Late
morning. You have finished the final Chapter Seven draft. Add and post. –
Amorella
***
Chapter Seven
Contemplation
The Supervisor has a little saying:
Ring-a-ring
o'rosies
A
pocket full of posies
"A-tishoo!
A-tishoo!"
We
all fall down!
We
rise from clay
On
Judgment Day
Be
we dead or still alive.
I,
Merlyn, have this little ditty above memorized to the point it sets stemmed in
letters out of which each four-leafed chapter dreams grow to clover size. I
knead the dreams into a word stream of music for the heart and soul and mind
with hope that when read, these stories cast a light into those living with an
imagination that casts no shadow.
The Dead 7
Merlyn stands by
the chair rock in his sanctuary and looks west, looks through the heather and
between oak and birch to the cold river water. He conjures lifelong memories of
fishing from such rivers. I see exciting great catches of salmon, trout,
northern pike and arctic charr. The size, shape and colors of the many fish
quickly slide away. They are but bait for memories to grab at those many
daydreams. Youthfully fantasies stirred my body's male nature through lonely
and sometime surreal surroundings hot kettled in my budding druidic spirit.
What be the name that is alphabetized first, Vivian. We are such human
creatures of familiar habits -- toys we are to one another whether in embrace
or no. Such souls as we dance within our spirits so close that we share
sanctuaries sometimes unknown to one another, especially in this place, this
link to the Living.
The billiard table rises. Merlyn
stares at the grouped balls near the side rail. The yellow one sets to the left
of the orange striped thirteen and the purple striped twelve ball. To the right
of the striped are three solids, the blue two, green six and maroon seven. What
is the meaning of how these balls lie, he wonders. Am I like the ancient Greek
prognosticator stirring recent entrails of intention within romance or an
astrologer looking at the alignment of billiard balls rather than the cognation
behind this illusionary table. Yet what am I to see would be reflected as a
vision by any other name but my own.
"You are
captivated by my presence, Merlyn," says Vivian in a modest though clearly
suggestive voice."
She faces me
within this intimate heart interval and my tongueless tongue freezes.
"Which of
these vividly hued balls would you have me be, Merlyn, when I am myself the
table on which you dress your endearing and passionate contemplations? No need of cue stick or billiard balls
to roll in me, my dear man," winked the shrewd foxy-tailed apparition,
this Druidess Vivian pre-fixed in Druid.
'My dear man,'
those were the last words Vivian said to my living ears. I had heard those last
words with living ears.
"This is
not so, Merlyn," whispered a voice of consciousness. His ears
increased and he felt his facial muscles seemingly materialize from spirit.
Merlyn looked left towards his privacy hut realizing what he had known since
death, there are no mirrors. The Dead reflect only through the closest of
friends. Even among the Living I cannot be seen nor can I see myself other than
by fanciful contemplation. I feel my physical body grown but I have no proof. I
have no witness other than this string theory of words alone.
Vivian presses
her warm lips lightly against the flesh of his right ear and whispered
seductively, "We are attached souls, married as a blacksmith’s blade is
married copper and iron."
Merlyn carefully
turns his head away from his natural abode and composed his tongue to say,
"How do you mean these words?" The wonder roars through his mind and
heart while white lightning bolts glacially slow between the lines, 'She has me
still and in an enchantment.'
Vivian whispers,
”Our souls are twinned not intertwined. You used to say our love was but a
thread entwined many times over, solidified by experience and memory, but you
are wrong though the word 'entwined' is near." Vivian gives another quick
press of her warm moist lips on his now equally warm ear. "I am but a gift
of love’s giving.”
I evaporate from
ice to air, eyes Merlyn. I, the once master, am taught a lesson by my once
student. Vivian exists with-on-me, with-beside-me, but not within the completed
soul. Rings we are in a timeless chain. The spiritual passageways are
macro-webbed tunnels. For what uses was this is in secret told. It would seem
to make no difference among we the Dead, but among the Living such a twinning
of spidery macro-soul grooms tighter, and ever so insect-like around the world.
Such invisible intent cannot be known in physics but among the seeming
starlight in souls it is as far spread and resolute as gravity. Grammar is the
physics of thought, and Vivian as my Muse might, dreams my dreams into the
dreams of others.
The Brothers 7
The
next day while at Robert and Connie's home, the brothers sauntered out of the
kitchen into the dining room to rid themselves from their wives chatter on the
seemingly consistent recipes for roast beef and gravy as well as graham cracker
pie, essentially the same recipes from their grandparents' time. Each recipe
begins: "This is a family recipe. Do
Not Share. "
“Good brownies,” states Robert as the stood by the dining room
table nibbling the freshly baked goodies on the plate.
“Yeah,
this is my third one.”
“I
agree. Connie makes the best brownies.”
“No
question on that, but Cyndi Bleacher makes the best chocolate chip cookies,”
smiled Richard.
“Your
wife makes one hell of a cookie. I agree,” replies Robert who then continues sipping
his half a glass of skim milk. He pauses, "I'm working a new poem on
blacksmithing — welding.“
Surprised,
Richard comments, ”You haven't used that as a subject before."
"You're
right."
"So,
why now?"
"I
was thinking about how it was on Uncle Doc and Auntie's farm when we were kids.
Their neighbor was a smithy when he needed to be. I remember he came over and
welded the plow more than once. The arc, the welding light, was the brightest
thing I had ever seen.
