Plato's forms — Jack Cummins

Omar Khayyam, through Edward FitzGerald great transmogrification from the Arabic, has it:

For in and out, above, about, below,
‘Tis nothing but a Magic Shadow-show,
Play’d in a Box whose Candle is the Sun,
Round which we Phantom Figures come and go.



To which I added, in my 'Extended Rubaiyat':

We are phenomena’s projected face,
Well-painted from noumena’s unseen base;
It’s as a lamp lights up a paper shade,
We figures revolving around in space.

Our being blocks the view of the Ultimate,
Nor to gaze at it can we our selves acquit.
E'en the wise can’t step beyond their nature—
All mothers’ sons stand helpless before it.

We are magic lanterns shining here; 
Our spirits are the lights in there.
From what bright star came the gleam in your eyes? 
From what distant sun came your smile, light-wise?

Come, light your lantern and mine with good cheer;
We’re magic lamps; our spirits dance in here.
Our beginnings and ends are of nowhere,
So, let’s radiate, since for now we’re here!

Our minds and senses interpret and dispense
The base reality into the colors and sensations
Of the phenomenal world from the noumenal;
We may become either rainbows or ugly stains!

Mind, like Shelley’s prism of many-colored glass,
Strains the white radiance of Eternity
Into our being—until death tramples us—
And then back we must go—to stardust.

the only reason for it all that does not beg the question with an infinite regress is that there isn't any reason for it all — 180 Proof

(The Hubble Deep Field—click)

Rhyme Without Reason
In No Space and No Time

Fields form and exhaust reality;
They are continuous; there is no Space!
Reality maintains itself in place—
It’s the net of objects interacting.

Copernicus’ revolution is complete;
An external entity isn’t required
To hold the universe. God’s not needed,
Nor a background of Space and Time.

There isn’t a ‘now’ all over the place.
The relational nature of GR
Extends to Time as well—the ‘flow’ of time
Is not an ultimate aspect of reality.

All’s Relational: no entity
Exists independently of anything;
There are no intrinsic properties,
Just ‘properties’ in relation to what’s else.

All interactions and events are
Quantum entangled with everything;
Impermanence goes all the way through—
What Nagarjuna means by Emptiness.

The fields are not from anything: causeless!
Or ‘not from anything’ is of lawless
‘Nothing’, which can’t form to remain.
There’s no reason, then, to the ‘mystery’.

This realization of Impermanence,
No Absolutes, and Emptiness
Is Nirvana.

more of the essence of the mysterious side of life — Jack Cummins

Up next on stage,

‘Calm Beauty’ by Michel Montecrossa

(Sung from these Omar Khayyam Rubaiyat quatrains,
with some slight changes)

When You and I behind the Veil are past,
Oh, but the long, long while the World shall last,
Which of our Coming and Departure heeds
As much as Ocean of a pebble-cast.
(insignificance)

One Moment in Annihilation’s Waste,
One moment, of the Well of Life to taste—
The Stars are setting, and the Caravan
Draws to the dawn of Nothing—Oh, make haste!
(live!)

Would you that spangle of Existence spend
About The Secret—quick about it, Friend!
A Hair perhaps divides the False from True—
And upon what, prithee, may life depend?

A Hair perhaps divides the False and True;
Yes; and a single Alif were the clue—
Could you but find it—to the Treasure-house,
And peradventure to The Master too;

(the shape of the ‘alif’ arabic letter looks like a hair, plus it represents the Beginning or Allah)

Whose secret Presence through Creation’s veins
Running Quicksilver-like eludes your pains;
Taking all shapes from Máh to Máhi and
They change and perish all—but He remains;
(Echoes of Parmenides)

And fear not lest Existence closing your
Account, and mine, should know the like no more;
The Eternal Saki from that Bowl has pour’d
Millions of Bubbles like us, and will pour.
(cyclic universe or multiverse)

listening to some obscure band, while contemplating the mystery of existence. — Jack Cummins

And lo, a masterpiece is performed at the music concert, surprising Jack and all:

music festivals — Jack Cummins

Plus even too hot in some places to go out…

Nevertheless, the Earth and the moon will be joining us and the planets at the music festival and singing and telling everyone about their worldly love as actually kind of twin planets…

Then Parmenides will make an appearance, he the great one who shocked the Philosophic World way, way back with his One of Necessity. (in case you want to look him up.)

RIP Weinberg.

Hubris to the max:

SAPIENS SUPREME

From what beastly heart sprung our zest?
Through what searching eye became our sight?
What sounds in the bushes let us hear?
What dark past haunts but helps us be?

Across what ink black rivers did we have to swim?
To what ends at length did we search for food?
In what deep entangled forest were we bred?
Of what stars did we shine in their stead?

Oh Man! What a piece of work—the mind;
What noble deeds done and undone in kind.
What Rube Goldberg inventions heaped upon—
In the layers of brains the mind is made upon.

What is this sapiens mammal animal,
But of some slime and of brutish law!
So, let’s ‘neglect’ this state of affairing,
On the grounds that it is unappealing.

So then…

We are spun of the Eternal Golden Braid,
Those windings of Truth, Love, and Beauty made
From the Goodness of Purity Immortal—
The Theory of Everything’s singular portal.

What is Man but the special chosen species
For which all the plants grow and the waters reach,
For which the Earth turns ‘round, and orbits
A sunny furnace, spreading Love’s energy,
Enabling us to thrive above any and all creation.

What is Man but the only bloom for which all
The 13.7 billions years of evolution and love
Have occurred, in a predetermined swirling yeast,
To form and flower such a vainglorious beast.

It’s ever on forever’s edge that we meet our destiny,
That in our temporary parentheses of Eternity
We would flourish for just this moment, bidden,
As the blossoms of Perfection’s Flower Garden.

A hundred trillion stars and countless shores
Were built to light our universal nights explored;
Forty million other lower species too, the All-Might
Placed about our world, merely for our delight.

