Copernicus showed how apparent motion in the heavens indicates actual motion of the earth. In this blog, I present a postulate that apparent motion in quantum phenomena (light, electrons and quarks) indicates actual motion of the universe we live in.
A certain sphere, shortly after being conceived in a particle exchange between his massive planetary parents, was diagnosed while yet in embryo with a superficial infection that covered his entire outer surface. The infection, a fairly common two-dimensional malady known as the Sphlat, took hold early in the first degree of the sphere’s gestation, when its diameter was a mere Planck length in size.
As is common with Sphlat infection, an intelligent species of microorganisms evolved inside the Sphlat and quickly organized a complex civilization upon the poor embryonic sphere even before the first degree of gestation was complete. The rising civilization built significant cities, farms and roads. They built shipyards and set out to sea to explore the surface of the Sphlat. A brave explorer, Meridian Flagellan, in an effort to prove what he called the Principle of Arc, circumnavigated the Sphlat and returned with mathematical calculations proving the Principle of Arc, but also indicating that the Sphlat was in a state of rapid inflation. Thanks to Flagellan’s data, the physicists of the Sphlat ascertained that their world was an expanding two dimensional surface which they called a hypercircle.
Flagellan’s voyage and the data gathered along the way was most timely and fortuitous, for if he had not completed his voyage in the first degree of the Sphere’s gestation, a circumnavigation would have never been possible. By the end of the first degree of gestation, the Sphere and parasitic Sphlat had grown quite immense through embryonic inflation (a well-know stage in spherical embryonic development know as the Great Inflat). Consequently, no future circumnavigation would ever be possible.
Physicist in the Sphlat became very concerned about the Great Inflat as they quickly noted that their many cities were beginning to grow more and more distant with every passing day. The tale was told of a close knit trio of city states who went to bed one night well in view of one another, but who by morning found that the Sphlat between them had stretched them beyond view. Trade between the cities quickly came to a halt. Many Sphlatlanders went on long journeys to find loved ones or to collect debts owed them in the neighboring cities. Most of these foolhardy souls were never heard from again.
What concerned the physicists of the Sphlat most was not so much the Great Inflat itself. What concerned them was that they were unable to explain why their universe was expanding at such a tremendous rate of speed. A few ingenious students of the rising field of topography developed the Bubble Theory in which they presented strong evidence that the Splat was a mere two dimensional bubble that would expand in size until it eventually popped or contracted into what they termed the Big Splat. This theory became a favorite among many physicist who were convinced that the expansion of the Sphlat could not go on forever. Most everyone in the Sphlat became convinced that at some point in the future all things would end in the Big Splat.
There were other mysteries, that piqued the curiosity of the physicists of the Sphlat. Among these was an unexplained ambient heat field and the apparently related appearance of light field on a regular periodic cycle. No one in the Splat could explain the presence of this miraculous energy, though all were grateful for its presence. Without it, the Sphlat would have long since died away. A majority of experts suggested that this heat was a residual energy or remnant from the Big Inflat. A few scientists opined that light was an extremely refined substance of some kind that washed across the surface of the Sphlat. A few of the more famous physicists, involved in higher levels of study, used curious methods to ascertain that light infused all things in the Sphlat, whether the Sphlat was in light or in darkness. Some even believed that the light was a kind of glue that made the Sphlat cohesive and gave it form. These sages came to understand that even solid figures had light inside them. Religionist of Sphlat took this information and leapt to the conclusion that light was something like a soul. Various belief systems arose out of these studies, but most Sphlatlanders were of a more scientific mind and denounced the religious views that stemmed from these excellent academic efforts.
By the three hundredth degree of the Sphere’s gestation, the organisms on the Sphlat had become very advanced indeed. They actually learned to observe atoms that intersected the Sphlat. On one auspicious occasion, using a pair of isolating rods to form an isolation chamber, two distinguished researchers at a leading university in one of the larger Sphlat metropolises managed to isolate a cross-section of hydrogen atom for a brief period. The data collected required a very long period of time to analyze, but upon completion, the researchers learned that atoms are an organized swarm of billions of particles. This swarm appears to consist of a positively charged central core surrounded at a significant distance by a negatively charged circular region. The researchers have dubbed this circular region “the first circle”. Exactly what keeps the negatively charged first circle from collapsing toward the positively charged core remains a mystery to the Sphlat researchers, but they have theorized that light somehow insulates the two regions. As to why the positively charged region remains cohesive, researchers have suggested that some kind of universal force (which they call the strong force) holds the atom’s swarming core together.
The core and the first circle consist of innumerable particles which in any given instant are created and annihilated. During the brief isolation, the particles appeared and disappeared with such swiftness that the researchers had a hard time measuring any mass in the scintillating particles. Yet they managed to get readings which seem to indicate an almost insignificant mass. The overall mass of the atom, however, eludes the researchers because it is impossible to tell the average number of particles in the core and first circle at any given moment.
Sadly, the scientific progress of this ingenious civilization came to an end as it always does during the last few degrees of each Sphere’s gestation. By the 360th degree, Sphlatlanders in virtually every known infection succumb to riotous behavior associated with a sense of doom that the expected Big Splat has come. They wildly spend their resources and engage in various kinds of behavior that undermine environmental safety and civil order. Government gives way to anarchy and eventually destruction. To date no living Sphlat infection has been detected on an infant Sphere, so complete is the final stage of social decline, that the inhabitants of the Sphlat, their civilization and culture are completely annihilated.
