannot be alas is observed. Sceptics, those supporting theory, dump down on those who contradict theory because they witnessed something to the contrary. “It can’t be therefore it isn’t.” The witness dumps down on the sceptic with the statement, “I know what I saw”. Impasse! Perhaps there is a third option, one where both theory and observation can coexist.

In any sort of legal dispute, if you’re the prosecutor, it’s good to have documents – a paper trail – fingerprints, video camera footage, someone caught red-handed in the act or with the goods, as well as a documented trilogy of available time, substantive motive and ample opportunity against the alleged perpetrator.  But sometimes all you have to base your case on is the observation of a witness or witnesses. That’s often been enough, even more than enough, to either convict someone or provide and substantiate that someone with a legal alibi.  Eyewitness testimony alone, well it’s not perfect but it’s not something inadmissible in court either. 

While documents, including pictographs, rock carvings/paintings, hieroglyphs and related archaeological relics, including human remains; films and photographs too, are all excellent means to document history, an awful lot of what we accept as historical gospel comes from what someone or a group of people have witnessed, especially in the days before sound recordings and film. Then too many a document is nothing more than the recorded word of an eyewitness; an observer(s). 

Lastly, you couldn’t last or survive a day without your powers of observation being accurate and reliable. If your vision was unreliable or faulty, could you drive to work? You’d better know a red light when you see one, and exercise superb judgment based of your observations if thinking about overtaking and passing another vehicle. Ditto if you cross a busy street. You’d better be spot-on in your observation if approaching a down staircase. You’d better be able to observe and tell the difference when meeting up with a bear or a deer in the woods if you intend to pet it. Your ability to observe and report accurately (if only to yourself) those observations are absolutely critical to your survival.

You probably tell lots of people every week events that you observed and many people no doubt relate to you things they have witnessed. Nobody bats an eyebrow – nobody questions anyone’s bona fides. Expect of course when its something that expert authorities, professional sceptics included, say cannot be. Then eyebrows get raised. 

Issue number one: If 99.99% of what you observe is accurate, believable, a no-brainer in terms of  credibility, then why are you all of a sudden an unreliable witness if you observe something others, so-called expert others, dismiss as an impossible anomaly?

Issue number two: So-called, and really-real experts can indeed dismiss an impossible anomaly, witnesses be damned, if it is indeed an impossibility by the science of the day.

Issue number three: We have a contradiction between theory (what the experts say) and observation (what the witness sees)

On the one hand, throughout history, there’s been many an observation of something anomalous and considered downright impossible, according to the sceptics, that’s now part and parcel of the standard norm, like meteorites – stone that fall from the sky. Score points for the observer.

On the other hand, how many observations have been credited as legit though later found to be less than credible. Score points for the sceptic.

Now if someone has a track record of telling tall tales or taking substances that are known to hinder accurate observations and judgments, that’s one thing, but if not, are you prepared to call someone into doubt just because their observation are anomalous according to the state of the world?

For the purposes of this essay, I’ll ignore the philosophical concept inherent in quantum physics that the observer actually creates what is being observed; or in other words, nothing exists or has reality unless it is being observed. Let’s go with the more down to earth philosophy that something has, or has not, a reality regardless of whether it is being scrutinized or not.

Let’s examine a quintuplet listing of those it-can’t-be-therefore-it-isn’t anomalies contradicted by observations of just that, which could easily be expanded by two orders of magnitude, but then this is an essay and not a book-length encyclopaedia.

The realm of the once animate: Ghosts – Even if you haven’t seen a ghost, you probably know of someone who has or lacking that, you can go to your nearest library or the Internet and find ultimately hundreds of thousands of reported observations of ghostly manifestations. Are you prepared to call all these witnesses deluded or liars or under the influence? Now, try to come up with a viable explanation that’s compatible with physics, chemistry and biology that explains the relationship between a dead body and its post-death yet animated counterpart. Good luck!

