12. Beauty of the Universe of Quantum Dancing

We know that the ultimate, unique source elementary particle is eluding us now that we have identified so many elementary particles (including antiparticles and super-particles): from which fundamental particle did these elementary particles emerge from ( ….) or  the source of so many particles was nothing but the infinitesimal infinitely-dense point-like energy concentrate with which the Big Bang started?

We have not yet been able to settle the issue: whether the energy concentrate was the egg and the elementary particles the eggs or the elementary particles formed the multiplicity of eggs that produced the single chicken of energy concentrate that preceded the formation of eggs. We just explored the possibility of a Nothing from which the energy concentrate emerged. But the question remained: Energy first or the elementary particles first.  The only solution is to treat them as one and the same thing in different forms.

But more perplexing possibilities haunt us in our investigation into the elementary particles. Energy is now known to be available in discrete units of one Quanta particle and not as continuous! On top of this, we have come to know that the elementary particles appear as particles or as waves depending on how to interact with them with our detecting and measuring instruments. Quantum physics deals with discrete, indivisible units of energy called quanta. Quantum Theory tells us about the behavior and characteristics of sub-atomic matter (electrons, protons and neutrons) and energy. The physical properties of the subatomic particles, like the momentum and position cannot be determined at a time. If one value is known precisely, the measurement of the other value is less accurate.

*Energy is discontinuous and exists in small packets, called quanta

* According to the Principle of Wave-Particle Duality, the subatomic particles behave as particles, as well as waves. The same “object” may appear to be a particle (locatable in a single place), or a wave, spread out over space and time (A particle is a solid object with a specific location in space and time while a wave is neither solid nor localized but spread out like a wave in water). Recent experiments assert that the elementary particles may in fact exhibit simultaneously both particle like and wave -like behavior. This duality may be arising out of Entanglement of particles: particles are never independent - they get linked

*The subatomic particles move in a random manner. Particles being in more than one place at once (a recent experiment found that one particle could be in up to 3,000 places!)  Subatomic particles seem to travel instantaneously over any expanse of space (even though Einstein said that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light) .In classical physics one could determine with certainty where a particle would go, given any set of conditions, but in quantum physics, one can never know with absolute certainty how a specific thing will turn out and can only specify probabilities of alternative locations to which a particle may shift. It is physically impossible to know both the position and the momentum of a particle at the same time. The more precisely one is known, the less precise the measurement of the other is.

*As per Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, the process of observing appears to influence what is being observed: when the observer attempts to observe or interact with the dancing damsels of subatomic matter/ energy, the observed changes nature from being a state/wave of probability to a particle. The act of measurement is creating that very reality it is measuring. Thus, when one is not observing or measuring, the electrons or photons (particles of light) act as waves: they have no precise location, but exist as “probability fields”. But, when one is observing or measuring, they appear as particles: the probability field “collapses” into a solid object locatable in a specific place and time.

The magical dance of quantum energy is the greatest shock that science have ever experienced and enjoyed for the last eleven decades bewildering the smartest men like Einstein. When an electron moves from orbit to orbit around the nucleus, it does not move through space the way we would think, instead it moves instantaneously: it just disappears from from one place in one orbit to appear instantaneously in another place in another orbit. The best the scientists could do is give up the attempt to determine with certainty exactly where the electron would appear or jump on to but calculate the probabilities of its jumping into different alternative locations using Schrödinger’s wave equation.

Weirdness of the microscopic universe of particles is fascinating. The thoughts of the ancient Indians 4000 years back that seemed to us as unscientific and imagination of the child now seems to no longer weird. Modern scientists claim that a change in the spin of one particle in a two-particle system seem to affect its twin simultaneously even if the two are separated by great distance in space: separated articles seem to in contact despite their distance in space. There may not be any transmission of signals between different particles separated by space: information seems to get transmitted from one to the other particle. We are still able to figure out how?.
Maybe information of the entire universe is contained in each of its parts (like any part of an Hologram providing the same image of the whole hologram itself.

Finally, some elementary particles may be soon termed as fairy tales: light appears quantized only because of the way it interacts with matter and protons may not really exist.

The perspective of Science has undergone a radical change with the discovery of the magical dance of the quantum damsels. The Knower  itself seem to be a part of the Knowledge acquired or  to be known. The reality is no longer an objective independent of the experience of the Knower. Each part of the Universe, however small or big part, seem to have multiple existences separated by distances over space.  It is not just three: particle, anti-particle and super symmetry particles but infinite number of existences. The Universe maybe an agglomeration of multiple universes. You and I may be in existence simultaneously in different locations of the Universe.

