http://www.physorg.com/news106316780.html
Sooooo, if the vast majority of comets have organic compounds and clay, where did all these comets become "impregnated" with these substances? Did they originate from one region of the universe? Inquiring minds want to know!
well, i belive 'life' to be a selfaware 'structure' in time. So why not?
As for the clay Q you could ask the same for any component creating those comets.
The answer to that Q. will take you back to what might have happened at the 'creation' of that engima, 'the big bang' and how matter can exist at all. We seem to have a very small 'overweight' of bosons and fermions in this universe :) That's what keeps us here as far as i understand it.
As for the clay Q you could ask the same for any component creating those comets.
The answer to that Q. will take you back to what might have happened at the 'creation' of that engima, 'the big bang' and how matter can exist at all. We seem to have a very small 'overweight' of bosons and fermions in this universe :) That's what keeps us here as far as i understand it.
Yor_on, I've heard theories along those lines. Supposedly, in a burst of energy like the big bang (simulated on a smaller scale in accelerated particle collisions) an exactly equal amount of matter and anti-matter particles are created from massive energy releases like the Big Bang (or the high energies at the impact site of a particle collision). Both masses will then go on to annihilate one another in the E=mc^2 energy conversion. However, as it stands there aren't any observations of any anti-matter located in our universe. Scientists explained it as "the scales were slightly tipped in our favor".
And if you were wondering, the matter and antimatter are isolated from collision experiments in vacuum chambers by... you guessed it, EM fields!!
Wrote a paper on that back in high school for... english class. Hmmm, I've always been a dork.
And if you were wondering, the matter and antimatter are isolated from collision experiments in vacuum chambers by... you guessed it, EM fields!!
Wrote a paper on that back in high school for... english class. Hmmm, I've always been a dork.
Wow, I didn't think I would open a can of worms! Now I will be thinking of THAT all night................ 
Thanks guys! (really, not sarcastic with my thanks)
Thanks guys! (really, not sarcastic with my thanks)
the real question is: what came first ; the chicken or the egg? Answer that in all seriousness and your headed in the right direction. 
QUOTE (am_Unition+Aug 14 2007, 11:45 PM)
Yor_on, I've heard theories along those lines. Supposedly, in a burst of energy like the big bang (simulated on a smaller scale in accelerated particle collisions) an exactly equal amount of matter and anti-matter particles are created from massive energy releases like the Big Bang (or the high energies at the impact site of a particle collision). Both masses will then go on to annihilate one another in the E=mc^2 energy conversion. However, as it stands there aren't any observations of any anti-matter located in our universe. Scientists explained it as "the scales were slightly tipped in our favor".
And if you were wondering, the matter and antimatter are isolated from collision experiments in vacuum chambers by... you guessed it, EM fields!!
Wrote a paper on that back in high school for... english class. Hmmm, I've always been a dork.
Another way of seeing this (from my perspective) is that if existance, on a broader scale than the visible universe is a collection of everything possible (though not witnessable as anything specific, when taken all at once) and time is the evolution of information within a network representing all of these, then the equivalent of a "half life" to various forms of information exists and things quickly decay into stable structures (or pathways that contain information that reinforces itself).
If you looked at this from a wave perspective and resonance, if you take a single impulse and expect it to remain stable over time in a coherent and predictable manner (the form required for us to understand and predict its influences and be seen as a "law" of nature), then that impulse must follow a deterministic cyclic pathway and not encounter phase cancellations or be spread into a uniform "blur".
If a piece of information is to exist in more than one location, then a split must occur, but continual splitting and duplication results in exponential growth and couldn't be witnessed as a conserved predictable quantity from moment to moment (unless it's diluted within an exponentially growing space), so these additional pathways must either merge or rejoin and reinforce each other. This can be done at multiples of some particular frequency (harmonics) and only at those multiples or spreading and/or cancelations occur, both of which degrade into undetectable states.
So you can place the Big Bang in an alternate perspective of the evolution of a network of communication with an appearace of intially highly energetic and chaotic states into a "cooler", less chaotic system with predominantly periodic and predictable features (a.k.a. laws of nature) remaining. Though in reality there's no requirement that everything began as a bang (and I don't believe the system can be considered entirely closed and cyclic either or there's no ability for an internal sense of time to be present, so the Big Bang idea is likely not very accurate) and instead the system can be continually morphing and random components injected (to add a subjective perception of time), though the periodic features remain more prevalent because they're weighted higher in our observations because they recur so often.
Another way to look at this is that there are more rouge asteroids in our solar system than Moons with stable orbits, but why is it that we observe and know so much about the characteristics of those stable orbitals compared to the rare and largely unpredictable features presented by numerous rouge asteroids? Well, it's of course due to the fact that a stable orbit can occur millions of times, versus a random collision occuring only once (it's a sampling bias, just as our observations of the probability of life existing are biased by the fact that when life doesn't exist we don't notice it's non-existance).
And if you were wondering, the matter and antimatter are isolated from collision experiments in vacuum chambers by... you guessed it, EM fields!!
Wrote a paper on that back in high school for... english class. Hmmm, I've always been a dork.
Another way of seeing this (from my perspective) is that if existance, on a broader scale than the visible universe is a collection of everything possible (though not witnessable as anything specific, when taken all at once) and time is the evolution of information within a network representing all of these, then the equivalent of a "half life" to various forms of information exists and things quickly decay into stable structures (or pathways that contain information that reinforces itself).
If you looked at this from a wave perspective and resonance, if you take a single impulse and expect it to remain stable over time in a coherent and predictable manner (the form required for us to understand and predict its influences and be seen as a "law" of nature), then that impulse must follow a deterministic cyclic pathway and not encounter phase cancellations or be spread into a uniform "blur".
