Unity, from ether to space

« We are the chil­dren of the ether, as the fish are the chil­dren of the water. » [1]

The concept of a holo­gra­phic uni­verse (see the article From dua­li­ty to uni­ty 2/3) is present in the nar­ra­tives of many ancient tra­di­tions. These report the exis­tence of an unma­ni­fes­ted sub­stance pre­ce­ding the mani­fes­ted crea­tion. It can take dif­ferent names accor­ding to tra­di­tions. But it always has the same cha­rac­te­ris­tics : it fills space, creates or even per­pe­tual­ly recreates mat­ter, per­meates eve­ry­thing, uni­fies everything.

Classical phy­sics once consi­de­red the exis­tence of a sub­stance that would ful­fil such a uni­fying func­tion : ether. The pur­pose of this article is to exa­mine how theo­ries of phy­sics have evol­ved the concept of ether over time. And the impli­ca­tion this has had on our repre­sen­ta­tion of the world.

My expe­rience tells me that eve­ry­thing is connec­ted (see My sto­ry). The links that made my expe­rience what it was, and how those links were crea­ted, are explai­ned in the article Is the uni­verse deter­mi­nis­tic ?. I am indeed explai­ning how infor­ma­tion cir­cu­la­ted in what some would call the ether, or in what Nassim Haramein calls space. My pur­pose here is to see how this phy­si­cist has some­how reha­bi­li­ta­ted the concept of ether, which under­lies his uni­fied field theory.

Ether in ancient traditions

Les textes fon­da­teurs de l’hindouisme, les Upanishad, parlent d’une sub­stance pri­mor­diale, nom­mée Prakriti. De cette sub­stance part et retourne toute exis­tence phy­sique. Il existe éga­le­ment selon ces textes un deuxième niveau de mani­fes­ta­tion, l’éther. Il est décrit comme une sub­stance invi­sible pré­sente en toute chose. En se den­si­fiant au tra­vers des mani­fes­ta­tions maté­rielles, l’éther devient visible. Il pro­duit les mou­ve­ments, alors iden­ti­fiés au prana.

Pour les Amérindiens, l’éther serait la grand-mère arai­gnée. Celle-ci tis­se­rait depuis les ori­gines du monde la toile de l’univers, et en assu­re­rait l’unité. Une méta­phore éga­le­ment connue dans la phi­lo­so­phie boud­dhiste, sous le nom de filet d’Indra. Il s’agit d’un filet mul­ti­di­men­sion­nel dont chaque nœud est orné d’un joyau qui se reflète dans les autres. Ainsi, chaque joyau contient la réflexion de tous les joyaux, à l’infini… comme dans un uni­vers holo­gra­phique. Le filet d’Indra illustre chez les boud­dhistes le concept de la vacui­té, l’apparition en dépen­dance des phé­no­mènes [2]. Pour eux, tout a une influence sur tout, même si l’on ne s’en rend pas compte car les fils de la toile uni­ver­selle sont invi­sibles.

The ether, from classical to quantum physics

Classical phy­sics has taken up the concept of the ether, but has diver­ted it. On the one hand, phy­si­cists wan­ted to have a repre­sen­ta­tion of forces that are exer­ted at a dis­tance, such as gra­vi­ta­tion. And on the other hand, the medium sup­po­sed to pro­pa­gate light. In so doing they have dis­tan­ced them­selves from the ori­gi­nal context of the ether by giving it a very ques­tio­nable sta­tus since they have made it mate­rial. While not inclu­ding it in the equations…

In fact, from Newton to Einstein to rela­ti­vis­tic quan­tum phy­sics in 1930, phy­si­cists have had contra­dic­to­ry atti­tudes towards ether. They said suc­ces­si­ve­ly that it had to exist, then that it did not exist, then that it could exist but that the equa­tions would exist without it, so it was not neces­sa­ry to take it into account. Except that in the last two cases, by kee­ping the ori­gi­nal refe­rence to the ether, the idea that things are sepa­ra­ted from each other was indu­ced. And this idea has fun­da­men­tal impli­ca­tions for the way we view our rela­tion­ship to our­selves, to others and to the universe.

Quantum field theory

In 1930, rela­ti­vis­tic quan­tum phy­sics deve­lo­ped. The quan­tum field theo­ry resul­ting from these advances aims to intro­duce the concepts of Restricted Relativity pro­po­sed by Einstein into quan­tum mechanics.

The quan­tum world becomes a sea of dyna­mic ener­gy. It is swar­ming with ephe­me­ral par­ticles in per­pe­tual crea­tion and dis­so­lu­tion. From then on, the vacuum is no lon­ger emp­ty – as pre­vious­ly thought – but filled with elec­tro­ma­gne­tic ener­gy fields. These retain resi­dual ener­gy when the tem­pe­ra­ture drops to abso­lute zero [3]. An ener­gy cal­led zero-point ener­gy or vacuum ener­gy. It repre­sents the ener­gy that remains when all other forms of ener­gy have been removed.

It is, in short, a form of ener­gy remi­nis­cent of the pro­per­ties of the ether, even if it is not named as such. We’re tal­king about quan­tum vacuum fluc­tua­tions. The cal­cu­la­tion shows that the total zero-point ener­gy is infi­nite. How, the­re­fore, can it be used in cal­cu­la­tions ?  Thanks to a renor­ma­li­za­tion pro­cess that makes this infi­nite value finite. However, although the zero-point ener­gy is no lon­ger infi­nite, it is still gigan­tic since its den­si­ty is 10⁹³ g/cm³. That’s 10 fol­lo­wed by 93 zeros…!

