The Impossibility for the Universe to (Not) Exist by Anton W.M. Biermans

Essay Abstract

Curious about the nature of reality, I ended up thinking about the reality of nature.

Looking at physics for answers, what struck me was how easily its laws are discarded when it interferes with our theories.

The reason to ignore laws of physics when it suits us seems to be that we don't understand their necessity from an engineering point of view, why a universe needs those particular laws if it is to create itself.

This, however, leads to inconsistencies, problems which as they are of our own making, cannot be solved, but instead generate useless theories of ever-increasing complexity.

The essay aims to show that no violations of laws of physics are necessary to rationally understand the magic, the mechanics of our world, though to follow the tale will take some effort, imagination and a willingness to let go of widely accepted, but essentially pre-Copernican ideas.

Author Bio

I studied chemistry at the Eindhoven University of Technology, terminated halfway between BSc and MSc, and, by self-study, familiarized myself with physics to what I suppose is an undergraduate to BS level.

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UPDATE 1 - STRONG FORCE

If particles also are the product of their interactions, if their properties or identity can change if they're subjected to extreme conditions, then the question is whether we can infer from collider experiments whether baryons (protons and neutrons) are built out of quarks, or if we only create quarks as they collide.

That QED treats the proton as a fundamental, rather than a composite particle, but nonetheless can predict experimental results to an extreme accuracy, indicates that quark properties are not separately observed until the colliding energy is high enough.

If a particle only exist if and when its presence is expressed in identifiable interactions, can be observed or inferred from effects, then quarks may very well appear only in the extreme conditions at high energy collisions and other violent events like supernovae.

In that case we cannot say that baryons are built out of quarks.

If particles have to create themselves out of nothing, without any outside assistance, and have nothing to know with how to go about creating one another, then they'd hardly pop up in a flash with all properties fine-tuned to the last detail as the Big Bang tale has it.

Instead, we may expect a trial-and-error process: whatever combination of particles, properties, exchange frequencies, mass ratio's, spins and kinds of behavior works in certain circumstances survives, as long as these circumstances last.

Though as particles create each other, they also create the environment to prosper in, once they master the trick to keep existing, they cannot but keep contracting, evolving in steps, through many detours, eventually to objects of ever-increasing mass density.

Every step towards a denser particle configuration further reduces their freedom to act as they like: if particle properties, exchange frequencies are to survive, then destructively interfering frequencies (or associated virtual particles) must be got rid of, radiated away.

As their conditions change as they evolve, they have to adjust their behavior, properties or identity to fit the new conditions they themselves create: as an ongoing contraction to ever-increasing density may require the destruction of earlier, less dense configurations, this evolution can proceed in violent starts and fits as in supernovae.

The conclusion is that quarks and the 2nd and 3rd generation particles of the Standard Model then aren't necessarily the bricks all matter is built out of.

Their self-designed environment then is an ecosystem which by favoring the creation of identical particles, guarantees a continuous, inexhaustible supply of virtual particles which as they keep contracting, eventually will become real ones, 'educated' as to how to act, what frequency to oscillate at by interacting with their real counterparts.

If a real particle by colliding with its virtual sibling (virtual in this context meaning that it hasn't yet got its frequency right) can decay into a virtual one, promoting the virtual one to a real one, then this is a two-way equilibrium reaction.

This, by the way, begs the question whether this kind of virtual particles form the non-baryonic, so-called 'dark matter' which causes the observed unexpectedly high velocities of hydrogen gas in large orbits about galaxies, a velocity which might also depend on the definiteness of the galaxy's mass center.

However this may be, as the energy of virtual particles can have all values, their transition to real ones doesn't leave a recognizable footprint radiation, unlike the H H = He reaction, which likewise is an equilibrium reaction.

To the right, this reaction seems to preserve, to secure the existence of hydrogen, as if without the existence of helium, it might decay any time into protons and electrons.

If particle species are to create one another, then they must find those frequencies and those (discrete) kinds of behavior which sustain their energy exchange -somewhat like how when a piano key is pressed, other strings begin to resonate at related frequencies.

The difference is that in our 'piano-universe', no key is pressed by some outside hand: the piano, its strings only take form as they start to resonate -which is not unlike the Munchhausen tale of the man who pulls himself by his hair out of a swamp.

As the frequency particles exchange energy at depends on their distance, velocity and spin, to keep 'resonating', to maintain their exchange, requires their distance and spin, for example, to be restricted to certain values, to be quantified, so they can absorb energy by leaping to another distance or spin state rather than change their identity.

The freedom to deviate from the ideal frequencies, distances, spins etc, then would be determined by the interval within which they are stable particles.

As the breadth of an energy interval, its indefiniteness is smaller at higher energies, particles have less freedom to deviate from a more strictly prescribed behavior as their (rest) energy is higher.

If when two particles are nearer, their universes overlap more precisely so look more exactly the same, then their properties converge as their distance decreases.

To keep contracting, to form objects of a greater density then requires particle to become more identical -which agrees with the observation (blackbody radiation) that there are increasingly more energy levels to occupy per energy interval at higher energies.

The higher their energy, the more decimals it takes to express differences between them, the more they become identical, the less freedom they have to behave as they like, the more rigid, the greater the inertia of the object they form, the more it is frozen in time.

The result is that particles don't evolve from one generation to the next, to ever more exotic species or, but that instead they loose more individuality, more freedom as the mass density of the object they're part of increases: the higher the density, the more identical, the less interesting they become.

