The Reassuring Universe
(Also available in hard-and soft-cover print editions)
Dr. Don Ray
Don Ray's work published by Quantum Embrace Publishing at Smashwords
Copyright © 2011 Don Ray
All rights reserved.
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
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DEDICATION
This project is dedicated to you, the reader, the focus of the entire creation process of this book, and the focus of the entire creation process of the Universe.
Prologue
Perhaps this book will help someone gain awareness that their daily life unfolds within a current, a flow, a direction that hints of meaning and Purpose; a current, flow, and direction that each of us already senses though often without awareness. Perhaps the reader will experience some reassurance through this increased awareness, and if so, they and the world will be a little better off, and the cardboard ceiling that blocks our view of our personal potential and the embracing Purpose will have a few more holes punched in it. Don Ray, s.D.g.
Table Of Contents
Author biography and message to the reader
Image Credits. And interesting background.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I stare at this page, wondering where to even begin. Too many people have played too many roles for too many years to do any justice to giving them credit. For every name I include, ten will be left out.
But as I procrastinate by playing with fonts and spacing, my eyes are finally drawn skyward (I work outside if at all possible) by a persistent and unusual sound of an airplane. I look and look, but do not see it. But then I see something else…. a hawk, and then a second, spiraling up together into the clear sky. The second hawk looks white, though at this distance I cannot be sure. Only once have I seen a white hawk, an experience I cherish for many reasons. I step inside the open door to grab my binoculars, an action of a few seconds, but when I again look up, neither hawk is to be seen, nor is the airplane to be heard.
Such improbable occurrences provide the foundation and framework, and the motivation and inspiration for this book. A chance meeting here, an introduction there, a person or guide or partner or leader or …. a white hawk…. . who set my life on a different course, who provided essential opportunity, who challenged or encouraged.
I acknowledge with deep gratitude the roles you each played, I celebrate having shared a rare and beautiful “white hawk” moment with you, and I acknowledge with wonder the Reassuring Universe in which every role fits, every interaction contributes, and as stated in the title of the wonderfully enlightening book by Richard Rohr, “Everything Belongs”.
I must add one critical individual acknowledgement though. Throughout this e-book, and much more in the print versions, the beautiful and evocative images by Karen and Spence add immeasurably to whatever impact this publication may someday have for someone. For Karen’s diligent searching through her and Spence’s remarkable collection of photographs, for her eye for sublime beauty, for pursuing permissions for use from other photographers, and for proofreading and ongoing support, I and any reader of this book are indebted
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Part 1: Science and spirit
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Science:
Science has nothing to do with spirit and soul. Science is black and white, sharp, verifiable, not a thing of heart and intuition and desire…. and this is good.
Science and Spirit:
Can these two words even appear at peace in the same phrase? Are they not immediately and mutually antagonistic? Have they not clashed through the centuries? Surely our intellect and our heart must remain locked in combat for our loyalty, and surely intelligence precludes faith; education exorcises belief.
Can beauty and truth be found in the arcane hieroglyphs of science? Or is beauty and Truth found only in that which can be calculated and quantified and mathematically expressed?
I would argue that elegant beauty is to be found in the runes of science and its ritual math, its hieroglyphs eloquently revealing concepts otherwise unfathomable to the human mind, yet even with this tool of elegant mathematical expressions, still the concepts and conclusions to which they lead often remain unfathomable, leaving us in wonder at their predictions and raw power, leaving us helpless and small in trying to grasp their meaning.
“Elegant beauty”? “Unfathomable concepts”? “Wonder at raw power”…”helpless and small”. . . ”grasping at meaning”…are these not the words, phrases, and expressions also evoked by the realm of spirit and soul, that other realm of prediction and raw power.
Expressing in words the profound meaning of mathematical equations is often a futile exercise. Expressing in logic the experiences of the heart is often a hopeless gesture.
The preceding equations are nothing more, and nothing less, than two of Maxwell’s equations of electromagnetism, in other words, the mathematical expression of the laws of our universe that give rise to………….
……………. . Light.
“And God said ‘let there be light’, And there was light. God saw that the light was good, and God separated the light from the darkness. ” (Genesis 1:3-4)
Expressed in symbols black and white and conveniently applicable for use in designing antennae and headlight lenses and in explaining rainbows, or expressed in grandiose summarizing proclamations of holiness and grandeur, does the light they describe not look as beautiful through either lens?
Courageous daring and open-mindedness allowed scientists of yore, and today, to boldly explore realms unimagined and unanticipated and, at least in their initial forays, realms resoundingly unaccepted by peers and institutions.
Courageous daring and open-mindedness allowed, and allow, mystics and prophets to climb up mountains literal and figurative, to explore realms unimagined and unanticipated, realms resoundingly unaccepted by peers and institutions.
Can we summon the courageous daring and open-mindedness needed to explore the gap between the scientific realm and the spiritual mountain to see what undiscovered terrain lies in that unmapped territory? The maps proffered from either side of the gap are rife with edge-of-the-world warnings of “go not beyond this point, venture not further from these known shores of logic (or of faith), beyond in direction of that other land lie monsters and sirens and whirlpools that will capture and swallow your intelligence (or your soul)”.
And if one did succeed in crossing to that other side, surely the benighted natives on that distant shore share no common basis with our enlightened selves, no comparable understanding or perspective or foundation. Surely we can learn nothing from them, and they are unwilling, or unable, to learn from us. Surely mistrust and separation are our only recourse.
But throughout history, some people have been called to explore, some cannot resist the blanks on the map, cannot resist the urge to find paths and build bridges. These few willing to leave familiar shores, called by something, something alternately described as intellectual curiosity or whispering spirit, may find they, we, are exploring more than a blank space on the map, We may discover we are in fact exploring ourselves, discovering unmapped lands in our own nature, and in building bridges they may discover that the bridge is no longer necessary because the perceived gap and blank and void and separation between science and spirit never existed in the first place.
