A Work In Progress
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Astronomers and Cosmologists have discovered something so incredibly important, that it might unzip virtual chaos at the hinges. One of the core assumptions of virtual chaos has been that the universe is flat, turns out its not. This piece will look at this important discovery, and explain how it could affect large portions of virtual chaos at a single stroke.
When you consider the fate of the universe, you are given three options. The first is that the universe will fly apart forever. This option would look at the big bang as a huge explosion, and with no friction in space to slow it down; it just flies apart forever. This is what they call an open universe. The second option is that there is too much mass in the universe and eventually gravity will draw it all back to the center again. This scenario is known as the big crunch, which you probably have heard of.
I stated in 123-Big Bang Blueprints that even fifteen billion years after the big bang it is still too close to tell whether the universe was open or closed. For all intents and purposes, it appeared flat. That is the third possible option; the universe is flat and will eventually slow to a stop. This seemed like the most likely option and this is where we put our chips. It seems that the universe is actually open and will expand forever. Looks like we lost.
If you want to carry this betting analogy a little farther, we not only lost our wager; we will have to pay compounded interest on it forever! That is because the universe is not only expanding forever, it is actually accelerating as it goes! So what? Let me explain.
Take a big rubber band and put five staples across it at equal distances. This is an analogy of how they thought the universe was expanding. When you pull the rubber band, all the staples are still equal distances apart, even if they are bigger distances. The BIG discovery is that in reality the outer two staples have moved farther than equal distances. They actually gained ground.
What they have found is that as things in the universe move farther away from each other, they begin to accelerate for no apparent reason. This is serious stuff. This one was not even in the initial three reasons everybody agreed must be the fate of the universe. We are not the only ones blind-sided by this development; the standard model is missing 90% of the universe's mass right off the top. It has trouble holding things together to begin with. This can only make things worse.
There are only two reasons I can think of why the universe might be seen to accelerate as it expands. The first is the manifestation of a new force of nature. That would make five known forces, and would demand that both virtual chaos and the standard model redo their symmetries. Like I said, this is serious stuff.
This "hyper-force" would have to have a particle to mediate its force. Unfortunately, with an ever-accelerating distance to travel, these particles could almost never reach the other particles affected by this force, unless they went faster than light. [Tachyons?]
Adding a fifth force and particle to the standard model is not really that hard. The standard model is much like a giant jig-saw puzzle with everybody stepping up to either add a piece, or to join a group of pieces where they belong. It would only get bigger and more complex. Chances are that they will bypass the fivefold symmetry and go strait to looking for a sixfold symmetry, just like they did with the quarks.
Adding a fifth force and particle to virtual chaos could be a disaster. It will demand the addition of a whole new dimension. You guessed it, the fifth. While this might not, be that big a deal for the standard model, in virtual chaos things will get weird. For one thing, the six hidden dimensions of virtual chaos are held to exist in a state of superposition. If we give one of them a distinct four-dimensional quality, then the other five of the six should have one as well. It also calls into question the validity of the assumptions we have made about the first four.
I know that in 10D torque and consciousness we outlined particles and forces for each of the ten dimensions, so why is this a problem? The reason is that in virtual chaos, angular momentum in five dimensions is only supposed to give rise to phenomena on a planetary scale. This new "hyper-force" has an energy that makes gravity look huge by comparison. In reality, gravity is a very, very mild force. Only because it is cumulative, it just keeps adding up, that it eventually overwhelms the strength of the other three forces.
This new force also appears to be cumulative. Only far out of the way of gravity's pull does it appear to kick in. Not only that, unrestrained acceleration WILL, [and rather quickly I might add], reach the speed of light. Actually, any constant acceleration will reach the speed of light. Looks like the edge of the universe draws matter to it kind of like the edge of a glass draws the bubbles to it.
To give you a little better understanding of just what this fifth force does to screw things up for virtual chaos, here is a progression I tried to do of the qualities of the dimensions from zero to ten:
A point is a zero dimensional phenomena. It has no length, no height, and no width. The entire universe is rumored to have begun as a point.
A line is a one-dimensional object and contains an infinite number of points. So going from zero to one dimension adds an infinite number of the previous state. This is the prerequisite for adding dimensions: any higher dimension contains an infinite number of lower dimensions.
A two dimensional object is a square and it has an infinite number of lines, each of which has an infinite number of points. Likewise the three dimensional cube contains an infinite number of squares which in turn have an infinite number of lines, all made up of an infinite number of points. [Infinity to the power of three].
