A Physicist\'s View of the Universe: A Philosophical Approach by Israel Omar Perez

Israel,

That is a very well thought out and absorbingly written essay. I am pretty much in full agreement, with one minor caveat about the nature of space. I think you bounce up against this, with the idea that space is necessarily infinite, but by arguing it hasn't any physical properties and must not exist outside of reference to the matter filling it, you overlook the consequences of nothing, ie. the properties of zero.

If space is nothing, it cannot be bound and thus is infinite, but it also, lacking physical properties, cannot be bent, curved, expanded, contracted, etc. This means that it is fundamentally flat. It is perfect equilibrium. All mass and energy, to the extent they are composed of opposing elements, are disequilibrium to this equilibrium. The fluctuations of the vacuum. So space is not only infinite, it is the absolute.

As for time, while I fully agree with your view, I think there is one point that is largely overlooked about the nature of time. Since I've made this argument many times on the FQXi blogs and was it the subject of my entry in the first FQXi contest, I'm posting this from one of those discussions: http://www.fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/813

The present doesn't move from past to future. The changing configuration of the present turns the future into the past. We don't travel the fourth dimension from yesterday to tomorrow. Tomorrow becomes yesterday because the earth rotates. Time is an effect of activity, not the fundamental basis for it.

Because time is an effect of motion, there cannot be a dimensionless point in time without actually freezing the motion creating time, thus a particle cannot be isolated from its activity, whether it's an electron or a car. A dimensionless point in time would be like taking a picture with the shutter speed set at zero.

Understanding time as going from past events to future makes sense if we examine these events in the past tense, but if we consider an event as it is occurring, it quickly recedes into the past, as succeeding events replace it and are then replaced to recede into the past as well.

We view past events as cause of future ones, but total input into any event cannot be determined prior to its occurrence. It is this sum potential which is cause and the events which actually occur that are effect. Thus future is cause and past is effect.

The concept of free will is meaningless in terms of the present moving from past to future, because we only exist at the moment of the present and cannot change the past, or affect the future. On the other hand, with time as an effect of motion, our input is integral to our circumstance. We affect our circumstance, as it affects us.

As an effect of motion, time is similar to temperature, being the sequence of changing configuration, as temperature is the level of activity. If similar clocks record different rates of change in different circumstances, it is due to the level of activity being increased or decreased and thus speeded up or slowed down. Not that these clocks travel different time vectors.

We don't travel into that probabilistic future of multiworlds. It is the actual collapsing of probabilities which is time. Future is cause. Past is effect.

Dear Israel,

An elegantly and beautifully written essay. I agree with almost everything that you say.

In item 15, you offer as one possibility, the idea that "M spontaneously came into being at total rest, and spontaneously started to move." I think your preferred argument is that motion has always existed, and will never end. In my theory, if the original 'substance' is the gravitational field, it's appearance at total rest would never allow it to do anything but collapse more tightly into itself. Therefore the assumption is that it 'hit the ground running'. The negative potential of gravity was counterbalanced by the positive kinetic energy of the 'explosion', allowing the possibility of a 'free lunch' universe that required no 'surplus' energy be created out of 'nothing'.

Recently fqxi'er Ray Munroe made me aware of Nottales 'scale invariance' which is equivalent to 'motion invariance', which in some ways eliminates 'time' until symmetry breaks. I have addressed this in my essay, which I hope you will find time to read. I think I have dealt with issues you are concerned with-- http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/799

As for item 16, especially option (2), I think that you might enjoy reading my previous essay in the 'Ultimate Limits of Physics' contest-- http://www.fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/561

Finally, item 17 states that if the whole universe is made up of one single entity, there are no arguments to propose dark energy and dark matter. I think I have a counter argument to that in my current essay.

I look forward to any response you might have.

Edwin Eugene Klingman

John

Thank you for your interest in my essay. First, I will comment something about the two first paragraphs and then the rest.

