Toward
a More Unified Theory of the Universe
Paul
VanRaden
1984
I hope that this paper will lead toward a
clearer and more consistent picture of reality, if not toward a more unified
theory of the universe.
All of us have difficulty explaining the
world, perhaps because it contains both order and chaos. When we look closely
around us, we see many local systems of order, yet each of these local systems
seem to be affected by random causes operating within and outside themselves.
This situation seems to hold true for the small system as well as the big. The
atom, the molecule, the life form, the community, the solar system, the
galaxies, the superclusters, and the many larger systems not yet discovered all
seem to behave by this principle. It would be hard to think of something that
didn't.
Now, we think of the Big Bang. Is it possible
that the Big Bang was exceedingly bigger than, but yet similar to, the fission
of an atom? Could both of these events be governed by other random occurrences
happening both within and outside these same systems? Could both of these
events be thought of as just another random happening in the world? These
questions lead us to speculate, for the moment, that there exists an infinite
hierarchy of local systems of order, and that disorder continues through the interaction
of these systems.
The conflict between order and randomness in
the world must come from somewhere. The order seems to come from principles we
assume are constant across the universe. These principles include things like
inertia, gravity, the conservation of matter and energy, the evolution of life
once it is established, these things plus many, or even all, of the concepts of
logical thought. The randomness of the world seems to come from its
infiniteness. That the world is finite would seem difficult to prove. Someone sitting
on his own planet far removed from our local Big Bang universe would be quite
amused at reading the proof. In cases like these where we can't prove that
something is finite, we usually assume the more general universe, in this case
the infinite one.
Using this assumption, the universe contains
an infinite amount of matter and energy, this matter and energy itself being
distributed across the infinite linear extensions of space-time.
The question is how you go about distributing
something which is infinite across infinity. The answer is, of course,
randomly. This seems to give us a more general view of the universe. We might
do well, for the moment, to assume that we live in a four-dimensional,
infinite, randomly operating universe. My own senses cannot pick up any
evidence of a fifth or higher dimension, so I should refuse to invoke a fifth
or higher dimension to help me explain the reality in which I must live.
The randomness of the world sneaks up on us
slowly, like the devil. We listen to the noise of a Geiger counter as it tells
us about the randomness of our world in one dimension, time. We envision
ourselves participating in a harmless game of one-dimensional random walk,
stepping forward or backward, at random, as finite intervals of a second
dimension, time, go by. We examine pollen grains floating on the
two-dimensional surface of water, each one moving at random to a new position
as a certain amount of the third dimension, time, goes by. And we imagine the
many and varied molecules of gas in the air, colliding at random with each
other inside some arbitrary volume or cube, continuing to do so far as long as
the fourth dimension, time, keeps coming by.
In this last case we have a picture of a
four-dimension random system, operating for a length
of time, with no real cause or effect, simply mixing and re-assorting itself
into new forms. Now we have only to slowly expand the volume of this system. We
push the sides of this arbitrary four-dimensional volume out slowly to the
upper reaches of the atmosphere and observe no real discontinuities to this
point. Then we let it go slowly to the edge of the solar system, and then
slowly out to contain the entire galaxy. Then we take it slowly to the edge of
the Big Bang matter, and finally, using our last ounce (28.3g) of mental
effort, throw the boundaries out far enough away to contain an infinity of Big
Bang or similar-sized systems, each separated by great distances, yet each
interacting with the others, the whole system existing for an infinity of time.
Isn't that a radical thought!
But it's not that radical. It seems more to
be a natural extension like relativity. The portions of space-time we have
examined seem to contain matter, energy, life, and random interactions of each
with the other. The portions of space-time we have not examined probably
contain these things as well.
There are now many available theories of the
universe. We have astronomers working on theories of the universe which use
concepts like curved space, expanding space, generalizations of general
relativity, and so forth. The ancient astronomers would have had no use for
these concepts. They knew only that if they seated themselves firmly upon the
earth, arbitrarily picked out four imaginary orthogonal axes, say North-South,
East-West, Up-Down, and their local clock (probably just their mental clock),
and stared up into the sky, then they could observe the local bodies of mass -
the sun, the moon, and the stars - move in nicely defined curves through this
nicely defined but arbitrarily chosen version of space-time. And they slept
peacefully.
But they kept wondering why there was such
perfect order and rhythm in the heavens while they and their sheep engaged in
such seemingly random activity on the earth just below. Then, one of them
discovered a random activity in the heavens - a planet, a "wanderer"
- and they were afraid of what this might mean. But time went on and they
learned to live with the randomness of their world. Fears were stirred up again
when comets would appear, seemingly at random, into the night sky, there for all
to see. But the people learned that this randomness would not hurt them, and
they lived with it.
These ancient astronomers had some naive
concepts of space as well. They defined space to be that portion of the
universe which did not seem to contain any matter. They figured, as long as
space doesn't seem to contain anything, surely it can't expand or contract, and
it would seem absurd to use curved lines to describe it if you could possibly
get by with straight ones. But they went on thinking that their own finite
little world was the only one possible, and this made them happy.
Should we assume that randomness had its
origin at a single point in space-time? The reality of the world seems to be
its randomness. Don't we all engage in just random activity, living our lives
by chance encounters with chance events, using only our instincts derived from
millions of years of chance evolutionary selections to get us through, or is
that just me? Yet there is this phrase about poetry in motion. I think that
describes the situation better.
These ideas give us a rather strange
universe, but one that at least is easier to explain than the current versions.
It has no starting point or ending point to the four dimensions, no
discontinuities in the middle, no Absolute cause and effect, just random
activity for an infinity of time, guided only by the principles we assume are
constant.
Could so strange a universe turn out to be
friendly? What would this theory say about life and living?
It would say that the future can only ever
cautiously be predicted, and that events of the past can never fully be
explained. It would tell us that not only we, but all the other struggling,
living creatures around us are faced with this same lack of knowledge. Like the
theory of evolution, this theory can only partially explain our past, and
offers no solid answers for the future. Its only prediction is that the
positive energies of evolving living systems will be forever locked into combat
against the negative forces of entropy, dissipation, and chaos, wherever and
whenever these life forms arise.
On a more personal note, this theory would
tell us that the things we see around us are neither good nor bad, neither
wrong nor right, that they are simply a reality that we inherited from the past
and are forced to live with in the present. Our strategy for the future would
then be simply to accept this reality in which we must live, to learn to enjoy
it rather than curse it, and to do what we can to make the reality we pass to
those living creatures around us in space-time an even better one than they would
otherwise enjoy.
That's my kind of a
universe!
"Toward a More Unified
Theory of the Universe" was written
by Paul VanRaden in 1984 in Ames, Iowa while I was a graduate student.
Edward R. Harrison, University of
Massachusetts - Amherst, author of the book Cosmology, provided this
review: "I like your
cosmological essay, and thank you for sending it. It is not easy to find
journals that publish papers of a reflective nature." November 27, 1984.
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