Gravity Waves at the Cosmic Microwave Background

The observation of gravitational waves in the early universe, a place called the cosmic microwave background, seems to have been an error. This represented the first direct evidence for gravitational waves in the B-mode polarization of the quantum fluctuations of the CMB. The oval view of the whole sky represents the plane of the Milky Way, which is our galaxy and spans across the center. The microwave fluctuations represent +/- 0.03% of the 2.7 degree Kelvin temperature in the very early universe right after hydrogen was born.

They have selected a region of the sky and looked at the polarization of these microwave fluctuations very carefully (see Carroll's blog or paper). These B-mode polarization waves shown below represent just 100 ppb of the 2.7 K CMB temperature, and can only be due to gravity waves and not to charge waves. The really amazing thing about this gravity wave polarization is not so much that it exists, it is that a gravity wave was this strong in the first place.

Gravity force is 1 part in 1e39th power of charge force in our neck of the woods, which is really, really small and makes gravity waves very, very difficult to observe in our galaxy or even in our nearby galaxies. However, the gravity wave in the CMB is just 0.2 or 1 part in five of the charge wave E-mode polarization that is due largely to charge force. So now science gets to explain why gravity force was only a factor of five different from charge force in the early universe, but hugely different now gravity force is only one part of ten to the 39th power that of charge force...this is very cool...

Oops...now they want to take their gravity waves back.

http://www.nature.com/news/big-bang-...bubble-1.15346

Big Bang blunder bursts the multiverse bubble
Premature hype over gravitational waves highlights gaping holes in models for the origins and evolution of the Universe, argues Paul Steinhardt.

03 June 2014

Oh dear, easy come, easy go...

The Neural Sound of Music

One of the characteristics of human hearing is that we sense and enjoy music with the seven notes of the octave because this particular 7-mer tonality is pleasing for humans. However, Science does not yet understand the neural network that is the basis for the 7-mer tonality. The basilar regions associated with sensation of sound from 200 to 20,000 Hz are shown in the figure along with how they map into the topology of the cochlea. The frequency diagrams show where along a hypothetical uncoiled basilar membrane we sense sound frequencies. There are frequencies below 200 Hz that are very important for enjoying music but not for understanding language and there seems to be a compression of these longer wavelengths beyond 200 Hz into the tip of the basilar.

Bilateral neural packets are the basic mechanism of sensation and of thought. Bilateral neural packets essentially form from sensory input and those mimes then persist in what we call thought, which is a neural packet for a given moment of thought. Each organ of sensation like the ear will have unique mimes with similar characteristics to other organs and the human ear will sense sound in ways that are similar to how the eye processes light.

Although there are many components within the human ear, the basic neural organ of hearing is the cochlea. The cochlea has a spiral shape (see Figure) and with both impulse and response fluid canals with the very well known frequency response shown in the figure. Tiny hairs along the length of the basilar membrane, which is the wall between to the spiral cochlea impulse and response canals, are the neurons that sense sound by the inner ear fluid deflection of a tiny hair. The neural patterns in the EEG that come from basilar excitation are many and varied, but the hearing neural network is still not well understood. In fact, science does not seem to have a very clear understanding of the underlying neural impulse patterns for even simple organisms.

The 7 notes of the octave are very suggestive, though, of a binary or bilateral difference sampling between groups of selected neurons and the top three rows of Pascal's triangle of the binomial theory describe how this binary sampling adds up to 7. This implies that the same kind of bilateralism that we recognize as the left-right symmetry is a part of hearing. Indeed, bilateralism is very common in all higher organisms and indeed also in the binary frequency analysis of sound and other spectral data with the Cooley-Tukey fast Fourier transform (FT) algorithm. The basic FT algorithm processes spectral data by sampling a time series with powers of two averaging and bilateralism is therefore an efficient way to sample and compress time series data into frequency amplitudes for representation in thought packets.

Therefore it seems very reasonable that along the basilar membrane, neurons from 20 mm to the end would be progressively paired into 7-mer's with the midpoint defined by middle C at 262 Hz, which peaks at 27 mm from the stapes. These progressive bilateral neural pairings would then form difference modes that would complement the sum and total modes and enhance sensation of the frequencies lower than ~1000 Hz as shown. These 7-order difference pairings would then effectively provide for our pleasure hearing the tones and chords of music.

It is no coincidence that there is likewise a 7-mer compression of retinal information from the eye just like there is apparently a 7-mer compression in the ear. This means that both our auditory and visual sensations end up using the same neural bandwidth at 7x the EEG delta wave, which is the EEG alpha wave at 11 Hz.

The sensation of sound results in a awaron packet of bilateral neurons. There are approximately 30,000 neurons in the auditory fiber, 90% or 27,000 innervate sensation while the balance of 3,000 neurons provide for feedback and gain control by stiffening gain hairs in the membrane. Each cochlear hair cell synaptically couples to about 10 other neurons, which then provides 270,000 neural nodes per frame or heartbeat, or 430,000 nodes/s. With a Hopfield reduction factor of 0.14 and a frame of 0.6 s, this is an overall effectively sampling rate of 7.9 kB/s or 4.7 kB/frame.

The Nyquist cutoff for human hearing is twice the 20,000 Hz upper range and would correspond to a neural network of 290,000 nodes/s with a Hopfield reduction of 0.14, which suggests that we use about 67% of the neural bandwidth for pure frequency response. Therefore, we use the balance of 33% neural bandwidth combination for tonality and phase, attributes that are especially critical for music.

In addition to sensations of tones or frequencies, which are the vowels of speech, there are also the sensations of sound starting and stopping, which are the consonants of speech. Starting and stopping of sound involve very high frequencies that are clipping sounds and starts and stops are quite a bit simpler to compress than tonal sounds. As the figure shows, a possible three difference modes sum to three for the top of the Pascal triangle, which would be a so-called theta EEG mode at 4.8 Hz, shown in the actual EEG spectrum below. Start and stop encoding is likely due to bilateral coupling of just 3 difference modes for hairs from 0 to 20 mm from the stapes.

This compression would be consistent with the total 10 interconnections associated with each auditory neuron, 7 for tone and 3 for stop and start or phase. All of these sensations, though, would be subject to the overall phase of the delta mode at 1.6 Hz. While start and stop data is important for sensation of all sounds, start and stop or phase encoding is especially important for the low frequencies of music since phase sets the tempo of music.

