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

[negativzero]

marcus, do u have anything on Smolin's dozen parameters? How has our universe evolved into the perfect black hole nursery due to the, just as a naïve inquiry, fine structure constant? Any parameter will do, to start. It doesn't have to be the fine structure.
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i could spend a few rainy months trying to understand computationally why! Yeehaw!
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And please don't feel obligated to respond. i know this thread has gone viral and the paparazzi are chasing you.
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"CNS" means what? Some of us are D students. i always think "Central Nervous System," for CNS. Sorry. i was late to disorientation.
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[Chronos]

Smolin's originals CNS conjecture constrained neutron star mass to about 1.6 solar. Apparently he has upped the bar to about 2.5 solar. I admittedly am unfamiliar with the logic behind this new limit, but, it appears he has abandoned his original reliance on the Browne & Bethe equation of state. I agree the prospects of detecting a neutron star of such a mass appears remote. Then again, we have no confirmed black holes less than about 5 solar masses, which I still find curious. For an example of a 2 solar mass neutron star, see http://www.rdmag.com/news/2013/05/observations-massive-neutron-star-confirm-relativity-theory

 

[negativzero]

At http://arxiv.org/pdf/1012.3208v1.pdf
Smolin is not mentioned, however the 1.97 solar mass limit is discussed at length.
i think it's safe to assume Smolin is aware of the work, since he mentioned that number at SETI if i remember correctly.
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[Chronos]

He has been aware of it for several years, but, unconvinced it is reliable. The more recent Shapiro delay measurements have, however, bolstered its credibility

 

[DennisN]

"CNS" means what? Some of us are D students. i always think "Central Nervous System," for CNS. Sorry. i was late to disorientation.
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CNS = Cosmological Natural Selection.

 

[negativzero]

Chronos: "Smolin's original cosmological natural selection conjecture that constrains neutron star mass has been observationally refuted."
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Yeah, but that doesn't mean the theory is wrong. 1.6, 1.97, nearly two, those are just numbers. Famously, Einstein was off by about a factor of two re the advance of the perihelion of Mercury. You know, the famous, "plus and minus" vs "plus or minus" error. I'm not dancing an end zone jig because Smolin screwed up his arithmetic.
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His still has one of the few non-standard approaches around that has any empirical legs at all.
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Not that i can hear you tap dancing Chronos. Without your skepticism you wouldn't be the fun poster that you are.
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On a separate detail, i have been thinking of the neutron star mass limit as different from the "tweaking the parameters" assertion, but both ideas are so closely linked that you could almost say it's all just one idea.
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This is apparent from the opening sentences of the article i referenced before above
http://arxiv.org/pdf/1012.3208v1.pdf
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Now if i could get some stuff to read on just which parameters are tweaked how, resulting in what?
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[quantum physics joke: Who left the door open? Everyone.]

 

[Tanelorn]

A black hole could just be matter with sufficient density to prevent photons from escaping. Isnt this still the most likely explanation? Occam etc. Also every black hole is different due to its size, mass and rotation. Wouldnt these variables also change the characteristics of any new Universes?

Finallly wouldn't this form of CNS ultimately result in Universes in which all matter ends up creating black holes in the shortest possible time? The concept of CNS is very interesting though, I wonder if there are other possible CNS mechanisms possibly on much larger size scales eg. 10^30 times size of the O.U. etc.

 

[Adrian07]

Thought I would catch up with this thread. Smolin has some interesting ideas like energy being fundamental, I would suggest however that how that energy is produced is more fundamental. I feel he is however no closer to the truth than Feynman was. There seems to be a huge blind spot, which I think Smolin is aware of, that no one has been able to see through. The universe is far simpler than they think and all have lost sight of the wood for the trees. As I said Feynman was within touching distance Smolin is getting there it remains to be seen if he can overcome the blind spot that has caused all the half theories to date.

