julius2
-
Joined
-
Last visited
Posts posted by julius2
-
-
On 11/6/2025 at 8:54 AM, exchemist said: As to your question about creating life just by mixing molecules together, the answer is almost certainly not. Life requires a whole set of structures as well as biochemical reactions. There are a lot of sub-assemblies. The goal of research into the origin of life is to understand how it may have occurred, not to try to replicate it.
Totally agree about life having a lot of sub-assemblies. If we take a short "tour" of some of these:
capture energy
build complex molecules
store information
maintain order
Then there is the creation of:
amino acids
sugars
lipids
nucleotides
DNA allows
stable storage
accurate replication
mutation
I understand that there would be ongoing research into how life began and persists from these sub-assemblies. Surely a good proof of the sub-assemblies (demonstrating strong knowledge) would be to do a recreation? Although this would be playing god.
I think what I was trying to get to in general is:
there is a known gap between quantum mechanics and general relativity. Each theory works well at each extreme. And the mathematics does not allow us to reconcile the two (yet).
proposal - LIFE itself provides the reconcilitation between quantum mechanics and general relativity. The problem with unifying QM and GR and the solution may be that we need to go into another "realm" possibly into dimensions we can't imagine or access. But life does this physically.
Life operates across both frameworks. If we take a cat, it has a quantum existence, due to the atoms for muscles, flesh, bone etc. But it also exists in the GR world - it uses quantum rules only where they are stable (and follows classical thermodynamics).
The difficulty with any kind of research in this area would be trying to find hidden dimensions we cannot imagine or access.
-
On 10/4/2025 at 4:47 PM, pinball1970 said: The definition of life is a little nebulous. Is a bacterium alive? They were about for billions of years before multicellular life.
There is no "pass down" either, this is not a thing in Biology, bacteria reproduce asexuality.
The soul is also not a thing in Biology. You should not mix unsupported notions with scientific process.
Bacteria has a parent of sorts. My understanding is that to replicate, the one cell grows and the bacterial chromosome is copied.
The cell then splits into two forming two daughter cells.
So there would be no replicated bacteria without the original cell?
On 10/4/2025 at 9:43 PM, exchemist said: As @pinball1970 indicates, It is in fact notoriously hard to come up with an exact definition of what is necessary for something to be considered "alive". So your idea of a passing down of "life" from one generation to the next is a bit simplistic.
At the start of life there would probably have been various biochemical systems with some of the properties we now associate with life, including, at some point, a highly imperfect ability to replicate in some way. But we don't know how it took place. That's why people are researching abiogenesis.
Abiogenesis - the origin of life from non-living matter.
The thing is , is it possible to create life just by mixing molecules together? It seems that many pieces of the puzzle have been achieved, such as organic molecule formation, partial RNA copying etc. But is it likely scientists will ever be able to create life?
Invisible threads proposal
This is where early life sprung up from "invisible threads" interacting. Let's say in the early Earth billions of years ago in with matter were these "invisible threads". It may have taken a long time but the interaction of these threads eventually leads to life coming in to existence.
In the life we see today the proposal is that these threads still exist. For instance the invisible threads of a male dog and the invisible threads of a female dog combine. This then results in a "download" of more threads. This forms the life basis for the baby dog. In humans the "invisible threads" is the soul.
So if scientists or whoever are trying to create life from just molecules they might not be able to do so without taking into account the interaction of these "invisible threads"??
You replied to me, but I didn’t say the quoted bit you included here. How does this address my question about what grows/develops?
The invisible threads.
Why can't we observe them - because they are from a different dimension.
-
On 9/27/2025 at 10:43 AM, swansont said: What grows, if it has no mass or energy
You can’t conclude “soul” until you eliminate all other possible causes for emotion, or etc.
"all the pieces that contribute to life were already alive themselves"
Yes, this is right. Life is a "pass down" process. So all living things we see today are as a result of a "pass down" from previous "parents". If this is the case , where / when was the first "pass down"??
It is not possible for any living thing not to have a parent. Mosquitoes lay eggs, plants have seeds, elephants have parent elephants, whales have parent whales etc.