Apart from the gap between observation and there being no theoretical way for ghosts or phantoms or spirits or wraiths, call them what you will, those remnants of the dead of people recently, or even not so recently, deceased, to exist, there is also the question, why aren’t sighted ghosts, or phantom hitchhikers, etc. naked? I mean it’s the person who died, not what they were wearing, so if a ghost is the essence of a former living person, and clothing doesn’t contribute to the nature of that essence, then ghosts should be seen naked! They’re not, so that’s anomaly number two between theory (should be undressed) and observation (ghosts are decently attired).

The realm of the animate: Botany: Crop Circles – This time there is absolutely no doubting the observational bona fides of the anomaly.  Thousands of witness and thousands of photographs and more measurements than you can shake a stick at have been made of (mainly British) crop circles. Sceptics counter that since natural complex geometric crop circles cannot be; and aliens obviously didn’t make them since there are no aliens on or near Planet Earth, then, since not even sceptics can explain away the reality of the circles, it has to be all a human hoax. Sceptics of the sceptics point out that the sheer logistics of human involvement, in total darkness, without mistakes, without leaving traces, without ever being caught, are also as close to theoretically impossible as makes no odds. Observations can’t be disputed; no theory can adequately explain them.

The realm of the animate: Zoology: Loch Ness – Let’s take at face value that numerous witnesses have sighted, some have photographed even filmed some sort of relatively biologically large ‘sea monster’ in Scotland’s Loch Ness. No matter how good the testimony or reliable the witness, no matter the quality of the photograph or the film, can it be so? Unfortunately for us romantic naturalists, the odds that ‘can it be so’ are so low that no sane person would bet a sawbuck on the positive. And so it’s Biology 101 to the fore for a theoretical reality check. You cannot have just a one-off ‘monster’. At the very least you need a male ‘monster’ and a female ’monster’. In fact you need a viable breeding herd of ‘monsters’ in order to keep the lake population of ‘monsters’ an ongoing proposition, since if you had just the one male or the one female and either one was infertile or somehow both failed to get their act together, well it’s by-by birdie or rather Nessie. Unfortunately, if Loch Ness contained a breeding herd of ‘monsters’ then snags would have to rear their ugly head that would argue the contrary. One would be that sightings would be vastly more frequent. Two, sooner or later one of the herd has gotta die, then another, then another. Sooner or later a corpse, fresh or decayed, has got to get washed ashore. If that happens, mystery solved. Thirdly, well there’s the issue of an adequate food supply. Loch Ness could probably feed one ‘monster’, but not a herd of them. Loch Ness is large, but still quite finite in volume. Fish in the open ocean can roam the wide open spaces for a meal; not so in a relatively small fish tank like Loch Ness. So we have another unresolved conflict between observation and theory. 

The realm of the inanimate: The Vacuum Energy - This is probably the Mother of All Anomalies! A temperature of absolute zero, that is a state in which there is no available energy, is impossible. That’s because of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle which is one of those rock solid foundations of quantum physics. So there is always a minimum amount of energy available that pervades the Universe. It’s called the ‘vacuum energy’. Theoretically the vacuum energy should exist with such-and-such a value. The vacuum energy indeed exists (is has been observed and it has been experimentally confirmed) with such-and-such a value. However, you have a 120 order-of-magnitude (that’s one followed by 120 zeros) discrepancy between the observed vacuum energy and the theoretical value of the vacuum energy. This discrepancy is the most embarrassing ‘oops’ in all of modern physics and nobody can figure out how to resolve the discrepancy. Oops indeed!  

The realm of the cosmos: Quasars - Quasars are ‘quasi-stellar objects’. They are ‘stellar’ because they aren’t all that large (unlike 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 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 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!

To be continued…

A Perfect Vacuum, Not

I recall the movie “Alien” had a tagline along the lines of ‘In space, no one can hear you scream’. Why? Because space is a vacuum, and sound (as in screaming) cannot travel from point A to point B if there’s a vacuum in-between. But the question really is, is space a perfect vacuum? Can one achieve a perfect vacuum? If not, why not?

