INFIVERSE
INFINITY IN ZERO
INTRODUCTION
Summary: We can’t get close to appreciating the importance of Infinity without also recognising the role and importance of Zero, as the opposing Absolute, which is just as fundamental and complex as Infinity. Our reality, all reality, the whole Infiverse, is simply the borderline where Infinity and Zero collide, causing asymmetry, collapsing wave functions, resolutions and inherent paradoxes.
I’ll give the short version here, in case I otherwise never get round to setting it down.
I am an avid pursuer of mathematics, cosmology, philosophy and physics (especially quantum mechanics). I have a theory. It’s “original”, at least in the sense that I haven’t taken it from anywhere; I’d concede that I might have absorbed aspects of it subliminally from somewhere. And with 6 billion people on the planet, I concede it’s possible that it has been thought of independently by others before me. But I haven’t seen it anywhere that I’m aware of.
Mathematics is the key to the underlying structure of reality. It is not just a tool for explaining or understanding reality, but is the very basis of our reality, of all reality.
There are two “Absolutes” (it’s hard to come up with a name for the two most fundamental principles): Zero and Infinity. A lot of theoretical work has been done on Infinity (Kurt Gödel et al), because there’s a lot you can do as work on it; there’s something to work on. Not much theoretical work has been done on Zero, because, well, there’s not much there to study … Zero is taken for granted, at least once it was finally introduced from the East to western number-theory.
Infinity, once you even half-grasp its implications, is an awesome thing, a thing that inspires true awe. So is Zero, except for the fact that it seems so much more mundane, as simply the absence of something. In fact, being the opposite ends of the spectrum of possibilities, they are both equally awesome. Zero is not simply the start-point of a series that sets off towards a mind-boggling Infinity; Zero is the opposite end-point from Infinity. Viewed “backwards” from Infinity, it is Zero which is the mind-boggling extreme.
Infinity and Zero are the two extremes, the two Absolutes, in mathematics and in everything.
Both of them have a similar tendency to defeat logic, to create paradoxes.
Both lie at the heart of quantum theories. The role of Infinity in quantum mechanics is celebrated in the work of Heisenberg, Everett, Deutsch et al. I’m not sure that the role of Zero in quantum mechanics has been equally appreciated. When the wave function collapses, or resolves infinitely , what is left of the wave function itself? Zero? Is that zero just mundane, or is it as fundamental as the thought of wave functions collapsing ad infinitum in infinite time?
Both Infinity and Zero are fundamental – it just looks like Infinity is the more fundamental!
They are two polar opposites, two absolutes, two fundamental principles, simultaneously both in union and in conflict with each other.
In some sense, they are the same as each other – the infinite sum of everything cancels out to zero, just as matter and anti-matter cancel out to zero. Ergo, by reverse, Zero can be expanded out to infinitely everything, just as zero can produce matter and anti-matter, as happened in the moment of the Big Bang or other Crunch. Zero contains Infinity as potential.
I hope you are now getting the idea that Zero is really as awesome and mind-boggling as Infinity is. (No, I am not on some quest for Nirvana, though I suspect that those thinkers intuited something of this, even before they had advanced mathematics and quantum theory to go on.)
Infinity and Zero both “do” co-exist, and “cannot” co-exist. It’s a paradox; but we’re no strangers to paradoxes in quantum theory. The actual relationship “between” Infinity and Zero is quite possibly beyond human understanding; maybe we can appreciate it at the quantum level, with paradoxes, but never fully grasp it. We can maybe see how it explains everything except itself, because it necessarily carries paradoxes with it. Our reality is a collision between the two, which must produce a range of compromises and paradoxes between them.
Our reality, our cosmos, our reality, is the collision-area between Infinity and Zero.
