Gravity in a distributed, process driven, information-based Universe

To a curious mind, gravity is a curious phenomenon. The more one pays attention to it, the more fascinating and mysterious it becomes. Today, we have the advantage of having had great minds ponder the mystery and define what can be observed and inferred by studying it. Newton pondered the question “why do objects fall?” and provided us with a theory of universal gravity (along with his three laws of motion). He essentially defined the terms we now use to describe and quantify gravity, the force that attracts objects with mass to each other. A description, particularly an accurate mathematical description, of gravity is the beginning of an answer to the question “how does gravity actually work?”

Newton’s theory of gravity gave us a grasp of the mechanics of motion, but until Einstein redefined our understanding of the relationship between space and time, and the relationship between mass and energy, changing our concept of gravity, we did not realize that there was a great deal more to the question. Einstein’s theory of general relativity revealed an equivalence between the force of gravity and the force of acceleration, with fascinating implications for the relationship between those forces and inertia that gave us new insight into the impact of motion on time and space. Einstein’s relativity introduced us to the concept of curved or warped space-time. At the same time, Einstein’s revelations provide a better description of the phenomenon of gravity while subtly undermining the concept of gravity. That is, it is less clear what gravity is (or what is gravity), specifically, and that makes it more difficult to comprehend how gravity works.

One of the things that makes gravity so difficult to pin down is the fact that it is inextricably linked to matter through mass, and through mass to space, time and energy; it reveals something profound about how space, time, matter and energy truly relate to each other. We just cannot, quite, see it. We understand that gravity is defined as an inherent interaction between masses with a direct impact on the shape of space in which mass resides. Ironically, space in the form of distance dictates the strength of the force of gravity. The force of attraction between the mass of two objects is proportional to the inverse square of the distance between them. We understand that energy is equivalent to mass times the square of the speed of light (C squared). But what does that actually mean? At the moment, we are looking at the same thing from many different perspectives, none of which provides a complete picture of the whole.

The descriptions have a way of losing sight of the query at the heart of the question. To answer “how does gravity actually work?” we have to stop and ask ourselves what we are really asking; when asking the question we need to consider what it is about gravity that is so mysterious. What is it about gravity that makes us wonder? We have to return to the question Newton asked, “Why do objects fall?” Newton certainly refined the way we were looking at the problem, but we still need to ask ourselves “what is this force?” or even more explicitly “what is the mechanism of this force?” There is something in the relationship between mass and energy that still bears examination. There is also something more to be understood about the relationship between gravity and other forces of motion, starting with acceleration or the transfer of kinetic energy to an object in opposition to gravity.

The answer might not come from asking about gravity at all. An interesting insight into the mechanism of gravity came to me through a series of observations about time. The idea was explored in a blog entry only a few days before I stumbled across the “how does gravity actually work?” topic on Helium. At the time, the blog was fresh in my mind and I posted it, without preparing potential readers for the leap my article asked them to make. Having been written in a moment of inspiration, it took a few days for the implications of what I had written to hit me. I had intended to comment on some of the philosophical implications of simulating time, based on the stated observations and examples, but in the process stumbled onto a simulation of the effect of gravity. To share that epiphany, I have to present it in its original form:

In order to understand time it becomes necessary to ask if time is an objective or subjective medium. To be clear, by considering time subjectively I do not mean simply in terms of our subjective perception of time. The question asks if time is absolute, and thus events at different points in time persist in their own frame of reference with a constant relative position in time. Basically, it asks if there are actual positions in and structure to time. The alternative, subjective time, deals with the concept of time as being functional, an operation upon the objective structure of matter and energy in space like the constant balancing of an equation in which there is no actual time, just a present state of the equation.

The purpose for asking this question is because the subjective version of time is one that can be reproduced. We have been doing this since the first human being recounted a story of events, and have refined the process of simulating and manipulating time in computer modeling. The example that prompted this line of inquiry for me is a program called Celestia (http://www.shatters.net/celestia/) that models the universe in four-dimensions. The program allows the user to explore the three-dimensional universe, across vast distances down to the scale of a few meters. It also allows the user to observe celestial motion at varying speed, moving forward or backward in time, in real time or at extreme acceleration. Observing this in action, one can get a real sense of time as a functional operation.

