The Latest Cosmological-Physics Theory of Everything

One of the most amazing insights I’ve read about lately was made by the early Greek “atomists,” Leucippus and his student Democritus. Observing a fish moving through water, Leucippus asked himself how is this possible? After all, both fish and water are “things,” both apparently having mass and occupying space. The only way, he reasoned, that this could happen is that if the water is actually composed of tiny particles separated by a void. The fish, therefore, in moving into the void between the particles of water, is able to push particles out of its way. It was a short step to realizing that everything is made up of tiny particles (that he called atoms) and the characteristics of things were defined by those atoms and their relationships to each other.  He pictured atoms as having hooks that linked them together. Solids had more hooks and so were bound more tightly together than the somewhat “slippery” atoms of liquids. Brilliant! And done without any “scientific” experiments or direct observations.

But, did you notice that these atoms, in Leucippus’ view, are separated by a “void?” What on earth is that?  It’s simply nothing, you might answer. But what is that? Parmenides, for one, rejected the idea of the existence of a nothing. Everywhere, he argued, that there appears to be nothing there is actually something, like air. Though the Greeks couldn’t reach the altitudes where air does not exist, you might still argue that outer space itself is not nothing; the average density of the universe (including all dark matter and dark energy) being approximately 6 protons per cubic meter, and the density counting just the observable matter and energy is closer to 1 proton per 4 cubic meters. Protons are rather small, so what is—and there is a lot of whatever it is—between them?  Even more so, the distance between an electron and the core of neutrons and protons that it orbits, is comparable to the distance from our sun to Pluto. Even on the subatomic level, that is still a lot of something?

So, what is this nothing of which I speak? Parmenides argued: "You say there 'is' a void; therefore the void is not nothing; therefore there is not the void." That seems a rather circular argument that relies more on grammatical relationships than on observation, because if it were true that there is no “void,” then all motion would be impossible. Contemporary physics usually describes the void as the “quantum foam” out of which pairs of negatively and positively charged bits of energy are continuously coming into being and annihilating each other. If I understand this correctly, then that means that what we call nothing is actually something akin to a randomly-arranged chaotic and continually changing backdrop on which everything depends.

In The Unobservable Universe: A Paradox-free Framework for Understanding the Universe, (Albuquerque, NM: Galaxia Way; 2011) Scott Tyson argues that the “nothing” from which particles of opposite-charged energy emerge is the part of our universe that we can never observe (he calls it the voidverse). Characteristics of the voidverse are that it is dimensionless and timeless. In other words, when matter emerges from the voidverse into our observable universe (he calls it the observerse) it comes from anyplace, anytime in our perspective. The universe will eventually reach a state where the energy in one “verse” so greatly exceeds that in the other that the flow will reverse itself.

He uses this argument to explain how it is that photons can take several different paths simultaneously and can be “entangled” at any distance from each other. He throws out the string theory (or M-theory) argument explaining that 10 or 11 extra dimensions are not necessary in describing the universe and its behaviour at subatomic levels. Gravity, which has always been a difficult subject for the sciences, is not, he claims, one of the four basic forces of the universe (the weak force, the strong force, and the electromagnetic force being the others), but is, rather a characteristic of space, rather than of mass. String theorists in particular have had to resort to elaborate constructs of parallel universes in order to explain why gravity is so weak compared to the other three fundamental forces. In their view, the strings that represent gravity (gravitons) are attached to a parallel universe (called a brane in string theory) which bleeds off a lot of their energy.

Tyson doesn’t rely on infinity (which, in some theorist’s minds means that there are an infinite number of universes, logic dictating that somewhere, at some time, there is a duplicate of you doing what you are doing now). He postulates that infinity exists only in our minds and that the universe as he describes it has bounds. His theory is elegantly simple: the universe has two parts, one we can never observe (i.e. “nothing”) and one that we can observe (i.e. “something”), and that these two parts are forever swapping energy maintaining a perfect equilibrium such that (Kenetic Energy action in the observerse) X (Potential Energy reaction in the voidverse) = 1. This expansion of Newton’s Third Law embraces both the quantum world and the large scale world. The preservation of energy has been a problem at the quantum level because energy has been observed to pop into and out of existence. However, taking the “non-existent” aspect of the universe into account, unity is re-established.

Pretty neat, eh?