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February 01, 2022

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Physics told us long ago that solid objects were largely empty space and only appeared solid because of the fields of energy and particles holding them together.

Spooky physics taught us that linear space and linear time don't always function that way.

The big bang theory, at least one variant, states that the universe started as a particle infinitesimally small, but of nearly immeasurable density.

And mystics claimed this reality is largely a projection of another reality.

We still don't really know what gravity is. We can measure its effect on other things, understand its connection to matter, space and time. It functions like a property of matter, but it could be the other way around, that matter is a property of gravity. Or a property of space. Or something deeper.. Interlaced strings or a mesh of distinct loops forming a kind of space time foam.

Gravity works across millions of miles of empty space connecting matter with no visible or measurable strings. No energy or particles that could be called gravity have ever been detected. Only its effect on other things.

This brings up the fundamental mystery of the physical universe and while theoretical physics is hard at work uncovering more of that mystery, and successfully, at this point science has proven that as much as we have learned, there is even more we never had a clue about that we don't know. Today we know more than we did, and even more about what we don't know. Hail Science!!

All good scientists honor the mystery.


This piece from Scientific American begins and ends with: - " . . . making space and time emerge from something more fundamental."
I find this whole issue very complex, but in a limited non-academic way I understand the inflation theory a little more. Brian Cox (below) makes the 'emergence from something more fundamental' reasonably credible.


With the origins of the universe in tow, Prof Cox flipped the Bible creation story to tell what he coined the "science creation story".
He said: "In the beginning there was an ocean of energy that drove a rapid expansion of space known as inflation.
"There were ripples in the ocean.
"As inflation ended, the ocean of energy was converted into matter by the Big Bang.
"And the pattern of the ripples was imprinted into our universe, as regions of slightly different density in the hydrogen and helium gas that formed shortly after the Big Bang.
"The denser regions of gas collapsed to form the first stars and the first galaxies.
"And nine billion years later, a new star formed in the Milky Way: the Sun.
"The star was joined by eight planets including Earth.
"And, nearly 13,8 billion years after it all began, we emerged, blinking into the light."
Last year, Sir Roger Penrose argued a similar theory for the beginnings of the universe as he re-ceived his Nobel Prize for Physics.
Winning for his work proving that black holes exist, he said he had found six "warm" points in the sky, which he called "Hawking Points" after the late physicist Stephen Hawking, who theorised that black holes ‘leak’ radiation and eventually evaporate away entirely.
These points, he explained, were around eight times the diameter of the Moon.
The timescale for the evaporation of a black hole is on a huge scale, potentially longer than the age of our universe, making them impossible to detect.
But, Sir Roger believes that "dead" black holes from earlier universes or "aeons" are observable now.
If this is true, then Prof Hawkings' theories and life's work will be proved correct.
Sir Roger said: "I claim that there is observation of Hawking radiation.
“The Big Bang was not the beginning.
"There was something before the Big Bang and that something is what we will have in our future.
“We have a universe that expands and expands, and all mass decays away, and in this crazy theo-ry of mine, that remote future becomes the Big Bang of another aeon.
“So our Big Bang began with something which was the remote future of a previous aeon and there would have been similar black holes evaporating away, via Hawking evaporation, and they would produce these points in the sky, that I call Hawking Points.

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