Morphogenesis and metabolism in astrophysical scales?

The proposed general picture has interesting implications for the TGD view about stars and planets. Minimal surfaces have vanishing mean curvature vector H^k defined by the trace of the second fundamental form. The external curvatures sum up to zero and the surface looks like saddle surface locally. This strongly suggests that one cannot have (spherically symmetric) closed 3-surfaces obtained by taking two almost copies of 3-surface having a boundary and gluing them together along boundaries as the assumption that there are not boundaries requires. Could stars and planets be flow equilibria analogous to soap bubbles for which pressure difference is necessary and is provided by an external energy feed (blowing the bubble). When the energy feed ceases, the bubble collapses? The analogy with the stellar dynamics leading eventually to a collapse to a blackhole is obvious.

Morphogenesis and metabolic energy feed in astrophysical scales as explanations for puzzling findings?

The analogy with morphogenesis could allow to build a more coherent picture from several puzzling observations related to TGD made during years.

1. One cannot obtain an imbedding of Schwartschild exterior metric without the presence of long range induced gauge field behaving like 1/r². Any object with long range gravitational field must have also electroweak gauge charge. The charge can be made arbitrarily small but must be non-vanishing. The natural guess was that em charge - closely related to Kähler charge - is in question. If flow equilibrium analogous to soap bubble is in question, the charge must be Kähler charge with the energy momentum currents of Kähler field feeding energy to prevent gravitational collapse.
   
   
2. During 1990s I did considerable amount of work t in attempts to construct spherically symmetric solutions of field equations using only Kähler action but failed. In this case, the field equations state the vanishing of the divergences of energy-momentum and color currents. All known extremals of both Kähler action and its twistor lift involving also volume term analogous to cosmological term are minimal surfaces and extremals of both Kähler action and volume term.
   

   The failure to discover extremals which are not minimal surface might be simply due to the fact that they are not simple. One can however ask whether there are actually no radially symmetric stationary extremals of Kähler action? Could volume term be needed to stabilize them?
   
   

3. 4-surfaces with vanishing induced Kähler field are necessarily minimal surfaces. The vanishing of induced Kähler field is however not necessary. In fact all non-vacuum extremals of Kähler action are minimal surfaces. The known repertoire of minimal surfaces includes cosmic strings, massless extremals representing radiation, and CP₂ type extremals with Euclidian signature of induced metric representing elementary particles. For these Kähler action is present but minimal surface field equations give extremal property separately in volume and Kähler degrees of freedom.
   

   Cosmic strings would dominate in the very early cosmology before space-time as a 4-surface with 4-D M⁴ projection had emerged. The vision is that the thickening of their M⁴ projection during cosmic expansion generated Kähler magnetic flux tubes carrying magnetic monopole fluxes. The thickening of cosmic strings need not leave them minimal surfaces but one expects that this is true approximately.
   

   The feed of energy and particles from flux tubes (suggesting that they are not minimal surfaces) would have generated visible matter and led to the formation of stars. The flux tubes would take the role of inflaton field in standard approach. Flux tubes would have also second role: they would carry the quanta of gravitational and gauge fields and thus would be mediators of various interactions.
   

   Dark matter identified as phases with non-standard value of Planck constant h_eff/h₀=n having purely number theoretical origin in adelic physics > would reside at magnetic flux tubes and the general vision about TGD inspired biology is that it controls the ordinary biomatter, which would involve metabolic energy feed as a stabilizer of the flow equilibrium. This picture suggests a generalization.
   
   

4. The vision about dark nucleosynthesis, which emerged from the model of "cold fusion" has led to the proposal that dark nucleosynthesis preceded ordinary nucleosynthesis. Dark proton sequences were generated first by the analog of Pollack effect at magnetic flux tubes suffering also weak decays to produce states involving dark neutrons. These states decayed to dark nuclei with smaller value of h_eff/h=n and eventually this process led to the formation of ordinary nuclei. This process liberated practically all nuclear energy and heated the system and led eventually to the ordinary nuclear fusion occurring in the cores of stars.
   

   In living systems dark nuclei realized as dark proton sequences realize dark analogs of DNA, RNA, amino-acids, and tRNA and would provide the fundamental realization of the genetic code. This picture predicts a hierarchy of dark nuclear physics and dark realizations of the genetic code and analogs of the basic biomolecules. Could biology be replaced by a hierarchy of "biologies" in a more general sense.
   
   

5. In the generalized biology stellar cores would provide metabolic energy realized basically as energy flow associated with Kähler field in stellar core making possible to realize star as an analog of cell membrane as flow equilibrium. Also the flow of Kähler charge, presumably in radial direction, would be involved if the energy momentum current of the induced Kähler field is non-vanishing and could relate to the mass loss of stars.
   

   Even in the case of planets dark nucleosynthesis could provide a radial energy flow to guarantee stability. Nucleosynthesis could have occurred inside planets and have produced heavier nuclei. The standard picture about stars as providers of heavier elements and supernova explosions giving rise to fusion generating elements heavier than Fe could be wrong.
   