Although this hypothesis or conjecture for the auditory neural network is not yet validated, it does appear to be consistent with the much of the data that is available. The prevalence of cochlear implants now provides a basis for testing this hypothesis. While encoding frequencies above about 1000 Hz (soprano C6 is 1047 Hz) is pretty straightforward with implants by this hypothesis, frequencies below 1000 Hz would need a special folding algorithm around middle C at 262 Hz or wherever a person's tonal connections midpoint would happen to be.

It is possible that people with what is called perfect pitch have a natural tonal midpoint that is very close to that of standard middle C at 262 Hz. Most people without perfect pitch, though, need to shift their hearing reference tone just like we do with color vision by feedback to the gain hair neurons. Since cochlear implants do not respond to neural feedback, this tonal shift must be performed electronically by the device and would need to be tuned for each person.

Aware Matter as Consciousness

Thus far... it has not been clear how any biological neural network actually organizes its information much less how the human brain organizes its information. Even though science knows quite a bit about the biochemistry of neurons, axons, and synapses, science has thus far not been able to interpret the neural coding of even simple biological neural networks. Even though our computer science knows how to build and program neural networks, thus far science has not been able to mimic even simple biological networks.

What we need is a paradigm for understanding our biological neural networks and one clue is with the bilateral symmetry of life. By considering neuron pairs as entities instead of single neurons, this simple conjecture leads to a new state of matter: aware matter. Aware matter is a quantifiable and measurable aggregate packet of balateral neuron quanta, aware matter. Aware matter provides the basic heuristics for a self-aware bilateral cognitive network with the fundamental phase and timing of the heartbeat, which is the delta mode of the EEG spectrum of our brain's electrical signals.

There are many that have proposed consciousness, which means free choice, as a new state of matter. However, there have been very few examples of exactly what that would mean (see Tegmark, Tononi, Hopfield), and aware matter is just such a construct from the bilateral symmetry of life. A packet of aware matter is in a real sense, self aware and for the human brain, holds a very large amount of information. In fact, a single aware matter packet could in principle hold all of the information of a lifetime. While an internet packet may hold 1-2 kb of data, an aware matter packet can address as many as 5e75 byte states of information in a one terabyte neural network.

In the brain, there is perhaps about 1 terabyte of static neural capacity given 6e10 neurons, 1000 synapses per neuron, and a 0.14 Hopfield information reduction factor. This is the upper limit for the information content of a single aware matter packet, a moment of thought, and that maximal packet would involve the whole brain. Most neural packets carry much less information and a single retinal packet, for example, might carry only as much as 16 mb, and typically far less information.

Unlike linear computers that store and retrieve data packets composed of bytes, aware matter packets carry information as superimposed coherent bilateral aware matter states at 64 independent frequencies or colors. This is like the information content of a modulated 64 color laser with 16 levels of intensities for each color, but with a fundamental color mode of just 1.6 Hz.

The neural EEG of aware matter...can hold a large amount of information with its coherent aware matter zoo, but  the neural capacity of the brain, ~1 tb, limits the total thought during a day. This would be about 92,000 eleven mb images per day, for example, as our most intensive information need, roughly one image per delta cycle during 16 hours. This would be the information capacity of the brain before a sleep cycle to dephase the aware matter packet for the next day's experience. One of the two basic functions of sleep are now clear; dephasing aware matter packets back to raw aware matter by disengaging all mimes of sensation and action.

Although aware matter packets can hold a great deal of information, the action of thought limits any information transfer to about 10 Hz, i.e., human response time that is how long it takes us to think. As moments of thought stack up while we are awake, each thought would be coded with 4 modes for a total of 16^4 = 65,000 moments per day, which seems about right. At 10 Hz, it would take about 2 hours of deep sleep to compress and write the typical 65,000 aware matter packets into a permanent memory of the day. Memory is a second very important function for sleep.

The fundamental action of aware matter is the bilateral bond between two neurons to form an aware matter particle, which is the quantum of free choice. In the figure, aware matter comprises two complementary synaptic impulses from a coupled pair of neurons and a frequency of that impulse for neural action. Exactly which synapse pair fires can vary for different mimes. Aware matter not only has an electrical signal, aware matter also has a quantifiable mass as well as a magnetism as a spin and a lot of other very interesting quantum properties.

For example, aware matter can either excite or inhibit other aware matter and form aware matter accretions or packets. Attractors tend to acrete and repellers tend to separate, but both attractors and repellers are the basic building blocks of neural networks that store static information as both excitations and inhibitions. Essentially aware matter is a adaptive dynamic cognitive neural network that stores information not only as the amplitude of aware matter modes, but also as the phase or timing among those modes.

This figure shows a dimer of neurons interacting as a impulse/response pair. The fundamental mode of aware matter is this dimer at 1.6 Hz, the delta or heartbeat mode of EEG brain spectrum. Aware matter packets can couple with other aware matter packets and form clusters that have very distinctive EEG spectra.

Aware matter is a quantum fluid that shows many of the characteristics of other quantum fluids like those of light in a laser cavity, but light photons do not bond to each other. In the presence of a gain medium, very novel quantum fluids have been observed that do effectively bind light photons. Such devices show the promise of quantum computers for solving some very complex problems.

Aware matter seems to be a very similar quantum fluid and form real, measurable particles that exist as fermions instead of the bosons that are light's photons and so aware matter bonds into packets. When aware matter adapts to the mimes of either or both sensation and realization, we call that a thought or experience or sensation. Aware matter packets can continue to accrete into larger and more complex packets that we associate with experience.

An aware matter packet is in a sense self aware since aware matter adapts to the modes of whatever neural template it is in physical contact with, which includes itself. Our brains can evidently write the accumulated aware matter packets of the day into static matter states that we call memory. These are all characteristics of adaptive cognitive networks, but aware matter is actually a substance made up of the pure quantum matter that is literally the matter equivalent energy of a synapse.

Aware Matter Spectra as EEG Waves

Each aware matter packet is a superposition of aware matter modes and its collective electrical activity is an EEG spectrum. Aware matter packets will have certain properties that all scale from its fundamental frequency, 1.6 Hz, which is called the delta or heartbeat EEG wave. Each state of aware matter will be some multiple of this fundamental mode as dimers, trimers, tetramers, etc., of aware matter and a single aware matter packet could involve the entire brain.

