TFNR - A first look

I think we must find the courage, even if only for a few moments, or maybe as a joke, to abandon the certainties on which we base our vision of physical reality. I believe in creativity and imagination to create hypotheses to be submitted to the inflexible scientific method. But limiting our creativity in the narrow cages of existing knowledge, especially when it is taken as a dogma, for me it is really a negative way of investigating Nature.

So, let me list here some "heretical" hypotheses that will surely horrify many readers. Grant me the opportunity to open doors to what many of you will consider absurd, inconceivable, inadmissible. Allow me to lead you into a short dance in a world where most of your certainties, on which modern science is based, will disappear, to enter into unknown territories. I will not offer you magic spells soaked with superstition, new age fascinations, psychedelic deliria. I will ask you only to try to observe the facts with new eyes. We see what we are prepared to see. Knowledge represents the filter through which we observe the world and build new knowledge. To see new things or the same things in a new way we have to move away a little from the beaten tracks, from the clichés, from our safe, comfortable and shared conceptions of reality.

Reality and the Universe “does not exist” in a conventional sense, the whole Reality “happens”

Reality do not exist in a classical, or ordinary, sense. Reality happens. Everything that exists appear as existing because at the elementary level of Reality, in the very fabric of causality and space time, the Elementary Events incessantly create and recreate the basic “substance”, the Elementary Action, from whose organization everything emerges at the various levels of Reality.

The Universe, and everything in it, is made of organized events. In this sense, we can say that also the Universe happens, not that it exists in a conventional sense. We can only say that “it exists because it happens”. If the incessant flow of events, which sustain Reality, were stopped, Reality and its present section, the Universe, would instantly disappear (and with it also space and time), even if no one (no conscious beings) would notice it.

Creation or and Evolution

In my opinion, the great debate between creation and evolution, although it is of great importance from the philosophical and religious point of view, and in particular for the understanding of the evolution of human thought, in the perspective of the knowledge of physical reality seems a little irrelevant.

Always with the utmost respect for the opinions of everybody, I think that, for a more wide and deep understanding of physical and cognitive Reality, it is not relevant if at the origin of everything there is a "divine" or "physical" source. I think it is more important to understand whether "creation" (the beginning) occurred in an instant in the past or if we are in the presence of an incessant creation, just as evolution seems to operate, which, in the continuous flow of time, shapes the form of Reality.

Within this evolutionary system of knowledge, Creation and Evolution are the two sub-processes which together incessantly realize the universal “Process of Formation of Reality”. Creation of the existence / existing, Evolution of the essence / form of Reality. These two sub-complementary sub processes, together, represent the whole formative manifestation of the Source of Reality (the complementary interacting couple: Force as source of causality and Field as source of spatiality and temporality).

The question “Why is there something rather than nothing?” is a secondary question

The question “Why is there something rather than nothing?” is a sub question. The answer in this system of knowledge is “because everything emerges from a source”. The real question to pose is “why is there a source?”. Or better “why is there the Source?”. Every other question we can imagine is a sub question, a secondary, derived question. We could try and be successful in answering any other question, but the reason why there is a source of existence, in my opinion, will remain forever unanswered. This is and will ever be a mystery, the only mystery that we ought to accept as non-resolvable… our limit in knowledge...

We can call it the Source, God, Chaos, Indetermination, First Mover, Nature, Force... We can think it as a willing being or as an impersonal force… But for us, it is and will ever be the unknown, the unknowable... It is the precursor of causality, spatiality and temporality. It is beyond everything we can conceive, observe, measure. It is really the Limit, the limit of Reality, both the Physical and the Cognitive, at the same time, the limit of physical dimensions and of the knowledge about Reality and the Universe.

In this sense, I think that scientific and religious answers have to be considered truly equivalent. Everyone must be free to choose the answer he prefers, the one rising from his culture, or from his reasoning, or from his heart. Nobody, nothing, neither science, must say a man what to believe about the origin of reality and the cosmos. Spiritual freedom is one of the most important and fundamental rights.