Our names are Writ Large on the Heaven’s marquee,
In the supernovae stardust showered from Thee.
From Nothing You came not, but of a naught
Our own universe was made and ever wrought.

A starring role we play in this reality show,
Every atom spinning fine just for us to know,
Our ancestors rising/falling for us to stand upon,
Oh man! They lived and died for our lone promise!

Every shaft of light shines with us in mind;
Thus it beams forth our beginning and our end—
In and of God’s hidden and Heavenly Shrine.
Oh life! We cherish being, that of Yours and mine.

We do so much deserve reward beyond this role—
And so it is that one’s immortal spirit-soul,
That angelic vapour that drives a living being,
Will go forth to glory on, beyond the scene.

We are not merely some mammally organic ‘luck’,
But purposely evolved on this planet, near a star,
In that intended long and winding mindless ‘birth’
Of slowly drifting time, dust, and selection by death
That ever sifted the best from the rest: Sapiens!

Interesting — Jack Cummins

Memory’s ideas recall the last heard tone,
Sensation savors what is presently known,
Imagination anticipates coming sounds;
The delight is such that none could produce alone.

Time for a Summer Party with a concert in the park starring the Spheres…

THE MUSIC OF THE SPHERES—MOONLIGHT SONATA

The music of the night was in the breeze,
A prelude borne by the airy musicians
Of the trees: the evening calls of the birds
That opened for the cosmic symphony.

The Music of the Spheres played in the park
That night—flung down by our Father, the Sky,
Through the soft night, to our Mother, the Earth,
Then to us, their audience and progeny.

The planets joined in a concert to the
Merrie Monthe of Maie, arrayed as follows:
There was Venusia, the Bringer of Peace,
Singing side by side with warring Marsius.

Flitting about was the wingéd Mercuria,
The speedy messenger who conducted
The orchestra, melting all of us who
Were touched by her wand of burning desire.

And mighty Zeus, was there, full to the brim
With the jollity of the fat man’s belly.
By Jove, came Saturnus, so very gray
With age, lumbering into the party.

Thence sat Urania—the magician, and
The old sea captain—King Nep, the mystic,
But not Pluto; he was downsized, no more
One of the harmonics—an underworld!

Jupiter’s music was round and robust,
While Saturn’s boomed with sounds of grandeur
And the old venerable melodies;
But Mercury soon picked up the pace.

Next flowed the serene love songs of Venus,
Followed inexorably by Martial marches.
Now was the time for Urania’s magic—
She played musical jokes and surprises.

At last, their music came to mesh as one,
And our wanderers of the night floated
Away on the haunting, mystical strains
Of King Nep’s tune, into the May Flower moon.

Now we’re touched, so touched by the night's lights,
Afraid that we’ll ne’er be the same again.
Can you sense the euphony of the spheres?
Can you fathom the theory of everything?

PDF: https://austintorn.files.wordpress.com/2021/07/moonlight-sonata-8.5x11-jpg-300-dpi.pdf

But let's pause for a while and ask ourselves: Aren't we even near to the answer or at least getting closer to it? How long more should we wait before realizing that we are chasing phantoms?

Therefore: Shouldn't we at some point accept the fact and admit that we cannot solve the mystery, give up, and move on, creating other useful and fruitful questions? — Alkis Piskas

Myself when young did eagerly frequent
Doctor and Saint, and heard great Argument
About it and about: but evermore
Came out by the same Door as in I went.

— Omar Khayyam

Clue to something: normal matter makes up less than 5% of the universe.

SHADES OF THE OTHERWORLD?

Could there be more to this world—
Those of the undrawn shades unfurled?
Is there a universe alongside this bright zone,
A parallel, twilight world overlapping our own?

Are there shadow beings all about us,
That we can only perceive as blankness?

They’d be made of but the dark matter,
Yet lively with their own kind of chatter,
These shades flowing right on through us—
We the lighted plus to their dark minus.

These pale shadows of our attendants,
Are not as us of light’s extent,
But are as black clouds of a coal sack;
Nay, they’re not even dark or black,
But are of an invisible bivouac.

Dark matter and its shadows traverse
The bulk of our missing-mass universe.
The shades of evening draw us on—
We must look to the past, upon the first eon.

Two distinct families of matter
Were created in the Big Freeze batter,
Just those two that did then so accrue
When they were frozen out of the primordial stew
As the fetal universe was cooling,
When the heartiest gruel was stewing.

The normal universe and the shadow universe
Can interpenetrate, neither averse
(Or even “adverse” to rhyme the verse)
Nor to coerce; they just cannot interact,
As they have no contract.

If the shadow universe was richly sown
It could have evolved along with our own.

Shadow planets could form
Around shadow stars as norms
And become populated with swarms
Of those shadow beings lukewarm.

They would be invisible specters, unseen phantoms,
Unobserved presences, indiscernible apparitions,
Imperceptible wraiths, unnoticed spirits, magic places,
Inconspicuous spooks, and hidden traces…

But first we must ask what makes a universe,
Such as ours, the one in which we immerse.

It is the forces that count for everything,
Matter being but a secondary singing,
For atoms exert forces through space,
Especially of the electromagnetic race;

So then, it is forces that disburse
The currency of a rich universe.

This is why we don’t fall through a chair—
That mostly empty space of thin air
When we decide to sit down there.

Space is a kind of a large-scale limitation
Of an underlying discrete network of connections.

Atoms would not even know at all
That their companions existed, with no call,
Without the push or pull of the forces’ thrall,
For then they themselves would be as pall
As some ghosts passing through a wall.

The four forces hold our world together
In its diversity of shape, structure, form, and color.

Some forms of our matter don’t feel
All of the four forces as real:
Neutrons have no electric charge
And so they don’t care, Marge,
About that e/m force at large.

Suppose some form of matter didn’t feel
Any of the four forces that became real?

Dark Matter doesn’t appear to discourse,
Not having the resource of its own special forces
To bind it together; no packhorses.

