P Theory/F Theory (Patrix/Father): The Third Continuum

[Eric B]

Some theorists hve speculated on alternate realities. Particularly when the subject of reverse time travel comes up. If you go back into the past, and begin altering reality, causality is violated, and the universe would make no sense. So they speculate that if you do go back into the past, you would in fact enter a parallel spacetime universe in which events are different. Each instant in time, when an event occurs, such as when we make one decision or another, becomes like a "fork" where multiple realities split off, and only one becomes realized in our experience; the one "chosen" over the others.
So there is a notion that the other, unchosen realities ("counterfactuals") might exist in some way, yet we simply don't have access to them. If you accept that the universe and all its matter, events and space and time itself consists of vibrating loops of string, then it doesn't seem farfetched to believe that all of these other states of them (collective vibrational patterns) exist, yet only one path through them has been chosen. I have seen two articles, using both space and time to access these counterfactuals. One, in Scientific American, proposes an infinite space, and the further out you go, you run out of possible configurations of matter and energy. So all matter can do is to start repeating itself. Eventually you will run across exact and near copies of everything we see around us, including ourselves.
The other one (http://www.exitmundi.nl/eternity.htm) does the same thing using infinite time. After the entire universe burns itself out and cools into nothingness, the quantum uncertainty principle proposes matter will be randomly popping in and out of existence. Given enough time, more complex objects will appear, including eventually, copies of everything we see around us, including ourselves and a new big bang.

One problem I have with infinite space or time, is that matter and events become zero in the overall scale of the universe.

But to me, parallel realities created from being "unchosen" in the here and now (and not cast off into infinite distance or future simply because the universe has run out of possible combinations) creates a new continuum, in addition to space and time. Space is the medium in which we measure the relative locations of matter and events. We use it to get from one location (marked by matter or an event) to another (see http://www.erictb.info/essays.html#space&time). Time is the medium in which we measure the chain of causality or simultaneity between events. We use it as we live and experience one event after another.
So think, what medium would be the one "travelled" by jumping straight from the here and now in our universe, to a parallel universe where we wore red instead of blue in the here and now? You might think time, but time is marked by a causal chain. On event causes the other. Yet an event we are experiencing now did not cause an alternate event in a parallel universe. They are results of a different choice (event) at a point further back in time where the two realities merge. The causal chain lies in the forward time dimension itself, not in the perpedicular dimension in which you jump from one to another.
It is also not space. When we think of "parallel universes", we are usually thinking of space, where one space is embedded in another space with more dimensions, containing other lower dimensional spaces parallel to the first one. You might think that alternate realities would be the temporal counterpart to embedding in higher spaces. But again, in higher dimensions, the medium in which the lower spaces ("branes") are located relative to each other is still space. The medium between counterfactuals is not time, because, once again, the relationship between parallel corresponding events is not causal.
So this is an all new medium. To give it a familiar monosyllabic name like "space" and "time", I would call it "chance".

I always like things like this in threes. So we have space, time and chance. It sort of parallels the Christian concept of the Trinity. And creationist Henry Morris and others have even linked the concept. (Apologize for referencing the most infamous old-school Young Earth creationist. Even as a young Christian struggling between C vs E; I used to be totally offended by a lot of his rhetoric. But this idea of his is truly interesting!) While the Trinity is often thought of as three equal beings sitting side by side, Morris framed them in terms of a reference, a visual form and an experential form. So the Father is what God is, or who we reference when speaking of God. The Son is God made flesh, visible and tangible in the world (the Father cannot be contained in space and time). The Holy Spirit is how God is experienced (in the heart). Morris ultimately still holds the "traditional" symmetrical view of three "equals" side by side. But when I researched all of this, I found that the pre-Nicene church fathers actually held a non-symmetrical view in which the Father was the Godhead from eternity, and the Son and Spirit were manifested from Him in time (i.e. at the birth of Christ). Forms of this were later revived by the likes of Marcellus and Servetus, but the church by then condemned them in favor of the symmetrical view, which has become the official dogma ever since. (more on this at http://www.erictb.info/triune.html)

Morris had linked this tri-unity to the universe, which he said was referenced to space, seen in matter and experienced through time. (and space had its three dimensions; and time had past, present and future, etc).
I did not like making space the "Father-like" element and matter the "Son-like" element. I had already started coming to see space and time as the visible/experential counterparts, and expected the third continuum to be another kind of continuum like space and time, unlike matter. Matter is what occupies space, and that may appear to fit the "visible manifestation" role, but it is not the same sort of thing. (Though mass is often the third measurement next to distance and duration in equations). You can imagine a universe without matter. Measurement of distance and events then becomes irrelevant, but it is still hypothetically possible. But a universe with no space or time is a whole different kind of existence.

