Wick and the Cricket

[Wick]

As Crick and Kit slept, Wick studied the WMAP data:

"It's like the Bible of science," Wick whispered, "A Genisis for cosmologists. And like the Bible each denomination has their own interpretation. Some cry, "Lo here!" and others cry, "Lo there!" But could it not be that there is an interpretation all denominations disregard simply because of assumptions so viceral and basic to science have blinded them to other possible truths?

Newton created Calculus, so called because it is based upon calculi or counting stones. "Upon this stone I will establish my church!" And it was established, but assumptions were made in its establishment. And over time there were schisms. The two great schisms aligned themselves with the Relativists and the Quantum Mechanists, and then there was the Holy Order of the Beautiful String, and the Quantum Loopers... "Lo here!" they cried, "Lo there!"

But none of them imagined that the universe might be moving. None of them dared to think that the universe might be racing through a "higher space" at the ridiculous velocity of "c". Nor did any imagine that the background of microwaves might simply be evidence of the universes motion through that space...ripples on still water.

Everything is interpretation...everything...but the mega-religions of science have established their dogmas and will not be moved. The cross of their axes of time and space reign supreme in all their churches! Genuflect or be ignored!

[austintorn@aol.com]

(maybe the expansion of "space" is like the 3-D universe moving in the 4th dimension…)

[Wick]

(maybe the expansion of "space" is like the 3-D universe moving in the 4th dimension…)

Wick's mind stirred. Crick was dreaming and the crickets musical thoughts pierced Wick's mind.

"Maybe the expansion of "space" is like the 3D universe moving in the 4th dimension..."

Yes, partly. Wick hoped that his thoughts would reach the hibernating cricket. But expansion is more related to the drag matter exerts upon the 3-space. A fabric of very loose weave makes a poor parachute. The air passes through without much drag and the parachutist perishes. But when the weave is tight the air becomes trapped and the fabric stretches upward against the parachute's descent.

In areas of 3-space where matter intersects the 3D surface, the fabric of the 3-space becomes tighter and the resistance against the entropward pull causes the matter-rich 3-space to strech toward ord. The more matter accumulates in the ordward stretching 3-space, the greater the resistance and pull toward ord.

So the fabric of 3-space stretches more and more and more owing to the accumulating matter and the velocity of the 3-space. This happens acutely in the presence of tightly bound matter (such as the singularity of what we call black holes), but it happens less drastically in regions where the matter is dispersed (galactic clusters, etc.).

The reason why our region of galactic clusters appears to be moving away from all the other galactic clusters is because all the clusters are dragging toward ord while the rest of space is moving toward entrop.

Let me know if you can hear me, Crick.

[austintorn@aol.com]

Meanwhile, the winter had passed by as hours and days had melted into weeks. Crick and Kit overslept a bit.

As the touch of spring awoke them, they slid from their cocoon, their silvery pinions yet wrapped and wet—and they breathed-in the moist and earthy air which had called them forth once again, and then they gently unbundled their wings and billowed them into flight. They flew and fluttered in flux, transitionally, but then transformed into a higher state that only few cricket couples could know, that of a sprite and nymph—as if so waved by some pixie hand, and arm-in-arm they flew and glided through the tall and growing grass toward the pond, bidden there, as are dragonflies, toward even fresher visions, so clear and bright, that drew them forward through all the summers of youth that they’d ever known, as there, at the water’s edge, they looked into the still water, each of them seeing only the other’s reflection looking back, cheerfully radiant and ever youthful…

Kit pointed out the aspects of the landscape, relating, “Here, the falling chestnuts of yesteryear, as from our healthy tree of love; there, the wild-hearted roses gnarling among the branches of a spruce, like a strongly formed poem blossoming with meaning.”

Flying and following the meadow trail along the wood side they caught the secret scents of the jasmine, deciphered the messages of the honeysuckle, sensed the signals of wisteria, recalled the half-forgotten memories of the rosemary, inhaled the sweet breath of violets, heard the thoughts of pansies, and felt the early youth of the primrose.

As they entered the woods, the path became a serpentine writhe of roses, pink as a maiden’s cheek, that led to a clearing where daffodils were arranged by nature’s hand—all wearing their yellow pixie-dresses. Thence to the same stream flowing later on in the forest, where lilies exhaled their powerful sweetness. Drenched in fragrance, they passed ever deeper into the woodland, noting the fairy-frocks and even more daffodils brightening from the spirit light of morning into the fuller radiance of day.

