Transcript The Birth, Life and Death of the Universe of Human Consciousness and

The Birth, Life and Death of the Universe
and
The Strange and Terrible Accident
of Human Consciousness
Patrick Gaydecki
School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering
University of Manchester
PO Box 88
Manchester M60 1QD
United Kingdom
Tel: [UK-44] (0) 161 306 4906
[email protected]
www.eee.manchester.ac.uk/research/groups/sisp/research/dsp
Synopsis
The universe was formed approximately 13.7 billion years ago from the
cataclysmic explosion of a singularity 0.000000000000000000000000003
(2 x 10-27) metres in diameter (much smaller than the diameter of an atom). After
just 0.00000000000000000000000000000000001 (10-35) seconds, when the
temperature of the nascent universe was ten thousand trillion, trillion degrees
Kelvin (1028 K), it underwent a period of ultra-rapid expansion called inflation,
during which it expanded in size by a factor of 1030. This has been likened to the
expansion of a DNA molecule to the size of our galaxy, in a trillionth of a trillionth
of the blink of an eye.
After this point, the universe expanded and cooled more gradually, during which
the stars, planets and all life emerged.
The visible universe today is 6 x 1025 m (or 3.75 x 1022 miles) in diameter, and
contains some 1011 galaxies. Each galaxy contains roughly 1011 stars, most of
which are thought to have planets. The universe beyond this point is unknown.
At some distant time in the future, the universe will cool and die, and all life will be
extinguished.
Lecture Overview (1)
Sizing the universe
The Steady State Theory
Big Bang Theory
Recession of the galaxies
Microwave background radiation
Problems associated with the Big bang Theory:
inflation, dark matter and dark energy
Formation of matter and planets: nucleo-synthesis
Age and formation of the solar system
Newtonian physics, the nature of light and time, the
concept of the aether
Einstein, Special Relativity and General Relativity
Lecture Overview (2)
Problems associated with Maxwell’s
interpretation: Plank
Formulation of Quantum Theory and The
Uncertainty Principle
The Standard Model of the Universe
String and M-theory
The evolution of life
The nature of consciousness
Mysteries and challenges ahead
Ultimate fate of the universe
The nature of reality
The Vault of the Heavens
“Thy shadow, Earth, from Pole to Central Sea; Now steals along upon the Moon's
meek shine; In even monochrome and curving line; Of imperturbable serenity”
The Diameter of the Earth
In ancient times the Earth was assumed to be flat. However, by 350 BC, The
Greeks had concluded, from many observations, such as the way a ship
disappeared over the horizon or the shadow of the Earth on the moon during a
solar eclipse, that the earth was spherical.
The first recorded, accurate measurement of the circumference of the Earth was
made by Eratosthenes of Cyrene (276-196 BC). On June 21, the noonday sun was
directly above the city of Aswan, Egypt. At the same time, a stick placed upright in
the ground in the city of Alexandria, some 800 km north, cast a short shadow,
indicating the sun was 7° past its zenith. From this, Eratosthenes calculated the
Earth’s circumference to be:
360
Circumference 
 800  41143 km
7
This was a momentous discovery, and one which began to cast doubt on initial
estimates of the size of the cosmos. Today, we know that the mean circumference
of the earth is 40,076 km, with a mean diameter of 12,774 km. Quite apart from the
minor irregularities cause by mountain ranges, the earth is not truly spherical since
it has an equatorial bulge resulting from its rotation.
Strictly speaking therefore, the Earth is an oblate spheroid.
Earth Sizing Principle
Sunlight
7 degrees
The Lunar Distance
Hipparchus of Nicaea (190-120 BC) reasoned that if the sun was much further from
the earth than was the moon, then the curvature of the earth’s shadow during an
eclipse could be used to estimate the distance to the moon. Using Eratosthenes’
data for the earth’s diameter, he calculated the distance to the moon to be 384,403
km. This was an excellent estimate. Today, we know that the moon is at a mean
distance of 382,166 km, with a perigee of 354,341 km and an apogee of 404,336
km.
By exploiting the parallax effect, it was possible to make increasingly accurate
measurements of the lunar distance.
By knowing its distance, the diameter of the moon could also be estimated by
using, additionally, its apparent size as seen by the eye. The diameter is 3,474 km.
