Essay Abstract

Information is corruptible and subject to erroneous interpretation, whereas reality is synonymous with "truth"; bit from it. Here we propose an alternative reality, the beginning and evolution of the universe based upon a new paradigm, the Zero Kelvin Big Bang (ZKBB). Grounded in basic demonstrable physics, simple logic, and extrapolation, ZKBB proposes a past-eternal cosmic fabric of mutually repulsive, spin-oriented atomic hydrogen, at zero kelvin. Condensation into a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) results in Georges Lemaitre's Primeval Atom, the concentrated mass of the entire universe in a single quantum, with zero energy and zero entropy; finally, a concrete universe-quantum connection. A quantum event, a single electron spin-flip, precipitates an implosion-explosion; a thermonuclear Big Bang and a universe, and the ultimate "bit to it" event. Using energy stoichiometry, we discuss how the ZKBB model accurately describes the cosmic microwave background (CMB), both conceptually and quantitatively. This model provides a realistic explanation for dark energy, and obviates the horizon problem and the flatness problem. Perhaps this logical, coherent model for the universe will partially fulfill Wheeler's dream; "Surely someday, we can believe, we will grasp the central idea of it all as so simple, so beautiful, so compelling that we will all say to each other, 'Oh, how could it have been otherwise! How could we all have been so blind for so long!'. I don't know whether it will be one year or a decade, but I think we can and will understand. That's the central thing I would like to stand for. We can and will understand".

Author Bio

Received B.S. in Genetics and Ph.D. in Comparative Biochemistry from University of California, Davis. After a laboratory management career in clinical chemistry and environmental chemistry, retired in 2007. Have been working on theoretical cosmology, as an independent researcher, for the last 10 years.

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Mr. Haynes,

I thought that your essay was extremely well written and truly informative.

As a somewhat unschooled decrepit old realist, may I please just comment on one telling sentence that you used in the essay?

You wrote, "However, as human beings, we are special: we do have unique capabilities that enable us to reconstruct reality in our minds."

As I have gone to great pains in my essay BITTERS to point out, it is reality that is unique. All we ever do is construct commonplace abstractions in our brain that have nothing to do with the uniqueness of reality.

    Royce,

    I found your essay to be very professional and rational based on the current paradigm that only something can create something which of course is logical to our mainstream thinking. You have taken on many obstacles with your logical approach and I commend you for your extensive efforts of which I will rate accordingly.

    I have found that the methodology of something creating something (effectual causality) has a fundamental flaw for it inherently omits causality. I get into this in my essay of which I invite you to review and rate when you get the chance:

    http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/1809

    Good luck with your entry.

    Regards,

    Manuel

      Thank you for the welcome.

      I don't think that the Theory of Everything will ever be completely known because of human fallibility. Our evaluation of information (data) is always subjective, subject to our own preconceived ideas of what the answer "should be".

      Thank you for your comments on my essay.

      From a physics standpoint, I am also an unschooled decrepit old realist, so it's nice to hear from another one.

      I was pointing to two things that are unique, reality as you pointed out, which I see as the evolution of our universe (there may be others) and man's ability to make sense of it. As I said in the essay, the universe happened only one way, with a single trajectory from a beginning to now. Hugh Everett's Many Worlds Theory is codswallop. Also most of the evolution happened before man or even biology came on the scene. So Wheeler's "participatory universe" is pretty much a figment of imagination. The other thing which I alluded to was that, in the field of biology, human beings are special and unique in that we can use imagination to extrapolate physical processes forward and backwards in time and picture a "reality" at a different point in time, and be able to rationally explain how it got from here to there.

      Hello Royce and welcome to the essay contest. Your ZKBB theory appeals to me as I have nurtured similar thoughts. But as this may not be within the purview of this year's contest, check me out on arXiv, author: ojo.

      The only question I wish to put to you is whether you have come across this equation:

      ∆S = ∆E/T,

      where S is entropy, E is a fluctuation in energy and T is temperature at the time of energy change.

      If you have, will you consider it a better source of astronomical-sized explosion, this time thermodynamic rather than thermonuclear?

      There is also a 'temperature problem' bedeviling cosmology, when all matter in the universe is claimed to be created at once. Bye for now.

      Best regards,

      Akinbo

        Dear Haynes,

        Thank you for presenting your nice essay. I saw the abstract and will post my comments soon. Did any body measured Bigbang generated CMB till today?

        I am requesting you to go through my essay also. And I take this opportunity to say, to come to reality and base your arguments on experimental results.

