Trapped in a Shell of Continuous Space and Time

We largely exist as conscious beings trapped in a shell of continuous space and time that we call our universe. However, the universe includes other sources besides space and time and our true primitive reality consists of discrete matter and action from which emerge space and time. Most macroscopic action conforms to the limitations of our space and time shell, but there are actions that go beyond space and time. The actions of black holes, for example, as well as the actions of very small scale. In fact, the feelings that we have about the world are not limited by space and time and it is by those feelings that we can know more about the primitive reality of matter and action.

Matter and action both obviously exist and describe not only the matter that makes up a static world, but also the action that is how matter changes. Instead of a reality where matter and action occur within space and time, our true reality is matter and action. We want to make reality as simple as possible but cannot seem to break out of the shell of space and time to better understand matter and action from which space and time emerge.

Space and time allow us to know certain limited things about the universe and then we need to use feeling to understand the parts of the universe like quantum phase that we cannot know directly. By subjective feeling, we can learn how to choose among many possible quantum futures despite a classical anxiety about the unknown. Just like we feel pleasure in the discovery by our choices, we also feel anxious about the possible dangers in those choices.

The universe of matter and action includes sources of quantum phase noise that we can never really directly know because of the limitations of consciousness. However, the feelings that we have do entangle with the quantum phase noise that is part of our consciousness as well as part of every sources. Sources whose action that we can observe become part of our spacetime reality while sources that we only feel and believe in become part of our quantum phase reality.

The electron and proton of a hydrogen atom is an example of a source that we can know in space and time. However, the quantum gravity phase noise associated with the actions of the electron and proton represents a very weak noise that entangles all matter. An observer sees the atom but can only feel the entanglement of quantum phase noise as shown. This entanglement is what makes reality seem real since all macroscopic sources under very rapid phase decay.

Rapid quantum phase decay for large sources is what makes reality appear to behave so classically and gives us the feeling of space and time. Each discrete moment of reality involves a superposition of not only past actions, but also of possible futures. When we choose a particular future, the other possible futures rapidly decay away and that one future becomes the next discrete moment.

When we choose to break or not break an egg, there is a very short time that a superposition reality exists before the future that we choose becomes reality.

Theory of Everything

Frank Close’s new book Theories of Everything is good, short, and to the point. Nima Arkani-Hamed wrote a similar albeit less historical essay in Daedalus in 2012 The Future of Fundamental Physics. Their basic conclusion is that science is locked up in a shell of space and time and has thus far not been able to find a way within space and time to a TOE that unites gravity and quantum. And thanks to Woits Not Even Wrong blog and his review of Close's book

Of course quantum gravity is the key to a TOE that unites gravity and charge, but understanding quantum gravity will also lead to an understanding of the quantum nature of consciousness. As Close suggests in his book and also Arkani-Hamed states in his 2012 Daedalus essay, science needs an understanding of the universe of matter and quantum action instead of the closed shell of a universe of space and time.

Our intuition of a classical universe with cause and effect is a very useful way to predict macro action, but fails for micro quantum action. Evolution has selected our neural mind with a classical spectrometer that does not measure quantum phase decay. Evolution’s classical consciousness allows us to keep track of sources in space and time quite well.

Unfortunately, that same intuition is what locks us all up inside of a shell of continuous space and time, which appear to be the places and durations of source change. How matter changes, though, is really called action and therefore all motion in space and time emerges from the action of mass and all action is limited by a discrete quantum step as an exchange of a particle of matter. Therefore the quantum universe is a simple matter spectrum of action that involves shrinking matter and expanding force. Thus it is from the differential of action with matter that both space and time emerge as very useful ways for consciousness to keep track of source actions.

Close notes that the Higgs field sound a lot like the aether of early science and yet if the universe were made of aether and action instead of space and time, aether would not actually fill space. Rather it would be from the action of aether that space emerges and the same aether that makes up atoms also makes up the space between atoms. Instead of atoms existing in the continuum of space and time, space emerges from the discrete action of aether. Particular aether actions make up electrons, protons, and neutrons and then other aether actions make up the space and time between atoms.

Atoms change by aether exchange and particular kinds of changes we call motion in continuous space and time. General relativity works well at many scales because it is based on the basic notions of a space and time shell within which light speed is constant and mass depends on relative velocity.