People in ancient times were fascinated by the night sky, and put a lot of time into watching and studying it, but didn't understand it. Everything seemed to move around us. The sun lit the earth and moved around it once a day. The moon also seemed to be lit by the sun but went through it's cycle of phases once a month, even though it rose and set as the sun did.
Then there were all of the stars in the sky. Some believed that there was a canopy, with light beyond it, and stars were holes in the canopy. But then why did the patterns of the stars, called constellations, gradually change, going through a cycle that lasted a year? Why did several stars seem to "wander" among the other stars? They wandered at different rates to each other but stayed to the same path across the sky.
It was so fascinating and intriguing but no one could explain it. It just didn't make sense.
Then a flash of insight came. What we needed to do was to get outside our earth. We were putting complete trust in what our senses were telling us and it was our own earth that was in our way.
It all fell into place. The earth was not at the center, as it seems to us, the earth actually moved around the sun in one year. This explained why the patterns of the stars change over the course of a year.
Earth was just one of the planets that appeared to "wander" among the stars at different rates, but kept to the same path across the sky. The path was the orbital plane of our Solar System, which we see as the Zodiac, and the planets moved at different rates because they were at different distances from the sun. The moon moved around the earth while lit by the sun, causing us to see it in different phases. All of the countless stars in the sky could be presumed to be more or less like the sun, except much further away.
This new view of the universe was nothing less than revolutionary. Our senses told us that the earth is at the center and all else moves around us. A basic presumption in science is that we can completely rely on our measurements and observations. That may be true for other sciences but not for cosmology. The challenge is finding our way outside our own perspective.
But today we are in another situation where we can observe and discover so much, yet it doesn't seem to make sense and is so difficult to explain.
The past 120 years or so has brought two new branches of physics that have gotten a lot of attention and attracted a lot of brilliant minds. Relativity was introduced by Albert Einstein. There are two separate theories, the Special Theory of Relativity from 1905 and the General Theory of Relativity from 1915. General Relativity explains how gravity curves space itself and an object that is in orbit or falling is actually moving in a straight line, but through curved space.
Special Relativity has the speed of light as absolutely sacrosanct and everything else revolving around it. Nothing can move faster than the speed of light because an object's mass increases as it approaches the speed of light and becomes infinite when it does reach it. Time slows down, and then stops, for one approaching the speed of light. The length of a spaceship approaching the speed of light would appear to get shorter, as seen by a stationary observer, until it's length appeared to be zero at the speed of light.
The other new branch of physics is Quantum Physics. This appears to have a lot of high-tech practical applications, such as very high-speed computers and tamper-proof communications. In Quantum Physics the observation is a vital component of any interaction. Uncertainty is part of the quantum realm and we cannot be sure of anything until it is observed. Two photons can be "entangled" so that they share a quantum state and even observing one photon will automatically show up in the other one, making foolproof communication a possibility.
Aside from these two new branches of physics there is still the "classic" textbook or "Newtonian" physics.
The trouble with all of this is that both Relativity and Quantum Physics are completely contradictory of classic textbook physics. How could ordinary physics explain how an object's mass approaches infinity as it nears the speed of light or how the outcome of an experiment is affected by whether or not the experiment is being observed?
Not only are the principles of Relativity and Quantum Physics completely unexplainable by ordinary physics, they are also incompatible with each other. The dividing line between Special Relativity and Quantum Physics is the speed of light. In Relativity the speed of light is sacrosanct. Nothing can ever move faster than it and everything else revolves around it. But in Quantum Physics the speed of light isn't even a factor at all. Quantum physicists can show that information moves instantaneously between two entangled photons, no matter how far apart they are, without being bound at all by the speed of light.
These three branches of physics all contradict each other but yet the veracity of all three can be shown by experiments. How can this possibly be?
That is just the beginning of the modern cosmology mystery. We are told that about two-thirds of the universe consists of a mysterious "dark energy" that drives the expansion of the universe. It has long been known that the universe is expanding but it was thought that the expansion was slowing down. In 1998 two separate scientific investigations both found that, not only is the expansion of the universe not slowing down, it is actually speeding up.
The majority of the remaining third of the universe is said to consist of "dark matter", which cannot be seen or detected except by the gravitational effect that it has on ordinary matter. This makes "dark matter" just about as mysterious as "dark energy".
Finally the remaining few percent of the universe is the everyday matter that we are familiar with.