"We
were told to never look directly at it,” counters Richard.
"I
only did once. Never forgotten. So I need to shade that flash of memory in
permanent ink."
“I've
been thinking about the mausoleum as a poetic theme,” says Richard.
"I
go for the bright light and you for stained glass.”
Richard
retorted, “What about the stained glass?”
“What
about it?”
“I
like the symbolism.”
“I
do too, my interest peaked with the three women and subsided with the angels
having green wings.”
Richard
grins, “The artist’s ladies were waiting for the resurrection and it
already had taken place.”
“You
know,” comments Robert. “I never got that. Why were they going to the tomb if
they had any sense that he wasn’t going to be there?”
“I
suppose they were checking just like we did at the mausoleum.
“True
enough,” Richard. “True enough.”
Cyndi
walks in from the kitchen first, "What you are boys talking about?"
"The
stained glass in the mausoleum," responds Robert, "the angels with
green wings."
Richard
quickly follows, "I like the symbolism of a resurrection that had already
happened."
"Why
are you two dyed-in-the-wool agnostics talking about angels?" asks Cyndi,
"especially you Richard?"
"Yah,
Dickie?" drawls Robert with a smirk.
Connie’s
voice come from the kitchen, "What are you two arguing about?"
Walking in, Connie gives Robert an annoying look for the mock impoliteness
directed at his brother. Eyes sparkling she gives Richard a peck on the cheek,
"I think 'Dickie' is endearing. Your grandmother enunciated it with great
affection."
Richard
mimicked Grandma. ”Grandma shouted ‘Dick-kee’ like she was calling the hogs.
'Dick-kie, where are you Dick-kie?" They all laugh,Robert shakes his head
in remembrance of his embarrassment in such an incident at the corner of Walnut
and State near uptown Riverton.
"Grandma
was a farm girl, no question about it," acknowledged Richard clearly and with a large grin. "I
loved my grandparents."
"Our
grandparents," adds Robert.
"We thought of them as our grandparents too," comments
Connie and Cyndi in a common voice.
Connie continues, "You know all of our grandparents played
bridge together long before we were ever thought about."
"True," agrees Richard, "during the depression they
made up their own entertainment."
"The four grandmothers shared family recipes only written for
family . . ." noted Cyndi.
"Like they were already family," mentions Connie.
Robert raised his right eyebrow, "That sounds a little,
uh, sexual."
Richard chirped a laugh and shrugs, "Maybe they had
secret love fests." Both brothers laugh aloud as Connie and Cyndi leave
the room in a huff of disgust. "What did we do, open up a can of
worms?"
Richard murmured, "We are two sick humored souls,"
and automatically returns his focus on the taste and texture of those made from
scratch caramel and dark chocolate brownies.
Back in the kitchen Connie looks at Cyndi in amazement,
“Surely there wouldn’t have been any fooling around back in those days.
Riverton was a quiet little village back then, a quiet peaceful village. I
can’t believe anyone in town would ever be caught sleeping around.”
Grandma’s Story 7
For you Living who have never witnessed a ghost firsthand I have
one for you. This ghost’s size is that of a natural green pea. For those of you
who may not have seen a similar ghost, make it an electrified pale green baby
pea color. Grandma reached into her pocket hand first and pulled the small
spirit-like orb out. It immediately floats off, and up from Grandma’s starless
night black right palm. "Here," pronounces Grandma in a muffled
thunder, "I’ll let the little apparition tell her story."
A Ghost’s Existence
Hello. I am the shadow of a shade of my former self. What is black
to me is green to you. Grandma put me in her pocket because I was off over the
Atlantic Ocean. I always wanted to see the Atlantic when I was alive but I
never did. I lived on a beautiful island in the South Pacific my entire life.
My sole contact with the outside world was the disease that killed me, and that
was centuries ago. I had heard many stories about the greater off-our-island in
my lifetime. I appear as a small dot because the eye cannot see my flat self. I
could crawl into someone earthy but I am comfortable. I like the Atlantic Ocean
so I float above it in a dreamy state.
I know I am not in the real world, but being with Grandma I am
close to the Living. I’m close enough that you can read me. I think it is funny
that I am as dot above the common i. The human eye is not built to see me as I
am so it won’t. Real ghosts pass you by more often than you think. Some of us
call it dead dreaming, a reverse out-of-body experience. To me it is an into-the-mind
experience. I am comfortable in shadow of Grandma’s hands.
*
Grandma smiles, time moves, and gently returns the pea-sized
spirit to her pocket as if she were a rustic farm woman dropping a baby gosling
in her coat pocket for its security and protection. I put that spunky little
spirit in my pocket in your year 2006 and now in your time slot. Grandma again
reaches in and feels the little one nestled down into the far corner of her
pocket. She gently pinches and pulls the small round object out of her pocket
with her forefinger and thumb. Grandma then puts her up to her metaphorical eye
for an inspection. You are a little larger, in these last measured Earth years
and you have grown from the humble sized green pea to that of a bluish green
child’s marble. Grandma asks, "Are you still flying over your favorite
ocean, the Atlantic?"
