Some Bits & Pieces That Are Out of This World

Orion’s Belt: It consists of the three bright stars Alnitak, Alnilam and Mintake The stars are more or less evenly spaced in a straight line, and so can be visualized as a belt. For some mysterious reason, several archaeological sites exhibit or mirror the positions of the trilogy of stars that make up the Belt of Orion. The most famous is the trilogy of those massive ancient Egyptian pyramids on the Giza plateau. The second is seen at Teotihuacán’s central pyramid complex in Mexico. The third is a trilogy of Hopi Mesas in Arizona. Okay, Orion’s Belt, that trilogy of stars, is fairly prominent in the night sky, but then too so is a lot of other star patterns. What makes these special to our ancient ancestors? A big deal of this is made by ‘ancient astronaut’ theorists. Somehow that trilogy of stars must be special, like perhaps home turf to ET. Alas, that doesn’t seem all that plausible. Alnitak (Zeta Orionis), Alnilam (Epsilon Orionis) and Mintake (Delta Orionis) are very bright stars (to the naked eye), but they are also very, very far away. That alone suggests that they are very un-Sun like. Alnitak is 736 light-years away and 100,000 times our Sun’s luminosity; Alnilam is 1340 light-years distant and 375,000 times as luminous as our Sun; and Mintake is 915 light-years away as the crow flies and is a whopping 900,000 times the Sun’s luminosity. Mintaka is also a double star system. Translated, the trio of stars that make up Orion’s Belt don’t seem to be likely candidates for extraterrestrials that would come a-calling as ‘ancient astronauts’. I very much doubt SETI scientists would target these stars as likely candidates to point their radio telescopes at.

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There’s nothing too controversial about the idea that other universes in a Multiverse could have differing laws, relationships and principles of physics than our own. It’s one way of explaining why our Universe is a Goldilocks Universe. If you have billions and billions of universes each with a unique or differing set of laws, relationships and principles of physics, well probability suggests that one universe should just right for life – a Goldilocks Universe. Since we can only exist inside a Goldilocks Universe, well that explains that. But what if the laws, relationships and principles of physics in our Universe changed over time, or over space, or both! Then it’s probably time to turn out the lights, shut and lock the lab door and go home. It’s time to find a new career. But amazingly, there is (controversial) evidence that that is just that. Physical constants aren’t. 

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If whatever powers-that-be are simulating our universe, then they could be simulating others as well – a simulated Multiverse! And each and every simulated universe of that Multiverse could have simulated parallel universes. That’s a simulated Megaverse!

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One of the 64,000 $64,000 questions: Can you pour stuff down a Black Hole indefinitely, or does the Black Hole have a finite capacity and ultimately or eventually will have to spew stuff out the ‘other side’ (i.e. – producing a White Hole) as you keep pouring in more and more and more? I’d wager the conservation relationships and principles of physics and chemistry hold sway here. What goes in ultimately comes out. That doesn’t mean there’s not a temporary holding vessel. Or, in more human terms, you fill what’s empty; you empty what’s full, but in-between those two there’s storage in the stomach and the intestines; the lungs and the bladder.

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What lies at the heart of a Black Hole? The traditional answer is a ‘singularity’ – a point of (near) infinite density and (close to) zero volume, matter crushed down to the final, ultimate limit – or maybe not.

Start with a hunk of matter. Keep on keeping on adding more and more and more matter (mass) to it. Your original hunk grows larger, ever denser; its gravity swells in proportion. Finally it’s just a fraction away from achieving Black Hole status – meaning its gravity is so strong not even light can escape from its grasp.

So you are a thimbleful of salt away from crossing the not-quite-yet a Black Hole to an actual Black Hole boundary. You can (barely) still see your now super-sized hunk of stuff. Now toss in that final thimbleful of stuff onto the hunk. No light now reaches you – you’ve crossed the threshold or boundary and have got a Black Hole. But do you doubt that lurking on the other side of the not-quite-yet a Black Hole to an actual Black Hole boundary, though unseen, you still have that super-sized hunk of stuff, not a singularity, but a really real solid 3-D hunk of stuff? Or, in other words, if the escape velocity of your hunk is 185,999 miles per second, no Black Hole and no singularity, but if it climbs to 186,001 miles per second you have a Black Hole and your hunk morphs into a singularity? A two mile a second difference makes that much difference? I don’t think so.

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You are all no doubt well aware of the General Theory of Relativity which holds that light (in a pure vacuum) always travels at constant velocity (300,000 km/sec), no matter what frame of reference you are viewing that light in – totally contrary to experience and expectations, but true nevertheless. That translates into length and mass and rate-of-change (time) all being variables, variations depending on what frame of reference you are in. Light of course is one manifestation of the electromagnetic force. That suggests to me that magnetism must also propagate at 300,000 km/sec. Two north magnetic poles or one north and one south magnetic pole, suddenly brought into existence, 300,000 km apart, won’t feel any mutual repulsion or attraction respectfully until one-half of one second after-the-fact, when the two forces meet in the middle and start doing their thing.

But that constant speed of a force, must equally apply to gravity. If the Sun were to suddenly in a split of a split of a split second vanish, it would be eight minutes before Planet Earth would be rudderless, or rather orbitless. No matter what your frame of reference, you’d ‘see’ gravity propagate outwards at 300,000 km/sec. The same must apply to ‘dark energy’, that anti-gravity force. I imagine the same would apply to the propagation of the strong and the week nuclear force as well.

Of course one cannot turn on and turn off gravity (or the strong and weak nuclear forces) like you can a light (or radio, UV, IR, etc.) beam or magnetic field, which is a bit of a bummer in testing the relativistic properties of a gravity beam.

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Gravity; it’s what holds you firmly to Terra Firma. If I ask you what holds you firmly to Terra Firma you’d answer “gravity”. But if then asked to explain exactly what it is and how it works you’d be stumped. Giving the Newtonian equations makes predictions but doesn’t give explanations.

However, there are two explanations for gravity if I read the textbooks correctly.

Gravity Is Just Another Force: Firstly, there are in this worldview four fundamental forces: the electromagnetic force, the strong and weak nuclear forces, and gravity. Forces have accompanying elementary particles witch convey the force. In the case of the electromagnetic force, the particle is the photon. The particle associated with gravity has been dubbed the graviton. Unfortunately, it has never (to date) been detected. Now the central issue here is try as they might, physicists cannot unify the four forces into one whole, called a Theory of Everything or TOE*. Since everything should be related to everything else, gravity should be, if not a brother or sister to the other three force-related siblings, at least a kissing cousin. Alas, it’s an unrelated hermit that wants no ancestry with the other three.

Gravity Is Just the Geometry of Space-Time: The second is that mass ‘tells’ space-time how to warp, and warped space-time ‘tells’ mass how to move – seemingly experimentally verified more than several times over. The movement of mass in warped space-time is what we interpret as the ‘force of gravity’, but gravity is actually the actions of mass moving in space-time geometry. If gravity is just geometry and mass deviates from the straight and narrow path because lots of other mass has warped space-time from the flatland Great Plains to the peaks and valleys of the space-time Rockies, then there’s no apparent need or reason that I can see to unify gravity with the other forces and their particles. There is no graviton. If there is no causality link with the other three (quantum level) forces, there’s no need for a TOE. There’s no need to reconcile the 98 pound of weakling gravity with the Atlas physiques of electromagnetism, etc. 

Gravity is highly anomalous. Apart from the fact that gravity is the 98 pound weakling of all the forces (you can pull a paperclip up into the air with just a tiny magnet even though the entire Planet Earth’s gravity is tugging back); and that the graviton hasn’t been spotted anywhere, anytime, anyhow; and that TOE is a no-go; but lastly there are those cosmic twin anomalies, Dark Matter and Dark Energy.

We can’t see, or even detect directly, 96% of the Universe! We have no idea what 96% of the Universe is composed of. If that’s not anomalous, I don’t know what is. Both however have revealed themselves indirectly via their gravity (in the case of Dark Matter) or their antigravity (in the case of Dark Energy). Some of that ‘missing’ part of the Universe is matter of unknown composition, but like all good matter, has gravity. It’s the gravitational effect on matter we can see that gives the game away. Some more (way more) of that ‘missing’ part of the cosmos is Dark Energy which is that unknown stuff which is accelerating the expansion rate of the Universe and if that’s not anomalous, I don’t know what is since by rights the expansion rate of the Universe should be decelerating under the force of gravity. The fact that it’s accelerating suggests that Dark Energy is a form of antigravity, a repulsive force driving things apart at ever faster and faster rates. Though antigravity is really outside the accepted realm of physics (though not sci-fi), there is a symmetrical parallel with the electromagnetic force, which is both attractive like gravity (north pole to south pole) and repulsive (north pole to north pole, or south pole to south pole).