If a piece of information is to exist in more than one location, then a split must occur, but continual splitting and duplication results in exponential growth and couldn't be witnessed as a conserved predictable quantity from moment to moment (unless it's diluted within an exponentially growing space), so these additional pathways must either merge or rejoin and reinforce each other. This can be done at multiples of some particular frequency (harmonics) and only at those multiples or spreading and/or cancelations occur, both of which degrade into undetectable states.
So you can place the Big Bang in an alternate perspective of the evolution of a network of communication with an appearace of intially highly energetic and chaotic states into a "cooler", less chaotic system with predominantly periodic and predictable features (a.k.a. laws of nature) remaining. Though in reality there's no requirement that everything began as a bang (and I don't believe the system can be considered entirely closed and cyclic either or there's no ability for an internal sense of time to be present, so the Big Bang idea is likely not very accurate) and instead the system can be continually morphing and random components injected (to add a subjective perception of time), though the periodic features remain more prevalent because they're weighted higher in our observations because they recur so often.
Another way to look at this is that there are more rouge asteroids in our solar system than Moons with stable orbits, but why is it that we observe and know so much about the characteristics of those stable orbitals compared to the rare and largely unpredictable features presented by numerous rouge asteroids? Well, it's of course due to the fact that a stable orbit can occur millions of times, versus a random collision occuring only once (it's a sampling bias, just as our observations of the probability of life existing are biased by the fact that when life doesn't exist we don't notice it's non-existance).
Wow Steven, you just torched my noodle.
I've definitely had the thought of the constantly evolving universe being represented as all possible outcomes of the current information organization, in infinite branch-like divisions, with the possible outcomes varying more the further down the chain you travel from the current situation.
We don't even know the current situation, and certainly not the past. I would have to agree that the Big Bang fails to validate every astronomical observation, and then there's the fact that our observations are limited to our little corner of what could be an infinite room.
Like you said, we're condemned to only be able to imagine the things we have yet conceived and witnessed. It is highly possible the true history (and even shape) of the universe has not been formulated yet. Speculation is so much fun though!
The wave model of the universe that you reference is slowly starting to make more sense to me, but it's been only a couple years since it was introduced into my curriculum... I'll be studying up on it more and more.
These are some good times we live in.
I've definitely had the thought of the constantly evolving universe being represented as all possible outcomes of the current information organization, in infinite branch-like divisions, with the possible outcomes varying more the further down the chain you travel from the current situation.
We don't even know the current situation, and certainly not the past. I would have to agree that the Big Bang fails to validate every astronomical observation, and then there's the fact that our observations are limited to our little corner of what could be an infinite room.
Like you said, we're condemned to only be able to imagine the things we have yet conceived and witnessed. It is highly possible the true history (and even shape) of the universe has not been formulated yet. Speculation is so much fun though!
The wave model of the universe that you reference is slowly starting to make more sense to me, but it's been only a couple years since it was introduced into my curriculum... I'll be studying up on it more and more.
These are some good times we live in.
QUOTE (observer1+Aug 14 2007, 05:38 PM)
the real question is: what came first ; the chicken or the egg? Answer that in all seriousness and your headed in the right direction.
The chicken! of course. Actually, there is a joke about that too, but I won't go there.......
Steven, DID YOU READ MY MIND??!!! Your post is almost identical to my own thoughts on the universe. cool.
The chicken! of course. Actually, there is a joke about that too, but I won't go there.......
Steven, DID YOU READ MY MIND??!!! Your post is almost identical to my own thoughts on the universe. cool.
It would appear obvious that what we see in the universe is limited by our ability to witness and understand "external" events. So you can see this similar to results in quantum mechanics always appearing to be potentially influenced by the observer. No matter where you go, there you are. We could almost instantly make the Sun turn green by wearing sunglasses (some people could actually already consciously perceive the Sun as green and as long as all three visual colors were mapped in detectably different/orthogonal ways, about any combinations of sensory perceptions could be swapped and mirrored in various symmetrical ways without it being physically detectable. I admit this may be irrelevant from the perspective of physical sciences but from a more intangible conscious perspective, it's very fascinating to consider what aspects of conscious experience could be rather arbitrarily determined and potentially different).
Regarding Panspermia more specifically, if deterministic physical processes represent the equivalent of subconscious features in the brain and conscious perceptions of will and self arise from the potentially paradoxical possibilities implied by the wavefunction, then the equivalent of conscious (potentially paradoxical results, only statistically resolved in a non-paradoxical manner as a single physical result) and subconscious activities (the physical requirement for a non-paradoxical state to be measured) could be seen to pervade everything in the universe. Likely the defining features of an organic brain that make it appear more conscious and alive than say a rock is that the brain has an ability to selectively amplify in a coherent manner a rather small subset of the total quantum influences present in the brain, whereas in a rock, quantum energies would largely cancel in influence and not provide much of any macroscopic way of being visible coherently. (Effectively the brain would be using something similar to the Schrondinger's Cat thought experiment in order to manifest an isolated subset of low level quantum influences on a larger scale). There's a question of entanglement though and it doesn't seem very clear to what extent quantum influences are pervasive versus being largely entangled (effectively, a large part of quantum effects could represent redundant influences that would not be entirely independent of other quantum effects, but correlated instead and what could appear a very pervasive influence could arise from a smaller subset of truly independent factors but physically mirrored in many combinations ... a rough analogy could be that though a population can appear diverse, if we ignore mutations, this diversity could still arise various combinations of genetic information from a limited gene pool)
I admit most of my post is pure speculation, though we're unlikely to discover something unless the possibility of its existance is first recognized so I'm trying to piece together some interesting possibilities and see to what extent they could be valid. (Some of this stuff is also physically unverifiable or related to intangible conscious perceptions and so related to intangibles it would be up to individuals and their subjective conscious experiences to decide what the likelyhood of such a "behind the scenes" view is).
