Could life forms such as ours, sentient beings, survive if laws of physics were variable?

[Michael 345]

Most likely, by dying - went their component atoms went flying apart at the speed of light.

Remember the scientists made it to the stage of being sentient because the force which causes the physics to vary also prevents such a catastrophe as you mention from occurring

 

[Write4U]

the force which causes the physics to vary

What force is that, and how do physics vary?

And in the beginning did light not exceed SOL during the inflationary epoch?

AFAIK, SOL was established after spacetime formed and acquired its physical permittive and restrictive properties.

 

[James R]

And in the beginning did light not exceed SOL during the inflationary epoch?

No. The inflationary epoch was not an expansion in space, but rather an expansion of space. It's an important difference.

 

[Write4U]

No. The inflationary epoch was not an expansion in space, but rather an expansion of space. It's an important difference.

I agree and that is not what I said. The inflationary epoch was the expansion of space in a timeless a priori permittive condition that had no physical properties and therefore had no restrictions of any kind and allowed for the FTL expansion of space.

I imagine that only when space had sufficiently expanded did spatial restrictions emerge and space became "spacetime" along with emerging constants and three fundamental values from which all physics were derived.

Perhaps this is an unorthodox perspective but is it logically wrong as a generic description? If so, why?

 

[James R]

The inflationary epoch was the expansion of space in a timeless a priori permittive condition that had no physical properties and therefore had no restrictions of any kind and allowed for the FTL expansion of space.

I don't know what "timeless a priori permittive condition" means. But the expanding universe certainly had physical properties during the inflationary period. It was full of very high-energy particles, for instance. Also, remember that the inflationary period is a model that explains certain observations about the universe. Every scientific model has restrictions and the inflationary model is no exception.

I imagine that only when space had sufficiently expanded did spatial restrictions emerge and space became "spacetime" along with emerging constants and three fundamental values from which all physics were derived.

I don't know what "spatial restrictions" you're thinking of, exactly. Spacetime was there from the start of the universe. General relativistic models of the expanding universe all presuppose spacetime because that's what general relativity is: a model of spacetime.

Which three fundamental values are you referring to?

Perhaps this is an unorthodox perspective but is it logically wrong as a generic description? If so, why?

It's not logically wrong. It's your understanding of the science that's a bit lacking. Also, as usual, you're throwing around impressive-sounding words without really knowing that they mean, which means that you end up using technical terms in a way that nobody else uses them. That, in turn, means that you're not really communicating in the accepted language of science.

 

[Write4U]

I don't know what "timeless a priori permittive condition" means.

A timeless condition of dimensionless nothingness that is permittive of everything.

But the expanding universe certainly had physical properties during the inflationary period. It was full of very high-energy particles, for instance. Also, remember that the inflationary period is a model that explains certain observations about the universe. Every scientific model has restrictions and the inflationary model is no exception.

I agree and I did not say otherwise. The expanding universe started as a singularity and for an infinitely small instant it expanded at FTL without being restricted by any physically restrictive laws of nature which at that time were non-existent but emerged within the universe as it expanded, cooled down, and formed physical properties along with their restriction of behaviors and the emergence of SOL as a constant.

I don't know what "spatial restrictions" you're thinking of, exactly.

The universal physically restrictive laws.

Spacetime was there from the start of the universe.

Yes, but not before.

General relativistic models of the expanding universe all presuppose spacetime because that's what general relativity is: a model of spacetime.

I have no quarrel with that. Every description of nature is a human symbolic model.

Which three fundamental values are you referring to?

The quantum fields of three elementary particles? (quarks, leptons bosons).

It's not logically wrong. It's your understanding of the science that's a bit lacking. Also, as usual, you're throwing around impressive-sounding words without really knowing that they mean, which means that you end up using technical terms in a way that nobody else uses them. That, in turn, means that you're not really communicating in the accepted language of science.

