Fewer people are probably familiar with F. Scott Fitzgerald’s short story “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” than they are with the reversed-time novels by Martin Amis, Kurt Vonnegut, or Lewis Carroll. But don’t worry, you will be!
In this case, the protagonist is born as an old man who grows younger with time, eventually dying as a baby. His father, not to mention the hospital staff, are somewhat nonplussed at his birth.
Mr. Button’s eyes followed her pointing finger, and this is what he saw. Wrapped in a voluminous white blanket, and partly crammed into one of the cribs, there sat an old man apparently about seventy years of age. His sparse hair was almost white, and from his chin dripped a long smoke-coloured beard, which waved absurdly back and forth, fanned by the breeze coming in at the window. He looked up at Mr. Button with dim, faded eyes in which lurked a puzzled question.
“Am I mad?” thundered Mr. Button, his terror resolving into rage. “Is this some ghastly hospital joke?”
“It doesn’t seem like a joke to us,” replied the nurse severely. “And I don’t know whether you’re mad or not—but that is most certainly your child.”
The cool perspiration redoubled on Mr. Button’s forehead. He closed his eyes, and then, opening them, looked again. There was no mistake—he was gazing at a man of threescore and ten—a baby of threescore and ten, a baby whose feet hung over the sides of the crib in which it was reposing.
No word of what Mrs. Button had to say about the whole affair.
Fitzgerald’s story takes a different approach to running the arrow of time backwards: Benjamin Button has experiences and memories that are completely conventional (although, for expository purposes, he is born with a full vocabulary), while his physical body ages backward.
The reason why I know everyone will be hearing about the story is that “Benjamin Button” is being made into a feature film, directed by David Fincher (Fight Club, Se7en) and starring Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett. Major photography has been completed, and it’s currently in post-production, scheduled to be released late in 2008. Major Oscar buzz.
Leaked photos seem to indicate that the film will portray Benjamin as being born baby-sized (albeit old and wrinkly), rather than as a full grown human being. Different actors will be used to portray Button’s reverse aging at different stages of his life, while CGI effects insert Brat Pitt’s face onto each body.
John Merryman –
“otherwise it is an increasing distance of stable space, not expanding space.”
Metric expansion of space affects the spatial dimensions (X,Y,Z) in all directions equally at the largest scales. At smaller scales, the expansion is apparently retarded by gravitation and the other forces.
“If it is only increasing distance, then an expanding universe model would mean that we are at the center of the universe.”
The expansion is happening everywhere and in all directions, very nearly homogeneously.
The result is that any vantage point will observe the Hubble flow (large structure redshift increases with distance in every direction, isotropically when at rest with respect to the CMB) and a nearly homogeneous arrangement of large structures (galaxies and clusters, just about everywhere).
In other words, any observer anywhere might guess that he/she/it has a privileged view and is at the centre of the visible universe.
‘It has been my contention that redshift is due to an opposite curvature of space then that caused by gravity”
Kind-of. The nature of the “dark energy” responsible for fuelling the metric expansion of space may be similar to gravity; it certainly appears to oppose gravitation. We don’t know a lot about it yet, unfortunately, other than that it has extremely small density but fills up all (or at least most) of otherwise empty space.
The redshift of large objects is consistent with Doppler shifting seen with much nearer objects whose distances and speeds can be measured by triangulation (e.g. RADAR on things here on Earth, rapid accelerations of blackbody radiators of known temperature, RADAR while approaching and departing planets and moons in the solar system, studies of eclipsing binary stars, and so forth). Close large structures have Doppler shifts consistent with peculiar motions towards or away from our general location, while further-away large structures have a significant redshift.
One of the key points of Doppler shifts in either direction is the preservation of spectral absorption and emission lines, and it is well defined spectra which are searched for.
Independent of cause, H2 spectrum searches allowed the derivation of the Hubble constant of 71 +- 4 km/s per Mpc.
We are not at rest with respect to the CMBR (there is a dipole anisotropy), but correcting for that gives us an isotropic redshift of objects whose distance we can also calculate by a variety of longer-range standard candles.
The redshift is identical to that produced by receding at that velocity, so “everything is moving away from us, with further away stuff moving away faster”. It is hard to construct scenarios other than an essentially uniform long-term metric expansion of space that also anticipates the same well defined spectra we see in telescopes.
“Could photons be something similar; The spot where the energy of the wave of light grounds to the contact field?”
Kind-of, yes. A photon is a discretization of a field — that’s the “quantum” in QM (or, more precisely, quantum electrodynamics). The field’s highest energy peak fluctuates randomly across the field (thus, its position and momentum has some uncertainty at the smallest scales). However, the quantization of the field into a point-like particle with discrete energy and discrete momentum reproduces all of its measurable behaviour. In part this is because the field does not divide — the whole field participates in an interaction with an arbitrarily small system, or none of it does — and we have not found any internal structure or component parts.
So light (which always travels at c in free space) comprises indivisible quantizations of energy and momentum called photons. The quantization energy was arrived at empirically through studies of blackbody radiators and the photoelectric effect, and is related to the frequency; the quantized momentum is its energy divided by c.
Accreted kludges aren’t pretty, but they (hopefully!) are more accurate nonetheless. We test for accuracy experimentally, and attempt to refine or reject models which are inaccurate. This is important if one’s goal is to describe and predict material events with ever greater accuracy, even if it doesn’t always offer neat insights into the nature of the real underlying processes so modelled.
Usually new insights start as some sort of intuition or wild speculation, which then must survive rigorous scrutiny in the form of regression testing against known observations, followed by a search for deviations from existing theory which can be tested experimentally at some point in the future.
I hope I haven’t messed up the editing again. I wish there was a preview feature!
Cy and John,
With regard to Dark Energy, space has a temperature of roughly 2.7 degrees Kelvin. The singular antipode of energy densities exhibits gravity as operating in the manner with which we are familiar.
