Okay, for those who’ve arrived late
Sit down and allow me to reiterate.
Sit down, sit down,
You might think it’s all just pontification and conjecture
But it’s not for my own benefit that I give you this lecture.
So far we’ve covered the full extent of metaphysics and ontology
– No, don’t mistake them for fields only of verbolatry –
Sure, my theories may seem a tad bombastical, sometimes even fantastical,
But they’re all perfectly scholastical,
And rigorously and impenetrably mathematical.
So, we go over the tiny and the expansively panoramic,
From cosmological constants to quantum geometrodynamics,
From subatomic particles and elementary forces
To planets, H2O, DNA, to plants and horses.
From the periodic-table’s and Euclid’s elements
To space-turtles and their shell-riding Elephants.
Today’s lesson covers all things and of what they’re composed
How, why and what they are will be explained and exposed.
Here we go -
Our Milky Way galaxy has 400 billion stars in it
– That’s our current best estimation’s upper limit –
And at its center, around which we slowly roll
Sits a 4-million-times-the-mass-of-the-Sun pretty big black-hole.
It takes 240 million years to rotate around one ‘cosmic year’, I’m told
So Humanity’s entire existence is only about 12 ‘cosmic hours’ old.
Our nearest neighbour galaxy has maybe 1 trillion stars, that’s Andromeda
And it’s heading towards us quite rapidly, says the cosmic speedometer.
At 400,000 km/hr it seems to be in a bit of a hurry
But it won’t hit us for a few billion years, so no real need to worry
(And by the time our two galaxies collide
Humanity itself will have long-ago already died.)
And to the Virgo Cluster do both these galaxies belong;
A cluster of galaxies that is 1,500 galaxies strong.
And that’s only 1 of 10 million clusters the universe contains
All aligned along enormous sprawling cosmic veins;
‘Galactic filaments’, structures that measure a few billion light-years across
To attempt to fathom such scales the human mind finds itself truly at a loss.
And all of this everything is being pulled toward some observed gravitational anomaly
The ‘Great Attractor,’ a super-duper really, really ridiculously big black-hole, probably.
But the basic point – there are more stars than grains of sand on all the world’s beaches
And each sand-grain contains about as many atoms as stars as far as Space reaches.
There are more water molecules in a full bladder than cups of water in the sea
Which, incidentally, makes it impossible to avoid drinking some of Napoleon's pee –
Hey – watch it! – no need to spit out that mouthful – relax,
I’m merely presenting you with the statistical facts.
It’s just a simple logistical matter
Of water molecules passing through any one individual’s bladder
Relative to the number of glasses of water contained in all the World’s oceans –
When dealing with Scientific Truths you must control your irrational emotions;
I was trying to imbue in you an appreciation for scale.
Well I think your piss analogy was a bit of a fail.
Fine, let’s move on to the microscopic end then
Sit back down and ready your pen again.
The atom! with its protons and neutrons of positive and neutral charge,
And even with its cloud of negative electrons it’s not very large.
And that’s an understatement – it’s actually small!
With the nucleus making 0.1% of the atom’s whole size and that’s all;
Like taking a football stadium and in its centre placing a penny.
So, of the physical ‘stuff’ that’s inside things there’s really barely any.
You could say all things are made up of empty space, mostly,
Or that Everything is basically Nothing, if you look at it closely –
But that’s something we’ll come to a bit later
As we further pull apart the mind of the Creator.
‘Protons? Electrons? But what are these particles?’ you’ll naturally ask,
And then you’ll regret asking that question pretty fast.
Well, I hope you have your caffeine and patience sufficiently steeled:
A particle is an excitation, or ‘perturbation,’ within its own quantum ‘field,’
And what on earth is a ‘field’? Why, it’s a mathematical abstraction;
Numbers, lines and equations of repulsion and attraction;
You know – statistical probabilities of observational interaction.
Is this a full explanation? – no! it’s not even a fraction.
But, regardless – give this ‘field’ a kind of existential flick,
And, presto! we’ve a particle – but it disappears real quick!
You see, staying in existence for only a moment is all particles are allowed
So ‘real’ particles are really just a ‘virtual,’ fuzzy transient cloud
Of particle-anti-particle pairs fluctuating in and out of existence,
With each virtual particle traveling only a fraction of a moment’s distance
Before disappearing via mutual matter-anti-matter annihilation,
Ensuring that The Nothing is kept in constant conservation.
What’s that? You say “creating Something from Nothing is bogus”?
Of course – but not if you do it so quickly before the Universe can even notice!
