Matter and Movement in Four (or more) Dimensions

These days, it only takes a little curiosity, access to the Internet, and a bit of patience to find explanations of progressive spatial dimensions or examples of four dimensional geometry, such as the old favorite the hyper-square. Some of the things you will find use analogies like Flatland, or animations which is a way of using time and motion to reveal a higher dimensional object using a lower dimensional cross section — the advantage of this kind of intersection or interface is the ability to scan through what is too dense to actually see through. In this way, we can emulate the ability to observe, say, the details of the internal structure of a three dimensional body in a manner similar to seeing it directly from the fourth dimension. Of course, we did not have to wait for the invention of magnetic resonance imaging to be able to perceive the insides of our bodies; our sense of touch gives us the closest thing to a physically four-dimensional perception. Our kinesthetic or spatial sense is annexed to our visual perception to give us an integrated sense of physical reality. In addition, we supplement our active field of vision with the memory of what we have previously seen, and studies on perception have revealed that we often rely more on our visual memory than our active sight in familiar settings. This ability to fill in the blanks around us is one that we can use to “see” into higher dimensions.

In the mind, it is possible to construct things in four or more dimensions, but that does not tell us if there are any objects in the universe that are constructed in four or more dimensions. Taking the example I gave of eight-dimensional time-space, we could surmise that the universe has height, width and depth in a kind of cellular structure in which every moment in time exists in strands of continuity along branches of probability in a network of possibility where multiple event paths lead to and away from any give moment. The instant is where-ever you happen to be focused on eternity. Time-travel would be non-paradoxical because time itself would be process based, a product of attention. The event you experience would largely be determined by the state of mind you are in as you approach the moment, so causal time would probably be the norm; that is the path of least resistance. The real challenge to time travel would be presented by the body and its influence on attention. As a three-dimensional spatial construct, the body predisposes us to move through time as a byproduct of moving through space. To arrive at a specific point in space and time, without transiting the intermediary space and time, would break the perceived continuity of events unless one could perceive space four dimensionally–in which case the intervening space was bypassed in an instant of time. The mind can conceive of four-dimensions internally, but the real question is, how would you move the body through a fourth-dimension externally?

A question like this is a question about matter as it relates to space. Among the things physicists know, matter occupies very little space and is distinguishable from energy only by structure. Attempts to understand the structure of matter has led to the identification of elemental atoms, primary particles and fundamental quarks; the last taking us down into the realm of quantum mechanics. In the process of getting down to the quantum level, physics has also run into fundamental forces, the electric and magnetic forces, gravity, the strong nuclear force and the weak nuclear force. These are all things that can be observed or inferred to exist based upon experimental observation, and for all that is known about them, there is much that is still not understood. The one aspect of matter that has captured my interest most often is the characteristic of mass and its association with gravity. A particle with mass is infinitesimally small and produces (or focuses) a force that has infinite range (though the strength of the effect diminishes over distance in a known, inverse-square ratio). Unlike electric and magnetic forces which are polarized, or both attract and repel, gravity seems only to attract and does so in a “like to like” fashion.

The “dent in space” model of gravity gets me thinking, as anyone who read my post on Gravity in a distributed, process driven, information-based Universe could tell. Einstein gave us the equation summarizing the relationship between matter and energy, but by itself, the equation does not explain what is really happening when energy is concentrated into mass. We have to ask, what is happening to the energy, and part of the answer lies in understanding how a point of mass is focused into a stable object and why that deforms the space around it. The answer is further complicated by the specific structure and electromagnetic properties of a given particle. Particle physics is a whole field of study unto itself, and if the great minds devoted to it will pardon me, outside the complexities that might be explored, the simple observation is that structure holds the answer. Energy is concentrated and structured into a more complex and dynamic state in which we find a focal point in three-dimensional reference and forces that produce one-dimensional (polarity), two-dimensional (surface tension, surface area), three-dimensional (height, width, depth) and four-dimensional (mass, gravity, inertia, vector) effects. There is so much going on, all of it debatable, but I always come back to the four-dimensional view of matter.