Since the CMB (CBR) is detected as a “temperature” of space, it would, I think, be reasonable to assume that at the photonic antipode of the universal geometry, as opposed to the singular energy density related antipode, gravity would seem reversed from our coordinates.
I appreciated both of your additional comments…
Sam
Sy,
The initial point where I began to question Big Bang Theory was with the observation that “Omega=1” or is very close. If the expansion is balanced by contraction of gravity, it seemed some form of convection cycle of expanding energy and collapsing mass made more sense.
So if the universe were to expand to twice its current size, than two galaxies x lightyears apart would be 2x lightyears apart? If so, that isn’t expanding space, it’s an increasing distance in stable space. If it remains x lightyears, how would we know it’s expanding?
Just as if it was an optical effect. Sort of like the light has to run up the down escalator. It travels further, but the source and destination are not actually moving apart.
If it is an optical effect, the further light travels, the more the effect would be compounded, so the faster the source would appear to recede. Eventually it would appear to exceed the speed of light and this would create a horizon line, beyond which visible light couldn’t travel, so the sources would vanish, but lower spectrum radiation would continue over this line, creating a black body effect, similar to the CMBR. At least ths way, we don’t say space is expanding, but then measure it against a stable measure of space.
Just like with lightning. It draws energy from the entire cloud, hence the branching effect. Carver Mead wrote some interesting stuff on working with electrons, that they can be up to three feet long.
Sam,
Is that gravity reversed from energy?
What, no mention of Merlin? He supposedly lived backwards in time, at least in TH White’s version of the tale.
Hmm, Seems like a live body is editing this at the moment. It’s been real. Sort of. Bye.
John asked, Sam
“Is that gravity reversed from energy?” (#27)
When we look outward in the universe, the universe becomes younger and smaller. At the “big bang”, 13.7 billion light years out, the unverse, everywhere at the astronomical antipode (360 degrees) is completely singular.
The CBM is the astronomical map of conditions in a much younger, and smaller universe, shortly after the big bang.
Space presently is not empty but has a photonic temperature of 2.7 degrees K. If it were empty, of course, it would have no temperature at all. The temperature of space everywhere is a measure of our present coordiates in space time, because, as measured from our frame, the universe had a very hot temperature, and necessary density at its origin.
This hot dense universe shortly after the big bang, which we are measuring had a great gravitational attraction (towards the big bang). Although the universe has cooled fown to 2.7 degrees K, this gravitational attraction toward the “bang” still exists in the direction of the astronomical antipode.
Since this attaction toward the bang goes in an opposite direction to the energy density particulate generated gravity of our universe, it seems reversed, like a vacuum energy to us. All this relates to what is almost certainly a modified Schwarzschild bi-particulate two-sphere geometry with two three-spaces…our reality.
Ned Wright has some great stuff posted on his site about the veracity of various cosmological models.
Best, Sam
Sam,
Sorry for dropping the thread. What little internet time I have had recently has been absorbed just keeping up on the various political and economic events.
We do look to the past as we move to the future. Are events scrolling away from us as motion produces them, or are we proceeding along a fundamental pathway? I’ve been raising this very basic question/observation for some months and have been unable to draw a similarly basic response, either negative or affirmative. I seriously doubt anyone is concerned about offending me, so I suspect that if there was some clear mistake, it would have been pointed out. Given this, I tend to look askance as to how much modern science has really proven and how much is natural human tendency to extrapolate into the unknown. Reality is most likely infinitely complex and there are no end of patterns to find and examine, but how much are our explorations a product of our own assumptions?
I’m still not sold that the default absolute space is the dimensionless point.
Which is in every direction, the stage of last scattering after Inflation created conveniently flat space. I still think it is flat space because the featureless void is the actual default absolute space and light is optically redshifted, creating a horizon line for the visible spectrum, so that only black body radiation travels over it.
I read through some of Ned Wright’s site some years ago and responded with some of my own ideas, to no response.
As I’ve stated, I do think modern physics is based on a reductionistic assumption that reality can be explained in terms of a perfect model, not a wholistic one. This search for the physical Platonic ideal is not only backward, since form is effect, not cause, but it is actually behind the times, not ahead of them. I think much of modern society has gone on over the last hundred years to understanding that “it” is flow, not object. As I’ve pointed out in my arguments over time, position is always only approximate, since without motion, nothing effectively exists, since it cannot be measured. That I get no feedback from members of the scientific establishment doesn’t surprise me, as we are in different time zones.
As for the search for the Higgs, I think the answer lays in all the data that gets thrown out. The secret is the oyster, not the perfect pearl.
Obviously I could be all wrong, but it’s an intellectual endeavor, not a financial one, so I can afford to be.
Hi John, You have some interesting thoughts here. I’ll put my responses in caps so you can identify my reaction….
Sam,
Sorry for dropping the thread. What little internet time I have had recently has been absorbed just keeping up on the various political and economic events.
YES, A LOT HAS BEEN GOING ON. MY HEALTH IS NOT GOOD ENOUGH TO PERMIT ACTIVE PARTICIPATION, BUT I AM INTERESTED TOO- AND AM INVOLVED IN THE SIMPLE WAYS I CAN. I CAN TELL BY SEAN’S THREAD CHOICE HE, (AND EVERYONE ELSE) IS (ARE) INTERESTED TOO.
When we look outward in the universe, the universe becomes younger and smaller.