We are learning so much about the universe, and how it works, but what we are learning doesn't make sense to us. It is almost like we are back before we found our way outside the earth, and presumed that the earth was at the center and everything went around it. Humans were fascinated by what was in the night sky but it didn't make any sense.
Could it be that there is something else that we have to find our way out of? What if we have to find our way outside ourselves before what we observe about the universe and the way it works makes sense?
A basic presumption of science has always been that we have an unbiased view of the universe, that we can completely rely on our measurements and observations. But what if we don't have an unbiased view of the universe? What if we are part of the universe ourselves and see it as we do not only because of what it is but also because of what we are? This might explain why we have learned so much about the universe but it makes so little sense.
To begin let's start questioning things. We live in three spatial dimensions, and time is often considered as a one-way dimension. Time is another thing. It is so fundamental to us but what actually is it? I had never seen a plausible explanation of what time actually is.
What if time is really another dimension of space that we can't access at will? This would mean that all of the matter we can see must have another dimension to it. Matter can change or move around over time but it still exists. What if matter actually consisted of very long strings in four-dimensional space, which we perceive as particles, such as electrons, because we can only see in three dimensions? The scientific community did have a lot to say about "string theory".
If we consist of strings, rather than particles, then the strings must be aligned in this fourth dimension of space that we cannot access, and this is why we cannot access it. This provides a simple explanation of what time actually is, the movement of our consciousness along the bundles of strings comprising our bodies and brains in the spatial dimension that we cannot access at will.
A clue that there is more going on regarding dimensions is the leftover radiation from the Big Bang, which began the universe. If we live in three spatial dimensions then we should be able to pinpoint the direction in space that the radiation from the Big Bang is coming from. But we can't, it seems to be coming at us equally from all directions. What that indicates is there is another spatial dimension that the site of the Big Bang is located in. Since we perceive the Big Bang as having taken place in the past, this indicates that our time is really another dimension of space.
Electric charge is obviously very important in the universe, matter consists of charged particles like electrons and protons. But what exactly is space and matter? We know that space and matter must somehow be composed of the same basic constituents because matter and antimatter will disappear into empty space after being reacted together, after releasing a burst of energy. The conclusion is simple. Space consists of alternating negative and positive electric charges in multiple dimensions.
Matter, or antimatter, is a concentration of like charges held together, against their mutual repulsion, by energy. This energy is what gives matter it's mass, as described by the well-known Mass-Energy Equivalence. It is also behind Einstein's famous formula, E = MC squared, which means that a small amount of matter contains a lot of energy.
This provides a neat explanation of what gravity is. If the two electric charges are equal then the basic rules of electric charges, that opposite charges attract while like charges repel, must also be equal. If matter consists of like charges held together, against their mutual repulsion, by energy then that must leave a net attractive force associated with matter. There is indeed a net attractive force, it is what we refer to as gravity. Many disagreed with Einstein that gravity is related to electromagnetism but this shows that he was correct.
The alternating charges of space usually balance out to zero but electromagnetic waves are so-called because they disturb this underlying balance. Just as matter is the overcoming of the attractive force between opposite charges by energy, electromagnetic waves are the overcoming of the attractive force between opposite charges by energy. The near-infinitesimal Planck's Length shows up in all manner of physics formula because it is the size of one of these fundamental electric charges.
What about the speed of light? Why is the speed of light what it is, rather than some other speed? If we don't even know why the speed of light is what it is how can it be so sacrosanct in Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity? If this is what time is then our consciousness must be moving along the bundles of strings comprising our bodies and brains at some certain speed. What if that speed was the speed of light and that is why it appears as so important?
If the bundle of strings comprising an object is aligned along the fourth dimension of space, that we perceive as time, the object will appear as at rest. If the bundle is bent at a right angle, the maximum possible angle, we will perceive the object as moving at the speed of light as our consciousness rushes past us at that speed.
So this explains what the Special Theory of Relativity is. Time is relative, hence the name, but the speed of light is absolutely constant. This is utterly different from "textbook" physics but it turns out that time and the speed of light are within us. Relativity is not "wrong" but we see it because of what we are. To make sense of it we just had to get outside ourselves.
What about quantum physics? To make sense of that we also have to get outside ourselves, but in a different way. Since we live in four-dimensional space that means electrons are really strings, rather than particles as we perceive them. The only way that we learn about the universe is through electromagnetic waves and the only way we can receive those are through their effect on electrons. I refer to this as "Electron Dependency".