All it can feel is the force of gravity,
And perhaps the weak force’s changeability—
Which is for decay and not stability;
In fact, both forces are weak, a pravity.

You cannot hold a person-size lump
Of matter together with just gravity’s slump;
So then, no interesting lumps can form
In the dark universe, not even unicorns.

Even making a star or a planet
Is difficult with just gravity alone working on it,
For the electromagnetic force is crucial
To slowing any of the material
Down enough to hold it in one place;
So then, there can be no shadow race…

…No veiled hints, obscured suggestions,
Unknown impressions, out of sight suspicions,
Nor any supposed tinges, shimmering glimmers,
Resembling semblances, or ghostly whispers.

What has no light is but a dark shade,
With no creatures therein made.
So dark matter is not a source for being,
Although it’s a large matter to us unseeing.

And yet is it we who are the outsiders,
Our luminous bubbles of foam the riders,
The stars, planets, and us the striders—
On the vast ocean of dark matters much wider.

We humans as from the matter that’s bright
Seem to be an afterword of the Cosmic scheme:
Not dark mats, we glow-surf on waves of light,
A tiny minority in the grand regime.

We were an afterthought, with no forethought,
Although perhaps made possible, nonetheless,
By the dark matter—since it was oblivious
To much of the great primeval blast,
It forming filaments that could last,

Attracting our regular matter
That was everywhere splattered,
Into the pearls of the galaxies
Strung along like cosmic necklaces.

Far from being the Magnificat,
We are more insignificant
Than we ever imagined,
For whatever is our measly count,
Compared to dark matter and dark energy,
We’re quite the rarity.

PDF: https://austintorn.files.wordpress.com/2021/07/dm-8.5x11-jpg-300-dpi.pdf

And Man is — Daniel

NON-CENTRIC

The holist brain side can entertain
Ungrounded notions
That are unfettered by detail,
But then, eventually,
Come the details that
Ever haunt the notion.

And this is even after the mistake
Of being human-centric,
The stance that man
Is the measure of all things.

It is neither meek nor humble
To suppose that humans
Are special and/or deserve
Reward in an afterlife.

The time of our universe happening
Is not of any special moment;
Therefore, any universes could be,
Any time or even at the same time.

Ours is not even the center of all.
There is no Earth-centric, human-centric,
Time-centric, or even universe-centric,
Which outlook is humble.

It is pride that wants one
To be King or Queen of reality.

the same basic laws that govern every object govern Man — Daniel

Man is just as organic as everything else in nature.

THE FOREVER FIELDS OF REALITY
AND THE END OF ‘ZERO'

Michael Faraday introduced
One of the most radical ideas in science.

They thought that he had,
For once, gone too far.

Particles were secondary excitations,
Being mere spigots in which the fields lumped.
The real stuff of reality was the forces flowing,
The particles being only the source.

The burden of reality had shifted,
For the space between particles became primary.
Particles were only the intersection
Of field forces that wove the universe.

Forces create stresses in space,
A superhighway of how to get from here to there.

An electron wiggles in the sun,
Tweaking the E/M field;
The ripples travel for 8 minutes
Then tickle an electron in your eye.

You see the light; light is a tweak.

Physics has never been the same since.
The field concept became real,
The idea being the same as the thing,
Fudging forever the difference
Between something and nothing;

Yet fields are made of something real,
For they have energy.

Einstein called the fields that be
“A change in the concept of reality…
The most profound and fruitful one
That has come to physics since Newton.”

Matter then is simply a place where
Some of the field happens to be concentrated.
Matter travels like a wave in a rope,
But the rope itself does not travel.

The field is not so much
Something in space,
But more as being space.

This is why all particles of a type are identical;
For they are each manifestations
Of their fields everywhere the same.

A field takes on a life of its own,
Even when the event that created it is gone.
The traveling kinks continue;
They propagate endlessly.

Where the vacuum is free of matter
It is not free of field, but filled with it.

Energy and mass are the same stuff,
But it takes a whole lot
Of energy to make mass.

Field is thus the bridge
Between matter and empty space.

Fields can’t go away,
As they’re part of the
Structure of the vacuum;
When in their quietest possible state
They are the vacuum.

This is about as close to nothing
As anything ever gets.

Forces act on things,
While matter is acted upon;
You can walk through a field,
But you cannot walk through a wall.

Kinks in fields can pile atop one another;
Kinks in matter hold each other at arm’s length.
Yet somehow, beneath it all they are kindred spirits.

Faraday made fields real;
Quantum Mechanics made them basic—
And lumpy—the currency of QM.

Everything melts via uncertainty,
As when we try to measure a quantum property.

But this too means that no quantum property
Can ever be zero, for zero is a precise amount,
That is, it is that motion can never cease.

Try to pin down an electron,
Such as putting it in a box,
And it increasingly moves about, ever faster.

Is it heads or tails while it is still spinning?
Well it is just a fuzzy ‘both’ yet neither.

In a way, QM eliminated
The very idea of zero
From the physical world,
As ‘nothing’ never sleeps,
But is ever up to something.

The History of All History

Ruby looks up, as if through the ceiling and up to the stars, remarking, “I’ve come such a long way to be here, with you, but our possibility was there in the beginning, although it was spread out all over.

“The Planck era at 1E-43 seconds was the first hint of us, as a cyclical compactfication or a vacuum fluctuation eruption in an indefinite realm that’s as close to Nothing as can be, but it can’t be a Nothing as such, since that would be a definite, whereas the vacuum as the basic quantum something must be fuzzy, uncaused, and undirected, matching that which we often note in the quantum realm. Apparently, motion can’t cease, for energy cannot be destroyed.”

“Ruby, I’ll knock Stillness off of the list of what can be, as being a kind of a cousin of ‘Nothing’, which we’ve already banished, along with ultimate Beginnings and Ends, plus Infinity, because it can’t be capped and so it cannot be had all at once or ever, since one can always add to it; it never completes, and that is more toward its meaning, not a meaning that it is a number or an amount. I’ll add ‘random’ as probably requiring a fundamental level or the quantum level, and as dubious otherwise, as it’s mostly evened out at the macroscopic level.”

