Mid-morning. Last night you had other
comments but were awaiting Doug’s reply before entering them. The reference is
to this delightful BBC article you posted yesterday. - Amorella
** **
“Why is there something rather than nothing?”
Some physicists think they can
explain why the universe first formed. If they are right, our entire cosmos may
have sprung out of nothing at all
Presented by Robert Adler
People have
wrestled with the mystery of why the universe exists for thousands of years.
Pretty much every ancient culture came up with its own creation story - most of
them leaving the matter in the hands of the gods - and philosophers have
written reams on the subject. But science has had little to say about this
ultimate question.
However, in
recent years a few physicists and cosmologists have started to tackle it. They
point out that we now have an understanding of the history of the universe, and
of the physical laws that describe how it works. That information, they say,
should give us a clue about how and why the cosmos exists.
Their
admittedly controversial answer is that the entire universe, from the fireball
of the Big Bang to the star-studded cosmos we now inhabit, popped into
existence from nothing at all. It had to happen, they say, because
"nothing" is inherently unstable.
This idea
may sound bizarre, or just another fanciful creation story. But the physicists
argue that it follows naturally from science's two most powerful and successful
theories: quantum mechanics and general relativity.
Here, then,
is how everything could have come from nothing.
Particles from empty space
First we
have to take a look at the realm of quantum mechanics. This is the branch of
physics that deals with very small things: atoms and even tinier particles. It
is an immensely successful theory, and it underpins most modern electronic
gadgets.
Quantum
mechanics tells us that there is no such thing as empty space. Even the most
perfect vacuum is actually filled by a roiling cloud of particles and
antiparticles, which flare into existence and almost instantaneously fade back
into nothingness.
These so-called virtual particles
don't last long enough to be observed directly, but we know they exist by their effects.
Space-time, from no space and
no time
From tiny things
like atoms, to really big things like galaxies. Our best theory for describing
such large-scale structures is general relativity, Albert Einstein's crowning
achievement, which sets out how space, time and gravity work.
Relativity
is very different from quantum mechanics, and so far nobody has been able to
combine the two seamlessly. However, some theorists have been able to bring the
two theories to bear on particular problems by using carefully chosen
approximations. For instance, this approach was used by Stephen Hawking at the University of Cambridge to describe black holes.
One thing
they have found is that, when quantum theory is applied to space at the
smallest possible scale, space itself becomes unstable. Rather than remaining
perfectly smooth and continuous, space and time destabilize, churning and
frothing into a foam of space-time bubbles.
In other
words, little bubbles of space and time can form spontaneously. "If space
and time are quantized, they can fluctuate," says Lawrence Krauss at Arizona State
University in Tempe. "So you can create virtual space-times just as you
can create virtual particles."
What's more, if it's possible for
these bubbles to form, you can guarantee that they will. "In quantum
physics, if something is not forbidden, it necessarily happens with some
non-zero probability," says Alexander Vilenkin of Tufts University in Boston, Massachusetts.
A universe from a bubble
So it's not
just particles and antiparticles that can snap in and out of nothingness:
bubbles of space-time can do the same. Still, it seems like a big leap from an
infinitesimal space-time bubble to a massive universe that hosts 100 billion
galaxies. Surely, even if a bubble formed, it would be doomed to disappear
again in the blink of an eye?
Actually, it
is possible for the bubble to survive. But for that we need another trick:
cosmic inflation. Most physicists now think that the universe began with the
Big Bang. At first all the matter and energy in the universe was crammed
together in one unimaginably small dot, and this exploded. This follows from
the discovery, in the early 20th century that the universe is expanding. If all
the galaxies are flying apart, they must once have been close together.
Inflation
theory proposes that in the immediate aftermath of the Big Bang, the universe
expanded much faster than it did later. This seemingly outlandish notion was
put forward in the 1980s by Alan Guth at the Massachusetts Institute
of Technology, and refined by Andrei Linde, now at Stanford University.
The idea is
that, a fraction of a second after the Big Bang, the quantum-sized bubble of
space expanded stupendously fast. In an incredibly brief moment, it went from
being smaller than the nucleus of an atom to the size of a grain of sand. When
the expansion finally slowed, the force field that had powered it was
transformed into the matter and energy that fill the universe today. Guth calls
inflation "the ultimate free lunch".
As weird as it seems, inflation fits
the facts rather well. In particular, it neatly explains why the cosmic
microwave background, the faint remnant of radiation left over from the Big
Bang, is almost perfectly uniform across the sky. If the universe had not
expanded so rapidly, we would expect the radiation to be patchier than it is.