11. Questions About Nothing of Cosmic Myth@200BC

An imaginary Nothing has been developed in the previous post. That Nothing is a consistent extension of the CosmicMyth @200BC and CosmicMyth @2010. We can now imagine the Creation of the Universe from Nothing and within an all pervasive, indestructible and infinite Nothing.
But there may be many concepts about this imaginary Nothing.
First, if Nothing is continuously generating  energy, where does the new energy go after our Universe has been created. There are two ways to deal with this. First, there may be many more Universes being created (Multi-verse Creation). Second, if the infinite speed of motion of the imaginary lines is variable, we can provide for energy utilisation within the system of Nothing.
Second, how did Time arise from Nothing. In two ways: the speed of movement of the lines gives rise to a concept of time. Second, if Time came after Big Bang which is the creation of Nothing, Time is ultimately sourced in the Nothing.


Third, if the imaginary lines are continually moving, then does Nothing any longer remains static and unperturbed? Yes, it does. First, infinite speed movement of indistinguishable imaginary lines leaves no scope for change in the formless form and content of Nothing. Second, even after generating energy, the imaginary lines remain the same and does the same thing.
Fourth, how did Space gets generated from Nothing. It is just the same way as the Big Bang did. And the space gets created over the domain of the Nothing of imaginary lines. The imaginary lines passes through all the points in the universe whether matter, energy or space including empty spaces. The Universe is in the Nothing and expanding in Nothing. Nothing is of higher order infinity than the infinite Universe (and even the infinity of the union of multiple universes).
 Fifth, does the Universe gets back into a State that there is nothing called Universe in the Nothing?Rather, does the Universe die in the Nothing? Yes, all this is possible but not necessary. Big Bank expansion gives way to Big Crunch and the Universe continues all the time occupying from just an infinitesimal part of the Nothing or a lower order infinite part of the infinite order infinite Nothing. If there is Black death, this also occurs in Nothing and the continuous energy generation can revive black death into action too.


Six, how do the imaginary intersect, overlap and create a mess and yet remain in perpetual infinite speed motion? The imaginary lines are no-mass charge neutral constructs and therefore there is frictionless intersections and overlap, especially as the the Nothing as an agglomeration is indivisible. The lines are merely an imaginary analytical construct to help understand the phenomenon of motion within the Nothing. The imaginary lines do not divide, split or compartmentalise any part of the Nothing.


Seventh, how does then any motion of infinite speed take pace within Nothing? Clearly, Nothing is not a body of energy or matter or volume of space: it is something like awareness and dissemination of knowledge, information and thought and therefore can be in continuous motion. Infinite speed ensures complete awareness of whatever is happening all over Nothing. Any two points through which the imaginary lines passes are therefore instantaneously interchangeable.  It is because of these characteristics of Nothing that the CosmicMyth @200BC coined the term Consciousness.


But all these answers are broad ones. Before we get deep into the concept of Nothing, we need to explore many other parts of the emergig Cosmic Myth of the future. This is what we do in the next several posts.

10. Imagining the Nothing: Extension of the 200BC Myth

Imagination is imagination. We can be logical and consistent in imagination but that may not be entire scientific because no scientific methods may be available to test imagination of Nothing.
By definition Nothing cannot be described given the accepted specifications that Nothing must satisfy. We can only have an imaginary, probably alternative hazy ideas. We try imagining one now and here as a start.

Let us consider any two points in the Universe and pass an imaginary line through them and extend the line beyond the two points on either side for infinitely strong stretches. This line need not a straight line: it can be curved in any manner through random choice or on any ad hoc basis (though for simplicity and without loss of generality, one can think in terms of straight lines).
Now let us imagine passing such lines through all possible pairs of points in the universe. The entire Universe will now be covered by infinite number of such lines. You may call these lines or strings. And, Nothing is nothing but the entangled mess of imaginary lines or strings of infinite length.


One can easily see that this Imaginary Nothing satisfies already FIVE out of the eight desirable criteria.
One, Nothing is perpetually ceaseless, permanent, indestructible and inexhaustible even after the Universe comes out of Nothing.
Two, Nothing is uncharged, unchanging, unaffected and unperturbed by the Universe.
Three, Nothing must never have been born or dead.
Four,  Nothing is incomprehensible, unexplainable, inexpressible, unalterable and original.
Five, Nothing is as infinite as a Source capable of explaining the infinite nature of the Universe.
Sixth, Nothing is formless in the sense of the Universe, i.e, it does not have any physical form that matter, energy or space or time can take.
The above SIX criteria are satisfied by simple construction of imaginary lines.

To see whether the other two criteria are met, we need to imagine some thing more about these imaginary lines.

Before we do this, we need to refer to the elementary particles called Neutrinos. Neutrinos are virtually mass less no-electrical charge particles that can and do pass through any type of bigger particles without being affected themselves and without affecting those through which they pass through( see http://universeofignorance.blogspot.com/2011/01/7-eluding-elementary-particles.html). It is now known that beams of neutrinos pass through our physical bodies all the time.

Let us now imagine that our imaginary lines or strings pass through all space, all matter and all energy all the time: by construction these imaginary lines remain unaffected by the mass , energy and space in the Universe all the time. Thus. by construction, our Nothing is all pervading: it always exists in each and every thing, biggest of physical bodies or smallest of particles, space  and energy in the Universe.