When was the first "pass down"?
-
On 9/12/2025 at 2:21 AM, Phi for All said: What?!
Life is an emergent property of organic matter.
Spacetime is a mathematical model we use to show the effects of relativity on matter and energy.
Conception is a vague and meaningless attribution that ignores the fact that all the pieces that contribute to life were already alive themselves.
There's no evidence at all for this, and it's easily testable. If there is a soul, it's nothing physical, it has no mass or energy. Is it emergent, like the personality you developed growing up? Could your soul be your persona, the accumulation of your experiences, your wit and humor, is that possible? Because having anything like that use the geometry of relativity is just bizarre.
"all the pieces that contribute to life were already alive themselves"
Yes, this is right. Life is a "pass down" process. So all living things we see today are as a result of a "pass down" from previous "parents". If this is the case , where / when was the first "pass down"??
"If there is a soul, it's nothing physical, it has no mass or energy"
Yes, that it right.
My guess is that the "soul" develops as we grow. If we have a "soul" and it has never been measured, we can "observe" it's effect - eg through emotions etc. Kind of like observing light through the 2-slit experiment. Because of it's strange nature you need to observe indirectly.
-
-
2 hours ago, swansont said: We sorta do this all the time. Do organic things fall at a different rate than inorganic? Do astronauts on the ISS orbit differently as compared to the inorganic station?
The concept is that "life" comes in through spacetime (at conception).
When things die the "soul" returns through spacetime.
There is no evidence of this as such. But looking at the wider gambit of physics - particle accelerators, string theory etc. is a crack at finding any such evidence.
-
On 8/25/2025 at 1:33 AM, Phi for All said: If I understand you correctly, this should be easy to model. Have there been experiments with weights and equivalent living examples to see if spacetime reacts differently to organic matter as opposed to inorganic?
The abstract of the paper you mentioned: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37359083/
Yes, the test would be to test spacetime reaction between organic and inorganic matter.
However, my understanding is that the effect on spacetime happens on large scales. e.g. when you look out in to the cosmos.
i.e. you can see the bending of spacetime (gravity) between the sun and the planets. I would say an experiment to measure spacetime effect on a human scale or similar would reveal a negligible result.
1 minute ago, julius2 said: Yes, the test would be to test spacetime reaction between organic and inorganic matter.
However, my understanding is that the effect on spacetime happens on large scales. e.g. when you look out in to the cosmos.
i.e. you can see the bending of spacetime (gravity) between the sun and the planets. I would say an experiment to measure spacetime effect on a human scale or similar would reveal a negligible result.
I guess the original idea was that there was "time" before the BB - made up of many "primitive" times (the explanation of which is not available).
There was a collapse in these "times" to a "singularity", then the BB itself.
Then a reconstitution of sorts. The problem with this idea however is the vastness of the universe outside of earth. Apparently there are trillions of stars, if not billions of galaxies. This is just a mystery.
-
On 7/3/2025 at 1:05 AM, Phi for All said: Your understanding is correct, but your idea is trying to include ridiculous parameters. A ToE isn't meant to explain EVERYTHING, that's a misunderstanding due most likely to popular science articles. When it comes to GR and QM, living organisms don't need to be considered. Physics happens without life all the time.
Thanks.
I guess the idea is to try to "hone in" more on how biology affects spacetime.
My area of interest would be spacetime at conception. I imagine the focus of IVF research would have much research covered.
One paper I found so far is: The Biological Production of Spacetime: A Sketch of the E-Series
-
On 6/20/2025 at 1:16 PM, Markus Hanke said: Sure, there’s quite a large number of alternative theories of gravity that have been and still are being explored; it’s an active research topic. Have a look here for example:
https://emis.de/journals/LRG/Articles/lrr-2013-9/articlese2.html
Note that that is by no means an exhaustive list.
Yes, so it seems that there are a number of alternate theories of gravity to help explain phenomena in the current universe. I guess because our current universe is so large and complex. Especially at the cosmic scale the magnitudes etc are mind bending.
