The Real World

novagaea · Posted: Tue Oct 03, 2006 5:24 am Post subject: The Real World

Greetings Darwintalkers

The ideas in Hawking’s A Brief History of Time will, no doubt, be valuable to future generations as prime examples of how the misapplication and over-generalization of limitedly useful mathematical abstractions can lead to nonsensical views of our universe and our existence. No doubt beings of the future who read this book will shake their heads and wonder “Were these the same people who first visited the Moon?!”
But rather than delve into this hopeless morass of contradictions, wild speculations, absurdities, and perpetuation of common misconceptions, (with its numerous floating globs of arrogance and cynicism), I would rather describe the universe I believe I live in.
This can most easily be done by visualizing a very simple imaginary universe that behaves in an analogous way to the universe of physical reality.

Imagine a universe that initially consists of nothing but a vast ocean of pure carbon dioxide gas.
Throughout this vast ocean, the temperature and conditions are such that the carbon dioxide gas molecules spontaneously aggregate into particles of dry ice.
Wherever the density of the solid ice particles becomes great enough, the particles spontaneously self-gravitate into rotating disks of dry ice crystals.
As the dry ice crystals accelerate towards the centre of the disk, their kinetic energy increases until they reach a region where conditions are so energetic that the dry ice crystals spontaneously sublimate back into carbon dioxide gas..
The resulting gas is ejected along the paths of least resistance as high pressure gas plumes above and below the plane of the gravitating dry ice disk, returning to the universal ocean of carbon dioxide gas.
As the dry ice crystals grow, the surface area available for further deposition increases, so that regions with a higher dry ice crystal density will ‘consume’ gas at a greater rate than regions of lower density, thus developing lower local gas pressures.
Each ice crystal acts like a gas ‘sink’ that decreases the pressure of the gas immediately around it, causing a flow of gas towards the accreting crystal. The larger the crystal, the more gas it consumes and the greater the local pressure decrease. The closer the approach to the surface of the crystal, the faster is the flow of gas towards the crystal.
(This explains why the crystals ‘self-gravitate’ into disks as postulated above. Wherever a cloud of crystals forms, gas within the cloud is consumed at a faster rate than gas outside the cloud, causing a relative deflation of gas pressure within the cloud.
The situation is similar to drawing dots on an inflated balloon, then slowly releasing the gas. The dots tend to ‘gravitate’ together as if they were actually attracting each other.
If the fabric of the balloon was undetectable, a scientific observer would be required to theorize that the dots really were attracting one another, no other cause being detectable by observation. The ‘self-gravitation’ of the crystals is thus a property of the gas cloud the crystals are immersed in rather than a property of the crystals themselves).
The region of greatest dry ice crystal concentration and therefore of lowest local gas pressure is in the plane of each disk, increasing from the centre to the rim of the disk.
The universal ocean of carbon dioxide gas thus develops two high pressure regions above and below the plane of each disk, and a low pressure region around the rim of each disk, generating a bulk flow of gas from the high pressure poles to the low pressure rim.
The resulting flow of carbon dioxide gas carries the developing solid crystals towards the rim of the disk.
Each visible disk of carbon dioxide crystals is therefore only the nucleus of a much larger circulating ‘cell’ or envelope of invisible carbon dioxide gas.
Disks initially accrete in local centers of gravity throughout the vast universal ocean of gas.
If it is assumed that a larger than average disk produces a more powerful gaseous jet that has a higher probability of transferring some of its gas to a nearby disk rather than circulating it internally, a general equilibrium will eventually develop where disks of fairly uniform size are distributed fairly homogeneously throughout the universal ocean of gas.
If, on average, the amount of gas being sublimated at the center of the disks is equal to the amount being deposited into dry ice in the universal ocean, then a dynamic steady-state will exist where the carbon dioxide endlessly circulates within and between the disks, oscillating between its solid and gaseous phase.

My purpose in generating this imaginary scenario (which I hope is self-evident), is to prepare you for a very simple model of how the universe of physical reality maintains itself in an eternal dynamic steady-state.

Put most simply, the entire physical universe consists of two regions +a and –a, and two phases of a single substance +b and –b.
In +a, +b phase changes into –b, which then flows to –a
In –a, –b phase changes into +b, which then flows to +a
The cycle is continuous and eternal.