The Parallax Method
The Solar Distance
Attempts by the ancient Greeks to measure the distance to the sun using
trigonometry were correct in their method but limited by the absence of appropriate
astronomical instruments. By 150 BC, they had gauged the sun to lie at a distance
of perhaps 8 million km, and this, they reasoned, was also the approximate size of
the celestial sphere (the universe), in which the stars were embedded. Calculating
the distance to the planets was not possible. No further progress on the size of the
universe was made for 1,800 years.
Almost certainly, significant progress in the sciences was delayed by several
hundred years by the destruction of the great Library in Alexandria, the ancient
world's single greatest archive of knowledge.
Matters were not helped by the fact that the Greeks believed all celestial bodies to
orbit the earth. A new model of the Solar System had to wait until the Polish
astronomer Nicolas Copernicus (1473-1543), who reasoned in a book published on
the day of his death, that the Sun, not the Earth, was the centre of the Solar
System.
Size of the Solar System
•
•
•
•
In 1619 Johannes Kepler (1571-1630) established an accurate model of the Solar
System. He found that the average distances of the planets from the Sun were
proportional to the times of revolution. Hence, it was possible to say if a plant x was twice
as far from the Sun as plant y. With the invention of the telescope by Galileo Galilei (15641642), it became possible to measure very small parallaxes. In 1671, Jean Richer (163096) and Giovanni Cassini (1625-172) made simultaneous parallax measurements of Mars
from Cayenne, French Guiana and Paris.
From this, they calculated the distance of the Earth to the Sun to be 140,070,000 km
(87,000,000 miles). This was pretty good; it is actually at a mean distance of 149,053,800
(92,580,000 miles).
Modern techniques use radar or laser reflection to measure the distances of planets within
our solar system, with great accuracy (less than a centimetre). We know, for example,
that the moon is spiralling away from the earth at a rate of 38 mm per year.
Pluto lies at a mean distance from the sun of 5,910 million km, or 3,671 million miles.
The Nearest Stars
Our Galaxy contains roughly 150 billion stars. The nearest star, Proxima Centauri,
is 4.2 light years from us. Since light travels at 299,792,458 m/s, it follows that
Proxima Centauri lies at a distance of:
D = 4.2 X 365 X 24 X 3600 X 299792.458 = 39,707,870,810,000 km
i.e. about 24.7 trillion miles.
The distances of the stars are so vast that it was not until relatively recently that the
tiny stellar parallaxes could be measured, for even the closest stars. This required
taking measurements at opposite points of the earth’s rotation around the sun.
In 1838, Wilhelm Bessel (1784-1846) announced the first parallax measurement of
a star, 61 Cygni, in the constellation Cygnus, which was 0.29 seconds of arc. Its
distance was 11.1 light years, or 105 trillion km (63.4 trillion miles).
The Doppler Effect
The Doppler effect was first explained
accurately in 1842 by Christian Johann
Doppler (1803-53). It works like this: if a car
travels towards us, the engine noise
appears to be raised in pitch, and it falls as
it passes. This is because the sound waves
bunch up as they travel towards us but get
stretched as the car recedes. The same is
true for light, but with respect to colour. A
white star approaching us appears bluish,
but reddish if moving away. In addition, the
light from a star has many dark spectral
absorption lines, since different elements
absorb different frequencies. By observing
the spectrum, we can deduce the star’s
speed and chemical composition.
By analysing the Sun’s spectrum, and
comparing this with the stars, it was
confirmed that the sun is indeed an ordinary
star.
Identification of Fraunhofer lines.
Fraunhofer Line
Element
Wavelength (Å)
A - (band)
O2
7594 - 7621
B - (band)
O2
6867 - 6884
C
H
6563
a - (band)
O2
6276 - 6287
D - 1, 2
Na
5896 & 5890
E
Fe
5270
b - 1, 2
Mg
5184 & 5173
c
Fe
4958
F
H
4861
d
Fe
4668
e
Fe
4384
f
H
4340
G
Fe & Ca
4308
g
Ca
4227
h
H
4102
H
Ca
3968
K
Ca
3934
Size of the Milky Way
Stellar parallax cannot be used to determine the
distance of more distant stars, simply because
they are too small. In 1912, a startling discovery
was made by Henrietta Swan Leavitt (18681921), one of the greatest unsung heroines of
astronomy (there are several others). She
discovered that a particular kind of star called a
Cepheid Variable varies in brightness at a rate
inversely proportional to its absolute luminosity
(by observing Cepheids in the Small Magellanic
Cloud). The absolute luminosity is determined by
distance. Hence, by establishing the distance to
one Cepheid, all distances could be known.