        I failed mainly because I worked against the main stream. The main stream community people want magic from science instead of realty especially in the subject of cosmology. We all know well that cosmology is a subject where speculations rule.

        Hope to get your comments even directly to my mail ID also. . . .

        Best

        =snp

        snp.gupta@gmail.com

        http://vaksdynamicuniversemodel.blogspot.com/

        Pdf download:

        http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/essay-download/1607/__details/Gupta_Vak_FQXi_TABLE_REF_Fi.pdf

        Part of abstract:

        - -Material objects are more fundamental- - is being proposed in this paper; It is well known that there is no mental experiment, which produced material. . . Similarly creation of matter from empty space as required in Steady State theory or in Bigbang is another such problem in the Cosmological counterpart. . . . In this paper we will see about CMB, how it is generated from stars and Galaxies around us. And here we show that NO Microwave background radiation was detected till now after excluding radiation from Stars and Galaxies. . . .

        Some complements from FQXi community. . . . .

        A

        Anton Lorenz Vrba wrote on May. 4, 2013 @ 13:43 GMT

        ....... I do love your last two sentences - that is why I am coming back.

        Author Satyavarapu Naga Parameswara Gupta replied on May. 6, 2013 @ 09:24 GMT

        . . . . We should use our minds to down to earth realistic thinking. There is no point in wasting our brains in total imagination which are never realities. It is something like showing, mixing of cartoon characters with normal people in movies or people entering into Game-space in virtual reality games or Firing antimatter into a black hole!!!. It is sheer a madness of such concepts going on in many fields like science, mathematics, computer IT etc. . . .

        B.

        Francis V wrote on May. 11, 2013 @ 02:05 GMT

        Well-presented argument about the absence of any explosion for a relic frequency to occur and the detail on collection of temperature data......

        C

        Robert Bennett wrote on May. 14, 2013 @ 18:26 GMT

        "Material objects are more fundamental"..... in other words "IT from Bit" is true.

        Author Satyavarapu Naga Parameswara Gupta replied on May. 14, 2013 @ 22:53 GMT

        1. It is well known that there is no mental experiment, which produced material.

        2. John Wheeler did not produce material from information.

        3. Information describes material properties. But a mere description of material properties does not produce material.

        4. There are Gods, Wizards, and Magicians, allegedly produced material from nowhere. But will that be a scientific experiment?

        D

        Hoang cao Hai wrote on Jun. 16, 2013 @ 16:22 GMT

        It from bit - where are bit come from?

        Author Satyavarapu Naga Parameswara Gupta replied on Jun. 17, 2013 @ 06:10 GMT

        ....And your question is like asking, -- which is first? Egg or Hen?-- in other words Matter is first or Information is first? Is that so? In reality there is no way that Matter comes from information.

        Matter is another form of Energy. Matter cannot be created from nothing. Any type of vacuum cannot produce matter. Matter is another form of energy. Energy is having many forms: Mechanical, Electrical, Heat, Magnetic and so on..

        E

        Antony Ryan wrote on Jun. 23, 2013 @ 22:08 GMT

        .....Either way your abstract argument based empirical evidence is strong given that "a mere description of material properties does not produce material". While of course materials do give information.

        I think you deserve a place in the final based on this alone. Concise - simple - but undeniable.

          Thanks Manuel.

          I enjoyed reading your essay, and the illustrations were very well done.

          I also have a problem with effectual causality, emerging from the Copenhagen interpretation and Wheeler's "participatory universe". The universe appears to have been around for a whole lot longer than man, or even of biology itself. So the universe must have gotten along quite well without man's presence, observation or intervention. To think that the evolution of the universe would be "on hold" just because some electron could not decide which way to go seems ridiculous.

          There is one point in your essay that I would like to comment on, and request your view in return. It is with the issue of gravity. Most amateur cosmologists, like ourselves, and even almost all professional cosmologists talk about the "force of gravity", essentially treating gravity as the defining (if not only) motive force in the evolution of the universe. In trying to clarify it in my own mind, I eventually leaned towards the view of the small minority of physicists, that gravity is really a pseudo-force; there is no attractive "force of gravity". General Relativity appears to show that, what we perceive as gravity, is actually an illusion created by the motion of matter through curved space; a function of an accelerated reference frame which we perceive as static. I was able to put this idea in words as follows: what we calculate as the force of gravity, is actually the hypothetical force which would have to exist, in order to produce the effects we see, if space were NOT curved.

          Thanks for your input.

          Royce

          Hello Akinbo.