We do look to the past as we move to the future. IN THE QUASI-STATIC MODEL IMPLIED BY GR AND INITIALLY ASSUMED BY EINSTEIN, WE OURSELVES TO NOT ACTUALLY MOVE OUT OF THE PAST AND INTO THE FUTURE. TIME IS A HOLOGRAPHIC AND QUITE ILLUSORY PROCESS WHICH WE EXPERIENCE ONLY BECAUSE OF THE WAY WE, AS PARTICULATE COMPLEXITY, ELECTROMAGNETICALLY OBSERVE THE UNIVERSE AT CERTAIN PERMANENT COORDINATES. Are events scrolling away from us as motion produces them, or are we proceeding along a fundamental pathway? LIKE THE UNIVERSE, WE PERSONALLY DEVELOP SLOWLY (IN THE MODEL) OVER ETERNITY. I’ve been raising this very basic question/observation for some months and have been unable to draw a similarly basic response, either negative or affirmative. I seriously doubt anyone is concerned about offending me, so I suspect that if there was some clear mistake, it would have been pointed out. I THINK SOME OF THE GUYS FEEL YOU ARE QUITE CONFIDENT OF THE SOUNDNESS OF YOUR PHILOSOPHICAL POSTION AND SEE NO REASON TO RE-STATE THEIR POSITIONS. AFTER ALL, THE UNIVERSE, HOWEVER IT EXISTS, EXISTS BY DEFINITION. INSOFAR AS OUR SPECULATIONS ASSIST US IN FORMULATING A TESTABLE HYPOTHESIS, OUT DISCUSSIONS ARE MEANINGFUL. OTHERWISE MOST PEOPLE ON THE BLOG ARE NOT REALLY INTERESTED IN A GENERAL DISCUSSION. I HAVE BEEN VERY IMPRESSED WITH THIS BLOG. MOST OF THE PEOPLE HERE ARE WELL KNOWN SCIENTISTS LOOKING FOR, AND SHARING IDEAS. REST ASSURED THEY HAVE NOTED YOUR IDEAS, EVEN THOUGH THEY MAY NOT SHARE YOUR PERSPECTIVE. EVERYONE HERE, WITH PRECIOUS FEW EXCEPTIONS IS VERY POLITE. Given this, I tend to look askance as to how much modern science has really proven and how much is natural human tendency to extrapolate into the unknown. Reality is most likely infinitely complex and there are no end of patterns to find and examine, but how much are our explorations a product of our own assumptions?THIS IS WELL STATED JOHN AND REFLECTS BACK TO MY COMMENTS IMMEDIATELY PRECEDING THIS COMMENT OF YOURS. THESE GUYS ARE LOOKING FOR TESTABLE IDEAS, AND IN QM/SR/GR/AND THE SCHWARZSCHILD GEOMETRY, THEY HAVE THEM. THEIR POINT OF VIEW IS DETERMINED BY A KIND OF ENGINEERING ENVELOPE WITHIN WHICH THESE WELL VERIFIED IDEAS CONCEPTUALLY FIT.
The temperature of space everywhere is a measure of our present coordiates in space time, because, as measured from our frame, the universe had a very hot temperature, and necessary density at its origin.
I’m still not sold that the default absolute space is the dimensionless point.
I DON’T THINK THERE ARE MANY PEOPLE ON THIS BLOG WHO BELIEVE IN EITHER ABSOLUTE SPACE- OR THE DIMENSIONESS POINT. THE HEART OF RELATIVITY IS THE IDEA THAT TIME AND SPACE ARE RELATIVE, NOT ABSOLUTE, AND THAT AT THE LOWEST LEVELS OF SCALE, SPACE AND TIME CEASE AND EVENT HORIZONS FORM. SOME OF THESE PEOPLE TINKER WITH THE REGION BENEATH THE EVENT HORIZON, BUT I WOULDN’T THINK MANY SPEND A LOT OF TIME WITH SUB-EVENT HORIZON “MECHANICS”. THIS ALSO RELATES TO THE INFORMATION PARADOX, WHICH, IT IS PRETTY MUCH AGREED, DOES NOT EXIST. WE KNOW THAT BLACK HOLES “EVAPORATE” BUT THIS PHENOMENON IS COMPLETELY CONSISTENT WITH A UNIVERSAL MODEL OF SPACE AND TIME WHICH HAS EXTRA DIMENSIONS BEYOND OUR 4D MODEL.
Although the universe has cooled fown to 2.7 degrees K, this gravitational attraction toward the “bang” still exists in the direction of the astronomical antipode.
Which is in every direction, CORRECT the stage of last scattering after Inflation created conveniently flat space. FLAT SPACE IS NOT JUST CONVENIENT, IT IS THE WAY THE UNIVERSE WOULD BE EXPECTED TO BE OBSERVED FROM CIRCUMFERENTIAL PARTICULATE 4D EVENT HORIZONS- YET EXPERIENCED AT THE CENTER OF A MARGINALLY CLOSED GR GEOMETRY. I still think it is flat space because the featureless void is the actual default absolute space and light is optically redshifted, creating a horizon line for the visible spectrum, so that only black body radiation travels over it.ALL THE EVIDENCE OUT THERE IS THAT SPACE IS NOT A “MEDIUM” IN THE CLASSICAL SENSE OF THE WORD…IT IS NOT REFRACTORY AND DOES NOT HAVE ANY RELATIVISTIC POSITION WITHIN THE MANIFOLD, YET SPACE IS NOT ULTIMATELY EMPTY AND IT DOES HAVE MASS.
I read through some of Ned Wright’s site some years ago and responded with some of my own ideas, to no response.NED IS A GREAT GUY…AN EXCELLENT TEACHER AND RESEARCHER, BUT HE IS VERY BUSY. SOMETIMES HE HAS TIME TO RESPOND, BUT HE GETS SO MANY INQUIRIES IT IS ALMOST IMPOSSIBLE TO REPLY TO EVERYONE.