If the (rest) energy of a neutron is higher than that of a proton and much higher than that of an electron, and it repeats in every cycle all rates of change up to the level corresponding to the neutron state, then it periodically, in every cycle for a short time is a proton as well as an electron.

The neutron then runs through all lower-energy identities, be it that it is for a shorter time a lower-energy particle as its rest energy is higher, so it is far more like a proton than it is an electron.

Neutrons and protons then can knit each other to atomic nuclei by exchanging electrons, by alternating their identity, their distance, spin and motion adjusted in such a manner that, within a large but limited temperature scale, their resonance is preserved.

This is why a neutron outside the nucleus environment where it can less easily maintain an exchange at the frequency corresponding to its neutron identity, decays into a proton and an electron, an electron which then becomes a more autonomous particle.

If the force between particles is as much the product as the source of their interactions so a force cannot be either attractive or repulsive, then we don't need the so-called 'strong' force to overcome any electric repulsion between the baryons in atomic nuclei.

That most atomic nuclei are very stable is because the bonds between their baryons have been forged in a very hot smithy, so it takes a high energy to break them up.

If in high-energy collisions, baryons fragment in groups of frequencies we associate with quark pairs and trio's, then the observations ('asymptotic freedom') that, unlike other particles, they seem to attract each other more strongly as they are farther apart and hence cannot be separated, may have another explanation.

The problem is that we have decided that the charge of quarks has a constant magnitude and sign, so we derive their interaction distance, the range of the so-called 'strong' force, from the energy of the interaction assuming their charge to be the source, constant.

However, if the force between them cannot be either attractive or repulsive, if their interaction energy determines their distance and vice versa, if we cannot determine one independently from the other, then we cannot assert that their attraction increases as they are farther apart.

Alternatively, if we create quarks by colliding baryons, then the quarks within a newly created pair or trio mainly exchange energy within that pair or trio: the pairs and trio's recede far too fast from each other to set up a significant energy exchange between the pairs and trio's.

The consequence is that the interaction energy between the quarks of a pair or trio becomes almost independent of their distance within the pair or trio, hence they seem to be confined within the pair or trio -before they reassemble into ordinary hadrons, as their quark properties vanish and their individual existence is dissolved.

Quarks, then, are not the building stones of other particles, so baryons aren't composites but are fundamental particles which only exist within certain conditions.

It may come as a disappointment that QCD describes particles which aren't very useful or interesting in the scheme of things, to understand nature's mechanics.

UPDATE 2 - TIME: CAUSE AND EFFECT

Just as there's no point in space more special than any other (Copernicus), no point in time is more unique than any other: that would only be so if there'd be time outside the universe, a watch on the wrist of some outside Authority who sees the universe evolve as a whole, who sees generations come and go and who's right now looking at us. However, how can we rhyme the apparently causal sequence of events with the idea that every observer is at the center of his universe in space as well as in time: what can it possibly mean to be at the center of time?

If the universe contains all time within, and a space distance is a time distance, clocks must show an earlier time as they are more distant, and, to be able to run behind the clock of the observer, run slower. The question whether we see these clocks as they were in the past or not depends on our assumptions. If we believe in the Big Bang tale according to which all clocks were created at a single event in the past, showing the same time, then we'd infer from the time they show (their evolutionary phase) and their pace (redshift), that they must be receding faster as they are more distant, so this universe would expand.

However, if particles create themselves out of each other in an evolutionary process at different times, then we'd see a particle 'run' at a slower pace, shifted farther to red, in an earlier phase of its evolution, but not necessarily as it was in a more distant past.

If processes are observed to proceed slower as they happen farther away, then we see the galaxy shifted farther to red as it is more distant if it is at rest with respect to us, any receding (nearing) velocity increasing (decreasing) its redshift.

The redshift of galaxies then doesn't necessarily prove that the universe expands: only if it could evolve as a whole, their redshift would indicate an expansion.

Unlike the Big Bang tale which assumes all matter and energy to have been created in a flash, to forever after remain constant, a self-creating universe wouldn't know how to stop creating, so here energy and spacetime keep being created, be it that probably as much disappears from the interaction horizon of the observer as is created inside of it. So when the Big Bang hypothesis came in dire straits when, contrary to expectations, gravity proved not to slow down the expansion of the universe after all, another myth was launched, the so-called 'dark energy' to explain why distant galaxies instead of decelerating, seem to accelerate away from us.

This is not to say that we live in Hoyle's Steady State universe: like the Bang tale, it treats the universe as an object, so it likewise fails to offer any idea about the origin of all matter and energy at all, about how it might be created. (Hoyle et al. do offer an alternative explanation about the origin of the 2.78 ° K cosmic background radiation in Further astrophysical quantities expected in a quasi-steady state Universe, F. Hoyle et al., Astron. Astrophys. 289, 729-739 (1994), p 732). Whereas we might expect radio sources in a steady state universe to be distributed uniformly, this is not observed: they appear more numerous at large distances. However, if new galaxies keep being created everywhere, at all distances, but we see on average more galaxies in an earlier evolutionary phase at larger distances, and radio sources are associated with some early phase, then this might explain their distribution.

