Dark Matters

Not sure if this normal, but it seems natural. I find myself looking at the world around us through the prism of the world I created in Evolved. Do other authors do this? Maybe it is my way of making subjective sense of recent events in France and the Middle East.

In Evolved there are extra dimensions, textured branes and dark matter in the universe. All of these aspects have an element of the possible based on current scientific theory. In such a rich world there are limitless ways to think about space travel and something greater.

Lately dark matter has been receiving more attention, as particle physicists like Dr. Lisa Randall publish new books on the subject. Dark matter should really be thought of as “transparent matter” since it does not interact with light and therefore we can not detect it directly. Instead scientists have observed its gravitational impact on the cosmos, resulting in fairly strong evidence of its existence.

What is most startling about dark matter is that it is all around us. In fact, about 85% of what surrounds us is likely dark matter. Billions of dark matter particles pass though us every second. Do other laws of physics exist for dark matter? Likely. Does this mean there could be life in the form of dark matter? Makes for fertile writing material, no?

So, getting back to my point. If there is dark matter all around us, in us, and there are likely extra dimensions around us, even in us – are we part of something greater that we do not recognize because our senses are limited?

The events in France had me pondering these questions as everyone was asking, why? Why would a religion willfully and deliberately kill innocent people? In some shallow respects I understand their “eye for an eye” argument. We have killed innocents by dropping imprecise bombs in the Middle East. War is nothing but the escalation of tit-for-tat.

But how does God play into this? Radical Islam seems to suggest a reward system for killing infidels who do not worship the proper God in the proper way, like God moves around and doles out specific prizes.

But, and this is where Evolved comes in, if God is everywhere and in every moment in time, it seems silly to think of God as moving closer. And how does targeted killing of a fellow person possibly get rewarded? I suppose I could turn the question around on the west and find our reasons wanting as well. Are we simply preserving our capitalistic society so we can accumulate more objects using Middle East energy sources? Our materialistic incentive structure drips with blood as well. Maybe we’ve just built up enough buffers (fighting happens overseas with a separate military, and multiple economic transactions exist between oil and our new car) to protect our moralistic compass from disturbance.

What I believe is that God is a constant. God is everywhere, all the time. It is up to us to open up to him, connect. The cardinal sins are simply telling us that these actions close us off from God, distract us from knowing. It really isn’t so complicated. No need to try to control the world around you. Just simply learn to control yourself, and whatever dark matter exists within you.

If science struggles to fully explain only 15% of the matter that surrounds us, all of us should maybe humble ourselves and open up to bigger possibilities.

Nested Meanings

Two is better than one, as the saying goes. This seems true from the smallest to the largest scale. Did you know particles in quantum theory like photons are monogamous? Only two can become entangled, not three. Entangled particles are connected in a way not completely understood by physicists, but basically it means the measurement of one determines the value of the entangled particle, no matter the distance separating them. Breaking the entanglement is possible, but costs energy. It is one of the stranger and least intuitive aspects of quantum theory, and also one that has proven vexing when scientists have tried to integrate the theory of general relativity with quantum theory.

Bridging quantum theory and the theory of relativity has been an on-going effort, resulting in fields of study like string theory. String theory replaces particles with loops and strands, creating a mathematical basis allowing for the two theories to combine, but not without contradictions. String theory requires higher dimension objects called D-branes to solve some of the contradictions between quantum and relativity. String theory suggests D-branes (branes for short) are ten dimensions, although there are theories that imply many more dimensions are necessary. Dr. Randall at Harvard does a great job pulling it together in a readable manner.

Before your brain cramps, simply think of a dimension as a necessary descriptor to describe your location precisely. In the reality we understand, we can locate every particle by its three spatial dimensions and time. But let’s say we found a way to shift gravitational force, holding everything else constant. Well then, we’d need another descriptor, or dimension, in order to describe our location precisely.

