Frequently Asked Questions

What's the focus of your website?

I don't merely focus on the known physical universe, or even the past or present. I consider what is possible in the ultimate arena of all possible universes or all possible realities. My original focus or question was, what exists if everything exists? 

Aren't the possibilities limitless? Isn't anything possible? 
There could be an infinity of different types of other worlds and most would be completely unlike our own. How can you claim to understand that?

I use to think of the greater infinite in that way, as radical and incomprehensible. I thought the very nature of it was indefinable. I reasoned that an infinite universe by definition is chaotic. And yet I still tried to understand. I started thinking a lot about the basic concepts of everything and nothing. Then in college my explorations became more serious as I studied physics and cosmology. That is when I realized that just as there are extreme ideas such as everything and nothing, there are also extremes in physics and astronomy. 

The visible universe is expanding as if its being inflated. The large-scale bodies of stars known as galaxies are moving away from one another, not moving away from any center, but rather all space is expanding everywhere in the universe. Space itself is somehow expanding internally. If we imagine turning the clock backward, our visible universe would collapse inward and become ever more dense and hot, since all stars would be moving toward one another, rather than away. 

The most obvious example of an extreme in physics is the singularity that would exist if all matter and energy were compressed to an infinitely small point. I will refer to this extreme as the alpha state. The alpha state is a cosmic absolute, a condition in nature so radical that nothing exists beyond its extremity. It is a possibility beyond which no other possibilities exist. The alpha state is a boundary to reality itself.

What other extremes exist in physics? 

As our universe expands its average density is naturally decreasing. The temperature of the universe is also becoming increasingly colder. These are very slow processes, but if we turn the clock forward, and imagine the distant future, we envision a universe becoming increasingly less dense. With all the galaxies moving away from one another, the average density of any given area or volume of space is decreasing. In fact the visible universe is becoming empty.

Expansion inevitably causes the universe to evolve ever nearer to absolute zero density and temperature. Absolute zero is also an extreme or a boundary of physics, nature, and reality, beyond which no other possibilities exist. 

If this is indeed true, it means that the whole infinity of possible universes is bounded by two extremes, and the same states define physics as we know it. This is why I now believe all of existence is radically comprehensible. I know existence is infinite, but there is an overall structure, or fundamental shape to nature, that can be understood, even with human reasoning. At a glance, the big picture is even simple.

What is absolute zero?

There is a common point of zero for just about everything in physics. Zero density is synonymous with zero mass, zero energy, zero heat, zero volume, zero curvature, and even zero time. 

In science today absolute zero is usually only a reference to temperature. The Kelvin temperature scale used by scientists is referenced or based on the coldest temperature possible. Absolute zero Kelvin is -459.7 on the Fahrenheit scale, or -273.15° on the Celsius scale. Absolute zero is the temperature at which all motion would cease, that is, if matter could be cooled to zero. However, matter cooled ever nearer to zero draws energy from its surroundings, eventually breaking down into Einstein-Bose Condensate near zero, where the particle form of matter smears into a smooth unified plasma. As long as there is matter or heat in the universe for the increasingly cooled area to draw energy from, as long as time occurs, matter cannot be cooled fully to zero. In order for absolute zero to occur, the entire universe must somehow reach zero simultaneously.

This is where the expansion of the universe comes into play. Matter can be stretched flat like unraveling a knot or pulling a knotted up rubber band straight. But the whole universe must unravel. A zero density anywhere in the universe would mean the end of time everywhere. When the whole universe stretches itself flat, at zero density the volume of space-time collapses, and time as we know it ceases, or at least our ability to describe the universe with modern day physics, which is fundamentally based on on the existence of things, would break down.

Can the universe actually reach absolute zero? 

During the past four years astrophysicists have discovered that the universe is expanding at an accelerating rate. We know that expansion slowed after the Big Bang. Expansion slowed for many billions of years. But about six billion years ago the rate of cosmological expansion began to increase. Scientists are still grappling with what this increasing expansion rate means in regards to the future, but the discovery does greatly support the proposal made here that the universe can indeed stretch to become a perfectly flat space, which would be a physical state of absolute zero.

It is sort of like imagining a rubber band that is twisted and curled up into a ball. If you pull the end of the rubber band it stretches into a straight line. In the case of space, when stretched fully it becomes flat, meaning that there is no spatial curvature or gravity. But the universe must expand very fast, virtually at the speed of light, in order for time to end at absolute zero where space would be flat.

