October 27, 2013

What Would God Think of the God Particle? (Part 2).

Quote.

When your mind and heart are truly open abundance will flow to you effortlessly and easily.

By Deepak Chopra, M.D., FACP and Menas Kafatos, Ph.D., Fletcher Jones Endowed Professor in Computational Physics, Chapman University

The “God particle” seems to be well and truly with us. The award on October 3 of the Nobel Prize in physics that focused on the Higgs boson – the technical term for the God particle – capped a decades-long search that has cost billions of dollars. In the first post we discussed why the discovery of the elusive, fleeting Higgs boson is two-edged. It represents a triumph in human curiosity and our drive to understand the universe. At the same time, however, a huge stumbling block hasn’t been overcome. In fact, the Higgs boson may indicate that creation (whether God exists or not) is becoming ever more mysterious.

The mammoth collider at CERN Switzerland blasted the Higgs boson out of the invisible quantum field so that it could be observed, at the faintest level of measurement and then only for precious milliseconds. But this was enough to disclose the finest level of the subatomic realm so far known to be real. The problem with getting this close to the source of creation is that space, time, gravity, matter, and energy have become more and more ambiguous, as if the quantum revolution hadn't already done enough in that department. With the probability that so-called "dark" matter and energy may account for 96% of the universe – along with another probability, that "dark" stuff doesn't obey the same laws as visible mater and energy – the picture of creation is undergoing radical revision.

Stephen Hawking added to the ambiguity, in his last book, The Grand Design, by siding with those who have basically given up on a Theory of Everything and are settling for a piecemeal patchwork or mosaic of theories, each pertaining to distinct regions of creation while never being synthesized into one grand design. If God exists, the deity must be smiling. For behind the high fives and hoopla over the Higgs boson, there's a growing doubt that we are anywhere near to understanding the nature of reality. These doubts arise from two major sources.

First, there’s broad agreement that science doesn't comprehensively describe reality to begin with. Over a century ago the pioneers of quantum theory dismantled the common-sense notion that the world "out there" consists of hard, solid, tangible things. As one of the greatest of these pioneers, Werner Heisenberg, noted, “The atoms or elementary particles themselves are not real; they form a world of potentialities or possibilities rather than one of things or facts.” No one has ever refuted this claim, and when you add into the mixture the Uncertainty Principle, which says that quantum objects can be located only by the probability that they will appear at a certain place (only after it is observed does a particle actually settle into a measurable position), the solid, tangible world is radically undermined.

The result is one of the greatest unsolved mysteries in science: How does the shadowy, invisible quantum domain transition into the familiar, reassuring world we perceive through the five senses? Something almost inconceivable is taking place, and to parallel this mystery, there is a second one. How did atoms and molecules give rise (if they did) to the thinking brain? The glucose that feeds your brain isn't very different from the sucrose in a sugar cube, but a sugar cube can't read this sentence, while your brain can. The starting point for solving these two mysteries was neatly summarized by the illustrious British neurologist Sir John Eccles: "I want you to realize that there exists no color in the natural world, and no sound – nothing of this kind; no textures, no patterns, no beauty, no scent."

Until very recently the two mysteries we've described (leaving out others that are more technical, such as the debate over Einstein’s cosmological constant) were essentially shrugged off by working physicists, who are content to accept the ordinary, common-sense world when they drive their cars, and who delve into the quantum domain as if it were a separate reality, which it isn't.

The second reason that physics might be very far from understanding creation can be traced to the failure, now decades old, to mesh the two greatest achievements of twentieth-century physics – Einstein's General Theory of Relativity and Quantum Mechanics. It's highly embarrassing that two such spectacular intellectual discoveries don't agree with each other. We won't go into the technical reasons for the disagreement. It's enough to say that trying to make them mesh has led theorists to the very brink of creation, to the boundary in spacetime where space and time emerge from a pre-created state. (One reason for celebrating the Higgs boson is that it represents a minuscule but vital step toward the pre-created state).

So the popular sentiment that we are near the big answers to big questions is hardly shared by many theoretical physicists who know more about their own theories. There is certainly a camp that believes the only way forward is to build more powerful particle accelerators to probe finer and finer fabrics of Nature, while another camp sees a way forward beyond the Standard Model and supersymmetry, through string theory, which offers a possible mathematical mode for the pre-created state (mathematics becomes the only guide left, since imagining the quantum vacuum, which precedes time and space, is mentally impossible).