The tenets in which my essay is based are essentially: (1) the principle of no contradiction and (2) the idea that everything that exists must be material. The first principle (among other reasons) urged me to emphasize the importance of item (f) of my essay, so that when one speaks in ordinary language one cannot contradicts oneself. Therefore, in my essay, I am not considering that space is nothing, because this goes against my second tenet. If space exists it must be made of some substance, if a field exists it must be made of some substance, and so on and so forth. Space under the principles I have stated cannot be nothing and at the same time exists. If you have checked the history of the number zero this is one of the arguments that ancient thinkers used to argue "How can zero exists if it represents vacuum, absence, nothing, etc.". Thus, in my proposal space is something made up of matter. Current theories consider that space is nothing and then is filled with matter and fields in agreement with your last words in your last paragraph

With respect to its infiniteness. I cannot guarantee that the material space is infinite, but the line of reasoning that I have followed led me to conclude that it must be infinite. Possibly based on other principles it will lead me to conclude that is finite.Since I am uncertain about this, I left it as one of the fundamental problems that physics should address.

With respect to time I agree with you in the fifth paragraph. A temporal point in current theories represents a moment of zero time.

You also mentioned the following: we only exist at the moment of the present... this line of reasoning seems to me as if time where a line constituted of events, like an empty film rolling which is filled with every occurring event, so in this sense one can talk about past, present and future. But this is exactly what I doubt and this is why I have raised the problem of causality as a fundamental problem. If the universe started with the Big Bang one is forced to ask: what caused the beginning of space and time? If there was not a Big Bang then things occur not by causes but by chance. And so we are being cheated by our psychological perception of time which is justified by memory.Someone who has no memory has no notion of time, but this is another story that I would like to treat in another moment.

I hope you are satisfied with my comments

cheers

Dear Edwin

Thank you for your comments and your kindly words about my work. I have read yours and I can see that we have several points in common.

To be honest I think that I require more background to fully understand your theory in particular the physical relevance of the fields C and G. You argue that the gravitational field is the only real thing. But from the perspective of my essay your field is just a state of matter. On the contrary, you may argue that the matter of my article can be seen as the manifestation of your field, so I think were are talking about the same idea with different names.

On the other hand, as you could figure out from my essay, I believe that the universe was not created out of nothing and out of no motion. So I am denying the existence of both total rest and total emptiness (seeing total emptiness as a synonymous of nothing). And when you talk about "explosion" I think that you have in mind that there was a Big Bang. Under my proposal the Big Bang is not fully acknowledged as something that really took place 13.7 billion of years ago, since this contradicts the idea that the universe has always existed, with no beginning and no end. If an explosion occurred, to me, it was just an explosion like the explosion of a supernova but it does not represent the beginning of space and time. Please see my previous post where I discuss something about this point with John Merryman.

In relation to item 16, I will take a look of your essay.

And for item 17, I think that the proposal of the existence of dark matter and dark energy resulted from one faulty assumption. In Newtonian dynamics, and no less in general relativity, space is seen as a container of material objects and the only mass that is accounted for in the calculations of these theories is the mass of the bodies (inertial or gravitational), but physicists neglect the mass of space, because they believe that space is not a material continuum, in fact, they know that vacuum is not empty after all, but they think that vacuum is just radiation or energy filling empty space, particularly, from gravitational and electromagnetic sources. When they compare the predictions with measurements, the results do not match and therefore they are forced to either propose dark matter and dark energy or manipulate the cosmological constant. Thus, if one assumes that space is a material continuum the physics is not the way current theories believe. If you are interested in the meaning of this, please read references 18-23 from my essay.

So if you have any comment, let me know.

Israel

Israel,

Thank you for your detailed response. I'm not saying space is something more than what occupies it(though possibly something less), but consider the consequences of an infinite, eternal universe: All energy would settle into an equilibrium state and the only action would be inherent to the energy in that state, such that any disequilibrium or instability would cause it to collapse to a degree the density would cause it to heat up and radiate back out as perturbations around this equilibrium. The result being an effectively overall flat space. It is only when space is defined as somehow finite that there can be some overall curvature to it. An infinite universe is flat because any curvature effect generated by the energy, no matter how large, is ultimately local and will average out against a larger context.

It should be noted though, that while CMBR is 2.73k, scientists have achieved temperatures down to a billionth of a degree, kelvin. So possibly space is not fully defined by the energy occupying it, since it seems the energy is as often defined by the space, but that's a bit of a chicken or egg issue. The real point is whether the universe began as a point and expanded out.

