Home – Essay

 

Introduction

 

This essay contains my thoughts in the form of answers to some fundamental questions. I am not a science or claim to have any sort of academic prowess. In fact,  I would only claim an average intelligence. However, I have as much right as anybody else’ to try to understand the world in which I live. I’m not trying to make science, just make sense. I have spent many years formulating the answers I have given in this essay and they seem to make sense, at least to me. I hope that my answers are sufficiently thought out and logically based, that they might be at least, an interest to you or even inspire in you some thought of your own.

 

This all started a number, of years ago. I taught an evening school course aimed at teaching electricians  basic science, to enable them to understand the theory behind electrical generation, transmission etc. However, when I got to the inevitable stage of explaining the concept of energy as ‘the ability to do work’ one of my students just could except my explanation and insist I explain further. As I tried to give a more in-depth explanation, it became painfully obvious to myself and my students, that I had not got a clue what energy was.  After that embarrassment, I started to take an interest in physics and science in general. As I searched for answers on the nature energy, I became interested in deeper subjects such as relativity and quantum physics. The more I tried to understand the concept of energy the more it seemed to be about the information of movement, and it seeded to me that movement and the information where the key to really understanding the universe.

 

Of course, I am very likely be wrong than right but nevertheless, in this essay. I will pose some of the main and important questions science asks and I will try to give my explanation in the hope that you the reader can put me right.

 

What is Reality?

We think we are an inhabitant of a vast world, but in reality; our world is tiny. Our world exists as electrical signals stimulating nerve cells (neurones) to transmit information through electrical and chemical signals. In a sense we all think out of the box all the time. We produce a model of the world, within the confines of an organ (the brain) housed in a cavity in our heads and this is essentially where we exist.

 

We construct this intellectual model of the world from information sent to the brain from various sensory parts of the body. For example, we build a picture of the world from signals sent to the brain from the retina at the back of the eye. However, these signals are not sent or received in any way like television signals. For example, when we look at one spot our eyes are constantly moving, this allows individual photosensitive cells to be constantly stimulated so that they don’t stop generating an output signal (Micro-saccades). Our view of the world should be at best blurred, but it is not, because our brains take these images and constructs a very accurate realistic picture of an object but not necessarily a real image of the object. Further examples are colour vision, photoreceptor cell called cones in the retina, that send signals to the brain distinguishing different wave lengths of light. The brain turns these signals into something we perceive as colour.  In a sense colour doesn’t really exist and there is no way to prove that any two people perceive colour in the same way. The same can be said for hearing. Noise is only the vibration of gases, which our ears detect, and our brains turn into something we perceive as sound. In fact, all information our minds receive is intellectualised.  Although we only have at best a perception of the outside world. For example, as I look down on the table my computer is resting on, I perceive that it is solid but, it is mostly space. The reason I perceive it as solid is that although some of the particles of light (photons) falling on the table may pass through the tables surface (to be mainly absorbed) others bounce off it to be detected by my eyes which my brain perceives as a surface. If my hand comes in contact, with the surface of the table, the nuclear forces within the atoms of the table react with the nuclear forces within the atoms of my hand preventing my hand from passing through the table. Nerves in my hand detect pressure on my skin and I perceive the table as solid. So, what our five senses do is to provide information that allows us to construct an intellectual model of this outside world. 

 

 So, does this outside world really exist? The answer is yes because of consensus between living beings. Not only can we agree with each other, what is outside our bodies, but we can also agree with other living entities. To an animal the question of if something is real or not, never occurs to them. This is because everything to them is real there is nothing that isn’t real, therefore reality has no meaning. They build an intellectual model of the world in the same way we do. Ok this model may vary from species to species and from ours, but it is essentially the same. However, they only use their model to navigate around and to identify objects and what the object is doing. For instance, is the object stationary or moving, is it moving towards or away from them, is it dangerous or is it food, is it the same species, is male of female etc. Whereas we can create ideas, imagine things, invent stores and understand abstract concepts. Therefore, it is important to us to be able to distinguish between what is and isn’t real. Nevertheless, whether we are animal or human we can all agree on what an object is and what it is doing. A lion, elephant, and a man can all agree on where a particular tree is in relation to us while also being aware of one another and being able to interact with one another. It is this agreement that allows us to say that the outside world we perceive is a reality.

 

However, for us humans at least reality isn’t as simple as that, we believe (or should I say know) that there is a world beyond our immediate senses;  let’s call it the ‘wider world’. This wider world is so much part of the human experience; we think of it as reality, but is it? Most of us would describe this wider world as the world we live in. Yet, as individual human beings we use our memory of experiences and knowledge gained (what we think we know) to create a wider world for ourselves. Essentially the wider world is an intellectual exercise we do with in our minds to create a version of reality to allow us to extend our consciousness beyond the range of our bodily senses (direct experience). This means the wider world is unique to each, individual depending on their own experiences and knowledge and therefore, can never be 100% accurate as no one sees the world in exactly, the same way.

 

Let me try to explain; if we relied only on our experiences, our worlds would be very small. For example, if we take group of people living a hunter-gather lifestyle, after the last ice age, on the shores of the newly formed east angler coast. Assuming they had no contact with other humans. Their wider world would be limited to the few miles they wandered up and down the coast looking for food. They would have no knowledge of mountains deserts or grasslands; to them they didn’t exist, they properly couldn’t even imagine them. Their experience would lead them to believe that the earth was flat and stationary, that sun move over the sky by day and the heavens by night and all things unseen could be explained as being governed by supernatural beings (Gods); this to them was reality. To us this seems a very naive view of the world but actually; given the information they had, it is a very logical one. They could only understand the world through their experiences. Experience is knowledge gained by establishing or testing something for oneself. For example, they can see every day that the sun rises in the east and sets in the west, and when berry turn a certain colour, they are safe eat. They knew these things to be true because they could experience them. Just because they didn’t understand the process behind these things didn’t make them less factual or real.

 

In the modern world we rely a lot less on our own experiences and more on information provided by other sources to build our knowledge and construct our wider world. For example, I know the earth is round (a sphere) I have overwhelming evidence of this. From a very young age, people I have trusted (parents, teachers etc.) have told me that it is round. Every map of the world I have seen has shown it to be round, I own a globe, I have seen pictures from space of a round earth. The earth is definitely round! “Hold on a minute!” people can lie or be deceived themselves. Maps, globs, pictures from space etc. can be forged. I have never travelled round the world, I have never seen the world from space, I have seen ship sink below the horizon, but that could be an optical illusion. In fact, sitting here on my computer in the middle of Norfolk looking across flat open fields, the earth seems pretty, flat to me. So, in reality, I don’t know the earth is round, I only a have faith that the earth is round because I believe the evidence for it being round. It is the same for all of us; we cannot know for certain that any information we learn is accurate if we do not or are unable to test that information for ourselves. However, when we have faith in a source of information whether it would be a personal account, book television programme or internet, etc. we except that information as knowledge and use it to extend our wider consciousness (wider world). This can lead to great dispute or even conflict.  Let’s take the very controversial issue, of the existence of God. For many people the existence of God is not a question of belief but is a reality. They genuinely feel the presents of God or his spirit when they pray or when they need him in their lives . This is of course, is subjective evidence; there might be any number of psychological reasons why they may have these feeling. But on the other hand, these reasons are just as subjective and are impossible to prove. Yet to other people the existence of god is obscured and is certainly not a reality. The evidence for evolution is unrefutably and besides how can you reconcile all the wars, poverty, and general suffering that goes on in the world with a loving God. Well science has not established exactly how life began on earth for instance. In fact, it currently has two theories on the subject: that life began in a primordial soup here on earth or was brought to earth from outer space on an asteroid or comet, neither of which would necessarily preclude the hand of a deity in the formation of life and all suffering human kind is largely self-inflicted, and could be part of some divine plan. What is clear, God is a reality or not depending on who you are.

 

To summarise what I am saying is that the wider world is different for each individual and is dependent on what we know (or the evidence we have gathered) through experience and by the evidence we have chosen to have faith in (religious, cultural, political and scientific ideas etc.). In turn the evidences we chose to have faith in depends on our experiences and the evidence presented to us. Which in turn depends on where we are born (the environment and culture we live in) and in what point in history we live. It seems that evidence we use to construct our reality is at least partly subjective, not just in the way it is perceived but also in the way it is interpreted.

 

So, What Is Reality? Reality relies totally on information. The fact if something is only in a particular; place at particular; time because of information. “Sounds a bit farfetched”. Let us look at Einstein’s, famous question “Is the moon there when I’m not looking at it”? Well obviously when Einstein looked away from the moon it exists intellectually, because it exists in Einstein’s brain in the form of memories, therefore it is a reality for Einstein. But dose the moon really exist?  Well it is kept in orbit by its momentum and its gravity which are forces, which are, as I will attempt to show, is only information of apparent movement. It also takes up space in the form of mass. Mass is the quantity of inertia; Inertia is resistance to movement: which also, information. So, without this information the moon would not exist when Einstein looked at it.  However, it’s the photons leaving the sun bouncing off to moon surface and sticking the retina at the back of Einstein eye causing electrical signals to fire neurons in his brain that gives him the information that allows him to build an intellectual model of the moon. However, Einstein was not consciously aware of any, of this information, only his intellectual model of the moon. Meaning, the information that forms reality is different to the in information that is act on. This allows us to categorise information used to build reality into four approximate categories:

 

Pure Information

This is naturally occurring information, which requires no intellectual input (no decision) in its creation and does not need to be deciphered or understood to be imparted. Pure information was around at the beginning of the universe and will be around at its end. Because there is no intellectual input, it could be termed as just “cause and effect” rather than information. However, this would be wrong, as the information is in the sequence that the “cause and effect” takes place (one effect causes another).

Two examples of this type of information would be:

  • The information of the direction of flow of the convection currents, within the earth’s magma, that causes the continental plates to move.
  • The information in a human gene, which can cause cells to divide in a certain way to construct, a unique human being.

 

Intellectual Information

Naturally occurring information that has no intellectual input in its creation, which required intellectual involvement to decipher or use it. Human beings and all other creatures use this type of information to observe and make sense of the world. It is how we understand our environment and what we build reality upon.

Three examples of this type of information would be:

·    The information, of the colour and scent of a flower, used by a bee to determine. whether the flower is worth visiting to collect nectar or not

·        Fossils in a rock layer that help a geologist to date the rock.

·        The information of a burning sensation on our skin gives us, when it comes into close proximity to a heat source, to prevent us damaging ourselves.

 

Programmed Information

Information that has intellectual input (a decision is made) in its creation but does not need to be deciphered or understood to be imparted. This type of information is used to make something do something in a predictable way.

Two examples of this type of information would be:

·        The information represented by serious of grooves cut into a key cut by a lock smith that will cause a series of tumblers in a lock to move in a predictable way to release the mechanism.

·        The information represented by the ratio of the number of teeth on two cogs (cut by an engineer) that are intermeshed, allowing one cog to drive the other at a faster or slower revolution rate to itself. 

 

Abstract Information

Information that has intellectual input (a decision is made) in its creation and requires intellectual involvement to decipher or use it. Human beings and other creatures use this type of information to communicate (to exchange ideas and thoughts).

Two examples of this type of information would be:

·        Different warning sound made by meerkats to distinguish different types of threat to the colony.

·        The information represented by the symbols on a road sign.

 

Therefore, although reality relies on (pure) information, our reality relies on our interpretation of that information (intellectual information). So, is our reality real? Of course, it is! It’s our reality the only one we have. It is where we create our ideas, morals and feelings. It is where we can do good things or bad things, express love or hate. All the suffering and pain all the joy happiness, every experienced by every human being that lives or has lived out their lives on this planet, is real, at least to them. All the problems faced by humanity, over population, pollution, starvation, and the depletion of finite resources is very real. To say that we are not living in a reality that somehow, we are living a dream, or we only exist as information within some sort of simulation of a reality, is to infer that we do not have responsibility for our own actions or a responsibly to those around us or to humanity in general. This is not only very untrue but is also a very dangerous philosophy.

 

Also, our individual intellectual models of the world agree on so much.  Let’s take my granddaughter’s favourite colour which is purple for example.  To both my granddaughter and me the colour purple is a reality. We see it all the time in our surroundings, we may see it differently, but nevertheless it is a reality. Yet you could argue that the colour purple (intellectual information) is not real; that it is a creation of our intellect used to identify and distinguish a wavelength of a photon particle and it is the photon which is reality (pure information) .  My argument would be they are both real because they are both information we process and use to our advantage. This because it is the receiver or interpreter, ‘us’, that determines ultimately what is information and what is not information. The only difference is that the colour purple, manifested in our consciousness which is our model (awareness) of the world. Whereas most of us only know about the proton through abstract information, gathered from other who have experimented and theorised about its existence, so it is not part our model of our conscious world. Yet our brains subconsciousness uses the detection of a proton’s wavelength to help create our model (consciousness) and without the proton the colour purple would not exist. In other words, they are both part of the same reality as they both contribute to our personal model of the world.

 

Therefore, the definition of if something is real or not must be: ‘Something is real or part of reality, if it contributes to the process of constructing, a useful cognitive environment (intellectual model of the world). 

 

What is Energy?

There are many definitions of energy. I was taught that energy was the capacity to do work (work done or the potential to do work), so what is work? There are many definitions of work as there is energy, but basically, it the ability to move something. So, energy is the capacity to move something. That’s like defining water as something that is wet. It does not begin to describe what energy really is. In fact, it seems energy is not something palpable at all, it has no essence (physical presence). There is no such thing as “pure energy”; energy is always associated/carried by something. It cannot exist on its own. It seems to me, to be a concept that used to explain characteristics of nature that is not understood. A better definition of energy would be something that contains information that has the potential or ability to dictate movement. Movement being, the change in distance between objects or the change in shape of an object over a period; of time.

 

My problem with energy as a tangible entity, is that it cannot be measured or detected. Of course, the thing is that energy has no movement, it is quantitative. An amount; it cannot cause movement in an object just dictate how much it moves. For movement to occur in an object, energy must be converted into something that can be expressed as a vector which has both movement and direction. This is done when energy is transferred from one object to another in the form of force. The problem is forces cannot be measured or detected either.

 

The most common definition of force is that it causes a stationary object to move. Increases or decreases a moving objects velocity or brings it to rest. It can also cause a fixed object to change shape. So, an objects velocity and shape rely on the magnitude of the forces both external and internal acting upon it. This implies that all objects are constantly subjected to forces. Even an object in the vacuum of space at rest and not subjected any gravitational force (I know gravitational waves are present throughout space; this is only theoretical), would be subject to electromagnetic and atomic forces holding it together. There is another way in which energy can be described in the form of a vector; momentum. An object is said to be subject to momentum when it is in motion and has no force acting upon it causing it to accelerate, decelerate or change direction. In this case no energy is transferred either into or out of the object. It is said to have Kinetic Energy. Energy is only gained or released when the objects motion resists or is subject to change (comes into contact with another object or force) in a process known as inertia.

 

The thing that interests me is that force and momentum and therefore energy can only be detected or measured in terms of the observation of movement. For example, take an object say a tennis ball and place it into empty box the size of the universe (space). So, there was nothing you could reference the ball against, to tell if the ball was moving or not.  You would not only, not be able to tell if there was force acting upon the ball and in what direction or if the ball carried momentum/kinetic energy or not. You could not conduct a repeatable experiment to prove the existence of force, momentum or energy with just the tennis ball as a reference and no means of detecting movement. If there was only one object in existence, velocity or movement would not exist (if you exclude movement within the object).

 

At this stage I think  I should explain what I mean by movement. Movement and distance are subtlety different. Distance is the movement between two points. Movement is the total that all points of an object change position over a period (time). For example: if you move a ball-bearing a short distance would take a lot less movement than if the ball-bearing expanded by a very small amount.

