Extra-Solar Religion and Science
Viewpoint Change
A new view of spacetime is likely to have been adopted in an extra-solar civilization after it recognized the unity of spacetime. From this it is but a short step from recognizing that spacetime might be quantized like its contents, the elementary particles making up matter and radiation.
Max Planck invented the term quantum when he discovered that heat and light radiating from a glowing object was not continuous and infinitely divisible. He found it was made up of extremely small indivisible packets of energy that Einstein identified as indivisible elementary particles called photons. The two concepts led to the discovery of quantum mechanics, which dominated the description of matter and radiation in the 20th Century. Since that initial discovery we have found there are about a dozen elementary particles that make up the entire universe.
Quantized spacetime, the alternative to continuous spacetime, considers spacetime to be made up of extremely small indivisible quanta, each an elementary particle of spacetime capable of holding one or more elementary particles of matter or radiation. With matter it is usually one, with radiation it is often more. To give a particle location in space and time, a spacetime quantum has three indivisible dimensions in space and one indivisible dimension in time. No smaller dimensions exist.
In moving from one quantum to another, an elementary particle moves one minimum length in one minimum time. The quantum dimensions are such that the particle travels at the speed of light. To make sure that this speed is the same in all directions, the minimum length and the minimum time must be the same in all directions. Spatially, quanta must therefore be spheres, and the quantum's pulse of time must be nondirectional. When tightly packed together in numbers amounting to 1 followed by 180 zeros (10180), they hold the entire contents of our universe: the empty spaces of the vacuum and the elementary particles. We can think of the universe as a game of three-dimensional chess where the pieces are moved at the speed of light through a cosmic matrix of infinitesimally small spheres.
The Existence of Eternity
Although all the quantum spheres contact each other at a few points, gaps exist between them. As the quantum spheres themselves contain the dimensions of space and time, their outside surfaces define a region beyond space and time. In effect, the gaps between quanta interconnect to form a hyperspace with no spacetime dimensions, nearly as large as spacetime itself. In effect, hyperspace is a second universe, an eternal universe, wrapped around every quantum of spacetime and extending beyond the matrix of quanta. We have an eternal labyrinth with no spacetime dimensions within us and the rest of the universe. Do not look over there or up above the clouds for eternity. It is within you.
There are already forecasts in our own science that some approach like quantum mechanics must be developed for gravity if we are to fully understand its properties. As gravity has its most profound effects in modifying space and time, the quantization of spacetime may provide an approach to quantizing gravity. If an extrasolar science has followed this line of development, it may have changed its world view to a degree comparable to the change occurring when quantum mechanics burst in on a Newtonian world.
Some of their findings from assuming spacetime is quantized would be:
Initially, hyperspace energy of eternity precipitates spacetime quanta
Emerging quanta capture hyperspace energy, create a spacetime universe
Spacetime is infiltrated by a labyrinth of dimensionless energy
Energy and momentum are conserved in spacetime by the labyrinth
Labyrinth energy waves guide particles through spacetime
Labyrinth channels provide instantaneous communication
A summary of how these concepts arise appears in the Quantized Spacetime appendix. They bring a new perspective on eternity for religion.
The determinism that quantum mechanics drowned with randomness in continuous spacetime is resuscitated in quantized spacetime. Particles follow deterministic paths through the spacetime matrix of quanta. The evolution of the deterministic universe in quantized spacetime is so complex, however, that its course can only be predicted by an organism as complex as a universe itself, with its 10180 memory elements, each shrunk to the minimum possible length (1.62 x 10-35 meter) and flipping in the shortest possible time (5.39 x 10-44 second). Yes, the speed of light is that distance divided by that time! 7/29/2020 3
. . . when all are poets and mystics. . .