Example: the Higgs boson vanishes in one quintillionth of a second
(And that’s a bit too quickly, if you ask me I reckon)
But apparently that’s sufficient to stop all of everything being massless;
Don’t worry why that’s important – we’d get bogged down in technical morasses
Or get caught up in conceptual interpretative crevasses –
But basically it’s all particles that the Higgs sticks to and harasses
So movement in this sea of effectively non-existent Higgs is like moving through molasses
(It’s not like that at all, but that explanation’s good enough for the masses.)
So,
That is what constitutes all the matter and force-carrying particles
Or at least that’s what I’ve gathered reading a few Wikipedia articles.1
So Matter is just Energy made sensible?
Right!
Then what’s Energy?
Well, that’s simply entirely incomprehensible:
Energy is a kind of oomph, an nnnngh, a hhnnnnff! a feisty sort of metaphysical fizz.
And so ultimately, at base, that’s all every Thing ultimately is?
Yep. Long story short, the basic gist:
Matter and Energy (i.e. Stuff or Things) don’t really exist.
So it’s all just quasi-empty Space and Time? That’s it?
I’m glad you asked – let’s talk about that for a bit.
Sometimes we view Time as a rate at which stuff happens, a tick-tock
But some say that the universe has no underlying clock;
That the World is Time-less; everything in a static lock,
As if the Universe was one big frozen spatial block,
A Space Lattice, like a crystal or rock.
(Personally I think this theory’s a bit of a crock,
But what do I know!)
Now, what then is this thing we call “Space”;
Is it just an empty something-nothingness disgrace?
We can cut it into smaller and smaller pieces if we want’ta
And what that produces is discrete and indivisible spatial quanta.
The smallest size of ‘size’ that’s achievable,
The smallest distance that’s even conceivable.
In meters that’s 10 to the negative thirty five –
Can’t measure any smaller no matter how hard you strive,
There’s no smaller distance you can find,
Because below this distance ‘distance’ itself becomes undefined.
Which is very strange – and this might make your temples sting,
But below this scale ‘smaller’ and ‘bigger’ mean the same thing!
What this means – and don’t worry about giving my maths a check
Is it’s possible – even probable – that our Universe is inside an infinitesimal speck!2
Our whole Universe as a dimensionless dot's innards
‘Expanding’ ‘forever’ ‘outwards’ inwards.
And what that means – and yes it’s a bit of a mind bender
Is that every point in the universe is directly its centre,
Which also means – no, my brain hasn’t been poisoned by lead –
The centre of the World is, in a not insignificant sense, inside your own head.
So, what does all that mean for Time & Space?
Well, what this all appears to say on its face –
And don’t take this as some obfuscatory mist –
Is that both Time and Space as well don’t even exist.3
(see Figure 0.4)
Okay, so now that we’ve taken Matter, Energy, Time and Space
And with our better “understanding” all these we’ve been able to erase.
That doesn’t seem to leave much room for other things to exist.
Naturally – and here, let’s go through the list:
To the junk-heap of Irrational Ideas we’ve consigned Phlogiston, Aether, Life-Force,
Consciousness, the Mind, the Self and the Soul – all just as baseless, of course.
Free Will, Morality, Altruism, God – in fact Godz plural,
Emotions (like Joy, Love, Sorrow, etc.) – all those are just Neural.
And Beauty and Meaning – also just varieties of quaint, superstitious belief.
All those don’t exist? Wow, what a relief.
Being concerned with all those really was such a chore.
But I’m glad I don’t have to worry about them at all anymore.
So, is anything really Real, with a capital R?
Well, you clearly haven’t been following me thus far:
See, your ‘seeing’ or ‘feeling’ stuff is just what Neuroscientists call an Illusion –
Not to be confused with what Psychiatrists might call a ‘delusion’ –
No, Seeing or Feeling, also known as ‘sensation,’
Is just a species of electro-chemical computation,
A flow of forward-backward cortical-firing propagation,
An integration of threshold-crossing summation and input-output information,
(Confirmed through cortical ablation and targeted sedation experimentation, and neural-network simulation with p-value statistical validation and high-impact factor journal publication)
Which all come together to produce a kind of ‘experiental’ hallucination,
So thinking we experience anything at all is really just in our imagination.
What we think of as Seeing or Feeling – and this is no exaggeration –
Really has just blind robotic mechanism as its underlying causation.
But then again, even our cause-effect conception is a fallacy of overstepping inductive reasoning,
Perhaps induced by my dyspeptic indigestion from last night’s too much spicey seasoning –
What in the hell are you talking about?
Doubt! I’m talking about doubt!
You must excuse me, but wrangling deductions can be a little unruly,
But technically all theories are true falsely or more accurately: false truly,
Now something cannot, of course, be both a True and a False –
No, you haven’t died and gone to Hell – stop checking your pulse –
As you can’t have a contradiction that’s both a False and a True one,
Such episte-ontological contortions simply can’t be done,
Because such a thing would truly be a real contradiction –
And that absurdity of logic is purely metaphysical fiction.