“So, Austin, to learn the Secrets of what IS and ever WAS, we must brave the crypt and ghost of cause, as the causeless. The so-called quantum foam seems to be ever and always, remaining even now, and it still has pairs of virtual particles quick appearing and then annihilating and disappearing, as a kind of ‘noise’, during which events time still passes without any useful change overall, as the noise may not often produce something that lasts a bit or more.”

“Indeed, I answer, “The virtuals are ‘somethings’, or ‘sum-things’, as one might call them as of possibility or potential, but have not yet as a true, meaningful existence until they become part of an information process and thus are able persist in their effects and go forward somewhat or greatly. This state has always been, and must be, so jot: that this All is ever here to be, since nothing cannot. We philosophers love to fathom the cryptic, where perhaps only the shade of substance slept with arithmetic, although the descriptions in physics are very amenable to math.

“There is a basic lightness of elemental being because anything more would have to be of parts, and thus beyond the fundamental arts. Bits of information need to be separated to operate, maybe, perhaps manifesting by ‘creating’ a Planck sized piece of space. Maybe we experience their separation as space. The bits can have relative relationships, which is a must, there being nothing outside or before the All, such as absolute rulers or clocks. Time evolves as relations form, all of them having to be relative. Mass, energy, and information have been shown to be equivalent.”

“So, then, where the causeless reigns supreme, the spark nursed by embers is the first that the universe remembers, as it fires toward the other members in a processing way. The opposite twins are as virtual pairs that rule the causing call, these positives and negatives constituting most of the All.”

“Yes, I’ve often thought of the many opposite states appearing in nature, such as matter and antimatter, left and right, up and down, the polarity of charge, on/off, and many more, as a near zero-sum equation.”

Ruby Yacht readies to continues her Cosmic description, renaming it ‘The History of All History of Our Universe—From the First Instant Unto the Last.”

“The Great Wheel of our universe proceeds very quickly at first. At 1E-36 seconds, in a GUT transition in a hell of a short time, the strong force separates from the electro–weak force, the strong force eventually providing for stability and the weak force for changeability, another great balance. Inflation begins, maybe, as a slow rolling scalar field generates negative pressure, causing an exponential expansion of spacetime. The doubling is of a vacuum energy density of 1E73 tons/cm^3. Quantum fluctuations lock in nearly scale invariant 1E-5 variation in energy density. Here the enigma of the ever immortal is undone and unloosed through its portal.”

“Or at least inflation is proposed, for nothing else makes sense yet. The galaxies would seem to be the quantum fluctuations writ large across the night sky.”

Ruby continues, we alternating, “At 1E-34 seconds, inflation quickly ends, the decay of the scalar inflaton field causing reheating. Is this the ‘let there be light moment’? No, photons don’t exist yet, but other massless vector quanta like left and right weak and B-L particles may exist. Things are not well known about this era. You and I are still but a twinkling in the cosmic eye.”

“What is here now was there in the beginning.”

“At1E-34 to 1E-8 seconds, in the quark era, there is the quark gluon plasma, and then quarks and perhaps super particles dominate matter content. At 1E-17 to 1E-15 seconds, SUSY breaking occurs when proposed super partners acquire mass with the LSP expected to have a mass of about 10 Tev. In induced gravity models, this is where mass energy first generates the induced gravity field; gravity is born, and we are grounded.”

“At 1E-10 seconds, there comes the electroweak transition, when the electroweak force, under the action of the Higgs mechanism, breaks symmetry. The photon is born. Standard model particles acquire mass.”

“Yeah! The photons guide us, as illumination beside us, while the mind whirls round and round, as the ear draws forth the sound, as the eye sees the light, and of the dark the fright. Fear not the proof—it’s the beauty of the truth.”

“At 1E-5 seconds, quark confinement comes about when the QCD vacuum becomes superconducting to color magnetic current. Quarks and gluons become confined.”

“Ah, the quarks can never exist independently again.”

“At 1E-5 to 1 E-4 seconds, in the hadron era, protons, neutrons, and pions, etc., form. Now our future atoms are on the horizon.”

“What a long road our parts travelled.”

“At 1E -4 seconds, hadron annihilation occurs during a brief period of proton/anti proton and neutron/anti neutron annihilation. A slight favoring of matter over anti matter, possibly locked in by CP violation at reheating allows some very few excess protons and neutrons to survive, with ten billion photons for every matter particle now, which tells us how many annihilations there were, as 10*9, along with how much more there initially was.”

“It’s still a humongous amount of stuff, albeit gone from 2x10*85 particles down to 2x10*76.”

“At 1E-4 to 10 seconds, in the next era, leptons are the dominant energy density, such as electrons. We are up to about one second after the Big Bang now, at neutrino decoupling, when mass energy falls low enough to free neutrinos, creating the neutrino cosmic background.”

“We’ve many hints from the Cosmic Microwave Background, too.”

“At 10 seconds, electrons and positrons annihilate, leaving a tiny fraction of electrons remaining. At this point the total number of electrons equals the total number of protons. This is a beautiful symmetry.”

“Protons are of positive charge, while electrons are negative.”

“From 10 seconds to 57 thousand years is the radiation era, in which photons created from the annihilation of matter and anti-matter dominate the energy density of universe. Light has been let; We will shine.”

“Of course, our shining turns out to be another very slow part, later, in bio evolution, taking four billion years.”

“At 1-5 minutes, nucleosynthesis begins, as fusion of protons creates helium, deuterium and trace amounts of lithium. A few of our basics are there. Hydrogen is already present, it being so simple.”

“From the simple, composites and complexities form, as we ever note, through and through.”

“At 57,000 years, there is matter/radiation equality. The radiation density (photon and neutrino) and matter density (dark and atomic) are equal. This is because radiation density falls more quickly due to the stretching of the relativistic particles’ wavelengths. Dark matter clumps into structures. Atomic matter begins oscillation due to the battle between gravity and photon pressure generating acoustic oscillations. The first sounds of the new universe come forth as the ‘word’.”