So, gravitational anomalies abound.

*The exception is that the highly theoretical (read purely mathematical) String Theory, Superstring Theory or M-Theory can produce a TOE. The downside is that it takes a whole potful of highly theoretical (read purely mathematical) extra dimensions of which we have no awareness of and can’t (yet) detect. That’s just a bit too ad hoc for me, though many a theoretical physicist goes to sleep by counting their strings instead of their sheep.

Dark Energy: The Ultimate Free Lunch

Science is full of surprising discoveries. One that recently won the Nobel Prize in Physics was the discovery that the Universe is not just expanding, but that expansion rate is accelerating. The cause is a mysterious and unexplained ‘dark energy’ which is ever increasing right along with the accelerating Universe. But if the Universe contains all that is and ever will be, where is this extra ‘dark energy’ coming from and is this creation out of nothing a gross violation of the basic laws and principles of physics? If yes, perhaps there’s an even more surprising alternative.

  

If you toss a ball into the air, there are two basic forces at work acting on the ball (ignoring atmospheric friction or drag of course but one can pretend there’s no atmosphere). There’s the oomph (kinetic) energy you give the ball in the upwards direction; there’s the gravitational force that pulls on the ball in the opposite direction. There are two outcomes. 

If you toss a ball up into the air, you expect just one thing to happen – the ball will go up; the ball will slow down; the ball will stop; the ball will fall back to the ground. Why? Earth‘s gravity, that’s why.

If your name is Hercules and you really toss that ball up into the air, maybe, just maybe, the ball won’t fall back down to the ground. You have given the ball enough oomph energy to overcome, though not avoid, Earth’s gravitational pull. But, even if it doesn’t fall back to ground level, even if it keeps on going up, up and away for all time, it will still be forever slowing down. Why? Earth’s gravity, that’s why.

In both scenarios the oomph you give the ball can never be enough to enable the ball to escape Earth’s gravity entirely. The ball must slow down. That’s because the gravitational pull of the Earth on the ball (and also the ball on the Earth) extends to infinity. At no point does gravity cut out. You can’t escape gravity though your energy oomph can be enough to prevent its domination – the ball doesn’t have to fall back to Earth.

Now, the absolutely one scenario you would never expect, is that if you toss the ball into the air, even if the ball didn’t fall back down to ground level if it was given really lots and lots of oomph, that the ball would somehow not only fail to slow down but would in fact speed up. If you witnessed that you’d suspect that your mind or vision was faulty. The only way the ball could accelerate away from you is if it had some sort of additional, internal energy supply (like a rocket). Since it doesn’t, it can’t.

Now apply that logic to the Universe as a whole. In the beginning the Big Bang (the explosive event of the creation) gave a certain finite amount of oomph to all the bits and pieces that make up the Universe. And thus the Universe is expanding – a standard scenario when you have an explosion. When a bomb explodes, the result is an expansion of bomb-stuff. Now all those bits and pieces have a certain finite amount of gravity. The Universe as a whole therefore has a certain finite amount of gravity.

And so we have a similar contest as per the ball’s oomph and Earth’s gravity. Now, either the combined universal gravity of all those bits and pieces will be enough to overcome the finite amount of oomph provided by the Big Bang, and the Universe, like the ball, will slow down, stop and reverse direction (becoming a contracting Universe) or the oomph will prove greater than all those combined bits and pieces gravity and the Universe will expand forever, though that expansion rate will slow down over time. The expansion rate may never reach zero, but the gravity of the bits and pieces must drag forever and ever on the overall initial oomph. The Universal expansion will slow down, albeit never to zero. Okay, like the ball and the Earth, it’s pretty much one or the other. You, as per the ball and the Earth, wouldn’t expect the expansion rate of the overall Universe to increase. That defies logic, everyday experience and basic physics.

For the Universe to accelerate, it would have to be supplied with extra energy from outside, but the Universe is everything and contains everything, there is no outside, so where can additional energy come from? It can’t, not without violating one of the most basic of all basic fundamental physical principles – you can change one form of energy into another form, but you can’t create energy from nothing. Wouldn’t it be nice to just snap your fingers; wave a magic wand, and presto, your empty gas tank is now full or your cold house is now snug and warm! You don’t get something from nothing! The common phrase is that “there’s no such thing as a free lunch!”

So the fundamental question cosmologists (astronomers who study the Universe as a whole) were interested in finding out was whether the Universe’s expansion rate was slowing down enough to cause the Universe to grind to a halt and then reverse; or not. There was never any question that the expansion rate was slowing down. It was just a question to what order of magnitude and was it enough to ultimately cause a Big Crunch.

And so it came to pass that two competing teams of astronomers embarked on a study to crunch the deceleration rate numbers; answer that question of whether the Universe will eventually cease expanding and undergo a contraction (like that ball falling back down to Earth) or not (like the ball that Hercules tossed). Nobody on either team would have bet a nickel, far less the family farm, that the answer would be none of the above. Somehow or other, the bits and pieces that make up the Universe gave the middle finger to gravity. The unthinkable became thinkable, in fact, it became fact. The Universe’s expansion rate was accelerating; therefore energy must be being created out of nothing to provide that extra gravity-defying oomph; there was such a thing as a free lunch after all! The mysterious and unknown energy source behind this unexpected phenomenon was termed ‘dark energy’.

There’s little to dispute in terms of observational evidence for the existence of ‘dark energy’, or rather the fact that the expansion rate of the Universe is accelerating. Evidence has gone from strength to strength.

This discovery was so great, and so totally unexpected, that the team leaders were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics (2011) for it. But, it must be pointed out that the recognition was for the discovery, not for the explanation. There is no explanation. You can’t adequately explain a free lunch! You need extra energy oomph to power up the acceleration rate of the Universe just like you need an extra surge of gasoline to accelerate your car. Where does that extra energy come from and keep on keeping on coming on from? Just calling that addition source ‘dark energy’ provides no explanation for the free lunch it is. There is a fundamental problem here.

How so a free lunch? Well if I have my facts right, the way ‘dark energy’ works is this. Dark energy is an intrinsic property of space that exerts a pressure that causes that space to expand, which in turn creates new space which has ‘dark energy’ as an intrinsic property which results in that space expanding thus creating more space and thus more ‘dark energy’ and so on and so on. More space means more ‘dark energy’ which means more space, etc. It’s creation out of nothing, or, it’s a free lunch. Now this notion of an expanding space alone puts me at odds with the establishment of modern cosmology. We part company here since I remain convinced the Universe is expanding through existing space. But that still leaves the acceleration rate to the expanding Universe, even if through existing space, as an anomaly.

From the Oxford Companion to Cosmology (2008) we have this snippet: “The simplest dark energy model is the cosmological constant*, which maintains a fixed density as the Universe expands. … Thus far the cosmological constant has proven capable of explaining all relevant observational data, and thus is the chosen ingredient of the standard cosmological model.”

What’s wrong with this statement? It postulates a free lunch, that’s what.

Let’s drop down a notch in scale and look at something more familiar.

To illustrate, take a pure ice cube which has a density slightly less than the pure fresh water from which it came (which is why ice cubes float in water). Say the ice cube is one inch by one inch by one inch or one cubic inch in volume. Now double the dimensions to two inches by two inches by two inches. The ice cube is now eight cubic inches in volume. The ice cube has expanded in volume -so far so good. The density of the ice cube hasn’t changed, so you have to account for the creation of the extra seven cubic inches of ice. If you can’t account for the additional seven cubic inches then something is amiss. The alternative is that the original ice cube has expanded, but no additional ice has been added, so the density of the ice cube has decreased – same amount of ice but spread over a greater volume. But that’s equally screwy. You can’t change the density of ice and still have ice. Density is a fixed parameter of the substance we call ice.

Now change the ice to water vapour and you can alter the parameters. One cubic inch of water vapour can expand to eight cubic inches of water vapour. If you don’t add extra water vapour then the density of your original cubic inch of water vapour obviously decreases in the expansion. You have less water molecules per unit of volume than you had originally. Now the Universe is like water vapour. The Universe is not one solid lump like our ice cube; rather it’s zillions of bits and pieces (like water molecules) that occupy and spread throughout an ever expanding volume. The same amount of stuff expanded into a greater volume means of necessity less density. Any high school student knows that.