I would have to have a great deal of time and a decent amount of resources to formulate something more substantial from this speculation. I am sure there is a great deal more information available that could affect the assumptions I have about pervasive energy, pervasive space, particular matter in infinitesimal space, concentrated energy, mass, structure, gravity, spatial displacement, fields, force, electron shells, magnetic shells, and light. I have the interest and the fascination to keep probing and a desire for more reliable speculation, but until I find an opportunity to devote myself to it, I can only work with the insights I have now. The implication of four-dimensional structure in matter, or the idea of atoms as four-dimensional objects, does not make our world any less a three-dimensional environment. That is, matter may only be possible at the three-dimensional surface of a four-dimensional substrate of energy and space. There are particles that seem to spontaneously pop in and out of existence, if some of the reading I’ve done on particle and quantum physics is correct, and that might be an indication of structure transecting our three-dimensional “plane” but most atoms seem to be pretty well stitched into place.

I am not as confident in speculating on how energy and structure “bind” but that is what I see as a likely basis for fundamental forces. The forces seem difficult to understand or explain, but part of that is because the concept presents us with an inherent mental block. A concept allows us to hold onto an idea about an observed phenomenon, but in the act of grasping an aspect of reality in that way, we focus on the effect and become unable to see the cause. Stepping back and looking again, we might be able to see that what we call a force is simply a particular way the balance of energy in a structured system must behave to achieve stability. Seeing that way, we can begin to ask what imposes structure and how does it persist either as part of or apart from energy. The question brings me back to a notion I had about the nature of limits and how that impacted the perception of substance and solidity. If matter is mostly empty space, what keeps things from constantly falling through each other? The substance of matter is not in the mass, but in the repulsive forces of the electron shells of atoms. The thing that makes the world seem solid to our touch is the existence of forces associated with particles that prevent them from actually touching.

There is a great deal more needed in a comprehensive analysis of matter, but this is enough to return to the question of moving a body through four-dimensional space. A common observation is that an infinite number of objects of a given dimension can exist in an object of the dimension above it, being in effect an image of itself, but it would take the action of an entity acting in the higher dimension to manipulate or move the object through that hyper-space. In my example of a person attempting to jump from one position in space-time to another position in space-time without transiting the intervening space, either an outside agent would have to be involved, native to the higher dimensions, or the person would have to be constructed in four- to eight-dimensions to begin with. Not really a problem for the mind, assuming the mind is not exclusively internal to the body. The hard part, for a mind rooted in a physical body in a world such as ours would be figuring out that it did exist in more dimensions and that this enabled it to move through space and time in ways that transcend the physical limits of the body. No tool or technology grounded in the physical world would be of much use in discovering or exploiting this fact. Not that you could not discover it by accident if the mind should happen to wander; though you would have a hard time distinguishing random moments scattered over infinite probability from dreaming.

A Glimpse into the Eye of Paradox

On any given day, a small handful of people find their way to the eye of paradox. Some of them probably just glance at an article to see if it’s relevant to the search that brought them here. One or two might actually read something. Once in a blue moon, someone leaves a short comment. Taken all together, I do not see anything to indicate that my words mean much. Is that frustrating? A little. I think it only bothers me because I have so much on my mind all the time, and there seems to be little or nothing I can do with it. I have to ask myself, what am I really accomplishing here? I’ve said it before, I tend to write in the hope of provoking a little thought, usually because the inspiration to write is interesting in itself. I do not expect anyone else to find the result as interesting; partly because it is hard to capture a thought perfectly in words. I am not a thousand-word-a-minute typist and yet I seem to think a million miles a minute. I am not a linear thinker. My thoughts are more like a library in a hurricane. I have never really been able to explain it, but it’s what I mean when I talk about higher-dimensions of thought. The problem with that terminology is that we would all probably assign the dimensions differently, based on the way we think. I suspect that a lot of us think things out in words as a general rule, that good old internal dialogue. I have one, but it’s only one part of how I process information.