I understand what you mean, but I believe that there is a certain prejudice involved. Scientists use allegorical expressions all the time, without penalty. It is really a matter of understanding the content of a sentence, not necessarily the linguistic mechanics.

I always accompany all my posts that are about scientific narratives with quotes of actual scientific narratives by scientists. My problem is overcoming resistance to anything I have to say because my academic credentials are suspect and it is easy to dismiss a statement that may sound ambiguous. But believe it or not, when I string a compound sentence together I use real care to maintain correct chronology. I do this to save space and I know that the readers are very capable of deciphering the sentence if they apply a little thought instead of instant dismissal.

I am verbose as it is, but I try to be concise as much as possible. And I always welcome clarifying the content.

As English is my second language, AFAIK all words I see in the dictionary that meet the definition of my intended meaning should usable. If they are not in common use by English speaking persons that's not my problem.

When I address a serious subject, I do actually look up definitions of words and terms. That is why it may seem contrived at times, which is not the intent.

I always welcome correction when I actually misuse a term.

 

[Write4U]

I don't know what "timeless a priori permittive condition" means. But the expanding universe certainly had physical properties during the inflationary period. It was full of very high-energy particles, for instance. Also, remember that the inflationary period is a model that explains certain observations about the universe. Every scientific model has restrictions and the inflationary model is no exception.

This is a sticking point in so many discussions.
I based my speculation on the wiki definition

Inflation (cosmology) - Wikipedia

The inflationary epoch lasted from 10−36 seconds after the conjectured Big Bang singularity to some time between 10−33 and 10−32 seconds after the singularity. Following the inflationary period, the universe continued to expand, but at a slower rate.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inflation_(cosmology)#

And I know that the standard model shows an oblate sphere,

but it also shows a toroid as a possible model.

Three-torus model of the universe

The three-Torus model is a cosmological model proposed in 1984 by Alexei Starobinsky and Yakov Borisovich Zel'dovich at the Landau Institute in Moscow.[1] The theory describes the shape of the universe (topology) as a three-dimensional torus.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-torus_model_of_the_universe

I like that model because it preserves the centre singularity, yet allows for a wavy 2D surface expansion and the continuous generation of a pilot wave. (Bohm)

 

[Write4U]

Remember the scientists made it to the stage of being sentient because the force which causes the physics to vary also prevents such a catastrophe as you mention from occurring

Perhaps it is not as complicated as it appears at first sight.

After all, very simple fractal algorithms can create an infinity of variations, but also show the chronology of strings self-assembling into polymers, evolving into complex patterns and finally becoming identical in complexity.

 

[James R]

Write4U:

As usual, it seems that you're getting carried away by the joy of abstract mathematical ideas. As a consequence, you lose connection with the physical reality of things.

A timeless condition of dimensionless nothingness that is permittive of everything.

To me, that's more or less a repeat of the first lot of word salad that you wrote. What does it actually mean for something to be "permittive of everything"? Can there actually be a thing that is "permittive of everything"?

The expanding universe started as a singularity and for an infinitely small instant it expanded at FTL without being restricted by any physically restrictive laws of nature which at that time were non-existent but emerged within the universe as it expanded, cooled down, and formed physical properties along with their restriction of behaviors and the emergence of SOL as a constant.

There are a number of problems with that statement.

First of all, realise that the term "singularity" in this context refers to a mathematical idea. Specifically it points at somewhere that a mathematical theory breaks down, which is a usually signal that we need a better theory. It is therefore wrong to say that the physical universe "started as a singularity". That's essentially saying that the universe started because something in one of our mathematical theories doesn't work, which is nonsensical.

Secondly, parts of our universe right now are moving away from us FTL. That has nothing to do with physical laws not existing, or anything like that. Which brings us to the third point: all of our models of the big bang necessarily involve what you call "restrictive laws of nature" that were there right from the start. It's hard to imagine why a "law of nature" would suddenly spring into being at some stage during the process of expansion, if it wasn't there before. None of our cosmological theories contain that idea.

