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 does not exist in a classical or ordinary sense. Reality happens. All that exists appear as existing because at the elementary level of Reality, in the true factory of causality and space-time, the Source incessantly create and recreate the elementary events, the basic “substance”, the Elementary Action, from whose organization everything emerges and evolves 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.

Nothing can be defined as entity, only the Source, in its two complementary aspects, the Force and the Field. The Source is the only “entity” in the true sense. Only the fundamental/elementary couple Force/Field can be considered as an entity. Everything else derive its existence from the fundamental/elementary Source. It is the incessant source, the origin of Existence, because it “causes” the happening, the emergence of the Elementary Events that represent the most fundamental form of Existence. Reality exists because happens, because the Source incessantly produce its happening.

The events we are perceiving, observing, measuring, the events that compose of natural phenomena, the everyday facts that we are incessantly experiencing in our lives, always are to be considered and can be described as macro-events. Even the simplest events, like the emission of a photon by an excited electron in an atomic nucleus, is a complex structure of organized events. This “simple” interaction between two of the more elementary particles/waves, that we can observe in nature, in facts, involves an enormous number of Elementary Events. Each related to the others, or better, correlated in the complex forms that we call particles, both the massive ones like vortex/particles as electrons and the non-massive ones like wave/particles as photons. We also have to take in consideration all the “non-stable, short life, variable extension and shape” structures that characterize the normal dynamics of the Field, especially in the surrounding of the previously mentions Structures engaged in a short-range interaction (which in QM we call virtual particles and, more in general, quantum fluctuations of the void).

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 whole Reality is incessantly empowered by a Source of Events/Action (a Force / Field couple)

This very important statement word by word, whose true meaning is: No Source, no Events, no Reality.

The whole Reality: every that existed, exists and will exist. Past (the history), present (the actual) and future (the possibile). The Universe in evolution.

Incessantly: in every instant in a continuous flowing of time, created by a continuous infinite process of events.

To empower: to give power, to propel, to create a potential, the potential, the possibility, to give the power of making something happen, become “real” from a potential state, to produce a change in the state of a field, to de-form a field, to produce events, action… Empowerment is the key of creation and emergence.

Source of Events: the former agent, the causal origin of those events (deformations of the Field produced by the incessant (inter)action of the Force. The Force and Field being the aspect, active and passive, of the Source itself, the fundamental manifestations of the Source interacting with itself. What is a source? It is a force in action on a field.

Everything is relative but the Source (Fundamental Force and Elementary Field)

Nothing absolute in the Reality, but the Source. Only the Force and the Field, the two aspects of the creative power of the Source can be considered. Everything that exists emerges from the inner interaction of the Force and the Field, in a creative and evolutive process the I call the Process of Formation of Reality. It is a process of events that gives form to Reality and the Universe in evolution.

Even the force and causality, even the space and time, emerge from the Source and are not absolute entities. They too are made of events, made by that inner interaction that produces the most elementary form of existence, the Elementary Events, the Elementary Action. Both space and time (local) extensions (distances in space and intervals in time) depend on the (local) average intensities of the distributions of the Elementary Events, the tiny fluctuation of the Elementary Field at the Planck scale.

This is also the reason why space and time are linked as stated in General Relativity. Because they are different expressions of the same phenomena, because, as seen above, they both depend on the same fundamental quantity, on the dynamical state of the Elementary Field itself.

And more, in an evolutive run toward complexity, even mass, motion, charge and spin, the fundamental physical quantities that characterize radiation and matter, and so everything that exists in the physical Universe, are relative. They can be described only in relation with the space-time distributions of that Elementary Events that constitute the Elementary Action in its three components: Perturbation, Traslation, Rotation (in the two forms of Chirality and Axis orientation).

Quantum time symmetry

According to quantum time symmetry, events can be reversed in time dimension. This is the theoretical symmetry of physical laws under the transformation of time reversal, that is equivalent to the conservation of entropy (impossible as per the second law of thermodynamics except for special equilibrium states).