Within the scope of a program like Celestia, time is simply a variable in the program equation; it is the rate of change in the system. Inside of a system, an observer would be subject to the rate of change in the system, and would deduce that no process could occur at a rate exceeding the speed at which changes in the system are resolved. It is actually important to note that an observer, subject to an environment in which actual time is dependent upon the process of change in the system, will only be confronted with the fully rendered product. If the process of change is distributed, occurring at the most basic level of the system, then there will be instances where time will exhibit other subjective properties.

In the event that time is a distributed process, in a varied environment there will be regions where the level of detail is low and thus changes resolve in the optimum process time, but in regions of extremely high detail, where resolution is high density, the process will lag. In a fluid system, the consequence would naturally be that a higher resolution transformation would require more time to process, thus time would appear to slow down in a dense environment. Thus, in such a universe, there would be a direct correspondence between information and mass. The incidence of more information at a point in the system results in persistent lag, which is a subjective distortion of time. A mass of information would always exhibit characteristics of attenuated time.

In a process driven information based universe, the consequences of particles with attenuated time characteristics would include attenuated spacial characteristics in reference to all dynamic interactions. The increase of information in any region would reduce the amount of change possible in that frame of reference. Any information coming into the region of density would become subject to the attenuation. Each mass of information, having the tendency to attenuate time, would also attenuate space specifically, to compensate for the processing debt created by an information mass, the scope of transformation around that mass would be reduced, conserving energy. A natural consequence of this space-time dilation is of course the expansion of the universal frame of reference.

That was as far as the original post went, and it was a product of typing as fast as I could to keep up with my thoughts. I realize that it jumps across points that are clear to me that may not be clear to others; and without outside comment I would not necessarily know what connections need to be spelled out, but to me, while writing this post, I seem to have stumbled upon a very simple explanation for how gravity might work. To strip away all the speculation, the curvature of space-time used to describe gravity might simply be a consequence of the conservation of energy. I honestly do not know if this is a previously noted relationship; the conservation of energy is such a fundamental idea in physics it might simply be taken for granted, described accurately in the math but not commented on. I simply present this as the line of thought whimsy and the topic question brought to my attention, since I do not recall having encountered it elsewhere.

The quick and dirty translation of underlying thoughts includes a conceptual understanding of space-time as facets of a unified medium of which energy is the essential “substance” underlying and invested in the structure of space as both static and graphic elements subject to dynamic and sequential distributed displacement manifesting as time. In this model of reality, energy becomes mass by acquiring structure, which behaves in accordance to static and dynamic principles like distributed information processing because, whether viewed as physical structure or information, the energy invested in all structures is constantly rebalancing. It is simpler to just say that the gravitic effect implicit in a distributed process is a product of the conservation of energy, and it is possible that this is also true for real gravity.

Still Scratching That Itch

The whole moving and searching for a better job thing is going slowly, so even with school work, there’s been time to write. Maybe I should not say, write, precisely. I have had a bit of time to pound out some new ideas and wrestle with some old ones, and I am coming to an agreement with myself about what I wanted to write, what I actually wrote, and what I hope to get written. I’ve actually been working on a group of related stories based on a common inspiration for years, so there is more material for me to draw from than the seven chapters I’ve posted.

I’ve noticed that a few people have actually looked at those, so that’s a bit of encouragement to try and do something with them. The funny thing is, if I posted my actual writing journal I would have something to post daily, but all my ideas, stark naked, would probably bend people’s minds and at the very least spoil any book that comes out in the end. It’s amazing how much writing goes into just developing the world and characters of a book, though, and each new idea that crops up changes everything in both subtle and dramatic ways.