You cannot have the concept of density without also talking about the density of a something (like the cosmological constant). It’s meaningless to talk about the density of nothing. That something could be matter, energy or more likely a mixture of both since it’s hard to conceive of energy-less matter or matter in an energy-less state. In fact it’s physically impossible.

But note the Oxford phrase above: “the cosmological constant, which maintains a fixed density as the Universe expands” - something’s screwy somewhere.

If we can’t accept creation of this mysterious cosmological constant ‘dark energy’ out of nothing, whatever is driving the accelerating expansion of the Universe (call it ‘dark energy’ if you must) must also be getting thinner and thinner on the ground, but that would be like easing your foot off the accelerator pedal of your car. You car would cease to accelerate and ease back to a constant velocity (in Universe terms a steady expansion rate) or a deceleration (which is what our two teams of cosmologists were trying to measure in the first place). So it’s a Catch-22. We can’t have creation out of nothing (a free lunch) – that is just not acceptable - but without it you can’t have an expanding and ever accelerating Universe which has been experimentally observed.

I used to think that ‘dark energy’ must be a variation on the theme of the vacuum energy, but I couldn’t figure out how to get a free lunch out of the vacuum energy. For the perplexed, the vacuum energy just means that even when you seemingly have nothing, a vacuum, you still have some energy present. Translated, you can’t have an absolute state of nothingness which would be a theoretical temperature of absolute zero. At the micro or quantum scale, since energy and mass are equivalent (Einstein’s famous equation), energy can be converted to mass  – usually a pair of matter-antimatter particles, which annihilate each other quick-smart returning the energy back to the environment that created them in the first place. Mass can be converted to energy. There’s no free lunch. Conservation laws and principles rule the vacuum energy roost.

Has the Universe always been expanding at an ever accelerating rate? No. There are two competing forces at work. Gravity, a pull force, and this ‘dark energy’, a kind of antigravity or push force. Over time, so the story goes, the amount of ‘dark energy’ increases as space expands. But gravity doesn’t increase. The amount of gravity the Universe has now is the amount the Universe had way back when. At the start gravity was king of the hill because there wasn’t that much space, therefore that much ‘dark energy’. However, with every passing second the amount of ‘dark energy’ increased until it finally overran gravity which was standing still or constant. At that point of intersection the acceleration began in earnest. Apparently that was some five or so billion years ago. Prior to that, the Universe was expanding but at a decelerating rate.

There are two related offshoots to this ‘dark energy’ puzzlement. One is the Big Bang itself. Now the standard cosmological model has it that the Big Bang took place in a small space; a very, very, very small space. In fact the space available was something atomic sized. You couldn’t even see our Universe with the unaided eye a micro-second prior to the Big Bang Ka-Boom it was that tiny, yet anything and everything that exists today, existed then in that tiny volume. Now the problem is that when you try to figure out the state of play with the mass of the Universe (gravity) crushed down to the size of an atom, (the realm of the quantum), the equations break down. You have no idea what the state of play was. In a broader context, the physics of gravity (general relativity) cannot be reconciled with the physics of the quantum. Thousand have tried over many decades. They were just banging their heads against a brick wall. To this day, nobody can fit the hand of gravity into the glove of quantum physics. The way I like to put it is that you apparently have two different and incompatible sets of physics software running the cosmos. That’s nuts! That too needs an explanation.

The other – well there’s an awful lot of Universe for just little old us, and an awful lot more was created (that accelerating Universe) in the time it took you to read that. It’s like having a flea housed in Buckingham Palace that’s adding additional rooms on at a rapid rate of knots. For the flea, it’s a lot of wasted space. There’s an awful lot of just about empty space between the planets; between the stars; between the galaxies; between clusters of galaxies, etc. Why do we, and any other extraterrestrial life forms that may exist, need with so much empty space and pretty much worthless real estate, nearly all of which we can’t even reach? That’s nuts. That needs an explanation, like maybe most of the Universe is just visual holographic wallpaper and has no more reality than the images on your bedroom wallpaper. Is the Universe in fact just a simulation; a virtual reality?   

The way to befuddle an artificially (simulated) intelligent ‘life’ form is to give it an unsolvable problem like dividing a number by zero; calculating the square root of a negative number; coming up with the definitive final value of Pi; or solving an unsolvable paradox like something that both is and is not at the same time; how many angels can dance on the head of a pin; or create a spherical cube. The possibilities are numerous and it’s been used many a time in sci-fi plots to demonstrate the superiority of wetware (brains) over software (silicon chips).

But what if we weren’t wetware (any more than the characters in your dreams are), but in reality software – say a simulated being – an artificial intelligence being given unsolvable puzzles to solve like quantum gravity; why is there so much Universe; why are all electrons identical; why ghosts; and how come crop circles; how can dragons and griffins be real creatures without any fossil remains; and how can a viable breeding herd of lake ‘monsters’ exist in Loch Ness for so long without absolute verification, along with other anomalies that make no apparent sense, like why the expansion rate of the Universe is accelerating.

Conclusion: There’s no disputing the observations that the expansion rate of the Universe is accelerating. While that appears to be wildly improbable, a violation of natural law, that is creation from nothing – a free lunch in other words – it’s not difficult to do as a simulation. So, do we live in a simulated Universe as virtual beings?

*The cosmological constant was a concept invented by Einstein. He knew that the Universe should be contracting under its mutual gravity yet he and nearly everyone else knew (or assumed) that the Universe was static. So he needed a constant outward pressure (the cosmological constant) to balance gravity just-so to enable the Universe to be static – unchanging. So, when Einstein learned, along with the rest of the world later on down the track that the Universe wasn’t static but expanding, he called his ad hoc cosmological constant mechanism the greatest blunder of his career in science. However, the concept, though dormant post-Einstein, has never been too far from the minds of those who could resurrect it in a flash if it served their purpose, like explaining the accelerating expansion rate.

The Big Bang’s Metaphysical Baggage: Part Four

The Big Bang event is the leading scientific cosmological theory when it comes to explaining the origin and evolution of life, the Universe and simply everything. While the Big Bang event is the leading candidate and the standard model, it’s not the only one. That’s fortunate, because while a fair bit of once theoretical now verified observational evidence supports that standard cosmological model, it also comes as well with a fair bit of metaphysical baggage. It’s mainly that metaphysical baggage that concerns me.

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

AN ALTERNATIVE PROPOSAL

So what if there is more than one expanding pre-Big Bang ‘universe’, say a pre-Big Bang Multiverse that contains lots of expanding ‘universes’. Some of these ‘universes’ are, like our own Universe, matter dominated. Some however are antimatter rich. Now say one of each start to intersect at their expanding boundaries. There will be very little direct meeting of the two minds since the matter (and antimatter) is spread thinly. It’s like you can have two galaxies collide without there being any actual collisions between the stars contained in each, because the distance between those stars is vast relative to the sizes of the stars. What does rule the roost however is the gravitational force. Slowly, but surely, the intersection starts the slow but sure collapse of all the stuff. Eventually, the bits get close enough where a few matter-antimatter annihilations take place, but that oomph drives more bits into each other’s arms and so you quickly get a chain reaction yet one that transpires in a medium still tenuous enough and a region without sufficient density to form a super-sized lump and a harmless Black Hole. Might that matter-antimatter chain reaction manifest itself as a non-quantum, macro Big Bang - our Big Bang?  

Whether this scenario is plausible or even possible I know not, but it has a nice feel to it; it just might be. Even if not, it might suggest a seed for the next generation of cosmologists, or those currently more cosmologically savvy, to pursue.

YET ANOTHER ALTERNATIVE

Lastly, here’s a wicked curve ball. What if the Big Bang is a theoretical impossibility of physics pure and simple, despite the observational evidence? There’s only one way I know of to generate convincing impossibilities – virtual reality; a simulated universe where there need be no connection at all between what you observe and what theoretically caused the various things that you observe. My scenario: the expansion; the CMBR; the ratio of hydrogen to helium, are all simulated.

Our reality, our Universe including the Big Bang (and ultimately you) is nothing but a computer-generated program, software created by some entity, probably extraterrestrial. Having set up the parameters, it’s just a matter of hitting the ‘start program’ key and seeing what happens. We humans have already done this sort of activity so there’s nothing implausible about this possibility.

