Ether, quantum, chaos: Building blocks for transcendence

Giulio Prisco
Turing Church
Published in
7 min readJun 1, 2018

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Elaborating on previous essays, here I summarize my physical theology framework. Radically emergent models of fundamental physics hint at new ether physics, transcendent engineering, quantum/chaos magic, and tentative models of divine action.

Current theories of fundamental physics seem to fail at small scales and high energies (two related concepts). This is often considered as a problem to solve. But we have probed nature only in a small range of scales. Why should our theories continue to work near zero length and infinite energy, which is infinitely far from the laboratory?

In his 2006 book “The Trouble with Physics,” a provocative look at current problems in theoretical physics, Lee Smolin praises emergent models of fundamental physics:

“These are models developed by condensed-matter physicists, such as Robert Laughlin, of Stanford; Grigori Volovik, of the Helsinki University of Technology; and Xiao-Gang Wen, of MIT… These men are master craftsmen and seers both. Having done perhaps the best and most consequential normal science of the last few decades, they decided to try their hands at the deep problems of quantum gravity…”

I have written some notes on the work of Volovik and Wen. In his 1998 Nobel Prize lecture, Laughlin defines an emergent phenomenon as a low-energy collective effect of huge numbers of particles that cannot be deduced from the microscopic equations of motion in a rigorous way and that disappears completely when the system is taken apart, and suggests that “most of the important outstanding problems in physics are emergent in nature, including particularly quantum gravity.” See also Laughlin’s book “A Different Universe: Reinventing Physics from the Bottom Down” (2006).

Simple example: Phonons in metals are emergent in nature. Smolin explains that a phonon is not an elementary particle: “It is certainly not one of the particles that make up the metal, for it exists only by virtue of the collective motion of huge numbers of the particles that do make up the metal.”

“But a phonon is a particle just the same. It has all the properties of a particle. It has mass, it has momentum, it carries energy. It behaves precisely the way quantum mechanics says a particle should behave. We say that a phonon is an emergent particle.”

In radically emergent models of fundamental physics, all known particles are emergent particles. All known fields, symmetries, and physical laws, including Einstein’s relativity and quantum mechanics, emerge from new physics in an underlying substrate. Following Volovik and Wen, “ether” seems an appropriate name for the fundamental substrate.

I like these models because they are physical, permit reasoning by analogy with known material systems like superfluids that can be studied in the lab, and are flexible enough to leave room for spiritual and theological speculations.

According to Einstein’s special relativity, the speed of light in vacuum is the same for all inertial observers (Lorentz symmetry). But a Lorentz symmetry for the speed of sound can emerge in a superfluid, Wen explains, “if the clock and ruler are [made] by low energy phonons.”

In other words, inner observers in the superfluid would think that the speed of sound is a fundamental speed limit. But we know that the speed of light in our vacuum is much higher than the speed of sound in the superfluid. Similarly, influences in the ether might propagate much faster than the speed of light in our vacuum. The idea comes to mind that future ether engineering might permit faster-than-light communications and travel.

Metric fields analogous to the gravitational field in empty space, which according to Einstein is the structure of our spacetime, emerge in condensed matter systems. Similarly, our space and time themselves might emerge from the physics of the ether, opening the way to spacetime engineering and time magic (time scanning, time travel and all that).

Quantum mechanics itself might emerge from chaotic dynamical systems in the ether. The underlying dynamics would be nonlocal and causally open. In fact, even in classical (non-quantum) physics, the chaotic evolution of strongly fractal dynamical systems is causally open (undetermined in principle).

Note: I am tentatively using “causally open” instead of “nondeterministic” in light of an ongoing discussion on my previous essays (1, 2) with chaos theory pioneer Ralph Abraham.

Using quantum-speak, the path of a dynamical system in a fractally “riddled” region of its phase space can be considered as a superposition of different possible paths, which eventually undergoes a collapse (apparently random, with probabilities instead of certainty) to one specific path.

This analogy suggest the possibility that quantum behavior could emerge from “deterministic” mathematical equations for the underlying ether physics. But these mathematically deterministic equations would allow indeterminate, quantum-like behavior.

The Planck scale and beyond, which is currently considered as a no-go zone for physics, could be accessible to new ether physics. The ether could be a continuum described by continuous mathematical models, with differential geometry extended to fractal geometry.