If the universe as a whole cannot follow some particular time direction, if there's no clock outside of it to determine in an absolute sense the time sequence of inside events, then the speed of light is not a velocity, but a property of spacetime. As a space distance is a time distance, we obviously measure a duration between the emission of a photon and its absorption elsewhere. However, this doesn't mean that it takes time for the photon to travel that distance: it bridges the spacetime distance between emitter and receiver in no time at all. According to the source particle, the state of the absorbing particle changes at the time it emits the photon, whereas according to the absorbing particle, the state of the emitter only changes as it absorbs the photon. Though to us the transmission seems to consist of three independent events, the emission of the photon, its voyage and its subsequent absorption, to the photon itself it is a single event: it cannot be emitted before it is absorbed elsewhere. Since the concerned particles by exchanging energy keep each other informed about each other's state, they can agree on the time of the emission and the photon frequency. Though we evidently measure a duration equal to the distance between the photon source and the receiver, that doesn't mean that the transmission isn't instantaneous.

So whereas Einstein was right in equating a space distance with a time distance, Newton was right in assuming that light is transmitted instantaneously. However, since Einstein and contemporaries came to believe that the universe must've started with a bang, they had to assume that particles only are the source of their interactions (or vice versa: because we assume this, we have to believe in a bang-kind of scenario), and hence we must see them, the galaxies they form as they were in the past, so their light must have taken a longer time to reach us as they are more distant. Unfortunately, we confuse a time distance with a duration: though we can measure a space or time distance as a duration, they are entirely different things. The confusion evidently originates in the medieval notion that there's a clock outside the universe, that the universe follows some particular time direction as a whole.

This, by the way, means that in EPR experiments where photons are entangled, having opposite spins, the observer with his detection of one photon doesn't affect the spin of the other photon (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPR_paradox 8-feb-2011). As the photon source continuously exchanges energy with everything in its environment it is informed about the orientation of the polarisation filter of the detector. It then produces both photons with opposite spins, the one which eventually is detected with a fitting spin, and the other photon with an opposite spin. So it isn't that a photon as it passes the filter chooses that polarization so it can pass and be detected, and at that time sends a signal to its sibling elsewhere to tell it what spin it must assume. As the source knows the orientation of the filter even before it emits the photons, it produces both photons with the appropriate polarizations. So except for the continuous, unobservable energy exchange between the source particles and those of the setup, there's no spooky action at distance, and no information is transmitted faster than light. For the same reason photons don't annihilate in the two-split interference experiment: as the source knows where they would annihilate, it doesn't even produce them: to the source the dark areas of the projection screen just don't exist in that wavelength.

Anyhow, we can only speak about the past of a galaxy if there would be a clock outside the universe, a calendar to note its evolutionary progress, if the galaxy has an autonomous existence, independent from any interaction it may be involved in. However, if particles create one another, then so do the galaxies they form, so they exist only as far as their particles exchange energy, particles which as they contract, emit the radiation that makes galaxies observable. Like the images on a TV screen disappear when we cut off the juice, particles would vanish, stop to exist if we could cut off their continuous energy exchange, an exchange which, unlike a net energy transmission, is unobservable for its obviousness since without it, nothing would exist. For particles to exist is an activity, a verb, not a noun: it would only be a passive state if they would've been created from the outside, if the universe would have a cause.

If galaxies power each other by exchanging energy, then the state a galaxy is observed in depends on its interactions with everything in its environment, including the observer and his galaxy. If in that case we, our galaxy affect the properties we observe the galaxy to have, then we cannot say that we see it as it was in the past: as a space distance is a time distance we see it as it is at present, to us. Saying that we see it as it was in the past, is like when two rockets A and B near each other with an equal velocity with respect to the stars, A says that since he sees B's clock running faster than his own clock, B must see his, A's clock run slower than his own.

The light of a light source shifts to red, to longer wavelengths as the source sits in a stronger gravitational field and the field at the observer is weaker, so since a longer wavelength is a less definite wavelength, more information seems to get lost. If the light from some distant galaxy shifts to longer wavelengths as it leaves the galaxy's field, to contract to shorter wavelengths as it enters the field of the Milky Way or Earth, then that doesn't mean that the information the light looses as it leaves the galaxy is retrieved again, that we see the galaxy as it was when its light departed -assuming for a moment that light has a velocity, which it has not. Such retrieval only would be possible (approximately) if there wouldn't be other galaxies between us and the source galaxy and the wide environment of the light's path, if, at the same distance as we see it now, the galaxy would be our nearest neighbor -though in that case the physical distance between both galaxies, their interactions would be quite different from what they are now. As the (rest) energy of a particle is the superposition of all frequencies it exchanges energy at with every other particle within its interaction horizon, two particles observe each other's energy to decrease as their distance increases: the superposition unravels. Similarly, the larger the distance a galaxy is observed from, the more the superposition of frequencies unravels, until only the longest wavelengths remain. So though the light seems to loose information as it leaves the galaxy's field, all galaxies in a large radius about the source and the Milky Way, in a large area about its path affect the information it carries, subtracting and adding information to the light. Though it seems obvious that a galaxy looks different from different directions and distances, this is why it looks, why it is different to different observers: if particles create one another, determine each other's properties and behavior, then different neighbors, a different mass distribution in different directions must make the galaxy different in different directions: there's nothing random about how it looks.