 

So, if you can detect movement then you can prove the existence of force, momentum and energy. Well No. Take my computer sitting on my desk. Newton would say that there are at least two forces acting upon it (there are more), gravity, pushing the computer down onto the desk and normal force pushing the desk up against the force of gravity. However, you cannot detect or measure any force on the computer at this time. You could get a simple set of mechanical scales put them on the desk and place the computer on the scales and take a reading from a needle against a scale there by detecting and measuring the forces.  Newton would say that the two forces act upon a spring in the scales causing the spring to contract; the movement of the spring contracting causes the movement of the needle via a mechanical mechanism. However, all you have actually measured, is the movement of the spring. All you can really say is that by placing the computer on the scales; you cause the spring to move by a measured amount. This holds true for measuring or detecting any force and their associated energies. Alright you might say. “What about if I was to hold a kilogram weight in my outstretch hand. I could feel and therefore detect the force of the weight pushing down on my hand without my hand or anything else moving?” Again no! What you would be detecting is the movement of electrons, because the weight is deforming your hand (causing the tissue, in your hand to be moved from its natural shape), which in turn causes the nerves in your hand to send electrical signals (moving electrons) to your brain. On receiving these signals, your brain will send electrical signals to the muscles in your hand and arm to tense up which in turn sends electrical signals back to your brain, that you perceive as a feeling of weight press down on your hand, but in fact you are only interpreting electrical signals (movement of electrons) sent to your brain in response to changes in your body. You cannot feel force only perceive force. This is very counter intuitive, we all think we are feeling forces on us all the time, but really, we are just detecting movement. Whether, it’s using a Geiger counter to detect radiation by measuring the flow of electrons (movement) through inert gas due to the ionization of the gas partials when in collision with a particle or photon of incident radiation or measuring a dent in the side of a car after a collision. Essentially all you are detecting measuring is movement. It doesn’t matter what type of force and its relative energy you look at, whether it be propulsive, tensile, frictional, gravitational, magnetic, electrical or radioactive, it requires movement to be detected or measured. So, if force can only be detected when movement is taking place, what is it? The best descriptions I can come up with is that “force is a concept used to describe the nature in which an object/particle will move in response to an external influence” .In other words rather than force being the causes of movement, it is a concept we use to define how an object/particle will move as a reaction to external influence, which is invariably, is other movement.

 

So, what about energy: energy is said to come in many different forms.

This comes about because like force and momentum; energy is conserved. The first law of thermodynamics says that energy can neither be created nor destroyed but is just changes from one form to another. So, a given amount of energy can be converted to heat or work or other things, but you always have the same total that you started with. So, as science progress and looks at say particles and how they bound and dissipate energy new forms of energy are discovered such as Chromodynamic energy that seems to bind quarks. But basically, there seems to be two main categories of energy: stored or potential energy and energy associated with movement or kinetic energy. However, this is confusing because if we go back to tennis ball placed into very large dark empty box. The tennis ball might be moving or not you cannot tell. However, an ant sitting in a miniature armchair on top of the tennis ball has every right to say he is at rest. So, if the tennis ball suddenly collided with the side of the box, the ant would say that the side of the box had kinetic energy as it moved towards and struck the tennis ball. You might say it’s obvious that the tennis ball was moving and had kinetic energy. However, the ant is just as likely to be right, the tennis ball might well be in a fixed space and the box might be moving. So, if you can never tell whether the tennis ball or the box is moving and if energy is only said to be present when it is transferred at the point of collision as inertia; then could both the tennis ball and the box be said to have potential energy before the collision or is it movement itself that hold the kinetic energy?

 

So, what is potential energy? Let’s look at one of the most common uses of potential energy we come across in our daily lives, the energy stored in an everyday AA battery ready to be released when required. Basically, the potential energy is in the form of chemical energy which will be released in the form of the movement of electrons electrical energy. The thing is, its potential energy (its charge) cannot be measured. You can measure how much energy goes into the battery (movement) and how much comes out, but you cannot measure energy that is contained in the battery, only calculate or estimate it. That seems nonsense everybody knows that you only have to put a battery level or life indicator on it to find out its charge. However, a battery indicator, measures either the voltage or its resistance of the battery, to give a rough indication of its charge. To measure the voltage (potential difference) of the battery a small amount of its charge movement) is used to produce an electromotive force (voltage) which induces a small current (flow/movement of electrons) which is amplified by the indicator to move a needle or change a digital display. So, you are not directly measuring the potential energy inside the battery, but a movement of electrons produced by releasing a small amount of electrical charge (energy) from the battery which can no longer be considered as potential energy as it is being used up. A more complex method can be used to measure the resistance of the battery using an ESR (equivalent series resistance), but there again the meter dose not directly measure the charge (potential energy) in the battery and relies on a current (movement of electrons); electrical energy to indicate the state of the charge.

 

It doesn’t matter what form potential energy you choose to look at, you cannot directly detect or measure it; only estimate or calculate it. This is because potential energy does not change the state of anything in other words no change, no movement therefore no movement, no information and no detection/measurement. The thing is if you cannot measure or detect potential energy does it exist? Is energy simply information. I would propose that the definition of energy is. Energy is information contained in an object which can be transferred to other objects or converted into different forms that has the potential to create and dictate movement (please hold on to this thought). In fact, energy is only a product of intellectual information. (this will come apparent later)

 

How Important is movement?

Before describing the importance of movement (the change in distance between objects or the change in shape of an object over a period; of time). I will have to define what I mean by object. By object I mean matter: matter is something that occupies space. So, to take up space it needs volume; it also needs substance, so it must have a density (an amount of something). It should also have a physical, presence so it can be touched or moved, this is its mass (although matter can also exist in the form of a wave which have no mass). To define mass is not so easy. I was taught at school that mass was the amount of something. The denser; something is the more mass it has and the heavier it becomes. However, that is not a true definition; mass is more about inertia the effort it takes to either move an object or stop an object. The more momentum an object has (kinetic energy) the harder it is to stop (inertia it has), so the more mass it has. That is an over-simplification, but basically as kinetic energy increases in an object so does its mass in proportion to it, and although it’s not fully understood it turns out that mass and energy in general are the same thing. This is because if an object is at rest (there is no movement between it and given datum or observer) it still contains vast amount of movement and therefore energy within it. For a start, substances whether a gas, liquid or solid contains molecules held together electromagnetic forces that are moving all the time. If you increase the movement of the molecules by adding heat energy you will increase the mass of the substance slightly. Molecules are made up of atoms and this is where the vast amount of energy is found. Atoms are made up of electrons, protons, and neutrons. The electron is a fundamental particle although it can be split into three separate quasiparticles: a `Holon’, Spinon and Orbiton. Electrons gain a small amount of mass through interaction with the Higgs field. The Higgs field is a universal field that slows down some particles (not all) converting their kinetic energy into mass. However, the electron only makes up around 0.03% of an atom the rest is the nucleus of the atom which is made up of protons and neutrons. These in turn are made up from another type of fundamental particle called the quark (of which there is six types). Quarks like electrons react with the Higgs field, causing them to have a small amount of mass. However, quarks also interact and are pulled together within the gluon field, this interaction known as the strong neural force which in theory requires vast amount of energy (Chromodynamic energy). Because energy and mass interchangeable the vast amount of mass in the universe can be explained in this way. According to Einstein an object at rest will have a potential energy equivalent to its mass, times the speed of light squared hence E=MC2.

 

The only way to stop all movement is to do something really, radical: that is to stop time. Physicists and mathematicians do calculations all the time, to predict how matter will behave at a certain point in time. However, that is very different from predicting what would happen to matter if time was stopped. If you could stop time, then there could be no change in distance between objects or change in an object shape. There would be no movement anywhere in the universe and entropy would be at zero. So, what would this mean? There have been a few science-fiction films television shows etc., that have attempted to show time being stopped. They tend to show a world that is freeze framed (to use a cinematographic term). People fixed like statues, fulling objects suspended in mid-air etc., but this is not what would happen at all. For a start if you could somehow freeze time all around you; you would not be able to see anything because photons would not be able to move and strike the retina. You could not hear because sound waves would not move, smell or breathe because air molecules would not move, you also would instantly freeze because there would be no heat. Even if you used a non-human sensory detector such as a Geiger counter you would not be able to detect anything as information needs movement to be transferred. This implies that an object could still be there but just not detectable, but this is not the case.  Let’s look at Einstein’s famous E=MC2. Basically, it an equivalence formula, showing that energy of an object at rest is equal to it mass multiplied by the speed of light (or universal speed limit)  squared. The speed of light is just a constant; an unchanging value. However, if nothing is moving you cannot have momentum, inertia, or force. In other words, you cannot have energy (information of movement) either associated with movement or potential movement. If there is no energy according to Einstein (M=E/C2 or M=0/C2  M=0) mass = zero. If mass it is zero, and an object has no momentum or energy it cannot have any essence and doesn’t exist. Even a photon which technically has no mass, still has to have momentum and energy to exist.

 

This holds true for Heisenberg uncertainty principle which states that you cannot know the velocity and position of a particle at the same time. This means that a particle before it is measured (looked for). It doesn’t have movement as we know it; but is in a type of super position where it is in many probable places at the same time before it is measured. To find out the probability wave function of, particle, we can use the Schrodinger equation which basically states, that the total energy of the probabilistic wave function of a particle is equal to its potential and kinetic energies . By knowing the particles total energy, we can predict where the particle likely to be. So, what happens. If we were to stop all movement. Well, if nothing moved you would know the position every particle and its velocity would be zero therefore, violate Heisenberg uncertainty principle. Some people think that is the reason why you cannot freeze something to absolute zero. However, you would still be left with a particle.  But as I have already explained if there is no momentum, inertia, or force (information of movement) you can have neither kinetic nor potential energy. If you have no energy according to Schrodinger equation you cannot have any possible velocity, position or mass. Therefore, no  essence or existence. This might seem that existence depends on energy, However, without movement there is no energy,  Because, without movement there can be no information of movement, which undoubtedly is energy. Therefore, movement is essential for exitance. 

 

If further proof was needed. Let’s look at something called Quantum Field theory. (the most popular theory amongst physicists at this moment?)

 

First, I need to give a little bit of background information. Up until the start of the twentieth century it was thought to be aether or ether a strange like substance that acted as a medium for light wave to travel in, in the same way that sound wave travel in air. However, by experiment and the advent of special relativity this has been proved not to be the case. Instead, it is thought that not only protons (light) but all sub-atomic particles travel as waves or disturbances in fields. A field is something that occupies every point in space, what’s more it has a value at every point in space. Mathematicians first started applying the concept of fields, to Newton’s laws of gravity in the eightieth century, then following the work of Michael Faraday on electromagnetic fields, James Clerk Maxwell published his paper “A Dynamical Theory of the Electromagnetic Field” in 1865 that showed that waves travel with in an electromagnetic field at the speed of light and postulated that light itself, was an electromagnetic wave. When quantum physics came along, classical field theory, quantum mechanics, and special relativity were combined into one to create Quantum Field Theory which basically says that for every type of particle there is field that it travels in.

 

I think it is fair to describe these quantum fields as types of energy fields, in fact, subatomic particles are just disturbances, small vibrations (packets energy of energy or quantized energy) within their own respective quantum field and this is used to explain particles interact with one another. The problem being that for a field to influence something it requires that something to move through it; even if that something is a disturbance within the field itself. Basically, a field doesn’t do anything unless there is some kind, of movement. We can see this, if we move a wire within a magnetic field. By moving a wire within the magnetic field, we are subjecting the wire to different values (or density’s) of the magnetic field this causes (induces) a potential difference in the wire and an electric current to flow in the wire. However, if we don’t move the wire, the wire is only subject to one value of magnetic field (no information can be passed between the wire and the magnetic field) and no current is induced in the wire. All fields work on the same principle. Take the latest field to be uncovered, the Higgs field. I say uncovered rather than discovered because the Higgs field is still largely theoretical although it associated particle the Higgs  Boson has been identified as existing by CERN recently.  The Higgs field is responsible for giving particles mass. So, if you stop the movement of particles you would have no mass. similarly, all the other field are either associated with a fundamental particle or a force. So, by stopping all movement you would illuminate everything.    

  

Without movement, nothing simple would exist. When I say nothing, I mean nothing, no mass, no substance, no time, no future, no passed. Not only, would we not of exited we would never of existed.  Seems a bit “dramatic” but please read on. Therefore, if without movement there is no exitance, surly movement is fundamental to existence.

 

What is Information?

So, with a real danger of trying to teach grandmother to suck eggs and getting it wrong here we go. This is because everybody knows what information is. “ it’s what you need to have, be able to know something about something” However, it’s not quite that simple a true definition is not so easy to find. It is bit like ‘energy’, everybody knows what it is but to accurately describe it is another matter. There seems to be many different definitions of information, depending on who is describing it an English teacher, a physicist, a naturalist or biologist. The best definition I can find comes from the online oxford dictionaries, describes information as “What is conveyed or represented by a particular arrangement or sequence of things or events”. The thing or events can be anything. However, the smallest or simplest, you could say the most fundamental thing or event that can be sequenced to represent information is the bit. A bit of information, is something that can only be in one of two possible states? For example, a coin that is either head or tails, or a switch that is either off or on. So, information is a sequence of things or events.

 

This very important concept to understand, because, by saying that information is a sequence of things or events, what you are saying: is that information is a series of different values in other words it is quantised (made up of different values), This is very important because, our reality is formed from information we receive. Therefore, our reality must be quantised, this doesn’t mean that we see everything in a pixel like manner, because our brains build up a picture of reality for us. However, it; dose mean when we measure the very small the reading we get, must be one of a particular; set of small values. We have no choice in the matter.

 

Therefore: Information is a quantised Entity .

 

Another important think about information it  needs two things. It needs a source or transmitter, but it also needs a receiver, a user or de-coder for it to be true information. It is the receiver that interprets a sequence of things or events and uses or recognising what is useful (information) and what is not (gibberish): at least to them. For example, the wrong key in a lock is useless to the lock, because the ridges and grooves on the key will not move its tumbles in the required way to release the mechanism. In other words, the key contains useless information. However, this does not mean that the same key does not contain useful information that will open another lock. So, does this mean if something is of no uses to anything, or not used that it cannot be information? For example: If a book was bought, but was placed on a shelf and never opened, would you say that book does not contain any information? Of course not; you could say if you were trying to be accurate, that the written words in the book were potential information. However, words in the book are just shapes. Although, they need information to create the shapes they are just shapes. The physical printed words in the book, doesn’t change. They don’t lose or gain information when read by different people. However, someone on reading the words for the first time will gain information about a ‘cat sitting on a mat, for example. However, on the second reading of the words the reader knows the cat sites on the mat so at best the information in the word is only confirmed and no new information is imparted. This is because the information the words contain are dictated by the reader (receiver) not in the words themselves

 

It is receiver of information that dictates what is information and what isn’t.

 

However, nothing is also information. For example: A radio-controlled model car. A person with a hand-held radio control transmitter can send a radio signal to the car via its aerial to move forward or backward, left or right. However, if the person controlling the model car does not send it any signal to the car, He is still sending information to the car, which is not to move! Similarly, if the oil warning light on the dashboard of a car does not come on, it means the oil pressure in the engine is ok. In computing nothing is vital, as everybody knows, a computer is basically a large number of controlled switches. A switch is either on allowing a current to flow or a signal to pass or off not allowing a current to flow or a signal to pass. The computer is controlled/programmed using a binary code; one representing a signal and zero representing no signal. Without the zero in the binary code it would be meaningless it could only have one value.

 

No information is as important as important as information itself: In fact, no information is information

 

I need to qualify the above statement: Information, does not exist of itself, it like energy is associated with a something, it must be associated with a system that the receiver is aware, or is part of. For example, the oil warning light on the dashboard of a car. It may be giving you information that oil pressure in the engine is ok, when it is off, but the receiver must be aware of the oil light and its function (the system) for it to be useful information.

