Space as an Empty Dark Lonely Nothing

Space is a very convenient way to keep track of objects and time, but our discovery of the meaning of the nothing of empty space reveals a perpetual journey to understanding everything. We must be able to believe in nothing as the something that the background universe is before we can ever hope to discover the way the world works, and it is that discovery that gives us purpose and gives our life meaning.

There is a long history of conundrums that the concept of space generates and magicians very skillfully use the illusions of space to effectively fool us about objects. Infinitely divisible and filled with nothing, the characteristics of space are a recipe for illusion and paradoxes even though empty space is what we discover most of the universe to be. We never seem to doubt the existence of the singular nothing that is an empty void space, which is an absence of sensation, even though we might doubt the existence of an object that we actually do sense. Space, after all, is everywhere the same nothing and has an intuitive and innate feeling of nothing about it in spite of our natural anxiety about the void of empty space.

We do not really experience continuous space and motion in space, we experience changes in discrete objects in discrete time. Because we do not really directly experience space, there is no end to space and motion much like there is no end to or stopping time. We are naturally very anxious about the void of empty space since with nothing to eat or drink and with no shelter or clothing, we would not survive very long. While we do not sense the nothing of empty space and only sense discrete objects and their discrete time delays, we presume that continuous space is an empty void of infinitely divisible nothing that separates objects from each other.

Likewise there are many empty moments of continuous time that we call inaction between the occasional actions of our lives, but we keep the action of continuous time connected between moments that we sense of objects. That is, we do not imagine a timeless eternity of inaction between the actions of our lives.

We often define things by stating what they are like, and continuous space is very much like continuous time. In other words, time and space are in some sense just different representations of the same metric of action. We can only define an axiom in terms of other axioms and so if both space and time are like each other, space and time are just different versions of the same axiom of time delay.

Discrete matter and time delay predict object action in time and the prediction of a Cartesian location or motion or force field results in continuous space and motion emerging from discrete matter, time, and action. In order to understand reality, we must first understand the axioms that define that reality and although the dark void of empty space is a very intuitive and innate concept, we only know if it is an axiom by describing what space is like. It would appear that instead of space being uniquely axiomatic, space and motion both emerge from the actions of objects in time. Space and motion allow us to keep track of separate Cartesian objects with our minds. While space and motion helps us keep track of objects and predict action, space does not exist independent of or orthogonal to discrete time delay.

There is the obvious something that separates objects from each other and therefore objects seem to need the continuum of empty space to move around just like objects need continuous time to prevent everything from happening at once. Given the axiom of action, which is the product of matter and time, where once again action as an axiom is defined by the product of two other axioms, time and matter. We can also define action as the product of matter and displacement, which further suggests that time and space are simply complementary metrics for action.

Since they are complementary, we define space just like we define time; with an action like a footstep or a meter and an accumulation of those moments as action. Although we think of distance in space as a length, the metric of that length is also a part of distance. A separation, then, has both an integration of matter as action and the moment of that action, such as a footstep or a meter.

The discrete time delays that we sense from objects imply that there is a continuous time space and since we move both forward and backward in space, we should also move forward and backward in time. In fact, we only predict objects into a future space based on our memory of them in the space of our past. We have a fading memory or knowledge of the past locations and motions of objects that permits us to predict their futures and so memory is an accumulation of past actions as experience. While we sense past locations and motions for objects, those sensations are simply a memory while the projections of objects' locations and motions in the future are only about the possibilities for our future and not necessarily about which future will occur.

Continuous space and time emerge from action as discrete time delays of objects and it is possible to project continuous time from motion in space and vice versa. The way that objects move is by changing their inertial mass over time and that change in inertial mass tells us about their motion and the way the the universe matter changes around an object tells us about an objects relations with other objects. The electromagnetic or gravitational fields that affect an object are equivalent to changes in decay or shrinkage of the universe and it is the shrinking universe that is the source of all force and motion.

Why Does Grand Unification Seem So Simple?

A rather simple set of three axioms; discrete matter, time delay, and action, close the universe with a shrinking decoherence of matter where gravity and charge are simply scaled versions of each other as the figure below shows. Instead of a higher dimensional string theory or a supersymmetry or a quantum loop embedded into a continuous space and time, the three axioms of discrete matter, time delay, and action augment the more limited notions of continuous space and time. Discrete matter and time delay incorporate a matter-scaled Schrödinger’s equation for action and since discrete matter and time are based on quantum mechanics, a quantum gravity results. Since action in matter time is based on mass-energy equivalence, matter time is also consistent with all of the principles of Lorentz invariance as well.