The universe is flat and why
that's important
Inflation
also gave cosmologists the measuring tool they needed to determine the
underlying geometry of the universe. It turns out this is also crucial for
understanding how the cosmos came from nothing.
Einstein's
theory of general relativity tells us that the space-time we live in could take
three different forms. It could be as flat as a tabletop. It could curve back
on itself like the surface of a sphere, in which case if you travel far enough
in the same direction you would end up back where you started. Alternatively,
space-time could curve outward like a saddle. So which is it?
There is a
way to tell. You might remember from math class that the three angles of a
triangle add up to exactly 180 degrees. Actually your teachers left out a
crucial point: this is only true on a flat surface. If you draw a triangle on
the surface of a balloon, its three angles will add up to more than 180
degrees. Alternatively, if you draw a triangle on a surface that curves outward
like a saddle, its angles will add up to less than 180 degrees.
So to find out if the universe is
flat, we need to measure the angles of a really big triangle. That's where
inflation comes in. It determined the average size of the warmer and cooler
patches in the cosmic microwave background. Those patches were measured in
2003, and that gave astronomers a selection of triangles. As a result, we know
that on the largest observable scale our universe is flat.
It turns out
that a flat universe is crucial. That's because only a flat universe is likely
to have come from nothing.
Everything
that exists, from stars and galaxies to the light we see them by, must have
sprung from somewhere. We already know that particles spring into existence at
the quantum level, so we might expect the universe to contain a few odds and
ends. But it takes a huge amount of energy to make all those stars and planets.
Where did
the universe get all this energy? Bizarrely, it may not have had to get any.
That's because every object in the universe creates gravity, pulling other
objects toward it. This balances the energy needed to create the matter in the
first place.
It's a bit
like an old-fashioned measuring scale. You can put a heavy weight on one side,
so long as it is balanced by an equal weight on the other. In the case of the
universe, the matter goes on one side of the scale, and has to be balanced by
gravity.
Physicists have calculated that in a
flat universe the energy of matter is exactly balanced by the energy of the
gravity the mass creates. But this is only true in a flat universe. If the
universe had been curved, the two sums would not cancel out.
Universe or multiverse?
At this
point, making a universe looks almost easy. Quantum mechanics tells us that
"nothing" is inherently unstable, so the initial leap from nothing to
something may have been inevitable. Then the resulting tiny bubble of
space-time could have burgeoned into a massive, busy universe, thanks to inflation.
As Krauss puts it, "The laws of physics as we understand them make it
eminently plausible that our universe arose from nothing - no space, no time,
no particles, nothing that we now know of."
So why did
it only happen once? If one space-time bubble popped into existence and
inflated to form our universe, what kept other bubbles from doing the same?
Linde offers
a simple but mind-bending answer. He thinks universes have always been
springing into existence, and that this process will continue forever.
When a new
universe stops inflating, says Linde, it is still surrounded by space that is
continuing to inflate. That inflating space can spawn more universes, with yet
more inflating space around them. So once inflation starts it should make an
endless cascade of universes, which Linde calls eternal inflation. Our universe
may be just one grain of sand on an endless beach.
Those
universes might be profoundly different to ours. The universe next door might
have five dimensions of space rather than the three – length, breadth and
height – that ours does. Gravity might be ten times stronger or a thousand
times weaker, or not exist at all. Matter might be built out of utterly
different particles.
So there
could be a mind-boggling smorgasbord of universes. Linde says eternal inflation
is not just the ultimate free lunch: it is the only one at which all possible dishes
are available.
As yet we don't have hard evidence
that other universes exist. But either way, these ideas give a whole new
meaning to the phrase "Thanks for nothing".
Selected and edited from – http://wwwDOTbbcDOTcom/earth/story/20141106-why-does-anything-exist-at-all
** **
** **
Yesterday.
1925 hours. Doug’s comment is of great interest to me partly because if this is
so, then ‘illusion’ has to be further defined, at least in my head. ;-) I have loved my friend’s comments
on all matters since the third grade. Here it is:
** **
Dick, Thanks for the
thought provoking article. Nothing from nothing means we are made from nothing.
Maybe that is why all fundamental particles are made with zero radius
particles. The entire universe and us are illusions.
Happy New Year!
Doug
** **
Yesterday.
1936 hours. If Doug is correct and
we are an illusion, then how much easier would it be for a soul to add a human
heart and mind to its being?
Send this on to John Douglas Goss and await
his reaction. – Amorella
Here is Doug's response to my idea that if we are an illusion, then it would be much easier for the soul to add a human heart and mind to its being.
