The scene is set by the first speaker, Xenophanes, who laments:
“No human being will ever know the Truth,
for even if they happened to say it by chance,
they would not know they had done so.”
Plato then makes the point:
“Discovering the Father and Creator of the universe is a supremely difficult task; and having found Him it would be impossible to tell anyone about Him.”
My following statement proves them both right:
“Our universe was created exclusively from neutron stars, the sole remnants of
the previous universe, this being the prime matter created by the Oneness.”
Pythagorus casts a sagely smile in response to my almost inaudible and seemingly meaningless statement, politely clears his throat, and says:
“On the one side is God, the active principle, who acts.
On the other side is matter, the passive principle, that undergoes.”
Einstein lights his pipe stuffed with tobacco stolen from Niels Bohr, blows a huge smoke ring into the crowd, and announces in a strange accent:
“Mass equals energy divided by the speed of light squared.”
Pythagorus glances up suspiciously and a few genuine coughs erupt within the crowd, so Empedocles stands up to calm matters down, and says:
“There are two sides to this tale. On the one hand the many unite to become the Oneness, and on the other hand the Oneness divides to become the many. Things continually shift between being united by love and divided by strife.”
Decorum is restored and then it is remembered that the oracle of Orpheus posed the following question:
“How can all things be One, yet each thing is separate?”
With deep insight Anaxagoras presents the following:
“Appearances are a glimpse of what is hidden.”
Again Empedocles sums it up beautifully:
“God is the unity of Oneness in which I dwelt myself before I was snatched away by the conflicts of opposites and born into the world of plurality organized by strife.”
Cicero boldly concurs by asking the following question to mankind in general on behalf of the group:
“Why will you not admit that the universe is a conscious intelligence since conscious intelligences are born from it?”
Plato announces:
“The universe is a single whole, comprised of many parts that are also whole.”
To which Heraclitus proclaimed:
“The One is all things. All things are One.”
Cicero humbly claims:
“Human beings were created to contemplate and reflect the universe,
They are not themselves this great perfection, but are particles of perfection.”
Hermes Trismegistus passionately eloquated:
“He is too great to be called by the name ‘God.’
He is hidden, yet obvious everywhere.
He is bodiless, yet embodied in everything.
There is nothing that he is not.
He has no name, because all names are his name.
He is the unity in all things, so we must know him by all names
and call everything ‘God’.”
Plotinus concludes by summarizing as follows:
“Man as he now is has ceased to be the All.
But when he ceases to be a separate individual,
He raises himself again and permeates the universe.”
Needless to say, I staggered out from this gathering speechless and I tacitly lauded all participants posthumously with awards far greater than the Nobel.
All the above quotes are the words actually uttered by these fathers of metaphysics.
Sunday, 24 January 2010
Avoiding the Black Hole Information Paradox
Although there are seven main approaches to the solution of the information paradox.
One interesting approach is that information is stored in a massive remnant.
This approach seems to gravitate toward 'Occam's razor', that suggests that the simplest theory that fits the facts is the one most likely to be correct.
The massive remnant approach, has the advantages that no mechanism for information escape is needed (as it is in the black hole approach), and also that a large amount of information does not need to be stored in a small object ( as it is in the tiny Planck-sized remnant approach).
When discussing the disadvantage of the massive remnant approach, physicists merely point out that no appealing mechanism that could stop Hawking evaporation of a macroscopic black hole is known.
Maybe so, but Nature is starting to indicate new clues about neutron stars that stunned astronomers and astrophysicists, who had expected that black holes should exist in their place, but do not.
That is the subtle mechanism whereby we might be able to avoid Hawking radiation altogether, by avoiding black holes.
If we deal with dense massive remnants of almost similar mass and density to black holes, then we find that a neutron star is not far off the mark.
One is tempted to glue two or more neutron stars together in a thought experiment, (Commercials tell us they've used Pratley's putty on the moon!)
When relativistic ( which means traveling near the speed of light) quantum particles collide, there are three possible general results for a collision.
