The Pleasure of Discovery Is About More Than Just Science...

Popular understandings of the technical issues of science are often clouded by the language of science. The public often favors and believes in one or more popular scientists as intercessories even when those popular scientists say things that most other scientists do not agree with.

Popular scientists are now a select priesthood vetted by television, internet videos, and popular science books. It is the ultimate insult to a practicing scientists to say that that scientist's science is not science, which seems rather silly since science is really just a part of human discovery.

Suppose that a person has a hobby communicating science to others and is otherwise employed...is that person a scientist? Human discovery, after all, can take many different forms and communication of science to others is in some sense the most important part of human discovery. The pleasure of discovery is about much more than just science.

Suppose that a person only teaches science but does not actually do any science...is that person a scientist? The ability of teaching and communicating science to a new generation is an important part of wisdom and knowledge.

Suppose that a person does industrial R&D developing and testing new drugs...is that person a scientist? You know...it is kind of nice to make a living doing whatever you decide to do...and so many different kinds of activities that comprise what people call science.

The pleasures of discovering knowledge and wisdom are fundamental and science is really only a small part of the pleasure of all of human discovery. Working scientists get paid for addressing the great questions and problems of science and one of many various sources funds their work. Likewise historians and economists and sociologists also get paid for what they do in making a more efficient economy.

Here are 5
great questions and 14 great problems for science that support many of the 14 human needs of civilization.

Great Questions for Science (Knowledge):

1)      … Nature of Matter;

2)      … Natures of Force and Action;

3)      … Natures of Intelligence and Consciousness;

4)      … Origin of the Universe;

5)      … Molecular Basis of Life.

Great Problems for Science:

1)      Curing Cancer (Health);

2)      Curing Heart Disease (Health);

3)      Curing Aids (Health);

4)      Placing People into Space (Knowledge);

5)      Reducing Energy Costs (Energy);

6)      Improving Transportation (Transportation);

7)      Cleaning Up Defense Wastes (Security);

8)      Maintaining Economic Stability (Money);

9)      Reducing Human Environmental Impact (Environment);

10)  Stabilizing Population Growth (Environment);

11)  Maintaining World Peace (Security);

12)  Maintaining National Defense (Security);

13)  Harnessing Nuclear Energy (Energy);

14)  Reducing Crime (Security).

The human needs basis divides the U.S. GDP into 14 needs and the great questions and problems for science addresses just 7 of those 14 human needs. Each human need involves a percent of the GDP ($19.5 T in 2016) as well as a percent of the need spent on extended research and development, exR&D. That is, there are many company's exR&D that improve shelter materials, which include clothing and furniture, and those efforts are not normally considered science, but rather more engineering optimization.

Human Need	%GDP	DP in $B	exR&D Rank	description
1)      Transportation	18%		1.3%	Autos, planes, trains buses trucks, boats, roads, bridges, DMV’s, maintenance
2)      Shelter	16%		1.2%	Homes and commercial structures, clothing, furniture
3)      Health	14%		2.7%	Physicians, nurses, dentists optometrists, hospitals, pharma, hygiene
4)      Knowledge	8.4%		1.8%	K-12, universities, exploration, NSF, part of NIH
5)      Food	8.2%		0.7%	Farming, processing, grocery, agricultural chemicals
6)      Security	7.6%		7.3%	Police, judiciary, prisons, national guard, military, weapons
7)      Tools	7.2%		4.7%	Hand tools, machine tools, analytical instruments, sensors, robots, computers, software
8)      Risk	*			Insurance, social security, welfare
9)      Administration	5.1%			Local, state, federal (does not include judiciary, police, utilities)
10)  Energy	4.1%		5.0%	Oil, natural gas, coal, nuclear, hydro, solar, wind, firewood, geothermal, power utilities
11)  Leisure	4.1%		0.2%	Parks, vacations, movies, entertainment, arts, music, religions
12)  Environment	2.7%		4.8%	Water, sewage, solid waste disposal, air pollution, habitat management
13)  Communication	2.6%		2.2%	Telephone, internet, radio, TV, newspapers, magazines, postal
14)  Money	2.0%			Banks, federal reserve, stock exchanges, commodities, coinage

These human needs define what people spend their lives doing as well as comprise a spectrum within each life and people then spend on their needs. Human needs describe an economy in a way that directly links R&D to increased productivity and therefore human needs basis provides a very useful way to optimize ex R&D resources for increasing productivity. 