“Gravity ever pulls back toward the past but the electromagnetic waves ever pull ahead, toward the future.”

“At 380,000 years, there is recombination, when the temperature falls low enough to allow atoms to form; photons decouple. The true CMB is born, locking in its structure—the story of the earliest times in the universe.”

“The radiation by now has been shifted into the microwave portion of the e/m spectrum.”

“For 5 to 200 million years, there is a dark age, as the photons fall into the infra red energy range. The universe goes dark. The atomic gas continues to fall toward the dark matter clumps, which grow more pronounced. Near to 100 million years, the densest clumps halt their expansion and begin collapsing. By 200 million years, the first mini halos form and within these the atomic cloud cools and collapses to make the very first stars whose light brings to an end the dark era. We are totally the hopes of further stars yet to become. By the way, I forgot that inflation could have been so fast that some virtual particles couldn’t recombine, thus becoming real.”

“It’s auspicious and of good fortune in the meadows of Heaven.”

“At 200 million years, there are the first stars, which are very massive and short lived, but emit some lower atomic elements since this doesn’t require extra energy. They die in violent supernova explosions filling the cosmos with the higher atomic elements that needed energy to be added, building dust for new stars and the planets of solar systems, and the elements for life.”

“The later generation stars are much more metal rich, this needed for solar system life to form.”

“At 200 to 800 million years, there is the epoch of ionization, in which the radiation from the stars and possibly the first quasars, ionizes much of the remaining neutral hydrogen and helium. A thin mist returns and partly obscures the CMB, but future Low Frequency Radio Telescopes may be able to see the epoch of ionization.”

“We’re getting through the first billion years.”

“At 1 to 2 billion years, there become infant galaxies, as star groups merge. There are frequent collisions of galaxies, high star birth rates, and high supernova rates. Heavy element production changes the pattern of star formation, making them lower mass, less luminous and longer lived, like the second generation stars of today. The stage is set for the emergence of life; the cosmos will soon have eyes to see and minds to think, like ours.”

“Um, your ‘soon’ takes another 10 billion years.”

“At 2 to 3 billion years, there is a star birth and quasar peak. In the dense environment of frequent galaxy collisions, the star birth rate reaches it maximum, as does the forming and feeding of supermassive black holes, as horrible darkling beasts. Abandon hope all ye who enter there.”

“Four to five billion years gone, and just as much to go to achieve the very early life of bacteria, who, by the way, took two billion years to make Earth’s atmosphere, by exuding oxygen as a waste product, as it was poisonous to them. Slow indeed.”

“At 6 billion years, there are the first very rich galaxy clusters, since enough time has elapsed for the densest regions to stop expanding and form these clusters. At 7 billion years, there is decelerated acceleration. The effects of dark energy kick in. The universe once again begins to accelerate its expansion rate, but gentler. Gravity has lost the battle.

“At 8 billion years, the first modern spiral galaxies form, although some elliptical galaxies form in the first billion years, but classic spiral galaxies aren’t seen until at about 5 billion years. Let’s skip over the next three billion years. That should be enough time for us to have dinner.”

“Yeah, nothing is near instant but for the Big Bang.”

I run my hand through Ruby's hair.

Ruby continues her description of All History, three billion years later.

“At 9 billion years, there is matter and dark energy equality, since the falling density of matter, both dark and atomic, become equal to that of dark energy. At 9.1 billion years, our sun and Earth form. We are inherent therein. Our solar system forms in the outer disk of the Milky Way, far out on a spiral arm, there further from harm. The stage is set for the emergence of humankind in the Cosmos—for you and I to meet and love. All this from stabilizations forming, onward and upward, in emergence, taking on a life of their own, and so on.”

“We’re going to fall in love?”

“Yes, probably.”

“Great!”

“At 13.7 billion years, we have the present time. Human civilization perhaps reaches its peak and perhaps begins heading into decline and eventual extinction due to over population, resource depletion, and environmental destruction, which generates conflict as human nation states fight for the ever dwindling resources. Hopefully, humankind is not typical and intelligent life solves the problem of balancing intelligent life needs with available resources by developing communitarian economic social structures. There have already been six near extinctions, some obliterating 95% of the species present at the time.”

“The religious were troubled by ‘God’ creating life and then then doing away with most of it, time after time, but it gave us mammals an opening. A nervous shrew looked out of the forest on day: the dinosaurs and most species were gone, the big beasts having seemed invincible for hundreds of millions of years. The shrew jumped up and down, celebrating, and thinking, if it could: ‘Hurray, now I can evolve.’ Of course, biological evolution shows to be as numbingly slow of a process as was cosmic evolution!”

“The Young Earthers claim that the Earth is only about 4000 years old, to save face, I suppose.”

“By the way, Austin, I think all of this is dynamic in time. There probably cannot be a Block Universe because it’s infinite into the future, and, because it’s a complexity. As First, it can’t have a definite blueprint, especially as composite and complex, plus we would not need brains to redundantly figure things out, if all was already set to follow a world line, as in a movie already made of still frames passing by, in this frozen Block Universe idea. We shall see. Lee Smolin is looking into presentism.”

Out of energy’s dispersion and decay of quality
Comes the emergence of growth and complexity.

Neutrinos may have swung the zero-sum balance to matter dominance over antimatter:

Quanta Magazine:

https://www.quantamagazine.org/do-neutrinos-explain-matter-antimatter-asymmetry-20160728/

Explaining the Cosmos is as easy as pie:
It’s an endless extravagance beyond the sky,
Which shows that matter’s very readily made—
Underlying energy raising the shades.

An intelligent agent can bring into existence a pocket watch. — Jan Ardena

The intelligent Agent is as a Super Watch, so all the more …

… quarks …

They gyrate, spinning their charms, twirling
In the universal dance of stunning motion,
The polarity sometimes reversed,
Whirling, their bottoms up and tops down.

