Two problems with a common solution: the problem of two Hubble constants and enormous value of cosmological constant

The discrepancy of the two determinations of Hubble constant has led to a suggestion that new physics might be involved (see this).

1. Planck observatory deduces Hubble constant H giving the expansion rate of the Universe from CMB data something like 360,000 y after Big Bang, that is from the properties of the cosmos in long length scales. Riess's team deduces H from data in short length scales by starting from galactic length scale and identifies standard candles (Cepheid variables), and uses these to deduce a distance ladder, and deduces the recent value of H(t) from the redshifts.
   
   
2. The result from short length scales is 73.5 km/s/Mpc and from long scales 67.0 km/s/Mpc deduced from CMB data. In short length scales the Universe appears to expand faster. These results differ too much from each other. Note that the ratio of the values is about 1.1. There is only 10 percent discrepancy but this leads to conjecture about new physics: cosmology has become rather precise science!
   
   

TGD could provide this new physics. I have already earlier considered this problem but have not found really satisfactory understanding. The following represents a new attempt in this respect.

1. The notions of length scale are fractality are central in TGD inspired cosmology. Many-sheeted space-time forces to consider space-time always in some length scale and p-adic length scale defined the length scale hierarchy closely related to the hierarchy of Planck constants h_eff/h₀=n related to dark matter in TGD sense. The parameters such as Hubble constant depend on length scale and its value differ because the measurements are carried out in different length scales.
   
   
2. The new physics should relate to some deep problem of the recent day cosmology. Cosmological constant Λ certainly fits the bill. By theoretical arguments Λ should be huge making even impossible to speak about recent day cosmology. In the recent day cosmology Λ is incredibly small.
   
   
3. TGD predicts a hierarchy of space-time sheets characterized by p-adic length scales (Lk) so that cosmological constant Λ depends on p-adic length scale L(k) as Λ∝ 1/GL(k)², where p ≈ 2^k is p-adic prime characterizing the size scale of the space-time sheet defining the sub-cosmology. p-Adic length scale evolution of Universe involve as sequence of phase transitions increasing the value of L(k). Long scales L(k) correspond to much smaller value of Λ.
   
   
4. The vacuum energy contribution to mass density proportional to Λ goes like 1/L²(k) being roughly 1/a², where a is the light-cone proper time defining the "radius" a=R(t) of the Universe in the Robertson-Walker metric ds²=dt²-R²(t) dΩ². As a consequence, at long length scales the contribution of Λ to the mass density decreases rather rapidly.
   

   Must however compare this contribution to the density ρ of ordinary matter. During radiation dominated phase it goes like 1/a⁴ from T∝ 1/a and form small values of a radiation dominates over vacuum energy. During matter dominated phase one has ρ∝ 1/a³ and also now matter dominates. During predicted cosmic string dominated asymptotic phase one has ρ∝ 1/a² and vacuum energy density gives a contribution which is due to Kähler magnetic energy and could be comparable and even larger than the dark energy due to the volume term in action.
   
   

5. The mass density is sum ρ_m+ρ_d of the densities of matter and dark energy. One has ρ_m∝ H². Λ∝ 1/L²(k) implies that the contribution of dark energy in long length scales is considerably smaller than in the recent cosmology. In the Planck determination of H it is however assumed that cosmological constant is indeed constant. The value of H in long length scales is under-estimated so that also the standard model extrapolation from long to short length scales gives too low value of H. This is what the discrepancy of determinations of H performed in two different length scales indeed demonstrate.
   
   

A couple of remarks are in order.

1. The twistor lift of TGD suggests an alternative parameterization of vacuum energy density as ρ_vac= 1/L⁴(k₁). k₁ is roughly square root of k. This gives rise to a pair of short and long p-adic length scales. The order of magnitude for 1/L(k₁) is roughly the same as that of CMB temperature T: 1/L(k₁)∼ T. Clearly, the parameters 1/T and R correspond to a pair of p-adic length scales. The fraction of dark energy density becomes smaller during the cosmic evolution identified as length scale evolution with largest scales corresponding to earliest times. During matter dominated era the mass density going like 1/a³ would to dominate over dark energy for small enough values of a. The asymptotic cosmology should be cosmic string dominated predicting 1/GT²(k). This does not lead to contradiction since Kähler magnetic contribution rather than that due to cosmological constant dominates.
   
   
2. There are two kinds of cosmic strings: for the other type only volume action is non-vanishing and for the second type both Kähler and volume action are non-vanishing but the contribution of the volume action decreases as function of the length scale.
   
   

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

Articles and other material related to TGD.

Further evidence for the third generation of weak bosons

Matt Strassler had a blog posting about an interesting finding from old IceCube data revealed at thursday (July 12, 2018) by IceCube team. The conclusion supports the view that so called blasars, thin jets of high energy particles suggested to emerge as matter falls into giant black hole, might be sources of high energy neutrinos. In TGD framework one could also think that blazars originate from cosmic strings containing dark matter and energy. Blazars themselves could be associated with cosmic strings thickened to magnetic flux tubes. The channeling to flux tubes would make possible observation of the particles emerging from the source whatever it might be.

Only the highest energy cosmic neutrinos can enter the IceCube detector located deep under the ice. IceCube has already earlier discovered a new class of cosmic neutrinos with extremely high energy: Matt Strassler has written a posting also about this two years ago (see this): the energies of these neutrinos were around PeV. I have commented this finding from TGD point of view (see this).

Last year one of these blazars flared brightly producing high energy neutrinos and photons: neutrinos and photons came from the same position in the sky and occurred during the same period. IceCube detector detected a collision of one (!) ultrahigh energy neutrino with proton generating muon. The debris produced in the collision contained also photons, which were detected. IceCube team decided to check whether old data could contain earlier neutrino events assignable to the same blasar and found a dramatic burst of neutrinos in 2014-2015 data during period of 150 days associated with the same flare; the number of neutrinos was 20 instead of the expected 6-7. Therefore it seems that the ultrahigh energy neutrinos can be associated with blazars.

By looking the article of IceCube team (see this) one learns that neutrino energies are of order few PeV (Peta electron Volt), which makes 1 million GeV (proton has mass .1 GeV). What kind of mechanism could create these monsters in TGD Universe? TGD suggests scaled variants of both electroweak physics and QCD and the obvious candidate would be decays of weak bosons of a scaled variant of ew physics. I have already earlier considere a possible explanation interms of weak bosons of scaled up variant of weak physics characterizes by Mersenne prime $M_{61}=2^{61}-1}$ (see this).