In leaving the shore of science or of faith, the courageous explorer may find the world is round, and your bold explorations bring you not to an alien shore but back to familiar home, having sailed through the mirages of separation and difference.
Set sail with confidence from either shore, for mind and intellect need not be threatened by explorations of the heart, and the heart can still securely hold on to its foundations when intellect seems to founder on the rocks.
This voyage of exploration is intensely individual, existential some would call it, mystical others would say. This voyage is for you, to satisfy your curiosity, to resolve your own questions.
Your mind and intellect and intelligence are invaluable navigational aids, and only a fool would embark without them. But they and their tools of words and language may not be able to express the personal discoveries to which you sail, and insistence on discovering only that which can be shrunk and packaged in language and liturgy, equations and dogma, may deny you entrance to the harbors you seek.
“I implored the sage in earnest last night to unveil the mysteries of the universe. He whispered softly in my ear, ‘Silence! It is something to perceive but never to say. ’”
Rumi, The Life and Thought of Rumi
Science’s take on spirit and soul
So what is your understanding of what science says about spirit and soul? Some might say science says nothing about spirit and soul. Others might say science argues against spirit and soul. But we are not here to engage in discussion of such responses, but only to explore your response to the question.
Many would say the following about science’s take on spirit, soul, and meaning.
Biology describes your body as a mobile life support system to transport genetic material to opportunities for reproduction and propagation of that genetic material.
Science says:“We looked into space. There is no Heaven above us. ”
Genetics assures us that all your wants, loves, desires, emotions, and feelings are programmed behavior honed by natural selection to optimize species survival. Biochemistry describes all your thoughts as cascading electrochemical reactions.
What do you say?
If you look with doubt upon the preceding statements about what science has to say about spirit and soul, if you are willing to entertain a different perspective arising from the same science, then welcome to…. . . .
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The Reassuring Universe
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It’s big, cold, violent, and doomed. Now what could be reassuring about this?!
On our path to the Reassuring Universe, we must first pass through
The Clockwork Universe
19th century science promulgated a clockwork view of the universe. The commonly held perception was that if we could just measure enough, detect enough, and analyze enough, then we could predict anything, for all existence obeyed Newton’s Laws and Maxwell’s Laws and Boyle’s Law and so on. The universe was boringly law abiding. Billiard balls always bounced per prescribed angles. Atoms and molecules were after all just little tiny billiard balls. Planets and asteroids were after all just really big billiard balls. So with merely more precise measurements and better microscopes and bigger telescopes we could pretty much predict the motion of every orbit, impact, collision, splatter, grain, drop, molecule, and atom.
The universe was mechanical, and by extension, we were mechanical.
With the entry of Darwin’s statistically driven life evolution onto the stage, the picture became even clearer. We were the mechanistic outcomes of a few million years of billiard ball collisions and chemical reactions and statistical happenstance.
Mystery solved, it was now just a matter of cleaning up a few details and taking lots and lots of measurements.
This approach to science proved invaluable for predicting the behavior of turbines and generators and steam engines and light bulbs and a host of other inventions that none of us are willing to go without.
But the success of clockwork science in producing airplanes and bumper crops led us to extrapolate its view of existence beyond that which could be measured and quantified. A world view began to take hold that if science could so effectively measure some things and predict some outcomes, then if science could not measure, or even detect, some things, then those things must not exist. That would seem a rather extraordinary leap of faith, and certainly religious in nature, and hardly consistent with the tenets of science and its adherence to repeatable empirical evidence as the basis for conclusions, but take hold the leap of faith did.
Now, that was after all the 19th and early 20th centuries, a long time ago, and people were newly enamored with the ongoing parade of marvels produced by science, so they could be excused for letting their enthusiasm extend the applicability of clockwork science beyond its original, verifiable, empirical realm into the realm of the mystical and spiritual.
But here we are, well into the 21st century, yet a surprising number of people still think of science in terms of this mechanistic, clockwork existence. It’s as if Einstein, Planck, and Pauli had worked in another universe. Science has moved on, but the perception of the general public has not. It’s as if Magellan et al had repeatedly shown the world as round, but the vast majority of people still believed the world to be flat.
So a century old form of clockwork science remains ingrained in the public perception, and ironically this dated mechanistic mindset has also in large part excised the modern citizen’s ability to understand religious and spiritual scriptures in terms of allegory, symbolism, and poetry. A significant portion of the populace believes they live in a physical existence fully understood in terms of its mechanical structures and forms. And this same (mis)understanding of science demands literal interpretations of religious/spiritual scripture.
But this clockwork universe in which all existence is measurable and quantifiable and predictable stands in direct contradiction and opposition to scriptural texts that for the past century or two we are told must be understood in literal (which ironically means worldly) terms.
It becomes impossible to believe in both the scientific and the spiritual. Entering the temple, church, or mosque you have to check your brain at the door; entering the laboratory or university you have to check your soul at the door.
And as Dr. Phil would ask, how is this working for us?
The vocal and strident proponents of the extremes will vociferously exclaim that their fundamentalist science or religion is working just fine for them, and who can argue against that? And as we all know, there is no point in arguing with these people anyway.
But for no small number of people, faith in clockwork science has proven synonymous with emptiness and purposelessness and nagging, even gnawing, dissatisfaction. And for people raised in the new religious world of literal, physical interpretations of text (as opposed to historic interpretation as allegory, imagery, symbolism, and poetry), the mental constructs of dogma they are asked to swallow are just too incongruous with fact.
The investigations of science have left no place for soul, eternal life, heaven, or God…. .
Why do we even seek to understand?
How the mind struggles to understand! How we are compelled to construct models and forms, to make comprehensible the gods and universes that direct our fate.