When civilization decides to shift more %GDP on health, the wealth necessarily must come from some other human need, such as leisure or administration, for example. Even though health is a very important human need, people really desire to spend less and not more for health. Thus health exR&D should increase productivity and reduce health spending.

Discrete Aether and Action as Fundamental

Abstract

Although continuous space and time seem to be fundamental to our universe along with matter and action, space and time actually emerge from the fundamental discrete actions of a finite discrete aether. The universe of discrete quantum aether turns the universe of space and time inside out since quantum decoherence from precursors to outcome is what really drives the emergence of the order of space and time. Although mainstream science believes that both space and time expand in universe, quantum decoherence of aether shows that space and matter shrink while time and action expand into an increasing order.

Discrete Action of Discrete Aether

Discrete aether and action are the fundamental two dimensions from which all other dimensions of the shrinking universe of expanding force then emerge. Although typical observers use the continuous time and space of an expanding universe to keep track of precursor actions, enlightened source observers use the discrete action of discrete matter to keep track of precursor actions. It is from the discrete actions of discrete matter that the increasing order of a shrinking progeny of outcomes arises.

Both time and space then emerge from the causal set of increasing order of outcomes for a shrinking universe. The term aether refers to the actual fundamental particle of all granulated matter and light. It is discrete aether that is what actually makes up the granulated universe, not really space and time and both space and time emerge from an entangled causal set of aether action. For example, atomic clock actions define time with collections of discrete actions that are causal-set progeny and observers then simply believe that there exists an infinitely divisible time that has meaning in between the discrete actions of that causal-set progeny. Thus it is the belief that continuous time exists outside of the discrete actions of discrete atomic action that then defines time and observers who believe in continuous time then interpolate between those discrete events to infer a continuous time.

It is the causal set of discrete wavelengths of light that define space from the discrete actions of that light. Observers have to first of all simply believe in the existences of both matter and action and most observers then further believe in the infinitely divisible space between discrete events to keep track of matter sources even though it is from discrete events that the notions of continuous space and time emerge. Ultimately then it is the discrete diameters of atomic charge radii and their spin periods that actually define discrete space and time displacements by the discrete wavelengths of light.

Although classical knowledge about the way the world works is necessary for wisdom, there are things about the way the world works that are not knowable but rather intuitive and yet intuition is still part of wisdom. People cannot know anything more about matter and action other than to simply believe that they are the way that they are. In other words, people cannot know why matter and action are the way that they are, people can only believe that matter and action are the way that they are.

Likewise people cannot know why they are here, why they are right here right now, or why it is they and not someone else who are right here right now. Our quantum intuition is a bridge between what we can know and what we cannot ever know, the quantum unknowable.

Discrete particles along with causal-set discrete actions make up the granulated universe and observers infer that there exists both continuous space and time in between the progeny of discrete actions. The universe does not exist first of all as a continuous flow of time and and a mostly empty continuous expanding space filled with just a small amount of matter on determinate gravity paths. Rather the universe exists first of all as a very large causal set of discrete aether with a small amount of that aether condensed at the CMB creation into the progeny of matter and light that we now observe. The shrinking granulated universe of growing action is then a pulse of decaying discrete aether and growing action as shown above and it is from the action of decoherence that emerges one of the two dimensions of a continuous time.

Although action normally integrates a kinetic and potential energy difference over continuous time and space for an unbound source, quantum action is inherent in the matter-scaled Planck constant without regard to continuous space and time. The matter-scaled Planck constant integrates the energy of a timeless aether photon and it is from the decay of that aether photon that time and space emerge from the discrete action of aether. Therefore all constants of the universe emerge from just the two simple ones of aether particle mass, m_ae, and the matter-scaled Planck constant, h_ae = h/c². The velocity of an electron spin, c/α, is constant, and it is from that radius and spin period that both space and time emerge as c and α that both actually vary slowly in cosmic time.

It is a fundamental aether decoherence that drives both charge and gravity forces in the shrinking universe. Thus this notion is subject to measurement and falsification although the decoherence rate of 8.1e-18 s^-1 is still beyond current precision of science as the plot shows. This decoherence rate is simply the ratio of gravity to charge forces times the orbit period of any matter. The decoherence rate for hydrogen is = Gm_H²/(q²c²1e-7) c/r_B. As measurement precision increases more and more, science will eventually measure and therefore discover the fundamental decay and shrinkage that the figure above shows…or science will show that it is some other decay or that decay does not exist at all. The fundamental decay time and distance of aether appear to center within the current experimental bounds of continuous spontaneous localization, CSL, as the figure shows. The difference between CSL and aether decay is that aether decay and distance are constants derived from the fundamental properties of a shrinking universe and not some arbitrary CSL parameters (see Carlesso et. al, 2017).

