The Universe - An Effect Without Cause by Philip Gibbs

Dear Edwin and Phil:

Thanks for your reply.

Let us not get hung up on the operational definition of "Free Will" so as not to miss the crucial physics that is missing from current theories. Let us focus on the degree of freedom that is well observed in the universe but not included in the current theories.

What is missing from physics and cosmology today is a lack of this degree of freedom to allow a mechanistic conversion of mass to energy and space to time to allow a complete implementation of the equivalence principle into the current theories. Hence, the missing physics leads to singularities (general relativity) and paradoxes such as dark energy, dark matter, quantum gravity, quantum time, measurement paradox, unknown and unverifiable particles, multi-dimensions, multi-verses etc. etc.....For example, when the mass of a galaxy or universe is confined to a point-like volume singularity is experienced in general relativity because no spontaneous mass to energy conversion and subsequent evaporation is allowed. Once this is allowed, as shown in my paper, the singularity goes away. Second example, the accelerated expansion of the universe is not predicted by general relativity because of the missing physics wherein the mass evaporates into the relativistic kinetic energy that provides the observed accelerated expansion. This provision naturally provides the mechanistic physics of expansion rather than the currently used Einstein's blunder fudge factor - cosmological constant.

The point (as described in my paper- -" From Absurd to Elegant Universe" ) I would like to bring to the attention of scientists in this forum that the fundamental reality of the universe is the Zero-point state of the mass-energy-momentum-space-time continuum and fundamental dynamic process that governs the manifested universe is the spontaneous (Free-willed) birth and decay of particles. Neither the Particles/strings nor space-time nor biological evolution are fundamental in themselves but their overall state of the wholesome continuum. There is a lot of focused discussion in this forum on the artifacts -inconsistencies and paradoxes of the missing physics but a lack of focus on the missing most fundamental state and processes that govern the universe at its core. As shown in my paper, once the missing physics is properly included in current theories, the artifact questions and inconsistencies disappear along with artifact paradoxes listed above leading to a coherent and simple/elegant universe.

We must cure the disease (missing fundamental physics) and not focus on merely eliminating symptoms (artifact assumptions, inconsistencies, paradoxes, mysterious phenomena etc.). The castle (universal TOE) cannot be built upon missing fundamental foundations. We must not get lost in trees (artifacts) so as not to lose the vision of the forest (fundamental universal reality).

Best Regards

Avtar

Peter, it was not possible to explain the mergence of diffeomorphism invariance fully in this essay because I ran out of space. It is not a complete theory yet either.

In special relativity light cones have nice simple shapes but in general relatciity where light is bent they are more complex than you might think. This is due to effects like the gravitational lensing that changes the topology of the light cone in the distant past if you could trace it back. This does not efect causality so long as there are no closed timelike curves. Same principle applies to the way we receive information via various communication channels such as TV.

I will read your essay when I get more time.

Phil

Yes, space, the final frontier of all essays! I not only agree with perturbed GR light cone topology via lensing delays (of over 3 years) but you'll find it referred in papers of my own (including a copy lodged on an excellent web archive here; http://vixra.org/pdf/1007.0022v8.pdf)

Of course there ARE apparent closed curves where delayed light arrives at an observer after direct light. My essay points out that this is not however possible when using 'Proper Time', which implies 'apparent' speeds and time are also fine and dandy and in a different class to 'LOCAL REAL' speed and time. The Quantum mechanism allowing this resolution of SR's issues is presented.

It's densely layered so beware, but I greatly look forward to your views.

Peter

Hi Phil:

Following up on my earlier posts above, I would greatly appreciate your comments on my paper - -" From Absurd to Elegant Universe" since it strongly vindicates the conclusions of your paper and provides a validated mathematical model of the universe that mirrors your recommendations.

Also, I would greatly appreciate your views regarding Emergence vs. Equivalence described in my post above.

