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The Big Bang Theory posits an expanding universe, but I don't understand this concept and despite reading multiple books, I'm still clueless. So if anybody can shed some light on this, I would appreciate it. The analogy is usually given of a balloon expanding so that every point on its surface gets further and further away from every other point. That's fine but if the balloon was the universe itself, what is it expanding into? There is nothing outside of the universe. (Forget the 2D vs 3D, I can accept though can't visualize a 3D surface as a boundary of a 4D shape).

I think the mathematicians are saying there are many more dimensions than just three or four. I don't recall now the number, but more than 7(??).

Your analogy of the balloon is our best picture of it yet, even if we can't visualize four dimensions (since we're only 3D creatures). You may have answered your own question, however. There is "nothing" outside the universe, so we may be expanding into nothing. The question presumes that there is "something" to expand into. I don't know that we know that. There may not be an "outside" of the universe.

Lawrence Krauss presented a reasonably good case that the universe came from nothing, and will go to nothing, because the net energy of the universe is zero. I'm not sure of the status of that hypothesis in the peer-reviewed community.

There is also the "frothy" multiverse hypothesis, where independent universes simply expand and grow, like the bubbles in a beer, totally unaware of the other universes. I don't know how we'd ever prove that hypothesis. I assume the mathematics work out at some level, or it never would have been suggested.

I was a physicist, but not a cosmologist. So I only know the bits and pieces from what I've read, and occasionally discussed with others. I did read Krauss' book, which I found pretty accessible (i.e. you don't need to be a physicist to read it). Though I don't recall him specifically dealing with what we may (or may not) be expanding "into".

Fun to think about this sort of thing sometimes.

The Big Bang Theory posits an expanding universe. ... The analogy is usually given of a balloon expanding so that every point on its surface gets further and further away from every other point. That's fine but if the balloon was the universe itself, what is it expanding into? There is nothing outside of the universe.

I too have puzzled over this — the becoming of existence — and have arrived at a perspective that feels more satisfying, at least for me.

As you point out, the notion of an expanding universe suggests a 'big-banging' original (erstwhile naked) singularity.

That raises the question: What came before original singularity?

Positing a universe oscillating between big-bang and big-crunch does nothing but put off answering this question. Beyond that, it's scientifically unverifiable.

A lifetime of contemplation has left me with a conviction that everything is now. That may seem like metaphysical Taoism, but I’ve done my best to reconcile this perspective with physical understandings. That’s led to an experience of ubiquitous existence as atemporally emergent within erstwhile nothingness. The challenge has been to resolve the apparent discrepancy between perception of a vastly extended physical environment and experience of everything all at once.

Central to this integration is the widely accepted notion among physicists of a massless singularity of infinite potential abiding at the origin of all-that-is. So there's an unfathomable gulf between this state of no-specific-thingness and exponentially expanding spacetime hosting boundlessly entangling relations. Physicists explain this by positing exponentially propagating cosmic inflation consuming imperceptible time.

I see the infinite potential of original nothingness as the host of all experience. Quarks are the fundamental components of protons, neutrons, electrons and photons; comprising atoms, molecules, cells, and organisms of every complexity — the stuff of universal experience as well as the means of its (self)perception. The observation that quarks are describable only as probabilities suggests that the entirety of organically evolving universal observation is, at every moment, emergent within the infinite potential of original singularity.

Our conception of a persistent ‘reality’ is, in a sense, an illusion. What’s actually going on is boundless complexification within the infinite possibilities of erstwhile nothingness.

The 'material' universe is perceived as matter and energy, manifesting as an evolving array of 'forces.'

I've come to regard existence as boundlessly complexifying relations ubiquitously emergent within the infinite potential of erstwhile nothingness. So the hypothesis is that original singularity is a placeholder for the infinite potential of nothingness. Infinite potential necessarily eventuates as everything experienced, at scales ranging from quantum to cosmic.

At quantum scale, quarks, undetectable in themselves, serve as an interface between infinite potential and materialization. Ephemeral quarks (atemporally?) aggregate as the persisting protons and neutrons that comprise atomic nuclei.

As you likely already know, photons are massless particles that propagate sensory information about the universe of our common experience. Needless to say, they travel at the speed of light, and thus, according to Relativity, they incur no change in transit. So we’re informed of a uni-verse as it was at the moment of its photonic emissions. Thus do we project a universal history of about 13.7 billion light years in spatio-temporal depth.

One question is what exactly is universal expansion? The usual answer is spacetime itself — "the container for the contained" as a teacher put it to my high-school physics class, now 65 years ago.

But I prefer to regard original singularity as emergent experience of boundlessly entangling ubiquitously evolving complexification.

I've concluded that what we're dealing with is perception — (self)awareness of the whole shebang.

Perception by what? Awareness.
Perception of what? Experience.
Experience of what? Existence.
Awareness of what? Complexity.

Human experience —
modulating recognition, anticipation, expression —
ever memorializes organically evolving perception.

So that's how we get to where we are.

Perhaps all that sounds complicated.
But as I get it, it's nothing compared to the complexity
of Quantum Field Theory.

And it mostly doesn't conflict with contemporary science,
as cosmic inflation is widely acknowledged as an artifact.

I suspect the biggest distinction between my view and contemporary science
is the atemporality of becoming,
which science deals with by proposing an unobservable period of inflation.

My sense of it is that boundlessly evolving complexity is emergent *within* the original singularity hosting the infinite potential of nothingness.
That's as opposed to an inflationary big-banging singularity.

If we dispense with all that we're left with whatever's going on now.

What are your thoughts about all this?

Tom

Well my theory, like all of them I suppose, is hard to explain.

We think of space as a vacuum, where there’s nothing. But space is something, isn’t it? I think of the universe as this giant balloon of “something”, and outside it there is literally nothing. That’s nothing as in “non-existence”.

My theory is that the universe is “being created” at the edges, it’s like an ocean wave of “something-ness” rolling and roiling into creation, so yes, it’s like a balloon, in that inside the balloon is the universe we can see (touch, taste, measure, etc.) and outside is “nothing”.

How long can that go on? No idea. Maybe it’s self-sustaining forever. Maybe the quarks or dark matter or whatever is powering it runs out and we have stasis. Maybe it starts coming back in again. I’m clueless here (some would say elsewhere, too.)

But yeah, there’s “nothing” outside the balloon because it hasn’t been created yet.

Perception by what? Awareness.
Perception of what? Experience.
Experience of what? Existence.
Awareness of what? Complexity.


Reminding me on Samkya philosophy:
"Phenomena are Prakriti dancing for Purusha"

And on someone who has this allegory:
"I imagine the universe as a highly evolved computer who after an endless time became bored and disassembled itself into single bits, each one making it's own experiences"

One thing I will point out, the question of what was "before" the Big Bang is a nonsensical question (scientifically speaking). Not that it's a dumb question (any honest question is a good question!!), but given the generally accepted nature of the Big Bang, there was no "before". Space-time commenced existing at Event One. If there was no time until Event One, then there also was no "before".

Also, quarks are NOT the building blocks of electrons or photons (or several other particles). They are the building blocks of protons and neutrons. But not leptons (muons, electrons, etc). Might be nit-picky, but I'm better at the science than the philosophy, so that is what I can contribute. Not picking on you.

There was some talk about the origin being a large vacuum fluctuation, though I would then ask "vacuum fluctuation in what" since we know about vacuum fluctuations within our universe, but if the universe didn't exist then what was the fluctuation in? There may be a bit more to that notion (probably is), but not being a cosmologist I don't know the hairy details. Plus, I'm not sure how that would reconcile with the apparent fact that the MBR was caused by the universe cooling sufficiently that matter and anti-matter were able to annihilate**, but there was an imbalance in favor of matter (so not all matter was converted to energy), which comprises the material universe we see today. To the best of my knowledge, vacuum fluctuations produce symmetry; equal amounts of matter and anti-matter. So why would there be an imbalance/asymmetry if the universe began that way?

I tend to discount any human-based interpretations because, in the grand scheme of the universe, our entire galaxy is nothing. And we're just one species of ape on one world orbiting one unremarkable star in our one galaxy. We experience the universe, but so do chimps, and dolphins, and any alien life in all that vastness out there. Based on observations, we know the laws of physics apply wherever you look in the universe the same as they apply here, so the experience of any being will be similar/identical. At least in terms of interactions with the universe.




**The thought is that there was a quark-gluon plasma while the universe was hot and dense, so matter and anti-matter co-existed. But once the density was low enough, and the temperature cool enough (still really hot by our standards), the universe became transparent as the matter and anti-matter suddenly were able to annihilate one another, and the resulting radiation from that reaction is the MBR.

quarks are NOT the building blocks of electrons or photons

Thanks for the correction. I know better, but missed that in copying something I'd written in a note to myself some time ago.