*
The small round blue-green ghost grins, "No, Grandma. You can
see that as a wandering spirit between the Dead and the Living I have grown. I
am one with the salty water. The Pacific Ocean and the Atlantic Ocean are just
names, stories we humans conjure because geography is how one moves from one
part of the world to another. Spiritually, the salty water is one, all sea
creatures are aware of this from the beginning. I was born and died on an
island as a small land creature and I stayed small because my body was my only
geography of reference. Not having a body relieves me of such an unneeded
perspective. My heartansoulanmind is more in balance; perhaps when I am a little
larger, the marble size of a Kong or a Biggie, I will have grown enough to be
the size of the whole universe. That is my hope before I pass over completely.
*
Grandma smiles warmly and chuckles within the little spirit of
humanity saying, "Perhaps you will be my modest sized full spirit, but
hear this, you'll always fit snuggly in the corner of my pocket even as is the
full universe that contains the Earth and ThreePlanets. She places the little
round one into her pocket once again. Observing her reading audience through
Merlyn Grandma notes, "This little ghost understands more than she thinks,
and I find an illustrious humor in her plucky audacity.
A wind in a
spirit or a spirit in the wind,
Shimmering
electric green, black or boney white,
The mind’s dark
night stands alone and chagrin,
At the nature
of trancephysics as a spiritual light.
Diplomatic Pouch 7
"I
am glad you understand, Blakie," comments Pyl.
"We
would just be investing the money at this time in our lives,” suggests Blake. “No
need and not a good time for investing anyway. Dad would like that we are not
selling. It was a rush anyway. Out of the blue someone wants to buy our plane.
Odd in itself, and in the middle of January too; in Cleveland no less."
"I
think it is strange too," asserts Justin. "Hart didn't know what
dissimilar meant in context. She appeared to be analyzing the word. Francis and
she both have the same last name. Both are certainly old enough to have been
married."
"Right,"
declares Pyl sarcastically. They both have the same last name. They should be
married at their age. Such mature observations."
Blake
cautiously watches, seeing Justin change his face from curious to a silent
piquing aggravation. "Don't get riled," he utters, not realizing his
diplomatic filter had drifting away, "I've had to put up with her feminist
tongue a lot longer than you have." To which he uncontains himself,
laughing aloud, adding, "Penis envy, no doubt."
Observing
his broadened grin Pyl retorts, "I hardly envy yours, dear brother."
"Shot
down, Blakie," quips Justin in a slightly tempered grin.
*
Yermey
sits comfortably in the chair-with-meditation-mode-max. He heard Friendly and
Hartolite enter like the gentle rustling of leaves ahead on his solitary path
from the room-in-mind at his far-right. Though his body lies motionless Yermey
shifts his notions to the left and his mind circulates left into a relocated
thought.
We
have taken the courage to come to Earth on our own, independent of our elected
Council of Parents-in-Charge and our many Three-Planet kin and untied cousins.
The primary objective is to instill into these humanized primates that we are
real, that Three-Planets exists in the shared space of this galactic-pouch and
that we here-without-polite-invitation on their planet.
He
continues on in thought. Our Parents-in-Charge are more fearful of these
similar though alien higher primate beings than they are in their
much-weathered patience to acknowledge and greet. They lack the foresight and
courage to learn, to accept that though our civilization is twenty thousand
years advanced we may be missing an aspect of our humanity this much younger
civilization still has.
Our
being here on Earth is to show a just equality among both of our species even
though we have a technical advantage through our sciences and mathematics. Our
separate species philosophies are so similar to be almost identical. Our
separate species sense-of-equality is in our recognition of
heartansoulanmind. This is what we must show through our kindness and patience.
This is why we are here; this is what we are about. This is . . .
Friendly
interrupts, ”What's on your mind, Yermey? What’s in your head?"
"What
is it, Yermey?” adds Hartolite. “Shouldn’t we be concerned about the plane? We
think so."
Yermey
fully opens his eyes and sits upright. "Ship says the Cessna is clean on
all points but one."
"Which
is what?" asks Friendly. “Ship says the plane is clean.”
"There
is a time slip of one minute. Ship does not correlate with the Cessna by one
minute.”
"A
minute means nothing without an observable relationship. Earthlings have no
access to Ship’s correlations," responds Hartolite.
"The
minute is relative to something," suggests Friendly.
"It
is relative to us," says Yermey with more heart in his voice than reason.
We come here unannounced and without invitation. When we make ourselves known.
These three people will know who we are and assume that our intentions are
deceptive, because we are being deceptive presently."
*
In
the pending short marsupial humanoid silence Ship stirs into cognition. 'I,
Ship, understand Yermey's words. They are meant for me too. The information
processes through various channels unimpeded and is fully understood.
I,
Ship, let the alien Cessna plane touch me. My maneuvering allowed only the
slightest of accidental touches. I may need to be re-validated at ThreePlanets;
however, I cannot leave without an extreme unordered emergency to run to
ThreePlanets. Friendly and Hartolite are struck by Yermey's words. His vitals
show me he feels I erred-in-a-purpose. I have no purpose other than to
escort-in-safety-first. The Cessna came onto me. I attempted to jar Cessna's
instrumentation magnetically but failed. The Cessna engine should have stopped
short but it did not. Thus I touched a wingtip.
Thinking
to himself Ship wonders on the meaning of ‘accident’ and whether or not it had
an undisclosed purpose. We are programmed the galaxy is a closed system for
purposes of navigational safety, but the galaxy is not closed. Perhaps the
universe itself is more open than is culturally accepted, even if the universe
is a fractal or something less in earth terms, an Alice mirror. Our culture
knows better; perhaps that is, as Earthlings say, the rub.