It is the causal set of discrete actions of discrete matter that define sources for an observer and so space and time merely emerge from the causal set of discrete action of matter from electron spin. Source matter oscillates with the action of exchange just as discrete source action oscillates and decays by exchange of discrete matter. The oscillations of matter and action mean that there are corresponding amplitudes and phases for the matter exchanges of matter actions. There is a further phase relationship between the oscillations of matter and action that then defines a quantum uncertainty principle in the traditional manner except with action and matter instead of displacement and momentum. This means that there is a limit to the precision of measuring both matter and action and so the conjugate variables of matter and action conform to the notions of quantum field theory.

While quantum field theory entangles matter sources to each other with an infinity of vacuum oscillators, quantum aether action entangles the same matter sources together with a very large but finite number of aether action oscillators. Thus the spacetime quantum fields that entangle sources with each other in an expanding universe emerge from the simpler notions of the discrete aether exchange of a shrinking universe.

General relativity unites continuous space and time into gravity action that results in determinate and infinitely divisible spacetime geodesics with no inherent uncertainty.  As a result, quantum uncertainty and oscillation and phase have no meaning for the determinate and continuous geodesic paths of relativity. However, the oscillations and phases of matter action represent gravity as a series of discrete events for a very weak gravity force.

General relativity therefore unites discrete matter and action into quantum gravity action. Quantum relativity then also results in determinate geodesic paths but now it is discrete matter and action along those determinate paths that makes them discrete. The emergence of continuous space and time from collections of discrete matter actions means that sources do actually follow determinate geodesics in space and time. This is because space and time actually emerge from the collections of discrete actions that define those paths. There is still a quantum uncertainty of the collection of discrete matter and action and that uncertainty necessarily limits knowledge of mass and action along those otherwise determinate geodesic paths. Thus while a source path follows the determinate geodesic of general relativity, there are still inherent uncertainties about the matter and action along that now discrete geodesic path.

Each atom of matter at the CMB creation entangles its emitted photon and that light shines on us today and these two entangled photons make up the biphoton resonance of quantum gravity exchange. The photons of the ancient light created not only matter, but also the biphoton quantum gravity from the determinate geodesic paths of the cosmic microwave background.

In summary, for matter and action to be the fundamental things from which all else emerges, the granulated universe must be made up of a very large but finite causal set of particles called aether. Instead of aether existing in continuous space and time, though, continuous space and time both emerge as outcomes from the causal set of discrete actions and discrete aether. Since both gravity and charge derive from the decoherence of quantum aether, they become in effect scaled versions of each other and the discrete action of aether provides a fundamental causal set for a rational universe.

References

https://arxiv.org/abs/1606.04581

Experimental bounds on collapse models from gravitational wave detectors

M. Carlesso, A. Bassi, P. Falferi, A. Vinante

Here are a series of blogs with more descriptive words for the nontechnical.

http://mattertimemeaning.blogspot.com/2017/02/quantavangelism.html

http://mattertimemeaning.blogspot.com/2017/01/quantum-phase-noise-versus-classical.html

http://mattertimemeaning.blogspot.com/2016/06/why-quantum.html

http://mattertimemeaning.blogspot.com/2016/05/quantum-gravity.html

Here are a series of technical papers only for those who understand the math.

https://www.academia.edu/7706507/Universal_Quantum_Action_with_Discrete_Quantum_Aether

https://www.academia.edu/7706668/GALAXY_ROTATION_WITHOUT_DARK_MATTER_IN_THE_MATTER-TIME_UNIVERSE

https://www.academia.edu/7708163/Decay_of_the_International_Prototype_Kilogram

https://www.academia.edu/9084109/Variation_of_the_Fine_Structure_Constant_over_Time_in_the_Matter_Time_Universe

Born Again Empathic Free Choice and In Feeling We Trust

Empathic free choice is the very necessary belief we all have in an objective physical reality of each person's feeling. A selfist believes in an objective reality that is the same for all people who can agree about measurements of reality. Selfists also believe in a subjective feeling that is how people each uniquely feel about the world and how they each feel is how they choose a future.

A selfist first of all believes in the matter and action of an objective world outside of the mind. This belief in matter and action anchors the selfist free choice and allows people to agree with each other about measurements of reality. A selfist also believes in the matter and action of a subjective world inside of our mind and that subjective world is unique for each person.