Something I'll toss out here as well, is that there's a perspective where this stuff seems to really link up very nicely and it ends up related to a lot of current problems in number theory.
If we assume our perception of the universe, including space and the laws of nature arise from subjective, human perspectives and attempts to understand it, then we can ask "how do we learn to perceive existance in some specific form"? From an evolutionary and scientific, physical perspective (which appears to be valid, though for creationists you could always say that a God or gods created evolution, so I don't see why there's necessarily a conflict here) the key component of knowledge is prediction (which can also be translated to data compression and intelligence). You have useful knowledge when you can use it to predict some future characteristic.
Prediction can only be applied to things that recur or are constant over time (though absolutely constant things tend to be physically undetectable as they provide no detectable contrast to verify their existance, though we can still imagine them to exist). So if we were to attempt to create a geometrical structure, using the ideas of a constant velocity, or constant units of distance in space, that represented such predictive knowledge, it would be primarily defined as loops of constant length (similar to string theory). But observers can only verify things from their own observational location, which is point-like in a light speed space, so all loops would share a common vertex - the observational point for an observer and because knowledge comes in discrete and finite quantities, these loops could be described as having integer lengths. So all forms of verifiably predictive knowledge should be representable geometrically in terms of integer length loops passing through a single point in space at whatever is doing the observation/verification.
If we assume rather random information is detected, then the probability of detecting a recurrance of an prior detected event would remain constant and the equivalent of an exponentially decaying field of probability for an interaction would exist surrounding this point (this might appear similar to the strong force within matter).
Also if we had difficulty determining a precise spacial location for such an object, it would additionally appear to possess a gaussian field of probability surrounding it (macroscopic view of mass). If all symbols this field performed matching on, to detect periodicity of an event were identical, then there's no reason for them to all possess subjective arbitrary orientations around the observer (which if we aligned the field along one axis as time, then it would appear to be toroidal/doughnut shaped), but for detections of only 2 possible symbols, the field would align in a single direction that indicated the spacings (or in a complimentary fashion, frequency) of one of the symbols (the second symbol would just represent space/distance/time ... either symbol could be selected as representing an object or timing and hence why views of a "reciprocal space" can be applied). If 3 symbols are detectable, then this field could exist as orthogonal loops in two separate planes (similar to the electrical and magnetic components of the electromagnetic field), and as I've shown in other threads, it takes a minimum of 3 shared attributes between two system in order to convey a perception of spacetime (and hence why the universe appears primarily 3 dimensional).
But consider that there are also complimentary views possible of this scenario. Imagine what the view from inside such a structure would appear as. If you were standing sandwiched between some closely spaced mirrors with various distances between them representing various lengths of such loops, it would be easy to interprete the various fractal, chaotic and subjectively expansive reflections between these appearing as a very large space with rather distributed and uniform characteristics (this concept is what merged some of the string theories). You could find things like quantum entanglement between objects, as the vast array of apparent objects derived their properties from various combinations of traits present in a fundamentally smaller subset. You could also likely find properties similar to a common spectrum for blackbody radiation of all objects as they fundamentally existed within a smaller space that would impose a characteristics spectrum upon chaotic motions within it as only some periods and a limited set of harmonics would persist within that smaller discrete space.
It ends up being that the properties of this system would be closely related to the study of prime relationships in number theory and the relationships between the properties of objects within space should be related to their relative ratios of descriptive lengths and periods, whereas the locations would arise from phase shifts and velocities arise from relatively prime values oscillating with continually changing phase shifts relative to each other (sorry, I know I should be posting some graphics, and in a lot of ways I'm way off topic, though from another perspective it's entirely related as matter, and its non-linear computational abilities could be representive of some units of consciousness). It's also interesting that this view of knowledge being representable in terms of the relatively prime relationships between integers agrees with some other ideas that space should appear similar and fractal on various scales of size (as, for example, doubling two values leaves the characteristic physical relationship between them, represented as detectable common subdivisors, intact. The doubling itself wouldn't alter the observed sequence of presentations, and interactions between the objects, though it could allow for two alternate phases of such interactions to exist in parallel)
Anyway, I recognize it's not easy for someone to read this and make a lot of sense of it (I know I have a tough time understanding a lot of ideas presented here, though they tend to "sink in" over time), but hopefully there are some nuggets of it that someone will find useful.
Now here's an interesting thought - if we had a way to detect the manner in which spacial properties are fractally interleaved throughout the perception of space and the fundamental random component was rather small (quite possible in primarily static universe), then it could be possible to simulate the likely evolution of distant locations. So imagine an approximate universe simulator where you could locate locations likely to contain Earth like planets or other phenomenon - pick a nice spot on the simulation and then head out to experience it firsthand (The universe shouldn't be entirely closed and so an element of uncertainty would always appear to exist in order that we can have a perception of time but that random influence could end up being very small).