Imagine two fundamental absolutes: in “almost all” of Zero, there is nothing. In almost all of Infinity (sic), there is infinite potential but no actual. Where Infinity and Zero collide, the borderline between the two, is where wave functions have to collapse, where “actuality” happens, where potential has to become actual (even if infinite versions), and where zero has to become something. Everything we can observe or surmise, that is not zero or infinite, is a sort of “compromise” between the two, a borderland where they conflict, where neither wins out, and their collision generates “stuff” between zero and infinity. We, and everything in all possible worlds, are the contingent fall-out from their collision.
Yes, I realise that this description seems to posit the existence of some third element, some domain or ether or geography or time-scale in which the two Absolutes of Infinity and Zero can collide. Some terrain over which they fight. Or at least a timeline that allows a pre- and a post-collision, if the collision is an event of some kind …
That is a question I put to myself, and I have 4 answers:
1) No, there is no third element in which the two Absolutes operate, neither terrain nor time. These two elements, Zero and Infinity come “first”, and we only resolve into “lesser” things like Time and Space by virtue of their interaction. I should probably say interaction rather than collision, if only as an attempt to remove the time-element, or, rather, to make time-elements come into play only “later” than the interaction between Zero and Infinity. This is similar to brane theory – the issue of “when” the branes “collide”, to produce space-time, is moot.
2) And/or: the nature of their “collision” really is beyond human understanding. We can get so far, but no further. Not only do we have no words for “how” and “when” Zero and Infinity interact, we have no capability of forming the right non-linear, non-temporal concept for it, since we are part of, and subject to, and limited by, the reality that ensues from it; we are part of the contingent aftermath. Our brains are limited to a few dimensions created by the collision, at least in our part of the collision-output. (Unless you go for the strong anthropic principle, but I don’t myself – maybe the subject of a follow-up discussion.)
3) There just might BE some third element (eg time, or “possibility”) within which Zero and Infinity collide. But then that third element existed without or “before” the Absolutes of Zero and Infinity? If so, it’s a fundamental we cannot possibly get to or understand. Infinite regress? We’ve gone as far as the human brain can probably go if we stop at the fundamentals of Zero and Infinity, and don’t even try to do more than speculate at infinite regress backwards to where Infinity and Zero “came from”. In my view, they didn’t come from anywhere, nor did they spend any time un-collided and then collide; I think they are as absolute as it gets: they are fundamental mathematical absolutes. At that level, with the paradoxes inevitable with Infinity (and with Zero), they can be deemed to be their own causes, as Absolutes. There’s nothing more absolute than Infinity or Zero. Ergo, Time is a consequence of the inter-action between Zero and Infinity, not a sequence within which they collided. Time is a very strange phenomenon (granular, quantum, continuous?), but intrinsically not as “absolute” as Zero or Infinity. If there IS a third element, it is even more absolute than time.
4) The “beauty” of mathematics. Is mathematics invented or discovered? Is it there all the time? It’s there. At some level, if there IS a third incomprehensible element within which Zero and Infinity come to blows, then it is the nature of mathematics itself, a pure essence from which Zero and Infinity flow, and hence must conflict, and hence must create collision-areas, forced paradoxical compromises between the two principles, creating time and dimensions and space and reality and actuality.
In summary, our whole reality is the borderline collision area between the Absolutes of Infinity and Zero. In one sense, there are vast areas of Zero, and there are vast areas of Infinity (sic), and there is a borderline where they conflict and resolve into “Actuality”, i.e. the sum total of actual existence, the Infiverse (yes, Many Worlds). That actuality is a fighting-ground, and a compromise, between the two absolute Absolutes. It is a crystallisation compromise between the two Absolutes, with aspects of both still applying. This is why we run into paradoxes in cosmology and particle physics and quantum mechanics – it’s because it’s a collision-area between two Absolutes, a compromise between everything and nothing, between Infinity and Zero, both holding sway at the same time, hence the paradoxes.