From Moses to Newton, Joseph Smith to Albert Einstein, and every priest, shaman, and graduate student in between, minds stretch to describe the indescribable, and the rest of us hungrily accept the images and equations they offer, desperate to glimpse a reliable truth.
Surely it must be there! . . . . . . . somewhere, behind the deceptions of our senses. How elusive the Truth, whether due to shyness or a cruel sense of humor we know not.
Obviously the earth feels and looks flat, obviously it is stable, and celestial bodies go around it,…. but no, Truth proves subtler, remaining hidden and disguised until more insightful calculations and sophisticated instruments could ferret it out.
In this example of earth round not flat and even up and down turned down and up if we but spin the globe, we speak of provable, irrefutable, demonstrable and verifiable truth, Yet still such truth remains hidden to any child until told, still it runs counter to senses and experience.
If even such irrefutable scientific truths are so effectively obscured by our daily experience, with what precocious audacity do we dare to pretend we know the never provable Truths of God and Life, of Creation and destiny, of right and wrong?
When even senses and scientists prove so oft false, what foolish faith would prompt us to entrust our beliefs to fickle heart and boastful prophet?
Yet entrust we must, and believe we do. Each soul seeks a foundation, a reference…the atheist, nihilist, existentialist, and humanist no different from the Baptist and the Buddhist.
How the mind struggles to understand. How hungrily it accepts the proffered paradigms of priests, prophets, atheist authors, and neighborhood gangs.
…. and therein we find a truth, consistent and repeatable….
The human mind, every fully functional human mind, can and must function within some reference frame of explanation.
Our universe of personal experience cannot remain a void, for even if our intellect insists that our existence is suspended in void, our mind reaches into that void, feels it, defines it, making even the void and our place in it a tangible reality.
We cannot escape our need to understand. We can however choose how open, how receptive, how challenging, how intelligent, how questioning, how optimistic we will be in pursuit of understanding.
What we eventually come to believe may indeed be limited by what exposure our society offers, what books catch our eye, what people cross our path.
Quantum Mechanics: Fundamental unpredictability; multiple simultaneous locations; inescapable uncertainty.
But though the available information and experience with which we shape our understanding may be limited, in the courage we each bring to the search for Truth we will define and sculpt the essence of our soul.
I say that because we can each come to believe only that which we are willing to accept. For example, we cannot and will not believe a Truth that demands love, surrender, or sacrifice if we are not willing to love, surrender, and sacrifice.
Our nature demands that each of us try to understand, try to fill in the blanks. That universal fact speaks of a profound Truth. In that imperative to understand and explain, Nature is forcing us to create ourselves, to choose the essence of our being.
The investigations of science have left no place for soul, eternal life, heaven, or God…….
……or have they?
It’s time to leave the 19th century and come kicking and screaming into the bizarre, disturbing, perplexing, and wondrous world of 20th and 21st century science. We will look at several avenues of scientific discovery with profound, earthshaking, stunning, revolutionary, mind-boggling, paradigm shifting (get the point? ) consequences for how we view physical existence, and maybe our own existence.
First up to bat to take a swing at our cherished misconceptions, quantum mechanics. Strange and unpredictable are not just descriptive adjectives for this field, but scientific terms applied with specific intent.
Before we talk about
the weirdness of quantum mechanics and its implications for God and
soul and eternal life and all that spiritual stuff we’re interested
in, we should talk about the reality of quantum mechanics.
How
esoteric, academic, and irrelevant is it? Without our understanding
of quantum mechanics we would have no computers, no LED lights, no
cell phones, no microwave ovens, no flat panel TVs, no lasers, no
desk top printers, no internet, no digital anything. Oh yea, and
every chemical reaction in every cell of your body would not exist.
Quantum mechanics is solid, established, reliable science.
And quantum mechanics says that the world is unpredictable and objects can be in two places at once but not in certain places and particles may come into existence out of absolutely nothing and then disappear again and reality is just a rippling wave and ……. interesting, huh?
Quantum mechanics wrecks the fine tuned workings of the clockwork universe.
That atom that we treated like a billiard ball and thought that if we could just measure it precisely enough we could know exactly where it would land…. . well, quantum mechanics demonstrates that that atom can act as if in two places at once because, well, because it is, as long as we don’t measure it too precisely and it maintains its wave form.
Then when we do measure it, it will appear to be in just one place, but maybe it will be here…. or maybe it will be there…. just depends.
“Depends on what? ! ” you impatiently ask. “Just depends”, I answer, on luck of the draw, statistical flukes, random fluctuations, and pure unadulterated, inescapable uncertainty.
The world is not predictable!
OK, big things, like planets and baseballs, are pretty predictable. It’s the little stuff that’s not predictable, quarks escaping via radioactive decay, electrons passing through little gaps, and how that synapse in your brain will connect with its neighbors.
Yea, synapses in your brain, cells in your body, all the little stuff, it’s all subject to quantum mechanics. That may well be why you have free-will. Mind you, in the clockwork universe, every electron in every cell of your brain was just following the orders of physics, with no slack or room for wiggle. Outcomes, including thoughts and feelings, were supposedly as predictable as a well angled bank shot on the billiard table.
Quantum mechanics frees you, and frees the universe. Fact is, the Big Bang presumably resulted from a quantum wiggle. How about that? All existence arising from a sub-microscopic quantum fluctuation.
So, you thought reality is predictable, unfolding per laws of physics, with no room for course changes, free will, or the occasional outrageously unlikely outcome that some folks might dare to call a miracle? Hmm. Turns out it’s not so simple.
There’s wiggle room in the universe…. and in your head. There’s room for a little fluctuation to change your mind, or make a seed sprout, or fix a broken gene, or make a universe come into existence.