Now I’ve often wondered if some great extraterrestrial computer programmer specializing in generating virtual reality worlds and universes would leave enough clues to his (its) ‘subjects’ that they in fact were just software generated virtual beings in a simulated universe. One such type of clue would be no way those virtual creations could reconcile observation with theory, as in the case of the Big Bang.

For another example we have observations of four physical forces yet no theory which unites the three quantum forces (electromagnetism, the strong nuclear force and the weak nuclear force) with the one classical force – gravity. There is no viable theory of quantum gravity despite thousands of physicists searching for one over many generations now. It’s like there are two sets of different software running the Universe.

One of the many Big Bang ‘in the beginning’ predictions of theoretical things is magnetic monopoles – magnets with either a south pole or a north pole, but not both. Alas, we’ve never ever found and confirmed the reality of even one monopole. So strange is that that a new concept states that the very early Universe underwent an additional oomph of very rapid inflation which so diluted the created monopoles that there are no longer any monopoles in our neck of the woods. That does appear a bit like clutching at straws.

You have a 120 order-of-magnitude (that’s one followed by 120 zeros) discrepancy between the observed vacuum energy and the theoretical value of the vacuum energy.

You have particles that behave both as a wave and as little billiard balls – observed but theoretically impossible in classical physics.

Speaking of particles, there are three fundamental properties of particles (like the electron, neutrinos, the numerous quarks, etc.) and their anti-particles (like the positron). They are charge, spin and mass. Despite the relatively large number of particles (including the equal and opposite anti-particles), there are only a few allowed values for charge and spin, values pretty much confined to the infield. But, for some reason, the mass (usually expressed in equivalent energy units – Einstein’s equation again) of the various particles are not only scattered throughout the ballpark but are all over the map. They take on values (albeit one value per type of particle) over many orders of magnitude without any apparent pattern or regularity or relationship between them – and nobody has the foggiest idea why, not even a validly theoretical idea. Nobody can predict from first principles what the masses should be. It’s like someone just drew a few dozens of numbers out of a hat containing multi hundreds of thousands of values and assigned them to the few dozens of particles willy-nilly. Something is screwy somewhere because something so fundamental shouldn’t be so anomalous.   

In the real world, the macro world, the classical world, no two things are identical down to the last microscopic detail – you are unique; every bacterium is unique; every house, den, nest, and ant hill is unique; so is every baseball and grain of sand. In the unreal world, the micro world, the quantum world, all fundamental particles of their own kind (i.e. electrons or positrons or up quarks or photons) are identical to the last measurable detail. Why? Who knows! But a possibility from the simulated universe is that there is one software code or sequence of bits and bytes for each type of fundamental particle. So every time that sequence is used, you get that type of entity and only that type.

There are constant reports of physical constants that aren’t – constant that is. That’s totally nuts!

Then you have observations of quasars with vastly differing red-shifts (measurements of their recessional velocities) yet quasars which appear to be causality connected.

In physics, time travel to the past is theoretically possible – though damned difficult in practice. However, that means that those time travel paradoxes are possible, even likely. Paradoxes like going back in time, say ten years, and killing yourself (which is a novel way of committing suicide), means you couldn’t have existed to go back in time in the first place in order to kill yourself, which means you’re not dead so you can go back in time and murder yourself, etc. What kind of physics is that? Curiouser and curiouser.

Any and all miracles, Biblical or otherwise, are explainable as easily as saying “run program”.

More down to earth, you have multi-observations of things like the Loch Ness Monster, those highly geometrically complex crop circles, and ghosts, yet there’s no real adequate theory, pro or con, that can account for their observed existence or creation.

All up, perhaps some cosmic computer programmer/software writer whiz with a wicked sense of humour (a trickster ‘god’?) is laughing its tentacles off since we haven’t been able to figure it (our virtual reality) out. Of course maybe the minute we do, the fun’s over and ‘Dr. It’ hits the delete key and that’s the way the Universe ends – not with a Big Crunch, nor with a Heat Death, but with a “are you sure you want to delete this?” message! “Yes”.

If God Isn’t God, Then Who or What is God? Part Two

In my opinion, all this Biblical nonsense boils down to a collection of myths and fairy tales for grownups. For those who really have the faith, I’m easy. But I think the concept of the Biblical God (and associated baggage) is the greatest con job ever fostered on the great unwashed. Unless, assuming that God or the gods (i.e. – Zeus, etc.) weren’t totally fabricated out of whole cloth, then maybe, just maybe, the gods, including God, are extraterrestrials.

I have argued that the concept of a supernatural, creator, all-knowing, all-powerful, God is philosophically flawed. But, there remains the question, if God isn’t really God, who is God? Well, IMHO, God isn’t God, since God is a flesh-and-blood extraterrestrial (ET)!

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

Some more explanations provided by a simulated universe, created by God, the extraterrestrial.

Biblical One: Explain the parting of the Red Sea in the Bible! It’s easy to do in the movies, on a computer, or in your head.

Biblical Two: Then there’s this Biblical bit about Joshua commanding the sun to stand still (at least that’s the way I recall it). That’s either a tall tale or a myth or the result of a simulation. Whatever, it can’t be a physical reality. 

Biblical Three: In the Bible we have this tale of the multiplying of loaves and fishes out of virtually nothing. Again, you can imagine it, but that’s about it. Likewise with any sort of miracle it’s easy to visualize the event, but infinitely harder to explain it. But, as in the case of loaves and fishes, it’s easy to write a software package that can do this multiplication feat as a simulation exercise.

Biblical Four: Heaven and Hell can be created as easily as any other sort of place, complete with either fluffy white clouds and pearly white gates; harps and haloes, or devils and pitchforks; fire and brimstone!

Biblical Five: If someone (or something) is calling the simulation shots, you could obviously and easily be resurrected or reincarnated or just allowed to cease to be (that is, deleted from the program).

Paranormal One: How can reports of a Bigfoot or a Loch Ness Monster continue for decades without physical verification as if these creatures were but phantoms? Again, it’s easy to visualize such creatures, but far harder to explain how a rather largish lake monster can elude detection in a confined lake seemingly indefinitely. All these observers can’t be totally mistaken. But what if the ‘monsters’ AND their observers are both simulations, where the ‘monsters’ are simulated to be a quasi-phantom – a sort of game to play with your simulated observers?

Paranormal Two: What about ghosts and fairies and all of their various relations? You can create them on film, in your mind, or on a computer screen, so, if you can, so could another – and create you as well in the process.

Paranormal Three: How can aliens abduct humans or mutilate cattle, decade after decade, without ever being seen? It’s easy to do in a computer simulation; difficult in reality.

Paranormal Four: That goes ditto for the English crop circles. The crop circle phenomena is totally unexplainable, but it doesn’t have to be explainable in a physical sense if it’s all a virtual reality created by an extraterrestrial intelligence including the observers who see the circles and wonder how on earth it was done.

From the examples above, I conclude that it almost seems as if someone (something) is ultimately responsible for aspects of the Universe, but he / she / it / they didn’t quite think things through sufficiently. Methinks an all knowing, all powerful supernatural God type being wouldn’t have stuffed things up. The Universe is certainly stuffed up and if the Bible isn’t a stuffed up piece of literary work, I don’t know what is! So both the Bible and our Universe are either naturally stuffed up (The Bible because it was authored by flawed human beings and thus has nothing to do with the infallible word of God), or it was created stuffed up! If it was created stuffed up, well again, it’s because the creator was flawed flesh-and-blood, and hardly an all-knowing and all-powerful God. Our flawed creator created a simulated Universe, including all the Biblical baggage we have to try to reconcile with a perfect creator God (who, in my version, doesn’t exist).

Could there be an afterlife without a God? I suggest that if there is an afterlife, there has to be a natural as opposed to a supernatural mechanism, and that we’d be hard pressed to come up with one. While I can’t think of a completely natural explanation to account for any plausible transition from life to afterlife, I can think of a non-supernatural one, albeit it’s not totally natural. Just as it’s within the realm of possibility that we exist as software in a computer program called “Planet Earth”, so too might there be another computer program with associated software called “The Spirit World” or “The Abode of the Afterlife”. When you reach your termination as a simulated living being in “Planet Earth”, you get resurrected in “The Spirit World”. Of course in that sense there’s still a god, but a ‘god’ who just happens to be an extraterrestrial computer programmer, who could be flesh and blood, or maybe an artificial intelligence in its own right. Either way, it’s not 100% natural, but it’s certainly not supernatural. Of course for all I know there maybe other software programs with names such as “Hell” and “Heaven” or “Valhalla” or maybe dozens, hundreds even thousands of others we’ve never even conceived or heard of. I mean the virtual beings in one of our terrestrial computer or video games wouldn’t be aware that there was thousands of other computer or video games in existence with dozens more being produced and brought out each and every month.