It turns out that one particular mode, the alpha EEG mode at 11 Hz, is particularly prominent in the EEG. Evidently this mode is associated with a 7-mer aware matter of the eye. In the figure, the foveal cone is the most sensitive part of the retina and its basic symmetry is the 7-mer and 7 x 1.6 = 11 Hz.

The spot where our most precise imaging occurs is at the foveal cones of the retina, which is a tightly packed topology that is very common in nature and called hexagonal close-packed. Essentially six cones form a hexagon around each cone in a highly ordered aware matter 7-mer as part of vision. Thus, we expect to see a very strong mode in the aware matter spectrum at 7 x 1.6 = 11 Hz, and there is a strong peak in the EEG at 11 Hz called the alpha, α, wave, as well as at its overtone at 22 Hz, the beta wave.

Correspondingly, there are 7 million cones in a retina, but only 1 million neurons to carry that information to the aware matter packet, a 7:1 information reduction. Each retinal image represents about 16 mb of Hopfield information, but the packet only stores features that resonate with mimes.

Once an image forms on our retina, the features of the image resonate with mimes and form aware matter packets that may involve the whole brain, but resonate particularly with local mimes within the brain. Unlike the rastering of linear computing, where time delay is simply a consequence of the read/write cycles of packets of electrons stored in silicon, an aware matter packet of matter carries both amplitude and coherent phase as part of its state.

Resonant states of aware matter are like resonant modes in a laser cavity, but photons do not bond to each other and so there is no corresponding aware matter packets in a laser cavity. Unlike the internet that transmits packets of information independent of the medium, packets of aware matter adapt and transform as they resonate and interact with other aware matter packets and templates. The structures of the brain affect the nature of the aware matter packet resonance and aware matter packets can either attract or repel each other. If the attraction is strong enough, aware matter will bond into a complex resonance that we call experience.

Awareness is a key feature of free choice and it is interesting that people report that deep meditation can seem like pure awareness, which is actually what makes free choice possible. Aware matter is a dynamic state of neural matter that carries a large amount of information, including information about itself. Therefore,aware matter is in some sense, self aware.

Aware Matter Packets and Internet Packets

The packets of internet protocol also have a two way error correcting protocol and ways for routers to direct packets, but packet information does not change in the process. In fact, much effort goes into avoiding any changes or errors in the packet information.

Like the internet packets, aware matter packets are inherently two way but aware matter uses coherent resonances to manage errors and therefore to have things make sense. The resonances of an aware matter packet evolve and grow into a thought as the packet attracts or repels other aware matter packets according to the topology and structure of its connections. A strong aware matter resonance is a heavy piece of aware matter and is the feeling that we have when something really makes sense.

It is now clear that you simply cannot read an aware matter packet like a computer reads an internet packet. Aware matter information resides both in the mimes of the medium as well as in the substance of aware matter. Knowing both the resonances of aware matter along with the mimes that are the qualia of memory and instinct, should allow transmission of thought.

In order to interpret the EEG resonances as thought, we need the phase, which is likely to be the delta or heartbeat mode of the EEG. This will provide a complete EEG spectrum, from which we should be able to probe and derive the mimes that are a person’s own qualia. Many mimes reflect the actually topology of the network, which of course is always evolving and learning.  Measuring the aware matter spectrum of a thought, and decoding it with the qualia mimes should permit direct, albeit crude, communication by thought. There are emotions and physiological responses that only indirectly impact aware matter. Although EEG provides aware matter amplitudes, in order to deconvolve into spectra, we also need the phase information or timing for all those modes as well.

The EEG amplitudes appear somewhat chaotic because of a lack of phase information that is presumably the heartbeat. Also, an aware matter packet carries not only the information of a sensation, it also carries the information of the entire experience. For example, the simple attractor/repeller modes in the aware matter amplitudes above hold a lot of information as constructive and destructive waves. In other words, the absence of a mode is just as meaningful as the presence of a mode once you have phase. This is related to the source or inverse problem in neural science, which is one of location of the signal.

It is usually assumed that the neural information for locomotion, for example, can simply be read and a motion actuated from the pattern in the signal. This method has not yet proven to be successful and it is clear that without the phase information, at least one-half of the information is simply missing and the other half is corrupted by folding into the power spectrum. It is better to think of the locomotion as a packet of aware matter that complements the aware matter packet of the brain.

It has long been clear that neural templates or mimes are very important in learning and comprehension, but the exact nature of human or any biological cognitive network  neural templates has not yet been clear. An aware matter spectrum represents the resonance for a thought and an aware matter mime complements or resonates with that thought. The receptor has a template that is the complement of that aware matter packet and a receptor device must likewise recognize that template.

The problem is that it is really not possible to learn a template from simply measuring the power spectrum of the neural EEG signal. You also have to also know the heartbeat as well as the mime shapes in order to really make sense out of aware matter since the phase or even the absence of a mode can also carry template information.

Aware matter has as many as 64 modes from the oligomers of aware matter neural dimer, assuming 102.4 Hz as an upper bounds (a power of two just because) and 1.6 Hz as the fundamental mode (102.4 Hz / 1.6 Hz). There are some 6e10 neurons in the human brain and assuming that each neuron connects to 1,000 other neurons, and the Hopfield static memory is about 1 tb. The average neuron content is 64 for each aware matter mode corresponding to a gamma EEG mode around 51 Hz, the mode templates represent an addressable information content of ~(1000/64)^64 / 8 = ~3x10⁷⁵ bytes of information. In case you don't know, that's a lot. It is like having a 64 bit computer with a base 16 (1024/64) instead of base 2 memory.

The information in a single packet of aware matter is a dynamic quantum cognitive substance that is limited by a Hopfield neural capacity of about 1 tb. That appears to be able to hold a whole lifetime of information in the phase and intensity of its modes, but this seems to be the limit for a day's worth of experience or about 16 hours. As aware matter mimics its sensory patterns and resonates with its mimes, aware matter is in some sense self aware as well.