Does that fact prove anything spiritual? Of course not. It simply opens the door to unpredictable events and outcomes that can unfold in ways that we perceive as accident or statistical chance, without any risk of contradicting causality or physics. It simply opens the door for something…. Purpose, God, Destiny, miracles, prayer results, whatever label you want to stick on it, to have influence while remaining backstage, out of view, unobtrusive, leaving us free to ignore or seek that source of influence without it ever being discoverable or provable.
Something else about this quantum mechanics: remember I mentioned that the whole universe came (or may have come, you choose) into existence out of the quantum wiggle that led to the Big Bang? Yea, quantum mechanics provides ample opportunity for particles, and maybe universes, to come into existence out of nothing. Well, not exactly nothing. Actually fluctuations associated with energy uncertainty. Of course usually these particles are just virtual particles, meaning they politely disappear in an infinitesimal fraction of a second after they appear.
But all these virtual particles bubble along unseen and undetected in everything everywhere…yes, everything everywhere, every nook and cranny of every gap between every atom of the cosmos and the chair and your body.
With all this uncertainty about location and time and energy, and with particles popping into existence like pop-corn, it’s a wonder that the universe, and our lives, are as well behaved as they are.
Quantum mechanics shows that the physical world in which we live, causal and rational and deterministic, is like a bubble of calm bobbing on an ocean of fundamental uncertainty, and in fact, our world arose out of that ocean of fundamental uncertainty.
“Uncertainty” might be translated “potential”, potential in the grandest sense, all bets off, anything possible, maybe even other universes popping into being.
The universe is revealed to be rife with possibilities that would not be allowed by the rigid, unyielding, inflexible world of the clockwork universe, possibilities making room for life itself.
In only considering quantum mechanics, science has already begun to lose its street cred as an argument against anything. In fact, it is science sheepishly proclaiming that anything is possible.
Is that the sound of doors starting to open?
Relativity
Ahh, relativity. At least that’s a word many people have heard. That will be our second batter to take swings at our head, trying to shake up our foundations of reality. Quantum mechanics tells us that our physical structures on which we thought we could rely are actually unreliable tricksters, and they may not be where we thought. But with physical existence reduced to unreliable rubble, at least we still have space itself, and time, those foundation structural elements that are the same for all of us……. . not. Einstein pulls that rug out from under us, with time itself, and space itself, forming a reality foundation as firm and secure as warming Jello.
Welcome to 20th century science folks! And this relativity stuff is early 20th century science. Hold on to your hats, if they haven’t decayed into pure quantum energy.
Relativity: space bends, light bends, time slows down and speeds up there but not here, and space and time are actually sewn together as space-time and their warping and bending have to be envisioned with space and time together.
Envisioned? What a joke! You can’t envision this stuff. It’s just too flippin’ strange. It comes out of the math, it’s proven, it’s repeatable, there’s no controversy or doubt about it…. but the human mind is bereft of experience and paradigms and models with which to envision it.
Remember how all that quantum weirdness happened at really small scales, quarks and electrons and atoms and such? This relativity weirdness happens for the most part at really big scales, universe size and rocket fast.
And why is it called “relativity”? Because what we perceive, mass (kind of like weight), length, speed, and time, all depend on how we move relative to what we observe.
Measure the length of a rocket and weigh an astronaut and synchronize watches while you’re sitting on the ground together. Then let them take off and swoop past at 90% the speed of light.
Now measure all the same parameters as the rocket swoops past.
Hmmm. Everything has changed. The mass of the cargo is larger, its length is shorter, and the clocks are out of synch. What a mess! OK, bring it back, set it back on the launch pad, and let’s start over.
Hmmm. Weight (and associated mass) of the cargo is the same as before we launched it in the first place. The length has not changed a bit. The clocks are ticking at the same rate, though we notice that somehow the clocks on the spaceship did lose a little time.
OK, we launch again, expecting that now everything we measured will remain the same, and the previous fiasco had something to do with our measurement equipment or that practical joker astronaut on board, and we take our measurements, and…. . oops,…. we get the same numbers we measured on the previous pass, all different from what we measured on the ground.
It turns out that because the speed of light remains constant regardless of how fast the source of the light moves toward or away from you, everything else in the whole flippin’ universe has to accommodate that speed limit , and when I say everything, I mean everything. (OK, recent neutrino experiments in autumn of 2011 may indicate motion faster than the speed of light, which means I better hurry up and get this book published before this section gets invalidated).
Through some surprisingly simple math Einstein predicted all these fiasco results of our rocket experiment. Mass, length, and the rate of passage of time are not fixed, not absolute. Objects, space, and time itself change, warp, alter, get more massive, and shorten in length, as they move past us.
Reality it turns out is made of taffy. The very foundation structure in which we live, how far away, how much, how long…. . toss in a little motion and all the values change.
The rigid clockwork universe is now not only broken in pieces but the pieces have been melted down.
Move fast enough relative to any object and time in that object appears to almost stop. Move fast enough and objects moving past will virtually disappear because they appear so short. Move fast enough and the equivalent of the entire energy of all the universe would appear to be contained in that now super-massive passing object. And observers in that object are saying the same thing about you.
So why don’t we experience this in daily life? The same reason we didn’t see the earth was round. If the earth were much smaller, it would have been obvious it was round. If it were hugely bigger, we might not have yet been able to sail around it and prove it round.
In the case of quantum weirdness and relativistic oddness, we conveniently exist in the sweet spot…. not too small, so we don’t have to deal with quantum diffraction when we walk through a door, not too big so we don’t have to take into account the curvature of space-time when tossing the softball.
That sweet spot served us well throughout our development and learning and history. But it does make it deucedly difficult to comprehend quantum and relativistic weirdness, which is why math is essential to discover what we otherwise would never guess and could not comprehend.
So do quantum mechanics and relativity effectively disassemble the clockwork universe? . . . . that universe that provides us such predictability and arrogant confidence in our understanding of everything? Just in case there’s a spring or bearing or ratchet not yet fully melted down, let’s bring into play:
String (M) theory:
With its 9, 10, or 11 dimensions, multiple universes coming into being, dimensions and universes inflating as matter+anti-matter annihilations release constraining wrapped strings…. .
Whoo hoo! Having already disassembled and melted down our comfortable and reassuring clockwork universe, we’ve now totally blown it to smithereens!
With M Theory we move into the 21st century science, where we will no longer have to deal with the weirdness of our universe, but the weirdness of lots of universes. But there is a caveat before wandering down this path. Unlike the preceding relativity and quantum mechanics, which are solidly verified, proven, accepted, and applied in daily life, M(String) theory remains to be validated. But our voyage of discovery seeks to find possibilities, and M (String) theory is certainly in the realm of possibilities, at least according to some of the most respected practitioners of the physics biz.
M Theory posits that all existence is made up of vibrating elements of energy, or strings. But to get the theory to work, the math requires at least 9 dimensions in which the energy vibrates. Other dimensions…. . dwell on that a moment…. . More than just our up-down, right-left, forward-back, we might live in a universe with six or seven or eight more “directions” (though tightly curled up so we don’t experience them on a daily basis).
And that term “our universe” takes on a new meaning in that some M theory models make other universes look quite possible……other universes……other realms of existence not even connected to or detectable from ours.
Do you begin to appreciate just how open the possibilities are now? In comparison to modern physics, the clockwork universe that we allowed to constrain our imagination about what might be possible begins to look like a stone axe. Stone axes were pretty darned important mind you, and we would not have airplanes and notebook computers if our ancestors had not first had stone axes. But to let that rigid, predictable clockwork universe dictate our view of reality is tantamount to insisting that the world is flat.
What’s going on in the invisible background we cannot see?
In the case of invisible airplane vortexes, we can make them visible with a little well placed colored smoke. But with hidden dimensions and other universes and wave functions and space-time warps, revealing their nature and behavior is not quite to easy. But what a leap forward in human perception it would be to acknowledge that there are some realms we do not quite yet fully understand. And maybe more than a leap forward in perception, it requires a leap off our cherished pedestals and a leap forward in humility.
The clockwork universe fed our hubris, putting human pride and ego on steroids, proclaiming that we could understand and measure and predict it all.
Maybe that’s why the clockwork universe has maintained such a persistent grip on the human world paradigm. Quantum uncertainty is unsettling, relativity bends our perspectives, and M theory forces us to look at the possibility of realms of existence out of our control and our understanding. That will never be an easy sell!
Fact is, we are subject to countless influences that we do not see, most of us do not recognize, and that are utterly out of our control, and in fact, we are utterly in their control.
That picture of a giant solar prominence provides one example, a burst of plasma from the sun that could turn our lights off and shut down our communications. That’s hardly a comforting notion. By the way, the little blue spec on the right in the midst of the curving magnetic field lines is the earth. Of course it’s not draw to scale or it would be too small to see relative to the size of the sun.
But at least with proper instruments we can see the flare, and even understand some of its physics, though it is totally out of our control. But this talk of other dimensions and universes does not even offer that meager solace! If math and physics force us to acknowledge the possibility of unseen, un-measureable, undetectable, and uncontrollable forms of existence, we might as well go back to believing in God(s) and spirits and such!
“(Quantum mechanics) describes nature as absurd from the point of view of common sense. So I hope you can accept nature as She is…. Absurd. ”Richard Feynman, Nobel Prize winning physicist
It takes only the briefest glance to recognize that all kinds of startling, unbelievable, shocking, stunning, awesome events are unfolding around us all the time. Our eyes simply do not readily perceive them. Wind vortexes, solar flairs, supernovas, decaying atoms, replicating genes, and so on, pretty much all that makes our world what it is, all that shapes and forms and guides our physical world, remains unseen to the naked eye.
With our science, our telescopes, microscopes, detectors, sensors, and instruments, now we can see the previously unknown……or see part of the previously unknown. Does it seem maybe just a little bit arrogant to believe that we see it all?
Are you willing to entertain the possibility that maybe we don’t yet quite measure and see and detect everything? And then are you willing to dare to ask the question, what might be going on in the unseen realm? As we explore the worlds of quantum mechanics, relativity, and M theory, you will find plenty that we do not perceive on a daily basis, plenty that leaves doors open for……?
As discomfiting as they may be, we should not deny the absurd implications of modern science, implications that we cannot deny, implications proven and confirmed and verified, no matter how rude an insult that may make to our ego that insists on understanding and being in control.
“The meta-lesson of relativity and quantum mechanics is that when we deeply probe the fundamental workings of the universe we may come upon aspects that are vastly different from our experiences. ”Greene, Elegant Universe, p. 108.
To our chagrin, we cannot see and measure and detect everything. At the quantum level we fundamentally cannot with certainty predict anything. And even what we see may not be what it seems. In images of distant stellar objects, the light from the distant galaxies has been bent by gravity of massive nearby galaxies. We see the distant galaxies in one direction, but in fact, they reside in a slightly different direction.
But at least science knows what it doesn’t know, right? . . . knows what it cannot detect, cannot measure, cannot predict. At least we are not in for any more surprises, right?
Guess again bucko. During the 1990’s, well after humanity had landed on the moon, the Rosetta space probe swings past earth for a routine gravity assist. Things went according to plan, except the final resulting speed after the gravity assist was just a tiny, infinitesimal bit different from that predicted. Seems it may have had something to do with the rotation of the earth winding up the curved space-time around us more in one direction than another. “Winding up space-time”! There’s that darned “taffy reality” again, and still capable of surprising us.