It all makes a sort of sense albeit in a weird or strange sort of sci-fi way. I mean, to paraphrase a rather famous observation, “the universe is not only stranger than we imagine, it’s stranger than we can imagine”.  If there’s anyone who can give a definitive proof that we’re not a creation of someone’s (something’s) virtual reality (computer simulation) then I’d like to hear it so I can cross the scenario off my list of things to have to worry about!

That specific aside, if there is any historical evidence for a god, gods or The God, then that evidence could just as easily be equally interpreted as evidence for the existence of extraterrestrial intelligence(s), whose purpose(s) or objective(s) may not be all that benign.

So my second and more likely possible answers to ‘if God isn’t God, then who is God?’ are summed up by the well known phrase ‘ancient astronauts’. God is, or was, an extraterrestrial, but not in this case the creator of a simulated universe. Rather, a being within a really real universe. Recall (the late) Arthur C. Clarke’s third law, “any sufficiently advance technology is indistinguishable from magic”, or in this context, an advanced extraterrestrial technology and alien being welding same is indistinguishable from the supernatural or a supernatural God.

If the above argument is valid, then I conclude that it’s easy to explore the nooks and crannies of our galaxy, and seeing that we have no place to run and hide, that then we indeed have been discovered by extraterrestrials. Since one or more extraterrestrial technological civilizations have already done their boldly going exploring thing, it stands to reason that at various times in our geological and historical past we would have received visitors from the stars. If one or more such occurrences happened in our historical past, there might be some suggestive evidence of same; and thus the concept of the ‘ancient astronaut’ has come to pass.

Erich Von Daniken, including those of a similar point of view who came before and after him, collectively had the germ of a good idea, but he, and they, IMHO got rather carried away with the concept and started seeing ancient extraterrestrial astronauts behind every pyramid and megalith in existence. Now I don’t believe for a moment that aliens, or humans assisted by aliens, built the pyramids or the statues at Easter Island or any other type of archaeological monument. Evidence suggestive of ancient astronauts will probably best be found in myths and legends, including the myths and legends central to our major religions, perhaps in advanced human knowledge of scientific concepts out of sync with that particular culture so hosting that knowledge, or in art works, or other archaeological works that are suggestive of an awareness of sky beings.

Firstly, nearly all cultures have stories and pictograms about or of sky beings, including the Australian aboriginals and American Indians. Myths and legends surrounding, say, the Greek / Roman / Norse gods can be interpreted in an ancient astronaut context (ditto for other religious beings or gods), or perhaps the Biblical ‘Wheel of Ezekiel’ is suggestive. While the etchings on the Plain of Nazca were certainly not runways, for flying saucers, they can easily be interpreted as mammoth human constructions designed to be viewed by sky beings. Why go to the trouble if sky beings weren’t really around to appreciate your efforts?

Then there’s a whole pot-full of mythological creatures – the Centaur, unicorns, the Sphinx, the Griffin, Pegasus, the Minotaur, mermaids, dragons, etc. which might be non-humanoid extraterrestrial life forms. Or, more realistically, perhaps in light of the UFO abduction and Roswell greys, are the myths and legends shared by many cultures dealing with elves, dwarfs, gnomes, the fairy-folk, the wee-people, and other smallish beings that aren’t quite human. It strikes me as more logical that these ‘wee folk’ actually exist, and that’s why all the references to, and belief in, them, exist. That is, they are really real vis-à-vis references to, and belief in them, because there is some psychological, sociological or cultural necessity to invent imaginary beings, calling it mythology (as opposed to literary fiction), or perhaps calling it religion.

In conclusion, the ‘ancient astronaut’ field is a subject ripe for detailed academic study, and the concept of the ‘ancient astronaut’ shouldn’t be dismissed by scholars are readily as it has been. Unfortunately, it’s unlikely any academic would put his or her career on the line by pursuing such a controversial, ‘pseudo-scientific, topic because of the ‘giggle’ factor – Pity that.

Further recommended ‘ancient astronaut’ readings:

Blumrich, Josef F.; The Spaceships of Ezekiel; Bantam Books, New York; 1974: 

Castle, Edgar W. & Thiering, Barry B. (Joint Editors); Some Trust in Chariots!!; Westbooks, Perth, W.A.; 1972:

Daniken, Erich von; Chariots of the Gods? Unsolved Mysteries of the Past; G.P. Putnam’s Sons, New York; 1969:

Daniken, Erich von; Gods from Outer Space: Return to the Stars or Evidence for the Impossible; G.P. Putnam’s Sons, New York; 1971:

Downing, Barry H.; The Bible & Flying Saucers; Avon Books, New York; 1968:

Drake, W. Raymond; Gods and Spacemen in the Ancient East; Sphere Books, London; 1974:

Drake, W. Raymond; Gods and Spacemen in the Ancient West; Sphere Books, London; 1974:

Norman, Eric; Gods Demons and UFOs; Lancer Books, New York; 1970:

Story, Ronald; Guardians of the Universe?; New English Library, London; 1980: 

Story, Ronald; The Space-Gods Revealed: A Close Look at the Theories of Erich von Daniken; Harper & Row, New York; 1976: 

Temple, Robert K.G.; The Sirius Mystery; Sidgwick & Jackson, London; 1976:

Wilson, Clifford; Crash Go the Chariots; Lancer Books, New York; 1972:

Wilson, Clifford; The Chariots Still Crash; Signet, New York; 1975:

Wilson, Clifford; The War of the Chariots; S. John Bacon, Melbourne, Victoria; 1978:

If God Isn’t God, Then Who or What is God? Part One

In my opinion, all this Biblical nonsense boils down to a collection of myths and fairy tales for grownups. For those who really have the faith, I’m easy. But I think the concept of the Biblical God (and associated baggage) is the greatest con job ever fostered on the great unwashed. Unless, assuming that God or the gods (i.e. – Zeus, etc.) weren’t totally fabricated out of whole cloth, then maybe, just maybe, the gods, including God, are extraterrestrials.

I have argued that the concept of a supernatural, creator, all-knowing, all-powerful, God is philosophically flawed. But, there remains the question, if God isn’t really God, who is God? Well, IMHO, God isn’t God, since God is a flesh-and-blood extraterrestrial (ET)!

There are two variations to that possibility.

Here’s one of those variations. What if God were in reality a very ‘flesh-and-blood’ extraterrestrial computer programmer, a computer programmer who has written a software package called, say “Planet Earth”? Maybe it’s a computer or interactive video game – maybe a homework assignment for a smart extraterrestrial student.

Anyway, computer software easily explains all the Biblical miracles (virgin births; the resurrection, etc.); or anomalies (like where did all the rain come from vis-à-vis the Biblical Flood, and where did all that water eventually go; how did Jonah survive inside a large fish, etc.) or inconsistencies (like Cain’s wife; the discrepancies between Biblical time and geological time). Regarding the Biblical flood, no humans actually died; no animals suffered and drowned, and so on, because the humans and animals were never real to start with, just as you and I aren’t real, just part of – for want of a better analogy – a computer game simulation.

The logic goes something like this. Within the observable universe, the probability is high that other extraterrestrial civilizations, with a technology equal to or greater than our own exist. By parallel with our civilization, we can assume that other intelligent technological beings would have invented something akin to our computers, laptops, PCs, etc. The number of possible computer software programs is no doubt vastly greater than the number of actual technological civilizations in the observational universe. I mean Earthlings have one such civilization, yet we have tens of thousands of interactive computer software programs, much of it entertainment or educationally driven.  That’s a lot of virtual reality, with a lot more technological advances probably to come – think of those holodeck programs featured in Star Trek.  In any event, the ratio of actual realities to virtual realities is lopsided in the extreme and in favour of the virtual. So, the odds are equally as great that you, me, the entirety of our so-called reality, Planet Earth (and neighbourhood), is of the virtual kind. Thus, we have a creator (our extraterrestrial computer programmer), and I guess the word ‘God’ is as good as any for ‘our extraterrestrial father who art our simulator’. Perhaps our concept of ‘God’ is nothing more than a mythological version of some advanced, but hardly supernatural, extraterrestrial computer programmer! Now as long as ET doesn’t hit the delete key!

