Reviewing past columns, and using the momentum of the columns on the elementary particle and the atom, putting them together with the columns on The Real Skeptic in a Nutshell and Making a Difference, I see there is only one real piece of information that would keep me from presenting in one column the grand scope of the universe.
We are dealing with an empirical science that fractures its vision to the point that its individual parts make little or no sense. The universe, by which I assume empirical science means the matter that is contained in the nothingness of space, is really not matter contained in nothingness, but is energy in the form of matter created by a big bang that occurred in some sort of space time continuum. The galaxies are all supposed to have coalesced out of the remnants of this explosion. Because explosions expand, the universe is expanding, the misbegotten red shift the terminal evidence, and because everything that expands will contract, the universe apparently goes through these cycles of big bangs unless, that is, there are multiple universes which represent each stage of the cycle.
Ignoring the energy that produced the force that causes motion by having it coalesce into matter, empirical science then concludes that there is only a single force in the universe, gravity, and that force is responsible for everything that we see. When we see motion that we can't explain, it must be because of the mass that causes gravity, and thus it creates dark matter, black holes and even dark energy to account for the motion, all of which is straight line but for the force of gravity. When it comes to the operation of the solar system, all movement results from being condensed out of a swirling mass of gas which means that the solar system is unchangeable. When we do find changes, empirical science calls them perturbations or more recently, as precision instruments have shown major changes, the product of chaos, which, elevated to the status of a theory, is in empirical science now a fact.
As to any question dealing with the current cause of motion, there either is no current cause, or the cause is a property of what is moving. When it comes to life, us, the animate matter that can perceive not only the universe, but ourselves perceiving the universe, we are simply an accidental mixture of elements that got hit by a chance bolt of lightning and evolved from nothing to our present state as a result of stray cosmic rays.
Our science must be the joke of the galaxy with Earth a synonym in the dictionaries of myriad civilizations for ignorance, laziness and delusion.
Once we have a particle with two opposing properties, we have the source of the energy that drives the universe. When the property of motion is captured by the property of attraction, then solid matter is formed made up of particles all of which have the potential of regaining their at rest motion. This fact is dimly recognized in the thought, codified by Einstein in his conceptual equation, that energy equals mass times the square of the speed of light.
Once we realize that field replacement is the process that releases the elementary particles that have been captured and held into place to form matter, we can see the process of those particles unraveling on the surface of the sun and the stars, and we know that the Earth we live on at one time must also have had a star-like surface that cooled and crusted over.
Because we know by experiment that an element's existence depends on the field in which it exists, that the stronger the field, the more complex elements and compounds of elements that field can break down, we can assume that no matter can exist in the strongest of fields, the fields found on the surface of the sun and the stars, and that elementary particles, when streaming into an area of nothingness where there is no field, will begin to reform into matter. Matter formation, the process in which the particle's property of attraction overcomes its property of motion, occurs in the absence of a field and matter dissipation, the process in which the particle's property of motion is released from its property of attraction, occurs in the strongest of fields. We have both those conditions existing in space, the former in the vast stretches of starless space and the latter on the surface of stars.
The two extremes produced by the two properties give us the two poles of the universal cycle, one the formation of matter, the other the dissipation of matter and the universe is a continuous process in which the elementary particles that make it up are either forming matter, are matter, or are matter that is coming apart, structured in the electromagnetic emission fields.
Examining the process of combustion reveals much about the nature of force in the universe. Emission fields, made up of the same elementary particle, have a structure. These fields, commonly called the electromagnetic spectrum that includes the light we evolved to perceive the universe, expand out from their source in all directions at the speed of the released particles, the speed of light. We can measure the way they expand. They diminish inversely with the square of the distance over which they expand because all directions is an expanding sphere and the areas of spheres which hold, using light as representative, the same amount of light are related by the square of their distance from the source of the emission field. The most telling measurement, however, is that they expand uniformly. If there were not something regulating the expansion of emissions fields, then light would come in blotches.
Examining the mechanism that causes the emission field to expand uniformly, we find that it also produces a force on matter that causes the matter to be pulled back toward the source of emissions. This mechanism mirrors the structure of the atom formed in the absence of a field, and the atom formed in the absence of a field is also capable of producing the field replacement that produces the expanding fields.
Thus, we have a situation in which matter forms, produces emission fields that dissipate the matter, and in the process, draw all other matter toward the emission fields doing the dissipation. This means that no matter can ever escape the process of dissipation. All matter is made up of the same elementary particles, and the way those particles interact as a result of their opposing properties ensures that all matter will continually go through the cycle.
This cycle would, in itself, be rather senseless unless it could produce something during its process. While I haven't covered these technical matters in prior columns, the inductive flows that recombine and therefore regulate the uniform expansion of the emission field have another predominate characteristic when they come into contact with matter. Inductive fields always flow at right angles to the primary flow. As a result, when there are two sources of emissions in proximity to one another, the inductive flows of each will oppose the inductive flows of the other. As induction is a right hand rule, we can demonstrate opposing inductions by pointing the thumb of the right hand to the left, the proximate emitter, and watching which way the fingers curl. When we flip the right hand over so that it is pointing to the first emitter, the curl of the fingers opposes the former curl. The inductive flows have an effect on the surface of the emitters, causing the matter that makes up those surfaces to start to rotate in the direction of the inductive flows.
