CERN: The Zero Possibility to Explain Gravitation

and

The Non-Zero Possibility to Destroy the Universe

vs

Commonsense Understanding of Quantum Reality 

By A. Gaudwin

(NB: My background is French and this essay has been sent to contacts at CERN, with the mention that it will be distributed on the Web.)

 If a 'theory of everything' is ever developed in physics to explain all the known
phenomena in the universe, it should at least partially account for consciousness. Roger Penrose

"Nothing [was*] more fairly distributed than commonsense." [René Descartes Updated* --- He didn't know about quantum mechanics]

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If you are a particle physicist working at CERN, you are aware of the "non-zero possibility" to destroy the universe with your experiments. You also know the reasons given by a committee of your peers to not consider this possibility as a real threat. However, I am convinced that what you don’t know is the true relation that exists between the space-time continuum and quantum gravitation, since if you knew, you would also know that you have more chances to destroy the universe with your experiments than to explain the force of gravity, for you have as many chances to explain gravity from the perspective of a substantive space-time  continuum supporting particles of force, as the pre-renaissance astronomers had to conceptualize gravitation while believing that crystalline spheres were needed to hold the Heavens together, which is to say: “ Zero!”

I can make these claims with authority, since they directly follow from the theory of Dialectical Evolution of Complexity based on time discontinuity, e = mlc²,  : from Energy to Matter, Life, Consciousness, ^{and Beyond}, which I have independently developed in and out of the university during the last thirty years, and which came to play the same role in the explanation of inertia, mass, and gravitation [sic], as Copernicus’ hypothesis of a moving earth and Galilean relativity played in their discoveries.

"To be is to be perceived."  Berkeley

"The question is not to be or not to be; to be is not to be." Alan Watts

Bohm Interpretation

I first understood “time discontinuity” as a cycle of being and non-being of the whole reality in the same spirit as Alan Watts, who was proclaiming in the same period of time (1970) that “To be is not to be.” However this was not very satisfactory to me, since I was not comfortable with the idea of “global non-being”: What happens to the universe when it is not? It took me another ten years to figure that out. It is after I got acquainted with Bohm interpretation of Quantum mechanics in the mid-eighty that I realized that “time discontinuity,” the fundamental discontinuity in the process of reality, could be expressed in terms of “Implicate and Explicate order.”

Here is how I came to interpret the relations between these two orders of reality in terms of discontinuity: What is enduring (being) is not the reality that we can perceive, as Berkeley assumed, but the "Implicate order," in which there is no discontinuity of any sort that can be perceived, but only “unbroken wholeness” that cannot.

"Nothing endures but change."  Heraclitus

Explicate Order (non-being)

The "objective reality" that we perceive is an illusion, since what we perceive  is a series of quantum of action for which movement is impossible. Indeed, in this "discrete reality" that I assumed, “before” is gone forever, and “after,” not yet existent, as Zeno already understood with arrows, and modern science with "Jumping electrons."  Moreover, in this discrete reality, “locality” is impossible, since motion being nonexistent, there is no possibility of local contact between quanta of action. What is problematic in my understanding of Bohm interpretation, thus, is not action-at-a-distance, but local action. All that we perceive as "true motion" is an illusion, since motion happen at a “deeper order” on the form of an unperceivable and incomprehensible differential adjustment of “holomovement” (From Bohm’s Interpretation). In fact, the "holomovement" of the deeper order is as incomprehensible from a point of view assuming a substantive "space-time continuum," as the "the Heavens" were from the point of view assuming that the earth was fixed at the centre of the universe.

All that we are aware of is a series of transitory quanta of action, which we don’t perceive as entities, but which all together make up the "motion picture Time” that we enjoy as a species—each discrete frame not lasting 1/24/second, but 10 ^–44 s (Planck time), or somewhere in this range. This is why I believe that it might be dangerous to destroy an elementary particle at this infinitesimal period of time, as the “Cernautes” want to do in their 27-kilometre accelerator, by recreating the conditions of the early universe, when according to my theory, the original discontinuity between being (Implicate order) and non-being (Explicate order) happened for the first time. They could then inadvertently break a link in the "unbroken wholeness" (more below), thus creating a rip in its fabric, and putting a stop to our never-ending reviewing of the “motion picture Time.”