And then there are Eden’s many colors,
In this flower garden filled with flavors,
Such as red bottom beauties, blue tops,
And magenta undulations unstopped.

The Near Decline of Physics Due to its Undressed Terms:

PDF: https://austintorn.files.wordpress.com/2021/07/dot-8.5x11-jpg-300-dpi.pdf

Eternity in A Grain of Sand in the Hubble Deep Field

The Hubble trained on night’s darkest pinpoint
For eleven days, collecting flashpoints;
“Foolish,” some claimed, “a resource waste so weird.”
Over ten thousand galaxies appeared!

What great needle plays, stitches, winds, and paves
The strands of the quantum fields’ types of waves
That weave the warp, weft, and woof of our ‘verse
Into being’s fabric of living braids?

More zero-sum null physics…

PDF: https://austintorn.files.wordpress.com/2021/07/looking-for-the-needle-in-the-haystack-8.75x11.25-300-dpi.pdf
(Prelude to Ellman)

PDF: https://austintorn.files.wordpress.com/2021/07/everything-solved-ellman-8.75x11.25-300-dpi.pdf
(Ellman)

Here Now — Jack Cummins

Now Here; No Where:

PDF: https://theomarkhayyamclubofamerica.files.wordpress.com/2021/06/nhnwredo-11x8.5-jpg-150-dpi.pdf

Video:

Does this universal exist intrinsically to everyThing? Or does this universal exist in the background ubiquitously, such that everything within it self organizes by integrating information? — Pop

Since we are the Cosmos…

Think not that I am existent as ‘I’, 
Or talk the talk and walk the walk of ‘I’,
For all’s of the ‘IS’; the Cosmos is I;
Where then, and what, who, and whence is this ‘I’?

(What should I do? No can do; the Cosmos does you.)

memorized information — Pop

Subconscious trains of thought vie for attention,
Dueling choirs competing for first place
Toward actions in the will’s ’I’—to produce
Future, for this is the main task of thought.

Who you are is your repertoire—your brain;
What you are now is the mind’s ‘eye’ of it,
Which ‘I’ e’er but obtains from who you are.
Aye, aye: the self generates what ‘I’ witness.

That information integrates on its own is a bit of a mind bender initially. — Pop

Subconscious trains of thoughts via for attention, and among these alternatives the brain constructs scenarios of consequences and then collapses them into the best result.

I think that the mystery of consciousness should not be dismissed too quickly.
— Jack Cummins

I agree. I usually take 20 minutes. :razz: — Tom Storm

Consciousness is that annoying time between naps.

The clue is that information integrates on its own And deep down, we identify with / as the thing that integrates the information. — Pop

Consciousness is

Intrinsic—my own, as independent;

Compositional—structured with many phenomenological distinctions;

Informational—particular and specific;

Integrated/Whole—unified and irreducible;

Exclusive—definite content, no more no less.


Subjective Features:

Referral—the ‘projection’ of neural states with no perceiving of neural firings/states.

Mental Unity—experienced as a unified field, whereas sources are all over the brain.

Qualia—the subjectively experienced felt qualities of sensory consciousness, the most perplexing gap between subjective experience and the brain.

Continuous—seamless stitching of ongoing changing contents.

Mental causation?—How can consciousness—an intangible, unobservable, and fully subjective entity—cause material neurons to direct behaviors that change the world?

Physics describes but the extrinsic causes,
While consciousness exists just for itself,
As the intrinsic, compositional,
Informational, whole, and exclusive—

As the distinctions toward survival,
Though causing nothing except in itself,
As in ne’er doing but only as being,
Leaving intelligence for the doing.

The posterior cortex holds correlates,
For this is the only brain region that
Can’t be removed for one to still retain
Consciousness, it having feedback in it;

Thusly, it forms an irreducible Whole,
And this Whole forms consciousness directly,
A process fundamental in nature,
Or’s the brain’s private symbolic language.

The Whole can also be well spoken of
To communicate with others, as well as
Globally informing other brain states,
So nonconscious parts can use what’s been made.

In a sense, we are an expression of the universe. — Pop

We developed brains that can take in the holistic overall view (in parallel mode) while also being able to linearly recognize the fine details and the relationships between objects. As such, so goes the universe, since we are formed in its image. So then this gives us a clue to the nature of the universe.

Seeing that the brain is divided into two hemispheres, each with their own characteristic mode of thought, which can communicate with each other, means that we are looking very deeply
Into the way that reality itself is constructed.

In other words worth repeating, we are indeed the universe come to life, made in its image—of multiplicity within unity, this scheme reflected in the holistic brain hemisphere operating in a parallel mode and joined to the other hemisphere operating in a sequential detail mode.

One hemisphere is floodlight of attention illuminating the whole scene at once, but connected to the other brain hemisphere which is a spotlight of attention moving linearly through the scene, they often alternating their cyclic reign, as the yin in the yang and the yang in the yin, making for a rounded life.

mystery of consciousness — Jack Cummins

Change the brain and consciousness changes too.
Take drugs and the emotions change as well.
Damage the brain and the mind’s damaged too.
Consciousness emerges only from the brain.

Consciousness is ever a brain process,
One which can be halted, never-the-less,
By anesthesia, poison/drugs,
A blow to the head, a faint, or by sleep.

In identifying consciousness,
We often confuse what is floating in
The stream of consciousness with the water itself;
Thus we note not the sea in which we ‘see’.

The brain interprets reality, and puts
A face on the waves of sound, light, color, touch,
And a sense on molecules’ smell and taste.
Consciousness is the brain’s perception of itself.

Consciousness mediates thoughts versus outcomes,
And is distributed all over the body,
From the nerve spindles to the spine to the brain—
A way to actionize without moving.

Conscious Awareness, which can but witness,
Is a safe haven from which to observe
The drama of our lives playing in our minds,
Granting us a sobering distance from it.

