A Living Universe

[foodchain]

Ok, this thread placement I hope will satisfy all as its more or less just an idea.

 

Ok, here is it with, a synthesis of things I thought up.

 

Taking into account QM and other aspects studied under physics or any field of science really, is it quite possible that the universe evolved into a current form. What I mean by this is everything, such as the existence of the electron. It basically has the most profound impact on chemical reactivity, without chemistry what would the universe look like, or how would change even appear really. Looking at life which is a composite of chemistry and physics, you can see that matter and energy is open to change, and in time we came from microbes or less really to dinosaurs and primates in time. Well, what about galaxies and stars, or molecular clouds of debris that can even produce such? Did basically an evolution of sorts take place primarily based from Quantum mechanics?

 

To take for instance natural selection I would like to attach a more broad meaning to such a statement for the purpose of this thread. Which is basically stating the reality of physics are naturally selected in a giving environment over time from QM. Which leads to states of matter and energy. I would like to postulate that from this relativity is basically a large QM field effect sustaining itself. To get into more details on my pseudo idea I would like to subject wave particle duality to this. At the subatomic level a certain degree of strangeness can occur, as such to the relative reality of various particles that can exist. IF for instance we just think of a waveform as maybe something barely over the most primordial level of existence for stuff in the universe one can think of the idea that a quantum environment is making selection possible.

 

Lastly one part of the definition to life is a certain level of metabolic activity that can reproduce itself. Looking at the universe or even the geology of the earth cant one at some point attach this definition to things? I know a great deal of conclusions are made is this thread but maybe just maybe what exists now is a product of the universe basically trying to sustain itself in time, of which on a QM level reflecting up through relativity is why physics has come to be expressed in a certain and regular manner. I have more but I think this is plenty of words to start off with.

 

Please remember where I placed the thread, its purely just that but I am interested in the idea and would like to get input on it.

[lucaspa]

Taking into account QM and other aspects studied under physics or any field of science really, is it quite possible that the universe evolved into a current form.

 

If you mean that the universe changed from an earlier form into what we see now, then that is established. Remember, the universe started as a small, very hot volume of spacetime. So hot that there was no matter, only energy. It was only later that matter appeared in a phase transition. Also, looking backward in time to distant objects, it is clear that the early universe was different than what we see now. We don't see any quasars near us, for instance. Instead, quasars existed in the early universe.

 

Did basically an evolution of sorts take place primarily based from Quantum mechanics?

 

No. The changes you are thinking of took place at levels and interactions higher than quantum mechanics. For instance, the QM for molecules is the same for amino acids as for proteins. However, life itself came from interactions between proteins.

 

To take for instance natural selection I would like to attach a more broad meaning to such a statement for the purpose of this thread.

 

Please don't do that. It is just confusing and inaccurate. Natural selection is very precisely defined. Also, natural selection is limited to those systems that satisfy the requirements necessary for natural selection to occur. Your "broad meaning" takes natural selection to systems where it does not apply.

 

Which is basically stating the reality of physics are naturally selected in a giving environment over time from QM.

 

No. To have natural selection you need a population, variation, and selection. The reality of physics doesn't work that way. States of matter and energy are determined by QM without a selection process.

 

I know a great deal of conclusions are made is this thread but maybe just maybe what exists now is a product of the universe basically trying to sustain itself in time,

 

What you seem to be doing is what a lot of people try to do: insert "intelligence" somewhere into the process. You apparently can't accept that the processes themselves will yield what we see. So you try to insert some "direction" to this. Some people do this by postulating direct action by deity. You are doing it by trying to make the universe itself be an intelligent entity.

 

Please remember where I placed the thread, its purely just that but I am interested in the idea and would like to get input on it.

 

Then please remember what you are doing and not react negatively when they test the idea scientifically -- trying to show it to be wrong. And finding problems that do show the idea to be mistaken. Just shrug your shoulders, smile, and accept that the idea doesn't work.

[foodchain]

Hey, thanks for the reply I did not think I was going to get one.

 

Firstly it is just an idea, I don’t actually think this is what occurred, I have no idea overall what occurred;)

 

I also do not know another good term to use in place of natural selection for just the purpose of the thread, would dynamic environmental selection work better? or environmental based dynamic selection?

 

As for my idea I just don’t see how if the QM level could not stabilize to some degree how any regular large scale effects could come to exist on a regular scale, such as a planet or a galaxy or any particular particle or element. If per say someone can show me where to draw the line for sure as to the effects or role of QM that would kill the whole idea instantly for me surely. Yet QM is random to some extent and I don’t know that exact bounds of such randomness or the relationship QM shares with any relative environment at any giving time.