So the moral of the story is that we cannot speak about the galaxy: doing so is saying that it has properties, an existence which at least partly (half-pregnant) is independent of any interaction, that is: that it has been created by some outside intervention. If so, then we obviously also cannot speak about the past of the galaxy, so we can only understand it if we acknowledge that, like its particles, galaxies are as much the source as the product of their interactions so it has no single, absolutely objective shape. If the galaxy, like every one of its particles, exists as a superposition of exchanges, of evolutionary phases, phases which are spread not only in time, but also in space, the earliest phases observable, existing presently to observers at the largest distances, then we cannot speak about the past of a galaxy as something which has vanished from the universe -a notion which, again, implicitly refers to some outside clock. That a nearby observer sees the galaxy in its most recent state, does not mean that the accidental time he lives and looks at it is more special than any other time: this would only be the case if the universe as a whole could evolve in time.

The next question is whether this view on time rhymes with causality, or, rather, if the concept of causality is compatible with nature's logic, whether it fits the facts. If energy is a fractal quantity, if it keeps being created or keeps creating itself at every point, then so is spacetime: if every point in spacetime and in time is like a tiny spring from which wells continuous, very tiny flows of water in all directions, expanding the distance between events and places in space as well as in time, then this weakens the chain linking causes to effects. In fact, if every point of every link expands in a process which is entirely independent of whatever events the chain is supposed to connect, then the relation between these events eventually evaporates as the chain grows, expands.

So though we can distinguish causes from effects, any cause event eventually peters out, having no reality outside some borders in space and time. If a hurricane in Houston caused by a butterfly in Cancun is cancelled if someone in Acapulco sneezes at the right time, if a later event determines the effects of an earlier cause, if we cannot recognize every detail of a cause event in every detail of all of its effects, then how can we speak about the chain of cause and effect? If no point in space nor time is more unique than any other, then events at places between these cities have an autonomy which defies causes to translate compulsory into specific, preordained effects: any chain between a cause and effect event is undermined by the uncertainty principle as it allows random events to insert themselves between its links, adding and subtracting information, affecting what happens elsewhere.

If there can be no clock outside the universe so it doesn't even make sense to ask what in an absolute sense precedes what, what is cause of what, then we should stop thinking in such terms. If any photon transmission has to be approved by the receiver if it is to proceed, then this makes the receiver as much the cause of the transmission as the emitter. As by heating something we can increase the probability of a photon transmission, we certainly can cause an event, its absorption, to happen elsewhere, though it still requires the faculty and consent of another particle to absorb it. If we could put a light source inside a spherical mirror which would reflect all light of all wavelengths completely, then we wouldn't be able to ignite the light source -though if we could isolate it completely from the rest of the universe, we would've annihilated it.

If we associate a greater distance or smaller energy of a particle with an earlier phase or time, and the particle by emitting a photon reduces its energy exchange with the observer, as if it recedes, moves in a 'backwards' time direction, whereas the absorbing particle seems to near the observer, becoming more 'recent', then this might be why we see (the effects of) a photon emission in time before (the effects of) its absorption elsewhere. The direction in which the energy of objects increases corresponds to our forwards time direction: as they inevitably are coupled to processes which have the opposite effect so can be said to proceed in the opposite time direction, then in this universe time flows in both directions, even though we move in one direction. As the universe as a whole cannot move in one particular time direction and we cannot ask what in an absolute sense precedes what, then terms like past and future in nature have not the significance they have to us. If ultimately we cannot say that our universe as a whole, as seen from the inside, moves, evolves in one direction rather than the other, then instead of saying that hydrogen is built out of a proton and an electron, we can say as well that it is a decayed neutron. If particles obey the same laws of physics, always, everywhere, then these laws already predict, or contain as potencies, all possible particle properties, so as every kind of particle helps create conditions, design a spacetime they prosper in, they will, eventually be created, and so perpetuate the existence of their species, of creation itself.

Dear basubeda

As to your question whether there's: "perpetual chaos; so that the Universe recreates itself perpetually, or a one time phenomenon that lasts till the Universe reaches thermal equilibrium": As the universe doesn't exist as a whole, it cannot be in any particular state whatsoever: in a self-creating universe, particles have to create themselves out of each other, so they exist, have reality only as far as they interact, exchange energy. A particle, then, does not exist outside of its interactions: if we could cut off its energy exchange with all particles within its interaction horizon, we would annihilate it. The assumption that the universe as a whole exists, has a physical reality, is the single, most damaging misconception in physics as it places the origin of all matter and energy outside of it, and reflects a purely classical, metaphysical approach to nature. In this assumption, we make nature's mechanics incomprehensible, ascribing particles supernatural powers and properties, as if they passively have been created by some outside intervention. From my own struggle I know how very hard it is to even grasp, let alone accept this very fundamental idea that the universe only exist as seen from within, to an observer who physically is part of it.

As to: "opposites cancel each other": If we were to define the 'nothingness' we assume everything to come out of, as an infinite reservoir of potencies, which all together cancel, then we might, perhaps, associate this 'reservoir' with empty spacetime.

Such an (approximately) empty spacetime, however, cannot exist without its opposite, the extremely rigid state in the black-hole like objects at the center of galaxies. Whereas the freedom for (virtual) particles to behave as they like is at maximum in the empty spacetime between clusters of galaxies, a freedom so great that all different kinds of behavior cancel and no particles become real, that is, manage to set up an energy exchange to prolong their existence, in holes there's almost no freedom at all.