By using the Doppler effect in conjunction with Cepheid behaviour, it was for the first time
possible to establish absolute distances and the size our galaxy. Many astronomers were
involved in this process, and the final shape and distribution emerged in the 1930’s. Our
Galaxy has a lens-shaped spiral construction, 16,000 light years thick at the centre and 3,000
light years thick at the position of our sun, which is roughly 2/3 the radius from the centre. The
galaxy is approximately 100,000 light years in diameter, i.e. 9.45 x 1017 km, or about one
million trillion km (600,000,000,000,000,000 miles).
By 1919, it was not even suspected that there might be other galaxies…
The Milky Way
Our place in the Milky Way
You are here
Echoes of Eternity
“If only you could see what I have seen, with your eyes”
Echoes of Eternity: other Galaxies and Galactic Recession
In the early part of the 20th century, Vesto
Slipher (1875-1969), not Edwin Hubble, first
discovered galactic red shifts, although at the
time they were considered shifts of stars.
However, Hubble (1889-1953) used Leavitt’s
discovery to show that the supposed stars
observed by Slipher were in fact galaxies in
their own right. In addition, he discovered that
the farther away a galaxy, the faster it is
receding (apart from the local cluster
including Andromeda and the Magellanic
Clouds, due to gravity). From these
observations was derived Hubble’s Law:
v  H0D
Where v is the recessional velocity, D is the
distance of the galaxy to the observer, and H
is a constant. Note that our galaxy does not
occupy a special position, i.e. all galaxies are
receding from one another, like dots on the
surface of an inflating balloon (this is a
simplification, since the surface of a balloon is
two-dimensional, whereas space is 3D).
Implications of an Expanding Universe:
The Great Debate
The discovery of an expanding universe was a relief to many but irksome to some.
Most important, Einstein’s Theory of Gravitation does not permit a static universe. At
the time of its formulation, no other kind was known, so he added a cosmological
constant (“the greatest blunder of my life”) to accommodate it. Actually, Newtonian
physics does not allow it either.
The expanding universe removed the necessity of the cosmological constant,
completing the theory in all its beauty.
However, an expanding universe implied, ineluctably, that it had a beginning as a
very small, hot and dense mass. The idea of the big bang was born, first proposed by
Georges Lemaitre (1894-1966), a Belgian priest. This was initially dismissed, but
later gained increasing acceptance.
However, Fred Hoyle (1915-2001) thought the theory absurd, and developed his own
ideas…
The Steady State Universe
Fred Hoyle had no problems with the notion of an
expanding universe, but, based on the Cosmological
Principle (which states that on a large scale, the
universe is homogenous and isotropic, and that we
occupy no special position), he maintained that it
came into existence by the continuous and
spontaneous creation of matter – about 1 atom per
cubic metre every 10 billion years, not through a
sudden cataclysmic event which he coined “The Big
Bang” as a pejorative term during a radio broadcast.
In the 1950’s however, evidence began to accumulate
in favour of the Big Bang Theory:
•
•
•
The expansion was consistent with Hubble’s law, at all observed points
The universe contained different features, depending on how far you looked,
i.e. how far back in time.
The amount of helium in the universe; it is the 2nd most common element, but
the Steady State Theory would give far lower concentrations than those
predicted by the BBT.
Yet the most important and crucial piece of evident in the Big Bang’s favour
occurred quite by accident in the 1960’s...
The Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation
In 1948 Russian cosmologist
George Gamow (1904-68) predicted
that if the Big Bang Theory were
correct, the heat of the initial violent
event would have cooled to around
50° K, but later revised to 5°K (268°C). Hence the universe would
be filled with a steady, constant
background
radiation
in
the
microwave region. Crucially, the
radiation should be very similar, but
not identical, in all directions.