 

Let’s get back to the example of the model car because there is a very important point to make here. When the person controlling the model car, didn’t send a radio signal to the car via the hand-held radio control transmitter, the car took that information of no signal was, to do nothing. However, it is true that the model car may not be receiving a signal, from its particular hand-held transmitter, but it is receiving lots of other signals from a lot of other radio source, radio stations, television channels etc. but because the car is not tuned to those signals, it doesn’t recognise those signals so does nothing. In fact, as far as the car is concerned those other radio signals don’t exist.

 

This is the same for us; if you were to go into an empty room and stand with your back to one wall and look across the room to the opposite wall. You might say that there is nothing in between the walls because your main senses, your eyes sight, hearing etc. cannot detect anything. Although, you probably know this is not the case, because you know that the room is filled with gas molecules that make up the air in the room. You also know that the room is filled with lots of types of electromagnetic radiation we cannot see; not to mention particles like neutrinos. We only know this because scientists have theorised their existence and built equipment to detect them, so we now have the information of their existence. It is information that gives something existence; at least as far as we are concerned. If we have no information about something it does not exist. Scientists have historically come up against boundaries to their knowledge (extent of known information) and declared that they are on the verge of knowing everything about the universe, (at this moment it is the standard model) only to discover new information which proves otherwise. So, I think it is perfectly logical to believe that that there are vast amounts of information that we are unaware of. That when you look across that empty room that there is not only countless billions of partials (information) essential for existence that we know about, but also countless billions of bits of information that have been undiscovered that some information may never be known.

 

The truth is, information is fundamental to existence, because reality is solely reliant on the information we receive. Auton Zeilinger (Quantum physicist) makes, to my mind one of the most profound and important statements of all time. He said, “It is operationally impossible to separate reality and information”.

 

So, what is information: it is basically values we use to build our complex reality

 

Before I  change the subject, there are two more things you should know about information (1) it flows (2) it can change value, but I will explain this as we go

 

What Is ‘Nothing’?

I am going to talk about nothing, not in the senses that I am not going to talk about anything. I am going to talk about nothing as a thing. If that makes any senses at all. So, when I refer to nothing as a thing, I will put it between quotation marks, to try to limit any confusion.

 

Why I am I bothering with the subject of “nothing”? Because in our reality, we have a conundrum. Everything must have come from “nothing”. Yet nothing by which I mean something cannot materialise from “nothing”.  

 

’Nothing’ is an extremely hard concept, to grasp. Nothing isn’t simple the absent of something.  For example, I already said that “no information: is as important as important as information itself. In fact, no information is information” therefore no information is something!!? Most people think of ‘nothing’ as big empty black void (space) that stretches out forever (infernally large) and goes on forever (eternity). However, it is not as simple as that. For a start, time could not exist because there would be no moments to follow one another no present, no future no passed. It couldn’t be dark, because that’s what we perceive when we can detect no light, but as there couldn’t be anything there to detect there was no light it wouldn’t be dark. It couldn’t be an empty space because there would be no dimensions to allow space to exist. It could not even be infinitely large, because there would be no scale (to be able to measure one thing against another). So ‘nothing’ would be infinitely big and infinitely small at the same time and what is infinity or eternity for that matter anyway?

 

My mind as I suspect most people’s minds is not wired to grasp the idea of infinity or eternity. As hard as I might try, even if I stretch my imagination to think billions of light years beyond the edge of our known universe I always seem to come to something, a barrier of some kind and beyond that something else and when I think of time, to me one moment follows another, but there is always a start to something and an end to it. I just cannot get the concept of infinity or eternity. What is clear if the universe started from nothing, it wouldn’t have start at all. If space, time, energy etc. didn’t come into existence until the very point in which the universe or something exists; there would be nothing to trigger it into existence in the first place. By rights we or anything else shouldn’t exist. I believe that there have been some people who have theorised that nothing exists that we are all part of some grand illusion. But ha-hoe sitting at my computer I feel pretty real enough. So, does this mean that as many scientists and theorists believe that there has always been something? An eternal god or as M theory seems to suggest membranes (branes) gentle rippling within a 11th dimensions.  But this is just so unsatisfactory. If god has been around for eternity at what point did, he decide to create our world. Assuming that he made the decision to create the world; like any action a decision takes time, which suggests that there is a timeline of sorts between him coming into being and creating the world. However, if he never came into being (has always been around) then there is no fixed point at which he can start to make his decision to create the world therefore there is no fix point or not a time when the world could come into existence. The same goes for M theory; if the existence of the universe (the big bang) is brought about by two rippling membranes colliding. If the membranes collide due to the rippling effect, it would mean there would be a pattern of ripples, however random that could be traced back to a starting point (first ripple). This would suggest that something caused the ripple in the membrane in the first place.  So, it couldn’t have always been rippling. This is because cause and effect, dictates that anything that is brought about by an action has a direct connection to the initiation of that action. In other words, everything must have a starting point. It seems that however hard I try everything seems to have a beginning and an ending. So, if I cannot even define what eternity and infinity is, how can I define what nothing is?  (My brain hurts)

 

Ok, I really am going to get nowhere with this train of thought. I need to tackle this problem in a different way. Instead of trying to think of what nothing is, perhaps I should ask what properties, it possesses. In fact, I can think of two properties that it has. Now at first sight, this seems to be a totally ridiculous approach, how can ‘nothing’ have any properties? However, if there was nothing and now there is something, it stands to reason that ‘nothing’ must have a property or properties that allow something to exist. Let’s try a little thought experiment. Let’s ask a simple question, if there is ‘nothing’ and God (metaphorically speaking) was to place a pencil into that ‘nothing’ Would the pencil have shape/ dimensions, atomic structure, could he still draw with it’? If the answer is yes, (As my instincts would tell me) you need to ask, what properties has the pencil brought with it and what properties has ‘nothing’ got to allow the pencil to exist. The pencil seems to have brought all the properties of existence with it. Matter (atomic structure, mass), energy in the form of atomic forces holding the pencil together, dimensions and even time; this is because the wood in the pencil is slowly radioactively decaying, releasing radiocarbon isotopes at a steady rate. Therefore, when god puts the pencil into nothing an isotope will be released followed by another then another one, marking time, till all the isotopes are gone (a beginning and end). The pencil has even given ‘nothing’ a property of shape. Although ‘nothing’ should not have a shape, as soon as the pencil is put into ‘nothing’, nothing will surround it therefore giving ‘nothing’ a shape. It’s appearing more and more likely that all the properties are brought into nothing by the pencil. I seem to be going nowhere, let’s try again.

 

Let’s take a minute to think about what God really is doing, when he is putting the pencil into nothing. He is taking matter (the pencil), that has form (dimensions) and substance (held together by energy), which can be detected and measured by us giving us information, establishing the existence of the pencil. In other words, he is placing information into ‘nothing’. So ‘nothing’ must have the ability to hold information. By the same token, ‘nothing’ or in other words the absents of anything, is in its itself information. So ‘nothing’ already holds information which of course is nothing. I am sorry I know it is confusing; but the point is. What God is really doing is changing the form or value of information of ‘nothing’ by placing the pencil in it. In other words, he is not adding information to ‘nothing’ he is just changing existing information from nothing there; to a pencil being there. Therefore, ‘nothing’ must contain information. It must somehow, have information embedded within it. Now this seems a complete contradiction, if ‘nothing’ contains information then it cannot truly be ‘nothing’! This is of course true; however, to try to explain a reality where information doesn’t exist is futile, because its information that indicates the existence or nonexistence of something.

 

Without information, ‘nothing’ itself wouldn’t exist and nothing or rather something couldn’t ever exist, but we do exist (“I think therefore I am”) this means that a state where information does not exist, is not a reality. It could only exist hypothetically!

So ‘nothing’ is something; it something that allows information to exist; even if that information happens to be the absents of, something quantifiable or nothing. Nevertheless, because it has the ability to contain information it has the property of allowing something to exist.

 

I did say that nothing had two properties and if you think about it logically, it must have at least one other. It must be a solid. Not only is it a solid it, but it must be a perfect solid. Sounds crazy but bear with me: It is a solid because; ‘nothing’ must be the same at every point within a given volume. It cannot have any variations within its essence. In other words, it is a rotational and translational invariant, the same in every direction and throughout. It looks the same whether you look from a great distance or closeup at it, under a microscope. Because of this in-variation ‘nothing’ cannot have any internal movement, it cannot deform expand or contract, it is a perfect solid. Whereas matter cannot be a perfect solid; take an ingot of pure Iron at room temperature. Seems pretty solid but it is made of iron atoms bonded together by electromagnetic forces with gaps in between so there is no consistence in its structure it varies from point to point enabling the movement of the atoms in relationship to one another which means it can be deformed by force and with the addition or subtraction of heat energy can expand and contract. Whereas this is not the case for ‘nothing’ I know how strange an idea this is, that ‘nothing’ is solid but look at the alternatives.

 

Let imagine ‘nothing’ (just for argument sake only) as an infinitely large space absent of all matter. Into that nothing (space) we place a hollow box. Now the box can be made-out of any material or matter you like, but just for the purpose of this exercise we will say it is made-out of rubber, because that will make it nice and flexible. Now the void in the box is filled with absolutely ‘nothing’, making it the same as outside the box. So, there could be no pressure difference between the outside and inside of the box that would inhibit the movement of the walls of the box. If you apply a force to the walls of the box away from its centre; the walls would start to expand outwards and the volume (space) of the void in the box would start to grow.  Now the crucial thing we need to think about is what is happening to ‘nothing’, inside and outside the box, as it expands. If you think about it there is, only three possible scenarios.

 

1 That somehow, ‘nothing’ is expanding inside of the box and would be compressed outside of the box.  This would mean that ‘nothing’ would not only, not be an invariant and could change consistence of its structure; but because the essence of ‘nothing’ inside the box had been stretched and the essence of ‘nothing’ outside compressed it would mean that ‘nothing’ was different on the inside of the box to the outside of the box?

 

2. That ‘nothing’ was somehow, being created inside the box and being destroyed outside the box. This doesn’t seem right. I agree space is being created inside the box, but as I already explained that’s a different thing. How can something that is unquantifiable be created?

 

3. That ‘nothing’ is everywhere and remains the same everywhere, it never changes. It is the information contained or embedded into ‘nothing’ (i.e. the box) that changes.

 

It’s the third scenario that seems to make the most sense; but this would suggest, that information (in this case the rubber box) is embedded into nothing. In other words, at every point throughout nothing, there is information either information of the rubber box or the absents of the rubber box. When the rubber box expands because the information is fixed and cannot move the information immediately adjacent to the box changes from being absent of a rubber box to a rubber box being there. Whereas, the information of the rubber box immediately adjacent to the inside changes from being the rubber box to absents of a rubber box. This means that as the rubber box expands the box only appears to move it only has apparent moment.

 

Let’s paused for movement to take in the implications of what is being said.

  • There is not no such thing as nothing, only information.
  • That every point of the universe contains information
  • That “nothing” and by implication, information or the place where we exist (the universe) is solid.
  • Therefore: Real movement does not take place. The movement we think we experience is apparent movement of information.

 

When I say I believe, that at every point of the universe holds one bit of information; what do I mean? How small is a point? To explain this, I need to explain scale. Basically there is no such thing as largest or smallest thing, because size like distance is relative. It all depends on scale. If you had just one object in the universe it wouldn’t have a size, because there would be nothing to compare it with. Size only has meaning as scale, comparing one object with another. However, large something appears to be or however small it appears to be, there would always be something larger or smaller than it.  Because we quantise reality and we tend to base scale on us. We see ourselves as in the middle of the scale, with the visible universe as the biggest thing and because of quantisation (we have a limit on the smallest) the plank length as smallest possible meaningful thing, but there is no evidence for that. It is very possible that we are huge much closer in scale to the known universe than we to the smallest thing. This is easy to say but a very hard concept to grasp. I can best explain this by doing a very simple mind experiment. Obviously, an elephant is bigger than an ant. However, if you put them into an imaginary space where there are no points of reference for the elephant and the ant accept each other:  if the ant started to get slowly larger in proportion to the elephant. The elephant would naturally say the ant is getting larger, but the ant would say the elephant is getting smaller, likewise if you shrunk the elephant, the elephant would think the ant is getting larger. If you were to enlarge or shrink them both at the same rate, because they only have each other for reference, neither of them would realise they were changing in size. So, in a sense, there is no such thing as size only scale. However, this doesn’t explain how small a point is to us on our scale. The trouble with that is, because of infinite divisibility. Basically, infinite divisibility is when you take something and continually divided it down without, ever coming to a final peace that cannot be divided into; it is an infinite process. This makes sense and is allowed. The problem is; a point would be infinitely small, and infinite is not a real number or quantity and we could not plot it on our scale. However, I did say that information was quantifiable.

 

So, the question is how small is information? I have already said “the smallest or simplest, you could say the most fundamental, thing or event that can be sequenced to represent information is the bit” of information. So, how small Is a bit of information? Well that obviously depends on the information. I have already said that there are four types of information. Pure, Intellectual, Programmed and abstract Information. The two types of information I would like to concentrate on are pure and intellectual. intellectual is the information our brains use to produce our reality. Pure information is the is the information our brains use to produce intellectual information. We would like to think there one of the same things,  but years of scientific research has proved otherwise. We must intellectualise all information before we use it. So, we can never see pure information in its natural form. This seems, strange because pure information is basically cause and effect, and we think  we see cause and effect all the time, but we never do only a intellectualise version of it. When we intellectualise information, we construct a reality from many different sources of pure information. Therefore, it seems reasonable to conclude that a byte (a collection of bits that give a unit of information) of pure information would be on average, smaller than a byte of intellectualised information. Which would mean that the size of s bit of pure information would have to be incredibly small, much smaller than the plank length for instance. However, I believe that at every point of the universe there is one bit of pure information (a value) that is connected to its neighbouring bit and interconnected with every other pure bit of information.  

I think I should at this point, should explained exactly what my understand of what the plank length is. The plank length is a measurement derived from the plank’s constant.  I have already said that all substance is reputed to contain vast amounts of energy. Some of this is heat energy.  Basically heat, is the energy, in the random motion of particles comprising an object. It is also been known for a long time that this random movement of particles give off electromagnetic radiation. The frequency of the radiation emitted depends on the motion of the particle. The hotter an object is the faster the particles motion and the higher the frequency of the radiation emitted. This means that every object emits electromagnetic radiation (glows) at a frequency relative to it heat energy. To distinguish this from any other heat radiation that could be reflexed off the object or in the environment; this is known as black body radiation. Many experiments had been carried out on this phenomenon over the nineteenth century and accurate date accumulated.

 

Towards the end of the end of the nineteenth century Lord Rayleigh and Sir James Jeans tried to explain the black body radiation in mathematical terms, by using Equipartition Theorem. The Equipartition Theorem states that in equilibrium, energy is spread across all possible energy states. Basically, it means that energy is shared equally among all its various forms; for example, the average kinetic energy per degree of freedom in translational motion of a molecule should equal that in rotational motion. Using this theorem, they were able to work out the frequency of light produced by different intensity thermal motion. However, their results, didn’t agree with experimental data. They were compatible with results at the lower frequencies of electromagnetic radiation, but very different at the higher end of the spectrum. At the higher end of the spectrum Rayleigh Jeans’ results predicted that the intensity of the radiation would keep on increasing indefinitely, but this was not the case. This was a blow to classical physics and was known as the ultraviolet catastrophe. The problem was infinite divisibility; this allowed energy to divide into one of an infinite numbers of energy values. This meant there was no limit to the frequencies at which particles could vibrate; this caused far too much energy to be distributed in the higher frequency energy range. Max Planck published the result of his work on black body radiation in 1900. He found that if he broke down all the possible energy values into packets of energy called quanta. He could match the results of the experimental research. He did this by limiting the energy, to multiples of a very small minimum energy state. The minimum energy state was arrived at by multiplying a very small number by the frequency of a particle’s vibration. His original idea was to see what happened when he gradually reduced the multiplier down to an infinity small number. He fully expected to reduce-down to zero. However, he found that this was not the case and that to match experimental data, a very small multiplier had to be applied. This multiplier is the Planck constant. Later Einstein realised that light energy released from the black body object was quantised because it was emitting this light in discrete packages of energy or particles called photons.

