Radical new take on *uni*verse questions by Smolin, could be important

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Smolin's upcoming book "Time Reborn" presents a radical perspective on the universe, emphasizing that laws of nature are not fixed but evolve over time, challenging the traditional "block universe" concept. In a recent talk at Perimeter, he outlines principles based on historical figures like Leibniz, arguing against timeless laws and advocating for a universe that explains itself without external references. The first half of the talk is accessible, while the latter delves into complex simulations of spacetime dynamics. Audience engagement, particularly from Rob Myers and Laurent Freidel, highlights the high-risk nature of Smolin's theories, which could significantly alter foundational physics. Overall, the discussion invites further exploration of these innovative ideas and their implications for understanding time and the laws governing the universe.
  • #151
Not a spokesman, i can still relate my take:
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Just on the most populous form of non-toroidal holes, the mass, spin, direction, charge, and related stats like surface area of event horizon are only apparent from the outside of the hole, i think. I'm taking the most populous form of hole because the theory relies on maximal reproductive capacity. What happens in toriodal holes and super holes is less significant.
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To me, Guth's inflationary theory always smelled like a jury rigged patch on the big bang theory. i agree, one of the first places to look would be the whole inflationary mythology. Smolin might straighten out a few issues. One thing that occurs to me is that inflation either accompanied/included the creation of "new" mass energy or immediately followed it.
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Smolin's illustration of space emerging from accumulation of sequential events powered by momentum would be analogous to a bang creating space.
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i would add again that what is really measured and confirmed is fields, fields on fields, not space. When Smolin says "space" in his universe, he's not talking about eternal classical space. If energy appears inside the hole, let's say when the event horizon is made, onlookers can't verify directly what's going on from the outside. All outsiders know is that, some stuff went in, and with frame drag it pulled in some fields with it. Once alone inside, space would be created in between the bits of energy over time. That would be expansion. (Assuming there is no singularity once inside.)
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It would not be an "explosion" of mass/energy, it would be an insertion of space between particles. But whether you call it "expansion" or "insertion," it amounts to the same thing.
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i'm still searching for a mechanism to explain what looks like creation of mass energy. Somehow uncertainty and misbehaving Cauchy formulations don't persuade me. i want to believe, but remain agnostic, re the creation of mass energy.
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To bad professor Smolin can't grade my paper and tell me where I'm off!
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  • #152
negativzero said:
Not a spokesman, i can still relate my take:

To me, Guth's conflationary theory always smelled like a jury rigged patch on the big bang theory. i agree, one of the first places to look would be the whole inflationary mythology. Smolin might straighten out a few issues. One thing that occurs to me is that inflation either accompanied/included the creation of "new" mass energy or immediately followed it.

That one I am not familiar with, could you do me a fav and post some related links?
 
  • #153
My apologies Mordred.
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Originally Guth used the term, "conflation." It has since been renamed, "inflation."
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i'm just a hick clinging to my, International Dictionary of Applied Mathematics, and a BB gun. The word, is dated. But i like it better than inflation.
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Since it is creating confusion, rather than sourcing the etymology, i'll just edit my post above.
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Thanks, Mordred.
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  • #154
lol gotcha, you had me going there for a minute. The name conflation is in some ways a better descriptive :smile:
 
  • #155
Tanelorn said:
A black hole could just be matter with sufficient density to prevent photons from escaping. Isnt this still the most likely explanation? Occam etc.
If this matter is dense enough to prevent light from escaping, then the outer extent of the light cone is traveling inward toward the center of this object. This means that in order for matter to remain stationary inside the horizon of a black hole, it would have to be traveling faster than light in its local frame.
 
  • #156
Chalnoth, do you mean the event horizon?
If Smolin is correct, some math must turn inside out when the event horizon is penetrated. Possibly something like a Mobius transformation. I'm probably wrong, because i haven't heard him say this, but i wouldn't be surprised if a photon sphere wasn't predicted to exist barely "inside" the event horizon as well as just outside it. If one assumes that mass entering the hole continues onward relentlessly to a singularity [if that's what you are saying], then it would contradict Smolin's basic assumptions.
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Perhaps i misunderstood your post, but as far as i know, empirical evidence doesn't confirm existence of singularities, but only black holes.
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  • #157
I also did not understand Chalnoth's reply. I only meant this:
"A black hole is a region of spacetime from which gravity prevents anything, including light, from escaping."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_hole
 
  • #158
Another interesting thought about Smolin's model is that old parent Universes do not just end by fading away into some kind of heat death after 10^100 years or so, but instead perhaps the parents energy continues onwards into their child Universes, over and over like a kind of cycle.
 
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  • #159
Tanelorn said:
I also did not understand Chalnoth's reply. I only meant this:
"A black hole is a region of spacetime from which gravity prevents anything, including light, from escaping."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_hole
Right. The point is that this fact, that light is not allowed to escape, means that inside this event horizon, the outer edge of the light cone actually travels inward.