An electron is a one-dimensional string. An electromagnetic wave is two-dimensional. Upon interacting the electron must absorb one dimension of the wave. We refer to the remaining dimension as a "photon", a particle of light. This is why an observation is part of a quantum interaction, it necessarily absorbs one of the two dimensions of the wave.
This also explains the much-heralded "Uncertainty Principle" of quantum physics. We can be sure of an electron's position or momentum but not both. Because the measured electron will absorb one of the two dimensions of the wave that is our only way to gain information about it.
Since the speed of light is something within us, the speed of our consciousness along the bundles of strings comprising our bodies and brains, there is no reason for information not to move between two entangled photons, which share a quantum state, instaneously. A photon can be split by a crystal but, since particles are really strings in four-dimensional space, the photons are still linked in the past dimension, and this is why information can pass between them.
What this concept of time means is that the universe is really stationary. Everything seems to us to be moving as our consciousness passes through. This means that light, and all electromagnetic radiation, is really stationary ripples in space. But it increases the energy density of space. This is an ideal explanation for the "dark energy" that pervades the universe and causes it to expand, or to appear to expand. Incredibly "dark energy" is, of all things, light. We just have to get outside our dimensional limitations to see this. Once again we have too much confidence in what our senses tell us.
More about what I call our "Electron Dependency". We are completely dependent on electrons, and the effect that electromagnetic waves have on them, for information about the universe. Most of the matter that we know consists of atoms, which have electrons in orbitals. An atom is a kind of "zero unit" of charged particles together that balance out to zero.
But who says that all matter has to end up as part of atoms? Protons and neutrons are made of quarks. These quarks are massive but don't have whole electric charges like electrons do. By "whole" electric charge I mean a charge of either +1 or -1. Quarks have charges in thirds, relative to electrons.
This means that if there were quarks in space, around ordinary atoms, we would be unable to detect them, due to our Electron Dependency, although we would feel their gravity. This concept of Electron Dependency thus provides a perfect explanation for the mysterious "dark matter". It could be quarks that never got paired up in atoms, or any other particles of matter with other than a whole electric charge.
A few centuries ago we had to find our way outside of our earth to make sense of the universe that we saw. Today we have learned so much but have information that just doesn't seem to make sense. We are in the same situation again but this time we have to find our way outside ourselves. We have the idea that we have an unbiased view of the universe, that we can completely rely on our measurements and observations.
My cosmology theory is that we do not have an unbiased view of the universe. We are part of the universe ourselves and see it as we do not only because of what it is but also because of what we are. With that attitude a door opens and things that didn't make sense suddenly do.
Here is a link to the posting that I use to introduce the theory:
www.markmeeksideas.blogspot.com/2019/05/in-cosmology-everything-just-fell-right.html?m=0
Following is the brief abstract that I sometimes use to summarize the basis of the cosmology theory. This theory not only explains what time actually is but also what actually caused the Big Bang. There are a multitude of theories about how the universe developed after the Big Bang but I can't see anything about what actually caused it.
My cosmological theory has the universe as not-quite-parallel strings of matter aligned mostly in one direction in four-dimensional space, although there could be many more than these four dimensions. The direction in which these strings of matter are primarily aligned is the one that we perceive as time, along which our consciousnesses move at what we perceive as the speed of light. We can only see perpendicular to the bundles of strings of matter comprising our bodies and brains. The original two-dimensional sheet of space, amidst the multi-dimensional background space, disintegrated in one of it's two dimensions as one pair of it's opposite sides came into contact. Due to charge migration, to seek a lower energy state, one side was positive in charge and the other was negative. This brought about the matter-antimatter mutual annihilation that we perceive as the Big Bang. The energy in the disintegrating dimension, from the tension between adjacent opposite electric charges, was released. The remaining dimension then consisted of very long strings of infinitesimal cross-section, that we perceive as the particles of matter today. Some of the energy released by the disintegrating dimension went into "welding" the charges of the remaining dimension together as strings of matter. We perceive these strings as particles because our consciousnesses are moving along the bundles of strings composing our bodies and brains, at what we perceive as the speed of light, and we can only see at right angles to our strings.
So, the basics of my theory is a two-dimensional sheet of space, which formed amidst the multi-dimensional background space by the same kind of opposite charge induction, disintegrating in one of it's two dimensions as one pair of it's opposite sides came into contact to create the matter-antimatter explosive mutual annihilation that we perceive as the Big Bang, which began the universe, and which scattered the remaining one-dimensional strings of matter out across space to form the universe that we see today. The strings of matter from the original two-dimensional sheet were scattered across four dimensions of the background space.
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