This essay is a compilation of ideas, opinions, and conjectures from two previous essays, "Is Science Solving the Reality Riddle," and "Order, Chaos, and the End of Reductionism," and was expanded to include subsequent essays. It is very much a work in progress and has been repeatedly amended when necessary. The author concludes that current scientific theories are incomplete and limit our understanding of nature in a fundamental way, the current description of how the universe eveolved is wrong, and a new evolutionary paradigm is presented that explains both the physical and mental evolutionary processes.
For a long time, theoretical physicists have dreamed of the day when the general theory of relativity and quantum mechanics would be combined to create the Theory of Everything. It often stated that such a theory would be so simple and concise that the whole thing could be condensed into a simple equation that would fit on a T-shirt.
It was clear to me that classic material reductionism could not provide a path to that laudable goal, so I undertook an investigation to see what could replace it. That investigation spanned almost 4½ years, and it was documented step-by-step in my essay Order, Chaos and the End of Reductionism. This research led me to several dead ends, blind alleys, and self contradictions. What I ultimately discovered was that Einstein's field equations of the general theory of relativity actually provide an exact solution for the universe as a whole, whereas these laws are recapitulated on smaller scales as approximations for weak-field interactions.
Combining this principle with the principle of maximal entropy led to some surprising conclusions, summarized by a simple equation of state that can easily fit on a T-shirt that captures the essence of the Theory of Everything.
Gravity: Superstrings or Entropy? A Modest Proffer from an Amateur ScientistJohn47Wind
This essay evaluates the promise that superstring theory will culminate in a quantum theory of gravity that unifies all the forces of nature into one package. In particular, the proponents of superstring theory promise that it will show how all forces of nature are “unified” at high energies. The essay traces the history of string theory from its humble beginnings in the 1960s, to explain the scattering of sub-atomic particles, to its culmination as five different string theories that supposedly comprise a yet-to-be defined theory named M-theory. In contrast, this essay presents a simple theory of gravity based on entropy that is distributed throughout space. A surprising consequence of entropic gravity is that Newton’s constant, G, has been decreasing over the life of universe, which fulfills the unfulfilled promise made by string theorists. Moreover, this consequence can be tested experimentally, unlike string theory, which makes no testable predictions.
The physical world as a virtual reality, Brian Whitwor.docxssusera34210
The physical world as a virtual reality, Brian Whitworth
2
The Physical World as a Virtual Reality
Brian Whitworth
Massey University, Albany, Auckland, New Zealand
E-mail: [email protected]
Not only is the universe stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we can imagine
Sir Arthur Eddington
Abstract
This paper explores the idea that the universe is a virtual reality created by information
processing, and relates this strange idea to the findings of modern physics about the physical
world. The virtual reality concept is familiar to us from online worlds, but our world as a virtual
reality is usually a subject for science fiction rather than science. Yet logically the world could be
an information simulation running on a multi-dimensional space-time screen. Indeed, if the
essence of the universe is information, matter, charge, energy and movement could be aspects of
information, and the many conservation laws could be a single law of information conservation.
If the universe were a virtual reality, its creation at the big bang would no longer be paradoxical,
as every virtual system must be booted up. It is suggested that whether the world is an objective
reality or a virtual reality is a matter for science to resolve. Modern information science can
suggest how core physical properties like space, time, light, matter and movement could derive
from information processing. Such an approach could reconcile relativity and quantum theories,
with the former being how information processing creates space-time, and the latter how it
creates energy and matter.
Key words: Digital physics, virtual reality, information theory
Modern online games show that information processing can create virtual “worlds”, with their
own time, space, entities and objects, e.g. “The Sims”. However that our physical world is a
virtual reality (VR) is normally considered a topic of science fiction, religion or philosophy, not a
theory of physics. Yet the reader is asked to keep an open mind, as one should at least consider a
theory before rejecting it. This paper asks if a world that behaves just like the world we live in
could arise from a VR simulation. It first defines what VR theory entails, asks if it is logically
possible, then considers if it explains known facts better than other theories.
Strange Physics
While virtual reality theory seems strange, so do other current theories of physics, e.g. the many-
worlds view of quantum physics proposes that each quantum choice divides the universe into
parallel universes [1], so everything that can happen does in fact happen somewhere, in an
inconceivable “multi-verse’ of parallel universes. This is a minority view but surprisingly
popular. Even relatively main-stream physics theories are quite strange. Guth’s inflationary model
suggests that our universe is just one of many “bubble universes” produced by the big bang [2].
String theory suggests the physical world could have 9 s ...
Removing Myths and Fantasies from ScienceJohn47Wind
A growing number of science authors, including Jim Baggott, Alexander Unzicker, Sheilla Jones, and Lee Smolin, have written about the so-called crisis in physics. The ongoing quest to unify Einstein's theory of gravity and quantum mechanics has so far produced a few interesting mathematical models and elaborate sand-castle fantasies, but these have mostly proven to be dead ends. Einstein, Bohr and the members of his Copenhagen team, Bekenstein and Hawking have provided all the necessary pieces. All scientists need to do is put them together. This essay is a recommendation from an amateur scientists on how to do this, explained in easy-to-understand prose.
This article aims to present possible strategies for humanity to seek its survival with the end of the Universe in which we live. Research on the fate of our Universe, on the existence or not of multiverse or parallel universes and on the development of the final theory or theory of everything, that is, of the theory of the unified field, are important questions to elucidate in order to point out possible strategies for humanity seeks its survival with the end of the Universe in which we live.
For a long time, theoretical physicists have dreamed of the day when the general theory of relativity and quantum mechanics would be combined to create the Theory of Everything. It often stated that such a theory would be so simple and concise that the whole thing could be condensed into a simple equation that would fit on a T-shirt.
It was clear to me that classic material reductionism could not provide a path to that laudable goal, so I undertook an investigation to see what could replace it. That investigation spanned almost 4½ years, and it was documented step-by-step in my essay Order, Chaos and the End of Reductionism. This research led me to several dead ends, blind alleys, and self contradictions. What I ultimately discovered was that Einstein's field equations of the general theory of relativity actually provide an exact solution for the universe as a whole, whereas these laws are recapitulated on smaller scales as approximations for weak-field interactions.
Combining this principle with the principle of maximal entropy led to some surprising conclusions, summarized by a simple equation of state that can easily fit on a T-shirt that captures the essence of the Theory of Everything.
Gravity: Superstrings or Entropy? A Modest Proffer from an Amateur ScientistJohn47Wind
This essay evaluates the promise that superstring theory will culminate in a quantum theory of gravity that unifies all the forces of nature into one package. In particular, the proponents of superstring theory promise that it will show how all forces of nature are “unified” at high energies. The essay traces the history of string theory from its humble beginnings in the 1960s, to explain the scattering of sub-atomic particles, to its culmination as five different string theories that supposedly comprise a yet-to-be defined theory named M-theory. In contrast, this essay presents a simple theory of gravity based on entropy that is distributed throughout space. A surprising consequence of entropic gravity is that Newton’s constant, G, has been decreasing over the life of universe, which fulfills the unfulfilled promise made by string theorists. Moreover, this consequence can be tested experimentally, unlike string theory, which makes no testable predictions.
The physical world as a virtual reality, Brian Whitwor.docxssusera34210
The physical world as a virtual reality, Brian Whitworth
2
The Physical World as a Virtual Reality
Brian Whitworth
Massey University, Albany, Auckland, New Zealand
E-mail: [email protected]
Not only is the universe stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we can imagine
Sir Arthur Eddington
Abstract
This paper explores the idea that the universe is a virtual reality created by information
processing, and relates this strange idea to the findings of modern physics about the physical
world. The virtual reality concept is familiar to us from online worlds, but our world as a virtual
reality is usually a subject for science fiction rather than science. Yet logically the world could be
an information simulation running on a multi-dimensional space-time screen. Indeed, if the
essence of the universe is information, matter, charge, energy and movement could be aspects of
information, and the many conservation laws could be a single law of information conservation.
If the universe were a virtual reality, its creation at the big bang would no longer be paradoxical,
as every virtual system must be booted up. It is suggested that whether the world is an objective
reality or a virtual reality is a matter for science to resolve. Modern information science can
suggest how core physical properties like space, time, light, matter and movement could derive
from information processing. Such an approach could reconcile relativity and quantum theories,
with the former being how information processing creates space-time, and the latter how it
creates energy and matter.
Key words: Digital physics, virtual reality, information theory
Modern online games show that information processing can create virtual “worlds”, with their
own time, space, entities and objects, e.g. “The Sims”. However that our physical world is a
virtual reality (VR) is normally considered a topic of science fiction, religion or philosophy, not a
theory of physics. Yet the reader is asked to keep an open mind, as one should at least consider a
theory before rejecting it. This paper asks if a world that behaves just like the world we live in
could arise from a VR simulation. It first defines what VR theory entails, asks if it is logically
possible, then considers if it explains known facts better than other theories.
Strange Physics
While virtual reality theory seems strange, so do other current theories of physics, e.g. the many-
worlds view of quantum physics proposes that each quantum choice divides the universe into
parallel universes [1], so everything that can happen does in fact happen somewhere, in an
inconceivable “multi-verse’ of parallel universes. This is a minority view but surprisingly
popular. Even relatively main-stream physics theories are quite strange. Guth’s inflationary model
suggests that our universe is just one of many “bubble universes” produced by the big bang [2].
String theory suggests the physical world could have 9 s ...
Removing Myths and Fantasies from ScienceJohn47Wind
A growing number of science authors, including Jim Baggott, Alexander Unzicker, Sheilla Jones, and Lee Smolin, have written about the so-called crisis in physics. The ongoing quest to unify Einstein's theory of gravity and quantum mechanics has so far produced a few interesting mathematical models and elaborate sand-castle fantasies, but these have mostly proven to be dead ends. Einstein, Bohr and the members of his Copenhagen team, Bekenstein and Hawking have provided all the necessary pieces. All scientists need to do is put them together. This essay is a recommendation from an amateur scientists on how to do this, explained in easy-to-understand prose.
This article aims to present possible strategies for humanity to seek its survival with the end of the Universe in which we live. Research on the fate of our Universe, on the existence or not of multiverse or parallel universes and on the development of the final theory or theory of everything, that is, of the theory of the unified field, are important questions to elucidate in order to point out possible strategies for humanity seeks its survival with the end of the Universe in which we live.
The Hidden Secrets of General Relativity RevealedJohn47Wind
It has been more than 100 years since Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity was published. It is one of the most successful theories created by the human brain, surviving every test that attempted to falsify it. However, the implications of general relativity are incredibly deep and go far beyond the humdrum analyses found in most physics textbooks. Recent discoveries have shown that general relativity and quantum mechanics are based on the common principle that our universe isn’t just relativistic but is radically so, and objective reality is a mirage generated in the mind of the observer. Temporal asymmetry, or the curvature of time, is the key to understanding this. This essay reveals a few of the hidden secrets of general relativity, which I expect will offend materialists but am hopeful will delight idealists.
Abstract: Dr. David Joseph Bohm an American scientist who theorized quantum mechanics in the most ordinary and understandable way, which is somewhat referred to as the “Pilot Wave-model”. Also he prophesized in neuropsychology, and gave the Holonomic model of brain affecting our view of the quantum mechanics. His theories suggest that the phenomenon of “NON LOCALITY” or quantum entanglement is due to the famous “frame dragging” phenomenon predicted by Sir. Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity.
Bohm’s theory also suggests that time doesn’t exist in the way we think it does as stated by “THE BIG CRUNCH” theory. According to it time exists due to the interacting frequencies of the waves due to particle vibrations in space and that the universe never began.
In this paper existence of quantum entanglement is used to question the degree of correctness of the Space-time fabric theory.
What are the basics behind the Special Relativity?
Actually Einstein used already known facts, or partially known facts, and known idea and concepts, and embedded them into a single complete theory, and reached innovative ideas.
Order, Chaos and the End of ReductionismJohn47Wind
The author presents a case against reductionism based on the emergence of chaos and order from underlying non-linear processes. Since all theories are mathematical, and based on an underlying premise of linearity, the author contends that there is no hope that science will succeed in creating a theory of everything that is complete. The controversial subject of life and evolution are explored, exposing the fallacy of a reductionist explanation, and offering a theory of order emerging from chaos as being the creative process of the universe, leading all the way up to consciousness. The essay concludes with the possibility that the three-dimensional universe is a fractal boundary that separates order and chaos in a higher dimension. The author discusses the work of Claude Shannon, Benoit Mandelbrot, Stephen Hawking, Carl Sagan, Albert Einstein, Erwin Schrodinger, Erik Verlinde, John Wheeler, Richard Maurice Bucke, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, and others. This is a companion piece to the essay "Is Science Solving the Reality Riddle?"
Thule/Haunebu: Rotating, magnetized iron ring around a sphere/gyro + 3 charged hollow spheres below.
Vril/Schumann Levitator: 2 counter rotating disks between static disk with magnetisable iron ring around it.
―Sarah Connor, Nuclear War in Parallel Quantum Universes
These entities themselves are slaves. All these entities are set up under that entity who has presented himself in the midst of the seat of power known as the Anti-Christ. This Awareness indicates this entity as having control upon this hierarchy system, intent upon gaining power and control of the earth, in order to set up his realms. These entities have great power in terms of physical and occult controls. These entities have machines which allow them to listen to the thoughts of others, which allow them to teleport. These powers these entities use comes from an understanding of the electromagnetic spectrum and the super spectrum. In these various vibratory rates there are powers that echo and reflect from one octave to another. This Awareness suggests that entities read the book by John Keel, called ‘The Eighth Tower.’ ―Cosmic Awareness Communications, 1979
Everything that surrounds us, ourselves included, can be described as macroscopic collections of fluctuations, vibrations, and oscillations in quantum mechanical fields. Matter is confined energy, bound within fields, frozen in a quantum of time. Therefore, under certain conditions (such as the coupling of hyper-frequency axial spin with hyper-frequency vibrations of electrically charged systems) the rules and special effects of quantum field behavior also apply to macroscopic physical entities (macroscopic quantum phenomena). ―NextBigFuture, If These US Navy Patents are Made Then We Are in a Star Trek World
Salvatore Cezar Pais 2017 Patent US20180229864A1: High-Frequency Gravitational Wave Generator
The thrust of this theory was a string of sixteen incredibly complex quantities (tensors: 10 for gravity and 6 for electromagnetism). A pure gravitational field can exist without an electromagnetic field, but a pure electromagnetic field cannot exist without an accompanying gravitational field. An electric field created in a coil induces a magnetic field at right angles to the first; each of these fields represents one plane of space. But since there are three planes of space, there must be a third field, perhaps a gravitational one. By hooking up electromagnetic generators so as to produce a magnetic pulse, it might be possible to produce this third field through the principle of resonance. ―Einstein's Unified Field Theory, The Philadelphia Experiment
And now imagine a technology that allows you to move through space and time like the transporter in the Star Trek movies and which is so genuinely simple and inexpensive to manufacture, that every human being could afford it. ―HOLOFEELING 1996
Teleport system US20060071122A1
Project Pegasus: Portal Tech
They Live: Gravity Lens
Event Horizon: EM-Field+Gravitons
TheSource - Metaphysics of an Amateur ScientistJohn47Wind
Physicists, cosmologists, and metaphysicists have many unanswered questions like, “How did the universe begin?”, “Are there other universes beyond our own?”, “What is the true shape and geometry of the universe?”, “What are the fundamental constituents of matter and their interactions?”, “Why is there something instead of nothing?”, and the Biggie, “How did the universe come into being?” Some physicists brush off the last question by proclaiming it emerged from “a quantum fluctuation” in the vacuum. But as John A. Wheeler observed, “The quantum theory of fluctuations of geometry tells us that the concepts of ‘before’ and ‘after’ lose all application at distances of order the Planck length or less. If the concept of time fails anywhere, it must fail everywhere.” Wheeler eventually arrived at his own conclusion, “Omnibus ex nihil ducendis sufficit unum (one principle suffices to obtain everything from nothing).” The search for that one principle occupied much of Wheeler’s time near the end of his career, and he sometimes expressed it as a “self-excited circuit” based on the principle that “the boundary of a boundary is zero.” Gottfried Leibniz defined the fundamental unit existence using a concept known as Monadology, wherein monads are the simplest, most basic units of existence, characterized by their internal activity, each perceiving and reflecting existence from its own unique perspective. The following essay is explores the idea of how time and space could have emerged from nothing – a dimensionless, boundless, timeless, and spaceless Source – followed by everything else called physical reality.
