The Pleasure and Anxiety of Discovery

The emotions of pleasure and anxiety are what kick start purpose and without some kind of purpose, consciousness is simply not possible. So it is the pleasure of discovery that allows us to survive as well as allows us to thrive when we discover futures beyond those we need for bare survival. When we discover something about the universe that seems like no one else yet knows, the pleasure of that discovery is especially intense.

And yet anxiety about the unknown tempers that pleasure and makes me wonder if I am right. Aethertime is a discovery that defines a universe with the simple axioms of matter, time, and action. The actions of two complementary electron spins complements the actions of discrete aether with the universe and its decoherence time that is what drives both gravity and charge forces. The axioms of matter, time, and action close aethertime and with the constants of matter, time, and action form an anti+universe pulse and our present epoch is just 82% decay from that pulse center.

Figure 1. Aethertime boson pulse that describes the anti+universe where the current epoch lies.

Just like the universe is a matter pulse in time, the universe is also a spectrum of objects of matter like people and neurons. In fact, just as people interact and bond, so do neural packets of aware matter as the figure shows. The neural impulses from excitation and inhibition of action potentials form EEG spectra that represent consciousness as objects of aware matter particles. Just as aware matter particles bond into objects of thought, people interact and bond as a result of those same objects of thought.

Mainstream science supposes that time is a continuous displacement in a continuous 4D spacetime and that is motion in space. While it is certainly true that atomic clocks have continuous pulses, atomic clocks therefore tick with a stream of discrete atomic events. So the atomic time that we sense is really not a continuous displacement on an infinitely divisible timeline of past, present, and future. Atomic time is instead average discrete frequency periods along with the deoherence for those periods. 

Objects that we sense have just one time delay, which is only one of the two time dimensions of a clock needed to tell time in the present moment. All objects including atomic clocks have both atomic frequency periods along with a decoherence rate for those periods and so there are two dimensions for time. Mainstream science imagines atomic time as a constant that does not run down or decay even though all working clocks including atomic clocks actually do run down as well as tick at regular intervals. 

Normally people view a clock running down as an artifact and for an electronic or any clock, the lost energy of decoherence or entropy is simply replaced with more coherent power from a battery or power plant. Since the tick frequency defines the duration of a moment for that clock and the tick frequency does not seem to change, it seems like clocks simply need energy to operate. But how fast a clock runs down also tells an absolute time for the clock in how often the clock needs to be charged or wound. In aethertime, there is a very small an intrinsic and universal decoherence rate not only for clocks, but also for all objects and that decoherence tells a universe time.

The aethertime universe clock is the decoherence decay of the universe matter pulse as 0.255 ppb/yr in the present epoch.

Decoherence time is provides a quasi-continuous time from the edge of the universe just beyond the CMB. Unlike atomic time, which depends on the frame of reference, decoherence time represents the absolute frame of the boundaries of a closed universe. Just like the thousands of millisecond pulsars that keep time for the cosmos, time has both a dimension of tick frequency as well as a dimension of tick frequency decay as shown in Fig. 2 below. Although millisecond pulsars decay due mostly to light and gravity radiation, there is also an average decay rate that coincides with many other measurements of matter decoherence.

Figure 2. Shows the many measurements that are consistent with the universal decoherence decay of the universe.

Along with atomic time in this epoch, this universal decoherence is very simply a dimensionless ratio of gravity and charge force and that ratio unifies these two forces by a scaling of the time period of the universe over that of the hydrogen atom. While charge acts at the microscopic scale of an atomic clock pulse, gravity emerges along with space from the cosmic scale of the universe pulse, a wrapping of charge force by the time scale of the universe.

Quantum Fine-Structure Constant

One of the more pervasive and mysterious nonmysteries of science has to do with the fine-structure constant, α. The fine structure constant shows up whenever there is moving charge since moving charges have both magnetization as well as charge forces. Of course, quantum particles are in perpetual charge motion of quantum phase and so the only real mystery of the fine-structure constant is that it does not seem to have a role in relativity gravity. Because classical particles do no have the perpetual motion of quantum phase, classical particles do not show the fine-structure constant.

In other words, there is no vector force for gravity like the vector force of magnetization for moving charge. In the collapsing universe, gravity is a result of photon exchange bonds and therefore, collapsing universe gravity does show a vector force.

