^ That would have to be a very different universe indeed.
It MIGHT have some form of life, but not as we know it.
It MIGHT have some form of life, but not as we know it.
The Nature of the Universe, Time Travel and More...
- Thread starter Will The Serious
- Start date
Every universe may have some form of life. If we define life as a perpetuating process that includes a non-specific intelligence, that has the ability to react in such a way as to assure perpetuation. It is hard to imagine a universe, with billions or more years, and a vast collection of complex systems, would not develop some phenomenon that fit such a description. The traditional attributes of reproduction and respiration may not be necessary.
Then, there is the whole idea of consciousness, with or without thought. Our own universe proves an example of mind that can exist within a finite area of the universe. Imagine how much more likely such a thing would be when one considers the universe as a whole.
I raise bees. Bees are highly intelligent, as far as insects go, but the hive, as an organism made up of thousands of bees, can also demonstrate such behavior and responsiveness to its need to perpetuate as an organism. Hives grow, hives divide, and reproduce, hives act in response to the environment to preserve themselves and perpetuate.
It would be reasonable to extend that concept to analogous organisms such as cities and countries. Why not include a whole planet? Then we could include planetary systems, galaxies and the universe itself. Remember, the universe is so complex that it actually contains billions of minds; more likely well past hundreds of trillions. Far more than the trillions of synapses contained in one human mind. Who was the early scientist that concluded the light traveled at the speed of thought? Was that Galileo?
-Will
It seems the mystery of the cosmic web's influence on galaxy formation and the correlation of galaxy rotation vectors might be down to magnetism.
That's what I'm thinking.
Every Galaxy that has a supermassive black hole appears to have a strong magnetic field. Most other massive objects (with a few exceptions) tend to have a magnetic field as well.
Lesser and Greater Magellanic Clouds - don't seem to have any particular focus causing them to orient into a Galactic Plane, or form any spiral arms. I believe that they don't have any significant sized black hole. It's all up to the individual stars and planets to work it out.
I'd be willing to bet that:
A: Dark Energy is just Space-Time expanding in deep open space between Galaxies because the only thing out there holding it back are the photons and neutrinos passing through the area. We already know photons have a gravitational effect - they effect Space-Time and vice versa. Neutrinos probably do so as well, but both are very weak effects.
B: Dark Matter is mostly a mix of the effects of Magnetism (the other forces are also involved - to a MUCH lesser extent) and a "can't see the forest for the trees" effect of not being to detect some of matter out there. Just to faint/cool for our still quite primitive instruments to pick up - and in some cases flat out hidden behind something more obvious - like the Shapely Center of the Milky Way.
Space-Time - Infinitely flexible - always a density of 0 - can expand or contract at any imaginable velocity. Basically, it's a field containing vacuum energy that presses on it to expand to some extent at all times. Probably expanded at millions of trillions of times light-speed during the first split second of the Big-Bang.
Gravity - just space accelerating towards the center of a mass - caused by the Mass Force (Higgs Field). The reason it's so weak - it's basically a form of drag produced by entropy.
If you think about it, Acceleration feels like Gravity because they are directly related. If you change the energy state of Space-Time - accelerating it relative to an object with Mass - this induces of a form of drag. If you change the energy state of an object with Mass (rocket firing it's thrusters) this creates a change in velocity relative to Space-Time and - entropy creates a drag effect. If there is no change in energy - coasting - no drag. Braking produces the same effect of drag since you have to actually add energy to slow the object with Mass.
Every Galaxy that has a supermassive black hole appears to have a strong magnetic field. Most other massive objects (with a few exceptions) tend to have a magnetic field as well.
Lesser and Greater Magellanic Clouds - don't seem to have any particular focus causing them to orient into a Galactic Plane, or form any spiral arms. I believe that they don't have any significant sized black hole. It's all up to the individual stars and planets to work it out.
I'd be willing to bet that:
A: Dark Energy is just Space-Time expanding in deep open space between Galaxies because the only thing out there holding it back are the photons and neutrinos passing through the area. We already know photons have a gravitational effect - they effect Space-Time and vice versa. Neutrinos probably do so as well, but both are very weak effects.
B: Dark Matter is mostly a mix of the effects of Magnetism (the other forces are also involved - to a MUCH lesser extent) and a "can't see the forest for the trees" effect of not being to detect some of matter out there. Just to faint/cool for our still quite primitive instruments to pick up - and in some cases flat out hidden behind something more obvious - like the Shapely Center of the Milky Way.
Space-Time - Infinitely flexible - always a density of 0 - can expand or contract at any imaginable velocity. Basically, it's a field containing vacuum energy that presses on it to expand to some extent at all times. Probably expanded at millions of trillions of times light-speed during the first split second of the Big-Bang.