Relativity and Quantum Mechanics Are Not "Incompatible"John47Wind
Many scientific journals, books, magazines and science web sites state that since Einstein’s theory of gravity doesn’t “fit” into the quantum theory of forces, a new quantum theory of gravity must be found. This essay explodes the prevailing scientific myth that relativity and quantum mechanics are somehow incompatible. The simple fact of the matter is that gravity is not a force at all, so trying to make it “fit” into quantum theory is impossible. This essay demonstrates that relativity and quantum physics are indeed different, but it’s simply a matter of scale. In fact they are perfect reflections of each other.
This essay describes several unresolved paradoxes involving black holes. It comes to the astounding conclusion, which is easily proved, that true black holes do not exist. The secret stems from the fact that gravitation has negative energy. With matter compressed within the Schwarzschild radius, negative gravitational energy completely cancels the mass-energy inside, resulting in M=0, a result that Abhas Mitra came up with from his own derivation of the Schwarzschild metric. This essay uses a minimal amount of mathematics, making it suitable for the general audience.
In the early days of quantum mechanics, the 1920s, the so-called "wave function collapse" or "measurement problem" arose. The problem centered around the question of at what point is the final result decided upon when a measurement of a quantum particle is made. In 1956 Hugh Everett III developed the many worlds interpretation (MWI) as his doctoral thesis at Princeton University. According to MWI, the Schrödinger wave equation doesn't ever collapse. Instead, the entire universe splits into as many parts as necessary, perhaps an infinite number, so that every possible result of a quantum measurement become realities in different universes. In the essay below, I uncover a serious mathematical problem with MWI as it is currently formulated and offer my own alternative interpretation called the "Many Alices Interpretation." I also offer a solution to the long-standing "measurement problem."
John Archibald Wheeler was one of the last of the great scientist-philosophers. He wore his science on his sleeve and wasn't ever afraid to go out on a limb with novel ideas or to admit he was wrong. He even would often engage in private brainstorming sessions in front of large audiences. A major problem struggled with is how the universe could be both self-contained and logically consistent, in light of Gödel's incompleteness theorem. He came to the conclusion we live in a participatory universe, perceptions of physical phenomena are generated by the observer instead of having been laid out as a preexisting external existence. He coined the term "It from Bit" to describe this new vision in his typical terse and pithy manner. The following essay highlights the salient features of Wheeler's interpretation and points out facts about the oft-misused term "information." The author concludes the essay by extrapolating Wheeler’s "It from Bit" into a new cosmological model.
In 1937 James Jeans wrote, “Today there is a wide measure of agreement, which on the physical side of science approaches almost unanimity, that the stream of knowledge is heading towards a non-mechanical reality; the universe begins to look more like a great thought than like a machine. Mind no longer appears to be an accidental intruder into the realm of matter...we ought rather hail it as the creator and governor of the realm of matter.” Shortly after Jeans wrote this, the onset of WWII redirected the stream of knowledge back to the machine model of the universe with science research becoming a gigantic engineering project committed to building weapons of mass destruction. Ever since then, scientific research based on material reductionism supported by “Big Science” has been stumbling into one blind alley after another, finally culminating in string theory. Lately however, the stream of knowledge has begun shifting back toward a non-mechanical, holographic model. This shift is clearly reflected in the most recent writings of John Archibald Wheeler, whose career spanned the period from 1933 until his death in 2008. This short essay summarizes a consciousness-based holographic model of the universe.
A semi-serious critical commentary of what science says about the universe, exposing some of the flaws about the current models. The author concludes that the universe is comprised of information, with space and time being essentially forms of information censorship. He backs this up with an example of how nature conspires to prevent us from destroying information. There are several appendices that expand on the ideas presented in the main body of the essay. Written in a somewhat humorous vein, the ideas presented are nonetheless factual, based on the author's understanding of the current state of scientific knowledge. The essay summarizes some key concepts and quotations from Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein, Hermann Minkowski, Arthur Eddington, Niels Bohr, Boris Podolski, Nathan Rosen, Kurt Gödel, John Bell, John Wheeler, Richard Feynman, Claude Shannon, Alan Turing, Benoit Mandelbrot, Erik Verlinde, Leonard Susskind and others.
The common explanation for global warming is faulty, leaving even those trained in the sciences unconvinced and skeptical about the validity of climate change. However, global warming is very real and it is definitely being caused by so-called "greenhouse" gases, even though the term "greenhouse" has no bearing on the actual physical phenomena taking place. This essay properly explains the physical mechanisms of IR-absorbing gases in the Earth's atmosphere, offering a more convincing explanation of what is really going on. The essay discusses some of the possible ramifications of global warming, and counsels for erring on the side of caution. On the other hand, there have been fraudulent scientific claims, such as the ozone-depletion theory, which diminishes the integrity of science and causes skepticism among the general public. In an appendix, the author presents the flaws in the ozone depletion theory based on sound chemical and thermodynamic principles.
The current scientific paradigm of material reductionism has problems accommodating a theory of the conscious mind, so it defines away the problem by claiming that consciousness equals neuron activity. That claim does not hold up to preponderance of evidence that proves an alternate state of consciousness, called a near death experience, can and does occur even after trauma to the brain ceases all neuron activity. Furthermore, NDE subjects report that their minds are far more lucid in that state than when they are awake or dreaming. Many NDE subjects get a clear impression that life is meant for learning and that being present in physical bodies is necessary for that to happen. The essay includes a discussion about the Hameroff-Penrose work on microtubules in brain neurons, which could be the actual seat of consciousness and could provide a link between the normal and the paranormal, and ends with an unusual twist.
The Hidden Secrets of General Relativity RevealedJohn47Wind
It has been more than 100 years since Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity was published. It is one of the most successful theories created by the human brain, surviving every test that attempted to falsify it. However, the implications of general relativity are incredibly deep and go far beyond the humdrum analyses found in most physics textbooks. Recent discoveries have shown that general relativity and quantum mechanics are based on the common principle that our universe isn’t just relativistic but is radically so, and objective reality is a mirage generated in the mind of the observer. Temporal asymmetry, or the curvature of time, is the key to understanding this. This essay reveals a few of the hidden secrets of general relativity, which I expect will offend materialists but am hopeful will delight idealists.
Abstract: Dr. David Joseph Bohm an American scientist who theorized quantum mechanics in the most ordinary and understandable way, which is somewhat referred to as the “Pilot Wave-model”. Also he prophesized in neuropsychology, and gave the Holonomic model of brain affecting our view of the quantum mechanics. His theories suggest that the phenomenon of “NON LOCALITY” or quantum entanglement is due to the famous “frame dragging” phenomenon predicted by Sir. Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity.
Bohm’s theory also suggests that time doesn’t exist in the way we think it does as stated by “THE BIG CRUNCH” theory. According to it time exists due to the interacting frequencies of the waves due to particle vibrations in space and that the universe never began.
In this paper existence of quantum entanglement is used to question the degree of correctness of the Space-time fabric theory.
What are the basics behind the Special Relativity?
Actually Einstein used already known facts, or partially known facts, and known idea and concepts, and embedded them into a single complete theory, and reached innovative ideas.
Order, Chaos and the End of ReductionismJohn47Wind
The author presents a case against reductionism based on the emergence of chaos and order from underlying non-linear processes. Since all theories are mathematical, and based on an underlying premise of linearity, the author contends that there is no hope that science will succeed in creating a theory of everything that is complete. The controversial subject of life and evolution are explored, exposing the fallacy of a reductionist explanation, and offering a theory of order emerging from chaos as being the creative process of the universe, leading all the way up to consciousness. The essay concludes with the possibility that the three-dimensional universe is a fractal boundary that separates order and chaos in a higher dimension. The author discusses the work of Claude Shannon, Benoit Mandelbrot, Stephen Hawking, Carl Sagan, Albert Einstein, Erwin Schrodinger, Erik Verlinde, John Wheeler, Richard Maurice Bucke, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, and others. This is a companion piece to the essay "Is Science Solving the Reality Riddle?"
Thule/Haunebu: Rotating, magnetized iron ring around a sphere/gyro + 3 charged hollow spheres below.
Vril/Schumann Levitator: 2 counter rotating disks between static disk with magnetisable iron ring around it.
―Sarah Connor, Nuclear War in Parallel Quantum Universes
These entities themselves are slaves. All these entities are set up under that entity who has presented himself in the midst of the seat of power known as the Anti-Christ. This Awareness indicates this entity as having control upon this hierarchy system, intent upon gaining power and control of the earth, in order to set up his realms. These entities have great power in terms of physical and occult controls. These entities have machines which allow them to listen to the thoughts of others, which allow them to teleport. These powers these entities use comes from an understanding of the electromagnetic spectrum and the super spectrum. In these various vibratory rates there are powers that echo and reflect from one octave to another. This Awareness suggests that entities read the book by John Keel, called ‘The Eighth Tower.’ ―Cosmic Awareness Communications, 1979
Everything that surrounds us, ourselves included, can be described as macroscopic collections of fluctuations, vibrations, and oscillations in quantum mechanical fields. Matter is confined energy, bound within fields, frozen in a quantum of time. Therefore, under certain conditions (such as the coupling of hyper-frequency axial spin with hyper-frequency vibrations of electrically charged systems) the rules and special effects of quantum field behavior also apply to macroscopic physical entities (macroscopic quantum phenomena). ―NextBigFuture, If These US Navy Patents are Made Then We Are in a Star Trek World
Salvatore Cezar Pais 2017 Patent US20180229864A1: High-Frequency Gravitational Wave Generator
The thrust of this theory was a string of sixteen incredibly complex quantities (tensors: 10 for gravity and 6 for electromagnetism). A pure gravitational field can exist without an electromagnetic field, but a pure electromagnetic field cannot exist without an accompanying gravitational field. An electric field created in a coil induces a magnetic field at right angles to the first; each of these fields represents one plane of space. But since there are three planes of space, there must be a third field, perhaps a gravitational one. By hooking up electromagnetic generators so as to produce a magnetic pulse, it might be possible to produce this third field through the principle of resonance. ―Einstein's Unified Field Theory, The Philadelphia Experiment
And now imagine a technology that allows you to move through space and time like the transporter in the Star Trek movies and which is so genuinely simple and inexpensive to manufacture, that every human being could afford it. ―HOLOFEELING 1996
Teleport system US20060071122A1
Project Pegasus: Portal Tech
They Live: Gravity Lens
Event Horizon: EM-Field+Gravitons
TheSource - Metaphysics of an Amateur ScientistJohn47Wind
Physicists, cosmologists, and metaphysicists have many unanswered questions like, “How did the universe begin?”, “Are there other universes beyond our own?”, “What is the true shape and geometry of the universe?”, “What are the fundamental constituents of matter and their interactions?”, “Why is there something instead of nothing?”, and the Biggie, “How did the universe come into being?” Some physicists brush off the last question by proclaiming it emerged from “a quantum fluctuation” in the vacuum. But as John A. Wheeler observed, “The quantum theory of fluctuations of geometry tells us that the concepts of ‘before’ and ‘after’ lose all application at distances of order the Planck length or less. If the concept of time fails anywhere, it must fail everywhere.” Wheeler eventually arrived at his own conclusion, “Omnibus ex nihil ducendis sufficit unum (one principle suffices to obtain everything from nothing).” The search for that one principle occupied much of Wheeler’s time near the end of his career, and he sometimes expressed it as a “self-excited circuit” based on the principle that “the boundary of a boundary is zero.” Gottfried Leibniz defined the fundamental unit existence using a concept known as Monadology, wherein monads are the simplest, most basic units of existence, characterized by their internal activity, each perceiving and reflecting existence from its own unique perspective. The following essay is explores the idea of how time and space could have emerged from nothing – a dimensionless, boundless, timeless, and spaceless Source – followed by everything else called physical reality.
Relativity and Quantum Mechanics Are Not "Incompatible"John47Wind
Many scientific journals, books, magazines and science web sites state that since Einstein’s theory of gravity doesn’t “fit” into the quantum theory of forces, a new quantum theory of gravity must be found. This essay explodes the prevailing scientific myth that relativity and quantum mechanics are somehow incompatible. The simple fact of the matter is that gravity is not a force at all, so trying to make it “fit” into quantum theory is impossible. This essay demonstrates that relativity and quantum physics are indeed different, but it’s simply a matter of scale. In fact they are perfect reflections of each other.
This essay describes several unresolved paradoxes involving black holes. It comes to the astounding conclusion, which is easily proved, that true black holes do not exist. The secret stems from the fact that gravitation has negative energy. With matter compressed within the Schwarzschild radius, negative gravitational energy completely cancels the mass-energy inside, resulting in M=0, a result that Abhas Mitra came up with from his own derivation of the Schwarzschild metric. This essay uses a minimal amount of mathematics, making it suitable for the general audience.
In the early days of quantum mechanics, the 1920s, the so-called "wave function collapse" or "measurement problem" arose. The problem centered around the question of at what point is the final result decided upon when a measurement of a quantum particle is made. In 1956 Hugh Everett III developed the many worlds interpretation (MWI) as his doctoral thesis at Princeton University. According to MWI, the Schrödinger wave equation doesn't ever collapse. Instead, the entire universe splits into as many parts as necessary, perhaps an infinite number, so that every possible result of a quantum measurement become realities in different universes. In the essay below, I uncover a serious mathematical problem with MWI as it is currently formulated and offer my own alternative interpretation called the "Many Alices Interpretation." I also offer a solution to the long-standing "measurement problem."