1. TGD "almost-predicts" the existence of three families of ew bosons and gluons. Their coupling matrices to fermions must be orthogonal. This breaks the universality of both ew and color interactions. Only the ordinary ew bosons can couple in the same manner to 3 fermion generations. There are indeed indications for the breaking of the universality in both quark and leptons sector coming from several sources such as B meson decays, muon anomalous anomalous (this is not a typo!) magnetic moment, and the the finding that the value of proton radius is different depending on whether ordinary atoms or muonic atoms are used to deduce it (see this).
   
   
2. The scaled variant of W boson could decay to electron and monster neutrino having same energies in excellent approximation. Also Z⁰ boson could decay to neutrino-antineutrino pair. The essentially mono-chromatic energy spectrum for the neutrinos would serve as a unique signature of the decaying weak boson. One might hope of observing two kinds of monster neutrinos with mass difference of the order of the scaled up W-Z mass difference. Relative mass difference would same as for ordinary W and Z - about 10 per cent - and thus of order .1 PeV.
   
   

One can look the situation quantitatively using p-adic length scale hypothesis and assumption that Mersenne primes and Gaussian Mersennes define preferred p-adic length scales assignable to copies of hadron physics and electroweak physics.

1. Ordinary ew gauge bosons correspond in TGD framework to Mersenne prime M_k= 2^k-1, k=89. The mass scale is 90 GeV, roughly 90 proton masses.
   
   
2. Next generation corresponds to Gaussian Mersenne Gaussian Mersenne prime M_G,79= (1+i)⁷⁹-1. There is indeed has evidence for a second generation weak boson corresponding to M_G,79 (see this). The predicted mass scale is obtained by scaling the weak boson mass scale of about 100 GeV with the factor 2^(89-79/2=32 and is correct.
   
   
3. The next generation would correspond to Mersenne prime M₆₁. The mass scale 90 GeV of ordinary weak physics is now scaled up by a factor 2^(89-61)/2= 2¹⁴ ≈ 64,000. This gives a mass scale 1.5 PeV, which is the observed mass scale for the neutrino mosters detected by Ice-Cube. Also the earlier monster neutrinos have the same mass scale. This suggests that the PeV neutrinos are indeed produced in decays of W(61) or Z(61).
   
   

See chapter New Particle Physics Predicted by TGD: Part I of "p-Adic physics".

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

Articles and other material related to TGD.

How does brain predict future?

Quanta Magazine is a real treasure trove. The gem was at this time titled " To Make Sense of the Present, Brains May Predict the Future" (see this). The article gives links to various research articles: here I mention only the article " Neural Prediction Errors Distinguish Perception and Misperception of Speech" by Blank et al > (see this) .

According to the article, brain acts as a prediction machine comparing predictions with what happened and modifying the predictions accordingly. Sensory perception would not be mere 3-D sensory time=constant snapshot as believed in last century but include also a prediction of future based on it that would be outcome of sensory perception and brain is able to modify the prediction by using the difference between prediction and reality.

In TGD framework one can go even further (see this). Sensory organs are the seats of sensory mental images constructed by repeated signalling between brain (maybe also magnetic body) and sensory organ using dark photons propagating forth and back with maximal signal velocity and contributing to the sensory input a virtual part. Nerve pulses would create by synaptic bridges connecting flux tubes to longer flux tubes acting as waveguides for dark photons to propagate. Sensory mental image would be essentially self organization pattern nearest to the actual sensory input. The percept itself would be artwork, a caricature selecting and emphasizing the features of sensory input important for the survival.

The term predictive coding used about the process reveals that the view about how brain achieves this relies on computational paradigm. This is one possible view. Personally I do cannot regard classical computation as a plausible option. A more neutral view relies on rather obvious assumption that that temporal sequences of associations giving rise to predictions. But how does this happen?

Neuroscientists speculate about deep connections between emotions and learning: the dopaminergic neurons are indeed very closely related to the neural reward system. If the difference between the predicted and actually perceived is large the reward is small - one might also call it punishment. "Surprise" would be rather neutral word to express it. Big discrepancy causes big surprise. The comparison of predicted and what really happened would be essential. This is was one of the first predictions of TGD and might apply to simple emotions but - as I have proposed - emotions such as experience of beauty, compassion or love need not correspond to emotions need not be mere reactions.

The finding suggests a connection with the ideas about the fundamental role of emotions in learning. I have already developed this theme in this article.

1. The first finding made for snails (see this) was that RNA somehow codes the experience and induces epigenetic change at the level of DNA in turn inducing a change in behavior. The popular article " Scientists Sucked a Memory Out of a Snail and Stuck It in Another Snail" tells about the finding (see this).
   

   This led to a TGD based model based on the notion of bio-harmony for music of dark photon triplets representing 3-chords predicting genetic code correctly. Music expresses and creates emotions: same would happen already at RNA level. DNA would get in the same mood and by resonating with the 3-chords of RNA music and changing its harmony/mood coded by resonance frequencies of nuclei, which would slightly change. Epigenetic change would take place as a consequence and change the genetic expression in turn changing the behaviour.
   

   This brings in something genuinely new: TGD based view about dark matter, realizations of genetic code by dark proton sequences defining the dark analogs of DNA, RNA, tRNA, and amino-acids at the magnetic flux tubes of magnetic body of living system plus realization of the genetic code.
   

   It must be emphasized that magnetic body is 4-D and corresponds to a preferred extremals connecting to two 3-surfaces at the boundaries of causal diamond. Hence the basic objects are deterministic time evolutions, analogous to programs or behavioral patterns. The sequence of associations assignable to percept could be seen as space-time surface, a predicted space-time time evolution.
   

   
   

2. Just a couple of days before writing this I learned about slime molds (this) , which are monocellulars, which contrary to expectations learn new behaviours. Nervous system is not therefore necessary for learning. Emotional RNA could be at work also here.
   
   
3. RNA would be naturally also behind the learning in CNS as a change of synaptic strengths generating effectively different synchronously firing neuron groups representing mental images and new sequences of associations providing predictions. The mismatch between prediction and real percept would we represented in terms of dopamine concentration and this in turn would generate at RNA level emotion, which would be negative for mismatch and induce corresponding DNA emotion generating epigenetic change in turn changing synaptic strengths in turn changing the prediction as a sequence of associations regarded as temporal sequence in turn changing the behavior! Long sequence of causations!
   
   

Also the speculated unification of motor control and sensory perceptions is mentioned in the popular article. In sensory perception internal environment as a model for external environment is updated. In motor action it is external environment. Connection with arrow of time? Motor action as perception of changing environment where own biological body is part of environment. In TGD framework sensory perception and motor action would be time reversals of each other at the level of sensory mental images. This view is allowed by ZEO and encouraged by the discovery of Libet that volitional act is preceded by neural activity by a fraction of second.