Speaking for ourselves, we side with a small but farseeing group who turn for answers to consciousness, working from an unassailable fact: Reality, as far as humans are concerned, consists of the things we experience. Even the most arcane activity of physicists – and the Higgs boson is extremely arcane – are experiences; so is mathematics – if the laws of mathematics exist outside our experience, we will never know that or be able to prove it. For decades consciousness has been dismissed by "real" scientists as simply a given. But Max Planck, the founder of quantum physics, was as real a scientist as you can get, and he said this: "I regard consciousness as fundamental. We cannot get behind consciousness. "

This belief that mind is inescapable, that so-called "objective" science must one day come to grips with subjectivity, was shared by any number of quantum pioneers but got put on the shelf while the thrust of physics remained physical. The vast majority of physicists continue to work and think as if mind shouldn't be part of their equations. As long as such a belief persists, despite its self-contradiction (can the mind really ignore the mind?) there will be more elementary particles for expensive machines to blast out of the vacuum state. At the same time, God will rest comfortably that creation's greatest mysteries haven't been revealed. At some point, perhaps in the near future, science will finally accept, and awards will soon follow, that the mind cannot be left out of the picture that the mind studies.

Deepak Chopra, MD is the author of more than 70 books with twenty-one New York Times bestsellers. Coming soon What Are You Hungry For? (Harmony, November 12, 2013)

Menas Kafatos, Ph.D., Fletcher Jones Endowed Professor in Computational Physics, Chapman University, co-author with Deepak Chopra of the forthcoming book, Who Made God and Other Cosmic Riddles. (Harmony)

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  1. Vidyardhi nanduri

    Sub: Identify Science misleads-pseudonym SCIENTIST’S VIEW : From laboratory, we proceed with data for specific analysis and reasoning. We reach up to the Sun or even beyond and we have a lot of Specific knowledge in wide fields. However, a times, we realize the limitations in reasoning but we proceed to add further knowledge. Beyond Sun and Galaxy, we realize that the knowledge expands in dimensions. However, again we are not equipped in our comprehension. But have a look a the Universe : it is infinite and beyond. Again let us see if we can conceptualize a finite Model : knowledge needs to expand with defined steps. Scientists wish to turn a blind eye towards Philosophy. PHILOSOPHER’S VIEW : From incomplete comprehension of knowledge, a man wants to transcend to a level of full comprehension only to realize the experience of incompleteness. How can you be the judge for laws of the Universe, while you do not have a comprehension of the Earth, Planes, Moon and the Sun and the Soul? We can realize and experience our incompleteness through a part or minute part of the Cosmic Bliss of the Universe with God as creator of the entire Universe and the system of existence. Knowledge flow from Divine and how can we comprehend the steps from bottom? Philosophers wish to turn a blind eye towards Scientists. WHAT IS COSMOLOGY? A borderland between Science and Philosophy. Both Scientists and Philosophers could be ignorant with he exception of a few Nobel Souls. Both of these groups do not wish to enter in to the other side of the fence. How to break the barrier? If we need to strive for completeness : i.e., total comprehension with divine understanding of Science in Philosophy as well as the Philosophy of Science with direction, then the aim is clear : Scientific aspects in relation to the Universe (2) Many other aspects incidental for the growth of Science and knowledge and (3) the gaps that may crop up – future generations to digest, analyses and progress for the welfare of Humanity. Alfven: Cosmolgy as Science should work towards clarifying conditions in ever increasing regions of Space and Time. but a discussion of pausible ultimate cause belongs to philosophy or religion.More than 3 Millenium have passed since the vedic period.[Alfven, cosmic plasma 1981 Cosmology -myth or Science IEEE pS-Dec 1992 p.590 ] read more in vidyardhicosmology [dot]blogspot [dot]in/2011/10/light-flow-interaction-plasma-vision [dot]html CONCENTRATION-MEDITATION-DEDICATION -KEYS FOR PROGRESS-INDEX JNANAM SPACE COSMOLOGY VEDAS INTERLINKS- Knowledge Base Cosmological Index

