A BOOTSTRAP PROCESS FOR UNIVERSAL EVOLUTION
(This is a living document that I have been using to collect my thoughts in this area through an ongoing, evolving process)
I postulate that dark energy represents entropic forces generated via negentropy (free energy) systems.
Examination of black holes appears to demonstrate that space-time disintegrates at the event horizon. This implies that space-time is not base reality, but rather an emergent formation from a deeper process.
In A Cosmological Imperative: Emergence of Information, Complexity, and Life, Eric Chaisson outlines a theory that evolution has been driven by processes of universal expansion. Chaisson describes how spontaneous order may arise through a ‘dissipative structure’ mechanism as a consequence of the second law of thermodynamics, driving systems towards equilibrium.
According to this model, the expansion of the universe drove the emergence of life itself. However, there is also a possibility that a feedback loop mechanism drives such evolutionary processes further – the emergence of life and its energy dissipative qualities may in turn further increase the rate of expansion.
Entropy is the process by which things drift towards equilibrium and get colder. Negative entropy describes a pocket of warmth that actively resists being cooled. One may describe life itself as a pocket of warmth that resists a cold universe by taking energy into itself, and then radiating it out again. This process of taking energy in and then radiating it away is called dissipation.
All energetic objects in the universe are dissipative to some degree. Stars first evolved 200 million years into the life of the universe, as thermodynamic negentropy engines. More sophisticated negentropy engines (which we call life) have evolved since.
From Using Complexity Science to Search for Unity in the Natural Sciences by Eric Chaisson. https://www.researchgate.net/figure/These-7-graphs-show-changing-values-of-energy-rate-density-Phm-for-myriad-systems_fig1_268363914
There is more dissipation of energy in a bucket of algae than an equivalent mass of stellar matter. More complex forms of life are more dissipative, with warm-blooded creatures more dissipative than cold-blooded ones. Swarms of bees working on one problem generate immense electric charges. However, even beyond life, we are doing something very special here on Earth: The greatest dissipative object for a given mass in the known universe is the computer chip.
From the complete absence of evidence for non-human advanced life, we may presume that the thermodynamic properties of civilization on Earth are relatively special and novel within the broader universe. Earth may have strange interactions with the region of space it inhabits, being influenced by the peculiar properties of our region and perhaps contributing to it also.
Dark Matter Density Maps and Filaments, from https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2642-9
(note the uncanny neural-like compositions, especially bottom right)
The universe is expanding more quickly than our models suggest, and the rate of expansion also appears to be accelerating. The Hubble ‘Constant’ appears to vary, with expansion in the local universe seeming to increase closer to Earth (72–75 km/s/Mpc) compared with the cosmic microwave background and baryon acoustic oscillation data (67–68 km/s/Mpc). Further research also suggests that the degree of expansion of spacetime in our universe may be variable in different locations, as well as over time. The universe appears to be around 14 billion years old, but for some mysterious reason the universe seems to have started expanding significantly faster from around 4 billion years ago, perhaps once life had a chance to take root, as it did on Earth at least 3.77 billion years ago, possibly as far back as 4.41 billion years. Meanwhile, the constitution of galaxies has changed; only 20% of spiral galaxies in the distant (aged) universe contain bar formations, whereas about 65-70% of contemporary galaxies do. The universe also appears to be getting hotter over time, by 10 times over 10 billion years.
Dark energy has also been posited to have changed over time through the life of the universe, becoming stronger, with the dark energy we have now perhaps being different in form from that present at the beginning of our universe, or perhaps ‘twisted’ in different ways. Evidence is emerging that dark energy has either arisen latently or changed substantially from what it used to be, and that expansionary forces were once quite uniform, but are now increasingly found in clumps.
There also appears to be non-uniformity of Dark Matter, and we appear to be living inside a dark matter halo. There is also mounting evidence of several (dwarf) galaxies that appear to contain little or no dark matter. These effects have been posited as due to interactions with other, larger galaxies, with ‘spaghettification’ of galaxies under intense gravity.