Motor action would be generated by a negative energy signal to the geometric past which would correspond to mental images with reversed arrow of time in TGD inspired theory of consciousness. This duality would mean that in opposite time direction motor action would be a perceptions about say hand moving in desired direction! The counterpart of predictive coding would take care of comparisons and modifying the predicted "sensory percept" so that it corresponds to reality. This sounds strange but maybe the motor actions is just passive perception from the point of view of time reversed self!

See the article Emotions as sensory percepts about the state of magnetic body?.

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

Articles and other material related to TGD.

How do slime molds learn?

Quanta Magazine is a treasure trove of popular articles about hot topics in basic research and biology and neuroscience are the hottest topics now. The article "Slime Molds Remember — but Do They Learn?" about learning of slime molds (see this) serves as a good example of pleasant surprises popping up on weekly basis.

1. The popular article tells that slime molds are monocellulars - for long time believed to belong to fungi - but actually somewhat like amoebas. They have neither neurons nor brains. The neuroscientific dogma says that neurons are necessary for learning so that slime molds should not learn. They should only adapt by selecting behaviors from a genetically inherited repertoir. Same would be true about plants, which are also known to learn.
   

   For physicist these beliefs look strange. Both animals and plants and also slime molds share the basic aspects about what it is to be alive, why should they be unable to learn? The research of biologist Audrey Dussutour and her team described in the article indeed shows that slime molds are indeed able to learn.
   
   

2. Conditioning is the basic mechanism of learning, which by definition leads to a creation of a new kind of behavior rather than selecting some behavior from an existing repertoir as happens in adaptation. Typically the conditioning is created by associating unpleasant sensory stimulus such as electric shock to some other stimulus, which can be pleasant, say information about the presence of food. This leads to avoidance behavior and the mere presence of food can induce the avoidance behavior.
   
   
3. It was found that slime mold learns a habit of avoiding the unpleasant stimulus - habituation is said to take place. Habituation generates of new behavior and is not mere adaption. For instance, habituation can mean stopping noticing stimulus like smell if it is not dangerous or important for survival. In the experiments the slime molds were conditioned to avoid noxious substances (having bitter "taste") and they remembered the behavior after a year of physiologically disruptive enforced sleep as the technical terms expresses it.
   
   
4. Central nervous system has been believed to be responsible for habituation since neurons receive and process the sensory the stimuli, build kind of cognitive representations about them, and generate motor response. Neuroscientist believe that learning means strengthening of synaptic contacts eventually giving rise to a learned motor response to a sensory stimulus by a sequence of associations
   

   Against this background the ability of slime molds to learn looks mysterious. How do they perceive the stimulus, how do they process it, how do they respond to it? We know actually little about cognition and learning: we know a lof about the neural correlates of cognition but not what cognition is.
   
   

Forgetting for a moment the question about what cognition is, one can just ask what could lead to the change of behaviour of the slime mold. Some time ago I learned about another fascinating finding related to learning from the article "Scientists Sucked a Memory Out of a Snail and Stuck It in Another Snail" (see this). What was found that one can take RNA of a snail that has been conditioned by some painful stimulus and transfer it to another snail by scattering RNA on its brain neurons! Same can be achieved also by feeding snail with the conditioned snail. RNA must somehow represent memories. If this is true for snail it can be true also for the slime mold.

Usually learning is assigned with cognition regarded as kind of linguistic cognition. One speaks also of emotional intelligence: could learning be based on emotions? The TGD based model for emotions (see this) inspired by the model of music harmony (see this and this) leading to a model of genetic code predicting correctly vertebrate coderelies on this idea and leads to a model for what learning could be also in the case of slime molds.

1. Music expresses and creates emotions coded in its harmony (think of major and minor scales as simple examples). This could be true in much more general sense. Not only music made of sound but also of light - dark photons in TGD framework - could realize these functions of music. DNA would have a representation in terms of a collection of 3-chords made of three dark photons with frequencies in proportions allowed by the harmony.
   
   
2. The model of harmony based on icosahedral and tetrahedral geometries predicts a large number of harmonies representing emotional states, moods. The music of light makes possible communication between DNA, RNA, amino-acids (AAs), even tRNAs and their dark variants DDNA, DRNA, DAA, DtRNA. Communications are possible if the three chords can resonate note by not: ideal situation occurs if the harmony defining the mood is same in sender and receiver. Emphatics are those, who experience also the sufferings of the other people. Moods can be transferred from RNA to DNA and here they can induce epigenetic change leading to a change in behavior.
   
   
3. The painful conditioning of snail would induce a new mood of RNA of snail (probably rather depressive!) and this would in turn infect the DNA of the snail (strong emotions are infective) and the mood of DNA would induce the epigenetic change leading to the avoidance behavior (see this and this). Emotions would be behind the learning and learning would take place at DNA level as epigenetic changes changing the gene expression. Habitutation would involve epigenetic changes and adaptation involve only activation of appropriate inherited genes.
   
   

It must be added that TGD also leads to a vision about the role of neurons in many aspects different from the neuroscientific view although agreeing with the basic facts and explaining quite a number of anomalies (see this).

1. The notion of magnetic body (MB) containing dark matter as h_eff/h₀=n phases of ordinary matter is central. The networks having as nodes objects consisting of ordinary matter (molecules, organelles, organs, even organisms) connected to a network made of flux tubes containing dark matter would give rise to both cellular and neuronal networks. Magnetic flux tube connecting two nodes would serve as a correlate of attention and communication pathway using supra currents or dark photons. Also classical signals can propagate along it.
   
   
2. The primary function of nerve pulse activity at the level of CNS would not be communication between neurons but building of communication pathways from flux tubes along which dark photon signals can propagate with maximal signal velocity. The situation would be same in travel phone connections: the communication pathway would be created first and only then the communications with light velocity would begin. Synaptic transmission would build a bridge between otherwise non-connected flux tubes​. This would give rise to long waveguides. Dark photons transforming to ordinary photons would yield bio-photons, which have remained mysterious in standard bio-chemistry since their spectrum is not consistent with the discrete spectrum of lines produced if they were generated in molecular transitions.
   
   
3. Sensory experiences would be basically at the level of sensory organs and sensory percepts would involve pattern recognition involving repeated feedback signal from brain an leading a standard perception nearest to the sensory input. The new view about time provided by zero energy ontology allows to circumvent the counter argument inspired by phantom leg phenomenon.
   