** **
Dick, Sounds reasonable to
me.
Doug
This
aspect of the soul is a part of the Merlyn books because Great Merlyn’s Ghost
realizes that he is, from his perspective, becoming more than heartansoulanmind
but he does not see how this is possible as he already is, from his perspective,
heartansoulanmind. Within this observation of slight change where he assumes
there shouldn’t be any in terms of human consciousness he wonders on the
aspects of being a humanized soul rather than a humanized spirit. He wonders on
the differences between both. – Amorella
0940 hours. I have been reading too much science – A Short
History of Nearly Everything. This reminds me of those early scientists, and
what they make of their observations. However, in this case it is Merlyn being
the scientist observing the ever so slight differences in his consciousness
caused by what he thinks is his soul stirring, not fully realizing it is he
that is being stirred, i.e. changed by a metamorphose within the soul caused by
his humanity.
Not quite but you are on the right track. –
Amorella
0946 hours. I am assuming this is all going to help the
story focus and move along.
Of course. The psychological/spiritual depth
is metaphysical and can be understood by the reader, in this case, yourself. Think
of Blake’s painting. It is not the spirits that have movement, it is his soul
that is moving not his mind and heart, so to speak. Let this rest in your head.
All you are doing is magnifying the aspect of the soul that the Living are not
always conscious of. You are showing the difference the soul makes by allowing
the soul to absorb the human heartanmind. – Amorella
0953 hours. I think I am not ‘translating’ you quite
correctly. I will have to study this as it is as a draft from my head not a
final copy.
1156 hours. I put in my forty minutes of exercises and
while doing so remembered last night’s chapter nine in “A Short History.”
Mostly it was about John Dalton, Rutherford, Niels Bohr, Heisenberg and
Schrodinger, the atom and how at the subatomic level information could outrun
the speed of light. It was a good chapter to read before bed. I’m sending this
book on to Doug when I finish. I’m sure he’ll enjoy it. Still, how in the world
can information outrun the speed of light? No one, as of yet, has the answer.
Once long ago you asked how I, the Amorella,
arrived here, in your head, so to speak. Why don’t we apply this sort of
physics to it for the time and say as the marsupial humanoids have been wont to
say in your text, ‘the speed of light is zero.’ – Amorella
1538 hours. I am up to page 188, chapter thirteen. The chapter that relates to ‘atom smashers’ and the like is out of date which shows me something. Continuing is a chapter on geology: continent formation and movement. Also, much of the study has been made in my lifetime. I did not know that Denver rises slowly without a known reason and that parts of north Australia are sinking slowly also without a known reason at least as of when the book was published in 2003. This could be easily updated but has not been. Certainly a refreshed version could be placed in the ebook publication without too much cost. Still, it is an interesting book and the dark humor (irony) continues to be pointed out which makes it worthy of human entertainment.
Arrogance is creeping in boy. Watch yourself.
– Amorella
1550 hours. I was thinking on that myself. Nobody knows
very much and I probably understand less than what people do know for fact. So
I should refrain from a secret smugness that creeps up. This leaves me with
nothing more to say, at least at the moment – no thoughts.
You are working on Dead Eight and this is
what you have for a draft so far. - Amorella
** **
The Dead 8
Great
Merlyn’s ghost sits along the bank of the 1400 year-old Scottish mountain fed
river in his sanctuary. His canoe is tied to a tree trunk just to his left.
Filled in a quiet memory from living at the age seven, Merlyn stretches the
1280 some years to his present sense of self as his once eyes focus on the oak
at the other bank of the slow meandering stream. He reasons, this place is
multi-layered and un-laddered floating dream.
I
am up and down and here and there, both at once. I plant my ghostly rump on the
memories and experiences of Life and the Beyond. My soul appears to be slowly
and stealthily nibbling into my mind and heart, yet spiritually I am wholly
heartansoulanmind since my physical death.
My soul,
as far as I can reason, is synthesized to my heartanmind to encapsulate the
breath of my life. And, for my part, what would I be here among the Dead but
solitary and existential being without my soul’s shield? Soul and heartanmind
gain from this seemingly natural spiritual order. But stepping deeper, what is
the essence of the soul first that it needs to nibble and ingest my
heartanmind? What is the soul but first an Angel’s breath, and what is the
essence of an Angel’s breath? I have a right to know my soul as I know my heart
and mind. 235 words
GMG.Two. The Dead: Segment Eight.