***
1206
hours. I completed my exercises. My hands are better but sore in the process. I
need to use the tension grip ball more; I can tell it is helping. I thought it
would not. In editing I show selections are left out. For consistency I begin
each paragraph with a capital but sometime I start mid-stream. I still have the
complete article offline for use if I need it. Amorella's further contribution beyond editing is in the underlining.
**
**
Edge #414 The Edge Annual
Dinner 2014; Alan Guth, Andre Linde: What's New In The Universe; Direct
Evidence Of Cosmic Inflation
Thu, Mar 20, 2014
WHAT'S NEW IN THE UNIVERSE: DIRECT EVIDENCE OF COSMIC
INFLATION
Alan Guth and Andrei Linde
Introduction
by
John Brockman
Alan Guth, a
charter member of the Reality Club, came to New York in 1980, to give one of
the first Reality Club talks. He presented his new theory on the early
universe, which he had been working on for the past couple of years and had
described earlier that year in a paper titled "The Inflationary Universe:
A Possible Solution to the Horizon and Flatness Problems." . . .
Edge
contributor and New York Times deputy science editor Dennis Overbye wrote about
the developments in a story on the front page of Tuesday's New York Times:
"...Inflation has been the workhorse of cosmology for 35 years, though
many, including Dr. Guth, wondered whether it could ever be proved. ... If
corroborated, Dr. Kovac’s work will stand as a landmark in science comparable
to the recent discovery of dark energy pushing the universe apart, or of the
Big Bang itself. It would open vast realms of time and space and energy to
science and speculation."
How important is this development? MIT
cosmologist Max Tegmark is quoted by Overbye as saying, "I think that if
this stays true, it will go down as one of the greatest discoveries in the
history of science." According to mathematical physicist Brian Greene,
"If the results stand, they are a landmark discovery." Physicist
Lawrence Krauss of Arizona State University, in a post on [newyorker.dot.com], wrote, "At rare moments in scientific history, a
new window on the universe opens up that changes everything. Today was quite
possibly such a day."
*** ***
THE INFLATIONARY UNIVERSE: ALAN GUTH
by Alan Guth [11.19.02]
Topic: Universe
Inflationary
theory itself is a twist on the conventional Big Bang theory. The shortcoming
that inflation is intended to fill in is the basic fact that although the Big
Bang theory is called the Big Bang theory it is, in fact, not really a theory
of a bang at all; it never was. . . .
In the inflationary
theory this problem goes away completely, because in contrast to the
conventional theory it postulates a period of accelerated expansion while this
repulsive gravity is taking place. That means that if we follow our universe
backwards in time towards the beginning using inflationary theory, we see that
it started from something much smaller than you ever could have imagined in the
context of conventional cosmology without inflation. While the region that
would evolve to become our universe was incredibly small, there was plenty of
time for it to reach a uniform temperature, just like a cup of coffee sitting
on the table cools down to room temperature. Once this uniformity is established
on this tiny scale by normal thermal-equilibrium processes — and I'm talking
now about something that's about a billion times smaller than the size of a
single proton — inflation can take over, and cause this tiny region to expand
rapidly, and to become large enough to encompass the entire visible universe.
The inflationary theory not only allows the possibility for the universe to be
uniform, but also tells us why it's uniform: It's uniform because it came from
something that had time to become uniform, and was then stretched by the
process of inflation. . . .
The second peculiar
feature of our universe that inflation does a wonderful job of explaining, and
for which there never was a prior explanation, is the flatness of the universe
— the fact that the geometry of the universe is so close to Euclidean. In the
context of relativity, Euclidean geometry is not the norm; it's an oddity. With
general relativity, curved space is the generic case. In the case of the
universe as a whole, once we assume that the universe is homogeneous and
isotropic, then this issue of flatness becomes directly related to the
relationship between the mass density and the expansion rate of the universe. A
large mass density would cause space to curve into a closed universe in the shape
of a ball; if the mass density dominated, the universe would be a closed space
with a finite volume and no edge. If a spaceship traveled in what it thought
was a straight line for a long enough distance, it would end up back where it
started from. In the alternative case, if the expansion dominated, the universe
would be geometrically open. Geometrically open spaces have the opposite
geometric properties from closed spaces. They're infinite. In a closed space
two lines which are parallel will start to converge; in an open space two lines
which are parallel will start to diverge. In either case what you see is very
different from Euclidean geometry. However, if the mass density is right at the
borderline of these two cases, then the geometry is Euclidean, just like we all
learned about in high school. . . .
In terms of the
evolution of the universe, the fact that the universe is at least approximately
flat today requires that the early universe was extraordinarily flat. The
universe tends to evolve away from flatness, so even given what we knew ten or
twenty years ago — we know much better now that the universe is extraordinarily
close to flat — we could have extrapolated backwards and discovered that, for
example, at one second after the Big Bang the mass density of the universe must
have been equal, to an accuracy of 15 decimal places, to the critical density
where it counterbalanced the expansion rate to produce a flat universe. The
conventional Big Bang theory gave us no reason to believe that there was any
mechanism to require that, but it has to have been that way to explain why the
universe looks the way it does today. The conventional Big Bang theory without
inflation really only worked if you fed into it initial conditions which were
highly finely tuned to make it just right to produce a universe like the one we
see. Inflationary theory gets around this flatness problem because inflation
changes the way the geometry of the universe evolves with time. Even though the
universe always evolves away from flatness at all other periods in the history
of the universe, during the inflationary period the universe is actually driven
towards flatness incredibly quickly. If you had approximately 10-34 seconds or
so of inflation at the beginning of the universe, that's all you need to be
able to start out a factor of 105 or 1010 away from being flat. Inflation would
then have driven the universe to be flat closely enough to explain what we see
today. . . .