Regarding Panspermia more specifically, if deterministic physical processes represent the equivalent of subconscious features in the brain and conscious perceptions of will and self arise from the potentially paradoxical possibilities implied by the wavefunction, then the equivalent of conscious (potentially paradoxical results, only statistically resolved in a non-paradoxical manner as a single physical result) and subconscious activities (the physical requirement for a non-paradoxical state to be measured) could be seen to pervade everything in the universe. Likely the defining features of an organic brain that make it appear more conscious and alive than say a rock is that the brain has an ability to selectively amplify in a coherent manner a rather small subset of the total quantum influences present in the brain, whereas in a rock, quantum energies would largely cancel in influence and not provide much of any macroscopic way of being visible coherently. (Effectively the brain would be using something similar to the Schrondinger's Cat thought experiment in order to manifest an isolated subset of low level quantum influences on a larger scale). There's a question of entanglement though and it doesn't seem very clear to what extent quantum influences are pervasive versus being largely entangled (effectively, a large part of quantum effects could represent redundant influences that would not be entirely independent of other quantum effects, but correlated instead and what could appear a very pervasive influence could arise from a smaller subset of truly independent factors but physically mirrored in many combinations ... a rough analogy could be that though a population can appear diverse, if we ignore mutations, this diversity could still arise various combinations of genetic information from a limited gene pool)
I admit most of my post is pure speculation, though we're unlikely to discover something unless the possibility of its existance is first recognized so I'm trying to piece together some interesting possibilities and see to what extent they could be valid. (Some of this stuff is also physically unverifiable or related to intangible conscious perceptions and so related to intangibles it would be up to individuals and their subjective conscious experiences to decide what the likelyhood of such a "behind the scenes" view is).
Something I'll toss out here as well, is that there's a perspective where this stuff seems to really link up very nicely and it ends up related to a lot of current problems in number theory.
If we assume our perception of the universe, including space and the laws of nature arise from subjective, human perspectives and attempts to understand it, then we can ask "how do we learn to perceive existance in some specific form"? From an evolutionary and scientific, physical perspective (which appears to be valid, though for creationists you could always say that a God or gods created evolution, so I don't see why there's necessarily a conflict here) the key component of knowledge is prediction (which can also be translated to data compression and intelligence). You have useful knowledge when you can use it to predict some future characteristic.
Prediction can only be applied to things that recur or are constant over time (though absolutely constant things tend to be physically undetectable as they provide no detectable contrast to verify their existance, though we can still imagine them to exist). So if we were to attempt to create a geometrical structure, using the ideas of a constant velocity, or constant units of distance in space, that represented such predictive knowledge, it would be primarily defined as loops of constant length (similar to string theory). But observers can only verify things from their own observational location, which is point-like in a light speed space, so all loops would share a common vertex - the observational point for an observer and because knowledge comes in discrete and finite quantities, these loops could be described as having integer lengths. So all forms of verifiably predictive knowledge should be representable geometrically in terms of integer length loops passing through a single point in space at whatever is doing the observation/verification.
If we assume rather random information is detected, then the probability of detecting a recurrance of an prior detected event would remain constant and the equivalent of an exponentially decaying field of probability for an interaction would exist surrounding this point (this might appear similar to the strong force within matter).
Also if we had difficulty determining a precise spacial location for such an object, it would additionally appear to possess a gaussian field of probability surrounding it (macroscopic view of mass). If all symbols this field performed matching on, to detect periodicity of an event were identical, then there's no reason for them to all possess subjective arbitrary orientations around the observer (which if we aligned the field along one axis as time, then it would appear to be toroidal/doughnut shaped), but for detections of only 2 possible symbols, the field would align in a single direction that indicated the spacings (or in a complimentary fashion, frequency) of one of the symbols (the second symbol would just represent space/distance/time ... either symbol could be selected as representing an object or timing and hence why views of a "reciprocal space" can be applied). If 3 symbols are detectable, then this field could exist as orthogonal loops in two separate planes (similar to the electrical and magnetic components of the electromagnetic field), and as I've shown in other threads, it takes a minimum of 3 shared attributes between two system in order to convey a perception of spacetime (and hence why the universe appears primarily 3 dimensional).
But consider that there are also complimentary views possible of this scenario. Imagine what the view from inside such a structure would appear as. If you were standing sandwiched between some closely spaced mirrors with various distances between them representing various lengths of such loops, it would be easy to interprete the various fractal, chaotic and subjectively expansive reflections between these appearing as a very large space with rather distributed and uniform characteristics (this concept is what merged some of the string theories). You could find things like quantum entanglement between objects, as the vast array of apparent objects derived their properties from various combinations of traits present in a fundamentally smaller subset. You could also likely find properties similar to a common spectrum for blackbody radiation of all objects as they fundamentally existed within a smaller space that would impose a characteristics spectrum upon chaotic motions within it as only some periods and a limited set of harmonics would persist within that smaller discrete space.
It ends up being that the properties of this system would be closely related to the study of prime relationships in number theory and the relationships between the properties of objects within space should be related to their relative ratios of descriptive lengths and periods, whereas the locations would arise from phase shifts and velocities arise from relatively prime values oscillating with continually changing phase shifts relative to each other (sorry, I know I should be posting some graphics, and in a lot of ways I'm way off topic, though from another perspective it's entirely related as matter, and its non-linear computational abilities could be representive of some units of consciousness). It's also interesting that this view of knowledge being representable in terms of the relatively prime relationships between integers agrees with some other ideas that space should appear similar and fractal on various scales of size (as, for example, doubling two values leaves the characteristic physical relationship between them, represented as detectable common subdivisors, intact. The doubling itself wouldn't alter the observed sequence of presentations, and interactions between the objects, though it could allow for two alternate phases of such interactions to exist in parallel)
Anyway, I recognize it's not easy for someone to read this and make a lot of sense of it (I know I have a tough time understanding a lot of ideas presented here, though they tend to "sink in" over time), but hopefully there are some nuggets of it that someone will find useful.