Observercentricity
For dimensionally challenged creatures, basing science solely upon observation is a risky proposition. Just as Sphlatlanders trying to explain three dimensional processes, we three-dimensional observers who observe four-dimensional phenomena are bound to misinterpret and obfuscate the true facts because we observe only what our three-dimensional faculties permit us to observe. Math can help us to probe into higher dimensions, but if our observations and perceptions provide incorrect input to the mathematician, the equations may be most beautiful, but incorrect.
In a sense, we are very much like the two-dimensional observers in the Sphlat. They come to wrong conclusions, because they are missing a majority of the information. We Spacelanders should take warning from the cautionary tale of the Sphere and the Sphlat. Einstein put it this way: “I am not a positivist. Positivism states that what cannot be observed does not exist. This conception is scientifically indefensible, for it is impossible to make valid affirmations of what people ‘can’ or ‘cannot’ observe. One would have to say ‘only what we observe exists,’ which is obviously false.”
In our example of the Sphere and the Splat, the two dimensional creatures struggle to deal with phenomena of three-dimensions. They are unable to observe the three-dimensional whole of the universe. Because they cannot account for the underlying embryonic sphere who serves as their very foundation, the cosmologists of the Sphlat conclude that their universe is a hollow and unsupported supercircle. They likewise assume that such a structure must be an uncommon and unlikely aberration of nature, bound to pop or contract. They find it difficult to understand the presence of inexplicable energy existent in the Sphlat—energy that only becomes comprehensible by grasping the nature of the underlying (and overarching) sources of heat and light. So they fail to comprehend what warms them from beneath—the sphere—and what enlightens them from above—presumably a sun or some other source of visible light. Their inability to understand the nature of three dimensional objects in the larger universe, causes them to misunderstand everything.
As they, we have come to understand the cosmos in a very similar way. We talk of the residual microwave background that remains from the Big Bang. We also consider the shape of space and have come to believe that the universe is “flat”. We wonder whether the cosmos will expand forever or contract into a Big Crunch. We theorize that the universe as currently configured is a tremendous anomaly and that the typical configuration of the universe must be something considerably less ordered than the universe that has existed for the last 13 billion years. While these presumptions (based upon firm evidence) may well be true, we must ask ourselves: Is there something fundamental we are missing? Does our potential lack of dimension blind us to possibilities that have up to now escaped our comprehension?
Consider how the inhabitants of the Sphlat understand the quanta. Isolating an atom of hydrogen with its three quarks and electron, they come to the understandable conclusion that they are not observing a few fundamental particles, but that a hydrogen atom is an organized swarm of billions of particles, created and annihilated at any given moment. To borrow the words of Boethius, a particularly enlightened philosopher of the 2nd century A.D., “that which is one and undivided is mistakenly subdivided and removed by (the inhabitants of the Sphlat) from the state of truth and perfection to a state of falseness and imperfection.” Because of their two-dimensional nature, the Sphlatlanders “make divisions of that which by nature is one and simple, and in attempting to obtain part of something which has no parts, succeed in getting neither the part—which is nothing—nor the whole” which they cannot comprehend.”
Like the Sphlatlanders, I suggest that we three-dimensional creatures fail to understand the true nature of the universe because we see subdivisions of the universe not the overarching whole. We grasp only what we see in the fleeting moment, in the present point. We think we are well on our way toward understanding the nature of light, the nature of matter, the nature of space and time, even the nature of universal evolution. But ultimately we only understand an insignificant and changing piece of the fabulous whole.
“Nature is showing us only the tail of the lion,” Einstein mused, “but I have no doubt that the lion belongs to it even though, because of its large size, it cannot totally reveal itself all at once. We can see it only the way a louse that is sitting on it would.” I respectfully add to Einstein that the lion is a lion of four dimensions and we are lice of only three. Quite a conundrum.
This conundrum significantly complicates our efforts to understand the universe, especially when the crowning achievements of science (the theories of general relativity and quantum mechanics) are based squarely upon univercentric and observercentric principles. General relativity was established specifically to ensure that the laws of physics were the same for every observer. Likewise, quantum theory describes an observed universe, but fails to tell us what the quantum universe would be like if we (the 3-d lice upon the 4-d lion’s back) were not here. In a nutshell, our theories describe a macroscopic and microscopic universe fully dependent upon a centered and unmoving universe containing a few observers.
I think it safe to say, that the universe has gotten along quite nicely without us for far longer, than it has with us. The human louse (if you’ll forgive such an appellation) is a relative latecomer to the universe. And were we all to disappear tomorrow, or were some cosmic phenomena to blind us all or make us incapable of observation, the universe and its components would move along their inexorable track, unobserved by humans, the quanta in perfect harmony with the stars, exactly as Providence made them. The universe is no more dependent upon us and our observation, than it is upon maple syrup on its morning pancakes.
Yet we are here, and it is we who are trying to comprehend the universal lion. Understanding the whole lion is only possible for us as we scrutinize and observe its tail, perhaps only the tip of its tail. Humility is in order.
03-12-2008 11:06 PM 