** **
Now that you have spent time clearing this
draft. Let it set. Post.- Amorella
You and Carol had Papa John’s pizza for supper while
watching a DVR of tonight’s NBC News then watched last night’s “The Mentalist”
and “CSI”. You are still surprised with your rather defiantly stated, “I have a
right to know my soul as I know my heart and mind.” This was you talking not
Merlyn. – Amorella
2125 hours. So I thought because I could feel the
defiance.
You were never afraid to confront an Angel,
imaginary or not. – Amorella
2128 hours. That is because if I feel my thoughts,
emotions and questions are honest then why should I be afraid. I have gone
through enough self doubts in terms of Angels. Real or not (how would I know
the difference) I’ll state my questions. I feel I do have a right to know my
soul as my heart and mind, if indeed I have a soul. I feel that I do, I act as
though I have a soul. No proof though. Human beings have hearts and minds, even
though they can’t be seen and weighed by traditional methods we know both are a
part of the human experience. Souls? Let me check for a good definition.
I
have limited my definition though the selecting and editing of the Wikipedia
article below to material I have read before and am generally more familiar
with.
** **
Soul
From Wikipedia, the free
encyclopedia
Socrates and Plato
Drawing
on the words of his teacher Socrates, Plato considered the psyche to be the
essence of a person, being that which decides how we behave. He considered this
essence to be an incorporeal, eternal occupant of our being. Socrates says that
even after death, the soul exists and is able to think. He believed that as
bodies die, the soul is continually reborn in subsequent bodies and Plato
believed this as well; however, he thought that only one part of the soul was
immortal (logos). The Platonic soul consists of three parts:
1
the logos,
or logistikon (mind, nous, or reason)
2
the thymos, or thumetikon (emotion, spiritedness,
or masculine)
3
the eros, or epithumetikon
(appetitive, desire, or feminine)
The
parts are located in different regions of the body:
logos is located in the head, is related to reason and regulates the
other part.
thymos is located near the chest region and is related to anger.
eros is located in the stomach and is related to one's desires.
Plato
also compares the three parts of the soul or psyche to a societal caste system.
According to Plato's theory, the three-part soul is essentially the same thing
as a state's class system because, to function well, each part must contribute
so that the whole functions well. Logos keeps the other functions of the soul
regulated.
Aristotle
Aristotle
(384 BC – 322 BC) defined the soul or psyche (ψυχή) as the “first actuality” of
a naturally organized body, but argued against its separate existence from the
physical body. In Aristotle's view, the primary activity of a living thing constitutes
its soul; for example, the soul of an eye, if it were an independent organism,
would be seeing (its purpose or final cause). For Aristotle, the soul is the
form of a living creature.
The
various faculties of the soul, such as nutrition (also known as vegetative
(peculiar to plants)); movement (also known as passionate (peculiar to
animals)); reason (peculiar to humans); sensation (special, common, and
incidental); and so forth, when exercised, constitute the "second"
actuality, or fulfillment, of the capacity to be alive. For example, someone
who falls asleep, as opposed to someone who falls dead, can wake up and go
about their life, while the latter can no longer do so.
Aristotle
identified three hierarchical levels of living things: plants, animals, and
people. For these groups, he identified three corresponding levels of soul, or
biological activity: the nutritive activity of growth, sustenance and
reproduction which all life shares; the self-willed motive activity and sensory
faculties, which only animals and people have in common; and finally
"reason", of which people alone are capable.
Aristotle's discussion of the
soul is in his work, De Anima (On the
Soul). Although mostly seen as opposing Plato in regard to the immortality
of the soul, a controversy arose in relation to the fifth chapter of the third
book. In this text, both interpretations can be argued for: soul as a whole is
mortal, or a part called "active intellect" or "active
mind" is immortal and eternal. Commentators exist on both sides of the
controversy, but it is understood that there will be permanent disagreement
about its final conclusions, as no other Aristotelian text contains this
specific point, and this part of De Anima is obscure.
Avicenna and Ibn al-Nafis
Following
Aristotle, Avicenna (Ibn Sina) and Ibn al-Nafis, a Persian philosopher, further
elaborated upon the Aristotelian understanding of the soul and developed their
own theories on the soul. They both made a distinction between the soul and the
spirit, and the Avicennian doctrine on the nature of the soul was influential
among the Scholastics. Some of Avicenna's views on the soul include the idea
that the immortality of the soul is a consequence of its nature, and not a
purpose for it to fulfill. In his theory of "The Ten Intellects", he
viewed the human soul as the tenth and final intellect.