As I’ve stated, I do think modern physics is based on a reductionistic assumption that reality can be explained in terms of HY perfect model, not a wholistic one. IT IS CLEAR TO MOST SCIENTISTS THAT REDUCTIONISM HAS DEFINITE LIMITS. THE MODEL WHICH SCIENTISTS SEEK IS A HOLISITIC MODEL, AND SR/GR/QM AND THE SCHWARZSCHILD GEOMETRY DO, IN COMBINATION FORM A GOOD, WELL VERIFIED BASIS FOR A HOLISTIC COSMOLOGICAL MODEL.This search for the physical Platonic ideal (EINSTEINS IDEAS ARE VERY PLATONIC) is not only backward, since form is effect, not cause, but it is actually behind the times, not ahead of them. I think much of modern society has gone on over the last hundred years to understanding that “it” is flow, not object. As I’ve pointed out in my arguments over time, position is always only approximate,THIS IS CORRECT, IN A QUASI-STATIC UNIVERSE THINGS ARE RIGID BUT AS A RESULT OF A COSMIC AND VERY RAPID PROPER TIME PULSE, COORDINATES DO SLOWLY (AND ALMOST IMPERCEPTIBLY) CHANGE. THIS SLOW CHANGE IS THE BASIS FOR OUR GREATLY EXAGGERATED SENSE OF TIME PASSAGE. since without motion, nothing effectively exists, since it cannot be measured. THERE IS NO EXISTENCE WITHOUT A PERCEPTION OF TIME. I DON’T REALLY THINK MANY PEOPLE ON THE BLOG WOULD DISAGREE WITH THAT IDEA. That I get no feedback from members of the scientific establishment doesn’t surprise me, as we are in different time zones. THEY NOTE EVERYONES IDEAS AND MOVE ON IN A CONTINUING SEARCH FOR NEW AND TESTABLE IDEAS.
As for the search for the Higgs, I think the answer lays in all the data that gets thrown out. The secret is the oyster, not the perfect pearl.THERE IS ALWAYS THE POSSIBILITY THAT WE ARE LOOKING IN THE WRONG PLACES FOR OUR ANSWERS. THE REASON WHY THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD IS SO GREAT, IS THAT IT PRODUCES RESULTS; AN EXPANDING TECHNOLOGY AND UNDERSTANDING OF THE UNIVERSE…HOWEVER COUNTERINTUITIVE IT SEEMS. MANY TIMES WE MISS IMPORTANT CLUES IN DATA…THAT IS VERY EASY TO DO. IT IS ALSO EASY TO OVERLOOK CLUES IN THE DATA WHICH POINT TO THE POSSIBLE VERACITY OF OTHER IDEAS- WHICH WE WOULD PREFER TO OVERLOOK FOR PERSONAL REASONS. SCIENTISTS ARE, AFTER ALL, HUMAN. THAT IS WHY THEY QUESTION EACH OTHER AND POST IDEAS ON BLOGS LIKE THIS ONE. THE IMPORTANT THING IS TO REMAIN INTELLECTUALLY OPEN.
Obviously I could be all wrong, but it’s an intellectual endeavor, not a financial one, so I can afford to be.YOUR POINT IS WELL TAKEN AND I KNOW SEAN AND EVFERYONE ELSE WOULD AGREE THAT BEING ON “THE PAYROLL” HAS CERTAIN POTENTIAL DISADVANTAGES. NEITHER YOU NOR I HAVE ANY “AXE TO GRIND” BUT THAT INTELLECTUAL FREEDOM DOESN’T NECESSARILY MAKE OUR IDEAS ANY MORE TRUE THAN THEIRS! THE BOTTOM LINE IN SCIENCE IS EXPERIMENTAL VERACITY.
Sam,
Just copy the block quote tag *blockquote>IN THE QUASI-STATIC MODEL IMPLIED BY GR AND INITIALLY ASSUMED BY EINSTEIN, WE OURSELVES TO NOT ACTUALLY MOVE OUT OF THE PAST AND INTO THE FUTURE. TIME IS A HOLOGRAPHIC AND QUITE ILLUSORY PROCESS WHICH WE EXPERIENCE ONLY BECAUSE OF THE WAY WE, AS PARTICULATE COMPLEXITY, ELECTROMAGNETICALLY OBSERVE THE UNIVERSE AT CERTAIN PERMANENT COORDINATES.
I realize the point I’m making is a simple statement of how relativity treats time, as you describe it, but it isn’t always taught that way and many people who have spent a great deal of time studying it seem convinced that time really does exist as an additional dimension of space, rather then simply being modeled as one. Also it doesn’t seem recognized that if we understand time as a model of motion and not the basis for it, then this narrative timeline is actually going future to past. Maybe it is so taken for granted and obvious among physicists that they don’t feel it worth commenting on, but it is the kind of point that the general public, such as myself, can grasp and understand why intuition and logic are not always identical. You would think those who do understand the importance of public relations might get this, but it doesn’t seem to be the case.
That is also a point that needs to de reconsidered. As I keep pointing out with the two directions of time, there is the measurement and what is being measured. (Energy going to the future. Information going to the past.)There is a strong tendency to carry this to one extreme and argue that it is all only the measurement/information. Max Tegemark comes recently to mind.
I no doubt they are being polite, but the recent issue Sean raises concerning “The Truth, Respectfully,” comes to mind. They could easily shut me up and I wouldn’t take it too hard if someone could give me a clear example of how the points I’ve raised have been previously refuted or taken into account. Yes, Lawrence did make the effort, but beyond the jargon, he still seemed to mostly wander off the specific point I was raising. Admittedly I’ve also raised arguments that are not pc for this audience, but I don’t try to hide my background, lack thereof, or general perspective. Yes, I realize this negates their potential respect for my position, but I do understand basic human psychology enough to not play politics, since this is presumably about raising basic questions concerning the nature of reality and it is a public forum, to some extent.
The fact is that physical hypotheses have gone far beyond what is testable. Maybe it is time to double back and reconsider some of those original premises, many of which are several generations old. The Copenhagen Interpretation comes to mind.
Abmittedly I wander off the deep end in questioning Big Bang Theory, but that’s where I went off the reservation to begin with; The idea that if gravity and the expansion of space are effectively opposing factors, how can there be any expansion of the universe? From this everything else I’ve raised flows, from two directions of time, to why doesn’t the speed of light increase proportionally with the expansion of space.