How does quantum mechanics fit into this? Well, with respect, I think it means that the paradoxes in quantum mechanics fit in well, and are intrinsically insoluble/uncertain, because Infinity inevitably carries a lot of paradox with it (so does Zero, though it is less obvious – the role that Zero plays is more evident when you collide Zero with Infinity).
And the quantum wave function? Yes, it yields all potential outcomes. I mean both potential outcomes to each quantum event; I suspect that every wave-function has a binary yes/no potential; but, when added together over infinite collapses, there are infinite outcomes.
Multiverse/Many Worlds. This theory is surely right. You can’t pursue quantum mechanics to its ultimate without seeing Multiverse as the only possible next-level explanation, however fantastical it sounds. Once you’ve got Infinity involved, nothing is too unlikely, so long as it is mathematically/logically possible. What? You mean that every tiniest action goes two ways in two separate branches of reality? Yes. If you think that sounds like inconceivably too many branches, you just haven’t understood Infinity. Infinity is big enough to accommodate all that and then some- it’s kind of in the nature of Infinity! My regret is that they (Everett first?) were apparently a little soft-soaping it by calling it MULTIverse; it is surely either one universe, or an INFIverse. No half way. I prefer to call it “Infiverse”.
Yes, I do therefore conclude, from Infinity and Zero, that we “live” in an Infiverse, an infinite set of universes. Every quantum event goes both ways, producing an ultimately-infinite set of parallel universes. We are in just one of them. This explains the god-like luck that the universal laws/constants happened to be just right for mass and energy to emerge from the Big Bang with just enough asymmetry for galaxies and stars to form, and just the right universal constants for the four fundamental forces to produce stable matter, and a scattering of anti-matter away from matter, etc, etc. Yes, it’s an absolutely amazing set of variables that had to be just right for us to be able to be here at all and wonder at it. But the point is that: Infinity takes care of that with ease, and then some. ALL the options happened. Our chance of all those, and other, constants being “just right” was a billion to one; no, a trillion to one; no, a trillion trillion trillion to one; no, even less chance than that. No problem. Infinity handles trillions of trillions with ease, and then some. It means that all options happened. We are just standing in one that worked out, and standing amazed the odds; otherwise we wouldn’t be here trying to work it out.
It’s analogous to your chances of being here as a living descendant: what were the chances of all your great-grandfathers meeting all your great-grandmothers? Hmm. Well, if not, you wouldn’t be here to ask the question! Every one of us is here through a massive set of unlikely partnerships over thousands of generations, that happened to lead to us being here to marvel at the odds against us being here. Same for our reality. We are one of those realities that led to us. Huge numbers of realities didn’t lead to us – they didn’t even lead to stars, never mind carbon-based life-forms, never mind humans, never mind you and me. Huge numbers. We are a very rare chance of the universe working out the way that leads to us. One in a trillion trillion trillion or more. No problem. Infinity can handle that with ease. And then some. Quadrillions don’t even dent Infinity. Our reality was bound to be one of the infinite number … It only seems “unlikely” to us if we fail to understand just how infinite Infinity is.
Can we ever prove this? Unfortunately I suspect not, except by logic about Infinity and Zero. I doubt that any experiments can ever prove the Infiverse – they can only conclude that the Infiverse is not ruled out, or that there are interferences and paradoxes that might be best explained by it. I suspect that quantum wave-function-collapse really does cut outcomes off from each other totally. The infinite universes cannot detect each other, they can only deduce each other. We can only infer the Infiverse as the only viable conclusion, not prove it by experiment. This is because we can only observe the reality produced by our own combination of wave-function-collapses, not all or any of the others, I suspect.
I said that this was founded on an appreciation of mathematics as being the key to underlying reality. Among infinite realities, I can imagine infinity extending to very different physical constants from those which we enjoy in our universe (we are the prize-winners, who get to stand here to ask how come we won.). The force of gravity might vary in its strength, and fail to form even stars in the “majority” of infinite possibilities. But I find it hard to imagine that there are realities in which mathematics could be different from what it is, where 2-squared does not equal 4. That seems so much less happenstance than the degree of force of the strong and weak nuclear forces or the force of gravity. That’s why I think that mathematics is the invariate, and the key to it all, and where the primacy of the Absolutes of Infinity and Zero are deduced from. The rest follows from there and is debatable as to its implications.
