Perhaps one of the most beneficial discoveries civilisation could make is TOE (the Theory of Everything). A comprehensive TOE would reconcile science and religion.
If you believe this letter represents progress towards an unlimited theory of everything, you might compare it to someone's Big TOE and regard it as a foot in the door of the room containing the secrets of the universe. But if you think it reveals an imagination gone wild, you should compare it to a Little TOE and regard it as a foot in the door of Dreamworld.
After reading the article 'The $2 Billion Hole' in TIME magazine (the Nov. 1, '93 issue), I decided to write down a few ideas and send a Letter to the Editor. One idea led to another, and I ended up with the following (which is too long for a letter-to-the-editor column, but is not too long to include here):
The superconducting supercollider may be gone but 'the most powerful tool ever designed to study the nature of matter' is actually the human brain.
As Professor Paul Davies states in his book THE MIND OF GOD: 'The astronomer Fred Hoyle believes that the organisation of the cosmos is controlled by a superintelligence' and 'Hoyle believes that by acting at the quantum level this super intelligence can implant thoughts or ideas from the future, ready-made, into the human brain'.
THE MIND OF GOD also says that if this super-intelligence acts backward in time - which, according to Professor Stephen Hawking and his colleagues, can be thought of as just another spatial dimension (accessible by means of cosmic wormholes?) -it could, as part of a self-consistent causal loop, create the universe and be what we term God.
Further, the book implies that a Theory of Everything explaining the entire universe could be attained if the universe operates as a closed loop in which its explanation is contained within itself. In other words, in which its output (the consequences resulting from the Big Bang eg the nature of matter) is consistent with its input (the generation of the Big Bang conceivably accomplished by humanity discovering matter's nature and applying that knowledge in combination with the idea addressed by scientists such as Alan Guth, Andrei Linde and George Greenstein of creating a universe in a basement or laboratory). When combined with so called time travel, the principle that TOE = I = O (Theory of Everything equals Input being consistent with Output) would allow humans to fulfil their destiny as parts of the cosmos and its superintelligence, and to play their role in the creation of their cosmos.
According to Albert Einstein, energy is equivalent to mass. It logically follows that the ultimate components of every particle are 'quantum waves' or 'infinitesimal pulses' of energy. Quantum waves within electromagnetic and gravitational waves would be the ultimate components of photons and as yet undetected gravitons and would be consistent with the existence of fractals (these are branching shapes which, like tiny quantum waves within relatively enormous gravity waves, are repeated again and again on different scales - when generated on a computer screen, fractals are used for computer art and in creating models of, for example, coastlines or plant growth). Repetition of fractals, when combined with a degree of randomness, can lead from tiny, complex, geometrical shapes to the relative enormity of convincingly natural, simulated coastlines and mountain ranges.
Following through from computer generated fractals leads to the conclusion that natural mountain ranges / coastlines (and everything else in nature) result from the universe itself being a computer (just as pulses of electrical energy in a sufficiently advanced computer generate AI - artificial intelligence - in that computer, quantum waves in the universe generate the universal superintelligence. Could these waves be formed into superimposed holograms by space-time's AI and actuating curvature when particles are created eg a hologram made from light waves might be combined with a hologram made from gravity waves?)
If the universe really is a computer, the distortions which occur with more than 3 space dimensions (distorted gravitational and electrical forces, distorted brain waves and other travelling waves) could be overcome by reprogramming or self-reprogramming.
Finally, I'd like to say a few words about two possible stumbling blocks to everything I've written (these might be called the probability and infinity problems):
To overcome the quantum mechanical belief that the end of a wormhole only has a probability of possessing a single, definite position; we could reinterpret the Many Worlds interpretation of quantum theory which says that a particle follows every possible path between two points and its exact position is a matter of probability. The revised interpretation says particles in different dimensions are at different points on the same path because energy levels vary between dimensions - and that positions are, in fact, precise (feedback is a fundamental principle of chaos theory, the branch of mathematics' Nonlinear Dynamics which scientists believe is vital for describing the universe - blurring, or quantum indeterminacy, occurs at atomic scales because effects, eg later locations, feed back on causes, eg earlier locations, in this cosmos which obeys laws of nonlinear dynamics).
This hypothesis has a couple of references to mathematician Roger Penrose's twistor theory: 1) twistors also make up both the points that define space and the particles that inhabit it, and 2) the intersection of paths travelled in twistor space by massless particles like photons (do photons appear massless because their energy content is identical to surrounding space's energy?) translates as a series of twistors - which may be represented as points - along a line (this resembles the statement 'particles in different dimensions are at different points on the same path').
Albert Einstein's mathematical calculations proposed (according to the 1973 book ALBERT EINSTEIN, CREATOR AND REBEL by Banesh Hoffman in collaboration with Helen Dukas) a maximum of 3 different types of universe that could exist in the endless cosmos - one finite and two infinite. The finite universe would be space as we know it while the infinite universes would be the 4th spatial dimension (Einstein's theories show time to be infinite and I like to call this dimension 'subspace', in honour of science fiction) and the 5th spatial dimension (hyperspace). so while some calculations would indeed be uncomputable by space as we know 4,t (a finite Computer) the inclusion of subspace and hyperspace in our universe (forming what is sometimes referred to as the metauniverse) would remove any limits to computing power.
Could it be that what is sometimes called Satan is actually a consequence of signals being routed among neighbouring space-time bits (quantum waves) in much the same way that ones and zeros can be processed by a neuro-computer (neural net) to weaken connections (in space-time, these connections wouldn't possess reduced positive values but would have negative values We they'd be located to the left of zero on the cosmic number line)? This would lead to Satan being regarded as subordinate to God, who could be thought of as a consequence of signals being routed through the cosmic neural network just as ones and zeros can be processed to strengthen connections (these would have positive values - they'd be located to the right of zero on the cosmic number line). Maybe this has implications for the cosmological constant or vacuum-energy problem (this refers to the amount of energy in empty space).
Is the negative energy termed Satan (having weakened connections) only apparently cancelled by the positive energy termed God? Because of the advantage of positive energy (strengthened connections), the positive energy - which pushes space outward - of the infinite energy density pervading the metauniverse would be responsible for the forever expanding infinite subuniverse of subspace and hyperspace, while the negative energy (which makes space contract) would be responsible for the ultimate contraction of our finite part of the metauniverse. (* According to Einstein, energy is equivalent to mass (ie matter is 'frozen' energy) and therefore possesses gravitational influence. It would also seem to possess antigravitational influence under certain circumstances eg Einstein invoked antigravity in 1917 equations of his which suggested the universe must be either contracting or expanding (he wanted to keep it static) and physicist Alan Guth called on anti-gravity over a decade ago when he proposed the inflationary universe (the theory that the universe didn't expand from the Big Bang at a uniform rate but underwent a period of explosively rapid expansion).
| « NEXT » | « Science Wish List » | « Australian Fiction » | « Library » | « Our Civilization » |