Selfists believe that a person chooses one of many possible futures based on their singular feeling and that singular feeling is a superposition of emotions along with a superposition of possible futures. The present moment exists as a superposition of a large number of past memories along with an even larger number of possible futures. Memory depends on the decoherence of neural memory to order past actions and the ordering of memory is what provides free choice a sense of time. The ordering of memories by decoherence within the mind provides an expectation that there will be a similar ordering for the many possible futures.

Born again empathic selfism does not deny the critical role of belief for understanding the relationship between our subjective and objective worlds. People must believe in matter and action and there is no way to further define those primal beliefs. Primal beliefs are what anchor free choice and help us find our destinies.

Selfists also believe that compassion is necessary to limit free choice and therefore bond to others for cooperation and mutual benefit. People must bond with others for the ascendance of a cooperative civilization where life expectancy increases, per capita productivity increases, and knowledge and wisdom increase. However, increasing life expectancy leads to anxiety about overpopulation and increasing productivity likewise leads to anxiety over inequity and these anxieties are both a direct result of increasing knowledge and wisdom, which then leads to even more anxiety about the downsides of civilization's ascendance.

Free choice of compassion is the also necessary belief we all have in a subjective feeling about the world and that others also have subjective feelings. Although people can agree about a objective free choice reality because of measurement, there is no way to measure subjective feeling of compassion and that means there is an alternate reality for each person's compassion. There is no way to know for certain that two people feel the same way about their inner compassion even though they can agree about an objective selfism.

Orders of Consciousness

Free choice is sometimes hard to define but rather easy to measure since free choice results in very particular patterns of electrical activity in the brain. The electroencephalogram or EEG indicates an subconscious versus conscious state and can differentiate different stages of sleep as well. Neural pathologies like epilepsy and coma also have very distinctive EEG spectra.

Free choice comprises progressive orders of recursive neural emotion:
zero order: joy and misery, anger and serenity, infants less than two years old;
first order: pleasure of discovery versus anxiety of the unknown, children less than six;
second order: free choice and compassion, bonding with others, long term memory, less than 18;
pride and shame, bonding with civilization, adults;
third order: spectral free choice, rapture of ecstasy, bonding with cosmos, passing away.

Free choice is also a learned process from acting like others act just like learning to communicate with language by acting like others act. Therefore it is useful to rank the development of free choice in general orders that the stages of human development define. When a child is first born with complete free choice, the two emotions of joy and misery pretty much determine the physical and parental inhibition of that child's free choice. Crying represents an infant's misery that a parent addresses while joy represents the looks and smiles and not crying then reinforces parental care.

First order free choice occurs by about age two or so when a child develops their first beliefs in space and time. First order free choice means that a child understands that sources do not disappear but rather continue to exist even though the child no longer sees them. The primitive emotions of pleasure and anxiety drive an initial purpose in discovering the world and that first world is a very selfish one with many potential dangers of free choice.

Thus a second order free choice occurs by about age six or so when a child begins to develop long term memories. Between two and six a child learns how to limit their free choice with compassion for others and how to limit other's free choices with anger and serenity. Free choice is a necessary emotion for survival just as compassion is a necessary emotion for bonding with others and as anger is necessary to limit other's free will. The child's long term memory allows development of bonding with others and sets the stage for ascent into civilization. Schools bring children together for learning and social interactions that introduce pride in accomplishments as well shame to conform behavior to a norm.

With a final emotion complement of pride and shame, second order free choice at age 18 or so is when a child transitions to an adult capable of survival on their own. Having developed a full complement of emotions, an adult is proud of the pleasure of discovery just as a child, but limits that pleasure by an appropriate anxiety about the consequences of shame. Driving an auto is a pleasant way to discover many things, but driving into a tree or another person is not something that is useful to discover.

Throughout life, people experience joy and misery along with anger and serenity in all of their endeavors, then pleasure and anxiety come next followed by free choice and compassion. Finally, pride and shame are a necessary emotions for fully conforming to a social norm and a civilization of laws and justice.

The third and final order of free choice occurs only after much experience in the world and does not necessarily occur for everyone. Third order free choice is the rapture and ecstasy with the discovery that the physical world of space and time is really not quite what it seems like it is. Third order free choice discovers the spectral nature of reality that underlies the apparent external reality of emergent space and time with sources and observers. When we pass into oblivion with this knowledge and wisdom, we experience the rapture and ecstasy of that discovery.