1. The collision is elastic.
2. The collision is non-elastic.
3. The collision causes annihilation.
In a sentence we could say; some things recoil, some things fuse and a few things disappear in a flash.
Unless neutron stars are also their own anti-matter, when two of them collide near the speed of light, at the end of a decreasing binary orbit, we are almost obliged to select option 2 above.
The collision is non-elastic.
Just like their quantum counterparts, they will fuse together, like nucleons.
All current computer simulations suggest that two such stars will merge and probably coalesce into a larger sphere for an instant and then collapse into a black hole.
That's the part I feel is not quite right.
I believe that two neutron stars will fuse just as two nucleons do, and lose a small amount of matter which is transformed into a huge amount of energy in the form of a gamma ray burst.
If we imagine four neutron stars fused together (resembling an alpha particle or helium nucleus) that somehow did not collapse into a black hole, but remained a massive solid remnant.
The radius of such a remnant, measured from its common centre, will lie within its Schwarzchild radius, measured from the same point.
This remnant would share some properties of a black hole, like mass and density, but it will not display Hawking evaporation because it is not a black hole!
For such an object there will be no disadvantage of resolving the black hole information paradox, and every bit of information is stored within this dense 'quadron'.
One interesting approach is that information is stored in a massive remnant.
This approach seems to gravitate toward 'Occam's razor', that suggests that the simplest theory that fits the facts is the one most likely to be correct.
The massive remnant approach, has the advantages that no mechanism for information escape is needed (as it is in the black hole approach), and also that a large amount of information does not need to be stored in a small object ( as it is in the tiny Planck-sized remnant approach).
When discussing the disadvantage of the massive remnant approach, physicists merely point out that no appealing mechanism that could stop Hawking evaporation of a macroscopic black hole is known.
Maybe so, but Nature is starting to indicate new clues about neutron stars that stunned astronomers and astrophysicists, who had expected that black holes should exist in their place, but do not.
That is the subtle mechanism whereby we might be able to avoid Hawking radiation altogether, by avoiding black holes.
If we deal with dense massive remnants of almost similar mass and density to black holes, then we find that a neutron star is not far off the mark.
One is tempted to glue two or more neutron stars together in a thought experiment, (Commercials tell us they've used Pratley's putty on the moon!)
When relativistic ( which means traveling near the speed of light) quantum particles collide, there are three possible general results for a collision.
1. The collision is elastic.
2. The collision is non-elastic.
3. The collision causes annihilation.
In a sentence we could say; some things recoil, some things fuse and a few things disappear in a flash.
Unless neutron stars are also their own anti-matter, when two of them collide near the speed of light, at the end of a decreasing binary orbit, we are almost obliged to select option 2 above.
The collision is non-elastic.
Just like their quantum counterparts, they will fuse together, like nucleons.
All current computer simulations suggest that two such stars will merge and probably coalesce into a larger sphere for an instant and then collapse into a black hole.
That's the part I feel is not quite right.
I believe that two neutron stars will fuse just as two nucleons do, and lose a small amount of matter which is transformed into a huge amount of energy in the form of a gamma ray burst.
If we imagine four neutron stars fused together (resembling an alpha particle or helium nucleus) that somehow did not collapse into a black hole, but remained a massive solid remnant.
The radius of such a remnant, measured from its common centre, will lie within its Schwarzchild radius, measured from the same point.
This remnant would share some properties of a black hole, like mass and density, but it will not display Hawking evaporation because it is not a black hole!
For such an object there will be no disadvantage of resolving the black hole information paradox, and every bit of information is stored within this dense 'quadron'.
The Celebration of the Court Jester's Insight
The inertial state of all the matter in the Universe, is clearly the result of some initial force or ‘prime mover’, yet we still do not know what that force was.
Today, such knowledge is worth a king’s ransom but no one has claimed it yet.
The Inflationary Big Bang Model, serves for now, as the official kick-off that got the game underway for the Universe.
It is riddled with problems and it is inevitable that the scientific fraternity will one day have to issue (in one form or another) the following statement or headline;
“We have discovered that the Higgs Boson does not exist!”