John Archibald Wheeler was one of the last of the great scientist-philosophers. He wore his science on his sleeve and wasn't ever afraid to go out on a limb with novel ideas or to admit he was wrong. He even would often engage in private brainstorming sessions in front of large audiences. A major problem struggled with is how the universe could be both self-contained and logically consistent, in light of Gödel's incompleteness theorem. He came to the conclusion we live in a participatory universe, perceptions of physical phenomena are generated by the observer instead of having been laid out as a preexisting external existence. He coined the term "It from Bit" to describe this new vision in his typical terse and pithy manner. The following essay highlights the salient features of Wheeler's interpretation and points out facts about the oft-misused term "information." The author concludes the essay by extrapolating Wheeler’s "It from Bit" into a new cosmological model.
In 1937 James Jeans wrote, “Today there is a wide measure of agreement, which on the physical side of science approaches almost unanimity, that the stream of knowledge is heading towards a non-mechanical reality; the universe begins to look more like a great thought than like a machine. Mind no longer appears to be an accidental intruder into the realm of matter...we ought rather hail it as the creator and governor of the realm of matter.” Shortly after Jeans wrote this, the onset of WWII redirected the stream of knowledge back to the machine model of the universe with science research becoming a gigantic engineering project committed to building weapons of mass destruction. Ever since then, scientific research based on material reductionism supported by “Big Science” has been stumbling into one blind alley after another, finally culminating in string theory. Lately however, the stream of knowledge has begun shifting back toward a non-mechanical, holographic model. This shift is clearly reflected in the most recent writings of John Archibald Wheeler, whose career spanned the period from 1933 until his death in 2008. This short essay summarizes a consciousness-based holographic model of the universe.
A semi-serious critical commentary of what science says about the universe, exposing some of the flaws about the current models. The author concludes that the universe is comprised of information, with space and time being essentially forms of information censorship. He backs this up with an example of how nature conspires to prevent us from destroying information. There are several appendices that expand on the ideas presented in the main body of the essay. Written in a somewhat humorous vein, the ideas presented are nonetheless factual, based on the author's understanding of the current state of scientific knowledge. The essay summarizes some key concepts and quotations from Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein, Hermann Minkowski, Arthur Eddington, Niels Bohr, Boris Podolski, Nathan Rosen, Kurt Gödel, John Bell, John Wheeler, Richard Feynman, Claude Shannon, Alan Turing, Benoit Mandelbrot, Erik Verlinde, Leonard Susskind and others.
The common explanation for global warming is faulty, leaving even those trained in the sciences unconvinced and skeptical about the validity of climate change. However, global warming is very real and it is definitely being caused by so-called "greenhouse" gases, even though the term "greenhouse" has no bearing on the actual physical phenomena taking place. This essay properly explains the physical mechanisms of IR-absorbing gases in the Earth's atmosphere, offering a more convincing explanation of what is really going on. The essay discusses some of the possible ramifications of global warming, and counsels for erring on the side of caution. On the other hand, there have been fraudulent scientific claims, such as the ozone-depletion theory, which diminishes the integrity of science and causes skepticism among the general public. In an appendix, the author presents the flaws in the ozone depletion theory based on sound chemical and thermodynamic principles.
The current scientific paradigm of material reductionism has problems accommodating a theory of the conscious mind, so it defines away the problem by claiming that consciousness equals neuron activity. That claim does not hold up to preponderance of evidence that proves an alternate state of consciousness, called a near death experience, can and does occur even after trauma to the brain ceases all neuron activity. Furthermore, NDE subjects report that their minds are far more lucid in that state than when they are awake or dreaming. Many NDE subjects get a clear impression that life is meant for learning and that being present in physical bodies is necessary for that to happen. The essay includes a discussion about the Hameroff-Penrose work on microtubules in brain neurons, which could be the actual seat of consciousness and could provide a link between the normal and the paranormal, and ends with an unusual twist.
Nature is quirky. Whenever things don't quite match up, She changes them so they will. The results often seem to be bizarre and nonsensical, but the more you study it you realize how profoundly wise Nature is. It all started with a thought experiment that Einstein said he came up with at around the age of 16. The young Einstein wondered what would happen if he chased a light beam and caught up with it. This essay describes two of the most important discoveries in science: The Special Theory of Relativity and the General Theory of Relativity. Both of these discoveries were made by a single man, Albert Einstein, over a period of one decade (1905 – 1915). This essay is directed at an audience of amateur scientists like myself. I will approach these two theories on the basis of their underlying principles, deriving as much as possible using basic geometry and a bit of elementary calculus. I will not go into the depth needed to become a “relativist.” Mastery of general relativity would require a good working knowledge of tensors, which is beyond the scope of this essay. Nevertheless, I think amateur scientists like myself will get something useful out of it.
The author examines available evidence to examine the question of "Are we alone?", i.e., whether humans are the only intelligent species in the Milky Way, or if the galaxy is teeming with advanced civilizations. The author discusses barriers to physical contact with extra-terrestrial beings and addresses Fermi's paradox "Where is everybody?" using the Drake Equation. The final answer is surprising, disturbing, and inspirational all at the same time. The appendix analyzes the strategy of the SETI project from and engineer's point of view, and offers some advice to maximize the chances of finding alien civilizations who may be transmitting beacon signals to announce their presence: Look for them in the Andromeda galaxy.
Richard's entangled aventures in wonderlandRichard Gill
Since the loophole-free Bell experiments of 2020 and the Nobel prizes in physics of 2022, critics of Bell's work have retreated to the fortress of super-determinism. Now, super-determinism is a derogatory word - it just means "determinism". Palmer, Hance and Hossenfelder argue that quantum mechanics and determinism are not incompatible, using a sophisticated mathematical construction based on a subtle thinning of allowed states and measurements in quantum mechanics, such that what is left appears to make Bell's argument fail, without altering the empirical predictions of quantum mechanics. I think however that it is a smoke screen, and the slogan "lost in math" comes to my mind. I will discuss some other recent disproofs of Bell's theorem using the language of causality based on causal graphs. Causal thinking is also central to law and justice. I will mention surprising connections to my work on serial killer nurse cases, in particular the Dutch case of Lucia de Berk and the current UK case of Lucy Letby.
Observation of Io’s Resurfacing via Plume Deposition Using Ground-based Adapt...Sérgio Sacani
Since volcanic activity was first discovered on Io from Voyager images in 1979, changes
on Io’s surface have been monitored from both spacecraft and ground-based telescopes.
Here, we present the highest spatial resolution images of Io ever obtained from a groundbased telescope. These images, acquired by the SHARK-VIS instrument on the Large
Binocular Telescope, show evidence of a major resurfacing event on Io’s trailing hemisphere. When compared to the most recent spacecraft images, the SHARK-VIS images
show that a plume deposit from a powerful eruption at Pillan Patera has covered part
of the long-lived Pele plume deposit. Although this type of resurfacing event may be common on Io, few have been detected due to the rarity of spacecraft visits and the previously low spatial resolution available from Earth-based telescopes. The SHARK-VIS instrument ushers in a new era of high resolution imaging of Io’s surface using adaptive
optics at visible wavelengths.
Comparing Evolved Extractive Text Summary Scores of Bidirectional Encoder Rep...University of Maribor
Slides from:
11th International Conference on Electrical, Electronics and Computer Engineering (IcETRAN), Niš, 3-6 June 2024
Track: Artificial Intelligence
https://www.etran.rs/2024/en/home-english/
Multi-source connectivity as the driver of solar wind variability in the heli...Sérgio Sacani
The ambient solar wind that flls the heliosphere originates from multiple
sources in the solar corona and is highly structured. It is often described
as high-speed, relatively homogeneous, plasma streams from coronal
holes and slow-speed, highly variable, streams whose source regions are
under debate. A key goal of ESA/NASA’s Solar Orbiter mission is to identify
solar wind sources and understand what drives the complexity seen in the
heliosphere. By combining magnetic feld modelling and spectroscopic
techniques with high-resolution observations and measurements, we show
that the solar wind variability detected in situ by Solar Orbiter in March
2022 is driven by spatio-temporal changes in the magnetic connectivity to
multiple sources in the solar atmosphere. The magnetic feld footpoints
connected to the spacecraft moved from the boundaries of a coronal hole
to one active region (12961) and then across to another region (12957). This
is refected in the in situ measurements, which show the transition from fast
to highly Alfvénic then to slow solar wind that is disrupted by the arrival of
a coronal mass ejection. Our results describe solar wind variability at 0.5 au
but are applicable to near-Earth observatories.
Cancer cell metabolism: special Reference to Lactate PathwayAADYARAJPANDEY1
Normal Cell Metabolism:
Cellular respiration describes the series of steps that cells use to break down sugar and other chemicals to get the energy we need to function.
Energy is stored in the bonds of glucose and when glucose is broken down, much of that energy is released.
Cell utilize energy in the form of ATP.
The first step of respiration is called glycolysis. In a series of steps, glycolysis breaks glucose into two smaller molecules - a chemical called pyruvate. A small amount of ATP is formed during this process.
Most healthy cells continue the breakdown in a second process, called the Kreb's cycle. The Kreb's cycle allows cells to “burn” the pyruvates made in glycolysis to get more ATP.
The last step in the breakdown of glucose is called oxidative phosphorylation (Ox-Phos).
It takes place in specialized cell structures called mitochondria. This process produces a large amount of ATP. Importantly, cells need oxygen to complete oxidative phosphorylation.
If a cell completes only glycolysis, only 2 molecules of ATP are made per glucose. However, if the cell completes the entire respiration process (glycolysis - Kreb's - oxidative phosphorylation), about 36 molecules of ATP are created, giving it much more energy to use.
IN CANCER CELL:
Unlike healthy cells that "burn" the entire molecule of sugar to capture a large amount of energy as ATP, cancer cells are wasteful.
Cancer cells only partially break down sugar molecules. They overuse the first step of respiration, glycolysis. They frequently do not complete the second step, oxidative phosphorylation.
This results in only 2 molecules of ATP per each glucose molecule instead of the 36 or so ATPs healthy cells gain. As a result, cancer cells need to use a lot more sugar molecules to get enough energy to survive.
Unlike healthy cells that "burn" the entire molecule of sugar to capture a large amount of energy as ATP, cancer cells are wasteful.
Cancer cells only partially break down sugar molecules. They overuse the first step of respiration, glycolysis. They frequently do not complete the second step, oxidative phosphorylation.
This results in only 2 molecules of ATP per each glucose molecule instead of the 36 or so ATPs healthy cells gain. As a result, cancer cells need to use a lot more sugar molecules to get enough energy to survive.
introduction to WARBERG PHENOMENA:
WARBURG EFFECT Usually, cancer cells are highly glycolytic (glucose addiction) and take up more glucose than do normal cells from outside.
Otto Heinrich Warburg (; 8 October 1883 – 1 August 1970) In 1931 was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology for his "discovery of the nature and mode of action of the respiratory enzyme.
WARNBURG EFFECT : cancer cells under aerobic (well-oxygenated) conditions to metabolize glucose to lactate (aerobic glycolysis) is known as the Warburg effect. Warburg made the observation that tumor slices consume glucose and secrete lactate at a higher rate than normal tissues.
Nutraceutical market, scope and growth: Herbal drug technologyLokesh Patil
As consumer awareness of health and wellness rises, the nutraceutical market—which includes goods like functional meals, drinks, and dietary supplements that provide health advantages beyond basic nutrition—is growing significantly. As healthcare expenses rise, the population ages, and people want natural and preventative health solutions more and more, this industry is increasing quickly. Further driving market expansion are product formulation innovations and the use of cutting-edge technology for customized nutrition. With its worldwide reach, the nutraceutical industry is expected to keep growing and provide significant chances for research and investment in a number of categories, including vitamins, minerals, probiotics, and herbal supplements.
Introduction:
RNA interference (RNAi) or Post-Transcriptional Gene Silencing (PTGS) is an important biological process for modulating eukaryotic gene expression.
It is highly conserved process of posttranscriptional gene silencing by which double stranded RNA (dsRNA) causes sequence-specific degradation of mRNA sequences.
dsRNA-induced gene silencing (RNAi) is reported in a wide range of eukaryotes ranging from worms, insects, mammals and plants.
This process mediates resistance to both endogenous parasitic and exogenous pathogenic nucleic acids, and regulates the expression of protein-coding genes.
What are small ncRNAs?
micro RNA (miRNA)
short interfering RNA (siRNA)
Properties of small non-coding RNA:
Involved in silencing mRNA transcripts.
Called “small” because they are usually only about 21-24 nucleotides long.
Synthesized by first cutting up longer precursor sequences (like the 61nt one that Lee discovered).
Silence an mRNA by base pairing with some sequence on the mRNA.
Discovery of siRNA?
The first small RNA:
In 1993 Rosalind Lee (Victor Ambros lab) was studying a non- coding gene in C. elegans, lin-4, that was involved in silencing of another gene, lin-14, at the appropriate time in the
development of the worm C. elegans.
Two small transcripts of lin-4 (22nt and 61nt) were found to be complementary to a sequence in the 3' UTR of lin-14.
Because lin-4 encoded no protein, she deduced that it must be these transcripts that are causing the silencing by RNA-RNA interactions.
Types of RNAi ( non coding RNA)
MiRNA
Length (23-25 nt)
Trans acting
Binds with target MRNA in mismatch
Translation inhibition
Si RNA
Length 21 nt.
Cis acting
Bind with target Mrna in perfect complementary sequence
Piwi-RNA
Length ; 25 to 36 nt.
Expressed in Germ Cells
Regulates trnasposomes activity
MECHANISM OF RNAI:
First the double-stranded RNA teams up with a protein complex named Dicer, which cuts the long RNA into short pieces.
Then another protein complex called RISC (RNA-induced silencing complex) discards one of the two RNA strands.
The RISC-docked, single-stranded RNA then pairs with the homologous mRNA and destroys it.
THE RISC COMPLEX:
RISC is large(>500kD) RNA multi- protein Binding complex which triggers MRNA degradation in response to MRNA
Unwinding of double stranded Si RNA by ATP independent Helicase
Active component of RISC is Ago proteins( ENDONUCLEASE) which cleave target MRNA.
DICER: endonuclease (RNase Family III)
Argonaute: Central Component of the RNA-Induced Silencing Complex (RISC)
One strand of the dsRNA produced by Dicer is retained in the RISC complex in association with Argonaute
ARGONAUTE PROTEIN :
1.PAZ(PIWI/Argonaute/ Zwille)- Recognition of target MRNA
2.PIWI (p-element induced wimpy Testis)- breaks Phosphodiester bond of mRNA.)RNAse H activity.
MiRNA:
The Double-stranded RNAs are naturally produced in eukaryotic cells during development, and they have a key role in regulating gene expression .
THE IMPORTANCE OF MARTIAN ATMOSPHERE SAMPLE RETURN.Sérgio Sacani
The return of a sample of near-surface atmosphere from Mars would facilitate answers to several first-order science questions surrounding the formation and evolution of the planet. One of the important aspects of terrestrial planet formation in general is the role that primary atmospheres played in influencing the chemistry and structure of the planets and their antecedents. Studies of the martian atmosphere can be used to investigate the role of a primary atmosphere in its history. Atmosphere samples would also inform our understanding of the near-surface chemistry of the planet, and ultimately the prospects for life. High-precision isotopic analyses of constituent gases are needed to address these questions, requiring that the analyses are made on returned samples rather than in situ.