Now we come to four dimensions. The dimension of time allows objects in 3D space [which is static] the ability to move around and interact. Keeping with the above rule, infinite 3D states would be contained in a four dimensional space-time. Four dimensions allow for ANY POSSABLE CONFIGURATION OF MATTER AND ENERGY in space-time. The truth of this conjecture is evident in the fact that anything that is possible can happen.
So what happens when we go above four dimensions? According to this progression, the fifth dimension would allow for ALL POSSABLE CONFIGURATIONS OF MATTER AND ENERGY in space-time. Anything possible in a four dimensional universe would be a matter of fact in a five dimensional universe. The many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics would be a reality in five dimensions. This is of extreme importance because EVERYTHING that can possibly happen ever, has been accounted for with only the addition of a single extra dimension! We still have five more to add!
So now we have a real problem. The progression that held so well through the first five dimensions has suddenly turned into a brick wall, well almost. It turns out that every possible state of matter and energy have already been accounted for in five dimensions, so to expand this progression to six dimensions it becomes necessary to include anything IMPOSSABLE in five dimensions. This would naturally raise the question of whether our dreams might have some sort of reality in six dimensions. It also leads naturally to an infinite number of universes, which can have any physical laws other than those that exist in our observable universe.
Following this progression, we can add yet one more dimension, the seventh. In this dimension, anything impossible would be raised to the power of infinity allowing for everything impossible to exist at once. Now we really are at a dead end.
If the universe really is ten dimensional, then dimensions eight, nine and ten are so far beyond what we can even conceive, that having a theory of everything that works in ten dimensions might be totally meaningless beyond a certain point. We could well end up using a ten dimensional theory to wreak seven dimensional havoc in pursuit of a four dimensional goal. [But who's to say that's not a good thing?]
The second possible reason why the farthest things away from us seem to be speeding up is the curvature of space-time itself. Since acceleration is the same as gravity, this would suggest a gravitational well with regard to the spherical shell of the very outer reaches of the universe. In the theory of superstrings, the six hidden dimensions are depicted as being curled up so small that they cannot be seen. This might be an example of a curvature too large to be appreciated.
There is also another option. It is not so much a third, as it is a variation on the second. In virtual chaos, an expanding portion of the universe is offset by a collapsing portion. [Our vacuum fluctuation model]. These two parts had been assumed to be centered on an axis where the weight of a vacuum fluctuation would immediately collapse the pair into a black whole. A simple modification to our model might bring it back into line again and might create the scenario where the new discovery might be expected.
Imagine two rulers lay on top of each other such that the 12-inch edge on the top one is lined up with the zero edge on the bottom one. This was the assumption we used to visualize the continuum of space-time. If we now slide the top ruler one-inch to the side, we have one inch on each end that over shoots the end of the other ruler. This would move what we had thought to be the center axis to a point at [or near] the small end.
Turns out that we already have such an anomaly at the small end of the spectrum, a region where the curvature of space abruptly drops off to zero, the Planck scale. This was the size of the universe at 1e-43 seconds after the big bang, and has developed into its own branch of the standard model - Inflation. So finding a region on the other end of the spectrum that accelerates to infinity should not really have surprised us. In fact, if our center axis was correctly placed, we should have predicted it long ago. Oh well, live and learn.
This twist on the last option works out pretty well for us. All virtual chaos will have to do to accommodate this new development is move the point of the big bang to a somewhat larger scale. The math we have posted will be unaffected by all this because whatever the new value turns out to be, it will still be unity. Unfourtunately this might not fix everything.
In moving the big bang to a larger scale, we could well lose the mechanism that we used to allow both quantum mechanics and relativity to be correct. Once again the equations will breakdown at the Planck scale, [1e-43 seconds past time zero]. At the very least we will have to come up with a new reason to explain this [above?]. On the up side however, it would explain why we never actually see black holes spontaneously produced by vacuum fluctuations.
There is also the question of whether an open universe can be zero-net energy. My initial answer would still be yes, [consider two halves of an arch]. It will however remain to be seen if this model actually fits the curvature of space-time just discovered. If it does not, it would suggest that the universe is not zero net energy, and that could invalidate our vacuum fluctuation model.
So as it stands right now, several of our core assertions appear to be wrong, or in question.
We have decided to spell out these new problems in this article even though we are not going to change any of these statements on the rest of the site. It is going to take some time to see how bad this is really going to hurt us. Until we know a little more, there is not much we could really do anyway.
Any ideas, suggestions or data are more than welcome. Chaos@virtualchaos.org
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