Are we ready for that headline? Are we prepared? How will we feel?
All hell will break loose in the world of Cosmology, and chaos will rule.
I once asked an astrophysicist, who was hosting a discussion on the Inflationary Big Bang theory, that very question. What if the Higgs boson is not found?
He calmly replied that they are already working on that possibility. He said in that event, they will attempt to introduce something called MOND to the forefront of physics.
He explained that ‘MOND’ is a mathematical model of MOdified Newtonian Dynamics. “Gravity,” he said, “might be found to change under extreme conditions.”
I do not believe they will get very far with MOND.
Besides, Newtonian dynamics remains to this day, a sure footing, and does not need to be underpinned by a new foundation.
Just as Inflation replaced the ‘singularity’ as the cause of the Big Bang of Creation,
MOND will attempt to alter the gravity that was supposed to have caused the singularity.
To me, this smacks of a snake biting its tail while flipped into a figure eight!
If we were to use this snake as a V-belt to drive the pulleys of Newton’s Universe, we will end up going backwards!
Inflationary theory relies on the existence of the Higgs field, and that in turn relies on the existence of the Higgs Boson.
The Higgs Boson is considered to have endowed every particle in existence, via the Higgs field, with mass. That’s right, mass.
They say that without the Higgs (which may not exist), all known particles that do exist, would be massless !
That in turn implies that gravity would not exist either, and without gravity, there would be no light ! Holy smoke !
We end up with a Universe of supposedly ‘critical’ density, composed of matter without mass, just like a bunch of bosons lurking about with nothing to do.
We might ask; “where did all the fermions go”.
Now imagine a court jester telling his King (of the Cosmos) that this conclusion makes no sense at all.
The King will tend to agree with the fool, and by default, so will his subjects, (all the stars and planets).
So the King sagaciously declares; “The whole argument bears no weight, there has to be another way!”
The jester replies, “Sire, methinks that mass was always hiding in this dark matter, and is occasionally allowing us to see the gravity of the matter in a new light.”
The King looked totally perplexed…
With that single statement, the jester was immediately appointed as the ‘Astronomer Royal’.
After many years of observation into the darkness of space, and endless hours of deep thought, the jester appeared before the King as the astronomer royal, and drearily declared; “Sire, I have the solution.”
“I warn you, Fool, I take a dim view on the matter!” said the King.
So before hearing the jester’s explanation, the King asked him the following twenty questions from a checklist he had personally compiled on a royal letterhead.
The wise King had made sure that in his opinion, the answer to each question was known to be “NO”.
Are we at the center of the Universe?
Does a singularity exist?
Have you needed to modify Newton’s work?
Can gravity exist without mass?
Can energy be created without matter?
Can matter exist without mass?
Can mass exist without energy?
Have they found the Higgs Boson?
Have Supersymetry’s famous neutralinos been found?
Have they found an Axion?
Have we discovered any hidden dimension of the superstring theory?
Has General relativity been disproved?
Has M-theory proved to be correct?
Has every action ever been proven not to have a reaction?
Has the concept of inertia ever been disproved?
Can we prove that the evolution of the Universe is not cyclical?
Do we know what causes dark energy?
The Jester Royal answered every one of the King’s questions correctly up to this point, to the utter disbelief of the subjects of the Cosmos.
The King said, “Well done, Fool, but now for the final question, and be warned, it’s the most difficult of all”.
“Question number twenty is ;
Do we know what dark matter is?”
Starting to giggle and bubble, the jester answered, ‘No Sire, but I have the solution! '
He told the court that in a fit of madness, it had occurred to him that dark matter consists of four neutron stars welded together, and from their common center, they share a common radius that lies inside their common Schwarzchild radius.
The subjects gazed blankly at this ex-joker, the Astronomer Royal.
Some even nodded off.
After a long, thoughtful pause, the King announced; “By Jove, Jester, you’ve found the missing mass ! ”
The King said that he would get his goldsmiths to weld him up just such an object, to be used as the royal seal from that time onward.