As for time, memory is a function of spatial perspective as well. An objective perspective is a contradiction. Multiple perspectives tend to neutralize one another, so an infinity of perspectives would be none. I think the same applies to temporal narrative as well. Often people have different views of situations which do not correspond. There is the assumption that there should be one true reality, but this reality is alot of intersecting perspectives. An example is that groups of people define themselves in terms of a narrative story. Religions and nations being the prime examples, but they end up conflicting with other group narratives in the larger cultural realm. The fact is that people's lives weave together as a tapestry in which the elements provide balance to one another, rather than are braided together in a single rope going in one direction. Time is this cumulative effect, not a singular direction. In fact, memories are often recycled and changed to create the current view of reality, much like substance is constantly changing.

I do think physics will eventually have to address some of its subconscious assumptions before it can go much further in understanding reality

1. Point N° 7: "time still flows because time is the intrinsic motion and change of the universe, motion or change can never stop".

It is great that motion never stops because it could stop if decided upon. Time is relative to space; thus your description of time is a description of relative or spatial time. There is also reference time, which can exist independently of space, but that time would be irrelevant for a particular space if the particular space was out of existence and therefore could no longer give clues to measure its time.

2. Point N° 7: "And a ruler is a material object we use to compare and delimit a particular length, without M, space would be meaningless too, for there would be nothing to relate the sizes. For such reason space itself should be a material continuum even if there were no ponderable objects to refer".

Space could exist without M, but such space would be irrelevant from within the void because space serves to locate matter. Matter here is first of all a set of points. Points precede lengths. Points can be singular, referential. You seem to behave in an affine space (with length-like concepts) as if you were in a purely vector space (not relying on reference points).

3. Point N° 10: "In a similar way to the points of a circumference in which any arbitrarily chosen point can be the beginning of the circumference, in the same way occurs with the universe, the beginning or end is mere convention to delimit two major events".

The lesson in this illustration of a circumference seems to be that the universe has no beginning. I disagree.

A circumference is a derived notion, the underlying notions being the reference point and any relative point. Thus, the circumference is a set of points emerging from a reference point. The beginning of the circumference is the center. Thus, the lesson of your illustration is that the Beginning can give way to new entities of which He is not direct part.

4. N° 12: "It follows that the universe must be infinite in extension". Here you say the universe is infinite. I agree because if our thinking allows us to perceive infinity, there could also be One with the ability to materialize what we merely aspire to reach. Power precedes intelligence.

5. N° 13: "From the previous reflections it follows that there is only one universe." There could be a spiritual universe next to a physical universe with no obvious link between the two universes.

It is possible for a given entity to switch states without motion. Geometric conformations of molecules show the same molecule in different states. We cannot obtain one conformation from another conformation through motion. Such molecular states just happen to be. Therefore entities could switch states from one reality to the other without necessarily moving.

Dear John

Thank you for your reply. First I would like to make very clear something about my proposal. I shall try to be as clear as possible and I hope we do not have semantical problems. What I did was essentially based on "common sense" and my own experience in life and physics, but no more. Unfortunately, the size of the essay is limited and I had to fit this requirement, so many other important things were not published. I did a very deep reflexion of the universe and the essay was developed to be independent of any of the laws established by a particular theory (i.e. Newtonian dynamics, quantum mechanics, general relativity, string theory, electrodynamics, etc.) In this sense, I got rid of some of the prejudices that some of these theories create in our minds. Like for instance, the idea of the existence of atoms, the principle of energy conservation, the principle of relativity, the principle of equivalence, etc. So I started analyzing what I feel and observe from real life. What has been written there is pure philosophy that I expect most of the readers agree with. I am not being bias following a particular principle or approach from an established physical theory but by following the laws of logic (the principle of no contradiction, etc.).So, based on this, my reasonings led me to conclude that the universe has no beginning and no end in time and that space must be made up of something. If these conclusions contradicts the Big Bang theory or the principles of Quantum Mechanics or General relativity. Then we only have two options, or my reasonings and principles are wrong or some of the principles of these theories are wrong. I believe that if we really want to make a revolution in physics we have to make a radical change, this is why I proceeded like this.