The fine structure constant first showed up as the Lamb shift of some hydrogen spectral features. The spinning electron has its own magnetism called spin and in certain hydrogen orbits, that electron also generates  orbital magnetism. The Lyman, Balmer, Paschen, etc., spectral series are light emissions that show the main energy levels of the hydrogen atom that converge on the hydrogen ionization energy at 13.6 eV as the Rydberg energy. (see figure)

The coupling between electron spin and orbital spin magnetism, spin-orbit coupling, has no classical analog and results in a splitting proportional to α². However, the collapsing universe does couple star motions in a galaxy and therefore also star motion with star rotation as well.

The quantum mystery of the fine structure constant deepened when increasing measurement precision of the electron magnetism found that the electron spin magnetism affected its charge. The anomalous electron magnetic moment is due to a quantum self energy that does not have a classical meaning and there is no such gravitization self energy for classical gravity force. It was then discovered by Feynman and Schwinger that the fine structure constant nicely predicted that a spinning electron created a counterspinning vacuum electric field with its own magnetism and the fine structure constant defined that coupling.

With higher resolution spectrographs, spectroscopists in the 1800's came to realize that spectral lines showed even further splitting and that spectral splitting came to be known as fine structure. Although not completely understood until Dirac in 1928, electrons can orbit in either spherical or donut-shaped ellipsoid orbits with different orbital angular momentum and phase or orbital magnetism. In fact, electrons exist in superposition states that involve some of all possible states and the interaction  of those states splits their degeneracy into what was termed the fine-structure constant by Sommerfeld in 1916, actually the square of the fine-structure constant α².

An electron in the perfect symmetry of a spherical orbit does not have any average orbital magnetism, but an electron in various donut orbits does have magnetism due to the reduced symmetry of such orbits and the orbital magnetism of donut orbits then couples with the electron spin magnetism. In addition, the intrinsic spins of the electron and proton are also interact and cause the hyperfine splitting observed at even higher resolution as the figure below represents. The quantum underpinnings for the fine-structure constant would have to wait until Dirac in 1928 and by that time, the hyperfine spectral splittings were also discovered.

The key to all of these quantum magnetic interactions turned out to be the fine-structure constant quantum quantum phase, but there is no classical analog to spin orbit coupling and so the fine-structure constant is not part of a classical reality. Indeed, Feynman developed his quantum field theory in 1958 that conveniently used α to represent a perturbation expansion to account for the effect of quantum electron charge on itself.

In fact, there is another common dimensionless constant called the gyromagnetic ratio, g, which is around two and expresses the frequency differences between classical and quantum rotating charges. The gyromagnetic ratio turns out to be completely determined by a series expansion of α, which then reveals the mystery of the quantum spinning charge with g = 2 reality versus the classical spinning charge with a g = 1 reality.

Somehow the gyromagnetic ratio all by itself embodies the difference between quantum and classical charge motion and there is a similar factor of two that shows up with gravity deflection of light. The equivalent mass from light's momentum deflects light passing near a gravity body like the sun. The gravity deflection of quantum light has twice the angle of an equivalent classical body like a comet or asteroid.

Just like the interaction of photon magnetism with quantum spin in a magnetic field is the result of many exchanges among virtual states, the interaction of photon momentum with gravity is also the result of many photon exchanges among virtual states. It is likely that a similar correspondence with α and gravity occurs for quantum gravity, but a quantum gravity is not yet in common use.

The figure above shows the gravity fine structure expected for the hydrogen atom that is many orders of magnitude less, 1e39, than current science can measure for a single atom in the present epoch. However, in the CMB creation is a gravity object that releases light and shows the quantum gravity resonances as fluctuations in the cosmic microwave background.

While the CMB emission at 2.7 K represents the hydrogen ionization energy in the early universe, the gravity modes oscillate with a fundamental at around 5e-5 K or 50 ppm of the 2.7 K CMB emission. The CMB gravity modes represent the multipole peaks in the CMB spectrum below.

There are any number of papers that show that α² varies on the order of 3e-15/yr for astrophysical spectra and 6e-17 for terrestrial atomic clocks and not the 0.26 ppb/yr decoherence rate predicted by quantum aether. Actually the standard cosmology of mainstream science does not recognize any variation in α and the measured variations have not yet been widely accepted. With quantum aether, there is a phase factor for α that is consistent with a variation in α² that is as reported. Thus the variations of α² with both astrophysical and high precision atomic time are consistent with the aether decoherence rate of 0.26 ppb/yr.