2. Note to my readers:
You can access and download this essay and my other essays through the Amateur
Scientist Essays website under Direct Downloads at the following URL:
https://sites.google.com/site/amateurscientistessays/
You are free to download and share all of my essays without any restrictions, although it
would be very nice to credit my work when quoting directly from them.
3. Note: The figure on the cover page depicts the expanding universe as temporal surfaces of uniform
negative curvature (a hyperbolic sphere), unfurling into the future above.
In Is Science Solving the Reality Riddle? I raised some questions involving current scientific dogma
and tentatively tried to answer some of my own questions. By the time I finished that essay, the fog
of confusion had lifted a little, so I went ahead with Order, Chaos, and the End of Reductionism.
The purpose of this essay is to write down some ideas and opinions that have since crystallized in
my mind, before old age and senility make that an impossibility.
I want to state up front that I'm not anti-science. As a retired engineer, I take pride in the fact that
I've mastered at least some of the principles from the vast storehouse of accumulated scientific
knowledge. Engineers are the problem solvers, but our profession owes a debt of gratitude to the
scientists – the thinkers and dreamers – who have added so much to that storehouse. But even as
we use scientific reductionism to solve many day-to-day problems, this approach can only give us a
rough approximation of reality. The time has come for scientists to explore other avenues
knowledge that will induce nature to reveal herself on her own terms – not ours.
Here then, is a summary of my conjectures on these matters – Manifesto of an Amateur Scientist.
Addendum
I started writing this essay in 2014 and it is now near the end of 2020. My beliefs and opinions
have evolved to a considerable extent, and I no longer believe in many of the conjectures as stated
in this essay. Some of them were mistakes and others were simply dead ends. Nevertheless, I’ve
decided to leave them in this essay as an historical time line of my thought processes, but I lined
them out with brief explanations of why I did this shown in red.
1. Quantum Physics and General Relativity Cannot Be Reconciled.
For the past 100 years, science has labored under the yoke of two completely incompatible theories
of reality: Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity, and quantum mechanics. Today, there is a
consensus among physicists that there should be, and there must be, one theory and one theory
alone that explains all things from the tiniest quarks to galactic clusters and beyond to include the
entire universe. An enormous amount of effort has been spent in trying to accomplish this by
making relativity look more like quantum physics, or making quantum physics look more like
relativity. The engineer in me asks, “Why bother?” Just a Newton's laws work exceptionally well
within their prescribed limits, general relativity and quantum mechanics also work exceptionally
well within theirs. These theories are incomplete, but do they have to be reconciled in order to
serve a useful purpose? Can they even be reconciled?
My investigation of general theory of relativity culminated in a TOE (theory of everything) based
on the premise that information is the foundation of reality. The Bekenstein-Hawking equation
doesn’t apply to surfaces of black holes because I’m convinced no true black holes with event
horizons exist in our universe. But this equation does apply to the boundary, or event horizon, of
the universe itself. Everything that exists lives on this boundary where this equation combines
quantum physics with general relativity. Refer to my essay The Universe on a Tee Shirt.
2. Solutions to the General Relativity Field Equations Are Approximations.
The field equations that Albert Einstein derived in 1915 are what I would call The (Almost) General
Theory of Relativity. Einstein brilliantly saw an equivalence between linear acceleration and a
gravitational field and used that as a first principle. Rotating motions were left as solutions to the
field equations, but there was no fundamental equivalence built in for them. Consequently, when
rotation is included in cases to be solved, anomalies and paradoxes appear in those solutions,
4. including naked singularities revealed by rotating black holes, and time loops in rotating universes.
On the other hand, an intrinsic state of spin (angular momentum) is incorporated into quantum
mechanics from the very beginning. The solutions to the field equations of relativity also seem to
break down at the Schwarzschild radius surrounding non-rotating black holes, and when
cosmologists apply them to solving the state of thee entire universe. I suspect (although I can't
prove) that those particular breakdowns occur because time and space are switching places.
I’m going to amend this statement by simply saying that the GR field equations produce
approximate solutions for systems within the universe, but they provide an exact solution for the
universe as a whole. Specifically, the Schwarzschild solution produces a thermodynamic equation
of state for an expanding universal boundary or event horizon. Refer to my essay The Universe on
a Tee Shirt.
3. Quantum Field Theory Cannot Be Derived from First Principles.
Quantum physics is hugely successful, in particular quantum field theory, pioneered by Richard
Feynman. Many predictions have been born out by experiment; most recently, the Higgs particle
was uncovered in the debris of proton-proton collisions in the Large Hadron Collider. This is an
amazing track record. However, the theory is still very much ad hoc. Part of it relies on a very
questionable mathematical procedure known as “renormalization” that subtracts infinity from
infinity to arrive at finite values. Another undesirable feature is the requirement of plugging
numerous physical constants into the field equations; those constants have arbitrary values that
cannot be derived from first principles and seem to bear no relationships to one another.
4. M-Theory Is Hopelessly Reductionist.
Physicists hoped that string theory (or M-theory as its proponents refer to it) would unify general
relativity with quantum mechanics. Physics is currently based reductionism, which hold the views
that the whole is always equal to the sum of its parts. This might be the case in a perfectly linear
universe where the wave functions of the parts interfere constructively and destructively to produce
the tsunami wave function that represents the whole. Unfortunately, the universe is only linear as
an approximation. M-theory is an extreme form of reductionism, taking the search for a unified
theory in the wrong direction.
5. The Effect of Space and Time Is To Censor Information.
In Reality Riddle, I made a conjecture that reality is made up of information. Everything that we
call “solid” is mostly empty space. Empty space isn't really empty. And forces, which seem so
powerful may simply be the tendency for the amount of information in the universe to increase.
Erik Verlinde has proposed a theory of gravity based on entropy, and entropy and information are
essentially the same thing. According to the holographic universe principle, the state of every
volume in space is encoded by bits of information on the two-dimensional surface surrounding the
volume. In other words, what we “see” in every volume is nothing more than the information
encoded on a screen surrounding it. That screen has a finite capacity for storing information. Every
observer is views the entire universe through a screen that surrounds the universe. Thus, by
reciprocity, the amount of information that is available to the observer is limited. Space and time
are incorporated into a mechanism that limits information that is knowable to an observer. Objects
that are separated from us in space are also separated from us by time. The only “now” for us is
right “here.” The farther away an object is, the less of its history is available to us.
6. Conflating Space and Time Is a Mistake – They Are Different Things.
The universe creates information in the Now. The Past is simply a record of all the information that
has ever been created. There is no information about the Future, so the Future does not exist; it is
only a projection in our minds of what might become, based on what is happening and what has
happened. We have the freedom to navigate among things that are scattered about us throughout
5. space. We cannot visit the Past – we can only see the records of the past that survive in the Now –
and of course we cannot visit the Future that doesn't exist. Therefore, we have only three degrees of
freedom in our universe, not four. Space is not time and time is not space; they're different things.
Hermann Minkowski invented the four-dimensional space-time continuum, and gave the temporal
dimension the “imaginary” label i, equal to √-1, in order to distinguish time from the three “real”
spatial dimensions. He had to make that distinction; otherwise, the mathematics wouldn't make any
sense. Einstein enthusiastically adopted Minkowski space and used it to express special relativity in
clean, elegant equations. He incorporated Minkowski space into general relativity, allowing gravity
to bend it like it were a sheet of rubber. Later, quantum physicists like Richard Feynman, used
Minkowski space into their models of particle interactions, showing particles from the “past”
merging with antiparticles from the “future.” But if space and time are qualitatively different
things, what happens when space-time becomes so distorted that time and space trade places? Then
the equations give you event horizons around black holes, naked singularities, and time loops.
7. Cosmology Lacks a Sound Theoretical Basis and Sufficient Observational Data.
The problem with cosmology is twofold: a) science doesn't yet have a true cosmological theory,
and b) observational information is limited and distorted. First, I don't believe general relativity can
serve as the basis for a cosmological theory because, as I stated earlier, it only gives approximate
answers. Attempting to find solutions to the field equations that represent the entire universe will
produce anomalies and paradoxes. A true cosmological theory is needed. Second, science lacks
sufficient observational data because the perspective of overall scale becomes distorted when
looking at the early universe through telescopes. Science currently accepts the premise of an
expanding universe, and I have no argument with that premise. Our telescopes should then reveal
smaller spaces between distant galaxies than spaces between nearby galaxies, simply because the
light from distant galaxies was emitted when those galaxies were closer together. But telescopes
don't show that, so our 3-dimensional view of the “past” is severely distorted. Suppose a new form
of radiation made it possible to “see” through the cosmic haze of the early universe all the way back
to the big bang event itself. My conjecture is that the big bang would appear to fill the entire sky –
a pinpoint object blown into cosmic dimensions. What then would we be looking at? Can our puny
three-dimensional brains understand the big bang event within our limited mental framework of
space and time? Are the field equations of general relativity up to the task of modeling the cosmos
without breaking down and producing mathematical gibberish? Can the current version of quantum
field theory be used to make predictions based on the conditions that existed during the first
moments of creation? I don't think so. Without a working theory and good observational data,
cosmology is, at best, science fiction.
8. The True Meaning of Second Law of Thermodynamics is Misunderstood.
The second law of thermodynamics has given scientists fits of depression for more than a century.
It seems to condemn the entire universe to a fate worse than death – heat death. In this final state,
nothing changes; nothing can ever change, because all the available energy has been used up. Woe
is us! But this state of mind stems from reductionist thinking. Entropy just measures the available
degrees of freedom of a system: S = k Log W, where S is entropy, k is Boltzmann's constant, and W
are the number of degrees of freedom, or microstates a system may have. The number W is
astoundingly large for most systems. Raise the temperature of one gram of water to the boiling
point. It has a total entropy of 7.35 Joule/ºK, which translates into W = 10 7.35/k
. This number is
monstrously large: it is one followed by 1023
zeros. If you wrote down that number as 1,000,000,
… etc., on letter-sized sheets of paper with five thousand zeros on each page, it would require a
stack of paper over one trillion miles thick. The universe has a voracious appetite for more degrees
of freedom; it is what causes the universe to expand, information to increase, and it is the very force
that drives creation forward. This is my version of the Universal Prime Directive behind every law:
“Every change maximizes the total degrees of freedom of the universe.”
6. 9. Entropy and Information Are the Same Thing.
Claude Shannon was a brilliant engineer, who worked on breaking secret codes in WWII and
studied information in detail after the war at Bell Labs. He came to the conclusion that information
and entropy are the same thing, and I believe him. You can't tell whether information is “good” or
“bad” by looking at it. In fact, a good secret code is one where the message you're sending looks
just like random noise. In Order, Chaos, I wrote a little illustration about building a wall with the
“Mona Lisa” encoded on it. From an information theory perspective, it had the same information as
a random pile of bricks. At Bell Labs, Claude Shannon wasn't particularly interested in the content
of the information transmitted through cables or space. He just wanted to make sure messages got
through without any of the bits changing along the way. Entropy and information don't have
attributes like “good” or “bad.” Entropy isn't “negative information,” as some authors contend.
10. Creative Processes Are Emergent and Chaotic.
In the process of maximizing the total degrees of freedom, various processes emerge according to
the present state of the universe. A closed system will try to maximize the total degrees of freedom,
but it can only occupy ones that are available to it in its present state. As systems become more
complex, additional pathways open up to an increasing number of available states. These pathways
are modes of change – creative processes – and they are fundamentally nonlinear and chaotic.
Strangely, chaotic processes also produce order. Moreover, in the face of the randomizing influence
of entropy, order can arise only through processes of self organization. Every self-organizing
process requires three things: the system has degrees of freedom available to it, the system is in a
state of non-equilibrium, and the process possesses some degree of non-linearity.
11. We Live in a Fractal Universe.
My conjecture is that 3-dimensional space is, at least in principle, infinite, and it is a boundary
between order and chaos in a higher-dimensional space. It is where the creative forces are played
out in the universe. An infinite 3-dimensional fractal borderline can be created mathematically
using quaternions, which are 4-dimensional objects. I can offer no proof of this conjecture; it is
based mostly on the fact that fractals have self-similarity that repeats the pattern of the whole down
to the smallest dimensions of the fractal. If the universe were a 3-dimensional fractal space, it
would project fractal-like features down to the microscopic level, which is what is actually
observed. Currently, scientists believe there is a limit to the smallness of objects that can exist in
the universe – the Planck length. If true, this might place limits on both the complexity and the size
of the universe. Interestingly, the Planck length is given by the formula lP = √ ħ G / c 3
, combining
three fundamental constants in nature. Could those constants be mathematically derived from the
fractal properties of the universe? If so, that would be a very nice proof of this conjecture.
I once believed this conjecture held some promise, but it turned out to be a dead end and was
superseded by the TOE described in The Universe on a Tee Shirt. The Planck units turn out not to
have constant values; instead, they change over time because all of them contain the gravitational
parameter, G, which decreases over time.
12. Standard Evolutionary Theory Is Wrong.
The theory of evolution is misunderstood – by both its advocates and its opponents. The opponents
of evolution mistakenly invoke the second law of thermodynamics as proof that evolution would
only produce random outcomes. That would be true if the evolutionary process were random, but it
is not. Additionally, the second law only applies to closed systems, whereas all systems (except the
universe itself) are open. On the other hand, the advocates of evolution make the same mistake by
insisting that the process is, in fact, random. This is the reductionist paradigm, which is useful for
analyzing the workings of mechanical clocks, but is hopelessly inadequate for explaining the
complexity of the universe. When applied to evolution, reductionism piles one improbability on top
7. of another until the whole edifice of creation becomes an absurdity. Michael Behe, a professor of
biochemistry at Lehigh University, points out the improbability of certain cellular structures such as
flagella arising from random mutations. These structures require numerous sequential evolutionary
changes to the DNA molecule to produce them, but none of those individual changes produce
anything that could be called an advantage chosen through natural selection.
I’ve completely changed my opinion of Behe’s work. Random genetic changes can pile up without
producing any particular evolutionary advantages or disadvantages. One last random change could
then significantly alter an individual organism for the better without producing a different species.
Human chromosome 2 is the result of fusion of two ancestral chromosomes. This change probably
occurred in a single individual who was still able to mate with members of the ancestral species and
produce hybrid offspring. A separate human species emerged later on from their descendants.
13. A New Paradigm of Evolution Is Required.
Fortunately, having to choose between creationism (or intelligent design) and reductionist evolution
is a false dichotomy. Evolution needs to be understood through the operation of chaotic processes,
especially when it comes to biological systems. The universe operates on a hierarchy of laws that
emerge as the state of a system, including the universe as a whole, changes. The “new” laws never
contradict the “old” ones; however, the effects of the old laws become secondary or tertiary as the
system evolves. Emergent laws and processes are not well understood, because they are chaotic.
Reductionist thinking tends to define laws and processes by their effects. Newton's law of
gravitation is defined entirely by a formula that describes the gravitational force: F = M1 M2 G/r2
.
However, the entropic theory of gravitation stipulates that there is a tendency for massive objects to
increase entropy (and the total degrees of freedom in the universe). They accomplish this by
coming closer together. Chaotic processes cannot be defined by their effects, even if the effects are
orderly. However, chaotic processes are repeatable; a pseudo-random number generator always
generates the same string of pseudo-random numbers; a Mandelbrot set is always the same.