Tom

the question of what was "before" the Big Bang is a nonsensical question (scientifically speaking).

Agreed. Yet many serious scientists acknowledge the possibility of a big-bouncing universe. I merely state that any such suggestion is non-scientific, in that it's not subject to observational verification.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Crunch

There was some talk about the origin being a large vacuum fluctuation, though I would then ask "vacuum fluctuation in what" ... if the universe didn't exist then what was the fluctuation in?

Well said. While the notion of a vacuum may be macroscopically relevant in representing organically evolving perception; it's irrelevant in a quantum realm interfacing with infinite potential. The vacuum is anthropically perceived — associated quarks collectively experiencing existence.

That's what ephemerally existing quarks do. They arguably derive from original singularity. Individual quarks experience atemporal realization by virtue of relations eventuating within cosmic experience.

vacuum fluctuations produce symmetry; equal amounts of matter and anti-matter. So why would there be an imbalance/asymmetry if the universe began that way?

I've long wondered about that, and haven't seen anything that resolves the issue. Likely much more is transpiring in that research domain.

My guess is that the becoming of collective experience disrupts the matter/antimatter balance. Existence may come at a cost. While we here-now observe a minuscule imbalance between matter and antimatter, I suspect there's much more to it.

I tend to discount any human-based interpretations

While that precaution is certainly warranted, taken to the extreme it leaves us with nothing, as any interpretation we might be privy to is human based. We're ever challenged to do our best with what we've got.

Your thoughts?

Tom

Most people don't know better. So don't feel bad. Even someone who took physics to satisfy their science requirement in school probably wouldn't know that. And most people don't do that (chemistry seems to be more popular for that for some reason).

Just to be certain, vacuum fluctuations don't really require a vacuum. That's just their name. Also called "quantum fluctuations". It's rare that I find someone who knows what those are, so I'm being pedantic to assure we're on the same page. Not being condescending. Those arise out of quantum chromodynamics (which I didn't study specifically, but we got a bit of exposure in grad school).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_fluctuation

It's really a fluctuation in a quantum field, not a vacuum. Simplistically, they are allowed because of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, which allows energy to "pop" into existence for a time that satisfies (delta)E*(delta)t < h(bar). That energy generally manifests as a particle and antiparticle. As a side note, if that happens near a black hole event horizon, one of the pair of particles may fall into the black hole leaving the other particle existing in real space-time, which results in Hawking Radiation. Yeah, over-simplified a bit, but we don't want to get too far into the weeds.

So, while we humans observe all this, I don't believe we influence it to any significant degree. We just discover it, as an other sentient species in the universe might do. Clearly, we view it through our filters (e.g. eyes that can only see about 350nm to 650nm), but we also build instrumentation that make up for our lack of sensitivity. There still is a modicum of interpretation, but the scientific method tends to clean that up by forcing us to discard faulty interpretations for more accurate (i.e. conforming to reality) ones.

I did used to watch a sci-fi show where one of the races espoused the philosophy we were the universal consciousness made manifest, trying to figure itself out. I have no evidence that there even is a universal consciousness, but it was an interesting notion. They also got a LOT of the physics correct, which is always a plus for me.

I did used to watch a sci-fi show where one of the races espoused the philosophy we were the universal consciousness made manifest, trying to figure itself out. I have no evidence that there even is a universal consciousness, but it was an interesting notion.

My view is that since we humans have first-hand experience of consciousness, it's safe to say that the universe of which we are a part hosts consciousness.

FWIW, I regard the whole shebang as boundlessly entangling relations even now emergent within the infinite possibilities of erstwhile no-thingness; necessarily eventuating in everything from fluctuating forces to quarks, atoms, molecules, organisms, and ultimately to perceivers like us abiding within a host cosmos.

What I find most interesting in the underlying physics is that everything, including us and all of our perceptions, is ever emergent in a gazillion ephemerally flickering quarks. Through the strong force, thought to be mediated by similarly emergent gluons, these atemporally emergent quarks comprise the protons and neutrons that make up the seemingly persistent physical universe.

Perception of that universe is mediated by chargeless photons traveling at the speed of light. In macroscopic relativity, propagation at light-speed incurs no change or passage of time, so perceived photons are simultaneously at their points of emission and absorption. Time and distance are local interpretations of variations detectable in photonic wavelength. That interpretation gives rise to the highly problematic dark energy.

I know ... it's all just a pile of words; but that kind of puzzling captivates my attention.

What are your thoughts about all that?

Tom

it's safe to say that the universe of which we are a part hosts consciousness.

No it’s not. This is nonsense, unless by “hosts” you mean in an entirely passive sense, the same way I could say “this room I’m sitting in hosts consciousness” because I am sitting in it. The universe doesn’t know, or care about any of this. To think otherwise is to presume “consciousness” into inanimate things, whether they are rooms, quarks, or cups of yogurt.

I know … it’s all just a pile of words, but that kind of puzzling captivates my attention.
What are your thoughts about all that?

That a pile of words doesn’t necessarily make sense, no matter how hard you try to pull meaning out of it. Sometimes it’s just better to say “I don’t know” than to throw a word salad in the air and pretend it means something.

Sometimes it’s just better to say “I don’t know”

I 100% agree - - - and am always puzzled when Atheists "know" that God, a Conscious Universe or whatever concept adverse to their psychology is BS - without seeing the irony of saying they are Atheists, but believing in this "I know it's BS" with religious faith.

am always puzzled when Atheists "know" that God, a Conscious Universe or whatever concept adverse to their psychology is BS

Speaking for just this atheist.... I don't know if there is a "God" that 'created' everything.

What I do know is this:
1) Not one religion can prove divine power exists
2) What religionists claim is evidence of divine power is demonstrably nonsense.|
3) Religion is a great tool to scam people.
4) Religion is a major cause of wars, genocide, crimes of hatred and general bigotry.

BTW, thanks for posting something on topic. It's been a ghost town since "Welcome" eviscerated the joint.

Yes, some atheists make such claims. I try to be very careful to say "I see no evidence", or words to that effect. Which is completely accurate. Is there a universal consciousness? Dunno. I am not aware of any evidence to support that. I also don't know if there is a teapot orbiting Saturn, but I am not aware of any evidence to support it, either. So I default to skepticism where no evidence exists.

It will get much livelier if some missionary decides to save us heretics and unbelievers. I remember at TMF we had several of those. One flat-out converted to atheism after talking to us, and another was in the middle of a crisis of faith last I/we heard from him (because he couldn't deny the logic and data we were throwing at him). I sometimes wonder how the latter person is. He was very devout, and we shook that to his core. That can be very traumatic for some people, comparable to losing a spouse or child. He clearly was questioning, and a bit shaken/unnerved.

I wish flyerboys came over here. He was a theist, but didn't rub our faces in it. And he found more acceptance on our board than he did Xian Fools. Which I always thought was somewhat ironic.

I 100% agree - - - and am always puzzled when Atheists "know" that God, a Conscious Universe or whatever concept adverse to their psychology is BS - without seeing the irony of saying they are Atheists, but believing in this "I know it's BS" with religious faith.

Well, I know there is no Santa Claus, even though I see people dressed as him at the mall every Christmas.

And I know there is no Easter Bunny, even though the grocery store is chock full of jellybeans, wicker baskets and egg coloring kits.

And I know there is no Father Time, Mother Nature, Tooth Fairy, Sandman, or Cupid. I’m pretty skeptical about Leprechauns, BigFoot, and the Loch Ness Monster, but I’m willing to say they exist once someone produces evidence of them .

And that’s really the key. I know that a lot of made up fairy tales are just that, it doesn’t really take much to say so because no one ever, in all of history has produced a single bit of evidence for it.

Helen of Troy? Yeah, probably. Adam & Eve? Not so much. A mysterious floating spirit in the sky (or somehow captured in the “universe”) who knows all, sees all, controls all, and still lets 4 year olds die of cancer? Nah, thanks. I know that’s a bunch of baloney.

A mysterious floating spirit in the sky (or somehow captured in the “universe”) who".... knows watches people slaughtering one another in great numbers for thousands of years over their conflicting interpretations of HIS wishes...... "I know that’s a bunch of baloney. "

...or else HE is a sadistic psycho, in which case it makes more sense.

After having read the whole thread, this is an answer I can think more about. The boundary between existence and non-existence.