I personally think that quantum time symmetry is highly over estimated. That is more theoretical than practical. It can be fully applied to very elementary, single or simple, quantum phenomena. Complex events or whole processes can’t be reversed (the combined probability of the reversal of all the individual elementary events that compose the whole process in the right order is so small that we can easily assume to be null). Events, or better simple events, can ideally be reversed. What can’t be reversed are relations between events. The organization of events in more complex macro events represent the true complexity of Reality, that normally can’t be reversed. This leads to the emergence of the arrow of time, the irreversibility of complex phenomena.

It is a crucial point. It is very important to understand the phenomena that in quantum world are called “wave-function collapse”, due to observation, and “quantum decoherence”, as an explanation for the observation of the wave-function collapse, when the quantum system loses information into the environment. And more, also measurement (a particular form of observation, that always creates relations or a complex set of relations between the observer and the observed), the more complex it is, the more affects the observed system, producing more and more irreversible effects both in the observed and the observer (respectively the object of the measure and the experimental equipment).

Different kind of forces/fields: a matter of complexity

In investigating the nature of the forces and the fields we commonly deal with in physics, in the quest for a real unification of these entities, to me is very important to distinguish between Fundamental Force / Elementary Fields on one hand and the derived forces/fields on the other.

I think this is not the only very useful distinction. In the land of the derived entities, the derived forces and fields, the products of whose interaction we observe in Nature as different phenomena, we have to distinguish between forces/fields that emerge and operate in the continuum, at a very elementary level of Reality, and forces/fields that emerge and operate in the world of granularity, at a more complex level of organization.

As direct manifestation of the fundamental entities, at an elementary level of Reality, where the fundamental continuity is still dominant and granularity, although starting to occur in a larval and highly unstable form, is not yet become the protagonist of the scene, we can identify the two main derived forces/fields: the gravitational and the electromagnetic.

From these two fundamental entities, from their evolution, their complexification through the causal transition from continuity to granularity, where quantum phenomena manifest themselves in all their weirdness and unintelligibility, where the complex Structures of Information that we commonly call atoms and nuclei, is there that we see new forces/fields emerging and manifesting in the interaction between the sub-components of atoms (more elementary Structures of Information, sub atomic particles like quarks, gluons, leptons, etc.).

It is there that the Fundamental Force and the Elementary Field manifest themselves in the emergence of new and more complex derived forces/fields, where continuity slides in the background and granularity takes the scene. It is there that gravitational and the electromagnetic forces/fields, while remaining fundamentally continuous entities, they take on new forms and properties, contributing to the emergence of the weak and strong nuclear forces / fields.

Mass, motion, charge and spin: the key is (cor)relation, organization, information

In this model of description of the physical world, “mass, motion, charge and spin”, the fundamental physical quantities that lay at the base of all the physics of matter and radiation, are considered not really fundamental. They are seen as emergent properties/quantities, phenomena, processes of events, something that happens, like everything else in the Universe, like the Structures of Information (particles, waves, atoms, molecules, etc.) that we really study, classify and measure through that quantities.

Or better, they are considered as organizations of relations among events, patterns of processes of events. Information, in short. Mass, motion, charge and spin are Information, at a low-medium level of Reality, where Reality evolves from the world of the Elementary Action, in its peculiar basic modes of manifestation (Perturbation, Translation and Rotation), to the world of the Structures of Information.

It is the world of Information, the physical information that we call “energy” in traditional science language. If we slice Action in time dimension, we can see Information. Information, as the word say, is the form of the Action, “In-Form-Action”. And to identify/measure an evolving form, we have to stop the flowing of the action, of the events that incessantly re-create and modify that form. It’s like taking a snapshot. We cannot get the form as reality evolves, changes. We can see, measure, an occurring action, a process of events only, so to say, “stopping” time and observing/measuring the deformation of a (derived) field produced by the (derived) action of the corresponding (derived) force.