I believe existing bottom-up science is presently blinding modern day physicists to a very simple and evident top-down conclusion, one as equally obvious as the big bang model derives from cosmological expansion. Our zero future is the cause of time and dramatically influences the future. For me accelerating expansion was experimental confirmation of what at the time were bold predictions. As my main theme, I proposed a finite end to time with the universe ending at zero by expanding itself perfectly flat in three books written in 1994, 96, and 97, all before accelerating expansion was discovered, and long before the big rip model was proposed by Robert Caldwell. My own predictions about the future consider the backward causation of zero which is unrecognized in forward causation models such as the big rip. 

What do you mean by flat space?

The term flat space or absolute flat space (AFS) refers to the physical state of absolute zero density, mass, temperature and time. I usually represent flat space using an invisible square as shown here, and will sometimes refer to flat space as Omega or the Omega state. 

My foundational argument is that all configurations or possible states physically exist timelessly, because all are merely fragments of an ultimate zero. They are like all the possible slices of a whole pie. It is easy to sense how such fractions and the whole are naturally interdependent, always conserved, and their laws self contained. This approach leads to a major “switch” in values and develops into an interesting perspective where zero is seen as full, a superspace, rather than an empty space, and any given possible state or universe is less than that fullness. If correct, then inverse to what most people classically believe, our universe is less than a base zero background, rather than more than a nothing. This realization about zero led me to develop the idea that there are two kinds of order present in nature, one kind of order exists in our past, and one kind of order exists in our future. Contrary to what scientists believe today, the most ordered state exists in our future, not the past. Of course time is partly illusion. The existence of a spatial kind of time is real but our sense that existence is evolving or changing in time is completely an illusion. Zero is the native state of existence, meaning zero exists now, has always existed, and will always exist. I believe zero equates simply to a being or existence that has no alternative.

All time worlds such as our own are timelessly embedded in this seemingly empty space. So of course it isn't empty, it is actually full. Flat space is simultaneously an extreme and a limit, which along with the extreme Alpha state (or Proto), produces a shape to nature and reality. The boundaries of each contribute to making the infinite universe humanly comprehensible. 

What then is empty space, or nothing?

It is permissible at first to think of flat space as empty or as nothing, although you quickly learn to grow beyond that idea. Zero is what we normally would imagine a real nothing to be like, a field perfectly absent of things. And the meaning of the word nothing helps in some ways, since "empty" is an obvious extreme also. Empty space cannot be twice as empty. A space totally empty of material objects cannot be any emptier. Likewise, if we imagine a universe that expands all the way until it becomes a perfectly empty space, the idea of further expansion is meaningless. A perfectly straight line cannot be made more straight. And that is essentially an important property of an absolutely flat space; the absence of curvature. However, there is more to flat space than any of these descriptions. And eventually we realize that "nothing" is really just a word for uniformity or sameness. It so happens that an perfectly empty space and a perfectly full space have the same properties. Perfect symmetry has the same properties as nothing or zero. Everything and nothing have the same properties. It is quite an amazing and beautiful realization. 

What then is Curved Space?

Curved space results when you take away some measure of space from a full flat space. In classical terms, our ordinary space is flexible, almost like rubber, and curved space is a fundamental property of our universe. Space is literally bent, it is curved by gravity. Gravity does not actually pull at objects as if strings are attached, instead it curves the space objects move within. Or to say it properly, gravity is the curvature of space-time. 

An example is our own planet Earth, which rotates around the Sun because the space around the Sun is curved. There are no invisible strings attached. The Earth would follow a straight path if space itself were not bent by the Sun's gravitational field. The same is true even of a thrown baseball. Gravity from the Earth doesn't actually pull at the baseball, instead space is bent so the baseball makes an arc as it flies through a curved space.

At times, Albert Einstein considered the idea that the whole universe is curved into some kind of a closed circle. A closed universe means that if you travel in one direction you will eventually complete a full circle and return to the place you originally began from, somewhat like the Earth does once a year in traveling around the sun. Once a year it comes back to the same place. 