Keeping this in mind I would make some comments about your post, in particular, the first two paragraphs. When you talk about flat or curved space, you are bearing in mind that the general relativity reflects the reality of space-time. When this theory is used in Cosmology it lead us to conclude that the universe had a beginning of time and a singularity (the Big Bang). But here I raised the question: (1) what was before the Big Bang, or (2) what caused the explosion? My proposal says that there is no beginning of time and therefore I am saying that there is something wrong with either the cosmological model or relativity, but if one believes in relativity because experiments support it one should doubt that my principles are correct.Also, you may reply to (1) that this question makes no sense since space and time started to exist at that moment, but what about (2), does it make sense?

I know a pair of theories that explain the same observed phenomena that the general relativity explains, although their principles and their philosophy are quite different, and therefore, they suggest us that perhaps there is no Big Bang, so, would you be able to entertain that the predictions of the general relativity are flawed? I hope you have a very open mind to consider this. If you are interested you may want to see this article:C. I. Christov, Math. Comput. Simul. 80, 91-101 (2009)

The apparent deflection of light rays (curvature of space) predicted by the General relativity can be seen by other approaches as a mere change of the refractive index of space (vacuum), provided that space is seen as a simple dielectric [Please see: Ye Hing-Hao and Lin Qiang: Inhomogeneous Vacuum: An Alternative Interpretation of Curved Spacetime}, Chin. Phys. Lett. 25, 1571 (2008)].

Similarly, I know a couple of theories that predict the same results as ordinary quantum mechanics, but they are not well known, one of them is Bohmnian quantum mechanics. So, depending on the choice of the theory you use you will arrived at different interpretations of reality.

As for time I agree with you, in particular in the following: Time is this cumulative effect, not a singular direction. I like this.

Israel

Point N° 7:

"Well, from my view space is made up of matter, therefore matter serves to locate matter. My view of space is as a material continuum which follows the laws of fluid mechanics. And I think that points do not precede length. A length is not constituted of points, but of infinitesimal lengths. This is so because a point is adimensional, that is, its length is zero. Therefore something that has a length cannot be constituted of things that do not have length."

Let us assume a length is not constituted of points, but of infinitesimal lengths. Let us consider two such infinitesimal lengths. An obvious operation would be to place one length next to the other, the result being a new length. The question then arises: where does the first length end and where does the second length begin? It is safe to say the first length ends where the second one starts, because the lengths are contiguous. Therefore, the end of the first length is the beginning of the second length. The two lengths intersect. The intersection has no length because the two lengths are contiguous. Thus the intersection of two contiguous lengths is a point. Here, points are part of lengths. In other words lengths are made up of points. Therefore something that has a length can be described relative to some reference: points.

Dear Israel,

I enjoyed reading your essay, which shows that profound reasonings can be made without being prisoner of a particular mathematical representation of the Universe. I am interested myself in this aspect, and I developed a mathematical structure that can be used to say general things without being tied to a particular theory. Anyway, my essay is about something else.

Best wishes,

Cristi

"Time is relative to space; thus your description of time is a description of relative or spatial time. There is also reference time, which can exist independently of space.

Forgive me but it is not clear to me what you mean by "time is relative to space" and what you mean by "reference time" Could you please rewrite or extend your comments."

It is commonly agreed: c = d/t or c t = d

Where d is relative to location (space), c is assumed constant and t is time. Therefore, there is a relationship between time and a given measure of space. If matter M is observed moving in a 3-dimension space, then there is variation of d (length-or-space-related variable) therefore variation of time t (since the speed c is assumed constant). If we force ourselves within a 1-dimension space to observe matter M, time viewed from the 1-dimension space could be immobile if we assume the movement happens within a 2-dimension hyperplane (in the 1-dimension space, we have: d = 0) and c is constant. Therefore, time in 3-dimension space is reference time because it can flow even when time in 1-dimension space does not flow.

"Time is relative to space; thus your description of time is a description of relative or spatial time. There is also reference time, which can exist independently of space.

Forgive me but it is not clear to me what you mean by "time is relative to space" and what you mean by "reference time" Could you please rewrite or extend your comments."