Robert Axby
10 March 2009
PART 2: THE IMPORTANCE OF “2”
I hesitate to add this, lest it take away from the above, by being less solid and by seeming to complicate things. But it just may be the vital next step to the above.
As I said, my view springs from mathematics as the underlying basis, of which zero and infinity are the two absolutes.
There are 2 of them. 2 absolutes. This is not coincidental or trivial. If only one of them “existed”, there would be a zero-nothing, or an infinite-unrealised-potential. It’s the fact that there are 2 of them that allows collision, or interaction, or asymmetry, and leads to the conflict between absolutes that leads to our realities becoming actualised. That there are 2 of them…
2 has some kind of special place in mathematics and in the above cosmology. Without 2, we would have either Zero or Infinity, not both (neither being on its own condusive to realities, or actualities, or matter, or humans – we are only here at all because the 2 conflict…).
2 seems fundamental in other ways, much more than 3 or 5 or even pi or c.
2 is the essence of binary, from which anything can be done. On/off. Yes/no. Everything can be built by binary (even quantum computers would make use of multiple binaries?). It is also true of 2 types of matter (matter and anti-matter), 2 types of charge, 2 directions of spin, etc etc. Let’s face, 2 runs through everything.
I suspect that it is no coincidence that to get anything started, it required 2 absolutes (Infinity and Zero), not just one of them.
I suspect it is no coincidence that when Infinity and Zero collide, they resolve into an uneasy 4 dimensions (space-time) – which is 2-squared. (We should also maybe talk later about why on earth “squared” seems underlying, eg E = MC-squared - why wasn’t it E = c X pi or such?).
String theory suggests 8-16 dimensions, with 11 being the current favourite. I somehow suspect that it will turn to be 8 or 16 at that level, ie 2 to the power of 3 or 2 to the power of 4
At the particle level, we have found exactly 16 fundamental particles. Coincidence? I think not. I’m not surprised that at that level there are 2 to the power of 4 types of particle.
I therefore “predict” (from the elegance and symmetry of mathematics) that the Higgs Boson particle will NOT be found by the Large Hadron Collider, which would make an inelegant 17 fundamental particles, anathema to those who see the elegance of mathematics? (I count W-minus and W-plus as one, understandably).
It may well be that we need a Higgs Field. But I predict it somehow won’t produce an associated Higgs Boson, making 17 fundamental particles at that level! 2 and its powers are built in. Perhaps the particle required from the Higgs Field is of a prior order, part of preons/pre-quarks, more fundamental than our 16 fundamental particles, and thus might be part of the next level down, not the quark level, ie one of the preons, of which (once the theory gets right) there will undoubtedly be only 8, 4 or 2 - all powers of 2.
The level below our 16 fundamental particles will inevitably be 8 or 4. And the ultimate below that will be 2, from which all else springs.
There is definitely something seriously fundamental about 2 and therefore the powers of 2 such as 2-squared, cubed etc. Maybe “2-ness” is that fundamental ether within which the two fundamental absolutes of Infinity and Zero collided; if it weren’t for 2, they wouldn’t have had to interact … and produce reality, and us.
2 is at the heart of wave-function-collapse, at the heart of position-or-momentum uncertainty, at the heart of binary, at the heart of quantum computing, at the heart of bifurcations to infinite worlds etc.