So, “mass, motion, charge and spin”, these very important properties/quantities, these basic forms of energy (as seen, basic forms of Information), emerge from the organization of the relations among the infinite, incessant, events, the Elementary Events, that represent the fundamental, the more elementary form of existence, the everchanging deformations of the Elementary Field.

Energy is an elementary form of Information (or Information is a complex form of energy)

What is energy? A central question in physics. Normally we think to Information as something complex, and to energy as something more elementary. But I think they are the same. Or better, energy is an elementary form of Information. So, we can convert the basic question “what is energy?”, into a more general question: “what is Information?”.

The central part of Evolutionary Physics model is represented by the Process of Formation of Reality: how the Source creates Elementary Events/Action and how this Action organize, takes form in Information (In-Form-Action), whose evolution produce all the Structures and the Forms that compose the Universe in evolution.

So, in this model of description of Reality Information is action that has taken a form through relation. At the most elementary levels of Reality, Information is represented by the set/net of Relations that organize the Elementary Events/Action. Only inhomogeneous sets/nets of events manifest, represent, is, Information. Homogeneity represents the minimum level/amount of Information (absolute homogeneity is equal to zero Information).

The more elementary form of inhomogeneity is an Elementary Event, a local basic deformation of the Elementary Field (a local fluctuation of the Field at the Planck scale). But looking at the Field, animated by those fluctuations, at a more distance, a volume with an extension that can include a statistically significant number of point-events, we will see again a little less elementary form of homogeneity, but always homogeneity. It is the “without form”, Action without form. Again, considering not a single point, but a 3D interval, a volume, we will find no Information, cause all the stochastic distributions of the fluctuations of each point-event in that volume are equal.

At this point, a new form of inhomogeneity can emerge. It is what we will consider the most elementary form of Information: a gradient in the stochastic distributions of the Elementary Events. We call this: Perturbation, the most elementary form of Action, the component of Action related to the intensity of the elementary fluctuations. Perturbation, with Translation and Rotation are the three basic forms of the Elementary Action, the basic components of Action. They are the building block of Reality. Relations among these forms of Action, the basic ways in which Events can organize, represent the fundamental Information, the basic forms of Energy. Because they are the basic ways in which the Force manifests itself, producing the derived forces that we see at work in the Nature, we can represent them in terms of the vector algebra: gradient, divergence, rotation/curl.

Every other more complex form of Energy/Information emerge from the evolution (organization, transformation, selection) of more and more complex relations among these three elementary forms of Action, this Elementary Information.

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”, in 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?”

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 true factory 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.

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

Radiation and particles, their interactions and their dynamics are very important parts of Reality (we and almost all that 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 of these stuffs. To understand the dark side of Nature and the most 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, bubbles, whirls, the mineral composts floating in and above water, potent geysers rising high. But it seems like we are not able to look under the surface, to look at the water, that transfers the heat and the motion from the deep of the earth to the surface and to 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 what is 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, ignoring what hosts them, what supports them.

Watching at the sky, we must not just look at the clouds moving around. We have to look at the (apparently) calm blue sky which represents the background of all that happens in it and which captures our curious attention. Observing and measuring the clouds, without studying the blue sky that, like the emptiness, apparently lies between them, does not allow us to fully understand what clouds are, why they exist and how they behave and interact producing all the meteorological phenomena that influence our lives.

I wrote “apparently lies between them”, apparently because the background, the sky in our metaphor, and the structures, the clouds, are not different kind of things. They are always atoms, molecules, only differently organized, combined, structured. The same with space-time and the structures that we call waves and particles. They are really not “in” the space-time field, they are the space-time field, or better, the Elementary Field differently organized. Different “Information”, In-Form-Action, what gives a different form to the Elementary Action.

Cosmic expansion as an effect of the rising complexity of Reality-

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Large scale homogeneity of the cosmos-

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No limits at all-

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Links to the tables of contents of TFNR Paper

• Go to the contents list of the paper "The Fundamental Nature of Reality"

• Go to Chapter 2 "A first look"