Superconductivity, or the 96% Solution

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As Colonel Hannibal Smith of A-Team fame was wont to say, “I love it when a plan comes together.”  You see, for years now I have been aware that my whole “Chord Theory/Universal Resonance explanation of the universe and existence” notion often foundered on the shoals of lack of pragmatic evidence.  When the whole construction rests on interactions too small to be measured – the behavior of strings – well, eyebrows tend to be raised, chortles are stifled, or not. 

New paths show promise in countering those reactions.  First, evidence that the status quo is flawed opens the door to alternative explanations, such as those I propose.  And, the more humongous the previous errors, the greater the wiggle-room provided.  Second, testable hypotheses generated by the alternative explanation are presenting themselves.

I am now willing to assert that the now widely-accepted notion that some 96% of the universe made up of dark matter and energy had escaped the observational efforts of the scientific community, qualifies as a humongous error. [See link.] 

And now even more recent data from the Kepler mission points to yet another elephantine oversight.  The May 20th issue of Science News carries an article entitled: Stellar Oddballs, in which Geoff Marcy of the University of California, Berkeley says, “There are so many stars that show bizarre, utterly unexplainable brightness variations that I don’t know where to begin. These phenomena have never been seen before, or never with such clarity.” Or in other words – “Oops, our bad.” [See link.] 

The point is not so much that “they got it wrong,” as it is that everything we were sure of yesterday can change tomorrow.  Certainty isn’t; which gives greater rein to hypothesizing about the uncertain.  Hence, this hypothesis:

As I understand it, little of what we know about the cosmos – or thought we knew – is based upon actually looking at a phenomenon.  That’s very old school, very Galileo.  Today, we measure the results of interactions or shifts in interactions and then define and identify the phenomenon by interpreting the interactions.  We don’t “see” particles collide in the Large Hadron Collider [LHC], rather reactions are “detected” that are consistent with what theory asserts should occur when specific particles collide – the actual collision is inferred, not observed.  That oblique ascertainment of “reality” applies in our everyday life as well.  I am looking at a pen that is blue.  But blue is actually the color that the pen is not.  The pen absorbs – takes into itself - all the other color wavelengths and reflects back those that are not “of it” – blue.  We see, and name the object’s color, by the reflected wavelength, by the characteristic it does not possess, blue.  Hence, Picasso’s blue period was really his “every color but blue period.” 

The objective of the foregoing is not a semantic game, rather it is an attempt to demonstrate how we might have missed most of the universe, and further, how we misunderstood much of that which we thought we had observed.  The issue is important since the data – as far as we can trust them – now seem to assert that our portion of the universe, the 4% we imperfectly observe, is different from the other 96% that we have not observed.  [A cautionary note seems important here.  There is no reason that I can see, to assume that the other 96% is made up of uniform “otherness.”  There may be a wide variety of “othernesses” in play.  But let us leave that for another time.]

The observational imperative of the 4/96 split would seem to be that we avoid attempting to observe the hidden 96% of the universe using the norms we have ascertained here in our 4%.  To do so is to become, once again, the midnight drunk searching for the car keys only where the light is best; searching using the flashlight of theories that now seem, at least, incomplete.

Chord theory, universal resonance, suggests a different observational strategy.  Our 4% solution rests on the observations of reactions, of collisions, of resistance.  The observation of discord, not harmony.   Universal resonance asserts a wider universe in which harmony is the norm and resistance the aberration. So, perhaps we should ask ourselves, what is the observable opposite of resistance?  What phenomenon might reveal a universe of harmonic normalcy? Conductivity seems to raise a hand. And superconductivity – that state when resistance disappears completely, when there are no collisions or reactions, defining a universe where harmony reigns, but is, to us, invisible. 