 

The quantisation of energy in this way, into a range of values, dictated by a specific multiplier (Planck constant) is a great insight into how our world works. For example, if the Planck’s constant was reduced in size, heat energy would emit photons at higher frequencies causing the sun to start glowing violet. If there wasn’t a Planck’s constant, then our world would be unrecognisable, and we would not exist. In short, Planck’s constant fine-tunes the universe or brings it into focus in a way we recognise as the world in which we live, by only allowing certain values of energy to exist. Remember, information and energy are interchangeable. We could say Planck’s constant fine-tunes the universe or brings it into focus in a way we recognise as the world in which we live, by only allowing certain values of intellectual information to exist. I believe strongly that Planck’s constant is not a natural phenomenon, it is an intellectual phenomenon. It is a peculiarity of intellectual information that allows us to take pure information and process it in a way that gives us the ability to navigate and survive, in an environment of bewildering amounts of information complexity. In other words, it is us that has quantised the world, not nature. Because the Planck’s constant, is only a peculiarity of intellectual information its derivatives the Planck Length and Planck Time do not apply to either, pure information or nature.  Although, the Planck Length might be the smallest meaningful measurement that can be taken as regards intellectual information, when it comes to pure information, it would be the size of one bit of information, which would be many times smaller than the Planck Length and would be the smallest thing that could exist. However, in nature outside of information, there is no smallest thing. Remember, it is the decoder of information that decides what information is and therefore gives its limits. We need to quantization and limit information in order to make senses of our world; nature doesn’t. ‘It is information that sets boundaries not nature’. You could say that; Quantum Physics is not so much the study of nature but is the study of our perception of nature. As Werner Heisenberg said “What we observe is not Nature itself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning”

 

Now because we are talking about bits of information; the obvious path to go down would be to somehow suggest that the universe works like a giant computer, but that simply would not work. For a start there would be no means of processing the information; no logic gates etc. There, are  those whom have tried to show be mathematics (the law of probability) that we are all just living in a giant alien simulation. But I cannot subscribe to this, simple because if my life is some sort of simulation why I it so boring!!? I am sure of reality.  I am very aware, that if the universe was made up of interconnected bits of individual bits of information.  Even if the bits where set at random states (i.e. head or tails) throughout the universe. Very quickly they would all be changed to one state or one value. In effect the universe would reach a state of equilibrium and nothing would happen. But  please stay with me, I will explain the mechanism by which the universe works as this essay goes on.

 

What is Time?

Information and movement are not totally interdependent on one another. Their mutual interaction creates the phenomena we call time. To explain this, we need to go back to the online oxford dictionaries, description of information as “What is conveyed or represented by a particular arrangement or sequence of things or events”. Things or events could be represented as values, so you could describe information as “What is conveyed or represented by differences or changes in a series of values. To strip it down, to the bare bones, you could say information exists in a change of values (either between things or of something). These changes of value required by information can only be conveyed by movement. In fact, movement can be described ‘as the mechanism or medium by which information is transferred’ If you think about it, you must have movement along or across different things to create a sequence of changes. For example, to read this, your line of sight must move from character to character. However, surly things can change state therefore, producing a difference and create information without movement? Well no they can’t as far as our reality the world of information is concerned. All change of information is associated with moment. For example, if you observe an object that changes colour without appearing to move. Although, the object itself might appear not to move, its internal structure must move to change it refractive index to affect a colour change. Even if you stare at an apparently stationary object, the information you are receiving from it is via moving photons.  It doesn’t matter what type method is used to transmit and receive information even down to the subatomic level, information is always associated with movement. In fact, as I have earlier tried to show ‘that without movement nothing would exist’.

 

According to Aristotle’s relational theory, time is a measure of change and does not exist on its own and as far as intellectual information is concerned, he is right. Time does not exist. It is just the rate at which we view change and because we can interpret information at different rates, time as entity does not exist. We all know this instinctively, if you are bored time travels slower than when you are enjoying yourself.  In fact, we have only really had a concept of time since we have started to measure it by observing movement and creating clocks (time measurement machines). All clocks rely on a constant rate of movement whether they are a candle with hour marks, sundial, mechanical or electronic clocks or even an atomic clock all in the end measure time by movement. The movement within any clock is a product of pure information, simple cause and effect; one event or action following another, and those actions or events are linked by movement. Without movement causing a delay between events or action, one action would cause another action immediately and the change between actions would be Instantaneous and time would not exist or anything else for that matter. Pure information on the very basic level is just static bits of information being affected by and affecting their neighbours. It is this interaction between bits of information which creates both movement and time. Remember the underlying universe is solid and actual movement is impossible. It is the changing values of bits of information in a sequence that gives us apparent movement and it is that apparent movement which allows information to be exchanged and allows the universe to exist. It also gives rise to time, because there is a small delay between a bit of information changing its value and having an effect on their neighbouring bits value.

 

This means that the information moves or flows at a given maximum rate which is of course the cosmic speed limit (speed of light) the maximum speed information can travel. The delay of one bit’s value causing an effect on another bit’s value is tiny. Plank time is the time it takes the speed of light, to travel one plank length in a vacuum which is around 5.39 × 10 −44 seconds. If as I suspect that bits of information are many millions of times smaller than the plank length, it would mean that the delay between one bit of information changing value and another, let’s call it bit speed is many millions of times quicker than that.  This is immeasurably fast, so fast it is almost instantaneous but not quite; allowing time and movement to exist. I must stress that the actual value change of the bit of information is instantaneous because it is quantised; it can only be in one state (value) or another. It cannot be nearly in one state and not quite in another state. It is the effect of the one bit’s value on another bit’s value that has the delay. To sum up without movement you cannot convey information or measure time and without a delay (period of time) between events (change in values) you cannot have movement

 

What is Matter?

Remember I said “matter is something that occupies space. So, to take up space it needs volume; it also needs substance, so it must have a density (an amount of something). It should also have a physical presence, so it can be touched or moved, this is its mass”. Albert Einstein showed that energy and mass where equivalent. This has led some scientists to suggest that matter is just a concentrated form of energy.  However, energy doesn’t occupy space and has no substance, density or physical presence. So how can matter be energy? The answer might lie with information, because both matter and energy are just different values of information. So, what do I mean by values of information. When most people think of values they think of numerical values. Where, if something has the same value as something ells it is equal to it. If something had a higher value, then something ells it was more or greater than it. Consequently, if something had a lower value then something ells it is smaller or lesser than that something. This is not the case with information values where, if something has the same value as something ells it will  not react with it. However, this doesn’t make them equal. If something has a higher, information value than something ells then it will react with that something causing it to change.  However, that doesn’t make something greater than something ells. So, it is more akin to the game scissors, paper, stone or more like a pack of cards where not only the aces high, but also low. Consequently, all other cards are also high or low depending on the other cards they are shown with. Matter is just information we identify as having volume substance and mass, which we assign as having a presence, but in the end is just a value of pure information.

 

Let’s pause here to make clear, We, by which I mean every conscious living entity. Builds an intellectual model of reality, from intellectual information adapted by our brain from values of pure information. We are never conscious of these values of pure information, but nevertheless they exist and are vital to reality as we know it. We subconsciously, chose by tuning in on pure information that will best help us navigate and survive. How we do this I will explain later in this essay.

What Is the Shape of the Universe?      

When I am talking about a shape to the universe in this context. I am not talking universe as a collection of galaxies of stars or even any form of matter or types of energy. I am talking the space in which reality exists and when I am talking  about its shape, I not talking about if it is round, a triangle or square. I am talking about its internal shape or the shape of its structure.

 

This is where I hold up my hands and say I don’t have a clue. I only know that must have a shape for values or information to exist. This might seem, a total cop out on my part but, I am not a scientist. I have neither the intellectual knowledge of physics, and certainly not the mathematical ability for task and am very happy to let those with the ability; describe the shape in detail.  My guess would be that the universe would be a lattice, crystal shape. The reason I say this is because a crystal  edges or extremities have straight lines to the furthest points, its corners, and in nature things tend to take the path of least resistant or a straight line. Now what order of rotation symmetry they have 3,4.6, or even 5, 7,8 (a quasicrystal) I don’t know, but should imagine that the lattice is made up of different crystal shapes probably arranged in a nonrepeatable pattern.  It is likely that the pattern is fractal in nature, meaning that pattern repeats itself on a smaller or larger scale. In other words, each layer of the pattern repeats itself. However, it is also possible that the pattern only repeats it itself on every other layer or every three four or more layers (scales). Of course, this is all speculation on my part.

 

The reason I am saying universe must have a shape is that information, does not exist of itself, it like energy is associated with a something, and that something must have a shape. Of course, ‘nothing’ has no shape, so here is an apparent paradox. But if we are saying that information is somehow embedded in nothing or the universe, then there must be a means for it to be able to do it; a shape to the universe.

 

Any space that could occupy by a reality, would have to have at least one thing dimensions giving it a shape. It is within the dimensions that the reality or information of a reality exist? The question is how information could exist in a dimension.

 

I think of dimensional space I immediately I think of four dimensions (height, width, depth and time) because that is how I see the world. This of course is very useful for navigating around space (our world) but not suitable for storing countless trillions upon trillions of bits of information about every particle in the universe. Ok that’s start with one dimension an infinite dot. This is probably logically what nothing should be no directions no boundaries, but also nowhere to store information. The same could not be said for two-dimensional space, When I think of two dimensions, I think of piece of paper on which you can draw a line in only a combination of two directions. But of course, in-reality the paper is three dimensional; it has depth. Even if the paper was atom thick it would still have depth. You need depth a third dimension to give something 3-D form. However, two dimensions can, act like a barrier giving it the appearance of having a surface of sorts. This is because in two dimensions you are free to move up, down or side to side, but you cannot move across because there is no dimension to move in, causing an impenetrable barrier to anything that wants to move across the two-dimensional space.  I must stress that two-dimensional space doesn’t have a surface it is a barrier to movement, but that barrier acts like a surface. The strange thing about this barrier it would not have any sides, (left or a right) or thickness because there is no dimension for them to exist in. However, information I believe in a tangible form could exist along (or upon) that barrier, existing only within two dimensions. I need to call this barrier something, I don’t, know if has an already got a name, but for the purposes of this essay, because it restricts movement along a plane, I will call it ‘antimotus-plane’ for want of a better word. The thing about the antimotus-plane’ it would not be either matter of energy, so it could not be measured or detected, so we might never know its true nature, just that it is there. This means to science it could not be recognised as being tangible or even existing, even though it did. However, supposing it exists, in one of two stats either holding information or not: positive and negative if you like. It would mean that it  would be capable of holding exactly one bit of information; not very useful when you would need trillions, upon trillions, trillions upon trillions of bits of information to describe the universe. Well you could try bending the two-dimensional space into a different shape. For example, you could roll it into a tube or perhaps a spear or even form it into a torus. All of which have been used to describe the shape of the universe. However, you still have the same problem, one antimotus-plane (acting like a surface) with the potential to carry only one byte of information. Ok what if we fold the two-dimensional space down the middle creating a barrier along the fold, in an effect two, two dimensional spaces in different planes. You would then have a potential of two bits of information.

 

I suppose you could argue that if space was two dimensional, that’s all there will be was two dimensions. However, if you propose a shape to space (universe), whether, it be a flat plain, torus, or whatever. You always have the same problem, an outside (or inside) to the shape, a place where nothing exists. However, theoretically where other spaces (universes) could exist; unseen (detected) by you. So, although metaphorically speaking these two spaces are unaware of each other, they could both exist. However, we have folded one space to make two. Therefore, the two spaces are touching along a common edge, which means that one piece (bit) of information resting along its antimotus-plane could affect the other piece (bit) of information as it was resting on its antimotus-plain in its space. So, in effect the two bits of information could communicate with one another.  It would be very unlikely that you would have just one-fold, (just two-dimensional spaces) it is more likely that a two-dimensional space would keep folding over on itself in all directions (planes) in ever increasing multiples (rather like crumpling up a piece of paper, then unravelling it to reveal the multitudes of shapes the folds have made in the paper) until you have almost an infinite amount of two-dimensional spaces naturally forming into a multi- plane shape. This would be the shape of the universe, at least its internal shape. Of course, as I have ready said it would take a mathematician to determine the exact shape. The thing about this shape, is that it would have no boundary’s: no edges it would be continues throughout space. The shape would be reoccurring right down to the smallest scale of pure information. But, most importantly it would be able to hold one of two types of information(either information is there or its not).

 

So, the universe would be made up of plains of two-dimensional spaces of various shapes making up a much more complex shape. Each two-dimensional shape would be incredible small much smaller than the plank length, smaller than perhaps our mortal brains can comprehend. This would be the smallest meaningful thing of pure information that would exist and would hold precisely one of bit of information. This would be every point of the universe. Each plane would have the ability to change freely from one state of information to another and have the potential to affect the information of its adjacent plane. Depending on the shape of the plane, will depend on how many sides it has and therefore how many adjacent plans it has. The more adjacent plans it has the more complex a mathematical relationship it has with those adjacent plans. Let’s look at the simplest shape possible for a plane, (one with three sides; a triangle). Its three neighbouring planes indicators could affect the state of its indicator in eight different ways.

 

 

 

The next table show an antimotus-plane ‘A’ with four sides ‘B,C.D and E’

 

 

The point that I am making, is the more sides to the shape the more complex way that any given plane can be affected (change) and therefore affect others. For example, a five-sided  shape has thirty-two different ways of being affected.

 

Therefore, if the indicators were set at random (different states) they would try to find a state of equilibrium (all becoming one state) but this would take an inordinately long time (billions and billions of years in our time scale) given the size of the universe. Once all the indicators reach the same state; an equilibrium, there will be no information or rather all information would be in the same state (zero entropy) and you will have nothing. Information can only exist when there is an imbalance. I know this is a bit of a strange concept. However, I believe this, is why things according to thermodynamics seem to move from order to disorder as measured by entropy. We perceive something, as being ordered, from information which I have said is brought about by an imbalance when the indicators are in constant change. As the indicators start to become more balanced (try to find equilibrium) ordered, information appears to break down bring about disorder in what we are observing. So, in other words as things seem to get more disordered information is; actually, getting more ordered? I will talk about this in more depth later.

 

This is a very abstract way of explaining value of information, but please stay with me. If it was possible to look closely at the planes and there was some way of observing the plans changing state, for argument sake, perhaps they were yellow in one state and blue in another. All you would see is a lot of different shapes changing colour very rapidly an there would be no particular; pattern: In other words, chaos. However, remember you would be looking at the planes on a very small scale to be able to see them, Remember, that the planes are put together into shape which has symmetry. As you draw back from the planes (zoom out) the colours would merge, and what you would see is irregular patterns of different yellows, blues and greens drifting (a better word would be flowing) around. These irregular patterns wouldn’t hold a particular shape, their profile would be constantly changing. This changing of shape and their movement of course is an optical illusion, brought about the planes changing state is due to the symmetry of the pattern. You could liken this to the way a digital colour television produces moving pictures ( coloured moving shapes) by the changing state of the pixels on the screen within value ranges. In fact, the movement you would see would be in a wave like in nature. The different coloured irregular Patten’s (if you could see them as colours) would move in a random fashion. However, these would represent tiny values systems of information which would give every tiny volume of space an informational value; at any particular time. If you continued to zoom out (take in a larger area of space) the pattern of colours would continue to merge to become one colour. In other words, as the volume considered became larger its overall information values becomes more stable.  overall value stays within an increasingly small range and therefore becomes more stable. Until, the values they produce can remain stable (constant) for extremely long time. The vast majority of value systems, flowing in the form of waves around of different values of pure information in space have no visible effect on our world. This phenomena of waves of pure information fills up all of space, is in fact what scientists would describe as fields. It is just really a vast array of pure information with different values at each small volume of space.