As to the: "one-time phenomenon that lasts till the Universe reaches thermal equilibrium": As there's no time outside the universe, nor can the universe exist, be in any particular state as a whole, in our out of equilibrium, this question makes no sense. This only would make sense if we would live in a Big Bang universe, which we certainly don't.

As to: "Obviously you are advocating a closed Universe. But everything closed must be enclosed within something": There's no need for something to enclose the universe in as it doesn't exist as a whole, as 'seen' from the outside. As a self-creating universe wouldn't know how to stop creating, there's no inside border to limit that creation either.

As to: "The term past is often misunderstood and misused.": I agree, see UPDATE 2 - TIME, which may help clear some confusion about "the" past. Why there's no "outside clock the pace of which doesn't depend on what happens inside of it and so doesn't belong to the universe itself"? Well, if only the universe itself can produce time, then how can we say that as a whole it evolves in time? Doesn't this suggest that there already exists some kind of time before/outside the universe? That is: something which exists completely independent of whatever may or may not pop up in it? That time seems to proceed in equal increments, that we experience time to pass at a constant pace is hard to investigate if there's no parallel time, no independent, outside clock we can use to compare the pace of inside processes with. Anyhow, if it depends on the strength of the gravitational field an event happens in and is observed from at what pace it is observed to proceed, then we cannot say that time passes everywhere at the same pace. This is only possible if there's a Clock outside the universe which directs the pace of everything inside of it, if the universe passively has been created by some Outside Intervention, if there exists already a Frame of Reference before, outside of it.

As to: "Planck's law is applicable only at Planck scale": No, Planck's law just acknowledges the obvious fact that energy and time define, power each other. Nature itself doesn't show any special phenomena at the so-called 'Planck-scale'. This misconception is, again, the consequence of the assumption that particles have been made to specifications by some outside creator. As in that case they only can be the source of their interactions, this leads to infinite interaction energies at infinitesimal distances. If, however, they also are the product of their interactions so the force between them cannot be either attractive or repulsive, then it requires energy to decrease their distance, to increase the frequency they exchange energy at. Since (the indefiniteness in) their distance is inversely proportional to their exchange frequency, their distance only decreases if we give them the energy to do so.

As to: "We also use inertia and equivalence principle. But these are different from your interpretation. We also hold gravity as a composite force that stabilizes - not contracts.":

Well, the electric repulsion between two protons is said to be about 10^38 times greater than gravity. However, if a force only can be as great as the counterforce it is able to evoke, and this counterforce only can come from the inertia of the particle, so that force brings to expression its mass, in a manner which is indistinguishable from how it reacts to being accelerated by an elevator, for example, then to say that one force is much stronger than the other makes no sense at all. What we call 'electromagnetic' phenomena actually refer to events in which the energy exchange of a particle changes. Whereas its exchange is spherically symmetric when at rest, by accelerating it we disturb this equilibrium, affecting the directions in which its mass is expressed. Besides, the exchange by means of which particles secure each other's properties which I've called 'strong gravity' and which is as attractive as it is repulsive, should not be confused with the weak gravity involved in the combined contraction to mass concentrations and the expansion of spacetime between them.

Dear Basudeba.

Thank you very much for your questions as they help me formulate and explain what I mean. As my ideas have been developing over a long time (and still evolve), to me some conclusions have become so self-evident that I sometimes forget that they must be very strange to the unprepared reader. My problem is how to formulate these new insights in a language which in many of its terms refers to concepts which to me have become so far outdated as to loose any significance. For example, is nature really so inefficient as to create mass-challenged particles, Higgs particles to provide them with mass, and subsequently gravitons to express that mass? In a universe where particles create each other's mass, express and preserve it by exchanging the energy corresponding to that mass, we don't need Higgs nor gravitons -nor string theory, for that matter. To me these theories are the product of sloppy reasoning, of the mixture of truths, half-truths and inconsistencies physics has become. The problem of the reader is that to see whether my ideas make sense, he needs to distantiate himself from the ideas he's familiar with, ideas which though they're generally accepted, nevertheless may be wrong. Just like when you fit new clothes, you have to shed the old ones, you simply have to get used to the new ideas by trying them out, by looking at the world through this new kind of spectacles.

---"If it does not exist as a whole, how does it exist? By whole if you mean the new creations, then we can never know the whole? How does one define or describe or theorize something that cannot be known? Is there any corroborative evidence to what you describe?"---

---"We do not believe that theory should exist independent of observation."---

I obviously cannot prove that the universe doesn't exist as a whole, I can only investigate what 'to exist' may mean. The universe is not an object which can be observed from the outside, not so much because it is impossible for an observer to depart his universe to look at it from the outside (if there can be such a thing), but rather because any observation requires the observer to physically interact with the observed. This means that the particles the observer is made out of, the laws of physics they obey, must be the same as that of what he observes. Whereas a magnet, for example, doesn't exist to a blind observer who's made out of cork, it does to a blind iron observer -though this example is a bit off as the cork and magnet consist of the same fundamental particles. It is because the observer is made of the same stuff and laws as everything in his universe, that he cannot leave it without disintegrating, annihilating himself. A hypothetical visitor from an alien universe obeying completely different laws of physics, built from stuff which is unable to physically interact with the matter here, cannot in any way observe our universe, nor can he and his universe exist to us. He also wouldn't be able to find us as our universes don't share a common space. Since any universe produces its own spacetime, there's no reference frame which can encompass both universes. Some alien made out of the same stuff as us, would be incorporated into our universe as soon as he observes it, so he also cannot observe it objectively, without being affected by it. So there also is no frame of reference outside our universe we can use to describe what happens inside of it. The total of everything which is and may happen inside of it, including space and time, physically must add to zero if the universe is to obey conservation laws, that is, if it is to exist without having been created by some outside intervention. So though it has no physical reality as a whole, things inside of it exist to each other only as far as they interact; 'to exist' is 'to interact'.