So if we look at the universe as the entire set of possibilities, then this new "chance" continuum is what it is "referenced" to, and space and time are manifestations of it, with space as what it is seen in and time what it is experienced in.

Just as you can get "close" to a point in space (with gradual changes as you pass one material object after another. Think of the transition from country to city as you get closer and the density of people and buildings gradually increases), and closer to a point in time (as one event leads to another, and a new "present" takes shape. Think of any transformation in time. A flower or other living thing growing, etc), you can also hypothetically/theoretically move closer to a point in chance by changing things to alternate states.

Like if I chart my position using the four dimensions of spacetime. At such and such time, I and at a particular longitude, latitude and altitude. In an alternate reality, I may have moved to a point five feet away in latitude. Or maybe ten feet away. That would indicate a further "distance" in chance, since five feet away is "closer" to the starting reality than ten feet away. Of course this will affect the choices I would have had to have made in space and time, in order to get to that point. Just like space and time determine where you can go in each other. So this is interchangeable, just like space and time, and can also be measured. While space has three dimensions, and time has only one dimension, the number of dimensions in chance seems to be unlimited.

So what does everyone think of this. Have any of the theorists thought of it? If so, I've never read about it.

[Keiji]

I think this is an excellent interpretation, Eric. I would imagine that chance would have unbounded dimension with the value of each dimension being the exact overall choice made by every entity at each point in time (I would have to suggest choices be made every Planck time period, for lack of a better assumption). Then everything must occur at some point in spacetime for every point in chance. This allows for non-paradoxical time travel. Though I can't really say much more because it's confusing the hell out of me now.

[Eric B]

I've recently been thinking more on this, and trying to come up with even more fundamental definitions.

I would say that strings are the fundamental fabric of space-time, and any given point in time is a collection of string-vibrations. Some strings are just empty space-time. Some are gravitational fields, some are matter, and some are energy. They are all arranged a particular way at any given time, measured by relative location in the medium called "space".

The entire "matrix" is a set of all possible arrangements of string patterns, yet only certain arrangements are "actualized". "Events" are changes in matter and energy (either changing form, or changing location in relative to other events). Space, time and chance are simply the continuums in which events are located relative to one another. This can be space, time or chance (which would be counterfactual events, or "alternate reality", which are simply the possible events not actualized).

The way to understand this, is to imagine the event of the beginning of the universe (supposedly expanded out from a single point). Now, the string pattern begins changing, and one pattern leads to another in a causative chain. First, matter is compact; then it has moved further apart. There are three coordinates in which it moves, and a different arrangement of strings can be found.
So there are actually four paths connecting to different string arrangements. One is causative, and you can only experience events in a chain once. The other three consist of all the displaced chains of causation, where matter and energy has taken other shapes in other events, yet these chains can be accessed from one another. I say chains and not events, because you cannot travel between simultaneous events, because that is faster than light, and even simulteaneity is relative! So instead, you can access another event that stems from the event you observed from a distance. Hence, a different "chain". So each piece of matter you look at in space is apart of another chain of events (its creation, changes made to it, things done with it, etc), displaced by whatever "distance' you measure, from the chain of events you are apart of.
Each collective pattern arrangement is actualized when all the chains of events leads to that particular pattern. (You scratch your head, as the object you are looking at reflects a flash of light from outside, and everything else occurring at that time).

So the continuum along which the chains progress becomes causative, and called "time", and the continuum (with its three coordinates) in which all the different chains are simultaneously displaced is called "space", and we have freedom to move in any direction. Chance would be the hypothetical continuum connecting to the un-actualized arrangements.
Like if I wear a red shirt, that is one pattern of strings actualized at the same time as every other event occurring in the universe. But a parallel timeline where I wore a blue shirt instead could be thought of as possible, and even "existing" in some hypothetical way, but it is simply not actualized. (Putting on a blue shirt after the red one doesn't count as actualizing, because then in that time frame, everything else in the universe has progressed (changed) from what it was at the time of the initial event, so it would be a yet different arrangement).