 

Very, very, very, occasionally anomalies occur within these value systems that create values, that we can identify as subatomic particles that comes together to form atomic & molecular structure and the forces that hold them together and act upon them (the strong and weak nuclear forces and electromagnetic forces) which intern all comes together to makes up everything we know. In fact, everything we think as existing is just large value systems of pure information that we can perceive. 

 

The more Stable a value is (The ability to resistance to any change) the more we perceive the particle as has having mass. In fact, there should be a unit of stability of information that relates directly to the unit of mass; the kilogram. However, I will leave it to someone much cleverer than myself to name it and define its parameters.    

 

In essence; what I am saying is that our world including us is made up of countless trillions of pure information bytes produced by ever changing bits existing in their own individual two-dimensional spaces. Of courses we don’t see the world in this way, we use this pure information to construct a three-dimensional world (much like a hologram) in which to live out our lives. Remember we don’t see the world as it really is. There is no such thing as colour or sound, they are perceptions we create in our minds, to understand the information we receive from different wave forms. Psychologist Richard Gregory’s visual assumption theory describes how we only receive about 10% of the information use to build up a visual image in our brains, directly from our eyes. The rest of the image is built up of assumptions our brain makes about our world, help in some part by information gained from other senses.  We effectively receive pure information and create intellectual information to understand, navigate and survive, in an environment of bewildering amounts of pure information.

 

How do Subatomic Particles work?

Particle Duality 

The first thing we need to get our head around when looking, at the bewildering world of  subatomic entities is particle duality. Particle duality is at the very heart of quantum physics; basically, subatomic entities appear to exist in two very different forms as waves and as particles. We are not talking about something that is part wave, part particle or even something that is composed of both, but something that is a particle and is a wave at the same time. Furthermore, the subatomic entity is in the form of a wave until it is observed when the wave is said to collapse and take the form of a particle. In 1801 Thomas Young, carried out an experiment that used a light source to shine light through two thin vertical slits in a partition, on to a screen behind the partition. Instead of two thin vertical concentrated bars of light as you might aspect. A spread several bars appeared in what is called an interference pattern, which is indicative of wave like behaviour. This seemed to prove that light was a wave, and this is what scientists believed, for more than a century until Einstein proposed the existence of the photon as particle of light. When devices where developed that could fire one proton at a time, at a screen, the photon acts like a particle, leaving the device and being detected on the screen in one particular position. However, when a partition with the two vertical slits is placed between the device and the screen, and a single photon fired at the screen multiple times an interference pattern starts to appear. This seems to show particle duality; that the proton leaves the device and acts like a wave, passing through both slits before collapsing to become more particle like, appearing in just one place on the screen. what comes next seems to defy explanation. If you repeat the experiment firing individual protons through two slits, at a screen, but this time you put a detector over one of the slits instead of an interference pattern forming, two distinct bars appear, showing that the photons are now acting like particles just going through one slit. What’s more the protons passing through the slit with the detector is unsurprisingly setting off the detector. Well you could argue that the detector is somehow interfering with the photon changing (collapsing it) its wave like behaviour so it acts like a particle. The problem is that the photon passing through the other slit is not setting off the detector, so cannot be affected by it. Yet it is still acting like a particle passing through just the one slit. As soon as the detector is switched off the interference pattern starts to appear. It is as thought the photon knows when it is being observed and acts like a particle. This experiment works the same whether it is being observed by a person or left working on its own in a darken room, so seems to preclude any intellectual interference in the process. It also can be done using elections, atoms, and even some molecules.

 

So, what on earth is happening? So how can something be two things at once, one thing when it is not observed and something else when it is? The key must be information: after all, if you think about it, ultimately it is the information about the object or rather the objects information, which is changing on being observed. I think it comes back to how we as intellectual beings, perceive the world and our inability to be able to comprehend it in any other way. Pure Information is passing through both slits all the time.  Remember, what the detector is doing it is change varies amounts of pure information into intellectually information we can use.  It is tune or designed by us to recognise a subatomic particle (or even an atom or molecules) specifically its position and velocity and ignore all other pure information. If the detectors are not on, then the pure information (in the form of wave) of the subatomic particle along with other pure information is free to pass through both slits and  the same time interacting with one another then sticking a screen revealing a wave like pattern.  Remember, the screen is a manmade detector which is designed to change varies amounts of pure information into intellectually information.  In fact, until the screen detects the subatomic particles position it didn’t have a position. This is because, information has no sequence. For examples, red fast car,  fast red car, red car (is) fast, car(is)fast (and) red, are all the same information. It’s just linguistic convention which makes us give information in a particular; order

If a detector observing the slits turned on. The pure information is still passing through both slits. Remember, the detector is scanning pure information of the particle until it finds information on the position of the particle which it changes into intellectual information that we can relate to. When the detector finds the pure information containing the position of the particle  it not only expresses it as intellectual information (for example it gives off a beep sound) it also instantaneously changing the value range of the pure information.  The particle now has a value range and wave form that reflects the particle starting from the place it was detected. The new pure information of the location of the particle and its associated  waveform carries on until strikes the screen this time though, it won’t have any information wave passing through the other slot to interfere with its progress. Therefore, the pattern will look as though it acted like a particle.  It wouldn’t matter if the detectors were placed before or after the slit the effect would be the same.

 

Even if you just had one detector over one slit. Remember pure information goes through both slits. If the pure information about the position of the particle goes through the slit not observed by the detector, the detector will not have the information to express as intellectual information. However, it still be monitoring pure information and still changes the value range of the pure information to reflex the particle position at the place it was not detected (remember no information is information) . Like before the pure information of the particles position carries on again unimpeded by waves from the other slot until it strikes the screen this time showing it has come from the slit unobserved by the detector.

 

This might look very strange to us looking from the perspective of intellectual information . However, if we didn’t have the ability to interact with pure information . I world would be a very different place and we would not be able to survive and navigate around it successfully.

 

We have a deep-seated belief; you might say unshakeable faith that the world constructed by our minds is a true reflection of the environment on the other side of our senses, but of course it is not the case. So, as we look closer and closer at the very small compared with ourselves (remember size is relative) we are looking at the nature of pure information through the lens of intellectual understanding. The trouble is we have expectations on how nature should work according to the way we are looking at it. We view the behaviour of subatomic particles as being weird because we can only view them from an intellectual prospective.

 

I think it is very likely, that subatomic particles only exist as intellectual information. That they are values or rather a small range of values perceived by us as partials. These small ranges of values are created by the general ebb and flow of value within pure information in all possible directions in a wave like manor. We, however, are not aware of the vast majority of this pure information. In fact, to us it is not information at all and does not exist, we are only aware of certain values with in it. Let me try to explain; imaging you were out in some wilderness on very dark overcast night and someone at some distance shone a torch in your direction, so you would see a spot of light in the distance. How are you seeing that light? One explanation would be as a stream of standalone particles (photons) striking the retina at the back of your eye giving you information, which your mind turns into an image of a spot of light in the distance. This would be a perfectly good explanation on how we see, except we know that light behaves like a wave. So, then it must be a wave of light striking the retina at the back of our eye that allows you to see.  Except, information is transmitted by a series of things (values), one thing (value) sticking the eye would not carry, any information. In fact, we know that  our retina cells react to pulses of information (energy), striking them which causes them to send pulses of electrons (electrical signals) to fire neurons in our brains that allowing us to construct an image in our minds. So how can light be one thing and the way we obtain information another; it simple doesn’t make sense. The wave of light must carry different values. In fact, a wave can carry vast amounts of information (values); too much to just be used to identify it (seen by your eye). This means your eye only reacts to a small set of pure information values. I must add at this point although I am not just talking about the workings of the human eye. What I am saying applies to all light detectors, whether they are another creature’s eye or a manmade detector. All require pulses of stimuli to provide information of light. So, it could be said that our eyes and all other light detectors are identifying a pure information value range (a pulse of energy or a proton carrier of energy) within an array of pure information (an electromagnetic wave).

 

To sum up,  if a single wave is capable of, carrying vast amount of information. I think, that the photon that we regard as a carrier of a package of energy is just one-byte value range of information, amongst many bytes of information carried within a value system, the electromagnetic wave. We see it, as having energy because it has the precise value that causes the apparent movement of other values we can detect. However, within the wave it has no special place or significates. We are totally unaware of the all the other value because they do not interact, with any value we can detect. So, because the value we recognise as a proton has no specific place within all the values that make up the wave. It comes down to probability were, it is within the wave. Which means because of the nature of waves it has no fixed trajectory or speed until it interacts with our eye or any other light detector.

 

Realism and Locality

Realism: Says that all objects exist independently of whether they are being observed or not. Basically, it is what I described as the wider world at the start of this essay, it’s about knowing something is there without being able to see or detect it. Quantum mechanics calls this into question by exclaiming that a particle can be in a number, of positions and in a number of states until observed; the famous Schrodinger’s cat scenario. Einstein hated this idea and once said “does that mean the Moon is not there when I am not looking at it”. My answer to that would be that the moon is still there, but only intellectually.

 

Whereas, Locality: Says that any part or point in the universe only reacts with its local surroundings. This concept is vital to relativity, as it simple could not work if distant objects could react directly with one another. Of, course this doesn’t preclude distant object reacting with one another, just not directly they must use a medium that would travel at a finite speed. Again, quantum mechanics called this into question. Quantum mechanics says that if two particles are created at the same time or interact with each other in a certain way. They will become entangled, sharing a single wave function which means their quantum states will be interdependent on one another. In practice, this means that if you have two entangled particles, they both will be in a quantum state of uncertainty (super state) where their position, velocity and other properties are unknowable. However, as soon as you measure a property of one its wave function collapses, and the other particle exhibits the same or opposite property. In 1935 along with Boris Podolsky and Nathan Rosen; Einstein published a paper challenging this. They posed a paradox called the Einstein Podolsky Rosen (EPR) Paradox. To explain it, let’s pose a little scenario. Supposing you have two entangled particles, say electrons that are far enough apart, say if one to be measured in a laboratory here on earth and the other in a laboratory on the moon. The spin direction of the electron here on earth is measured causing an automated signal sent out, to an observer on the moon telling them the direction of spin. However, the observer on the moon has measured the second entangled electron 0.3 seconds after the first electron was measured on earth and because the wave function between them has collapsed and they were entangled, they now know the spin direction of the electron on earth. However, the signal sent from earth must travel at the speed of light and takes 1.3 seconds to reach him. Therefore, the observer on the moon has the information of the spin of the electron on earth a full second before the signal that gives him the information on the spin arrives. This means the electrons must have communicated faster than the speed of light and violated locality. Einstein thought this was absurd and called it “spooky action at a distance” He postulated that the two electrons must have hidden variables. In other words, they had a shared set of hidden instruction encoded within them that told them how to react when measured. Of courses the way the hidden variables would react, depended on how and where they are measured. So, there must be another set of variables were the measurement is taking place (locale variables) that identifying the method and place of measurement, to the particle’s variables so that they can react appropriately.

 

In 1964, John Stewart Bell showed that it was possible to carry out a series of experiments that would show statistically whether, particles were reacting to local variables or information independent of the locality (“spooky action at a distance”). It was proposed that you could do these experiments using an entangled electron/ positron pair, but positrons don’t last very long, because the positron react with another electron within a very small space of time, meaning the entangled pair could not be measured sufficiently far apart to exclude communication between the particles at the speed of light. This is known as the ‘Locality Loophole’; so, experiments where first carried out using polarised photons. However, in the case of the proton entangled pair, although they last a long time, so they can be measured at a distance, they are very hard to detect so could be subject to errors through non-representative selection, known as the Detection Loophole. There are also other loopholes that needed closing, such as ensuring that a true random selection of orientations of measuring devises etc. Finally, in 2015 the first loophole free Bell test was done at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands in 2015 that showed conclusively that entangled particles did not contain hidden variables. I must point out that this is still controversial, there are those who think, that that there are, still loophole within the experimentation and that the results, can be explained by hidden variables. I personally am convinced that hidden variable, do not exist within entangled particles.

 

 

So, this seems to prove that information can move faster than the speed of light. This would appear to scupper my idea that at every point in the universe, there is a bit or indicator that effects its neighbouring bit and so on, producing a chain reaction, causing pure information to flow at a finite speed (the bit speed). However, pure information can do one of two things. It can flow as I have just described, but in order to flow, each bit must change value. Now a bit of pure information is a quantum object it can only be in one of two states it cannot be any fraction in between. This means if you have a group of bits (a byte) of pure information, their cumulative value must also be a quantum object. This stands to reason if you have a million bits of information that can have a value of either zero or one, and the total value of all the bits is five hundred thousand. If one of the bit changes value from zero to one the overall value of the bits changes instantly to five hundred thousand & one, the overall value can never be between hundred thousand and five hundred thousand & one. Although it only makes a very small change to the overall value it is still a quantum change. This is a very important point, that quantum values change instantly, and pure information is quantised so its value over any area of space can and does change instantly. So why don’t we see things appear and disappear all over the place all the time. Because these value changes are very, very small and as I described earlier when talking about Planck’s constant; we intellectualise (turn into intellectual information) pure information, further quantising it so we only see or detect certain much larger ranges of pure information value change. Remember, it is only when we look at the very small approaching the Planck length, that we see thing acting strangely.

 

So how does all this relate to entangled particles? Let’s look at a hypothetical experiment where two entangled particle an electron and a positron, are created at an event at some point in space. They fly off in opposite directions with opposite spins. In practise the particles won’t last very long before reacting with other particles, but suppose these particles are very lucky and survive long enough to have their spins measured thousands of kilometres away. Well first of all, they not particles and they are not spinning. They are not even waves of energy that is just how we perceive them or more accurately rationalise them. They are just value systems we can detect. We detect  pure information derived from millions or billions of constantly changing static bits/two-dimensional plan causing small Information Value Systems. Small areas of space which stay within a finite information value range. These pure information value ranges act together to form larger value ranges and so on. Some of these larger value ranges have an overall value we can intellectualise and detect as particles. However, the particle value range are also part of a greater value that incorporates them both.  This is not really the case all Pure Information Value Systems do have effect on other information Pure Value Information Systems, but because their apparent movement or flow is in a wave like manner. If two Pure Information Value Systems are propagated by two different wavelike phenomena with different wave lengths, they have little effect on each, other’s values. So, for instance if we detect a quark in a particular area of space; that quark, is just one, minute Pure Information Value System that has an effect on the overall information value of the entire universe. The effect the quark’s Pure Information Value System has on the universe is so minuscule it appears to go unnoticed by the universe. However, it may be possible that the existence of our quark’s Pure Information Value System is affecting the universes information value in such away, that it is having an effect on another quark billions of light years away on the other side of the universe.

 

Information Value System and the increasing space (which also has an information value) between them. I must stress this is very different, from saying these particles are objects linked in some way, for example an Einstein Rosen Bridge (wormhole) or energy wave. What I am saying is that within that increasing Pure Information Value System, there are values that hold information of what we perceive as an electron and a positron flying apart and their associated properties as well as other information, we cannot detect, but have an effect on them. Einstein’s dreaded hidden variables. However, these hidden variables are spread throughout the Pure Information Value System and are just part of its overall information value, so have no fixed position. When this Pure Information Value System interacts with the magnetic field of the first detector (which is itself a Pure Information Value System) its overall information value changes and the part of the Pure Information Value Systems containing the information value of the first particle changes with it to give it the apparent property of spin in a particular direction when detected. At the same time, the other particle information value is also changed to give the apparent property of spin in the opposite direction when detected. Both particle information values are affected by the overall information value of the entire Pure Information value System; not local values, so no faster than light communication, takes place between them and Realism and Locality are preserved. The same would be true if we carried out the experiment using two entangled protons flying off in opposite directions towards two polarised filters. As soon as, their Pure Information Value System  interacted with the Pure Information Value System associated with one of the polarised filters, its overall information value changes instantaneously affecting the polarity of both proton information values, determining whether they will pass or not, through their respected filters. The question is, could this change in the overall Pure Information Value System of two particles be used to do faster than light communication? The answer is no, because, the overall value of the entangled particle system is not just interacting with the detector (magnetic field polarised filter etc.), but with many other Pure Information Values that are adjacent to or occupy a super position with it. Meaning the overall information value is constantly changing slightly up or down, all be it by small amounts. So, it would be impossible to predict its exact information value when it reacts with the detector information value and therefore, the resulting outcome would be completely non-deterministic and therefore cannot be used for communication. I hope, that makes sense.

