III. Ecosmos: A Revolutionary Fertile, Habitable, Solar-Bioplanet, Incubator Lifescape

1. Quantum Cosmology Theoretic Unity

Kauffman, Stuart. Towards a Post Reductionist Science: The Open Universe. http://arxiv.org/abs/0907.2492. Posted on July 8, 2009, in part as a response to Stephen’s Hawking disavowal of a final theory, see above. Do access the full paper for as usual it is not fair to annotate Kauffman, to wit he reinterprets the multiverse in terms of Darwinian selection whereof our present cosmos is seen to possess unique “enabling laws or constraints” that imbue an unplanned potential for emergent creativeness.

The heart of what I want to explore begins with this: The very laws of physics may be open to being viewed as enabling constraints - enabling constraint laws selected by an abiotic natural selection among a set of possible laws to yield our extremely complex universe. And our single universe, not the multiverse and its attending weak Anthropic principle, may be the ’winning’ universe that is enabled by the opportunities afforded by those laws. In winning, our universe would then have evolved its laws such that the winning universe is ours. (2)

Again, reductionism and the consequent faith in deductive entailment yields a universe barren of creativity, a tautological realm entailed by the hoped for theory of everything. In contrast, if ’law’ is enabling constraint, and that enablement enables opportunities that can, blindly, be seized by the becoming of the universe in its full becoming, then the universe is open to myriad creativity. The universe is open in ways we have not dreamed in Western science since Descartes. (3)

Kibble, Tom and George Pickett. Introduction. Cosmology Meets Condensed Matter. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A. 366/2793, 2008. An array of articles on the interface and convergence of our world today with long ago and far away finds a repetitious universality as the same phenomena recur at each instantiation.

At first sight, low-temperature condensed-matter physics and early Universe cosmology seem worlds apart. Yet, in the last few years a remarkable synergy has developed between the two. It has emerged that, in terms of their mathematical description, there are surprisingly close parallels between them. This interplay has been the subject of a very successful European Science Foundation (ESF) programme entitled COSLAB (‘Cosmology in the Laboratory’) that ran from 2001 to 2006. (2793)

Just as a superfluid or superconductor will go through a phase transition when it cools past the critical temperature Tc, so the early Universe, cooling after the big bang, may have undergone a sequence of symmetry-breaking phase transitions. (2793-2794)

Kiukas, Jukka, et al. Complementary Observables in Quantum Mechanics. Foundations of Physics. Online April, 2019. Aberystwyth University, UK and University of Turku, Finland mathematicians contribute to a special issue about the esteemed University of York physicist Paul Busch (1955-2018) with whom they collaborated with for years. They advance Busch’s insights and expressions that natural phenomena tends to ever seek and reside in a dynamic duality, rather than a single state. Albeit by way unfamiliar terms and mathematical depth, a salient conclusion can be broached. This fantastic spacescape whence we find ourselves, which is yet amenable to our inquiry, is indeed distinguished by reciprocal archetypes at each and every instance. The authors open with a quote (see below) from his 1997 paper which suggests an “unsharp” milieu that is in some critical poise between complements, rather than a one thing theory. His Quantum Research Page is still online (paulbusch.wixsite.com/research-page) where an array of papers and conferences can be accessed. A special journal issue about Paul Busch is forthcoming, to which this belongs. See also Quantum Reality, Perspectivalism and Covariance by Dennis Dieks at arXiv:1905.05097 for another entry.

We review the notion of complementarity of observables in quantum mechanics, as formulated and studied by Paul Busch and his colleagues over the years. In addition, we provide further clarification on the operational meaning of the concept, and present several characterisations of complementarity—some of which new—in a unified manner, as a consequence of a basic factorisation lemma for quantum effects. We work out several applications, including the canonical cases of position–momentum, position–energy, number–phase, as well as periodic observables relevant to spatial interferometry. We close the paper with some considerations of complementarity in a noisy setting, focusing especially on the case of convolutions of position and momentum, which was a recurring topic in Paul’s work on operational formulation of quantum measurements and central to his philosophy of unsharp reality. (Abstract)

We hope to have demonstrated that one can safely open a pair of complementary ‘eyes’ simultaneously. He who does so may even ‘see more’ than with one eye only. The means of observation being part of the physical world, Nature Herself protects him from seeing too much and at the same time protects Herself from being questioned too closely: quantum reality, as it emerges under physical observation, is intrinsically unsharp. It can be forced to assume sharp contours – real properties – by performing repeatable measurements. But sometimes unsharp measurements will be both, less invasive and more informative. (Operational Quantum Physics Paul Busch 1997)

Kuhlmann, Meinard. What is Real? Scientific American. August, 2013. Its online title is “Physicists Debate Whether the World is Made of Particles or Fields or Something Else Entirely.” In this post Large Collider time, whose finding of the Higgs Boson is now not seen to really mean much, a major rethinking of course has commenced. Akin to Lee Smolin’s Time Reborn, e.g., a University of Bremen philosopher of physics proposes that something else and more is going on via the real interconnections between objects. As tangibly present in themselves, this dynamic domain might be seen, for example in a “Structures to the Rescue” section, as a version of the “organization” that distinguishes living organisms.