Further on, there were brilliant clumps of blue delphiniums growing in the ruins of old cottages, happy dandelions everywhere, lilac bushes as large as a building, irises in their soft magnificence, and laughing pansies that were dewy-eyed and velvet smooth. Kit knelt to smell a rose, seemingly becoming one for a moment, and, so, Crick lifted her to his lips, as if she were a flower, and kissed her and drank the dew.

“The lilies-of-the-valley,” she said, “came from Eve’s tears as she left the Garden of Eden, taking much more than just the apple blossom.”

“Every spring the world grows young again when the angels of nature reconstruct it. It is as cyclic as our universe. All is ever reproduced. A rabbit is not just pulled out of a hat; it has parents!”

“And there,” he continued, “the golden-throated lilies sing, and here a maiden-flower blushes, its purity and virginity reborn.”

She added, “And there a galaxy of sunflowers sways in the wind, echoing the luminosity of our love.”

“Yes” he continued, “herein live all the flowers of nature’s fragrant garden—even the silken saucers of the hollyhocks.”

“In which someone caught a bee as a child, then shook it and held it against an ear to hear the aggravated buzz, even getting stung perhaps, then opening the flower and letting the bee fly away.”

Such they were able to see far beyond cricket vision and on into the life of things. Time had slowed down for them—and so they could even catch flowers in the act of forming—by mirroring the pixies and obtaining their colors from the reflections. They watched as butterflies came to life in the souls of pansies—embodied there by an extension into the third dimension of fluttering flight, looking like flowers floating on air and leaving only their dusty shadow prints behind on the pansies.

They could even see in the dark, for tulip lamps lit the path of the lane and the hollyhock torches illuminated the clearings. The secret hollows glowed at midnight from the crocuses that were cups of stored sunlight. In the luminous back wood haunts, the flowers could be seen growing from the touch of nymphs. They saw fairy’s-frocks, made of elfin sowing, and lady’s-lockets, or bleeding hearts—the two heart halves joined in love—a gift to the imagination from the spirits loosed from Eden, along with Adam and Eve. From the Virgin Virgo were strewn asters, or starworts, in the form of stardust and tears streaming down from the night sky. And wherever fairies had just romanced, wild pansies, once known as ‘jump-up-and-kiss-me’, soon sprouted and sprung from the amorous power of the sprites’ images.

“The universe has expanded in the ord direction while we slept, Kit. I can sense it.”

“Me, too. It isn't gravity that's holding us down; it is everything expanding that is pushing us up!”

“Hey, you’re right. I can feel the lifting push of the earth on me.”

[austintorn@aol.com]

[A possibility is that our Universe resembles a three-dimensional membrane - called a brane - embedded in a four dimensional space. The brane can move in the fourth dimension. Although we do not see this extra dimension, the motion of the brane along it has physical effects within the brane, not least because our brane is attached to another, located very nearby, tethered by a spring like force. The force pulls the branes together to create a huge impact. The branes then fly apart, only to be drawn together again in a trillion years or so. It is the oscillations and repeated collisions of the branes that create the cyclic behavior within our own brane.]


“Ah, hail, Wick, good friend,” came a chirpy voice from the garden.

“Hello, Crick. Did you have a good hibernation?”

“Ah, yes; it was the best; we even slept in a few weeks. I dreamt of the spherical flatland. There seems to be some connection of it to the Endless Universe in that there is another dimension beyond which touches us all in the name of what goes on behind the scenes.”

“Is that the name of the article you copied some stuff out of, ‘The Endless Universe’?”

“Yes. The author would want his theory promoted.”

“Hope so.”

“How was your winter, Wick?”

“London got clobbered with an inch of snow and no one could even move without falling down. Hey, did you get the thought I sent to you while you were sleeping?”

“Yes, thanks. I used it to invent that ‘Gravity is the 4th Dimension’. The earth is larger than us, so when it expands it presses against us. A ball thrown up doesn’t “fall” so much as the earth overtakes it. Gravity is acceleration. All this explains why objects of much differing mass ‘fall’ at the same rate.”

(Austin, testing the rate of fall of differing masses)

“You stole that from RascalPuff. He spent much of his life on that theory.”

“I, um, just borrowed it for a while. I’m giving it back soon.”

“So now, Crick, we’re actually going to distinguish the inflationary and cyclic pictures by looking back in time to see what actually occurred a few instants after some kind of titanic bang or collision”? Wow! If we can do that, we’d better move this thread to a more notable area than the Public Square.”