One of the big scientific oops often depicted in Hollywood (and other country’s equivalents) sci-fi space operas is an external view of spaceships, etc. in deep space chug-chug-chugging along with all appropriate sound effects, and/or blasting away with laser cannons or photon torpedos, ditto with appropriate sound effects. Of course, if you really were an external viewer, what would you actually hear? - Absolutely nothing. It would be, or should be, like viewing a silent film from the pre-talkies era. But, for the sake of dramatics, Hollywood (etc.) ignores the physics of it all. ‘Artistic licence’ is what it’s called I believe. 

However, in the physics classroom, where artistic licence isn’t allowed, I’m sure we can all recall from our student days a demonstration of the ringing alarm clock inside the bell jar. As the air was pumped out from the bell jar, the ringing got softer and softer and softer until you heard nothing at all, even though the alarm clock was still jangling away. Of course the science teacher or physics professor told you there was now a total vacuum inside the bell jar and thus no sound could travel from point A – the alarm clock inside the vacuum inside the bell jar, to point B – your ears which were outside the bell jar.

Of course it should be obvious to blind Freddy that there was no such thing as a total or perfect vacuum inside the bell jar. Firstly, no pump is good enough or efficient enough or strong enough to remove each and every last molecule of air from the bell jar. [Of course there is no such thing as a molecule of air, rather atoms and molecules of the various substances that together make up what we call air, but for the sake of simplicity let’s make believe there are molecules of air.] Even discounting those rarefied air molecules left within the bell jar, molecules few and far enough in-between as to prevent the sound of the alarm clock from reaching your ears, the inside of the bell jar still wasn’t a total vacuum.

Why? Well assuming the bell jar was made of glass; light was pouring through the bell jar, and light is a something. The inside of the bell jar was full of visible light. Okay, let’s make the bell jar out of solid lead. That blocks out the light – right? Wrong. Visible light is but a small part of the entire electromagnetic spectrum. Radio waves (a form of non-visible ‘light’) will probably pass through the leaden bell jar, or gamma rays. Even if you succeed in blocking out all of the wavelengths and frequencies of the electromagnetic spectrum, there are still cosmic rays. If you make the leaden bell jar thick enough you might block out all of the cosmic rays, but that still leaves neutrinos, and in order to block all of those, you’d need a bell jar that had a lead thickness of hundreds of light years. Neutrinos can pass through leaden walls as easily as Casper the Friendly Ghost – even easier!

Okay, so you’ve got a perfect pump to remove all the air molecules and sufficient shielding to prevent even neutrinos from entering and passing through. That’s that; now you have your perfect vacuum – right? Wrong again.

You still have gravity not only surrounding but inside the otherwise perfectly shielded bell jar. Even if there were no other matter in the entire Universe, the bell jar itself is made of matter and has its own gravity which resides inside the jar as well as extending to infinity outside of it. Since nothing we know of can block the force of gravity, well that alone puts the kibosh on the perfect vacuum. Gravity is really a real thing, and if you doubt it, I invite you to try to leap tall buildings at a single bound!

Now a perfect vacuum would have to have a temperature of absolute zero, given the total absence of any material substance within. Temperature of course is just a measurement of the average molecular or atomic motion of molecules, atoms, even their fundamental particles. No stuff means a temperature of absolute zero. However the Universe isn’t lacking in stuff which moves around from place to place

For quite another reason however, absolute zero, zero degrees on the Kelvin scale, (or minus 273.15 degrees Celsius or minus 459.67 degrees Fahrenheit) is only theoretical and can never be obtained. That’s because the concept of absolute zero violates the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle which states that it is impossible, no matter how good your measuring instruments are, to simultaneously know the position and momentum of anything, because the very act of measuring something must alter both parameters. That’s because something must bounce off what you are trying to measure and hence interact with your measuring device, but that bounce alters the position and momentum of that in which you are interested. At a theoretical absolute zero, nothing moves and thus you would know both the position and momentum of that or any object, even say an electron, with absolution precision. The momentum is zero and thus your object is in, and stays in, a fixed location – and besides, there’s nothing to bounce off it anyway, because that something (usually a photon) must also have zero energy and is thus at rest.

And thus we have the concept of the vacuum energy, or quantum fluctuations or the quantum jitters. That is to say, at the extreme micro level, there is always activity and thus motion and thus temperature above the theoretical minimum of absolute zero - thus, no perfect vacuum is possible. Even the best vacuum will have the quantum jitters. Oh, and by the way, the quantum jitters or the vacuum energy has been experimentally verified.