Now here's an interesting thought - if we had a way to detect the manner in which spacial properties are fractally interleaved throughout the perception of space and the fundamental random component was rather small (quite possible in primarily static universe), then it could be possible to simulate the likely evolution of distant locations. So imagine an approximate universe simulator where you could locate locations likely to contain Earth like planets or other phenomenon - pick a nice spot on the simulation and then head out to experience it firsthand
(The universe shouldn't be entirely closed and so an element of uncertainty would always appear to exist in order that we can have a perception of time but that random influence could end up being very small).
QUOTE (observer1+Aug 15 2007, 12:38 AM)
the real question is: what came first ; the chicken or the egg? Answer that in all seriousness and your headed in the right direction.
The real question is: Is an egg a chicken's way of making more chickens or is a chicken an egg's way of making more eggs?
The real question is: Is an egg a chicken's way of making more chickens or is a chicken an egg's way of making more eggs?
QUOTE (StevenA+Aug 15 2007, 04:07 PM)
Now here's an interesting thought - if we had a way to detect the manner in which spacial properties are fractally interleaved throughout the perception of space and the fundamental random component was rather small (quite possible in primarily static universe), then it could be possible to simulate the likely evolution of distant locations
Finally something I can bite!!!! Not that the rest wasn't good, mind you, it's that all of my talent dances in the head of a pin with room to spare for Fat Oprah...
Since I have been looking at galaxies lately --I was born an astronomer, I just didn't know it... -- it occurs to me that from a point of no movement things are created. Movement can not then be assumed to be caused by external sources only, because the reductio would lead us to: the "primordial point" (it never existed, of course) would have had an external cause to itself... and that is, philosophically, non-sense.
The same goes for panspermia, but only if the word means that a physical cause of life in the universe would necessarily be caused by an arriving *physical* "seed".
Not that it is impossible, mind you. I am sure anyone can write 5 theories before breakfast, and that would show up as one of them, but it would also kind of imply -through long and tortuous logical paths up with which you will not put- that the game of chess, say, was caused by the arrival of the peons and towers!
The stoppage in time is obvious: everything as already there. So when we look at a galaxy from far away and think that it is "evolving", the concept of "evolution" already includes the passage of time, not any passage of time, but instead an *observable* passage of time during which things happen or don't happen. A wonderful duality with matter and space, where something *observable* is there or is not there.
Forgive the contradiction but panspermia is possible, it's unlikely as an only cause because there may be many other equally deserving theories! A physical-only system traveling through space becomes an event in time, and an event in time is much like the actors in the movies... you know they go to the bathroom but you don't wonder why the scenes are not in your movie theaters...
I guess I am trying to say that the complete event "life" already existed before its physical manifestation because in order to have an event occur in *stopped* time you would have to have an observer. It wouldn't be the first time I have said it. If I remember it correctly, I have been shoving it down people's throats for a long time, but don't trust my memory... unless your throat still hurts
Case in point for a complete set of "life" events to have a start in "stopped" time:
(Oh, GeneAddiction, it's an abstraction, nothing more!)
Finally something I can bite!!!! Not that the rest wasn't good, mind you, it's that all of my talent dances in the head of a pin with room to spare for Fat Oprah...
Since I have been looking at galaxies lately --I was born an astronomer, I just didn't know it...
-- it occurs to me that from a point of no movement things are created. Movement can not then be assumed to be caused by external sources only, because the reductio would lead us to: the "primordial point" (it never existed, of course) would have had an external cause to itself... and that is, philosophically, non-sense.The same goes for panspermia, but only if the word means that a physical cause of life in the universe would necessarily be caused by an arriving *physical* "seed".
Not that it is impossible, mind you. I am sure anyone can write 5 theories before breakfast, and that would show up as one of them, but it would also kind of imply -through long and tortuous logical paths up with which you will not put- that the game of chess, say, was caused by the arrival of the peons and towers!
The stoppage in time is obvious: everything as already there. So when we look at a galaxy from far away and think that it is "evolving", the concept of "evolution" already includes the passage of time, not any passage of time, but instead an *observable* passage of time during which things happen or don't happen. A wonderful duality with matter and space, where something *observable* is there or is not there.
Forgive the contradiction but panspermia is possible, it's unlikely as an only cause because there may be many other equally deserving theories! A physical-only system traveling through space becomes an event in time, and an event in time is much like the actors in the movies... you know they go to the bathroom but you don't wonder why the scenes are not in your movie theaters...
I guess I am trying to say that the complete event "life" already existed before its physical manifestation because in order to have an event occur in *stopped* time you would have to have an observer. It wouldn't be the first time I have said it. If I remember it correctly, I have been shoving it down people's throats for a long time, but don't trust my memory... unless your throat still hurts
Case in point for a complete set of "life" events to have a start in "stopped" time:
QUOTE
The real question is: Is an egg a chicken's way of making more chickens or is a chicken an egg's way of making more eggs?
(Oh, GeneAddiction, it's an abstraction, nothing more!)
Holy cow, you guys wrote books! I will have to print this and read it at home tonight. Sheesh, you gave me reading homework?
I shouldn't be here.... so just one quick post then I must go cook dinner...
Steven, you sure have my brain running 100 mph! I can't go quoting the many points, but one quick question, are you going in the same direction as Good Elf's holographic universe? I have never heard it described the way you have, and I am just stumbling trying to piece it together.
And don't think you are off topic, this is actually the direction I was hoping it would go, you just have gone much deeper than I had expected this topic to be.
Steven, you sure have my brain running 100 mph! I can't go quoting the many points, but one quick question, are you going in the same direction as Good Elf's holographic universe? I have never heard it described the way you have, and I am just stumbling trying to piece it together.