I guess, I am wondering whether any equations have been looked at if we were to build a "new" universe? For example, a "gravity" where spacetime does not curve but goes at right-angles instead....
I don't know the equations on how you would do this. I guess it would depend on the tensors.
On 4/23/2025 at 3:06 AM, Phi for All said: Multiple temporal dimensions causes some extreme problems with physics, from what I understand, based on this paper by Max Tegmark. Lots of instability and unpredictable outcomes.
It is interesting to note that scientists talk about the Theory of Everything. My understanding is that they are trying to reconcile quantum mechanics to general relativity. ie. the theories governing the very small to the very large. My idea is that you can't have a Theory of Everything unless you include life. There are major challenges to explaining life, so I guess physicists decided to skip it all together.....
Without being precise, I say that life involves higher dimensions (as mentioned on post above). So we get away from philosophical and go towards scientific. But finding out about these higher dimensions could be difficult or impossible. And in fact perhaps we are not meant to work it out? In which the planet will keep on turning and economic needs will rule the day....
Although lazy, under this idea and I turned to string theory or M theory etc. this may be the closest we get to "talking about" the higher dimensions. As mentioned, there is a chance we are not meant to discover.....
But we would not be where we are today, without trying.
-
10 hours ago, swansont said: You can have different equations give you the same result, so this is too vague to give a definitive answer.
My understanding is that the field equations describe the "mechanics" of the existing universe. So changes in these equations would change the "mechanics" too?
Similar to 2T physics which adds another time dimension to spacetime, many people have "toyed around" with different theories in order to discover something new.
Just wondering if there are any existing papers / known physicists who have theorised on a universe with a different set of Field Equations???
-
Einstein Field Equations.
Involves the Einstein tensor, Metric tensor, Cosmologial Constant etc.
Left side has curvature and distances and angles in spacetime. Right side deals with matter, radiation, energy
Understanding, you start with the right side and then solve for the left side giving how distances and times are measured in spacetime.
There is the solution for empty space (Schwarzschild solution) or expanding universe (Friedmann equations).
Question: If we had slightly different field equations, would we have a different universe?
-
On 5/15/2025 at 11:43 AM, swansont said: Yes, but we humans don’t notice these dimensions, because they are only noticeable on a very small scale - as you say, Planck scale or smaller. So you can’t have it be true that they’re important for life but also we don’t notice them. They would have to have effects above the atomic scale, meaning there has to be experiments that would reveal them.
It is interesting to see Brian Greene talk about consciousness. He says that how can you take a bunch of molecules / atoms, arrange them in a certain way and have consciousness? He says if these fundamental blocks (molecules / atoms) have no consciousness themselves how can this be?
Alternatively, if these fundamental blocks do have some consciousness, then a non-living thing, like a chair or table, should (in theory) have some kind of consciousness.
-
-
On 5/15/2025 at 11:43 AM, swansont said: Yes, but we humans don’t notice these dimensions, because they are only noticeable on a very small scale - as you say, Planck scale or smaller. So you can’t have it be true that they’re important for life but also we don’t notice them. They would have to have effects above the atomic scale, meaning there has to be experiments that would reveal them.
It is interesting to note that experiments have been done with particle colliders to see if certain particles escape in to the extra dimensions as described by string theory.
-
On 5/12/2025 at 10:15 PM, swansont said: The thing about extra dimensions in string theory be “curled up” is that they are only important at very small scales. Life is macroscopic by comparison. IOW, if you say it affects life there has to be a way to test it on the scale that “life” has meaning
The thing about string theory is that it can be quite complex.
I mean you are dealing with 10 or 11 dimensions so you can't visualize it like you can in a 3D world.
So I am assuming that describing the 10 or 11 dimensions properly is probably best done using mathematics.
Just now, julius2 said: The thing about string theory is that it can be quite complex.
I mean you are dealing with 10 or 11 dimensions so you can't visualize it like you can in a 3D world.
So I am assuming that describing the 10 or 11 dimensions properly is probably best done using mathematics.