 

[negativzero]

Tanelorn, your last question rules!
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If you could find a parameter-tweaker calculator free online, then maybe you could work out different universal scenarios. Smolin seemed to say that your question was too difficult to calculate beyond small tweaks. If I recollect, he said that a dozen of 30 parameters seemed to be dialed into maximize black hole number, presently at about a billion billion in the known universe.
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Generally, it looks like the tweak question revolves around the collapse where-in some parameters account for pressure outward, and overwhelming pressure inward accounts for the other "significant" parameters. i think these are included in the parameters he's been tweakin'. The article i referenced talks about this, but not about CNS. This leads one to wonder what kind of universe could maintain the basic twelve parameters responsible for reproduction and still vary the other 18 parameters. A million SF writers at a million keyboards.
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Yeah, looking for the mechanism which somehow creates all the mass/energy to supply a new universe somewhere in black hole collapse has been my continuous goal in understanding Smolin's thing. i think his argument starts off that you don't and can't know what is happening beyond the event horizon. For instance, from the inside you might find there is no singularity at all. But does that mean we can throw conservation of mass energy out the window? i think that's what he's saying, "I'm throwing conservation out of the fenestra!"[not an actual quote. edit] He mentioned that Lagragian constraints take the place of conservation of energy laws.
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Stuff on the inside can't link up with the old universe outside the event horizon. Further, the only memory of the old universe will be the infalling mass. Which apparently is some kind of "seed mass" which shares it's constraints with any new mass energy created in the event. Why would it share? Why wouldn't the old mass share it's parameters? The contradiction would be if the old and new didn't share parameters. He imagines the parameters change randomly but typically in small increments.
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Smolin still needs to show that everything we know about the bang and results from the bang are consistent with being on the inside of a black hole. In Smolin's universe the math inside black holes should coincide with what we are seeing here in this universe. There are arguments out there that use this idea, e.g. holographic theories.
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Smolin is a creative individual. He tolerates ambiguity well. He's open minded. His ideas come out of philosophy which reminds me that Bohr published some of his best work in Philosophical Magazine, in 3 parts.
If Smolin is correct, he may not be held in as high esteem as Bohr or Einstein, but he will rank, and it doesn't in anyway surprise me that his bent is philosophical.
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As Bohr explained the obdurately mysterious symmetry of the Period Tables with quantum mechanics, Smolin's theory promises to explain the previously inexplicable elemental parameters of physical theory. Not by some mythical "initial conditions," but with a theory of natural selection through fecundity of black hole production.
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Needs more information theory and a little cow bell.
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[Tanelorn]

I agree that there is a degree of separation between matter in the black hole and the matter in our outside universe. However there are still connections between them. Firstly there is the Gravitation field (warping of our space time) and secondly there is matter and energy leaving our side of the event Horizon and falling into the BH.

Another possible problem is that you don't want too many black holes in too small a space. I suspect that those threads of galactic clusters and great voids are also necessary for our universe of galaxies to work the way it does.

If our Universe is a BH in a parent Universe then perhaps our Big Bang inflation was the moment the BH formed due to the collapse of a star, and the continued dark energy expansion here, the growth of the BH due to matter in the parent Universe continuing to fall in. Matter there becomes energy in our Universe. The whole thing, parent, child and yet more progeny Universes become one enormous, very complex warping and DIVIDING of space time. WOW!

Unfortunately though, as I have said several times we have not found first cause or final effect, but it is a very very interesting picture or model of a possible reality nonetheless.

More Cowbell would help, or you could try "M of the U" by HW :)

 

[negativzero]

