Neoclassical Physics and Quantum Gravity

Dr. Lawrence Krauss posted a fascinating series of “5 Minute Physics” videos circa April/May 2020. They are filmed in and around his Oregon home, which is in a lovely woods with a creek running through it, and this yields a very pleasing viewing experience. Let’s dive into Episode 26.

Episode 26 : In this episode Dr. Krauss talks about the future of the universe. If you’ve already watched, here is the comment I made on Dr. Krauss’s announcement tweet.

Then I wrote an even simpler logically TRUE statement from my NPQG account, hoping that Dr. Krauss would see at least one of the tweets. Dr. Krauss is one of only a few people on the planet that has the creativity and freedom of thought to recognize the veracity of my ideas.

I’ll paste portions of the abridged transcript below and intersperse them with my commentary. To be clear, Dr. Krauss explains the ΛCDM view very well and like almost every other physicist of the GR-QM-ΛCDM era has been misled by the idea of a one time inflationary Big Bang.

Then you might say we have this energy in empty space we therefore know the universe will expand forever and accelerate. However, we don’t know if the energy we’re measuring in space right now, that’s causing the acceleration in the universe is fundamental. Maybe it’s due to some field that’s going to disappear and that energy will be released in matter and radiation in which case that acceleration will stop. Then, if there were no energy and empty space left it would once again depend upon whether the universe is open, closed, or flat. If the universe were closed then it would start to collapse.

We know that the observed low point in energy of spacetime is 2.7 Kelvin, i.e., the temperature previously ascribed to the cosmic microwave background from the Big Bang. However, now we know this simply to be a measure of the energy content of deep space between galaxies. Furthermore we can expect spacetime æther to have a black body spectrum characterized by a peak at 2.7 Kelvin.

N.B. It is possible that in large voids in the universe that spacetime energy is even lower than 2.7K. As is true everywhere in spacetime, the speed of light is local based on the local permittivity and permeability and so in regions of even colder than 2.7K or where spacetime æther particles are depleted then photon speed is higher than what science currently considers to be the constant c.

Then you might say that energy goes away we measure the universe to be closed we don’t know if there’s not an energy in empty space that’s lower in value than anything we could measure now or in the future because eventually if it takes over the energy density of matter will continue to increase. If there’s some energy in empty space that takes over before the universe starts to recollapse then the universe will once again start to expand faster and faster so unless you know about all the kinds of possible energies of empty space you don’t know whether the universe is going to expand forever. You might say what if we discover the universe is open then it doesn’t really matter whether there’s energy in empty space it’s going to expand forever but there can be actually an energy in empty space which is negative and if that energy is negative it can eventually become the dominant energy if you wish of of everything and then in which case the universe will start to collapse again.

Not to worry. The universe is flat. It will expand forever, but that will be local opposing expansions, not a universe wide, unimpeded outward expansion.

Unless we basically have a theory of everything we really can’t say with absolute certainty what the future of the universe will be. We are living in a universe that’s expanding and accelerating faster and faster and appears to be dominated by the energy of empty space. If that persists what will the future of the universe be? As the universe expands faster and faster we’ll see less and less of the universe because eventually objects far enough away from us will be moving away from us faster than light. That sounds impossible in special relativity but in fact in general relativity you have to be a little more careful. These objects are at rest in space but space is expanding and the relative separation of objects is increasing faster than light. So one of those objects can emit a light ray and it’ll travel at the speed of light in space but space is expanding away fast enough that the light ray will never make it to us. The universe isn’t expanding exponentially fast or accelerating. The longer you wait the more you can see because the longer you wait, light from further and further objects will get to you. In universe such as ours the longer you wait the less you see because right now there are objects that are separating from us faster than light that were once not doing so and we can’t see them now they’re invisible to us. If we’d evolved five billion years earlier maybe we could have seen them in principle.

Dr. Krauss’s narrative is based on the faulty one-time inflationary Big Bang. Once we reframe to galaxy local process, we then realize that whether we can observe a photon is entirely dependent on the path they have traveled through expansionary galaxies as well as the lower end cutoff of observable photon energy. Science does not yet understand what happens to a photon as it reaches extremely low energies, other than frequency will be low and wavelength will be long. What then? Does the photon decay?

Similarly the civilizations that may arise in the future will look out and they’ll be able to see less and less of the universe. We calculated that in about 10 trillion years all objects outside of our local supercluster which are bound to us right now and therefore not expanding with the expansion all other objects all of the galaxies will now be moving away faster than light and will have disappeared the rest of the universe will have disappeared in about 10 trillion years. By the way that may seem like a long time and it is but compared to the lifetime of the longest living stars, it’s shorter than that so there’ll be main sequence stars in the milky way galaxy that’ll still be around in civilizations that may be around that will look out and see nothing other than their own our own cluster of galaxies and by the way eventually all the objects in our cluster of galaxies will collide together to form one massive galaxy.

Good news! For any observers in the future, the universe will look pretty similar on large scales as it does today. The only possible exception is that there may be more observable structure and radiation created by intelligent life.

In the far future 100 years ago we thought our galaxy was the universe. We thought the rest of space was empty and dark and and eternal and our galaxy was all there is. In the far future when civilizations look out from the galaxy they’ll see an eternal dark empty space although no evidence that the universe is accelerating because there’s no galaxies in there to probe. The microwave background which is an evidence of the big bang in some sense will have will have disappeared. It won’t be able to permeate the galaxy and so in some sense there’ll be no evidence that there was a big bang or that there’s an expansion in the very very far future of the universe after 10 trillion years if the energy of empty space is all there is and if it dominates and stays the same it doesn’t change. All of those are big ifs. After 10 trillion years when our galaxy is all there is and we’re alone in a dark empty space what will happen well eventually the stars will burn out and eventually they may coalesce into some large black hole which will then in principle evaporate after an extremely long time leaving space cold dark and empty. That’s the future of the universe in the long run it will end with not a bang but a whimper if the energy of empty space dominates and it’ll be cold dark and empty and so it it ends badly.

Fortunately we can now say that the future universe will look like it does today and like it has always looked. That said, we still don’t know the future for intelligent life. Hopefully, with knowledge of NPQG we can ensure a future that contains intelligent life that has its genesis here on Earth.

You don’t need a one time inflationary Big Bang if you have inflationary minibangs in AGNs. Completely logical. This fits 100% with observations and only tears down ΛCDM narrative. Galaxies inflate and expand into one another. The low point in spacetime energy corresponds to the CMB at 2.7 Kelvin.

J Mark Morris

I can visualize the decision tree in history. Michelson-Morley threw a curve ball and quantum mechanics (QM) took a giant swing and hit it way out into the field(s). Then everyone went all field happy. Well, except Einstein. Fields are the opiates of physicists. Those decision tree scenarios in the video are moot points. The solution is galaxy local inflationary mini-bangs leading to intra universe expansion and recycling.

J Mark Morris : San Diego : California