Yellow Turban Tribune

Update 12/2/2020 – My beef with the Theia scenario has been added.

I’ve been suffering from a bit of a writer’s block lately – despite having many things I want to write: a strategy for eliminating the two party system, a full explanation of capitalism, how to make AI safe, how Facebook has huge issues with it’s moderation, etc.  But I’m struggling to get myself to sit down and write.  Therefore, I’m throwing out a more fun subject that will, at least, get me writing again and hopefully get me writing more about politics.

I generally agree with mainstream science – I have no doubts about evolution or climate change or the necessity of vaccination.  I am certain the Earth is round as I’ve written about before.  But, there are certain areas where I am in wild disagreement with the mainstream view, and I figure it will be fun to explain them to you.  I don’t believe anything in here will alarm anyone, but there are always surprises out there and perhaps this will be one of them.

A Mental Universe

The most profound way I disagree with mainstream science is that I don’t believe the Universe is physical.  We touch things and they seem to be physical – we don’t throw balls that pass through walls and so we certainly assume that the world around us is physical, as it’s primary nature.  You could say it is a materialist assumption that science makes – and that generally serves us well.

However, scientists have discovered over the past century or so that the Universe acts quite odd at the smallest levels and it led to the creation of a new branch of physics known as either quantum physics or quantum mechanics.  It is said that anyone who is comfortable with [the implications] of quantum mechanics doesn’t truly understand it.  Albert Einstein, despite contributing much to the field, rejected it with the statement that “God does not play dice with the Universe.”

One such discovery, and perhaps the most famous among them, came from the double slit experiment, or Young’s experiment, first performed by Thomas Young.  Young had shot a beam of light through two slits and found that they interfered with one another, like waves.  Thus, it was presumed that light was a wave.  Then enter particle detectors – if you try to detect which slit the light went through the interference pattern disappears and light behaves as if made up of particles (which we call photons).  However, later experiments managed to show that with less certainty the interference pattern can remain at a level in proportion to the the level of certainty.  Moreover, when the experiment was tried with known particles such as electrons and protons – and even the molecule known as a buckyball – they behaved as waves when we didn’t measure which slit they went through and like particles when it was measured.  Even when particles were shot through one at a time, the interference pattern appeared as if the particle interfered with itself.

This led to the Copenhagen Interpretation.  Essentially, rather than the particles going through either slit, probability waves – a mathematical construct – went through each slit and that is what determined the pattern.  When you measure which slit the particle goes through, the Universe must decide which slit it went through (the probability is 100% through one and 0% through the other when you force it to decide) and so the wave function collapses into a single reality.  The Universe didn’t care which slit it went through until we made it care by forcing an answer from it through observation and measurement.

All particles have various attributes that are all possibilities at once until you measure them.  This is called quantum superposition – particles have certain probabilities of having particular attributes when measured, but it is not decided until they are measured.  Another experiment had two particles interact with one another in such a way that they should have opposing spins – an abstract concept that has nothing to do with actual macroscopic spinning – or other definable attributes based on the interaction.  At the time of collision, it’s unknown which particle has which attributes, but measuring one would mean the other would have to have the corresponding attributes.  They then measured these particles far enough away and with enough precision in time that the particles – if they were to transmit a smaller particle or stream of particles – to communicate with one another to agree would have to send them at a speed that exceeds the speed of light – something that should be impossible.  And yet, they always agree.

Einstein called this “spooky action at a distance.”  The formal name is quantum entanglement and it plays into what is called nonlocality.  In essence, it questioned whether location itself is real or something we only imagine.  It suggests that everything is in the same place and distance isn’t real.

I’m going to leave aside the possibility that under multiple universes the two “observers,” whether they be measurement tools or humans, may have simply collapsed the probability function of the other observer when they made the measurement under a multiverse concept since mainstream science does as well.  We will ignore that maybe two universes are created where two different results were shown and when one observer observed the other they may have collapsed into the version of that observer that had matching results.