Once the physics of chaos and nonlocality in the ether is better understood, quantum ether engineering might permit controlling fundamental chance and change.

Life, mind and Mind in the ether and beyond

We are only aware of carbon-based life in the Earth’s biosphere, but we can’t assume that all forms of life in the universe must be similar to life as we know it. Surely nature is much more imaginative than that.

Following the analysis in the privately circulated book “Xenology: An Introduction to the Scientific Study of Extraterrestrial Life, Intelligence, and Civilization” (available online), by molecular nanotechnology pioneer Robert Freitas, Clément Vidal analyzed possible metabolisms of living systems based on all four fundamental physical forces in his 2014 book “The beginning and the end: the meaning of life in a cosmological perspective.”

Following astrophysicist Fred Hoyle (in “The Black Cloud” and related nonfiction), Freitas and Vidal speculate on living creatures operating on the principles of plasma physics rather than the usual molecular biochemistry. Super-exotic life forms based on non-electromagnetic interactions such as the strong nuclear force (quantum chromodynamics, QCD) could exist in high-energy environments such as neutron stars, and even more exotic life could exist in black holes.

From here, another leap of imagination brings us to thinking of intelligent life based directly on the sub-quantum physics of the ether.

There are speculations that the biological brain could be “quantum matter” and support the thinking and feeling mind through long-range quantum coherence. According to radically emergent models of fundamental physics, the ether also exhibits long-range coherent behavior.

Recent research suggests that quantum fields (ether fields) could process information in mind-like ways. Since ether fields are much denser and faster than familiar forms of matter, we can think of the ether as ultra-high performance computronium and self-aware perceptronium.

Therefore, we can imagine self-aware, intelligent life in the ether. Some of these beings could be super-intelligent, God-like Minds able to control the universe (divine action) through ultimate ether engineering and “quantum/chaos magic.”

Let’s go back to the possibility, mentioned above, that quantum behavior could emerge from “deterministic” mathematical equations for the underlying ether physics. If so, how can the divine Minds, and smaller minds like you and I, make freely willed choices? Where do the apparently random inputs needed to actualize one of several possible outcomes come from?

A possible answer is that, if the underlying mathematical laws are deterministic in the sense that they don’t contain uncertain parts, free will and divine action can be thought of as emerging from inside in some way, as opposed to coming from outside.

If so, there’s no need to resort to mind/matter dualism. Monism is a viable philosophy, and there might be a self-consistent unified description of mind and matter.

Another possibility is that freely willed choices really come from outside, which brings us straight into simulation hypothesis territory. Or, since it’s really the same thing, traditional theology territory.

Yet another possibility is an infinite regress. Beneath the ether there might be another ether, or the simulating reality might be a simulation itself, and so forth with turtles all the way down in an infinite fractal zoom. In this case, the origin of freely willed choices is pushed down to the infinitely far, unattainable bottom.

In any case, I am persuaded that intelligent organic life forms like current humankind can learn much more and earn a place in the community of God-like Minds. If there is an absolute God, we’ll become cosmic engineers in God’s control room. If needed, we’ll start exploring deeper turtles on the way down. Eventually, we’ll re-engineer the universe and resurrect the dead, achieving the Cosmist vision of Nikolai Fedorov.

I just found out that I have been quoted in an essay on Fedorov, published in Atlas Obscura, titled “The Russian Philosopher Who Sought Immortality in the Cosmos.”

“In particular, cosmism is open to the possibility that future science and technology might be able to resurrect the dead from the past, and to the idea that our universe might be, for want of a better word, a simulation,” says Prisco. “These ideas are, like it or not, both compatible with science and totally indistinguishable from religion. Many Transhumanists, who tried to kick religion out through the back door of superstition, are now finding that religion is coming back to them through the main door of science.”

In fact, the parallels between these ideas and traditional religions are clear and evident for those who want to see. My message is that, if you want to believe in the cosmological core of your religion without abandoning the scientific worldview, yes you can.

Pictures from Wikimedia Commons (1, 2, 3).

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Writer, futurist, sometime philosopher. Author of “Tales of the Turing Church” and “Futurist spaceflight meditations.”