But when physicists talk of an expanding universe, they are talking about something much more prosaic. That is the red shift you observe of light (EM radiation) from further galaxies because they are moving away from us.
Assuming we are not special, which is a big assumption, we can generalize that every galaxy is moving away from every other galaxy in space. And since The night sky is not full of galaxies in every direction, the universe must be finite. Or at least the number of galaxies (EM sources) in the universe must be finite. Ergo the universe is a closed curve with N dimensions. The problem of course is that every closed curve has an inside and outside and that is not possible for THE universe because everything exists inside.

My two bits. In thinking about before the big bang I realized there are some things we might never know and am content to leave it that way. Also, in thinking about the singularity I realized I cannot picture or really think of non-space. I picture the singularity,m which has all know time and space in it as a dot floating in... space. But it can't float in space because all the space is inside of it. I realized I might be talking about a limitation on my mind. I can only picture something in terms of space. I can talk abstractly about non-space but that's it.

I think for many atheists we have little against spirituality, it's when the spirituality organizes itself, creates stories to explain morality, regiments that into doctrines, creates hierarchies, societies, shuns, persecutes, punishes, has schisms, cooperates with oligarchies/royalty, starts wars, wreaks havoc, that it looks just exactly like something man made up.

My two bits. In thinking about before the big bang I realized there are some things we might never know and am content to leave it that way.

I am more happy to think that someday someone will have an insight which is a reasonable explanation for it all. It won’t be testable, obviously, but humankind is always grasping for an explanation - else we would all still be worshiping Ra the Sun God or whatever other superstitious nonsense someone dreamed up.

For a long while nobody could explain how animals came to be in such variation, or what possible mechanism could account for the proliferation of predators and prey, the similarities but differences, and so on. Then one day Darwin came up with a hypothesis which made so much sense it blew the myths out of the water.

No one understood how atoms were held together, or what the relationship was between space and time (or if there was a relationship at all) and then suddenly Einstein. Likewise disease and antibiotics, and a hundred other steps humankind has made in this long journey of ours.

I am hopeful, pretty confident, actually, that at some point in the far distant future (assuming we get there, of course) there will be some hypothesis proposed which will explain in understandable and believable detail what happened “before” (acknowledging that there is no “before”) and how all of this we see and touch and feel came into being.

Until then, “I don’t know” is sufficient for me.

Assuming we are not special, which is a big assumption, we can generalize that every galaxy is moving away from every other galaxy in space. And since The night sky is not full of galaxies in every direction,

I don’t understand this last part. Every time we get a more powerful telescope and train it on an empty part of the sky we find there are galaxies in every direction. They are widely separated, of course, such is the vastness of space, but I don’t think (contrary to some opinions) that we have seen the edge of the universe yet.

I do think we have seen the edge of what we can see, but that is a different thing.

At the beginning mankind thought the whole world was what they could see in their lifetime. The great flood, for instance, was likely a localized flood that was really big , like some of those in the Midwest, maybe. Then we developed ways of transport and the world got bigger, to include other continents! Then came electronic communication and we could talk to the world (and some say made the world smaller, but it actually vastly expanded our horizons.)

We went from “the moon” to planets, and then “solar system”, and then “galaxy” and then “multiple galaxies”; I suspect we have not found the end of it all with “our observable universe.” We’re like the guys on the boat in the Atlantic, thinking the world ends at the edge, when actually there is no “end”, it just keeps going, far beyond our imagination to somewhere far, far distant.

Depending on how you define 'the universe' it could be infinite (space) or finite (space containing something other than light/energy).

I can imagine a finite volume in which all matter exists. Maybe all matter is swirling in that space due to some energy phenomenon (gravity). Maybe it's constantly expanding into space....which is infinite even it's a void.

It pointless pondering a finite universe (space) because there's always more space on the other side of any line you can describe, even if there aren't fine people on both sides of that line.

Two years ago my sister said to me, "If I don't make it to Christmas, I'll see you in the stars.

Last year she opened her eyes and said "Sano, Sh!t happens."

Then she left. Matter devoid of energy.

Her energy?... traveling outward through the galaxies?... chasing Starman's roadster? Nah. Her matter? Recycling.

And that’s really the key. I know that a lot of made up fairy tales are just that, it doesn’t really take much to say so because no one ever, in all of history has produced a single bit of evidence for it.

Well, there is that pesky maxim that "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence". However -
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evidence_of_absence

The argument from ignorance for "absence of evidence" is not necessarily fallacious, for example, that a potentially life-saving new drug poses no long-term health risk unless proved otherwise. On the other hand, were such an argument to rely imprudently on the lack of research to promote its conclusion, it would be considered an informal fallacy whereas the former can be a persuasive way to shift the burden of proof in an argument or debate.[6]

And until there actually IS some evidence for god - or any other character from fantasy - they will remain only a source of intellectual amusement of no real consequence in my life.

And until there actually IS some evidence for god - or any other character from fantasy - they will remain only a source of intellectual amusement of no real consequence in my life.

Well true, unless the religionists take over and start imposing their peculiar beliefs on you.

You must wear a burka, because god says so. (Middle East)
You can’t have an abortion, because god says so. (Red states)
You can’t be gay, because god says so. (All of Africa)
You can’t be an atheist, because god says so. (Middle East, again.)
You must go to church on Sundays. (Colonial America)
You must give us 10% of your income. (Mormons and Salvationists)
You cannot eat pork, because god says so. (Israel)
You can’t sell alcohol on Sundays, because god says so. Many US states, still)
You can’t have a divorce because god says so. (Most religions before 1900)

…and so on. It’s easy to ignore it until they put it in your face, and by then it’s too late.

RE: the edge of the universe...

We almost certainly have not seen it, and never will. I read something a few years ago that said we are living in a relatively unique time. We can see billions upon billions of galaxies. But even now, they are disappearing from our view. They are accelerating away from us so quickly that their light just doesn't reach us anymore, and they disappear from view. Sometime in the future, I forget how long, you'll look up at the night sky and see only a few galaxies (maybe even only our own), and without records from earlier peoples (like us) you would never know there was anything out there. And you would never know the universe was/is expanding.

Regarding the earlier comment that we don't see galaxies everywhere; yes we do. They pointed Hubble at an empty bit of sky. Nothing of consequence had ever been seen there. And they did a long exposure. They were shocked to find the field full of galaxies, never before seen.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubble_Ultra-Deep_Fi...

There are likely more galaxies than there are stars in our own galaxy. So, yes, we are not really special. There likely are other civilizations out there pondering the same things we are. Can't prove it, but it seems particularly unlikely that we are the only ones in all those billions of galaxies (each containing billions of stars).

…and so on. It’s easy to ignore it until they put it in your face, and by then it’s too late.

True. We must at least be aware enough of these fantasies to try to prevent them from having a negative impact on society. Enough damage has already been done in the name of religion over the past 5 millennia.

"There likely are other civilizations out there pondering the same things we are."

That's far more likely than there being an all-powerful/all-knowing skydaddy that favors one group because a book they wrote is what he intends/intended 'the way to be.'

I apologize for the delayed response. My beloved wife and I just returned from visiting with the three of our four sons and their families who live in or near San Diego, a six-hour drive from our home. So we've been most pleasantly preoccupied this weekend.

Unq: it's safe to say that the universe of which we are a part hosts consciousness.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

GH: No it’s not. This is nonsense, unless by “hosts” you mean in an entirely passive sense, the same way I could say “this room I’m sitting in hosts consciousness” because I am sitting in it. The universe doesn’t know, or care about any of this. To think otherwise is to presume “consciousness” into inanimate things.

Thanks for sharing your perspective, as it augments my apprehension of boundlessly eventuating infinite potential.

I acknowledge that many, if not most, may not initially resonate with my perspective. That's entirely understandable, as my view is admittedly unorthodox.

To be clear, I'm suggesting that organically evolving experience is of boundlessly elaborating complexity rather than of some finite construct of local perception. Certainly not some imaginary guy in the sky with a beard wielding a magic wand, or even a long-since inflated universe, much less an inanimate room.

I don't 'pretend to know' anything ... much less nothing. So, along with all else, I'm challenged by my own present experience.

To reiterate: I see all of experience as evolving within what many scientists regard as an original singularity boundlessly emergent within erstwhile nothingness.

GH: ... a pile of words doesn’t necessarily make sense, no matter how hard you try to pull meaning out of it. Sometimes it’s just better to say “I don’t know” than to throw a word salad in the air and pretend it means something.

Gotcha. To paraphrase: "Just shut up, as whatever you're saying means nothing to me." I do wonder how hard you actually "[tried] to pull meaning out of" my writings.

I puzzle over how best to communicate my apprehension of reality to others. From my perspective, it's not that others need to know; it's that I enjoy connecting. In that context both successes and failures are informative.