In fact, quantum computers are being developed that work on these principles and can do multiple calculations at once and store multiple values on individual bits of storage all based on these particles having multiple values at once.  In fact, some have been built already that are not yet cheap enough for commercial sale.  Personal computers that we are used to, one of which is necessary for you to either read this on a screen or have it printed out, only work because of the principles of quantum mechanics.  Of course, this is along with such things as lasers, GPS, and MRIs.  A more rudimentary computer, such as an abacus, can exist in a classical world, but we have things today that cannot exist in such a world.

I argue that phenomena like these are impossible to truly understand if you believe the Universe is physical and material.  They make no sense, whatsoever, in a physical universe made up of physical properties.  However, they do not pose a problem at all if the Universe is mental.  In fact, I believe I can illustrate just how this is acting in a mental manner rather than a physical one with a thought exercise – not quite an experiment.  Read carefully and scroll down slowly from this point so you can get the effect.

Imagine your ideal home.

Think about its design.

Think about the color of the walls – are they wallpapered, painted, stone, wood paneling?

Think about all the furnishings and decor.  What goes where?

Think about all the little things that make it the perfect home.

STOP.  THINK.

…

Now, what kind of dish detergent is under the kitchen sink?

Unless you are the owner of a dish detergent company or a particularly loyal consumer, I bet that dish detergent was in a superposition containing every dish detergent you ever heard of.  That is, until I made you decide.  That is exactly what you see with quantum superpositions – they are all the possibilities at once until we force the Universe to decide which one it is.  The dish detergent wasn’t important until the question was posed, making it important, and then it was measured by you answering whether you wrote it down, said it out loud, or just answered to yourself in your head.

It may not be possible to prove a mental universe with absolute certainty, but it does a better job of explaining quantum mechanics than a physical universe because a physical universe doesn’t allow for observation to affect the results of an experiment – for measuring a result to affect its outcome.  We know these things are true, we see them in action, but we struggle to let go of a physical Universe.

While I won’t go into detail about this part of it, I consider the mind that imagines us all to be God – and following the rule of dreams that everything in them is a part of us, I see us all as part of God.  It isn’t a personal God that interferes in our life, but one much more active than that where it is it’s own creation.  There is nothing but God to act within the Universe.  In this sense, it is no different than Spinoza’s God, which Einstein believed in, though my logic in arriving at this God is much different than Spinoza’s.  But fret not if you disagree, because I also don’t see any tangible benefit to believing in such a God so I don’t have any interest in you agreeing to that extent of conclusion, whatsoever.

However, the idea of a mental Universe also allows me to believe in something else that science soundly rejects: magic.  I, myself, practice reiki and I haven’t charged anyone for a treatment to date.  I have relieved pain for people with it, one with an effect that lasted a month.  Skeptics have felt it and were amazed – in so far as they could feel something whether or not they thought it did what I said it did – though several studies have discounted it.  I haven’t participated in any and my only offer was a friend who genetically engineers E Coli offering to send me a petri dish to use it on and see how it changes – though I had refused that because reiki will only do good and I have no idea what to expect good would be when it comes to E Coli or to expect it would cause any change at all if it wasn’t an infection.  I do believe I have made rain stop, within seconds, to help friends move and when I declared the move done there was a strong gust of wind immediately after a long period of lack of any significant breeze.  However, as the “spell” that I did this with left it up to a higher entity’s judgement, I do not think I could possibly reproduce that in a controlled experiment, especially if belief has no value.  I’m convinced, you should not be by me simply stating it.  I know I’m not making it all up, but you do not.

But, in a mental Universe should open the possibility of minds altering reality.  In fact, I think that once quantum computers become commercially available and introduce a true random function – current random number generation is based on seed numbers and the reading of time on the computer – such ability could be tested on them by trying to produce a certain range of numbers in a string of random generation.  More magically attuned minds should have more success.  I would also suppose that a failure of anyone to be able to produce measurable results on such a quantum computer should disprove magic, at least as I conceive it, though not necessarily a mental Universe.