“Indeed, Wick, we are going to peer right on through the hot plasma cloud. As for this thread, it was undetermined that we’d get to this point, each of us liking to have an extra dimension in our own way, so we can only hope the serious ToeQuestors pick up on it right here.”

“Seeing the new-born creation of the universe, my God, Crick! It is astounding beyond belief that some mammals with satellites attempt this; but, to see through this barrier we’ll need to use a far more ethereal form of radiation, one able to pass unhindered through all the terrible and plasmatic denseness, which is ‘merely’ the whole entire early universe. Do you have such a flashlight hidden up your sleeve?”

“Fortunately, Wick, just such a ghostly source of radiation exists, one of the weakest, most ancient, and evanescent entities in the universe: cosmic gravitational waves. They are the key to the sixth and final test. They answer ‘The Last Question’ proposed by Isaac Asimov, his favorite story.”

“You copied some of this stuff from the internet.”

“Well, yes, but all those contributing people work for me, although they don’t really know it. The cyclic model has potential. You’re right that the gravitational waves are quite feeble, though, for they come from very tiny mass—there is quite a lightness of being in this universe.”

“True, even a light-ness. OK, so people freely publish information to the world; that’s fair game and lucky for us all. So, what are gravitational waves, really?”

“Gravitational waves are distortions of space that travel through the universe like ripples on the surface of a pond. As the waves move through space at the speed of light, they cause space to alternate back and forth between squeezing along one direction and stretching along a perpendicular direction…”

“…where both of these directions are at right angles to the motion of the wave.”

“Hey, Wick, do you google, too?”

“Sometimes, and I’ll accept for now that Resting Light Theory can, relatively speaking, show this, as well, although the mechanics differ. Either that or Austin doesn’t know what to say here.”

“To picture the wave, think of it as a Slinky that is squeezed and stretched according to the way gravitational waves distorts space. If you were small enough or the wave was stronger, it would increase your height and squeeze you front to back.”

“That would please Austin as a weight loss plan.”

“Yes, but then just as he was becoming pleased by that outcome, the next part of the wave comes along and makes him short and fat.”

“Uh, oh, but luckily the effect is not really that large.”

“Yes, and whew! The waves from 13.75 billions years bombard us all the time, plus they are also created by any matter or energy that wiggles, sloshes back and forth, or makes circles.”

“Yes, lucky that the waves are so weak as to leave us and our atoms undistorted, but then that means it’s very difficult to detect them without a highly sensitive instrument. I hear that the total amount of squeezing and stretching as the waves reaching the earth is typically less than the width of an atomic nucleus.”

“Yes, but it’s still possible to detect them, as we will see.”

“So, how do these waves distinguish the inflationary model from the cyclical model?”

“In the inflationary model, gravitational waves are generated through the quantum jitters of microscopic regions of space. These random quantum jitters create tiny warps and ripples in space all the time—even now, not just during inflation. But normally they come and go so quickly that they leave no long-term vestiges. The warps created during inflation are different because they are rapidly stretched to extraordinary sizes and become long-lasting distortions of space. Whether stretched a lot or a little, the waves have roughly the same height and depth.”

“Hmmmm. So, in the inflation model, small-wavelength gravitational waves are set in motion first, and then progressively longer-wavelength gravitational waves start moving as the universe evolves.”

“How did you know that? And so today those wavelengths range from a few meters to billions of light-years. Since they all begin with the same height for all wavelengths, the test for the inflationary universe model is to search for a scale-invariant spectrum of gravitational waves.”

“Sounds good, plus I can’t really talk from myself since Austin is writing this. And, so, of course, that spectrum would be totally different for the cyclic model.”

“Yes, completely different, for two reasons. First, the energy density of the universe during the phase when long-wavelength gravitational waves are generated is miniscule for the cyclic universe compared to the inflationary case. Second, the gravitational waves produced in the cyclic universe are not scale-invariant.”

“Hey, cool, so, instead, their amplitude increases sharply as their wavelength decreases.”

“Good observation, Wick. This is because the gravitational waves are generated as the branes accelerate toward one another before the big collision. This acceleration causes the quantum jitters of space to increase as the branes approach, which enhances the height of the smaller-wavelength gravitational waves generated during the last instants before collision. The result is a cyclic spectrum of gravitational waves that cannot be confused with the inflationary prediction.”

“There’s those brainless branes again, Crick, but I do suppose that if we can disprove the inflationary model, then that shows that something else must be afoot.”

“Yes, like the bigfoot cyclical kickoff of the universe time and time again forever.”