  2. George Cheyne

    They are ill discoverers that think there is no land, when they can see nothing but sea. Francis Bacon Our reality, spacetime, is at least 4 dimensional. This we were told by Minkowski, Einstein, Maxwell, and others more than a hundred years ago. Our universe, and everything in it, is at least four dimensional, including our bodies and their brains. Our brains are designed to perceive the three space dimensions, but do not integrate them with the time dimension, so we measure time separately, as a linear “arrow of time”, or duration of existence. The logic of mathematics can give us information about four dimensional objects in simple algebraic equations, and they can be translated into geometrical graphics. Relativistic physics shows us that the faster we travel, the slower time seems to move. At the speed of light, time stops. Without time there is no movement; without movement, there is no space. We try to visualize the continuum of space-time, but we can only conceive images which are spatial, not temporal. Science says that matter cannot reach the speed of light, that as it approaches that velocity, time “contracts”, and at the speed of light, time does not exist. Why is this so hard for us to grasp? Because we cannot conceive of spacetime, we project four dimensional events onto the three-dimensional screen in our minds, eliminating the time dimension. Plato told of people living in a cave who tried to interpret outside reality from the two-dimensional shadows of the outside world projected on their wall. We are in a similar situation. Our instruments and computers must translate data from the 4 dimensional world into three dimensional logic so we can understand the information, but we can not understand the world as it is, in its four or more dimensions. The conception of the world presented by Newton is a three dimensional world existing and moving in time, and it works well in our lives because it is consistent with the way our brains conceive our reality. When we interpret experimental data and translate our math logic into verbal, we are still projecting the four dimensional events onto our three dimensional mental screens. We cannot conceive of an electron, or photon, or any fast moving “particle”, as it really is. So we talk about the properties we have abstracted from "what is". We can determine where the particle is in space, but in doing so, we eliminate its time dimension. When we measure its speed, it does not exist in 3D space, so we cannot determine its location. Quantum physics shows us that at a very small scale, events become indeterminate and probabilistic. And, that a particle split in two and separated by space still behaves as if the two parts were connected. Science calls this the “quantum nonlocality” principle, discovered by Einstein, Podolsky, and Rosen, in 1935. It has been verified many times, and states that objects in quantum scale may seem to be separate, but somehow they are connected in a way we cannot see. Does this sound similar to the phenomenon of gravity? Suppose there is a pond, with a two-dimensional surface on which tiny creatures live. They can go in any direction on the plane of the surface, but not up or down. Their mentality is two dimensional. They encounter two impenetrable circular areas some distance apart. One of the areas moves, and then the other. The two areas move across the pond, one after the other, staying about the same distance apart. The more curious of the creatures thinks the two areas are connected, but can not see any way they can be. If the creatures could suddenly perceive three dimensionally, they could see that there is a huge bird wading in their pond. We are creatures made up of quantum parts; quarks, electrons, photons, atoms and molecules. Our physical bodies are connected with all the quantum particles in the universe. If we could perceive four dimensionally, we could understand this. The more we can accept this idea of connectedness, the less loneliness, insecurity, and fear we will experience, and the better we will relate to others, and to our world which we once believed to be inert matter. We are one, after all, you and I, together we suffer, together exist, and forever will recreate each other. Teilhard de Chardin What our limited understanding, based on what we have learned from science, is suggesting (at least to me) is that the space-time universe in which we live, if we could perceive it four-dimensionally, is essentially spaceless and timeless. To a photon, or electron, which we see moving at the speed of light, there is no time; and without time, there is no motion, and without motion, there is no space. There is no matter, or things. At lightspeed, energy is totally potential. Every event that occurred in the past still exists, timelessly, or eternally (outside of time), as information about past events. And all possibilities for the future also exist as unrealized probabilities, relative to where we are in the continuum. The important fact to realize is that the world we experience has already disappeared into the past by the time we experience it. For us humans, as we race through the multidimensional matrix, there is no present moment. Our world, as the ancients said, is an illusion. A very persistent illusion, as Einstein said. We hear a lot about “being in the present moment; that`s all there is”. While being conscious of one`s self as a person, there is no “present moment”. Only when one forgets one`s self, observing without thinking, does the experience become timeless. The phenomena of our reality continues to pass by, but awareness is (as always) in the timeless state. It seems to us that time is flowing, that future probabilities become realized in the “present moment”, and then disappear into the past, which we cannot perceive. Like a passenger on a smoothly moving train that gets the impression that the station is moving by, we, consciousness, may be moving through the spaceless-timeless continuum at the speed of light, causing probabilities to become realized events, phenomena, then leaving them behind. However, we are not moving in a linear direction, but in all spacial directions, as light seems to do in our experience. That is four dimensional