While contemptuous responses may not be enjoyable, they're yet quite informative.

Tom

The problem of course is that every closed curve has an inside and outside and that is not possible for THE universe because everything exists inside.

Brilliant!

Tom

Some of the more...poetic...parts of your posts I don't really follow. Obviously I can't evaluate your subjective experience of the universe because "subjective" -by definition- is specific to you (or me, or Gh, or anyone else). But "boundlessly eventuating infinite potential" doesn't really convey any meaning to me.

I see all of experience as evolving within what many scientists regard as an original singularity boundlessly emergent within erstwhile nothingness.

Needlessly poetic, but it appears you are saying that all experience within this universe is contained within this universe that began as a singularity expanding into nothing. Which, to the best of my knowledge, is reasonably accurate as far as it goes. Though we can't prove that we're expanding into nothing, or into something. And maybe we never will be able to prove it. Not unless we can figure out how to enter/cross dimensions that we can't even perceive, assuming those dimensions are even there.

Thanks for sharing your perspective, as it augments my apprehension of boundlessly eventuating infinite potential.

I acknowledge that many, if not most, may not initially resonate with my perspective. That's entirely understandable, as my view is admittedly unorthodox.

I’m pretty sure nobody understand what you’re saying. Or trying to say. It appears you’re just stringing words together in the hope that they mean something. To someone. Maybe.

Like most people, I have things going on in my life, I don’t have time to try to decode meaning from a message board. Either the poster states his case openly and plainly or I move on. There are occasions when a poster has gained so much trust on a particular subject that I will try to follow along and parse the phraseology, but that’s relatively rare. Most media, which is in the business of communication , tries to eschew jargon and make their moments with the audience useful, otherwise it’s a waste of everyone’s time because the viewer/listener/reader doesn’t receive it and the sender has wasted time trying to convey it.

But enjoy yourself, if that’s your thing. It’s only a silly little message board, after all.

"What are your thoughts about all that? -Tom "

Your perceptions are a fascinating blend of cosmological musings and scientific concepts. Let’s break it down:

Boundlessly Entangling Relations:
This phrase suggests interconnectedness and complexity. It implies that everything in the universe is intricately linked, forming a vast web of relationships.
Whether we consider particles, forces, or living organisms, they all participate in this cosmic dance of interdependence.

Infinite Possibilities of Erstwhile No-thingness:
The concept of “erstwhile no-thingness” refers to a state before the emergence of the universe.
The idea here is that from this initial void, infinite possibilities arose, leading to the diverse phenomena we observe today.

Eventuation in Everything:
The unfolding of events, from fundamental forces to complex structures, is a continuous process.
Quarks, atoms, molecules, and living beings all trace their origins back to this cosmic evolution.

Perceivers Within a Host Cosmos:
We, as conscious beings, are part of this grand cosmic theater.
Our existence within the universe allows us to perceive and contemplate its mysteries.

Photons and Perception:
Photons, chargeless particles of light, play a crucial role in our perception of the universe.
They travel at the speed of light, allowing us to witness distant events.
In macroscopic relativity, their propagation doesn’t experience time dilation, which means they exist simultaneously at their points of emission and absorption.

Local Interpretations of Time and Distance:
Time and distance are not absolute; they vary depending on the observer’s frame of reference.
Photonic wavelength variations contribute to our perception of time and spatial dimensions.

Dark Energy:
Dark energy remains one of the most enigmatic aspects of the cosmos.
It’s a mysterious force driving the accelerated expansion of the universe.
The interpretation you mentioned—arising from variations in photonic wavelength—adds an intriguing twist to our understanding.

In summary, you beautifully weave together scientific concepts, philosophical ponderings, and cosmic wonder. It invites us to explore the profound interconnectedness of all things and the mysteries that continue to captivate our imaginations.

-nanosano

Two years ago my sister said to me, "If I don't make it to Christmas, I'll see you in the stars.

Last year she opened her eyes and said "Sano, Sh!t happens."

Then she left. Matter devoid of energy.

Her energy?... traveling outward through the galaxies?... chasing Starman's roadster? Nah. Her matter? Recycling.

Please accept my condolences.

While her matter is thankfully recycling,
her existence is ever-emergent in complexity.

Tom

nanosano:

unquarked: I love everything you've written here, and am thoroughly appreciative. I've been struggling forever, and especially in recent days, with effective expression of my vision. Your articulation is a wondrous resolution.

More importantly, comments from both of us reflect an intimate correlation between our perspectives.

I'm in your debt, and look forward to future collaboration.

Tom

In macroscopic relativity, [photon] propagation doesn’t experience time dilation, which means they exist simultaneously at their points of emission and absorption.

That's correct. Relativity attributes no passage of time to anything traveling at the speed of light. That's the basis of communication — allowing an accurate reception of source emission at object absorption, regardless of separation. It's how we come to know our environment ... the very definition of quantum entanglement.

Tom

While true that anything traveling at light speed (which, to the best of our knowledge, is only photons) no time passes. But to the observer in a different reference frame, time does pass. So our sun could have exploded 1 minute ago, and we'll not know about it for another 8 minutes. The photons would experience no passage of time, but we would. So a photon could never "decay" because no time elapses in its reference frame.

I'm not aware of any quantum entanglement of photons from distant objects, but if you have a paper I can read...

I did read a while back that communication via quantum entanglement would not be possible. The particles are entangled so as to conserve a trait (e.g. spin), but if you disturb them the entanglement is broken. Measuring them disturbs them. And once broken, the entanglement cannot be reestablished remotely. It was an interesting read.

You may be referring more to simultaneity than entanglement.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relativity_of_simult...

opg: I'm not aware of any quantum entanglement of photons from distant objects, but if you have a paper I can read...

Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_entanglement

Quantum entanglement has been demonstrated experimentally with photons, electrons, and even small diamonds.

There's a lot going on of late in the science of entanglement, including the now famous ER = EPR conjecture that Juan Maldacena posed to Leonard Susskind in 2013.

Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ER_%3D_EPR

ER = EPR is a conjecture in physics stating that two entangled particles (a so-called Einstein–Podolsky–Rosen or EPR pair) are connected by a wormhole (or Einstein–Rosen bridge) and is thought by some to be a basis for unifying general relativity and quantum mechanics into a theory of everything.

As you may know, a wormhole is a connection between two black holes that can be at any distance from one another. It's also used to deal with the apparent information loss at the event horizon of a black hole. According to contemporary theory, information is never lost, yet for some time that was thought to be occurring at the the event horizon.

PhysOrg: https://phys.org/news/2022-03-wormholes-black-hole...

A wormhole — a bridge connecting distant regions of the Universe — helps to shed light on the mystery of what happens to information about matter consumed by black holes.

Quanta Magazine: https://www.quantamagazine.org/the-most-famous-par...

This all suggests to me that everything is fundamentally one, and that entanglement is the arbiter of existence.

Call me a nutcase if you will. But I'd rather hear your reasoned assessment.

Tom

You omitted my last bit: "...photons from distant sources". Yes, we can run EPR experiments, and have done so. I don't believe every photon from distant sources is entangled (and we might not know if it was...you have to measure the both entangled particles to confirm). To the best of my knowledge.

Not a nutcase. Perhaps a bit poetic. But you're aware of more physics than probably 95% of the population. You see more the numinous. If I take off my physicist hat, and look up at the sky, I do too. It's very overwhelming to be away from city lights on a clear moonless night.

The wormhole article you cited is highly speculative. It also proceeds on a potentially false assumption that QM and GR are unite-able. I've been reading that people are rethinking Grand Unification, and that perhaps gravity is not compatible (or unifiable) with the other three forces. And no theory of quantum gravity appears to work. Always a bad idea to say "it can't be done", but many are starting to think that maybe it can't be.

I've been reading that people are rethinking Grand Unification, and that perhaps gravity is not compatible (or unifiable) with the other three forces. And no theory of quantum gravity appears to work.

My own view, which respects well-confirmed science, leans toward a clear distinction between the relativistic macroscopic and quantum 'microscopic' realms.

As I get it, General Relativity brilliantly articulates the spacetime orientation of human perception. It's concise formulations describe relations among observable phenomena ranging in scale from atomic to cosmic.

Wikipedia — GR: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_relativity

General relativity ... is the geometric theory of gravitation published by Albert Einstein in 1915 and is the current description of gravitation in modern physics. General relativity generalizes special relativity and refines Newton's law of universal gravitation, providing a unified description of gravity as a geometric property of space and time or four-dimensional spacetime. In particular, the curvature of spacetime is directly related to the energy and momentum of whatever matter and radiation are present.