The key turns out to be a complementary α phase factor that accompanies each oscillating charge dipole that generates a photon of light. Although mainstream science approximates a hydrogen atom with the motion of an electron in orbit around a proton and that motion shows an average velocity of αc, the product of α and the speed of light, c.

This means that the dipole average kinetic energy of the photon from the oscillation is proportional to α²c². However, there is a neglected phase factor associated with charge motion that is why distant galaxies show the same α² as we experience in our epoch even though both α and c actually increase at 0.26 ppb/yr. In quantum aether, it is the ratio of c/α that is constant and h becomes the matter scaled Planck's constant h/c² is the Planck constant in quantum aether.

A basic premise of quantum aether interaction with matter is that the constants h, c, and α all expand over time and actually begin at zero at the aether pulse peak of the CMB that is the transition of our universe from the its precursor antiverse expansion. Thus it is important to understand why the relative splitting of the hydrogen atom spectrum that is α does not seem to vary in early galaxies back in time.

Although it seems a bit incredible that mainstream science has long misinterpreted the meaning of spectral splittings in distant galaxies, there are many measurements that validate the ongoing decay of matter at 0.26 ppb/yr (8.1e-18s^-1) along with the increase in both gravity and charge forces that complements the decay of matter. Moreover, it is the decoherence of quantum aether that determines and unites the two forces of matter that mainstream science calls gravity and charge.

Finally, with the quantum gravity of quantum aether comes the gravitization of moving matter like stars that complements gravity force. Matter gravitization is most obvious in the coupled motions of stars in galaxies due to star radiation and motion. Mainstream science now attributes galaxy star motions to an as yet unmeasured cold dark matter but the simple star to star coupling of gravitization makes galaxy star motion explicable without any need for the unseen mystery of dark matter.

Why Does the World Exist?

Questions about the infinity of nothing that is empty space date to ancient Greece and Zeno. How can we get anywhere in space, the ancient Greek philosopher Zeno asked, when we need to take an infinity of steps just to span the infinity of infinitely divisible space. More contemporary philosophers often simply accept the infinite divisibility of nothing without any objection and do not bother with the infinite discourse about nothing.

The recent book by Jim Holt Why Does the World Exist interviews a number of philosophers, religious scholars, and scientists and provides a wide litany of the standard answers to this infinite philosophical discourse. Somehow Holt felt that he could write a whole book about the dark nothing of empty space and people would actually buy it and read it...and I did...

Holt supposes that nothing would be a much simpler reality than the world that exists but he somehow does not really explore the inherent paradoxes of the infinities of nothing. As a result, infinity does not seem to bother Holt and he seems quite comfortable with the simplicity of infinity.

A statement that nothing could exist seems to contradict itself. Much like the square circles or married bachelors that Holt twice mentions, supposing nothing as something is a similar foil of words. Simply asking a question with words does not mean that the question has any meaning or any answer either.

The finite universe exists and is what existence means. Existence is simply a belief that we acquire as young children around two years of age as we learn consciousness. We simply learn to accept the belief about the universe of existence consisting of sources and observers of sources that undergo action and therefore change with time. The dark lonely nothing of empty space is a convenient object that we use to represent the universe itself and therefore empty space helps us keep track of the objects of matter within an otherwise empty universe.

The shrinking decoherence of aethertime defines both the gravity and charge of our quantum universe. In a universe of matter and time, space and momentum are just convenient representations that are consistent with sensation and neural thought. Each of general relativity and quantum charge exist as overlapping regimes of quantum aethertime.

Asking why the universe exists is then the same as asking why existence exists; the question's answer is a circular identity. Such identities are useful in that they allow us to know the boundaries of what we can know. There is no empty universe devoid of sources because the only universe that we can know and that can exist is one that is full of sources and observers all changing in time. The notion of a mostly empty universe filled with just a few sources is a useful one just like the number zero is useful for describing the absence of having something like an apple, but the notion of empty space is fundamentally limited and flawed and does not describe all changes in the universe.

Instead of a mostly empty universe filled with just a few observers and sources, the universe of discrete aether is made up of variations of matter and action. Aether is the matter that is the universe and the action of discrete aether is what clumps aether into sources and observers. Discrete action is the exchange of discrete aether particles between observers and sources and action describes how aether clumps into discrete matter spectra.