If I’m not mistaken I believe he called the cosmological constant (causing the expansion of the universe) his biggest mistake, but he may have actually been correct because as it turns out that constant is actually dark matter and energy. Someone who knows more please correct me.
I’ve been thinking lately that dark matter and energy is almost like the unconscious of the universe. It makes up a vast portion of everything that exists yet only its effects can be observed; dark matter and energy itself appears to be beyond our current ability to examine. You can’t hold dark matter in your hand (even though it’s everywhere); you can’t use dark energy to power a light bulb (even if most of the energy in the universe is dark).
And again, those who actually know about these things please enlighten me.
Close enough comrade! Unnecessarily detailed explanations cos I think it's interesting as fuck and you might like them: The cosmological constant is a corrective term that Einstein needed to put into his field equations to help his theory of general relativity explain that the universe was neither expanding or contracting, but was instead stable and static. His original equations before introducing the term had described that the universe was expanding, but he introduced this term to modify their description and allow for this static universe model. Edwin Hubble then measured redshift to prove that the universe actually was expanding - proving the original Einstein field equations correct - and Einstein said it was this modification of his equations to fit his preconceived notion rather than accepting the validity of the original equations, especially given that he could have predicted this ahead of observation, that was his biggest blunder. The cosmological constant is still really important though, because through it we've created the CDM model of the big bang which accurately describes lots of properties of the universe like the strand-like macro structure of galaxies, elemental abundances, and the nature of background radiation from the big bang. And yep like you said, it's related to the energy density of space which is higher in this model than we predict using the standard model, and there are attempts to explain it by a number of theories, one of which is dark energy - some unknown energy source that we can't detect yet but adds to the energy density of space, the inclusion of which makes the CDM model really accurate.
Dark matter is a similar theory, in that we can't detect or describe much about it other than the inclusion of its mass in our standard models allow things to exist as they do. The easiest example is galaxies. If galaxies rotated at the speed they do, and only had the mass contained within its stars and black holes and planetary systems etc., the gravitational pull due to all this mass is not enough to hold the spinning galaxy in place and it would fly apart. The fact that galaxies don't fly apart suggests that there's more mass within them which we can't detect, and the different rotational speed of the galaxy at different distances from the centre allows us to predict where this matter is, and modern cosmological models suggest that there's a halo of dark matter surrounding galaxies that stretches far out beyond them.
Thank you for your excellent clarification. One question: did I sound like a kook when I said that dark matter and energy is like the unconscious of the universe?
No worries comrade, and no not at all man! It's sad that spirituality has been ridiculed and made to sound nuts, it's a lingering casualty of imperialism which people on the left really need to do more to unpack. I think that the fact we can't currently detect and analyse these forms of matter and energy doesn't mean they're any less a part of the consciousness of the universe as any other matter. There have been many forms of matter and energy that at some point we couldn't detect, until the sensitivity of our detection methods improved and then we could, and this may well be the case for this matter and energy we predict to exist.
If I'm interpreting your definition of unconsciousness correctly, I think the closest thing to it for me is the vacuum state. For example in the electromagnetic field, packets of energy in regions of the field are photons. These photons are part of the universe's consciousness, but have this empty space in the field between them at which no photons exist and the energy is minimum, a "vacuum state". It's these vacuum states within every quantum field that I'd consider the universe's unconsciousness. It coexists with the conscious aspects and is required to define them, but can never be directly detected because there's nothing to detect, it's just an underlying quality of spacetime allowing for the existence of everything else - hope I understood what you meant by consciousness and unconsciousness but please let me know if not!
Sweet, no, thank you, you got it. I’ve also read that given enough time, these vacuum states can produce something called quantum tunneling which could potentially give birth to new universes once our own universe becomes so old that even the last surviving black holes evaporate and time basically stops because nothing will be changing anymore. How this relates to consciousness or unconsciousness I can’t really say, except that as the universe dies it could also give birth to new life, which has a nice dialectical sound to it.