movement. Einstein`s Special Theory of Relativity tells us that there is no difference in what we experience if we are moving through the space-time continuum, or if the continuum is moving past us. The motion, and phenomena experienced, are relative. Now, what is the world like, in itself- not as we see it? Without light or sound. Sounds weird! Consider- light and sound are experiences for us. What is “out there” is a very complicated mix of electromagnetic vibrations and powerful “force-fields”. A very small part of the spectrum of vibrations is visible to us as colored light. Other parts of the spectrum we use are infra red, ultra violet, microwaves, radio and tv transmissions, etc. Light, as we experience it, is produced by our sensory system, brain, and imagination. Without us or other sophisticated sensory systems, without imagination to create an experience of it to consciousness, there would only be darkness. And, we experience sound when vibrations in the atmosphere affect the nerve endings in our ears, and the information is passed to the brain for identification and processing. Then imagination presents us, awareness, with the experience of sound. Without the sensory processing, imagination, and consciousness, there would be no experience of sound. The vibrations would be there, but only silence. The “big bang” beginning imagined by the astro-physicists would have been silent, and totally dark, without a complex perception system and consciousness to experience it. We look at the starry night sky, and see lights; but without living forms to experience the phenomena, it is totally dark. The sub atomic particles (quarks) which make up the atoms do not really exist, until consciousness or a scientist`s experiment chooses them. So say the physicists. So the world we experience is a phenomena; an illusion caused by our physical makeup and the magic of imagination and consciousness. Was there a beginning to our universe? A “big Bang”? Maybe yes, and maybe no. Let`s look at it from “out of the box”. Way out!. Suppose there are infinite (not finite) possibilities for material forms to exist (as phenomena). Time, movement, and space, does not exist. Then we, awareness, begin to move through the matrix of possibilities, in all space dimensions simultaneously, as light seems to do in our observation. We are moving at the speed of light. Our movement creates the phenomena of matter and forms, which seem to be moving in space and time, as we experience them. In the timeless, spaceless continuum of possibilities, there are an infinite number of paths to take. The future is not determined. We have free will. When consciousness begins to move, infinite potential energy resists movement, and enormous forces result. In the beginning of creation, the movement of consciousness, possibilities for all forms of matter exist, even your body, and mine. If they weren`t possible, we would not have them. But the probabilities for complex material forms are extremely small at the beginning. The most probable forms are the tiny energetic particles (quarks) that later assemble into atoms. As the early vibration patterns interact, the great forces of the beginning bind them in space-time bubbles of highly kinetic energy. The first atoms contain what we see as four primal forces; the strong and weak nuclear forces, gravity, and the electromagnetic force. As awareness, now consciousness, moves through the continuum of possibilities, probabilities increase for more complex forms, and molecules develop. Of course, these forms are only apparent to moving consciousness. An analogy might be the way a motion picture can be recorded on a disk, and then recreated. For instance, the movie “Gone with the Wind”. The disk we have has only little bumps on a spiral track imbedded in its plastic. A laser light beam moves along the track and variations in the reflected light are transformed by our player`s computer, and light images that seem to us to be moving are projected onto our screen. Actually, the disk is moving and the laser is stationary, but the effect is the same. The whole drama is on that disk in the form of information. We may be watching Scarlet O`Hara walking under the Spanish moss, but the past and future of her life exists at the same time on different parts of the disk. The laser light moves along, illuminating the “present”, as the future quickly becomes the past. Everything in Scarlet`s world is connected by the track on the disk, but while we watch the action unfold, we are not aware of the connections. The difference between Scarlet`s world and ours is that there is only one track ahead in her future. She has no free will, but must play out the drama as it was written. Has the speed of light been changing, as it seems to travel through the continuum of possibilities? (Or, has our velocity through the continuum been changing?) Scientists have been measuring its apparent velocity for a little over three hundred years, more precisely for one hundred years. Physics states that it has always been the same as it is now, everywhere in the universe. Physics has decreed that lightspeed is constant, and the whole edifice of relativity physics has been built on this assumption. Their mathematical model would require drastic changes if E did not equal MC squared, in all “frames of reference” (C being the constant speed of light). Yet recently, some scientists have questioned the constancy of time, and revealed that each measurement taken has shown it to be a tiny bit slower. Perhaps it has been slowing, not enough for us to see much difference yet, but over a million years, it could have slowed significantly. And in a billion years, a lot. If light, or consciousness, were going faster early on, then the whole history of the universe, as seen by today`s astro physicists, could be quite different. If the light from galaxies far from us in time and distance started toward us at a much higher velocity, then those galaxies would be closer to ours than we think, and the idea of an accelerating expansion of our cosmos would be in question. There would be no need to invent “dark matter” and “dark Energy” to explain the apparent phenomena. And, the universe would be much younger than science thinks it is.