Antimatter Galaxies and Dark Energy

Here I am on much more solid ground with the scientific community.  In fact, after seeing Dragan Hajdukovic on Through the Wormhole, I did contact him with my thoughts on what I felt was the same idea.  While the idea may not have been exactly the same, he certainly did like what I had to say and found it plausible and praised what I suggested: “[a]t the level of ideas you propose the same as professional physicists.”  However, for context, he is not suggesting I have the same expertise nor ability to test these ideas, only that my proposals are on that level.

Part of what is ingrained into me is that the laws of physics are absolute, whatever they may be.  Even magic, described above, is following some laws which are part of the laws of the Universe, not contradictory to them.   Among those laws are that every action has an equal and opposite reaction.  Therefore, I reject the notion that any more matter could have been created in the Big Bang than anti-matter.  Each and every particle of matter had to have an anti-matter counterpart; the rules did not change.

Even where it has been shown that matter and anti-matter decay at different rates, I am forced to consider this is due to our location in a gravity well created by the local supercluster of matter galaxies and that the difference in decay rates would not only be different being at different depths in that gravity well and an equal and opposite difference would exist in an anti-gravity well.  In fact, Dragan pointed out that a test of this seems to be planned in an experiment.

To this effect, it also stands to reason that matter and anti-matter, being opposites created to balance one another, should have an equal and opposite reaction upon the fabric of spacetime.  If we imagine that matter is like marbles on a cloth, indenting it downward and moving together, antimatter must push upward on that same fabric.  Then, there is a question of what that would do with in regards to gravitation – and thinking of that cloth instead as cellophane, you can imagine one finger pushing down while a another pushes up and it actually stretching the cellophane between them, increasing their distance.  There should be an anti-gravity effect – and that is what Dragan was proposing on the program.  Matter attracts matter; anti-matter attracts anti-matter, and the two repulse one another.

In fact, some experiments have observed some signs of this – though conclusions were not drawn.  There was a case of anti-protons not colliding with protons as quickly as expected.  Other research has shown a lack of annihilation at times (I am having issues with accessing the full version at this time and New Scientist has failed to get back to me on that for over 2 days, but I am 90% sure this article contains the experiment where an antiparticle took longer than expected to annihilate as if it had bounced off of matter).  This may very well be due to an anti-gravity effect – individual particles will repel from their anti-particle – and vice versa – but when overwhelmed they will be forced to collide with their anti-particle at that point.

This becomes important because the current means of disproving the existence of antimatter galaxies is the presumption that loose particles and anti-particles would be traveling from their respective galaxies and collide in the void between, lighting up the spaces between the galaxies.  However, with plenty of space between them – hundreds of thousands or even millions of light years apart, an antiparticle leaving an antimatter galaxy and a particle leaving a matter galaxy, seeming doomed to collide in the vast cosmic void between, would have plenty of time to avoid one another on the distance.  Perhaps pushing slightly to the side of one another or, more likely, being driven away from the galaxy itself completely changing its trajectory through the repulsive effect, either back into its own galaxy or around the opposing galaxy.  A repulsive effect negates the expectation of an intergalactic light show – or intersupercluster (intersuperclustric?) light show.

So, this brings us to dark energy.  Dark energy is the name we gave to energy we suppose must exist to explain the expansion of the universe – rather than colliding in on itself under the force of gravity, it is ever expanding and it is even accelerating.  This could be explained by pockets of matter galaxies and pockets of antimatter galaxies, which I assume are separated by the bounds of being the differing superclusters pushing against one another at a distance.

Different realms of matter and antimatter should move away from one another if there is an antigravity effect.  This makes v (velocity) positive.  They are constantly pushing on each other more and more, as time passes, increasing the speed by which they push apart.  This makes v’ or a positive.  This has all been established as far as dark energy is concerned.  However, just as The Earth pulls on the Sun more than it pulls on Alpha Centauri because it is closer to the Sun, the increasing distance should result in that additional push growing weaker and weaker as they fly apart.  v”, or a’, or r should be negative.  To the best of my knowledge, this has not yet been measured – but a positive measurement of the rate of acceleration, rather than a negative one, should disprove this theory, while the expected negative value should keep it in the running.

