Some say the world will end in fire, some say in ice by James Lee Hoover

James Lee Hoover,

An informative and easy to read essay. You note that "the most pervasive natural force permeating all aspects of human experience is entropy. It perhaps has the largest impact on why the universe works and why it supports life." In this sense it is interesting that Lee Smolin* pointed out that

" Gravity subverts ideas about thermodynamics ... gravitationally bound systems are anti-thermodynamic."

*See my 2013 FQXi essay: Gravity and the Nature of Information

In this sense I found England's idea that entropy drives matter to acquire life-like physical properties interesting, but self-replication to support the goal of dissipating ever more energy is a big step. I'll study his paper.

You say "our pursuit of goals depends on the contextual occasions of life", which is compatible with neural-pathway-based dependence in my essay.

And your statement: "our bodies contain the stuff of the universe, elements born and reborn - sometimes, animate; sometimes in animate." brings to mind the Santayana quote I mentioned elsewhere:

"All of our sorrow is real, but the atoms of which we are made are indifferent."

Edwin Eugene Klingman

Hi Jim:

Thanks for reading my essay and thoughtful comments.I would greatly appreciate it if you could please provide your valuable rating to my essay.

I very much enjoyed reading your paper as well. Your paper asks the important questions and addresses all the key goals, purposes of human life beyond the mere survival of species on this planet earth. The mainstream science has to go a long way to see beyond the inanimate matter and biological-only evolution to recognize deeper cosmic and universal realities. I am particularly impressed by your expressed thoughts in your paper -

"So we use these piecemeal guides of mathematical laws, hoping, like a piece of life's puzzle, we can put them all together into a universal whole. We wonder about ourselves, a living, breathing scalar example of universal things that live and die, achieving this cycle on a much smaller and less cosmic scale than a galaxy, composed of stars, planets, black holes, and gases, or the entire universe."

The key theme of my paper is to provide a quantitative scientific model to address the above with empirical evidence and test-ability in future.

Best Regards

Avtar Singh

Dear Jim:

Thank you so much for your kind consideration and valuable feed back on my essay. I appreciate it deeply.

Best Regards

Avtar Singh

Jim:

Yes, I did rate your essay.

Thanks

Avtar

James

Thanks for this interesting essay. It was very great to hear about Englands ideas of a relation between the second law of thermodynamics and self reproduction. A nice essay.

Regards __________________ John-Erik

Dear Hoover,

I really enjoyed your essay and thought it was very important that you discussed England's dissipation driven adaptation which I think is a very insightful step forward in the right direction. If you have time, check out my essay. You might find the section "An Argument from Non-Equilibrium Thermodynamics" in my submission "Intention is Physical" interesting. I show how the emergence of intention and purpose, can be combined with England's idea for adaptation under one single set of idea. Thanks.

Natesh

Some say the world began in fire

Some say in ice

From what I've tasted of desire

There are many who would favor fire

But if the world would begin yet twice

I think that ice

Would also surely suffice...

Hi James

Well written and pertinent essay again. I've always has issues with entropy as it falls apart with the 're-ionization' we've found and in any recycling model, which is what I've shown wide evidence supports more consistently than the so called 'Concordance' Model. That means it would be increasing 'ice' before going through the hottest 'fire' (a quasar) before the next iteration, so even 'end' may not be the right concept!

However I like England's approach, and yours to discussing it. In particular I agree and have written about matter being condensed by shear (first discussed by the present Royal Astronomer in quasar jets in the 1960's). Did you know that the galaxy mass function has grown significantly over the last 12bn years?! I assign that to the fresh NEW matter condensed and mixed in with each re-ionization ('recycling').

Very nice essay, interesting and high up the bunch I think.

Best of luck

Peter

Thanks for the ping Jim..

Too tired to comment intelligently now, but I read your essay.

Comments tomorrow, most likely.

Best,

JJD

I'll start anew here..

I liked your essay, but I didn't know about England's work until reading it. The premise as stated seems a bit too simplistic, but a generalization of that idea could explain a lot. It tends to be the non-linear aspects of entropy that drive life's adaptation, Jim, because life tries to actively exploit the niches which are boundary regions, places of higher fractal dimension (roughness) and so on. The irregular regions are a haven for living creatures, because they provide a significant gradient over a short interval.

What most people don't realize is that non-linear entropy, and non-linear electrodynamics for that matter, creates islands of order amid the chaos - or rather regimes of order that alternate with chaotic states. To a degree; one can equate converging and diverging regions with purely real vs complex or hyper-complex states with terms that anti-commute or anti-associate as part of the equation. Anyhow; life exploits that to survive, finding a region where a proper mix of order and chaos prevails.

Did you know that if you overlay a bifurcation diagram on the Mandelbrot Set, it has a branching point every place the Set folds back on itself. But the really cool part is that the islands of order in the chaotic regions of the bifurcation map correspond precisely with the mini-Mandelbrots in the tail region of M. There is a place where all the trajectories seem to be drawn to converge at one point, and this location is called a Misiurewicz point. That place is of special interest to me, and is currently a subject of research. Would you believe a BEC formation quantum critical point and a Black Hole event horizon?

Of course; that explains the supervoid too.

All the Best,

Jonathan

Dear Jim Hoover,

Thank you for reading my essay and for your comments. I am posting my reply here also.

The Novae and Super Novae (Exploding stars) produce many elements and even new flavours of neutrinos. These things are covered in another paper. Here page length limitation is there. I could not cover many points. To give a basic idea about Dynamic Universe Model.....