So according to Einstein's theory of relativity the early universe may have been curved into some kind of circular structure so that any path through space eventually makes a loop. In the tiny and dense early universe there may have been only small circles curved back on themselves. Imagine taking five steps forward and finding yourself in the same place where you started. In a curved universe we could hypothetically look out in one direction with a super telescope and observe ourselves, seeing the backside of our own heads in the far distance. But recently the curvature of the universe we see with telescopes has been carefully measured and there does not appear to be any such large-scale curvature. In other words, the sea of stars and galaxies appears to extend infinitely in all directions, although there are issues about time that one has to factor in if one is to correctly imagine what the large-scale sea of galaxies is like.

How can you say the infinite is simple?

I just managed to discover that there is not an indefinable chaos out there. There are boundaries to, and structure overall, to the world of possibilities. Extremes, which are simultaneously limits, are understandably responsible for physics as we know it, particularly the forces of nature. The Alpha and Omega extremes are responsible for making reality humanly comprehensible. When the overall shape of reality is understood, it's known to be rather simple, even if what is inside is capable of extraordinary complexity. It is possible to envision the big picture. That is what this website presents, a model of the big picture.

What do you mean by possibilities?

Usually the world of possibilities relates to what is physically real, but it isn't the same. If we flip a coin there are two possible outcomes. And if we roll a dice there are six sides which can face upward. After the dice is rolled, one possibility has become an actuality, but all six possible outcomes still exist in the possible realm. The world of possibilities exists just as ideas exist, and is unchanged by actuality. The world of possibilities is always there, fixed and permanent, timeless and constant. We take it for granted, because it is invisible and hidden by the more pronounced world we observe. 

What is an extreme of possibility?

I can explain an extreme of possibility using a deck of cards. Imagine shuffling a deck of cards. When you stop, the cards are in some particular order. Each pattern that the cards could be in is one possibility, one pattern. The number of different combinations is not infinite but it is an extremely large number. With three cards there are only 9 unique configurations the cards can be in, but with ten cards there are 3,628,800 different possible unique configurations. With eleven cards you multiply 3,628,800 by eleven, which is almost 40 million different patterns, and so on and so on, until you reach 56 cards, where the number of patterns is a bit more than 8 followed by 67 zeros, or 8.065817517094 × 10⁶⁷. Okay so that is a little bit surprising, that there are so many different configurations in just one deck of cards, but let's see which configuration the cards are in. You have shuffled the cards at least thirteen times and so each pattern is as probable as any other, and now it is time to look... 

Suppose you turn the deck over after all that shuffling and with shock you find that each suit is separated and in order, ace, 2, 3, 4 and ending jack, queen, king, just like they are when you buy a new deck of cards. Of course if you spent your whole lifetime attempting to make this happen it likely will never occur, yet within the myriad of all possibilities, that is one of the possible patterns for the cards to be in after being shuffled. It is one possibility among billions of other possibilities, but it is a very special possibility, because that one pattern is the highest state of order for the cards. It is an extreme or limit to how ordered the cards can ever become. So it is a boundary in the possible configurations of the cards. Which means it is a boundary in the realm of possibilities.

Of course we just considered a finite set of possibilities, not an infinite set, but even when dealing with an infinite set of possibilities, we can still discover that such boundaries exist. For example, in math the number of decimals that exist between zero and one is infinite. Yet all those numbers exist between the non-decimal values of zero and one. This is a simple example of an infinity that is bounded.

Are there impossibilities?

We can imagine and discuss the possible realm in two different ways. First we can refer to what is possible imaginatively. Anyone can think up worlds that are imaginative and bizarre compared to our own. Anything imaginable, no matter how strange, is included in the first way of conceptualizing possibilities. 

Second we can more narrowly refer to what is possible when considering the known laws of nature, and so include all those things that could reasonably happen. We can imagine other histories and futures for the Earth that are equally as possible as that one we experience. We can imagine life on other planets in distant galaxies. We can also add events that are highly improbable, and yet don't violate the known laws of physics. 

What is in fact possible and impossible can be easily debated. I would not argue against the occurrence of miracles, but even the most amazing miracles that I have experienced, as well as those of religion and myth, and even those portrayed by the entertainment industry, seem to be mild departures from the norm, when we consider how utterly unpredictable the universe could be if all that can be imaged was set free.