You can see this stuff in theoretical physics' books, but I have never seen any of them speak of this continuum in which parallel timelines exist, as a third continuum. It's not time, as there is no causal chain between parallel [counterfactual] events. It's not space (e.g. hyperspace), as space only contains actualized (tangible, visible) events that can be measured in distance relative to each other (even if not visible from lower spaces).

Time and space are frequently said to be interchangeable, and I would say chance is interchangeable with them. All they are is three different methods of arriving to different potential universal collections of states of matter and energy. One of them you have free movement in, another you are involuntarily "dragged" along, and the other you have no known access to at all.
It's said that if you move at the speed of light, then that direction of space then becomes like time. (I'm not sure if time then becomes like space, since when you move at the speed of light in any one direction, you are still in the others. Within a black hole, space and time are said to switch like that as well, with some sort of freer movement in time, but then you don't have much space or time left, as you are pulled into the singularity and torn apart by the tidal forces).

[Eric B]

In this idea, chance is basically the primary continuum of the universe; in which are defined the connections between all possible events or collective states of matter and energy. Space and time are generated from it depending on the relationshipe of events that have been actualized.

Space is the continuum of the connections between actualized events that exist independently of each other.

Time is the continuum of the connections between actualized events that generate (cause, lead to) one another.

To further elaborate on something said before; an alternate causal chain springing from an event is not time because it is not actualized, and we are defining the continuum of "time" as causal connection between actualized events. So such a chain would simply be a veering off into this new "chance" continuum. Yet if we could actualize that alternate chain of events (at the same time as the first chain), then it would sweep out a causal plane rather than line, and thus generate a second dimension of time. So in this, a chance dimension has transformed into time.


If we start with an old neighborhood, we have our coordinates of how far east or west (longitude), north or south (lattitude), and of course that it is on the ground (up or down; altitude), and then choose a particular time, then we have an event with at least five coordinates; the first three telling you where, a fourth telling you when, and a fifth (and more) telling you WHAT: a particular state of matter.
After this initial event, the neighborhood can either have its buildings stay the same, or be renovated, or it can be torn down for an all new development. Either way, we will arrive at one of two different possible events, separated from the starting event by a causal chain, which will replace the starting event with the new event, eventually. Only one of the events will be actualized. The other will then lie outside of the four dimensional spacetime continuum, in the "chance" dimension, and we will say it doesn't exist.

Now, if we had a dimension in which we could actually lay out the entire causal chain (world lines springing from both events) along it, both events could be seen at the same time. Both would be actualized, and the old neighborhood and new neighborhood would exist side by side in the same spacetime continuum, yet occupying the same lattitude, longitude, altitude and time. You could now freely go back and forth between the old neighborhood and the new one. New causal chains could then spring forth from both that do not replace one with the other. (Like the old buildings being renovated). The displacement between them would no longer be causal. So then, a time dimension has become a fourth space dimension, and a separate time dimension continues to march on.

[Eric B]

Here is a 3D Penrose diagram illustrating the concept for a Kerr-Newman grey hole.
http://www.erictb.info/Kerr-Newman.png
If a regular Schwarzschild hole (mass only) has one event horizon leading to a spacelike singularity, and Resissner-Nordstrom (mass+charge) OR Kerr (mass+spin) holes have two event horizons leading to a timelike singularity, and you would figure that a Kerr-Newman hole with BOTH charge and spin in addition to mass, would have THREE event horizons. I wondered what thy would do; would it align the singularity in a spacelike orientation again, or something else.
I had to hunt down info and Penrose diagrams on the Kerr-Newman solution, and I found a had drawn one somewhere, and it is protrayed as also having only two event horizons. The only difference in the geometry between Kerr and Kerr-Newman was said to be the static limit being different. (I think I was told that that was the "third surface" affected by the third factor).

But now, with a third continuum after space and time, peraps this new "chance" dimension is where the geometry spins off into. Not sure all the details of how this would work, so I just put together this draft of the idea.

[Eric B]

Here, I have recently thought of a new way to state an idea I had about the dimensionality of the universe.
From a "build it up from scratch" method of explaining, and with new illustrations I have just created.

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If we imagine loops of string, in different states. Say color.
I can have only one color , but I imagine other "realities" where the circle appears other colors. These different circles are displaced in a medium that appears imaginary, because in our perception, only one "reality" can be actualized at a time.