The templates or mimes come from learning or they may be innate whereas the stimulation comes from a sensation or from the realization of a memory. Aware matter naturally mimics the modes of mimes that it contacts and once a mode forms, it will resonate with other mimes that complement its mode structure. Once an aware matter packet accretes into an experience, the brain imprints that packet at the delta rate, and so each moment is limited to about 11 mb per delta cycle, and that totals about 1 tb per day, or 92,000 moments in the day for delta wave = 1.6 Hz. But four bit encoding would mean that at most, we capture more like 65,000 moments in a day.

Aware Matter as Sleep

There are certain characteristics of sleep that appear during both REM and deep sleep called sleep spindles and K complexes. While these EEG pulses are always associated with normal sleep, their exact role is still not well understood. Here are  examples of the frequency versus time chirp of two slightly different sleep spindles observed in two different parts of the brain. see sleep spindles

The spectral chirp of the spindle shows the basic mode of free choice, alpha, as well as an overtone of alpha + 1.5 delta. The K complex is a delta dimer pulse bound by the energy of 0.5 delta and so the delta dimer resonates at 1.5 delta. see K complex spectra

The overlay of the spindle and K complex spectra illustrate their close association since the K complex and spindle chirps have the delta dimer time duration. Essentially, a spindle pulse is a composite of a pulse of pure alpha bound with a delta dimer.

A delta dimer bound alpha aware matter packet forms the basic structure of thought. How delta-dimer alpha packets bind into larger aware matter packets is what makes up thought and those packets are saved during sleep as long term memories.

Aware Matter as a Quantum Fluid

Finally, the quantum wave equation for aware matter is particularly simple and so the wavefunction is simple as well. The EEG spectrum will be sinc functions (sin x / x), which is the Fourier transform of the aware matter wavefunction.

m_a = aware matter particle mass, ~3.2e-30 kg (matter equivalent energy of two synaptic impulses)
Ea = 2.9e-13 J or 1.8 MeV

Ñ_a = aware matter action constant, m_a / 2π / f

n = order of mode for aware matter object, 1 to 64

t = time, s

f_a = aware matter object frequency, Hz

y_a = aware matter wavefunction

y_a with dot = time derivative of y_a

This simplicity comes from the fact that aware matter binding energy is equivalent to its resonance energy and when that happens for a quantum matter, the quantum wave functions, y_a, are mathematically very simple superpositions of electrical impulse frequencies. Therefore the proportionality is related to the mode frequency as shown and there is a reaction time, t_a, which should be around 0.1 s and is the linewidth of the mode. Thus, we do not expect the EEG modes to be transform limited but rather will have the linewidth of human reaction time.

There are many obvious ways to test the aware matter hypothesis and indeed, there may be information out there that shows that aware matter could not exist. However, it is really fun to imagine how such a simple quantum fluid as aware matter could becomes not only a part of our lives, but a part of every neural life. Aware matter would be the unifying force behind all sentient life if it exists.

Sterile Neutrinos...Cousins or Siblings or Self?

There is a class of hypothetical neutrinos called sterile neutrinos that appear to be similar to aware matter. If there turns out to be sterile neutrinos, that would mean that free choice is aware matter from the neutrino flux over our lifetime and the aware matter that was us returns to the neutrino flux when our life ends. 

Just like we borrow the matter of our bodies from mother earth and return it to mother earth when we are done, we likewise borrow the aware matter of our minds from the neutrino flux of father time and likewise return it to father time when we are done as well. Aware matter may be the paradigm that will finally allow us to unlock the secret of free choice.

What is Action?

Action completes the trimal of matter and time and action’s simplest and really only true definition is as a product of matter and time. Although we associate action with the integration of object motion through space, object motion through space is simply the way that we imagine action in the universe. The universe is full of an equivalence of matter objects that are gaining and losing mass relative to the universe outside of that object. We call a change in matter from some rest frame motion and we see comoving and countermoving objects as increases in the mass of each object as its relative motion increases towards or away from a given frame of reference. We assign that change in mass to the kinetic energy of the object in motion through space because of the equivalence of energy and mass.

But we can equivalently describe relative motion as a change in an object mass and then project that mass change into a motion through space. In fact, all objects in the universe are shrinking and comoving at the speed of light and that action is equivalent to each object’s proper mass. Thus objects get their proper masses from the primal action of the shrinking universe and objects alter their motion by changing their mass. There is no inaction in the universe since all action drives all matter.

The rate of change of the universe mass in time is the primal action constant, m_dot, and that matter decay that determines all force. The potential energy of an object that is subject to a force is equivalent to an object’s change in mass over time. In other words, while kinetic energy or relative motion is a step change of an object’s mass, potential energy or force or acceleration represents a continuous change in object mass over time, and it is the integration of matter over time that is the definition of action.

We associate action with motion through space but it is only with both step and continuous changes in matter that we can project that space. Motion necessarily involves both kinetic and potential energies. Since matter, by definition, is never without gravity force, the change in matter that is gravity is always present in the universe. Objects are always exchanging radiation and atoms with other objects, but the primal dimensions of matter, time, and action are what determine motion and motion is how we project a Cartesian space all around us.

We do not really need the a priori empty void of space to journey from one object to another. It is clear that a journey from one object to another does take time and that time can be no shorter than speed of light. The speed of light is how we can think of time as a means to separate objects in our mind. Even though time only has one dimension while space has three, there are two other primitive dimensions of matter time, matter and phase, that project Cartesian displacement.

In a universe of two counterrotating hydrogens, there is only one world time line and that world line is then equivalent to time. The two objects are trapped in a perpetual ballet of gravity and charge and ionization and recombination and photon absorption and emission. We only need to consider other world lines once there are other objects in our universe, for example, the universe itself. We assign a gaechron amplitude from the matter spectrum of a world line to a dimension orthogonal to time, m, and we further associate a phase, θ, to describe the rotation of m around t, the phase relationship between matter and time. Now with these three dimensions of matter, time, and phase, we have a basis for projecting all three Cartesian dimensions from the primal dimensions of matter, time, and action.

So unlike the approach of relativity, which begins with the axiom of three Cartesian dimensions and adds a time axiom as a fourth spatial dimension, matter time begins with the three primitive dimensions of matter, time, and phase from which matter time projects the three Cartesian displacements. The approach of matter time still means that time dilation occurs with velocity and so spatial dilation also occurs and mass increases with velocity as well, all in accord with relativity and Lorentz invariance.