The King named the object of the jester’s dreams, the “Quadron”, and commented that it did indeed make the perfect container in which to store and hide vast amounts of hydrogen from view.
The King was a bit of a ‘throne physicist’, and he worked out that if there were enough quadrons, and some of them spilled their neutrons, there would be plenty of hydrogen about to form the first stars.
He determined that about four percent of the quadrons should get smashed.
The King bellowed, “Let’s celebrate the fool’s discovery of mass with a really big bash!”
All the subjects of the Cosmos rejoiced; it was like the fourth of July, and they felt somehow emancipated.
This was because deep down, they all had vague suppressed memories of once being part of a neutron star, and it was the village idiot that had caused the champaign corks to pop, in celebrating this enlightenment. What a party!
Nine (hundred million) months later, infant stars, the first-born, entered the visible Universe, and boy, were they a welcome ray of sunshine to a previously dark and gloomy lot, still hung over from the party.
All these newborn stars were the illegitimate progeny of a few quadrons who became absolutely smashed during the celebrations of the jester's insight.
The King was delighted, because science was back on track, and all his subjects behaved as was expected of them.
The Jester Astronomer Royal lived happily ever after, because the King gave him his old job back.
The King philosophically professed, isn’t it amazing that we are even here at all, in spite of there being no Higgs Boson, to leave such a fantastic tale to all who come hereafter? He called it the 'mild' anthropic principle.
The End.
Today, such knowledge is worth a king’s ransom but no one has claimed it yet.
The Inflationary Big Bang Model, serves for now, as the official kick-off that got the game underway for the Universe.
It is riddled with problems and it is inevitable that the scientific fraternity will one day have to issue (in one form or another) the following statement or headline;
“We have discovered that the Higgs Boson does not exist!”
Are we ready for that headline? Are we prepared? How will we feel?
All hell will break loose in the world of Cosmology, and chaos will rule.
I once asked an astrophysicist, who was hosting a discussion on the Inflationary Big Bang theory, that very question. What if the Higgs boson is not found?
He calmly replied that they are already working on that possibility. He said in that event, they will attempt to introduce something called MOND to the forefront of physics.
He explained that ‘MOND’ is a mathematical model of MOdified Newtonian Dynamics. “Gravity,” he said, “might be found to change under extreme conditions.”
I do not believe they will get very far with MOND.
Besides, Newtonian dynamics remains to this day, a sure footing, and does not need to be underpinned by a new foundation.
Just as Inflation replaced the ‘singularity’ as the cause of the Big Bang of Creation,
MOND will attempt to alter the gravity that was supposed to have caused the singularity.
To me, this smacks of a snake biting its tail while flipped into a figure eight!
If we were to use this snake as a V-belt to drive the pulleys of Newton’s Universe, we will end up going backwards!
Inflationary theory relies on the existence of the Higgs field, and that in turn relies on the existence of the Higgs Boson.
The Higgs Boson is considered to have endowed every particle in existence, via the Higgs field, with mass. That’s right, mass.
They say that without the Higgs (which may not exist), all known particles that do exist, would be massless !
That in turn implies that gravity would not exist either, and without gravity, there would be no light ! Holy smoke !
We end up with a Universe of supposedly ‘critical’ density, composed of matter without mass, just like a bunch of bosons lurking about with nothing to do.
We might ask; “where did all the fermions go”.
Now imagine a court jester telling his King (of the Cosmos) that this conclusion makes no sense at all.
The King will tend to agree with the fool, and by default, so will his subjects, (all the stars and planets).
So the King sagaciously declares; “The whole argument bears no weight, there has to be another way!”
The jester replies, “Sire, methinks that mass was always hiding in this dark matter, and is occasionally allowing us to see the gravity of the matter in a new light.”
The King looked totally perplexed…
With that single statement, the jester was immediately appointed as the ‘Astronomer Royal’.
After many years of observation into the darkness of space, and endless hours of deep thought, the jester appeared before the King as the astronomer royal, and drearily declared; “Sire, I have the solution.”
“I warn you, Fool, I take a dim view on the matter!” said the King.