Quantum Gravity

Quantum Gravity theories currently expect there to be a graviton – a particle that interacts with various particles to be the particle that creates gravity.  The other natural forces all have particles that represent those forces and enact them.  Electromagnetism is caused by the interactions of photons; the weak force by W and Z bosons; the strong force by gluons.  It is suspected that another particle does this for gravity, which will be called the graviton.  It’s a neat organization, but I do not suspect it will be found.  Of course, working from the false understanding that the Higgs boson was supposed to give other particles their mass and yet have more mass than some particles with mass, I thought it would never be found either.

My objection here comes from a different understanding of atomic orbitals.   Contrary to what I was taught in 7th grade chemistry class in the 90s – and students are probably still taught today – Bohr’s model of the atom is not an accurate model of atoms.  In fact, not only did Bohr know the model would collapse into neutrons in a fraction of a second – it was still better than the models before it in describing the atom – he helped design the model we use today and died in 1962.  It’s not uncommon to teach outdated science to students – most people erroneously think plants turn carbon dioxide into oxygen whereas it turns carbon dioxide into sugar and creates oxygen from water.

Rather than orbiting a nucleus, electrons rather have certain shapes that govern where they might be found if you collapse their wave functions.  There is a 90% chance they will be found within the region of that shape and as I was made to understand it could be literally anywhere else in the universe the other 10% of the time – the exact wording involved being on an elephant’s ass in India.  As they are waves when their position is not measured, they don’t collapse in on the nucleus.

While these are defined by the probability when they are a particle, I focus on the fact that they are waves most of the time.  It is not so much that they are within that area 90% of the time as that they 90% exist within that area, or so I interpret them.  Electrons, and I assume all particles, exist everywhere at once – which could explain nonlocality – but exist more in some places than others at any given time other than when they are particles and exist only in one place.  The probability comes from them existing more in that space than they do in other places and if you drew a 95% probability area it would probably have a shape as well, close to the atom, and the same with a 99% probability area, and if you drew a 99.999999999999999999999999999999999999999% probability orbital it may very well exist at macroscopic levels.  With 100% probability it would cross the entire universe.

So, with every particle existing everywhere at once, there seems to be no need for a graviton to pull them together – or at least the matter particles which would presumably be pushed away by an anti-graviton.  Rather, these waves likely work upon the fabric of spacetime itself which allows a smooth effect on spacetime rather than a granular series of cliffs where particles are.

In fact, I would suggest that if you could measure two particles in a relative vacuum and constantly measure their positions, you would see that they would stop gravitating toward one another because they have would have no gravitational effect while being particles rather than waves.  However, I also don’t think it is possible to measure position with an absolute constancy, and even if you did: the measurement tools would likely disrupt spacetime so much as to drown out the results amongst the gravitational noise they create.  Then there is the fact that you would have to know their trajectory and speed to track them and the Heisenberg uncertainty principle rules that out.

Theia

Look at the theory of the creation of the moon and you will come across the name Theia – it was a Mars size planet that collided with a larger body that became our Earth and moon.  Parts of Theia sunk into this primordial planet, notably its iron core, and parts of both planets formed the moon.

It isn’t even that I disagree with the science – but I disagree with the naming.  Theia did not crash into Earth, it crashed into another planet that was not Earth but was used to build the Earth.  It was too different from Earth to call it the same planet and I get irritated every time I hear it put that Theia crashed into Earth – because as far as I’m concerned – the Earth did not exist until after the collision.  The very size of the iron core is a defining part of our planet – and it would not be defining without Theia’s iron core being added in.

In fact, allow me to rename both to perhaps match a myth much better.  The larger planet can be called Izanagi and the smaller Izanami.  They are said to have arose when the heavens and Earth separated, creating the first landmass together, and then Izanami died in childbirth, burned to death, and went to Yomi, where she could not leave because she ate the food there and began to rot.  It seems fitting enough.  Izanami and Izanagi collided and reformed to make the Earth and moon.  The moon, which is primarily made of Theia is a dead world after all, while Izanagi returned to birth more gods when he bathed in the sea to cleanse himself of Yomi – creating life.

Featured Image via NASA.  Public Domain.

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