Philosophising Coincidence

“Ah hello again, I hope I didn’t confuse you too much during our last little chat?”

“When we spoke of the nature of matter? A little, but it got me thinking, as I cogitated our discussion; you said that we reside in a “goldilocks” universe and yet everything is really just energy at different frequencies of vibration?”
“That’s correct and that it may be one of several realities in a multiverse, as exhibited by the double slit experiment and the wave of potentials. “
“You said that there were at least nine parallel universes occupying the same time and space as ours and you also mentioned all these coincidences that make this reality the way it is…”
“Indeed, I remember. Has this thinking led you down a rabbit hole?”
“I’ll say. It just leads deeper and deeper. You said that the moon is just happens to be the same ratio of size and distance to enable us to view a solar eclipse and that it’s gravitational effect keeps our planet tectonically active. Well I did some more research of my own about the moon, and… oh I will come across as literally a lunatic!”
“We are friends, trying to understand our reality. I won’t judge you. Where did this research lead you?”
“It led me to believe that the moon shouldn’t exist.”
“That’s a dramatic conclusion! Why would you say that?”

“It’s too big for one thing. If you look at other planets in our solar system and the comparative size of their satellites you conclude that the moon should be roughly 40 miles in diameter, but Luna is 2000, Its orbit is an almost perfect circle, not elliptical and as it orbits the planet it spins but once so that it always shows its one face to the earth.  It’s old of course roughly 4.5 billion years and so comparable with earth and yet some of the rocks were estimated at being 5.3 billion years.”

“Well we know it’s old due to the cratered surface.”
“The craters yes, some big over 60 miles across and some small less than 15. Yet… all the same depth.
“That’s weird.”
“Yes because the moon has in effect a 20 mile thick titanium shell which acts like ballistic nylon, absorbing the impact and disintegrating the bullet that hits hit.”
“A shell? Is that the correct term?”
 Yes, when space probes have purposely been crashed on its surface the whole body has rung like a bell, suggesting it’s actually hollow.”

“So… where does that lead us. How was it formed by the way?”

“Conventional theory states that a large body crashed into earth when all was molten rock, the result being that Luna broke away to form the moon we see today… the perfect moon and all by sheer coincidence.
“But how can it be hollow and made the way it is, if it’s formed from the same rocks as earth? Hang on. Hollow. A twenty mile thick shell, placed in a near perfect orbit. Anywhere else, that would sound like a spaceship. But if this isn’t the case – and conventional science of course says it isn’t – then it’s all mere coincidence, but…”

 “To quote a famous film – That’s no moon! Ha, ha. Coincidences, yes… the more you look for them, the stranger the universe becomes. I looked into your nine parallel universes and something struck me.”

“Brilliant, I’m loving this philosophising, let me list them so I remember. There’s the Quilted Universe where in an infinite universe every conceivable event happens an infinite number of times but the speed of light prevents us from being aware of them. There’s the Inflationary universe whereby inflation fields collapse to reform anew. There’s the membrane  or Brane universe, whereby the universe exists on a 3 dimensional membrane that coexists with a higher dimensional membranes. Then there’s the Cyclic universe where the membranes collide again and again, causing big bangs. Theres’s also the Landscape universe that relies on the reality of string theory and quantum fluctuations creating a pocket with laws different than that of the surrounding space.  How many is that so far? Five, so four more! My favourites left really. The Quantum, where each diversion creates a new universe. There’s the Ultimate where every mathematically possible universe exists with different sets of physics. The weirdest I’ve left to last; we have the Holographic where the entire universe is formed from two dimensional information projected from the event horizon of a black hole and the Simulated whereby we are part of a vast computer simulation. So then, which theory of the universe do you like the most and how did it help with your investigation into coincidences?”
“Partly holographic, partly simulated, which aligns with the narrow band of electromagnetic spectrum you described during our last conversation.”
“Go on.”
“You know the worlds within worlds idea where solar systems almost mirror the atoms that make our universe. “
“Electrons orbit a nucleus like planets around a sun. Yes it’s like a repeating pattern on different scales.”
“Exactly and then you have a galaxy of suns orbiting the core and an infinite number of galaxies all moving and interacting on a colossal scale. The odd thing is that each galaxy looks like a biological cell, the black hole in the centre, its nucleus.  Simulations of the universe with strings and clusters of galaxies looking remarkably like a brain cells with neurons connecting with one another.”

“Fascinating. So the universe itself is a giant brain? But isn’t the universe expanding?”