The speed of light limitation means that every object must necessarily stay within its own light cone. Thus, since the outer edge of the light cone is traveling inward inside a black hole, all matter must also travel inward. No amount of pressure from matter just inside can prevent this (incidentally, at these gravities, pressure just increases the gravitational pull anyway!).
 
  • #160
Chalnoth, that's an interesting theory. Do you have any experiments verifying the climate inside holes? It sounds to me as if you are insisting upon perpetuating some of the expectations that would be valid outside the hole. Smolin has to be suggesting a rule change at or beyond the event horizon. If you don't accept that, you are rejecting the essential premise.
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Think, "Mobius."
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  • #161
We should all draw straws and the winner has to read Smolin's book!
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  • #162
negativzero said:
If Smolin is correct, some math must turn inside out when the event horizon is penetrated. Possibly something like a Mobius transformation.
What? This doesn't really make any sense at all.

negativzero said:
If one assumes that mass entering the hole continues onward relentlessly to a singularity...
There is no assumption being made. In the framework of general relativity this is exactly what happens.

negativzero said:
Perhaps i misunderstood your post, but as far as i know, empirical evidence doesn't confirm existence of singularities, but only black holes.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singularity_theorems
 
  • #163
Wannabe, thanks for communicating.
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i'm making the best effort i can to understand Smolin, who in fact is a general relativist.
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Since you are referencing Wikipedia, take a look at this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Möbius_transformation
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One way to look at it would be like this, but the process would be truncated by the creation of the event horizon: you take the information from the celestial sphere, and project it through any point and you get a kind of inside out map. Project it through the so called point of "singularity" and you map a new universe. (And can i add a big, "PERHAPS" here?)
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Or take a look at this stuff on sphere eversions:
http://torus.math.uiuc.edu/jms/Papers/isama/color/opt2.htm
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Here are some sphere eversion videos i rank ordered by my own preference:

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There is math for turning things inside out. Whether or not it's "nonsense," i discuss below.
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i'm trying to understand here. i can repeatedly say, "Hey! Wait a minute! That not the dogma I'm used too!," or i can try to get it. I'm trying to get it, and i guess that makes me an emergent advocate for Smolin at this time. It's just me here though, not the Dr. himself.
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Your source gave, "...1.a situation where matter is forced to be compressed to a point...," as an example of a space like singularity.
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Excuse me, but examples of matter are physical, and a point is geometry. Just how is one supposed to squish physical stuff into a mathematical fiction smaller than Planck length? Experiments confirming the accuracy of GR, don't prove the case here. There is no experiment confirming that matter, real physical matter, can be compressed into a metaphysical element.
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And that is what point, line, and plane are; they are fictions. They are mythical objects for which there is no physical example. (A word for that is "nonsense.") Show me a point. In modern math people assume postulates by faith re undefined elements, and derive theorems from them. In Smolin's use of Knopf algebra, for instance, the elements were: events, and momenta.
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Just ask the Pythagoreans, the math is a fictional almost religious ideation which remarkably resembles reality sometimes. No offense, but you sound like a true believer. i think altogether it is Smolin who is the skeptic here. Make that, "the heretic."
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Now back to my question above; it's not rhetorical: "...how is one supposed to squish physical stuff into a mathematical fiction smaller than Planck length?"
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What are you gunna do with that WannabeNewton?
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The creation of a black hole doesn't allow physical stuff to become metaphysical or Platonic. THAT would be nonsense reminiscent of Descartes' assumption that the pineal gland was man's connection with the metaphysical. Since there is no agreed answer in GR given the reality of QM as to what happens at the singularity, Smolin suggests that some of the fundamental questions of cosmology and physics could conveniently be answered if it can be shown that our U is inside an event horizon and that his precious parameters are tweaked to maximize stellar black hole births.
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GR powerful as it is still can't make real physical stuff into an element of Euclidean geometry, it's just a handy dandy fiction. And there are a variety of kinds of GR, and there is debate within GR. So if you think it's settled as to what happens at or beyond the event horizon or the singularity, we are in disagreement. It's not settled.
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Thx as always for your thoughtful responses,
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  • #164
Tanelorn my friend,
you said again, "...we have not found first cause or final effect..."
i start with the assumption that no one will ever find IT.
But that means that every time i come back to the subject, it's not resolved.
So much fun for so many!
Hopefully for us all, cosmetology and it's smaller cousin cosmology are not purely and exclusively a total waste of time.
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  • #165
My personal problem with buying his book is that i like to think about what should be in a book before i read it.
This proclivity is very rewarding for me because i can say, "Hey! i thought of that too! Just before i read it. Since you bring it up."
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Knowing myself, if I'm still interested in Smolin in a month, i will have bought his latest book, sheepishly.
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Until i buy the book, i can say i only saw 2 or 3 of his videos and i agree with what i hear.
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But the reason i am here at all is because i see space emerging from energy over time and that's what my boy Smolin says!
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i'm not a fan of many, but Wheeler was once upon a time my only celeb until Smolin arose as a figure in physics. i admit. I'm an instantaneous fan of his. If i met him i might get agitated and ask him to autograph my forehead in indelible ink. But it's because i came to similar conclusions before i ever heard of him. i think too.
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In this group, on this message board, i guess you would have to say I'm one of the few fans posting.
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[i hate being a fan! In tennis i don't care about anyone's game but mine. Outside my family and friends, I'm a fan of nobody but Wheeler and Smolin, and Nader, on anything. That sounds soooo creepy! i need intervention from the physics dept!]
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  • #166
negativzero said:
Tanelorn my friend,
you said again, "...we have not found first cause or final effect..."
i start with the assumption that no one will ever find IT.
But that means that every time i come back to the subject, it's not resolved.
So much fun for so many!
Hopefully for us all, cosmetology and it's smaller cousin cosmology are not purely and exclusively a total waste of time.
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minus, I couldn't agree more, the eternal search will go on!