In the book Evolved the universe is based on ten dimensional branes within a higher dimension bulk universe. Think of it as objects floating in space. Humanity is in a four dimensional reality (three spatial plus time) within the ten dimensional brane. The Big Bang was the point when the brane (referred to as “The One” in the book) collided with a resistance field in the higher dimension bulk universe, causing the conversion of energy to mass in three spatial dimensions and dividing the reality we understand from the remaining dimensions held within the brane. It is this theme of division, and its counter force of unification, that runs through Evolved. If you look at the Evolved symbol you’ll see a caret-like symbol with a vertical line above it. This is the ‘Two into One’ theme. A lot more to the symbol, but let’s leave it at that for now.

If division was the split of one into two, unification is the effort of making two into one. Our world is defined by the tension between these opposing aspects. I find it interesting you see this unification at the quantum level through entanglement. In our life the will to unify surrounds us. The Rusty Blackbirds reminded my daughters and I of unification yesterday as they squawked at our presence near their three babies in their nest under the eave of the shed by the dock. The Loons watching us closely as we rowed near their nest with eggs was another reminder, as was the startled Eastern Phoebe flapping out of her nest with eggs when we opened the back door. Of course, the Bald Eagles swooping over our shed on their way to their nest where junior typically perches on the edge is a dramatic reminder.

Makes you wonder if evolution is simply “The One” trying to reunify itself in a divisive reality…

Time Matters in Evolved

What is time? If the image of a clock appears in your mind, reconsider. It is something we take as fundamental to our existence, a plug in a physics formula, a tool by which to schedule our day. But tell me, what IS time? Does it change? Has it always been around? Even before the Big Bang? Can we time travel? Well, yes! We’re all doing it right now as the seconds pass…

Einstein’s theory of relativity suggests time shortens or lengthens as velocity changes relative to another object. Objects… something with mass and three spatial dimensions. Mass is basically resistance as energy interacts with an external field. E=mc², Higgs Boson and all that. So if the strength/ weakness of the resistance field changes, our mass changes. Perhaps if we found a lever to control this resistance it could become the next diet fad, despite tearing apart our universe as we know it. But, back to time.

Do you believe there is a future? A past? A present? Well then, this implies time is fundamental to existence. This view is supported by many intellectuals, so you’re in good company. It implies time existed before the Big Bang, ticking away the seconds just like we experience today. The Big Bang was instead The Big Bounce, or perhaps a newly formed Bubble Universe. Quantum physics would appear to support this view of time as the wave length of particles move through space. Philosophers tag this type of time “A-theory.”

What if we shifted the term future to ‘happening after,’ past becomes ‘happening prior,’ and the present becomes ‘simultaneous.’ This is much more than semantics, it instead argues time is tenseless. It implies time is emergent, possibly didn’t exist before the Big Bang. It is more consistent with the theory of relativity, in which a human could theoretically accelerate close to the speed of light, slowing time for them relative to us, and return home to find hundreds of years have passed. This type of time is called “B -theory.” It too has many supporters among intellectuals.

This debate is woven into the fabric of Evolved, including consideration of chance, free will and determinism. Present, or simultaneous time, becomes a special point when possibility meets knowledge. In Evolved, the Big Bang can be thought of as the Big Division, when the resistance field first interacted with a singularity. This dynamic suddenly created mass (and time), splitting the singularity into the four dimensions we know and everything else we don’t. The present point holds the answers in Evolved, but proves surprisingly difficult to attain and control (are our four dimensions determinate from within our reality?). It forces the protagonist, fourteen year-old Amos, to consider higher dimensions within the universe and even spirituality in a society that has abandoned such notions.

Eagle Eye Shared

The path that led me to write Evolved began firmly in science and logic, studying the properties of chemical elements, space time structures, and neurology. It eventually led me to something I called the “Real” in the book as I dove into psychology, specifically the subconscious. It was only at the end that I felt I had missed something in the series of objects I had logically patterned out. Eventually I was guided to Richard Rohr, a Franciscan monk, who explained what I had wrote completely.