2 is somehow the underlying principle that made Zero and Infinity clash, or else the medium within which they did so. But the nature of that is getting beyond my human capabilities; I just predict that powers-of-2 will continue to turn out to be key in all discoveries in particle physics, in quantum computing, and in quantum mechanics and cosmology. Yes or no? ;)
Robert Axby
19 March 2009
Summary: We can’t get close to appreciating the importance of Infinity without also recognising the role and importance of Zero, as the opposing Absolute, which is just as fundamental and complex as Infinity. Our reality, all reality, the whole Infiverse, is simply the borderline where Infinity and Zero collide, causing asymmetry, collapsing wave functions, resolutions and inherent paradoxes.
I’ll give the short version here, in case I otherwise never get round to setting it down.
I am an avid pursuer of mathematics, cosmology, philosophy and physics (especially quantum mechanics). I have a theory. It’s “original”, at least in the sense that I haven’t taken it from anywhere; I’d concede that I might have absorbed aspects of it subliminally from somewhere. And with 6 billion people on the planet, I concede it’s possible that it has been thought of independently by others before me. But I haven’t seen it anywhere that I’m aware of.
Mathematics is the key to the underlying structure of reality. It is not just a tool for explaining or understanding reality, but is the very basis of our reality, of all reality.
There are two “Absolutes” (it’s hard to come up with a name for the two most fundamental principles): Zero and Infinity. A lot of theoretical work has been done on Infinity (Kurt Gödel et al), because there’s a lot you can do as work on it; there’s something to work on. Not much theoretical work has been done on Zero, because, well, there’s not much there to study … Zero is taken for granted, at least once it was finally introduced from the East to western number-theory.
Infinity, once you even half-grasp its implications, is an awesome thing, a thing that inspires true awe. So is Zero, except for the fact that it seems so much more mundane, as simply the absence of something. In fact, being the opposite ends of the spectrum of possibilities, they are both equally awesome. Zero is not simply the start-point of a series that sets off towards a mind-boggling Infinity; Zero is the opposite end-point from Infinity. Viewed “backwards” from Infinity, it is Zero which is the mind-boggling extreme.
Infinity and Zero are the two extremes, the two Absolutes, in mathematics and in everything.
Both of them have a similar tendency to defeat logic, to create paradoxes.
Both lie at the heart of quantum theories. The role of Infinity in quantum mechanics is celebrated in the work of Heisenberg, Everett, Deutsch et al. I’m not sure that the role of Zero in quantum mechanics has been equally appreciated. When the wave function collapses, or resolves infinitely , what is left of the wave function itself? Zero? Is that zero just mundane, or is it as fundamental as the thought of wave functions collapsing ad infinitum in infinite time?
Both Infinity and Zero are fundamental – it just looks like Infinity is the more fundamental!
They are two polar opposites, two absolutes, two fundamental principles, simultaneously both in union and in conflict with each other.
In some sense, they are the same as each other – the infinite sum of everything cancels out to zero, just as matter and anti-matter cancel out to zero. Ergo, by reverse, Zero can be expanded out to infinitely everything, just as zero can produce matter and anti-matter, as happened in the moment of the Big Bang or other Crunch. Zero contains Infinity as potential.
I hope you are now getting the idea that Zero is really as awesome and mind-boggling as Infinity is. (No, I am not on some quest for Nirvana, though I suspect that those thinkers intuited something of this, even before they had advanced mathematics and quantum theory to go on.)
Infinity and Zero both “do” co-exist, and “cannot” co-exist. It’s a paradox; but we’re no strangers to paradoxes in quantum theory. The actual relationship “between” Infinity and Zero is quite possibly beyond human understanding; maybe we can appreciate it at the quantum level, with paradoxes, but never fully grasp it. We can maybe see how it explains everything except itself, because it necessarily carries paradoxes with it. Our reality is a collision between the two, which must produce a range of compromises and paradoxes between them.
Our reality, our cosmos, our reality, is the collision-area between Infinity and Zero.