Gravity - just space accelerating towards the center of a mass - caused by the Mass Force (Higgs Field). The reason it's so weak - it's basically a form of drag produced by entropy.
If you think about it, Acceleration feels like Gravity because they are directly related. If you change the energy state of Space-Time - accelerating it relative to an object with Mass - this induces of a form of drag. If you change the energy state of an object with Mass (rocket firing it's thrusters) this creates a change in velocity relative to Space-Time and - entropy creates a drag effect. If there is no change in energy - coasting - no drag. Braking produces the same effect of drag since you have to actually add energy to slow the object with Mass.
When you talk about entropy as a source of a force (drag, resistance to inertia), do you mean to say it is a tendency to the equal dispersion of energy? Thus, it is a transference of energy form?
-Will
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I would assume so - Thermal Dynamics is hard to ignore (do so at your own peril).
Some transference or conversion process has to be in there.
Also consider that if Photons have a gravitational effect on Space-Time...what's the point of a Graviton? I would expect that the W and Z Bosons and Gluons also have some effect. Probably on a much shorter range scale.
Gravity is therefore just part of the behavior of Space-Time itself - as is 'Dark Energy', along with Inertia/Momentum etc... All connected with similar processes.
Some transference or conversion process has to be in there.
Also consider that if Photons have a gravitational effect on Space-Time...what's the point of a Graviton? I would expect that the W and Z Bosons and Gluons also have some effect. Probably on a much shorter range scale.
Gravity is therefore just part of the behavior of Space-Time itself - as is 'Dark Energy', along with Inertia/Momentum etc... All connected with similar processes.
Oh - keep in mind - I'm NOT a physicist. I just like to puzzle things out.
"The Universe is a multi-dimensional, multi-trillion piece puzzle. One that opens up a new section every time you solve part of it!" (~me)
"The Universe is a multi-dimensional, multi-trillion piece puzzle. One that opens up a new section every time you solve part of it!" (~me)
The same. More than anything, I think of myself as a philosopher, then an artist and a sailor who is lost in the mountains.
The trap that frustrates me is that of science as a consensus. I once was asking a retired chemist and devout atheist about the apparent impossibility of the beginning of the Universe. His response was, "We know how the Universe began, that's settled science."
"Settled science" is a very unscientific phrase. And giving something a name like, "Singularity" or "dark matter" only highlights how we don't know. They are not answers as much as place holders, blackbox functions while we work with their outputs and inputs. What's inside the box is guess work, reasonable, at best.
Schopenhauer was as close as anyone with his Universe as Will. Perhapse the next undiscovered dimension will be a matter of scale, the inner/outer dimension. Cantor proved multiple infinities. He even came up with the notation for his infinite cardinal numbers, the Hebrew letter ℵ (aleph). ℵ null was suppose to be the largest finite number, infinity minus one. This makes it a finite number that is infinite. There are the infinite sets of finite numbers, there are the sets of infinite numbers and there are the infinite sets of infinite infinite numbers... the ancient Indian Vetas describe very similar concepts around infinity.
The problems Cantor's ideas present are in the cardinality of infinite or continuous phenomenon to other such phenomenon. We have to know the two sides of the expression are in the same class of infinite sets. Otherwise, trying to find cardinality as proof of something is no longer valid.
Does the universe spin? Can anything exceed light speed? Imagine how slowly the universe would have to rotate if its perimeter could not exceed the speed of light. The angular velocity would have to be infinitesimal. Completely undetectable. What if photons regularly exceeded the speed of light, except that by doing so, they become imperceptible, their measurable fundamental state might become unobservable. An entire universe of hyper speeding photons could exist and we might never know they were there, except, we have the effects we have attributed to dark matter. Maybe all the missing matter is just traveling too fast to observe.
-Will
There's a joke I once heard. Not a particularly funny joke, but more of a parable.
"The old cod fish rested just above the bottom relaxing when a school of young fry swam past. As they moved past their closest point, the old cod called out, 'Hey, how's the water?' Confusion followed while he chuckled to himself."
The story's point is that, to the school of young fish, they are so immersed in the water that they don't even know it exists.
I know, there are lots of ways to know about the medium in which we are surrounded by. I grew up a sailor. But, why does a whirlpool hold together for so long after a boat passes by? If we were to only see the particles of suspended sediment whirling, might we wonder what amount of mass accounts for their lasting structure?
A vortex in water, and probably the same in air, holds its structure because of the vast amount of surrounding fluid that contains it. Without the greater ocean around the tiny vortex, it would almost instantly fall apart.
