Could a new kind of period of exploration save our civilization from collapse?

Everyone knows Columbus and other heros from the period of exploration journeys when we learned the geography of our home planet. After Newton emerged planetary physics and we started to learn of our planetary system. Eventually astrophysics and cosmology emerged. Now the James Webb telescope is shattering our views about the foundations of cosmology and astrophysics and a profound revolution of the world of physics seems unavoidable. This revolution also relates to our view of time. Also in biology, brain science, and science of consciousness, we are at the verge of revolution. After half a century our recent physics based world view might be regarded as childish as the world of Flat-Earthers.

In a sharp contrast to this progress in science and technology, our civilization has fallen in a state of stagnation. Its materialism based world view has deprived us of ethics and morals and the highest goal of modern man is to consume even more. Success in our society means money, fame and power. The uncontrolled application of various technological breakthroughs have created lethal looking environmental problems and social structures are breaking down. It is quite possible that our civilization is doomed to collapse. This is nothing new and actually fits with the fact that all complex systems are born, flourish, and eventually die. It is good to remember that after the collapse of the Roman empire there was a period of stagnation of about 1500 years before the development of mathematics created in antiquity could continue. In fact, they almost discovered calculus and computers before the collapse.

In this kind of situation one can wonder whether a new exploration period could be possible and give a deeper meaning for the existence of our western civilization and make us something more than consumers? Could the striking findings of the James Webb telescope and equally striking discoveries from other branches of natural science, which do not gain attention of popular media, inspire a new period of exploration of our world allowing us to update our lethally wrong world view?

What could be the big question?

What could be the question catching the attention of adventurous minds in the future? What dark matter and energy really are? This is certainly one of the deepest mysteries of recent day science. Could the attempt to understand dark matter give meaning to the existence of the society?

Dark matter is indeed an excellent candidate for the problem of the next century. The mainstream science knows only of the existence of dark matter and energy. The particle physics inspired models have repeatedly failed the tests and also the halo model for galactic dark matter relying on particle physics models is in deep difficulties. Same can be said about the o MOND model, which denies the existence of dark matter and postulates that Newtonian gravitation fails for weak fields. This is a rather paradoxical looking assumption, which very few can consider seriously.

TGD answer to the big question

The TGD explanation of dark matter relies on a new view of both space-time and quantum theory. TGD predicts the existence of a dark matter hierarchy as phases of the ordinary matter labelled by the values h_eff of the (effective) Planck constant, which is a multiple of its minimal value. Dark matter would be simply ordinary matter in a phase with a nonstandard value of Planck constant. If the value of the h_eff is large enough, this phase of matter is quantum coherent in even macroscopic scales. This would explain the mysterious ability of living matter to behave coherently in macroscales, impossible to understand in the biology as nothing but chemistry approach. The quantum coherence of the dark matter would induce the ordinary coherence of biomatter.

This view also revolutionizes the views about elementary particle-, hadron-, nuclear-, atomic- and molecular physics. The same basic topological mechanisms appear in all these physics and a lot of new physics is predicted (see this ). The dark matter would reside at space-time sheets (a new notion forced by the TGD view of space-time) characterized by the value of h_eff. The value of h_eff would characterize algebraic complexity of the space-time sheet, which in turn is a natural measure for the capacity to represent conscious information. The h_eff hierarchy would define an evolutionary hierarchy.

The most natural candidates for the space-time sheet carrying dark matter would be what I call magnetic bodies. The TGD view of space-time predicts that the electromagnetic fields of a system define a kind of field body of the system as a well-defined geometric anatomy and having body parts, motor actions, etc... In particular, the magnetic body consisting of monopole flux tubes would serve as the "boss", controller of the system because its IQ characterized by the high value of h_eff would be high.

The predicted values of Planck constant are largest for the monopole flux tubes mediating quantum gravitation. This conforms with the facts that gravitation has infinite range, is un-screened and the fact that quantum coherence scale increases with h_eff. The highest values of Planck constant would be associated with gravitational monopole flux tubes of Earth, Moon, other planets, Sun, and even galaxies. The unavoidable prediction is that the magnetic bodies of these astrophysical objects could play a key role in the quantum biology of the Earth. Horoscopes make no sense but astrologers might have not been completely wrong. Hard science must rely on numbers and the number of numerical miracles supporting this view has been accumulating (see for instance this, this, this).

The field bodies as the target of the new period of exploration?

These considerations suggest that the new period of exploration could have the electromagnetic environment of the Earth as its target. What do the magnetic and electric bodies of Earth, planets, Sun, galaxy,... look like? How dow they interact? This would be also exploration of the inner world, not only ours: the prediction is that life and consciousness are universal. This is so because the h_eff hierarchy plays a central role in understanding of conscious experience and intelligence.