Scott, a most excellent article, best I have read here yet. You should have gone more into the title theme but perhaps your limited to two pages. Thanks.
Fred,
Great work, I enjoyed Five Ages immensely. There remains however a future not being considered by the mainstream of cosmological science, in fact physicists seem quite oblivious to one particular scenario, and I can't help but liken this blindness to the thirty years after Hubble until the MBR was discovered in 1965, when so many held to the steady state theory purely because they didn't like the implications of time having a beginning. I noticed the image of the multiverse depicts a measure of irregularity to individual universes. Lately it seems the hottest topic is the structure of the greater multiverse, whether the breadth of universes includes those we expect of the many-worlds theory, or a much larger basin of possible universes where the laws of nature are different. In my own recent book I present a set of theories explaining why the many-worlds partition of universes is very special in any multiverse scenario, summarized as follows.
Firstly, an ultimate zero exists plainly in the direction of the future, rather than the past. The universe has been expanding in the direction of zero since time originated. And since 1998 we have known the expansion and so the momentum of time is accelerating toward what Caldwell himself referred to as the ultimate singularity. Accelerating expansion exposes a simple fact, that our universe follows a gradient of decreasing density, mass, and energy which invariably ends at zero. Regardless of the actual future of our own single universe, the gradient exists for every expanding universe. This gradient could not be more basic to physics.
Secondly, a state of absolute zero density and mass, curvature and gravity, temperature and energy, volume and space-time, is by no means a state of disorder. Physicists have been attempting to place zero in the past at the beginning of time since the acceptance of the big bang theory, due to intuitively and logically recognizing that a perfect zero is the most highly ordered state in all of nature. Zero is simply balance, and balance is a powerful kind of order. If expansion accelerates enough to cause a big rip type of future, which at this time is only absurdly deemed objectionable or ignored, then our universe will end stretched perfectly flat. A universe that was once "all matter no space" will end "all space and no matter".
Thirdly, in evaluating the simple fact that a bottom end zero to a fundamental gradient of density and heat exists in the direction of the future, then half of the second law is simply incorrect. Entropy increases along such a gradient, however, disorder cannot continually increase. Quite the opposite. The acknowledgement of the zero in our future reveals that a type of order exists beyond what we imagine to be disorder. What kind of order is increasing? The influence of zero is plainly evident in our environment, we just haven't learned yet to associate properties of balance and symmetry with the perfect symmetry of a zero in our future. The isotropy of the large-scale universe, the symmetry of a spiral galaxy, the consistency of the laws of physics in all regions of the observed universe, global expansion, and most importantly, electromagnetism, are all natural influences dictated by a future zero.
Fourthly, if an order exists beyond disorder, if time's arrow is not simply pointed at disorder, how do we rephrase the second law. Absolute zero is obviously the most balanced state in the space of all possibilities. If the arrow of time points at zero, then if follows that history of time traces back to increasing imbalance. If we simply refer to density as a positive property, above zero, then we designate the state at the beginning of time as a positive singularity. We then imagine the initial state of our universe like a pendulum swung all the way to one side. The implications of there existing a negative singularity are then obvious, and finally the big bang, as well as the entire evolution of time, transforms into a collision of two charged singularities which merge until time reaches zero.
So what then is a zero doing in our future? This cosmology ends with the astounding recognition that all states or configurations physically exist timelessly, because all are merely fragments of zero. Zero is like a whole pie that can be sliced up infinitely many ways, yet always remains one whole. Zero is the unchanging pendulum at rest. The void is not empty, nor is there any such thing as potential. Everything we know is less than zero, not more than nothing. Zero exists now, it has always existed, and it will always exist. It is the native state of the universe. The order in our past is like the order of white checkers divided apart from black checkers, all positives apart from all negatives, the two natural halves of the whole, which David Bohm called explicate order and I call grouping order. The order in our future is balance, symmetry, uniformity, externally simple yet internally complex, which David Bohm called implicate order, and I call symmetry order.
In this cosmological model, universes that abide by different laws of nature exist outside a narrowly defined special partition of the more probable worlds that travel strictly from the order of imbalance (grouping order) to the order of balance (symmetry order), which we recognize presently as the many-worlds of quantum theory. Comments are appreciated.
Sincerely,
Gevin Giorbran
Learning to See the Timeless Multiverse