The road is long
With many a winding turn
That leads us to who knows where
Who knows whenInteresting that spacetime is warped by mass which is equivalent to energy..
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spacetime

Perhaps first cause is final effect :)
 
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  • #167
Adrian07 said:
Laws depend on the circumstances underlying them. Why these laws could also read why these circumstances.
Take gravity for example 3 choices
1 The value of G was predetermined before the universe began
2 Did it start at 0 and settle at its current value for some unknown reason
3 It was decided by a third party (God)

Only with option 2 could the laws evolve, for 1 and 3 G is predetermined and so must be the law it is set by circumstances.

the value of G is 1.** always has been and does not change w.r.t. time or anything. same for c, \hbar, \epsilon_0, k_\mathrm{B}.


** actually, if it were up to me, i would set G=\frac{1}{4\pi}.
 
  • #168
I tried setting G = 1/(4*Pi) and ran my BB simulation overnight and all I ended up with was a Universe consisting entirely of marsh mallow! :)
 
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  • #169
i see the :) smiley. but just to make sure, the value of dimensionful constants are not "operationally meaningful". saying "The value of G was predetermined before the universe began" is not really operationally meaningful.

saying "The value of \alpha was predetermined before the universe began" might be meaningful. at least if "... before the universe began" is meaningful.
 
  • #170
  • #171
Could the missing energy in the Smolinverse be vacuum?
Looking for an answer to this question i found this appropriate bit by John Baez, Smolin's buddy.
It occurred to me that when a hole is formed it might gulp down some space along with energy. What would be the values:
1. as measured outside the hole, like mass, proportion of energy in spin, etc;
2. as cut off from the rest of the universe from inside the event horizon. Would the gulped bit of empty space suddenly acquire huge vacuum energy density? Enough to provide energy for a baby Smolinverse?
http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/vacuum.html
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By "missing energy" i mean an answer to the mystery of how the new universes acquire a universe of mass/energy from what looks from the outside to be just a few solar masses?
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i notice that Baez is happy with explaining expansion as vacuum pressure but didn't mention it as the cause of gravity. Anti-gravity, yes. Gravity, silence. Einstein attacked this problem [with Fried? Freed?...can't remember], and similarly to Baez's comments found that vacuum energy seemed to provide far TOO MUCH energy to explain the weakness of gravity. So he shelved the idea; it didn't make sense.
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It first occurred to me that space might create the force of gravity when i was 10 years old, one lazy hot afternoon in Dallas. Then i found the idea at age 20 in Misner, Thorne, and Wheeler's fantastic book, Gravitation. Page 50. The text read that you couldn't tell the difference between the force coming from above or below. Exultations!
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By 34 i had realized that vacuum pressure would form voids and accelerate the universe. That was 30 years ago. Now I've decided that space emerges from energy over time and Smolin has a model saying the same thing! Not only that but he likes a finite universe too! I've finally fallen in with the right crowd, for sure. This is the only bunch of cosmologists who agree with me. Now i want Smolin and Baez to talk about how entanglement re-explains what has been up to now called, "continuity."
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  • #172
Perhaps you don't need additional energy, just a kick to start it all off as in an unstable system.

Perhaps this Universe reproduction cycle could be considered the main event. All the normal matter in the Universe is only 5% of the total energy. Could almost consider it to be just a by product..
 