---"This violates the principle of causality, which is proved true from everyday experience."---

One problem is that since the properties, the existence of macroscopic objects doesn't seem to depend on anything, we assume the same to hold for their particles. However, a quantum particle coincides with its function: it cannot be distinguished from its action. It has no superfluous, irrelevant properties like the color and shine of a bullet are to its function and which make the bullet visible. This is unlike a fundamental particle the existence of which only can be inferred from its effects as this is the only rationale for it to exist in the first place. Particles are as much the cause as the effect of their interactions, agreeing with the fact that a self-creating universe obviously can have no cause.

If we understand something only if we can reduce it to a cause, and we can understand this cause only as the effect of a preceding cause etcetera, a chain of cause and effect to which ends at some primordial cause which, as it cannot be reduced to a previous cause, by definition cannot be understood, then causality ultimately cannot explain anything. So a universe in which particles create one another requires a circular way of reasoning: though it exposes and quantifies relations between things, it doesn't waste time on useless questions as to what is cause of what -never mind that we certainly can cause events to happen. To understand a universe which has no cause, a perpetuum mobile which yields as much as it costs, requires us to learn to handle its paradoxical logic, to get used to it. Instead of indulging in a righteous indignation and reject ideas which seem weird, we need to reconsider our own logic, whether it's fits nature's logic -which is what we try to unravel. Our idea of what is and isn't logical doesn't spring from some platonic truth which transcends our world: it is but the product of a trial-and-error evolution which at best produces a poor reflection of nature's logic. After all, the progeny of those of our distant ancestors who didn't see the logic of putting perfectly edible seeds and tubers in mud, we today can visit in the zoo.

---"Can you give one example of self creating mechanism, where "particles have to create themselves out of each other". Can any body create himself or herself.---

Mathematically, such a creation out of nothing is like a zero splitting itself into positive and negative numbers: though their sum always remains zero, if their sign would refer to the electric charge of particles, then these 'numbers' exist to each other only as far as they communicate that property. If the universe would contain only a single charged particle so it cannot express that charge, then it cannot be charged itself, so a property, any property, is something which exists only in its sharing, its exchange. To insist that it nonetheless is charged, that charge exists whether it is expressed or not is an art physics at present has mastered to perfection. Though macroscopic objects don't seem to do anything for a living, as if 'to exist' is a state which requires no particular action, no work, their particles only exist to each other as long as they exchange energy. They would vanish instantaneously if we could cut off their exchange, just like an image on a TV screen vanishes if we pull its plug. So whereas the grand total of everything inside the universe remains nil so it has no physical reality as a whole, things inside of it do physically exist to each other, for as long as they manage to keep communicating their existence. My essay is but an examination of what 'to exist' may mean.

Regards, Anton

Dear Tejinder,

Thank you for your question.

I was mainly concerned with understanding the non-causal character of quantum mechanics and its implications, and thus far have neglected specific questions such as yours, which are interesting and important. I'll try to find an answer but as I need to refresh my memory with a peek in Feynmans Lectures, this may take some time.

If the energy of a particle, the frequency it oscillates at is composed of all frequencies it exchanges energy at with every particle within its interaction horizon, then the behavior or state of the observed particle depends on their behavior. As their behavior cannot be investigated without affecting it, we cannot ascertain, predict the effects of that behavior on the observed particle, that is, predict the amplitude for this or that reaction, agreeing with the idea that particles also are the product of their environment. Though particles are more independent from each other, have more freedom to behave as they 'like', for random, unrestricted kinds of actions as their distance is greater and/or the frequency they exchange energy at is lower, the effects of many such capers can add up to unpredictable behavior of the particle we observe. This is not to say that its state necessarily is indefinite as long as we leave it alone: only its specific reaction to our observation interaction is undetermined before that observation, that is, the manner in which the expression of its properties changes as we interfere with it. Another reason for the unpredictability of any individual interaction is that we cannot know in what phase the observed and the test particle are in as they interact. So it is not as if the particle itself doesn't 'know' what state it is in, that it takes our intervention to let it make a choice, adapt one state or the other. This does not mean that we cannot force a particle to make a choice for one spin direction or the other when it had no spin before. So I suspect that the expression 'collapse of the wave function' doesn't reflect what's happening.

Another point is that whereas the energy we measure a particle to have encompasses all the frequencies it exchanges energy at with everything within its universe, its 'equation' value, to an observing particle, however, the energy of the observed particle consists of the frequency they exchange energy at. So if no observer is more unique than any other, his/its observation being no truer, having no precedence above the observation of any other observer/observing particle, then perhaps the 'many worlds' interpretation which is associated with this 'collapse' refers to the different realities the observed particle has according to all observing particles which contribute to its energy. If with our measuring interaction we affect the exchange of the particle, then we affect all particles it shares its energy with, so there would be no need for 'parallel universes', each of which is supposed to accommodate one of all the possible actions of the observer and one of all possible reactions of the particle. I hope to come back to this issue soon.

