The Simple Explanation suggests that a "universal unit of consciousness" carries all of the information that manifests as our particular time/space continuum. This universal unit of consciousness is the primal algorithm of the set of laws that govern our universe. Some people call that God. Other people think it all can be boiled down to math and physics.
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According to my interpretation of gnostic cosmology, quantum foam emerged as the first material expression after the Fall. In the pre-Fall state, consciousness was immaterial and purely ephemeral. After the Fall, consciousness expressed itself as a slower, denser, and more concrete form. Both the Simple Explanation cosmology and the gnostic cosmology speak of the emergence of ordinary matter as arising from the small, uncooperative first expressions of random behavior--i.e. quantum foam. Quantum foam is entirely unpredictable and chaotic. This chaos effectively uses up and partially smothers the infinity of coherent consciousness underlying and preceding the foam, like a blanket thrown over a fire. The random nature of quantum foam explains "free will" in our material universe, as the quantum randomness forms the platform underlying ordinary matter, occasionally interjecting itself into a material cosmos otherwise rigidly constrained by cause and effect. This illustration, borrowed from Brian Greene's The Elegant Universe, shows how the appearance of matter transforms from smooth to chaotic the closer you look. Imagine the ordinary, unmagnified, world as the grid at the bottom of the drawing, and that each successive plane represents a closer look at a portion of the plane below. At the most extreme ultra-magnification, quantum fluctuations have replaced smooth, predictable geometry.
This model of chaos can be used to illustrate the principle of individual free will. As was previously stated in Traits of Units of Consciousness, most Units of Consciousness perform as expected—they “do their part,” they “work according to plan.” It was also stated that every UC has the free will to fulfill or contradict its responsibilities. Below you will find a new scientific article that explains quantum foam with a new hypothesis that I find compatible with my cosmologies.
Physicist suggests 'quantum foam' may explain away huge cosmic energy
by Bob Yirka , Phys.org
Credit: CC0 Public Domain
Steven Carlip, a physicist at the University of California, has come up with a theory to explain why empty space seems to be filled with a huge amount of energy—it may be hidden by effects that are canceling it out at the Planck scale. He has published a paper describing his new theory in the journal Physical Review Letters.
Conventional theory suggests that spacetime should be filled with a huge amount of energy—perhaps as much as 10120 more than seemingly exists. Over the years, many theorists have suggested ideas on why this may be—most have tried the obvious approach, trying to figure out a way to make the energy go away. But none have been successful. In this new effort, Carlip suggests that maybe all that energy really is there, but it does not have any ties to the expansion of the universe because its effects are being canceled out by something at the Planck scale.
The new theory by Carlip is based very heavily on work done by John Wheeler back in the 1950s—he suggested that at the smallest possible scale, space and time turn into something he called "spacetime foam." He argued that at such a small scale, defining time, length and energy would be subject to the uncertainty principle. Since then, others have taken a serious look at spacetime foam—and some have suggested that if a vacuum were filled with spacetime foam, there would be a lot of energy involved. Others argue that such a scenario would behave like the cosmological constant.
Thus, to explain their ideas, they have sought to find ways to cancel out the energy as a way to make it go away. Carlip suggests instead that in a spacetime foam scenario, energy would exist everywhere in a vacuum—but if you took a much closer look, you would find Planck-sized areas that have an equal likelihood of expanding or contracting. And under such a scenario, the patchwork of tiny areas would appear the same as larger areas in the vacuum—and they would not expand or contract, which means they would have a zero cosmic constant. He notes that under such a scenario, time would have no intrinsic direction.
More information: S. Carlip. Hiding the Cosmological Constant, Physical Review Letters (2019). DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.123.131302 . On Arxiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/1809.08277
For you folks interested in scientific explanations, I'm reprinting this physics article about how the formation of the early universe could have created black holes and dark matter all at once--in a phases shift as quick as the the blink of an eye. As you know, my Simple Explanation cosmology suggests there is a black hole associated with every piece of matter in our universe. The theory in the article below hypothesizes that excess energy could have been converted to primordial black holes and dark matter as a by-product of the phase shift that led to nuclear material. For my readers who are also interested in gnostic cosmology, this phase shift would have occurred as the initial correction of the Fall by the aeons of the Fullness...
Theory proposes that LIGO/Virgo black holes originate from a first order phase transition
by Ingrid Fadelli , Phys.org
Graphic showing the observed population of black holes of mass a few tens of solar masses. Credit: LIGO-Virgo/Frank Elavsky/Northwestern.