  • #173
Baez mentions, "...A slightly less naive way to calculate the vacuum energy in quantum field theory is to admit that we don't know spacetime is a continuum,..."
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Yes! No infinities, no infinitesimals. Entanglement defines the smallest unit of continuity. When any two particles interact, they continue to be connected until one of them interacts with another particle. The fastest shortest quickest interval in space/time is that unit. There is no need for an infinitesimally continuous space; the choppy nature of entanglement is the reality.
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But Baez didn't say that, he just kinda hinted at it. i have no information that he buys into CNS, so i guess i shouldn't harp on some tangential issue. i'll cut it off here.
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  • #174
rbj said:
i see the :) smiley. but just to make sure, the value of dimensionful constants are not "operationally meaningful". saying "The value of G was predetermined before the universe began" is not really operationally meaningful.

saying "The value of \alpha was predetermined before the universe began" might be meaningful. at least if "... before the universe began" is meaningful.
This page on Planck units and normalization is very useful for understanding what rbj mentioned. If I covered this at all, it was at least 32 years ago so good to see this again.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck_unitsApparently we would not know if the speed of light has changed, even drastically. We say that the speed of light is constant but it appears that we cannot tell even if it isn't. Are there any implications for CMBR redshift here at all?
 
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  • #175
Assuming that consensus shifts to support the Smolinverse,
what cosmological questions will remain, and what new questions will be generated by acceptance of CNS?
i've been having fun with this one, and i'd like to read what anyone else imagines.
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  • #176
This thread introduced CNS to me. An admirable new notion!
i came here already advocating a finite universe, with a quantum space/time emerging from energy over time. i assume both dark energy and gravity result from vacuum pressure. i think space is a construct used to describe fields. That "space" is anywhere energy can go, that's all. So the longer a particle exists the more space there is associated with it. This describes expansion. Another definition of space is that it is all the differences that can be measured. i think entanglement shows empirically that the classic notion of continuity is flawed.
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i find so many points of agreement with Smolin that it seems like a wonderful stroke of luck to find this thread!
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i've been so lonely so long.
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So cold.
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[Insert big whimpering sigh after a good cry here.]
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Thx again marcus!
 
  • #177
Smolinverse, the movie.
Inevitably his theory will be integrated into SF. Here is a brief treatment.
As Joseph Campbell says, every hero story is the same story, after all.
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An offshoot group of Creationists hollow out a small asteroid and look for stars that are almost massive enough to implode into a black hole, where they intend to add enough mass to create a new Smolinverse, which they name after a mythical character in their liturgy, "Hernik, Fysiks Foramen Pastor." Which of course makes no sense, because the mythology of the Hernik One is shrouded, shrouded in, well, shrouds.
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In all drama, character drives plot, and paradox drives character.
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The lead character, Tanalorn, is a skeptic. He's the elected governor/captain of the religious zealots on the asteroid colony. He wasn't a doubter when he boarded the interstellar asteroid, but now that his cult has found a candidate star, he finds that his math has evolved and he's a heretic to Smolin's physics. BUT, he's in love with the Chocolatiers' daughter! And she and her father, Chronos, ARE true believers. Tanelorn trusts his chocolaty love interest to work out the math and figure just how much mass the faithful need to toss into the star to implode it, but her math is ersatz. She's off by about the BMI of one human male. One lean muscular handsome charismatic male, like the protagonist, Tanelorn. In the end, even though he doesn't believe, he throws himself into the star to create what his beloved thinks will be a new universe.
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Why the Chocolatier's daughter? Well, this particular cult wants to make a universe with running chocolate streams and Spaten Optimator waterfalls. So they bring Hersheys bars and dark beer as mass to throw in. You know, chocolate and beer in, chocolate and beer out. And the Beirmeister, marcus, has only sons.
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Until and unless, Smolin's CNS is produced as a 1 star SF movie, his idea is not going to find the public mind.
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  • #178
hehe minus that's quite an imagination. Did I really come over as a skeptic? I question everything and rarely believe anything outright. btw Tanelorn is a city, a city of peace that exists in every Universe, but I will play it as a character :) I was an extra in X3 and a few others. Although I don't think Disney's Black Hole movie was a big success as I recall. So if I could somehow create a black hole inside my own body I could then say that I became a whole new Universe?

Actually there's the background for a story right there using Smolins theory of CNS. Tanelorn a city of peace which exists in each of his Universes and which provides a means for traveling between these Universes for what ever reason is required for a good story.
 
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  • #179
Don't push it Tanni, rumor is Brucie willis is looking at the script.
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[edit. negativzero started this rumor]
Hernik collaborated on the treatment.
 
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  • #180
One other thing i absolutely agree with Smolin on is, NO PARALLEL UNIVERSES!
Entanglement again shows the way.
If particles are still connected between interactions, then there is no need for any parallel universe theory.
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P.S. Since I'm talking about agreements with Smolin...yeah! The Universe IS emergent! Been sayin' this for 34years now!
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i even sent out a monograph.
 
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