Wisdom of the Unknowable

There is a long history of discourse in philosophy and religion about the the dual natures of wisdom and knowledge. While knowledge is about remembering events and feelings that we discover, wisdom is how we use that knowledge along with feeling to discover and choose one of many possible and desirable futures.

Anything that happens in a determinate universe is in principle knowable with a knowable cause and so wisdom in a determinate universe is completely based on causal knowledge. Since feelings in a determinate universe all have knowable causes, determinism presumes people can always know why they make the choices that they make. In contrast, people actually live in a quantum and therefore uncertain universe, which means that there are many things that happen with unknowable causes. The unknowable causes  of the quantum universe represent unknowable knowledge, which is a mystery in which people must simply believe. As a result, people have feelings that they simply cannot explain and therefore they make some choices that they cannot ever really understand.

There are actually many questions that we can ask that have no answers even in a determinate universe. Why is the universe the way that it is? Why are we here? Why are we here right now? And why is it us and not someone else who is here right now? Many devout determinate believers simply do not ask these kind of questions that have no answers.

The many questions that do have answers are part of what is knowable while the questions that we can ask that have no answers are part of the unknowable and yet the unknowable also is part of wisdom. The further beliefs that anchor consciousness represent the fundamental wisdom of the unknowable.

There is a long history of religions attributing the wisdom of unknowable events to supernatural and therefore unknowable causes. Religions have created large amounts of wisdom over several thousand years and much of that wisdom derives from supernatural revelations. Much of religious wisdom helps guide human compassion and selfishness, which are two necessary and yet complementary emotions for bonding people together or causing conflict that separates people.

Religions also reveal wisdom about other emotion complements;  pleasure and anxiety, joy and misery, anger and serenity, and pride and shame. Pleasure and anxiety, for example, are the most important emotions for individual survival while compassion and selfishness are the most important for civilization and bonding. Religious wisdom reinforces emotions and feelings that help people survive.

Secular wisdom likewise depends on both knowable and unknowable beliefs and so secular wisdom still depends on some essential supernatural beliefs. People must simply believe in the way the universe is and that matter and action are what make up the universe. Secular wisdom also means that there is a unique pleasure that each person has in discovering the world along with a unique anxiety that helps them avoid the many dangers of the world.

Secular wisdom means that each person has a unique compassion along with a unique selfishness in relations with others. There are therefore many unique bonds that people form with other people that weave civilization into the fabric that is has become. Since the values of both religious and secular wisdom overlap, the difference between secular and religious wisdom is in the nature of the individual versus the collective. Secular wisdom promotes the value of unique individual wisdom while religious wisdom promotes the value of common collective wisdom.

Secular wisdom supports the unique self journey and destiny of each individual person in the universe while religious wisdom supports the common journeys and destinys of a collective.

Sunspot Cycle, Cygni-61, and Procyon

The oscillating collapse of quantum aether is why unlike charges attract as well as why matter attracts other matter and so unites both gravity and charge forces. Furthermore, the motion of collapsing matter results in a vector quadrupole gravity force besides monopole gravity between moving stars called quadrupole gravitization. The decay of star mass along with its motion relative to other stars couples star motion with quadrupole gravitization within galaxies. Similar to the dipole magnetization of moving dipole charge, quadrupole gravitization (QG) is a quadrupole vector force between moving stars.

Quadrupole gravitization (QG) coupling also affects the outer convection of our sun and other stars by coupling convection cell motion to other star decays and motions and when there are two stars at the same distance from the sun, QG results in a cycle period corresponding to their time separation. The stars Cygni-61 and Procyon are both 11.4 light years away and their QG coupling is an example of QG affecting the convection of the sun with a 11.4y cycle. In addition to the 11.4y cycle, Cygni-61 A and B is a binary with a 678 yr period that is 11.4 lyrs from sol and Procyon A and B is another binary with 41 year period that is also 11.4 lyrs from sol. Those binary periods then also affect the intensity, phase, and period of the sunspot cycle in an absolute sense.

Gravitization from Cygni-61 and Procyon affects the sun's convection and results in a periodic variation of sunspots over time corresponding to the time distance. Fitting the parameters with least squares minimization results in the fit shown below and is absolutely predictive. The QG fit up until 2012 predicts cycle 24 intensity fairly well but the fit peaks two years earlier as the figure shows. In addition, there appear to be additional sources of sunspot variability that the matter wave model does not yet include.