A few years ago, the LIGO/Virgo collaboration detected gravitational waves arising from a binary black hole merger using the two detectors of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO). This eventually led to the observation of black holes with masses that are roughly 30 times the mass of the sun. Since then, researchers worldwide have been investigating these black holes, specifically examining whether they could be of primordial origin, meaning that they were produced in the early universe before stars and galaxies were formed.
Hooman Davoudiasl, a theoretical physicist at the Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York, has recently introduced a new theory suggesting that the black holes observed by the LIGO/Virgo collaboration originate from a first order quark confinement phase transition. In his paper, published in Physical Review Letters, Davoudiasl implemented this idea using a light scalar that could turn out to be a good dark matter candidate.
Recent detections by the LIGO/Virgo collaboration suggest that there are several black holes that have similar masses (approximately 30 solar masses). This suggests that there might be a population of black holes that are characterized by a typical mass value.
"This population may be associated with stellar evolution and certain astrophysical conditions, but a primordial origin could also be a potential explanation," Hooman Davoudiasl, the researcher who carried out the study, told Phys.org. "This latter possibility is quite intriguing, but how such objects might form in the early universe is an open question."
A mechanism that could potentially lead to the production of primordial black holes (PBH) is an abrupt cosmological phase transition, which is somewhat similar to the transition from vapor to liquid that occurs when water condenses on a cold surface. An example of this phase transition in the early universe could be the cooling of hot plasma made up of quarks and gluons, which might have occurred as the universe expanded, and they began binding into protons and neutrons.
According to current physics theories, however, there are two key issues with this scenario. Firstly, the transition would not be abrupt, and secondly, it would most likely lead to the production of PBHs with a mass similar to that of the sun, rather than masses 10 or more times larger.
"In my paper, I set out to examine under what additional assumptions, from as yet unknown phenomena, the above picture can change in a way that is conducive to a 'primordial' explanation of the black hole population observed by LIGO/Virgo," Davoudiasl said.
The explanation he proposed is based on a longstanding theoretical construct suggesting that if there are three or more light quarks, the transition from the hot quark-gluon plasma to nuclear particles could, in fact, be abrupt. The current standard physics theory that has been extensively tested, however, states that in this scenario, only two quarks are sufficiently light; thus, the transition would not be abrupt (i.e., it would not be a first-order phase transition).
"My idea was to see how one can arrange for this situation to change in the early universe, so that the transition is abrupt, but then recover the standard picture later on, corresponding to well-established present-day experimental data," Davoudiasl explained.
Davoudiasl essentially wanted to show that under certain conditions corresponding to new physical ingredients, three or more light quarks could, in fact, have been present in the early universe while the transition to nuclear matter was taking place. This would ultimately entail a first-order phase transition, enabling the production of PBH with masses similar to those observed by the LIGO/Virgo collaboration.
"My proposal arranges for the quarks to attain the masses that we observe today afterwards," Davoudiasl said. "However, interestingly, by making the number of light quarks larger, one also pushes the masses of the PBHs that could be produced to larger values, closer to that of the population observed by LIGO/Virgo."
The idea introduced by Davoudiasl in his recent paper could explain the production of the PBHs observed by the LIGO/Virgo team. In addition, it could shed light on why their masses are larger than what might be expected based on current physics theories.
"Rendering the transition abrupt in the way I proposed not only facilitates the production of PBHs, but also makes their expected masses heavier, approaching those observed by LIGO/Virgo through gravitational waves," Davoudiasl added. "Also, my proposal employs a very light hypothetical particle whose dynamics control the variation of quark masses from very small to their observed values today."
Interestingly, the hypothetical "light field" considered in Davoudiasl's theory might have the right properties to be the dark matter of the universe that countless researchers have been investigating and seeking. In fact, the black holes observed by the LIGO/Virgo collaboration may only account for a small fraction of dark matter, due to various constraints.
"The general subject of non-standard cosmologies is worth thinking about further," Davoudiasl said. "Modifying some of our usual assumptions regarding the early universe could potentially lead to new insights about open questions in physics and cosmology."
More information: Hooman Davoudiasl. LIGO/Virgo Black Holes from a First Order Quark Confinement Phase Transition, Physical Review Letters (2019). DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.123.101102
B. P. Abbott et al. Observation of Gravitational Waves from a Binary Black Hole Merger, Physical Review Letters (2016). DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.116.061102
GWTC-1: A gravitational-wave transient catalog of compact binary mergers observed by LIGO and Virgo during the first and second observing runs. arXiv:1811.12907 [astro-ph.HE]. arxiv.org/abs/1811.12907