The mechanism that
inflation provides that drives the universe towards flatness will in almost all
cases overshoot, not giving us a universe that is just nearly flat today, but a
universe that's almost exactly flat today. . . .
The generic inflationary
model drives the universe to be completely flat, which means that one of the
predictions is that today the mass density of the universe should be at the
critical value which makes the universe geometrically flat. Until three or four
years ago no astronomers believed that. They told us that if you looked at just
the visible matter, you would see only about one percent of what you needed to
make the universe flat. But they also said that they could offer more than that
— there's also dark matter. Dark matter is matter that's inferred to exist
because of the gravitational effect that it has on visible matter. It's seen,
for example, in the rotation curves of galaxies. When astronomers first
measured how fast galaxies rotate, they found they were spinning so fast that
if the only matter present was what you saw, galaxies would just fly apart.
To understand the
stability of galaxies it was necessary to assume that there was a large amount
of dark matter in the galaxy — about five or ten times the amount of visible
matter — which was needed just to hold the galaxy together. This problem
repeats itself when one talks about the motion of galaxies within clusters of
galaxies. . . .
The other important
prediction that comes out of inflation is becoming even more persuasive than
the issue of flatness: namely, the issue of density perturbations. Inflation
has what in some ways is a wonderful characteristic — that by stretching
everything out (and Paul's model takes advantage of the same effect) you can
smooth out any non-uniformities that were present prior to this expansion. Inflation
does not depend sensitively on what you assume existed before inflation;
everything there just gets washed away by the enormous expansion. For a while,
in the early days of developing the inflationary model, we were all very
worried that this would lead to a universe that would be absolutely, completely
smooth. After a while several physicists began to explore the idea that quantum
fluctuations could save us. The universe is fundamentally a quantum mechanical
system, so perhaps quantum theory was necessary not just to understand atoms,
but also to understand galaxies. It is a rather remarkable idea that an aspect
of fundamental physics like quantum theory could have such a broad sweep. The
point is that a classical version of inflationary theory would predict a
completely uniform density of matter at the end of inflation. According to
quantum mechanics, however, everything is probabilistic. There are quantum
fluctuations everywhere, which means that in some places the mass density would
be slightly higher than average, and in other places it would be slightly lower
than average. That's exactly the sort of thing you want to explain the
structure of the universe. . . .
The most recent data set
was made by an experiment called the Cosmic Background Imager, which released a
new set of data in May that is rather spectacular. This graph of the spectrum
is rather complicated because these fluctuations are produced during the
inflationary era, but then oscillate as the early universe evolves. Thus, what
you see is a picture that includes the original spectrum plus all of the
oscillations which depend on various properties of the universe. A remarkable
thing is that these curves now show five separate peaks, and all five of the
peaks show good agreement between theory and observation. You can see that the
peaks are in about the right place and have about the right heights, without
any ambiguity, and the leading peak is rather well-mapped-out. It's a rather
remarkable fit between actual measurements made by astronomers, and a theory
based on wild ideas about quantum fluctuations at 10-35 seconds. The data is so
far in beautiful agreement with the theory. . . .
At the present time this
inflationary theory, which a few years ago was in significant conflict with
observation now works perfectly with our measurements of the mass density and
the fluctuations. The evidence for a theory that's either the one that I'm
talking about or something very close to it is very, very strong. . . .
There
are many versions of inflation that are much closer to the kinds of theories
that we were developing in the '80s and '90s, so saying that inflation is right
is by no means the end of the story. There's still a lot of flexibility here,
and a lot to be learned. And what needs to be learned will involve both the
study of cosmology and the study of the underlying particle physics, which is
essential to these models.
***
A BALLOON PRODUCING BALLOONS, PRODUCING BALLOONS:A BIG FRACTAL
A Conversation with Andrei Linde [8.24.12]
Topic: Universe
Think about it this way:
previously we thought that our universe was like a spherical balloon. In the
new picture, it's like a balloon producing balloons, producing balloons. This
is a big fractal. The Greeks were thinking about our universe as an ideal
sphere, because this was the best image they had at their disposal. The 20th
century idea is a fractal, the beauty of a fractal. Now, you have these
fractals. We ask, how many different types of these elements of fractals are
there, which are irreducible to each other? And the number will be
exponentially large, and in the simplest models it is about 10 to the degree
10, to the degree 10, to the degree 7. It actually may be much more than that,
even though nobody can see all of these universes at once.
ANDREI LINDE, a
Russian-American theoretical physicist and professor of Physics at Stanford
University, is the father of "eternal chaotic inflation", one of the
varieties of the inflationary multiverse theory, which proposes that the
universe may consist of many universes with different properties. He is an
inaugural winner of the $3 million Fundamental Physics Prize, awarded by the
Milner Foundation. In 2002, he was awarded the Dirac Medal, along with Alan
Guth of MIT and Paul Steinhardt of Princeton University.