14. The Laws of the Universe Are Not Static – They Evolve.
Science operates on the assumption that the laws of the universe are the same everywhere and at
every time. The new evolutionary paradigm does not hold on to that assumption. Laws are best
described as processes of change, which may or may not be chaotic. While everything obeys the
Prime Directive of the Universe, it is possible or even likely that individual laws would be modified
or superseded as conditions change. If the big bang theory is correct, the state of the universe was
entirely different early in history. We have no way of knowing or even guessing which processes
prevailed at that stage of its evolution.
15. Life Is a Natural Process.
As awesome as life certainly is, it can be at least partially understood as being a natural, and maybe
inevitable, outcome of universal evolution. In short, life is a natural process. There may not be any
hope of reducing that process into a set of mathematical equations, but that doesn't mean life is
supernatural or that it defies scientific explanation. But I'm not saying that there isn't a bright line
between living and non-living things exists, as many reductionists would say. There is a very bright
line in my opinion, and life is much more than a collection of atoms or wave functions. There are
significant qualitative differences between a collection of amino acids and a living bacterium.
Again, it's a matter of a new set of laws emerging from complexity; living things are governed by
laws that operate independently from quantum physics and Newtonian mechanics, but they are still
in harmony with them; science doesn't yet understand these laws, nor can they be understood from a
reductionist perspective.
16. Consciousness Emerges from Material Complexity and Undergoes a Separate Evolution.
If there is a purpose or an “end state” of the universe, it may be the evolution of consciousness.
8. Consciousness seems to have emerged from the material complexity, which means that material
complexity is a sufficient condition for consciousness. The question is whether material complexity
is also a necessary condition. If so, that may provide the rationale for having a universe in the first
place. Consciousness has undergone, and may be undergoing an evolutionary cycle of its own.
Richard Maurice Bucke describes the various mental states of an evolving human race. He said that
until about 5,000 years ago, the majority of humankind existed in a state known as the bicameral
mind; a mental state completely different than what we would call a “normal” state of mind. Over
time, this state of consciousness was replaced by ordinary self consciousness. According to Bucke,
humans undergo an evolutionary process from infancy toward adulthood, which starts as simple
consciousness and ends in self consciousness. Beyond that level is cosmic consciousness, which is
probably the same thing as what Buddhists call satori. A small percentage of humans have attained
that state of consciousness, but Bucke believed it is becoming more common with each passing
century and he listed many of the known cases. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin goes even further; he
said that multiple human consciousnesses form the noosphere, a disembodied global consciousness,
which in turn evolves toward a universal end state he calls the Omega Point. Teilhard's vision of
the noosphere seems to have anticipated the world wide web that emerged in the technological age.
It’s now clear to me that information underlies everything – space, time, matter and energy – and
that information is based on uncertainty. Uncertainty is a state of mind, which suggests that
consciousness must preexist everything else.
17. Consciousness May Surpass the Brain.
Based on what was stated in the previous conjecture, it remains an open question whether or not
consciousness can survive in a disembodied state. Reductionism would reject such a notion out of
hand, because the whole – consciousness – could not possibly be the sum of its parts – the brain
cells – simply because the whole wouldn't have any parts. However, if we accept the idea that new
chaotic processes emerge when the underlying order reaches a sufficient level of complexity, then I
don't think we can rule out the possibility that consciousness operates somewhat independently
from the neural networks where it originates, and it continues to function in some manner even after
the physical foundation is removed. Of course this gets into the realm of mysticism and
immortality, which is currently outside science; however, new post-reductionist principles and laws
may be discovered that will be incorporated into a scientific theory of consciousness.
See Conjecture 16 for an updated explanation.
18. Some of the Greatest Enemies of Science are Scientists.
There is a growing hostility toward science in the 21st
century, especially in America. Part this is
fueled by religion, which is seen as being under attack by science. Part of this is driven by a
political agenda orchestrated by “captains of industry” who see science as standing in their way of
controlling, exploiting, and monetizing the Earth's precious resources. But some this is also due to
pronouncements made by scientists themselves, which either turn out to be completely false or only
partially true. It's bad enough that the vast majority of citizens and their leaders are scientifically
ignorant, but it's even worse that scientifically-educated people are doing such a lousy job of
communicating science to the general population. As an engineer who is fairly well acquainted
with scientific principles yet who is very much outside the scientific community, I can plainly see a
fair amount of “group think” among scientists. On one hand, they often refuse to let go of current
paradigms, even in the face of overwhelming contradictory evidence. History books supply many
examples this. On the other hand, when one of them comes up with a half-baked theory that sounds
good, many jump right on board without showing the slightest trace of skepticism. One example of
this is the ozone depletion scare that led to a global ban of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) in the 1980s,
causing a great deal of unnecessary economic disruption. This theory (at least the theory that was
presented to the public) was “voodoo chemistry” where individual chlorine atoms released by CFCs
9. destroy ozone molecules in the upper atmosphere, deplete the ozone layer, and expose everyone to
deadly ultraviolet rays. But in order for this process to work, the rogue chlorine atoms weren't
allowed to form any known stable compounds with oxygen; they had to be continuously recycled so
they could eat more ozone. This effectively turns those atoms into catalysts that drive the reversible
chemical reaction between oxygen and ozone only in the bad direction. Of course, such one-way
catalysts are an impossibility, and I explained why that is so in much more detail in Appendix A of
my essay Global Warming Is Real (Even if the Term “Greenhouse” is Bogus). Even if the ozone
layer really were being adversely affected by man-made chemicals, the chemists did a terrible job of
presenting a scientifically-credible theory to us, and I say shame on the scientific community for not
calling them out on this. With friends like these, who needs enemies? It's no wonder that there are
so many climate deniers and anti-evolutionists among us.
19. Science and Religion Will Someday Become the Same Thing.
I have a great deal of respect for atheists who are intelligent, like Neil deGrasse Tyson and the late
Carl Sagan, although I don't share most of their theological views. One of my favorite Tyson quotes
is, “God is an ever-receding pocket of scientific ignorance that's getting smaller and smaller and
smaller as time moves on.” He was referring to the “God of the gaps” hypothesis, which says
things we attribute to God are merely those things we don't understand scientifically. When Sir
Isaac Newton studied orbital motions involving more than two bodies, he concluded that the solar
system is unstable. This led him to propose that God must occasionally nudge the planets back into
their proper orbits. Pierre-Simon Laplace later analyzed this problem using better mathematical
techniques and he found that the planetary orbits are, in fact, quasi-stable, based on nothing more
than Newton's laws. After Laplace published his results, the emperor Napoleon asked him why he
hadn't mentioned God in the analysis. Laplace supposedly replied, “Sire, I had no need of that
hypothesis.” Laplace wasn't stating he was an atheist; he just didn't need to invoke God in order to
explain orbital mechanics. Yet I cringe when scientists make public pronouncements that God
doesn't exist. All that does is inflame passions and turns religious people into enemies of science
(and of progress). Also, you really can't say things like that if you're intellectually honest because
you can't prove a negative. I accept the premise that God created and sustains the universe, but I'm
referring to Thomas Jefferson's God, not the cruel, vengeful and capricious cartoon character that is
worshiped in some churches. When scientists who deny God are asked what existed before the
universe came into being, they are forced to state that the universe (in one form or another) always
existed. Religious people respond with something very similar when asked what came before God:
they say that God always existed. I hope that scientific study will finally uncover the Single Causal
Factor that created and sustains the universe; we will find that it has always existed and it's the
necessary and sufficient condition for everything; it will also be so profoundly obvious that nothing
else is needed to explain it. Isn't that a pretty good description of God?
20. The Human Race Is Effectively Alone in the Universe.
I think this the most important topic in this essay by far, because it influences our core philosophical
and religious outlooks, how we perceive our purpose and place in the universe, and the way we
relate to each other. Therefore, I'm going to devote several pages to this important topic instead of
summarizing it in a single paragraph as I have done in other parts of this essay. I tried to approach
this question logically in my essay Are We All Alone? Using empirical evidence, I came away with
the conclusion that we are effectively all alone. I broke the question down into three parts: 1) Are
there spiritual or supernatural beings watching over us and protecting us? 2) Are intelligent beings
from other planets actually making contact with us, or could they in the future? and 3) Is it possible
for us to make non-physical contact with other intelligent beings through radio communication
channels?
10. I can't find much empirical evidence one way or the other regarding the first question. Believing in
intelligent spiritual beings, benign or otherwise, are essentially articles of faith. These things
simply aren't amenable to study using the scientific method. The idea of spiritual or supernatural
beings who watch, guide, and sometimes intervene directly in human affairs seems to be very
appealing and accepting them as real is part of human nature and central to most of the world's
religions. In fact, it is belief in spiritual beings that separates religion from boilerplate philosophy.
Many scientists completely reject these ideas out of hand because of the lack of experimental proof,
but I think that may be a mistake. I think there may be some data to support the notion of a spiritual
aspect to our existence, although the data are rather weak. For example, some near death
experiences (NDEs) have been at least partially validated by medical workers who verified that
certain activities that NDE subjects could have only seen while “out of body” actually did occur.
Then there people who have provided details about previous lives, which were corroborated by
others and could only have been known by those people if they had lived those previous lives.
Based on this rather weak evidence, there seem to be higher moral or spiritual laws – in addition to
the known physical laws – that operate in the universe. Beyond that, I can't be absolutely certain
whether or not there are conscious spiritual entities who commune with us.
Concerning the second question, I've concluded there is no possibility of making physical contact
with advanced alien beings. This conclusion is based on logic, the physical laws of nature, and the
vast distances between us and the home planets of potential advanced civilizations. Making a
journey across these distances within the limited lifespan of an individual traveler would require
transport at nearly the speed of light, which would require stupendous amounts of raw energy. Even
if the technology for achieving that were possible, the journey would essentially be a one-way trip;
after reaching earth, travelers would forever be temporally cut off from their home planet.
Of course, the problem of interstellar space travel has been solved in science fiction novels. There
we can find inter-dimensional beings who can enter the fourth dimension and materialize anywhere
they choose, and “wormholes in space-time” that enable star travelers to bypass the normal physical
limitations imposed by special relativity. Oddly enough, there are even a few supposedly well-
educated physicists who embrace such ideas. Well, I hate to burst anyone's bubble, but “bypassing”
the speed of light limitation, while being very convenient, would also entail violating the laws of
causality. Nature simply will not allow that to happen – ever. End of story; case closed.
Leaving inter-dimensional beings and wormholes behind, what could possibly motivate intelligent
beings to undertake what is essentially a one-way journey? Only three things come to my mind:
1) to gather information about another civilization solely for the sake of knowledge itself, 2) to
satisfy a hunger to help a dysfunctional civilization like ourselves avoid self destruction and to
guide them along the evolutionary path toward a higher purpose, and 3) to undertake a campaign of
conquest to invade a habitable planet like earth and subjugate or exterminate the native population.
The first motive makes no sense because there is very little a hyper-advanced civilization could
learn from people like us who have just recently emerged from the bronze age. Plus, there would be
no way for those travelers to transmit any knowledge they could glean from us back to their home
planet in anything resembling a timely fashion. But if aliens are only motivated by a desire to help
us, then they must truly be altruistic, because they could never return to a “home” that is anything
like the one they left. Only the third ominous possibility makes any logical sense; but if alien
visitations have occurred and are occurring with invasion, conquest, and destruction in mind, then
those dire events would have already happened. Furthermore, none of the UFO conspiracy theories
make any sense to me, because it would involve an extraordinary level of secrecy and global
cooperation involving tens of thousands of people in every level of every government on earth.
Humankind has never accomplished anything close to that level of cooperation in the past and we
probably never will.
11. Concerning the third question, the evidence available to me strongly suggests that there relatively
few places in the Milky Way where advanced civilizations could exist. Our sun happens to be (at
the present time) in a relatively empty space between two spiral arms. It is only in places like this
where physical conditions are fairly benign. The vast majority of places in our galaxy are simply
too hostile for life to survive. Most star systems in our galaxy are comprised of first-generation red
dwarfs with planets (if any) that are comprised of hydrogen and helium. Those planets just don't
have the right chemistry for life. Many of the second- and third-generation stars are giants that burn
out too quickly; however, the long-lived medium-sized stars usually form multiple-star systems
where it's impossible to maintain stable planetary orbits in the so-called “habitable zones.”
The few remaining solitary sun-like stars that live in benign locations might have life-supporting
planets, and recently astronomers have indirectly detected some interesting candidates for those.
But then consider the earth, which enjoys the most favorable conditions possible for supporting life.
Even here, life has been nearly extinguished on a number of occasions over the 4-billion year
history of our planet. Mass extinctions usually leave some surviving primitive or microbial life
behind, but then it's a very long evolutionary road back to the more advanced life forms. How
many times over our sun's 8-billion year lifespan could evolution recur? Only very recently on
earth has a single species, Homo sapiens, emerged with enough intelligence and inventiveness to
begin to carry out interstellar communication. And based on mitochondrial DNA evidence, our
species was almost driven to extinction two times before we developed any advanced technology at
all. If humans did become extinct, would another species ascend to take our place? Maybe not.
After all, there doesn't seem to be any requirement for life to be technologically advanced. Other
animals, including our closest ape relatives, seem to be perfectly content living simple lives without
feeling any pressure to walk upright and develop large brains.
Based on all of this evidence, my guess – and I admit it's only a guess – is that there may be as few
as 10 communicating civilizations in the entire Milky Way. Most or maybe all of those few
civilizations would be scattered in those empty spaces between the spiral arms. The likelihood that
any of them are close enough to earth to communicate with us using anything resembling current
technology is vanishingly small. It's no wonder that the SETI Project is coming up blank.
So my answer to the question is this: Yes, effectively we are all alone. Strangely, having come to
this conclusion didn't make me discouraged or depressed. On the contrary, having the knowledge
that we're all alone helps me focus on my 7 billion brothers and sisters who share this little blue life
raft slowly drifting through the Milky Way. In my opinion, this is far better than wasting my time
hoping and praying that some supernatural or extraterrestrial beings will fly down and take care of
all our problems. One of the things that gives life some purpose is the realization that all we can
really depend on is each other.
21. The Origin of the Universe Is a Mystery That Science Alone Is Not Able to Solve.
One of the dictionary definitions of mystery is, “Any truth that is unknowable except by divine
revelation.” I think “unknowable” pretty well sums up the origin of the universe. Within our
particular universe, everything is linked through a chain of causation back through time. By
reversing time, we can trace every causal chain in our universe all the way back to a common
origin. At that point, the chains of causation simply end and that's where the mystery begins.
It's pretty obvious that the universe actually does have an origin. For example, we know the
universe is expanding. Assuming that the universe is finite (whether it's bounded or unbounded),
space is getting “bigger.” If we run the movie backwards, space gets “smaller” until space simply
runs out at some point; then we arrive at the origin, also known as the “big bang.” Physicists say
12. that the laws of physics break down at the big bang, which means the chain of causation as we
know it ceases to exist. Even if you don't know anything about astronomy or an expanding
universe, the second law of thermodynamics is all you need to prove there's an origin. As the
universe evolves, irreversible processes create entropy, which cannot be destroyed. This is the same
as saying that the universe accumulates information about itself while its history is being written.