Given a look / survey of existing scientific theories, it would be likely that if there is existence before the BB, it is probably complex.
For example, the theories of electromagnetism, general relativity and spacetime are a little bit complex. We know about these from studying our current universe.
It seems to be the "trend" to have both straightforward rules and non-straightforward rules. The "trend" of nature.
So any previous universe, if existed, is likely to have it's own mind-bending phenomenon etc.
-
On 5/10/2025 at 10:19 PM, swansont said: How do you test this idea?
Let's take a step back and look at what the scientists have already done (string theory).
I understand that the curled up dimensions are much smaller than the Planck scale ~10 -35 m. So this makes it hard to test. Maybe impossible using existing physics and scientific equipment.
The attraction is that string theory talks about extra dimensions.
So to what extent would string theory help explain life? Assuming that life has these extra dimensions????
2 minutes ago, julius2 said: Let's take a step back and look at what the scientists have already done (string theory).
I understand that the curled up dimensions are much smaller than the Planck scale ~10 -35 m. So this makes it hard to test. Maybe impossible using existing physics and scientific equipment.
The attraction is that string theory talks about extra dimensions.
So to what extent would string theory help explain life? Assuming that life has these extra dimensions????
Looking at spacetime again.
Theory has already looked at different types of spacetime: e.g. Minkowski spacetime, De Sitter and Anti-de Sitter spacetime and Kaluza-Klein spacetime.
The problem occurs when you use a certain spacetime to explain what we see in the current universe. In other words the spacetime has to fit within the laws of what we currently see.
If there was time before the big bang, the question may be what did it look like?
Let's say it was (x, y, z, t1, t2). With two dimensions. The point is that it doesn't need to fit our current universe. It existed before.
-
On 4/23/2025 at 3:06 AM, Phi for All said: Multiple temporal dimensions causes some extreme problems with physics, from what I understand, based on this paper by Max Tegmark. Lots of instability and unpredictable outcomes.
Interesting article. My understanding that the PDEs for nature become elliptic or ultrahyperbolic for more than 1 time dimension.
Incidentally there could be merit in M-theory or superstring theory. Here the scientists propose that many different spatial dimensions are "curled up" making them unobservable to people.
The problem with any "work" on spacetime and any time history is that you are delving into a really difficult area because the empirical evidence is very difficult if not impossible to obtain.
On 4/23/2025 at 3:16 AM, swansont said: Just some simple notions pop up - how does the time flow “know” to change when something changes from being nonliving to living or vice-versa? You kill food and eat it and it becomes part of a living thing again. Does the C-14 in it decay at a different rate when it changes state? Does K-40 decay at a different rate in a rock than in a potato or banana?
The notion is that for a living thing, the body (if animal) is a "vessel" for the other time dimension components.
So if you were to eat a banana for instance, the banana would become a part of the existing "vessel". Obviously, if this line of argument were to be pursued, there would be a complex interaction between the "vessel" that we know and the other t2 - t8 time dimensions.
Actually, it may not be t2 - t8 time dimensions, but st2 - st8 different space times. Compacted and curled up, as described in string theory.
-
55 minutes ago, julius2 said: Good question.
It seems that our current time / universe seems to be explained perfectly well by 3 spatial coordinates and 1 time coordinate. So why the need to add another time coordinate? Having 2 time coordinates leads to 2T physics. It seems the research has already been done with such a scenario with advantages / disadvantages of the theory. And it is even more complicated / problematic with a 3T model (apparently).
Put simply, space time (Einstein Field Equations) help explain gravity at the least.
Looking at the universe, would one say our current universe is a living thing?
Are stars classified as "living" or just giant gas balls. We know the current universe DOES contain living things (e.g plants, animals).
Where is the boundary?
My proposal is non-living things have the parameters (x, y, z, t1) whereas living things have parameters like (x, y, z, t1, t2, t3, t4, t5, t6, t7, t8) so a much higher depth.
Where t2, t3, t4.... resemble pathways to different parts of "time eternal". So living things (plants, animals etc) contain much more complex pathways in time.