   

6. This picture conforms with what we know about dark matter. Dark matter would consist of h_eff/h₀=n phases of ordinary mater at magnetic flux tubes. If also magnetic flux tubes are minimal surfaces in good approximation, gravitational degrees of freedom assignable to the volume action as analog of Einstein-Hilbert action and stringy action would not interact with Kähler degrees of freedom appreciably except in the events in which dark energy and matter are transformed to ordinary matter. These events could be induced by collisions of magnetic flux tubes. The energy exchange would be present only in systems not representable as minimal surfaces. Dark matter in TGD sense has key role in TGD inspired quantum biology.
   
   

Blackhole collapse as an analog of biological death?

Before one can say something interesting about blackholes in this framework and must look more precisely what cosmic strings are. There are two kinds of cosmic strings identifiable as preferred extremals of form X²× Y²⊂ M⁴× CP₂. X² is minimal surface.

1. Y² can be homologically non-trivial complex sub-manifold of CP₂ for which second fundamental form vanishes identically. Induced Kähler form is non-vanishing and defines monopole flux. Both Kähler and volume term (cosmological constant term formally at least) contribute to energy density but the energy momentum currents and also tensors have vanishing divergence so that there is no energy flux between gravitational and Kähler degrees of freedom.
   
   
2. Y² can be also homologically trivial geodesic sphere for which Kähler form and therefore Kähler energy density vanishes identically. In this case only cosmological constant Λ represents a non-vanishing contribution to the energy so that energy transfer between gravitational and Kähler degrees of freedom is trivially impossible.
   
   

What could happen in blackhole collapse?

1. Blackhole is not able to produce "metabolic energy" anymore and preserve the spherically symmetric configuration anymore. The outcome of blackhole collapse could be a highly folded flux tube very near to minimal surface or perhaps, or even a cosmic string. The latter option is not however necessary.
   
   
2. Is this string homologically non-trivial having large string tension or homologically trivial and almost vacuum for small values of Λ? The huge mass density of blackhole does not favour the latter option. This leaves under consideration only the homologically non-trivial cosmic strings or their deformations to flux tubes.
   

   The string tension for cosmic string is estimated to be a fraction of order 10^-7 about the effective string tension of order 1/G determined by blackhole mass which is proportional to the Scwartschild radius. Therefore the cosmic string should be spaghetti like structure inside the horizon having length about 10⁷ time the radius of blackhole. Note that TGD predicts also second horizon below Schwartschild horizon: the signature of the induced metric becomes Euclidian at this horizon and this could explain the echoes claimed to be associated with the observed blackhole formation.
   
   

3. One could say that Big bang starting from homologically non-trivial cosmic strings would end with Big crunch ending with similar objects.
   
   

Living systems are conscious and there is indeed a strong analogy to TGD inspired theory of consciousness. One could say that the particular sub-cosmology corresponds to a conscious entity (many-sheeted space-time predicts a Russian doll hierarchy of them) which repeatedly lives and dies and re-incarnates with opposite arrow of time.

1. In zero energy ontology (ZEO) key role is played by causal diamonds (CDs) carrying analogs of initial and final states at their boundaries are in key role. The M⁴ projection of CD is intersection of future and past directed light-cones. The shape of CD strongly suggests Big Bang followed by Big Crunch.
   
   
2. TGD inspired theory of consciousness predicts that conscious entities - selves - correspond to a generalized Zeno effect. Self is identified as a sequence of "small" state function reductions (weak measurements) increasing gradually the size of CD by shifting the active boundary of CD farther away from that passive boundary which is not changed (Zeno effect).
   

   The states at the active boundary are affected unlike those at the passive boundary. Self dies when the first "big" state function reduction to the active boundary occurs and the roles of the active and passive boundary are changed. The arrow of geometric time identified as the distance between the tips of CD changes and the CD starts to grow in opposite time direction. The evolution of self is a sequence of births and deaths followed by a re-incarnation.
   
   

3. In astrophysical context this evolution would be a sequence of lifes beginning with a Big Bang and ending with a Big Crunch with two subsequent evolutions taking in opposite time directions. Somewhat like breathing. This breathing would take place in all scales and gradually lead to a development of sub-Universes as the size of CD increases.
   
   
4. In ZEO the first big state function reduction to active boundary of CD occurs when all weak measurements have been done and there are no observables commuting with the observables, whose eigenstates the states at the passive boundary are. Self dies and reincarnates.
   

   One can also try to build a classical view about what happens. Measurement involves always a measurement interaction generating entanglement. Could the transfer of quantum numbers and conserved quantities (also color charges besides Poincare charges) between Kähler and volume degrees of freedom define the measurement interactions in practice. When this transfer vanishes, there is no measurement interaction and no further measurements are possible. Also metabolism ceases and self dies in biological sense.
   
   

See the chapter Non-locality in quantum theory, in biology and neuroscience, and in remote mental interactions: TGD perspective or the article Morphogenesis in TGD Universe .

See also the article Getting philosophical: some comments about the problems of physics, neuroscience, and biology.

For a summary of earlier postings see Latest progress in TGD.

Articles and other material related to TGD.