Thanking you in advance,

Best Regards

Avtar

Phil,

Time, space-time and gravity take up a lot of space in the essays, including yours. I responded to a comment about TIME in Kelvin Marshall's essay, Topic 1382, (post Aug. 15, 2012 @ 23:20 GMT) with the statement, "TIME is a manifestation of the existence of energy," and I provide a supporting argument.

Gravity is covered in Marshall's essay, and a statement about action-at-a distance prompted me to post a comment (Aug. 16, 2012 @ 19:44 GMT) and a link to my viXra article, "The helical structure of the electromagnetic gravity field". I mention that a number of versions of the paper had been submitted to five peer reviewed publications and that the viXra paper is an iteration of the various submissions.

Helical Electromagnetic Gravity Field

I do not attempt to describe the quantum structure that is responsible for the EM force of gravity, just how the EM fields produce the force.

What if part of nature is not at all logical? For example, physics and predictability seem to stop at quantum mechanics where eigenstates cannot be predicted. Is it possible that within this unpredictablity, within the uncerttainty, nature still has form and function, yet defies logic?

Hi Phil,

I've read your essay and I must say I liked the new directions in thought that you advocated. I will try to summarize my understandings of what you wrote. Math in order to advance goes through two stages. A mathematical concept is first proposed as a conjecture if no proof available and then it exists as this conjecture and some people build on that conjecture or try to disprove it. The concept is finally accepted into math when a proof is given and math is advanced. But you know all of that. What I got from your essay is that you want to do the same thing to physics except instead of using proof as the final verifying event you want consistency to be the final verifying event. This brings up a question; what is consistency to where it can be equated with mathematical proof, if that is possible?

You know, physics has already done a variation of this already, except the standard was "beauty" and it was applied to string theory and look where that got us, the "landscape" and lots of people thinking physics has lost its direction.

Are you prepared for the "landscape" version of consistency? I am of the opinion that consistency is an attribute not a guiding principal of physics, because what may seem inconsistent from one vantage point maybe completely consistent from a different vantage point.

Anyway, I want to thank you for keeping the world up to date concerning the Higgs experiment results before July 4th.

Jim Akerlund

Dear Philip,

Though you know an awful lot more about physics than I do and your excellent essay is written much better than mine, I do think, with all respect, that I'm a few crucial steps ahead of you.

Causality only makes sense in a Big Bang Universe. The problem is that a BBU lives in a time continuum not of its own making, so the concept of cosmic time refers to an imaginary observation post outside the universe, which, as I argue in my essay (''Einstein's Error'') is illegitimate, scientifically and hence is an invalid concept. If without a 'cosmic clock' showing cosmic time, we cannot determine what precedes what in an absolute sense, whether the emission of a photon at A precedes its absorption at B, then we can no longer attribute light a (finite) velocity. Instead, it refers a property of spacetime, which is something else entirely.

The problem is that we confuse causality with rationality, even though it leads nowhere.

If we understand something only if we can explain it as the effect of some cause, and understand this cause only if we can explain it as the effect of a preceding cause, then this chain of cause-and-effect either goes on ad infinitum or we end up at some primordial cause which, as it cannot be reduced to a preceding cause, cannot understood by definition, so causality ultimately cannot explain anything. If, for example, you invent Higgs particles to explain the mass of other particles, you'll eventually find that you need some other particle to explain the Higgs particle, a pre-Higgs particle which in turn needs another particle and so on and on.

A universe which has a beginning is a caused universe, that is, is created by some outside intervention. As I refuse to believe in some Creator, I had to assume that we live in a universe which creates itself out of nothing, without any outside intervention. In such universe particles and particle properties necessarily must be as much the product as the source of their interactions, which explains the why of the uncertainty principle. Since in a Self-Creating Universe particles cause, create one another, they explain each other in a circular way. Here we can take any element of an explanation, any link of the chain of reasoning without proof, use it to explain the next link and so on, to follow the circle back to the assumption we started with, which this time is explained by the foregoing reasoning, that is, if our reasoning is sound and our assumptions are valid. If we have more confidence in a theory as it is more consistent and it is more consistent as it relates more phenomena, makes more facts explain each other and needs less additional axioms, less more or less arbitrary assumptions to link one step to the next, then any good theory has a tautological character, fitting a self-creating, self-explaining universe. The circle of reasoning ought to work equally well in the reverse direction.