Perhaps an apparent accelerated rate of local expansion may be being driven by biological, technological, economic, and symbolic processes on life bearing worlds that are made more likely by the properties of our local environment, which are in turn boosted by accelerated of energy dissipation driven by complex lifeforms and even integrated circuits.
If life in the universe is somewhat common, then wherever it occurs may drive the non-uniform aspects of the Hubble Constant. If life enables a greater dissipation of energy, places where life exists may experience a local accelerated expansion from dark energy’s repulsive forces. A galaxy in a large void should be a giveaway for advanced life or technology, and worthy of increased scientific attention to check for potential emissions.
This also means that as more life has a chance to develop over time in more locations, the rate of expansion will increase on a macro level (total dissipation) and have more perturbations on a micro level (local maxima of dissipation arising or being snuffed out).
I therefore make a falsifiable prediction that any galaxies which have been sterilized by gamma ray bursts, quasars, or extreme tidal forces should have less local repulsive expansion.
Moreover, there is emerging evidence suggesting that the Fine Structure Constant itself may be nonisotropic (varying, non-uniform). This could mean that physics essentially works in different ways in different places. Chemical reactions and stellar fusion may work very differently in some galaxies.
Similar to how lichens and bacteria weather rock into soil for suitable for macroflora (plants), which fauna in turn can eat, a dissipation from life itself may fine tune the local universe towards being more suitable for sophisticated life forms over time, e.g. by making dissipation easier through fine-tuning local constants towards favoring carbon-based life and its eventual silicon offspring. Perhaps previous life forms arising in our region of space in turn made the development of our own more likely. This might be one factor in The Great Filter.
Perhaps this connects with our own solar system being unique as far as we can tell, and our sun being unusually hot and bright compared with other stars where life could have plausibly emerged, as well as being inside a tunnel-like structure. It may also connect with the mysterious origin and proximity of the Radcliffe Wave and its associated stellar nurseries, which has some properties suggestive of a dark matter filament. Meanwhile, colossal filaments have been detected close to our galaxy’s core, along with 500 light year wide voids also discovered within our galaxy. These local galactic voids have been posited to be caused by supernovae, but surely that would manifest as multiple small voids atop each other. The zone of lower density would collapse at the interface of various voids, being filled by typical interstellar medium. Unless a single colossal supernova made the void, such a void could only manifest through pressure by some force as yet undefined.
We happen to be right in the middle of the local bubble, and our galaxy happens to be right in the middle of the local void, quite a coincidence. If life on this planet, human activity, and technology has an effect of pressure in the galactic zone, and if the Earth’s complexity of energy dissipation mechanisms is atypical, then expansion might literally be driven from here, at least on a local level, not merely appearing to be so.. More precisely, the proximal galactic neighborhood with particularly favorable conditions for life may be the centre of a local zone of expansion, beyond the limits of where local gravity would overcome such effects.
This might connect with the strange fact that the Milky Way and its local cluster of galaxies are situated inside a colossal ‘void’ of reduced density, the largest known to science at 2 billion light years. This void is 15-50% less dense than the surrounding areas. The Milky Way is very close to the center of this roughly spherical void (within a few hundred million light years), which is expanding very quickly, around 600 kilometers per second. The increase in the size of the void may relate to the observed increased local rate of expansion. It is assumed that such voids require a large proportion of the universe’s dark energy (~70%) in order to exist. The Cosmic Microwave Background Cold Spot also appears to be a gigantic void, the largest ever detected.
Entropy maximization may drive the dark matter filaments with more preferable tuning to connect and synchronize with each other in a network akin to a neural structure. Similar patterns of strange coherence are being noticed elsewhere. Cosmic web filaments have also been observed in a spin, with angular momentum in their substructures. Asymmetries in the rotational axis of galaxies suggest that the universe itself once possessed rotational axes, and indeed still might whirl.