So we need a way to actualize the other states of the circle.
One way is to essentially create copies of the circle with each one being one of the other colors. We can then place them in a "side by side" displacement, and all are then actualized at once.

We have now created a new dimensional medium, called SPACE.

In this medium, we can freely, randomly access each circle, measure their location relative to each other, building a scale called distance.
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How can we actualize the different states of the same object without creating copies of it?
We can have it change to all the different colors, the displacement being sequential, "one after the other", involving causation. We raise the frequency, causing one color to turn into the next.

This is yet another dimensional medium, called TIME.

One drawback, is that we do not have the total freedom to randomly access these states. Unless the cycle is looped, if you miss one, there is no way to get back to it. Actualization is now avery brief thing.
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So we see we have arrived at the same "different states" of an object, using three different means.

One, we hypothesized these alternate states, as simple parallel realities, and basically imagined a medium connecting them.
What we lacked, was a way to actualize them.

Two, we placed these alternate realities in a medium where they could be actualized all at once, and randomly acessed.

Three, we had a medium where the original object itself could actualize all of these different states one after the other.


Of course, our universe is a combination of these last two. "Events" are actualized changes of states of matter and energy marking location in both the randomly accessed medium (which is actually fanned out into three dimensions of freedom), as well as the sequential medium.
All together, this is called "four dimensional spacetime".

The premise is that the first medium, which I call "chance", is the primary "Father"-like realm (i.e. "Patrix"), and that space and time are simply manifestations of it, in which reality is actualized.

Another premise is that this "chance" dimension might be able to figure in theoretical equations calling for various dimensions that are currently assumed to be space or time.

Like the six tiny (10^35m) "extra" dimensions of string theory. Some variations add anywhere from one to sixteen additional ones. All of these are generally assumed to be spatial. (Occasionally, a suggestion of one of them being temporal surfaces).

But perhaps they are chance. Wouldn't this fit in with the "uncertainty principle" that string theory is in part based on? (that a particle may or may not appear at a given location)

Every alternate state of every string in the universe would generate a new dimension of "chance".
So perhaps in these field equations calling for more dimensions, each one would somehow involve that number (6, 16, etc) of probabilies that could become real.

[PWrong]

Why are they circles, as opposed to just points? The existence of a circle implies the existence of something like "space" for it to be circular in.

Every alternate state of every string in the universe would generate a new dimension of "chance".

Modelling probability as a single dimension doesn't work. In quantum mechanics you have to sum over all possible paths, which I think involves Hilbert spaces of wave-functions. So technically that's infinitely many dimensions.

[Eric B]

I considered using dots, (but those have spatial area as well, really, and to make them smaller, it would be harder to see the colors), but then used circles in honor of "string" theory.
According to the theory (at least as broken down by Brian Greene), space itself consists of strings, and "inbetween" the strings is a "primeval realm" that is not spacetime!

So of course, this cannot be perfectly represented. The point is, just to roughly illustrate the three means of "displacement".

I had figured this "chance" continuum would be a potential Hilbert space, or really, if there is a limit to spacetime, then however many strings there are × how many vibrations they can engage, which of course would be such an astronomical number, it might as well be infinite.
But it seems only a certain far smaller number of probabilities would be pertinent to the actualized universe, if they might be involved in these extra tiny dimensions.

[PWrong]

It's much easier to not think of probability or multiple universes in terms of dimensions at all. Just think of them as whatever they are. There's no reason to think you can "add up" universes, in the way you can add up points in spacetime. So the multiverse probably isn't a vector space.

[Eric B]

I was just thinking that if they do happen to be vector spaces (of sorts), they might figure in those field equations involving multiple dimensions. i.e. they might not all be "space" dimensions.
I think that is an idea that should be looked into. I could imagine it leading to useful theoretical discoveries.

[Teragon]

This is an interesting topic. Quite old, and I don't know if the involved users are still active, but there's quite a lot more to say.

There is a natural way to access a certain part of what is called "chance". The term is also a metaphysical statement. I'll call the part of it we have acess to, quite contrairy to the original term, "choice". I'm going to focus on the concept of choice alone in the following, leaving apart the confusions of chance.