I haven’t argued that it is a medium. They most I’ve said about space it that it represents the absolute state and this is not represented by an initial point, but a featureless void, or lack of any such original reference. Lets just say the singularity was a quantum fluctuation. Would it be possible to say this fluctuation is constantly occurring and we are inside it, so that space expands of itself and only collapses to potential points/black holes, since the material generated does have physical definition. This way we have expansion that is similar to what is observed and doesn’t need dark energy to supplement the singularity. The Big Bang universe does constitute a narrative unit from start to finish, so that at the beginning it was in the future and eventually it will be in the past, just as any narrative unit does. As usual physics is only focused on the measurement and not what is being measured, the energy which goes from one unit to the next, just as the sun and earth go from one day to the next.
I better get back to work…
Regards,
John
I knew I shouldn’t have messed with trying to put that tag in there;
Sam,
Just copy the block quote tag above the text box and paste it about as many quotes as you will need, then copy what you want to quote and paste it into them, between the middle arrows>IN THE QUASI-STATIC MODEL IMPLIED BY GR AND INITIALLY ASSUMED BY EINSTEIN, WE OURSELVES TO NOT ACTUALLY MOVE OUT OF THE PAST AND INTO THE FUTURE. TIME IS A HOLOGRAPHIC AND QUITE ILLUSORY PROCESS WHICH WE EXPERIENCE ONLY BECAUSE OF THE WAY WE, AS PARTICULATE COMPLEXITY, ELECTROMAGNETICALLY OBSERVE THE UNIVERSE AT CERTAIN PERMANENT COORDINATES.
It seems to be the arrows which cut off text…
Hi John, Pardon me for just recapitulating a few reflections, with which I know you were and are familiar.
The only thing I wanted to address in this response was your concern about the Big Bang. Believe me there are many scientists with reservations about the “Big Bang”. It is most important to realize that everything we deduce about the bang may in fact be quite real, and verifiable…it is a “bang” as observed from OUR particulate 4D existence….hot, with early nflation, great gravity and unimaginable density- everything…but as observed from OUR frame of reference!
We deduce the bang by working backwards from our coordinates in space-time and we describe it within those parameters, which may be OK from our local frame…in fact we may be able to build a technology on this information, yet the universe may in fact be quite different structurally.
Remember our astronauts accelerating away from the Earth? What observers on the Earth observe is completely different from what the astronauts observe as they look out the window of their spacecraft. Their universe really looks different than the one they knew on the Earth when they departed.
The KEY is, the astronauts could build a workable technology out of the universe they observe from their accelerating spacecraft. Living on the Earth with a gravitational acceleration of 1G produces multiple (not single direction) accelerations, which give us the universe we observe. Our world, just like the universe in an accelerating spacecraft, is the result of relativistic effects. Our world seems “normal” to us. Little do we know that we are observeing the universe in a very unique and particular way, on particulate 4D event horizon surfaces, in extreme gravitational dilation…from the center of a marginally closed spherical geometry.
Now for the Bang…it is, like the rest of the universe we observe, but a relativistic effect…real, YES…to us. However to conceive of the big bang as a massive explosion from a geometric point is downright foolish, in the light of what we know about relativity and relativisitic effects. Even from our frame of reference, it is better to start in the right place, with ourselves, for the universe exists the way we observe it. We stay, in GR, at the same coordinates forever. It is space and time which collapse, making us one with everything else which also exists in the cosmos at their own permanent locations.
Take Organic Evolution…again a relativisitc effect, produced by the way we observe the universe on event horizon surfaces in extreme gravitational dilation. Is Organic Evolution correct? Of course it is correct, for organic evolution is the way we observe life to originate and develop from our frame of reference. Like all other relativistic effects which make up our world, we can build a technology from what we observe in the processess of organic evolution.
However, GR tells us bluntly, that what is so logical to us (what we see out the window of our spaceship Earth) is only the tip of the cosmological iceberg. There are cosmic principles and forces involved far more profound than organic evolution which we can infer by what we know about physics…the equivalence of non-inertial and gravitational frames of reference, in this case.
Take my word for it John, we live in an amazing universe. I for one, do not even pretend to really understand what is happening…but I think mankind is learning, and will not only understand, but control and be a part of those cosmological principles which have brought us to this blog, at these coordinates in space and time.
Best Wishes, Sam Cox
Sam,
I do have some grasp of relativity. My point about the big bang is that gravity is collapsing space at AT THE SAME TIME AND AT THE SAME RATE as it is expanding. Think of it in terms of my observation that our proceeding forward in time from past to future is relative to its passing by us going the other way, from future to past. These factors of expansion and contraction are happening at the same time. So as with the two directions of time, what we would seem to have is an equilibrium, with the illusion of relative motion.
Hi John,
Absolutely. What is observed as expanding from one frame, is observed as collapsing from another, 180/360 degrees removed in space and time but particulately superposed as pulsating energy, matter/antimatter occillations at the quark level of scale which cosmologically occur at a rate of 2.8 trillion times per Earth second.
Thinking this through it is easy to understand the quasi-static universe! Everything stays eternally in the same place…obviously! By gravitational time dilation, and observing electromagnetically and remotely, we see an almost instantaneous pulse as taking the vast age (and space) of the universe. In the sky, at the astronomical antipode, (The CMB) we read this sub-microscopic pulse (one half of it) as the “power spectrum”.
By the way, all this follows from the fact that a wad of keys and a bowling ball accelerate at the same rate when released at the same distance from the center of the Earth. Gravity is a fictitious force (Merry go Round- like) which results from a “curvature” of space/time induced by the presence of energy densities. This curvature is, at macroscopic scales, unrelated to the individual mass of energy densities in the vicinity of the Earth for example.
The “curvature” we call gravity is an induced manifold which appears in the presence of information and complexity on multiple 4D event horizon surfaces. These 4D event horizon surfaces form as a result of the fact that the very existence of energy densities prohibits their existence- or that of space/time at a certain place in scale, and that these scale/anergy density relationships vary with great complexity, depending on the mass of the energy denisties and how, and from what place within the manifold they are observed.