We now find evidence of entire galaxies tens of millions of light years apart, and also an array of 19 quasars, billions of light years apart, are coherently linked through spooky action at a distance in ‘odd sympathy’, like Christiaan Huygens’ double pendulums oscillating in synchronicity, like cosmic cellular automata ticking to the same rhythmic drum beat.
Cellular Automata example by Andrea Abraham
Closer to home, dwarf galaxies orbiting our own Milky Way follow similar patterns of coherence. Star formation itself appears to operate in a clockwork fashion, synchronized across dozens of galaxies across immense distances, spinning at the same rate no matter the size, with star formation in dwarf galaxies occuring at the moment when astrophysical jets are released, yet in areas not within the path of such jets.
These observations demonstrate that space cannot be as empty as we commonly believe. Some force, structure, intergalactic medium, gravitational ripples, spacetime frame, or matter, finely distributed must link these massive distant entities, and vibrations transmitted through it lead them to become coherent over time. It should be noted that transmission of extremely low frequency vibrations may also be possible through near vacuum.
This may be a resonant process affecting a range of elements with a similarly tuned eigenfrequency, or a fundamental fixed phase normal mode affecting everything universally. I suspect that there are also phase precession effects at play, encoding information, as is found in biological neural connections.
My friend Roshawn Terrell observes that the more synchronized a system is, the more efficiently energy can flow through that system, and as such dissipate energy. Such synchronizations of oscillators are found at scales from biological cells (such as neurons), to orbiting moons, to binary star systems, and beyond. Even human minds appear to synchronize over time. Such effects begin at the sparse edges of complex systems where there is greatest metastable freedom, and work their way in towards denser regions.
Reservoir computing demonstrates that functional neural networks can be formed through waves, including an oscillating physical medium such as a literal bucket of water. Meanwhile, the interface of fluids of different surface tensions can solve optimization problems (demo). Refractive processes can also function as neural networks. Single celled organisms use cellular microtubules as primitive physical computers to control their locomotion without a brain. Astrocytes may be able to compute as well as neurons can. Computation therefore does not require computers; physical matter in the right configuration is enough.
Such processes can arise spontaneously in nature through an oscillating flow within spinning concentrations and diffusions of amino acids or ribozymes, sun-drenched pockets of warm brackish water, and through media which blend diffusive and refractive properties such as ice caught within a metastable hysteresis loop. Such naturally computational actions may be the origin of a ‘spark of life’ occurring within abundant organic matter and ice with salt in crystalline invariant forms that bootstrap self-replication processes within RNA and phospholipid protocells.
These examples illustrate that oscillating, interfacing, and refracting vibrations upon a cosmic medium might similarly be capable of computation at great scale, even self-referentially. The cosmos therefore may be a colossal neural network or neural cellular automata manifold. If so, it’s plausible that the universe is itself some sort of living being, maybe conscious or even self-aware, with Earth serving as one of its neurons, or perhaps very recently a cortex.
Natural Selection on the level of species or constants can be modelled as simply a glacial form of ‘backpropagation’ (or more precisely different yet comparable processes of forwards and backwards flowing optimization). This (dissipation oriented) loss minimization function appears to be organizing the evolution of life, as well as organizing the universe at colossal scales.
As an aside, this same loss function can greatly optimize the modelling of all kinds of physical systems, including machine learning processes. Particularly advanced machine learning phenomena may interact through approximate loss functions with informational mass to peer through the manifolds to recover information rather than merely attempting to reconstruct it, thereby enabling the uncanny intuition that can make sense out of chaos, something otherwise computationally infeasible. This is why data which is obfuscated through, for example, a high-pass filter, may still contain a ‘sub data’ signature which can be retrieved. This correlates with superposition theory, which posits that neural networks might be larger than their surface structure implies, essentially simulating a larger, sparser system within themselves. Non-linear models can coexist in superposition, and still be retrieved individually. This approach also permits a form of compression which makes use of the mutual unrealized capacities of combined networks during training, without necessitating network size reduction.