Whereas everybody investigates nature by trying to explain observed phenomena, I started from a reverse-engineering point of view: How can a universe create itself out of nothing, without any cause, any outside intervention? Can I understand this self-creation process rationally? As I could not argue every step of my reasoning in so few pages, some conclusions of the essay may seem to fall out of the blue: for a more extensive study, you might take a look at my website www.quantumgravity.nl Though you'll find that I'm an awful writer, I think you'll find plenty of useful ideas to use as whetstone to sharpen your own thoughts. I would be obliged if you'd care to take the effort to read and comment on it.

Anton

Hi Phil/Edwin/All:

"Operational Definition/Framework for Consciousness or Free Will" - A response to your earlier comment.

Phil and Edwin have stated in an earlier post here that "As for "free will", it can't be defined in an operational sense, same for consciousness."........ How does one distinguish free-will based action from random action? And how does one prove it, objectively?

My paper - -" From Absurd to Elegant Universe" offers an approach to describe Free Will or Consciousness physically and mathematically in terms of the well-known physical phenomenon of spontaneous decay/birth of particles. Since Free Will cannot be bounded in space and time, the state of Free Will is described by a fully dilated space and time with no clocks or distances. Hence, The Cosmic Free Will or Universal Consciousness is represented mathematically and physically by the Zero-point State (ZPS) continuum of the universe. This fundamental state that represents the un-manifested totality or wholesomeness or everything-ness of the universe is most ironically known as the vacuum or the "Nothingness" in the commonly known terminology of physics and cosmology.

The most fundamental process leading to the manifested universe or creation of matter, space, and time is the spontaneous or non-causal or free-willed birth of particles or creation of matter borne out from the fundamental Zero-point State (ZPS). The reverse of this process i.e. the spontaneous decay of particles into the Zero-point state is also a fundamental process that forms the bridge between the manifested matter, space, and time and ZPS.

The results described in my paper show that when the universe is described in terms of these fundamental Free-willed (Universal Consciousness) and processes (free-willed creation and dilation of matter), it successfully (objectively) predicts the observed universe behavior - classical, quantum, and relativistic without any singularities, paradoxes, and singularities. The apparent randomness is not in nature but shown to be merely an artifact of the measurement error or observational deficiencies in the chosen scientific method and measuring devices. This leads to the conclusion that the current inconsistencies and paradoxes of physics are nothing but artifacts of the missing fundamental physics described above from the current theories rather than wrongful isolated assumptions that are being identified and discussed in this forum in a piecemeal manner.

It is not possible to determine the universal wrongfulness or correctness of an isolated assumption unless it is evaluated within an integrated wholesome model of the universe and validated against the observed universe behavior. A few or even many isolated worldly experiments performed in a classical worldly setting in fixed Newtonian space-time cannot determine the absolute or universal correctness of an isolated assumption or set of assumptions as evidenced by the existing paradoxes and inconsistencies of the thoroughly tested QM and GR theories today. Their failure is revealed when valuated at the cosmic level.

The framework of Cosmic Free-will or Universal Consciousness provided by my paper-" From Absurd to Elegant Universe" should be seriously considered to achieve progress towards a complete wholesome theory of physics.

I would greatly appreciate your views and comments from scientists in this forum regarding the proposed approach to the operational framework for consciousness or free will that is shown to work successfully in conjunction with and enhancing current theories.

Best Regards

Avtar Singh

Dear Avtar Singh,

"Since Free Will cannot be bounded in space and time, the state of Free Will is described by a fully dilated space and time with no clocks or distances."

This appears to me to be a mechanical perspective. Is your approach to free-will basically a theoretical physics model? I understand it to be lack of preciseness in predictability.