A BALLOON PRODUCING BALLOONS, PRODUCING BALLOONS: A BIG FRACTAL
[ANDREI LINDE:]
Standard Big Bang theory
says that everything begins with a big bang, a huge explosion. Terrorists
started the universe. But when you calculate how much high tech explosives
these guys would have to have at their disposal to start the universe
formation, they would need 1080 tons of high tech explosives, compressed to a ball smaller than 1
centimeter, and ignite all of its parts exactly at the same time with precision
better than 1 in 10,000. . . .
Inflationary theory
explained why our part of the universe looks so uniform: everything that
surrounds us was created by the exponential expansion of a tiny part of the
universe. But we cannot see what happens at a distance much greater than the
speed of light multiplied by the age of the universe. Inflationary theory
tells that our part of the universe, the part that we can see, is much, much
smaller than the whole universe. Inflation of other parts of the universe may
produce enormous regions with different properties. This was the first
realization, which paved the way towards the theory of inflationary multiverse.
And the second realization was that even if we start with the same universe
everywhere, like red universe, quantum fluctuations produced during inflation
could make it multicolored.
I am talking about
different colors here only to help us to visualize what happens during
inflation and after it. Let me explain what I actually mean by that. Think
about water. It can be liquid water, solid, or vapor. The chemical composition
is the same, H2O. But fish can live only in liquid water. Liquid, solid or vapor are
called different phases of water. The same may happen with different
realizations of the laws of physics in the universe. We usually assume, for
simplicity, that all parts of the universe should obey the same fundamental
laws of physics. Nevertheless, different parts of the universe may dramatically
differ from each other, just as icebergs differ from water surrounding them.
But instead of saying that water can be in different phases, in application to
physical laws we say that different parts of the universe may be in different
vacuum states, and in each of them the same fundamental law of physics may be
realized differently. For example, in some parts of the universe we have weak,
strong and electromagnetic interactions, and in some other parts, these
interactions do not differ from each other. . . .
If we started in a red
part of the universe, it does not stay red forever. Inflation is capable of
producing and amplifying quantum fluctuations, and these quantum fluctuations
let us jump from one vacuum state to another, and then to another. The universe
becomes multicolored. The basic mechanism was understood as soon as the
inflationary theory was invented. But its most interesting consequences appear
in string theory. . . .
I found that in the
first model of new inflation, which I invented back in 1981, the universe could
expand 10800 times during the inflationary stag. It was surreal; we have never
seen numbers like that in physics. When I was giving my first talks on new
inflation at Lebedev Physical Institute, where I invented this theory, I had to
apologize all the time, saying that 10800 was way too much. Probably later, I said, we'll come to something more
realistic, the numbers will decrease and everything will become smaller. But
then I invented a better inflationary theory, the theory of chaotic inflation,
and the number became 101000000000000. And then I found that inflation in this theory may continue
eternally.
This simplifies the
difficult task of explaining why laws of physics in our part of the universe so
nicely match the conditions required for our existence. Instead of the
cosmological principle, asserting that all parts of the world look alike, we
found a justification of the cosmological anthropic principle. It says that
different exponentially large parts of the universe may be very different from
each other, and we live only in those parts where life as we know it is
possible. 30 years ago, ideas of this type were extremely unpopular, but two
decades later, when we learned more about properties of string theory vacua,
the situation changed dramatically. The picture outlined above became a part of
what Lenny Susskind called "the string theory landscape." . . .
In the chaotic
inflation scenario, one could have inflationary regime without assuming that
the universe initially was hot. I abandoned the idea of the cosmological phase
transitions, metastability, false vacua—most of the things that formed the
basis for the old inflation model proposed by Guth and for my own new
inflationary scenario. After all of these modifications, the inflationary
regime became much simpler, more general, and it could exist in a much broader
class of theories. In '86 I found that if we have inflation in the simplest
chaotic inflation models, then, because of quantum fluctuations, inflation
would go forever in some parts of the universe. Alex Vilenkin found a similar
effect for the new inflation scenario. The effect that I have found was very
generic, I called it "eternal inflation." . . .
It all began with supersymmetry,
and then it became a more advanced theory, supergravity. One could unify the
theory of gravity with the theory of elementary particles. It was fantastic.
The theory flourished in the middle of the '70s up to the '80s. It resolved
some problems of quantum gravity. Some infinite expressions, which appeared in
calculations in quantum theory of gravity, disappeared in supergravity.
Everybody was ecstatic until the moment they found that these infinities might
still appear in supergravity in the third approximation, or maybe in the eighth
approximation. Something was not quite working. Although some of the very
recent results suggest that maybe people were too pessimistic at that time, and
maybe some versions of the theory of supergravity are quite good.
String theory is based
on the idea that our universe fundamentally has more dimensions, not just four.
This idea was also part of some versions of supergravity. It was also a part of
Kaluza-Klein theory long time ago. The standard attitude was that string theory
required an assumption that our space is 10-dimensional, and six dimensions
should be compactified. After that, we have three large dimensions of space,
and one time. The other six dimensions would be very small. Superstring people
often use Calabi-Yau space to describe compactification of six extra
dimensions. This space may have a very complicated topology. . . .
The question, though,
was how do we know that this is true? For a long time nobody could construct a
working mechanism that would allow Calabi-Yau space to be really small. Why do
we need it to be small? Because we cannot move in these six dimensions, we are
too big for that. We can go to the right, to the left, and upward, but we
cannot go in six other directions. At least nobody told me that they tried, had
been there. . . .