The single substance, (the counterpart of the carbon dioxide molecule of the imaginary scenario) is an ultra-microscopically small physical particle (hereafter called an ‘aethron’).
Aethrons exist either in an aggregated, ‘solid’ phase, where they are perceived as ‘matter’ (+b); or in a diffuse, ‘gaseous’ phase, where they are perceived (or rather not perceived) as ‘empty space’ (–b).
The two regions are the regions within the visible galaxies (+a), and the inter-galactic region that surrounds the visible galaxies (–a).

If, in the above scenario you read ‘aethron gas’ or ‘space’ for ‘carbon dioxide gas’; ‘matter’ for ‘dry ice crystals’; ‘galaxies’ for ‘dry ice disks’; and ‘intergalactic space’ for the ‘circulating envelopes of carbon dioxide gas’, you will almost fully comprehend the fundamental level of the universe of physical reality that I believe I exist in.
The main difference is that there never was a time when the universe consisted of a vast ocean of pure aethron gas. The universe has always had, and always will have the same proportions of circulating galaxies and intergalactic space that it has now.
The universe constantly attempts to attain equilibrium, but equilibrium can never be completely attained, because whenever space sits long enough, it slowly phase changes into matter; and wherever matter accumulates to a sufficient density, it rapidly phase changes back into space.

In later posts on this topic I will discuss how these basic ideas lead to simple physical explanations for gravity, the transmission of light through space, the high speed of light, the red shift of light from distant galaxies, and the shapes and distribution of galaxies; plus how they make comprehensible the predominance of matter over antimatter, the dual nature of light, the origin of matter and its relative youth, the nature of stars and the cause of their stability, as well as such metaphysical issues such as the reasons why mathematics is applicable to the universe in the first place, and a deeper understanding of the relationship of humans to the universe as infinitely recurring events of finite probability in an eternal dynamic steady-state universe.

Nova

Mangetout · Posted: Tue Oct 03, 2006 2:23 pm Post subject:

Interesting; I'll try to read and make sense of it later, but for now, I'd like to ask: do you hold any beliefs on anything that could be described as mundane?

Arthwollipot · Posted: Tue Oct 03, 2006 5:27 pm Post subject:

Hey, it's our old buddy! Do you still think the Earth is hollow, Nova?

Like Mangetout, I'll get a chance to read this a little later. Meantime, rock on!

politas · Tadpole Joined: 13 Jun 2006 Posts: 23

Arthwollipot · Posted: Wed Oct 04, 2006 2:45 pm Post subject: Response as promised

Nova:
First off, it is nice to see you back on DarwinTalk. You are always entertaining.

It is also nice to see that you consider yourself to be cleverer than one of the most respected and acclaimed physicists in the history of the world.

Your carbon-dioxide-universe model, although flawed in one or to very unimportant ways, I believe is sufficient for me to understand where you are coming from here. Essentially you believe that matter is continuously being created and destroyed (sublimated between the +b and -b phases) in the centres of galaxies. I cannot see any fault in the logic you have used to come to this conclusion. As far as I can see, it is a possible universe.

However, your theory contradicts the observed evidence. A Steady-State theory much like yours was proposed by the respected (and eccentric) astronomer Fred Hoyle back in the 50s, but it too was found to be contrary to the observed evidence.

For example, you have not accounted (yet) for the observed motion of the galaxies away from each other - an observation which is neatly explained by the inflationary big bang model, but not explained in any steady-state theory.

Also, you will need to provide some evidence of the "jets" above and below the plane of the galactic disk, which as far as I am aware have so far never been observed, except where they are easily explained by the presence of black holes.

So it appears to me that while you have described a possible universe, it does not appear to be the one we live in.

admin · Posted: Wed Oct 04, 2006 10:13 pm Post subject:

You guys really make me wish I had more college. Seriously, this is all SO over my head it's not even funny.

politas · Tadpole Joined: 13 Jun 2006 Posts: 23

Arthwollipot · Posted: Thu Oct 05, 2006 2:35 pm Post subject:

politas · Tadpole Joined: 13 Jun 2006 Posts: 23

Hmm. A week later, no follow up. Is this to be Nova's shortest ever visit? Is he already off working on a new bizarre theory? What zany concept will he come up with next? Something profound regarding nasal mucous? A treatise explaining that planetary motion is actually caused by tiny space frogs? All we can be sure is that whatever bizarre notions we might hypothesize, Nova is sure to surprise us.

novagaea · Posted: Wed Oct 11, 2006 5:00 am Post subject:

Arthwollipot · Posted: Wed Oct 11, 2006 1:42 pm Post subject:

And while we're on the subject, do you have a response to

politas · Tadpole Joined: 13 Jun 2006 Posts: 23