Imagine two fundamental absolutes: in “almost all” of Zero, there is nothing. In almost all of Infinity (sic), there is infinite potential but no actual. Where Infinity and Zero collide, the borderline between the two, is where wave functions have to collapse, where “actuality” happens, where potential has to become actual (even if infinite versions), and where zero has to become something. Everything we can observe or surmise, that is not zero or infinite, is a sort of “compromise” between the two, a borderland where they conflict, where neither wins out, and their collision generates “stuff” between zero and infinity. We, and everything in all possible worlds, are the contingent fall-out from their collision.
Yes, I realise that this description seems to posit the existence of some third element, some domain or ether or geography or time-scale in which the two Absolutes of Infinity and Zero can collide. Some terrain over which they fight. Or at least a timeline that allows a pre- and a post-collision, if the collision is an event of some kind …
That is a question I put to myself, and I have 4 answers:
1) No, there is no third element in which the two Absolutes operate, neither terrain nor time. These two elements, Zero and Infinity come “first”, and we only resolve into “lesser” things like Time and Space by virtue of their interaction. I should probably say interaction rather than collision, if only as an attempt to remove the time-element, or, rather, to make time-elements come into play only “later” than the interaction between Zero and Infinity. This is similar to brane theory – the issue of “when” the branes “collide”, to produce space-time, is moot.
2) And/or: the nature of their “collision” really is beyond human understanding. We can get so far, but no further. Not only do we have no words for “how” and “when” Zero and Infinity interact, we have no capability of forming the right non-linear, non-temporal concept for it, since we are part of, and subject to, and limited by, the reality that ensues from it; we are part of the contingent aftermath. Our brains are limited to a few dimensions created by the collision, at least in our part of the collision-output. (Unless you go for the strong anthropic principle, but I don’t myself – maybe the subject of a follow-up discussion.)
3) There just might BE some third element (eg time, or “possibility”) within which Zero and Infinity collide. But then that third element existed without or “before” the Absolutes of Zero and Infinity? If so, it’s a fundamental we cannot possibly get to or understand. Infinite regress? We’ve gone as far as the human brain can probably go if we stop at the fundamentals of Zero and Infinity, and don’t even try to do more than speculate at infinite regress backwards to where Infinity and Zero “came from”. In my view, they didn’t come from anywhere, nor did they spend any time un-collided and then collide; I think they are as absolute as it gets: they are fundamental mathematical absolutes. At that level, with the paradoxes inevitable with Infinity (and with Zero), they can be deemed to be their own causes, as Absolutes. There’s nothing more absolute than Infinity or Zero. Ergo, Time is a consequence of the inter-action between Zero and Infinity, not a sequence within which they collided. Time is a very strange phenomenon (granular, quantum, continuous?), but intrinsically not as “absolute” as Zero or Infinity. If there IS a third element, it is even more absolute than time.
4) The “beauty” of mathematics. Is mathematics invented or discovered? Is it there all the time? It’s there. At some level, if there IS a third incomprehensible element within which Zero and Infinity come to blows, then it is the nature of mathematics itself, a pure essence from which Zero and Infinity flow, and hence must conflict, and hence must create collision-areas, forced paradoxical compromises between the two principles, creating time and dimensions and space and reality and actuality.
In summary, our whole reality is the borderline collision area between the Absolutes of Infinity and Zero. In one sense, there are vast areas of Zero, and there are vast areas of Infinity (sic), and there is a borderline where they conflict and resolve into “Actuality”, i.e. the sum total of actual existence, the Infiverse (yes, Many Worlds). That actuality is a fighting-ground, and a compromise, between the two absolute Absolutes. It is a crystallisation compromise between the two Absolutes, with aspects of both still applying. This is why we run into paradoxes in cosmology and particle physics and quantum mechanics – it’s because it’s a collision-area between two Absolutes, a compromise between everything and nothing, between Infinity and Zero, both holding sway at the same time, hence the paradoxes.
How does quantum mechanics fit into this? Well, with respect, I think it means that the paradoxes in quantum mechanics fit in well, and are intrinsically insoluble/uncertain, because Infinity inevitably carries a lot of paradox with it (so does Zero, though it is less obvious – the role that Zero plays is more evident when you collide Zero with Infinity).