I believe that the imaginative realm includes literally all possible patterns, the complexities of which are beyond our powers to imagine, yet the whole is not a chaos simply because there are ultimate boundaries of extreme, so there are limits to the whole. This creates a general shape to what is possible, which is rather simple and can be easily envisioned, which is explained in by book and here at this website. It is these boundaries that define and make reality comprehensible to us. 

It's extremely important to note that it is best to imagine what is ultimately possible without the component of time or change. In other words, it is easiest to imagine all possible static patterns rather than all possible time worlds. Any changing system or time world can be broken down into a set of static patterns. The set of all possible universes is therefore fundamentally a set of static patterns first. Those patterns form time only secondarily. Time worlds are inevitably built from static patterns in the same way that individual frames are required to create a movie.

So the answer to the question: are there impossibilities? There are extremes that can not be exceeded, beyond which no possibilities exist, beyond which no ideas exist. So yes, it is impossible to exceed the extremes. But what is possible of timeless patterns and what is possible in time is considerably different. The infinite universe, absolute zero, existence itself, includes all possible states. That is the fundamental way in which the universe is physically existent. And this satisfies the necessity of the universe to be totally infinite. But if we instead consider what is possible within time worlds such as our own, where things change and evolve, then we are asking a new question. Time-worlds are limited by the fact that time is probabilistic, meaning that the flow of time moves toward what is most probable within the space of all possible states. Consequently, all time worlds evolve toward the most probable state in all of reality, as explained here and in my book.

The ideas here suggest very strongly that certain events are so improbable for the evolution of a time system that they are absolutely impossible. Most of the fantasy or science fiction worlds that we can freely imagine do not occur in time, because they don't obey the natural way that a time world evolves. They don't obey the universal laws of physics. For example, the tale of a monkey sitting at a typewriter randomly striking keys for an infinite period of time suggests the monkey would eventually type the collected works of Shakespeare, but there is no such thing as a duration of clock time which is eternal. Clock time always begins and it always ends. For reasons embodied in the theories explained throughout this website I don't believe the monkey would ever type out Shakespeare. There is a measure of improbability that accomplishes impossibility. We actually know this world of impossibility very well. It is the worlds we might imagine where there are other forces of nature different than those we experience in time.

Do you think the universe is presently closed, open, or flat?

There is now strong evidence that suggests the universe is very flat on the large-scale, and even though I don't think the universe adjacent the present is flat, I don't think we will ever be able to discover that the visible universe is spatially curved into a closed repeating volume. If the large scale universe of galaxies is flat then space extends infinitely, although what that fully means is uncertain in science. What we do know, is that galaxies cause small measures of curvature everywhere in local space. Space is never perfectly flat even in between the galaxies. So do not confuse the two concepts or applications of the notion of flatness. In the absence of large-scale curvature scientists say that the universe is flat without yet understanding concretely what that means physically about the universe, mainly because it is so profound. While the concept I have introduced of an absolutely flat space is very different, since it refers to a state of space without matter or energy, which in the past was believed to be impossible. My concept of flat space is a perfectly flat space. It is flat everywhere. It is what we would imagine to be empty space.

The main issue I am concerned with is the way that expansion causes the universe generally to flatten out in any cosmology scenario. For example, any length along an increasingly large circle flattens or becomes less curved and more straight. We know with a great deal of certainty that there is actually no such thing as a straight line anywhere in the universe. Space is always curved or else it would be flat, and so absolutely cold.

Why can't a line be perfectly straight? What about a short line, like a ruler?

It is simply impossible for lines or paths in space to be perfectly straight in a universe full of massive bodies like stars and galaxies, but sometimes the curvature is so mild that it can only be seen on a macrocosmic scale of hundreds of galaxies. As seen in the image below, the galaxies nearer to us are curving space enough that some of the more distant galaxies, the oval shapes, appear to be bent. Sometimes a large-scale field of space is curved enough to cause a lensing effect, like a microscope, which allows us to see distant galaxies, in greater detail than we would otherwise. Of course the bent galaxies in the picture are not really bent. It is just that we are looking through a curved space.

What is the biggest question today in Science?

Since the accelerating expansion of the universe is moving us increasingly toward the extreme physics of absolute zero and empty space, does this mean that our universe is moving toward a single equilibrium state (zero) rather than away from order toward disorder, as suggested by the second law of thermodynamics? Once we recognize the universe isn't simply moving toward disorder, all kinds of important new questions arise.

Part One: The Cosmic Absolutes