This results in opposing inductive flows in proximate emitters establishing rotation in the same direction. The opposing inductive flows act like a middle gear between two gears causing each outside gear to move in the same direction the other outside gear moves. This is the right hand rule of the solar system. If the thumb of the right hand points to the north pole of a planet, the planet's rotation will be in the direction the fingers curl.
This has an even greater affect on the planets when a dominant emitter asserts itself and becomes the central sun of the solar system. Because rotation results from opposing emission fields, the dominant emitter begins to rotate. As it does so, its emission field is effected in two ways. First, because the rotation produces centrifugal force, the equator of the sun bulges and the greatest amount of emissions migrate to the equator. This establishes the plane of the solar system, the area in which the planets will orbit. The second affect of rotation is the bias it imparts to the emission field. The sun's emissions field no longer expands directly out and away from the sun. It expands away and back from the direction of rotation.
Because the mechanism that regulates its expansion and causes matter to be attracted is no longer pointed directly back toward the surface, but has accommodated the bias produced by rotation, the bias of the attractive mechanism is now in the direction of the sun's rotation. The planets, instead of falling toward the sun, fall in the direction of this bias and thus begin to orbit the sun in the same direction that they rotate. If the right thumb is pointed to the sun's north pole, rotation follows the curve of the fingers. As the attractive mechanism is a reverse bias, the planets also orbit in the direction the fingers curl.
This situation is absolutely necessary in the cycle of the universe because it gives matter the permanency it needs to crust over and form an atmosphere. If matter had no permanence, then it could not perform its primary function of producing life. Life is the organization of atoms and molecules of atoms around electrical flows. As soon as a planet begins to crust over, its surface contains vast expanses of differing elements, each with a different potential difference from the other and therefore capable of establishing the electrical flows around which life forms. However, it is the rotation of the planet that produces these flows, these telluric currents, because the constant change from night to day changes the temperature of the elements and changes in temperature change their potential differences with respect to one another.
Rotation is the force that drives the evolution of life on a planet. It is not a chance process, it is a dictated result of the process of matter formation, ignition and motion. Animate matter has to come into existence because it is the process that attempts to stabilize the environment once motion, orbiting and rotation, destabilize the environment. Once rotation begins on a cooling planet, animate matter, life fills the gaps created by the deficits produced by the rotation. Once life forms, it evolves as a result of its own necessity to satisfy the disbalances. Once it evolves the simple virus, which evolve to maintain or increase the potential difference at an area, and the simple bacteria, which evolve to decrease potential differences by removing energy in the process of division, the ability to reproduce and move within the environment extends life's survival within the environment.
From that point, the evolution of life is simply the evolution of characteristics that can be combined into animate matter that can increasingly exist independent of the environment. Animate matter starts off as simple fungi whose existence is dependent on the flow and which ceases to be animate when the flow stops and proceeds to acquire a reproductive capability so that, should the flow its dependent on stop, it can exist where other flows exist. The forest can fling itself afar so that when it is destroyed by fire, it can, from the forest afar, once again regenerate itself.
The next step is to become ambulatory so that animate matter, instead of being rooted in place as the fire approaches, can flee the fire. Once ambulatory, animate matter needs a detector to move safely within the environment and once it evolves a detector, it evolves systems that can record the experiences of the detector so that those experiences can be used to further its range of survivability. Sentience, the ability to hold pictures of reality that don't exist in reality, gives rise to us and our ability to not only move within the environment, but to change the environment so that it accommodates our existence.
The outcome of motion giving temporary existence to matter in a manner that maintains that matter in an unstable form, constantly moving and constantly changing temperatures, results in matter that can exist independent of the matter. This brings us back to the cycle of the universe. We don't know where the matter that makes up the universe came from. Because the universe is nothing, the absence of matter, it had to come from somewhere. While we don't know how the particle obtained just the right portions of opposing properties to produce the matter that then moves before it dissipates, we know that time, like nothing, does not exist so that there was any amount of time available for particles to come into existence and be unsuccessful.
However, we do know that the five part cycle of the universe is capable of producing matter that does not necessarily have to participate in the five part cycle. The five-part cycle is the formation of matter, the ignition of matter, the movement of matter, the cooling and subsequent attraction of matter into combusting matter and matter's dissipation in that combustion only to start the cycle once again.
We, as sentient ambulatory animate matter can craft our environment so that it will not participate in the five-part cycle of the universe and therefore the universe would appear to have a purpose, the purpose of producing matter that is permanent, that is not perpetually caught up in the five-part cycle. But to accomplish that, to make ourselves independent of the cycle, we have to produce a technology that reflects the universe, and, sadly, we are not even close.
Unless we begin to address the questions of force and motion, what makes the planets orbit and rotate, what makes objects drop, address the structure of light and integrate it with electricity and magnetism, we will be reduced to our elementary particles, flung to the dark reaches of the universe never to come together again.
We, the particular life that formed on this particular planet revolving around this particular star located in this particular section of the galaxy located among myriad galaxies will be selected out of the evolutionary process.
We will cease to be, recorded in the annals of other civilizations as a failure, probably not the first, and most certainly not the last, but the only one that really makes a difference to us.
Peter Bros is the author of the 9 volume Copernican Series and is President of The Far Museum of Dallas, an actual history museum, which will house its collection of 50,000 rare Eastern Mediterranean manuscripts and artifacts together with actual history displays and tours in a full-sized replica of the Egyptian Temple at Dendera to be built in the Dallas Ft. Worth area. Email:peterbros@therealskeptic.com