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Category: Metaphysics
Are we looking at beautiful space-dust….? Or could it be the depth of one’s own mind?
The theory that our universe is contained inside a bubble, and that multiple alternative universes exist inside their own bubbles – making up the ‘multiverse’ – is, for the first time, being tested by physicists.
Image caption: The signatures of a bubble collision at various stages in the analysis pipeline. A collision (top left) induces a temperature modulation in the CMB temperature map (top right). The ‘blob’ associated with the collision is identified by a large needlet response (bottom left), and the presence of an edge is highlighted by a large response from the edge detection algorithm (bottom right). In parallel with the edge-detection step, we perform a Bayesian parameter estimation and model selection analysis.
Two research papers published in Physical Review Letters and Physical Review D are the first to detail how to search for signatures of other universes. Physicists are now searching for disk-like patterns in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation – relic heat radiation left over from the Big Bang – which could provide tell-tale evidence of collisions between other universes and our own.
- Are all the (measurable) dimensionless parameters that characterize the physical universe calculable in principle or are some merely determined by historical or quantum mechanical accident and uncalculable? Einstein put it more crisply: did God have a choice in creating the universe? Imagine the Old One sitting at his control console, preparing to set off the Big Bang. “How fast should I set the speed of light?” “How much charge should I give this little speck called an electron?” “What value should I give to Planck’s constant, the parameter that determines the size of the tiny packets — the quanta — in which energy shall be parceled?” Was he randomly dashing off numbers to meet a deadline? Or do the values have to be what they are because of a deep, hidden logic? These kinds of questions come to a point with a conundrum involving a mysterious number called alpha. If you square the charge of the electron and then divide it by the speed of light times Planck’s constant, all the dimensions (mass, time and distance) cancel out, yielding a so-called “pure number” — alpha, which is just slightly over 1/137. But why is it not precisely 1/137 or some other value entirely? Physicists and even mystics have tried in vain to explain why. Continue reading
“How strange is the lot of us mortals! Each of us is here for a brief sojourn; for what purpose he knows not, though he sometimes thinks he senses it. But without deeper reflection one knows from daily life that one exists for other people — first of all for those upon whose smiles and well-being our own happiness is wholly dependent, and then for the many, unknown to us, to whose destinies we are bound by the ties of sympathy. A hundred times every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life are based on the labors of other men, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the same measure as I have received and am still receiving…
“I have never looked upon ease and happiness as ends in themselves — this critical basis I call the ideal of a pigsty. The ideals that have lighted my way, and time after time have given me new courage to face life cheerfully, have been Kindness, Beauty, and Truth. Without the sense of kinship with men of like mind, without the occupation with the objective world, the eternally unattainable in the field of art and scientific endeavors, life would have seemed empty to me. The trite objects of human efforts — possessions, outward success, luxury — have always seemed to me contemptible.
“My passionate sense of social justice and social responsibility has always contrasted oddly with my pronounced lack of need for direct contact with other human beings and human communities. I am truly a ‘lone traveler’ and have never belonged to my country, my home, my friends, or even my immediate family, with my whole heart; in the face of all these ties, I have never lost a sense of distance and a need for solitude…”
Psychologist Pearsall had a personal experience with “energy cardiology” when he had hip cancer. His logical, directing brain struggled over his disease and what it meant to him with his sensitive, more accepting heart. He began to study the heart and learned about its “L energy” and how to recognize its warnings. He went on to study heart transplants and how the background of a new heart could affect its recipient; for example, one man began to yearn for spicy foods and to study Spanish before he knew that his donor had been Hispanic. Documenting the stories he tells with medical and psychological literature, Pearsall states that we have been too brain-focused and have not listened to all the heart has to offer. We should learn to be patient, connected with others, pleasant, humble, and gentle, Pearsall says, and for those who want to find out whether they are cardiosensitive, he presents a personal inventory. Although hardly a work of completely hard science, Pearsall’s effort has much to offer thoughtful readers.
Decrypted Matrix 