Yes, but not before.

There was no "before", as far as we can tell.

The quantum fields of three elementary particles? (quarks, leptons bosons).

Does that question mark mean that you don't know what you're talking about, there, and you'd like me to suggest something that might make sense?

Scientists use allegorical expressions all the time, without penalty.

To explain things to laymen, certainly. But in explaining things to each other, they tend to use precisely defined scientific terms. That way, everyone can understand what is being discussed, because they all use the same terminology and understood conventions (at least, in the ideal case).

It is really a matter of understanding the content of a sentence, not necessarily the linguistic mechanics.

When it comes to technical topics, the "vibe" is not sufficient. One has to be precise in communicating.

I always accompany all my posts that are about scientific narratives with quotes of actual scientific narratives by scientists. My problem is overcoming resistance to anything I have to say because my academic credentials are suspect and it is easy to dismiss a statement that may sound ambiguous. But believe it or not, when I string a compound sentence together I use real care to maintain correct chronology. I do this to save space and I know that the readers are very capable of deciphering the sentence if they apply a little thought instead of instant dismissal.

I am verbose as it is, but I try to be concise as much as possible. And I always welcome clarifying the content.

As English is my second language, AFAIK all words I see in the dictionary that meet the definition of my intended meaning should usable. If they are not in common use by English speaking persons that's not my problem.

When I address a serious subject, I do actually look up definitions of words and terms. That is why it may seem contrived at times, which is not the intent.

I always welcome correction when I actually misuse a term.

Understood. I would point out, however, that there's more to science than just a series of definitions of words or terms. It's about connections and causations and interactions, all of which have to be understood. Scientific knowledge is built up in layers from the simple to the complex. You can't start at the highest level of complexity and hope you can make an original contribution (or even understand fully what's going on) without knowing anything much about the lower, foundational layers. You have to learn to walk before you can run.

 

[James R]

And I know that the standard model shows an oblate sphere.

No, it doesn't.

This is why it important to understand what you're looking at when you see a pretty picture of something like the microwave background radiation distribution. That oval in the pretty picture says nothing about the shape of the universe.

but it also shows a toroid as a possible model.

That's a completely different kind of diagram, and a different topic for consideration.

I like that model because it preserves the centre singularity, yet allows for a wavy 2D surface expansion and the continuous generation of a pilot wave. (Bohm)

Are you aware that the physical universe has no centre? So, necessarily, there is not - and has never been - a "central singularity".

 

[James R]

After all, very simple fractal algorithms can create an infinity of variations, but also show the chronology of strings self-assembling into polymers, evolving into complex patterns and finally becoming identical in complexity.

More word salad. *sigh*

 

[Yazata]

Could life forms such as ours, sentient beings, survive if laws of physics were variable?

I have no way of knowing for myself, but if I take all the "anthropic" rhetoric seriously, then Earthlike physics and chemistry can only exist if the various physical constants remain within very narrow limits. Which sounds plausible, I guess.

So if we interpret "life forms such as ours" to mean biology with the same fundamental biochemistry as ours, then the answer would seem to be 'no'.

The science-fiction nut in me is hugely skeptical about that conclusion. (I think that science undergraduates, and high-school kids contemplating majoring in science at university, should be encouraged to read hard science fiction as imagination stretching exercise.)

But if we interpret "life forms such as ours" not to mean the same basic biochemistry, but rather to mean functionally equivalent as "sentient beings" would seem to suggest (multirealizability), then the question becomes harder. So the question becomes, could reasonably stable self-reproducing structures subject to natural selection and thus capable of evolution exist if the physical constants or even the laws of physics themselves were different? Could a being that's sentient in the functional sense still exist even if its underlying enabling principles are radically different?