Could galaxies and the larger universe be kept from falling apart by a greater surrounding medium that prevents them from accelerating into the vastness around them?
The limits of light speed is one such mechanism and that speaks to the "drag" created by time. Without the restrictions of time, entropy would occur instantly and before any other mechanism could reorganize anything.
-Will
"The old cod fish rested just above the bottom relaxing when a school of young fry swam past. As they moved past their closest point, the old cod called out, 'Hey, how's the water?' Confusion followed while he chuckled to himself."
The story's point is that, to the school of young fish, they are so immersed in the water that they don't even know it exists.
I know, there are lots of ways to know about the medium in which we are surrounded by. I grew up a sailor. But, why does a whirlpool hold together for so long after a boat passes by? If we were to only see the particles of suspended sediment whirling, might we wonder what amount of mass accounts for their lasting structure?
A vortex in water, and probably the same in air, holds its structure because of the vast amount of surrounding fluid that contains it. Without the greater ocean around the tiny vortex, it would almost instantly fall apart.
Could galaxies and the larger universe be kept from falling apart by a greater surrounding medium that prevents them from accelerating into the vastness around them?
The limits of light speed is one such mechanism and that speaks to the "drag" created by time. Without the restrictions of time, entropy would occur instantly and before any other mechanism could reorganize anything.
-Will
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Vortices have long interested me…something cosmic about them.
A dark Big Bang?
https://www.universetoday.com/160285/the-universe-may-have-started-with-a-dark-big-bang/
A dark Big Bang?
https://www.universetoday.com/160285/the-universe-may-have-started-with-a-dark-big-bang/
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I was having a thought about the nature of infinity the other day. It may not have any significant applications to the physics of the Universe, but Infinity is still interesting.
As you know from earlier posts, Georg Cantor came up with this idea of 1 < infinity or ℵ null. Given that the set of all integers is made up entirely by finite or countable numbers and that the cardinality of the set of integers is equal to the largest number in this finite set that will always have another number. Then it stands the the cardinality of the set of integers is ℵ null or one less than infinite.
Accepting this to be true, for the purpose of this thought, image what the factorial of the set of integers would be. It would have to be stated as, (ℵ null +1) x ℵ null/2.
With Cantor's Notation, that number can be considered exact, where the general concept of infinity is calculated into an equation more as an attribute of an uncountable number than an exact number.
Just thinking out loud here.
-Will
As you know from earlier posts, Georg Cantor came up with this idea of 1 < infinity or ℵ null. Given that the set of all integers is made up entirely by finite or countable numbers and that the cardinality of the set of integers is equal to the largest number in this finite set that will always have another number. Then it stands the the cardinality of the set of integers is ℵ null or one less than infinite.
Accepting this to be true, for the purpose of this thought, image what the factorial of the set of integers would be. It would have to be stated as, (ℵ null +1) x ℵ null/2.
With Cantor's Notation, that number can be considered exact, where the general concept of infinity is calculated into an equation more as an attribute of an uncountable number than an exact number.
Just thinking out loud here.
-Will
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What is your opinion on the continuum hypothesis - the first of Hilbert's 23 problems?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuum_hypothesis
https://www.hindupedia.com/en/Mathematics_of_the_Vedas#Concept_of_Infinity
Infinity, as a mathematical value, expresses something more akin to a category, than any exact or limited range of values. To say that there is no set, subset or cardinality between the set of R eal numbers and an infinite set of finite numbers is to express that concept of categorical value.
The set of all Real numbers between 0 and 1 can easily be argued to have the same cardinality as the set of all R eal numbers, and it is. Yet, the set of all R eal numbers clearly contains the members of the Real number set between 0 and 1 plus every infinite set of values between the infinite sets of whole number pairs. The breakdown can continue as finitely as one wishes to define, for infinity.
Much of the differences, properties, rules and laws are, in fact, a matter of definition. Then, every answer becomes a matter of consistency with the established standards.
A lot of my set theory education is coming back to me, as I write. I remember that the cardinality of a set always contains one more element or member then the number of members, because every set is also considered to contain the null set. I am not completely initiated into the exceptence of this idea, but having defined it as so, the cardinality of an infinite set of finite values, such as the N atural, W hole, or I nteger sets, becomes easier to talk about as ℵ+1 (an infinite set of finite members).
Cantor's proof of different Infinities involved showing the lack of a one-to-one relationship between the cardinality of an infinite set of finite numbers. By counting along the diagonal of a set to create the next finite number, where each successive member of the set was the new value generated by the diagonal number and placed next in the set, he demonstrated that the cardinality of the set grew exponentially faster than the values of its members. That is, the infinite limits were reached by the population of the set before the values of the set could be considered infinite. The idea was actually very similar to Gödel's incompleteness theorem and probably what Gödel's proof was inspired by.