I think that most of what I think cannot really be put into words. Seriously, I find it easier to think in worlds. Every instant my brain is processing sensory data to assemble an endless stream of consciousness that ties what I perceive in the moment with things I have perceived in the past, things I imagine, things I have conceptualized, things I have analyzed, things I have articulated, things I intuit and things I have only imagined. I have this notion that I ought to be an author because stories come to me in bursts of instantaneous thought. The problem is that it takes so long to fully articulate one I will have conceived of a thousand variations in the time it takes to block out the basics of the one I started with. The sheer number of options and variations overwhelms me. I don’t find it surprising, however. This is what our brains evolve to do; in life we only get one chance to get anything right, and there are a lot of times when a mistake will cost you your life. When faced with a challenge, we automatically engage the imagination and run through as many simulations as our intelligence and attention allow. A good view of the future requires at least seven dimensions of thought. Our base line of reference is four dimensional (working in three spatial dimensions and one temporal dimension) and we have to be able to project that image forward to assess the consequences of our actions through to positive, neutral and negative outcomes.

The future is not on a straight line. Neither is the past, really. An individual has no problem seeing history as a line running back through events, but there is such a line for every person and every object involved in every interaction. The past that we perceive is not the only past. For any given instant, there is a conceivable alternate path leading up to it, though usually the only people who are aware of this are people involved in reconstructing events. To a lesser degree, anyone who mulls over the days of their lives will notice the variable paths within the repeating cycle. You can stop, while walking down the street and suddenly put yourself on the other side of the street in some memory. It is one of the reasons we like routine. The more times we go through a sphere of activity, the better we understand the possibilities of acting in that sphere. We use it to maintain a hypersphere of potential activity. We use something similar in the mastery of our own bodies. At any given moment, there is only one position we can be in, but we are aware of all the positions we can move to just in the limits of our own bodies. In a sense, you could say that this is the real difference between the physical nature of something and the spiritual nature. We can only ever see one instance of an object, but that one instance contains the potential of every instance of that object. When you can look at an old man and see the little boy he once was, that is a very spiritual perception.

The funny thing is that we have run into this same thing in quantum physics, the notion that things have potential that exceeds what can be manifested at any given point. In the mind, we can hold onto everything at once, seeing nothing but aware of it all, and pull whatever we want into focus in an instant. I really don’t find it surprising that reality is pretty much the same way. We work constantly to bring the world into focus, we are in a constant process of realization, learning about changes in the world and updating our own internal representation accordingly. This is how we maintain our grip on the universe, and also how the universe maintains its grip on us. Or, this is how we maintain our grip on ourselves. This is a good spot to focus on if you take the question “who am I?” seriously enough. This is where I ended up after years of asking that question in an attempt to determine if it was who I am or what I am that makes me “me”. I came to the same conclusion the characters in the Matrix did, the body cannot live without the mind. Perhaps that is an indication of gestalt consciousness, an indication that the mind is more than the sum of the body’s parts? I am still thinking on that. In the meantime, while I find myself in the universe’s grip, there is an omniverse of information in my grip. I am holding the universe in a firm mental grip, but at the same time I am holding on to many, many more in my thoughts. Of course, I might just be apprehending the possibilities of the universe that would be found in higher dimensions.

What kind of sense organ would be able to perceive higher dimensions? I do it in my mind constantly, so I would be inclined to say the brain is that sense organ, as I rush along in the wake of intuition, chased by thoughts of perception being our key to acting in our environment. I grasp all of the implications of movement in higher dimensions of space and time and cannot keep up with the possibilities that seem to open themselves up. I am riding on an epiphany, a realization of a universe that contains infinite potential. What kind of words could begin to describe it? I struggle to find them, even now. I struggle to find the time to think things through enough to achieve a less dizzying perspective. This is my true field of study, and all I can do is stand at the threshold and stare into it longingly. The irony is, we’re all at this threshold. It’s kind of like the best kept secret, because it’s hidden in plain sight. I think the only reason I noticed it is because I am too.