Not a spokesman, i can still relate my take:
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Just on the most populous form of non-toroidal holes, the mass, spin, direction, charge, and related stats like surface area of event horizon are only apparent from the outside of the hole, i think. I'm taking the most populous form of hole because the theory relies on maximal reproductive capacity. What happens in toriodal holes and super holes is less significant.
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To me, Guth's inflationary theory always smelled like a jury rigged patch on the big bang theory. i agree, one of the first places to look would be the whole inflationary mythology. Smolin might straighten out a few issues. One thing that occurs to me is that inflation either accompanied/included the creation of "new" mass energy or immediately followed it.
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Smolin's illustration of space emerging from accumulation of sequential events powered by momentum would be analogous to a bang creating space.
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i would add again that what is really measured and confirmed is fields, fields on fields, not space. When Smolin says "space" in his universe, he's not talking about eternal classical space. If energy appears inside the hole, let's say when the event horizon is made, onlookers can't verify directly what's going on from the outside. All outsiders know is that, some stuff went in, and with frame drag it pulled in some fields with it. Once alone inside, space would be created in between the bits of energy over time. That would be expansion. (Assuming there is no singularity once inside.)
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It would not be an "explosion" of mass/energy, it would be an insertion of space between particles. But whether you call it "expansion" or "insertion," it amounts to the same thing.
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i'm still searching for a mechanism to explain what looks like creation of mass energy. Somehow uncertainty and misbehaving Cauchy formulations don't persuade me. i want to believe, but remain agnostic, re the creation of mass energy.
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To bad professor Smolin can't grade my paper and tell me where I'm off!
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[Mordred]

Not a spokesman, i can still relate my take:

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

That one I am not familiar with, could you do me a fav and post some related links?

 

[negativzero]

My apologies Mordred.
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Originally Guth used the term, "conflation." It has since been renamed, "inflation."
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i'm just a hick clinging to my, International Dictionary of Applied Mathematics, and a BB gun. The word, is dated. But i like it better than inflation.
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Since it is creating confusion, rather than sourcing the etymology, i'll just edit my post above.
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Thanks, Mordred.
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[Mordred]

lol gotcha, you had me going there for a minute. The name conflation is in some ways a better descriptive

 

[Chalnoth]

A black hole could just be matter with sufficient density to prevent photons from escaping. Isnt this still the most likely explanation? Occam etc.

If this matter is dense enough to prevent light from escaping, then the outer extent of the light cone is traveling inward toward the center of this object. This means that in order for matter to remain stationary inside the horizon of a black hole, it would have to be traveling faster than light in its local frame.

 

[negativzero]

Chalnoth, do you mean the event horizon?
If Smolin is correct, some math must turn inside out when the event horizon is penetrated. Possibly something like a Mobius transformation. I'm probably wrong, because i haven't heard him say this, but i wouldn't be surprised if a photon sphere wasn't predicted to exist barely "inside" the event horizon as well as just outside it. If one assumes that mass entering the hole continues onward relentlessly to a singularity [if that's what you are saying], then it would contradict Smolin's basic assumptions.
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Perhaps i misunderstood your post, but as far as i know, empirical evidence doesn't confirm existence of singularities, but only black holes.
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[Tanelorn]

I also did not understand Chalnoth's reply. I only meant this:
"A black hole is a region of spacetime from which gravity prevents anything, including light, from escaping."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_hole

 

[Tanelorn]

Another interesting thought about Smolin's model is that old parent Universes do not just end by fading away into some kind of heat death after 10^100 years or so, but instead perhaps the parents energy continues onwards into their child Universes, over and over like a kind of cycle.

 

[Chalnoth]

I also did not understand Chalnoth's reply. I only meant this:
"A black hole is a region of spacetime from which gravity prevents anything, including light, from escaping."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_hole

Right. The point is that this fact, that light is not allowed to escape, means that inside this event horizon, the outer edge of the light cone actually travels inward.

The speed of light limitation means that every object must necessarily stay within its own light cone. Thus, since the outer edge of the light cone is traveling inward inside a black hole, all matter must also travel inward. No amount of pressure from matter just inside can prevent this (incidentally, at these gravities, pressure just increases the gravitational pull anyway!).

 

[negativzero]

Chalnoth, that's an interesting theory. Do you have any experiments verifying the climate inside holes? It sounds to me as if you are insisting upon perpetuating some of the expectations that would be valid outside the hole. Smolin has to be suggesting a rule change at or beyond the event horizon. If you don't accept that, you are rejecting the essential premise.
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Think, "Mobius."
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[negativzero]

We should all draw straws and the winner has to read Smolin's book!
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[WannabeNewton]

If Smolin is correct, some math must turn inside out when the event horizon is penetrated. Possibly something like a Mobius transformation.