Again, assuming the universe is finite, there can only be a finite amount of entropy. Consequently,
there was less total entropy yesterday than today, and there was less total entropy two days ago than
yesterday. Running the movie backwards, entropy monotonically decreases until we flat run out of
entropy and hit a zero-entropy void. Again, there is an origin with no prior history in sight.
(Physicists seem to be befuddled as to why the universe started out in a low-entropy state. To me, it
only makes sense that a universe with no history would contain very little information, and hence
very little entropy. I guess I'm too dumb to understand why anyone would think that's odd.)
Physicists hate the idea of a universe they can't explain, so they invent causes. Some of them are
pretty creative. Take Lee Smolin's evolutionary universe. According to his theory, our universe
emerged from a black hole in another universe, while other universes are born from black holes in
our universe. Natural selection chooses universes that tend to produce lots of black holes because
they produce more offspring than those that only produce a few. Since all such universes are
causally linked, this might seem to solve the problem of origins, but it doesn't. If mother universes
give birth to billions of daughters via black holes, the number of universes increases exponentially
with each successive generation. Working backwards through these chains of causation, the number
of universes diminishes exponentially until we arrive at The Mother of All Universes. The source
universe of all these chains doesn't have a mother, so we're not really any further ahead in solving
the problem of origins. An evolutionary universe model just kicks the can further down the road.
In fact, any theory that purports to furnish a sufficient cause for our universe will suffer the same
fate as Smolin's evolutionary universe model. The only way to avoid the problem is to accept that
our universe just doesn't have a cause in the normal sense. Stephen Hawking came close to
accepting it; he says the universe popped into existence as a random quantum fluctuation. But this
requires laws of quantum physics in order for that to happen, so where did those quantum laws
originate? Even proposing a quantum fluctuation in the beginning really doesn't solve the mystery.
Let me propose the following principle: A logically self-consistent universe must exist for no other
reason than it can exist. In other words, logical self-consistency is both the necessary and sufficient
condition for existence. Along with the weak anthropic principle, this principle also explains why
the fundamental constants of nature in our particular universe seem to be so finely-tuned for
supporting intelligent life. Since every conceivable logically self-consistent universe must exist, a
universe like ours that is capable of supporting intelligent life must exist.
I now believe The Universe on a Tee Shirt has removed much of the “mystery” surrounding the
origin of the universe. According to the TOE, the universe started out as one single binary bit of
uncertainty in the sea of consciousness, or a great thought as James Jeans described it.
22. Causality Underlies All Other Physical Laws in the Universe.
The statement that causality underlies all physical laws might seem trivial, but a closer examination
reveals some surprises. Conjecture 21 proposes that our universe, or any universe for that matter,
rests entirely on logically self-consistency. Causality is a fundamental requirement for a logically
self-consistent universe. As I stated in my essay Order, Chaos, and the End of Reductionism,
Nature will do whatever is necessary to prevent any attempt to bypass or circumvent causality.
(That is why Einstein's theory of general relativity is still incomplete – its field equations have
13. solutions that permit time travel into the past, which violates causality. If general relativity were
really complete, it would never allow such solutions to exist.)
The second law of thermodynamics is intimately tied to time and causality. The modern version of
the second law states that the total entropy of a closed system can never decrease. According to
Boltzmann's formula, entropy is equal to a constant, kB, times the logarithm of the number of
microstates that correspond to a macroscopic state; i.e., a state that can be specified by temperature,
pressure, density, etc. Claude Shannon, who founded information theory, realized that Boltzmann's
formula shows that entropy is directly proportional to the number of information bits that are
required to define (or bits contained within) a system. This led him to conclude that entropy and
information are one and the same. It's not just that entropy and information are similar, or they
share some of the same qualities; no, they're identical to each other. Some scientists seem
unwilling to take Shannon's intellectual leap, so they hedge a bit and say that entropy is “hidden”
information. Whatever. If information is hidden or encoded somehow, that doesn't change the fact
that it's still information. Since the universe is a closed system, its total entropy cannot decrease. If
you accept (as I do) that entropy and information are the same thing, this leads directly to the
corollary that information cannot be destroyed. How is that linked to causality? The law is simple:
What was done cannot be undone. Since information/entropy is a record of the past, destroying
information would entail erasing the past, breaking the causal chain between the past and present.
In other words, causality requires strict enforcement of the second law of thermodynamics.
This also solves the mystery of time. Why is time irreversible, always pointing in the same
direction, and why do humans “sense” the passage of time? Well, actually time is reversible at the
quantum level, where interactions between fundamental particles can go either in forward or
reverse. The arrow of time only exists at macroscopic scales where information is being generated
(and permanently recorded). The reason humans sense the passage of time is because our
individual consciousnesses are accumulating information as time moves forward. Our “sense” of
time is simply our ability to remember the past and our inability to remember the future.
Causality is manifested in other surprising ways. Recall the EPR paper and Bell's Theorem,
discussed at length in my essay Is Science Solving the Reality Riddle? EPR thought they had
discovered the big “gotcha!” that would nullify the interpretation of quantum physics of Niels Bohr,
who stated that quantum states are indeterminate until they are measured. The reasoning EPR used
in their paper was that Bohr's interpretation would allow, or actually require, faster-than-light
transmission of information between two entangled systems when one of them is measured, a clear
violation of causality. As it turned out, experiments based on Bell's Theorem proved that Bohr was
right. Ironically, EPR's reasoning actually proves that quantum states must remain indeterminate
until measured. Otherwise, quantum states would be predetermined through hidden variables, and a
communication device based on the EPR paper actually could transmit faster-than-light signals
between entangled systems. As it stands, Nature has arranged things so that an EPR device can
only transmit faster-than-light “signals” that are random and undecipherable, which contain no
information that could possibly alter history and violate causality. Can you appreciate the lengths
that Nature will go, even at the quantum level, to prevent us from violating Her law of causality?
23. Biological Beings (Including Humans) Are Not Designed Creatures.
It's apparent by reading Conjectures 12, 13, and 15, that I'm groping for answers concerning the
origin of life and a complete theory of evolution. I'm not a biologist by any stretch of the
imagination, but I've been doing a lot of thinking about these subjects lately, and I believe I may
finally be on the right track (refer to Appendix G that was recently added to my essay Order, Chaos,
and the End of Reductionism).
14. At some point in almost every public debate between someone who embraces materialism and
reductionism (usually a scientist) and someone who promotes theism and creationism (usually a
member of the clergy), a false dichotomy arises: “My opponent's views cannot explain X, Y, or Z;
therefore, you must accept my views as truth.” An average person who tries to evaluate such a
debate with an open mind is then forced to choose which person's views are least wrong. This is a
terrible choice in my opinion because both views are fundamentally flawed.
The theist/creationist often makes the mistake of invoking scripture. This automatically invites an
attack by the opposite party, who proceeds to point out numerous scriptural falsehoods and
discrepancies. On the other hand, the materialist/reductionist is often backed into a corner by not
being able to properly address the problem of an origin (see Conjecture 21, above) or trying to
defend the standard theory of evolution that is still incomplete.
One of the favorite arguments used by theists/creationists consists of the statement, “Since the
universe was created, there must be a Creator.” Beginning that sentence with the word since makes
this argument a logical fallacy known as “begging the question.” Making the assumption that the
universe was created is the same thing as assuming the conclusion that a Creator exists. There is no
objective, testable evidence that the universe was created. (I think a plausible alternative to a
created universe may be found in Conjecture 21.)
A somewhat “softer” version of creationism is intelligent design. In Conjecture 12, I mentioned
Michael Behe's analysis of certain biological features that he concludes can only have arisen by
design. Having thought long and hard about this, I now realize that his views are wrong. Instead of
pointing out the fallacies contained in Behe's analysis, I had unwittingly slipped into a reductionist
mind set that supports the conclusion that evolution is driven by forces that are essentially random,
thus creating a false dichotomy that supports Behe's ideas. It is now clear to me why the standard
version of evolution is wrong, but gaining that insight also obviates the need for intelligent design.
The critical insight came by looking at the function of DNA and considering how little information
is actually contained within the human genome. It is estimated that whereas over 1042
bits of
information would be required to replicate an entire human being, there are less than 1010
bits of
information contained in the 46 chromosomes in the nucleus of a human cell. This discrepancy of
32 orders of magnitude can be resolved by understanding that the genome isn't a human blueprint;
rather, it defines the process of human evolution from a single cell. Cellular differentiation
occurring in an embryo and producing various tissues and organs, requires very intricate feedback
loops, using chemical (and possibly electrical) communication among the cells through their cell
membranes, and triggering chemical <If …Then> logical operators embedded in the DNA itself.
This could also explain the phenomenon of embryonic recapitulation, where the human embryo
goes through various stages of development that seem to resemble pre-human life forms. If the
genome represents an assembly process instead of a complete blueprint, then the only way to arrive
at the end product is to repeat all the evolutionary steps between one-celled organisms and human
beings. Thus, the DNA code does not transcribe the final product – it defines the process that
assembles it. Since there is no master design – not even in the DNA code itself – there is no logical
necessity to have a Designer.
24. The Multiverse Theory is the Ultimate Cop Out.
It's become fashionable in the 21st
century to propose multiple universes as the answer to every
unsolved problem of physics. I recently watched a YouTube video of Amir Aczel interviewing
Brian Greene, who is one of the most renowned physicists/string theorists/cosmologists on this
15. planet. Of course, Aczel is no slouch either, having written numerous books on mathematics, his
primary field of expertise, as well as physics. Aczel challenged the idea of an infinite universe,
pointing out that the universe isn't expanding into pre-existing space, but that space and time arose
from the big bang and space is continuously expanding; thus, the universe must be finite. Greene,
on the other hand, subscribes to the multiverse theory in which our “universe” is only part of an
infinite space along with other “universes” that continually pop into existence. This redefines our
universe and reduces it from being “all there is” to merely “all we can observe.”
The multiverse theory reminds me of an episode from the Seinfeld television series. In that episode,
George Costanza has lost his job, his apartment, and his girlfriend; he has moved back in with his
parents; his wardrobe consists of a shirt and sweatpants. The scene is in Jerry Seinfeld's apartment.
Jerry: “Again with the sweatpants?”
George: “They're comfortable.”
Jerry: “Do you know the message you're sending out to the world with these sweatpants? You're
telling the world, 'I give up.'”
Multiple universes are like George's sweatpants; they're comfortable. By embracing a multiverse,
you don't have to explain why this universe appears so finely-tuned to support life. In fact, you
don't have to explain how or why this universe began in the first place. It's nothing more than a
huge repository for ignorance like dark matter and dark energy; it's a place where physicists send
unsolved problems to make them disappear. It's not even a theory in the scientific sense; its just an
unproved, unprovable, and unfalsifiable idea. There's a name for a fact-free belief system based on
such ideas: religion. A multiverse is no more plausible than “God did it” for explaining how and
why our universe came into being. When Brian Greene and others articulate the multiverse
concept, the message they're sending out to the world is, “I give up.” It's the ultimate cop out.
I recently finished reading a book Hidden in Plain Sight by Andrew Thomas. I don't agree with
everything the author says in that book, but I do agree with his main point: The universe is
everything there is. Since the universe is all there is, there is no external measuring rod and no
external clock that Nature can use to scale distances and times within the universe. All that Nature
has to go on are relationships between objects inside the universe; in fact, there is only the inside
and no outside. Therefore, the universe is all relative; space and time do not exist as independent
objective entities, but only as a means for establishing relationships between objects. These are the
concepts that serve as the very foundation of Einstein's theory of relativity. We're approaching the
100th
anniversary of the general theory of relativity as I write this in 2014. Yet it's as if some
physicists have learned nothing at all from his theory; they are still proposing infinite numbers of
“universes” co-existing within an infinite external domain of space and time. Well here's the
problem: You can have relativity or you can have a multiverse, but you can't have both.
It's as if we've flashed back to a time before 1887 when scientists were still arguing over the
physical properties of luminiferous ether. Today, scientists have proposed experiments to measure
the “curvature” of space-time and to detect gravity waves propagating “through” space. Well, here's
my prediction: When those space-time curvature and gravity-wave experiments are performed,
nothing will be found, just as the Michelson–Morley experiments failed to find any trace of
luminiferous ether. The reason why I'm confident about seeing negative results is that everything is
relative: Space-time is not a “thing” that can be stretched, bent, or twisted by gravity waves, and
There are no “straight” measuring rods you can line up with space-time to check its “curvature.”
By the way, the multiverse theory provides an ontological argument for the existence of God. In
fact, it provides an ontological basis for any god that can be imagined. The proponents of the
16. multiverse hoped they could use it to neatly sidestep the requirement of a Designer; ironically it
actually proves the opposite.
Actually, the general relativity field equations describe space-time as having properties that are
comparable to an elastic solid. In addition, the Schwarzschild equation describes space-time as
having thermodynamic properties at the boundary. However, it is true that space-time is flat and
with no discernible features as seen by free-falling observers. Acceleration produces the appearance
of curvature.
25. The Scientific Method Is Fatally Impaired by the Human Senses.
Anything that the scientific method can prove or disprove relies on the human senses. The list of
the human senses is usually limited to five: sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch. I would add two
more senses to the list: space and time. Our sense of space is how we arrange objects in relation to
ourselves. It is closely tied to our sense of sight, and I will show they are both inherently limited.
Our sense of time involves perception of motion between “moments” and the accumulation of
information. Our mental concepts of space and time are inherently local and thus limited.
When we look at something, the only thing we actually “see” is a tiny area in the center of our field
of vision. If you stare at a distant object and extend your hands to the sides, you won't be able to
clearly see your fingers. To really “see” an object, the eyes must rapidly and randomly scan over it
and send tiny pieces of the object the brain, which stitches the pieces together into a composite
mosaic image. The brain is able to do this through the spatial sense. It knows that a face consists of
a nose located above a mouth with eyes on either side of the nose and a chin below the mouth. We
think we “see” a complete face, but our eyes only send small bits and pieces of a mosaic to our
brains in random order. What we “see” is mostly inferred from our spatial sense.
Our most advanced scientific instruments are just extensions of the seven senses. The Hubble space
telescope is an expanded version of our sense of sight, which is intimately tied to a localized sense
of space and time. If we point the Hubble at a quasar and measure its distance as 13 billion light
years, and point the Hubble at another quasar in the opposite direction and measure that distance as
13 billion light years, our brain assembles this information into a 3D diorama with two quasars 26
billion light years apart. But this picture is completely false. The light recorded by the Hubble
emerged from those two quasars when the universe was 13 billion years younger than today's
universe; therefore, those two images can only be separated, at most, by a couple of billion light
years. Our brains use Hubble telescope images to construct a false 3D Cartesian diorama existing
in the “now.” Large-scale reality is fundamentally distorted by our localized senses of space and
time. We have no other way to interpret the Hubble data because the brain is completely
constrained by its senses, which work together to project an inappropriate model of the cosmos.