While he
was imprisoned, Avicenna wrote his famous "Floating Man" thought
experiment to demonstrate human self-awareness and the substantial nature of
the soul. He told his readers to imagine themselves suspended in the air,
isolated from all sensations, which includes no sensory contact with even their
own bodies. He argues that in this scenario one would still have
self-consciousness. He thus concludes that the idea of the self is not
logically dependent on any physical thing, and that the soul should not be seen
in relative terms, but as a primary given, a substance. This argument was later
refined and simplified by Rene Descartes in epistemic terms, when he stated:
"I can abstract from the supposition of all external things, but not from
the supposition of my own consciousness."
Avicenna
generally supported Aristotle's idea of the soul originating from the heart,
whereas Ibn al-Nafis rejected this idea and instead argued that the soul
"is related to the entirety and not to one or a few organs". He
further criticized Aristotle's idea whereby every unique soul requires the
existence of a unique source, in this case the heart. al-Nafis concluded that
"the soul is related primarily neither to the spirit nor to any organ, but
rather to the entire matter whose temperament is prepared to receive that
soul," and he defined the soul as nothing other than "what a human
indicates by saying "I".
Thomas
Aquinas
Following
Aristotle and Avicenna, Thomas Aquinas (1225–74) understood the soul to be the
first actuality of the living body. Consequent to this, he distinguished three
orders of life: plants, which feed and grow; animals, which add sensation to
the operations of plants; and humans, which add intellect to the operations of
animals.
Concerning
the human soul, his epistemological theory required that, since the knower
becomes what he knows, the soul is definitely not corporeal—if it is corporeal
when it knows what some corporeal thing is, that thing would come to be within
it. Therefore, the soul has an operation, which does not rely on a bodily
organ, and therefore the soul could subsist without a body. Furthermore, since
the rational soul of human beings is a subsistent form and not something made
of matter and form, it cannot be destroyed in any natural process. The full
argument for the immortality of the soul and Aquinas' elaboration of
Aristotelian theory is found in Question 75 of the Summa Theologica.
Immanuel
Kant
In his
discussions of rational psychology, Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) identified the
soul as the "I" in the strictest sense, and that the existence of
inner experience can neither be proved nor disproved. "We cannot prove a
priori the immateriality of the soul, but rather only so much: that all
properties and actions of the soul cannot be cognized from materiality".
It is from the "I", or soul, that Kant proposes transcendental
rationalization, but cautions that such rationalization can only determine the
limits of knowledge if it is to remain practical.
James
Hillman
Contemporary
psychology is defined as the study of mental processes and behavior. However,
the word “psychology” literally means "study of the soul", and
Hillman, the founder of archetypal psychology, has been credited with
"restoring 'soul' to its psychological sense". Although the words
"soul" and "spirit" are often viewed as synonyms, Hillman
argues that they can refer to antagonistic components of a person.
Summarizing
Hillman's views, psychotherapist and author Thomas Moore associates spirit with
"afterlife, cosmic issues, idealistic values and hopes, and universal
truths", while placing soul "in the thick of things: in the
repressed, in the shadow, in the messes of life, in illness, and in the pain and
confusion of love". Hillman believes that religion—especially monotheism
and monastic faiths—and humanistic psychology have tended to the spirit, often
at the unfortunate expense of soul. This happens, Moore says, because to
transcend the "lowly conditions of the soul ... is to lose touch with the
soul, and a split-off spirituality, with no influence from the soul, readily
falls into extremes of literalism and destructive fanaticism".
Hillman's archetypal psychology
is an attempt to tend to the oft-neglected soul, which Hillman views as the
"self-sustaining and imagining substrate" upon which consciousness
rests. Hillman described the soul as
that "which makes meaning possible, [deepens] events into experiences, is
communicated in love, and has a religious concern", as well as "a
special relation with death". Departing from the Cartesian dualism
"between outer tangible reality and inner states of mind", Hillman
takes the Neoplatonic stance that there is a "third, middle position" in which soul
resides.
Archetypal psychology
acknowledges this third position by attuning to, and often accepting, the
archetypes, dreams, myths, and even psychopathologies through which, in
Hillman's view, soul expresses itself.
Selected and edited from
Wikipedia - soul
** **
Even though the article suffers from
multiple issues according Wikipedia it will serve here as a place for Merlyn to
begin his work on the construction of his soul before it had his mind and heart
in occupancy. – Amorella
2154 hours. I am finding this interesting in this new
context with Merlyn. How it plays out in the rest of this book and the next
though is beyond my sight.
Post after you have cleaned up the article
for our purposes. I will help where needed. – Amorella
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