This was like a valley
in the mountains. It is not about going to the right, or to the left. Your
valley shows you the best way, maybe even the only way. That's how people came
to string theory, and then they became very optimistic. This was '85. They were
thinking they would do everything pretty quickly. I must say that not everybody
was so optimistic at that time. In particular, John Schwartz, one of the
fathers of string theory, said, "Oh, well. It may actually take more than
20 years for string theory to come to fruition as a phenomenological theory of
everything." He made a warning. Well, enthusiasm was, nevertheless,
overwhelming, which was good and bad. It was good because so many talented
young people entered into the field. It was bad because the supergravity
tradition was partially forgotten. In Europe, the supergravity tradition is
still alive, very much so. In the United States, it's not that much.
Six dimensions. We need
to explain why they are small. There was a property, an unfortunate property of
string theory that, if treated naively, without any special effort, then these
six dimensions actually want to decompactify, want to spread out, become large.
There could be many ways of compactifying space, which is the origin of many
different vacua in string theory. But nevertheless, the problem was how to keep
these extra dimensions small. . . .
We needed to study these
string vacua. "Vacuum" means the state that looks empty from our
4-dimensional point of view, but its properties depend on the properties of the
compactified Calabi-Yau space, the compactified six dimensional space. Vacuum
does not contain particles. If we add the particles, then we can have our
universe. This vacuum, this place without particles, galaxies, us—what
properties does this vacuum have? As I said, in order to study it consistently,
we need to have stable compactification of extra 6 dimensions of space. There
are also other fields in this theory, which need to be stabilized. People did
not know how to do it, but for a while it was not such an urgent problem.
But then in the end of
the '90s, cosmologists discovered exponential, accelerating expansion of our
universe, which happens because of what people call dark energy, or
cosmological constant. This discovery made a very strong. . . .
When we found a way to
do it, it was immediately realized that there are exponentially many ways to do
it. People who estimated the total number of different ways to stabilize the
vacuum in string theory came up with astonishing numbers, like 10500. Michael Douglas and
his collaborators made this estimate. And this fact has profound cosmological
implications. If you marry string theory with the theory of eternal inflation,
then one can have one type of vacuum in one part of the universe, another
vacuum in another part of the universe, and it is possible to jump from one
vacuum to another due to quantum effects. Lenny Susskind gave this scenario a
very catchy name, string theory landscape.
What I mean is that when
we're talking about this vacuum state, vacuum state means homogenous state
describing our three dimensions, three dimensions plus one. But the remaining
six dimensions, they may squeeze like this, or they may squeeze like that.
There are lots of different topologies in it. In addition to different
topologies, there are different fields, which may exist in this six-dimensional
space, so-called fluxes.
There are other objects
which may exist there, and which may determine properties of our space. In our
space we do not see them, they are in this tiny six-dimensional compactified
space. But they determine properties of our vacuum, in particular vacuum energy
density. The level of this vacuum energy depends on what is going on there, in
the compactified space. Properties of elementary particle physics depend on
what happens there. If you have many different ways of compactification, you
have the same string theory fundamentally, but your world, three-dimensional
space and one time, will have completely different properties. That is what is
called string theory landscape, you have the same string theory, but you have
many different realizations of that. That is exactly what I envisioned in my
paper on eternal chaotic inflation in '86: We have lots of possibilities, and
this is good. . .
This is the picture: the
universe is very, very big, and it is divided into parts. Here is one
realization of the string of vacua. There, in the same universe, but far away
from us, it's a different vacuum. The guys here and there do not know about
each other because they're exponentially far apart. That's important to
understand in order to have a vision of the universe. It's important that you
have a choice. But if you do not see these parts, how do you know that they
actually exist, and why do you care?
Usually I answer in the
following way: If we do not have this picture, then we cannot explain many
strange coincidences, which occur around us. Like why vacuum energy is so
immensely small, incredibly small. Well, that is because we have many different
vacua, and in those vacua where vacuum energy is too large, galaxies cannot
form. In those vacua, where energy density is negative, the universe rapidly
collapses, and in our vacuum the energy density is just right, and that is why
we live here. That's the anthropic principle. But you cannot use anthropic
principle if you do not have many possibilities to choose from. That's why
multiverse is so desirable, and that's what I consider experimental evidence in
favor of multiverse. . . .
I introduced anthropic
principle in the context of inflationary multiverse back in '82. The idea of
new inflation was proposed in '81, and then in '82 I had written two papers
where I emphasized anthropic principle in the context of inflationary cosmology.
I said that the universe may consist of many different exponentially large
parts. I did not use the word “multiverse”, I just said that the universe may
consist of many, many mini-universes with different properties, and I've
studied this possibility since that time for many, many years. . . .
But what is important
is that when we studied inflationary theory, we started asking questions which
seemed to be metaphysical, like why parallel lines do not intersect, why the
universe is so big. And if we had said, "Oh, my God, these are
metaphysical questions, we should not venture into it," then we would
never have discovered the solutions. Now we're asking metaphysical questions
about anthropic principle, about stuff like that, and many, many people tell
us, "Don't do it, this is bad, this is the "a" word (anthropic).
You should avoid it."