The scientific method, which has served us well since Isaac Newton's time, is reaching the end of its
useful life. Probing farther and father into the cosmos provides us with nothing but a highly
distorted picture of reality due to the inherent limitations of our senses, which were optimized for
acquiring information about local objects and events. Probing further and further into the
microscopic realm only yields quantum weirdness, which nobody can fully understand through a
localized, macroscopic sense of space and time. Data from the LHC (large hadron collider) can
only enlighten us to the extent that we can force the data to conform with a model of reality that our
brains construct, which is a model intimately tied to – and limited by – our senses.
Even if string theory eventually emerges as the Theory of Everything (which I seriously doubt), the
scientific method will be utterly useless as a means of confirming it. As it stands, string theory is
17. based upon the existence of 1-dimensional objects on the scale of a Planck length vibrating in 10
dimensions, but seven of those dimensions are completely inaccessible to us. Probing down to
Planck scales would require stupendous amounts of energy that are simply not available to us using
anything resembling our current level of engineering. The time is coming when scientists must
finally concede that the scientific method has run its course because the human race has reached the
limit of what can be understood through our senses.
26. The Entropic Universe Has a Purpose.
I've essentially come around full circle to the first topic in this Manifesto; i.e., that quantum physics
and general relativity cannot be reconciled. I think I now know why – or at least I see a glimmer of
the answer. In my essay Teachings from Near Death Experiences, I explored the ongoing work of
Stuart Hameroff and Roger Penrose on quantum consciousness, which has spanned the past 20
years. There is fairly conclusive evidence that consciousness does not emerge at the level of the
synapses between neurons, nor does it consist entirely of brain-wave patterns. Consciousness is
actually manifested at a much smaller scale: within protein structures known as microtubules in the
cytoplasm of all living cells. Hameroff insists that even a single-celled animal, such as a
paramecium, exhibits a definite rudimentary consciousness without the benefit of a single neuron or
synapse.
According to the Hameroff-Penrose model, consciousness involves quantum entanglements that
have fractal properties that descend down to the unimaginably small Planck scales. Macroscopic
effects, which they call “moments of consciousness” occur when those entanglements decohere, on
time scales on the order of 1/40th of a second. The Libet experiments, which show that conscious
decisions precede the awareness of making those decisions, seem to substantiate this model. I
believe it is no accident that structures in living cells exist at the precise scales that bridge between
the atomic/subatomic quantum universe and the macroscopic universe. In order for life to fulfill its
main purpose, those two universes must remain separate. This is why quantum physics and general
relativity cannot and will not be fully reconciled, although they do not contradict each other.
But what is that purpose? What we perceive as linear time does not exist at the level of quantum
entanglement, where protoconsciousness occurs. Time emerges from entropy, which is strictly a
feature of the classical universe. The work by Erik Verlinde shows that the classical laws of motion
and gravity, along with how we perceive space and time, emerge from entropy. Examining
consciousness in the dream state can provide some clues to understanding of consciousness that
operates on the non-material plane and the purpose of the classical, material universe as it relates to
consciousness. Dreams often lack the usual sequence of causality. Dreamers sometimes know what
will happen next in a series of events, but they are powerless to change the outcome. In contrast,
waking-state “moments of consciousness” in the Hameroff-Penrose model become “grounded” in a
causal frame of reference – the entropic universe. According to the Hameroff-Penrose model, states
of consciousness certainly can and probably do occur without microtubules, cells, life, or a universe
for that matter. It's just that such a consciousness would lack qualia and purpose. That, in a nutshell,
is the purpose of life and why there is a physical universe as we know it: to enable conscious
thoughts to be carried out as actions that have irreversible effects, giving consciousness purpose
and meaning.
In Conjecture 24, above, I stated that the multiverse theory is a cop out. I believe this is true more
then ever. In the realm of quantum entanglement, anything and everything can exist
simultaneously. But in order for consciousness and free will to have any purpose, they must also
operate within the limits of a classical world of causes, effects, and consequences. A universe that
splits off into ever-bifurcating universes has no sense of morality or purpose in my opinion. There
18. is only one universe and there are no “do overs” here. A bad choice made today results in set of bad
alternatives in the future. You may be able to get back on the original path with a lot of effort, but
you can never erase what you did in a world of entropy. I raised the question of evil in my essay
Are We All Alone? Here's my latest opinion on this matter. Our sense of right and wrong, good and
evil are examples of qualia that result when a consciousness is grounded in an entropic universe
through the mechanism of life. Evil doesn't really have a purpose, per se. But I've come to the
conclusion that evil is unavoidable when intelligence and free will operate in a universe with
entropy. It's the price we humans must pay to be human.
27. The “Block Universe” Model is Incompatible with Free Will.
In the book Hidden in Plain Sight, by Andrew Thomas, the starting premise is that the universe is
all there is; there are no external yardsticks that provide absolute measurements of space or clocks
that provide absolute measurements of time. Chapter 3 is entitled “Space Is Not a Box” and
Chapter 4 is entitled “Time Is Not a Clock,” and up till that point I kept thinking, “Right on! Here's
a science author who really gets it!” Then I came to Chapter 5, entitled “The Block Universe” and
became completely befuddled. In that chapter, Thomas completely contradicted everything he was
telling us in the first four chapters.
In Chapter 5, a block universe is depicted schematically as a set of spacial coordinates (reduced
from three to two), with a time coordinate pointing perpendicular to the spacial coordinates. This is
supposed to represent “space-time” as a 3-dimensional block. Only two spacial coordinates are
used because because a real “space-time” universe with three spacial coordinates would be a four
dimensional block that would be difficult to depict in a book. Individual “events” in time are
scattered as dots within the block. Events taking place over time would trace lines inside the block.
There are a couple of problems with this model. First of all, the geometry of that block universe is
Euclidean, whereas the geometry of space-time, as defined in Special Relativity, is hyperbolic.
According to SR, if an object changes position, Δx, Δy, and Δz, over a time interval Δt as observed
from any reference frame, then the distance ΔS traveled through space-time is invariant – the same –
for all observers, where ΔS2
= c2
Δt2
– Δx2
– Δy2
– Δz2
. The minus signs in the expression for ΔS2
make the geometry of Minkowski space-time hyperbolic, not Euclidean. In order for objects to
trace out lines in a Euclidean block universe, like the one depicted in Chapter 5 of Hidden in Plain
Sight, all those minus signs would have to be changed to plus signs.
The second problem with the block universe model is that time is treated as just another dimension,
making the universe “eternal.” In other words, a Being having a god's eye view of the universe
could – at least in principle – navigate through time like it was a spacial dimension and observe the
future. This is very much like Laplace's determinism, where a Being with complete knowledge of
the present state of the universe could use the laws of motion to extrapolate the present state into
states in the distant past and future. But if such a thing were possible – even in principle – then free
will cannot exist. Near the end of Chapter 5, Thomas himself acknowledges the problem of free
will: “The idea that all of space and time is laid-out in one unchanging block might appear
unsavoury [sic] to some people as it appears to deny the possibility of free will.” Exactly.
However, a deterministic block universe doesn't just appear to deny the possibility of free will;
logic demands it. (In the 16th
century, John Calvin rightly concluded that the possibility of an
omniscient Being eliminates the possibility of free will. Forced to choose between the Christian
God and free will, Calvin chose God. This is the basis of Calivinism's doctrine of predestination,
where human beings are essentially lifeless robots programmed to either accept or reject salvation.)
A block universe that allows the possibility of an omniscient Being “might appear unsavory to some
19. people” for a very good reason. It is that life is pointless when free choice is absent and everything
has been programmed into the universe. The mere illusion of making choices isn't the same as
making them, and therefore moral accountability is absent. How can we justify meting out rewards
and punishments without accountability? Forced to choose between an omniscient Being and
freedom, I'll choose freedom. So if God exists, I hope She's just as clueless about the future as I
am.
Conjecture #26, above, I stated that irreversibility generates entropy (information) and is necessary
for a purposeful existence. Irreversibility also brings about chaos and unpredictability, which
seems to be necessary for free will. A linear, deterministic block universe without any purpose or
free will is a just a machine – a dead universe.
28. Black Holes Only Exist in the Imagination.
Lately, the physics community is all abuzz over yet another apparent contradiction between general
relativity and quantum physics. Nature usually does a pretty good job of isolating quantum
mechanics from classical physics and/or patching over their differences. We don't need to calculate
the quantum wave functions of the Sun, Moon, and Earth in order to predict solar eclipses; nor do
we need to think about gravity when computing the scattering matrices of electrons. However, a
black hole (a hypothetical object) is where quantum mechanics collides directly with classical
physics, and this recently created a pretty messy situation known as the AMPS Firewall Paradox.
A while back, Stephen Hawking studied black holes from a thermodynamic perspective and
concluded that black holes have entropy, so an event horizon has a positive temperature and emits
black-body radiation. But he went further by stating that information is “lost” when an object falls
into a black hole. This caused quite a stir among physicists, notably the indomitable Leonard
Susskind, who insist that the conservation of information is an immutable law. After much hand
waving, it was decided that the information isn't really lost; it's encoded onto a black hole's event
horizon based on the holographic principle.
Then Ahmed Almheiri, Donald Marolf, Joseph Polchinski, and James Sully (AMPS) uncovered an
apparent paradox involving Alice falling into a black hole, Bob staying outside the black hole, and
their quantum wave functions entangling (or not). This sent the physics community spiraling into
the so-called firewall crisis, which I admit I can't fully comprehend. I've always found the
description of a classic black hole to be very unsettling (see my essay Is Science Solving the Reality
Riddle – Trouble on the Horizon). According to popular science, the black hole's gravity literally
tears space apart at the event horizon, making escape impossible. Despite much hand waving by
some physicists, the black hole equations clearly show there really is a singularity at the event
horizon, where denominators are zero; distances and accelerations there are infinite. But why
would a singularity lurk in empty space? It sure looks like “spooky action at a distance” to me.
It turns out that a brilliant Indian physicist by the name of Abhas Mitra has solved the puzzle. Re-
examining the equations for black holes, Mitra discovered that you can indeed create a singularity
with an event horizon surrounding it. The trouble is, you can only do this if the black hole's mass is
zero! In other words, even though you can plug any large mass you want into an equation on the
blackboard, you can't have a black hole with mass in reality. I believe I found why the discrepancy
exists. When calculating the size of the Schwarzschild radius of a spherical object, you must
include all mass-energy everywhere, both inside and outside the Schwarzschild radius, including the
“empty” space surrounding the spherical object itself. Since the gravitational energy surrounding a
spherical object is negative, as it is squeezed down to the size of its Schwarzschild radius, the
enormously negative gravitational energy surrounding it cancels all the object’s original positive
20. mass-energy; thus, as a “black hole” forms, its effective mass-energy (and its Schwarzschild radius)
approaches zero.
So with a proper understanding of general relativity, we see that there's no such thing as an event
horizon surrounding a singularity (naked or otherwise), no Hawking radiation, and no information-
loss paradox. Problem solved. See how Nature always elegantly intervenes to invalidate our flights
of fancy that might violate Her fundamental principles? There is no need for quantum wormhole
entanglements, à la Susskind, or nasty AMPS firewalls because there is no way of making a black
hole in the first place.
Predictably, the physics community is not enamored with Mitra's ideas. After all, scientists have
spent almost 100 years contemplating black holes and basing really cool and radical theories on
them. But recent astronomical data on so-called black hole candidates (BHCs) show they have
stupendously large magnetic fields, which classic black holes simply cannot have. So it looks like
Mitra is right. Even the legendary Stephen Hawking himself recently cast doubts on the existence
of black holes, and has started calling them gray holes instead. Unfortunately, the absence of black
holes is bad news for many current cosmological theories, especially ones like Lee Smolin's
evolving universes, where mommy universes give birth to black holes that collapse into baby
universes; a kind of genetic selection process that results in universes with lots of black holes and
high probabilities of being friendly to intelligent life based on the anthropic principle [sic].
When elaborate thought experiments result in crazy paradoxes, these problems are often caused by
the misapplication of physical laws by humans instead of the laws themselves.
29. A Simple Feedback Mechanism Resolves the Goldilocks Enigma.
There are scores of so-called free parameters that constrain the physical universe, and it turns out
that changing any of these by a couple of percentages would radically alter physics and chemistry to
the point where biology, at least as we know it, would be impossible. It seems that these free
parameters are very finely-tuned to make it possible for us to exist, which seems kind of arbitrary
and odd. This is referred to as the Goldilocks enigma, and it deeply troubles scientists. It might be
that these free parameters aren't really free after all, and that changing one of them entails changing
all of them in such a way that physics remains life-friendly. However, this doesn't really solve the
enigma of why physics should be life-friendly in the first place. Or maybe there are a plethora of
ways that “life” could exist without biology as we know it, but that's hard to imagine.
Of course, the Goldilocks enigma gives creationists and intelligent designers all the validation they
need for spinning their magical, supernatural myths. Physicists and cosmologists can't do much
better; they took the easy way out by combining the multiverse concept with the anthropic principle,
et voilà, the Goldilocks enigma is explained. The horrible multiverse idea seems to have originated
with Hugh Everett's many worlds interpretation of quantum physics, inspired by Schrödinger's cat.
Unbelievably, a poll taken in 1995 among 72 “leading cosmologists and other quantum field
theorists” revealed that almost 60% of them actually believed in some form of multiverse. In
essence, this means 60% of leading scientists gave up on science and embraced an unfalsifiable
theory that relies on a circular tautology, i.e., we exist because we're here, and a false dichotomy,
i.e., free parameters either must have been selected through intelligent design (a proposal rejected
out of hand by science), or else they must have been a complete accident.
I found a more elegant way around the enigma based on a simple feedback mechanism. All you
need is one axiom and all the rest flows from logic. The axiom originates with quantum physics,
and while everything in our universe may not exhibit obvious quantum behavior, quantum physics
21. still rules the roost. Within the realm where quantum rules do apply, a fundamental law is that
nothing truly exists until or unless it is observed. For example, electrons are quantum particles, and
when they boil away from a hot metal cathode in a vacuum, they become free electrons and
accelerate toward a positively-charged phosphor screen. As free electrons, they exist only as wave
functions. A raw wave function, Ψ, has a complex mathematical form so Ψ is not observable, hence
electrons – as free particles – don't exist. For an electron to be observable, its wave function must
“collapse.” By that, we mean Ψ is multiplied by it its complex conjugate, Ψ*, to produce a function
comprised of real numbers that yields locational probabilities. Multiplying Ψ by Ψ* involves some
non-linear device, like a phosphor screen that collects and amplifies an electron's energy and
localizes it as an observable, visible dot. The rigid Copenhagen interpretation of quantum physics
would assert that the visible dot itself doesn't exist until some conscious observer actually comes
along and sees it. (Of course, this relates to the Schrödinger's cat dilemma, and I'm not getting into
that topic here – if you've read my other essays, you know how I feel about Schrödinger's cat.)