What? This doesn't really make any sense at all.

If one assumes that mass entering the hole continues onward relentlessly to a singularity...

There is no assumption being made. In the framework of general relativity this is exactly what happens.

Perhaps i misunderstood your post, but as far as i know, empirical evidence doesn't confirm existence of singularities, but only black holes.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singularity_theorems

 

[negativzero]

Wannabe, thanks for communicating.
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i'm making the best effort i can to understand Smolin, who in fact is a general relativist.
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Since you are referencing Wikipedia, take a look at this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Möbius_transformation
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One way to look at it would be like this, but the process would be truncated by the creation of the event horizon: you take the information from the celestial sphere, and project it through any point and you get a kind of inside out map. Project it through the so called point of "singularity" and you map a new universe. (And can i add a big, "PERHAPS" here?)
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Or take a look at this stuff on sphere eversions:
http://torus.math.uiuc.edu/jms/Papers/isama/color/opt2.htm
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Here are some sphere eversion videos i rank ordered by my own preference:

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There is math for turning things inside out. Whether or not it's "nonsense," i discuss below.
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i'm trying to understand here. i can repeatedly say, "Hey! Wait a minute! That not the dogma I'm used too!," or i can try to get it. I'm trying to get it, and i guess that makes me an emergent advocate for Smolin at this time. It's just me here though, not the Dr. himself.
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Your source gave, "...1.a situation where matter is forced to be compressed to a point...," as an example of a space like singularity.
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Excuse me, but examples of matter are physical, and a point is geometry. Just how is one supposed to squish physical stuff into a mathematical fiction smaller than Planck length? Experiments confirming the accuracy of GR, don't prove the case here. There is no experiment confirming that matter, real physical matter, can be compressed into a metaphysical element.
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And that is what point, line, and plane are; they are fictions. They are mythical objects for which there is no physical example. (A word for that is "nonsense.") Show me a point. In modern math people assume postulates by faith re undefined elements, and derive theorems from them. In Smolin's use of Knopf algebra, for instance, the elements were: events, and momenta.
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Just ask the Pythagoreans, the math is a fictional almost religious ideation which remarkably resembles reality sometimes. No offense, but you sound like a true believer. i think altogether it is Smolin who is the skeptic here. Make that, "the heretic."
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Now back to my question above; it's not rhetorical: "...how is one supposed to squish physical stuff into a mathematical fiction smaller than Planck length?"
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What are you gunna do with that WannabeNewton?
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The creation of a black hole doesn't allow physical stuff to become metaphysical or Platonic. THAT would be nonsense reminiscent of Descartes' assumption that the pineal gland was man's connection with the metaphysical. Since there is no agreed answer in GR given the reality of QM as to what happens at the singularity, Smolin suggests that some of the fundamental questions of cosmology and physics could conveniently be answered if it can be shown that our U is inside an event horizon and that his precious parameters are tweaked to maximize stellar black hole births.
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GR powerful as it is still can't make real physical stuff into an element of Euclidean geometry, it's just a handy dandy fiction. And there are a variety of kinds of GR, and there is debate within GR. So if you think it's settled as to what happens at or beyond the event horizon or the singularity, we are in disagreement. It's not settled.
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Thx as always for your thoughtful responses,
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[negativzero]

Tanelorn my friend,
you said again, "...we have not found first cause or final effect..."
i start with the assumption that no one will ever find IT.
But that means that every time i come back to the subject, it's not resolved.
So much fun for so many!
Hopefully for us all, cosmetology and it's smaller cousin cosmology are not purely and exclusively a total waste of time.
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[negativzero]