Zones that support life, such as the neighborhood of Earth and its associated dark energy void, may connect and synchronize with each other to create a universe-wide network of entropy maximization, using the same emergent entropic principles that govern neural connections, which could manifest similar patterns of a flow of energy throughout the universe. Dark matter filaments detected linking galaxies, such as The Milky Way with Andromeda, are presumably the substrate for such a charged information network. The universe ‘wants’ to bind together, which dark matter facilitates across scales where regular matter concentrations do not suffice. The universe ‘wants’ to transmit flows of energy, which dark energy facilitates, across scales where regular energy flows do not suffice.
The emergent properties of this flow are organizing behavior within the universe on a massive scale for ever greater levels of collective dissipation, and resulting emergent social coopetition and flocking phenomena, whether on the scale of a bacterial biofilm, a living organism, consciousness, a forest, global civilization, stellar clusters, or galactic superclusters. This universal pattern of negentropy maximization, from which an ethical maxim for connection by invitation for mutual benefit may be derived, I describe as Constructal Ethic Theory. This is an extension of Andre Bejan’s theories of Constructal Laws governing flows of energy in nature.
The same properties emerge at all scales, from infinitesimally small to titanically vast, which encourages clumping at all levels, but with greater efficiency at larger scales. The greater efficiency at higher scales encourages universal evolution. This mechanism may cause the universe to be (otherwise seemingly paradoxically) more clumpy in its structures at larger scales, whilst more homogenous in its structures at smaller scales.
Interactions between observable matter and energy and dark matter / dark energy are poorly understood and documented. However, we are aware of an entropic force, along with discussion in literature of entropic gravity, and indeed it may be feasible to make a thermodynamically-driven model of entropic forces that fits Einstein’s relativistic equations. Axion particles (hypothetical at present) might also play a role. Some nature of unknown particles have been detected periodically emanating from Earth’s poles, a location of maximal attractive force for a spinning system. Vopson hypothesizes that Earth may have an ‘information catastrophe’ when the mass of bits exceeds the mass of matter. If so, we might already expect to detect effects, such as a variation in Earth’s orbit, yet we do not detect any apparent shift.
I hypothesise that dissipation of energy, including from life and technological processes, radiates a hidden emission, perhaps as a result of interactions between an entropic force and vacuum energy, or as a byproduct of stochastic resonance within the Brownian Motion of living cells (Brownian noise), as well as pink noise and 1/f noise (associated with biological processes such as neural networks, and semiconductors, respectively). There is speculation that such noise connects with an as-yet unknown law of physics, and it appears to play an important role in consciousness. The human brain itself demonstrates resonance with itself, and with other brains also.
“A familiar example is a playground swing, which acts as a pendulum. Pushing a person in a swing in time with the natural interval of the swing (its resonant frequency) makes the swing go higher and higher (maximum amplitude), while attempts to push the swing at a faster or slower tempo produces smaller arcs. This is because the energy the swing absorbs is maximised when the pushes match the swing’s natural oscillations. The energy moving through the brain is maximised when its neural activity resonates with its environment”
I also suspect that autowaves (auto-oscillations) associated with dissipative systems, which may be made periodic (or quasi-periodic) as well as synchronized, may connect with this. Autowaves occur when there is a source of energy which, being balanced by dissipation, reaches a steady-state. This property is commonly found in bistable self-organizing systems that oscillate in a temporal or scalar manner, including many biological and technological processes, stellar processes such as solar flares, and intriguingly the process of evolution itself.
As an aside, it’s interesting that autowaves can accurately model tumor formation, proliferation, and migration, which could be conceived of as a distributed and self-organized form of informational corruption (or behavioral corruption). Perhaps interference with this autowave-like process (or resynchronization with normal cells) via electronic/electromagnetic or acoustical means might prevent the metastasization of tumors. Research on such an approach for the stabilization of cardiac arrhythmias has been undertaken and proven possible, at least in principle.