And don't think you are off topic, this is actually the direction I was hoping it would go, you just have gone much deeper than I had expected this topic to be.
QUOTE ("THEY"+Aug 16 2007, 02:16 AM)
I shouldn't be here.... so just one quick post then I must go cook dinner...
Steven, you sure have my brain running 100 mph! I can't go quoting the many points, but one quick question, are you going in the same direction as Good Elf's holographic universe? I have never heard it described the way you have, and I am just stumbling trying to piece it together.
And don't think you are off topic, this is actually the direction I was hoping it would go, you just have gone much deeper than I had expected this topic to be.
I think holographic characteristics arise from uncertainties in communication between two system. Unless you can interact with the entirety of something (which would be a misnoemer as it implies it's already a part of you and invisible as anything externally changing. Instead, it would effectively be part of your internal ruler you use to compare with something else), then you can't witness all possible internal states of it. This leads to multiple internal states having the same outward appearance and this leads to an uncertainty in the durations of the witnessed events, which can be seen as a loss of dimensionality due to the equivalent of a blurring in time between the two (sort of, though very high dimensional structures would likely lose less information in this projection). For example, 3 dimensional communication allows only reliable 2-D representations.
The basic cause of this can be seen to arise from quantization and communication. For example, the least restrictive (most pervasive) and lowest form of 3-D communication is when an object can be seen to exist in one of 3 states. Other methods of communication could be envisioned to lie within 3 dimensions, but they would truly be able to convey information in a higher dimensional context if they allowed for a greater set of symbols/states to be presented. We can just call these states A, B and C (here's a nice equilateral triangle showing both their symmetry and relationship to XYZ coordinates in space):
But as that object changes between states, we can only witness the transitions and not durations of each of these symbols. If we attempt to use our own local clock in an attempt to measure the durations of presentation of each state, then the length of each symbol is determined by local factors (also?), and this can effectively alter the dimensional context of the communication as well (it's now no longer 3 dimensional as additional symbols have been embedded for timing).
So if changes within the object caused an external representation of ABCCBBBA, we would only directly witness the changes of A to B to C but would have no direct way to "see" C repeated twice, nor an ability to see B presented 3 times without some other symbol between them, so the two Cs and three Bs would just be witnessed as 1 of each and the observed sequence would become ABCBA instead. When you look closer you find that for a system conveying n possible states, each observation ends up being witnessed as transitioning to a set of n-1 possible alternatives. Again, you can't witness a transition from one of n possible states to every other possible n states, because a transition to an identical state is undetectable (and would instead rely upon whatever, likely subjective and arbitrary, measurement of time you decided to add to the information, and this would truly increase the dimensionality of the observation in any case as you need access to something conveying that perception of time as well, so I'm trying to sttick to the lowest and likely most pervasive form of communication possible - 3 dimensional).
Now consider that each transition between n symbols conveys n-1 possible alternatives, but these alternatives are relative measurements and don't exist in the absolute terms of the observed system. So effectively it's a translation that doesn't convey things in terms of the true qualities of the original system either.
We could describe transmitting a binary 1 or "yes" or some other arbitrary value as a rotation on an equilateral triangle from A to B or B to C or C back to A, and a complimentary value 0 or "no" etc. as A to C, B to A or C to B. But notice that the these results are no longer related to A, B or C specifically (and they don't directly possess whatever qualities A, B and C represent) but are made in terms of detectable physical contrasts between them. Just as the visible edges of an object aren't related to any specific color but are simply derived from changes in colors or their intensities. Seeing a single color without contrast is the same as seeing nothing at all, just as witnessing something presenting an identical sequence of As is entirely uninformative and incapable of inherently generating any perception of time passing.
Another interesting thing to notice here is that this differential/contrasting measurement between symbols includes a very basic form of memory (as well as a fundamental unit of time). Memory can be used to construct a perception of space. Why don't we perceive all electrons as being identical and the same if their physical properties are identical? How is it that we can separate the detection of one identical thing with another detection of that identical thing? Well, we don't detect them in identical contexts and so differentiate between via. memory. Just as a transition from A to B, is different from the result of a transition from C to B (for example, in this case we might consider B to represent an electron detection, but in one case we might see the electron as having an "up" spin and in the other case a "down" spin. Truly we needn't be detecting a spin property inherent in the electron though, but could instead see this as a separation in space between two alternatives and so you can create units of spacial distance as well and not solely interprete it as detections of various classes of objects. So we could say C represents seeing one location in space and seeing A represents viewing another location and B represents seeing an electron at whatever viewing location we were observing. Then the sequence ABCACB would mean we looked at location A and saw an "up" spin electron, then we looked at C and saw nothing, and then we looked back at A and saw nothing, then we looked back at C and saw a "down" spin electron. In this way the electron "B" could only be seen at location A when it had an "up" spin and at location C when it had a down spin. The location and spin would then be built into the subjective interpretation of space and what represents electrons etc. with nature doing little to force this as the only valid interpretation possible. In this, likely very inaccurate, example, in order to see the electron as existing within various contexts of space we had to attach a spin property to the electron that allowed for its properties to appear different at one location versus another. So we appended a spacial context to its interpretation, which gave it properties related to space and then via. our memory of what exists in space could see more than one electron as existing even though the detection of various "B"s is identical. Another way of seeing how memory, or such relationships to the past, creates a perception of time and space is to imagine a spinning ball. From the surface or interior of the ball, if it existed in a universe all by itself, no perception of time is available as no detectable changes occur from within the ball itself due to its spinning. It takes some external reference to allow this passing of time to be witnessed - so time arises from viewing various changes in relationships between two systems, but it also requires memory as no motion is visible if you can't remember what position the ball was in a moment ago. So a ball may spin but it's only with the additional presence of a memory that can be altered to count, that we could see the ball as having rotated once or twice etc. - time results from the alterations made to that memory)
It's interesting to consider this influence on the attributes or qualities communication. If, for example, (and this may not be very accurate but it's an interesting numerological coincindence) 5 physical senses give a perception of 4 dimensional "spacetime", the original traits and qualities of those 5 senses aren't present in the 4 dimensional representation because it's constructed in terms of contrasts, just as motion isn't directly detectable but only in terms of how it changes relative to energies altering that motion (I see perceptions of motion as arising from information/energy and not the other way around).