 

I don’t have the math skills to chop the idea up into existing physics lingo. I have been trying to get there a little bit slowly. I like the Fourier series with waveforms but I am far off from actually being able to work with such, plus I don’t think I would be able to sneak in a years worth of QM at university.

 

I have trouble thinking of time as in clocks, clocks are simply made, I guess what we are recording is the relativity of things in certain regular words, such as it takes X time to reach mars and so on. I still think its more or less a field effect but why the differentiation really? I mean physics I think states its gravity but yet no consensus exactly what that is or where it comes from truly. Plus the whole dark energy/matter thing really buggers me out. I know any physics educated people that probably read this are busting up but I don’t posses that education so I would hope they would chime in.

[lucaspa]

Firstly it is just an idea, I don’t actually think this is what occurred, I have no idea overall what occurred;)

 

Foodchain, then please do some research. Timothy Ferris' The Whole Shebang would be a good place to start.

 

Yet QM is random to some extent and I don’t know that exact bounds of such randomness or the relationship QM shares with any relative environment at any giving time.

 

Let me see if I can help. In large numbers, QM is regular and produces regular results. At the level of the individual quantum particle, then things get random.

 

For instance, take any amount of C14 atoms. ALWAYS 1/2 of them will decay in ~5,200 years. That's the regular part. When you look at each individual C14 atom, you have no idea when or why it is going to decay! Will it be a second from now or will it be a million years from now? What makes it different from the C14 atom next to it that will decay at a different time?

 

However, you ALWAYS know that 1/2 of C14 atoms will decay in a half-life.

 

So, the regularity of QM events and the regular probabilisitic behavior gives many of the "laws" of physics we see at the macro level. Does that help your confusion?

 

Of course, then there is the discontinuity between Relativity and QM. Relativity -- motion and gravity and spacetime -- are not quantized (yet). We have 2 separate realms/theories of physics that are not united. You are just going to have to live with having QM explain the very small while Relativity explains the rest and the two of them don't match.

 

I also do not know another good term to use in place of natural selection for just the purpose of the thread, would dynamic environmental selection work better? or environmental based dynamic selection?

 

What you appear to want is how to quietly go from the QM level to the macro level. What happens is that the QM effects get so small that we don't notice them. For instance, you and I do have a wave function of location. But because of our size the wave function of where we can be is smaller than the diameter of an atom. So that doesn't mean anything at our size.

 

Now, there are systems where you can contrive to get the quantum level to the macro level that we can see. Bose-Einstein condensates of atoms do that. You get masses of atoms to behave as tho they are are just one atom. You can actually see the probability waves!

 

I mean physics I think states its gravity but yet no consensus exactly what that is or where it comes from truly. Plus the whole dark energy/matter thing really buggers me out. I know any physics educated people that probably read this are busting up but I don’t posses that education so I would hope they would chime in.

 

No, they aren't "busting up". One thing a scientist learns very quickly in his/her training, however, is to live with unanswered questions. No, we have no consensus on the deep reality of gravity or on what constitutes the "dark energy" that is causing the expansion of the universe to accelerate. We simply live with that unanswered question. Don't force an answer. By that I mean don't want an answer so badly that you try to make one and insist it be right. Just live with the unanswered question and be patient.

[Ophiolite]

I also do not know another good term to use in place of natural selection for just the purpose of the thread, would dynamic environmental selection work better? or environmental based dynamic selection?

I thnk the difficulty is in the word selection. What we appear to be seeing not selection, which implies alternatives, but progression, which implies a somewhat deterministic outcome.

 

It seems reasonable to call it progression since the emergence of complexity - particles, galaxies, stellar systems, life etc, - is not obvious from the intial almost uniform conditions of the Big Bang singularity. It is the complexity that makes the Universe interesting (and allows us to be here and be interested in it). That complexity has been increasing since the first moments of the Big Bang. I am interested in what the next emergent property might be, after life and consciousness, and whether or not it has already emerged somewhere in the Universe, and whether or not we would be able to recognise it.

[foodchain]

I thnk the difficulty is in the word selection. What we appear to be seeing not selection, which implies alternatives, but progression, which implies a somewhat deterministic outcome.

 

It seems reasonable to call it progression since the emergence of complexity - particles, galaxies, stellar systems, life etc, - is not obvious from the intial almost uniform conditions of the Big Bang singularity. It is the complexity that makes the Universe interesting (and allows us to be here and be interested in it). That complexity has been increasing since the first moments of the Big Bang. I am interested in what the next emergent property might be, after life and consciousness, and whether or not it has already emerged somewhere in the Universe, and whether or not we would be able to recognise it.