Best regards, Anton

Dear Dan,

I admit that I haven't understood you essay completely because my knowledge of GR is very limited. I do see that your FPC in some respects is equivalent to a Self-Creating Universe. However, as in a SCU the grand total of everything in it, including space and time itself, remains nil, it cannot have a beginning as a whole, so if with cosmic time you mean the time since the bang, then you've lost me. A universe which as a whole has a beginning must have been created by some outside intervention, is a caused universe. The flaw of causality, however, is that if we understand something only if we can reduce it to a cause, and we can understand this cause only as the effect of a preceding cause etcetera, to end at some primordial cause which cannot be reduced to a previous cause, then causality ultimately cannot explain anything. For short: a universe which as a whole has a beginning cannot by definition be understood rationally, so any bigbang scenario must be wrong, however much observations seem to be in favor of it. You propose that

"mass-energy doesn't actually "fall into" a BH, as orthodox BH theory indicates, because it ceases to have any distinguishable meaning at the event horizons. [..] as it expands the mass-energy that was lost to BH's is eventually recovered in the new cycle"-

I don't believe that there's mass/energy lost to BH's. As it eats a star, the mass of the BH increases, its energy exchange with all other objects within its interaction horizon, so there's no mass lost, taken out of circulation, whereas the energy which is radiated away as the star is consumed likewise isn't lost. To explain what I mean, I'm afraid I have to sketch the mechanism of self-creation (see also the UPDATE 1 post at my thread).

If in a cloud of gas particles behave in such a manner that they always feel an equally strong force from all directions, then the force on a particle from its own cloud can only increase if it increases as much from the opposite direction, from neighboring clouds, so stars in statu nascendi only can contract in concert. The force between the particles within the stars then increases as much as it does between the stars. The result is that the energy of the particles increases, the frequency they exchange energy at, so the mass of the stars should increase as well. Though this agrees with the uncertainty principle, this is contrary to official lore according to which the mass of the cloud decreases as it contracts to a star, which agrees with the (false) assumption that the mass of particles doesn't depend on their interactions but only is their source. Whereas before contracting, the position of the mass centers of the clouds was ill-defined so the force between the clouds is weak, as they contract to stars the distance between the (mass centers of the) stars becomes less indefinite. As the force between them increases (and is as attractive as it is repulsive), their mass increases. However, if the gravitational field also increases as a cloud contracts to a stare and the field is an area of contracted spacetime, then as measured within their field, the distance between the stars in statu nascendi increases, expanding as they contract, so there's spacetime created as well as energy. So any increase, any creation of mass/energy IS a creation of a proportional quantity of spacetime: one cannot increase, be created without the other, so the contraction of matter, the creation of mass/energy powers the creation, the expansion of the universe and vice versa. However, since we calculate their distance from their positions with respect to surrounding stars, we find a smaller value than if we could measure their distance within their field, so we underestimate their mass. Though the effect of this expansion is small at the scale of stars and even galaxies, it is observable in the motion of clusters of galaxies with respect to each other, in the continuous creation of spacetime between them. This expansion then isn't a remnant of the velocity particles got at the hypothetic bigbang, but is powered by the contraction, the creation of mass/energy inside the clusters, in galaxies and stars, by the increase of the mass of more or less virtual particles to real ones as they contract to stars. This also explains why the expansion of the universe doesn't decelerate under the influence of gravity as the bigbang scenario predicts, but keeps accelerating. So in a SCU there's no need for dark energy. It is because we assume the mass of particles to be only the source of their interactions that we've come to believe that stars burn their mass, loose mass even if we ignore things like solar flares. It is the energy exchange between the particles, combined with the fact that an energy increase tends to conserve itself in time (unlike a decrease), which powers this combined contraction and expansion. Since in a SCU particles (stars, galaxies ...) move, contract in such a manner that the force they feel is equal from all directions, this automatically produces the homogeneity and isotropy we see, so here there's no need for the far-fetched cosmic inflation hypothesis the bigbang tale needs to appear to make sense itself.

Though a galaxy contracts in the sense that its stars slowly spiral towards its central BH, it is not that it starts out with a definite, finite quantity of matter as the bigbang tale has it. As stars go down the galaxy's 'drain', new particles 'crystallize' (UPDATE 1) where the gravitational field is strong enough to separate real particles from their more virtual siblings, restricting their behavior, forcing them to assume more discreet properties, energies. Whereas virtual particles have much freedom to act as they like, making their position and behavior less definite so they only interact weakly, keeping their mass small, to become real particles, to increase their rest energy to the required level, they must coordinate their behavior, limit their energy exchange to certain discrete values. By radiating the associated, disorderly frequencies, they loose much of the freedom they had as virtual particles. The same happens in as their star implodes to a neutron star or BH, though as their freedom of behavior then becomes much more limited, they'll radiate away much more energy at the supernova, in much higher frequencies.

So it is not that a part of the mass which disappears into a hole is converted to energy: this radiation actually destroys order elsewhere, while the mass of the hole increases, its energy exchange with all other masses. In the water-drain picture of a galaxy, real particles (water) then are created, separated from virtual particles (vapor) where the field is strong enough, contracting to stars, forming a 'head of foam' circling around the drain, new ones appearing as old ones go down the drain.