“Ha, yes it is, perhaps it mirrors our own conversations. Our minds are opening up!”

Are we conscious of matter? A conversation.

If you want to find the secrets of the universe, think in terms of energy, frequency and vibration - Nikolai Tesla


“Different states of vibration take us to altering levels of consciousness and therefore to differing perceptions of reality. Therefore everything around us had a degree of consciousness.”

“What, even bugs? What about rocks and plants?”

“Everything. The insects have an altered sense or reality, you know this already. They see the world through a pixelated ultra-violet spectrum. The colours that we see flowers possess look utterly different to bees and butterflies. It’s been proven that plants communicate with one another, that trees require a symbiotic relationship with fungus in the soil, that plants under infestation with insects will issue an alarm to other plants an attempt to make themselves unpalatable to pests. As for rocks, how is it that I can crumble graphite in my fingers and yet, chemically, it’s the same material as diamond?”

“But insects don’t exist in a parallel reality, they live in ours.”

“True, which is why stick insects have evolved their camouflage, why moths appear as leaves or bark and yet they still view the world in an alien way to us. To survive in a world haunted by animals and birds with a visual spectrum such as ours they have evolved these techniques. Don’t forget as a life-form, they have successfully been in this world far longer than us. ”

“Visual spectrum?”

“Yes. We know that light, like sound, travels in waves.  The frequency of these waves dictates what is visible, hence you get the long slow waves of radiowaves through to the rapidly repeating gamma rays. Our visible spectrum of red through to violet is a narrow band in this wavelength between infrared and ultraviolet, yet all these colours are contained within white light.”

The Electromagnetic spectrum - pintrest

“Radiowaves? So sound and light are the same thing?”

“No, although they both travel as waves, they are different. Light can travel in a vacuum but sound cannot. Sound is merely an excitement of atoms, it needs a medium through which to travel. Light, on the other hand, is composed of photons - the elementary particle of electromagnetic radiation – therefore, unlike sound, light has the duality of being a particle and a wave.”

“So what’s beyond radio waves and gamma waves?”

“Well that’s the question, isn’t it? It could be that there are lower frequencies that our instruments can’t quantify and maybe higher frequencies than gamma waves… although the energy required to produce such an electromagnetic burst would be literally astronomical. However we live in a hypothetical multiverse, so why not?”

“A multiverse?”

“Yes, whereby many different realities occupy the same space-time.  I see that you’re confused, but look; the big bang was a quantum event, yes? Well we can still discern gravitational waves from this event, in particular the inflation effect that occured soon after. There are unseen forces  that affect the universe in which we reside. The universe is expanding, yet what moves in to occupy the space between galaxies? We see nothing and yet this nothing must be something in order to push them apart.”

“This is all pseudoscience, mere philosophy.”

“On a quantum level observation yields only chaos; sub particles, for instance, have to rotate multiple times until the same face reveals itself to us. How is such a thing possible? We see the universe in terms of an orrery; where all is as clockwork and predictable. But we live in a goldilocks universe - everthing is just right. Not only do we live on a planet that lies in the habitable zone around our sun whereby liquid water can exist. Or that we have a moon that keeps our planet's tectonics active, that coincidentally has the same size/distance ratio from said sun, enabling us to view the wonder of a solar eclipse. Neither that our solar system has gas giants sucking up the majority of comets and space debris that would otherwise bombard us… But we just so happen to exist in a universe whereby matter itself can exist. Therefore surely it stands to reason that other universes must be out there. Some theorise that there must be at least nine types of parallel universes, but it could be an inconceivable number. The deeper we delve the more philosophical it all becomes, it is at the very edge of our scientific understanding.”

“I think I can get my head around that, but what were you saying about vibrations?”

“In this universe everything is energy. Light is energy, we know sound is energy. I twist a rubber band and my movement creates energy, which is stored in the rubber band’s elasticity.”

“You mentioned rocks before, they don’t have energy.”

“Yes they do, on an atomic level they are in motion. It’s merely that with our limited perception we don’t see it. Most of what we call rock is in actual fact empty space. Its solid form is the result of the energy from its chemical bonds. But if I apply energy using a hammer I can break off pieces; that’s me applying greater energy than the chemical bonds.”

“Hang on that implies that this material world isn’t really matter at all?”

“Exactly. It’s really energy.”

“But what of consciousness?”

“Have you ever heard of the double slit experiment?”

“Is that whereby you can discern if something is a particle or a wave?”