In 1965, whilst working on a sensitive microwave antenna at Bell Laboratories,
Arno Penzias (1933-) and Robert Wilson (1936-), were plagued by a constant
source of microwave interference, no matter how they adjusted and cleaned the
instrument. It appeared to come from the sky uniformly, at a temperature of 2.7°K.
They were unawareof the significance of this, despite the fact that Robert Dicke at
Princeton (locally) was trying to find it. This earned them a Nobel prize and firmly
established the BBT.
Implications for the
Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation
If the universe had been perfectly uniform during
expansion, then no stars or galaxies would have
formed. Minute fluctuations in the initial conditions
would instead lead to granularity and clumping of
atoms. Hence, the CMBR should contain tiny
fluctuations in temperature – less than one
thousandth of a degree.
In 1998, the Cosmic Background Explorer
(COBE) probe was launched to detect such
fluctuations. The data it provided were exciting,
but of low resolution.
Its successor, the Wilkinson Microwave
Anisotropy Probe (WMAP), was launched in
2001. It is located 1 million miles from the earth,
at Lagrange point 2 (L2, a point of gravitational
stability, always looking away from the sun, earth
and moon at the universe.
It includes the most sophisticated microwave
detectors ever made, and has yielded the most
detailed picture yet of the echo of creation.
Lagrange Point 2 (L2) for WMAP
WMAP Looking back in time 380,000 years after the Big Bang
The universe 380,000 years after the Big Bang
Furnace of the Gods
“Fiery the angels fell, deep thunder rolled around their shores,
Burning with the fires of orc”
The Sun
The Sun is an ordinary, 2nd generation (confusingly, a population I) G0-type (main sequence) star, with a
mean diameter of 1.292 million km (865,000 miles), and a mass of 2,000 trillion, trillion tons (333,000 times
that of the earth).
It burns hydrogen through D-T nuclear fusion. In this process, two
atoms of hydrogen are forced together through intense
gravitational pressure to create helium. The helium atom is less
massive than the two hydrogen atoms, and the mass difference is
expressed as energy through Einstein’s celebrated formula E =
mc2.
Each second, the sun loses 4.26 million tons in mass, releasing
383 trillion, trillion watts, or 9.15 X 1010 megatons of TNT per
second.
The sun is approximately 5 billion years old, and will continue to burn normally for a further five billion, when
it will swell and become a red giant. The sun does not have sufficient mass to form a supernova, but will
eventually throw off most of its outer layers and become a dead white dwarf.
Stellar Nucleosynthesis
In the first phase of the Big Bang, only the lightest elements including hydrogen (74%), helium
(23%), lithium (2%), and beryllium (1%) were synthesised. The earliest stars (Population II,
i.e. 1st generation), contained none of the heavier elements to start with. These are still visible
by observing distant galaxies, which are of course further back in time.
In a series of papers in the 1950’s, Sir Fred Hoyle, with colleagues Fowler and the Burbridges,
established the principle of stellar nucleosynthesis. As a star runs out of hydrogen, the helium
“ash” in the core contracts and heats to 100 million °K, triggering the fusion of helium. This in
turn produces heavier elements, including carbon, oxygen and all the way up to iron, which is
a dead end. Each stage requires higher temperatures, and the process becomes
progressively less efficient. Sir Fred Hoyle brilliantly solved a theoretical problem with this
scheme (concerning the triple-alpha process), which was proven experimentally.
Fowler received a Nobel prize for his work, but to the eternal shame of the Nobel Assembly,
Hoyle did not.
Elements beyond iron cannot be synthesised through normal stellar burning because the
necessary temperatures cannot be generated. These are only formed in supernova
explosions.
Everything that exists was manufactured in the heart of stars. Our star is Population I,
meaning it was formed from the debris of earlier supernova.
Kepler's Supernova Remnant
This image was taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. It is the last such object seen to
explode in our galaxy, residing about 13,000 light-years away in the constellation Ophiuchus.
Evolution of the Solar System
The formation of the solar system was
first proposed by the Pierre-Simon
Laplace (1749-1827), and was termed
the nebular hypothesis. In this
scheme, a great rotating cloud of
interstellar dust and gas coalesced
under the force of gravity to form the
sun, with outer rotating rings collapsing
to form the planets. At the time,
nuclear fusion was unknown, so
details (and mathematical evidence)
had to wait.