That is, of course, the nature of the ultimately harmonic universe posited by universal resonance.  The question remains: What does that universe “look like”?  What lampposts shed light on the other 96%?  I would hypothesize that the other 96% - or at least significant portions of it – are cloaked by superconductivity, perhaps even hyper-conductivity that would allow more than one object to commonly occupy the same space at the same time.  Yes, yes, we know that is wrong – at least so it seemed yesterday.  But continued “head-stuck-in-the-4-percent” attempts to prove such bizarre notions impossible, simply impede progress toward discovering how we might observe them once they rudely assert their reality.

A more fruitful path would be for those with the appropriate skill sets to seek for “cosmic background superconductivity,” as they have previously sought cosmic microwave background radiation.  How?  I haven’t the slightest idea.  But there are some wickedly brilliant people out there who can probably get their heads around it.  I look forward to their work!
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The Fascination of the Small

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The southern summer has settled in with a vengeance, spawning tornadoes that swept northward like latter-day Jeb Stuarts taking the war to the Yankees.  The thermometer puts up numbers of which students only dream, and you can soak a shirt walking out to get the mail.   All in all, it seemed a strange time to take my camera for a stroll.  But Christine has been gone for awhile, up in the Second City doing “Aunt Chris” duty, and I have succumbed to cabin fever.  So I made it a two-stop day.  First, I walked a short loop over by Lake Crabtree, then the “Investigator” path through the meadow and woods adjoining the North Carolina Museum of Art. 

The lake trail was peacefully deserted, save for a few other mad dogs and Englishmen jogging and biking the perimeter.  There is a calming silence to heat.  It would be oppressive indoors, but out here it seems a filter – nothing expends energy on unnecessary sound.  All that remains is important and worthy of our efforts to listen.  The smell of pine and honeysuckle steep together nicely in the quiet; trumpet vines and mimosas splash pink and scarlet among shade upon shade of green and brown. Several times I raised the camera to frame a shot, only to let it fall.  I began to realize that, today at least, simply pausing and watching would suffice.  More and more these days, when I take a photo it has a way of sinking into the voracious, multi-layered and cross-indexed “Pictures” file, never to be seen again.  Better to gaze, to breathe, and to listen.

Coming around a bend, I chanced upon a biker in full Lance Armstrong regalia; Area 51 styled helmet, spandex this and wicking that, all held together with Velcro and clever clips.  His stylish steed rested lightly against him as he fiddled with ear buds looping down to something small and digital.  I nodded, but he seemed oblivious to my awesome walking staff and raffish fedora.  A yard or two past him a flashy bluebird perched above a spectacular thicket of poison ivy draped with honeysuckle. I stopped and peeked through my viewfinder.  Damn near dropped the camera as a huge heron exploded from an eddy just behind her tiny blue buddy.  She screamed, and beat her way into the air.  I turned to see if Lance, too, had avoided a coronary, only to find him head down, staring intently at his digital doodad, thumbs flying.  It struck me that had we invented cellphones first, we would never have tamed fire – the saber-tooth tigers and cave bears would have been picking us off like jellybeans as we texted our way to extinction.

The path embracing the art museum was more populated, but still not crowded.  The large sculptures scattered across the landscape lay baking in the sun, pieces pulled from some gigantic kiln, cooling under Carolina blue.  Dogs, which had no doubt started the day straining the leash, now toiled up slight inclines, tongues panted to full extend.  Parents pushed, pulled and carried children among ponds and plantings perhaps a tad too obviously designed to tempt modern-day Monets.  Still, I caved, and took a couple of shots as background for a new set of images I am drawing.

I suppose it was the sleepy little ones being toted through the lush landscape that took me back to the first serialized fiction I can remember reading, Thorton Burgess’s Old Mother West Wind stories.  Burgess, a naturalist and author from Massachusetts, penned the tales over a stretch of almost 50 years, starting in 1910.  I first encountered Little Joe Otter, Spotty the Turtle, Billy Mink, Peter Cottontail, et al., in 1954, when I was still several months shy of my sixth birthday.  My father had taken a summer teaching position in California, and our rented home was not far from the local library.  My mother used books the way modern moms use DVD players, and so we read the summer away.