I have no problem understanding the Continuum Hypothesis. The specific infinite numbers of a sets cardinality would never be known unless specifically defined as a known infinite or hyper-real number.
Such a definition or premise should be possible if one were to consider the hyper-real number ...999999999.0 to be larger than the hype-real number ...333333333.0. Given the ability to know that one number is both infinite and knowable as greater or less than another infinite number, it might be possible to define a condition where the cardinality of a subset of the R eal numbers was less then the cardinality of the set of all R eal numbers, but greater than the set of all N atural numbers.
So, the answer to the Continuum_hypothesis is both true and false, depending on the type of math.
-Will
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Yes, mathematical proofs contain a statement as to whether the continuum hypothesis is taken as true or as false, if relevant. It's analogous to whether one accepts the validity of the parallel postulate in geometry. To me, mathematics is wholly human-created. It's a useful tool for describing the Universe, but its concepts do not exist except in minds, which then commit the concepts as symbolic representation. These concepts include infinities of any cardinality. That we can choose whether or not to accept the validity of the continuum hypothesis suggests strongly to me that mathematics is invented, not discovered. Mathematics, like other things such as life, minds and consciousness that are tricky to define, is emergent - it did not exist ab initio.
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Mathematics, as a formal system of modeling, is indeed, a human construct. However, the addition of one thing to another thing that creates a set of two things, then, adding one more thing, leaving a set of three things, and so on, is a description of a very concrete phenomenon. The usefulness of that phenomenon is one of the things that is decidable. The twoness of an object in conjuction with another object is not made up as much as it is observed. It is our method to describe twoness that is pulled from the abstract imagination.
Maths' primary function is to model and describe relationships. They are basic relationships that are discovered, usually.
The early mathematicians did not work with abstract symbols (numbers) the way we do today. Most of the complex mathematics was done by drawing and measuring lines. A division, the addition of subtraction of line units were drawn out. Drafting techniques demonstrated how to bisected angles, calculate areas of a circle, prove the Pythagorean Theorem...
BEHOLD!
Those relationships were discovered.
The number system, created by man, twoness, both discovered and created.
-Will
Thingness (or placing physical objects into categories) is itself a categorisation imposed by the human mind. It does not exist outside minds.
The Genesis quotes are an example of creation through categorization. The Void was Chaos in the Greek tradition and Cosmos literally means 'organized' (a synonym for beauty).
I whole heartedly agree with you.
Russell and Whitehead took 300 pages to prove that 1 + 1 = 2, only for Kurt Gödel later to undermine the whole intent of Principia Mathematica. Also, according to J E Littlewood: "[Russell] said once, after some contact with the Chinese language, that he was horrified to find that the language of Principia Mathematica was an Indo-European one." We are unaware of the context in which we construct our models of reality. So much so that we are blind to other ways of viewing things.
Can we prove that anything exists outside of mind?
Parmenides wrote in his famous poem, that we can only know anything through our senses. By this, he concluded that 'being' is the only true reality. He is known as the father of rationalism or logic, but in a very different way than Aristotle. Parmenides was a Mystic who described his philosophy as coming directly from his decent into Tartarus. The goddess met him to tell him the secrets of the Universe. She pointed out to him that he could only know the world through his senses and that all roads lead back to one place. His conclusion was that 'mind' was the beginning and the end of the Universe.
When Descartes stated, "I think, therefore I am." his fundamental mistake was that he knows, but he doesn't know he thinks. Temporal awareness is an illusion of the mind. We can't know we think. We can only know the one moment where we have the knowledge of past, present, and an idea of a future.
That isn't to say nothing actually exists outside that one moment. Only that we can only know what our mind knows in one moment.
By what mechanism could time actually exist? Given that time does exist, by what process would anything be able to move into a space where a past moment, a past state of being, could be revisited. Either the mind, or the physical object would have to separate itself from the flow of change that led up to the moment of departure, "curve" back through all those past streams of change and rejoin the flow where the object that travels back can rejoin the flow, or the entire flow of the universe would have to be rewound. Reverse entropy, reorganized in reverse physical reaction.
Unless, time was cyclic. To take Gödel's position, that a rotating Universe allows for time travel, then time is not infinite. It is very finite (as if there is a finite that isn't so "very"). All time would have to be passed through to revisits a time that was past. Perhaps, time moves in cycles and all things have already come to pass, and to do over and over and over again. This then leads to the concept of a meta-time. A sort of accounting for the number of cycles of time.
We can dismiss this concept as worthless, because it is never ending and either leads to a true forever or to more and more meta-time cycles, which again, gets us nowhere.
-Will