Dynamic Universe Model doesn't use Relativity concepts. So the associated problems of SR and GR like singularities and Bigbang etc are not present. By considering the other 60 percent of Galaxies in the Universe including Blue shifted Galaxies and Quasars, the model doesn't restrict itself to only expanding Universe model.

For your information Dynamic Universe model is totally based on experimental results. Here in Dynamic Universe Model Space is Space and time is time in cosmology level or in any level. In the classical general relativity, space and time are convertible in to each other.

Many papers and books on Dynamic Universe Model were published by the author on unsolved problems of present day Physics, for example 'Absolute Rest frame of reference is not necessary' (1994) , 'Multiple bending of light ray can create many images for one Galaxy: in our dynamic universe', About "SITA" simulations, 'Missing mass in Galaxy is NOT required', "New mathematics tensors without Differential and Integral equations", "Information, Reality and Relics of Cosmic Microwave Background", "Dynamic Universe Model explains the Discrepancies of Very-Long-Baseline Interferometry Observations.", in 2015 'Explaining Formation of Astronomical Jets Using Dynamic Universe Model, 'Explaining Pioneer anomaly', 'Explaining Near luminal velocities in Astronomical jets', 'Observation of super luminal neutrinos', 'Process of quenching in Galaxies due to formation of hole at the center of Galaxy, as its central densemass dries up', "Dynamic Universe Model Predicts the Trajectory of New Horizons Satellite Going to Pluto" etc., are some more papers from the Dynamic Universe model. Four Books also were published. Book1 shows Dynamic Universe Model is singularity free and body to collision free, Book 2, and Book 3 are explanation of equations of Dynamic Universe model. Book 4 deals about prediction and finding of Blue shifted Galaxies in the universe.

With axioms like... No Isotropy; No Homogeneity; No Space-time continuum; Non-uniform density of matter(Universe is lumpy); No singularities; No collisions between bodies; No Blackholes; No warm holes; No Bigbang; No repulsion between distant Galaxies; Non-empty Universe; No imaginary or negative time axis; No imaginary X, Y, Z axes; No differential and Integral Equations mathematically; No General Relativity and Model does not reduce to General Relativity on any condition; No Creation of matter like Bigbang or steady-state models; No many mini Bigbangs; No Missing Mass; No Dark matter; No Dark energy; No Bigbang generated CMB detected; No Multi-verses etc.

Many predictions of Dynamic Universe Model came true, like Blue shifted Galaxies and no dark matter. Dynamic Universe Model gave many results otherwise difficult to explain

Have a look at my essay on Dynamic Universe Model and its blog also where all my books and papers are available for free downloading...

http://vaksdynamicuniversemodel.blogspot.in/

Best wishes to your essay.

For your blessings please................

=snp. gupta

Hi, James, I enjoyed your nicely written essay. And the emphasis in England's theory, I truly think the clue to the question is around these ideas.

> Do the forces of energy given off by plasma, a fourth stage of matter, in fact, about 99% of normal matter in the universe, replicate and restructure in the form of dark matter?

Wow, interesting conjecture!

Thanks! ines.

More so this..

The Mandelbrot Set is maximally asymmetric. It is the very embodiment of broken symmetry, where one end behaves as a source and the other as a sink. All the variations appearing at the cusp are extinguished at the tail, where vibration stops and absolute zero temperature is modeled at (-2, 0i). The cusp and the tail point in the same direction. The supervoid has a location in M near (-1.25, 0i), where a bulb opens up as a projection of the 'main' disc.

The spot I'm most interested in is at about (-1.543689, 0i), which is a Misiurewicz point. This is the spot described in my last post.

Warm Regards,

Jonathan

This is elaborated here..

A little Math problem..

Enjoy!

JJD

Dear James Lee Hoover,

Hope you will spend some more time on Dynamic Universe Model...

Best Regards

=snp.gupta

Dear James Lee,

Thank you for the lessons I learned from your essay.

Indeed survival (and procreation) is for living agants the most important thing, but beside of that we are also worrying about the WHY, one of the reasons of this contest.

You had a very clear goal in your work : The goal of the Universe our reality.

In my perception it is "outside" our emergent reality that we have to search for the WHY.

I hope that you will find some time to read/comment and rate my essay "The Purpose of Life. (I rated your essay a 7).

Best regards and awaiting your comment

Wilhelmus de Wilde

This dissipation driven adaptation idea is a fascinating topic. It is hard to see how life can be organising itself in order to dissipate heat more effectively. After all, a dark rock sitting in the sunshine dissipates heat very well. However Jeremy England's calculations seem to suggest that the idea is right.

This seems to leave open the question of what physical mechanism is making this happen. Thermodynamics says that entropy must increase but is there a law of thermodynamics that says a system will adapt to do it more efficiently? How can this be shown in general terms rather than just by examples?

Dear James,

Very interesting essay, high dialectic and deep ontology of the "LifeWorld" (E.Husserl). This is what is needed today to overcome the total crisis of understanding in science and society. Successes in the Сontest! Sincerely, Vladimir

Dear Jim

I enjoyed your essay - its quiet tone and range, and its being refreshingly well-written and also on-topic (unlike mine) contributed to that. I tried to read England's paper following your endorsement, but it was too technical for my immediate understanding. I would like to see his simulations. I get the feeling it describes how local causal molecular interactions can evolve into self-replicating living cells via a faster route than thought possible.

As to dark matter In my Beautiful Universe Model dark energy and matter may be simply due to the internal pressure of mutually repulsive Universal lattice nodes.

Cheers

Vladimir