   
4. Nerve pulse patterns would frequency modulate the generalized Josephson frequencies assignable to the membrane proteins acting as Josephson junctions and generating dark Josephson radiation as part of EEG propagating to the MB of the system. Thus nerve pulse patterns would code information but this information would be sent to MB.
   
   
5. It is quite possible that the proposed RNA level mechanism is the microscopic mechanism behind strengthening of synaptic connections believed to be behind neuron level learning although also here new findings suggests that situation is not quite it has been believed to be (see this).
   
   

This did not say anything about cognition yet. TGD leads also to a view about mathematical correlates of cognition requiring profound generalization of the mathematical structure of theoretical physics. Real number field is tailor made for the description of the sensory world but how to describe the correlates of cognition. Here p-adic number fields come in rescue and in TGD framework one ends up to a unification of real physics and their p-adic analogs to what I call adelic physics (see this and this).

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

Articles and other material related to TGD.

Two different values for the metallicity of Sun and heating of solar corona: two puzzles with a common solution?

Solar corona could be also a seat of dark nucleosynthesis and there are indications that this is the case (see this) . The metallicity of stellar objects gives important information about its size, age, temperature, brightness, etc... The problem is that measurements give two widely different values for the metallicity of Sun depending on how one measures it. One obtains 1.3 per cent from the absorption lines of the radiation from Sun and 1.8 from solar seismic data. Solar neutrinos give also the latter value. What could cause the discrepancy?

Problems do not in general appear alone. There is also a second old problem: what is the origin of the heating of the solar corona. Where does the energy needed for the heating come from?

TGD proposal is based on a model, which emerged initially as a model for "cold fusion" (not really) in terms of dark nucleosynthesis, which produced dark scaled up variants of ordinary nuclei as dark proton sequences with much smaller binding energy. This can happen even in living matter: Pollack effect involving irradiation by IR light of water bounded by gel phase creates negatively charged regions from which part of protons go somewhere. They could go to magnetic flux tubes and form dark nuclei. This could explain the reported transmutations in living matter not taken seriously by academic nuclear physicists.

TGD proposal is that the protons transform to dark proton sequences at magnetic flux tubes with nonstandard value of Planck constant h_eff/h₀=n. Dark nuclei with scaled up size. Dark nuclei can transform to ordinary nuclei by h_eff→ h (h= 6h₀ is the most plausible option) and liberate almost all nuclear binding energy in the process. The outcome would be "cold fusion".

This leads to a vision about pre-stellar evolution. First came the dark nucleosynthesis, which heated the system and eventually led to a temperature at which the ordinary nuclear fusion started. This process could occur also outside stellar cores - say in planet interiors - and a considerable part of nuclei could be created outside star.

A good candidate for the site of dark nucleosynthesis would be solar corona. Dark nucleosynthesis could heat the corona and create metals also here. They would absorb the radiation coming from the solar core and reduce the measured effective metallicity to 1.3 per cent.

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 .

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

Articles and other material related to TGD.

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.

Morphogenesis in TGD Universe

All structures - including bio-molecules, membrane like structures, organelles, organs, ... - would be 4-D space-time surfaces in TGD Universe. This would reduce the notion of shape in biology to a precisely defined and testable geometrodynamics coupling to em fields and possibly also other induced gauge fields.

1. The dynamics of space-time surfaces

This dynamics predicts two kinds of space-time regions (see this).

1. The regions of first kind are locally minimal surfaces. These minimal surfaces are as 4-D analogs of geodesic lines analogs of asymptotic states of particle physics for which interactions are not on. They also satisfy non-linear geometrization of massless field equations so that both particle and wave aspects are present. What is especially important is that static minimal surfaces have vanishing mean curvature and look like saddles locally. They cannot be closed surface if stationary.
   
   
2. Second type of regions are not minimal surfaces: there is a non-trivial coupling of the minimal surface term to 4-force density analogous to the divergence of Maxwellian energy momentum tensor. This is a generalization of the dynamics of a point-like charged particle in Maxwell field. These regions are identified as interaction regions: in particle physics these two regions correspond to external free particles and the interaction region. Magnetic flux tubes play fundamental role in TGD based quantum biology are deformations of string like objects, which represent simplest 4-D minimal surfaces.
   

   Essential is the coupling between induced Kähler form (mathematically like Maxwell field) and the geometry of the surface: the divergence of energy momentum current assignable to the analog of cosmological term (4-volume) equals to the divergence of that assignable to Kähler action: this expresses local conservation of four-momentum. One could also speak about coupling between Kähler field and gravitational field: Penrose's intuition about the the role of gravitation in biology would be correct.
   

   When the coupling is absent, minimal surface property implies the separate vanishing of both divergences and separate conservation of corresponding energy-momenta. All the known extremals of Kähler action are minimal surfaces: this is due to their very simple algebraic properties making easy to discover them. Physically this correspond to quantum criticality: dynamics is universal and does not depend on coupling parameters.
   
   

2. General view about morphogenesis

These observations lead to a rather general view about morphogenesis.

1. The presence of the Kähler field (em field is sum of Kähler field and second term) makes possible flow equilibria such as cell membrane, which are not minimal surfaces. These surfaces can be closed and stationary making possible isolation from environment crucial for living organisms.
   

   Spherical soap bubble is a good analogy: it is not minimal surface as the soap films spanned by frames are. They look locally like saddle surfaces with opposite external curvatures in two orthogonal directions, this implies that they cannot be closed surfaces. Bubble is not possible without a pressure difference Δ p between the interior and exterior of the bubble: the blowing of the soap bubble generates Δ p, and means external energy feed analogous to metabolic energy feed.
   

   Δ p is analogous to a non-vanishing voltage V over cell membrane. The electric field of cell membrane and the energy feed providing the energy of electric field as metabolic energy are essential for the stability. More generally, V would generalize to non-vanishing of energy momentum tensor of Kähler field with non-vanishing divergence serving as a correlate for the energy transfer between Kähler and volume (gravitational) degrees of freedom.
   

   This generalises to all morphologies, which correspond to closed surfaces. They necessarily involve both Kähler electric and magnetic fields coupling to the geometry to stabilize the morphology. This statement would give some content for the exaggerated claim that biology is nothing but electricity + Schrödinger equation that I heard during my first student year.
   
   

2. For instance, the presence of Kähler electric field can correspond to electric fields of cell membrane or along a part of body. If it is too weak, things go wrong in development. As was found decades ago, consciousness is lost if the electric field between frontal lobes and hindbrain gets too weak or has wrong direction. Cell dies if the membrane potential becomes zero and EEG disappears in death. Also microtubules have electric field along their axes essential for their existence.
   