So these 5 senses perceive a 4 dimensional spacetime which contains 3 dimensional atoms that are observed as 2 dimensional surfaces constructed as an array of 1 dimensional orbitals (which are 1-D/linear) conveying binary/photonic information over time.
You could see this as the set of ABCDE communicating 4 possible transitions between each symbol (interesting enough this can be interpreted as 2 parallel planes containing single bit information as 2*2=4 - which would mean 2 parallel 3-D systems instead of a single 4th dimension. This jump might be seen as 5 senses viewing 3-D objects in terms of independent position and velocity ... a very interesting possibility)
Anyway, you can see that as each lower dimensional representation is constructed the qualities present in the higher dimensional representation are lost as only the relative contrasts between them are measured, and not the absolutes. So this is why science can't see beyond the physical into conscious realms, though individuals themselves can perceive conscious qualities. It's something inherent in observation and communication.
Now that doesn't necessarily mean everything is alive in the universe as you necessarily have at least one unknown quality present in communication. A rock might exist in some higher dimensional form but we can't observe what it is - it's effectively observing the universe in terms of its own attributes and then giving us its translation in a necessarily lower dimensional representation, so we can't directly witness what "qualities" those higher dimensional attributes of a rock possess, nor can we be certain of the exact timing of events from an absolute perspective but it's still interesting to understand why there's an uncertainty to this and even find logical and mathematical descriptions of it and it's fundamentally based upon measuring contrasts in relative terms.
Another interesting possible numerological correlation is with DNA. The helical rotations of DNA have a 5 fold symmetry conveying 4 symbols composed of 3 dimensional objects composed of 2-D collection of electron orbitals conveying 1-D of binary quanta. From my prior post I stated that knowledge can be seen as provably true and potentially useful when it can predict some event and then correlated this with geometry in terms of looped pathways in space of various lengths performing pattern matching on events. In support of this, it turns out that this matches closely to how DNA itself operates as it performs pattern matching on 4 symbols and bends into various 3-D shapes in loops that depend upon the lengths between these matches. This has already been used to perform real computations in laboratory experiments.
Extrapolating upon this, it makes me wonder if mental processes do represent a 6th sense, but I admit that's not a rigorously tested idea, but on the surface it seems quite possible.
Steven, you sure have my brain running 100 mph! I can't go quoting the many points, but one quick question, are you going in the same direction as Good Elf's holographic universe? I have never heard it described the way you have, and I am just stumbling trying to piece it together.
And don't think you are off topic, this is actually the direction I was hoping it would go, you just have gone much deeper than I had expected this topic to be.
I think holographic characteristics arise from uncertainties in communication between two system. Unless you can interact with the entirety of something (which would be a misnoemer as it implies it's already a part of you and invisible as anything externally changing. Instead, it would effectively be part of your internal ruler you use to compare with something else), then you can't witness all possible internal states of it. This leads to multiple internal states having the same outward appearance and this leads to an uncertainty in the durations of the witnessed events, which can be seen as a loss of dimensionality due to the equivalent of a blurring in time between the two (sort of, though very high dimensional structures would likely lose less information in this projection). For example, 3 dimensional communication allows only reliable 2-D representations.
The basic cause of this can be seen to arise from quantization and communication. For example, the least restrictive (most pervasive) and lowest form of 3-D communication is when an object can be seen to exist in one of 3 states. Other methods of communication could be envisioned to lie within 3 dimensions, but they would truly be able to convey information in a higher dimensional context if they allowed for a greater set of symbols/states to be presented. We can just call these states A, B and C (here's a nice equilateral triangle showing both their symmetry and relationship to XYZ coordinates in space):
But as that object changes between states, we can only witness the transitions and not durations of each of these symbols. If we attempt to use our own local clock in an attempt to measure the durations of presentation of each state, then the length of each symbol is determined by local factors (also?), and this can effectively alter the dimensional context of the communication as well (it's now no longer 3 dimensional as additional symbols have been embedded for timing).
So if changes within the object caused an external representation of ABCCBBBA, we would only directly witness the changes of A to B to C but would have no direct way to "see" C repeated twice, nor an ability to see B presented 3 times without some other symbol between them, so the two Cs and three Bs would just be witnessed as 1 of each and the observed sequence would become ABCBA instead. When you look closer you find that for a system conveying n possible states, each observation ends up being witnessed as transitioning to a set of n-1 possible alternatives. Again, you can't witness a transition from one of n possible states to every other possible n states, because a transition to an identical state is undetectable (and would instead rely upon whatever, likely subjective and arbitrary, measurement of time you decided to add to the information, and this would truly increase the dimensionality of the observation in any case as you need access to something conveying that perception of time as well, so I'm trying to sttick to the lowest and likely most pervasive form of communication possible - 3 dimensional).
Now consider that each transition between n symbols conveys n-1 possible alternatives, but these alternatives are relative measurements and don't exist in the absolute terms of the observed system. So effectively it's a translation that doesn't convey things in terms of the true qualities of the original system either.