“Nothing changes”  Parmenides

Implicate Order (being)

It becomes even more frightening when we consider the possibility that the original Pre-Big Bang singularity, the initial “Being” in which all the potentialities of our evolving order were contained, could still exist as the “Implicate order,”  since, having  no dimension but only potentials, there was nothing in this original singularity that could come to an end.  It is these “potentialities” of the early universe (Principia)  that could be artificially “untangled” in the LHC by an act of destruction. This could be dangerous since it is possible that the Implicate and Explicate orders are also the two elemental contradictions of the original dialectics, whose perpetual Quantum becoming, usually unobserved at the "deeper order,” is the illusive reality that we perceive at the “higher order.”  What would happen if a destruction of a particle of matter is ever observed at this ultimate quantum instant? Is it not possible that the ordered reality that emerges as a series of quantum instants, of which we are aware, emerges into its antithesis, eternal chaos, as a consequence of our newly acquired capacity to "observe" the destruction of one elementary particle close to the instant when it is one with the "Unbroken wholeness?" 

Here is why I believe that the creation of such chaos is possible:

1. First there is the first principle of thermodynamics, which tells us that in any process the total energy of the universe remains the same: Nothing is ever destroyed, but always transformed into something else; then

2. there is the anthropic principle, which stipulates that the universe is fine-tuned “for the existence of (intelligent) life on earth at the present time” (Penrose, parentheses in the original); and finally

3. there exist physical quantities in the universe (physical constants) that play essential roles in this fine-tuning and which are generally believed to be both universal in nature and constant in time. (Wikipedia).

So, it is possible that to observe (since, at the Quantum level, if it is not observed, it doesn’t exist—and probably at our level too), to observe, thus, the destruction of only one particle of matter, at an instant when it is still implicated with the whole universe, when the process of "untenglement" occurs, could have the consequence of changing the total amount of energy in the universe. Why? Because this particle, which would be annihilated at an instant close to its being implicated with the whole universe, would not have the chance to transform itself into anything else, as the first principle of thermodynamics states it should, since it would already be entangled with everything else, therefore affecting the total amount of energy in the universe, the values of the physical constants depending on it, and thus, the conditions of the actual universe allowing for our existence.

Thus, it is also possible, if the initial Big Bang is in fact the ultimate instant when all matters of the universe came out of nothing, that this newly created Big Bang will have the  antithetical consequence of returning all matters of the universe into nothing, as I fear.

So, the danger lurking behind the creation of a new big bang is not "only" to “destroy the universe,” as I first believed, but, which is even worst, to send it into relative chaos in which we could not exist anymore. Experts will probably retort that this is “laughable,” since the force of each collision in the collider is “equivalent to the energy of a flying mosquitoes:  "Speculations about [such cataclysmic events] ...refer to .... collisions of pairs of protons, each of which has an energy comparable to that of a mosquito in flight." Okay! But this assertion is even more frightening, when one thinks about it. Indeed, if we increase nuclei to the size of moskitoes,moskitoes would be the size of solar systems [Sic]. Can you imagine the mightiness of two of these, and the effect they would have here on earth, if their energies were concentrated in a car tunnel under the Alps?

It is by reason of this relatively immense force applied on protons that the first instant of the universe will allegedly be “recreated” in the LHC. Again, if my identification of these first instants of the universe to the "eternal" (No beginning nor end) implicate order has a “non-zero possibility” to be valid, could it not be dangerous to recreate their conditions with an act of destruction? Could it not have the antithetical effect of creating eternal chaos out of the evolutionary order that has engendered us, as I fear it would?  The committee that concluded that this was not a real threat [sic] grounded their conclusions on the facts that these kinds of collisions happen all the time with much greater energy in the atmosphere and elsewhere in the universe. However, I haven’t seen mentioned anywhere,  that these natural collisions are not closely “observed,” as they will be in the underground detectors the size of “cathedrals.”

Furthermore, could it be also that to compare these high-energy collisions happening in the atmosphere to collisions happening in the very constricted beam of energy of the LHC be the same as to compare the burning of a thousand pounds of loose black powder in the middle of a desert to the explosion of less powder serving as triggers in atomic bombs?  Moreover, I haven’t seen mentioned anywhere, either, that the strange matters that could be “created” by these high-energy collisions have been predicted by the same standard model that predicted the existence of the elementary particles, which have already been detected in profusion in smaller accelerators. Why predictions of the potential destruction of the whole universe made by the same model not taken in consideration?

Something of that nature might have already happened in the RHIC, in the US. However, the process happened so fast that it could not be "detected."  "We expected the particles to be released for a much longer time at these high energies," said University of Washington physicist John Cramer. "Instead, the time is so short that we can't measure it. The time has grown shorter with increased energy instead of longer."

These particles just disappeared without a trace. Literally, since it is by leaving traces in bubble chambers that elementary particles are detected. (At least that’s the way they were detected when I was younger.) But no problems, we are presently putting the finishing touch to another accelerator in Europe, which will be seven times bigger and able to measure events happening even closer to the ultimate Planck time —the ultimate Quantum of action. Then we’ll know, by next summer, whether the simple act of observing the annihilation of particles close to their “implication” with the whole universe will send us into eternal chaos, or not.