So before hearing the jester’s explanation, the King asked him the following twenty questions from a checklist he had personally compiled on a royal letterhead.
The wise King had made sure that in his opinion, the answer to each question was known to be “NO”.
Are we at the center of the Universe?
Does a singularity exist?
Have you needed to modify Newton’s work?
Can gravity exist without mass?
Can energy be created without matter?
Can matter exist without mass?
Can mass exist without energy?
Have they found the Higgs Boson?
Have Supersymetry’s famous neutralinos been found?
Have they found an Axion?
Have we discovered any hidden dimension of the superstring theory?
Has General relativity been disproved?
Has M-theory proved to be correct?
Has every action ever been proven not to have a reaction?
Has the concept of inertia ever been disproved?
Can we prove that the evolution of the Universe is not cyclical?
Do we know what causes dark energy?
The Jester Royal answered every one of the King’s questions correctly up to this point, to the utter disbelief of the subjects of the Cosmos.
The King said, “Well done, Fool, but now for the final question, and be warned, it’s the most difficult of all”.
“Question number twenty is ;
Do we know what dark matter is?”
Starting to giggle and bubble, the jester answered, ‘No Sire, but I have the solution! '
He told the court that in a fit of madness, it had occurred to him that dark matter consists of four neutron stars welded together, and from their common center, they share a common radius that lies inside their common Schwarzchild radius.
The subjects gazed blankly at this ex-joker, the Astronomer Royal.
Some even nodded off.
After a long, thoughtful pause, the King announced; “By Jove, Jester, you’ve found the missing mass ! ”
The King said that he would get his goldsmiths to weld him up just such an object, to be used as the royal seal from that time onward.
The King named the object of the jester’s dreams, the “Quadron”, and commented that it did indeed make the perfect container in which to store and hide vast amounts of hydrogen from view.
The King was a bit of a ‘throne physicist’, and he worked out that if there were enough quadrons, and some of them spilled their neutrons, there would be plenty of hydrogen about to form the first stars.
He determined that about four percent of the quadrons should get smashed.
The King bellowed, “Let’s celebrate the fool’s discovery of mass with a really big bash!”
All the subjects of the Cosmos rejoiced; it was like the fourth of July, and they felt somehow emancipated.
This was because deep down, they all had vague suppressed memories of once being part of a neutron star, and it was the village idiot that had caused the champaign corks to pop, in celebrating this enlightenment. What a party!
Nine (hundred million) months later, infant stars, the first-born, entered the visible Universe, and boy, were they a welcome ray of sunshine to a previously dark and gloomy lot, still hung over from the party.
All these newborn stars were the illegitimate progeny of a few quadrons who became absolutely smashed during the celebrations of the jester's insight.
The King was delighted, because science was back on track, and all his subjects behaved as was expected of them.
The Jester Astronomer Royal lived happily ever after, because the King gave him his old job back.
The King philosophically professed, isn’t it amazing that we are even here at all, in spite of there being no Higgs Boson, to leave such a fantastic tale to all who come hereafter? He called it the 'mild' anthropic principle.
The End.
The Gravity of the Matter
What to Make of it All
What do you think dark matter consists of?
Evidence is increasing to suggest that 'dark matter' clumps gave birth to all our bright or visible galaxies.
Today, the mystery of the composition of this stuff still lingers, and thus far, it eludes every human mind on our planet.
Maybe we should assist the astrophysicits and see if we can glean an insight from their observations.
Instinctively, one senses that the mystery will have such a simple solution.
The first consideration should be about where all this dark matter might have come from in the first place.
It is unacceptable to simply bolt on the notion that the Big Bang must have produced it.
All the bolts protruding from the Big Bang model are turning the theory into a monster.
An intuitive answer may well lie in astronomers recent observations that very old and distant galaxies contain less luminous matter than galaxies that are closer to our own.
Faint, irregular galaxies, seem to suggest that the first bright stuff to emit light, emerged from the cores of these early dark matter globules or clumps.
It is as if the dark stuff gave birth to the bright stuff.