The question is how did this Nothing lead to the emergence of  energy, matter, space and time. If we can get energy from this Nothing, energy in turn will produce all other elements as per the Big Bang theory.
But how do we get Energy from Nothing? For this, we need to expand our imagination of lines passing through every thing just little. We imagine these imaginary lines to be in continual motion at infinite speed. By this extension of imagination, we ensure that the Nothing remains unaltered all the time: since the lines move in infinite speed, it remains all the time static-unchanged and unaltered. Most important, this infinite speed continual motion generates energy: here E=mc^2 doe not apply. There is no mass as yet, but speed is infinitely higher than the speed of light.

We have now generated energy from Nothing (the continually moving imaginary lines at  infinite speed).  This energy is initially stuck with the lines in an uniform manner buts gets clustered in some stochastic (probabilistic) way in around some point in one of the imaginary lines. Over  a periuod of trillions of human years the concentration of this energy is so dense at certain point(s) that we get that infinitely dense energy concentrate with which the Big Bang started.

We now have the entire Universe produced from Nothing. The Nothing now satisfies the other two criteria.  Nothing is apparently powerful enough to contain at least energy, matter, time and space in implicit form in itself.
And, Nothing is now capable of making its impact felt in any part or the whole of the Nothing must make its presence felt in each and everything in the Universe: Nothing must be felt to be present everywhere and in everything.

To get back to the Cosmic Myth @ 200 BC, the Universe had Nothing at some point of time. This Nothing existed ceaselessly all the Time and permanently. Because of its internal infinite speed motion, Nothing generates energy. That energy gets concentrated at an infinitesimal part of one of the imaginary lines to create the infinitely dense energy concentrate (Hiranyagarbha) that, owing to the continued impact of the spin generated by the infinite speed motion of the imaginary lines of Nothing, starts a process of inflation reducing energy density, creating space, elementary particles and so on. The Big Bang inflationary expansion takes place in the domain of the Nothing only. Thus, that Nothing still remains permanently and ceaselessly unaltered, unaffected and  Infinite containing the entire universe - space, energy, matter and time and remaining within each and everything in the universe in an indivisible formless existence.

9. Attributes of the Acceptable Nothing

Even if the Universe had come out of Nothing, any definition or specfication of Nothing will not do. Most religions (major exception being Hinduism or rather Sanatana Dharma or more specifically the Upanishad Philosophy expounded 4000+ years ago) defined this Nothing as God: God desired and said let me create the Universe. He must indeed be powerful.


Science has defined this Nothing as nothing that the scientists know off or have been so far able to identify.


But, we can try to define this Nothing by what we would consider as possible source of the Universe in terms of the chracteristic it must have in order to be a source of the Universe.


First, Nothing, as the source of the Universe, must be perpetually ceaseless, permanent, indestructible and inexhaustible even after the Universe comes out of Nothing: otherwise the Universe cannot be explained continually on a permanent basis.
Second, Nothing must be uncharged, unchanging, unaffected and unperturbed by the Universe: other wise, it becomes part of the continually changing Universe whose source we are exploring.
Third, Nothing must never have been born or dead: otherwise it would be contradicting with the first two requirements above.
Fourth, Nothing should be as infinite as a Source capable of explaining the infinite nature of the Universe.
Fifth, Nothing, being the source from which all energy, matter, space and time have emerged, must be powerful enough to contain at least all these in implicit form in itself: if it did not contain these, Nothing cannot be the source of the Universe and if it contained these explicitly, it would become part of the physical Universe.
Sixth, Nothing should be incomprehensible, unexplainable, inexpressible, unimaginable, unalterable and original: otherwise, we cannot use it as the source from which the Universe has come.
Seventh, Nothing should be capable of making its impact felt in any part or the whole of the Universe: if there is no impact of Nothing on the Universe, we cannot say that the Universe has come out of Nothing. Nothing must make its presence felt in each and everything in the Universe: Nothing must be felt to be present everywhere and in everything.
Eighth, Nothing must be formless in the sense of the Universe, i.e, it cannot have any physical form that matter, energy or space or time can take.


In sum, Nothing should satisfy the following criteria to be eligible to be the source of the Universe: be implicitly present ceaselessly in everything and everywhere of the Universe,  and yet Nothing should be formless, indestructible, indivisible, infinite and permanent unlike the continuous transient phenomenon that continually transform in the Universe.


You are right. Nothing satisfying the above criteria is close to the description of God in the Upanishads of the ancient Indians (ancestors of Hindus) ( http://senland.blogspot.com/2009/02/gita-and-god-0002.html and http://senland.blogspot.com/2009/02/gita-and-god-0007.html).  But that is besides the point.

We have some acceptable criteria now to imagine (cannot really describe it properly as per the specifications above) Nothing from which the Universe has come out. Not that we hope to satisfy all these criteria by imagining ANoting, nor we may like allcriteria to be satisfied. But we can explore and experiment. Let us imagine One Nothing in the next post.