My personal problem with buying his book is that i like to think about what should be in a book before i read it.
This proclivity is very rewarding for me because i can say, "Hey! i thought of that too! Just before i read it. Since you bring it up."
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Knowing myself, if I'm still interested in Smolin in a month, i will have bought his latest book, sheepishly.
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Until i buy the book, i can say i only saw 2 or 3 of his videos and i agree with what i hear.
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But the reason i am here at all is because i see space emerging from energy over time and that's what my boy Smolin says!
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i'm not a fan of many, but Wheeler was once upon a time my only celeb until Smolin arose as a figure in physics. i admit. I'm an instantaneous fan of his. If i met him i might get agitated and ask him to autograph my forehead in indelible ink. But it's because i came to similar conclusions before i ever heard of him. i think too.
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In this group, on this message board, i guess you would have to say I'm one of the few fans posting.
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[i hate being a fan! In tennis i don't care about anyone's game but mine. Outside my family and friends, I'm a fan of nobody but Wheeler and Smolin, and Nader, on anything. That sounds soooo creepy! i need intervention from the physics dept!]
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[Tanelorn]

Tanelorn my friend,
you said again, "...we have not found first cause or final effect..."
i start with the assumption that no one will ever find IT.
But that means that every time i come back to the subject, it's not resolved.
So much fun for so many!
Hopefully for us all, cosmetology and it's smaller cousin cosmology are not purely and exclusively a total waste of time.
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minus, I couldn't agree more, the eternal search will go on!

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

Perhaps first cause is final effect :)

 

[rbj]

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

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

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


^** actually, if it were up to me, i would set $G=\frac{1}{4\pi}$.

 

[Tanelorn]

I tried setting G = 1/(4*Pi) and ran my BB simulation overnight and all I ended up with was a Universe consisting entirely of marsh mallow! :)

 

[rbj]

i see the :) smiley. but just to make sure, the value of dimensionful constants are not "operationally meaningful". saying "The value of $G$ was predetermined before the universe began" is not really operationally meaningful.

saying "The value of $\alpha$ was predetermined before the universe began" might be meaningful. at least if "... before the universe began" is meaningful.

 

[Tanelorn]

rbj, actually I didn't have my glasses on as well as not thinking about whether they were dimensionful.

I presume you normalize to 1 from this value?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitational_constant

 

[negativzero]

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

Perhaps you don't need additional energy, just a kick to start it all off as in an unstable system.

Perhaps this Universe reproduction cycle could be considered the main event. All the normal matter in the Universe is only 5% of the total energy. Could almost consider it to be just a by product..

 

[negativzero]

Baez mentions, "...A slightly less naive way to calculate the vacuum energy in quantum field theory is to admit that we don't know spacetime is a continuum,..."
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Yes! No infinities, no infinitesimals. Entanglement defines the smallest unit of continuity. When any two particles interact, they continue to be connected until one of them interacts with another particle. The fastest shortest quickest interval in space/time is that unit. There is no need for an infinitesimally continuous space; the choppy nature of entanglement is the reality.
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But Baez didn't say that, he just kinda hinted at it. i have no information that he buys into CNS, so i guess i shouldn't harp on some tangential issue. i'll cut it off here.
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[Tanelorn]

i see the :) smiley. but just to make sure, the value of dimensionful constants are not "operationally meaningful". saying "The value of $G$ was predetermined before the universe began" is not really operationally meaningful.

saying "The value of $\alpha$ was predetermined before the universe began" might be meaningful. at least if "... before the universe began" is meaningful.

This page on Planck units and normalization is very useful for understanding what rbj mentioned. If I covered this at all, it was at least 32 years ago so good to see this again.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck_unitsApparently we would not know if the speed of light has changed, even drastically. We say that the speed of light is constant but it appears that we cannot tell even if it isn't. Are there any implications for CMBR redshift here at all?

 

[negativzero]

Assuming that consensus shifts to support the Smolinverse,
what cosmological questions will remain, and what new questions will be generated by acceptance of CNS?
i've been having fun with this one, and i'd like to read what anyone else imagines.
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