I am struck by the differences between then and now, between those stories and today’s.  The Mother West Wind tales made the small large – they created an entire world in a meadow or along a stretch of riverbank.  It is a characteristic shared with Kenneth Grahame’s British classic, Wind in the Willows, published in 1908, and Milne’s Winnie the Pooh, from 1926. These works all appear to have their roots in a close observation of nature writ small.  I envision Burgess, Grahame and Milne, children when the 19^th century turned 20, forced to go outside and play without things plastic or electric. They were, no doubt, initially bored.  But boredom, like necessity, often proves the mother of invention.  And they invented entire worlds in the gardens, meadows and streams that surrounded them – worlds that later flowed from their pens onto receptive pages, worlds they shared with me, waiting anxious and unknowing, across the decades. 

I wonder if, when even the youngest of children can touch the wide world through today’s magic screens, do we deny them the fascination of the small?  Do we ever allow them to become bored enough to track an ant across the garden?  To follow the flight of the bluebird? To imagine the throat that gives voice to thunder, or the world to which a rabbit hole allows entry? Have we become so averse to leaving our children alone with themselves that we impair their ability to discover who they are, and by what small thing they may be fascinated? And is the same true for you, and for me?

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Observing the Elephant, or, WiiinWim

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The fable of The Blind Men and the Elephant teaches an important to truth – to children.  As nimble fingers explore the pachyderm those tracing the side find a wall, a tusk becomes a spear, the trunk a snake; leg, tree; ear, fan; tail, rope – until the poor beast is totally and inaccurately deconstructed.  The implicit assertion is that could we but see the entire creature we would somehow “know” what it “is.”  And that is a valuable lesson for kids – “Get all the information before reaching a conclusion.” But seen from another perspective, the fable itself becomes an illusion.  No mere observation of the elephant would reveal the matriarchal social structure, the navigational nuances, or the communicative sophistication of the species that we are only now beginning to understand and appreciate.   So the story of the elephant and the blind men leads us into a WiiinWim situation.  Ah, no, again, not a typo – just another example of my love of acronyms.  WiiinWim stands for “What It Is, Is Not What It Means.”  And I am, again, talking about the universe – this time the optometrist’s universe.

The Optometrist’s Universe is a simplistic metaphor. An optometrist provides the lenses that allow us to read.  However, the ability to make the glasses is completely separate from the ability to read and comprehend whatever text is made legible by the lenses.  The most skilled uni-lingual American optometrist can peer through her finest lenses and still find French a mystery. Seeing the text is not the same as reading the words, and neither equates to understanding the sentence, let alone the paragraph or the book.  The same, I would posit, is true about astronomers and cosmologists and the universe: seeing is not directly correlated to understanding.  WiiinWim. 

This current musing drifts from my recent reading of The 4 Percent Universe: Dark Matter, Dark Energy, and the Race to Discover the Rest of Reality, by Richard Panek.  The book simultaneously fascinated and embarrassed me.  The fascination comes from the fact some of the smartest cosmologists, astronomers, mathematicians, and scientists somehow overlooked 96% of the universe. Even more fascinating; how easy and understandable was the error.  The embarrassment stems from the fact that these were “family” to a certain extent – members of the academic family – and much of the error was compounded because they expended incredible amounts of energy fighting over “grants and glory.”  At times the whole process wasn’t so much a “chase for the truth” as it was an effort to “affirm my version of the truth.”

But I digress, as always.  What I found most troubling about the work was the “Blind Men and the Elephant-ness” of it.  Perhaps trapped by the metaphor of his title, The Race to Discover the Rest of Reality, Panek seems to assert that once we learn to “observe” and measure the other 96 percent of the universe we will have “seen the elephant,” and that vision will put to rest pesky questions regarding the meaning of existence, the nature of love, the existence of God, and all that jazz.  I must object.