8. Universe From Nothing (Maha Sunnya)

The Cosmologists always have this dilemma: did the Universe come out of Nothing or something cannot come out of Nothing? The Cosmologists have always been obsessed with finding the beginning of the Uinverse and obsessed with the idea that the beginning must be small.

As per the Cosmic Myth @2011, in the beginning there was only infinitely dense energy in an infinitsimal point. But this small beginning had to immediately adopt of Big Bang - not an explosion but a sudden large expansion.  Space, elementary particles of matter and time did not exist at the beginning and emerged from the very small energy concentrate. The only things that the Cosmic Myth of 2011 did not explain are: where did the energy-concentrate come from, where did this high-density energy point lie and why did the original energy started reducing its density. Maybe someday we shall be able to answer these three questions. We can explore these questions later.

But at this point it is clear that the Cosmic Myth @2011 based on Big Bang has identified a beginning and that beginning is a small size one. And, this small size enegy concentrate apparently came from Nothing, If we combine Big Bang with Big Cruch, we avoid the obsession of a begining (and therfore also avoid the obsession with small beginning) because with Cosmic expansion and cosmic contraction alternating like a sinsodial curve, the question of when did it all start vanishes. But the question of where from the energy come still remains and the answer is that it has always been there. This the same thing as saying that the energy came from Nothing.

One surprising thing about elementary particles of matter are particles! It is not clear why particles, rather elementary particles, emerged as particles - whether point particles or string particle? Why was it necessary for the Universe to start with Energy being converted into elementary particles like Quarks and Gluons? Could not energy directly produce atoms and then atoms started splitting of into elementary particles and the latter started recombining, re-spliting add infinitum? The obvious answer is that from a point-like concentrated and condensed energy one cannot produce atoms as these required more space which was scarce in the beginning: cosmic inflation has to generate space first to accommodate larger units of matter like atoms.

True, but why not we start with a huge mass of matter in concentrated or condensed form that then converts into high density energy and then energy start reducing its density rapidly?
Alternatively, why could not the beginning start with the most expanded form of the Universe and then the process of a Big Crunch start. If we could start with, for example, a mutiple of the present size of the Universe with space, matter and energy all available and then through a continous process of deflation we arrive at a point-like energy concentrate?

If we start with the an infinitely large Universe with galaxies, black holes, stars and plannets and then start the process of concentration or deflation, we need a domain of the largest size of the Universe. This is the Domain of every thing: the space, the matter and the energy. Cosmic Deflation would have led to a point-like energy or matter concentrate floating in an infinitely large Domain. Once this Domain is available, energy or matter or space could then undergo both inflation as it had happened after the Big Bang or contraction as explained by Big Cruch.

This Domain can in fact be called as a Great Zero (Maha Sunnya or MS) or Nothing in which all physical matter, energy, space and time rests.  At any point of time, any point in Nothing or MS will have either some matter or energy or space or a mixuture of all three.

Let's explore this concept of Nothing or MS from which the Uinverse has arisen in this blog later. After all we have no way out of the conclusion that the Universe has come out of Nothing.

7. Eluding Elementary Particles

The Universe is so huge and expanding. It is infinite. The Macro-universe is so wonderful thing to explore with infinite number of celestial physical bodies of matter like comets, planets, stars, constellations, galaxies, expanding space with cosmic radiation and colourful lights: the Micro-universe of particles and elementary particles that are believed to be the building blocks of the Universe are equally absorbing infinity of exploration. All colours, lights, energy, forces, consolidation / disintegration of matter  and movements seem to be the play of particles.

All matter, the substance of all physical objects from atoms and other particles to stars have mass and occupy a volume of space (we ignore the fact that alternative scientific meanings of "matter" in different subjects of study may be even incompatible). But the smallest bits of matter are called particles. The ultimate goal of scientific investigators would be breakdown into the internal substructure of all particles to find out the unique fundamental source of all matter in the Universe. 

As the scientists delved deeper and deeper into particles, they identified Elementary or Fundamental particles that are believed not to have substructure. The process seems to be never ending: instead of one or a few elementary particles, they have come to identify, speculate and detect many such elementary particles! the small particle, Atom,which was thought to be an elementary particle initially soon turned out to have a substructure with even smaller particles like electrons, protons and neutron forming the nuclei of atoms. Even protons and neutrons are not elementary particles. In the

In theStandard Model of particle physics, the quarks, leptons, and gauge bosons are elementary particles.

Quarks, an elementary particle and a fundamental constituent of matter, combine to form composite particles called hadrons, the most stable of which are protons and neutrons.

Gluons are elementary particles which act as the exchange particles (gauge bosons) for the color force between quarks, analogous to the exchange of photons in the electromagnetic force between two charged particles.    quarks make up the baryons (composite of three quarks) and the strong interaction takes place between baryons, one could say that the color force is the source of the strong interaction, or that the strong interaction is like a residual color force which extends beyond the baryons, for example when protons and neutrons are bound together in a nucleus. 

Bosonic particles that act as carriers of the fundamental forces of nature: particles exert forces on each other by the exchange of gauge bosons.