As opposed to the relativity of space time, space is a result of action in matter time that is a very convenient and useful projection of our minds from a primitive quantum reality. All action derives from matter and its change in time and the proportionality between an object’s change in matter with time to the object’s matter is the Schrödinger equation. Both charge and gravity force derive from the exchange of gaechron and the action of gaechron is what we project as space. It is important to note that gaechron action does not fill space because there is actually no space to fill. Space is a projection of matter action and is not independently necessary for predicting matter action.

Space is therefore very much a timelike projection of our mind's mathematical models and time is the differential of action with matter. Correspondingly, there is a matter and an action that defines space as well, such as the footsteps that are the action of a journey. We imagine objects separated by the empty void of space, but that void has a distance as an integration of matter over time just as objects separated in time have both the matter of a moment and an integration of those matter moments as action. We do not think of time as moments separated by timelessness and so we should not think of space as an empty void between objects.

In other words, there is always a time distance between objects even though those times might be very long and even cosmic. There is always a matter exchange among objects and no object is truly isolated or constant. And all objects are under action and there is no true inaction in the universe.

Time is axiomatic and is the differential of action with matter while space is just a projection of time as the differential of action with matter. Dividing the action of a journey by the matter of a footstep gives us a distance in time. Dividing the action of a journey with the moment of a footstep gives us a distance as matter, which we interpret as Cartesian distance. We project an empty void of space between two objects as a convenient way to separate objects in time but we do not project an empty void of time, a timeless eternity, between two moments of time.

As Einstein showed with his relativity, time is a spatial dimension and that allowed us to better understand the universe. What Einstein did not show, though, was that there was a simpler reality that projects space as a result of action. Since space is a projection of matter action in time, convolving time with space results in the very complex mathematics of general relativity for gravitational force that has thus far resisted any unification with quantum mechanics or with charge force.

Nevertheless, the principles of general relativity are perfectly useful given the limited realm of their application just as are the principles of quantum mechanics useful in their limited realm. But general relativity does not provide a complete description of action for the universe. In particular, dark matter and dark energy are straightforward manifestations of a quantum gravity. A quantum exchange coupling among the matter decays of stars and galaxies and the decay of the universe  provides an additional term to the gravitational virial equation.

The coupling of the matter decay of a star with the decay of its space results in a force. These forces among stars are part of the fabric of the universe and result in resonances called matter waves that are concerted and cyclic variations in gravity and charge forces as well as in the masses of objects. By changing the density and polarizability of matter, matter waves also affect the convection of gravitationally compressed plasma in stars and magma in planets and matter waves also affect the nuclear weak force as well. The cycles of matter waves in our local star neighborhood seem to determine solar cycles as well as cycles of earth’s magmatic activity while our sun’s journey through galaxy matter waves determine the cycles of ice ages as well as other geologic ages.

What is Matter?

We easily describe what matter is like since matter is just the stuff that makes up all objects and so each object has a single dimension of mass. Objects are made of matter and that matter is finitely divisible into the atoms, electrons, protons, and neutrons of our microscopic universe. Unlike the equally intuitive notion of space, though, matter does not suffer from being infinitely divisible. The hard stop for matter is the electron, which is indivisible, and the quark pair, since a quark pair along with its gluon particle exchange would take the energy of the universe to separate.

Both protons and neutrons are made of three quarks, or really two quark pairs and bonding gluons, that is it as far as matter is concerned. In matter time, the universe is mostly boson matter and the smallest boson particle is the gaechron and gaechron are very much smaller than other matter particles. But even atoms are very small and their numbers are very large. A kilogram of hydrogen is 6e26 atoms and matter is therefore a virtual infinity of particles.

Although we experience matter as the single dimension of intensity or amplitude squared, objects actually exist as matter wave amplitudes that have both phase and oscillation of their amplitude. This means that a particle can exist as matter wave amplitude among any number of world timelines along that matter wave, but that particle will only be realized as intensity on one particular timeline. Our universe is mostly space with only a relatively small amount of fermionic matter, like hydrogen, on the order of one atom of hydrogen per cubic meter of space. However, in matter time most of the matter in the universe is bosonic and is not in the form of fermions. In fact, there is about eleven million times more bosonic than fermionic matter in the universe and so it turns out that shrinking bosonic matter largely drives force and action and force and action are how the universe evolves.

The small amount of baryonic matter, the protons and neutrons of fermionic matter, stands in contrast to the overwhelming amount of bosonic matter. So where are the bosons hiding? In plain sight of course, or maybe plainly out of sight. Although it is tempting to imagine that space is filled with a quantum boson foam from which fermions seethe into and out of existence, that implies that space has an existence independent of the action of matter in time. It is much better to assume space is a projection of matter action and that there is a universal matter spectrum that describes all of the possibilities of objects as matter waves.

Our universe is both a pulse of matter in time as well as a spectrum of the possibilities of matter waves, which is the Fourier transform of the universe matter pulse. However, our universe is not actually made up of the empty void of nothing that we call space. Rather that empty void of nothing that we call space is just a projection of the actions of objects in time and it is matter action that actually separates objects.

Each of time and matter are complex amplitudes with a common phase, but matter and time are also related to each other by the Schrödinger equation. This relationship imposes a quantum phase differential between matter and time, π/2, that is the basis for orthogonality between matter and time as well as the basis of the right angle of Euclidean geometry that matter time projects as space. The conjugate coordinates {m, t} along with the action of the Schrödinger equation provide the basic dimensions of reality that then project a Cartesian displacement that is the right angle of Euclidean geometry.

In the early universe, forces were vanishingly small and matter was an equilibrium of bosons and fermions since there was not yet enough force to condense or freeze bosons into fermions. As the universe pulse collapsed, forces increased and when matter’s rate of change, force, reached a threshold of m_p/m_e, the ratio of proton and electron masses, a fraction of matter froze out from the boson sea as the light elements of hydrogen, deuterium, helium, and other isotopes. Each boson condensate formed into fermions as pairs of atoms with complementary angular momentum.