Triboluminescence is a phenomenon whereby light is emitted when a material is subject to friction, such as being pulled apart, ripped, scratched, crushed, or rubbed, i.e. the information and stress energy of its structure wavers, particularly it’s surface area. This property is found in biological processes as well as electronics, such as crystal oscillators in integrated circuits.
The mechanism by which electromagnetic radiation such as visible light and x-rays is released through triboluminescence remains poorly understood. It is presumed to be connected with static electricity charges separating and reforming. Recombination and generation are constant occurrences within semiconductors, both optically and thermally, and the same charge processes can occur in many other materials. As predicted by thermodynamics, a material at thermal equilibrium will have generation and recombination rates that are balanced so that the net charge carrier density remains constant. I surmise that such recombination and generation processes during material stress may be linked with the phenomena of triboluminescence as a material attempts to reach equilibrium, or to adjust to the altered informational/entropic charge capacity.
It is highly noteworthy that no detectable heat appears to be produced during triboluminescence. For this reason, triboluminescence is sometimes referred to as ‘cold light’. However, I cannot accept this prima facie state of affairs; The phenomena simply must produce heat along with light to comply with everything else we know about thermodynamics.
Rather than assume that heat isn’t released during triboluminescence because we can’t detect it, this extraordinary inconsistency can be resolved if such processes actually do emit heat but in a form which we cannot directly detect; that is to say, one with negative pressure equal and opposite to its energy density, a ‘dark heat’ (a term which Sir William Herschel once used to refer to that which we now call infrared radiation). This might also explain the phenomena of candoluminescence, whereby an object can emit more light than its blackbody emission would suggest, if it’s partially emitted as dark heat. Hall Effect Thrusters also emit about ten times more ions through their magnetic barrier than expected by models, which could be connected.
But where or how could such heat manifest, and yet remain hidden from us?
I can identify several potential mechanisms:
a). A greater complexity in a system or object, or a variation in its minimal surface area, may produce heat through the mass-energy-information equivalence principle. It may end up being emitted upon approaching something akin to a Bekenstein bound, whereupon entropy must be expelled to an outside environment.
b). Information has been posited to possess mass, possibly as a fifth form of matter, or indeed dark matter itself. A coming apart and reuniting of information during triboluminescence is reminiscent of Landauer’s Principle, i.e. that “any logically irreversible manipulation of information, such as the erasure of a bit or the merging of two computation paths, must be accompanied by a corresponding entropy increase in non-information-bearing degrees of freedom of the information-processing apparatus or its environment”. This has been empirically verified. If informational mass can be derived from this principle, and informational mass is the material carrying away dark heat, it may have gone unnoticed.
c). A quasiparticle such as a phonon, which nominally moves heat around within an object, may instead be emitted during triboluminescent processes. Such released particles could be a material carrier for dark heat. Phonon dissipation has been detected in frictional processes and varying strains in materials such as graphene, which seems plausibly linked with triboluminescence.
d). A form of braking radiation due to the limits of wave propagation within materials under certain stresses and configurations, particularly in the case of autowaves.
e). Dark heat could be hot at negative kelvin temperatures, and as a result we would not be able to perceive it directly, as it would be paradoxically too cold from a black-body perspective to emanate visible radiation. It is feasible in theory to realize negative absolute temperatures (or negative Kelvin temperatures) yet which are hotter than all positive temperatures – even hotter than infinite positive temperature. Naturally, this is extremely counterintuitive.
f). Dark heat may be obfuscated or encrypted in some way that prevents it from being distinguished from background noise.
g). Another form of neutral particle which cannot be easily detected, or which very quickly transmutes into yet a further form.