That leads to a problem, because most physicists now believe that dark matter cannot consist of the 'baryonic' matter that our visible Universe consists of.
Baryonic matter simply means protons and neutrons, that make up all ordinary matter.
We, for example are made from baryonic matter, and so are our homes and autombiles.
All the objects we observe in the Cosmos are made from baryons.
The reason that cosmologists and astrophysicits think dark matter is non-baryonic, is because it would interact with bright or ordinary matter if it were baryonic, and dark matter appears to be inert to bright matter.
The way around this is to consider that dark matter may be baryonic, but is somehow prevented from undergoing nuclear and electromagnetic interactions.
What in the Universe could serve to render dark matter invisible and immune to the effects of ordinary matter?
Gravity could hold the key.
Gravity might cause all the objects that shine and glow in the heavens, to eventually stop emitting light or any form of electromagnetic radiation.
The Laws of Thermodynamics do not apply in the absence of heat.
So if gravity were to exhaust all the hydrogen to helium fusion, thereby using up all the hydrogen needed to form stars, stars would no longer form.
The ones that have formed will eventually burn out their fusion fuels, go supernova, and leave small massive dense cores that slowly cool down until even the Second Law of Thermodynamics abandons them, when they reach a point of almost maximun entropy.
Just because the Second Law no longer applies at this point does not mean that the cold dense core remnants of all the stars that ever existed will simply cease to exist.
Indeed, they will exist in darkness, devoid of any heat transmissions.
There is no reason to believe that just because of the absense of electromagnetic radiation, the Universe will contract again under the force of gravity, because dark energy will still be around to counter gravity from collecting all the cold ash and debris scattered across the sky and crushing it into one great mass..
Rather, gravity will continue to easily overpower dark energy's anti-gravitational effects at close range, meaning that gravity will continue to hold comic remnants like old neutron stars together, in spite of the continuing accelerated expansion of the now dark Universe.
It is this dark Universe that will give rise clumps of dark matter (which is also not going anywhere anytime soon) in which gravity can reheat some matter in the clump cores until there eventually appears new light in them.
The force of gravity could turn out to be the Universe's ultimate negative entropy or 'renewable energy' provider, but it would need 'something to squeeze' and that something would have to be everything that was in the Universe when the lights went out.
If that 'something' (matter) happened to be free neutrons and alpha particles, before long, gravity will be happily making new stars.
Only then will the Second Law of thermodynamics apply again, as it manages this new energy in the way that it manages all enegy.
From an observer's point of view, it will appear as the birth of the Universe.
What do you think dark matter consists of?
Evidence is increasing to suggest that 'dark matter' clumps gave birth to all our bright or visible galaxies.
Today, the mystery of the composition of this stuff still lingers, and thus far, it eludes every human mind on our planet.
Maybe we should assist the astrophysicits and see if we can glean an insight from their observations.
Instinctively, one senses that the mystery will have such a simple solution.
The first consideration should be about where all this dark matter might have come from in the first place.
It is unacceptable to simply bolt on the notion that the Big Bang must have produced it.
All the bolts protruding from the Big Bang model are turning the theory into a monster.
An intuitive answer may well lie in astronomers recent observations that very old and distant galaxies contain less luminous matter than galaxies that are closer to our own.
Faint, irregular galaxies, seem to suggest that the first bright stuff to emit light, emerged from the cores of these early dark matter globules or clumps.
It is as if the dark stuff gave birth to the bright stuff.
That leads to a problem, because most physicists now believe that dark matter cannot consist of the 'baryonic' matter that our visible Universe consists of.
Baryonic matter simply means protons and neutrons, that make up all ordinary matter.
We, for example are made from baryonic matter, and so are our homes and autombiles.
All the objects we observe in the Cosmos are made from baryons.
The reason that cosmologists and astrophysicits think dark matter is non-baryonic, is because it would interact with bright or ordinary matter if it were baryonic, and dark matter appears to be inert to bright matter.
The way around this is to consider that dark matter may be baryonic, but is somehow prevented from undergoing nuclear and electromagnetic interactions.