Along with the three axioms, there are just two fundamental constants in matter time: the aether particle mass, m_ae, and the matter-scaled Planck constant, h_ae= h/c², along with Schrödinger’s equation. The only fundamental particle in matter time is the aether particle, a boson that makes up all matter and all force and aether decoherence time, determines is what determines both gravity and charge forces. Gravity is nicely quantized in aethertime and the fundamental exchange particle of gravity is the aether particle while the fundamental exchange particle of charge is the aether pair, which is a photon. Photons, in effect, are a bound state of aether excitation and photons therefore aether carries both charge and gravity forces. Single photons  as aether pairs carry charge polarization and so it is complementary photon pairs that are the aether of gravity.

Aether decoherence is the intrinsic shrinkage of space with the time period of h_ae/m_ae and decoherence couples the radiative decay of stars to each other as matter waves. There is an extra quantum exchange force of gravitational matter waves that couples star motions to a spatial decoherence that stabilizes galaxies, in effect representing the force now called dark matter. Gravitational matter waves are a kind of exchange force that slow galaxy inner stars and speed up galaxy outer stars more than simple gravity action predicts by relativity. Stars in effect surf on galaxy matter waves and in principle, it should be possible for future spacecraft to also surf galaxy matter waves. It is possible to derive angular momentum from galaxy rotation instead of just impulse and that would allow prolonged periods of either acceleration or deceleration within a galaxy.

A fundamental property of matter time is that the universe shrinks with decoherence and does not expand as in the mainstream science of space time. Galaxies in the early aethertime universe are red shifted not because they are moving away from us due to expansion of the universe, but rather galaxies are red shifted because their spectra come from an early universe where values for the “constants” c, h, and α were all smaller in a concerted manner. In fact, the motion of decoherence of the universe blue-shifts the early galaxy spectra and it is the combination of red-shifted galaxies from the early universe along with their blue-shifts due to decoherence that we actually observe as a Hubble constant.

It is not clear why no one has yet discovered this rather simple unification scheme, but there are a number of approaches that are similar. Dirac’s large number hypothesis, for example, and more recently, Christof Wetterich of Heidelberg University has shown how a shrinking universe with uniformly varying physical constants is still consistent with the Hubble red shift. Matter time is just such a shrinking universe.

Both the velocity of light, c, and the fine structure constant, α, and Planck’s constant h all vary together in the early universe and that concerted variation confuses science. Not only was charge force much weaker in the early universe, but gravity force was also much weaker, although ironically, matter was heavier in the early universe in exactly the proportion that gravity was lower in some cases. Once again, even though gravity is weaker in the early universe, the apparent structures of distant galaxies does not change since hydrogen and other atoms are proportionately heavier in the early universe.

This apparent conspiracy of the concerted variation of space-time constants is simply a straightforward consequence of the simple axioms of that describe the decoherence of aethertime. Some local constants vary on a cosmic scale and their variation is very, very small, 0.255 ppb/yr. Although the current precision of time measurement is much greater than this, there is no correspondingly precise measure of mass. In fact, the IPK, the international standard for the kilogram, has decayed over the last 110 yrs by 0.53+/- 0.11 /yr, in agreement with to 0.52 ppb/yr that predicted by matter time within that measurement uncertainty as the figure shows. Mass appears to decrease at twice its true decay of 0.255 ppb/yr because of the assumption of constant atomic time. In matter time, atomic time increases its tick rate exactly complementary to the decay of matter.

The rotation of the earth defines the solar day and measuremnents over that last 60 years or so show a great deal of variability in the solar day. As the figure below shows, the measure of each day changes over a year by a millisecond or so and by several milliseconds over the last 60 years. Earth's rotation is slowing and the two reports show that rate along with the universal decoherence rate of 0.26 ppb/yr. Once again the assumption of constant atomic time leads to the measurement of an apparent slowing of earth's day but it is actually due to the increasing tick rate of the atomic clock.

Both charge and gravity forces have a rather simple and intuitive common explanation in aethertime. The fundamental decoherence of the universe onto itself is the origin of both gravity and charge forces. Charge force acts on the dimension of the hydrogen atom radius while gravity force acts on the dimension of the folded radius of the universe, some ten to the thirty-ninth power different in strength. In effect, the cross section of gravity force is charge force that has folded back onto itself by the folding of the universe back on itself.