   Michael Levin and his collaborators have discovered further fascinating connections between electric fields and morphogenesis. One of the discoveries is that the electric fields of the embryo are controlled by neurons of the still developing brain (see this). This conforms with the view that neurons and their MBs correspond to a higher level in the hierarchy than ordinary cells and there take care of control in longer scales. The MB of the developing brain would be the controller.
   
   

3. A non-trivial coupling (four-momentum transfer) between the volume and Kähler degrees of freedom requires that the energy momentum currents have opposite and non-vanishing divergences. For the energy momentum tensor of ordinary Maxwell field the divergence is proportional to the contraction of Maxwell current and Maxwell field so that the current must be non-non-vanishing.
   

   In TGD the energy momentum tensor is replaced with energy momentum current allowing to have well-defined notion of energy momentum and corresponding conservation laws. Now the divergence contains two terms. The first one is the contraction Tr(T_KH^k) of energy momentum tensor T_K of Kähler action with the second fundamental form H^k: this term proportional to T_K is new. Second term is proportional to the contraction j_KJ∇ h^k of the induced Kähler form J with Kähler current j_K and gradients ∇ h^k of imbedding space coordinates analogous the divergence of energy-momentum tensor j^{βFα_~β in the case of ordinary Maxwell action. One expects both terms to be non-vanishing.}
   

   For the mere Kähler action, which I believed for decades to determine the preferred extremals, j_K is either vanishing or light-like. In presence of coupling it can be both non-vanishing and time-like. The realization that cosmological term is present was forced by the twistor lift of TGD whose existence is possible only for H=M⁴× CP₂.
   

4. The predicted stabilizing Kähler (and em) currents would naturally correspond to the DC currents flowing along the body in various scales discovered already by Becker and found to be essential for the survival of the organism. In particular, Becker's DC currents are essential for the healing of wounds and in the regeneration of organs. In the first first aid stage of the healing DC currents are generated locally and after than central nervous system (CNS) takes care of the generation of the current (for TGD based discussion of Becker currents see this). Also this is easy to understand from the proposed stability criterion.
   
   

3. More quantitative view

The emergence of life would require the coupling between Kähler and volume degrees of freedom. The following gives a quantitative discussion based on p-adic length scale hypothesis and twistor lift of TGD.

1. The coefficient Λ/8π G == 1/L⁴ of the volume term in the action is analogous to cosmological constant in general relativity. The predicted wrong sign of Λ is the stumbling block of superstring theories. In TGD framework the sign is correct.
   
   
2. p-Adic coupling constant evolution predicts that the cosmological constant depends on p-adic length scale L(k) characterizing the size scale of the Universe, most naturally as that of horizon size. In zero energy ontology (ZEO) L(k) is identifiable as the size scale of causal diamond (CD).
   

   One important implication is a solution to the problem of cosmological constant. Although cosmological constant is huge at very early times (or more precisely, in very short p-adic length scales), it is small in the length scales of recent cosmology. The values of cosmological constant at smaller p-adic lengths scales are however visible also in the recent day physics in many-sheeted space-time and biology could make them visible as the following arguments show.
   
   

3. There are two paired p-adic length scales: short p-adic length scale L(k₁) and long p-adic length scale L(k). The vacuum energy density ρ_vac=Λ/8π G is naturally proportional to 1/L⁴(k₁). One has energy E=1/L(k₁) per 3-volume L(k₁)³.
   

   ρ_vac=Λ/8π G is also naturally proportional to 1/GL²(k) since Λ =x/L(k)² is natural by dimensional considerations. If L(k) corresponds to the size scale of the horizon, Λ degreases during cosmic evolution and the problem of cosmological constant disappears. One has
   

   1/L⁴(k₁) = Λ/8π G ,
   

   Λ/8π = x²/L²(k) .
   

   Here the p-adic length scale L(k) could characterize the p-adic size scale of CD. G=l_Pl² is gravitational constant, l_Pl Planck length scale, and L=L(k₁) is a smaller length scale. L(k₁) expressible using the geometric mean
   

   L(k₁)=(8π GΛ)^1/4 = x^-1/2(L(k)l_Pl)^1/2 .
   

   of L(k) and Planck length l_Pl and allows an identification as a p-adic length scale for a suitable choices of the parameter x. One has (8π)^1/4≈ 2.4.
   

   What could this pairing of short and long p-adic length scales mean? The notion of magnetic body (MB) could provide and explanation. MB has onion-like layered structure with layers labelled by p-adic length scales up to some maximum size scale. This suggests that a biological structure with size scale L(k₁) has MB for which the largest layer has the size scale L(k). L(k₁) would correspond to smallest length scale in the hierarchy. Both scales could correspond to size scales of CDs.
   

   Remark: When L(k₁) is scaled by 2^r (k₁→ k₁+r), L(k) is scaled by 2^2r (k→ k+2r).
   
   

4. From the parameterization
   
   

   
   ρ_vac= yH²/8π G
   

   of the dark energy density in terms of Hubble constant at given space-time sheets one obtains an estimate for the inverse of the Hubble constant H, which depends on space-time sheet in terms of L(k), as
   

   1/H(k) = (y/8π x)^1/2 L(k) .
   

   H(k) refers now to Hubble constant in given p-adic length scale characterizing a level in the hierarchy of space-time sheets and is not the ordinary Hubble constant defined in very long scales at GRT limit of TGD. Naturality suggests the condition y/8π x=1.
   
   

One expects that the coupling between Kähler action and volume term can be non-vanishing only if the two contributions to the energy momentum tensor are of the same order of magnitude. Otherwise minimal surface property takes care that field equations are satisfied, and one does not obtain closed membrane like structures crucial for life.

1. To achieve this, Kähler action ∝ E²-B² must be of the same order of magnitude as (Λ/8π G)== x/GL²(k) giving in the case of cell membrane for the Kähler electric field strength the rough estimate
   

   E ∼ (x/l_PlL(k))^1/2 .
   

   
   Remark: The electric field of the cell membrane corresponds to E ∼ 5× 10^-4 eV² in the units of particle physicist (hbar=1 and c=1) in which unit of distance is 1/eV and one has 1 m ↔ 1.24× 10⁶ eV^-1.
   
   

2. If an estimate for the typical strength E of bio-electric field is given, one can get some idea about the length scale L(k) as
   

   L(k)= x/l_PlE .
   