And the quantum wave function? Yes, it yields all potential outcomes. I mean both potential outcomes to each quantum event; I suspect that every wave-function has a binary yes/no potential; but, when added together over infinite collapses, there are infinite outcomes.
Multiverse/Many Worlds. This theory is surely right. You can’t pursue quantum mechanics to its ultimate without seeing Multiverse as the only possible next-level explanation, however fantastical it sounds. Once you’ve got Infinity involved, nothing is too unlikely, so long as it is mathematically/logically possible. What? You mean that every tiniest action goes two ways in two separate branches of reality? Yes. If you think that sounds like inconceivably too many branches, you just haven’t understood Infinity. Infinity is big enough to accommodate all that and then some- it’s kind of in the nature of Infinity! My regret is that they (Everett first?) were apparently a little soft-soaping it by calling it MULTIverse; it is surely either one universe, or an INFIverse. No half way. I prefer to call it “Infiverse”.
Yes, I do therefore conclude, from Infinity and Zero, that we “live” in an Infiverse, an infinite set of universes. Every quantum event goes both ways, producing an ultimately-infinite set of parallel universes. We are in just one of them. This explains the god-like luck that the universal laws/constants happened to be just right for mass and energy to emerge from the Big Bang with just enough asymmetry for galaxies and stars to form, and just the right universal constants for the four fundamental forces to produce stable matter, and a scattering of anti-matter away from matter, etc, etc. Yes, it’s an absolutely amazing set of variables that had to be just right for us to be able to be here at all and wonder at it. But the point is that: Infinity takes care of that with ease, and then some. ALL the options happened. Our chance of all those, and other, constants being “just right” was a billion to one; no, a trillion to one; no, a trillion trillion trillion to one; no, even less chance than that. No problem. Infinity handles trillions of trillions with ease, and then some. It means that all options happened. We are just standing in one that worked out, and standing amazed the odds; otherwise we wouldn’t be here trying to work it out.
It’s analogous to your chances of being here as a living descendant: what were the chances of all your great-grandfathers meeting all your great-grandmothers? Hmm. Well, if not, you wouldn’t be here to ask the question! Every one of us is here through a massive set of unlikely partnerships over thousands of generations, that happened to lead to us being here to marvel at the odds against us being here. Same for our reality. We are one of those realities that led to us. Huge numbers of realities didn’t lead to us – they didn’t even lead to stars, never mind carbon-based life-forms, never mind humans, never mind you and me. Huge numbers. We are a very rare chance of the universe working out the way that leads to us. One in a trillion trillion trillion or more. No problem. Infinity can handle that with ease. And then some. Quadrillions don’t even dent Infinity. Our reality was bound to be one of the infinite number … It only seems “unlikely” to us if we fail to understand just how infinite Infinity is.
Can we ever prove this? Unfortunately I suspect not, except by logic about Infinity and Zero. I doubt that any experiments can ever prove the Infiverse – they can only conclude that the Infiverse is not ruled out, or that there are interferences and paradoxes that might be best explained by it. I suspect that quantum wave-function-collapse really does cut outcomes off from each other totally. The infinite universes cannot detect each other, they can only deduce each other. We can only infer the Infiverse as the only viable conclusion, not prove it by experiment. This is because we can only observe the reality produced by our own combination of wave-function-collapses, not all or any of the others, I suspect.
I said that this was founded on an appreciation of mathematics as being the key to underlying reality. Among infinite realities, I can imagine infinity extending to very different physical constants from those which we enjoy in our universe (we are the prize-winners, who get to stand here to ask how come we won.). The force of gravity might vary in its strength, and fail to form even stars in the “majority” of infinite possibilities. But I find it hard to imagine that there are realities in which mathematics could be different from what it is, where 2-squared does not equal 4. That seems so much less happenstance than the degree of force of the strong and weak nuclear forces or the force of gravity. That’s why I think that mathematics is the invariate, and the key to it all, and where the primacy of the Absolutes of Infinity and Zero are deduced from. The rest follows from there and is debatable as to its implications.