With the two standard, classical options (particles or fields) gridlocked, some philosophers of physics have been formulating more radical alternatives. They suggest that the most basic constituents of the material world are intangible entities such as relations or properties. One particularly radical idea is that everything can be reduced to intangibles alone, without any reference to individual things. It is a counterintuitive and revolutionary idea, but some argue that physics if forcing it on us. (42)

Laudisa, Federico and Carlo Rovelli. Relational Quantum Mechanics. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2008. Online at http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qm-relational, a succinct entry that reality is composed of and distinguished by much more than a profusion of objects. The equally present interconnections in between every thing are nature’s salient quality and essence, a view at the edge of the 21st century turn from particles to people, a yin and yang of communion and agency.

The physical world is thus seen as a net of interacting components, where there is no meaning to the state of an isolated system. A physical system (or, more precisely, its contingent state) is reduced to the net of relations it entertains with the surrounding systems, and the physical structure of the world is identified as this net of relationships.

This way of thinking the world has certainly heavy philosophical implications. The claim of the relational interpretations is that it is nature itself that is forcing us to this way of thinking. If we want to understand nature, our task is not to frame nature into our philosophical prejudices, but rather to learn how to adjust our philosophical prejudices to what we learn from nature.

Lederman, Leon. The God Particle. Nature. 448/310, 2007. A perspective paper in a special section on the Large Hadron Collider, wherein nine articles provide a good review of the past 50 years of the particle paradigm. But one wonders if this endeavor has more than run its course, scoffing up funds, as others have noted, which cannot detect in its benthic depths a self-organizing cosmic to human genesis.

Lemoine, Martin, et al, eds. Inflationary Cosmology. Berlin: Springer/Praxis Publishing, 2008. Papers from a 2006 Paris colloquium on the 25th anniversary of the theory that the universe, in its first instant, experienced a vast ballooning expansion from a singular point of origin. With some modifications, this phenomenon has been verified and serves to unify a number of disparate findings. A lead, notable article is by Andrei Linde on this past history, and its latest multiverse and anthropic implications.

Levin, Michael and Xiao-Gang Wen. Photons and Electrons as Emergent Phenomena. Reviews of Modern Physics. 77/3, 2005. Another example of a welling, fundamental shift from an inanimate, 20th century physical nature composed of particles alone. A quite different universe is lately being realized, which is here composed of “string-nets” (not to be confused with string theory) from whose “condensations” develops the overt intricate structure of the universe. A reference is made to Nobel laureate Philip Anderson, we would add Robert Laughlin, Stephen Adler, and others who propose, in this nascent revision, some deeper, non-particulate realm as the real source of a cosmic gestation.

As we probe nature at shorter and shorter distance scales, we will either find increasing simplicity, as predicted by the reductionist particle physics paradigm, or increasing complexity, as suggested by the condensed-matter point of view. We will either establish that photons and electrons are elementary particles, or we will discover that they are emergent phenomena – collective excitations of some deeper structure that we mistake for empty space. (879)

Lightman, Alan. The Accidental Universe. Harper’s Magazine. December, 2011. How curious and worrisome that a venerable icon of American literature, founded in 1850, would in the 21st century publish an article like this purported to be the despairing epitaph of centuries of physical science. An MIT cosmologist and author, Lightman wholly buys the string theory multiverse that male physics has spun itself into to hand down an erroneous, ill-considered death sentence. Life, persons, and earth are but a vicarious happenstance of insensate, soulless, cosmoses that bubble in and out of existence. In fact, as the January 2013 Foundations of Physics on this theory (search de Haro) contends, the physics jury is still out, quite divided, so no such rush to judge and condemn should be made. A new book by Perimeter Institute director Neil Turok The Universe Within: From Quantum to Cosmos, reviewed below takes strong issue with these myopic pronouncements. A deep polarity palls these theoretical realms over “to be or not to be,” such a dire fate should not be foisted on a public unable to challenge it.

This long and appealing trend (that nature has an intelligible purpose) may be coming to an end. Dramatic developments in cosmological findings and thought have led some of the world’s premier physicists to propose that our universe is only one of an enormous number of universes with wildly varying properties, and that some of the most basic features of our particular universe are indeed mere accidents—a random throw of the cosmic dice. In which case, there is no hope of ever explaining our universe’s features in terms of fundamental causes and principles. (35)

If the multiverse idea is correct, then the historic mission of physics to explain all the properties of our universe in terms of fundamental principles—to explain why the properties of our universe must necessarily be what they are—is futile, a beautiful philosophical dream that simply isn’t true. Our universe is what it is because we are here. (38)

Why does such fine-tuning occur? And the answer many physicists now believe: The multiverse. A vast number of universes may exist, with many different values of the amount of dark energy. Our particular universe is one of the universes with a small value, permitting the emergence of life. We are here, so our universe must be such a universe. We are an accident. From the cosmic lottery hat containing zillions of universes, we happened to draw a universe that allowed life. (41)

Linde, Andre. The Self-Reproducing Inflationary Universe. Scientific American. November, 1994. The Russian-American cosmologist describes the universe as a “self-generating fractal” which reproduces in an analogous biological fashion. In late September 1983, to a packed physics auditorium at Harvard, I heard the young emigre from the Lebedev Physical Institute in Moscow present his first public lecture in the United States on this vast scenario.