So, if you were somehow expecting that there was such a thing as a perfect vacuum, you’re out of luck, not that that I’m sure will cause anyone any loss of shuteye. However, that doesn’t alter the fact that in space, no one can hear you scream! You don’t need a perfect vacuum for that to be true.

Dark Energy: The Ultimate Free Lunch

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Parallel Universes: Part One

Parallel universes, or alternative universes or mirror universes have had a long run of popularity in science fiction and science fantasy, in both print and visual formats. One need only look at an “Alice in Wonderland” or look no further than the “Star Trek” universe (our Universe in less than obvious disguise) to view the near endless plot variations that such parallel / alternative / mirror universes provide our heroes and heroines. Do they actually exist and do they explain anything?

There are apparently two theoretical counterparts in our real world, or in our physics. Firstly, there’s the idea that from the beginning, there’s an infinite number of parallel universes where all things that can happen, do happen. Our Universe is just one of that infinite set. In five of those universes, you 1) flip a coin – in one, it’s a heads you flip; in another, tails; in the third, the coin stands on edge! Or, in a fourth universe you decide not to flip a coin at all, or in universe #5 you decide to flip something else instead.

The other theoretical set of parallel universes is a set that ever increases, staring with just one. Universes split whenever an either/or choice is forced upon it, such that all results that can happen, happen. In this (our) Universe you decide not to flip a coin – but that decision results in a division, the universe splits and in that split, in the new universe, you do flip a coin. In that universe it comes up heads. But, that universe then splits into two and yet another universe where your flip has tails comes up. There’s also another universe where the coin lands on edge! There’s also a universe that originally splits off where you decide to flip something other than a coin. This is known as the ‘Many Worlds Interpretation’ theory, (which resulted out of a need to explain certain quantum phenomena). With every passing second, more and more universes branch off (actually trillions per second).

I’ve never been a fan of the Many Worlds Interpretation of all things quantum. That is, the universe keeps splitting each time it comes to a fork in the road. The question of where all the matter/energy comes from – created out of nothing apparently – I’ve yet to see addressed in the texts. But, many top notch scientists adopt it – perhaps as the least of all the evils certain quantum phenomena dish up. As to where they fit, all those extra universes, that’s not as much of a problem. A motel with an infinite number of rooms never has to put out a ‘no vacancy’ sign – if you get the analogy. Oh, the Many Worlds Interpretation also means that there’s no such thing as free will. You may think you have free will in deciding to wear your red dress instead of your green dress, but in the Many Worlds Interpretation, you do both – so no free will.

However, I myself go for the Copenhagen Interpretation* – when you come to a fork in the road, one and only one choice is made – the other possible choice(s) are never realized and ultimately never have any reality. But, if you start out from scratch with an infinite number of universes, or at least a vast number, then the issue of ‘where’ all the universes are is irrelevant, and the creation of all the stuff that makes them up is equally irrelevant. In the beginning, it was so!

You can have an infinite number of universes in an infinite amount of space. An analogy – there are an infinite number of whole numbers like 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, etc. There’s also an infinite number of even numbers such as 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, etc. Ditto an infinite number of odd numbers. Yet the infinite set of even numbers, plus the infinite number of odd numbers, equals the infinite set of whole numbers. Infinity + infinity = infinity! Or, if you like, think of your house (volume) with just one molecule (universe) in it. You’d agree there’s room for one hell of a lot more molecules (universes). If your house had infinite volume, then…

I had always assumed, and followed the assumptions of others infinitely more brilliant than I, that such theoretical constructions, such parallel / alternative / mirror universes, was forever beyond our actual reach – works of fiction aside of course. We could construct them as an intellectual exercise, but could never verify and understand the actual existence of these mental or thought experiments. That’s because these universes, if they exist, would not be part of our space-time continuum and thusly we could never interact with them.