The best known of all leptons is the electron which governs nearly all of chemistry as it is found in atoms and is directly tied to all chemical properties. Two main classes of leptons exist: charged leptons (also known as the electron-like leptons), and neutral leptons (better known as neutrinos). Charged leptons can combine with other particles to form various composite particles such as atoms and positron's, while neutrinos rarely interact with anything, and are consequently rarely observed: neutrino usually travels close to the speed of light, is electrically neutral, and is able to pass through ordinary matter almost undisturbed. This makes neutrinos extremely difficult to detect. Neutrinos have a very small, but non-zero rest mass.  

A fermion can be an elementary particle, like the electron, or a composite particle, like the proton.There are 12 flavors of elementary fermions, plus their corresponding antiparticles, as well as elementary bosons that mediate the forces and the still undiscovered Higgs boson. There may also be elementary particles not described by the Standard Model, such as the graviton, the particle that would carry the gravitational force or the sparticles, supersymmetric partners of the ordinary particles.

The 12 fundamental fermionic flavours are divided into three generations of four particles each. Six of the particles are quarks. The remaining six are leptons, three of which are neutrinos, and the remaining three of which have an electric charge of −1: the electron and its two cousins, the muon and the tau. So, we have electron, electron nutrino, muon, muon nutrino, tau, tau nutrino, up quark, down quark, charm quark, strange quark, top quark and bottom quark. The best known of all leptons is the electron which governs nearly all of chemistry as it is found in atoms and is directly tied to all chemical properties. Two main classes of leptons exist: charged leptons (also known as the electron-like leptons), and neutral leptons (better known as neutrinos). Charged leptons can combine with other particles to form various composite particles such as atoms and positronium, while neutrinos rarely interact with anything, and are consequently rarely observed. There are also 12 fundamental fermionic antiparticles: anti-electron (positron), electron anti-nutrino, antimuon, muon anti-nutrino, tau, tau anti-nutrino, up antiquark, down antiquark, charm antiquark, strange antiquark, top antiquark and bottom antiquark.

Isolated quarks and antiquarks have never been detected, a fact explained by confinement. Every quark carries one of three color charges of the strong interaction; antiquarks similarly carry anticolor. Color charged particles interact via gluon exchange in the same way that charged particles interact via photon exchange. However, gluons are themselves color charged, resulting in an amplification of the strong force as color charged particles are separated. Unlike the electromagnetic force which diminishes as charged particles separate, color charged particles feel increasing force. Color charged particles may combine to form color neutral composite particles called hadrons. A quark may pair up with an antiquark: the quark has a color and the antiquark has the corresponding anticolor. The color and anticolor cancel out, forming a color neutral meson. Alternatively, three quarks can exist together, one quark being "red", another "blue", another "green". These three colored quarks together form a color-neutral baryon. Symmetrically, three antiquarks with the colors "antired", "antiblue" and "antigreen" can form a color-neutral antibaryon. Evidence for the existence of quarks comes from deep inelastic scattering: firing electrons at nuclei to determine the distribution of charge within nucleons (which are baryons). If the charge is uniform, the electric field around the proton should be uniform and the electron should scatter elastically. Low-energy electrons do scatter in this way, but above a particular energy, the protons deflect some electrons through large angles. The recoiling electron has much less energy and a jet of particles is emitted. This inelastic scattering suggests that the charge in the proton is not uniform but split among smaller charged particles: quarks.
Gluons are the mediators of the strong interaction and carry both colour and anticolour. Although gluons are massless, they are never observed in detectors due to colour confinement; rather, they produce jets of hadrons, similar to single quarks. The first evidence for gluons came from annihilations of electrons and antielectrons at high energies which sometimes produced three jets — a quark, an antiquark, and a gluon.
The fundamental forces of nature are mediated by gauge bosons, and mass is hypothesized to be created by the Higgs boson. There are three weak gauge bosons: W⁺, W⁻, and Z⁰; these mediate the weak interaction. The massless photon mediates the electromagnetic interaction. The Higgs boson itself has not yet been observed in detectors.

Existence of more elementary particles have been identified or speculated by the scientists: one class of these are supersymmetric particles or sparticles. Each particle in the Standard Model would have a superpartner whose spin differs by 1/2 from the ordinary particle.  There are a whole list of names of elementary particles / particles here: neutrilinos (superpartners of neutral Higgs bosons, Z bosons and photon), chargino (superpartner of charged bosons), photino (sp of photon), wino ( sp of W bosons), zino (sp of Z boson), Higgisions (sp of Higgs bosons), gluino (sp of gluons), gravitino (sp of graviton), sleptons (sp of leptons), sneutrino (sp of neutrino) and squarks (sp of quarks).

There are stll more elementary particles: graviscalar, graviphoton,axion, saxion, axino, saxion, branon, dilaton, dilatino, leptoquarks X and Y bosons, magnetic photon, majoron and majorana.