In paral­lel with these deve­lop­ments, other dis­co­ve­ries were made at the cos­mo­lo­gi­cal level : in 1922, the Russian phy­si­cist Alexander Friedmann publi­shed the semi­nal article demons­tra­ting the expan­sion of the uni­verse. And in 1998 two inter­na­tio­nal teams of phy­si­cists [4] high­ligh­ted the fact that this expan­sion was acce­le­ra­ting. In order to des­cribe the force that accounts for this phe­no­me­non, they are led to sup­pose – without so far having detec­ted it – the exis­tence of a new ener­gy : dark ener­gy. It behaves as a force that opposes gra­vi­ta­tio­nal attrac­tion, thus explai­ning the acce­le­ra­tion of the expan­sion of the universe.

Dark energy and Einstein’s cosmological constant 

« Historically, the only (hypo­the­ti­cal) form of ener­gy beha­ving as [dark] ener­gy was the cos­mo­lo­gi­cal constant, pro­po­sed in ano­ther context by Albert Einstein in 1916. (…) Einstein’s ori­gi­nal moti­va­tion, howe­ver, was far remo­ved from the moti­va­tion for the cur­rent inter­est in [dark] ener­gy. Indeed, in 1916, when the expan­sion of the uni­verse was not known, Albert Einstein consi­de­red that the uni­verse should be sta­tic, so he had to intro­duce a new force oppo­sing gra­vi­ta­tio­nal attrac­tion. The ideal can­di­date was found with the cos­mo­lo­gi­cal constant, which, under cer­tain very spe­cial condi­tions, could exact­ly coun­ter­ba­lance the attrac­tive effect of the gra­vi­ta­tio­nal force. » [5]

When the expan­sion of the uni­verse was dis­co­ve­red, Einstein went back to adding this para­me­ter. Nevertheless, some phy­si­cists believe that dark ener­gy would cor­res­pond to the ave­rage ener­gy den­si­ty of the vacuum on cos­mo­lo­gi­cal scales, a den­si­ty model­led by the cos­mo­lo­gi­cal constant pos­tu­la­ted by Einstein.

In prac­tice, it is not so simple because the esti­ma­ted value of dark ener­gy is 10^-29 g/cm3, a dif­fe­rence of 122 orders of magni­tudes com­pa­red to the ener­gy of the quan­tum vacuum (10⁹³ g/cm³). This pre­dic­tion is also known as the vacuum catas­trophe, the worst pre­dic­tion ever made in phy­sics. And it has des­troyed any hope of lin­king the quan­tum and cos­mo­lo­gi­cal scales by a form of ener­gy with pro­per­ties close to those of the ether.

Cosmological constant = quantum vacuum energy

In 2011, howe­ver, Nassim Haramein demons­tra­ted that the value of the quan­tum vacuum ener­gy den­si­ty and the cos­mo­lo­gi­cal constant were both cor­rect. Simply, they are appa­rent­ly une­qual because they are expres­sed on two dif­ferent scales. You can read the article Quantum Gravity and Schwarzschild Proton to unders­tand how they are rela­ted, and ulti­ma­te­ly, the fact that dark mat­ter does not exist [6].

In the world of Nassim Haramein, final­ly, eve­ry­thing seems to hap­pen as if ether exists. Remember that ori­gi­nal­ly, for phy­si­cists, ether was sup­po­sed to make light waves tra­vel. On the one hand these phy­si­cists the­re­fore pre­sup­po­sed the uni­form rec­ti­li­near move­ment of light in the vacuum. And on the other hand they nee­ded a mate­rial ether to try to account for this movement.

Everything is connected

Nassim Haramein shows that, in fact, the true move­ment of light is not what we per­ceive (see the article Movement and Perception). In that sense, we could say that light doesn’t tra­vel. Then of two things one : either we rea­lize that it does not tra­vel, and conse­quent­ly the ques­tion of the mate­rial ether has no rea­son to exist. Either we are delu­ded by our obser­va­tions – because we ignore the dyna­mics real­ly at work in the uni­verse – and we believe that light tra­vels. Since we do not detect the pre­sence of the mate­rial ether, we come to the incor­rect conclu­sion that things are not connected.

But this infe­rence is wrong not because things are indeed unre­la­ted, but because the star­ting pos­tu­lates – light tra­vels and ether is mate­rial – are incorrect.

Nassim Haramein consi­ders that eve­ry­thing in the uni­verse is connec­ted. However, he doesn’t talk about ether. He doesn’t need to.  He sim­ply says that eve­ry­thing is connec­ted by space, the only ele­ment com­mon to all scales. Since he shows that light does not tra­vel, he cuts off all spe­cu­la­tion about the ether. He also avoids refer­ring to the whole expla­na­tion just mentioned.

In the end, he pro­poses a theo­ry of uni­fi­ca­tion that does not call upon the mate­rial ether of cer­tain phy­si­cists while revea­ling the imma­te­rial ether of ancient tra­di­tions !

Notes and references

[1] WILCZEK Frank, Prix Nobel de Physique, 2017
[2] For a bet­ter unders­tan­ding of the concept of addic­tion, you can also consult the article Indeterminism and entan­gle­ment.
[3] Absolute zero repre­sents the lowest tem­pe­ra­ture that can exist, set by conven­tion at ‑273.15°C.
[4] The Supernova Cosmology Project, led by Saul Perlmutter, and the High‑Z super­no­vae search team, led by Adam Riess, will earn them the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2011.
[5] According to WIKIPEDIA.
[6] See also the article by phy­si­cist Amira Val Baker of the Resonance Academy, The vac­cum catas­trophe, 2019.