I have a much more relaxed interpretation of quantum physics than Niels Bohr and his colleagues,
i.e., quantum wave functions become real by rendering them observable, meaning that an object
could have been observed even if it wasn't. Based on this criterion, the dot on the screen is real
whether someone sees it or not. All classical, macroscopic objects are real because they are the
result of myriad quantum wave functions that have been rendered observable by countless nonlinear
interactions; thus, classical, macroscopic objects automatically satisfy the observability requirement
in an easy, natural way. The Moon remains in the sky even when you look away from it.
The proof of the feedback mechanism follows directly from ordinary logic:
1. For an object to exist, it must be observable (an axiom of quantum mechanics that objects do
not exist unless they are observed has been experimentally verified using Bell's theorem).
2. For the universe to exist, objects within it must exist, and those objects must be observable.
3. For objects to be observable, subject-object relationships must be possible.
4. For subject-object relationships exist, conscious subjects must be possible.
5. For conscious subjects to make observations of physical objects, a physically means of
sensing those objects must be possible; e.g., sensory nervous systems or their equivalents.
6. Therefore, for a physical universe to exist, physical objects and conscious beings that
observe them with sensory nervous systems or their equivalents must be possible.
Notice I didn't say the universe had to have conscious beings with nervous systems, only that it had
to be possible. Die-hard quantum physicists would have a serious problem with my “relaxed”
approach, and insist that actual biological observers are a requirement. It doesn't matter to me,
because the feedback process still works even if the Moon disappears when you stop looking at it.
In fact, John Wheeler originally came up with the feedback idea, including it in the Big U model.
Wheeler was about as hard-core as they come in insisting that actual observations are needed in
order to make things exist. In Wheeler's Big U universe, the appearance of conscious observers
literally creates the physical universe retroactively, bringing all the pre-biological stages, starting
with the big bang, into existence. Of course, I consider this to be a feedback loop run amok, with
biological beings acting as their own causal agents. This version of reality seems an awful like lot
like Genesis 1:1-31 where the physical universe suddenly popped fully-formed into existence. The
difference is that with the Big U, it was creatures like ourselves who popped it into existence.
All of existence can be summarized by this equation: Existence ↔ Observability + Causality
The double arrow indicates the feedback loop. Note that observability is a necessary condition for
22. existence, but it is not a sufficient condition. Therefore, causality was included in the equation to
bring order and sanity to the universe. Requiring causal agents assures that objects don't just spring
into existence based solely on being observable.
Engineers commonly use feedback to provide fine control and optimization, and the engineer in me
finds the feedback mechanism in Wheeler's Big U model very satisfying. The only remaining
question in my mind is whether the universe is truly optimized for life in a Goldilocks sense, or if it
is just barely able to support life. Well, we don't see life forms from other planets landing on the
White House lawn for breakfast with the president every morning. In fact, we don't see any
evidence of biological activity on other planets in our own solar system, although the jury is still out
on that question. But if you consider the dozens of free parameters that had to be set in order for
life to be possible, you'd have to say that this feedback mechanism was a pretty effective way for
tuning the system. So I'll go out on a limb and say that the universe we live in – the only universe
that really counts – is probably as good as it gets in terms of being life-friendly.
There is a sharp contrast between the feedback model and the prevailing multiverse models that are
embraced by 60% of leading scientists. Parallel universes, and various multiverse models,
including Lee Smolin's cosmological natural selection, all face the same obstacle. To reiterate,
physical laws with a large set of free parameters having special values are required for conscious
biological beings to appear naturally. Obtaining the “right” physics through chance alone would
require multiple trials, along with some unexplained mechanism that forces each trial to have a
variable (random) set of free parameters initially and then fixes those parameters as constants from
then on. If the initial values of those parameters are unconstrained, an unimaginably large number
of trials would have to occur to produce even a single “success.” Consequently, the vast majority of
trials would be wasted on dead, failed universes. It's clear that the principle of Occam's razor would
affirm a simple mechanism that virtually assures success on the very first try.
30. The Libet Experiment Does Not Prove Humans Are Cyborgs without Free Will.
In Conjecture 16 of this essay, I said that consciousness emerges from physical complexity (in the
form of nervous systems) and its evolution coincides with the evolution of the brain. Although this
may be true, Conjecture 29 got me thinking about the chicken-and-egg question of whether
consciousness really did arise from the physical universe or vice versa. I think the answer hinges on
the true definition of consciousness, referred to as the “hard question” in psychology.
My essay Teachings from Near Death Experiences explores whether consciousness is a physical
process or something non-physical underlies it. According to reductionism, it is unequivocally
physical because conventional science can't do non-physical experiments or come up with non-
physical theories. Thus scientists must conclude that consciousness is equivalent to thoughts and
emotions, and those can be reduced to automatic electrochemical responses to the brain's
environment, called brain waves, which can be observed using the EEG (electroencephalogram).
Thus, the brain can no more make decisions than a lung or a kidney can, so consciousness and free
will are illusions and humans are reduced to machine-like cyborgs.
It is claimed the Libet experiment proves the above assertion. In that experiment, a timer is placed
in front of a human subject. The subject is asked to push a button and take note of the exact time
shown on the timer when the decision was made to push it. The subject's brain wave activity is
continuously recorded by an EEG and correlated with the timer. In every instance, the EEG showed
the subject “decided” to push the button about ½ second prior to the subject becoming aware of
making the decision to push it. Scientists claim this ½ second time lag is “proof” that all thoughts –
including ones about making decisions – are actually nothing more than automatic electrochemical
brain processes that we have no control over.
23. In my view, the experiment proves no such thing. The fact that the subject thinks he made a
decision to push the button ½ second after brain wave patterns occurred does not prove that the
brain wave patterns made that decision. All it shows is that there is an inherent time lag in our
conscious awareness. But we already knew that; touching a hot stove induces motor reflexes before
we become consciously aware of feeling any pain.
The explanation of this experiment is that the subject (the consciousness observing thoughts and
making decisions) cannot observe itself, so the only way to be consciously aware that a decision is
being made is by observing brain wave patterns external to the consciousness itself. The brain
waves that the subject observes and the EEG records may simply be the brain preparing to send a
signal to the motor neurons to push the button. The consciousness becomes aware of those wave
patterns ½ second later and misinterprets this as “making a decision” to push the button.
We can easily demonstrate that the conscious mind can misinterpret brain wave patterns. Everyone
has had a creepy déja vu experience, when information being directed into the memory is
misinterpreted as information coming from the memory instead. This causes the feeling of
experiencing something in the present that has also occurred in the past. We know this is just an
illusion (contrary to certain New Age explanations) because we can never seem to pin down exactly
when these experiences occurred in the past because déja vu memories just don't fit within the
chronology of other memories. I'm convinced that a similar type of misunderstanding on the part of
the subject of the Libet experiment leads to a false conclusion that decisions are just automatic
physical responses that can be measured by an EEG. Of course, that interpretation relies on the
assumption that all thoughts must have a physical basis, so this is a classic case of circular logic. It
shows the need to weed out all hidden assumptions that are buried in our theories and experiments.
If consciousness isn't just some physical phenomenon in the brain, what is it? Science is usually
very reluctant to acknowledge non-physical things exist. Yet certain physical experiments only
make sense using quantum mechanics, which doesn't appear to be very physical in the usual sense.
My guess is that we might need some yet unknown non-physical process to explain consciousness.
31. Psi Phenomena Might Be Experimentally Confirmed as Quantum Entanglement.
Scientists sometimes lapse into a bad habit of thinking about physics as being frame-dependent, i.e.,
a preexisting space and time (or more correctly space-time) in which objects exist and events occur.
This, or course, is completely contrary to the principle of relativity where there is no universal
frame of reference; instead, every observer defines their own unique reference frame. Space and
time are needed only for establishing subject-object relationships. Stated bluntly, space and time
simply don't exist in the absence of subject-object relationships. Although the very idea of
“transcending space and time” gives material reductionists severe heartburn, that very thing does
occur with quantum entanglement and it has been repeatedly proven experimentally to be true.
My essay Is Science Solving the Reality Riddle? discussed experiments based on Bell's Theorem
and the Quantum Eraser in some detail. These experiments demonstrate the quantum states of
entangled particles as having exceptionally strong correlation, and that correlation actually does
transcend space and time. These experiments have to be carried out with exquisite care and
precision, however. Quantum entanglement is a very delicate state and it can be disrupted by the
slightest interaction with the environment, so it is difficult to maintain entanglement over any
distances and time. Furthermore, the ability to detect statistically significant correlations between
quantum states requires extremely delicate instruments and precise measurements. Nevertheless,
the experiments clearly reveal that in the world of entangled particle pairs, space and time really
doesn't exist – there is simply no subject-object relationship between them that can cause any space
and time separation. We see those particles separated from each other by space and time, but they
do not. There is one caveat concerning these experiments, however: They must not be carried out
in any way that could violate causality. In other words, there can be no possibility of sending
24. messages through space instantaneously or back to a previous time. If the experiment is set up in
any way that might violate causality, it is certain to produce negative results.
Turning to psi phenomena, it seems that most believers in psi phenomena aren't true scientists, and
most scientists aren't true believers. Consequently, much of what passes as “psi research” is either
haphazard and sloppily-executed by amateurs, or its success is undermined by science professionals
who have a strong negative bias against the possibility of achieving success. Refer to the remote
staring experiments independently carried out by Marilyn Schlitz and Richard Wiseman, discussed
in my essay Teachings from Near Death Experiences.
I'm convinced that if psi phenomena are real, they surely involve the physical brain in some
unexplained manner. However, the physical connection may be at a much deeper level than
electrochemical processes occurring in the synapses. If Roger Penrose's and Stuart Hameroff's
theory is correct, consciousness (or more likely subconsciousness) involves quantum-level
processes in sub-microscopic structures called microtubules within brain cells. In that case,
anomalous psi phenomena, which are impossible according to material reductionism, might be
experimentally confirmed as brain-to-brain quantum entanglement involving microtubules.
Just as Bell's Theorem and Quantum Erasure experiments must be carried out meticulously and
without any possibility of violating causality, psi experiments would have to be carried out with the
same level of scientific rigor. Psi experiments should not try to beam fully-formed thoughts from
subject to subject, or communicate messages instantaneously through space or backward in time –
any attempt to defeat causality is doomed to failure. Instead, experiments should look for
quantifiable, subconscious (non-subjective) responses in a subject that correlate with signals that are
randomly-initiated from remote subjects. I believe the Schlitz remote staring experiments could
serve as the model for these studies, although I doubt that achieving consistent, repeatable, positive
results will be easy. See Appendix D of Teachings from Near Death Experiences for some
innovative ideas about doing this.
32. Matter May Emerge from Consciousness Instead of the Other Way Around.
In Conjectures 16 and 17, I posited that consciousness emerges from material complexity,
whereupon it undergoes a separate existence and evolution. Based on information I've uncovered
lately, I may be forced to rethink my position by considering the inverse of that hypothesis is true,
namely that the material universe emerges from consciousness.
Everyone knows that ordinary matter planets and stars are made of consist of atoms, which are
made from elementary particles – quarks and electrons. At the level of elementary particles,
quantum physics reigns. In fact, you might say that elementary particles are purely mathematical
quantum wave functions, and these are no more more physical than cosines or logarithms.
Although physicists have a pretty good handle on the rules that govern quantum waves functions,
they can't tell us what quantum waves are made of. Nobody has ever measured, let alone seen, a
quantum wave directly. Their existence can only be inferred by using them to compute probabilities
that closely match indirect physical observations. String theory is no help at all. This is just an
attempt to turn non-physical quantum waves back into physical objects again, made of tiny
vibrating strings. But that just raises the question of what kind of matter makes up the strings
themselves. I find it kind of amusing that while modern physics furnishes laws that describe
physical phenomena in detail, physicists don't seem to have any idea what the most basic physical
elements consist of.
The same is true of psychologists and neuroscientists. These experts have sliced and diced human
consciousness into the id, ego, and superego, recorded and mapped brain-wave patterns, and
divided the brain into functional regions like memory, emotion, and intellect. Yet nobody knows
what consciousness really is. Of course, material reductionists will confidently supply a ready
25. explanation: Consciousness is nothing more than electrochemical wave patterns in the brain,
stimulated by sensory inputs from the environment over which we have no control. Nice try, but
that still doesn't explain anything – it just redefines the problem.
Then there is the artificial intelligence (AI) crowd, who insist that human consciousness is nothing
more than a set of behaviors and habits that will eventually be imitated or duplicated by machines.
In fact, a complete human personality could be uploaded from someone's brain into a machine and
kept alive there indefinitely, rendering that person immortal. (This was the basic premise behind
the movie “Transcendence” starring Johnny Depp.) AI experts believe that with sufficiently
complicated electronic circuitry and sophisticated software, a machine will pass the Turing Test and
render human brains obsolete within the next 10 to 20 years.
So it seems that quantum physicists, psychologists, neuroscientists, and AI engineers all have
something in common: They all are experts in highly-specialized fields involving some
fundamental element they can't fully explain. I'm thinking that each of these fundamental elements
is the same thing; i.e., consciousness, intelligence, and quantum waves are the same purely
mathematical “mind stuff.” And since all observable phenomena emerge from quantum wave
functions, all matter, energy, and forces may be made of mind stuff as well. Of course, this is what
Eastern mysticism has been saying all along, and it also lines up with John Wheeler's “it from bit”
model of reality.
I have just one difficulty in accepting the idea that the entire physical universe consists of mental
images: This idea tends to descend into solipsism, which I find disturbing. It's one thing to believe
that non-living objects like tables and chairs are nothing but figments of my own mind, but how do
other conscious beings fit into such a purely mental construction of reality? Or do they? If there
are myriad conscious beings, how is it that others are imagining more or less the same version of
reality that I am? Could it be that I am the only one who is imagining reality into existence?
Of course, scientists reject out of hand any notion that the physical universe is mentally-constructed
because there seems to be no way that science can test such an hypothesis. But maybe it's just
because nobody's really tried. In light of Bell's experiment and the delayed choice experiment, it
certainly seems that quantum physics is hinting at this possibility.
33. The Universe Is Not an Object and Is Therefore Inherently Unobservable.
The scientific method is based upon observation. Every observation involves a subject (the
observer) and an object (the observed). Cosmology is not science is because its practitioners are
trying to “observe” something (the universe) that is not an object. An object can be only be
observed from its exterior, and as stated numerous times in my essays, the universe doesn't have an
exterior. Someone might object by saying that I can observe my living room from its interior, so
why can't I observe the universe from its interior? The answer is that when you observe your living
room's interior, you are actually observing the floor, ceiling and walls as objects with exteriors, and
forming a mental picture of your living room as a box having an exterior delineated by those
boundaries. Unlike your living room, the universe doesn't have boundaries or an exterior.
More fundamentally, every observer is part of the universe and cannot be separated from it. No, I'm
not having a kumbaya moment or a New Age revelation. I simply mean that being literally part of
the universe makes it impossible for anyone to make a normal subject-object observation of it.
Since every observer has a unique perspective and all observers are simultaneously at the center of
the universe, there would have to be as many universes as there are observers in order for subject-
object relationships to exist. The consequence of this is that anything that scientists can ascertain
about the universe as a whole through the process of observation is going to be fundamentally
distorted and flawed.
Here's an example of what I mean:
