A Cosmology

[George S]

A Cosmology

Axiom: There exists reality. Proof available to each conscious self through introspection.

Observation: Reality is expanding exponentially.

Assumptions

1) Physics works in either time direction.
2) There is a smallest volume into which our universe could be compressed as a matter of physical law.
3) All effects are caused.

Begin where we are in the midst of reality. By some measure our local patch of reality is uniformly (at the largest scales) expanding exponentially (observation). R = e^t (with appropriate scaling factors). At t=0 R=1. Running time backward (A1) we find this smallest size (A2). Unity. This is that smallest volume. Running time backward is proper physics. At t=0 something has to give.

What gives is a 4-d expansion. In all spatial directions and both ways in time. (A1 and symmetry). Continuing in the negative time direction we find an expanding universe. A symmetry: a non-reflecting-mirror mirror-image half of reality. An expanding universe expanding in the other time direction beyond nature's 1 at time 0.

Cause/effect is then that a mirror-image universe (ours) collapsed into their big bang. We see a mirror-image universe (theirs) collapsing into our big bang. Time 0. When reality was very young. Just One. 1 rather than 0. On rather than off. Existing. Being. Not nothing. Why? Because...

Because a universe collapsed into our big bang. Where did this whole structure come from? Not nothingness because nothing comes from nothing. So what is that something? It is a self-creating cause-effect preserving reality, see above.

 

[Peez]

George S:
Cosmology

Axiom: There exists reality.

I don't buy it.

Proof available to each conscious self through introspection.

Introspection has provided me no such proof, but perhaps I am not conscious.

Peez

 

[George S]

I don't buy it.

Proof available to each conscious self through introspection.

Introspection has provided me no such proof, but perhaps I am not conscious.

Peez

I knew someone from the reality-is-an-illusion crowd might check in. Welcome.

You might wonder to whom (what 1 individual) it is an illusion. (Note the 1.)

 

[Uwe]

What testable prediction are you making stemming from this cosmology?

 

[George S]

It is consistent with known reality. The area from time zero backwards is forever inaccessible in every theory. It is much like string theory in this regard, but simpler.

 

[Bomb#20]

Observation: Reality is expanding exponentially.

That's not an observation. It's expanding; the expansion rate appears to be accelerating; but there isn't nearly enough data to uniquely determine the form of the function. Exponential expansion is one hypothesis. (Your model can probably be adapted to other curves though, and some of them might even fit it better.)

Assumptions

1) Physics works in either time direction.

Tried uncollapsing a wave function?

2) There is a smallest volume into which our universe could be compressed as a matter of physical law.

Why is assuming there's a brick wall in the density dimension and the temperature dimension any more reasonable than assuming you hit a brick wall if you travel to the galactic north far enough? Our best theories of physics are all differential equations; they assume nature is continuous and there's no smallest non-zero distance.

3) All effects are caused.

Are you postulating hidden variables to explain why one uranium nucleus decays today and the next one over lasts a billion years?

 

[George S]

That's not an observation. It's expanding; the expansion rate appears to be accelerating; but there isn't nearly enough data to uniquely determine the form of the function. Exponential expansion is one hypothesis. (Your model can probably be adapted to other curves though, and some of them might even fit it better.)

Assumptions

1) Physics works in either time direction.

Tried uncollapsing a wave function?

2) There is a smallest volume into which our universe could be compressed as a matter of physical law.

Why is assuming there's a brick wall in the density dimension and the temperature dimension any more reasonable than assuming you hit a brick wall if you travel to the galactic north far enough? Our best theories of physics are all differential equations; they assume nature is continuous and there's no smallest non-zero distance.

3) All effects are caused.

Are you postulating hidden variables to explain why one uranium nucleus decays today and the next one over lasts a billion years?

3) The cause in nuclear decay is the instability of certain atoms. The universe seems to think in logarithms so I would expect exponential decay -- a constant half life.
1) In any case CPT symmetry holds for all physical phenomena. (If the universe behaves as we think it does.)
2) It is more reasonable if there is a smallest volume, and unreasonable if there is not.

 

[DBT]

I don't buy it.

Proof available to each conscious self through introspection.

Introspection has provided me no such proof, but perhaps I am not conscious.

Peez

Cogito ergo sum. Something rather than Nothing. Absolute proof of existence.

 

[Juma]

Tried uncollapsing a wave function?

Measuring speed makes location uncertain. That is "uncollapsing a wave function".

 

[Bomb#20]

Tried uncollapsing a wave function?

Measuring speed makes location uncertain. That is "uncollapsing a wave function".

If you measure the position and later on you measure the speed, that doesn't undo the effects of the original position measurement. You're just collapsing it a second time.

 

[Underseer]

The axiom/premise is flawed. You can't prove that reality is real.

 

[DBT]

The axiom/premise is flawed. You can't prove that reality is real.

What is 'real?' That there is Something rather then Nothing is indisputable. It is an Absolute. It is self proving without being circular. The nature of this Something is another question.

 

[Juma]

Measuring speed makes location uncertain. That is "uncollapsing a wave function".

If you measure the position and later on you measure the speed, that doesn't undo the effects of the original position measurement. You're just collapsing it a second time.

No. After you have measured the speed the location is again uncertain.

 

[George S]

If you measure the position and later on you measure the speed, that doesn't undo the effects of the original position measurement. You're just collapsing it a second time.

No. After you have measured the speed the location is again uncertain.

In reality, Feynman says, looking into the past all that can be determined about the path a photon traveled is which routes it probably took. In fact, it took all paths weighted by probability (Feynman's sum over histories.) Does the future do the same? A photon takes all paths available from its origin to the delivery of its energy weighted by probability.

Where is the photon after its origin and before its delivery of (at least some of) its energy? (I think a wave-function collapse occurs at each and every delivery of energy no matter how tiny. A kind of objective "observation.") The probability wave function has a non-zero value, albeit quite tiny, everywhere. Most -- nearly all -- components of this wave function are so close to zero that it would take multiples of the age of the universe for 1 probability in this range to have occurred even once. We often say that a photon in-flight is here or there or on this path, all wrong. A photon is natures means of transferring energy from (x,y,z,t) to (x',y',z',t') by no particular path. We might say that if we were to place detectors in our apparatus right now we probably would get a delivery of energy with one and no others.

Three baseball umpires. "When it is a strike I calls it a strike." "When it is a ball I calls it a ball!" "It ain't nothin' until I calls it!" says the third.

The photon is nowhere until nature calls it -- wave collapse. It is just more likely to deliver its energy at certain predictable places than at others. A photon is nowhere until it delivers its energy and then it is just energy delivered as momentum and/or raising the energy of an electron in an atom which may emit a new photon with just that energy (minus momentum delivered).

Going up in size from the zero mass of photons we find electrons doing the same qm trick -- 2-slit experiment -- as photons. Protons, and neutrons -- 1836 and 1838 times bigger respectively than electrons.

Carbon atoms do the same trick 12 neutrons, 12 electrons, 12 protons.

Carbon buckyballs do the same trick 60 carbons this time shaped like a soccer ball.

It is created and shot in an apparatus and we know just where within qm limits. When you again have measured where it is it, apparently it was everywhere it possibly could have been weighted by probability. This reflects well in negative time flow. At any given time the (now negative) future is all about where the photon or buckyball will go (in our direction "came from") weighted by probability. It is the same in both directions.

 

[George S]

The axiom/premise is flawed. You can't prove that reality is real.

I take it you reject both the definition "reality is that which is real" and Cogito ergo sum.

If personal reality is unreal, then it is unreal to that conscious being. Is thinking that one is a self enough to declare there is a real thinker?

Is it true that thou art? If not then what are you? A computer program simulating being human? A biological robot that only thinks that it thinks? A human biological robot that only thinks that it thinks? Is the pronoun "it" proper in the last two sentences?

There is a personal reality. Really. Don't you think?

Can we trust our senses and logic derived from experience in the world to declare at least some of the external world real? Real enough that certain future experiences are quite predictable.

The stance that only I am real is Solipsism. You will not find True Solipsists (tm) on message boards.

Who, I wonder, does a true solipsist think will read his work?
He doesn't need to write it down at all,
but merely think it to himself,
the only self.​

By merely posting on a message board you (yes, you) acknowledge the reality of other selves like you.

Reality unreal? Only to a true solipsist imho.

 

[Bomb#20]

If you measure the position and later on you measure the speed, that doesn't undo the effects of the original position measurement. You're just collapsing it a second time.

No. After you have measured the speed the location is again uncertain.

A wave function isn't a one-bit variable with two possible states, certain and uncertain. It's a complicated set of probability amplitudes for finding the particle over a range of locations. After you measure it twice those amplitudes are going to be completely different from what they would have been if you hadn't measured it at all.

 

[Juma]

No. After you have measured the speed the location is again uncertain.

A wave function isn't a one-bit variable with two possible states, certain and uncertain.

And no-one says so. So what is your problem?

 

[untermensche]

A Cosmology

Axiom: There exists reality. Proof available to each conscious self through introspection.

We label what exists "reality". That which exists exists, a truism. And there is no proof, only evidence, and this is known through observation, not introspection.

Observation: Reality is expanding exponentially.

The universe and reality are not synonymous. What exists beyond the universe, if anything, and what it is doing is unknown.

Assumptions

1) Physics works in either time direction.

The math works, whether the universe could work in reverse is unknown.

2) There is a smallest volume into which our universe could be compressed as a matter of physical law.

What if all matter were turned to energy? Does energy fill some volume? Does it take up space or just move through space?

3) All effects are caused.

This sends causes back infinitely. Is it possible for there to have been infinite causes before a present cause? Can an infinite number of causes have already happened?

Begin where we are in the midst of reality. By some measure our local patch of reality is uniformly (at the largest scales) expanding exponentially (observation). R = e^t (with appropriate scaling factors). At t=0 R=1. Running time backward (A1) we find this smallest size (A2). Unity. This is that smallest volume. Running time backward is proper physics. At t=0 something has to give.

We can only imagine to t=0. Beyond that we can say nothing.

What gives is a 4-d expansion. In all spatial directions and both ways in time. (A1 and symmetry). Continuing in the negative time direction we find an expanding universe. A symmetry: a non-reflecting-mirror mirror-image half of reality. An expanding universe expanding in the other time direction beyond nature's 1 at time 0.

Perhaps, but nobody can say. If we found evidence of this then we could.

Cause/effect is then that a mirror-image universe (ours) collapsed into their big bang. We see a mirror-image universe (theirs) collapsing into our big bang. Time 0. When reality was very young. Just One. 1 rather than 0. On rather than off. Existing. Being. Not nothing. Why? Because...

We don't "see" any of this. You imagine it.

Because a universe collapsed into our big bang. Where did this whole structure come from? Not nothingness because nothing comes from nothing. So what is that something? It is a self-creating cause-effect preserving reality, see above.

Where did this thing you imagine come from?

It is called the imagination and I can't explain it.

 

[George S]

Where did this thing you imagine come from?

It is called the imagination and I can't explain it.

Thanks for asking.

If you're asking where the idea came from. The math is to take a complex conjugate of a Lorentzien spacetime and apply symmetry in 4 dimensions. See the work of Sean Carroll (http://preposterousuniverse.com/self.html) which goes in similar directions was surely part of the intuition pump.

If, by "comes from" you mean the "what caused" that One at the Big Bang the answer is the same in both directions: a collapsing universe.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

Something rather than Nothing.

This to me appears flawed. It is better stated, "Something rather than something else." I don't know where that gets us but it is more accurate and perhaps more honest.