The scheme is essentially correct; as
the matter condensed in a central
region, the temperature gradually rose,
until at 10 million degrees K, nuclear
fusion was triggered.
The planets underwent countless
collisions with other formations and
asteroids, as evidenced by craters on
the moon, the earth and other worlds
in the Solar System.
Stellar Nurseries in the Eagle
Nebula
Age of the Solar System
Radiometric dating using uraniumlead analysis was first established
as
a
reliable technique
for
determining the age of the earth and
indeed the Solar System by Clair
Patterson in 1953. Uranium 235
decays to lead-207 with a half-life of
about 700 million years, uranium238 decays to lead-206 with a halflife of about 4.5 billion years. By
comparing the amount of the parent
material to the daughter material, it
is possible to establish the age of
the sample. Using the two isotopes
above also allows independent
cross-checking. The age of the earth
is reliably estimated to be 4.54
billion years,
using meteorite
samples. This corresponds closely
with the age of the sun, established
through analysis of its nuclear
reaction speeds.
 D
t  ln 1  
  P
1
Where:
t is the age of the sample
D is the number of atoms of the daughter isotope
P is the number of atoms of the parent isotope
λ is the decay constant of the parent isotope
The Gathering Storm
“And all who heard should see them there, And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating hair! Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread, For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise.”
Victorian Certainty
By the close of the 19th century, many scientists
thought that the age of scientific discovery was
drawing to a close, and that the rest would be
merely filling in the details.
The Newtonian theory of gravitation had
established celestial mechanics as an exact science
(nearly), with the astounding equation of
F G
Mm
r2
Which Henry Cavendish (1731-1810) had used with
great accuracy to weigh the earth.
James Clerk Maxwell (1831-1879), widely
considered the 4th greatest physicist of all time, had
unified the electric and magnetic forces with the
electromagnetic wave theory of light, and the theory
of acoustics was advancing apace.
In short, scientists viewed the universe as a vast,
predictable machine, in which, if all the motions of
its particles were known, the future could be
established with perfect accuracy.
Most important, Time was an endless, constantly
flowing river, that provided an absolute reference for
all phenomena.
F G
Mm
r2
Special Theory of Relativity (I)
In 1905 An obscure patent officer, Albert Einstein (18791955), working in Bern, Switzerland, published in the journal
Annalen der Physik a paper entitled “On the Electrodynamics
of Moving Bodies”.
In contained almost no mathematics (initially), no references,
no historical context and only a single acknowledgement to a
colleague, Michele Besso.
It is the single most important publication in the history of
science, and completely altered our concept of the universe,
time, space, reality and the meaning of existence.
The most extraordinary feature of this work is that Einstein
appeared to have deduced this purely by a process of
cogitation, independently and, it seems, out of nothing.
It established the Special Theory of Relativity (which Einstein
had originally wished to be called Theory of Invariance),
which replaced the concepts of space and time with a single
entity called Spacetime.
Special Theory of Relativity (II)
• As we move faster in space, time slows, since the
spacetime velocity is always constant.
• If two bodies move relative to one another (e.g. trains
passing), any clock on the other train appears to be
moving more slowly. This is known as time dilation.
• Each train appears to the other to be shortened. This is
called the Lorentz contraction.
• The speed of light, c, is absolute and independent of the
observer.
• Events which appear simultaneous to one observer will
not be so to a second observer who is moving relative to
the first.
• If a body accelerates away from another and returns,
less time will have passed for the body which
accelerated.
• As a body accelerates, its mass increases, so it
becomes ever harder to gain speed. At the speed of
light, time would stop, mass would be infinite, and the
body would have zero width. Hence, this is not possible.
a  c2  b2
your speed
The entire SRT may be summarised as follows:
The combined speed of a body moving through space and
moving through time is always equal to the speed of light.
Or:
The speed of a body in spacetime is always equal to the
speed of light.
Hence:
c2  a2  b2
c
b
a
If you travel at
200,00 km/s, b,
for every 4
seconds that
passed for an
observer
stationary with
respect to you,
only 3 seconds
passes for you.
time
Light: 300,000 km/s
You: 200,000 km/s
Although a stationary observer will see the light
pass you at 100,000 km/s, you will still see the
light pass at 300,000 km/s, since time travels more
slowly for moving bodies.