 

Something I think I should make clear at this point:  I am saying is that everything in the universe, is a Pure Information Value System, which is made up of other Pure

Information Value System giving it an overall information value. The larger the object or volume of space, the more, Pure Information Value System and sub Value Systems it contains, all of which have constantly changing in value. So, wouldn’t it mean, those changes in sub Value Systems, would add up and cause the overall information value of the object/area of space to become very unstable? Well no, the opposite in fact, because each Pure Information Value System value are varying up and down within a small range and as explained earlier the values themselves are “not necessarily a numerical value having a specific place in a set of ordered of value”. This means that the more Pure Information Value Systems there are making up an overall information value the more they cancel out each other’s variation in value and the less the overall information value fluctuates and the more stable an object or area of space becomes.

 

This idea of small value changes in Pure Information Value Systems, can explain other quantum effects such as quantum tunnelling. Where, a change of values of energy ( a measure of movement) on two side of what appears to be an impenetrable barrier causes a subatomic particle to apparently magically pass through the barrier. I don’t believe nature performs magic. However, it might do the odd magic trick. I think what is happening is similar to a childish conjuring trick that children love to play on an adult. The child will come up to the adult with one hand clenched shut in a fist and another open with a marble resting in its upturned palm. They then close that hand hiding the marble and tell the adult that the marble will magically fly through the air to the other hand. They then open the other hand to reveal the marble. The adult will enviably play along, but of course knowing that the child has a marble in both hands. This is probable the same trick nature plays on us. Remember the particle are Pure Information Value Systems as are the barrier and space immediately behind the barrier and together they have an overall value. What we perceive as an energy change in the particle and the space behind the barrier is really just a value change in both. The value of pure information change in the area of the particle, changes to a value that cannot be detected by sensors (instruments) tuned to identifying values of intellectual information, so it no longer can be seen. I must stress that is all that has happened to the particle or the intellectual information representing the particle. It hasn’t disappeared, gone to another alternate universe it just can no longer be seen. While, the pure information value of the immediate area on the other side of the barrier has changed so that sensors tuned to identifying values of intellectual information can now detect a particle. This gives the illusion of a particle passing through the barrier. This phenomenon can explain electrons jumping from one energy shell of an atom to another, without seemingly passing through the space in between, when energy is introduced to the atom. Of course, this also shows how virtue partials pop in and out of existence.

 

Of course, Pure Informing Value Systems is pure conjecture on my part. I have no testable evidence it exists. The same as bits of pure information existing on two dimensional shapes.  Of course, I could be very wrong and I except that. However, I am convinced that the information we receive form our senses (pure information) is changed by us into a form of information (intellectualised) we use to build a reality.  That pure information exists and can be found at every point of the universe.  

 

Quantum Field Theory

How I been describing Pure Information Value Systems is akin to something called the De Broglie–Bohm theory or Pilot-wave theory. This states that probabilistic waves, described in the Copenhagen Interpretation, are in fact real waves of something; what that something is, is not explained in the theory but I think is pure information. However, I haven’t mentioned the part particles play in creating force. This is best explained by using something called Quantum Field Theory. I have mentioned it already but need to go into much more detail.

 

Of course, I am not a quantum physicist; so, what follows is my understanding of Quantum Field Theory. Quantum Field Theory, states that for every subatomic particle described in the Standard Model has a field. I have already describe these fields as types of information arrays, in fact, subatomic particles are just disturbances, small vibrations (packets  of  quantized pure information values) within their own respective quantum field. Each field can interact with other fields, so that a disturbance in one can result in a disturbance in another. This can be used to explain the complex and sometimes strange behaviour of  subatomic (Standard Model) particles. For example, when two subatomic partials with the same charge in the same field, say two electrons come in close proximity to each other they will repel each other. This is because, the two subatomic particles/disturbances in the electron field interact with the electromagnetic field by passing energy (information) through it causing a disturbance there, which in turn causes further disturbance in the electron field, causing the electrons to fly apart. Of course, I believe fields are specific values or more accurately specific levels of pure information where a disturbance or anomaly can occur causing a Pure Information Value System which we interpret as a particle.  It is the reaction or interactions between these value systems that Quantum Field Theory describes.

 

This sounds simple but in reality; these interactions are very complicated and almost impossible to calculate.  However, thanks to something, called Perturbation Theory, they can be reasonably approximated. This is done by calculating a number of ideal interactions and adding them together to give an approximation of the actual interaction. Each interaction is represented by a set of values/properties that are passed from one field to another, known as a virtual particle. In the case of the two repelling electrons the interaction passes through the electromagnetic field; therefore, the values/properties will be photon like and would be called a virtual photon. So, one of the interactions could be described simply as , two electrons come in close proximity to each other causing the electrons to pass a virtue photon from one to the other resulting in them repelling one another. Of course, this describes just one possible interaction of many possible interactions. For example, the electrons could swop, virtual photons or even two or more or interact in way quite frankly I don’t even understand. All these different, interactions are put together to approximate the actual interact. Added to this, two electrons repelling each other are probably the simplest way partials interact with each other. Depending on the type of subatomic particle, they can also attract each other, they can annihilate each other, or can absorb and emit other partials, and can decay into other partials. All these, interactions and actions can be described by Perturbation Theory.      

 

Interestingly, where, a subatomic particle/disturbance, is not present which is for most of the field for most of the time, the value of the field, is said to fluctuate around  zero, (except for the Higgs field) but never exactly zero. Strangely, this phenomenon of the energy fluctuating around zero but never exactly zero is called zero-point energy and describes the field at rest. When the field is in this condition it is known as the vacuum energy state. This is a very interesting concept; there is a so-called energy everywhere, which is at zero, so it is none existent but not quite, so it does exist? I think it is easy to think or a field as a set of pure information.

 

Back to ‘Quantum Field Theory’ This means there is no such thing as empty space because, where there is no matter there is this property of fields called the vacuum energy state. The vacuum energy’s value is not exactly zero because it is a quantum phenomenon, so the uncertainty principle applies. Nevertheless, despite having a value close to zero the vacuum energy is energy. Which means among other thing, that virtual particles can borrow this energy to pop in and out of existence at random.  These particles like objects appear in matter and antimatter pairs for an immeasurable small amount of time before destroying each other, making them impossible to detect. So, what are these virtual particles and are they a real?  Well, they are exactly what it says on the tin; they are virtual! They are a means of understanding the complexities of the fluctuations of the vacuum energy state and probably more significantly the complex interaction between fields. Although virtual particles have some of the same characteristics as the particles of the standard model such as charge and spin but, they don’t obey the same laws of physics. For example, they can travel faster than light and backwards in time suggesting that they don’t actually exist at least physically. In fact, another branch of field theory called Lattices Field Theory, does not use virtual particles but gets much the same results; nevertheless, they are very useful scientific tool.

 

So basically, ‘Quantum Field Theory’ describes, subatomic particles are packets of energy or disturbances in quantum fields, which are themselves energy fields; and interaction between subatomic(standard model) particles can be explained by virtual particles which describe complex energy transfer between quantum fields which among other things is responsible for forces. What I am saying it is that it’s not energy that is responsible for fields and their complex interaction including force transfer, but Pure information values.

 

What is Gravity?

Ok in the previous paragraphs, I have shown how value change in pure information value change which explains three forces , Strong nuclear force, weak nuclear force and electromagnetism. However, it doesn’t explain Gravity. Gravity is very different to the three forces described. It is much weaker, and it act across the whole universe. You might say that the three forces react with gravity to define the information of structures. Whereas Gravity reacts with the other three forces to defines, the structure of the universe. I think Gravity is different because I don’t think of it as a  force but more a product of time.

 

We call gravity a force, because it has the ability, to move things. We know of three other forces, electromagnetic force, strong nuclear force and weak nuclear force. Which also, can move things, but does this mean that gravity and the other three forces are the same things? Just because they create the same action, ‘movement’ does it mean they must create it in the same way? Physics and mathematicians have been trying to unify, gravity and the other three forces for years, to bring together two great theories, Relativity and Quantum Theory into one theory, Quantum Gravity the theory of everything. However, this has yet to be achieved; even promising theories like Sting Theory that predicted the elusive Graviton Particle have come to nothing. Is this because the only thing that gravity and the other three forces, have in common is movement?  I think it is a good possibility that this is the case. That gravity is the product of the flow of information/ time whereas the other three forces are a product of subatomic particles (Pure information values) interacting with one another. They both do the same thing; move things but in totally different ways.  A little bit like a rock, fulling on your head and a screaming child, they can both give you a headache, but in two totally different ways. I know this is a big leap of faith, but to me it seems to make sense. 

 

Before, looking at how gravity is product of flow, we need to take a closer look a subatomic particle. The quantum field theory for mass, describes  a subatomic particle called the Higgs-Boson. The Higgs-Boson like all subatomic particles has associated field called the Higgs field. This field different than the other fields because it has, slightly higher energy levels (just above zero at, all the times). Depending on which of the other standard model is particles is passing through Higgs field (the Higgs field is everywhere so all other subatomic particles are passing through the Higgs field all the time) depends on how much mass the partial has. This explains why some particles have mass and why others don’t have any. Evidence for the Higgs-Boson was discovered  by the large Hadron Collider at CERN in 2012. This of course is a very convincing explanation of mass, but I think there is another one. 

 

I have said that particles, are Pure Information Value Systems, (an area of space with a pure information value). This means that values within its area remain within a certain range. Which also means the movement (value change) of the flow of information also must remain with in that area.  In other words, the Pure information value systems representing a particle  has internal movement. This internal movement appears more vigorous than the movement of the general flow of information but it still only traveling at light speed. It looks more vigorous because: take for example two solid balls moving at the same speed, if you were to put one of the balls in a box so it bounced around inside it. It would appear to be moving faster; be more vigour’s than one outside the box but it would be moving at the same speed. The internal movement, of the Pure Information Value Systems is what we interpret as the energy of the particle.

 

Because of the particle or the Pure Information Value System has a value range and internal movement it can exist in the general flow of pure information or in other words time, as a separate entity. Because multiple particles exist, they have a position to one another and a velocity (speed and direction) in proportion to one another. Obviously, it is these particles that come together to make everything we know.

 

The more permanent a Pure Information Value System representing a particle is; the more mass it has. I must make it very clear at this stage. When I am talking about the permanence of a particle, I not talking about how long it lives or even how long before it falls apart (decays). I am talking about its ability to resist destruction. By which I mean the destruction of it value range. The more mass a Pure Information Value System representing a particle the more it has an ability to resist the general flow of pure information (time) from flowing through it. The more a particle resists the general flow of pure information (time) the more must flow around the outside giving the particle a very small gravitational field. A gravitational field is formed around the particle because the general flow of pure information wants to increase its speed slightly as go around the particle to maintain it overall velocity. However, this is impossible. So, the gap between, the values increase slightly, and time slows down.  The gravitational field is not built up of different values but the distance apart of those values or the rate at which of time is passing. So, say something with a gravitational field; say another particle, comes in close, proximity to our particle. As their gravitational fields interact with each other. The  pure information value passing between the two particles, try to  a line and obtain their original velocity. This causes a very slight attraction between the two particles or gravitational pull.

 

Of course, the gravitational attraction of two particle’s, is very small and easily overwhelmed by the electromagnetic force. However, on much larger scale when the forces have brought together subatomic particles to make atoms and atoms to make molecules the gravitational attraction becomes more pronounce and can easily be misunderstood as a force rather than a product of time.  Of course, the vast, majority of the pure information flow (time) passes through any larger size object because of the distancing of the particles, (so will act like a sieve in a river)  but the information forced around has further to go so overall the gravitational effect increases.

 

How Can Information Be Tuned?

For information, to be information, it has, to have two parts, the originator/transmitter and the decoder/receiver.  The receiver’s ability to decode, the information, depends on their ability to distinguish the parts or bytes of information in a discernible sequence which holds the information. This means decoder imposes finite boundaries whether information can or cannot exist. In other words, it is the decoder/receiver that determines what is and is not information. Up until now I have been talking about values of information. However, although different value of information can hold information, they are not themselves information.

 

The first person to properly define how information is transferred between things was Claude Shannon; recognised as having one of the great analytical minds of the twentieth century. His work on quantifying information has revolutionised the modern world. He saw that information was not in the actual sequence of symbols or pattern of a message, but in the message’s predictability. For example, let’s look at a message in the English language say: “Can you read this message and still understand it”. You know that often a consonant or a short sequence of consonants is nearly always followed by a vowel. For example, a ‘q’ is always followed by a ‘u’ or ‘th is always followed by vowel. This means you can remove the vowels from inside of the words of the above message and still be able to understand it i.e. “Cn y rd ths mssg nd stll undrstd t”. What you are effectively doing by removing the vowels from inside of the words is to remove characters that hold no information. So now you are left with fewer characters but the same amount of information. So, in effect you have increased the concentration of information in the message. At the same time the message has become less predictable there are fewer patterns within it that you can use, to shrink it down further; it has become more random. This doesn’t just apply to English; it applies to all languages and codes in fact, all types of intellectual, programmable and abstract information. Therefore, the more predictable something is, the less information it carries. Now it stands to reason, that more predictable a message becomes the less dense the information becomes. Until it comes to the point where a message is totally predictable but holds no information( e.g. abcabcabcabcabc..) So, you need a certain amount of unpredictability in a sequence to convey information. However, if there is too much unpredictability all though no information is lost it becomes undecipherable. This is because the receiver can no longer decipher a predictable pattern. This suggests that information has finite limits where it can exist, between total predictably and absolute unpredictability. These limits are imposed on it by the decoder, so that is why, it is the decoder, that decides what is and what is not information.

 

The big question is, how do we as humans or any conscious being for that matter, tune the predictability of pure information so we get the intellectual information we need to navigate and survive.

 

If you were, to ask any biologist how our sensory system work. They would say; sensory cells translating chemical, electromagnetic and mechanical stimuli into potentials action  potentials that your nervous system can make sense of and turn into information we can understand (intellectual information)? This process is called transduction. However, nobody knows how we take potentials action (basically electric signals) and turn it into intellectual information. To me this is the greatest wonder and mystery of the universe; but turn pure information into intellectual information we do. What is known is the apparent accuracy in which we seem to do this.   

 

Before, going further I want to make clear the difference between scenery input and perception of that input. Our main function is to survive and navigate this world not understand it. Our senses receive all the pure information they are designed to detect, all the time, they are never switched off. It is our brains that take this bewildering about information and decides not only what information is used but also when it should be used. Out of this intellectual exercise a model of reality is constructed which we use (intellectual information). For example, if you put a heavy set of keys in the top pocket, of your blouse or shirt, immediately you can feel them, and you continue to feel them for some time. They might even start to irritate you but, after a time you will not notice that they are there. Your nervous system is still emitting the feeling that the keys are in your top pocket, but you are no longer noticing them. What is happening, is your brain is receiving the pure information signals that the keys are in your top pocket but has decided that the information is no longer a threat or of any use to you and doesn’t covert it into intellectual information. This means it’s your brain or nonvoluntary intellectual reasoning (perception) that determines reality and not your senses. This of course, means that our intellectual model of the world we use is not an accurate picture of the pure world our senses detect; it is not meant to be. The  intellectual model we use only needs to contain information, that is useful to us to survive. For example: two people might disagree whether a hunger charging Lion towards them, is 96 meters or 98 meters away but, they both will agree they need to run. The point is the exact distance the Lion is away from them irrelevant. The information that there is a hunger Lion running towards them within a dangers distance is very important. This has been known about for a long time. We don’t have an exact scale for everything in heads to measure everything with. That is why in a previous example the two individuals could not agree on how far in meters the lion was away from them and is why two people cannot agree how bright a light is or its exact colour. We cannot say the exact weight (in kg or other scales) of an object is by just holding it. However, we can estimate its weight by using our experience of holding similar weights, this although not entirely accurate gives us a good idea of its weight. We don’t seem to use our senses to measure the world but to compare things in it. However, there is also an inaccuracy between our perception of difference between objects and the actual difference between the them (their comparative pure information value) This is known as the Difference threshold. Ernst Heinrich Weber a nineteenth century physician, discovered there was a logarithmic changes to how we perceive things ( percentage change rather than a liner change), for example; a person can feel the difference, between 100g and 120g but cannot feel the difference, between 200g and 220g, because for humans can only tell difference by 2% or more in the case of weight. I must be honest, later research has found this logarithmic relationship only holds true in the midrange for most human sense. However, the principle of a discrepancy between the input of pure information and the output of intellectual information holds true. It is though the brain is deciding on accurate of information we need to have to build a useful intellectual model of the world.