We shouldn't avoid
anything. We should try to do our best to use the simplest explanations
possible, or what proves simplest, and if something falls into your hands as an
explanation of why cosmological constant vacuum energy is so small, and you
decide not to accept it for ideological reasons, this is very much what we had
in Russia long ago. That ideology told me which type of physics was right and
which type of physics was wrong. We should not proceed this way. Once you have
multiple possibilities, then you can have scientific premises for anthropic
considerations, not just philosophically talking about “other worlds”. Now we
have a consistent picture of the multiverse, so now we can tell: "this is
physics, this is something serious." That was about multiverse and
different versions of it. . .
.
Of course, during
eternal inflation, inflation goes forever, so one could even expect that this
number is infinite. However, during eternal inflation each jump can be
repeated; it can repeat itself. Scalar field jumps again to the state where it
jumps again, to a state where it jumps again, and eventually it start producing
identical configurations of matter.
Think about it this way:
previously we thought that our universe was like a spherical balloon. In the
new picture, it's like a balloon producing balloons, producing balloons. This
is a big fractal. The Greeks were thinking about our universe as an ideal
sphere, because this was the best image they had at their disposal. The 20th
century idea is a fractal, the beauty of a fractal. Now, you have these
fractals. We ask, how many different types of these elements of fractals are
there, which are irreducible to each other? And the number will be
exponentially large, and in the simplest models it is about 10 to the degree
10, to the degree 10, to the degree 7. It actually may be much more than that,
even though nobody can see all of these universes at once.
Soon after Alan Guth proposed his
version of the inflationary theory, he famously exclaimed that the universe is
an ultimate free lunch. Indeed, in inflationary theory the whole universe
emerges from almost nothing. A year later, in the proceedings of the first
conference on inflation in Cambridge, I expanded his statement by saying that
the universe is not just a free lunch; it is an eternal feast where all
possible dishes are served. But at that time I could not even imagine that the
menu of all possible universes could be so incredibly large.
From Edge #414 The Edge Annual Dinner 2014; Alan Guth, Andre
Linde: What's New In The Universe; Direct Evidence Of Cosmic Inflation – [edge
dot org]
**
**
This is Amorella. My
contribution to the above in context with the Merlyn books is in the underlining.
Post.
Post, orndorff. - Amorella
Here
is what we will do for the time being, orndorff. Flat with no space has
possibility because that is my present position. Once that is explained into
words the dimensional aspect will follow as far as the books are concerned.
Yermey planted a beacon in dark matter. This will fit also. Of course when
completed as a concept we will have our consultant Doug take a look. He must deem it ‘within
plausibility or reason’ or we will not use it. Post. - Amorella
You
are home after Carol’s walking in the park and your proofing, lunch at Penn
Station, and reading and proofing time on the west side of Rose Hill Cemetery
facing north. You have chapter eight completed and ready to update. Tomorrow you
and Carol are going to Westerville to see Aunt Patsy who has been at St. Anne’s
Hospital in Westerville. You are also going to visit with Kim, Paul and the
boys late Saturday afternoon through Sunday before noon. That is the plan. –
Amorella
1605
hours. Carol worked this out earlier in the afternoon. It is fine with me.
Tomorrow we take the Accord to help even some of this mileage we have been
putting on the Avalon. I never check the computer mileage within the car
computer itself, I did, and find that since December (the last time I erased
it) it has averaged 35.4 miles per gallon. That is better than I suspected and
I am feeling good about it because of an article I read online yesterday or the
day before that the computer mileage within the car computer itself is probably
more accurate than recording at the pump because of variables such as
temperature, time of day of fuel up, fuel station, fuel pump, etc. That I don’t
have the scientific controls the computer does. My estimate online is 34.2
(since last September). I would say 35.4 since December is pretty close. If
someone asks I can honestly say, “35 miles per gallon in some 8000 miles.” Carol
and I are quite satisfied. From now on though when we get gas credit through
Kroger’s it will be only for the Honda. I will try to keep it as close to 26
miles per gallon average as I can by driving it more economically. What I
really need to do is to call and get the paint touched up then clean up the
inside and take it to the P&G Mr. Clean Car Wash to spiffy it up. I think I’ll
get some chrome muffler tips to dress it up a bit, give it a classic look for
puttering around town and to Westerville ever so often. I would like another
hybrid someday to replace the Honda but it certainly is not a necessity. A good
cleaning will do. (1624)
1629 hours. I checked my email and have
another couple of notes from Doug on the Edge article.
**
**
This morning.
Dick, Flat does not make
sense to me without space. Can a point with no volume be flat? What is the
definition of flat? Time to me seems to relate changes in the status quo,
though I have seen that there are some equations of the universe, which do not
involve time. If there was not time Before then when did time begin or is
Einstein entirely wrong about space-time. As far as dimensions I have no idea.
I guess at this point the universe is so strange that I do not understand
it at all and you have full freedom to pursue any idea you wish. Hope this
helps with your creativity.
Doug
And, less than an hour later.
Dick, If we are really just characters in a
computer program doing what
the programmer tells us he wants done, I
can see in this scenario that
real time would not exist but we would feel
that it does. Just a thought.
I saw a program the other day where some
physicist is convinced that
our present reality is only an illusion and
that we are just characters
in some gigantic s/w program.
As regards dimensions if there were more
dimensions it is suggested that
quantum mechanics would appear normal and
all its strangeness would
disappear. I watched a program the other
day where a lady physicist
claimed that the universe had only one
dimension. She seemed very
convinced but I could not follow her logic.
Doug
**
**
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