Matter time actually unifies more than gravity and charge force since the fundamental action, the decoherence of the universe, is what drives all forces and all actions. Matter time incorporates the same quantum principles of action into both gravity and charge force and so the Klein-Gordon quantum equation that relates charge force to strong and weak nuclear forces still applies. Since time is a spatial dimension in matter time, the broad principles of time dilation in general relativity still apply, but spatial dilation has a much different interpretation.

Decoherence has far ranging consequences. In effect, an object like a star whose matter decays by hydrogen fusion and neutrino and photon radiation couples to the decoherence decay of space as well as to the decay of other stars. Such a coupling adds another term to the virial equation, which is a fundamental relationship between kinetic and potential energies and adds an extra force on the scale of a galaxy normally associated with dark matter. These extra forces result in matter waves that alter charge and gravity forces in concerted ways. Matter waves result in the exchange of angular momentum from the inner to the outer stars, slowing inner stars down while speeding outer stars up.

Why has mother nature waited so long to reveal these fundamental axioms of the universe?

The answer to this question is in the way we imagine space, the absolute nothing that is most of what we believe is all around us. The notion of a lonely dark empty Cartesian space has been and will continue to be very useful to help us predict the actions of objects. However, space has a much different interpretation in matter time compared with space time. We imagine space as an empty object that separates the objects that we see with our eyes and yet that space is an empty three-dimensional Cartesian void.

The absolute nothing that we imagine as empty space is the darkness between the stars and other objects as we gaze into the cosmos. We are often more certain of the absolute nothing of empty space that we cannot see or sense than we are of objects that we can see. There is no question that there is something that separates objects in our world, but is it really a lonely dark void of empty space?

In matter time, it is not space but rather it is time that separates objects, which is the way we think about time. Time is therefore a more fundamental dimension of separation than space and we can imagine that it is time that separates objects and not Cartesian space. Imagining time instead of space for separation gets at the fundamental axioms of the human consciousness as well as to the axioms of matter time.

When we define or name an object or concept, we describe what that thing is like, since that is how we relate objects to each other. Although there are many things that are like the axiom time, there is not any single thing that time is like. Rather, we can only define the time axiom in terms of other axioms, matter and action. Time is then both an action such as a clock tick along with the accumulation of those ticks as matter, the clock hands as a record of action.

Space seems to be a rather simple distance metric that shows object separation as three dimensions of forward and backward, up and down, left and right. All of these Cartesian distances, though, are each equivalent to a time as well, so Cartesian space is really just a projection of time.

Cartesian space is a time-like projection of the underlying reality of matter, time, and action. Our projection of Cartesian space on earth’s surface, for example, is a simplification of the complexity of the action of earth’s gravity, earth’s rotation about its axis, its motion around the sun, and through the galaxy and cosmos. We do know about the complexity of absolute motion in the cosmos and simplify our projection of space with a comoving inertial frame of reference that permits us to project our location and predict action.

Although we are very comfortable with both time and matter as a single dimensions since we measure time by the ticks of an atomic clock and measure the mass of an object. However, there is also a coherent phase amplitude for both time and matter and the amplitude of the aether particle oscillation in a matter spectrum is proportional to the displacement of that action. Although we imagine a volume of space that is filled with the matter of an object, that Cartesian volume is a representation of the time and matter spectra that make up an action.

Actions can be either collision or capture or a mixture of both collision and capture of two or more bodies. Two bodies exchange matter with each other, one gaining mass and the other losing mass, and alter their trajectories as a result. As the two bodies interact, their matter spectra become highly mixed and are no longer distinct. The matter spectrum for this action is a very good basis for predicting the future of that action, but the Cartesian time trajectories are likewise important.

Aether Action

It is really unfortunate over my forty year sojourn with science that mainstream science has not yet united charge and gravity forces. If you do not know what unification means, do not worry because there are explanations galore for the proposition of charge and gravity unification. Moreover, the limitations of mainstream science are obscured by the tensor algebra of relativity, the particle zoo of the Standard Model, and the mysteries of black holes, dark matter, and dark energy. This complexity renders mainstream science's explanations unintelligible to most people.

My life with science and technology has involved discovery of meaning and a deeper understanding of being. I enjoy very challenging problems in science and technology and have tended to work on problems that others cannot easily solve.

Thus it is quite a pleasure to discover the aethertime universe from which all physical laws and constants derive from a simple set of rational beliefs in discrete matter and action along with the Schrödinger equation. By augmenting continuous space and time with discrete matter and action, gravity and charge forces become scaled versions of each other and there are many other puzzles that discrete matter and action address. In fact, aethertime's particle-like Cartesian and wave-like relational representations for reality reveal the mystery of consciousness along with the vicissitudes and evolution of feeling and emotion. 