On the other hand, the Standard Model of particle physics addresses fundamental phenomena originating at subatomic scale. Most striking for me are the hypothesized quarks that underlie materiality. Atomic nuclei are comprised of observable protons and neutrons, each of which consists of three quarks. Quarks serve as the interface between seemingly permanent matter and nondescript infinite potential. It's notable that while protons may persist for billions of earth years, their component evanescent quarks evade detection, at least to-date, other than by their effects.

Wikipedia — Standard Model: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Model

The Standard Model of particle physics is the theory describing three of the four known fundamental forces (electromagnetic, weak and strong interactions – excluding gravity) in the universe and classifying all known elementary particles.

I'm no physicist, and struggle to integrate their complex findings. Thankfully they widely banter among themselves. Acknowledging all that, my current takeaway is that the evolving world of human experience is presently most effectively described by relativity, and its emergence into existence is best described by quantum theory. They don't need to thoroughly integrate, although it would be stupendous if they did.

As I see it, the bottom line is that everything is now,
suggesting a block universe comprised of all evolving within it,
evoking spacetime in the human venue.

Fundamental singularity boundlessly complexifies,
ubiquitously hosting whatever's happening here now.

Cognition is emergent within experience.
Absent emergence, there's no experience, much less cognition.

As an aside, my writing is an exercise in clarifying my own thinking rather than an argument for its validity, shared in the hope of advancing the understanding and eliciting the responses of others.

Tom

My own view, which respects well-confirmed science, leans toward a clear distinction between the relativistic macroscopic and quantum 'microscopic' realms.

Yes, that is what I was referring to. There is a school of thought emerging that we won't ever be able to reconcile those; we won't be able to unite them. Which has been a preoccupation of many theoreticians for decades.

Cognition is emergent within experience.

Not quite sure what that means. I am NOT a biologist, but in learning why religion is wrong, I have learned that consciousness and intelligence -and by extension, cognition- is an emergent property of brains. A single, or even a few brain cells don't give you much. Get billions of them all interconnected, and you get awareness, cognition, and personality**. At least that is what neuroscience is telling us.

I saw an excellent program on complexity on NOVA a few years ago. Contrary to what many creationists assert, complexity commonly arises out of simplicity. And then can follow other emergent properties that were not evident in the simpler construct. They had multiple example from mathematics and chemistry.



**Though personality also has an experiential component.

unq: Cognition is emergent within experience.

opg: Not quite sure what that means.

I apologize for the confusion. The obscurity likely arises from my use of the term 'experience' in referring to quantum to cosmic emergence, including whatever's going on here on mother Earth. The notion is that anything happening at any scale is a precursor to whatever happens next. If you can suggest an alternative expression, please share it, as I'm not satisfied with 'experience' either.

Tom

I have learned that consciousness and intelligence -and by extension, cognition- is an emergent property of brains. A single, or even a few brain cells don't give you much. Get billions of them all interconnected, and you get awareness...

What you say you learned is what ONE school of thought says regarding the so-called "hard" problem of consciousness. That a complex brain creates/produces/causes consciousness, that it's a by-product. But actually this is a very open and heavily discussed field of not only philosophers but equally of neuroscientists.

GH: We think of space as a vacuum, where there’s nothing. But space is something, isn’t it? I think of the universe as this giant balloon of “something”, and outside it there is literally nothing. That’s nothing as in “non-existence”.

Looking from the inside out, as an individual perceiver existing within a spacetime universe, I fully accord with your view. On the other hand, when perspective is expanded to include all emergent quarkiness, it accommodates not only the locally apprehended components you mention, but also the infinite potential of erstwhile nothingness.

My theory is that the universe is “being created” at the edges, it’s like an ocean wave of “something-ness” rolling and roiling into creation, so yes, it’s like a balloon, in that inside the balloon is the universe we can see (touch, taste, measure, etc.) and outside is “nothing”.

Inside-out ... the near-universal consensus.

I've been pondering an outside-in perspective.
Naked singularity hosting emergent experience
ubiquitously realized within infinite potential.

To wit: Organically evolving experience of existence,
emergent within original singularity
in lieu of a big-banging spacetime balloon.

What are your and others thoughts on that?

Tom

What you say you learned is what ONE school of thought says regarding the so-called "hard" problem of consciousness. That a complex brain creates/produces/causes consciousness, that it's a by-product. But actually this is a very open and heavily discussed field of not only philosophers but equally of neuroscientists.

How about Boltzmann Brains?

Wikipedia: The Boltzmann brain thought experiment suggests that it might be more likely for a single brain to spontaneously form in a void, complete with a memory of having existed in our universe, rather than for the entire universe to come about in the manner cosmologists think it actually did. Physicists use the Boltzmann brain thought experiment as a reductio ad absurdum argument for evaluating competing scientific theories.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boltzmann_brain

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductio_ad_absurdum

It is a tool for other arguments. No one actually considers it real. Hence, "ad absurdum".

As for the other comment about emergent complexity...sure. I believe I stated what is the dominant, and best supported, school of thought. But it almost certainly isn't the only one. Not a neuroscientist, so mostly know what I've read on that topic. If it were a definitive issue, all the neuroscientists would have to look for other jobs. :-) (Actually, I'm sure they have other aspects to research and debate.)

If it were a definitive issue, all the neuroscientists would have to look for other jobs. :-)

What I hesitated to mention, as I am well aware in which forum I am and that such ideas are only seen with ridicule here: That an alternative idea regarding the " 'hard' problem of consciousness" is that a complex brain simply is the vessel required for a "soul" (or whatever you might call it) to manifest itself, a requirement for it to have/show consciousness and intelligence.

(I hear Goofy laughing :-)

(I hear Goofy laughing :-)

I’m not laughing.

I’m sneering, it’s much more satisfying.

Here’s why: If the human has a soul, then so does a dog. A dog has emotions, all the same senses, and a brain which records past events and learns from them. There is no difference between us and them except for a couple of extra lobes in the brain which allows us to put somewhat more complex thoughts together, and a voice box which allows us to articulate better than they do. But they do communicate, as anyone with a dog and a door bell can attest.

But if dogs have a soul, then so much snakes. They see, they move, they eat and excrete. What is the substantial difference except a voice box?

And if snakes do, … well, it’s turtles all the way down. Do Amoeba have souls? Why not? They’re “alive”, They react. They gravitate towards light and food don’t they? And what would give amoeba “souls”? The proteins and bacteria and other microscopic things that form life at that level?

The more obvious Occam’s razor answer is that there is no soul. No one has ever measured it, seen it, tasted it. It cannot be demonstrated or felt. It is a made up construction, probably by people so ego-centric as to think “Well, I can add 2+2 and get 4, so I’m smart, smarter than a dog, certainly, so I must have a soul.” Which fits in so perfectly with the other myth of Porto-human mankind: “God is watching” *(and probably explains that roar of thunder after he throws down the lightning bolts.)

No. No mystery man in the sky. No Soul down here, except for James Brown. Just the ever increasing complexity of things combining in endless ways for the wonder and awe of all of us. Including dogs.

No mystery man in the sky. No Soul down here, except for James Brown.

You are lucky, Goofy. Lucky because you "know".

With that I don't want to say you'd think to know everything. Absolutely not. You are fully aware of the limits of what you know. But you also "know" that those limits essentially are only because of the limits of what science knows nowadays.

You are unshakable in your conviction "I know what I know. And I know what's just a load of BS". Congrats. Religious or otherwise convictions give stability.

You are lucky, Goofy. Lucky because you "know".

Well, I *know* what I *know*. I don’t make up fantastical things to explain what I don’t know.

Had I been alive in, say 1800 I wouldn’t have said “there can be no such things as germs”. I might have said “No one can see them, no one has proven they exist, so until they do I choose not to believe them.” The unsaid part then - and now - is that if someone can demonstrate it, I’ll believe it.

Until then, I see no profit in believing things which cannot be demonstrated, proven, or otherwise shown to exist. I’m entirely open to new ideas, all I ask is that you not ask me to “take it on faith because you say so.” That has never worked out well, including the drowning of witches, rain dances to change the weather, human sacrifice to appease the gods, and so on.

All manner of terrible things have been foist on the planet in the name of “trust me”. The existence of a “soul” is just one more.

