It started a few years back with a sophomoric question that I actually had the atomic density to email to Fred Alan Wolf, the author and physics professor, and one that, to my surprise, he actually answered (without making me feel like a freshman). Anyway, the question was something regarding my grand theory of what would happen in falling off the edge of the three-dimensional known universe, and Dr. Wolf explained that the universe is a balloon that curves back on itself and so, from our 3D point of view, there is no edge, no ultimate void where the Starship Enterprise can traverse an energy band and go where no man has gone before. In other words, we are trapped within a 3D bubble of our space-time perception that moves along with us – complete with Einstein’s relativity as the man behind the curtain.
Fast forward to this morning and more of my Google searching of theoretical physics questions to find out that space is expanding faster than the speed of light. This begs the potentially erroneous 3D mindset question: well if that’s happening at the edge, wouldn’t that mean that there’s somewhere out there, beyond where we can see (beyond where light can come from), that is still a THERE, i.e. a place that exists in some form of space-time?
I thought about it for a bit, and a thought-experiment dawned on me where you imagine that you are standing on the last planet in the known universe and are looking out toward the edge of space. What I think you would see is just as much space-time in front of you as you can see standing right here. This is because you are standing on a planet moving on the edge of the expanding universe and so the speed of light, relative to where you are, is great compared to the distance that that light has to travel before it encounters a place where the rest of the universe is moving (i.e. expanding away from you) faster than the speed of light, call it the black-void boundary (roughly about 93 billion light years in diameter, based on measurements of the cosmic background radiation). In an infinitely expanding universe, one that is expanding at the same rate everywhere, there is no center (this is hard to explain), and that boundary is always the same distance from you. It’s the one case where you actually ARE the center of your own universe (but don’t let it go to your head).
Then it hit me, the bigger perspective (and yes, if there is one piece of wisdom that I would wish to surgically implant into the brains of everyone on the planet it is: THERE ALWAYS IS A BIGGER PERSPECTIVE, even if you don’t know what it is), the bigger perspective on this is that we are all living in “space time soup”, with a few alphabet noodles of condensed matter floating by. The proof of this is not only your own existence (hey we could all be living in a cosmic version of the Matrix), but the existence of light (as well of matter) and the demonstrable fact that light moves through space.
The reasoning goes like this. Sound moves through air, because air is a medium for the mechanical transmission of sound waves, a wave energy that exists on a physical level, and so requires a physical medium for its propagation. Take away the air (or any gas, liquid, or solid) and mechanical propagation of sound waves ceases (“in space, no one can hear you scream”). So what about light? Is there a medium that we can take away that would eliminate the propagation of light waves and particles (photons)? Off hand, I don’t know of one, unless you can find a way of taking away space-time. Space-time is all around us and it is the stuff in which everything exists, and through which light is propagated. Light can be blocked just like sound can be blocked (actually it’s way easier with light), but except for a black hole (of which we don’t know all the physics), there is no way to take away space time.
Another way of looking at it is that we do not know of any higher-order material or energetic conditions of existence beyond space-time. Quantum mechanics? Maybe, because some demonstrated phenomena have been proven to exist there, but, from a 3-dimensional perceptual point of view, the quantum world is in the opposite direction from the cosmos world of our immediate perception. There have been many attempts to reconcile this and I could even go so far as to suggest (rhetorically) that we could refer to the “space-time-soup” that I mentioned earlier as equivalent to our“quantum-air”, but that linkage would only be semantic as I have no proof of their inherent connection. Also, I don’t want to drag into this the current hot-topic of dark-matter and dark-energy, because I know even less about those then the few people who claim to know anything at all about them (This is because I actually do respect science and so don’t’ want to go off on an endless wonderland word trip of hope-filled psudo-scientific speculations more than necessary to make these points).
So here’s my hypothesis. Just as mechanical forces can propagate as a wave energy in a physical world existing in the larger framework of space time, so too, space-time (a medium through which electro-magnetic energies, i.e. light, can travel) might exist within some larger unknown framework (though not likely a 3-dimensions + time one) that is beyond our inherent, and or scientific, ability to perceive. Call it “quantum-void” for lack of a better name (“quantum” being still the most popular leading-edge science term, though I’m open to other name suggestions). Perhaps this is all, at least in part, a statement of the obvious, but I like pointing to bigger perspectives because it gets people thinking; that and unless you want to turn this question over to theology, I think it’s forever on the science horizon.
Now I know these are all speculative questions, but some more thoughts that follow this are: If there is force and energy that propagates through every medium of known existence, would there also be force and energy (or something equivalent) that propagates through this other larger quantum space-time? In addition, if sound is a wave, and light is a wave and a particle, what would quantum-space energy be, pure particles in the material form of whatever would exist as a “solid” state of this higher order realm? Or, a wave energy, within the dimensional characteristics, of some characteristic of the matter that stuff (of which there might an even be a still higher, “quantum-quantum” order if the whole thing doesn’t somehow curve back in on itself, as space-time does). A good analogy to consider is that electro-magnetic energy is an energetic aspect of the motion in space of the stuff of atoms, and so would the quantum space-time energy be a phenomenon within the macro scale reflection of the nature of particles that exist on the sub-atomic level ??? See how these questions go on and on… physics speculation is kind of like rhyming.
So this is all hypothetical, and may not be entirely congruent with all of the current science and its relevant terminology, but after I thought up the quantum-air notion, I did some searches and found nothing, no apparent conjectures along the lines of what I have here, so I’m throwing this out there into the info-sphere for others to pull at on the fringes. Unravel…