Special Theory of Relativity (III)
One of the consequences of
the
Special
Theory
of
Relativity is the relativity of
simultaneity. This means that
two
events
which
are
simultaneous to an observer
will not be simultaneous to
another if the second is
moving relative to the other.
This is not apparent, it is real.
In one interpretation of the
theory, spacetime is a solid
block in which the universe is
a static, and all events that
have happened and that will
happen are forever frozen.
time
Special Theory of Relativity (IV)
Time dilation for moving bodies was
demonstrated experimentally by Joseph
Hafele and Richard Keating, who, in 1971,
flew a caesium atomic clock on a 747 jet
around the world, comparing the results
with those of an identical clock at the
United States Naval Observatory. As
expected, less time had elapsed on the
moving clock, by -59 ns, exactly in
accordance with the theory.
To build a time machine, simply accelerate
away from the earth at an appropriate
velocity, for a given time, and return.
Depending on the velocity, You might age
a day, but the earth will have moved on by
10,000 years.
General Theory of Relativity (I)
By 1915, Einstein concluded that acceleration and the force of gravity are equivalent. It therefore follows
that time dilation will be experienced by bodies immersed in a gravitational field, i.e. the stronger the gravity,
the slower time flows.
In addition, because Einstein had established the concept of spacetime, he concluded that gravity operates
by warping the fabric of spacetime in the vicinity of the body. Objects, including light are attracted to a body
not in a Newtonian sense, but because they are following the warp of the spacetime in which they move.
Immediately, it correctly accounted for the anomalous precession of the perihelion of Mercury.
The GTR is the most tested and accurate theory ever developed. It has many applications in everyday life,
including GPS, communications and astronomical observations.
General Theory of Relativity (II)
In 1919, Arthur Eddington led an expedition to
Principe Island in the Gulf of Guinea, in equatorial
Africa, to observe a total eclipse of the sun. In
particular, they were attempting to verify the
bending of distant starlight by the sun. The
measure deviation, 1.76 seconds of arc, was again
as predicted by the theory.
Global Positioning System (GPS) must use an
Einsteinian correction factor to account for the
fact that the synchronization system on earth runs
more slowly than that on the satellite.
Quantum Theory (I)
Things were going to get a whole lot worse. Maxwell’s
classical theory of electrodynamics relied on smoothly
changing, continuous systems. In 1894, an obscure
professor named Max Planck (1858-1947) had been
commissioned by electric companies to create
maximum light from light bulbs with minimum energy.
This required a theoretical description of how the
intensity of radiation change with frequency.
Seemingly an easy problem, it took 6 years to solve.
At low frequencies, classical methods failed.
His theory required that light (EM radiation) be emitted
as multiples of quanta, which appeared continuous at
high energies (like the dots in a photograph). He
disliked the idea, thinking it was a fix. However, it was
so accurate that he received the Nobel prize in 1918.
Hence light, which for centuries had been considered
a wave, also had a discrete microstructure. In the
space of less than two decades, the old order had
been swept away.
intensity
In 1905, Einstein independently published a paper
describing how the photoelectric effect was caused by
absorption of quanta of light (photons); unlike Plank,
he immediately saw that the quantum idea was real,
and not a mathematical expediency.
E  
wavelength
Quantum Theory (II)
The photoelectric effect, part of quantum
theory, dictates that light may act as both a
wave and a particle, the photon. Normally, the
light that we see contains trillions of photons,
and its wave behaviour is dominant. However,
if the intensity is turned down below a critical
point, we detect individual photons, which,
bizarrely, also have wave properties.
In 1905, Einstein confirmed the existence of
the atom with his work on Brownian motion. In
1910, Rutherford confirmed the existence of
the nucleus.
More strangeness quickly followed. In 1913,
Niels Bohr (1885-1962)
discovered that
electrons in an atom occupied discrete energy
levels, and could only move into higher or
lower orbits in discrete jumps. This explained
why electrons did not lose energy as they
orbit the nucleus and hence spiral into it.
Quantum Theory (III)
Wave interference
What you expect with quanta...