Awakening

I have pointed out before that my struggle with gender dysphoria prompted me to search in all directions for a solution to being born in the wrong body, and the determination with which I pursued that goal in spite of all doubts and discouragements — even attempts to accept things the way they were, adapting to and adopting the identity imposed on me by circumstances — says a lot about me, and even about what I ultimately concluded. My existence may be supported by reality, the physical, chemical, biological and sociological fabric out of which we all seem to be spun, but none of these things are me. I exist in my mind and that is why the way I perceive myself in my own mind can not only contradict my physical form, but trump it in importance to my survival. I have heard the theories and arguments on nature versus nurture and taking my own experience into consideration I can say that there are elements in both that can help shape who you are, but only by presenting the options or stimulus necessary for you to determine who you are. I cannot tell you if this is a process of creation or revelation; it feels like both. I am the driving and defining force within my own mind; my mind is the structure and articulation of my soul.

I was born in a context in which everything and everyone seemed to deny my existence, in accordance with the belief that who I was was based upon what I was and where I came from. I was not encouraged to express myself in ways that were inconsistent with my appearance. I’ve described some of the ways I was discouraged in other writing, and how it affected me. The most important result of this situation was that it did make me conscious of the fact that there was more to me than just my body. I have long since realized that most people are not very clear on what a spirit or a soul really is, but I never really had a problem with that. It was difficult for me to understand the modern view of consciousness and things like mind, spirit and soul as mere epiphenomena. I eventually understood the limitations of scientific thinking responsible for promoting this view, as I understand the way it drives scientists to look for a physical mechanism for the origin of consciousness. On the other hand, I had no difficulty understanding that the mind was central to everything that really mattered about existence. Perhaps that is a result of being hyper-conscious of every thought and action I took as a consequence of being forced to override all of my natural instincts and impulses to conform to people’s expectations of me.

I spent my childhood engaged in a constant, intensive observation of myself and everyone around me. I analyzed the world and all my experiences in it as if my life depended on it, often discovering new ways in which it clearly did. In my day to day life I was as deliberate in the control of my thoughts and emotions as I was in the control of my body. I had to understand as much as possible about how my mind and body worked to achieve that degree of control, which included managing or bypassing a number of “hard wired” behaviors and responses. I was thinking hyper-dimensionally long before I learned that was the way to describe what I was doing, or how to explain the process to someone else. I think the first step in thinking hyper-dimensionally involved the unstated realization that everything in my existence occurred in my mind; the “outside” world distinguished from my “inner” world by my physical perspective in it and limited influence over it. In my “inner” world, I was everyone and everything, everywhere at once — all on the verge of being nowhere, nothing and nobody. My consciousness was an all encompassing point with unconscious depths in the shadow of oblivion.

I began to understand that there are many things you have to figure out for yourself, in order to know and understand them, and consciousness is one of those things. I suspect that the scientific study of consciousness will inevitably conclude that it is a complex form of a basic property of “awareness” inherent in energy as the combined medium of information structured in space, time and mind. It might arrive at that conclusion with more esoteric and granular terms, but that is pretty much what it will amount to. Any other proposition runs into the problem of spontaneous generation of the subjective state phenomenon that is the prerequisite for any observer of the objective state. The consequence of any reductive analysis is an increase in relative potential; which is to say that everything is implicit in nothing. The information potential of a singularity is infinite. The interesting thing is that I am not saying anything new here. The same observations have been made again and again in many different ways. None of them make any sense to people until they observe it for themselves. I have no idea what conclusions a scientifically valid description of it will lead to. The first steps in this direction were taken when science confronted the quantum paradox and the possibility of observer based reality.

For my purposes, this observation is not the end; it is just the beginning. To be perfectly frank, I find myself in an untenable position and this can only be corrected in a world where things we would think of as magical or miraculous can occur. In part, this is because any question of physical transformation runs into problems related to the preservation of the mind. I ran into this while contemplating the use of future nanotechnology to remodel a living body, picking this as the most scientifically plausible method of turning a man into a woman. Biological processes can and should be viewed as proof of the concept of nanotechnology, in which complex organisms are constructed on a molecular level. We know that some aspects of personality can be passed on biologically, but there is no indication that the subjective consciousness is transferable. If you were cloned, the clone would be his or her own person, with a unique subjective consciousness. He might be like you, and assuming your exact brain structure and chemical memory was copied precisely, think he was you, but you would not be him. Nothing we know of suggests that there is any continuity of consciousness in that kind of situation. In a transformational process, there is every chance that the thread of subjective consciousness would be broken as one form was broken down and another built up.