For a prime example of “taffy reality” see the following photograph of Abell 370, showing light smeared and distorted by the space-time curvature induced by the closer massive objects.
So with space-time itself not providing a rigid foundation for our reality, of what exactly does reality consist? !
Relativity shows us that there is nothing sacrosanct about space-time coordinates. Two moving observers watching the same two events can even see the sequence of the events switched, one observer saying “A” happened first, the other observer with a different relativistic perspective swearing that “B” happened before “A”. (Though mind you, the speeds and distances required for such conflicting observations ensure no violation of causality. In other words, neither observer will see a ball caught before it’s thrown. )
At first these seemingly conflicting observations, time itself proving unreliable and even the sequence of events turned topsy-turvy, may seem disconcerting. But hey, if we were staking our whole foundation and security on nothing, and space-time is after all just about as “nothing” as you can get, we shouldn’t get too upset about discovering that in fact the flimsy network of our projected Cartesian coordinates and measurements on that “Nothing” prove fragile and unreliable.
But what are we left with? What is unyieldingly, objectively, resolutely, absolute? The event! The interaction! The time of the event, the energy released or absorbed, the momentum carried away or added, velocities, lengths, and locations, these quantified values will vary from observer to observer, being mere whims of our relativistic circumstance.
But the nature of the event itself, the collision, explosion, decay, or collapse, this the observers will agree upon, even if every measured detail about it is subject to relative disagreement.
In terms relevant to us, did the ball hit the goal? When, how fast, and with what impact, our relativistic referees may disagree on, but the fact of impact, the indentation of net, the buzzer detecting contact, the bending of the supports, that qualitative fact, if not quantitative details, all observers will agree on.
This provides profound testimony in support of the premise that interactions themselves underlie the foundations of reality. Ultimately, only the fact of interaction can be trusted. And ultimately, it is interaction events upon which all existence and reality are built.
All the queasy insecurity of quantum mechanics and the confounding twists of relativistic space-time no longer vex our perception of reality once reality is perceived as built upon interactions, with everything else, including even space-time, flexibly bending to accommodate the building of those interactions upon each other.
We have long held fast to locations, times, and outcomes of mechanical trajectories as the reference points, literal and figurative, for our framework of reality.
People’s reluctance to accept the inescapable conclusions of quantum mechanics and relativity arose in part because we lacked another firm foundation reference base to replace those dismantled by Planck and Einstein.
We need not despair, for there is in fact an immutable foundation upon which reality solid and reliable can be built, and it is the interaction events themselves. Upon those interaction events of the past, through the ongoing crystallizing network structure of ever forming new interactions, the events of the future are quite securely anchored, not left to dangle in Einstein’s space-time that twists and bends upon the slightest gravitational breeze and merest relative motion.
So what else is going on out there in space? Remember quantum mechanics and virtual particles popping into existence out of nothing?
"…. . even the vacuum of empty space is a teeming, roiling frenzy of virtual particles momentarily erupting into existence and subsequently annihilating one another. " (Greene, Elegant Universe, page 337).
Well hey, these particles disappear almost as fast as they appear. They come out of “nothing”, they return to “nothing”, so no harm no foul, right? Virtual particles are at least one thing we don’t have to worry about. For cryin’ out loud, ongoing creation in the midst of perfectly good empty space? . . . that just can’t be, and it’s just a trick of the math, and let’s worry about big stuff like black holes or something.
Except these virtual particles, boiling up out of “empty” space, provide enough momentary interaction to make micro-machined parts stick together
In the picture of the ball on the little “tuning fork”, the little “tuning fork” is bent down toward the surface below…. . but not because of weight, because this little ball is really little! (note the scale marker indicating the length of 100 millionths of a meter). Weight is irrelevant. It is the attractive forces induced by virtual particles popping into and out of existence in empty space that cause the little ball to try to close the gap and move closer to the underlying surface.
This effect cannot be ignored as we design micro-machines even smaller than those used today in air-bag deployment sensors, ink-jet printers, chemo-sensors, blood-pressure sensors, and cell phone accelerometers.
We cannot escape the real world implications of modern weird science! Nor I would argue should we turn from the implications of weird science for other potential worlds.
It becomes clear as we peer deeper and deeper into the sub-nuclear world and discover ever more forms of matter and energy and dimensional curvatures, all blending together and changing identities as conveniently as business cards exchanged at a convention, that at the quantum level we see the remarkable flexibility and variety of the very structure of existence.
It’s as if space itself is aching to give birth, the potential for virtual particles present everywhere at all times, energy impatiently putting in its appearances only to be yanked back behind the curtain not yet raised.
Matter becomes energy, energy becomes matter, virtual particles tease our detectors, quarks and gluons taunt with their “you know we’re here but you can’t get to us” game of hide and seek. Color charge remains invisible and always will, structures proven and verified still remain in fact only conjectures of hoped for symmetry.
We see in the sub-nuclear the whirling dance of Creation itself, possibilities unbounded by polite adherence to humanity’s convenient labels.
At that quantum level, energy, that ability to alter future possible states, becomes a pure thing, too boisterous and playful to sit still for long in one form or one place.
In exasperation we long for the simplicity of merely a couple of quarks, a dab of gluon between them, and some dignified electrons in stately orbit about them. Instead we get levels of ever heavier and stranger quarks (to the point we name one of them Strange), while leptons of dubious repute and mass instigate disquiet and decay by their suspected, if not always detected, fleeting presence as agent provocateur.
In analogous example, on the surface of a tiny blue rock suspended in black void, mere chains of simple nucleic acids demonstrate dumfounding complexity in the infinite variety of forms that arise when replication runs amok.
From the cataclysm point of relativistic particle collisions we see the infinite variety of Creation, structure, and existence itself, rippling dimensions spawning vibrating strings that in their turn create other curvatures and bonds and energies, and it all shimmers in waves of potential that like all waves carry a beauty in their mathematical simplicity and an infinite complexity in their symphony.