“Yes that’s the one. If I set up a screen and fire marbles through a single slit, the marbles will hit the screen and make a shape corresponding to the slit. If I put two slits in from of the screen I’ll get two corresponding bands forming on the screen. However if I fire light at the slits, particles which we know travels in waveform, where both waves meet after exiting the slits you get interference patterns. So the screen will show multiple slit shapes, separated by area where no light strikes the screen at all.”

“Yes, I think I’ve seen such images, fascinating stuff. But that doesn’t prove consciousness.”

“No… but if we go to the quantum level and fire electrons at the single slit we get one band shape but two slits form the same multiple interference patterns. The electrons – actual matter, was behaving as a wave.”

“Maybe they were merely bouncing off each other and making the interference pattern that way?”

“Well the next logical step to check this is to fire individual electrons at the slits.”

“Yes and thereby making two slit patterns on the screen.”

“You’d think… and yet after an hour or so off firing individual electrons at the slits the same banded interference pattern is observed on the screen. Which means the single electron is fired at the slits and becomes a wave of potentials, splitting and going through both slits and therefore interfering with itself and hitting the screen making that banded pattern. Mathematically this is mind- blowing; the single electron goes through both slits or none, through one or the other simultaneously.”

“Did they check this, observe which slit the electron passes through?”

“This is where it gets strange. Equipment was set up to observe the slits to see which one the electrons, fired singularly, went through. It was observed that the electron only went through one at a time, not both. The screen revealed that only two slit patterns were made.”

“Hang on, so the electron was behaving like a particle, not a wave? How did it make the interference pattern before?”

“It was the very act of measuring that did this. If left alone there is a wave of potentials from the electron, but under observation this wave of potentials collapses… as if the electron was aware that it was being observed.”

“But that begs the question of the nature of matter, is it made of particles or waves… and if the electron knows  that its being observed that implies a degree of…”

“Consciousness! Exactly!”

The Universe is toast!

 

 

The universe is toast and it’s my entire fault.

There are infinite worlds, through a veritable infinity of days and yet this moment was on one, before this particular schism of timelines. Each was linked of course; webs of subatomic particles strung each to the other in a network of infinite possibilities. Already through the choices made, there were alternative earths with differing histories, some similar and some radically different from our own. I say our own, but of course I mean mine. It might be that you have winked out of existence, without you even realising. Or perhaps I am now a never was, due to the past choices of others? Do I talk to myself? Do I really exist and if not, how do I ask myself these questions? I hear the radio in the background attempting to set the parameters of  this reality, but do I really? What if all this is a figment of my own imagination? Was Descartes correct in his assumption of cognito ergo sum?

If only I could have the best of all worlds…

But like it or not, I am a traveller through the quantum universe. The world you see seems settled and familiar; the solar system an orrery that moves like clockwork on its set patterns, set in a swirling galaxy, in a universe that counts the hours since its violent birth at the beginning of time. But this is an error, an illusion we escape into to preserve our fragile sanity.

If you could see at the subatomic scale (although seeing isn’t the correct term, as at this level, light has no meaning, as we would be beneath the peaks and troughs of photonic wavelengths) then you would observe a seething chaos, an insane madness where quarks and neutrinos exist and don’t exist, occupying the same space in the multiverse. Some spin but do not show us the same face until one and a half rotations.

Being aware of this doesn’t make it easier to understand. It makes no sense, this can’t be real, this must be my imagination and yet I do feel hungry. Do I feel hunger when I dream? Have I ever dreamt of eating? I can’t recall.

But like a Star Trek episode, dealing with these quandaries, everything has a cause and effect. What I do now could cascade through the future but I must make a decision, and make it soon. I’ve weighed the options; sweet or savoury, strawberry jam or marmite. Are my needs the only indicator that I can rely upon? More time! I need more time! Maybe I can defer for a moment?

But suddenly with a violence akin to the big bang the time is upon me, filling my senses; the sound of the forceful ejection, the sight and the smell of the carbonising process. I reach for both the items from their apertures. They are both hot, threatening to burn my fingers. Surely this must be another sign, an indication that I truly exist?

So now I am at that final point, whereby a decision is needed, but I defy this cruel universe. It shall not force my hand; I will have the best of all worlds. I laugh then at the universe and revel in my cleverness; of course, it was obvious. I spread the butter over the two cooling slices of toast and reach for the jam AND the marmite, one for each. Victory, this timeline stays whole with its infinite possibilities preserved.

And yet as I reach into the cupboard, I see the universe mocking me yet again and seeding my mind with doubt… peanut butter… I’d forgotten about the peanut butter!