          Yes I came across that equation in a 2005 paper on the thermodynamic basis for inflationary cosmology by Akinbo Ojo. I thought I recognized the name when I saw the post here. I read your paper a few years ago and your clear presentation of the problems inherent in Standard Big Bang (SBB) cosmology were a strong catalyst for the ideas which led up to the Zero Kelvin Big Bang (ZKBB) theory. I also liked the forest fire analogy.

          The one thing that really struck me was your referral to the assumption, by essentially all cosmologists, that the universe is "all there is". It was in questioning this assumption that got me thinking beyond the universe.

          It appeared to me that scientists were committing the same error which occurred prior to Hubble (the man not the telescope). Prior to Hubble's observations, there was a consensus among cosmologists who assumed that the Milky Way was the ENTIRE universe, just because they could not see any further. Now we can see further, but still with no end in sight, and so we (erroneously?) assume that what we see is all there is. It was in making the jump from a unitary universe, to our universe as part of a larger structure which enabled me to envision a different, more expansive, concept of the cosmos; the ZKBB model. Imagining structure beyond our universe results in a ZKBB model which allows simple answers to vexing problems e.g. dark energy, flatness problem etc., which are impossible to resolve within the SBB paradigm. "Man's vision should not be constrained by how far he can see".

          The ZKBB theory explains how and why the initial entropy is exactly zero, rather than infinity as in the SBB model. The thermodynamic equation is fine, but what physical mechanism produced the energy? Only e = ms^2 can do that, and 32.6% of a universe-size chunk of hydrogen being converted instantaneously into helium would unleash a LOT of energy; a really Big Bang. A hypothetical universe-scale quantum fluctuation, creating matter, energy and space out of "nothing" might appeal to some "visionary" cosmologists, but I'm afraid that it does not pass the common sense, reality test for me.

          As far as the temperature issue is concerned, that is why in the stoichiometry comparison, I calculated it as energy per baryon, which gives it a solid basis. Based on some specific heat calculations from NASA, trying to figure out the thermodynamics of the gas planets, I estimated the temperature of the Big Bang to be about 15 billion kelvin, with a large uncertainty factor.

          Thanks again for all your help.

          Best Wishes,

          Royce

          Thank you for checking out the essay.

          You asked ; Did any body measured Bigbang generated CMB till today?

          Ironically, it was Fred Hoyle who first compared the energy in the CMB with energy released from nuclear fusion; reference Burbidge and Hoyle, Ap.J. 509, L1.

          They noted that the energy released by the fusion of hydrogen to helium since the universe began was approximately equal to the energy measured in the CMB. Unfortunately, these authors were already committed to the Steady State Theory of the universe, and so could not accept a thermonuclear Big Bang, although that is obviously the most natural conclusion that one could come to. Instead, they theorized that the universe must be trillions of years old, and that the energy detected in the CMB must have come from the slow accumulation of energy produced by nuclear fusion in countless generations of stars during that time. It is unfortunate that sometimes our preconceived notions on what we know MUST BE true, overcomes our ability to see the "truth" and reality in the data that we look at. Similarly, Einstein could have predicted an expanding universe well before Hubble showed it through observation. Instead, he believed in a static universe, and inserted the cosmological constant to make sure that it was static. Unfortunately, even today, the progress of cosmology is controlled as much by sociology as it is by physics.

          Thanks again for your interest.

          Royce

          Dear Royce,

          I agree information is corruptible and that one day we will understand nature much more fully.

          Original angle on this!

          Best wishes,

          Antony

            I enjoyed your essay, Royce.

            I think your model has promise. There are some other facts you could link up with to strengthen your case, as well. You missed a big opportunity to characterize the ZKBB theory as the ultimate case of "It from Bit" because a single bit of information, in the form of a spin-flipped electron, sets all of cosmic evolution in motion.

            A lot of cosmologists are positing a cold dark end, but few are asking "What then?" and of course the idea a Big Bang could commence from an ultra-cold event is way cool that way. You might want to check out Steven Kauffmann's paper on a self-gravitational upper bound to energy concentrations, referenced on the FQXi community page. You will want to check out what Tom Ray has to say about fermionic condensates, when his essay posts.

            I liked this idea when you presented at CCC-2, and still find it appealing today. It could be built upon, to construct a robust theory. I submitted my essay on the last day, but it should eventually appear. FYI - Ram Gopal Vishwakarma, who was also at CCC-2, in in this year's contest as well.

            All the Best,

            Jonathan

              Royce,

              Please explain something for me. I completely fail to see any relevance of your essay, either in it's proposals or writing style, to the current community placing and score it's carrying.