What in the Universe could serve to render dark matter invisible and immune to the effects of ordinary matter?
Gravity could hold the key.
Gravity might cause all the objects that shine and glow in the heavens, to eventually stop emitting light or any form of electromagnetic radiation.
The Laws of Thermodynamics do not apply in the absence of heat.
So if gravity were to exhaust all the hydrogen to helium fusion, thereby using up all the hydrogen needed to form stars, stars would no longer form.
The ones that have formed will eventually burn out their fusion fuels, go supernova, and leave small massive dense cores that slowly cool down until even the Second Law of Thermodynamics abandons them, when they reach a point of almost maximun entropy.
Just because the Second Law no longer applies at this point does not mean that the cold dense core remnants of all the stars that ever existed will simply cease to exist.
Indeed, they will exist in darkness, devoid of any heat transmissions.
There is no reason to believe that just because of the absense of electromagnetic radiation, the Universe will contract again under the force of gravity, because dark energy will still be around to counter gravity from collecting all the cold ash and debris scattered across the sky and crushing it into one great mass..
Rather, gravity will continue to easily overpower dark energy's anti-gravitational effects at close range, meaning that gravity will continue to hold comic remnants like old neutron stars together, in spite of the continuing accelerated expansion of the now dark Universe.
It is this dark Universe that will give rise clumps of dark matter (which is also not going anywhere anytime soon) in which gravity can reheat some matter in the clump cores until there eventually appears new light in them.
The force of gravity could turn out to be the Universe's ultimate negative entropy or 'renewable energy' provider, but it would need 'something to squeeze' and that something would have to be everything that was in the Universe when the lights went out.
If that 'something' (matter) happened to be free neutrons and alpha particles, before long, gravity will be happily making new stars.
Only then will the Second Law of thermodynamics apply again, as it manages this new energy in the way that it manages all enegy.
From an observer's point of view, it will appear as the birth of the Universe.
Friday, 15 January 2010
Is dark matter shedding light on baryonic matter?
Recent experiments measuring the proportions of baryonic matter compared to dark matter in different sized galaxies, has sparked a lot of excitement in the quest to discover what dark matter actually consists of.
Scientists have discovered that the larger galaxies tend to contain the most baryonic matter (about 17%), compared to its dark matter content, while the smaller dwarf galaxies appear to contain as little as one percent of the bright stuff (and 99% dark).
This bodes well for theories supporting the notion that galaxy formation occured within larger gravitationally bound clumps of dark matter, spread across the Universe.
What has not been postulated until now, is that dark matter might, under certain extreme conditions, transform into bright (or baryonic) matter made of ordinary atoms.
To this end, we could observe dim dwarf galaxies that have higher percentages (than 1%) of baryonic matter and determine if they have existed for a longer time.
If this were found to be the case, then it could imply that dark matter in those slightly brighter galaxies had transformed into bright matter.
This then, would clearly link dark matter more closely with baryonic matter, pointing to the possibility of dark matter being baryonic, albeit somehow in a non reactive form.
The stumbling block remains though,that bright matter does not appear to react or interact with dark matter.
That is why many physicists believe dark matter to be non-baryonic
These recent findings could cause these assumptions to be re-visited.
Is it possible that galaxies start off composed entirely of dark matter, that gradually transforms into bright baryonic matter?
If any dim dwarf galaxies appear to brighten, even slightly,then such a notion is worth investigating.
Such an investigation might start with the question; "Is dark matter unstable, or is it just me?"
Scientists have discovered that the larger galaxies tend to contain the most baryonic matter (about 17%), compared to its dark matter content, while the smaller dwarf galaxies appear to contain as little as one percent of the bright stuff (and 99% dark).
This bodes well for theories supporting the notion that galaxy formation occured within larger gravitationally bound clumps of dark matter, spread across the Universe.
What has not been postulated until now, is that dark matter might, under certain extreme conditions, transform into bright (or baryonic) matter made of ordinary atoms.
To this end, we could observe dim dwarf galaxies that have higher percentages (than 1%) of baryonic matter and determine if they have existed for a longer time.