Robert Axby
10 March 2009
PART 2: THE IMPORTANCE OF “2”
I hesitate to add this, lest it take away from the above, by being less solid and by seeming to complicate things. But it just may be the vital next step to the above.
As I said, my view springs from mathematics as the underlying basis, of which zero and infinity are the two absolutes.
There are 2 of them. 2 absolutes. This is not coincidental or trivial. If only one of them “existed”, there would be a zero-nothing, or an infinite-unrealised-potential. It’s the fact that there are 2 of them that allows collision, or interaction, or asymmetry, and leads to the conflict between absolutes that leads to our realities becoming actualised. That there are 2 of them…
2 has some kind of special place in mathematics and in the above cosmology. Without 2, we would have either Zero or Infinity, not both (neither being on its own condusive to realities, or actualities, or matter, or humans – we are only here at all because the 2 conflict…).
2 seems fundamental in other ways, much more than 3 or 5 or even pi or c.
2 is the essence of binary, from which anything can be done. On/off. Yes/no. Everything can be built by binary (even quantum computers would make use of multiple binaries?). It is also true of 2 types of matter (matter and anti-matter), 2 types of charge, 2 directions of spin, etc etc. Let’s face, 2 runs through everything.
I suspect that it is no coincidence that to get anything started, it required 2 absolutes (Infinity and Zero), not just one of them.
I suspect it is no coincidence that when Infinity and Zero collide, they resolve into an uneasy 4 dimensions (space-time) – which is 2-squared. (We should also maybe talk later about why on earth “squared” seems underlying, eg E = MC-squared - why wasn’t it E = c X pi or such?).
String theory suggests 8-16 dimensions, with 11 being the current favourite. I somehow suspect that it will turn to be 8 or 16 at that level, ie 2 to the power of 3 or 2 to the power of 4
At the particle level, we have found exactly 16 fundamental particles. Coincidence? I think not. I’m not surprised that at that level there are 2 to the power of 4 types of particle.
I therefore “predict” (from the elegance and symmetry of mathematics) that the Higgs Boson particle will NOT be found by the Large Hadron Collider, which would make an inelegant 17 fundamental particles, anathema to those who see the elegance of mathematics? (I count W-minus and W-plus as one, understandably).
It may well be that we need a Higgs Field. But I predict it somehow won’t produce an associated Higgs Boson, making 17 fundamental particles at that level! 2 and its powers are built in. Perhaps the particle required from the Higgs Field is of a prior order, part of preons/pre-quarks, more fundamental than our 16 fundamental particles, and thus might be part of the next level down, not the quark level, ie one of the preons, of which (once the theory gets right) there will undoubtedly be only 8, 4 or 2 - all powers of 2.
The level below our 16 fundamental particles will inevitably be 8 or 4. And the ultimate below that will be 2, from which all else springs.
There is definitely something seriously fundamental about 2 and therefore the powers of 2 such as 2-squared, cubed etc. Maybe “2-ness” is that fundamental ether within which the two fundamental absolutes of Infinity and Zero collided; if it weren’t for 2, they wouldn’t have had to interact … and produce reality, and us.
2 is at the heart of wave-function-collapse, at the heart of position-or-momentum uncertainty, at the heart of binary, at the heart of quantum computing, at the heart of bifurcations to infinite worlds etc.
2 is somehow the underlying principle that made Zero and Infinity clash, or else the medium within which they did so. But the nature of that is getting beyond my human capabilities; I just predict that powers-of-2 will continue to turn out to be key in all discoveries in particle physics, in quantum computing, and in quantum mechanics and cosmology. Yes or no? ;)
Robert Axby
19 March 2009