My response to that is a definite maybe. The alternative universe would have to have the potential for stable structure to form. But not too stable, where everything is locked in place for all time such that changes can't occur. There would need to be something like chemical bonds that can form and be broken. It needn't be our familiar (to scientists, maybe) fundamental particles and their observed interactions in our universe. But there would have to be something functionally equivalent.

So I guess that if we imagine the basic principles of physics being variable so that they can take any of an unknown number of forms, and if we imagine a possibility-space composed of all those possible universes, then I would expect that only one universe would contain Earth life, many universes might contain functional equivalents to Earth life (some quite exotic, no doubt) and many others would be completely sterile.

Which would arguably defeat the stronger anthropic arguments. Sentient beings in any other of those possible universes in which the functional equivalent of life is possible, even if it is radically different than Earth life, could say that their universe is "fine-tuned" for their sort of life.

 

[Write4U]

Can there actually be a thing that is "permittive of everything"?

Yes. Nothing is permittive of everything. Nothing to get in the way.

It is therefore wrong to say that the physical universe "started as a singularity"

Don't tell me. I didn't come up with that one.

]Secondly, parts of our universe right now are moving away from us FTL.

Doesn't that prove my point ? Nothing inside the universe moves at FTL

That has nothing to do with physical laws not existing, or anything like that.

OK, what do physical laws do if not permit or restrict physical interaction?

Which brings us to the third point: all of our models of the big bang necessarily involve what you call "restrictive laws of nature" that were there right from the start.

The inflationary epoch wasn't. It did not have the SOL restriction it has now. It's hard to imagine why a "law of nature" would suddenly spring into being at some stage during the process of expansion, if it wasn't there before. None of our cosmological theories contain that idea.[/quote] Not for me. There has to be something physical before there are physical restrictions and permissions.
You seem to forget it started with NOTHING. Can you prove otherwise?

]There was no "before", as far as we can tell.

In that case my description of a "timeless, dimensionless a priory permittive condition" is perfectly suitable. If you unpack that sentence you end up with exactly what you just posited.

Does that question mark mean that you don't know what you're talking about, there, and you'd like me to suggest something that might make sense?

AFAIK those are the three quantum fields that emerged from the cooling plasma. Being that there is "string theory", I am not quite sure what exactly emerged first. Can you help me ut here?

(at least, in the ideal case).

OK, that is a qualified yes.

When it comes to technical topics, the "vibe" is not sufficient. One has to be precise in communicating.

I agree. But we are not discussing a technical topic. We are all speculating when addressing this area of knowledge.

Scientific knowledge is built up in layers from the simple to the complex. You can't start at the highest level of complexity and hope you can make an original contribution (or even understand fully what's going on) without knowing anything much about the lower, foundational layers. You have to learn to walk before you can run.

I agree completely. I am sure you are aware that one of my favorite tenets is that there is "no irreducible complexity". That smacks of ID.....

 

[James R]

Write4U:

Yes. Nothing is permittive of everything. Nothing to get in the way.

Okay, whatever you say. I guess you know what you mean.

The inflationary epoch wasn't. It did not have the SOL restriction it has now.

What did not have the speed-of-light restriction? The universe? Are you talking about things inside spacetime, or spacetime itself, or something else? Spacetime does not now have any speed-of-light restriction. The speed-of-light limit applies to things that move in spacetime, not to the movement of spacetime itself.

There has to be something physical before there are physical restrictions and permissions.
You seem to forget it started with NOTHING. Can you prove otherwise?

You're the one making the positive claim. You say the universe started with NOTHING. Prove it, if you can.

In that case my description of a "timeless, dimensionless a priory permittive condition" is perfectly suitable. If you unpack that sentence you end up with exactly what you just posited.

Okay. Then I now understand what you mean, and we're in agreement, I suppose.

AFAIK those are the three quantum fields that emerged from the cooling plasma. Being that there is "string theory", I am not quite sure what exactly emerged first. Can you help me ut here?