In particular the delay of the latest sunspot maximum of cycle 24 by two years from 2012 to 2014 is not unlike past delays like that of cycle 19 minimum from predicted 1974 to observed 1976. One possible source of this extra variability may be the well-known variabilities of Cygni-61A and B also plotted, but it is not yet clear how to account for this variability in the QG model. The NASA-Goddard prediction in 2009 for cycle 24 was 90 spots/day and 2013.4 while the Schlatten model was 2013.25 and 80 spots/day. Since the two year shift had already occurred at the 2009 minimum, the QG prediction for cycle 24 was more accurate than either NASA-Goddard or Schlatten.

The QG prediction for cycle 25 is for a peak in 2024.25 at 122 spots/day and this prediction depends on the fit from 1/1/1749 to 1/1/2013 cycle 23 and includes the Maunder minimum in 1670. In fact, the matter wave model is a regression fit and so matter wave predictions really do not vary much with each new cycle.

The Maunder Minimum was a ~30 year period around 1670 when the sun was devoid of sunspots and the weather was particularly cold. The binary orbit of Cygnis-61A and Cygnis-61B corresponds to the apparent equidistance from Earth's perspective of these binaries and so associates a lower QG convection of the sun with that period.

more details

Remaking the Spell of Supernatural Belief

Secularists argue that consciousness and the angst of existence and purpose do not depend on supernatural beliefs like religions. In fact, Daniel Dennett in 2006 wrote a whole book about breaking the spell of religion with secularism. However, Dennett's secularism then goes on to declare many diverse beliefs in in all kinds of moral and ethical values and emphasize that these beliefs are based on secular and not religious values...in which he simply believes. Instead of breaking the spell of religion, secularism should rather remake the spell of supernatural belief.

Consciousness is a somewhat mysterious but integral part of existence and yet even very smart people cannot seem to agree about the nature of consciousness. Religions believe in various supernatural agents as a necessary part of consciousness and purpose, but secularists seems to believe that there is no need for any beliefs in supernatural religious agents...ironically a belief in nonbelief.

Nevertheless, secular beliefs are just that...beliefs. Secular beliefs anchor consciousness just as do religious beliefs and really there is no difference between anchors of supernatural religious beliefs and supernatural secular beliefs for addressing the angst of existence and purpose. Secularism should not therefore deny supernatural belief, rather secularism should remake the spell of supernatural religion into a supernatural compassionate selfism.

The basic supernatural selfist beliefs are of matter and action, which are the self-evident axioms that describe the universe existence. Secularism cannot further define either matter or action and must simply accept matter and action as supernatural belief in the way the universe is. A traditional personification of matter is Mother Earth while that of action is Father Time. Instead of fighting against all of the various supernatural religious agents, secularism should simply accept the mystery of the supernatural agents of Earth and Time.

People believe in a great many different religious supernatural agents, but the greatest growth over the last century has been in the secularists who proclaim little or no religious affiliation as the figure shows. Johnson and Grimm compared world religious beliefs in 1910 with those in 2010 and found the greatest percent growth in secularism, 12%. Islam grew 10%, from 13 to 23% from 1910 to 2010, but the growth in Islam largely reflects the population growth of the less developed world according to a Pew study. In contrast, the growth of secularism seems to have come from conversion and not from population growth.

The marked decline in various ethnic religions of -20% seems to have been the result of both lower population growth in advanced regions as well as conversion into secularism. Thus while the growth of Islam has been driven largely by population growth, the growth of secularism has been driven by conversion. The large growth of Islam is a result of higher fertility rates and all of the attendant demands for limited resources of that increasing population. In contrast, the growth of secularism is a result of increasing wealth, education, life expectancy, and lower fertility rates and more efficient use of the same limited resources.

In 1910, secularism was a very small part of global belief and most people believed in one of the many religions. The explosive growth of secularism since 1910 seems to be associated with increasing literacy, education, wealth, life expectancy, and with more efficient use of limited resources in the more advanced world. The industrial and information revolutions have ironically resulted in the rise of secularism as well as a decline in fertility rates below replacement in the more advanced world. Ironically, though, the industrial and information revolutions have also fueled the high fertility rates of the less developed world and so are also largely responsible for the growth of Islam.

The fertility rates of the less developed world are now fueling a mass migration from less into more developed regions and those migrations result in many social pressures. The collisions between the two largest growing beliefs, first secularism and second Islam, is perhaps the contact that produces the most friction. In Europe, secularism is 50% while in China, it is 60% while other developed nations range from 20-50% secularism as noted in Paul Harrison's recent essay.