To be clear, I believe Christianity is merely one path we can follow to find the “Real.” Most other religions, spirituality and even science also seek to guide one to the same truth. However, our ego gets in our way and every faith or mindful effort focuses on different aspects. In designing the symbol for Evolved, I wanted most faiths and even mindful thinkers to see meaning. After all, the ancient Greeks touched on deeper truths in their math and science discoveries.

This morning I received the weekly summation of Richard Rohr’s writings. “Shared Identity” speaks to what I touched on in “Eagle Eyes Penetrate.” The following is an excerpt:

“Francis spent much of his time praying in solitude in nature. He practiced contemplation, or ‘a long loving look at the real,’ which allowed him to see in a new way. Seeing from a pair of glasses beyond our own is what I call ‘participative seeing.’ This is the new self that can say excitedly with Paul, ‘I live no longer, not ‘I’ but it is Christ now living in me’ (Galatians 2:20). In the truest sense, I am that which I am seeking. This primal communion communicates spaciousness, joy, and a quiet contentment. It is not anxious, because the essential gap between me and everything else has already been overcome. I am at home in a sacred and benevolent universe, and I do not need to prove myself to anybody, nor do I need to be ‘right,’ nor do others have to agree with me.”

– Richard Rohr

That’s Just Warped!

It didn’t take long after I started writing that I figured out if I was going to set the story in the distant future, I needed to understand some of the theories about the universe. After reading many books on bubble universes, multi-universes, and string theory, I found Dr. Randall’s theories most satisfying. Her book, Warped Passages, was one of the first books I read and is filled with my notes, underlines, and turned-down pages. What made her views click is that she is a “model builder.” She builds theories from the bottom up. This means she starts with observable scientific facts in particle physics, within the framework of the Standard Model, and attempts to extrapolate from a firm footing. For a former financial analyst who modeled out the finances of public companies, I very much appreciated the methodology.

Her book is an effort to tie particle physics with string theory. String theory is elegant mathematics but has also been portrayed as “castles in the sky” due to its lack of relationship to anything observable. Dr. Randall developed the theory of branes, named after their membrane-like structure. Basically, the theory argues our three or four (if you include time) dimensional reality is a brane within a multi-dimensional bulk. This allowed Dr. Randall to explain why gravity is so weak in our universe, when the standard model argues it should be much stronger.

As a writer, this theory literally gave me a rich topography of the universe with which to play. It also was a very approachable theory for someone who is not a mathematician, offering an easy way to visualize the universe. To recognize the book’s impact on my writing, I named the main ship in the story the USS Randall.

Standing on Giants

Over the summer I plan to go through my sources of inspiration for Evolved. This is partly for my own benefit as I refresh my understanding of various theories. It is also to recognize the brilliant minds that have transformed my life over the past few years. Finally, it will help you understand the road I have traveled to date, and how I arrived at this point.

The path started innocently enough with the thought, “What if humans could adapt to non-organic elements and unlock new capabilities?” This initial idea quickly swept me into chemistry, neurology and psychology, followed almost immediately by cosmology and particle physics. Quantum mechanics and time philosophy took some time to wrap my head around, but boning up on general relativity helped me to understand at least the basics. I’ve always enjoyed moral philosophical debates like “sacrificing the many for the few,” as well as arguments around free will and determinism. One book on chance I read at least five times before it clicked.

When the second draft of the manuscript was complete I took a step back and thought, “there is something more to this.” After showing the draft to a minister at my church, I was blown away that the world I had created was explained almost perfectly by spiritual teaching. Not only that, but Christian, Judaism, and Buddhism belief systems all seemed to explain the supra conscious element I had developed, especially Native American spirituality. Ancient Greek philosophy suddenly sprang into relevance for me. It became clear my mind was wrestling with deeper questions than I had recognized. This realization has been transforming me, urging me on to deeper understandings in all the areas mentioned above.

It has been very cool to go into science and emerge out of spirit. Hope you enjoy the ride.