The same charge force that bound rotating electrons and protons also bound their rotating neutral atoms to themselves with gravity, but in the folded universe, gravity forces were very much smaller than charge forces. The very much weaker gravity force condensed rotating hydrogen atoms into rotating planets and stars that fused hydrogen into heavier elements up to iron. Photon and neutrino radiation not only provides the light and warmth of the heavens, but that radiation also results in star matter decay over and above the decay of space. The coupling of star decay with spatial decay then provides an extra force that transfers angular momentum from inner to outer stars in a galaxy.

Rotating stars cluster into rotating elliptical and spiral disks called galaxies, which are fueled both by the fire of the stars as well as by the angular momentum of the atom. Ever more massive accumulations of matter yield the heavier elements as well as neutron stars, magnetars, and finally, massive rotating boson stars known as supermassive black holes. Boson stars represent the ultimate destiny of all matter in the shrinking universe with an ultimate dephasing of all matter.

What Is Spacetime?

The current science paradigm, known as space time, is a very useful and essential part of our perception of physical reality. Science takes the gravity of Newton along with the relativity of Einstein to predict the futures of macroscopic objects like people and planets. Science also takes quantum mechanics to predict the futures of charged microscopic objects like electrons and quarks, which is a realm where gravity force has little impact.

However, this patchwork of theorets is far from complete and is not a self-consistent representation of the universe. That does not mean that precepts of space time are not useful, but it does mean that space time cannot explain some key mysteries and it simply is not very pretty. Instead of some very simple and straightforward basic theory of the universe with a few simple principles, the principles of space time are actually quite difficult to even simply describe. Space time has a large number of axioms, dimensions, particles, and constants, along with a long list of exceptions and mysteries and it is quite a chore simply to list them all and to keep them straight.

First of all, space time has five axioms as matter, time, space, quantum action, and gravity action. There is one matter dimension as amplitude or mass and for quantum force, there is one additional matter dimension as phase, one time dimension except for inside of black holes, three Cartesian dimensions of space except for inside of black holes, and two different action equations, one quantum action except for inside of black holes and one gravity action for a total of eight dimensions. The two dimensions of matter actually have six fundamental particles simplified as two baryonic quarks for protons and neutrons, two leptons as electrons and neutrinos, and two bosons as binding particles, photons and gluons.

There are all total some 61 fundamental particles or dimensions to matter…at least so far, but many of these particles are related by symmetry like antimatter. Of course, that symmetry is only for quantum action and has no meaning for gravity action. And then there are two fundamental forces for matter action, and gravity force does not have an exchange particle and charge force has the photon and gluon as exchange particles. This means that there are 61 dimensions of matter, with the mediating exchange of bosons includes nuclear strong and weak forces as well as charge force.

The patchwork that is space time then has its five axioms and some eight dimensions along with 2 different action equations and along with some 61 particles and 26 fundamental constants…so far…and there are also a number of unresolved mysteries such as dark matter and dark energy as well as the mystery of the inner workings of black hole singularities. And of course the awkward patchwork of gravity and charge forces results in a space time with an elaborate, perplexing, and sometimes inconsistent patchwork of different models and theories that leave the gaps in space time as its imperfections.

With the model of the universe in such a disarray of gaps and singularities and mysteries, it should not at all be surprising that we can't figure consciousness out. There are very few people who even understand the house of mud bricks that science has built and it is a chore for them just keeping the mud bricks patched up after the occasional downpour of alternate ideas.

The Machine of Consciousness

The figure adapts Steve Lehar’s cartoon with a homuncular recursion and other factors that describe the circular recursion of thought and cognition. The homunculus is the little person inside of our minds with whom it feels like we are always speaking. The homunculus is also a part of the physical brain that maps the topology of motor function.

The homuncular recursion is often called absurd because it does in principle go to infinity, since each homunculus has its own homunculus inside that head and so on. But there is absolutely nothing wrong with a homuncular recursion or any recursion as long as it converges in a reasonable number of recursions. When a homuncular recursion converges, it results in a resonance wave of neural action called a thought. Thoughts make sense out of the outer world and are the resonances of inner relational waves shown plotted in time for a deep meditative delta wave. Most thought, of course, is much more complex than the singular thought of a deep meditation or sleeping delta resonance.

There are many math series and computer do-loops that show convergence even though they could also go to infinity in principle and such series make sense as long as they converge to a useful result with a useful precision within a useful time. Recursions are part of the solution of consciousness and fundamentally, neural recursion is that reason that we often end up with circular definitions in our discourse and thought.

There are many important details about consciousness that this figure sketches in, like the role of Cartesian versus relational thought and the important role of memory for consciousness and perception. Memory is our lifetime of objects related to the experience of the moment. However, this assumes that cognition works somehow and jumps right into feeling and consciousness. This figure also does not include the very important roles of emotion and the primitive mind in feeling and choice of action.

Our brains exchange matter with the objects in the world that we perceive and while the typical matter that we exchange is made up of photons of light (i.e. visual images), sensation can also be sound, taste, touch, or smell as well. Don't forget that our body shines on the same object whose light then shines on us as well. The EEG spectra (see also) of the brain show the amplitudes of neural recursion waves associated with thought according to the various states of the mind. The EEG amplitudes are the relational waves of recursions of electrical activity among neurons present in our brains.

These EEG spectra include the thought spectrum from a single frequency resonance that represents deep meditation as well as sleeping delta waves. From the relational neural waves that are connected to objects, our Cartesian machine resonates with the possibility of an object but that projection only exists in our mind as a possibility of our particle-like Cartesian reality. The mathematics of this information extraction are straightforward as we go from neural pulse time relational amplitudes to matter (or frequency) spectra of thoughts. 

In principle, each resonance of an EEG spectrum represents the recursion of a single thought, but our conscious mind is able to keep the resonances of each thought separate from each other. In order to decode the resonances of a single thought needs the phase information as well as the amplitudes. The often neglected phase information of EEG resonances, which is the relative firing of the neural impulses, permits the deconvolution of EEG’s into distinct thoughts out of the power spectrum, i.e., make sense out of the superposition of all of the thoughts of each day. A desirable feeling or thought could be either a peak or a valley in an EEG spectrum and any reasonable experience would be a superposition of a large number of thoughts. 

The deep meditation EEG shows that the single thought peak at 0.70 (1.4 Hz) represents a time wave with a recursion of about 0.70 s, which is close to the period of a heartbeat. Human reaction times are about 0.1 s or so and the brain is typically flooded with neural waves as the beta wave plot shows with recursive waves as fast as ~0.002 s or 500 Hz.