Again, to drive the point home, let’s suppose, for argument’s sake that in the real physical Universe, there exists some tens of thousands of extraterrestrial civilizations which have evolved technology our equal or better (even more advanced).  The odds are high that most would have invented computers – hardware and software.  Any one civilization, such as our own, have (to date) produced multi-thousands of computer programs, many of which simulate life forms – think of the hundreds, indeed thousands of computer/video games. No doubt these programs will grow, over time, ever more complex and lifelike.

If one advanced civilization produces multi-thousands of individual computer programs that simulate an actual, or imagined, reality, what are the odds that we aren’t one of those thousands vis-à-vis being that advanced civilization that actually exists? How could you know if you were real, or imaginary? I maintain there’s probably no obvious way of you knowing.

Even if there’s only a relatively few actual extraterrestrial civilizations, but untold number of created false realities – what odds we are one of the real ones and not one of the imaginary/simulated many?

Is the idea really so way out in left field that there’s not a snowball’s chance in hell that it could be right? We have to look to advances in our own terrestrial computing power to determine that. Computer generated simulations are already realistic enough that they are used to train astronauts, pilots and MDs and other humans in professional activities where mistakes in training, if done in real situations, could be disastrous.  Our cinema industry has already produced computer generated virtual reality films, bypassing real actors and real scenery. It’s entirely possible (legal issues aside) to bring back in a sense dead actors to star again in new productions. We’ve all been awed by computer generated special effects in films that are so realistic that if you didn’t actually know better, you’d swear were real.

Walk into any DVD store and you’ll find thousands of video (computer) games and/or simulations that you can run on your PC.  Most have ‘humans’ in various role-playing guises that are software generated and which you interact with. The reality factor is increasing by leaps and bounds. At what point will the software become complex enough that these simulated ‘beings’ are advanced enough to have self awareness? What happens when the software programming these virtual ‘humans’ becomes equal to the software (brains) that program us? What happens when the computer software complexity exceeds that of the human brain? Is this far-fetched? Methinks not. Now just replace our virtual ‘humans’ with ourselves, and maybe, just maybe, we’re the virtual reality in somebody (something) else’s actual reality.

If we, Planet Earth, and our observable universe are nothing but a simulation, that can explain (or at least rationally account for) any and all anomalies (miracles?) that you care to bring up. Software (be it of the wet-ware [brains] or of the computer variety) can create any sort of simulated reality – it doesn’t even have to be logical or explainable. Here are just a few examples off the top of my head.

Astronomy One: When considering things cosmological, it’s become apparent that astronomers only observe about 4% of the matter that should be present. That is, about 96% of the matter that should be present and detectable to account for the observed behaviour of our observable universe is missing! Now 1% might be understandable givens measurement uncertainty (error bars), but hardly 96%! So, cosmologists have postulated concepts which they have termed ‘dark matter’ and ‘dark energy’ to make up the deficit. However, nobody has the foggiest idea what exactly ‘dark matter’ and ‘dark energy’ actually is. Neither has actually been detected – obviously. Of course in an artificial simulated universe, one needs no correlation between cause (amount of matter) and effect (behaviour of the observable universe). In fact, it makes the programming that much simpler. By human analogy, I’m sure a detailed study of our video/computer games would show gross violations of the laws of physics. 

Astronomy Two: No astronomer can explain how galaxies form and stay formed, at least without incorporating ‘dark matter’. Yet we see them in lots of shapes and sizes. Maybe it’s as if our hypothetical simulator thought that these were sort of pretty and thus threw several billions of them into the background as decorative wallpaper.

Astronomy Three: Since the Big Bang was first documented by measuring the velocity of far away galaxies, there’s been reoccurring problems with the discovery that parts of the Universe have appeared to be older than the Universe itself (as implied by the Big Bang as documented by the velocities of galaxies) – which is a nonsense. Recalibrations have always rectified this situation, but there are still current unresolved issues here. Further, some distant objects appear to have a physical connection, yet separately each is moving at drastically different velocities. 

Physics One: Then we have the Theory of Relativity and Quantum Physics – both are accurate to a high degree of experimental precision, but they aren’t compatible with each other. Apparently, one (or both) of these theories must be wrong, or at best incomplete. That’s why the unification of the two (a theory of quantum gravity) is physics’ Holy Grail. However, that Holy Grail is proving as difficult to find as the Grail itself! But for the moment, it’s like the universe has two independent sets of laws, or software – one governing the very large; one the very small. This makes no natural or scientific sense. It’s beyond me how that can be if our reality is really reality, but easily explained if our reality is just someone’s simulation.

Physics Two: Within quantum physics there’s something called the wave-particle duality. That is, something can exhibit the properties of both a wave and a particle at the same time. There really is no entirely rational explanation for this, it just is.

Physics Three: Within General Relativity Theory, if there is anything unintuitive it is the fact that in the entire Universe, it is the speed of light that is absolute or fixed, not something like space or time. It’s unintuitive that all other bits and pieces in motion can be added or subtracted. So, if you are in a train that is moving at say 100 km/hour and you throw a ball at 10 km/hour in the direction at which the train is moving, to an observer outside the train, your ball is travelling at 110 km/hour. If you throw the ball towards the rear of the train, an outside observer will measure the ball as moving at 90 km/hour. If on the other hand, you shine a flashlight in the train, an outside observer will see the velocity of the resulting light beam moving at the speed of light – not the speed of plight PLUS the velocity of the train, or the speed of light MINUS the velocity of the train if you shine the flashlight towards the rear, but at the speed of light! That’s nuts, but it’s scientifically nuts and been proven again and again in any experiment you care to devise. I suggest here that a really natural universe wouldn’t have that property, and that this weird absolute in physics has been imposed on us by someone (something) else. 

Physics Four: In our Universe, there should be equal amounts of matter and antimatter, but there’s not. Our antimatter has gone walkabout. While there is one viable physics explanation for this, when considering a simulated universe, it would be easy to program out the antimatter quota which makes for a less complex universe; less complex software that one needs for the simulation. Or, perhaps our simulator hadn’t realized the simulation of physical laws would have predicted antimatter hence never bothered to program it in from the get-go. 

To be continued...

Pick a Verse, Any Uni-Verse: Part Two

VERSES: Well, there’s Adverse; Averse; Diverse; Inverse; Perverse; Reverse; and Universe. That’s the one we want – Universe.

PICK A UNIVERSE, ANY UNIVERSE: Well, they seem to come in a number of possible flavours.

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

SUPERNATURAL UNIVERSES: These also come is a number of flavours – assuming they exist at all – like the spirit world universe where ghosts go bump in the night, the eternal afterlife in Heaven where you spend eternity plucking a harp, or the Hell universe where you don’t have to worry about the heating bills. Then there is Asgard and Valhalla too where true Norse heroes go and drink mead and prepare for Ragnarok. Then there’s the New Age and related concept of ‘higher planes of existence/reality’ theme, whatever that actually means – it’s pretty nebulous. There’s probably plenty of potential others depending on whom you ask and what mythologies you research, but you get the general gist of possibilities. I personally consign these potential supernatural universes to the rubbish bin. However, many intellects equal to and greater than mine don’t. One possible can of worms here is that a simulated universe (be it a software/computer or wetware/brain/mind variety) might use might use a supernatural universe as a role model. You might dream of Valhalla; a video game might simulate Armageddon with you caught in the middle perhaps. Therefore, a simulated universe and a supernatural universe are not mutually exclusive, since you can have a simulated supernatural universe. 

DIMENSIONALITY: Unless we actually work and play; live, breathe and eventually snuff-it in the ever so obvious 3-D Universe that we all think we do, then all bets are off. If reality is the holographic universe, then you’re 2-D and the third dimension is illusionary, no more solid than wisps of smoke, dust and gas (which actually are ‘solid’ but you know what I mean). Likewise, that third dimension is an illusion if you’re a mental construct or if you star in your very own computer game. If all there is is your mind, then I guess ‘reality’ outside of that is dimensionless! And if you reside in a supernatural universe, then it’s a case of God, or gods, only knows – you may have no reality or geometry as we know it at all.