              May I suggest it could be something to do with your accusation that researchers rarely question the basic validity of their model. Or perhaps your accusation about the corruptibility of information and erroneous interpretation. Both concept bound to challenge cherished assumptions and invite a backlash.

              Did you not consider for a moment that even if you did scrape into consideration for a prize the judges would almost certainly banish it to the outer reaches and ignore it? (at least on the evidence of my last two efforts).

              And do you realise the implications of your suggestions? If emitted time signals propagating across space can be considered as 'information', then you imply they are subject to tampering and perhaps even Doppler shifts from co-motion of propagating medium? Do you not realise that would change the observed rate of apparent time? You may wish to read my own essay to be reassured what a ridiculous suggestion any other option would be, mainstream doctrine or not.

              I see you also claim that; "we can use imagination to extrapolate physical processes forward and backwards in time and picture a "reality" at a different point in time, and be able to rationally explain how it got from here to there."

              Well assuming you mean that process can be "successfully" accomplished, I can assure you, having experimented with many theoretical physicists, that that statement has proven patently untrue for a significant part of the sample. I suggest the evidence shows that you are being over optimistic with respect to the intellectual development of our species. I made a prediction in my 2011 essay ('2020 Vision') that another 10 years may be needed. I have seen no evidence to modify that. Can you provide any?

              I regard your current position of some one and a half integers as entirely untenable and have to say I am applying an appropriate tenable score to do what I can put your upstart ideas in their proper place, or at least far closer to a logical reality and reason. You may do what you wish with my own and jolly I hope you do, after first reading it carefully of course.

              Peter

                Royce,

                If given the time and the wits to evaluate over 120 more entries, I have a month to try. My seemingly whimsical title, "It's good to be the king," is serious about our subject.

                Jim

                Thanks Jonathan. I was puzzled by your comment, "You missed a big opportunity...". On page 6 I wrote, "..imagine that at least once in eternity, one atom in 10^80 atoms underwent a spontaneous electron spin flip. This makes it the ultimate "bit to it", where a single atomic transition precipitated a universe". Perhaps you missed that statement in skimming the essay.

                I had already checked out Steve Kauffmann's paper in reviewing the regular FQXi blog that you had requested Zeeya Merali to start earlier this year. I have a problem with two assumptions that Kauffmann makes. First, he assumes (as do the great majority of physicists) that there is a "force of gravity" between objects in the universe ("..gravity exerts force on energy,.." Kauffmann). I tend to side with the few renegade physicists who consider gravity to be a "pseudo force". The way I interpret General Relativity, and what I believe Einstein showed, was that what we perceive as a gravitational force, is actually an optical illusion created by a misperceived reference frame, when viewing the motion of matter through curved space. On Earth, we unconsciously assume that what we are seeing is in a static rest frame, when actually the Earth's surface is on a spinning sphere (accelerated rest frame), orbiting the sun (accelerated rest frame), traveling around the Milky Way (accelerated rest frame). No wonder we have a problem interpreting what we see! The other issue I have is with his assumption of a static rest frame in his calculations. EVERYTHING in the universe is in motion relative to everything else. As stated above, if gravity is all about the motion of matter in space, then calculating anything in a static rest frame might make the math more simple, but it is ultimately unphysical and could be dangerously misleading.

                I will check out Tom Ray's essay when I see it posted.

                Ram's essay is a reprise of his recent paper in The Open Astronomy Journal, which I had already read. I am not that great at GR math so I had a problem following his argument. However I plan on writing to him separately to see how his GR interpretation squares with my take on GR gravity.

                Thanks again for the comments.

                Best Wishes,

                Royce

                Thanks for your review and comments Peter.

                First, I would like to correct one misinterpretation; my essay included an "observation", and not an "accusation", regarding physicists not questioning the model when dealing with observational data which does not "fit" the accepted paradigm. I noticed a surprising number of papers on arXiv where the conclusion included a statement like "These observations do not fit the prevailing, accepted model", or something to that effect, and then just leaving it at that.

                Secondly, regarding "scrape into consideration for a prize", for me this is not about winning an essay contest; it is irrelevant. My aim is to get these ideas out there for a critical review, by scientists far smarter than I. I don't expect members of the "establishment" to seriously consider my ideas or even waste their time reading the essay. However, I do hope that some young physicists, just starting their careers, and not wedded to the status quo, will take some of these ideas, explore them more thoroughly, and decide for themselves whether this alternative paradigm has any validity.