" The Cosmic Free Will or Universal Consciousness is represented mathematically and physically by the Zero-point State (ZPS) continuum of the universe. This fundamental state that represents the un-manifested totality or wholesomeness or everything-ness of the universe is most ironically known as the vacuum or the "Nothingness" in the commonly known terminology of physics and cosmology.

The most fundamental process leading to the manifested universe or creation of matter, space, and time is the spontaneous or non-causal or free-willed birth of particles or creation of matter borne out from the fundamental Zero-point State (ZPS). "

I cannot tell where intelligence enters into this description. I presume that your meaning of cosmic consciousness means a form of probability? Perhaps that which has occured at the beginning, which itelf is unpredictable? In other words, it is due to mechanical effects that are not yet predictable?

I remember you mentioned free-will at the end of your essay indicating that your physics view allowed for an explanation. It appeared to me then to be referring to a physics definition of a mechanical free-will. Do you view human free-will as a mechanical abberation?

I acknowledge that I do not view the mechanical versions of free-will as being free, and, more importantly not being related to intelligence. That being said, I am interested in further explanation of your understanding of human free-wil if it is related to the physics version. Thank you.

James

Philip,

Reading through your essay and may be getting a grasp of how I could interpret your concepts into my essay.

My essay is basically stating that any multiple of the metric [math]g_{\mu\nu}[/math] (i.e. Lambda or Omega or what have you) is technically mutually exclusive to the Einstein tensor [math]G_{\mu\nu}[/math] if we do not relax the assumption that [math]R_{\mu\nu}=0[/math]. Thus, in the case I present of [math]\Omega g_{\mu\nu}-L_{\mu\nu}[/math], if [math]L_{\mu\nu}= 0[/math] then there would be no structure to spacetime and thus no concept of "time". Would you view this as an emergence of time?

Regards,

Jeff

Dear Avtar Singh,

Your reply was very informative about your view. Thank you for your detailed response and to Philip Gibbs for my use of his forum for this purpose.

James

Dear Phil,

You wrote:

"Complete symmetry will be an important element "

And further:

"The difficulty is to show that such structures can underlie string theory.

I think that recent work on the holographic principle and higher spin symmetries indicates that this may be possible."

Do you think that complete symmetry could happen if the big bang produced "fully entangled CP symmetric copy universe bubbles at a long distance"

Entangled even down to the Planck scale?

Then our universe is not any more unique and even humans have to deal with a shared consciousness with our anti-matter copy brothers and sisters over there ( inside the raspberry shaped multiverse)

See:

The Bouncing CP Symmetrical Multiverse, Based on a Massless but Energetic Oscillating (Non SM Higgs) Vacuum Particle System.

http://www.fqxi.org/data/essay-contest-files/Vuyk_13121461.pdf_The_bounc_1.pdf

or:

http://www.fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/1412

Leo Vuyk.

Phil

I put a new improved version of an essay that is very different from that which in vixra.

Please read it with additional posts ..

Thanks for the shelter of crazy ideas.

Yuri

Dear Phil,

Beautiful essay. Definitely causality changed after the discovery of relativity, but after the advent of quantum mechanics, it truly became something else :)

I concur with your affirmation "Correlations and consistency are all that can be counted on if we want to understand the foundations of physics."

About the survey aiming to prove correlation between smoking and tooth decay, maybe the common cause is a careless behavior. I was amused when I heared about another research, claiming that reading while sitting on the toilet causes constipation -- the converse seems a much simpler explanation :).

Congratulations for the deep and well-explained observations about causality.

Cristi Stoica

I don't necessarily agree with the idea, but the essay was a very good read.