We can argue about facts, observations, measurements. It is here that science, with its peculiar method, with its rigour and specific approach can make the difference, can shed light in the obscure areas of reality, can remove the wrong and superstitious visions of reality that frequently hold people in ignorance and submission. Always with the maximum respect for the traditional cultures, for the “other” visions of reality, products of the vast evolution of the human though.

Always remembering that our cognitive systems, in the history of mankind and even before in the whole evolution of life on this planet, has evolved through different steps, different developments. Perceptions, sensations, emotions, thoughts are equally important and vital for us, and today prominence of rationality is sometime only apparent, the emotional and the unconscious being, in some way, the true forces that lead our behaviour.

So, irrational, superstitious, magic visions of the Nature must be accepted for what they are. Always representations of reality… If, in the physical domain of reality, we all have to prefer a description, an explanation coming through the rigorous application of the scientific method, in the spiritual field concerning the origin of Nature, I think that science cannot say anything final, that science must let way to the individual spiritual freedom.

In conclusion, in my opinion, everything that exists, emerging from the Source through the creative and the evolutive sub processes, is in principle knowable even though not observable, measurable. Everything but the origin of the Source itself. I believe that it will be possible to describe every physical process, even the main properties of the Source. It will be only matter of time and diligence. But the origin of the source of existence will remain a mystery forever and we must accept it.

Matter is not fundamental, or, better, is not so fundamental...

It is natural that we are searching the basic constituents of matter, that hope to find a fundamental particle, the “first” particle, that we try to find the origin of all that we can observe in Nature, digging in the deep of matter. It is natural because we are made of matter, we are matter. Even the cognitive aspect of living beings and humanity, in an evolutionary perspective, seem to raise from the emerging complexity produced by the evolution of matter. And even religions focus on the act of creating matter by god (s).

But I think there must something else. Or better, maybe matter is a particular form, state, of something else, something more fundamental, hiding in the deep processes in the very fabric of Reality. Philosophy, science, physics, in their histories, have given us various representations of matter and what we think matter is. The evolution of those representations toward covariant fields, and then, quantum fields, the current attempts to go even beyond, to get a quantum theory of gravity (through the synthesis of quantum covariant fields) and to grasp the grand unification, in my opinion is always too much focused-on matter as we know it.

I think that we must do one more step beyond, to forget matter and atomism for a while, and to focus on something that in the evolutionary perspective proposed by this research project, by this new coming system of knowledge, appear more fundamental: Action (events) and Information (relations among events). Action is the emerging product of Creation, while Information is the emerging product of Evolution. Everything (even matter!) is made of that.

The “inconstancy” of natural constants and an amazing equivalence

The speed of light in the vacuum, the quantum of action, etc. are no longer to be considered as constant. Although they always can be considered basic reference quantities, their values, their intensities are strongly dependent on the (universal and local) state of the “void” and on our comprehension of its true nature and dynamics.

Void is not “empty”, is not like nothingness. Void, as QM suggests, is full of incessant fluctuations. It is animated by “something”, the way stated by the uncertainty principle. Space-time, and, more in deep, the Elementary Field is full of what we call Elementary Action, the Elementary Events, the tiny fluctuations at the Planck scale, the most elementary form of existence.

Natural constants are dependent on the (universal and local) distributions (in form and intensity) of those fluctuations. In the case of “c”, the speed of light, its intensity is determined by the distributions of the intensities of those fluctuations. It is a measure of the stress of space-time, its curvature. Light does not speed off due to space-time curvature produced by the presence of a massive object. The curvature “is” the mass. Mass, the curvature of space-time and the (local) speed at which light travels are all effects of a particular form of the organization of the distributions of the elementary fluctuations in/of the Field.

These physical quantities are the same thing, the expression of the nature and dynamics of something more fundamental. This is an amazing equivalence: mass density, speed of light (velocity of propagation of information), curvature of space-time, temperature of the Field = distribution of the intensities of the elementary fluctuations in the Field (we call this “Perturbation”, a fundamental form of Elementary Action, the fundament of metrics, mass and gravitation).