We could describe transmitting a binary 1 or "yes" or some other arbitrary value as a rotation on an equilateral triangle from A to B or B to C or C back to A, and a complimentary value 0 or "no" etc. as A to C, B to A or C to B. But notice that the these results are no longer related to A, B or C specifically (and they don't directly possess whatever qualities A, B and C represent) but are made in terms of detectable physical contrasts between them. Just as the visible edges of an object aren't related to any specific color but are simply derived from changes in colors or their intensities. Seeing a single color without contrast is the same as seeing nothing at all, just as witnessing something presenting an identical sequence of As is entirely uninformative and incapable of inherently generating any perception of time passing.
Another interesting thing to notice here is that this differential/contrasting measurement between symbols includes a very basic form of memory (as well as a fundamental unit of time). Memory can be used to construct a perception of space. Why don't we perceive all electrons as being identical and the same if their physical properties are identical? How is it that we can separate the detection of one identical thing with another detection of that identical thing? Well, we don't detect them in identical contexts and so differentiate between via. memory. Just as a transition from A to B, is different from the result of a transition from C to B (for example, in this case we might consider B to represent an electron detection, but in one case we might see the electron as having an "up" spin and in the other case a "down" spin. Truly we needn't be detecting a spin property inherent in the electron though, but could instead see this as a separation in space between two alternatives and so you can create units of spacial distance as well and not solely interprete it as detections of various classes of objects. So we could say C represents seeing one location in space and seeing A represents viewing another location and B represents seeing an electron at whatever viewing location we were observing. Then the sequence ABCACB would mean we looked at location A and saw an "up" spin electron, then we looked at C and saw nothing, and then we looked back at A and saw nothing, then we looked back at C and saw a "down" spin electron. In this way the electron "B" could only be seen at location A when it had an "up" spin and at location C when it had a down spin. The location and spin would then be built into the subjective interpretation of space and what represents electrons etc. with nature doing little to force this as the only valid interpretation possible. In this, likely very inaccurate, example, in order to see the electron as existing within various contexts of space we had to attach a spin property to the electron that allowed for its properties to appear different at one location versus another. So we appended a spacial context to its interpretation, which gave it properties related to space and then via. our memory of what exists in space could see more than one electron as existing even though the detection of various "B"s is identical. Another way of seeing how memory, or such relationships to the past, creates a perception of time and space is to imagine a spinning ball. From the surface or interior of the ball, if it existed in a universe all by itself, no perception of time is available as no detectable changes occur from within the ball itself due to its spinning. It takes some external reference to allow this passing of time to be witnessed - so time arises from viewing various changes in relationships between two systems, but it also requires memory as no motion is visible if you can't remember what position the ball was in a moment ago. So a ball may spin but it's only with the additional presence of a memory that can be altered to count, that we could see the ball as having rotated once or twice etc. - time results from the alterations made to that memory)
It's interesting to consider this influence on the attributes or qualities communication. If, for example, (and this may not be very accurate but it's an interesting numerological coincindence) 5 physical senses give a perception of 4 dimensional "spacetime", the original traits and qualities of those 5 senses aren't present in the 4 dimensional representation because it's constructed in terms of contrasts, just as motion isn't directly detectable but only in terms of how it changes relative to energies altering that motion (I see perceptions of motion as arising from information/energy and not the other way around).
So these 5 senses perceive a 4 dimensional spacetime which contains 3 dimensional atoms that are observed as 2 dimensional surfaces constructed as an array of 1 dimensional orbitals (which are 1-D/linear) conveying binary/photonic information over time.
You could see this as the set of ABCDE communicating 4 possible transitions between each symbol (interesting enough this can be interpreted as 2 parallel planes containing single bit information as 2*2=4 - which would mean 2 parallel 3-D systems instead of a single 4th dimension. This jump might be seen as 5 senses viewing 3-D objects in terms of independent position and velocity ... a very interesting possibility)
Anyway, you can see that as each lower dimensional representation is constructed the qualities present in the higher dimensional representation are lost as only the relative contrasts between them are measured, and not the absolutes. So this is why science can't see beyond the physical into conscious realms, though individuals themselves can perceive conscious qualities. It's something inherent in observation and communication.
Now that doesn't necessarily mean everything is alive in the universe as you necessarily have at least one unknown quality present in communication. A rock might exist in some higher dimensional form but we can't observe what it is - it's effectively observing the universe in terms of its own attributes and then giving us its translation in a necessarily lower dimensional representation, so we can't directly witness what "qualities" those higher dimensional attributes of a rock possess, nor can we be certain of the exact timing of events from an absolute perspective but it's still interesting to understand why there's an uncertainty to this and even find logical and mathematical descriptions of it and it's fundamentally based upon measuring contrasts in relative terms.
Another interesting possible numerological correlation is with DNA. The helical rotations of DNA have a 5 fold symmetry conveying 4 symbols composed of 3 dimensional objects composed of 2-D collection of electron orbitals conveying 1-D of binary quanta. From my prior post I stated that knowledge can be seen as provably true and potentially useful when it can predict some event and then correlated this with geometry in terms of looped pathways in space of various lengths performing pattern matching on events. In support of this, it turns out that this matches closely to how DNA itself operates as it performs pattern matching on 4 symbols and bends into various 3-D shapes in loops that depend upon the lengths between these matches. This has already been used to perform real computations in laboratory experiments.
Extrapolating upon this, it makes me wonder if mental processes do represent a 6th sense, but I admit that's not a rigorously tested idea, but on the surface it seems quite possible.
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