 

That’s my main point I guess though is like evolution the reality of such at a current point in time say for life in the rain forest evolved in time to what it is or what selected in time for such. I am trying to look into various reports I can find from atom smashers for instance and the reality that we can produce various elements for any possible data to include on my idea, please remember anyone that reads this that such is just an idea. Back to the topic.

 

I just don’t understand how science can surely say at some point that QM can only allow for a certain expression of matter and energy. What I mean is that from a big bang point of view which for lack of better words supplied the visible and I am not sure maybe more of the universe and physical reality we study and that in the time it took to get to that QM has taken on this form. That QM really is part of a much larger whole evolving in time and really that effect also produces relativity. Such as with life, if some unstable form appears that instability and its subsequent extinction is completely dependent for the most part on the environment or life’s ability to sustain itself from any point you can want to study, such as if it has a highly deleterious mutation that basically causes the organism to self dissolve, not that such happens to my knowledge but the example I think carries in that the current forms of life are that which can survive in the environment long enough to reproduce and in time the matter and energy like anything else that composes physical reality and of course life happen to be mutable dynamic and open to selection or various variables that are both external and internal.

 

I think such would have to hold true for the universe, such as if things were tweaked just a little like people who follow the anthropic principle bring up the entire universe would be vastly different. Its not as if matter or energy would not exist it would all just be very different. So from what I can gather how matter and energy comes to be expressed is not a finite or fully deterministic reality. So to me then the idea again comes full circle as to why reality or nature is in current form which seems to hold true throughout the universe such as the existence of the atom for instance.

 

So if you can buy the anthropic principle I don’t see where my idea would be so off in saying that in time, be it a few local seconds in a cloud of "stuff" nameless and without lasting form yet to a few billions years of such an environment that dynamic or environment based selection from the smallest to the largest is not a viable idea in the least to study.

-------------------Edit--------------

Just to add more thought on my idea.

 

Now I don’t have any real visualizations or graphical aids, and I certainly don’t have any math to it yet. Its not something I have really put much thought into time wise, but I think if I spill enough words out some detailed thought should present itself in some form.

 

Ok, now lets say dark matter/energy is some mysterious X that time wise again is relativity something new and rather undefined at best save for the mysterious dark moniker handed to it. Well then basically what can be said by me of course with some grain of truth to it is that we have no hecking idea what the heck it is really. It does seem to interact though via gravity, in which gravity relates to other physical aspects of the universe right?

 

Now to dwindle a bit of topic for a second. What exactly is QM? What is its bounds. Looking at a cellular life form you can see how the small, or even smaller such as codons attributes in large to the larger or overall reality of a cellular organism, be it multi or single. Now not to make some weird connection about waves, then atoms, then cells, which I wont, I just want to hint on at even the smallest level again I would think things would have to work out or become stable. The opposite of stable atomically speaking I think can be referenced with the idea of the atomic bomb or a nuclear explosion and or reaction. So whatever stuff is on that small quantum level if you will its capable of ending life on the planet when packaged as a missile quite easily, well life as we know it anyways.

 

Going from subatomic to atomic to molecular structures all on its own is lifetimes worth of research and more. On that note though it can be said with some confidence that the earth would be drastically different if per say 70% of its mass happened to be tungsten. Also for what its worth is seems as if stars happen run on hydrogen, or I don’t know of an iron based stars or what not. The reasons for this I have no overall clue save to think again it points to very tiny origins or connections overall.

 

Why is it that you can have a “evolution” of sorts to particles? Such as a neutron going off to become a proton and an electron, and the proton itself not being fundamental? What about anti matter? Or the concept that we can produce here on earth elements not naturally found in occurrence? What I am getting at here is that I do know quantum systems are not isolated beings, such is evident in quantum entanglement. So how large of a field does this produce or what is the reality of such? Would it be severly drastic to say the universe might be a giant higgs boson? I know, that’s not the right thing to say. But the reality of gravity, time and the connections of QM and relativity are still not laid in concrete to this day, even though both have been in the hands of humans to think about or probe for some time now. With the discovery of the mysterious dark matter agent all of this entails to me in an idea of a evolution of sorts brought about by what QM maybe represents or encompasses. With such and in time for whatever it is the possibility to me from the reality of organic evolution is that maybe the current universe going from QM has in a sense “evolved” to its current form.

 

I have no ideas on how to test such. I would think doing experiments with a super collider might be able to produce in reality quantum systems which are unstable, or exotic really. I think the key at that point would be to study the impact the surrounding environment has on the reality of why those systems are unstable. I think absolute zero for some reason also could be a pointer along with quantum entanglement to support my idea.