Depths Within Depths, the Nested Great Mysteries
“Raffiniert ist der Herrgott aber boshaft ist er nicht.”
“Subtle is the Lord, but he is not mean.”
— Albert Einstein
This is a field trip through some of the most interesting findings regarding a common occurrence, the rainbow and colours, and how that led to the most deeply meaningfully-possible discoveries in our lifetime, how the universe may have come about and from what it might have come from, what underlies all of our universe.
It’s a field trip in space and time from now, back in time to Newton, then a bit forward in time to Mt. Wilson Observatory in California in the South San Francisco Bay area, then further back in time billions of years and across billions of light years, then even further back.
Everyone has seen a rainbow, and some have been lucky to see those rare, triple rainbows, where we see first the arching band of ROYGBIV and then the next inverted band of colors, not as intense and then dimmer still, and the third band of color again in the right red to violet sequence. The rainbow arising from the successive reflections inside millions of raindrops.
Most know how those colors were found, but let’s recount the first discovery of the spectrum way back in the 17th C. when Isaac Newton, not yet knighted, let a bright beam of sunlight shine through a prism he had, and which cast a broad beam of colored light, we know NOW as the visible light spectrum onto a smooth, white surface on the wall. He was astonished to say the least, and began trying to figure out where it came from, that white sunlight should give a band of colors, only seen, as he guessed it in the rainbow. This compared well to the rainbow’s band of colors, and Newton made the creative insight by associating that the two came from the same process, which turned out to be the different bending of different frequencies of light through a refracting glass triangle of some length. he had found an astonishing thing, colors made up white sunlight. A subtle finding of the first mystery.
He furthered his work on the “Opticks” And things stayed there for some time, until a German chap named Fraunhofer began to look at the spectrum of light with a lot more depth and care. He found yet another subtle mystery.
Inside of the spectra of the sun lurked a series of black bands of unknown origin, which he carefully studied, ordered and labelled. These were hiding in the rainbow all along, you see. Eventually the lines were found to be the absorption of light looking like vertical bands, corresponding to certain electron levels in individual atoms, sort of a visual fingerprint which every element has of the same atomic number and distinctly different from all other elements. So by seeing each distinct, identifying series of lines, carefully analysis could show what elements were present. Indeed helium, named after Helios, the Greek sun god, was discovered on the sun before being found as an elemental gas on the earth. The one discovery predicted the other. Creativity and discovery, you see.
The spectra show us what kinds/amounts of elements there are throughout the entire universe, as long as we can get a spectrum of a star, nebula, or other body, or galaxy made. Another, the Second subtle mystery inside of the rainbow.
Now we go over to Mt. Wilson, which at one time was the largest and best telescope on earth. There a gardener, by the name of Milton Humason had begun working on the great telescope there, because he was very, very good at doing the patient, sustained night time work needed to get photograph images of those fuzzy, blurry white patches of light we now know as galaxies. At the time, few knew what they were, but decades of work by Humason and Hubble showed those bright galaxies were outside of our own, very large and bright barred spiral, the Milky Way
But then something deeper and more amazing happened, once again.
They were able to estimate distances to these galaxies using a standard brightness scale, found by a man named Shapley. He had studied an unusual kind of variable star, like Mira, the “Wonderful” the ancients named it because it was so interesting. Mira changed its brightness markedly with time, brighter, then diommer and then brighter again. Shapley found that the brightness of the star was directly related to the period of time it took it to brighten and then dim. And as the distances to these stars could be determined with some accuracy, in time, because brightness fades in a very precise way with distance, knowing the period of a Cepheid variable star, made it possible to measure the distances to those stars, as well as to ANY galaxy in which such a bright variable star could be found.
Comparing Cepheids’ distance scales, Hubble and Humason’s data showed that the further away the galaxies were from our planet, the more the spectrum shifted to the red direction. And they found more and more shifting, the dimmer and further they were away. And how? By measuring the absorption spectra which showed those same lines on stars and galaxies, not only in our sun and the stars in our own galaxy, but in the Local Cluster of galaxies, in which are Milky Way is the second largest galaxy, but out as far as the telescopic eyes could see, now at 14 Billions light years (B LY) away and as far back in time as the same 14 B yrs, ago. And here was yet again, inside of the rainbow, inside of the spectra of galaxies, yet a THIRD subtle, deeply hidden mystery.
This was true regarding where ever they looked and every time they looked, the galaxies’ spectra showed that same red shift more and more, the further they were away. Comparing our sun’s base line spectral lines to those of the galaxies, was how this movement of the spectral dark lines were measured and found.
In time it was realized that the further distance a galaxy was as we looked out, the further back in time the galaxies were all moving away from us, not quite uniformly, but mostly. This was astonishing. The universe was expanding. The further away from us those galaxies were, the faster they were receding from us. A great mystery had once again been found, just from looking at a rainbow from the closest and most distant light from galaxies separated by the entire lifetime and size of the universe.
Such subtlety, such depth, such mysteries. Subtleties upon subtleties, could there be yet more? Ja, ja!!
But we are not done yet, to the surprise of us all. Because there is yet a Fourth and Fifth subtlety laying within the three above, nested quietly, there for perhaps 15 and more billions of years, too. It has been missed by the many and not been talked about at all, but yet it’s true, real and again, Ultro Misterioso. It’s been decades since Hubble and many others found and confirmed the expansion of the universe and; now the story can be carried even further.