***

It is after hearing from a scientist on the Internet in December 2006 that there where a "non-zero possibility to destroy the universe," that I first contemplated this possibility of creating chaos with the experiments conducted in the Large Hadron Collider.

Indeed, I already had a similar idea about the destruction of the whole universe, twenty year earlier, when I correlated from a lay point of view the results of (1) Aspect’s experiment to (2) my personal interpretations of the Big-Bang theory and (3) David Bohm interpretation of Quantum mechanics:

1. Everything that has once been in contact remains “entangled,” even when light years apart.  (Aspect)
2. The "singularity" of the early moments of the universe (Big-Bang theory) could still be with us as "eternal" Implicate order. (my hypothesis) 
3. Reality oscillates between being (Implicate order - “Unbroken wholeness”) and non-being  ( Explicate order, Illusive reality). (My hypothesis)

It is then that for the first time (twenty years ago) I became aware that it could be dangerous to destroy, I have updated this twenty year later to, "to observe the destruction of," even one particle of matter, at or close to the instant when it is still implicated with the “unbroken wholeness.”

As I told you before, I can make this claim with authority, since it also came to directly follow from the theory of Dialectical Evolution of Complexity, which eventually developed into a theory of Quantum reality that play the same role in the explanation of conscienscious, inertia, mass and gravitation, and in the riddance of a substantive space-time continuum, as Copernicus’ hypothesis of a moving earth and the Galilean relativity played in the discoveries of gravitation and in the riddance of unnecessary crystalline spheres.

Before I submit these rudimentary explanations to the scrutiny of your expertise, though, and hopefully convince you to agree with me that your experiments could disrupt the "universal equilibrium," I feel that I need to present myself and define the context in which this notion of time discontinuity came to play a crucial role in my reasoning. I believe that it is important, and ask for your patience. Normally, I should not have to do this, after thirty years, my peers would know who I am and what I did at the university. However, if I am a scientist, I am not a “normal scientist”: I have no peers. Since, after two general baccalaureates, the first received in my twenties, and the second deliberately undertaken in my thirties, to develop a “comprehensive” understanding of “our failures” as a species (Buckminster Fuller), and after a subsequent unspecialized Master’s degree in Zoo-anthropo-sociology, gained in my late forties among unwitting academics, I became a “natural scientist.” In the sense that after all that I came to know as much about science, as natural philosophers of the late seventeen and early eighteen centuries knew about nature, which is to say: Not that much.

Nonetheless, I know enough to know that in science one is bound to find what one is looking for. And what I have been trying to find at the university, from a “comprehensive” point of view, are the effects that our deep-rooted fallacious assumptions about space and time and our inabilities to perceive the intrinsic discontinuity of reality have had on our religious beliefs since the beginning of time [sic] and on our scientific understanding of reality in the modern times.

Actually, I can say “since the beginning of time,” for my theory fruitfully suggests, in the spirit of Ernst Mach and to some extent David Bohm, that “space” and “time” are not substantial entities existing of all eternity, but the basic cognitive notions (Kant’s a priory) that we had to intuitively conceive to become consciously aware of the opened Savannah, as Homo at the start of our evolutionary journey into the mental dimension. And much later, as pre-modern humans, the basic cognitive notions (space and time)that we had to consciously substantiate to formulate the laws of (illusive?) motion. 

Here is, for instance, how this “comprehensive” understanding of science allowed me to shed light on the limits [sic] of David Bohm interpretation of Quantum mechanics.  Indeed, when he says that:

In the enfolded order, space and time are no longer the dominant factors determining the relationships of dependence or independence of different elements. Rather, an entirely different sort of basic connection of elements is possible, from which our ordinary notions of space and time, along with those of separately existent material particles, are abstracted as forms derived from the deeper order.(Wikipedia, my italics),

it is easy for me to see that Bohm has been too much informed by Quantum Mechanics and not enough by the theory of Evolution. Actually, it is not “our ordinary notions of space and time “. . . [that] are abstracted as forms derived from the deeper order,” but, on the contrary, it is the notions of the “deeper order” (e.g., waves and particles) that we have abstracted from the notion of space and time that we have conceived to “objectify” the world at the start of our evolutionary journey into the mental dimension.

For Bohm, to say that “ . . . our ordinary notions of space and time . . . are abstracted as forms derived from the deeper order,” he must assume that the space time continuum exists. Well! It doesn’t. No more than the “ether”  or crystalline spheres exists. Nevertheless, I have accepted and even prolifically used the first portion of his statement about "unbroken wholeness."

Part II: Commonsense Understanding