  3. George Cheyne

    A voyage of discovery I decide to embark on a voyage of discovery. Not as Darwin on the HMS Beagle, or as Einstein on a beam of light, but this time on an accelerating proton, a bit of matter. My plan is to ride a proton to nearly the speed of light, then jump onto a photon, which is at the speed of light. I cannot take my body along, of course, but must do this as an OOBE, an out-of-body-experience. My brain will continue to function back home, and I will stay connected with it through Higgs field vibrations. I leave my body and quickly locate the new particle accelerator at CERN, Switzerland. A group of protons have been injected into the circular accelerator, and I catch up with one and connect with it. Of course, it is not a solid, material “thing”, but rather a highly complex self-sustaining system of vibrations and forces. My proton approaches the speed of light, and I want to get off before it collides with another. I see a photon and jump to it. Amazingly, everything disappears, including motion. Time, the duration between events, is no longer. Space no longer exists. At least in my frame of reference. My brain is in another frame of reference, in space-time, and still thinks. I am aware of timelessness, no-thing. This is the state before the creation of space-time. Not a good description, but our language (and thinking) cannot handle this state well. “I” no longer exist in this state, nor consciousness as I know it. There is nothing to be conscious of. All the kinetic energy of our spacetime universe is now potential energy. Awareness is only aware of itself. There are no thoughts, no desires, no anxieties. Only bliss, which is a steady state. I am, but not as an individual. It is my nature to desire experiences. To have “things” to be conscious of. Curiosity. Without thinking about it, or making a decision, I begin to create movement. The timeless, spaceless state is ultimate inertia. To start movement, which creates time and space, an enormous amount of power is required, but I have that power. The power of Imagination. As movement begins, the tremendous stresses and strains as potential energy becomes kinetic, create extremely energetic vibrations of the highest frequency and ultra short wave length. These vibrations, creating extreme heat, interact with each other, reinforcing and canceling, making harmonic patterns and overtones. These patterns exist for only the briefest of durations, yet some combine with others to form units with longer lifetimes as the temperature decreases.. The immense power in these vibrations create tiny space-time dimensions, in which the patterns are maintained. Potential energy has been converted into the strong and weak force, electromagnetic force, and gravity. And, awareness now has activity to be conscious of. I am aware of the little universe as it rapidly expands and the “particles” of harmonic vibrations exchange energy and combine into more stable patterns. As temperature and pressure of the expanding spacetime universe decreases, the velocity some of the particles slows. I am consciousness of the interchange of information between particles, and begin to choose between probable patterns, so that they begin to combine into the atomic particles; electrons, protons, and neutrons. Matter, in the form of hydrogen atoms, packed with the huge forces of creation, comes into being. The vibration of electrons within the atoms creates electromagnetic fields and sends out pulses of photons which travel through the force fields of the expanding universe and interact with forms of matter as frequencies of “light”. There are only three “building blocks” that form all the atoms; protons, neutrons, and electrons. Yet the way they are assembled create a hundred or so different kinds of atoms. Some are gasses, some liquids, some solids, at the temperatures found on earth. And the many combinations of atoms create a myriad of molecules, with many different qualities. Over vast durations of time, the forces within and beyond the atoms form galaxies of stars that synthesize more complex atoms in their intense temperatures and pressures. As the more primitive particles combine creating new qualities, awareness correspondingly leaps to higher levels of consciousness. Carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen atoms combine into a great variety of “organic” molecules, and atomic “valence”, the forces that guide the combining, become a primitive form of intelligence, which forms the molecules into self replicating patterns. My emerging intelligence desires higher levels of organization, and molecules form into units that begin to take in “nutriments”, grow in size, and divide. Living cells now begin to take over the inert inorganic worlds. Cells become more and more complex, and evolve into creatures, which evolve into more complex creatures, defying the process of deterioration called “entropy”. Eventually, a human creature evolves on a small wet planet, and one of them is born who does not remember where he came from, and must try to imagine what it is like to ride on a proton in an accelerator.

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