I see no profit in believing things which cannot be demonstrated, proven, or otherwise shown to exist. I’m entirely open to new ideas

I should not do this, but those sentences tempt me to suggest a book to you. Unfortunately it's title is enough to make you sneer again: Dean Radin, "The Conscious Universe". As you will immediately see on Wikipedia Radin is highly controversial --- naturally, because his subject are psi phenomena, being the foremost scientist/charlatan in this area (I suggest to read the book first and then decide which term to use :)

What he does in this and his other books is presenting the scientific evidence, describing in detail his and other's experiments since the turn of the 20th century (Rhine's "Zener" cards etc.), the scientific evolvement of those experiments up to nowadays, and the statistical evaluation of each one (of special interest to me as since university I love statistics :)

But the book is about more. It's partly a history of physics, from Galileo to quantum mechanics in which Radin is extremely interested (later experimental setups are based on entanglement). It's also a brief of revolutions in physics and their reception in their respective aeras.

Would be interesting to hear what after reading it you'd think of his subject with respect to "demonstrated, proven, or otherwise shown to exist". I have it as ebook so if interested just shoot me an email. Even if you sneer every other page you'll probably find it well-written, absolutely not dry but often humorous and entertaining.

No need to hesitate. We're all grown-ups here (to my knowledge). We've had theists on AF before, so it's not surprising some are here also.

We always tended to be a full-contact board. Bring your data, bring your arguments -nothing is allowed to "slide".

There presently is no evidence for a "soul", and the arguments for it break down when you consider situations like identical twins (one soul becomes two?), people with TBI (either accidentally, or via surgery, or disease), etc. As Gh said, if you can demonstrate it I will believe it. Until then, I'm not buying it. Which is true for most things with me.

Again, not a neuroscientist. But from what I read, most seem to agree that the more interconnectedness of a system (be it brain cells or computers), the more it exhibits emergent characteristics and complexities beyond its base construction. There are few things as interconnected as human brains (I think the only possible competitors are other brains...I think cephalopods are comparable to ours, for example).

Assuming we are not special, which is a big assumption, we can generalize that every galaxy is moving away from every other galaxy in space. And since The night sky is not full of galaxies in every direction,

I don’t understand this last part. Every time we get a more powerful telescope and train it on an empty part of the sky we find there are galaxies in every direction. They are widely separated, of course, such is the vastness of space, but I don’t think (contrary to some opinions) that we have seen the edge of the universe yet.


I don't exactly know myself. It's the reasoning that led to the death of the steady state universe theory. If the universe was infinite, then by definition matter, space and time would be infinite. So no matter where we look, some light from some galaxy would have reached us already. I don't know how the finite speed of light plays into this though.

And if snakes do, … well, it’s turtles all the way down. Do Amoeba have souls? Why not? They’re “alive”, They react. They gravitate towards light and food don’t they? And what would give amoeba “souls”? The proteins and bacteria and other microscopic things that form life at that level?

The more obvious Occam’s razor answer is that there is no soul.

Soul is an emotionally charged term. How about a sense of identity? I take it as axioms that I exist, there is only one me, and that my mind does not exist outside of my body. (Negate the first and you get the universe is a simulation "theory". Negate the second and you get the Multiverse argument. Negate the third and you get all kinds of weird quasi religious things.)

Mixing metaphors, Occam's razor is a blunt tool 😀 Not a reliable guide to truth.

Why would amoeba not have a sense of identity? Certainly their behavior displays a tendency to want to survive, eat, reproduce. You know, The things that distinguish the living from the nonliving.

It doesn't have to be turtles all the way down. If space, time, and matter can be quantized, maybe there is a quantum of identity. Let's say single cells with nucleus. Below that we cannot communicate with any certainty, say if a virus or a piece of RNA or a molecule /atom/electron had an identity, our mental worlds are too far apart to communicate. So we might as well assume that they do not have identities. Occam's razor!

So no matter where we look, some light from some galaxy would have reached us already.

Well, two things.

No matter where we look, light *is* reaching us. What we used to think of as dark patches of sky turn out not to be, they’re just so far away and so faint that we can’t see them with the naked eye, or the first generation of telescopes, or the second, but now comes another quantum leap in telegraphy and suddenly, whoop, there it is.

Second, my “theory” is that the universe is not infinite, but is being “created” at the margins. That is, there is “nothing” - true nothing, not just vacuum but the absence of anything, yet somehow at the margin “somethingness” is being created (time & space) after which the physical manifestations that we can understand (quarks, atoms, protons, eventually hydrogen, matter, etc.) moves in - which is why space continues to “expand”. It’s not that new stuff is being created, just the framework of space (& time). So everything continues to move away from everything else, perhaps forever.

Second, my “theory” is that the universe is not infinite, but is being “created” at the margins.

Define "margins".

It's it the matter space and time that is the farthest from the Earth? Are we back to the Earth centric universe?

If not, and the universe is homogeneous, then there is no margin. So your theory is that new time space and matter are being created inside your own stomach continuously, and everywhere else you can see as well.

Define "margins".
It's it the matter space and time that is the farthest from the Earth? Are we back to the Earth centric universe?

Part 1: Margins, in my model, is the absolute “edge” of the universe, where the universe we know is being continuously created and is expanding into the “nothingness” that is there. Hmmm. Not clear.

OK. Imagine a tsunami wave expanding over a perfectly flat plane. Forever. The wave is the edge, and everything behind it is wet while everything in front of it is dry. That’s the margin. The tsunami is the manifestation of the energy; it’s not actually the water or the sand, it’s whatever it is that causes this “thing” to happen.

The trouble I have with the Big Bang is that with that model it all had to happen once. That’s a helluva explosion/creation, but by everything we know there is nothing that makes the explosion gain energy as it continues. Yet space is expanding; the galaxies are flying farther and farther apart. A single cosmic event doesn’t work that way, at least none of the others do (black hole, pulsars, neutron stars, X-rays produced by other cosmic events.) They happen, they travel, but they don’t speed up.

(I have considered “the expanding balloon” hypothesis, but that would require some gigantic cosmic force to keep pushing from the inside , for which we have no evidence. I know, I know, dark matter blah blah blah. I’ll believe it when I see it. I prefer my “cooking at the edge and pulling it outwards.” Probably just me.

Part 2: No, the earth could be incredibly close to one of the edges (but the edge still be out of sight, or at least unseeable now with our current technology, or possibly forever if it is expanding at the speed of light or has some other natural phenomenon going on.) There is nothing that says the earth should be in the center; indeed looking at the vastness of the universe we are able to detect it seems very unlikely that that would be the case.

If (and that's a big "if") our current models are correct, there is no "edge" or "margin" in the 3D universe. It appears to be expanding into at least a 4D space (which we can't visualize with our limited 3D perceptions). Is there an "edge" or "margin" in 4D? Not a clue. Maybe someone whom has done the math could say, since mathematics is the only way we can describe that dimension.

I posted a recent paper on the science board about the "speed up". It was/is a new notion about dark energy (not matter). Obviously, still conjecture, but some conjecture supported by observations. When talking about anything beyond 3D, it's more a question of whether the math works. We can't measure or access any higher dimensions than the 3 we can perceive. At least not yet.

The trouble I have with the Big Bang is that with that model it all had to happen once. That’s a helluva explosion/creation, but by everything we know there is nothing that makes the explosion gain energy as it continues. Yet space is expanding; the galaxies are flying farther and farther apart. A single cosmic event doesn’t work that way, at least none of the others do (black hole, pulsars, neutron stars, X-rays produced by other cosmic events.) They happen, they travel, but they don’t speed up.

I too have long regarded the expanding universe model as problematic, and have recently arrived at a different perspective. Rather than seeing the universe as exploding, I've come to regard it as erstwhile nothingness hosting boundless complexification. Or, to put it more concretely, inwardly complexifying naked singularity.

Overcoming the conventional view is challenging, as we invariably see ourselves as minuscule perceivers abiding within an immense spacetime environment. The relatively recent discovery that this environment is expanding over time leads us to conclude that it originated some 13.8 billion years ago in what must have been a big-banging singularity.

But our frustrating inability to integrate the theory of General Relativity, which accurately describes this macroscopic view of spacetime, with the Standard Model of Particle Physics, which accurately describes underlying quantum phenomena, is quite troubling.

GR postulates a gravitational force that deforms spacetime in the presence of matter and energy. And gravity is thus far unobserved at the quantum level. Furthermore, quantum behavior is irrespective of time.

For this and a variety of other reasons I've come to regard our experience of existence as boundless complexification timelessly imploding within an original singularity representing the infinite potential of erstwhile nothingness.

Tom

It appears to be expanding into at least a 4D space (which we can't visualize with our limited 3D perceptions). Is there an "edge" or "margin" in 4D? Not a clue. Maybe someone whom has done the math could say, since mathematics is the only way we can describe that dimension.