There does appear to be a recursion in the deep meditation spectrum at ~1.4 Hz, although that recursion is only one of many. Synchronized with the heartbeat, though, this peak may be the singular state of awareness that deep meditation feels like and this deep thought may also be the fundamental action of our brain’s clock, which is the heartbeat. 

Assuming a neural action potential energy is 1.6e-30 kg (120 mV at 200 Mohms for 2 ms), the minimum energy needed for recursion would be two neural actions at a matter equivalent energy of 3.2e-30 kg. That would result in an action of 2.3e-30 kg s at 1.4 Hz and this neural action is the exchange matter (or binding energy) for a single neural quantum of thought just as Planck's constant gives the energy from a single photon of light.

This model of the mind as neural resonances would then be very much like that of a laser with neural action waves in place of light waves. Without coherence, the modes of a laser cavity are random and chaotic, and so the resonances of thought only make sense with coherence. Thus the missing piece for being able to deconvolve our mind's relational waves may be a measure of the phase coherence among the recurring thoughts as neural waves that are the EEG. The phase of the delta wave is the key to unlocking the time wave phase coherence of the human mind.

For completion, this last figure shows the EEG waves of various states including our final eternal thought...

Sleep Drives Metabolite Clearance from the Adult Brain

Lulu Xie1,*, Hongyi Kang1,*, Qiwu Xu1, Michael J. Chen1, Yonghong Liao1, Meenakshisundaram Thiyagarajan1, John O’Donnell1, Daniel J. Christensen1, Charles Nicholson2, Jeffrey J. Iliff1, Takahiro Takano1, Rashid Deane1, Maiken Nedergaard1

Science 18 October 2013:

Vol. 342 no. 6156 pp. 373-377

DOI: 10.1126/science.1241224

Comment: 

This paper shows the different states of the mouse mind, awake, asleep, and anesthesized. Especially nice were the delta and alpha wave measurements that correlated the brain cerebral spinal fluid (CSF) infusion that occurs during sleep. Neural proteins like Abeta build up while awake and dissipate during sleep. Brain cells expand while awake and shrink during sleep, thereby drawing CSF in during sleep and pushing CSF out upon awakening.

What Is Free Choice?

It would seem like the theories of physics and the structure of the universe would have little to do with the theories of the mind and free choice. Even with a valid quantum theory of gravity to complement our quantum theory of charge, it is not clear how that would have anything to do with how our minds work.

Usually, when it comes to free choice, science throws up its hands. These are hard questions that have no answers, it would seem, and of course, philosophy and religion are both perpetual discourses about hard questions that have no answers. Philosophy and religion both feel compelled to ask the questions nevertheless and try to answer them as well, which generates more questions, and so on. Just because matter time unites charge and gravity forces, it would not seem likely that that unification had much of anything to do with free choice.

One theory reasons that free choice is simply what happens when we are awake...okay. Another theory of free choice ties it to the microtubules of the brain, where some kind of coupling with space occurs...okay. But in any event, there is no easy way to define free choice.

Similarly, there is no easy way to define time and space and the three propositions of free choice, time, and space all seem to bedevil our imaginations. Nevertheless, free choice does seem very timelike and it would seem that free choice is more like time and space than it is like either matter or action.

Unfortunately, philosophical discourses often begin without a description of the axioms that anchor the universe. With ill-stated assumptions that are usually implicit as some combination of matter and time and space and energy and so on, such discourses become confused. When the people involved have different beliefs and axioms that anchor their realities, they really can only discuss their different beliefs and their consistency, not any other discourse.

All objects are made of matter, but since energy is also matter by E = mc², objects are then both matter as well as energy. Assuming that the universe is made up of only matter and time, that then means that there is additional matter beyond that of the objects we sense. Space is usually an object as well, an empty object that we do not sense, and so objects really are matter, energy, and space. Before you know it, there are both sensed objects and objects that consist of nothing but the empty voids between sensed objects. Space is an object that has dimension, but space has nothing in it…except many quantum particles jumping into and out of existence. Now there are different kinds of matter showing up here, there, and everywhere.

Current science bases the universe on a set of axioms that are notably incomplete and full of gaps in understanding.The basic difficulty that we have in describing free choice has more to do with the patchwork of axioms in science than in any intrinsic complexity of the mind. A simpler, self-consistent description of reality seems to show a simpler, self-consistent description of free choice as well.

Philosophers get into trouble very quickly by launching into discourses about the nature of the universe before carefully defining their axioms and beliefs for a universe. This is especially a problem since science does not yet provide a completely consistent set of axioms and beliefs in the first place. What is a property and what is a material? What is time and what is the action principle? Can matter exist as both amplitude with a phase and intensity devoid of phase? Does time have one or two dimensions? The projection of Cartesian space in our minds, for example, is a powerful and innate means for predicting action, but that projection of Cartesian space can blind us to the underlying simpler reality of matter time.

The properties of time and action are axioms and not objects of matter in our universe and so with matter time, our axioms end up defining each other as they should. Matter exists as objects by the differential of action with time and an action of the universe divided by a time moment is what results in matter. Although we think of matter as motionless and without action, all matter is in motion.

Time is the trickiest axiom to think about since our minds are very time-like and that makes free choice just as tricky. Using our time-like thought to think about time is in some sense circular. As we think of time in the present moment, that moment includes the action of our thought about the present moment and we are somehow confused between time as the memory of action and time as the action of thought. As we think of time as a memory of action, we use the action of thought to imagine time as the actions of memory.

But memories and thought are both part of the matter of our brain and maybe we are confused between time as the matter of our memory and time as the matter of our thought. The fact that we obviously think as time passes fundamentally confuses us about thinking of time. Thought seems like time and time seems like thought, so the only way out of this conundrum is to use time's definition to also define free choice.

Time is the differential of action with matter and our free choice is similarly the differential of the action of thought with the matter of memory. The very way that we think is time-like, but our minds can either be experiencing a present action, remembering a precursor, or imagining an outcome.