Whereas the rest energy of particles increases as they subsequently are part of a star, neutron star, BH, IMBH and SMBH, there's an equal energy flow in the opposite direction as in every subsequent step they radiate more disorder away. This radiation keeps empty space empty, restoring its potencies. So we have a spectrum with SMBH's at one end, where the rest energy of particles increases towards its center, the energy difference between neighboring particles smaller as their density is greater, without ever becoming zero as the hole keeps absorbing mass, at the same time by radiating disorder away, keeping empty spacetime empty. As the oscillation of the particles in a BH is more stringently coordinated as its mass is greater, it may behave in many respect as a Bose Einstein condensate. Anyhow, as far as I can see, there's no need for a cycle in this perpetuum-mobile like self-creation process. A cycle suggests (bigbang) that there's a finite quantity to go around, which it is not in a SCU which cannot stop creating itself.

The problem of black holes is that they are the product of our belief that particles have been created, that they only are the cause, the source of their interactions, which they would be in a bigbang universe: only then the force between them can become infinite. As in a SCU the force between them also is the product of their interactions, it never can become infinite, so there's no singularity at the center of what for this reason I've called Black-Hole Like Objects (BHLO's) in my essay. So there also is no infinite curvature of spacetime: though there's no limit to the curvature, to the mass and mass density of a BHLO, it always is finite: there are no singularities in a SCU. Black holes then are the product of our naïve belief that the mass of particles depends on nothing, that it only is the source of the force between them, and hence becomes infinite at infinitesimal distances.

If (as I argued in the UPDATE 2 post at my thread), the speed of light isn't a velocity but rather a property of spacetime, then we cannot say that photons cannot escape from behind the 'event horizon' of the BH, so it cannot have such a horizon either. If it would have a horizon, then gravitons similarly wouldn't be able to escape the hole and express the mass inside of it as gravity outside of it, implying a zero horizon radius. Another objection is that if the hole's field contains mass (as I argue in my essay), then the Schwarzschild equation for the horizon radius should contain a term for the distance the hole is observed from, which it doesn't. Perhaps this field mass of objects, consisting of the more or less virtual (that is: non-baryonic) particles discussed above causes the effects we summarize as dark matter?

So to me terms like 'black/white hole', 'dark energy/matter' and 'singularities' belong to the language of fairy tales, not physics. A problem with calling a quantity infinite(simal) is that this requires the speaker to omit to state with respect to what that quantity is infinite(simal). As any measurement is a comparison to some arbitrarily chosen unit, we should abstain from using these terms in physics. If they pop up in a text, then you know for sure that you've entered wonderland.

Our present confusion comes from the assumption that the mass of an object is an objective, interaction-independent property, that we treat it like a mathematical quantity, a number the size of which is undisputed, that is, doesn't depend on the 'calculation' it is used in. Though we can use the mass 'number' of an object in our equations, we too easily forget that the physical quantity mass only exists in its expression, in the interactions between objects and not as something which has a reality on its own. This is why I insist that the universe as a whole has no physical reality, why a statement like "The mass of the Universe is 1.8x10^54 kg" doesn't mean anything. As to your question

-"is the universe in a continual mode of creation? I came to the conclusion that it had to be cyclical due to 1) constancy of a finite velocity of light for all observers in the universe, 2) the simplest explanation for redshift is cosmic expansion, 3) the isotropic distribution of unusual astronomical objects only at high red-shift"-

As indicated above, the speed of light is not a velocity (see UPDATE 2). As to the redshift argument, I have argued above that this doesn't necessarily prove any expansion (other arguments can be found in the (short) chapter 1.2 'Mass: a quantum mechanical definition' at my Quantumgravity.nl site). As to 3) and "the two separate sets of empirical correlations between SMBHs and their galaxies", I have no idea as yet. As a universe in which particles have to create each other paints a totally different picture of the universe, many phenomena (CMB, BH's, quasars, GRB's, dark energy and matter) need to be rethought before we may accept observations as proof for one hypothesis or the other.

-"The SMC views the CMB as the signature remnant of the expansion at the beginning of time, but has not adequately been able to explain the events leading to this expansion, especially the singularity. Our model incorporates the singularity as a limit in cosmic time of the previous cycle. " -

As to the CMB, this indeed is no fossil, remnant radiation but is produced at present (see UPDATE 2) As to the origin of the CMB, it obviously cannot explain any singularity if there are none. As to "not adequately been able to explain the events leading to this expansion", this seems an understatement as the bigbang model doesn't explain anything at all: it only tries to infer the state we get if we extrapolate back in time. That is, if we assume that the particles have been created at the bang with all their properties they have today, if they only are the source of their interactions.

However, if we extrapolate back in time assuming that particles create each other and don't causally precede stars and galaxies, then we get a completely different scenario, along the lines sketched above. As far as it makes sense to speak of a beginning in a SCU, this would be an indefinite state where particle masses are extremely small, their position ill defined, as would be spacetime itself.

-"Extrapolation of the expansion of the Universe backwards in time using GR yields an infinite density and temperature at a finite time in the past. This singularity signals the breakdown of general relativity."- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Bang 28-2-2011 In a SCU there's no break down of spacetime nor of the laws of physics: they always apply. Spacetime only is ill-defined until the energy of particles begins to increase as they contract to form more massive objects, as their mass increases, objects which in their field make positions physically different, defining, creating, expanding spacetime.

Regards, Anton