To explain the inexplicable, discrete matter and time delay provide a rational universe based on a set of three mathematical axioms, axioms that show the mystery of consciousness as well as the purpose and meaning of existence. Aethertime shows that there is a kind of spirituality within a rational universe with the gifts of matter, time, and action as a basis for imagining desirable futures.

The aethertime universe has three primal beliefs as origin, destiny, and purpose, a trimal that discovers meaning and purpose for  being. Every life and every universe has a beginning, has a destiny, and has a purpose in discovery and aethertime is a rationale for our universe that also has an origin, has a destiny, and has a purpose in discovery.

Humans and all life share and enjoy but a very thin slice of time and in fact all of human civilization is barely 5,000-10,000 human lifetimes, which is a bare one-hundred-thousandth of the lifetime of our universe. The primordial seed of all that we are is in discrete matter, time delay, and their action and we are therefore the progeny of the action of matter in time, even as we imagine our many possible futures. The universe, all life, and humanity would not be and we would not be without both the actions and the possibilities of matter that is our purpose in discovering how the universe works.

Religions believe in the supernatural, which seems like an otherwise harmless part of most other people’s lives. Religions have variously selected beliefs that are often associated with selective interpretations of ancient stories with mysterious supernatural origins that seem by definition irrational, but so what? People believe in a great many irrational things like extraterrestrial UFO's and conspiracies and yet people still survive and sometimes even thrive with many such irrational beliefs. Some people believe that they are beautiful and attractive in spite of evidence to the contrary in the mirror every morning.

After all is said and done, most of us can and still do agree to live by the golden rule and have compassion for others and limit our selfishness and adhere to the norms of civilization even without any supernatural stories to guide us. However, we also then agree to live by a code of justice enforcing those norms with punishment meted out to those who violate civilization's norms. 

Certain elements of religion do show a potentially destructive religio-politico zealotry that often seems to violate civil norms, but really this behavior is not unique for any particular religious ideology or even for religion at all. Religious and political zealotry by their very natures have a potential for persecution, for war, for inquisition, for shunning, for excommunication, and for other religious and political retributions. 

Religions believe in an afterlife that is free from all of the misery and selfishness of life, which can lead to self-destructive behavior. Leaving this life in favor of some imagined perfect afterlife can be the source of very destructive behavior, both for individuals as well as others whose lives those individuals touch.

We all have a purpose in discovering how the universe works, which can be as mundane as what is for lunch or as profound as the origin of all things. For me to imagine a desirable future, though, I need something much more rational and much better tied to a rational universe than any of these religious or political beliefs. After all, any of these beliefs, even Buddhism and capitalism, has its zealots.

So I now count myself as a believer of sorts, and I have come to believe in both science and in the metascience of discrete matter, matter exchange, and time delay. Aethertime is a simple set of rational beliefs that anchors existence. Although there will always be some mysteries and gaps in any science, thank goodness that science will always explain the explainable.

But then there will always be the inexplicable that science can never hope to explain, and as a result, we all also need the spiritual or supernatural stories for the inexplicable and the ineffable parts of existence. For the inexplicable, we all need primal beliefs; in an origin, in a destiny, and in a purpose--the trimal. That we need this trimal belief is self evident since there would be no conscious life without unfounded and unconditioned belief. We can choose to ignore the inexplicable, but that simply reduces our purpose to some default or innate belief. In fact, most people accept their primal beliefs from established supernatural agents, which have been providing such guidance from a diverse set of ancient stories for thousands of years. 

Discrete matter and time delay are a framework for existence which make help me understand all of the extant beliefs of civilization, religious, political, and philosophical. Through the prism of aethertime, the wisdom of ancient stories comes alive and aethertime provides an understanding of human reason.

The Past and Imagined Future

We look up into the stars and darkness of the night sky and see only the past, which are the sounds and images of many possible futures. In fact, all of what we ever hear or see is a memory of our past and in the sky we see a sun as it was eight minutes ago, a "nearby" star, Procyon, we see as it was 11 years ago, and we see the hundred billion other stars in our galaxy tens of thousands of years in their past. 

An earth-like planet that is 600 light years away may look very different today than it did 600 years ago. Remember descriptions of earth's history 600 years ago? Outside of our galaxy, there are a hundred billion other galaxies that are millions or even billions of years into the past billions of years of our universe. 

The sound of an approaching automobile can be many tenths of a second up to many seconds in the past and yet we call that our present. We remember the actions of our near and distant past and then we imagine a set of desirable futures. The futures that we imagine are based on our past knowledge and experience and with our feeling, we select a particular future that begins a journey that then becomes our reality. At each moment we choose from among a set of possible actions those that lead to a desirable journey and that selected future evolves into our reality. 