FREE WILL: Presumably if you live in any sort of 3-D universe, even the 2-D holographic universe, including any and all manner of parallel universes, then you apparently have free will. I say apparently as you can’t actually distinguish real free will from illusionary free will. You just might be following that 100% deterministic clockwork Universe that was set into motion at the time and point of origin; you wouldn’t know. In any sort of simulated reality, if you’re an entity in same, then someone (something) else is dictating the terms, so no free will there. Presumably in a supernatural universe you’d have forfeited your free will. I mean, could you of your own free will commit a sin in heaven?

BIRTH: In any standard universe, you (the ‘I think, therefore I am’ you) were born or hatched or some such. In any simulated universe, if you exist in that simulated universe, then you must have been born into it, although that birth does not have to of necessity reflect a standard biological baby birth. In a simulation, the creator could just snap fingers, and, well there you are, fully grown, developed and functional. Of course you could be born again and again and again – and yet again. In a supernatural universe, well, assuming causality that birth must precede death, and that a supernatural universe contains only dead entities, then it’s unlikely in the extreme that you could be born into a supernatural universe!

DEATH: In any standard universe, you are born; you will die. In any simulated universe, if you are in it, then you may or may not die. There’s nothing preventing you having simulated immortality! But, assuming you die, in your dreams, in someone else’s dreams, in a computer game, then of course you can be resurrected! Or not, depending on who is doing the simulation and what their motives are. In a supernatural universe, assuming you are in one and it’s accepted that so being is akin to an afterlife, then it’s taken as given that you have passed on or passed away. However, it’s possible to be in a supernatural universe but not the afterlife part, as in that Armageddon video game referenced above.

INTERACTIONS: Interactions are the name of your game in your reality – whatever that might turn out to be. You interact with your partner, your family, your relatives, your neighbours, your pets; all manner of other people from all manner of walks of life. You in fact interact with yourself, not to mention your environment. Life, the Universe and everything interacts with you; you interact with life, the Universe and everything. Well, nearly everything. Truth be told, there are lots of things that are passive in your reality, or translated, things you don’t normally interact with. There are things that don’t affect you; things you don’t affect. In terms of this essay, you don’t interact with a painting or sculpture or a play on stage or theme park ride or film or TV episode or for that matter 99.999999% of the cosmos. Your interaction with the Andromeda Galaxy is negligible and vice versa. If you don’t interact with something, then it’s pretty irrelevant to your reality. It may as well not exist – perhaps it doesn’t. Apart from those bits and pieces I’ve noted that you do interact with, and vice versa, everything else is of no concern. For all the impact they have on your existence, they may as well not exist.

There are however some other things I’ve noted that you do interact with, or perhaps interact with you. There are those pesky wetware dreams – you interact with the characters in your dreams (and in your ‘I’m awake’ imaginations). You can interact with the characters in software generated scenarios. The question then arises, is someone (something) interacting with you in turn, you being a character in their wetware dream simulation? Is someone (something) interacting with you, you being a character in their software simulation? What ultimately is the reality of your Universe, or the Universe of your reality? Perhaps it is something not yet envisioned, thought of, or dreamt of in anyone’s philosophy or cosmology.

STAKE YOUR REALITY ODDS:  Your reality might well be existence in one universe – our Universe. Even if there is a Multiverse, or parallel universes, there still only one of you, more likely as not, in any single one of them. So, one Universe contains one you. Now that one Universe contains one Planet Earth – your home reality. Unfortunately, one Earth has generated one technological intelligence which has created thousands, even tens of thousands (or more) software simulations. So, is your reality one Universe, one Earth, or one of the thousands-plus video (software simulation) games?  Unfortunately, one Earth has also spawned all those intelligent beings, each of which dream multi-dreams per sleep interval, all of which amounts to trillions upon trillions of dream scenarios, each one of which is a simulated ‘reality’ in its own right. Even if you are one of the billions of intelligent beings, the odds are pretty good that you have also featured as a character in not only your own dreams, but in those of other people as well. Someone doesn’t of necessity have to dream of someone they know of. They can invent in their dream(s) a total stranger – that stranger could just be you! Given trillions upon trillions of dreaming ‘realities’ you can’t really be sure whether or not you are the dreamer or the dreamed (or maybe both). Similarly, are you the video game creator/player or the character within (again, maybe both)?

Now there are probably lots of terrestrial-like planets, some of which are abodes to other technologically advanced (alien) intelligences, which presumably also have given rise to their versions of wetware and software simulations.

The bottom line is that while there is one Universe, lots of civilizations, and uncountable numbers of individuals, the sum total of software simulations are probably uncountable squared; the wetware simulations uncountable cubed! Therefore, the odds favour your reality being contained within one Universe, on one abode, but ultimately therein being but a simulated entity in wetware or software.   

THE ANSWER TO YOUR REALITY & YOUR UNIVERSE: The answer is, does it ultimately really matter? Does it matter in your day-to-day existence whether you are just a simulated character in someone else’s dream fantasy universe or a simulated character in someone’s video game universe or a physical character in a really real 3-D Big Bang-Expanding-Heat Death Universe? Firstly, there’s nothing you can do about it regardless of the ultimate answer. Even if you knew for an absolute fact that you were just a character in someone’s dream, how would that change you and what you are? Secondly, regardless of the answer, it doesn’t reduce your cost of living and tax burden or having to struggle out of bed in the morning! Perhaps all possible universes are equally real and co-exist in some sort of harmony. Perhaps you should just be thankful that you have any kind of existence at all – that existence was never some absolute before-the-fact inevitability (parallel universes aside where your existence probably is inevitable in at least on of them). And as long as you firmly believe you have free will, what does it ultimately matter if, in the bigger picture of things, you don’t? It’s a case of what you don’t know won’t hurt you. Unfortunately, its human nature to want to know THE ANSWER even if it doesn’t matter or you can’t alter your fate. So, you’ve got to think the matter through for and on behalf of yourself and come up with your own ANSWER.

If I’m in near total control of my own destiny, as one having an existence in a 3-D Universe that contains a liberal dose of free will, then to be honest, tomorrow is boring! Tomorrow is pretty predictable. So as far as I’m concerned, there’s a far greater element of the unexpected if I’m being controlled by the mind set of others, since I have no idea what their game plan is – which of course they might not know themselves. That’s exciting. Who knows then what tomorrow might bring! To be, or not to be, a puppet - that is the question! The answer – well actually belief - to whether or not that’s true is up to you.

FINAL THOUGHTS: Regardless of what universe you believe to be the correct one, the one that represents actual reality, do you really have the smarts to actually analyse what Mother Nature is telling you and wrap your mind around that analysis to come to that belief? I mean, intellectually we’re good; we’re very, very, very good. But are we good enough? I further mean, we are but one species of currently multi-millions of species on Planet earth. Further, some 99% of all species that have ever existed have gone kaput! So, ultimately we (human beings; Homo sapiens) are but one of a massive number of living and extinct species. The question is, since none of the other non-human species can, or has, come to terms with ultimate questions about life, the universe and everything, what makes us think we are any the more able? I mean, could a virus or bacteria figure out what type of universe they live in and what sorts of physics dictates their existence? What about an earthworm, ant, starfish, goldfish, frog, snake, or owl? My companion feline animals haven’t a clue; ditto I’m sure their canine counterparts. Whales and dolphins ditto. Ditto likewise our closest biological relatives – apes and monkeys. What universe, and the operating forces and principles behind it, is ultimately THE universe, just might yet be beyond our comprehension. Perhaps we’ve some evolution yet to achieve before we really figure things out.

Further reading:

Woolley, Benjamin; Virtual Worlds: A Journey in Hype and Hyperreality; Penguin Books, London; 1993:

Pick a Verse, Any Uni-Verse: Part One

VERSES: Well, there’s Adverse; Averse; Diverse; Inverse; Perverse; Reverse; and Universe. That’s the one we want – Universe.

PICK A UNIVERSE, ANY UNIVERSE: Well, they seem to come in a number of possible flavours.

STANDARD UNIVERSES: These come in three flavours. There’s the standard physical 3-D Universe and maybe a 3-D Multiverse of which it is a part of; there’s also the possibility of a physical 2-D universe disguised as 3-D illusionary universe – we call that a holographic universe. Finally, there’s that old sci-fi favourite, the parallel universe.

1) The 3-D physical Universe is the one we all know and love and are convinced represents the one true reality. It might however be part of a larger collection of universes that are connected either in a straight forward linear fashion or via wormholes or Black Holes. The key point is that there is a physical connection/relationship between our Universe and possible other universes that collectively make up a Multiverse.

