Chapter III: Modern Physics and Cosmology
“We are faced with a new kind of difficulty: We have two contradictory pictures of reality; separately neither of them fully explains the phenomena of light, but together they do.”Albert Einstein, with L. Infeld, The Evolution of Physics
“Quantum physics thus reveals a basic oneness of the Universe.”Erwin Schroedinger, Mind and Matter: Oneness of Mind
“(Calculating the vacuum energy from Quantum Field Theory, which led to the cosmological constant problem) ... is probably the worst theoretical prediction in the history of physics.”Mike P. Hobson et al., General Relativity: An Introduction for Physicists
After Michelson and Morley proved that light travels with the same speed regardless whether it was moving in the direction of the movement of the Earth or perpendicular to it, scientists started to look for alternative theories, away from the luminiferous aether, to explain the nature of light and other electromagnetic phenomena. This unexpected null result initiated active research that eventually led to Special Relativity in 1905 (to be generalized after ten years for non-inertial frames). The speed of light in vacuum is then considered the maximum speed which anything in the Universe can attain, regardless of the motion of the source or the inertial reference frame of the observer.
In parallel with the success of Relativity, Quantum Mechanics had also been proved successful in describing the interactions between fields and subatomic particles, despite the fact that it clearly contradicts the aforementioned central principle of Relativity, since it predicts various nonlocal interactions, such as quantum entanglement and tunneling, which have been also widely observed experimentally.
This conceptual incompatibility between Relativity and Quantum theories triggered many research paths that tried to consolidate the fundamental forces of nature, leading to many differing and intersecting theories, such as Quantum Field Theory, Strings Theory and Loop Quantum Gravity, in addition to various new conceptions such as black hole thermodynamics, dark energy, cosmological constant, dark matter, emergence, super-symmetry, cosmic inflation and the holographic principle. None of these theories, however, has ever been able to settle the critical contradiction. On the contrary, the discrepancy manifested recently more clearly in the cosmological constant problem which was described as the worst theoretical prediction in the history of physics.
The theories of modern physics, however, showed that the classical description of nature is not adequate, especially at low temperatures, high velocities, microscopic distances, or other extreme conditions. In general, Relativity is more applicable at macroscopic scales, such as in the various fields of astronomy and cosmology, while Quantum Mechanics dominates more at the microscopic scale, such as the interactions between atoms and elementary particles, although some macroscopic phenomena such as superconductors, and superfluids, can only be explained according to the quantum theory. They, however, can not be applied together in the same domain. This means that neither of them is complete yet, or at least they can not be both fully correct at the same time.
As we briefly introduced in chapters I and II, the Duality of Time does not replace or contradict the exiting theories, but it exposes a deeper understanding of the complex nature of time that leads to the same principles of Special and General Relativity together, as well as the quantization of energy and fields, on which Quantum Field Theory is based. The dynamic, granular and self-contained space-time of the Duality of Time hypothesis will easily lead to simple Euclidean Quantum Gravity, in addition to explaining the other fundamental interactions in terms of its genuinely complex-time geometry. This will change many of the basic concepts of modern physics, and revive some of the classical and even ancient conceptions, such as aether and the four elements of nature; which will provide realistic explanations of various weird quantum mechanical phenomena, as we shall introduce in this chapter, to be discussed further in chapters V and VI.
In this chapter, therefore, we want to review the major modern theories of physics and cosmology, in order to continue the previous comprehensive review of the main ancient philosophical and cosmological conceptions. By that, we will set the stage ready to be able to explain Ibn al-Arabi’s original cosmology, represented in the Single Monad Model, and the resulting Duality of Time hypothesis, that will be discussed in the following chapters. All the equations and general analysis in this chapter are widely available in text books and many free websites, such as Wikipedia, so we shall not need to reference and cite other than the otherwise serious issues and critical claims.
We will notice how the Single Monad Model combines together all the benefits of the main models that have been advocated by various scientists, and reconciles their main contradictions. It will also become very clear that each of the main modern theories and models have actually described the reality from its own physical perspective, but they were all in mutual contradictions because none of them could penetrate beyond this veil of physical multiplicity. The Duality of Time is able to make all these theories complementary only because it emerged from the metaphysical oneness of nature, and hence the various, apparently contradicting, or peculiar, physical phenomena are some extreme situations anticipated by the genuinely-complex nature of time, which will also predict other even more extreme situations that will be discussed in the concluding chapters VI and VII that introduce: Metaphysics and Ontology, and Alchemy of the Sufis, respectively.
As we did in the previous chapter, we will review the main historical developments that led to the current theories and conceptions, leaving out the unnecessary details and mostly complicated mathematical formulations, in order to concentrate more on how the main genuine ideas have emerged and developed, but sometimes were superseded and replaced by other less accurate but more practical theories that actually confused the scientific investigation and caused nothing but more perplexity and bewilderment. It can be confidently argued that, despite the sophisticated and advanced theories and applications, the physics of today is no better than how it was a hundred years ago, at least with regard to the main fundamental conceptions. In particular, the overthrowing of aether theories by Special Relativity, and the subsequent strong fascination for the Riemannian non-Euclidean geometry of General Relativity, caused physics to slip away from the right path. At the beginning of the previous century, the preliminary versions of relativity theory by Lorentz and Poincaré, that were still based on aether concepts and Euclidean imaginary space-time, were about to make a breakthrough towards the Theory of Everything, but the non-Euclidean Minkowski space-time made everything more complicated and move slowly in the wrong direction, although it was the most efficient mathematical method to explain the apparent physical phenomena, but not the actually metaphysical reality, which can only be explained based on the genuinely-complex time-time Euclidean geometry.