Just asking a simple “what if” at any point can generate a few pages of notes detailing the consequences of that revision. I don’t think anyone in my family really understands how I could spend years writing and never produce a complete manuscript. As tempting as it is to think of that as a failing on my part as a writer, the absence of a complete manuscript does not mean I have not accomplished anything. In the hundred or so partial manuscripts and related notes, I have generated enough ideas and plot threads to write consistently for the rest of my life — as long as I create a sound foundation to build them all on in the first work I bring to completion.

The Price of Admission

What is a society, what is it made up of and how does it work? The simple answer is, jobs. Society is all about jobs. Living in the wild, surviving on their own, human beings had no jobs. Their lives were defined by the tasks that needed to be done in order to be able to survive. A bunch of people living together and sharing their resources does a better job of surviving, and each person becomes primarily responsible for the task he or she is best suited to do.

A job is taking responsibility for a certain task, fulfilling a need of the group. I could keep breaking this down to simple ideas, but the point is, every job has specific requirements, certain things a person needs to be, have or do. For every job, there is a job candidate. Finding job candidates is a job in itself. Participation in society is not elective. The resources a human needs to survive are no longer freely available.

So, we seek out jobs in order to participate in the system, because we are forced to be dependent on the system. Strangely, we are not entitled to have a job. We can not just go out and do a job, even if it benefits society; to earn money, which is what entitles us to the benefits of society, we need to find someone who will give us a job. The amount of gate-keeping that exists in our society is almost mind boggling.

Our job often defines our position in society, and our position in society determines the value of our participation and the opportunities available to us and our dependents. A person can bring something of unique value to a job, the characteristics of his or her job performance, but to the system it only matters that the job is adequately filled. To be specific, an individual can have a unique value to the people he or she works with or for, but as far as the system is concerned all of us are replaceable. That fact, when it is completely thought out, is unsettling.

The operative reality of society is that it is an ad hoc system. It is easiest to understand if perceived as a macro-organism, composed of individual parts that cohere into a pattern of activity that sustains itself. That pattern will change and grow, evolving or warping, according to that activity of its components, but the individual components are expendable, because the purpose of the organism is to ensure its own survival, not that of its constituents. To sustain itself, the system becomes geared toward the creation of components to replace those that are lost.

To sustain itself, it will even expend components in order to secure resources. It is a soldier’s job to die for his country if necessary to ensure the survival of his society. It is a soldier’s job to kill for his country, for the same reasons. Who gives someone this job? Who asks someone to do this job?

The jobs in a society are created by the needs and expectations of it’s members, so the answer to both questions is, we do. What we do in society tells it what we want it to do for us. What does society have to give in exchange for our willingness to kill or die? What can anyone gain that is worth that? A better place in society?

If society formed to make it easier for us to survive, why do we have to work so hard and sacrifice so much in order to survive in society? What have any of us gained? If society succeeded in fulfilling its purpose, those are questions we would not need to ask.

Opportunities in the US are not universal. Some opportunities are only available to those with certain advantages, and some of those advantages are unobtainable for some people. Because of the risks of military service, inequities in the circumstances that determine who serves become dangerous to the fabric of society. It can lead to classism and the stratification of society, and that reinforces and perpetuates inequality.

General attitudes held by individuals in every part of society can be responsible for determining who is given opportunities that prepare them for more important and less accessible opportunities. A parent’s decision that a child is too irresponsible to apply him or herself to music lessons are limiting the child’s life opportunities. A teacher’s belief that Asian students are better students can result in a neglectful attitude toward all the other students. For every choice we encounter, there are a billion possible influences that determine which options we will be choosing from. That eventually results in a world where people are forced to do the jobs they are allowed to do, rather than the jobs they are interested in doing.

It has resulted in a world where a minority of people own all the real property and the rest are tenants. It has resulted in a world where people have to work for someone else, because few individuals have enough resources to support themselves through their own work. At present, we are a nation of indentured, transient workers. It does not take much to turn a system that serves the people into a system that uses the people. It’s is another small step to a system that abuses people.