Existence from quarks, life from DNA, and part and parcel of it all, consciousness, individual consciousness, miraculously able to model the infinite complexity of the life and structure that gave birth to that consciousness, models constructed out of math of consciousness’ own creation, elegant and simple equations and symmetries.
Weird science goes to the dark side
We really should not go any further without bringing up the topic of dark matter and dark energy.
Turns out we don’t even have to invoke virtual particles or extra dimensions or other universes to give ourselves a wake-up slap in the face telling us that we must might not understand everything to quite the degree our egos would like to.
To make a fascinating and long story very short, dark matter was discovered to be the stuff holding galaxies together. This discovery was no small trick as dark matter cannot be seen, measured, felt, smelled, tasted, directly detected, or bought.
It is about as unknown as anything can be, except for one thing: it does interact gravitationally. So in looking at the shape of galaxies and how fast they rotate, and in looking at all the visible matter in those galaxies, it was obvious they ought to fall apart. There was not enough matter to provide enough gravity to hold them together.
Enter dark matter. Sprinkle in enough of something, an unknown something, but sprinkle it in and spread it around in the right places, and voila, you get enough gravity to hold galaxies together.
Problem is, you then look for this stuff and can’t see it…. or touch, taste, feel, etc. It has to be there. But you can’t catch it in any of your traps.
And “there” is everywhere, throughout the whole bloomin’ universe.
Sounds like a pretty wild stretch, huh? . . . . just making up some invisible “stuff” because your calculations showed you needed some. How can we take that seriously? ! How do we know dark matter is really there?
Remember that “light bending” characteristic of relativity and gravity and curved space-time? Remember how distant galaxies may not be where we see them to be because their light got detoured by the curved space between them and us?
Well dark matter provides a convenient signature of its presence. Get a big bunch of it, as in a halo around a galaxy, and the light from sources behind that galaxy (relative to earth), gets bent. Just as a magnifying glass will bend light and distort images in the distance if you look through the magnifying glass, so too a massive collection of dark matter will distort and bend the light passing near it.
Fine, we can conclusively prove the existence of dark matter about which we know almost nothing. But that shouldn’t bother us too much. What’s a little bit of not- so-well-understood material matter in a universe made of stuff we for the most part do understand?
Oops. The problem is the “little bit” phrase.
It turns out our universe has almost six times as much dark matter as “regular” matter. This world in which we live, all the mechanisms of the clockwork universe, all that we can see, touch, feel, taste, measure, and quantify, is not even half, not even third, not even a fourth of the matter in the universe. And we’re more or less clueless about the nature of the stuff that comprises six times as much as our “regular” matter. We don’t know what it is, what it’s doing, where it’s going, what’s its structure …. . That 19th century scientific hubris may have been just a wee bit premature.
Fine, so dark matter, virtually unknown, mysterious, everywhere around us, dark matter comprises six times as much of the universe as our “regular matter”. And that is, believe it or not, just the tip of the intergalactic iceberg.
Enter dark energy.
“Dark”, as in the case of dark matter, again refers to the fact we cannot detect it, measure it, localize it, see it, hear it, feel it, or explain it.
So what gave away this shy form of existence?
It turns out that analysis of the rate of expansion of the universe, which was expected to be reasonably well behaved and predictable since an initial period of inflation, was not so well behaved and predictable.
It turns out “something” (there’s that unsatisfying, nebulous word again), was giving the expansion of the universe a bit of a significant kick. The universe was not being quite as restrained by gravity as it should have been.
The only explanation was some form of energy, but it could not be any energy that we knew about.
So following the precedent of naming the unknown matter that held galaxies together “dark matter”, this unknown, un-measurable form of energy got the name “dark energy”.
But surely this cannot be a bigger deal than dark matter, right? We’ve already shown that our world, the world we can see and touch and measure, the world of the clockwork universe, is only a sixth of the matter in the world.
That’s chump change folks. Dark energy’s share of the universal pie? . . . . . . 74%. . . . . almost three-fourths of all existent entities in this universe.
Do the math, adding up dark matter and dark energy, and you find that our dear and familiar world, everything and anything that we can touch, feel, move, measure, and understand…. comprises a grand and underwhelming total of 4% of the stuff in the universe.
Even if the clockwork universe had been right about being able to measure and predict and understand everything about matter and energy, it turns out our grandest expectations and hopes, had they panned out, would give us domination over a grand total of four percent of the universe.
And we don’t even know what the other 96% is…. but we do know it plays a critical role in shaping the universe in which we live.
We looked up into the sky, we penetrated that sky with our telescopes and rockets, and we saw no Heaven. End of story……………Or………?
Our universe may be only one of an enormous number of island universes. Paraphrase Greene in "Elegant Universe".
Well, well, well. We understood it all, we were well on the way to being in control, we would claim our throne at the top of the evolutionary heap, and clearly if we could not measure something, it must not exist.
Now instead we must acknowledge how little we know, how little is in our control, and how rash our assumptions were.
The door of possibility is now surely wide open.
This paraphrase arises out of M (String) Theory. It is speculative. But it is not wild conjecture. It is supported (though not proven) by solid, and very complex, math.
Other universes……not just other worlds or other galaxies…. . other universes…. . In M Theory it is conjectured that universes, entire new universes, may regularly and continuously come into existence. This is nothing short of creation and genesis, each universe formed with its own structure and laws of physics.
Granted, this is conjecture, albeit with some substantial math supporting it. But even as conjecture, it reveals that modern science considers such prospects well within the realm of possibility. This universe of ours, 96% of which is already beyond our present measurement and understanding, is not even remotely the end of possibilities for other places in which consciousness could reside. Modern physics liberates us to accept such possibilities. This is a dramatic contrast to the clockwork universe which we extrapolated to argue against even possibilities of other homes for different forms of existence.