   By feeding in Planck length l_Pl∼ 1.6× 10^-35 m and the electric field E∼ 5× 10⁶ V/m of the cell membrane, one obtains for the cell membrane the estimate
   

   L(k)∼ x^1/2 L₀ ,
   

   L₀= 1.1× 10⁶ ly .
   

   L(k₁)= x^-1/4 L₁ ,
   

   L₁=(l_PlL₀)^1/2=4.2× 10^-7 m .
   

   Note that L(k) scales as x^1/2 and L(k₁) as x^-1/4.
   
   

3. The value of electric field for cell membrane is essential for the argument. If one wants to generalize the argument from cell membrane to other systems, one must have an idea about how it scales. Membrane potential is near the value for which the potential energy ZeV₀ for a Cooper pair is slightly above the thermal energy at physiological temperature. Hence the possible magnetic flux tube assignable to membrane proteins acting as Josephson junctions through cell membrane carry weakest possible electric field: this conforms with metabolic economy. A natural generalization would be that for a flux tube of length L one has E= V₀/L. This gives the scalings
   

   L(k)∝ L/L_c ,
   

   L(k₁)∝ (L/L_c)^1/2 .
   
   

The value of the parameter x is open and one can make only guesses. Naturality would suggest that x is not too far from unity.

Option I: The size of the Milky Way is estimated to be about L_MW=10⁵ ly. L(k)=L_MW would be obtained for x=.01. One should be however cautious with this estimate: also x∼ 1 might be acceptable.

1. For L(k₁) the formula L(k₁)= x^-1/2(L(k)l_Pl)^1/2 gives for x=.01
   

   L(k₁)= 4 nm .
   

   This is near the p-adic length scale L(149)=5 nm assignable to the ordinary cell membrane. There are indeed indications that galactic year defines a biorhythm. For x=1 giving L(k)= 10⁶ ly one would have
   L(k₁)= 1.26 nm, which does not correspond to cell membrane length scale.
   
   

2. For the inverse of the Hubble constant H(149) one obtains for x=.01 the estimate
   

   1/H(k) ≈ 2(y/8π x)^1/2 L(k) .
   

   H(149) does not correspond to standard cosmological constant. One has H(149)=L(k) for y=2π x=.0628.
   
   

3. The scaling L(k) → 10⁵L(k) the size scale of the observed Universe about 15 Gly scales L(k₁=149) to L(k₁)= 1.3 μm, which corresponds to L(165)=1.25 μm in a reasonable approximation (L(167)=2.5 μm is the p-adic length scale of nuclear membrane). This scale would correspond to a distance through which one has membrane potential V₀. Could the size scales of galaxy and observed Universe indeed correspond to those of lipid layer of cell membrane and cell membrane?
   
   

Option II: One could argue that the long length scales correspond to the size scale of Earth. In TGD based view about EEG MB as onion-like structure has also layer with size scale of Earth radius R_E.

1. The condition that L(k)=R_E=6.3× 10⁶ m gives x=6.4× 10^-16 and L(k₁)= 6.7 mm. L(k₁) could characterize a brain structure involved in the generation of EEG. Note that the estimate assumes the electric field of cell membrane. One can argue that the value of x=6.4× 10^-16 is highly un-natural.
   
   
2. There are indications for the existence of life in Mars, whose radius is 1/2 of that for Earth. L(k) would scale down by 1/2 as also the cell membrane thickness. Could this be assumed also for the Option I? By the proposed criterion the strength of electric field E for cell membrane should be 2 times stronger than for Earthly cell (for same physiological temperature). For instance, membrane potential could be same but membrane thickness could be 1/2 of that for Earthly membrane.
   

   Interestingly, the TGD based version of Expanding Earth model predicts that Earth experienced a rapid expansion doubling its radius. Even more, neuronal cell membranes are 2 times thicker than ordinary cell membranes. Animals utilizing aerobic respiration emerged in Cambrian explosion and eventually also neurons and TGD suggests an explanation in terms of oxygenation as the life in underground oceans entered to the surface through the cracks generated by the expansion.
   
   

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 forthcoming 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.

Getting philosophical: some comments about the problems of physics, neuroscience, and biology

A reaction to not so thoughtful comments of a young otherwise friendly fellow in FB inspired me to ask why the young people who have got through the the basic courses are not only ignorant but sometimes also - well - arrogant. Why they are ignorant is easy to understand but arrogance remains a mystery for me. Personally I was also extremely ignorant as also the my fellow students but quite too shy to be arrogant: could I have been as arrogant as other if I had not been so hopelessly shy? This fellow had not understood much of what I had written - something completely acceptable, understandable, and predictable since something completely new is in question and text book wisdom or what professor said is simply not enough.

So he concluded that I am writing only weird fairy tales and that it seems that I have never heard about mathematics, electrodynamics, or thermodynamics. According to him these fields of science allow to understand biology more or less completely: I do not know whether this wisdom originated form from a text book or whether a professor told it. My FB friend also wanted to know whether I have read any book about biology during my lifetime.

I responded that I have not only heard the word "biology" but have even written a book about quantum consciousness and quantum biology (1000+ something pages). I forgot to mention that I have also written two published books about TGD and there are 17 online books at my homepage (9 of them about quantum biology) plus numerous articles both published articles and at homepage. I told that I have also recently published a long article in a book published by Springer about adelic physics: the goal of adelic physics is to describe the correlates of cognition and consciousness in terms of number theory and whose most important applications are to biology.

I also informed that I have also heard the word "thermodynamics" and even developed what I call p-adic thermodynamics providing a first principle approach to particle massivation replacing Higgs mechanism. I forgot to mention that quantum TGD can be seen formally as a complex square root of thermodynamics replacing Boltzman weights with the complex square roots defining vacuum functionals and that the generalization of so called microcanonical leads to extremely predictive view about scattering amplitudes serving as the building bricks of zero energy states.

1. Importance of philosophical thinking

This discussion once again made manifest both the extreme importance and regrettable lack of philosophical thinking - not only biology but in natural sciences in general. I do not mean with philosophical thinking academic philosophy, which I have found mostly deadly boring. Rather, for me good philosophical thinking means posing critical questions - rather than personal insults.

What we really know and what we do not know? What do we believe and what part of this is just beliefs? Are there facts challenging these beliefs? What is consciousness: is it really a property of something as "-ness" suggests? What is free will? How it manifests itself? Is it an essential aspect of consciousness so that AI hype could be forgotten? Are free will and non-determinism really in conflict with physics as physicalist has decided to believe? Concerning consciousness, what guidelines come from modern, physics, biology, and neuroscience?