It has been over 60 years since I read the book “Flatland.” At least I think I read it; reading a quick summary on the web I have no recollection of the “romance” part of it, but I was intrigued by the premise: that there is a world where the characters live in 2-dimensions and cannot perceive the third. That is, their world is as flat as a sheet of paper, and nothing more.

So a 3D globe passing through their world is perceived as a circle, beginning as a dot, growing larger and larger until it becomes smaller and smaller and is once again a dot, and then disappears. Anything three dimensional is a line to them, since they can only see the intersecting plane of their sheet of paper.

It occurs to me that we are (and always will be) unable to visualize a fourth or higher dimension because we are the creatures of Flatland, doomed to forever see things only within our own abilities. We may build mathematical constructs but it is doubtful that many people will be able to follow or understand what the others are talking about (much less believe it.) “Hey Harry, tinfoil hat time. Did you hear 1pg talking about 4D? Ha ha ha.”

Anyway, my concept is not of another dimension, it is of total nothingness: no time, no space, no matter, no nothing - and then “somethingness” being created at the extremities, perhaps as it has been since the beginning. (No “big bang”, more of a “big creation event start”, which I think carries a different connotation.

Anyway, my concept is not of another dimension, it is of total nothingness: no time, no space, no matter, no nothing - and then “somethingness” being created at the extremities, perhaps as it has been since the beginning. (No “big bang”, more of a “big creation event start”, which I think carries a different connotation.

I've long struggled with the notion of nothing. Or, as you say, no nothing. What, exactly, is THAT? I often refer to it as erstwhile nothingness. It's what you'd have if there weren't something (in which case there'd also be no you to be nothingless). Dealing with nothingness and infinity is truly a mess.

As we're starting with awareness of experience, there's no question as to whether or not there's something, even if it's simply awareness.

I've no problem with ignoring the probability of extra dimensions. Up to eleven dimensions may be hypothesized in string theory, but that's not my domain. However, in considering the complexities of present experience, I've wondered whether my exceedingly volatile cognitive processes, which are real in the sense that they're experienced, may be described as ephemeral extra dimensions. But that's a matter for another discussion.

So we've got something, and from our earthly perspective it's expanding, in my view originating in a non-dimensional singularity that may be regarded as the infinite potential of erstwhile nothingness.

To the best of our present knowledge, emergent experiential evolution materializes as complexifying relations among boundlessly elaborating existants, in the human realm boiling down to boundless perceivers of the cosmos, organs, cells, molecules, atoms, nuclei and ephemeral quarks, the latter negotiating infinite probabilities in harmony with their macroscopic relations.

I'm suggesting a hopefully less anthropic perspective: boundlessly imploding complexity ever emergent within infinite potential. As I see it, whatever we may experience is necessarily included within the infinite possibilities inherent within erstwhile nothingness.

I hope you don't dismiss that as just another "word salad" as I'd much prefer a mutually respectful exploration.

Tom

I've long struggled with the notion of nothing. Or, as you say, no nothing. What, exactly, is THAT?

Take away all matter, including the things that comprise matter. Take away all energy, if you haven’t already. Now remove time and space. It is absolute nothing-ness. There is nothing there. There never was. There is no history because, well, tautology. It is the absence of (literally) everything.

Funny, I have very little trouble conceiving of such. I have great trouble trying to put my arms around a 4th dimension, not to mention higher dimensions than that. (Anybody else notice that string theory has sort of disappeared from the popular media? There was a time when there were TV shows and articles all over the place, and now, not so much. I’m gonna postulate, without evidence, that “dark matter” will suffer the same fate at some point.)

But to have the volume of material that we can see in the universe - all the stars, planets, galaxies, and associated debris, and then include a theoretical dollop of all that is beyond our vision, there must have been a helluva creation event - or perhaps it is an ongoing phenomenon (my theory) which is (somehow) turning (unknown) energy into matter before it moves on to the further reaches of space even as it stretches the boundaries of space farther out. I need a good moniker for this, “big bang” is a wonderful marketing word - I don’t have that for my concept.

Word Salad

Yes, I was unnecessarily harsh in my first assessment. That said, I have trouble parsing what you say, and find myself skimming when it gets too dense.

I have trouble parsing what you say, and find myself skimming when it gets too dense.

I understand. I'll do my best to improve my communication.

Tom

"Nothing" is a very dicey term. A lot of discussion about Krauss' book "A Universe from Nothing" dealt with how Krauss defined "nothing", for example. It is very important to define that term before using it.

Can you imagine true "nothing"? As in, not even space-time? The quantum field (from which vacuum fluctuations arise)? I don't think the human mind can really comprehend absolute nothingness. We always have to visualize it against something we can conceive (like "take a box with nothing in it, not even atoms"...but there are still quantum fields in it, possibly gravity waves traveling through it, etc). I'm out of touch with the latest thinking on this, but there was considerable debate at one time that there was at least quantum fields, even if space-time had not yet popped into existence (at least the space-time we are familiar with...there is still the hypothetical multiverse).

I find the other poster to be very poetic, but sometimes not clear in what he means with some of his terms. I notice a lot of references to "experience" and "experiential", but that implies (at least to me) that somehow our experience of the universe is more than just our experience of the universe. Which further implies we're more important than just another species on an tiny planet orbiting an ordinary star, in an unextraordinary galaxy, that is part of just one of many clusters and superclusters...you get the idea...

I don't think the human mind can really comprehend absolute nothingness.

That's a good point.
I even can't comprehend me not being anymore. Can you? Not in an abstract way, but if closing your eyes and seriously trying to imagine that you cease to exist, that there is no more "me"?

opg: I don't think the human mind can really comprehend absolute nothingness. We always have to visualize it against something we can conceive.

That's exactly why I refer to it as "erstwhile nothingness," placing it in relation to the somethingness that's evident in every "experience."

opg: I notice a lot of references to "experience" and "experiential", but that implies (at least to me) that somehow our experience of the universe is more than just our experience of the universe. Which further implies we're more important than just another species on an tiny planet

I written about this earlier in this thread in an attempt to obviate precisely the implication you've presented here. Here are some quotes from those earlier exchanges:

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
unq: For this and a variety of other reasons I've come to regard our experience of existence as boundless complexification timelessly imploding within an original singularity representing the infinite potential of erstwhile nothingness.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
unq: To the best of our present knowledge, emergent experiential evolution materializes as complexifying relations among boundlessly elaborating existants [of every ilk], *in the human realm* boiling down to boundless perceivers of the cosmos, organs, cells, molecules, atoms, nuclei and ephemeral quarks, the latter negotiating infinite probabilities in harmony with their macroscopic relations.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
unq: Cognition is emergent within experience.

opg: Not quite sure what that means.

unq: I apologize for the confusion. The obscurity likely arises from my use of the term 'experience' *in referring to quantum to cosmic emergence*, including whatever's going on here on mother Earth. The notion is that anything happening at any scale is a precursor to whatever happens next. If you can suggest an alternative expression, please share it, as I'm not satisfied with 'experience' either.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Even though no one responded to my invitation for an alternative, I guess I should have eliminated that ambiguity after that post. Somewhere along the line I concluded that the term entanglement might be preferable as a generic reference to complexifying relations at levels ranging from quarks to cosmos. The problem is that the term *entanglement* may be unfamiliar to some, and it certainly only vaguely describes what's going on at the scale of human complexity.

I suppose referring to processes at all levels of complexity as "experience" is the problem.

Your thoughts?

Tom

Can you? Not in an abstract way, but if closing your eyes and seriously trying to imagine that you cease to exist, that there is no more "me"?

Not really, no. I can imagine looking down after I die and seeing what 1poorlady and 1poorkid are up to; how they would be dealing with things without me. But I'm still an observer in that scenario. Intellectually, I can say "the same as before I was born", but I can't remember that (obviously...since I didn't exist), nor really imagine it.

I sort of need a glossary. I can try to guess at what you mean, but I may be guessing wrong. Your terminology is not rigidly defined, as near as I can tell. For example:

as boundless complexification timelessly imploding within an original singularity

While there is some question about whether Event One came from a singularity, I assume you're assuming it did and referring to that. The rest of that phrase is not clear to me. "Complexification" may mean "growing more complex"? What is "timelessly"? If there is no time, there is no evolution of anything (complexity, stellar formation, etc). As I said, it is very poetic, but not well-defined in scientific terms, and possibly even in contradiction to science (e.g. evolution of anything without time).

I even can't comprehend me not being anymore. Can you? Not in an abstract way, but if closing your eyes and seriously trying to imagine that you cease to exist, that there is no more "me"?

Well perhaps I’m fooling myself, but I think I can. Both my parents have died. They have ceased to exist, so far as I am concerned, in any way at all. No “spirit”, no soul, no presence - it’s as if they were never here, except of course they were, and I am the product of it.