In the above experiment, individual photons of light still behave as
waves. Amazingly, so do electrons. Quantum theory came of age with
the towering contributions of Erwin Schrödinger (1887-1961) and
Werner Heisenberg (1901-1976), who described the laws governing
wave-particle duality. In essence, a particle is a wave until measured,
when its probability wave function collapses. This is the Wave
Equation, the corner stone of Quantum Physics. Heisenberg went on to
show that at the quantum level, there is no such thing as certainty – it is
fundamentally probabilistic. Einstein was deeply opposed to this.
In 2007, D. Akoury and others, working at the University of Frankfurt ,
demonstrated wave interference for a molecules. Everything has a
wave function, including humans. Quantum theory is one of the most
successful, and least understood, theories in physics. It has given us,
for example, the transistor, which underpins our entire modern day
technology.
...What you get
A Theory of Everything
“I had a dream, which was not all a dream.
The bright sun was extinguish'd, and the stars
Did wander darkling in the eternal space,
Rayless, and pathless, and the icy earth
Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air.”
Conflicting Issues and the Standard Model
Interaction
Theory
Mediators
Strong
QCD
Gluons
Electromagnetic
QED
Photons
Weak
Electroweak
W and Z bosons
Gravitation
General Relativity Gravitons (to be
discovered)
Relative
Strength
1038
1036
1025
1
Range, m
10-15
Infinite
10-18
Infinite
By 1979, it was known that the universe comprised four, and only four, fundamental forces:
the strong and the weak nuclear, electromagnetic and gravitational force. The objective of a
Grand Unified Theory is to combine the forces into a single super force, which will
demonstrate their common ancestry. At this point in time, the relationships between all but
gravity have been established. This is known as the Standard Model.
Unlike the other forces, gravity is much weaker, and cannot be accounted for yet by the
Standard Model. Furthermore, there is an unresolved conflict between the General Theory of
Relativity and Quantum Theory. The GTR is superb at predicting the behaviour of gravity at a
macroscopic level, but cannot be applied at the particle level. The opposite is true for QT.
A theory of everything would combine all the forces, perhaps involving quantum gravity. In
order to test the theories, the Large Hadron Collider has been constructed, which will allow
physicists to replicate the conditions soon after the Big Bang.
The Large Hadron Collider
The LHC will accelerate protons to 99.999999%
of the speed of light, giving them a collision
energy of 14TeV. On collision, the energy is
converted into mass via the formation of new
particles. This will replicate conditions very
shortly after the Big Bang. Amongst other
things, it is hoped that the particle theoretically
responsible for producing mass, the Higgs
boson, will be found. The speeds are so high
that one billionth of a gram of hydrogen has the
energy of 8 litres of petrol.
Dark Matter and Dark Energy
In 1962, Vera Rubin (1928-) discovered that
the rotation of many galaxies was so fast that,
unless there was some additional unseen
matter holding them together, they should fly
apart. Initially she was ignored (partly
because she was a woman – she had tried to
enrol on the graduate program at Princeton
but they did allow women until 1975) .
However, further observations and theoretical
calculations suggested that the universe
appeared to be missing about 90% of its
matter.
The idea of “dark matter” was born, but as yet
there is no direct evidence of its existence.
Similarly, at the present time the inflation of
the universe appears to be accelerating. It is
proposed that this is due to “dark energy”, but
again there is no direct evidence.
Some
notable
cosmologists,
Mordehai
Milgrom,
propose
Newtonian Dynamics (MOND).
including
Modified
Black Holes and Echoes of Hoyle
Black holes are formed by the collapse of
super-massive stars, typically after a
supernova event. The gravitational field
produced is so strong that even light cannot
escape. Black holes cannot be described by
the GTR, since they are singularities.
Quantum theory dictates that space is a
seething mass of particles that flicker into
existence and out again every moment
(thereby maintaining the law of mass/energy
conservation).
However, Stephen Hawking discovered that
black holes emit radiation (Hawking
Radiation), since , in a particle/antiparticle
pair, one may lie within the event horizon, but
not the other. Black holes therefore eventually
evaporate, over an inconceivable amount of
time.