[austintorn@aol.com]

“Crick, are the WMAP satellite results growing more relevant because the satellite obtains more information every day?”

“Yes, because gravitational waves leave a distinctive imprint on the cosmic radiation background radiation pattern. First, gravitational waves traveling across the universe distort the distance to the plasma that emitted the cosmic background radiation. The effect is to brighten or dim the the radiation according to whether the path along which it travels is shrunk or stretched by the gravitational waves. The brightening and dimming creates hot and cold spots in the WMAP image on top of those caused by the variations in energy density.”

“Astounding, but can we separate and extract this entangled information easily?”

“Yes, by a statistical analysis of the pattern of hot and cold spots. For example, one approach is to count how the number of spots varies with size, where the size is measured by the number of degrees a spot subtends on the sky. The gravitational waves generated during inflation should produce a pattern with a nearly equal number of detectable spots of each size for sizes ranging from two degrees and upward. Variations in energy density produce a different pattern of hot spots and cold spots spanning all angles. By comparing the number of spots of various sizes, cosmologists can disentangle the gravitational wave and energy wave contributions. The simplest inflationary models predict that gravitational waves should be responsible for somewhere between 10 and 40 percent of the hot and cold spots spanning more than two degrees. I just got back from speaking with the WMAP team.”

“They talked to a cricket?” That’s strange.”

“Well, you are, too! They heard about the Pentagon virus thing and were curious to meet me so they gave me an audience.”

“Just joking.”

“They brought me up to date and will have more soon at a really big conference.”

“What did they say so far?”

“They found no gravitational signal down to the level of 35 percent, which rules out some simple inflationary models but leaves many others intact; however, soon we get to hear about their more sensitive test on the effects of gravitational waves on the polarization of the cosmic background radiation pattern.”

“Polarization.”

“Yes, I’ll have to copy some stuff verbatim, but also leave out some of the complexity of polarization for brevity.”

“At least you admit it. I’ll bet that some of it comes from a book and that it would take too long for you to retype it all.”

“How do you know these things? Is my skull transparent? Anyway, there’s not a whole lot new under the sun, so it’s all in the cross-relation of ideas much of the time, such as in this thread and in the book.”

“What about where the sun don’t shine.”

“That’s a dark matter.”

“What about where and what light really is, such as described by RLT?”

“That’s well covered in another thread, plus Austin isn’t so good at that stuff. He’s still trying to travel up, down and around a flatland globe. He had to leave bread crumbs to know where he had been.”

“OK. I’ll talk to you some more after the really big conference. It was actually held in 2006, you know.”

“Yeah, but I’m just pretending that it’s now in order to give some more drama to the story. I’m having trouble finding the percentage stuff in the 2008 report and later, especially because the 2009 one is in over a month from now. Anyway, although those will go to lower percentages and rule out even more inflationary models, WMAP is probably reaching the end of its abilities.”

“Aye, yi-yi—stay in character, Austin.”

“Well, some movie stars did that and it became permanent.”

“Oh. I guess one could become what they do and see if too many neurons connect and then further build on that by staying in character too long.”

“Chirp, chirp.”

[austintorn@aol.com]

“Hey, Crick, is that you behind the sunglasses?”

“Yes, the polarized lenses keep out the polarized rays of the sun, leaving the rest alone, for even though the light from the sun and the hot plasma of the early universe is unpolarized, when it scatters off matter some of this outgoing radiation in some directions is polarized; thus, light from the sun scattering by roughly ninety degrees from molecules in the atmosphere arrives at the eye highly polarized, although not perfectly so.”

“So, the lenses block the predominant polarization but let through a small amount of light with the opposite polarization?”

“Yes, plus I am a movie star and so I don’t really need to be recognized.”

“What movie!”

“The ‘Genetic Code’ movie, in which we find that DNA holds some juicy secrets about our past, many of them not presently active and presumed as junk DNA, but actually just turned off and still quite readable.”

“Alright already! What about polarization?”

“OK, I’ve just returned from the big conference. Now, skipping over same basic definitions, the cosmic background radiation became polarized when it scattered for the last time off the hot gas that filled the universe 14 billion years ago. This was because the plasma had some nonuniformity. Although the radiation now reaching us has been transformed from red-hot gas into microwaves, its polarization remains unchanged.”

“So, both the gravitational waves and the energy density are sources that cause polarization?”

“Yes. Energy density fluctuations produce only E-mode polarization, but gravitational waves produce a mixture of both E- and B-mode polarizations.”