 

However, this might be explained by the way information works. As I think I have explained information is a quantised of finite process.  If you take a number say ‘12’ and keep on dividing it by half, you will get a (set) sequence of numbers: {12, 6,3,1.5,0.75,0.375,0.1875,0.09375, r}. This sequence is infinite process but always results in a finite or real number. The sequence of numbers will carry on forever, with each number in the sequence getting closer to zero. . However, each value in the sequence is becoming closer and closer to the previous one or in other words there is less difference between them. We know, the smaller the difference in a sequence of things or events the more predictable it becomes; and the less information is imparted. This means the more you dived something, the less information you can obtain and because there are finite limits to the predictability of information imposed by the decoder, there is a limit that information will impose on you on how far you can divide something down in other words a finite limit to information. So, if you took an apple for example and cut it in half, and then cut one of the halves in half and so on. You  would come to the stage, when the slice of apple would not be information to you. There no longer would be an enough difference between information of the apple and no information of the apple (zero amount of apple), and you could no longer detect it, so it would simple disappear as far as you were concerned.

 

I will try to explain this phenomenon using a simple thought experiment. We want to record the movement  of a simple time piece it has just one hand that rotates once a minute and has markings for seconds on its face. To record its movement, we will use a very special hypothetical camera that can take twenty-four trillion frames a second in the short scale (that two and four followed by twelve zeros in English money). When we put all the pictures or frames together in a sequence on cine film and run it, the hand on the watch doesn’t appear to move at all. Of course, all we are doing is producing a slow-motion film. The hand is moving, but so slowly we cannot see it move. In fact, if the cine film is running at the standard speed of twenty-four frames per second it would take something like 31,775 years for the hand to move one second on the watch. So, say the second’s gradations on the watch where two millimetre apart that would mean that the tip of the hand is moving a millimetre every 15,887.5 years. Far slower than anything we have recorded and would go unnoticed. Of course, if we took pictures at an even faster rate approaching an infinite rate, then we would lose any information of movement in the hand. This is because as we have shown, that information or rather the decoding of information put a limit on how far something can be divided down. The question is can we get the information of the movement of the hand back. Well of course we can its simple we have to do is keep the first frame and throw the next 999,999,999,999 in the bin then keep the next one and throw the next 999,999,999,999 in the bin and so on. Then put the pictures you have saved to together in their chronological sequence and you have twenty-four pictures recording every second on the clock. If you put them on cine film and run it at normal speed, you would restore the information of the movement of the hand. However, you would have lost a lot of certainty of were the hand was at any split second in time. You now only know with certainty were the hand is twenty-four times in a second, instead of at almost every moment in time. In affect you have only allowed information of its position to exist, at twenty-four points in any second, but in doing so you have restored the information of its movement. It is though the more information you can know about the hands movement the less you know about its position and vice versa.

 

So, the smaller the difference one byte of information and its successor the less information is imparted.  This might be why our perception of different between objects or the way we compare objects is based on their percentage difference, rather than the amount by which they differ. It may also explain our scale. If you could take information and shrink it. The smaller the information would become in proportion to you. The smaller the difference between bytes of information value becomes smaller and the more ,they appear the same, so the more predictable the information appear to you. To eventually they disappear altogether. I must point out at this point that the difference in proportions between the values has not changed they have the same percentage difference it is only our perception of the difference that has changed it is still the same information. If we stop shrinking the information and start shrinking ourselves or more to the point start shrinking our perception of things. The greater the difference between bytes of information value becomes larger and the more ,they appear to be different from each other, so the more  that information has an ability to become unpredictable to you, so reappears because it can now be deciphered by you. So, what is information and what is not information depends on the scale at which it is perceived. We are just the right size or more to the point perceive at the right scale to be able to make sense of the  world. If we perceived at the scale of an atom, our reality and therefore the world would be a totally different place.

 

I have already explained, in my keys in the top pocket example that the brain ignores certain information pure information all the time and some pure information some of the time but, is getting that pure sensory information all the time. That is why when you think about where your keys are; you can feel the keys in your top pocket again. However,  how, do you stop the pure information in the form  potentials action or signals to the brain becoming too predictable. For example,  if a particular nerve is activated in your body it sends a signal of pure information to your brain, to be turned into intellectual information.  However, if that nerve is continually activated the signal sent (however complex it might be) must repeat itself in continues steam of pure information. Therefore, becoming very predictable and losing information until it is no longer hold information, only that the nerve is activated.  However, I have said that the brain is receiving  pure sensory information all the time ( e.g. the intensity at which the nerve is activated); how can this be? I think, it is to do with how we sense the world or rather pure information.

 

I have already explained in part how we see. That our eye is constantly moving, this allows individual photosensitive cells to be constantly stimulated so that they don’t stop generating an output signal in a process called Microsaccades. This is because our photo receptive cells on the retina at the back of our eye need to be stimulated, by pulses of information and would cease to function if a constant stream of light activated them. They would become sort of paralysed. However, this explains how the eye protects the photo receptive cells, not how the pure information, created by the cell (potentials action or the electrical signal to the brain) does not become repetitive and therefore, predictable and cease to become information. Now remember, light is a wave: and a wave can carry vast amount of information. Your, photocells, react to different values or pulses of information within the light wave. These values within the wave, being information; don’t have to be in any particular order. Meaning the pure information (potentials action or the electrical pulse) sent to your brain from the photo receptive cells, is in the form of a wave. Which means the patterns of information within the pules are not regular and so are less predictable than simple signals of pure information.  This holds true for how we hear sound, because sound after all is a wave but, what about our sense of smell.  

 

Sight and hearing depend on us detecting waves however, our sense of smell (Olfaction) depend on us detecting molecules. For, decades biologists thought they knew how we smelt. They believed, that the scent molecule has shape, that fits into the scent receptor (Olfactory Epithelium) in our nose which sends a signal to our brain and the brain uses that signal to create smell.  However, new research, has shown that our sense of smell might work in a in a slightly different way.  scent molecule shape fits into the scent receptor (Olfactory Epithelium) in our nose like before. This action causes electrons in the Olfactory Epithelium passing from one atom to another to vibrate the chemical bonds of the scent molecule which intern sends a wave of potential activity (pure information) to the brain. As for or sense of taste (Gustation) it is very similar to our sense of smell in fact our sense of taste is 80% smell. I suspect that our sense taste might work the same way as our sense of smell. However, what about our sense of touch.

   

Our sense of touch or our Somatosensory system, depends on three independently operated receptor systems Your Mechanoreceptors: responsible for detecting Pressure, Vibrations, Texture. There are several receptor nerves responsible for this the main once are the Merkel cells, Meissner corpuscles and the Pacinian corpuscles. Your Thermoreceptors: responsible for detecting temperature there are two types hot & cold and you also have Pain Receptors, some of these can also be found in organs of your body and even in bone. These receptors send signals in the form of potential actions, via our nerves system to brain to be turned into intellectual information to help build our intellectual model of the world. However, developments in Haptics: the science and engineering relating to the sense of touch, in particular  the sensing and moving of objects. Has shown that touch can excite non locale sensations in the skin.  for example, you tough something with your fingertip it can cause ripples (waves) in your hand that can be picked up by receptors on your wrist. Of course, you don’t feel the wave in your wrist but nevertheless, the receptors in your wrist are working with the receptors in your fingertip to give you a sensory experience. If you think about it, all objects vibrate because they are made from molecules so when they come into contact with your hand, they must have an effect on the molecules and therefore the subatomic particles of our skin and receptors of your hand and like with your nose sensory system have an effect of sending waves of potential actions (pure information) to the brain instead of just simple signals. Ok this is mainly speculation but, I believe our brains turn waves of pure information  into intellectual information rather than just simple signals. To help us tune in on the information we need.

 

What is entropy?      

Entropy is often held responsible the reason why time doesn’t run backwards from the future to the pass. I also want to show it is directly responsible for why time runs from the past to the future. I want to look at a phenomenon known as perpetual motion. Of course, perpetual motion cannot exist in our world. So, let us imagine a complete conserved system, a mini world where only the first law of thermodynamics only applies: energy can neither be created nor destroyed. However, if we are talking about energy, as being the information of movement, we are talking about no movement being lost by an object. In other words, the total amount of movement of an object remains within that object. This world is also symmetrical meaning that an objects movement must be the same at each point of its movement whether it is moving forwards or backward. So, if you were to film, the movement of an object  it wouldn’t matter if you view the film forwards or backwards it would look the same. Also, all forces must apply evenly to each object.  It was  Emmy Noether showed mathematically that there is a relationship between symmetries and conserved quantities. Symmetry is the translation, rotation or reflection/reversal of information in such away, that the original information is preserved. In our imaginary world there is just a hard (totally solid) floor and a space above it. There is just one object that is capable of movement; a ball made from a very special type of material that can’t lose energy or in other words movement. In our imaginary world we will consider, only one force; a gravitational like force in the direction floor applied evenly to the space above it. As we allow our minds to enter this world and leave our own. We notice that the ball is precisely 10 meters above the hard floor. As the gravitational like force reacts with the ball. The ball starts to move towards the floor at an angle of 90% to it and at constant acceleration until comes in contact with the floor exactly a second later. Because the ball is made of a special material that doesn’t lose energy/movement and because the ball cannot proceed any further, the movement of the ball is transferred 180% in the other direction and the ball starts to rise towards its starting position. This time, it is going against the downward forces and will decelerate at the same rate as it accelerated downward until it reaches a zero speed at exactly one second later and 10m above the floor. The gravity like force will again react with the ball and the ball starts to move back towards the floor and the whole two second cycle starts again. Its important to note, that because the acceleration and deceleration of the ball, have the same value. That at every point of the balls travel; regardless of which direction it is traveling in, it will be traveling at the same speed so it will have overall symmetry in its movement.  This perpetual world, would be very strange as you could never be sure if time was running forwards or backwards and if your memory only lasted two seconds you would be trapped in a two second world with a future and pasted not lasting more than two seconds. This is because time is interdependent on movement.

 

The only reason, our little world worked, and we manged perpetual motion, was that the movement of the ball was kept within the ball. So, its movement was symmetrical and therefore reached a state of equilibrium were no movement was lost. This is known as an isolated closed system.  However, in the real world this could not happen. The floor could not be totally solid it would have to be made or a material itself made up of molecules which have movement. In  the world we live in we have an atmosphere of air. Which is made up of different gases which are also made up of molecules as is the ball itself. As the ball moves through air, it uses some of its movement up, moving the air molecules out the way and coming into contact with them as is brushes past them. The ball also loses movement when it comes into contact with the floor, exiting the floor molecules and its own as it deforms, to release movement in the opposite direction. However, when the ball starts to move in the upward direction it has less movement than in the downward direction and continues to lose movement, so never reaches it start position and its movement is non-symmetrical. Eventually all the movement of the ball is lost either to heat the internal movement of the molecules in the ball or to its surroundings. This is entropy; Entropy is explained the second law of thermodynamics, of course it is talking in terms of energy, but, as I have already explained ‘energy is just the information of movement’. The second law of thermodynamics states: ‘The entropy of an isolated system not in equilibrium will tend to increase over time, approaching a maximum value at equilibrium,’ Its, as though movement is constantly being drained away and spread out, as if ordered movement/energy is constantly becoming disordered. The point is this process is irreversible, the ball in our example in the real world will always slow down and stop as its concentrated (ordered) movement is diluted away (becomes disordered), the same will happen to any form concentrated / movment/energy whether it be in a star or falling apple, as movement spreads out, in the ongoing march from hot (a lot of movement) to cold (less intensive movement) , as our universe cools down.

 

This explains entropy in terms of movement, of course when I say movement, I mean apparent movement,  but it doesn’t explain the entropy in terms of information. Remember, Claude Shannon realised that information was not in the actual sequence of symbols or pattern of a message, but in the message’s predictability.  The more predictable something is, the less information it carries. Therefore, the more random, something is the more information it carries; this process is known as information entropy. This means as entropy increases as the universe goes from order to disorder the amount of information in the universe also increases. This seems to make sense up to a certain point; you would think there would be more information now than at the start of the universe. However, where is all this information come from and besides if you carry entropy, foreword to it natural conclusion in the way many scientists have predicted, the universe would keep on expanding and getting cooler and cooler and in the far distance future, all the stars (matter & energy) in the universe will burn out leaving just some dying ember left and eventually even zero point energy is so spread out that virtual particles cannot be created and there would be nothing at all. This doesn’t make sense,  if you agree with me that nothing is information, at the end of time, all you would have is nothing everywhere at every point, so everything would be perfectly predictable and therefore, information entropy will be very low not at its highest?

 

However, if we were to go with the idea that energy is simply information of movement? Then the first law of thermodynamics would apply to information. Therefore, information cannot be created or destroyed just changed from one form to another, meaning the amount of information in the universe always remains the same.  This at first sight doesn’t seem to make sense, Surly you can create information and destroy it just as easily. So, how can we have the same amount of information in the universe at the same time. This is a very difficult concept to visualise.  I will in my clumsy way try to explain using an analogy. Let’s imagine a box with particles bouncing around inside of it. If we were to take one specific point in that box, say its dead centre. Then looked at that point we might see a partial. In other words, we have information that a partial is there. If we were to look at the same point a fraction of a second later there might not be able to see a partial. This doesn’t mean you have no information; the information you have is that there is no partial at that point, the information has just changed; you still have the same amount of information. So, if you were to take all the points in space within that box and add up the information they contain. You would have the same amount of information from one split second to another. 

 

However, we are also saying that if information obeys the first law of thermodynamics it would mean it could not be created or destroyed, but surely information can be destroyed; it happens all the time. For example, all I would have to do to destroy all the information on the very file that I am writing this essay upon, is to press delete. Well, that wouldn’t actually destroy the information. Everybody knows that the computer keeps an encoded copy of the file in the recycle bin file as a backup. Ok let’s wipe the recycle bin file, now we have destroyed the information on the file. No because there are ways in which people with the right equipment and knowhow can read the information off the hard disk even though I thought I had deleted it completely. Right let take the hard drive out of the computer disassemble it and take out the magnetic platter that stores the information and cut it up into tiny pieces and throw the pieces into a fire, now surly we have destroyed the information. Sorry no, because what we have essentially done, by trying to destroy the platter by burning it, is to convert it into various chemicals, gases and energy (pure information) all of which hold information about its original state. Now if we were clever enough (which we are not or ever likely to be) we could in theory at least take the various chemicals and gases; and rearrange their atoms and molecules (reorder them) back into the magnetic platter and by doing so restore the information on it. This goes for any information it cannot be created or destroyed just changed from intellectual information to pure information. Remember pure information is naturally occurring information, which requires no intellectual input (no decision) in its creation and required no intellectual involvement to decipher or use. In other word’s information relayed by simple cause and effect. It is cause and effect that conserves information. In other words, it is the process in which information has an effect on other information by changing it, but not displacing of destroying it that means information is conserved.