It is possible (you see that word “possible” appearing over and over when we discuss M Theory) that black holes might serve as the beginning point of entire new universes. Right there before us in our pictures of the surrounding galaxies with black holes at their cores, and in fact, right at the center of own galaxy with its massive black hole, might lie the root, even a form of connection, to entirely different universes. And by definition, in another universe, anything is possible.
Might the harsh realities of this world, this world of fang and claw and inevitable death, this world of evolution driven by inter- and intra-species combat, not be the only form in which life could exist? Obviously such conjectures go far beyond the math based conjectures of physics. But we can at least no longer invoke science to argue against possibilities, however grandiose, however beautiful.
And what of this dance of time, what of duration, what of eternity?
From Brian Greene in his exquisite book The Elegant Universe we hear the following conjecture: “…time itself comes to an end at the heart of a black hole…. it might be a gateway to another universe that tenuously attaches to ours at a black hole’s center…. . where time in our universe comes to an end, time in the attached universe just begins. ”
Intriguing, isn’t it? Not conclusive, not definitive, and not unequivocal,…. but intriguing.
Earlier we mentioned that per M (String) theory even our own universe might have 9 or 10 or 11 dimensions, all but three (plus time) remaining invisible to our daily experience. Now we are discussing the possibility of additional universes. . . . which would have their own collection of dimensions and laws of physics…. . some of which might accommodate conscious beings. The possible nature of life and consciousness and being in these conjectured universes knows no bounds.
Laws of physics, the nature of communication and interaction and relationship, the very nature of time itself and development of life and individual consciousness, all can and would be different in those other universes.
We refer to this ever-growing ensemble of universes as “the multi-verse”. In this scenario, each component universe provides opportunity for additional universes to bud forth, Creation continuing to unfold without bound. All existence grows and changes and evolves, with new forms appearing, with those forms that are more conducive to propagating new universes producing universes that themselves are more conducive to formation of yet more new universes.
This hypothetical image of propagating universes bears striking similarity to life itself. And it is life unbounded.
What of spirit and soul?
We only live once.
Eventually our neural functions, the electro-chemical source of consciousness, cease.
We die.
Our bodies decay.
Spirit, soul, eternal life……. remotely possible according to science?
For this topic we will invoke a theory titled “the holographic universe”.
And we should emphasize “theory”. The holographic universe comes out of quantum gravity and M (string) theory. So the theory invokes the curious possibilities of all the modern disciplines of physics.
And the results are even more curious. But they are a bit challenging to describe.
It has to do with taking information from a volume and getting all that information on a surface surrounding that volume. Hmmm. OK, let’s back up and start over.
Let’s start with photographs. A photograph, by using lenses and a photosensitive media, takes a 3-dimensional object, like your face, and turns it into a 2-dimensional image. But of course you lose a lot of information in the process. You would not mistake the image for your face.
A hologram is similar. Using a laser you take a picture of an object and record that image on film. But the image produced on the film can, by shining a laser through the holographic film, produce a 3-dimensional image.
Now holograms have an interesting trick up their sleeves. If you cut off the lower half, or the right half, or the upper half of the film, and then try to project the 3D image, you still get the entire 3D image. The image may lose some qualities, but it will still be a 3D image of the whole object, not just the upper half or the lower half.
So to what does the “holographic universe” refer?
The math that can result from combining quantum gravity and M theory shows that all the information of any point in space time is contained on a surface at the edge of the cosmological horizon. Oops. There we go with another new term. But let’s not get bogged down in too much technical jargon.
Suffice it to say that the holographic universe is called “holographic” because the information in a higher dimensional space is recorded at the enveloping boundary formed by a lower dimensional space.
In other words, per this theory all information, yes, all information, at any space and time coordinate, is retained at the boundary of the universe surrounding that coordinate.
In other words (how many “in other words” will we have to invoke to make sense of this? ) the universe does not forget. Every moment of your life, your existence, your thoughts, your feelings, all the information associated with every electron and quark in your body and brain, is forever part of the universe.
(The fathers of this idea are Petr Horava and Raphel Bousso, at UC Berkeley at the time of the initial work on the topic. )
To take this a step further, from studies of entropy of black holes and volume and surface area, it can be shown (theoretically) that volume itself is illusory, and the universe is really just a hologram, with information encoded onto its multi-dimensional surface.
What might this theory mean for you?
……everything that occurs in the “interior” of the universe is merely a reflection of information defined on a distant, bounding surface. Paraphrase Greene, Elegant Universe, p. 411
i. e. , the essence of your being, your personality, and all your life is recorded throughout the universe (or is an integral part of the universe), and does not disappear when your physical life ceases.
Imagine out there, out everywhere, at the moving edges of the universe, is the source hologram, and you, this life, your experiences, are a multi-dimensional projection of that hologram. The loss of the projection is a loss of nothing, not a loss of source, merely a loss of the momentary image. Perhaps we might even perceive this multi-dimensional life we experience as masking the true depth and essence of the Source.
By now the discussion has left far behind anything remotely resembling hard science. And we should remember that the holographic universe is only a theory, a curious quirk of math. But we cannot rule out the described scenario.
Interestingly a similar speculative scenario appeared in ancient writings. Plato, in The Republic, Book VII, spoke of a people chained in a cave so they could only see the shadows cast by a fire. Seeing only the shadows, those shadows - the projections of their real selves, become their reality. They cannot imagine anything other than the shadows.
If theories of the holographic universe are correct, and if we can extrapolate them to our lives and consciousness, might Plato not be proven prophetic in this case? And might we not be forced to speculate on our true nature, a nature that casts the shadows that we interpret as this life?
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