2) A 2-D physical universe masquerading as a 3-D holographic universe.

3) There’s the parallel / shadow / alternate / mirror / many worlds universe – these are all pretty much variations on the same theme and that theme is grounded in physics’ (quantum and cosmological) theoretical musings. Basically, while they might exist, the key point here is that there is no real physical connection between parallel universes. There’s no ways and means of travel between them. There’s apparently no way we can detect them with our five senses (or instruments that are surrogates for those) so it’s fairly meaningless to talk specifics. The generality though is that collectively they represent the ‘anything that is not forbidden is compulsory’ mantra. That is, within that (probably infinite) set of parallel universes, all possible histories have, are, and will be enacted in all possible combinations coupled with as many variations to boot in the laws, relationships and principles of physics that can be allowed for (i.e. – the speed of light might be different in other parallel universes).

While existence in these sorts of purely physical realities is interesting, there are other possibilities even more interesting. Perhaps we exist in some form of simulation – in a simulated universe. Since that’s a way more interesting (albeit far out) proposal, I’ll spend the bulk of this essay discussing this possibility.

SIMULATED UNIVERSES: These come in two flavours too, but before we start, it’s worth noting that before you can have simulated universes, in all probability you had better have a real Universe that evolves and is bio-friendly and produces an intelligent entity with a mind that can at least dream and imagine and ideally evolves to produce a technology that can create software simulations.

1) Externally created simulated universes come in several varieties like theme park rides, video games and works of fiction like “The Wizard of Oz”, “Alice in Wonderland”, “Through the Looking Glass”, “Flatland” as well as a host of others. In fact just about every science fiction, science fantasy and dark fantasy (horror) story ever created – well in fact, every work of fiction, every novel and short story and poem and play, every tall tale, is really an imagined and externally created simulated universe. Clearly while the characters on a page aren’t a real simulation, the act of creating them and the plot via the author’s mind was clearly a simulation, albeit mental. Apart from that, in nearly all cases the translation from print (or for that matter from an oral story) to the reader’s mind’s imagination generates that individual’s lone interpretation of that universe contained within that work of fiction. However, when the scenario is made a bit more explicit, as in a video game, then the characters might be construed as leading quite a separate and more individualistic existence. In a video game featuring Alice of ‘Alice in Wonderland’ fame, might not Alice feel she has a real identity in what’s to us a simulated universe, but which to her is a really, real wonderland world? The key element here is being able to interact with the characters, like an interactive video game, or play mental gyrations with the literary characters within your mind. They dance to your tune. In that sense, a theme park ride, while a simulation of sorts, isn’t very interesting since the scenario never changes – just like a film or a TV episode, there’s just no variations in the interactions possible. In fact there are no interactions.

Video games (or mental scenarios) are quite unlike a TV episode or film or theme park ride where you can’t interact with the characters, though, as in the case with literary works, you can translate the characters from the screen (as with the page) into mental images within your mind which you can then manipulate. In that sense James Bond and Captain Kirk have an existence. Of course, as with literary ‘universes’, celluloid features can be translated into interactive game playing features, so again, James Bond and Captain Kirk might ‘exist’ in their respective video game universes (or maybe you could create a video game where both characters exist simultaneously) - which leads to the next flavour! 

2) Internally (mentally) simulated universes also come in several varieties. I’ve already suggested that literary and celluloid characters can be given a form of simulated reality within your own mind.

There’s the normal brain chemistry that self-creates universes like the standard I’m dreaming universe and there’s the standard I’m-awake-and-conscious-and-engaging-in-an-active-imagination-thought-experiment universe/daydreaming universe. The upshot of this is that you (as a representative of the Universe) might in turn be the product of someone/something else’s dream or someone/something else’s imagination. The division between illusion and reality might not be entirely trustworthy. You know your dream universes and characters are illusionary, but if you are the product of someone else’s dream, as far as you are concerned, that’s your reality, though it’s not the reality you think it is.

Another variation on the theme – if you dream you are X, can you be sure it’s not really X who is dreaming of you dreaming of X!

Also, if you simulate a universe via a dream, that simulation doesn’t of necessity end when you wake up. Sometimes when you awake you recall the dream you were dreaming that was happening immediately before waking up. You can then take that dream scenario and carry it forward in your now awake mode imagination. So, invented mental images – dreams while asleep and the active imagination while awake aren’t all that different – if different at all. The saying ‘I think, therefore I am’ could equally be ‘I dream, therefore I am’, or maybe that should be ‘someone (something) is dreaming (thinking) of me, therefore I am’!

Then there’s the abnormal brain chemistry self-created universes – universes created within a mind that has been affected by drugs, from the legal to the illegal, the mild to the powerful; lack of food or oxygen, disease, injury, etc. One variation on this theme is the brain that’s stimulated by electrodes which can produce all sorts of apparently very real hallucinogenic images. A slightly futuristic version of this might be a computer-brain/mind interface, an advanced form of virtual reality. The upshot here is that I expect those with abnormal brain chemistry probably have atypical (weirder) dream scenarios that differ from those with normal brain functionality.

If there can be a simulated universe; and if it’s possible for there to be a holographic universe, then let’s go to extremes and say we’re in a simulated holographic universe! One would have to combine the probability of one with the probability for the other to arrive at some sort of likelihood of that possibility. But that possibility, of necessity, means that the hologram in this case is artificially generated – wetware or software - by an intelligent being. The entire holographic universe aside, we can downscale in the meantime to the best known software example in ‘fiction’ of simulated holographic scenarios. The example that comes to mind is the “Star Trek” holodeck or holosuite.

However, the best known wetware example in actual ‘reality’ is dreaming. Dreams are obviously simulations, the product of an intelligent mind (the wetware) but since a dream is but a 3-D illusionary image, that’s a hologram in all but name. That’s currently our best example of a simulated holographic ‘universe’. Dreaming, to use the analogy, is nothing more than your mind turning on its holodeck and acting out a simulated scenario.

But such wetware holographic simulations aren’t confined to just the human mind. Here the intelligent mind extends to other biological entities, although just how far down the evolutionary ladder isn’t clear. But higher animals (at least mammals and birds, maybe reptiles and amphibians, perhaps some invertebrates) dream too. Anyone who has observed their sleeping pet dog or cat can testify to that. Exactly what they dream no one knows, but probably of things most central to their mind set and world view and what matters most to their survival.

There’s also the question surrounding the possibility of near infinite regressions – a dream within a dream within a dream; a video game within a video game within a video game. To be honest, I’m not about to buy into that can of worms even if it is a possibility, but just because it just plain makes my head hurt! You can get into some weird shit here. I mean, let’s talk about our favourite couple, Clive and Jane. Say Clive dreams of Jane dreaming of Clive dreaming of Jane, ad infinitum.

Finally, there’s the mind as the universe. This is an interesting variation on the theme which says that the be-all-and-end-all of reality is your mind and only your mind, which has created for its amusement the everlasting illusion of life, the Universe and everything. The technical philosophical name for this is ‘solipsism’.

I have been assuming up to this point that the originator of a simulated universe was ultimately a biological being, even if said biological being programmed a computer to run a simulation. Now, what if a computer itself – the product of a highly advanced race of intelligent and technologically savvy life forms - was a self aware entity? What if instead of a CHON (carbon / hydrogen / oxygen / nitrogen) life form being the creator of a simulation, it was an iron and silicon artificial intelligence that’s behind that simulation? ‘Do androids dream of electric sheep?’ I believe is the title of a popular sci-fi novel. Does it ultimately matter what chemical elements the composer of a simulation is made of?

Before leaving simulated universes, somewhere between a realistically normal simulation (dream or video game) where ‘normal’ is taken to represent our day-to-day 21^st Century environment and existence, and a supernatural universe (see immediately below) is a subcategory of mythological/fantasy universes (which admittedly have a fair share of representation in the video game market). In real life however, we tend to associate a mythological oriented world with our terrestrial ancient times through to the Age of Enlightenment. It was a lengthy era where unicorns and elves and dragons and witches and all other manner of things now consigned to mythological literature and texts devoted to the mythology of various past cultures were very real to the then inhabitants of those times. Now the question is, if all our history has been but a simulation, might there have been a time when unicorns, elves, dragons and witches were as actually real to our ancestors many times removed now, as real as horses and dwarfs and iguanas and old hags are to us? The simulation software might have morphed one into the other over time. Mythology might not be so mythical after all if that’s the case.

To be continued...