In quantum field theory, every particle is an excitation of a quantum field, whether it is lepton or baryon or meson, boson or fermion.

We don't currently have a description of anything that happened in the first $$10^{-43}$$ seconds of the universe's existence. Shortly after that time, I believe there was some kind of universe-encompassing plasma-like thing. The four fundamental interactions would all have been behaving similarly at that time, so I'm not sure if it would have been possible to distinguish the various force-carrier bosons. I'm not a cosmologist, but I don't think it would be hard to find some descriptions of the order in which the various constituents of the universe "froze out" as the universe expanded. I'd have to look it up, though.

 

[Write4U]

No, it doesn't.

This is why it important to understand what you're looking at when you see a pretty picture of something like the microwave background radiation distribution. That oval in the pretty picture says nothing about the shape of the universe.

Ok, enlighten me about the shape of the universe.

That's a completely different kind of diagram, and a different topic for consideration.

Oh, I thought we were talking about the various models that are in circulation in the scientific world?

Are you aware that the physical universe has no centre? So, necessarily, there is not - and has never been - a "central singularity".

Can you prove that definitive statement?
Only "nothing" has no center. The physical universe does have a singular beginning which by definition is its center, regardless if is the center of a 2D expanding plane or the center of a 3D expanding sphere.

Expansion of the universe

The expansion of the universe is the increase in distance between any two given gravitationally unbound parts of the observable universe with time.[1] It is an intrinsic expansion whereby the scale of space itself changes. The universe does not expand "into" anything and does not require space to exist "outside" it.

Technically, neither space nor objects in space move. Instead it is the metric (which governs the size and geometry of spacetime itself) that changes in scale. As the spatial part of the universe's spacetime metric increases in scale, objects become more distant from one another at ever-increasing speeds. To any observer in the universe, it appears that all of space is expanding, and that all but the nearest galaxies (which are bound by gravity) recede at speeds that are proportional to their distance from the observer. While objects within space cannot travel faster than light, this limitation does not apply to changes in the metric itself.[notes 1]

Therefore at great enough distances the speeds of distant objects exceed even the speed of light[dubious – discuss], and they become unable to be observed[according to whom?]

, limiting the size of our observable universe.

As an effect of general relativity, the expansion of the universe is different from the expansions and explosions seen in daily life. It is a property of the universe as a whole and occurs throughout the universe, rather than happening just to one part of the universe. Therefore, unlike other expansions and explosions, it cannot be observed from "outside" of it; it is believed that there is no "outside" to observe from.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expansion_of_the_universe

 

[Write4U]

Spacetime does not now have any speed-of-light restriction. The speed-of-light limit applies to things that move in spacetime, not to the movement of spacetime itself.

Exactly. That's what I have been telling you.
There is nothing outside spacetime and that is why spacetime is able to expand without any limitation as to speed.
Inside spacetime there are limitations (restrictive and permittive laws).

 

[Write4U]

In quantum field theory, every particle is an excitation of a quantum field, whether it is lepton or baryon or meson, boson or fermion.

I agree, and each "particle" represents a different value.

I have said this before, I am really not proposing anything new or contrary to mainstream consensus. I am trying to look at known science from different perspectives. Being able to look at a thing from different perspectives results in deeper understanding of its properties and potentials.

And most of all, I believe in David Bohm's cautionary tale against the fracturing and total specialization of different areas of inquiry without trying to identify "common denominators", properties and potentials that bind the universe together rather than what separates it.

Holistic (wholistic)

In the holistic approach of David Bohm, any collection of quantum objects constitutes an indivisible whole within an implicate and explicate order.[12][13] Bohm said there is no scientific evidence to support the dominant view that the universe consists of a huge, finite number of minute particles, and offered instead a view of undivided wholeness: "ultimately, the entire universe (with all its 'particles', including those constituting human beings, their laboratories, observing instruments, etc.) has to be understood as a single undivided whole, in which analysis into separately and independently existent parts has no fundamental status".[14]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holism_in_science#Chaos_and_complexity

 

[Write4U]

Look what I dug up.