Ask yourself how you like the idea that your worth and significance as an individual is based only on your position in the system? It might not be the purpose of Sociology to ensure that the world is a system that respects the humanity of all individuals, but the only reason for us to participate in the world is because doing so ensures that all our needs are met. Any system that requires human participation without providing for the needs of all participants is inherently exploitive and inhuman.

Sociology’s purpose is to make us aware of the true character of our society, to show us how the system operates and to identify the cost in human lives. There are many areas in our society where human lives are spent, sacrificed to keep the system going, and we hear the cries of outraged witnesses, the friends and family and sometimes the horrified bystander, every day. It is not a Sociologist’s job to change the system. They are simply the individuals who are working out the information all of us need to be able to change the system ourselves. Only society can change society.

Having said that, I have to ask, can a social contract be inherited from generation to generation? If we are going to have rules we all have to live by, doesn’t it make more sense for all of us to have a say in what those rules are? Is that even possible when no one can possibly know all the rules, and a special education is required to even understand them?

In the game of life, we have sort of made up all the rules as we’ve gone along, but unlike any other game we cannot just quit and walk away if we don’t like the way the game is being played. I mean, seriously, killing ourselves is not an option, but it seems to be what we are doing, either way. The truth is that life is not a game, and we’re not all playing by the same rules. We are supposed to accept that life is not fair, that suffering is the price of admission, but the real reason life is not fair is because life is what we make it.

Time in a distributed, process driven, information-based Universe

In order to understand time it becomes necessary to ask if time is an objective or subjective medium. To be clear, by considering time subjectively I do not mean simply in terms of our subjective perception of time. The question asks if time is absolute, and thus events at different points in time persist in their own frame of reference with a constant relative position in time. Basically, it asks if there are actual positions in and structure to time. The alternative, subjective time, deals with the concept of time as being functional, an operation upon the objective structure of matter and energy in space like the constant balancing of an equation in which there is no actual time, just a present state of the equation.

The purpose for asking this question is because the subjective version of time is one that can be reproduced. We have been doing this since the first human being recounted a story of events, and have refined the process of simulating and manipulating time in computer modeling. The example that prompted this line of inquiry for me is a program called Celestia (http://www.shatters.net/celestia/) that models the universe in three-dimensions. The program allows the user to explore the three-dimensional universe, across vast distances down to the scale of a few meters. It also allows the user to observe celestial motion at varying speed, moving forward or backward in time, in real time or at extreme acceleration. Observing this in action, one can get a real sense of time as a functional operation.

Within the scope of a program like Celestia, time is simply a variable in the program equation; it is the rate of change in the system. Inside of a system, an observer would be subject to the rate of change in the system, and would deduce that no process could occur at a rate exceeding the speed at which changes in the system are resolved. It is actually important to note that an observer, subject to an environment in which actual time is dependent upon the process of change in the system, will only be confronted with the fully rendered product. If the process of change is distributed, occurring at the most basic level of the system, then there will be instances where time will exhibit other subjective properties.

In the event that time is a distributed process, in a varied environment there will be regions where the level of detail is low and thus changes resolve in the optimum process time, but in regions of extremely high detail, where resolution is high density, the process will lag. In a fluid system, the consequence would naturally be that a higher resolution transformation would require more time to process, thus time would appear to slow down in a dense environment. Thus, in such a universe, there would be a direct correspondence between information and mass. The incidence of more information at a point in the system results in persistent lag, which is a subjective distortion of time. A mass of information would always exhibit characteristics of attenuated time.

In a process driven information based universe, the consequences of particles with attenuated time characteristics would include attenuated spacial characteristics in reference to all dynamic interactions. The increase of information in any region would reduce the amount of change possible in that frame of reference. Any information coming into the region of density would become subject to the attenuation. Each mass of information, having the tendency to attenuate time, would also attenuate space — specifically, to compensate for the processing debt created by an information mass, the scope of transformation around that mass would be reduced, conserving energy. A natural consequence of this space-time dilation is of course the expansion of the universal frame of reference.