So, the relevant question is: why these distributions are not homogeneous in space and time dimensions? This question is very important because all that exists emerges and evolves from the organization of these fluctuations. In short, it is true that everything is made of void, but the central matter is: “why the void is not really void and how it behaves in the particular ways that allows/forces Reality to organize and evolve the way we see?”

Waves and particles are not the main part of what exists (or rather, “happens”) in Nature

Waves and particles, their interactions and their dynamics are very important parts of Reality (we and almost all we can observe and measure in the Universe are made of these two classes of structures). But we need to stop thinking that everything that exist is made by these stuffs. To comprehend the dark side of Nature and the more elementary levels of Reality, in the study of natural phenomena we have to go far beyond the atomistic vision.

It is like to watch the surface of a volcanic lake. We observe vapor, babbles, whirls, the mineral composts floating in and above the water, potent geysers rising high. But, it seems like we were not able to look under the surface, to look at the water, that transfers the heats and the motion from the deep of the earth to the surface and the structures that catch our attention.

It is like, unable to see under the surface, we concentrate on all the phenomena above the surface, trying to explain them only in terms of what we can directly see, even if we do not completely understand them. I think we are forgetting the main part of the happening! Our cognitive system is specialized to recognize structures, patterns and changes in them. So, it is natural that we focus on particles and waves, and their interactions.

Watching at the sky, we must not only look at the clouds moving around. We must observe the (apparently) quiet light blue sky that represents the background of everything happening in it and that catches our curious attention. Observing and measuring clouds, without studying the blue sky that, like the void, lies among them, will not allow us to completely comprehend what the clouds are, why they exist, and how they behave and interact producing all the meteorological phenomena that influence our lives.

Where is the electron? No point particles...

One of the weirdest questions in the quantum world is the claimed impossibility to know the position of a particle before a measurement (and more, the impossibility to reach an infinite precision in measuring contemporarily both position and velocity, as conjugated quantities). Even more, the absurdity to think that the particle has a position in space time.

I think that

The shape of particles and atoms is...

x

Dark matter is not made of particles

Why cannot we find dark matter? Basically, because we are looking in the wrong direction! Or rather, we are looking for the wrong thing. We are looking for particles ... Elusive, strange, exotic, light, heavy, warm, cold ... but always "particles" ... Someone thinks to change the laws of dynamics, to overcome Relativity, to reform gravity ... Let's change! Let's try something different ...

Dark energy and the cosmic expansion

Are we really sure that the expansion observed is a true expansion? That the distances among the larger cosmic objects like galaxy clusters and superclusters are really rising in time? And that expansion is accelerating? What if “c” (the speed of light) could vary in time and space?

Action – events Information relations

No Big Bang! No inflation! We don’t really need things like these...

These “theories” don’t really explain what we observe in the Universe. They were the best explanations possible at the time when they were conceived and developed. But, after many decades, nonetheless the many patches studied to explain the more and more accurate and divergent observations made and nonetheless the comprehensible defence by all the people that have funded on them their research and their scientific identity, now their appear a lot aged, tired, unable to support the theoretical and observational effort needed to reach a more deep comprehension of the Universe, its birth and evolution, and its past, present and future dynamics. Let’s think of the source of all this energy, all this motion, all the power that works incessantly to ensure that the universe continues to exist and evolve.

So, it is absurd to think about a time before the big bang, Because, no big bang, and because time has emerged and incessantly emerges form the process of formation of Reality. As causality and space, it is the result of the incessant manifestation of the Source, that Elementary Action composed by all the Elementary Events coming from the incessant interaction of the two aspects of the Source, the Fundamental Force and the Elementary Field.

No limits at all

• No limits in causal extension: the incessant growth in complexity
• No limits in space extension: an infinite Universe
• No limits in time extension: an eternal Universe, no begin, no end

The Universe is older than we think

It is infinitely old… no beginning in a classical sense

Only one universe is needed, not many or infinite

No multiverses, no need, no matter

Go to the list of the topics of this chapter

Go to the summary of the paper "The Fundamental Nature of Reality"