Here is my concern: the technology that reveals the extent and structure of the universe, and the individuals who operate the equipment and analyze data, do not necessarily reflect the skill sets and knowledge bases best-suited to understanding the meaning of the universe.  Now, I certainly do not wish to reduce the astronomer's role to mere lens grinder or image-maker, no, the skill involved in the conception and creation of contemporary telescopes and other sensing devices is quite incredible.  To image the various guises of the universe we can see and to even contemplate the tools necessary to perceive the other 96% that we cannot see, is a manifestation of technical and scientific skill of the first magnitude.  The astronomer's labor is worthy of daily admiration, and occasional awe.

But while those exceptional efforts bring the text into focus, they do not automatically provide insight into the meaning of the text resolved by the device.  I’m not advancing the general semanticist's old saw and simply asserting that, "the word is not the thing."  As a matter of fact, I’ve come – well, maybe not 180 degrees from that – but certainly, 155, maybe 160.  I am far more comfortable with my own perspective, drawn from my writings on Chord Theory and Universal Resonance [drop me a note, I’ll send you the links]; that while the word it is certainly an inherent part of the thing, it is just as surely not the whole thing.  To discern the symbol is not synonymous with understanding the symbol.  Were that the case, Dan Brown would be a far less wealthy man today.

Let us explore another metaphor.  Let us consider Maxfield Parrish's Sunlite Valley from 1947.

 I choose it because it is not Rembrandt or Van Gogh.  It isn't even J.M.W. Turner or Thomas Cole. It is an unabashedly romantic landscape, which if painted today might be accused of some photoshopping - a little heavy on the saturation, a bit defuse on the sky - but I like it. It is sort of painting “comfort food.”  The point is this: you could take the physical elements used to construct the painting and put them in a room.  The tubes of paint, or perhaps the pigments and binders used to make the paint, the canvas, the brushes, the stretchers for the frame, the varnishes.  Throw in the wood for an easel. Maybe add some lights.  Everything. Dump it there, in the room.  Let all those elements stand for everything that makes up the universe or the multiverses or whatever.

When the astronomers and astrophysicists finally manage to define all of those elements for us, then they will have cataloged the materials in the room, they will have marked the paint in Parrish's studio.  When they isolate the forces that pull elemental particles into larger clusters and reveal the actions and reactions that suture up the galaxies and the unimaginably immense super strings of galaxies, then they will have discerned what holds the paint together, what allows it to cling to the brush and adhere to the canvas.  They may have even have glimpsed the nature of Maxfield's technique, his brushstrokes, and his preferences for hue and texture.  But unanswered still is the question of why the artist chose to paint that particular scene and for what purpose? What, if any, was the intelligence that stretched from conception to execution?

And that, of course, brings us back to WiiinWim - what it is, is not what it means.  If you have followed these posts for long you know that they stem from my own efforts to merge the physics with the philosophy.  And those efforts have led me to a number of assertions about "what it means."  I wait, with not much patience, to learn the nature of that 96% of the universe that remains cloaked.  I am curious to see if it seems to “confirm or deny” my guesses about “what it means.” If you have forgotten the nature of those guesses, you can download the long version The God Chord: String Theory in the Landscape of the Heart, [200 – 300 pages depending on font size] for free here:

http://www.feedbooks.com/userbook/624/the-god-chord-string-theory-in-the-landscape-of-the-heart

But, in short, the work concludes with this thesis: Foster harmony, enable beauty, oppose harm: these are not the only truths, but without them all others come undone.

It is an assertion regarding appropriate human attitude and behavior that is drawn from what physics reveals about the nature of reality. You see, the recurring theme is that each time the best and brightest observers of the universe assert the primacy of chaos and the eventual demise of existence - those lynchpins of nihilism - newer evidence, better data, and a broader view reveals transcendent harmony and order. I continue to scour the emerging literature from the LHC, Hubble, et. al.  To date, the dominant chord still echoes harmonics.  And in that echo sounds the human mandate: Foster harmony, enable beauty, oppose harm.
 
The God Chord has been downloaded some 16,000 times, and is, I assume, also occasionally read :-)   So the foster harmony, enable beauty, oppose harm message is inching along through cyberspace. But my wife, Christine, requested a shorter version a couple of years ago, “You know, one regular people might actually enjoy reading.” 