Linde, Andrei. Inflationary Cosmology after Planck 2013. arXiv:1402.0526. By this March 2014 revision, the Russian-American, Stanford University, physicist posts his latest understandings of an initial vast expansion of a universe from a singular point of origin. Linde, along with Alan Guth, were the prime conceivers of this theory in the 1980s. The 84 page paper summarizes his talks at the summer 2013 Post-Planck (Satellite) Cosmology conference in Grenoble, France. It offers a unique vista on the frontiers of physics whence a string theory landscape might imply an inflationary multiverse, anthropic principle, and so on.

In September 1983 I attended Linde’s first public lecture in the United States at Harvard, where he spoke of myriad bubbling fractal cosmoses. He remains on message three decades later. But at these speculative reaches, versions still vie, often as opinions and metaphysics, with little reference to an independent mathematics, or independent reality. And our human collaborations that are able to quantify such infinities are rarely factored in or given a place and purpose.

And readers know that on March 9, 2014 it was announced as front page news that the BICEP2 (Background Imaging of Cosmic Extragalactic Polarization) project at the South Pole had detected gravitational waves in the early universe that appear to prove this inflation conjecture, crucial to the main cosmological scenario. Its main posting is at arXiv:1403.3985. In the meantime this report has come under much scrutiny, for example arXiv:1402.6980 (March 13), Big Bang Finding Challenged in Nature (510/20, 2014) and in Physics Review Letters Editorial: Signals from the Dawn of Time? (112/240001, 2014. ADDENDUM: In February 2015 a joint Planck and BICEP report concluded that dust was in the data and a primordial inflation cannot yet be confirmed. However, as Science notes (347/595), the year long exercise is seen as a good primer for how to really prove what is still thought to be the cosmic origin.

The best available explanation of the observed uniformity of the universe is provided by inflation. However, as soon as this mechanism was proposed, it was realized that inflation, while explaining why our part of the world is so uniform, does not predict that this uniformity must extend for the whole universe. To give an analogy, suppose the universe is a surface of a big soccer ball consisting of multicolored hexagons, see Fig. 2. During inflation, the size of each hexagon becomes exponentially large. If inflation is powerful enough, those who live in a black part will never see parts of the universe of any different color, they will believe that the whole universe is black, and they will try to find a scientific explanation why the whole universe must be black. Those who live in a red universe will never see the black parts and therefore they will think that there is no other universe than the red universe, and everybody who says otherwise are heretics. But what if the whole universe started in the red state? In the next section we will show how quantum fluctuations can lead to transitions between different colors and simultaneously make inflation eternal. This means that almost independently of the initial state of the universe, eventually it becomes a multicolored eternally growing fractal. (16-17)

When inflationary theory was first proposed, its main goal was to address many problems which at that time could seem rather metaphysical: Why is our universe so big? Why is it so uniform? Why parallel lines do not intersect? It took some time before we got used to the idea that the large size, flatness and uniformity of the universe should not be dismissed as trivial facts of life. Instead of that, they should be considered as observational data requiring an explanation, which was provided with the invention of inflation. Similarly, the existence of an amazingly strong correlation between our own properties and the values of many parameters of our world, such as the masses and charges of electron and proton, the value of the gravitational constant, the amplitude of spontaneous symmetry breaking in the electroweak theory, the value of the vacuum energy, and the dimensionality of our world, is an experimental fact requiring an explanation. A combination of the theory of inflationary multiverse and the string theory landscape provides a unique framework where this explanation can be found. (62)

Linder, Eric. Mapping the Cosmological Expansion. Reports on Progress in Physics. 71/5, 2008. A good introduction to the theory and experiment of a universe that seems to be flying apart. One is curiously led to wonder why such cosmos has evolved to accomplish its own descriptive observation by our earthmind. See also “Dark, Perhaps Forever” by Dennis Overbye in the New York Times for June 3, 2008 for latest views on dark energy, matter, and acceleration disputations.

A century ago our picture of the cosmos was of a small, young and static universe. Today we have a far grander and richer universe to inhabit, one that carries information on the strongest and weakest forces in nature, whose history runs from singularities and densities and temperatures far beyond our terrestrial and laboratory access to the vacuum and temperatures near absolute zero. Understanding our universe relies on a wide range of physics fields including thermodynamics, classical and quantum field theory, particle physics and gravitation. (2)

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