When we experience an immediate action with sensation-feeling-action, free choice is the action of thought with the matter of memory. When we remember or imagine action, we derive action from the matter of our brain and free choice becomes the action of memory or imagination with the matter of thought. Time is an accumulation of matter moments as action divided by a matter moment where a moment of matter is like a clock tick or a neural moment. Action is the integration of matter objects in time and action is the basic result and cause of force of the universe.

So you can see now why a theory of the universe will also therefore be a theory of the mind. Our free choice has all of the attributes of our reality and that free choice is therefore a mechanism of our brain just like language is a mechanism of our brain. Although free choice is innate to the mind, just like we learn language, we must also learn our innate free choice by observing and imitating others.

Free choice as learned behavior is analogous to language in the sense that even though the ability of language is innate to our mind and physiology, we still must learn a particular language by observing and imitating others in order to communicate. By the age three or four we acquire or learn a simple language and by the age of five or six, we further acquire or learn a simple free choice as well. Just like language is how we use words to share stories, free choice is how we act out those stories with other people.

Just like language allows us to communicate with each other, free choice allows us to act with others and communicate and bond with each other and to have feelings of compassion for and selfishness of each other. In effect, free choice is an evolutionary mechanism of our minds where people freely choose to bond with other people and what we call rational thought is how we learn that we came from some origin, have a purpose beyond that of the primitive mind, and some kind of a destiny. With free choice, we share a Cartesian reality of an outer life and a relational reality or an inner life and bond with other people, animals, and objects in a cooperative civilization that enhances our survival.

Our life and our free choices are both prerequisites for and therefore depend on the primal beliefs that anchor that free choice. There are primal beliefs that anchor free choice just like there are languages that anchor communication, and so we all do need some kind of primal beliefs to anchor our free choice. After all, we can only be alive and conscious if we both think and accumulate memories of experiences, which are the neural recursions of sensation, feeling, and action. Free choice depends on both the action of thought and the static memory of experience and this combination of primal beliefs means that free choice is time-like.

The theories of the mind are many and varied, but cognitive development occurs in certain key stages. By the age of about two, the primary anchors of Cartesian belief are that objects are permanent matter, that time is a sequence of actions, that space is a projection of time, and that prediction of action is the product of objects and time. These primary Cartesian anchors of matter, time, and action then permit learning relational anchors by age of about six that objects all have an origin, a destiny, and a purpose. Once a child learns the Cartesian and relational anchors of belief, the memory of action as experience begins a nascent free choice.

Thus the basic axioms of matter time show up as they should as the basic Cartesian and relational beliefs that anchor free choice.

Space as an Empty Dark Lonely Nothing

Space is a very convenient way to keep track of objects and time, but our discovery of the meaning of the nothing of empty space reveals a perpetual journey to understanding everything. We must be able to believe in nothing as the something that the background universe is before we can ever hope to discover the way the world works, and it is that discovery that gives us purpose and gives our life meaning.

There is a long history of conundrums that the concept of space generates and magicians very skillfully use the illusions of space to effectively fool us about objects. Infinitely divisible and filled with nothing, the characteristics of space are a recipe for illusion and paradoxes even though empty space is what we discover most of the universe to be. We never seem to doubt the existence of the singular nothing that is an empty void space, which is an absence of sensation, even though we might doubt the existence of an object that we actually do sense. Space, after all, is everywhere the same nothing and has an intuitive and innate feeling of nothing about it in spite of our natural anxiety about the void of empty space.

We do not really experience continuous space and motion in space, we experience changes in discrete objects in discrete time. Because we do not really directly experience space, there is no end to space and motion much like there is no end to or stopping time. We are naturally very anxious about the void of empty space since with nothing to eat or drink and with no shelter or clothing, we would not survive very long. While we do not sense the nothing of empty space and only sense discrete objects and their discrete time delays, we presume that continuous space is an empty void of infinitely divisible nothing that separates objects from each other.

Likewise there are many empty moments of continuous time that we call inaction between the occasional actions of our lives, but we keep the action of continuous time connected between moments that we sense of objects. That is, we do not imagine a timeless eternity of inaction between the actions of our lives.

We often define things by stating what they are like, and continuous space is very much like continuous time. In other words, time and space are in some sense just different representations of the same metric of action. We can only define an axiom in terms of other axioms and so if both space and time are like each other, space and time are just different versions of the same axiom of time delay.

Discrete matter and time delay predict object action in time and the prediction of a Cartesian location or motion or force field results in continuous space and motion emerging from discrete matter, time, and action. In order to understand reality, we must first understand the axioms that define that reality and although the dark void of empty space is a very intuitive and innate concept, we only know if it is an axiom by describing what space is like. It would appear that instead of space being uniquely axiomatic, space and motion both emerge from the actions of objects in time. Space and motion allow us to keep track of separate Cartesian objects with our minds. While space and motion helps us keep track of objects and predict action, space does not exist independent of or orthogonal to discrete time delay.

There is the obvious something that separates objects from each other and therefore objects seem to need the continuum of empty space to move around just like objects need continuous time to prevent everything from happening at once. Given the axiom of action, which is the product of matter and time, where once again action as an axiom is defined by the product of two other axioms, time and matter. We can also define action as the product of matter and displacement, which further suggests that time and space are simply complementary metrics for action.

Since they are complementary, we define space just like we define time; with an action like a footstep or a meter and an accumulation of those moments as action. Although we think of distance in space as a length, the metric of that length is also a part of distance. A separation, then, has both an integration of matter as action and the moment of that action, such as a footstep or a meter.

The discrete time delays that we sense from objects imply that there is a continuous time space and since we move both forward and backward in space, we should also move forward and backward in time. In fact, we only predict objects into a future space based on our memory of them in the space of our past. We have a fading memory or knowledge of the past locations and motions of objects that permits us to predict their futures and so memory is an accumulation of past actions as experience. While we sense past locations and motions for objects, those sensations are simply a memory while the projections of objects' locations and motions in the future are only about the possibilities for our future and not necessarily about which future will occur.

Continuous space and time emerge from action as discrete time delays of objects and it is possible to project continuous time from motion in space and vice versa. The way that objects move is by changing their inertial mass over time and that change in inertial mass tells us about their motion and the way the the universe matter changes around an object tells us about an objects relations with other objects. The electromagnetic or gravitational fields that affect an object are equivalent to changes in decay or shrinkage of the universe and it is the shrinking universe that is the source of all force and motion.