What makes all this worth talking about is its experimental veracity. All this is not some dumb conjecture of a weirdo, unless we consider Einstein, and a concept which is predictive to 33 decimal places to be weird! GR works right down to the event horizon. Some people try to take it further, but as you can see from what I have just said, taking GR below the event horizon is not conceptually consistent…that is, indeed, a bit “weird”.
Best, Sam Cox
Sam,
Maybe the reason GR doesn’t go beyond the event horizon is because it is reflected back as “the other side of the merry-go-round,” caused by release of energy.
Think of it this way; Gravity curves space inward, but from what frame of reference? Flat space? No, because there is no such thing as objective flat space, so it must be curving it in from the opposite effect of expanding space and whatever is the intermediate level between these two directions is the equilibrium. Sort of if you took a bulldozer and pushed all the hills into all the valleys, what is left is flat. So how would these hills between the gravitational valleys be detected in the first place? Since this effect doesn’t have a gravitational focal point, it wouldn’t bend the path of light. It would be pervasive across all space, so how would it affect light crossing this space which is expanding as surely as gravity pulls light in? Logically by redshifting the light. If the space is actually expanding, why wouldn’t the source be actually receding? Given that space is measured by its contents and all such measurable “stuff” is falling into gravity, even the light falling onto the lens of our telescopes, the pressure of this expansion is relieved by gravity. So while the expansion is one side of the merry-go-round going one way, gravity is the other side going the other way, AT THE SAME TIME. The more space that light crosses, the more the effect is compounded, so the faster the source appears to recede. When the source is far enough away that it appears to recede at the speed of light, the effect is a horizon line for visible light and only black body radiation goes over this horizon line. That’s why the CMBR comes from all directions and why those visible sources are redshifted directly away from us without the earth being the center of the universe and without having the speed of light increase as space expands, since the same objects will remain in view, much as light bending around a gravity field doesn’t actually cause the source of this light to be pushed to the side of the field, but is an effect on the transmission of the light, rather then the position of the source.
Therefore redshift is due entirely to this form of cosmological constant which balances gravity, just as one side of the merry-go-round balances the other side and there is no need of an initial singularity.
Hi…A couple of thoughts…
Particulate energy densities, by defintion become singular, depending on their mass as we “descend” in scale, larger particles first, then smaller and finally the smallest. Certainly the entire universe below 10 to the minus 36th Cm is and must be by definition, singular. I laughed once at a well known scientist’s comment that “there isn’t much down there”….very well stated.
However, over the universe as a whole, the singular Planck realm makes up 73% of the mass of the universe.
The point is, the whole SR/GR concept of space, time and gravity limits the existence of energy densities to certain scale ranges. Its a matter of definition- that is how the concept plays out.
I like your analogy of filling in the holes with the piles of dirt extracted from them in the first place…pretty good!
However, gravity, just because it seems to act like a vacuum as in the CMB does not really operate in reverse…it, in effect pulls down everywhere in the universe. As you mention, our Merry Go Round is moving in the same direction on both sides, it only seems to move in different directions because of the way gravity is observed…what coordinates we observe from.
That does not mean that gravity on the “other side” of a twin universe would not take some getting used to! We would stand on the ground, yet the initial sensation would be that of paralysis. Never the less, what we needed would come to us “automatically”. It would be an easier world, but as someone already mentioned on the blog, a world of decreasing thermal entropy would be accompanied by increasing informational entropy…IE we would become more childlike.
“there is no need of an initial singularity.” I would venture you phrased that incorrectly, because the universe actually exists as it is observed. If we observe the universe to exist a certain way…that is what exists…IE there IS an initial singularity. One of the things about a GR universe we need to remember is that it exists in a near infinite variety of ways. If you doubt that, consider the different frames of all the plants, animals and people in this world. My world is really real to me and your world is really real to you. Our coordinates are similar enough we can communicate, but even in the case of humanity, we can’t change coordinates too far in space and time without having difficulties with our communication of meaning!
800 years ago, were we to move backward in time, learning English as it existed then would have been a project like us learning the German language today. In linguistics we study “mutual intelligbility” and “word correspondence”. We try to translate ancient languages, read the geological record and study the history of evolution by the study of fossels. In reality, we are attempting not only to understand the universe, we are attempting a kind of communication. Obviously we can communicate with humans, even other living things, but some might argue we cannot communicate with the inanimate. I know using such words as communicating with the inanimate seems a contradiction in terms, but I think there is value in the idea.
Math, Physics and Engineering stand at the pinacle of science. When we discover such a fundamental truth as that the universe exists as it is observed, and we experimentally confirm that concept, we establish a link between the natural and even social sciences which we can identify even in the semantic nomenclature they share.
Yes, the universe is much more profound structually that the initial singularity. I spent quite a bit of time on the blog reviewing the reasons why that is true. In that sense you are correct. However we are conceptually on very thin ice in a GR universe, when we assert there was no initial singularity.
Best, Sam Cox
Sam,
A major part of the other side of the merry-go-round, the source of these hills, is the radiant energy expanding out of gravitational wells, across the visible universe. A singularity would be a point of infinite density, but if there are limits to this density, black holes would be the eye of gravitational vortexes into which matter falls, before it reaches the wall beyond which it cannot fall further and is radiated back out.
The universe exists as observed because an objective perspective is an oxymoron.
You don’t really address my point that if gravity and expansion are opposite factors and are in general equilibrium, then it describes a cycle of collapsing mass and expanding energy, a convective process where one side expands until it cools down and starts to collapse until the pressure heats it back up and it starts to expand again. It was in Hawking’s Brief History of Time that I first came across the point that expansion and gravity must be in close balance for the universe to be as stable as it is and experiments since apparently prove it.
Is that because it really doesn’t make sense, or because it’s like entering a mac program on a pc and it just does not compute. I realize that professional physicists are extremely focused, but if there is some conceptual mistake buried in the foundations of their theories, are they capable of deconstructing what has become the essence of their being, much as any adherent of a system is both master and slave to the paradigm?