Photon Mass Gets a Boost
August 16, 2002• Phys. Rev. Focus 10, 9
The mysterious magnetic fields that seem to permeate the cosmos may come from simple physics.

Magnetic Milky Way. Massive photons in the early universe might be responsible for the Galactic magnetic field we see today. Galactic radio waves reveal spatial variations in that field across a small patch of sky.

Simple physics principles might explain the mysterious magnetic fields that seem to permeate the cosmos. Researchers have suggested that the magnetism might have arisen if normally massless photons possessed mass during the Universe’s early moments of expansion. Now in the 2 September print issue of PRL, they finally show that massive photons could have existed.

.....

In quantum field theory, every particle has a corresponding field extending across space. Inflation pulls those fields like taffy. Most particles, such as the photon, don’t notice this pull. But a few do, including particles called light charged scalars, which appear in several theories.

As a result, pairs of virtual charged scalar particles are separated before they can annihilate one another, and they become real particles emerging from the vacuum. The vacuum becomes “polarized,” as particle physicists say.

This polarization affects photons. It takes more energy to produce a photon amidst the sea of scalars, and photons can only propagate a limited distance through them. Effectively, the photon acquires mass.

In today’s Universe, other particles probably acquire mass by a similar mechanism: according to theory, they appear massive only because they are surrounded by a cloud of virtual Higgs particles. “It’s like moving through water,” says Prokopec. When inflation ends, photons lose their mass, but some of the extra energy of the electromagnetic field is left behind in the form of a small magnetic field.

https://physics.aps.org/story/v10/st9

Might this suggest an unrestricted instant (inflationary epoch) where massless particles travelled @ FTL and acquired mass commensurate with the cooling universe and becoming denser, restricting the SOL to "c" as the limit?

Any comments?

 

[Write4U]

More word salad. *sigh*

Perhaps I created the word salad, but there is a serious proposed theory of Causal Dynamical Triangulation (CDT) that proposes a fractal aspect to the universal spacetime itself.

Quantum Gravity from Causal Dynamical Triangulations: A Review
R. Loll (Cornell University)

This topical review gives a comprehensive overview and assessment of recent results in Causal Dynamical Triangulations (CDT), a modern formulation of lattice gravity, whose aim is to obtain a theory of quantum gravity nonperturbatively from a scaling limit of the lattice-regularized theory.

In this manifestly diffeomorphism-invariant approach one has direct, computational access to a Planckian spacetime regime, which is explored with the help of invariant quantum observables.

During the last few years, there have been numerous new and important developments and insights concerning the theory's phase structure, the roles of time, causality, diffeomorphisms and global topology, the application of renormalization group methods and new observables. We will focus on these new results, primarily in four spacetime dimensions, and discuss some of their geometric and physical implications.

https://arxiv.org/abs/1905.08669

Causal dynamical triangulation
Beyond the Standard Model

Simulated Large Hadron Collider CMS particle detector data depicting a Higgs boson produced by colliding protons decaying into hadron jets and electrons

Standard Model

Causal dynamical triangulation (abbreviated as CDT) theorized by Renate Loll, Jan Ambjørn and Jerzy Jurkiewicz, is an approach to quantum gravity that like loop quantum gravity is background independent.

This means that it does not assume any pre-existing arena (dimensional space), but rather attempts to show how the spacetime fabric itself evolves.

There is evidence [1] that at large scales CDT approximates the familiar 4-dimensional spacetime, but shows spacetime to be 2-dimensional near the Planck scale, and reveals a fractal structure on slices of constant time. These interesting results agree with the findings of Lauscher and Reuter, who use an approach called Quantum Einstein Gravity, and with other recent theoretical work.

 

[exchemist]

And another thread is now full of Write4U's derailing rubbish.............

Time to close it, perhaps.