Are you just saying words at random?
No, no, no! This is the hugely significant task known as
Explaining the Explanandum!
I thought explanations were meant to make things more clear?
Of course! but the closer you look at something the more it will disappear!
Don’t you see? – When you look at something for too long
You eventually see how all the ways your previous looking was wrong!
To get to a thing’s core, to get right to its heart,
You dissect it and cut it and cut it further apart,
In the endless attempt to understand things and get inside ‘em,
And then you continue this process ad nauseam ad infinitum.
The inexorable conclusion you come to that’s impossible to logically resist
Is that Existence itself –
(Let me guess
)
– doesn’t even exist!
Right. Well, all of that makes absolutely no sense.
Well, whether it does or doesn’t I somewhat sit on the fence,
And from that perspective the real fun starts to commence,
Such as what do we even mean by the term ‘sense’ –
So, what about pain?
If you’re trying to say that doesn’t exist you’d better explain.
Pain?! Pain, of course, is just our reflex to avoid
Stimuli that could have our bodily integrity destroyed.
It keeps us carefully cautious and alert
To any dangerous scenario we might need avert.
So we don’t carelessly and recklessly assert
Ourselves and end up splayed out dead in the dirt, But it also gives us a spurring motivating spurt,
So that we don’t remain too indolently inert,
Then –
Okay, okay, but why does it hurt?
It doesn’t! It just ‘feels’ like it does.
But that’s just an electrochemical buzz,
A neuro-info simulated fuzz.
So, the True Truth is
– if I haven’t dropped the ball:
Is that even ‘feelings’ don’t really feel like… anything at all?
Correct! Illusion is the only thing that we feel
Because illusions are the only things that are real.
And I think that means you should see a real psych.
No, – what it means is that Existence is just what Nothing feels like!
And so that’s basically what Everything is, in summation
A short history of all Things since the Universe’s creation.4
All the World’s components and what makes them tick.
Huh. That was actually pretty quick.
So that’s all of everything that Humanity knows?
Oh, there’s a few other peripheral, trivial things, I suppose.
Oh? In that case, should we continue?
I can’t answer that; that’s up to you.
What? You asked about ‘Dark’ matter and energy?!
Well! These are sort of Good matter’s arch enemy.
They power the mitochondria – or was it the midichlorian?
Or maybe it was the fuel source for Doc & Marty’s Delorian?
No, it was the eternal struggle between Harry and the Sith Lord,
Expelliarmus versus the Red Light-Saber Sword.
Or was it the return of Aslan’s Mane or Sozin’s Meteor?
Hmm, Okay I think I’ve got lost in too many opened tabs of wikipedia…
Here’s something further to mull over, just as an aside,
Everything from the Universe’s birth until it has died,
All History, all Experience – everything you’ll ever feel, know, or remember,
Is probably inside a single transiently fluctuating quantum ephemera.
See, there’s not really any explanation of how
Existence is only ever experienced in an ever-present ‘Now’
But your ‘now’s not the same as mine,
But don’t worry about that, that’s fine.
My now is happening now and yours is when?
Soon. See? – now yours has come while mine left just then.
That’s what we mean by Time being Relative
And just keep listening if you’re in need of a sedative.
Following that, if we take ‘Now’ to be the only ‘When’
The consequence of doing that then
Is that by the same logic you can never move over There
Because ‘Here’ is always and forever the only ‘Where’
Because – and I hope this is clear –
The instant you move there ‘There’ becomes ‘Here!’
It’s true Time’s a bit tricky to pin down,
Probably because it’s more verb than noun.
But I’ll let you spend the rest of your life considering that one
While I must return to getting the rest of this book done.
But those aren’t the only theories, there’s a whole heap,
Here’s some more if you haven’t yet fallen asleep.
My favourite, if I was to decide to put a bet on,
Is that the WHOLE Universe is made entirely of one single electron
Whizzing forwards then(?) backwards then forwards again through Time;
This one electron creating you, me, and even these award-winning rhymes. (wow impressive)
Or another theory is that everything is made from a knotted-up 12, or 13, or n-dimensional super-symmetric String!
And if it’s not that? Well, then it’s probably some other thing.
Like maybe all universes are the inside of blackholes that are infinitely nested
(Admittedly this particular theory still remains empirically untested.)
Or maybe the underlying nature of nature is a frothy quantum-spin foam,
Or maybe it’s a God dreaming he’s a man dreaming he’s a butterfly regretting writing a poem?Maybe it’s all Parrallel Multi-worlds, or a Hologram or an AI simulation,
Or maybe all this metaphysical speculation is just mental masturbation.
Maybe it’s all computational bits, just digital ones and zeros.
Or maybe, basically, at the end of the day, nobody knows.