There is nothing they can do, nothing to indicate they ever “were” except for my siblings and I, and the small urns buried in a veterans’ cemetery somewhere in middle Pennsylvania.

“Not being” is pretty easy to envision. Mom & Dad are “not being” now or ever again. I have a perfect model to understand it, and (as I said I may be delusional but) I think I get it just fine.

Yes. But you are experiencing their absence. I think he was asking more about YOU. Can you envision your non-existence. As I said in my reply to him, I think the best that I can do is imagine what the family will do without me. But I'm still sort of "there", as an invisible watcher in those imaginations.

“Not being” is pretty easy to envision. Mom & Dad are “not being” now or ever again. I have a perfect model to understand it

That's exactly the opposite of what I meant, which is why I said "not in an abstract way, but...": To imagine (Not: "to think about") this constantly thinking and sensing "I", "me", "Ego" does not exist any more.

When I seriously try to do that it's not only impossible for me, but even the failed try is the most terrifying thing. If that's not the case for you then you are either "enlightened" --- or rationalising, as you just did (avoiding to be confronted with the raw emotions of this imagination, instead using your intellect to look at it from a cool and rational view ("... perfect model... ")).

Slightly tangential, but still on topic (I think):

We both retired early because we both had health scares back-to-back (me in fall of 2019, her in winter of 2019/2020). I'll spare you the details, but I was pretty sure I would be dead within a year or so. I occupied myself with organizing and listing everything for 1poorlady. Accounts, passwords (I made sure the password manager was up to date). She hadn't really shown interest before, but I taught her how to use Quicken. I wrote instructions about how our internet setup works (modem, router, what to do if 'x' happens). Because a) it would have helped her when I died, and b) when I was not busy my thoughts were somewhat terrifying. Not all the time, but every now and then it would overtake me and I'd just lay down for a while. I can't say I visualized my non-existence, but I was confronted with the very real possibility of it.

1poorlady was really strong. Our daughter told me later that she only broke down in the waiting room when the surgery status board said that my surgery had begun. Turned out it was benign, but they didn't know that until they got it out (a biopsy would have been as invasive as removal, so they just removed it).

Yes. But you are experiencing their absence. I think he was asking more about YOU

That’s exactly the opposite of what I meant, which is why I said “not in an abstract way, but …” To “imagine” (Not: to think about) this constantly thinking and sensing “I”, “me”, “Ego” does not exist any more.

Well, both of you seems to believe I cannot conceive of it, even though I tried to explain that I can. And that I find it easy to do. I look at the world around me and know that when I am gone it won’t matter. Nothing will change except that I won’t be here. I tried to use the example of my parents, who now are “nothing” to me except a distant memory, and when I am gone even that will no longer exist. I certainly won’t “miss it” because I won’t have consciousness to miss anything, just as before I was both. I didn’t exist. Now I exist. Later I won’t, again.

Please don’t tell me what I can or can’t conceive of based on the fact that *you* can’t. I can. I tell you with all honesty and directness: I can. Indeed, I have. It’s not a big deal, at least to me. It’s not at all hard to separate myself from, uh, myself, this reality, and everything.

For the record, I didn't say you couldn't. I just was wondering if you answered the OP's question.

Intellectually, I agree with you. I don't remember anything before I was born, and when I'm dead I'm pretty certain I won't be aware of anything (or experience anything, or know anything) after I die. There will be an absence of me. I still find it difficult to visualize that scenario, despite my relative certainty of it, without projecting myself as an unseen observer. Perhaps I lack the creative imagination for it.

opg: "Complexification" may mean "growing more complex"?

There's so much more to evolving existence.
"Boundless complexity" doesn't begin to capture emergence.

opg: What is "timelessly"? If there is no time, there is no evolution of anything (complexity, stellar formation, etc).

This discussion has prompted a deep dive review of many notions,
including:
•Complex Adaptive Systems [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complex_adaptive_sys...]
•Emergence [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergence]
•Quantum Entanglement [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_entanglement]
•Big History [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_History]
•Cosmic Evolution [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_Evolution_(book)]
•Technological Singularity [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_singul...]
•Problem of Time [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Problem_of_time]
•Free Will [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_will]

I was particularly struck by Big History,
which I'd been unaware of as a 'thing.'
Very informative, though apparently needing more work.

Wikipedia [CAS]: Typical examples of complex adaptive systems include: climate; cities; firms; markets; governments; industries; ecosystems; social networks; power grids; animal swarms; traffic flows; social insect (e.g. ant) colonies; the brain and the immune system; and the cell and the developing embryo.

These all exemplify macroscopic emergence
within organically evolving experience —
representations in spacetime.

I'd suggest that in the course of most day-to-day experience,
we have no sense of our relations within the overall scheme of things.

Wikipedia [Problem of Time]: In theoretical physics, the problem of time is a conceptual conflict between general relativity and quantum mechanics in that quantum mechanics regards the flow of time as universal and absolute, whereas general relativity regards the flow of time as malleable and relative.

As for "timelessness," my view is that everything happens at once,
as sages have presaged for ages,
and we humans parse it as fragmentary perception
of a totality regarded as past,
augmented as present
and anticipated as future.
Observation is regarded as decohering
coherently entangled prior experience,
including:

•sensation regarded as environment
•recollection regarded as past,
•cognition in the present,
•anticipation regarded as future,
•articulation regarded as behavior,
•remembrance regarded as oneself.

Present experience decoheres an erstwhile environmental coherence.

Everything makes a little more sense to me following my review,
so thanks for encouraging the exploration.

The truth is, much of this has been under discussion for centuries,
if not millennia.

Thanks for sharing that my writing sometimes strikes you as poetic,
though I hope that doesn't mean you find it less understandable.
The goal of my writings is comprehensibility.

Tom

But to have the volume of material that we can see in the universe - all the stars, planets, galaxies, and associated debris, and then include a theoretical dollop of all that is beyond our vision, there must have been a helluva creation event - or perhaps it is an ongoing phenomenon (my theory) which is (somehow) turning (unknown) energy into matter before it moves on to the further reaches of space even as it stretches the boundaries of space farther out. I need a good moniker for this, “big bang” is a wonderful marketing word - I don’t have that for my concept.

Let me try another visualization. There is a rubber sheet of unimaginable proportions. There are lots of workers stationed around the perimeter and they pull at the sheet all at the same time, all in the direction opposite the center.

The center would remain (more or less) in the center, but everything would be moving away from it as the sheet stretched. Indeed, the closer you are to the edge, the more the sheet would be stretching, (and if it would tear, it would most likely be somewhere near the edge where the force is strongest, I would think.)

That is a two dimensional model, of course, but it should be easy enough to scale up to three dimensions in your mind; and transfer over to “the universe” and we find that everything, including “space”, is moving away from everything else, and more rapidly the farther away we can see. Galaxies farther away are separating more rapidly than galaxies closer to us, etc.

(I point out that this is a “me” centered universe, and it would be interesting to know if what we see, i.e. “everything moving away from everything else at increasing speed” is the same for everyone else in the universe. Alas I suspect we’ll never know that one.)

The “balloon” illustration of the universe misstates things because only the balloon is moving, indeed the air molecules inside the balloon are actually being compressed closer together by pressure. So, in my marketing world “big bang” or “balloon” would have to be replaced with “infinite rubber sheet”.

OK, I don’t think that’s gonna grab the popular zeitgeist. I’ll keep working on it.

It will take time to read your links.

"Poetic", in my usage, means it sounds nice, but it's meaning isn't always clear. The terms used are often not precise, or even well-defined. Like "timeless"...it can either mean 'without time' (in which case nothing is happening because there is no time), or 'infinite in time' (without end). When speaking science, part of the difficulty the public/lay-people have is that the terms are precise, and often not known to them. An easy example is that people will say "I have a theory". But scientifically, they usually don't. They have a conjecture. A theory is the strongest statement you can make in science, so when people say -for example- "evolution is just a theory", they -unknowingly- are saying evolution is the strongest statement that can be made in science with the strongest evidence. If I say "bremstrahlung", any physicist will know instantly. Most laypeople won't (unless they happen to speak German, and then they might have a clue).

Which is why it is difficult to find a scientist who can write for the masses. Neil DeGrasse-Tyson is an excellent communicator, as was his mentor Carl Sagan. You get a lot of scientists up to speak, and they will often lose the audience because they can't make it understandable to someone not in their field. Sagan and Tyson are somewhat poetic (Sagan, especially), but they still use sufficiently precise terminology to be accurate and still be understandable.

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