                Thirdly, regarding the time frame. I think that 10 years for a change in thinking is wildly optimistic. General Relativity is now almost 100 years old, and yet cosmologists still stick with Newtonian gravity, where gravity is a "force" between objects, rather than the Einsteinian motion of matter through curved space, which gives the illusion of a force. One also has to be realistic, and realize that mainstream physicists have 20, 30, 40 year academic careers tied to preserving the status quo, and vigorously "defending" the Lambda CDM paradigm, so any change will not come either easily or quickly, especially coming from a non-physicist. One also has to avoid being bitter about rejection. After all, this is about ideas and not people. It is not about winning or losing, but about working together in a search for the "truth", whatever that happens to be.

                Thanks again for your comments.

                Royce

                7 days later

                Howdy Royce,

                I just wanted to comment that instead of complaining, Peter is offering sage advice above. It takes an odd blend of tactics to weave oneself through the maze of conflicting ideals in a contest like this, but the main thing is that if you are derogatory or disparaging about the state of the scientific establishment, you best have a better idea to offer and leave a small attack surface for naysayers to pick at.

                One can talk about the Einstellung effect within hierarchical systems, and only offend a few scholars, but if you make an accusation that the establishment is being short sighted by not acknowledging a better model; that is not as likely to be well received in this venue, and a seasoned contest veteran like Peter is right to call you on it. Of course; you can see how well it works (or fails to work) for Elliot McGucken, whose Physics might be brilliant - but he comes across as crazed and offish.

                So it is tough sometimes to separate the notion of your idea, its presentation, and its relationship to the larger body of work or the mainstream of Physics. I have commented that this idea shows promise. But it is not yet a well-developed physical theory; at this point it is a well-formed toy model, which has the potential to become robust theory.

                All the Best,

                Jonathan

                Dear Royce,

                I like and agree with your realist philosophy -- " ... the universe has traveled on a single trajectory; events have occurred in a unique sequence, whether someone was there to measure them or not. To believe that the early universe had no reality, just because we were not there to measure it, seems the height of human arrogance" -- and I appreciate the cosmological model you have constructed.

                Nevertheless, you confuse me on a couple of key points. You say you reject the idea that the universe came from nothing, and yet your proposition of a frozen hydrogen atom at zeroK is also a representation of "nothing." That is, a singular ground state with no excitation potential (spin oriented relative to what?) is not a quantity measurable in principle and so not consistent with Wheeler's maxim that "a phenomenon is not real until it is observed."

                Further, though, by making the Bose-Einstein condensate fundamental, you create in principle a continuum of "nothing." There are no particles in BEC statistics that can be differentiated from the spacetime in which they interact, because an infinity of bosons can simultaneously occupy the same point and eventually will (the singularity problem).

                So I'm not so much disagreeing with what you wrote, as suggesting that it doesn't go far enough. That is, if one's aim is to show the least excited state in which reality can continually exist, change and evolve, meaning the world we observe which consists of things that can be differentiated, I think one must advance to a fermionic phase of superfluidity, where the Pauli Exclusion Principle saves us from an eternally static model. That's the subject of my essay, and I hope you get a chance to visit.

                Thanks for a good read and best wishes.

                Tom

                Dear Dr. Haynes,

                It was most interesting to see how you place the evolution of ZKBB in the context of the history of modern physics. A very informative and well written essay.

                At the beginning, you mention the nature of mind - how we reconstruct reality in our reflective minds. I write about this in some detail - how every species ultimately perceives the underlying reality in its own way, thus spinning its own Species Cosmos over evolutionary time.

                It would appear that the human mind is evolving in correlation with its field of observation, and changing contiguously with it - thus establishing the relationship of Bit and It as one of correlation.

                This is an important and daunting point - for it means that Information is in perpetual flux, and facts can never be absolutely nailed down, nor can they be extrapolated consistently to the same conclusions.

                I understand that you want to express ZKBB purely in terms of physics, but I think there's great value in also contextualizing physics in a cosmic and biological evolutionary paradigm. It can help us to new conclusions. An objection that could raised to your paradigm is that it begins with one electron and one proton, and that assuming stable particles as a point of origin naturally configures into the system a great tangle of parameters that only emerge later - in the context of the fully formed Cosmos.

                The solution to this might be to set the point of origin, as I do, in an omni-dimensional energy field, within which there must exist other cosmic systems - and to account for the primal particles of the original BEC in terms of this energy field's complete freedom in creating variant dimensional systems.

                The Big Bang is then replaced by the perpetual equilibrium shifts of this Field, offering many interesting conclusions concerning the nature of your primal cosmic fabric, and of particles themselves.

                There is no way to summarize this here, but hopefully you'll find as much to interest you in my essay as I found in yours.

                I look forward to hearing your views, and wish you all the best,

                John