Hi John,
All the evidence points to a big bang. The standard model is founded on it, and the standard model is an excellent (though significantly not perfect) predictor of the evolution of the universe following a bang.
Is there something beyond the standard model? I’m sure there is, yet any new model will not only explain discrepancies in the Standard Model, but be equally predictive of the other events following the Big Bang.
Scientists have biases just like anyone else, and they (should) admit those biases, but as I said before, their theories must fall within the mathematical envelope of already tested ideas- or scientists quickly lose their credibility in their profession. All good scientists are on record as having some very weird ideas…Isaac Newton, PAM Dirac and Fred Hoyle are good examples.
One of the points which I have made over the years is that many scientists are (kind of) ignoring the inherent geometry and cosmological implications of current concepts which are so well verified we could almost call them laws of the universe.
I agree with you that sometimes there is little difference between mastery and slavery!…however, in science, if a concept is predictive and verifiable, we are stuck with it until we find something yet better. In the meantime, we look for subtle flaws and observational deviations in our concept…we keep testing it. Science is an ongoing process.
Best, Sam
Sam,
As I’ve pointed out previously, we could use the same logic that says time is an additional dimension of directional space to argue that temperature is a parameter of volume space and the math would be just as precise. The reason we don’t is that as individual units, we function as social particles, not mass, so we have a little more perspective on mass relationships and can clarify the relationship between temperature and volume a little more objectively then we discern the relationship between time and distance. The logic is somewhat similar to windchill factor, in that it is a triangulation of factors from our perspective.
The Standard Model and Big Bang theory are very precise as well, except when they are not and observation doesn’t quite match theory, then patches get added, such as Inflation, Dark matter and energy and any number of other “renormalizations,” as Lawrence so descriptively put them.
History will vindicate Fred Hoyle.
John said,
“The Standard Model and Big Bang theory are very precise as well, except when they are not and observation doesn’t quite match theory, then patches get added, such as Inflation, Dark matter and energy and any number of other “renormalizations,” as Lawrence so descriptively put them.
History will vindicate Fred Hoyle.”
Dark Matter, Dark Energy and Inflation are really at the bottom line semantic terms. One of my serious beefs with science is the poor way terminology is coined, but you really can’t blame the scientists. These notions are so esoteric to the average person that you might just as well name these things black, white and in-between!
Inflation is the early expansion of the universe at an almost infinite velocity.
Dark Matter is extra mass demanded by the rotational characteristics of galaxies.
Dark Energy is that 73% of the universal mass which has to be more or less equally distributed everywhere in the cosmic structure.
You spoke of Ned Wright. Ned really respects the work of Fred Hoyle. Although “Freddie” certainly was wrong on many points, Ned well understands that the Relativity is, at its heart, conceptually a static, or quasi-static concept. Since Relativity is so well verified, the universe therefore must have, in some way, a quasi-static structure.
Very interesting…
Sam,
Inflation shoehorns the observations which would otherwise support an infinite universe into a finite model. Such as the time required to establish thermal equilibrium, as well as verifiable equilibrium between expansion and collapse, ie. flat space, since it must be many orders of magnitude larger then what is visible for what is visible to be flat. Given that there are about as many variations on Inflation theory as there are Inflation theorists, it means that only two points are relevant, observation and singularity based model. Everything connecting them is speculation, which requires violating basic laws of physics, such as C. If light is being “carried” along by this inflation, so that it doesn’t violate C, then the speed of light is effectively increasing as the universe expands. At the singularity, the speed of light would have to be zero. Think about it, you can’t say there is a stable speed of light that pre-exists the universe and inflation is just expanding the universe to match it. So, when the universe was the size of the proverbial basketball, or whatever it was when inflation started, it would take light just as long to cross this universe as it would at the point where inflation stopped, since C would be increasing at the same rate as inflation. This means that inflation is utterly meaningless, since it wouldn’t matter if the universe remained the size of the basketball, as it would still take light billions of years for light to cross it and we wouldn’t know the difference. As for when inflation stopped, what happened then? How did we suddenly switch to a universe which continues to expand, but a lightspeed that is stabilized so that we could detect this expansion?
As for dark energy and dark matter, specifically they are both gaps between theory and observation. What if there is expanding space, but not an expanding universe? It would create additional pressure on gravitational systems, resulting in the effect for which dark matter is theorized. How about if redshift is a form of curvature of the passage of light, rather than recessional velocity of the source? The dark energy to actually move galaxies further apart wouldn’t be necessary, only that required to impede the passage of light. Which may just be gravity.
Reality is an incredibly complex puzzle, but humanity has a proven track record of moving seamlessly from facts to imagination with the same lack of impedimenta as a pendulum swinging past its nadir. It is only as the establishment line becomes ever more detached from observation that it is clear there is a problem. As the history of religion shows, for many this is just not a issue. For me, it is.
Looking over your questions, I think that it becomes pretty clear how important the concept of “event horizon” is.
It is very misleading to speak about the “size” of a universe which is everywhere. It can be shown experimentally that matter and energy (light) cannot and do not exist below a certain level of scale. That level of scale and the nature of the curved manifold of space in the vicinity is determined by the relative size and mass of energy densities.
So far as light and matter are concerned, there are well defined limits to their very existence. Light could not and would not travel across a universe the size of a basketball, because at that scale, light would not exist.
This illustration is misleading too, but for overall conceptual purposes, all the matter in the known universe, if combined, would form an event horizon with a radius roughly the size of our solar system….the solar system, with all its stored information would form an event horizon with a radius of a few feet.
The point is that light, matter, space and time are all limited in their relationships and extent. There are certain conditions under which they cannot exist as we know them. From our frame, we can even measure gravity as propagating at the speed of light, but if gravity propagated at the speed of light, the universe would be unstable. A stable universe requires near Newtonian gravity. This reality shows us how different the universe we observe truly is from cosmic reality, and forcefully reminds us that the universe sructurally is very different from the way we observe it.