“We can detect B-mode, of course?”

“Yes, and so if there is B-mode then the inflationary model wins and the cyclical model loses.”

“So, at the really big conference?”

“Oh, yes. The first part was a bit boring as they went over the quality of the instruments, but this demonstrated the validity of the data gathered. I almost fell asleep. I’m getting tired even thinking about it.”

“Crick!”

“Oh, yeah. Lyman Page proudly presented the first full-sky polarization map ever made, hastening to report, “The pattern we have measured is pure E-mode, with the gravitational waves contribution to the hot and cold spots having to be less than 28 percent, ruling out still more inflationary models.”

“Even some of the most promising inflationary models?”

“Indeed. After the applause died down, there came the time for questions.”

“And of course you asked one.”

“I said to Lyman Page, ‘That map is fantastical and fabluous! With this experience of the polarization map produced by WMAP, how much further do you think we can push to search for B-modes and what is the best approach?’ Now remember, Wick, that Page is a meticulous scientist who bases prospects on conservative judgment…”

“Crick, tell me already!”

“OK. There’s good news and some not so good news.”

“Give me the good news first.”

“Page’s answer was crisp and unequivocal: ‘We can push the measurements from 28% to 1% percent using a new satellite dedicated to the purpose.’”

“Holy cow!”

“Yes, Wick it was like a canon going off! What an uproar ensued.”

“Page is calling for a satellite whose instruments and flight path are specifically designed to measure the polarization pattern!”

“Want the bad news, Wick?”

“Huh? What?”

“Although this satellite could be ready in 5 years, NASA has recently redirected its focus toward a manned mission to Mars. The satellite is off the agenda until at least 2018.”

They were both happy and sad at the same time and exhausted from the dialog. As they drifted off into the haze of daydreams and a nap, Crick managed to whisper “there are some other hopes coming about that are not too far off, some even launching in 2009…”

[Wick]

"But space isn't the final frontier, Crick. Its just a hole we keep falling into. The answers aren't in the hole. They're in the greater space of 4-dimensions. If we want to understand the universe, we have to look to a dimension higher. How do we get there? How?"

A gaddisfly buzzed around Wick's nose as he drifted to sleep.

[labelwench]

Caramel had such exciting news! She just couldn't wait to share it with Wick and the cricket.

She cast her mind over the rise, and through the portal, discernable only to those who knew where to seek same.

The friendly mare inhaled the loveliness that was spring in this place. New growth was everywhere, just as it would eventually return to the north and her habitual space/time. She reached down and took a few nibbles of the delicious taste that is sublimely spring. Chewing with her eyes closed in ecstasy, Caramel desired another bite, just a little one...

A rude taste assailed her sensitive tongue.Oh, no! She had nipped through a Crocus stem, and all horses know that Crocus is not for eating. Now Crocus would die, before achieving it's primal principle of propagation, and she was to blame.

What could she do to make ammends? Caramel was quite distressed by her thoughtless action, unintentional though it was. Perhaps Wick or Crick might be of assistance.

Gently she picked up the flower and carried it with her until she came upon the sleeping Wick. No sign of Crick or Kit at present. Perhaps this was nap time for crickets as well.

Not wanting to wake the sleeping Wick, the red mare gently laid the Crocus on his chest. It was a lovely Crocus to her eye, perfect in every way for it's kind.

Backing away quietly, Caramel reflected on how her delight of the moment had become tragic for the Crocus, actions and reactions reflected throughout time and space everywhere.

Her exciting news was the furthest thought from her mind at this moment....

[austintorn@aol.com]

“Hey, Wick, wake up!” said Crick. “There’s a crocus on your chest.”

“What the heck!”

“Guard it with your life, for saffron is made from crocuses and sells for $700 an ounce.”

“A visitor must be about. I’ll bet it’s Caramel and rider.”

“And maybe a whole herd of elephants jumped over us as we slept.”

“Let’s not get carried away.”

“But dinosaurs might do that.”

“Crick, are you all the way awake yet?”

“I guess not. Anyway, I don’t know if we are falling through a hole but it still seems that I am being pushed outward.”

“Ord and tempth.”

“Oh, yeah. Do you think that there are more dimensions after the 4th, and so on?”

“I have to get back to you when I can write for myself.”

“OK. But maybe there is no room left for any more extra directions and the 5th dimension is more like the possibility and superposition of all states below it, such as all possible universes. Thus, we could go anywhere possible in that dimension, even all at once, and this certainly kills determinism, doesn’t it?”