If this were found to be the case, then it could imply that dark matter in those slightly brighter galaxies had transformed into bright matter.
This then, would clearly link dark matter more closely with baryonic matter, pointing to the possibility of dark matter being baryonic, albeit somehow in a non reactive form.
The stumbling block remains though,that bright matter does not appear to react or interact with dark matter.
That is why many physicists believe dark matter to be non-baryonic
These recent findings could cause these assumptions to be re-visited.
Is it possible that galaxies start off composed entirely of dark matter, that gradually transforms into bright baryonic matter?
If any dim dwarf galaxies appear to brighten, even slightly,then such a notion is worth investigating.
Such an investigation might start with the question; "Is dark matter unstable, or is it just me?"
Do neutron stars share more in common with stellar mass black holes than just density?
Toward the end of 2005, astronomers studying the results from NASA's Chandra x-ray observatory determined that a very massive star, in excess of 40 solar masses, collapsed to form a neutron star instead of an expected black hole.
One obvious implication of the results is evident; that many more stars than previously thought, are ending up as neutron stars.
It is as if Nature is telling us that this family of ultra-dense stellar objects, are more fundamental to the evolution of our Universe, than we might ever have imagined.
Neutron degenerate pressure, does not seem to be the end of the line though, before gravity causes a runaway implosion toward the 'singularity' lurking beneath the event horizon of a Kerr stellar black hole.
Such evidence can be speculated to imply that upon reaching its maximum degenerate pressure, the super-dense nucleon fluid at the core of a neutron star, might change its properties, from fermionic behaviour to bosonic behaviour.
Various physicists have used computed simulations to support evidence for postulated 'quark stars' or even 'electroweak stars', where quarks have decayed into leptons such as electrons and neutrinos which allow for a higher outward pressure to counter gravitational collapse.
However, these are all still fermions, and as such, are subject to Pauli's Exclusion Principle.
If the fluid of the core took on bosonic properties, the particles will behave according to Bose-Einstein statistics.
So, the s-matrix of the system that is a neutron star, is proving to contain far more probable solutions than might have previously been overlooked.
One obvious implication of the results is evident; that many more stars than previously thought, are ending up as neutron stars.
It is as if Nature is telling us that this family of ultra-dense stellar objects, are more fundamental to the evolution of our Universe, than we might ever have imagined.
Neutron degenerate pressure, does not seem to be the end of the line though, before gravity causes a runaway implosion toward the 'singularity' lurking beneath the event horizon of a Kerr stellar black hole.
Such evidence can be speculated to imply that upon reaching its maximum degenerate pressure, the super-dense nucleon fluid at the core of a neutron star, might change its properties, from fermionic behaviour to bosonic behaviour.
Various physicists have used computed simulations to support evidence for postulated 'quark stars' or even 'electroweak stars', where quarks have decayed into leptons such as electrons and neutrinos which allow for a higher outward pressure to counter gravitational collapse.
However, these are all still fermions, and as such, are subject to Pauli's Exclusion Principle.
If the fluid of the core took on bosonic properties, the particles will behave according to Bose-Einstein statistics.
So, the s-matrix of the system that is a neutron star, is proving to contain far more probable solutions than might have previously been overlooked.
Thursday, 14 January 2010
A Plan Elevation of our Reality
“…creating a new theory is not like destroying an old barn
and erecting a skyscraper in its place.
It is rather like climbing a mountain, gaining new and wider
views, discovering unexpected connections
between our starting point and its rich environment.
But the point from which we started out still
exists and can be seen, although it appears smaller
and forms a tiny part of our broad view gained by the
mastery of the obstacles on our adventurous way up.”
Albert Einstein
and erecting a skyscraper in its place.
It is rather like climbing a mountain, gaining new and wider
views, discovering unexpected connections
between our starting point and its rich environment.
But the point from which we started out still
exists and can be seen, although it appears smaller
and forms a tiny part of our broad view gained by the
mastery of the obstacles on our adventurous way up.”
Albert Einstein
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