But what if that assumption is wrong? What if parallel / alternative / mirror universes not only exist, but can and do interact with ours, and thereby give some additional credence to the adventures of our “Alice in Wonderland” and “Star Trek” characters, not to mention the reputations of those physicists who propose infinite universes or Many Worlds Interpretation theories. 

Micro & Macro Mysteries: Well, those assumptions just might now be put to the test. I’d love to be able to say I thought of this idea, even independently, it’s just that brilliant. Alas, I didn’t, and I’m kicking myself because it’s just so simple and elegant.  The credit for this goes to physicist David Deutsch, and for a fuller and better outline of his proposals, see his book cited below**. 

The basics are as follows and deals with the paradoxical and famous ‘double slit’ experiment with light – an experiment with photons.

If you shine a light (millions of photons worth) at a slit, you’ll get a blob of light on the surface behind the slit. No problems – the photon ‘bullets’ go through the slit and impact on the surface behind.

Now you shine the light (millions of photons) at two slits. Contrary to expectation, you don’t get two blobs of light – one opposite each slit – but a classic wave interference pattern of alternating light and dark areas on the surface behind. So photons aren’t ‘bullets’; light must be a wave.

Thus is demonstrated the classic wave-particle duality or paradox of light. Is light a continuous wave, or is it a collection of individual ‘bullet’ particles?

Instead of firing millions of photons at these slits at a go, redo the experiment by firing off photons one at a time – say one per hour. That can actually be done. If you fire the one per hour photons at a single slit, the picture that emerges over time is your blob of light behind the slit. Photons are behaving as ‘bullet’ particles as before.

Now, fire the photons – one per hour – at the two slits. Clearly, you’d expect two blobs of light to ultimately form on the (say photographically sensitive) surface that is behind each slit. Sometimes the single photon would go through one slit; sometimes the other. Alas, you still get a wave-like interference pattern! How can this be? What’s interfering in real time with the actual photons that you’re shooting off?

The only object capable of interfering with photons, to cause wave-like interference, an alternating light-dark pattern, is other photons. But there are no other photons in the vicinity if they are shot out at one per hour and your photon source is the only photon source!

The inescapable conclusion is that there must be other photons around that can’t be detected (seen). Call these photons virtual photons, or shadow photons or ghost photons. Where do they come from? The answer is from our parallel / alternative / mirror universes. There is therefore a form of weak interaction between universes.

How do they, parallel universe photons say, actually get here? Well, at the quantum level, all manner of virtual particles pop into and out of existence from what’s called the vacuum energy. At the extremely microscopic level, what’s often called the ‘quantum foam’, is a level seething with activity, including the popping into and out of existence of micro wormholes, wormholes that can connect one universe with another, even if only for nanoseconds. But, that’s enough to allow the transfer of micro objects, like photons, and electrons, etc. from one universe to another. It’s like seeing the ocean from space. It looks really smooth and tranquil. However, at rowboat level, there’s this twenty foot wave about to come crashing down on top of you.

To be continued…

*But with one very, very important caveat. The Copenhagen Interpretation of the quantum requires that Nature makes up Her mind when, and only when an observer or an observer’s measurement is made. Until then all is probability and nothing has reality or actual existence. The Moon has no reality unless someone is observing or measuring it! To me, observers are irrelevant – reality is reality, with or without observers. 

**Deutsch, David; The Fabric of Reality; Penguin Books, London; 1998:

Multiroads to the Multiverse: Part One

If Mother Nature can create one Universe (ours), Mother Nature can create more than one universe – a Multiverse! The concept of a Multiverse, that there exists more than one universe, that is our Universe – perhaps an infinite number of them existing sequentially in time, or at one go in space, maybe both, is one of the hottest topics in current cosmology.

At the outset, there’s no law of physics (or even of God) that says that there can be (or must be) one and only one universe, our Universe.

Three questions arise – the mechanism for the origin and evolution of other universes; what types of Multiverses can be generated; and what can the concept of a Multiverse explain that the existence of our sole Universe cannot explain?

Ways, Means and Mechanisms That Generate a Multiverse:

In the infinite beginning, there existed from square one, more than one universe. No origin event(s) are required. However, those universes will evolve and ultimately morph into other universes. 