In physics critical thinking would have allowed to avoid the numerous fads and fashions that have plagued us during last 4 decades: GUTs that led to the wrong track, inflation theory, various ad hoc models of dark matter postulating some exotic strong AI, supersymmetry in its GUT form, superstring models, loop gravity,...

Critical thinking would have challenged various "interpretations" of quantum theory and we could have continued immediately the work of the fathers of quantum theory rather than waiting for almost a century. Critical thinking would have also inspired the question whether the non-determinism of state function reduction has something to do with free will and how one should generalize the ontology of physics (Copenhagen ontology gives is it up altogether) to build a logically consistent framework.

Unfortunately critical thinking tends to lengthen the time spent in academic assembly line so that it is strongly discouraged. Thinkers tend also to become isolated from their social groups since everyone of us wants desperately to belong to some group and this requires sharing of its beliefs. It is easier to believe what professor and text book tell and get the research position and funding.

People are also very lazy. AI scientist decides that consciousness is running computer program or a property of the network structure or something equally ad hoc: no need to learn huge amount of physics, biology, neuroscience. Biologist decides that biology is nothing but Schrödinger equation and electromagnetism (or mere chemistry as in the older variant of the belief still prevailing). Neuroscientist desides that physicalism is correct and brain is the seat of the consciousness module. Brain as a computer paradigm makes the situation even easier. Physicist decides to believe in physicalism stating in its modern version that all physics reduces to Planck length scale: one can safely forget all other branches of sciences as a kind of taxonomy and specialize to apply one particular algorith to build CV.

2. Basic dogmatics

The key dogmas common to all branches of natural science are physicalism and reductionism. Physicalism states that matter is all that matters and consciousness is mere epiphenomenon and that world is deterministic - in the quantum version of the dogma it obeys statistical determinism. Reductionist sees natural sciences are a victorious march towards shorter and shorter space and time scales. Science is an imperium that grows conquest by conquest.

We are told that super string theorists have taken the last step to Planck scale by building the only possible theory of everything. This step is really gigantic: from electroweak length scale there are 16 orders of magnitude to Planck length scale. Before this every order of magnitude has contained a lot of su4prises but now the situation would be different as already GUT theorists revealed to us.

The surprise was however that the theory in Planck length scale does not allow to predict anything in long length scales: situation is like trying to predict the behavior of initial value sensitive system. The question of philosopher would be obvious: could something have gone wrong? This question has been made by some theoreticians. The decision of elite however seems to be that physics has reached its end. Nothing can be predicted and we should be happy about this marvellous feature of the only possible theory.

This series of conquests is marked by transitions. From biology to biochemistry, from biochemistry in vivo to organic chemistry in vitro, from chemistry to molecular physics, from molecular physics to atomic physics. Then follows a transition from atomic physics to nuclear physics: the assumption is that these two physics have practically nothing to do with each other. There are numerous experimental anomalies found during the last century challenging this belief. "Cold fusion" people were labelled next to criminals for their scandalous claims. Luckily the situation has now changed. But people talking about water memory belong still to the pariah of science.

After this jump we jump from nuclear physics to hadron physics to physics at quark-gluon level and then comes the really really big Planck jump. So simple.

There is however a little problem. Every successful conqueror must build a lot of bridges, without them the maintenance fails. Reductionistic conquerors were so hasty that they did not have time to to build the bridges between these different physics. We do not understand how nuclear physics emerges from hadron physics emerges from quark physics. We do not understand how biochemistry emerges from organic chemistry emerges from molecular physics emerges from atomic physics. But we can decide that this is only a technical difficulty: if we had enough computational power we could fill these gaps.

Actually, I know a couple of finnish fellows who tried to fill a gap. The first one has read from text book that the notion of chemical bond emerges from atomic physics. He wrote a lot of computer programs and did not find a slightest indication for this. Second fellow had learned that cell membrane emerges and started to study a model in which one has just molecules and molecular dynamics simplifying the situation. Not a slightest indication.

3. Restricting the attention to biology and neuroscience

In the following the attention is restricted mostly to the philosophical problems of biology and neuroscience. It however turns that these problems are actually also problems of physics.

3.1 Biology as nothing but biochemistry and electromagnetism

The basic dogmatics says that life is nothing but chemistry plus a little bit of electromagnetism needed to model cell membrane and neuronal membrane. There is also EEG but this is taken as noise due to neural circuits so that there is no need to waste time with it. Luckily, not all experimentalists know or care about dogmatics and have found correlations of EEG with behavior and physiology and they are used as a diagnostic tool. Most of them however refuse to consider seriously the possibility that EEG might possibly communicate something from brain somewhere. Where would this somewhere could reside: outside brain?

No! Philosopher must be producing totally weird fairy tale now! Says the mainstreamer inside me with such a friendly ut delicate tone that it becomes clear that he regards the poor philosopher as a screwball.

But philosopher continues asking. Didn't Libet discover that our sensory data is fraction of second old? Could it take fraction of second of this data to propagate as EEG signals from brain to this something. As a matter fact, Libet discovered also that the conscious decision to raise finger is preceded by neural activity starting for a fraction of second earlier. One cannot understand this unless one decides that it supports the absence of free will.

Philosopher asks also whether our decision that experienced time and the time of physicist are one and the same thing is be wrong. They are indeed different in many respects as any first year physics student understands. Should we trust facts instead of textbook wisdom? And what about Libet's second finding: could we give up our firm decision that signals propagate in only single direction of geometric time?

There is also a second strange electromagnetic phenomenon in biology: bio-photons. Already discovered almost century ago, they are still taken as pseudoscience by many biologists. They appear in visible and UV range but it seems that they are not produced in molecular reactions (this would mean peaks in the distribution). What is their origin?

3.1 Why vivo-vitro difference?

Even the basic dogmatist must admit that one must speak about organic chemistry in vivo and in vitro. In vitro one can build models for reactions, deduce estimates for the excitation energies of molecules, construct thermodynamical models for reactions in terms of thermodynamics involving parameters like activation energies and chemical potentials, one can develop complex networks of reaction pathways.

The typical assumption of these models is that everything is homogenous and isotropic: one has spatially constant concentrations of various reactions obeying differential equations determined by the kinetics. One can however construct more complex structure by allowing diffusion making possible spatial gradients.

The problem is that this dynamics has very little to do with what happens in living cell. The in vitro estimates for the rates of reactions are many many orders of magnitudes too low as compared to those in living matter. We do not understand anything about bio-catalysis. We know that enzymes and ribozymes somehow make the miracle but that's all. We do not have slightest clue about how reactants manage to find each other in the molecular soup full of different molecules. We have no idea wherefrom the reactants get the energy to jump over potential wall making the reaction quite too slow.