Because we measure the red shift by the absorption lines, and the absorption lines are ALL the same from the labs on earth to the sun, to the nearest stars to us and then across the kilolight years and megalight years, and 13 gigalight years of galaxies and stars. All of these absorption lines which can be seen are the same, from now, and way back until a short time after the universe first came into existence and in all of the intervening distances. The same. Not different, the same.
Because the same absorption lines indicate the existence of the same electron levels in the atoms, which means the SAME chemistry and the same atomic, nuclear structures are seen through all space and time. How subtle and mysterious is THAT? This is the Fourth depth and subtlety hiding in the spectral lines of everything there is.
It means because the chemistry is the same, it means that life as we know it can/could exist in all spaces and times, and in ALL the intervening spaces and times, so far as we have observed, through all 15 billions years of time and 15 B LY’s, too. And that life as we know it can have evolved an unlimited number of times all through all space and time in the trillion estimated galaxies and in the unimaginable numbers of stars in our vast universe.
Yet there is a FIFTH mystery which not only compounds the previous Four but confirms the case. We know thru physics of relativity found by the man who said that Der Herrgott was subtle, that light is bent when it passes through a strong gravitational field. This was proved in the early 1920′s by starlight passing our own sun and is one of the most highly confirmed facts in existence.
Further, Einstein postulated that if on a line of sight a more distant galaxy’s light should shine past an intervening galaxy on the same line of sight, then the most distant galaxy’s light should be bent into a cross of 4 or more lights, or even arcs of lights. He said that the distances for that to occur were so great, it wasn’t likely to be found.
Yet, those have been found. Google Einstein crosses, rings and see the images of 100′s of them. This confirms the spectral data, because even at over 12 B LY’s distance and back in time the same 12 B years, those Einstein crosses and arcs have been found.
Mystery of mysteries!!. Einstein’s laws and those of gravitational physics have been confirmed, yet again, as being the same, at the observable, most distant times and spaces in our universe, and intervening spaces/times right down to our doorsteps. There is not reason to believe otherwise.
Nested inside light are now 5 mysteries, and yet another even deeper mystery altogether, the Sixth depth, the Sixth Mystery of Mysteries.
Subtle are the Ways of the Lord!!
Because how does the universe KNOW, how can it be that in all spaces and times, the laws of the universe are observably very much the same? The answer is even a greater, deeper mystery, and related yet again to the deepest of all great mysteries, how did our universe arise and from what conditions?
Occam’s Razor is a least energy, comparison process. If there are a series of hypotheses explaining a phenomenon, then the simplest which does not create more than the fewest new hypotheses and explains the data, is highly likely to be right.
A most probable answer is this, that underlying our universe and in touch with it at all points, lies an instantaneous universe which keeps the laws, ordered and the same in our universe. How else, but instantaneous processes acting through all spaces and times for 15 B LY’s and 15 B yrs.?
But it is unbelievable some might say. And here are the facts. Instantaneity is allowable in our universe being consistent with Quantum Physics, which has NEVER been found to be wrong, tho it’s difficult to understand and use, much of the time.
The Bell test shows it, which showed that Einstein was wrong and that “spookie action at a distance” Does occur and at the latest measurement instantaneously to 40,000 TIMES light speed, ie. Cee. This is confirmed.
When Einstein was discussed in “Cosmos” by the remarkable Dr. Carl Sagan, one of our greatest science authors, he showed that Einstein created a major part of Relativity by asking a thought experiment about what happened if we rode on a light beam? No time passed on that light beam. As we speed up to light speed, relativity shows that time slows down, until we, at light speed, get on the photon, and all time stops for the photon. (Not that we CAN ride a photon. That horse is one we can’t ride.) The universe around the photon happens all at once, instantaneously. There is no time for the photon. It’s outside of time.
The Casimir effect is a real, physical finding which accounts for this by using the probability that virtual particles/photons are popping into space and out of space at all times, a sort of interaction with our space/time continuum and some sort of whatever, maybe a bosonic “ylem”, because it’s not space or time at all, but something else, and doesn’t exist for us, except at a deeper level.
There are 4 other confirming examples of this instantaneity in my Cosmology article, all consistent with physics and all showing that instantaneity is real. It’s OK by Quantum Physics, too.
http://jochesh00.wordpress.com/2014/03/15/cosmology-and-the-comparison-process-comp-explananda-5/
Is this not like Sagan’s book, “Contact” where hidden within pi, was a great mystery, too? But these are hidden inside of real, existing events, which seem foreshadowed by his ideas.
And what is the last great mystery, the Sixth? What is this not space/not time event? We don’t know.
And it must therefore be an analogue to, Dare we say it, “subspace”, familiar to all Trekkie’s?
We can interact with this bosonic ylem, which exists outside of time and space, from which ours arose, in order find more out about it by particle physics’ highest energies, by Bose/Einstein condensates, by quantum tunneling in all of its specifics, and by other methods yet to be found. We can observe carefully the fine structure of these above events, and discover yet more, perhaps even how the Big Bang occurred, and where events go when they quantum tunnel, and if faster than light, or even time travel are possible. Or the even greater mysteries lying within the uttermost depths of these nested and nested and yet nested again mysteries? Other universes? No one knows.
Perhaps some reading this will find out for us. In time.