Let me close with the 700 words that were the result of that request as they sum up my take on Wim "What it means":

Distillations: An Acknowledgement of Universal Resonance

by

RL Schrag

September, 2009

Being a tiny little book that attempts to present Universal Resonance, the worldview formerly know as Chord Theory in a more accessible form.

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Distillations

“Even small works can be beautiful if they point the way.”

Foster harmony, enable beauty, oppose harm: these are not the only truths, but without them all others come undone.

The object of this work is to distill universal resonance to its most parsimonious essence.  The guiding principles will be brevity and clarity, the objective, a work you can hold in the palm of your hand.
 

Universal Resonance

From the string theory of physics I accept the assertion that at the irreducible core of all things rests the string.  Unimaginably tiny, it vibrates.  Its existence mandates that the universe be defined by resonance; that we are made - as is every other thing in the universe, no matter how great or small - of music.

Existence, therefore, is best understood in terms of harmony and discord with no artificial distinction drawn between physics and metaphysics.

Universal resonance sees the division between physics and metaphysics as an intellectual artifice, a relic of wars between dueling arrogances:  Metaphysics asserts that truth is beyond measurement, while Physics fails to imagine the instruments equal to the task.

Universal resonance anticipates a world in which the unimaginable will become measurable, and the unbelievable is rationally explained.  It has happened so often in the past, it seems foolhardy to assert the contrary.

Foster Harmony

This guides all our behavior. It shapes what we do and what we should refrain from doing: We seek harmony.

Implicit in the exhortation to foster harmony is the realization that we cannot choose for others. The only chord you can tune is your own.

Harmony rarely frowns. She is not selfish, arrogant or disdainful.  Harmony could be rather tedious were she not so willing to laugh at herself.

Enable Beauty

This tenet mandates our active participation in making the world more beautiful. A broad conception of beauty is implied, one that transcends culture, market and current taste.

The route to beauty winds through throngs and past lonely places.  Where and how we choose to follow is unimportant.  That we do follow is imperative.
 

Oppose Harm

Harm is anything that compromises harmony and beauty. Sometimes active opposition, though seemingly discordant, is the necessary path to harmony. But, whenever possible, opposition should be graceful, gentle, even beautiful.

Remember, opposition forced into the public sphere usually indicates a failure to blunt harm in a more private and graceful manner.

The Self

The self is the symphony we compose with the choices of our life.  Inclined by biology, we take from our DNA the realization that we are utterly unique.  Each breath we draw, each hope we cherish, our fears, the thoughts we think, all trigger cascades of discernible physical reactions that strum the very strings of our self, creating and recreating us anew each moment.

Though buffeted by both choice and chance, we are the composers of our life’s symphony.  It is a role we are powerless to relinquish.

The Soul

The entity that most religions call the soul is recognized in universal resonance to be a physical reality; a cluster of those unimaginably tiny strings that uniquely encodes our deepest beliefs, feelings and insights. It is a minute morsel of matter whose size and resonance allows it, on the occasion of the demise of its current body, to migrate among the multiple dimensions demanded by the math of string theory, thereby actualizing immortality.

The Universe

Is the encompassing resonant harmonic entity of which we, as individuals, are and will always remain, a unique, sentient part.

The universe expands beyond the multi-verse of our theorizing, and yet is reflected in the infinitesimal perfection of the soul.

Our knowledge of the universe is evolutionary.  We are disabled by the belief that we can imagine the horizon of understanding.  Our belief in complexity blinds us to the insight suggested by simplicity.

Wisdom

We gain wisdom as we explore the three truths.  It is an exploration that is ambiguously poised between the private and the public.

We are unique entities suspended amidst unimaginable billions – unlike any other, yet in evolving concert with all.

Perhaps wisdom is best seen as unfolding harmony, comprised of works accomplished, commentaries on those works and the thoughtful anticipation of works yet to be.
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