The Comprehensible Universe
Edited: Friday, 6 December 2019
When the great physicist and Nobel laureate Steven Weinberg wrote his book The First Three Minutes (1977), he concluded that “The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless”. His pessimistic conclusion is shared by too many physicists. Relief can be found in a comment made by the late cosmologist Stephen Hawking: "The human intellectual history is meaningful as a record of how we have come nearer and nearer to an understanding of the order in the universe". However, the question is whether the history of the universe can be understood as meaningful in itself by having a purpose regardless of human intellectual history.
The generally accepted one-shot model of the universe seemed pointless also to Hawking so he proposed once that the cosmic expansion will reach a peak followed by time reversal. He felt soon forced to abandon that proposal and said later that it was a big blunder. Albert Einstein said the same about his abandoned static model of the universe and he also said that “The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehensible” (Physics and Reality, 1936), While he described time as an illusion in line with the view that the universe seems pointless, its intrinsic nature is worth a better interpretation. My own thoughts on the subject were a decade ago published by The Swedish Mathematical Society, SMS. Generalizing the Einstein-Planck equation, it seemed logical to propose a wave theory of time, WTT. And as the universe is comprehensible by means of mathematics, it seemed equally logical to apply the Turing computational model for the purpose of coming nearer to an understanding of its order.
SMS has published detailed descriptions of my handheld models for explaining the solar system, the Milky Way, and the apparent accelerated expansion of space-time. Designed to complement earth globes and to present cosmic proportions in an accurate manner, they are intended to present at a glance the message that the nature of the universe is dynamic sustainability and that repetition rules. According to WTT, the macro- as well as micro-scale phenomena of the universe can be traced back to repetition periods of fundamental waves described by a generalized version of the Einstein-Planck equation. WTT describes the nature of dark matter, of dark energy, and of the huge difference in strength between electromagnetic forces and gravitation. And the so-called big number coincidences are made derivable instead of being interpreted by anthropic reasoning.
Einstein described Isaac Newton's gravitational force as caused by curved space-time. WTT explains that curvature as due to the continuous-wave nature of time described as a flow with a varying scale of time itself and with zero-crossing points where the direction of the flow is reversed. The simple two-dimensional model is extendable Into a three-dimensional continuous-wave model asserting the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics.
The three-dimensional continuous-wave model of time is meaningful. It makes macro- and micro-scale phenomena describe an ever-changing resilient universe. One day, it will make the present one-shot model of the universe seem as obsolete as the old static model.
The Comprehensible Universe
Edited: Friday, 6 December 2019
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