The Most Basic Fact of Existence

by David Sims

THE MOST basic fact of existence is the uncertainty principle. A quantity of energy, multiplied by a quantity of time, must be greater than Planck’s reduced constant (a very small number) in order to engage with causation.

As a result of that fact, the vacuum state isn’t entirely empty. It contains energy fluctuations having magnitudes that follow some sort of distribution: probably a Planck distribution. Some of them contain enough energy to form conjugate pairs of elementary particles, such as an electron and a positron.

There’s some speculation that this mechanism provides for the genesis of universes, when, upon an extremely rare occasion, a fluctuation of energy in vacuum has a magnitude that exceeds the Planck energy, resulting in a quantum black hole that is forbidden by conservation laws to decay by Hawking radiation.

Upon reaching the time limit imposed by the uncertainty principle, the quantum black hole detaches from our universe and forms a trivial manifold of one Planck volume. This again violates the uncertainty principle, and the result is a rapid pluralization of quantum states: i.e. the inflation that starts off a new universe.

John Wilson of Virginia Commonwealth University states:

As the knowledge base in quantum mechanics continues to grow it may be possible to either confirm or falsify quantum fluctuations as the cause of the Big Bang. It is my understanding that proponents such as Lawrence Krauss and others maintain that the uncertainly principle applies everywhere including outside of our universe and presumably outside all universes. Therefore, as quantum particles go in and out of existence and under very rare conditions they form a massive quantum particle outside a universe that causes a big bang to form a new universe. This concept complicates the meaning of “universe” which brings up a different problem for later discussion. Other related quantum mechanics models are Loop quantum cosmology and Penrose’s Conformal Cyclic Cosmology.

Simon Crowhurst of the University of Cambridge said on the topic:

Another way to look at this (a thought experiment) is to ask “what would improve the probability of a complex universe with large numbers of particles coming into existence?” Such “universes” in a multiverse would become more probable, if they were more likely to replicate. Singularities such as black holes improve the chances of “universe replication,” so universes containing large gravitational aggregations of matter are selected for. Similarly, if biological entities somewhere down the line generate singularities (e.g., for energy or transport), then complex biology is “selected for” by the increased replication of this sort of universe (e.g., the one we find ourselves in). Taking this further back, it would be expected that each incremental stage of universe reproduction back to the elementary quantum fluctuation might still be preserved or reflected in our universe, unless that characteristic would impair universe replication; so that some properties of the universe are predicted by this model. If so, it becomes possible to build a speculative “phylogeny of universes,” even without direct interaction with other universes (of which, incidentally, there would be a phenomenally large number).

[These ideas have possible implications for the future development of Cosmotheism. — Ed.]

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