Most modern world religions including Islam have adapted very well to each other as well as to the rise in secularism despite having conflicting beliefs, but there is a very radical minority in Islam that violently rejects conflicting beliefs. This Islamic minority not only rejects any acquiescence with secularism, but also rejects any acquiescence with other religions including mainstream Islam.

The minority Islamist conflict is simply a manifestation of Earth's overpopulation and therefore represents a competition for Earth's limited resources. Since Earth's population is still growing, there will likely be more conflicts, especially between secularism and violent religious minorities. Wealth, education, and life expectancy seem to be keys for both capping population growth as well as converting more people to secular beliefs, but religious belief will likely to continue to have an enduring role in the developed world.

Let There Be Light

Light's determinate geodesic path through space and time at constant velocity, c, represents the most fundamental action of mainstream science. In fact, science only know that the world exists because observers see light traveling at constant velocity and that constant velocity means that energy is equivalent to mass and also that space and time shrink and dilate with increasing relative velocity.

Discrete aether defines the action of light instead as an oscillation of aether with matter and not time and matter oscillates in a universe of matter bonded by light exchange. Bonded by aether exchange light moving through space and time bonds matter with light photon exchanges are stationary aether oscillations in the primitive coordinates of matter and action and it is the decay of aether shrinkage everywhere that observers see stationary aether oscillations that they call light. The observers of the universe flow to the aether oscillations of stationary light by aether exchange and it is not light that moves to observers from sources.

The equivalence of matter and energy is also fundamental in aethertime as it is in spacetime, but instead of space and time, it is the action of aether exchange that defines light as an oscillation. And it is from aether decay that space and time emerge from the action of aether.

We only know about the universe because of our encounters with light and so we quite naturally think of light moving from sources to observers in rather straight determinate paths. Thoughts that observers and the universe somehow shrinks toward the light are already confused concepts because of the use of terms that presume space and time. When we interact with a photon of light from a source, for some very short quantum decay time our matter becomes part of the source and the source becomes part of us. Therefore that quantum phase decay time is a very important part of physical reality.

Since energy is equivalent to mass, the energy of light is equivalent to an aether exchange oscillation with the aether field. Thus the action of light is equivalent to an exchange of aether at a frequency, ω, relative to the universe phase decay, m_dot. Time and space both emerge from the natural oscillation and decay of the universe and that natural spontaneous oscillation and decay is the way things change.

Photons in science are states of vacuum oscillators and those oscillators fill empty space with an infinity of ground state energies. Aether photons are also an oscillation, but now of the very large but finite number of aether particles that make up the universe. Aether does not fill the empty vacuum of space over time but instead our notions of space and time emerge from the oscillation and decay of aether particle phase.

Instead of filling space with an infinity of vacuum oscillators for the action of photons of light, space and time emerge from the action of light as aether and the action of aether is what defines space and time in aethertime.

Ancient versus Today's Warrior Stories

Ancient warrior stories like that of Achilles in Homer's Iliad involve three different periods. The period of the Trojan war some 3200 years ago, some 400 years after the Trojan war 2800 years ago when Homer wrote his story, and today, when people still read and retell Achilles warrior stories like they happened yesterday. A recent essay in Aeon goes into much detail about Achilles' honor and propitiation where honor means redressing insult with anger by killing and pillage and propitiate means gaining the good will of the gods, usually also by killing and pillage but also by compassion and friendship within your own warrior culture. In modern times people still retell these ancient warrior stories and therefore in some sense continue to perpetuate these stories.

The Aeon essay retells stories about the brutality of warriors like Achilles, but also relates the compassion and friendship within Achilles' warrior culture. It really is not that clear that honor and propitiation are much more than justification for the angry selfishness of killing and pillage of one group by another group...or is it purely defense? Really, there are a large number of justifications for the selfish killing and pillage of war but the main one always seems to be competition for limited resources and a desire to acquire wealth and power, whether defensive or offensive. After all, the defense of one's own property and life is also the provenience of the warrior.

Civilization today faces yet another paroxysm of warrior stories driven by a different ideology than Achilles, but with much the same result...lots of people die with lots of property destroyed or taken from them by warriors for one reason or another. There seems to be issues with honor today as well as propitiation driving today's warrior cultures, and yet the essay does not draw the obvious comparisons of warrior stories of the past with those of today.

It seems that this retelling of Achilles' warrior stories after 2800 years avoids the obvious comparisons to the warrior stories of today. Killing for insult out of anger takes lives and property and fulfills one group's selfishness while sharing of the spoils and cooperation fulfills another group's compassion. However, only a very small fraction of people are part of today's warrior stories and the rest of us just read and repeat stories we hear from storytellers.