We are virtually flooded with elementary particles of different kinds. The explain or predictably potential in explaining the material universe. But then the Universe is dependent on too many fundamental building blocks. We do not know how they came into existence except from the Big Bang general source of Energy Concentrate in the continuous process of losing density. In that case, they are not the building blocks of the Universe: they are the result of the dilution of energy.

The Truely Fundamental Particles could not have been too many and must be capable of explaining the high density energy concentrate itself and its inflationary behaviour.  The Fundemental Elementary Particles or constiuent of the Universe are still illuding us.  What we know so far and in the process of knowing is the properties and chracteristics of particles that help explain  the operation of other particles and forces but not yet amenable to investigation as how they are sourced from the basic orgin of all matter.  The String Theory talks of particles not being point particles but closed or open strings and may help better explain how the particles behave. But does string theory yet solve our problem of too many elementary particles? Maybe the concept of strings and branes have given us the desired direction of investigation. If the vibration of strings produce  elementary particles, the strings themselves may be the path to the origin of all matter, energy, space and time!

6. Eternity Nicks In The Nick of Time

Time is so much an integral part of human life, that we have time for everything except time. Time and existence of time is taken for granted. We are born in the nick of time. Our time starts some 42 weeks before we see the light of the World. We record the time of birth and time of death both on Calendat time and clock/ wrist watch time. We enjoy happy times and find time to introspect. We have the habit of even killing time, even though we know time is money. We forget things from time to time and even with time. Time is supposed to be a great healer.Sometimes we have idle or spare time, sometimes we run short of time, Sometimes we schedule time for appointment and sometimes we failed to reach the destination in time. We complain of scarcity of time. When we do not know we hope time will tell. We desire good things to be done in time and aircraft's departing, flying and landing on time. We know time runs out fast and yet waiting at the end of a long queue we seem to find time taking its own sweet time to reach us at the head of the queue.

We schedule our programs to best utilize time. We need leisure time, bedtime , breakfast time and dinner time. Some say that any time is tea time. We distinguish between day time and night time. We dislike time consuming work and time delays. Some likes winter time but dislike summer times. Television channels want their prime time ratings to go up. We do not like time delays but wait to act when the time is ripe. Many things take time to make an impact.
We place events in chronological time and maintain records as per Calendar time. Executives want information online on real time basis. We pass time in pastimes and get worried during war times. We read about events in historical times with interest and are amazed to know that some scholars have discovered about things during pre-historic time. In arithmetic, there were sums involving time and work. In college they taught differential calculus and difference equations to deal with time dynamics. In science fiction, we travel backwards and forward in time.
If our lives are so time dependent and intertwined with time, we could perhaps allocate time to explore the concept of and independent existence of time. It is better to start with the stupid question: what is Time (not what is the time)?  Does Time have an existence or is it only a construct to make living more comfortable?

The concept of Time helps us the sequence events/ happenings and future outcomes in a manner to place them in the order of their occurrence: which occurred before and which after which. Time also helps us have an idea of the distance between two events as also measure the duration of an event or happening. Thus, Kurukshetra War happened before Arjun died and after Arjun's father died, the distance between Arjun's father's death and Arjun's death was x number of years and that the the battle of Kurukshtra lasted for say 18 days. It is like a number system where the numbers are placed in a sequence of ascending/ descending order of magnitude and where the distance between two numbers are capable of being measured and distances between two different pairs of numbers can be compared.  This is applicable not in the past tense, past continuous tense and past perfect tense, but also of the different categories of present and future tense.

We are herefore very particular about measuring time / time periods and time intervals. Units of measurement are small as as very large. One Planck time is the time it would take a photon travelling at the speed of light to cross a distance equal to one Planck length (1.616252(81)×10−35 meters). Theoretically, the smallest time measurement that will ever be possible is roughly 10^-43 seconds (change in time less than one Planck time apart, is beyond physical measurement and detection:  the smallest time interval that was directly measured was one of 12 attoseconds (12 x 10⁻¹⁸ seconds), about 10²⁴ times larger than the Planck time. Planck Epoch Planck epoch (or Planck era), named after Max Planck, is the earliest period of time in the history of the universe, from zero to approximately 10⁻⁴³ seconds (Planck time), during which, it is believed, quantum effects of gravity were significant. Division and combination of tiem units have  been in practice among ancient Indians(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindu_units_of_measurement).  The smalest units of time is a miniscule of a currently known second while the largest is Brahma's day equivalent to 4.32 billion human years. But what we measure  as time my not be really in existence: we measure change or movement and call it time!

Does Time have any real existence beyond such use to deal with past, present and future which are essentially a classification for human convenience. Would Time be there when human beings did not exist? Is Time an independent component of the Universe as Energy-Matter is or it is just another derivative of the phenomenon called Energy-Matter? We have discussed in the previous post, how Space is a mere derivative of Energy: energy reduces its density to produce and expand space. This is what Big Bang theory of the creation of Universe says. The same is true of Time. Time started with the Big Bang and merely reflects the change in energy density and the consequential creation and expansion of space. That is why just like we have energy-matter equivalence a la Einstein, we have space-time as one dimension or a single spacetime contimum.  Einstein showed that with electromagnemtic measurement, time and space get entangled in what is called Minowski space.
 