Being is to doing as ground is to figure
As subject is to object, as essence is to existence,
As Awareness-Consciousness is to mind-brain,
As the ultimate simplicity is to the composite.

I can never share a mind directly,
For there is no access; we are alone.
Mind melding works only for the Vulcans.
This loneliness leads us to company.

The unbearable solitude of consciousness
Is relieved by literature, social clubs,
Movies, caring, friendships, discussion, writing,
And other sharing acts, but, mostly, by love.

I think the big bang is well established by E=mc2, but otherwise there is so little reliable and cross verifiable information. — Pop

reflections — Jack Cummins

We are gearing up here to look at another zero-sum theory, that of Roger Ellman …

— No Source —

We are now really pretty sure that there
Was literally nothing to make anything of,
And yet there is something here, on this day,
So we do know that there must be a way.

— Logic / Science—

Logic does continue to guide us on,
But, to be complete, we’ll in the middle meet,
As also starting from the end of science—
Which confirmations must match the logic.

— Two is the Limit For Matter —

There are only two stable matter particles
In free space—the electron(-) and the proton(+),
As ever charged, although oppositely,
Along with their anti-particles, of course.

— Of Only Two Ways—

Therefore, as for electrons and protons,
There are only the two ways to make them,
As well as the two and only two ways
To make positrons and anti-protons.

— The Unstable Neutral Matter Particle—

Neutrons are not stable in free space,
For they decay, within a few minutes,
Into an electron and proton pair,
So neutrons are not as stable things.

— The Energy of the One Way—

There’s but one stable energy particle
In free space—the photon, uncharged, as neutral,
It having no anti-particle at all.
So, there’s only one way to make pure energy.

— To the Primal Base —

The base existent can’t be composite,
And certainly not fancy or complex,
For then the parts would precede. It has to
Be a simple continuous function!

— The Needle in the Haystack —

What underlies the perfect symmetry
For the electron, proton, and photon?
They and all in existence are of waves!
Waves are ubiquitous in the universe.

— Good Looking Logic —

There has to be a primal wave of ‘something,’
Opposed by a wave of ‘anti-something’,
These ‘sum-things’ canceling to nothing,
As with their derivatives and sub-waves.

— The Low Probability Event? —

These primal waves ever jiggle about,
They as their wave envelopes and sub-waves.
In some rare ‘moment’ they begin to build,
Forming a giant neutron—it’s the Cosmic Egg.

— No Infinite Density! —

10^85 waves and envelopes build up,
With 10^85 anti-waves and anti-envelopes,
And then the two cosine functions cut off,
Having reached a bandwidth limitation.

— The Birth of the Universe —

The whole shebang of the cosmic egg ‘bangs’,
It being near as large as the cosmos will be,
Although 10^9 annihilations still occur,
Leaving 2x10^76 particles as the Universe.

— All That Unfolds —

All that follows, unto today and beyond,
Is the continual unfolding of
That one big effect of the one big event
Of the beginning of our universe.

— Determinism —

Yes, all is as the ongoing continuation
Of the one and only effect, making
What we think of local cause and effect
To be but of artificial boundaries.

— The Particles —

Wave oscillations are the realest existents,
With but such as mass-energy-charge effects
Being secondary, which are still real,
Since from the realest, but not primary.

— Now We Get it! —

The electrons/positrons are the wave envelopes,
The protons/anti-protons are the waves,
And a photon is of both opposing waves,
Being 180 degrees out of phase.

— Wave Properties —

Wave length makes for mass and its extension,
While the wave frequency makes for energy,
And the wave amplitude makes for charge.
The wave is both the ‘what’ and its effects.

— The Impossible Particles —

No wonder there can be no
Stable neutral matter particles
And no stable charged energy particle;
There are no ways to make them.

— The Golden Braid —

The universe was a change in form,
But the primal essence carries on,
In the wave oscillations of the
Electron, proton, and the photon.

— The End of the Line —

Well, if the waves are the primal ‘what’,
Then the waves cannot come from another ‘what’,
But only from like math of an equation,
For that is all that is left, with nothing.

— Eternity’s Waiting Room —

The potential eternity of nothing
Could not complete, without a happenstance,
But there was also the potential
Of near infinite opportunity.

Religion, it seems to me, is all about that reinforcement through repetition. Of course one learns at first, and then repeats. And that's mainly it. Literate and intelligent people indeed grow away from the repetition. And most religions - all, near as I can tell - have nothing more to offer. — tim wood

Most religious preachers proclaim about 'God' as if 'God' were truth and fact, even repeatedly. This is intellectual dishonesty.

Still working on Not Anything… have to explore these alternate avenues for completeness…

The nonexistence of Nothing must then be
Neutral and symmetrical, totally,
While existence within nonexistence
Must be polar—as asymmetrical.

Matter/anti are each half of ‘at large’,
Being polar and opposite in charge,
While photons represent all of the cosmos,
Being neutral, as both plus and minus.

Why three space dimensions, plus one of time?
There must be three dimensions because
The singularity/nothingness demands
Existential closure—to nonexistence…

Which demands the compositional parity
Of positive and negative, as charge,
Which in turn demands that space be cubic:
Dimensionality inevitable!

The three space dimensions are compositional,
So the nullification of existence
At totality must be carried out
Via electric charge polarity,
An aspect of time, along with motion.

It could be that boundless 3D space bounds
A 4D finite hypervolume hypercube.
This arrangement is all extent (distance),
But, inside, one distance converts to time,
By the speed of light, as spacetime distance.

Hypervolume (distance^4) =
c(distance/time) * spacetime(distance^3 * time)

So, time is but internal to spacetime,
Being just a difference of space(s).

So, there is no time, then, externally,
And, internally, everything happens,
In the boundless ‘eternity’ within,

Happening over and over again,

As well as many times, too, everywhere,
In the boundless ‘infinity’ within.

The Cosmos contains its own history,
As well as its own ‘infinite’ spacetime.
Everything and every-time, both boundless,
Doth go round and round, perpetually.