The obvious follow-on issue is the continuing desire of civilization to retell these ancient stories in all of their guises and therefore provide the seed for future warrior paroxysms. After all, people retell the stories that move them and forget the stories that do not move them. In a sense, the continuing popularity of warrior stories reflects a fundamental dynamic between compassion and selfishness that is as valid today as it was for Homer in his Achilles.

Wars then are not really an aberration of human nature but war is a part of human nature and warriors provide just another way for civilization to redistribute limited resources among different peoples with different ideologies. As civilization advances now to 7 billion people, it is clear that the warrior cults are a very small fraction of people but still a large number of people like to hear and retell warrior stories. Warrior stories still persist today because there are still limited resources and therefore conflicts among ideologies and warriors still one way to reallocate resources and power by killing and pillage.

Do We Matter in the Cosmos...

There are certain transcendental beliefs that are a part of existence: being, identity, beauty, truth, and feeling. A recent Aeon essay Do we matter in the cosmos  by Nick Hughes opens with several sweeping statements of how insignificant is the matter and action of civilization and earth relative to the total matter and action of the universe. Hughes never mentions the role of transcendent belief and in particular, that he first of all has being, an identity, knows beauty, acknowledges truth, and certainly has feelings as well. With these transcendental and therefore cosmic beliefs not measurable by Science, Hughes concludes that he is insignificant. After all, Science tells us that civilization is only ~10,000 years within a universe of billions of years it would seem all of civilization is therefore insignificant. It would take 100,000 years to cross our galaxy traveling at the speed of light and so with the limitations of matter and energy, people cannot visit other stars in the galaxy in the same way that people visit other places on earth.

The essay does not mention the transcendentals at all and mentions causality briefly. Hughes does not evidently believe in the uncertainty of quantum futures and the fact that our matter is quantum entangled with all of the matter in the universe. Quantum phase noise plays a particular role in our differentiation of a classical determinate reality from the many possible futures of the actual quantum reality in which we actually live.

In the end, though, Hughes essay does conclude that even though civilization is not very massive compared to the universe, the neural resonances and Grand Narratives of civilization are most of what matters to us here on earth. So even though the size of the universe boggles the mind... so what? Likewise, the microscopic size of matter also boggles the mind... so what?

"And whether or not they are objectively valuable, the ends that matter to us, the things that we care about most – our relationships, our projects and goals, our shared experiences, social justice, the pursuit of knowledge, the creation and appreciation of art, music and literature, and the future and fate of ours and other species – do not depend to any considerable extent on our having control over a vast but largely irrelevant Universe...Most of what matters to us is right here on Earth."

The essay argues that the time and space of the universe makes people and civilization seem insignificant in comparison since we cannot personally visit most of the universe. Hughes does not mention that the size of the atom is a microscopic world that we also cannot personally visit either. We also cannot visit the tens of thousands of miles of the vast matter of inner earth nor can we visit Venus' surface or the surface or interior of the sun. So there are a lot of places that people cannot visit and yet there is no mention of our insignificance as a result of not being able to visit the sun or the center of the earth.

People tell stories and share experiences about their discoveries and these narratives limits the possible futures that people discover. Travel across the universe requires the matter equivalent energy of the universe and a journey to the our galaxy center and back would not take 58,000 years for those travelers at the speed of light. A the speed of light, a traveler would only experience a moment of time in such a journey. Even at less than light speed, a space ship accelerating at 1 g and then using the supermassive black hole to slingshot a return to earth would only take about 25 years. Of course, during that journey earth would still age 58,000 years according to relativity and the spaceship would therefore return to a very different earth.

Also, the matter equivalent energy needed to maintain 1 g acceleration for 15 years is beyond science today but there might be ways to use galaxy spiral gravity waves to boost future journeys at this scale, so called gravitization waves. Gravity waves, after all, are something that science is just learning about and so maybe we can catch a gravity wave and surf our way to the galaxy center. It would take the matter equivalent of ~600 MW nuclear reactor to accelerate a 100 MT ship at 1 g for a year. After all, spacecrafts already use the gravity assist of earth and other bodies to accelerate and so future spacecraft may surf gravity waves for space travel.

We do matter in the cosmos since it is us who determines what matters to us and not anybody outside of our own local universe. The definition of a universe is the matter and action that we affect and that in turn affects us during our lives. The universe that we imagine does not exist until we experience that universe and so we are in fact the most important part of our own universe since neither it nor its uncertain future would exist without us observing it.