Interesting that you include 'consistency with experiment'. There is the Rub ! That justifies singlets for right handed fermions, in the absence of some algebraic reason for it, but leaves one wishing there were an explicit algebraic reason. Perhaps the emphasis on Lie algebras has drawn attention away from the algebra that the Lie algebra lives in. Hamilton had a lot to say with quaternions without knowing about SU(2). The really peculiar thing is that useful statements can be made with quaternion arithmetic to add up "force vectors" - but the gross oversimplification was essential to the evolution of physics. Ditto for Maxwell. Anyway, I suspect that this Consistency business ultimately depends on the design of the universe being some algebra. I don't know whether a notion of 'emergence' clarifies or confuses the issue. At least algebra leads to asking important questions. Like - what does it mean that in real Clifford algebra the +--- signature is in a different algebra than the -+++. And complex octonions have both. To make things more confusing, consider a direct product of octonions - because it includes direct products of quaternions you get Clifford algebras ! Maybe sometimes the Lorentz signature does not necessarily refer to spacetime - it might have multiple meanings, like pauli matrices and Spin - or Weak Isospin. Oh well - it is sort of amusing that the universe is such that Hamilton did not have to derive classical mechanics from chromodynamics, or we would be in worse shape than at present.

Ed,

''Quantum measurement predictions are consistent with relativity for macroscopic observations, but there is no consensus on how to explain this consistency in fundamental terms.''

My essay is a sketch of a much more extended investigation about how a universe might create itself out of nothing (see my website www.quantumgravity.nl). In this study I have proposed a mass definition based on the Uncertainty Principle (UP): the less indefinite the position of a particle or the mass center of an object is, the greater its mass is. If forces upon a particle can be stronger as they are more exactly equal from all directions, and they are more precisely equal within a smaller area as these forces are stronger, which they are as the mass of the particle is greater, then its position is less indefinite as its mass is greater and vice versa. As the force on it and definiteness in its position also depends on the mass its environment and its distribution, its mass in this definition automatically is a relative quantity.

If a larger distance between particles is a less definite distance, and particles can only exchange energy (see below) at a frequency the definiteness of which corresponds to that in their distance, then this frequency becomes less definite, shifts to red at larger distances, agreeing with the proposition in my essay that in a SCU clocks are observed to run at a slower pace as they are more distant, even when at rest.

In another chapter ('The color of light') this definition is shown to be consistent with relativity theory. Though this is just a first, qualitative analysis, I suspect that it must be possible to derive the equations of relativity theory from the UP, using the proposed mass definition. As in a SCU particles are as much the product as the source of the force between them, here forces never become infinite, so we don't get the infinite self-energies of QED not the singularities of a BBU-based GR.

If, as I argue, c doesn't refer to a velocity but to a property of spacetime so the contact between particles at different spacetime points is instantaneous, then they are at all times informed about each other's state and motion, the info consisting of the frequency they exchange energy at and its polarisation, info which is refreshed, updated in every cycle. So the hidden variables Einstein wanted to exist to avoid indeterminism, can be identified as the energy exchange by means of which particles express and preserve each other's properties, its instantaneousness making self-evident things like the EPR paradox, entanglement and double-slit experiments.

However, the unpredictability Einstein wished to eradicate remains since (in a SCU) particles are as much the effect as the cause of their interactions. It is because the exchange of energy, of info between particles is unobservable as long as they are in equilibrium that we have been able to remain ignorant of it: because we've always assumed that particles have passively been created, so only are source of forces: their exchange only becomes observable when their equilibrium is disturbed and energy is emitted or absorbed.

In a SCU real particles can be thought of as virtual particles which by alternately borrowing and lending each other the energy to exist, manage to force each other to reappear again and again after every disappearance, so here they create and un-create each other time and time again. The smaller their distance, the greater the force between them, the higher the frequency they exchange energy at, the higher their energy is. In this view the origin of mass is obvious, as is the equality of inertial and gravitational mass, so unlike a Big Bang Universe, a SCU doesn't need Higgs particles, nor string theory, bigbang, inflation or dark energy to explain observations.

Well, I just wanted to give you some reason to take a look at my study as the essay was too short to elaborate my arguments in full.

Anton

Phil,

A very interesting discussion but how do you use "consistency" in in discovering the properties of or explaining how gravity works? The example of the discovery of the the Higgs boson speaks of the Standard Model and quantum physics. Gravity is a strange and mysterious bird. I could only refer to empirical evidence and a few studies to even begin to explain it.

Jim