It is commonly agreed: c = d/t or c t = d

Where d is relative to location (space), c is assumed constant and t is time. Therefore, there is a relationship between time and a given measure of space. If matter M is observed moving in a 3-dimension space, then there is variation of d (length-or-space-related variable) therefore variation of time t (since the speed c is assumed constant). If we force ourselves within a 1-dimension space to observe matter M, time viewed from the 1-dimension space could be immobile if we assume the movement happens within a 2-dimension hyperplane (in the 1-dimension space, we have: d = 0) and c is constant. Therefore, time in 3-dimension space is reference time because it can flow even when time in 1-dimension space does not flow.

Point N° 10

"The main idea here is that what I did suggests that the universe has no beginning of time. If you do not agree with this I would be grateful if you let me know your arguments."

Concerning the time when the universe began, I will quote a well circulated publication showing the universe was once a singularity.

If there strong indication about this, I can say the universe started at that time it was a singularity. The circular reasoning saying "what happened before the singularity?" is not relevant. If you were asked about your birth date and you insisted upon knowing your complete genealogy in order to recognize the date given by your mother, such reasoning would be circular, exaggerated. In the same way a very small universe was the Genesis of significant developments.

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"Evidence Pointing to a Beginning

All the individual stars you see are in the Milky Way galaxy. Until the 1920's, that seemed to be the only galaxy. You probably know, though, that observations with larger telescopes have since proved otherwise. Our universe contains at least 50,000,000,000 galaxies. We do not mean 50 billion stars--but at least 50 billion galaxies, each with billions of stars like our sun. Yet it was not the staggering quantity of huge galaxies that shook scientific beliefs in the 1920's. It was that they are all in motion.

Astronomers discovered a remarkable fact: When galactic light was passed through a prism, the light waves were seen to be stretched, indicating motion away from us at great speed. The more distant a galaxy, the faster it appeared to be receding. That points to an expanding universe!

Even if we are neither professional astronomers nor amateurs, we can see that an expanding universe would have profound implications about our past--and perhaps our personal future too. Something must have started the process--a force powerful enough to overcome the immense gravity of the entire universe. You have good reason to ask, 'What could be the source of such dynamic energy?'

Although most scientists trace the universe back to a very small, dense beginning (a singularity), we cannot avoid this key issue: "If at some point in the past, the Universe was once close to a singular state of infinitely small size and infinite density, we have to ask what was there before and what was outside the Universe. . . . We have to face the problem of a Beginning."--Sir Bernard Lovell.

This implies more than just a source of vast energy. Foresight and intelligence are also needed because the rate of expansion seems very finely tuned. "If the Universe had expanded one million millionth part faster," said Lovell, "then all the material in the Universe would have dispersed by now. . . . And if it had been a million millionth part slower, then gravitational forces would have caused the Universe to collapse within the first thousand million years or so of its existence. Again, there would have been no long-lived stars and no life."

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Dear Israel,

My essay will support your opinion concerning the point/line issue. Are you aware that Loty's position corresponds to presently mandatory mathematics?

Thank you for the link you gave to me elsewhere. Did you already comment on Peter Jackson's essay? Aren't his ideas in part similar to yours?

Eckard

Dear Israel

I am impressed and inspired by your excellent essay, which may be no surprise as I found it almost the precise philosophical equivalent of my own, rather more mundane and down to earth offering.

I agree with almost all, though may now be able to add an interesting 1.3 to your Universe derivation options. Actually this has similarities to the 'big crunch', and it is that it is effectively recycled. I can expand if you wish but it's part of the below;

Your reference to Hau & Quiang was very helpful as I'd failed to find and cite their work, which is very remiss as you'll see if you can find time to read my essay (2020 vision).

I belive it meets your a-f requirements. What I hope I can also do however is provide the key to proving your postulate, and the one matter you did not fully square up to - the constancy of 'c' irrespective of the motion of the observer, which is why AE had to 'stipulate' no 'M field' for SR.

This allows both reality and locality, providing a quantum mechanism for SR, similarly to Hau, and also Stokes so long ago. I suspect you may be one of the few who may understand the discrete field model proposed. (which also leads to the recycled universe).

I feel far less alone now. I'd very much appreciate your views.

Many thanks,

Peter Jackson