We could derive a formula following Einstein.
   Time =  Distance travelled by light in space divided by the square-root of energy per unit of mass. You are right. I expressed the famous E = m*c^2 in a different way.  For Einstein energy per unit of mass and speed of light are constants of equal values (speed of light is nothing but a ratio of related intervals of space and time covered by light as it travels). If particles of light has to move, they should get space to move in. The interval space between which a light particle moved is nothing but a change of position. This change of position is alternatively measured in time so that one can derive a notion called speed or velocity. If there is no change, there is no time. Time disappears. Time does not have any existence of its own. It started with Big Bang and will end with Heat Death of Big Rip.  What was the time before Big Bang is a meaningless question if we understand Stephen Hawkings, the greatscientist of our time.

Ultimately, we arrive at Energy as the sole element of the Universe.

But equations are equations. What is a dependent variable and which is independent often depends on our choice.  So, one can if one wishes can say that energy, mass and space - all exists only in time. Without Time, nothing exists: Kaal, the Eternal Time, as per the Cosmic Myth of 200 BC, shapes the path of behaviour of all beings and non-beings in the Universe and the Universe.  But for the Cosmic Myth of 2011 AD, Time is just about 14 billion years of age and was created only by the Big Bang, meaning the Big Bang was beyond Time.

By just adding Big Crunch to Big Bang,  however, one can easily extend the lifetime of Time to Infinity: a never-ending repeated cycles of contraction and expansion of space along with increasing and decreasing density of energy. This means Time never ends as change never ends. Change in energy density and amount of space occurs only in Time. If change never ceases permanently, Time is Infinite just as the numbers are.
We thus go back to the Cosmic Myth of 200BC. In the five to two millennium BC, the source of all creation was traced back to the Infinite Kaal (Time) by the knowledge seekers in India: Everything exists in Time and Time exists in everything. And yes, that is the Concept of God in Sanatana Hindu Cosmology (not religion). Eternity nicked Time in the nick of time.

Still the question about Time would persist. Energy (or for that matter or latent matter was there to start with and never ceases to exist (conservation principle that nothing is lost in the Universe). Even space is not created by human beings. Time is the creation of human beings just as the numbers are. They may be uncountable infinite, but they are not fundamental to the Universe. Stars are part of the Universe but their numbers, however counted, are not part of the Universe. So time is not a fundamental and independent constituent/ ingredient/ feature of the Universe.

There are no human beings in the Mars or the Jupiter. So, there is no Number or  Time in the Universe outside the Earth. Even at the time the Planet Earth was formed, there were no human beings and hence there would not have been numbers or Time. Could it not be that both the Number System and Time existed all along in the Universe just as Energy and matter and possibly Space did. Human beings only discovered them that all these existed in the Universe. Internet technology was not discovered until recently: does it mean that Internet communication did not exist in the Universe from the very beginning?

Where are the scientific answers to these questions? Can we live with opinions and hunches? For how long Time do we have to wait? Till Eternity? Or, is it that since energy, mass, space and time get entangled, the quadruplet is nothing but the same thing: there is nothing to distinguish among time, energy, mass and time!!!

We would explore these thoughts a little later.

5. Space in Search for Domain

Concept of space is so crucial to human beings. We need abstract spaces to satisfy our intellectual needs and nebulous spaces to satisfy our emotional needs and physical spaces to satisfy our need to accommodate everything that we come across. When we have plenty of space in supply, we space out the all that we need to keep in space and when we have more things to be accommodated, we squeeze out space from the available space through compacting.
In mathematics, a space is a set whose members satisfy some defined structure. And,  there are many types of mathematical spaces like (arranged alphabetically) Affine Space, Baire Space, Banach Space, Base Space, Bergman Space, Besov Space, Borel Space, Calabi-Yau Space, Cellular Space, Chu Space, Dimension, Dodecahedral Space, Drinfeld's Symmetric Space, Eilenberg-Mac Lane Space, Euclidean Space, Fiber Space, Finsler Space, First-Countable Space, Fréchet Space, Function Space, G-Space, Green Space, Hausdorff Space, Heisenberg Space, Hilbert Space, Hyperbolic Space, Inner Product Space, L2-Space, Lens Space, Line Space, Linear Space, Liouville Space, Locally Convex Space, Locally Finite Space, Loop Space, Mapping Space, Measure Space, Metric Space, Minkowski Space, Müntz Space, Non-Euclidean Spaces, Normed Space, Paracompact Space, Planar Space, Polish Space, Probability Space, Projective Space, Quotient Space, Riemann's Moduli Space, Riemann Space, Sample Space, Standard Space, State Space, Stone Space, Symplectic Space, Teichmüller Space, Tensor Space, Topological Space, Topological Vector Space, Total Space, Vector Space . Topological spaces are the most general type of spaces, while the most familiar and popular space in everyday life is the Euclidean space: we all started with Euclidean geometry and in Einstein's theory of Special Relativity, Euclidean three-space plus time are unified into the so-called Minkowski space.  The supply of newer mathematical spaces however cannot meet the ever-growing demand for physical and emotional spaces.