The possibility of transitional death forced me to focus on understanding the nature and survival requirements of the mind, and this is ultimately a question of significance for all of us in the face of the inevitability of death. Death is the inescapable paradox. It is reasonable to assume that it inspired the concepts of spirits and souls. The prospect of oblivion is something that drives us to truly assert ourselves, to dream of and strive for immortality. In our lives we experience oblivion in different ways. In a way, the singularity of our consciousness exists in a bubble of oblivion. It is not hard to argue that individual consciousness can only exist if it is shielded from universal consciousness. Until we actually die, we cannot know if death is the end of consciousness, the end of individuality, or the beginning of something else. All we can do is ask what the existence of the mind really depends on. One possibility is that the body and brain is the foundation on which the mind is built, while the other is that the body and brain are merely the scaffolding used in building a mind that can stand alone. We might as well be asking if the world is really what it appears to be. As it happens, it is not. The world as we know it exists only in our minds.

To be more specific, we exist in our minds and the world we perceive is constructed in our minds based on information provided through our senses. What we can know about the universe is based on the information that can be derived through its structure. Perception is the conversion of structure into information, through the structure itself, into our minds. Our bodies, our physical senses and our brains are part of and can be found in that structure, but our minds cannot. Our minds possess structure, based on they way they use information, however; this gives us information and structure in both abstract and manifest states. The process of transition from a manifest state to an abstract state presents us with one dynamic. The constant transformation of structure in the universe and in the mind gives us another dynamic, in general terms “change” or in more specific resolution “time” which we derive from the continuity of perception. It is possible that consciousness emerges from the organization of awareness in the structures of perception through the interpretation of information derived from static interactions with dynamic structure in the universe. The interesting question, of course, is what does the existence of the universe depend on?

I am not sure anyone claims to know an answer to this question, but science has given us a lot of ideas derived from tested information about the universe. It does not give us an origin for the medium of space-time or energy, but it can tell us that all matter is derived from energy and structure. I am strongly inclined to look at space and time as part of the way energy is structured, viewing dimensionality as a component of structure along with size, scale, position, etc. If, as I suspect, awareness is a property of energy, then even the mind can be fully encompassed in the universe. Mostly, energy seems to be the most persistent and pervasive thing encountered along the spectrum of extrapolation or reduction. I would hope that anyone critical of my inclination to view awareness as an inherent potential of energy will understand that I simply find awareness too fundamental to our experience of existence not to be implicit in energy. I think that the obvious complexity of structure found in the human brain and perceptual processes is evidence enough of the difficulty of focusing potential awareness into coherent consciousness. I do not pretend to have a hypothesis for how the structure and organization works, or where in the process proto-awareness becomes awareness or proto-consciousness becomes consciousness. I just see it intuitively in life in the world around us.

I did not get to this point in my speculation following a straight and direct route, and some of the most interesting and useful things I spent time on were essential to getting me this far, such as a study of dimensionality, part of which I have elaborated on in explaining the different dimensions and part of which I only hinted at in this post — dimensions of mind. It is a lot to go over and again, too much to really explain inside another topic. We do not truly know what energy is, but it does seem to be pervasive and universal enough to be a base medium that, through structure in manifest, static, dynamic and abstract ways would give us space, time and mind, the three media that encompass existence as we know it. Information and structure both have intimate relationships with energy. Our bodies and our minds can easily be seen as structured energy. We are energy and information forged into a truly dynamic state. With all the universe to show us that energy sustains information, it seems absurd to think it would simply delete information like us. Most of all, I would think that energy organized to the point of self-awareness would somehow be self sustaining. If we could become more complex by one dimension of space-time-mind, I suspect that maybe we would. Of course, that’s just me commenting on a mountain of unshared speculation.

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.

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.