If I’m not mistaken I believe he called the cosmological constant (causing the expansion of the universe) his biggest mistake, but he may have actually been correct because as it turns out that constant is actually dark matter and energy. Someone who knows more please correct me.
I’ve been thinking lately that dark matter and energy is almost like the unconscious of the universe. It makes up a vast portion of everything that exists yet only its effects can be observed; dark matter and energy itself appears to be beyond our current ability to examine. You can’t hold dark matter in your hand (even though it’s everywhere); you can’t use dark energy to power a light bulb (even if most of the energy in the universe is dark).
And again, those who actually know about these things please enlighten me.
Close enough comrade! Unnecessarily detailed explanations cos I think it's interesting as fuck and you might like them: The cosmological constant is a corrective term that Einstein needed to put into his field equations to help his theory of general relativity explain that the universe was neither expanding or contracting, but was instead stable and static. His original equations before introducing the term had described that the universe was expanding, but he introduced this term to modify their description and allow for this static universe model. Edwin Hubble then measured redshift to prove that the universe actually was expanding - proving the original Einstein field equations correct - and Einstein said it was this modification of his equations to fit his preconceived notion rather than accepting the validity of the original equations, especially given that he could have predicted this ahead of observation, that was his biggest blunder. The cosmological constant is still really important though, because through it we've created the CDM model of the big bang which accurately describes lots of properties of the universe like the strand-like macro structure of galaxies, elemental abundances, and the nature of background radiation from the big bang. And yep like you said, it's related to the energy density of space which is higher in this model than we predict using the standard model, and there are attempts to explain it by a number of theories, one of which is dark energy - some unknown energy source that we can't detect yet but adds to the energy density of space, the inclusion of which makes the CDM model really accurate.
Dark matter is a similar theory, in that we can't detect or describe much about it other than the inclusion of its mass in our standard models allow things to exist as they do. The easiest example is galaxies. If galaxies rotated at the speed they do, and only had the mass contained within its stars and black holes and planetary systems etc., the gravitational pull due to all this mass is not enough to hold the spinning galaxy in place and it would fly apart. The fact that galaxies don't fly apart suggests that there's more mass within them which we can't detect, and the different rotational speed of the galaxy at different distances from the centre allows us to predict where this matter is, and modern cosmological models suggest that there's a halo of dark matter surrounding galaxies that stretches far out beyond them.
Space is fuckin weird man.
:hex-moon:
Thank you for your excellent clarification. One question: did I sound like a kook when I said that dark matter and energy is like the unconscious of the universe?
No worries comrade, and no not at all man! It's sad that spirituality has been ridiculed and made to sound nuts, it's a lingering casualty of imperialism which people on the left really need to do more to unpack. I think that the fact we can't currently detect and analyse these forms of matter and energy doesn't mean they're any less a part of the consciousness of the universe as any other matter. There have been many forms of matter and energy that at some point we couldn't detect, until the sensitivity of our detection methods improved and then we could, and this may well be the case for this matter and energy we predict to exist.
If I'm interpreting your definition of unconsciousness correctly, I think the closest thing to it for me is the vacuum state. For example in the electromagnetic field, packets of energy in regions of the field are photons. These photons are part of the universe's consciousness, but have this empty space in the field between them at which no photons exist and the energy is minimum, a "vacuum state". It's these vacuum states within every quantum field that I'd consider the universe's unconsciousness. It coexists with the conscious aspects and is required to define them, but can never be directly detected because there's nothing to detect, it's just an underlying quality of spacetime allowing for the existence of everything else - hope I understood what you meant by consciousness and unconsciousness but please let me know if not!
Sweet, no, thank you, you got it. I’ve also read that given enough time, these vacuum states can produce something called quantum tunneling which could potentially give birth to new universes once our own universe becomes so old that even the last surviving black holes evaporate and time basically stops because nothing will be changing anymore. How this relates to consciousness or unconsciousness I can’t really say, except that as the universe dies it could also give birth to new life, which has a nice dialectical sound to it.