Eternal causes cannot happen,
And so these must be equation-replaced:
The zero-sum balance that provides for the
Conservation laws ultimately precise.

That's All, folks!

Existents are not infinitely old:
The tale of their making is ever told;
They’re not unbreakable/unmakeable;
They are ‘sum-thing’—zero-sum formable.

Existents ever back to ‘no-thing’ trace,
Such as this universe, now in a race,
Even accelerating, from ‘no-thing’,
From the fuel that can never stop giving.

The null balance continues, remains, then,
As the reason things can’t be so frozen
That they don’t react, nor so fleeting
That all remains as chaos everlasting.

Confirmation abounds: as space and time,
Charge polarity, matter and its anti,
Kinetic/potential—stuff/gravity,
Smallest and largest, and reason and rhyme.

As per the explosive Big Bang Theory,
Our own ‘verse appeared, nearly instantly,
Going from not there to here, inflating—
A low probability happening.

As for ‘no-thing’, we knew it all along,
Philosophically, logically—as strong,
And now, factly—the triad that we love,
For there’s ‘no-thing’ to make anything of.

What meaning, then, of every- from ‘no-thing’?
Well, there was no option, no deciding—
Information’s content’s in the same row,
For both ‘no-thing’ and everything: zero.

…

All these explanations would fit the data on hand. — Pop

Investigating the zero-sum balance some more…

To comprehend the Cosmos, one must, hence,
Find the why and how of its existence,
For, incomplete answers will never dress—
Invariably wrong, by incompleteness.

Forever Stuff could not have been always,
For then there is no reason for its plays,
Its total amount, and its certain stance:
Stuff had to be created, in balance.

No thing can be eternal, never made,
As there’s no reason for the forms’ cascade;
Yet, there is ‘no-thing’ source to make it from;
So, the default ‘lawless’ is where it’s done.

The no-place of no laws is the first cause,
Requiring nothing but the same ‘because’.
Forever and always anything goes,
This being the final answer to the TOEs.

…

a pulsating universe — Pop

Some kind of rhythm/balance sustaining…

Our existence, necessarily, is finite,
Centered between the Largest and the
The smallest, mid-point perched, as between the
The extremes of dispersion/compaction.

(The exact middle of the large and small is about the size of a piece of dust.)

whatever that may be. — Pop

Is Existence a zero-balance tree
Of opposites?: matter and its anti,
The weak vs. strong force, charge polarity—
All from ‘nothing’, to form reality?

The universe weighs nothing at all: zero,
Plus it is electrically neutral.
The positive kinetic energy of ‘stuff’
Cancels the negative potential energy of gravity.

think about nothing — Pop

'Eternal' not coming from anything…
Seems the same as saying it's ‘from nothing’.

and if zero sum turns out to be true, we still have some time to fill :smile: — Pop

I am good at doing nothing and thinking about nothing…

‘ZERO’ KEEPS REARING ITS HEAD

So called ‘empty’ space is vital,
For that’s where there’s the recital
That forms and plays the tunes of reality—

This grand cosmic symphony,
As existence fluctuates with the non,
Those causeless waverings of undulation.

It was once thought that the shove
Of this total energy was of
The order of 10**120 orders of
Magnitude above.

Well if that were so near
then we couldn’t even be here;

It was the worst calculation
In all of scientification;
So we weighed the universe,
Summing all of its constituent verses.

The universe weighs nothing at all!

This too since we found that
Our universal space was B flat—
Not just via the 60 degree angles of a small triangle,

And not only by using stars,
Nor rays that went from here to Mars
To Venus and back,

But all the way back to a degree of the CMBR,
Which represented 100,000 light years,
For which we measured the curvature:
The rays didn’t converge or diverge.

The ultimate of this geometry
Is that being flat is the beautiful symmetry
That leads to yet another beauty: zero.
The ever returning, conquering hero.

…

There was no place special in time
Nor properties of reason and rhyme.

Our beloved quantum fluctuations
Left their imprint all over creation—
The signature of their emanations
Written in the CMBR’s variations—

A magnifying glass upon their revelations,
As well as in the capitals of matter congregations
Of galaxies, nebulae, and other condensations.

What underwrote this glorious expansion
From such a humble state to a big time mansion?
It’s called inflation.

Perhaps there are many such bubbles blown—
All but one of these pocket universes unknown.

Where did all this energy come from
To amount to this astronomical sum?
It comes from the gravitational field.

Our universe did not begin with this yield
Already stored in the gravitational field;
But, rather, the gravitational field can supply
The energy because its energy found
Can become negative without bound.

As more and more positive energy materializes
The forms of ever growing region sizes,
Filled with a high energy scalar field, arise,

As more and more negative energy materializes
In the form of expanding regions wielded
That are filled with a gravitational field.

There is nothing known that can place a border
On the amount of inflation that can occur
While the total energy remains exactly zero…
Why does this ‘zero’ ever become the hero?

Once this ball starts rolling it is difficult to stop. — Pop

Look deeper into the evident zero-sum balance of the Universe/Cosmos?

If the quest is ended - What now? :lol: — Pop

Because we have no access to absolutes, we must develop a relativistic understanding. :up: How fortunate this coincides with the minimum condition necessary for a state of integrated information ( consciousness ) - the relating of one thing to another,. — Pop

In his new book, 'Helgoland…', about Quantum Theory, Carlo Rovelli notes that All is Relational, that no entity exists independently of anything else, so that there are no intrinsic properties at all, but only 'properties' in relation to something else, which is essentially what Nagarjuna means by 'emptiness' in Buddhism.

Everything is 'quantum entangled' with everything, the 'things' more properly described as interactions and events.

Further, there are no fundamental substances, absolutes, no outside of Everything or bird's-eye view, no eternal basis, no 'God', etc. that is, there is no foundation of any kind to what goes on. 'Impermanance' goes all the way through…

This realization of Impermanence', 'No Absolutes' and 'Emptiness' is 'Nirvana'.

The quest is ended.