Born to Do Math 178 – Modern Atomism: Indivisible Cross-Sections of the Universe
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner
Publication (Outlet/Website): Born To Do Math
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2020/07/22
[Beginning of recorded material]
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: So, outside of photons, based on the last session, what would be some other indivisible things, as in an extension of the atomists?
Rick Rosner: Neutrinos and anti-Neutrinos, electrons (kind of), while electrons are indivisible, they are interchangeable. There are the two different types of fundamental particles. The bosons that follow Bose-Einstein statistics and then the ones that do the other thing. There are two different type of particles depending on whether the particles are interchangeable in a certain way or not. Protons are semi-indivisible. In that, they contain three quarks, so do neutrons. But the quarks can’t be pulled apart. You can flip a proton into being a neutron. Protons can turn into neutrons and vice versa. However, the process involves emitting energy and electrons, and anti-neutrinos, or neutrinos, depending on which way you are going. So, they are divisible. Protons and neutrons can come apart into sets of particles. Or you can take several particles and crash them together. They have a low capture. Neutrinos have a low capture cross-section. So, any one event is unlikely. But in the aggregate, it happens. So, protons are divisible.
Jacobsen: What is the informational equivalent of division here? If you take various particles that can be divided, then they do get divided. What is the equivalence in informational terms there?
Rosner: I look at protons as being more open to the universe. Protons have a charge, an electrical charge. So, they interact electromagnetically with the stuff in their vicinity. Neutrons have zero charge. So, they don’t interact. I look at protons as being some open variable, where, in situations that we would consider normal – that is, situations on Earth with regard to most matter, the vast majority of protons have an electron associated with them. Most of the time, either a proton is part of an atomic nucleus, which has a cloud of electrons that has the same number as the number of protons or it’s a nucleus that’s slightly ionized. It is temporarily missing an electron, part of a molecule, etc.
For the most part, stuff forms that has little net charge. Anything that is normal matter, not a plasma and so a solid, liquid, or gas, has the same number of electrons as protons in a reasonably sized sample of this stuff. I see the proton-electron system as a system for information exchange; the way everything is a system of information exchange. When parts of the universe coalesce, and release energy by coalescing, you’ve created information. You’ve created a bunch of association and information when a bunch of hydrogen atoms forming a gas in space gravitationally collapse into each other and form a star. Before the star even starts burning through fusion, a bunch of energy is released – heat energy. Gravitational energy is released as photons because as the gas coalesces, falls into itself, from a big cloud of gas into a star or a pre-star.
All the fall in has turned potential energy into kinetic energy, which, eventually, gets released as photons. The photons contain the information that this stuff has coalesced. This mass of 10^68th atoms has come together. So, I see protons plus electrons as association generators. With all these new associations formed, here is the information about them released to the rest of the universe, a neutron is not stable. Unless, it is locked into a nucleus. A free neutron has a half-life of like 11 minutes. It will break apart into a proton plus an electron plus a neutrino, or anti-neutrino, plus a photon. But a proton that gets locked into the nucleus with another neutron forming a deuterium nucleus – one proton plus one neutron – is again releasing a lot of energy. It, too, is – that energy – information about an association a linking that has been formed, which is shared with the rest of the universe.
The deal is, it happens a lot in stars, but stars have 10^68th atoms. So, the odds that there will be two protons crashing into each other and fusing into a proton-neutron nucleus. The odds are low individually. But there are 10^68th atoms smushed into each other, super smushed into the guts in the star, plus absorbing tremendous energy all of the time from the huge temperature at the centre of the Sun. Protons by the quadrillion per second fuse. These collisions that are unlikely as individual events; these potential fusings. So many of them happen, even though, they are super unlikely – a gazillion of them happen every second. It is a tight association that these two protons found themselves so close together with enough energy to overcome their mutual repulsion. That they formed into a stable nucleus. It has one net charge instead of two. You take two protons. It turns into a proton-neutron with one charge of a nucleus. If it weren’t ionized at the centre of a star, if you had a deuterium atom somewhere else, it would have one electron orbiting it.
That, to me, is an associative shorthand in the universe. It says, “You don’t need to worry where these two protons are because they are locked together. There’s only one variable here. That’s the one proton with its electron and the other proton has been locked down. We know what’s up with it. It’s so close. Its history let it become so close to this electron. Now, it’s locked down and very tightly linked with the electron. It is a tight association.” So, the universe is an association engine.
Jacobsen: What is another term for engine here, generator?
Rosner: Yes, as you move through time, the number of associations formed generally increases. Things don’t fall apart. They fall together.
Jacobsen: I see two-way association here too.
Rosner: We should talk about what IC says in terms of the cycle of things. Associations are formed. As galaxies run out of stuff to fuse, the galaxies go dark and are pushed aside by more active association engines. The burned out galaxies participate less and are frozen on the outskirts of the universe. Until association on a huge, cosmic scale pulls them back in, and also lights them back up again, strips them of some of their associations, or they accumulate new wads of gas, which can light the galaxy again.
[End of recorded material]
License
In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
Copyright
© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
In-Sight Publishing 