The events that we remember as our past help us to imagine possible futures, which is simply repeating the obvious. What perhaps is not so obvious is that this simple logic recursion, which evolves our feeling, is the basis of all action in the physical universe, the Schrödinger equation. While the past holds our origin, the future is our destiny and our purpose is in imagining and selecting a destiny that evolves a desirable life.

In imagining the collision of two objects, we predict a future based on a past collision for similar objects, but that future is never absolutely precise or certain. The uncertainty in our future is a fundamental part of our reality and that uncertainty describes the way our universe works. 

In other words, a replay of our universe with exactly the same initial conditions will lead to a similar but not necessarily an identical future. Likewise, given our selection of a possible future, a replay of exactly the same initial conditions will necessarily lead to a similar but not an identical choice. While our immediate future can often be predictable, our eventual destiny will never be exactly predictable. The very action of prediction, by its very nature, changes the course of the universe and it is this recursion that defines reality.

Origin, Destiny, and Purpose

There are three primal truths or beliefs that are bases of a trimal for our universe: origin, destiny, and purpose.

The origin is where the universe began, but in a sense, we can believe that the universe began when we awoke this morning. Science begins its universe with the big bang of spacetime, but where the big bang came from is an inexplicable belief that is beyond human understanding and our universe and ultimately our lives evolved from that unfounded belief.

Usually we are comfortable with the belief that we were born of parents and that our parents were likewise born of their parents and so on. With many such generations, it is very rare to have much more than a belief in such heritage, and so either science or religion can found many different origin beliefs.

Destiny is where the universe will end but also where we go when we die as well as at the end of the day, where we will sleep. The science of spacetime believes in a cold death for our universe as all matter expands into an accelerating oblivion. This destiny is beyond understanding and will occur many billions of years into the future. 

Religions have a variety of different destinies that usually involve immortal human souls, including destinies that recycle or reincarnate those human souls. Spacetime science seems to deny any kind of destiny for human souls after death. 

Most people are just happy to have a place to sleep at the end of the day and whatever the destiny of your belief determines the course of your life.

Purpose is a belief that all life shares in the discovery of how the universe works and in order to survive, we must discover how various parts of the universe work. Mainstream science seems to believe that all purpose and meaning is due to the action of physical laws and that there are no supernatural or transcendent influences for action. However, science also concedes that all action in the universe is still subject to a fundamental uncertainty in that for every moment there are still a large number of equally possible futures.

From these many possible futures, only one future becomes our past and every subsequent action still results in a similar superposition of many possible futures without any certain future. Only when a possible future becomes reality do all of the other possibilities decay away and our reality immediately affects all other possibilities within the same time moment from an action. 

Religions believe that there are supernatural or transcendental influences for action. In particular, religions argue that human choice is most certainly influenced by various supernatural agents. 

Science believes that human choice is simply the result of the processing of the neural impulses of our sensation. Science defines an uncertainty associated with each neural impulse and therefore with each human choice as well and so even for science, the future is never certain even with the perfect knowledge of its initial states.

Okay, religion continues, the predictions of science come from a number of possibilities but only one becomes reality as a past. Although it is impossible to predict exactly which of a set of futures our feeling will select, it is possible to predict which futures we are more likely. We select a particular future, though, based on neural recursion which involves our perception of objects and our feeling.

Religions predict the same number of possibilities as science, but religions argue that there are supernatural influences in our choice and in our feeling. Therefore it is not possible to predict exactly which future becomes reality, but it is possible to predict which futures are more likely. For both religion and science, then, sensation, contemplative thought, past experience, and action all form the bases of much of our feeling and for predicting a likely future. And it is with our feeling that we select futures and choose actions.

What is the difference in action between science and religion? Both science and religion ultimately depend on feeling and both acknowledge the underlying uncertainty and complexity of that feeling. 

A religion petitions for divine guidance, imagines futures based on past experience, selects a future based on feeling, and is grateful to a divine metaphor for the gifts of living. 

Science contemplates actions based on an initial state, imagines futures based on physical laws, predicts a likely future based on feeling, and is grateful for the gifts of living.

Since human feeling is at the root of choice for both science and religion, the real difference between science and religion is simply in the oral and written stories that science and religion recite. The collective wisdom of these stories resonates with the feelings of those who listen and therefore affects their feelings and the choices that they make for their futures. This recursion is what determines our reality.