The Many Worlds Interpretation of all things quantum states that when anything within our Universe is forced to make an either/or decision, between two or more pathways or alternatives, each and every pathway or alternative is taken – because Mother Nature cannot make up Her mind between equal probabilities! Thus, to accommodate each and every possible choice, the Universe splits into as many other universes as is necessary to cater for all possible outcomes. Thus, where there existed initially one universe – our Universe – now there must exist an extra one, or two, or three, or whatever number of universes because our Universe had to make a decision between two, three, or whatever number of choices confronted it. Multiply that by how many crossroads our Universe comes to each and every microsecond, and you have the beginnings of a Multiverse in real quick-smart fashion.

Baby Universes via Black Holes: An advanced extraterrestrial technology might be able to create or manufacture baby universes by creating or manufacturing Black Holes. The recipe itself is simple – take a lump of matter and squeeze it down to such a density that its gravitational escape velocity exceeds that of the speed of light. Such is the text of ‘Universe Manufacturing 101’. Of course one doesn’t of necessity need ET. A universe with the sort of physics that permit Black Holes to form will ‘breed’ because those Black Holes will produce baby universes, presumably with the sort of suitable physics that will allow for further Black Holes, etc.

Bubble Universes via Inflation: To adequately explain various observational properties of our Universe, the concept of a rapid period of inflation around the time of the Big Bang event (I’ve seen inflation invoked both just before and just after the ‘bang’ itself) has been proposed. For the briefest of times, the Universe’s expansion accelerated at a fantastic pace before running out of puff. The fly in the ointment is that if inflation didn’t stop at the exact same nanosecond everywhere, then you’d get smaller pockets or bubbles of inflation continuing, and that each separate inflating bubble wouldn’t stop at the exact same nanosecond, creating more bubbles, etc. Each separate pocket or bubble would inflate so fast and break off from the parent inflationary event to form another universe. An analogy is to shake up a say, 1/3^rd empty bottle of fizzy soft drink and open the top cap. What do you get – rapid inflation, that’s what! Bubbles form and expand and give rise to other bubbles which create new bubbles. Each bubble is its own separate universe.

Quantum Fluctuations: The vacuum energy can give rise to virtual particles, which can turn into actual particles under suitable conditions. It’s possible for the energy to come together intensely enough to perhaps create not just a pair of virtual particles, but an entire universe of particles. That could happen again and again, a multitude of times.

Video Games Analogy: There are a Multiverse of videogames within our Universe (i.e. – Planet Earth) – in two ways. One is the collective set of the thousands to maybe hundreds of thousands of individual video games within the marketplace. Each videogame equals one possible universe. The other is that each individual videogame has hundreds to hundreds of thousands of identical copies.  So the videogame Multiverse has both individuality, and sameness. Perhaps our Universe is one copy of one individual ‘video game’ or ‘computer simulation’, within a sea of thousands of identical copies of that game, within a sea of thousands of other individual games/simulations! 

Types of Multiverse:

Parallel / Shadow / Alternative / Mirror / Many Worlds / Higher Dimensional (String Theory’s Branes perhaps) universes – collectively, these universes would have the same laws and principles of physics that we know and love (unless you’re a physics student at exam time), although the ultimate nature and evolution of each and every one might differ. In other words, all these universes will be bio-friendly, though that doesn’t mean of necessity that all will contain life. Basically, these universes are all variations on a theme of our own Universe.

Simulated / Video Games Universes – Okay, within these universes, anything goes. A computer program does not have to follow or obey or simulate the existing laws and principles of physics. You want faster-than-light-travel? You got it! You want antigravity? You can have that too! Do you want your heroine to survive travel through wormholes and Black Holes? Fine! All the terrestrial superheroes and superhero powers – a Superman, a Spiderman, a Green Lantern, the list is near endless – all is possible. You can botch an operation – the patient survives. You can crash a plane – no causalities. You can make the Sun stand still; perform miracles like the resurrection; create new life forms and new civilizations, and boldly go where in our Universe, no one can every go! You can have a Heaven and/or a Hell, or live unprotected upon the surface of Venus (which is the same as Hell only worse).