Non-living things have a much shallower depth in time.
That is the proposal.
-
On 4/16/2025 at 5:42 AM, swansont said: Lots of spacetimes are mathematically possible, but do not reflect the spacetime we are in (e.g. Galilean is another one, which ends up having unphysical implications)
In this case you have to explain how t1 and t2 manifest themselves; what does it mean to have three time coordinates? Are they orthogonal, like spatial coordinates, and what does that mean?
Good question.
It seems that our current time / universe seems to be explained perfectly well by 3 spatial coordinates and 1 time coordinate. So why the need to add another time coordinate? Having 2 time coordinates leads to 2T physics. It seems the research has already been done with such a scenario with advantages / disadvantages of the theory. And it is even more complicated / problematic with a 3T model (apparently).
Put simply, space time (Einstein Field Equations) help explain gravity at the least.
-
It is interesting to investigate the concept of energy. But if we could just go back to the concept of spacetime for a bit.
If there is a mug sitting on top of a table (stationery) then it's footprint in spacetime might look something like:
(0, 0, 0, 5). at t=5s
(0, 0, 0, 10) at t=10s
(0, 0, 0, 15) at t=15s etc.
That is, it's "world line" would be vertical as the mug passes through time.
If the mug were to move through space it's "world line" would be slightly diagonal as time slows down.
Is it possible to have a spacetime which is more like (x, y, z, t, t1, t2)?
Where t1 is time from a previous universe and t2 is time from another previous universe.
So in other words adding more parameters to spacetime?
Assuming that previous universes did exist.
-
5 hours ago, exchemist said: No it doesn't, actually. This is a common misunderstanding. m denotes mass, not matter and what the equation says is that a system with a certain amount of energy will have a corresponding mass. i.e. BOTH mass and energy at the same time. One is not converted into the other. Mass and energy are both properties of physical systems of various kinds. Neither mass nor energy is a thing in its own right. You can't talk about energy without saying the energy of what.
Thanks for highlighting the point.
I have read that pure energy can exist. For example electric and magnetic fields carry energy without requiring mass.
-
On 3/16/2025 at 1:04 AM, swansont said: No. The reconstitution happens under very limited circumstances, and the universe is nowhere near that set of circumstances.
The question for the universe, is where did all the matter come from? I know this is one of the great mysteries of science.
If the universe is a reconstitution of previous time(s), the question still remains, where did all the matter come from , from those previous time(s). So still a mystery.
E = m c 2. Indicates the interchangeability between matter and energy. So really would we just have to investigate why energy exists?
What makes energy come in to existence? (From physics, electricity comes from interaction between kinetic energy and a magnet)
-
1 hour ago, julius2 said:
I am not sure if the youtube and science document are meant to confirm that you are able to get some kind of reversibility??
I would not expect the 3 blobs to be re-constituted after being so largely smeared.
It is interesting that things can be re-constituted.
Is the current universe a reconsitution?
Sorry, IS THE CURRENT UNIVERSE A RECONSTITUTION?
16 minutes ago, julius2 said:Sorry, IS THE CURRENT UNIVERSE A RECONSTITUTION?
If this is the case, more research needs to go into how things reconstitute.
Experiment:
Study how things reconstitute. Then devise experiments that seek to "pull apart" objects. (in time)
If this holds true, then this would be empirical evidence of a reconstituted universe.
Caveat:
This is the danger of going from what we do know and can be readily measured. Better is to ASSERT a theory and then look for evidence that fits the theory. Not enough assertion is being done.
If the universe is a reconstitution then we can SKIP the big bang idea.
-
On 2/22/2025 at 1:37 PM, swansont said:
That’s the exact example I had in mind.
I am not sure if the youtube and science document are meant to confirm that you are able to get some kind of reversibility??
I would not expect the 3 blobs to be re-constituted after being so largely smeared.
It is interesting that things can be re-constituted.
Is the current universe a reconsitution?
Speculative science questions
in Speculations
Agree that great strides have been made and the hard work by everyone will continue to deliver progress.