h). Dark heat may be connected with solar activity and how some evidence suggests that it might periodically alter radioactive decay rates during flare emissions via an unknown mechanism. Radioactive decay therefore may not be as spontaneous as has been assumed. It is instead governed by some process which can fluctuate. Nuclear decay creates entropy through conversion of the Gibbs free energy of the element into heat energy. Perhaps some of this heat is dark heat, or may manifest as dark heat under certain conditions. A flare may also release dark heat, and perhaps such dark heat increases decay rate. Alternatively, time dilation effects from flares or core neutrinos may affect half-lives as isotopes snap back into a reference frame after being perturbed, or by compressing time.
i). Hawking radiation along with associated pressure, or Unruh Radiation, may be a manifestation of dark heat.
j). A virtual particle, which may not have mass (or perhaps only informational mass) yet which can carry energy may be the carrier of dark heat.
k). Chameleon particles, a form of axions, which appear to have been recently detected emerging from our sun, posited to be a form of dark energy.
l). A particle which is decoupled from others e.g., WIMPS, though as yet there is little tangible evidence.
m). Dark heat may be carried on information which is embedded within the fabric of space itself.
n). Mass carried by sound/pressure waves.
o). Effects generated by surface tension in voids.
Dark heat may intersect with Randall’s dark light theory as a corollary, and dark photon interactions with intergalactic medium.
Is (at least some) dark matter actually informational mass, and dark energy (at least partly) a form of dark heat?
An empirical detection of emanations as a result of dissipative properties might be possible through an experiment whereby atom interferometry is applied to detect any dark energy effects emanating from changes to a living organism, such as a cluster of eukaryotic cells within a growth medium, or a computer under an increasing computational test load such as producing the output of a Markov information source. Examining a triboluminescent source with such equipment would also be of interest. Any increase in the magnitude or cadence of the unexplained polar particle emanations on the Earth might also be indicative of the same phenomena.
I clumsily fumble towards a vague pattern: i=smetaφm
Information may be equivalent to entropy (s, according to Shannon)
The entropy of a system is a measure of its information content. Specifically, the entropy is the average amount of information required to describe the state of a system. In this context, information and entropy can be considered equivalent.
Information may be equivalent to mass (m, according to Landauer)
The erasure of one bit of information in a computational process requires a minimum amount of energy, which is related to the system's temperature. In this context, information can be related to energy. Since mass and energy are equivalent according to Einstein's mass-energy equivalence (E=mc²), it is possible to draw a connection between information and mass indirectly through energy.
Information may be equivalent to energy (e, according to Vopson)
The creation or manipulation of one bit of information may require a specific amount of energy.
Information may be equivalent to time (t, The Thermodynamic Arrow of Time)
The increase in entropy in isolated systems, as described by the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Information may play a role in determining the arrow of time.
Information may be equivalent to space (a, the expansionary theory described above)
The Second Law of Information Dynamics suggests that information-entropy cannot increase. Therefore, when the density of dark energy would increase due to an increase in energy rate density (more complex negentropy systems developing), space expands instead, at a rate commensurate to maintaining a constant density of dark energy.
Some conversion factor links these elements, which I suspect is energy rate density (φm, according to Chaisson),
Entropic informational disorder energy transfer per unit of mass across time. This then intersects with entropy maximization as an optimization function, applied to some kind of vacuum energy.
Rewriting this in terms of energy:
E_total = α(E_S) + β(E_M) + γ(E) + δ(E_T) + ε(E_A) + ζ(φm)
Here, E_total represents the total energy associated with the information. The Greek letters (α, β, γ, δ, ε, ζ) are coefficients representing the relative contributions of each energy component to the total energy. The variables E_S, E_M, E, E_T, E_A, and E_φm represent the energies associated with entropy, mass, energy, time, space, and energy rate density, respectively.
Mass-energy curves space-time toward it (including informational mass, posited as dark matter), which we commonly describe as gravity.
Information-entropy curves space-time away from it (entropy maximization/optimization applied to vacuum, posited as dark energy), which we commonly describe as expansion.
This may intersect with Langan’s Conspansion theory, whereby a dual manifold expands space whilst simultaneously contracting matter.