At a closer look it's only possible to experience a snippet of space at one point in time. It's only through time that we can explore a landscape, travel to other countries or just view an object from the other side. So even though we know that there's a "parallel universe" out there connected through space with what we witness, we are not able to experience some "distant" place at the same time. Furthermore we may not go arbitrarily fast, there's a natural limit how far we can go per unit time, creating an event horizon for us in spacetime. It's impossible to reach Alpha Centauri within the next year. It's because our position now and Alpha Centauri's position in one year are causally disconnected. If we started out four years ago, theoretically we might have reached it at that point in time. If we look at the possible locations where we could be in a certain time from now, that space of possible locations would be growing and growing with time.

Similary to space we are not able to witness two different causal branches of chance at the same time. Still at any point in time, we can actually decide between certain branches to go. At any time we have a certain "decision space" to go, the part of choice that's causally connected to our current actualized state of the universe. The causal branch we choose is actualized through our intent and our focus. We choose if to visit the universe where we are at a party, or the universe where we are sleeping at the same time. We may go to the universe where we become a manager or we may go to the universe where we are a globetrotter. We may say "yes" or "no", respond friendly or offended and so on.

As we may not go to Alpha Centaury within one year, we may not become a billionaire in three minutes, because there's no causally connected branch in "choice" to our current point in choice-space-time. There may be a branch in which we are a billionaire at the same point in time, but this branch is not causally connected to our branch, it's outside our event horizon. We may have reached it if we started our efforts a decade ago. In a similar manner as the possible space we can reach grows with time, the possible "choice space" we can access grows with time. Within one day it's unlikely that we develop a whole new state of everyday consciousness, within some years a huge range of different states of everyday consciousness is possible.

I do not share the concept of a measureable distance in chance or choice. I think that there's no metric to be defined on such a space. If the question arises if to apply for a job, we can choose "yes" or "no". Both scenarios would lead to quite different outcomes and there's no smooth transition between doing something and not doing something.

To the previos discussions I'd like to add that string theory should be treated as what it is: A very interesting and at the time controversial theory that may prove powerful or useless in future times.

[Eric B]

Yes, this touches upon what I've also thought of as part of the subject. Our "sphere of influence" is something that acts like the sphere of where we can go within the relativistic framework. (The expanding sphere for events is called the [future] "light cone").
But I didn't know how to frame what governs the limit of our choice. That we cannot become billionaires in three minutes is not quite the same thing as not beign able to reach Alpha Centauri in one year. The latter is a general law of the universe. The former is a whole bunch of factors, and would be related to not having a concept of any measurable "distance" in the chance realm. I figure, a "distance" might have something to do with the different states of every string involved in what makes every chance "brane" different from another, but then there would be so many factors, there might be billions of different "dimensions" involved in every little difference.
We could conceivable become a billionaire in three minutes if someone walks up to us and gives us billions in three minutes. But then, though it's not our "choice"; it's still the trajectory of other factors, such as the other person, and being in the right place at the right time. If I could just walk up to a mint and print myself billions, then it could happen, but what's stopping me is not laws of the universe, but laws of man, and that's not a relativistic factor. I guess you would have to take it all the way back through time, and how chance allowed man to develop and create such laws in the first place.

[Teragon]

Becoming a billionaire in the next three minutes lies clearly inside my light cone equivalent in chance space, that's right. It's physically possible, but highly unlikely. The problem is that propability has no sharp boarders at all! It's also possible but very unlikely that a special U₂₃₈ Atom decays within my lifetime and even more unlikely that a cupboard tunnels through the wall. In this case, the propability is given by quantum mechanics. There are positions in chance space that are more likely than others with gigantic differences in likelyhood. This is closely related to statistical physics and the concept of entropy.

The first case is even more complicated. There's a complex human psyche involved in the propability of this to happen. As we are not able to handle such a complex system quantum mechanically and we do not even know the nature of consciousness or how it goes together with physics (arising from the theory of everthing or something beyond?), I think it's far more practical to start out from the level of the human mind concerning choice space (and a part of chance space).

Being at the right place at the right time also largely depends on the choices we and others made, even though we couldn't foresee all the consequences.
If we chose to climb a mountain we've got a certain idea what it's gonna be like and our possibilities there, because of our experience, but we don't know what we might find there in detail and what lies behind it / which branches will open up upon this choice.

If we are aware of it or not, if we take advantage of it or not, we are always taking branches in choice space. A way through space-time is always also a way through chance space. This is not true the other way round. We may stand still in space (quantummechanically it's a different story), but not in chance-time, because the branch structure of chance is connected by causality and evolving with time. In fact without time, chance would make no sense.