Every moment is in search for space. The growing human population needs more space to live more prosperous and quality life. The endangered species need space. Houses need more living, dinning and partying space. Cars need more communication space as well as parking space. The women needs space as much to the men. The children need space. Computers need more disk space. Data storage and transmission need infinite cyberspace. Human mind needs space to explore and work out the shape of space and reach the edges of space if any. Matter occupies space. The balloon expands in space. Light travels and radiates in space. Energy fills space. Fields needs space to work on.  The stars and planets are in the space and the galaxies have space within the formations as well between any two of them. Even invisible energy and matter occupy space. Space seems to get filled in with something or the other, so there is no empty space that remains to be occupied.  So, space has to expand itself to keep the Universe going.

Is that why the Cosmic Myth 2011 AD (Big Bang, Big Crunch etc) provides for creation and expansion/ contraction of space depending on the emerging requirement for space? It says that Space, matter, energy and time arose out of the continuous inflation of the dimension-less primordial point of maximum density energy with high pressure and temperature that appeared from no where suddenly 14 billion human years ago to begin the journey of the Universe. This myth does not explain how that point came about and where did it appear to exist? Scientific could go so far back only as for Science this was the beginning. Of course, the Big Crunch helps to explain that the primordial infinitesimal, dimension-less point of concentrated energy is not primordial but the result of cosmic contraction. But that does not help answer the question from where did this energy come from: it is just like the Cosmic Myth @ 200 BC not explaining when and how the Consciousness come from. Well, there are two ways to deal with that. First, just as God has been there as Consciousness all the time as Self created / Sayambhu, the same property applies to Energy that moves from the State of maximum possible density to the State of minimum possible density (cosmic inflation) and then back to maximum density (through cosmic deflation) phase. Second, if there are continuous cycles of  alternating contraction and expansion phases, there is no need to ask where and when did it all begin. Just as the Hindus know that God has been in existence for ever without a beginning and end.

In the cosmic inflation phase, energy density continually decreases, even as part of the energy converts itself into  matter and matter converts itself into energy, creating more and ore space in the process. It is tautological: energy density is defined as amount of energy per unit of space: increase / decrease in energy density implies that space must expand/ contract at a faster rate than expansion/ contraction of energy. Thus, the Universe is essentially defined by Energy and its properties - matter and space are mere derivatives/ consequence of the properties of energy.
And, energy loses density to create space. And, the space in the Universe is expanding. Between ant two galaxies, the amount of space is expanding. And, this is how currently the Universe is expanding in size. The balloon expands in space, but in what does the space or the Universe expand? Either we assume that expansion or contraction of space is a mere illusion or assume that expansion of space creates its own required space. Both are interesting concepts but not very appealing without proof.

There is still another alternative. The total energy of the Universe in its most concentrated form exists in an infinite, end-less, indestructible, unperturbed, non-expandable, non-contractible, non-tearing, non-breakable, seamless, transparent, color-less, all-pervasive and  medium, named, say,  Illusionnet (MayaJaal) or Netillude. Space and the Universe expand and contracts in that Illiusionnet. What does that illusion contain: it contains all that is there in the space including spaces that energy, matter, fields, time and strings that occupy as also spaces that are free of matter, energy, fields, time and strings, etc. It is like the 200 BC mythological concept of Narayana which is present in each and everything with complete density and in which each and everything exists. It is the only concept that allows for existence of the same particle to be present simultaneously at different locations and time. All spaces, whetheroccupied/ tainted by any physical component/ matter/ energy/ field or not, may have to lie in some domain like Narayana or Neillude.

Let's forget for the present such illusive concepts as Narayana or Netilude. Let's be comortable with the idea that the space between any two galaxies are expanding. Two issues need to be addressed. First, if the space is expanding, it must be doing so because the invisible/ visible energy content in those parts of the space must still be becoming less dense.  Where is this energy or matter going? Crossing over to fall inside the boundaries of the galaxies and their graviational fields? When would the space between galxies become completely bereft f any matter or energy or anything else? And, when it does hppen, what would happen to that empty spce? Will it collapse or become static. This would mean the distances between galaxies would tereafter stop increasing.
Second, if the distances between galaxies are expanding, then some galaxies would have already gone out of our Milkyway glaxies and those nearby.  And, may be some galaxies may have gone out of the horion of the galaxies that are at the edge of our Horizon. Wht is happenning to those galaxies that have gone out of the horion of the end of our horizon?  What is the position of the set of galaxies beyong the horizon of the infinite horizons? Are there spaces beyond them? The edge of the infinite Universe brdered by galaxies or empty spaces? (does the natural number system end with an odd or even number? being infinite, the question does ot arise, since the series  of natural numbers cannot not ever have an end point?)

Is the concept of Space up for a grand deconceptualisation and reconceptualisation?