On another thread, bloggers are talking about the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics right now. One of the advantages of infinite universe models is that they are open, and the 2nd law does not prohibit their continued existence. However there are many disadvantages to infinite models too. To take only one of hundreds of examples, the density formula will not admit infinities. Neither will the grand proportion of Einstein…as initially presented, anyway. For the universe to develop the way it has, it had to have a very specific intital density. For nuclear and thermonuclear technology to work, the grand proportion must be just the way it was intitially proposed. There are hundreds of reasons why the universe must be finite in mass, and GR says it is unbounded in spatial extent.
All this looks bad (for the finite universe) from an engineering standpoint, because closed systems in engineering experience increasing thermal entropy to equilibrium- a heat death. However in an extremely vast but finite massed universe with certain very particular intial conditions and dimensional configuration, it is possible that increasing thermal entropy is “traded” for a gradual decrease in informational entropy (increase in complexity) over eternity…or very nearly eternal conditions.
Nobody in his or her right mind would propose to have all the answers to these basic questions, we do not. There are things to be said for universes of infinite and finite mass.
However the SR/GR model…the best we have right now, is based on finite mass and a marginally closed geometry. This seems to conflict with engineering principles, but because of the models experimental veracity, and the relationships we observe between thermal entropy and complexity, I think we should be very slow to draw conclusions, considering what we know about the conceptual demands of our best models which are all conceptually deterministic.
Errata…second paragraph, previous thread…
“That matter and energy as we understand them”…etc
Sam,
I realize that, but I’m not the one to propose Inflation theory. I’m just trying to point out the logical inconsistencies with its justification for transcending C. It’s an extension of my earlier point that using a stable lightspeed to measure what is presumed to be expanding space, as opposed to an increasing distance of stable space as defined by C, is contradictory.
So how could it have originated as a singularity, which is presumably much smaller?
Does that apply to assuming the entire universe must be expanding from a point because distant galaxies are redshifted?
Various kinds of horizons effectively limit any subjective perspective of the universe to the extent it is finite from any possible point of view. Whether it is the distance light and even black body radiation can travel before they are entirely dissipated, even if it’s for many billions of lightyears. Yet this doesn’t make it a closed system, since approximately as much energy is pouring back toward any area as is being radiated away. Structure is informational energy.
And it’s traded back when these structural configurations break down and radiate away their constituent energy.
You still don’t address my primary point that if expansion and gravitational collapse are in general balance, as they appear to be, there is no Big Bang/Big Crunch cycle! Both sides of the merry-go-round exist in the here and now and pervade all aspects of our existence, from the entropic structural deterministic collapse of the old, to the energetic, chaotic expansion of youth. Matter and complex structure falling into gravitational wells, as the energy radiates away, is shot out the poles of galaxies as jets of charged electrons, or novas, super novas, etc. exploding the most dense concentrations of matter back out across the universe like some celestial Tower of Babel, unable to withstand its eternal and internal contradictions. The whole cycle exists in all its chaotic grandeur out across the universe, but we only see parts at a time and create this patchwork kaleidoscope with various parts emphasized and others ignored. Do you really think a model that finds it necessary to say every quantum decision results in multiple realities going in different directions is really pointing in the right direction? Or that possibly the conceptual biases of scientific minds are insistent on defining even what they know cannot be defined. That particles are motion based as much or more than motion is particle based. Form truly follows function.
Hi John,
“You still don’t address my primary point that if expansion and gravitational collapse are in general balance, as they appear to be, there is no Big Bang/Big Crunch cycle!”
You are right- but only from the standpoint of the overall cosmological structure.
If, in reality and at the quark level, the universe undergoes a synchronized proper time pulse 2.8 trillion cycles per Earth second, we are (obviously)actually looking at unchanging eternal reality in our surroundings as we discuss this! That is exactly what I mean by an “eternal, quasi-static universe”.
The fact that time seems to pass very slowly to us, and space seems so vast, is a product of our remotely and electromagnetically observing (cross-reading) our 4D event horizon existence in extreme, but mathematically predictable and definable gravitational time dilation, at certain coordinates in the manifold…place in scale…space/time.
The bang and the crunch are only phenomena the existence of which we define from our present observing frame of reference! However, even though these phenomena are only relativistic effects, they none the less are real- to us…as you say, the CBR HAS a temperature! In the same way, even though gravity in the universe HAS to be Newtonian to prevent instability, gravity propagating at the speed of light seems real to us, well, not seems real, IS real.
The speed of light is a limiting factor of our 4D reality…neither we nor anything else is observed to possibly “go faster” than c. We build particle accelerators and must take relativisitic changes in mass into effect…unless we want to be hit by single protons with the inertia of a baseball pitched at 100mph!
Our very existence results from the same kind of relativistic effects resulting from accelerations we find on a less complex level in a particle accelerator.
Our existence is particulate…on the 4D event horizon surfaces of the singular realm (Planck Realm). I don’t pretend to fully understand where all the surface organization and complexity we observe from our frame came from, but it is clear that all this complexity not only permits our existence as individuals, but is also permanently entangled via the Planck Realm with the rest of the universe.
“Do you really think a model that finds it necessary to say every quantum decision results in multiple realities going in different directions is really pointing in the right direction?”
I believe we get important clues about the overall nature of our world from that model. However, when we observe the universe within a certain geometry, with certain topological characterisitics and as existing with a certain mass, this general model gets constrained into the universe we observe…at our location in the manifold. What we observe to happen in the extreme sub-microscopic seems incongruous to us-it IS incongruous to us…but that is the sub-microscopic, after all…unconstrained by the conditions and mathematical manifold within which we exist.
So constrained, everything cannot and does not happen…in fact, since the model is overall conceptually deterministic, we can justifiably conclude that what happens in the universe is very structured and limited, but phylogenically progressive.