Bubble / Baby / Quantum Fluctuation Universes / Cyclic or Oscillating Universes (standard Big Bang expansions followed by Big Crunch contractions followed by Big Bang expansions, etc.) – collectively, these universes could be as different as chalk and cheese in that the laws and principles of physics could vary to a greater or lesser extent – but vary, well these universes just might. Think of all the laws, relationships and principles in physics and vary them to your heart’s content. While each universe might be unique, the rules and regulations for each and everyone one is fixed.

To be continued…

Can Black Holes Evaporate? Part One

While there is a constant transfer of matter and radiant electromagnetic energy (photons) between bodies throughout the cosmos, there are sinks, ultimate final resting places where matter/energy can retire to and be removed from the rest of the cosmos. These cosmic sinks are Black Holes. But is that retirement permanent, or can stuff re-enter the cosmic workforce? Can Black Holes evaporate? The theoretical short answer is “yes”; the long answer is “no”.

Black Holes are astrophysical objects that are so massive, that have gravity so high, that their escape velocity (some seven miles per second on Earth) exceeds the ultimate cosmic speed limit – the speed of light (186,000 miles per second). Since nothing can travel faster than the speed of light, nothing (matter and/or energy) once inside a Black Hole can ever get out again – or so the seemingly ironclad logic went.

However, that’s all according to classical physics. A physicist by the name of Jacob Bekenstein came up with the idea of applying quantum physics to Black Holes (upon a suggestion by his mentor John Wheeler – who incidentally coined the phrase “Black Hole”), and once that was done, well lo and behold, Black Holes apparently exhibited entropy, and therefore had a temperature and therefore must radiate and therefore can vomit out stuff. His ideas were mulled over and over again and finally agreed to and expanded on by the celebrated astrophysicist/cosmologist Stephen Hawking. That stuff that a Black Hole can regurgitate now goes under the name of Hawking radiation, or to give credit where credit is due it is technically Bekenstein-Hawking radiation. However, it’s usually just called Hawking radiation so I’ll stick with that convention.

Of course if Black Holes have a temperature, then they must follow the same laws of thermodynamics as any other object with temperature. One key point in thermodynamics is that energy exchanges between objects are at least partly determined by one object’s temperature compared to another object’s temperature. The temperature of a hot cup of coffee will stay hot longer the higher the temperature of the environment that surrounds that hot cup of coffee. A Black Hole’s temperature must be compared to whatever temperature surrounds the Black Hole when considering the fate of the Black Hole. So how does a Black Hole get temperature?

In retrospect, how this happens is obvious (as are all great ideas when applying hindsight).

There is no such thing as the perfect vacuum. That could only be achieved at a temperature of absolute zero where and when everything is 100% frozen stiff. Alas, such a state violates one of the most fundamental principles of quantum physics – the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle – where it is impossible to know both the momentum and position of anything with 100% precision. If something were at absolute zero, frozen stiff and standing still, you’d know both the momentum (which would be zero) and position (at a standstill) of that something with absolute precision.

Since there is always a minimum state of energy anywhere in the Universe (something above absolute zero), and since energy and mass are equivalent (Einstein’s famous formula/equation), then that energy state, the false not-quite-absolute-zero vacuum, the vacuum energy*, can generate mass – virtual particles. However, the particles come in matter-antimatter pairs, which usually immediately annihilate and return to their former pure energy state. BUT, and there is always, a BUT – there’s an exception to the rule – that normal state of affairs can be thwarted.

The vacuum energy, that which can generate particle-antiparticle pairs, exists everywhere where existence has any meaning. Part of that existence is an area called the event horizon**, which is a concept related to the concept we call Black Holes. All Black Holes have an event horizon which surrounds them.

The event horizon surrounding a Black Hole is that somewhat fuzzy region that separates the region (below the event horizon) from which gravity rules over the speed of light, and that region (above the event horizon) where gravity’s escape velocity can’t quite dominate that speed of light velocity. I say its “fuzzy” since it’s not razor sharp, albeit nearly so.

The vacuum energy is part and parcel of the space surrounding the event horizon, above, below and spot-on. Now, what if that vacuum energy generates a pair of virtual particles, one each popping into existence above the event horizon; one below the event horizon. Then, the particles will be unable to annihilate and recombine into pure energy. One will stay within the Black Hole. The other, being above the event horizon, can be dealt a ‘get out of jail’ card. And thus, slowly, ever so slowly, but ever so surely, the Black Hole loses mass, thus energy, and evaporates.

Here’s the general picture. Black Holes can only radiate from the event horizon region which, in a very large Black Hole is going to be very cold because it’s not radiating very much, so initially only things like the mass-less photon escapes. Assuming there’s no incoming to replace the loss, the Black Hole shrinks, and as it gets smaller it warms up slightly (that’s what things that shrink tend to do) and can radiate particles with small mass – say neutrinos. When the Black Hole is tiny, it’s very warm, in a relative sense, and it can go out with a ‘bang’, maybe emitting an electron or positron which is way more massive. When there’s no more Black Hole, the vacuum energy still produces at random virtual particle pairs, but there’s no more event horizon from which to separate those virtual particle pairs and thus its all back to normal – the two annihilate and return to their vacuum energy state. That’s where the popular accounts end. End of story. The ultimate fate of Black Holes will be to evaporate via Hawking radiation, even if it does take trillions of years.

Alas, the written texts forget to mention that radiation emission (and other forms of emitted stuff) is a two-way street, not a one-way street. Black Holes can acquire stuff, as well as radiate stuff. If deposits exceed withdrawals, then Black Holes will always have a positive ‘stuff’ balance and thus won’t fully evaporate. Now this is perhaps why Hawking radiation hasn’t been observed. The tiny amount of Hawking radiation (outgoing) will be swamped by the greater, many orders of magnitude greater, amounts of incoming radiation and other stuff impacting the Black Hole.

Forget Black Holes (and their massive gravity) for a moment and concentrate on Planet Earth. Even at night, you see lots of suns – stars. You see them because they are radiating photons – particles of electromagnetic energy of which visible light is a small part. In fact you only detect a tiny fraction of visual photons because your visual detection devices (eyes) aren’t that efficient. Optical telescopes pick up a lot more of them, but they’re still just as real. You are also being hit by photons in the infrared, the ultraviolet, in radio wavelengths, X-ray photons, gamma-ray photons, etc. Though Earth’s atmosphere shields us from some of these photons (ultraviolet photons are far greater in number at the top of our atmosphere than at the bottom), you still get impacted by multi-billions of them; Planet Earth many orders of magnitude more. Some of the photons get reflected back into space; these don’t add to Earth’s energy/mass balance. Overall, there are roughly one billion photons for each and every fundamental particle with mass, like electrons and neutrinos.

Now in addition Earth (and you too) gets hit with cosmic rays, neutrinos, and cosmic dust. Even if you luck out, Planet Earth gets impacted by meteors and other outer space debris, sometimes debris large enough to not only hit the surface but do considerable damage. Planet Earth’s mass increases by many tons a day, all due to Earth’s sweeping up of the interplanetary dust and small rocks that intersect Earth’s orbit. The trillions of neutrinos that hit us are so ghostly that nearly all pass right through you and the entire planet as well despite them having a tiny amount of mass, so as far as our planet is concerned, they are of little significance. 

Now what about a Black Hole?

To be continued…

*If it helps to conceive of the concept of the vacuum energy, here’s an analogy. Think of the invisible but energetic atmosphere as the vacuum energy. Part of that atmosphere consists of invisible water vapour. But, all of a sudden, and for reasons that must have been mysterious to the ancients, part of the atmosphere undergoes a phase change into something you can see; into something solid – like a particle. You get mist/fog (clouds), rain drops, snow, sleet, hail, etc. Then, equally mysterious, those solid bits eventually undergo another phase change (evaporation standing in for annihilation) back to invisible water vapour in the equally invisible atmosphere. And so you have the invisible vacuum energy that generates particle-antiparticle pairs which annihilate back into the vacuum energy.

**The surface area of the event horizon is the same for both incoming and outgoing so there is no need to take that (non) variable under consideration.