All information has  effect on the universe, whether it is a wave breaking on primordial seashore before life had begun, to the very beginning of the universe or a rain drop fulling on a car windscreen in Manchester. All, are just cause and effect of information. We call this the butterfly effect. When one small bit of information’s effect, is spread out in an unpredictable and chaotic way. This is what I feel entropy really is: The natural and constant change of pure information (through cause and effect) throughout the universe in such a complex and chaotic way that it is impossible for the process to be reversed and the original information to be re-established. So, if you were to take a pen and write down something original on a piece of paper. You would have added to the information in the universe. However, that is abstract information. To create that abstract information, you took the information in the molecules in the ink in the pen and combined them with the molecules on the surface of the paper. There by changing the pure information on the surface of the paper. Although you may have added to the information of the universe with abstract information it is only temporary. Sooner or later the paper will degrade the pure information in the paper and ink will change into something else (carbon and other chemicals) and the abstract information will be lost, and you will be left with the same amount of information you started with. So, it may be true, that intellectual, programmable and abstract information can be created and compressed there by increasing information in the universe. However, it is always temporary; the vast majority of information is pure information. Intellectual information is how we understand/interpret our surroundings and by its very nature is short lived, although we can change it into abstracts information, to preserve it a little longer. 

 

Pure information is constantly interacting with itself and changing but not increasing or decreasing in quantity, to eventually all the information at every point in the universe is the same; nothing. So, what I am saying? every point of the universe holds one bit of information.

 

What Happens at the End and Beginning of Time?

Remember a bit of information is the smallest amount of information possible. It basically is recognition of one of two states. For example, up or down, heads or tails, one or zero etc. So, at the end of time when there is literally nothing; at each point in space the information is the same (nothing). Therefore, all bits of information must be in the same state. So, if nothing is one state of a bit of pure information what is the other? Well there was another time (according to expansion theory) in the history of the universe when at every point the information was the same. This was period just 10-43 seconds after the universe came into being, known as Planck Epoch. At this time, it is thought that the laws of the universe as we know them didn’t apply; that all four types of force where somehow unified and at every point was a particular type of energy. Could this particular (strange) energy be the other state a bit of pure information? I think it can, I think it was at the very start existence that entropy, started. That entropy is the constant change of bits of pure information from one state to another and back again as they interact with each other to eventually end up in one state which we see as nothing. It is the vast and complex patterns formed, as the bits change states. That form everything we know: matter, energy, the stars, the planets and us. 

 

So how does this all fit in with the question of the, begin and the end or eternity. Well when our universe comes to an end and the last bits of energy and matter dissolve into nothing and time seemingly comes to a stop and all the bits of information become the same, producing the same value nothing (zero entropy). This in it’s self would be an unstable situation because the values are not sequential (no one value higher or lower than another) so as the last bit or indicator changes to become the same as all the others it creates a very unstable value. That causes all the surrounding indicators (bits) to change back almost instantaneously setting off a chain reaction, bring the universe back into the state it was in at the time of Planck Epoch very quickly. In effect creating a big bang, time would be brought back into existence as information once again started to flow and the whole process would start again.

 

There is one, glaring problem, with this idea. At 10-43 seconds after the universe started (Planck Epoch) the size of the universe was said to be less than the volume of an atom and the end of time the universe will be many times bigger than it is now.

I can reconcile this by the fact that scale like movement and time is relative. . At the Planck Epoch the size of the universe was the size of everything there was nothing else to reference its size to. Similarly, at the end of time the universe will be the size of everything therefore at both periods the size of everything is the size of the universe, so the universe must be the same size at each period. This is not an easy concept to grasp but nevertheless is true. The Planks Epoch might be where it all began after which, patterns started to form and spread-out. Something like this must be the answer to the question of eternity, because If we stick to the idea of causality. The only logical conclusion we can come to is that time must be circular in nature. If you don’t like this idea or simple think it is simply ridiculers, that’s fine, it’s only an idea but please take time, to read on a little further to the end and consider all my ideas as a whole, if only to humour me.

 

A Summary of Answers

Before drawing this essay to a close, I wanted to bring to together, many of the ideas I have discussed, to reaffirm what I believe to be the fundamentals of existence (information, movement and their product, time). To show why scale is so important and why I think my version of reality can begin to explain the great paradoxes of existence. 

 

In struggling to look outside the box, I am trying to understand mechanisms that gives rise to existence. So, the first question must be, what was there before existence? There can be only one logical answer to that, nothing because without existence there is nothing. Then the next question is what triggered existence? There lies the greatest paradox of them all, because if there is nothing; there is nothing to trigger existence. So, by every logical reasoning and according to the accumulative understanding that humankind has on how things work; nothing should exist! Yet I do exist. Therefore, by any logical reasoning nothing must have a property or properties that allow existence. The only properties I could come up with was, that it must be able to contain information and it is solid.

 

Now thinking that the universe is solid, seems a very strange thing to do. However, logic dictates that whatever nothing is; it must be an invariant and there for a perfect solid. This means nothing cannot actually move and I believe nothing can, I believe all movement is apparent movement brought about by changing in information. This I know, is an alien concept to get your head around. However, if you think about it, movement is a very complex thing to come out of nothing. To have something move, first of all you need two separate and distinct entities. Something that moves and something it can move in. Their needs to be multiples of the thing that moves (remember, for something to move it must have something else to move in relation to) and the something that it moves in, must have internal movement in other words it must be malleable, having the ability to flow, so it cannot be an invariant. On top of that you need to have something to move your object, a force of some kind, whose properties are dictated by some mystical thing called energy, for example, and all this suddenly coming from nothing. Whereas, the apparent movement only needs to be multiple parts of the same thing that can be in either one state of another. For example, the apparent movement produced by the changing pixels on a black and white monitor.

 

Nothing must also have a property to be able to holed/contain information within it, because without information you cannot have existence. Anything that exists, has to have a presence, it has to be an entity. To be an entity it has to have an identity, and the only thing that can give something an identity is its information. Without information nothing can be identified so nothing could exist. So, what is information? Information is something that is conveyed by a series of something’s or events; in other words, a sequence of changes. Information needs two things an initiator or transmitter of the series of differences and a receiver, who uses the information. What is and what is not information, is decided by the receiver who is the decoder. If the decoder uses (recognises) the pattern or sequence of changes, its information. If it doesn’t recognise the pattern of changes, it is not information. Although to another decoder the pattern or sequence of things may be useable (recognised). However, to the decoder that doesn’t  recognise it, the information simply does not exist.

 

So, working on the premise, that information requires two parties or things. Information can be categorised into four distinct forms. 

 

1.     Pure Information: Naturally occurring information, which requires no intellectual input (no decision) in its creation and does not need to be deciphered or understood to be imparted.

2.     Intellectual Information: Naturally occurring information that has no intellectual input in its creation, which required intellectual involvement to decipher or use it.

3.     Programmed Information: Information that has intellectual input (a decision is made) in its creation but does not need to be deciphered or understood to be imparted.

4.     Abstract Information: Information that has intellectual input (a decision is made) in its creation and requires intellectual involvement to decipher or use it.

 

Out of the four type’s information, only pure information is naturally occurring. It cannot be created or destroyed, in other words there is always, the same amount of pure information. Whereas the other can be created from pure information and increase in time, seemingly to us as intellectual beings increasing the amount of information in the universe. However, these forms of information always revert back to pure information. And although, at the end of the life of the universe there will be nothing; nothing is still itself information and there will be the same amount of pure information then as there is now and at the time just after the big bang.

As intellectual beings we can never recognise pure information in its true form. To some extent to us it doesn’t exist, because we can never be conscious of it. However, that doesn’t mean it’s not real or we don’t use it. We intellectualise it, to build a model of the world that only exists in our own consciousness which allows us to navigate and survive. This ability we have, has not just suddenly popped out of existence, there nothing magical about it; it’s part of the natural evolutionary processes. The first creatures that had any ability to be aware of their surroundings, must have evolved this ability to intellectualise pure information. Intellectualising information is only a process of tuning in (identifying) pure information we want to use and ignoring the rest (all be it subconsciously); not considering it to be information at all. Evolution is just a form of cause and affect or in other words a consequence of pure information. In recent year a new field of science has opened up called quantum biology. Where amongst other things, it has shown that birds (specifically European Robins) have evolved to use quantum entanglement, as part of a process taking part in their eye, to help them navigate during migration. These birds should have no way of detecting individual entangled electrons, yet the state of these entangled electrons, do manage trigger a chemical in reaction in their eyes and brain (which is a pure information process) that they can intellectualise to give them a sense of direction. This shows, you cannot separate, quantum physics and biology or that matter, chemistry. They are all intertwined; all various way of describing nature. Likewise, you cannot separate pure, intellectual, programmed, or abstract information they all the same thing: information. Intellectual, programmed, and abstract information are just interpretations of pure information. In the same way you cannot separate information and reality. Reality, our reality is whole dependant on information and the way we interpret it (intellectualise it). Everything our five senses detect, colour, sound, odours etc. and everything we use to describe reality, matter, energy, fields and so on, are products of the way we intellectualise pure information. 

 

So how do we intellectualise pure information to create our reality? As I said earlier, in a similar way to how you tune a radio receiver to a particular radio station. Instead of selecting a frequency of radio waves you select a range of predictabilities of changes within the pure information. Remember, information is what is conveyed by a sequence of changes. As pointed out by Claude Shannon the amount of information conveyed depends on the predictability of those changes. The more predictable the changes, the less information is conveyed. However, the less predictable the changes, the harder it is for the receiver of the information to see the patterns in the information. To the point they become totally unpredictable to the receiver and become gibberish. So, for comprehensible information to be conveyed it has to have a sequence of changes within it, that are within a range of predictability and unpredictability and that range is ultimately governed by the receiver of the information. 

 

The range of predictability at which we perceive intellectual information is a product of scale and the speed of light. Let me explain; if as I believe the universe is solid and at every infinitely small point of the universe, is one bit of information that would be in contact with its neighbour and would be affected by them and have an effect on them, causing the bit to continually change states. As the bits interact with one another, they cause moving wave like patterns of pure information to flow in all directions at once. It is this flow of information that creates the phenomena, that Estine refed to as space time, which is responsible for the force of gravity. Now, because apparent movement is produced by the interactions of bits and these interactions are almost instantaneous but have a minute delay creating the phenomena, we call time. It means that information flows at a set speed,(bit speed) we call the cosmic speed limit or the speed of light. This speed limit is a constant and never varies, so the larger the object is the slower the speed of information is in proportion to it. This means as you increase in scale the objects or events you can perceive become lager and change slower giving you less information, hence time appears slower to a large object than it does to a smaller object. Consequently, the smaller you become not only does time appear to speed up but the changes giving you information become more rapped and although you are receiving more information the harder it is to comprehend. In other words, the closer you are in size to the source of the information, the bits of information, the less sense it makes. Take a fly landing on a television monitor, it only sees a lot of flashing lights, were as a human, looking at the monitor can see moving picture. We have to be the size we are, to be able intellectualise and make uses of pure information. Our world, our reality, only exists because we are so huge in comparison with a bit of pure information. Which means, we are able to interact and comprehend vast amounts of bits of pure information. Detecting patterns that are formed, by them, which allows us to create (intellectualise) an environment in which we can navigate and survive  

 

Scale is very important. It is relative phenomenon like velocity. If you had just one object in the universe it would not have any velocity. Likewise, it would not have a size, you would need another object to compare it with.  This means, there cannot be the biggest possible thing or the smallest possible thing, there can always be something bigger or smaller than it. This sounds simple, but scale is a hard concept to get your head around, particularly when it comes to the very small. It is a lot easier to imagine something being on an infinite large scale, so we can imagine thing outside of the visible universe, perhaps other universe perhaps trillions of them, stretching on for ever. However, when we try to think of things on a very small scale, we naturally tend to think there is some sort of barrier, that there must be a limit to how small something can get (a plank length) but there is no logical reason for this to be so. Infinity works equally in both directions. To put ourselves on an infinite scale would be meaningless, we could not occupy any one place on it. However, if we were placed on a scale compared to the smallest unit of anything that can have information, which I believe is one bit of pure information not the plank length. Then we would be far closer in size to our galaxy than we would to the bit of pure information.       

 

If scale is very important, in the understanding of reality, movement is fundamental to it. Without movement (when talking about movement of cause I’m really talking about apparent movement) there simply would not be anything. This is because information is transmitted by movement and information gives everything an identity (size, shape, colour, volume, mass, position, relative velocity, molecular structure, etc) allowing it to exist. Everything is moving in relation to something else all the time. If time was stopped and nothing moved in relation to anything else then you would have literally nothing, no time, no space, no future, no passed.

 

 

 

 

Existence, our world, our reality totally depends on movement and information and by extension time. Therefore, movement, information and their product time, are the fundamental building blocks of the reality in which we exist.     

 

Time is responsible for the second greatest paradox; when was the beginning? This is because like velocity and size. time is a relative phenomenon. This time, though you could have just one object in the universe and still have time this is because time is the product of change. So, you could have one object that could change colour or shape (remember both colour and shape change require movement) and the difference between the object being one colour or another or one shape and another, would be a time period. However, that time period could not have a value (a given length of time) because there is nothing else changing to compare it with. Similarly, there is no way of saying when the time period began and ended, because again no other change has taking place to compare it with. Therefore, time started when the object started to change and ends when it stops changing and time itself would be both infinitely long and infinitely short. So, what about the time we experience, what we think as time, well obviously time began when things started to change, but there lies the paradox. To trigger change in something, anything, you need an event (a causes), but every event is a result of change. For example, a light bulb changes from not giving off light to giving off light. The event that triggered the light to go on, was a change in the lighting circuit from not having a current flowing through it to having a current flowing through it. The event that triggered the current to flow was the lighting circuits switch changed from being open to being closed and so and so on. Every change requires a change, this applies to absolutely everything, from the way machinery works, to biology of why we age and natural selection, to chemical reactions to quantum mechanics, all are essentially about changes brought about or triggered by other changes. It is simple cause and effect (how pure information works) and this process is what we experience as time, but the problem is if at the beginning there is nothing and therefore nothing can change so there is nothing to trigger change. 

 

I think the answer to this paradox, lies in the flow pure information. If at every point of the universe, there is something an indicator, that can be in one of two stated. Let’s call these states this time black and white. If at some point the vast majority indicators were in the same state say white with only a very few that where black. The black indicators would have effect on their white neighbours turning them black. Which would cause a chain reaction as those indicators in turn, turned their neighbours black and so on. However, because the indicators are a range of different shapes and so have different values. Some of the black indicators would turn back white. This causes apparently moving (flowing) patterns to form giving us pure information. The universe has an overall value, which is the overall value of all its indicators and that value is always trying to stabilise at one value either all white indicators or all black indicators. If all the bits in the universe could be in one state, the universe would be either in the state of pure energy? movement (Planck Epoch) say when all the indicators are in the white state or in a state of nothingness when all the indicators are in the black state.  Although, the universe wants to be in either one state or the other it can never be in entirely in either of them.  When it is in a state of near pure energy (Planck Epoch) its values are quite stable, so process of the white indicators changing into almost all black indicators happens slowly.  This slow changing of states gives us the effect (our experience) of time and of course the apparently flowing patterns of pure information formed by this process is what we intellectualise to determine existence of everything. This process is entropy; entropy is thought as a process of order becoming disordered, but it really is a process of bits of pure information trying to become in one state. Once the universe gets to a state of near nothing, its value is very, very, unstable, so it changes back to state of near pure energy (Planck Epoch) almost instantaneously producing the so-called big bang and the cycle begins again. Of course, it would be very unlikely that each cycle of big bang to nothingness back to big bang would create exactly the same universe each time. This means an almost infinite amount of different universe will be created, but at some point, according the laws of probability an exact replica of an earlier universe will be formed and the cycle of change (time) will start all over again. 

 

I hope you have enjoyed this essay, please feel free to leave a comment