The Nothing That is
2.5 miles
The diameter of an atom is typically 10-10 m. The diameter of its nucleus
is typically 10-15, i.e. some 100,000 time smaller. Scaled up, if the nucleus
were the size of an orange, then the electrons, each the size of a pea,
would be orbiting some 4 km (2.5 miles) away.
Clearly, the vast bulk of matter is empty space.
But what are the fundamental particles made of? String theory, and its
latter manifestation, M-theory proposes that all matter ultimately
comprises strings of vibrating energy, incomparably smaller than the
particles they represent. Different particles arise when the strings vibrate
at different fundamental frequencies. But what are strings? How can
nothing become something?
String theory so far allows many (possibly an infinite) different
manifestations of the universe, and has so far failed to describe ours in a
unique way. Hence it has yet to make a single, testable prediction.
(1) Matter (2) Molecules (3) Atoms (4) Electrons (5) Quarks (6) Strings.
Note: protons and neutrons comprise quarks, not electrons.
Dawn of Mind
“Yea, slimy things did crawl with legs
Upon the slimy sea.
About, about, in reel and rout
The death-fires danced at night;
The water, like a witch's oils,
Burnt green, and blue and white.”
Evolution Timeline
It is widely held that life on earth first evolved around 3.8 billion
years ago (the earth is about 4.5 billion years old). This can be
inferred from carbon isotopes peculiar to life and apatite, a
mineral that is produced and used by biological microenvironmental systems.
The central issue is how it got started.
Amino acids (there are 22 natural ones) will form
spontaneously if the conditions are right, but the formation of
proteins, from amino acids, is still problematic. These must be
assembled in the right order for a meaningful protein to form.
The chances of this happening are exceedingly remote.
For life to get going, the proteins must be assembled into selfreplicating DNA molecules. And the rest is just evolution…
Two of the most remarkable features of life on this planet are:
• Although life started 3.8 billion years ago, for multi-cellular
life such as slime moulds, did not appear until about 1
billion years ago.
• The first Homo species only appeared abou5 2.5 million
years ago. Hence if the age of the earth is one day, we
appeared in the last minute before midnight.
The human eye is a good
example of a structure that
evolution has designed rather
poorly.
Consciousness
Although there have been major advances in
the study of human consciousness in several
narrowly defined areas, the ultimate objective of
creating a machine with even a small fraction of
the cognitive powers of the human brain, or
indeed consciousness, still appears to be
beyond the reach of science and Artificial
Intelligence (AI).
The neurological basis of human consciousness
is now a very important perhaps the most
important are of scientific endeavour. It includes
important themes such as notions of Cartesian
Dualism (now outmoded), The Multiple Drafts
Model, Connectionist Theory and The
Pandemonium Hypothesis of speech formation,
as proposed by Daniel Dennett (1942-).
There is some dispute between those cognitive
theories that maintain consciousness is a “hard”
problem (Roger Penrose, 1931-), i.e. forever
beyond the reach of a fundamental
understanding (and therefore replication), and
those that argue it has a convergent solution.
The human brain contains around 100 billion
neurons, with each neuron containing around 7000
synapses (connections). Your brain therefore has
around one thousand trillion interconnections.
Many scientists agree that it is the nature of the
connections which leads to consciousness.
Nightfall
“Goodnight, Sweet Prince, and flights of angels sing thee
to thy rest”
Open or Closed?
At the moment, the evidence appears to be in
favour of an open universe.
open
flat
Diameter
There is still some debate amongst
cosmologists about whether the universe is
open or closed, i.e. whether or not there is
sufficient matter to initiate a collapse, or whether
it will expand forever.
closed
This therefore dictates that the universe will
end.
Time
“Come, Sable Night”
Our sun will die in 5 billion years.
In about 1000 billion years, our Galaxy will consist of dead stars and
cold interstellar matter. Other galaxies will continue to recede from
one another.
In 1025 years, 99% of the matter will be ejected from our Galaxy, via
collisions. The remaining matter will form a super-massive black
hole, equal to 1 billion solar masses. This will also happen to all
other galaxies.
In about 10100 years all black holes will evaporate due to Hawking
Radiation.
76
10100
It is thought that after
years, all other forms of matter will
spontaneously collapse into black holes and evaporate.
End
“All these moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.
Time - to die.”