Philosopher would say that here is an excellent opportunity for new physics to enter in biology. How can reactants find each other? Could they possibly be connected by something, which shortens as the reactants meet? Could the notion of tensor network involving quantum entanglement be essential element of biology and entire physics. Particles would not be lonely riders but could be connected by something at least temporarily. Could this something liberate energy quanta allowing to get over the potential wall making reaction so slow? Could these networks have dynamical topology and make living systems what they are.

Unfortunately, standard space-time picture does not allow this something. Also Planck constant is quite too small. Should we conclude that the philosopher is weirdly fairytaling again?

3.2 What selected the biomolecules?

Now philosopher is asking why only very few candidates for relevant biomolecules are actually selected. Who/what selected and how? This leads to very unpleasant questions circumvented by deciding that the emergence of life was nothing but a thermodynamical fluctuation. It has however become clear that complex organic molecules are present even in interstellar and intergalactic space. The miraculous thermodynamical fluctuation explaining evolution without real evolution would have been really huge.

Philosopher tends to conclude that we simply have no clue about what selection at the bio-molecular level really is and continue that some new physics is involved so that it is time to think giving up the reductionistic narrative.

The selection problem appears also at the level of biochemical reaction pathways. One can imagine endless variety of "reaction vertices". If one assumes that only very few basic "reaction vertices" are allowed but the rest not, one can construct a limited number of reaction pathways. But this is an ad hoc assumption: this selection of allowed reaction pathways certainly occurs but we do not have a slightest idea about the physics behind it.

There is also an analogy with computer science. One can construct endless variety of linguistically correct computer programs: why only very few of them would be selected. And with neuroscience: from a huge array of behavioral patters only some are selected.

Here one can of course try a loophole: Darwinian selection. But there is no selection in the Universe of physicalist. This would require free will and intentionality. The trick does not work.

But what about this network in which biomolecules are connected by this something already mentioned?, asks philosopher. Could this something connect only biomolecules if they are in the same relationship as sender and receiver of radio signal. Could these somethings connect stably only systems possessing common resonance frequencies? Could this criterion could select both the preferred biomolecules and the "reaction vertices" and thus also reaction pathways?

Easy to guess the reaction of me the mainstreamer: fairy-taling again.

3.3 Where does the coherence come from?

A further mystery is how the biochemical reactions can occur coherently in length scales longer than atomic scale. Without this coherence I could not write this, play piano, or even raise my hand. If we were just sacks of water containing some chemicals we would be doing science and arts. We would be indeed just sacks of water containing some chemicals in chemical and thermodynamical equilibrium and microscopic sample from this water would characterize us completely.

Mysteriously the coherence of biodynamics in scales up to the size of the organism emerges somehow. The required coherence need not be quantum coherence - and probably it is not - but it could be induced by quantum coherence. Quantum coherence of what? There is also the problem due to quite too small value of Planck constant. We have learned about the effects supporting the vision about quantum biology. It is now however becoming clear that these effects would however require large value of Planck constant.

Here the philosopher remembers the findings of Blackman and other pioneers of bio-electromagnetism. They found that the irradiation of vertebrate brain by ELF radiation at EEG frequencies scale had effects on both behavior and physiology and these effects look quantal occurring at harmonics of endogenous magnetic field of .2 Gauss. E=h× f makes these effects extremely small and totally masked by thermal noise. What if the value of Planck constant were so large that the energies were above thermal energy?

Now the mainstream physicist inside us is getting really angry: is this recklessly speculating philosopher really suggesting that our cherished quantum theory might not be the final word of science?

3.4 Morphogenesis

The problem of structure formation in biology - morphogenesis - was put under the rug by most biologists after the emergence of genetics. Sheldrake is one of those who have taken it seriously and has been labelled as a crackpot by mainstreamers. One just assumes that the structures are there and performs chemistry around these structures. This approach is very practical and has given an enormous amount of data but practically no understanding.

In standard physics the description of spatial structure would be in terms of enhanced densities of biomolecules or of their gradients in some space-time region. This is the only possibility because the space-time of standard physics is topologically and geometrically utterly trivial. Empty Minkowski space is an excellent approximation for it.

What philosopher has to say about this? If space-time topology were topologically non-trivial, situation would change dramatically. Already Wheeler saw this possibility and in the biology inspired by TGD (for which Wheeler suggested its name) all structures correspond to structures of topologically non-trivial space-time identified as surface in certain 8-D space-time: space-time sheets, magnetic flux tubes, etc... The entire TGD inspired quantum biology relies on this vision. The structures that we see around us would represent the non-trivial topology of space-time surface.

All structures - including bio-molecules, membrane like structures, organelles, organs, ... - would be 4-D space-time surfaces. Again philosopher gets excited since this would reduce the notion of shape in biology to a precisely defined and testable geometrodynamics coupling to em fields.

3.4.1. The dynamics of space-time surfaces

This dynamics predicts two kinds of space-time regions (see this.

1. The regions of first kind are locally minimal surfaces. These minimal surfaces are as 4-D analogs of geodesic lines analogs of asymptotic states of particle physics for which interactions are not on. They also satisfy non-linear geometrization of massless field equations so that both particle and wave aspects are present. What is especially important is that static minimal surfaces have vanishing mean curvature and look like saddles locally. They cannot be closed surface if stationary.
   
   
2. Second type of regions are not minimal surfaces: there is a non-trivial coupling of the minimal surface term to 4-force density analogous to the divergence of Maxwellian energy momentum tensor. This is a generalization of the dynamics of a point-like charged particle in Maxwell field. These regions are identified as interaction regions: in particle physics these two regions correspond to external free particles and the interaction region. Magnetic flux tubes play fundamental role in TGD based quantum biology are deformations of string like objects, which represent simplest 4-D minimal surfaces.
   

   Essential is the coupling between induced Kähler form (mathematically like Maxwell field) and the geometry of the surface: the divergence of energy momentum current assignable to the analog of cosmological term (4-volume) equals to the divergence of that assignable to Kähler action: this expresses local conservation of four-momentum. One could also speak about coupling between Kähler field and gravitational field: Penrose's intuition about the the role of gravitation in biology would be correct.
   

   When the coupling is absent, minimal surface property implies the separate vanishing of both divergences and separate conservation of corresponding energy-momenta. All the known extremals of Kähler action are minimal surfaces: this is due to their very simple algebraic properties making easy to discover them. Physically this correspond to quantum criticality: dynamics is universal and does not depend on coupling parameters.
   
   

3.4.2 General view about morphogenesis

These observations lead to a rather general view about morphogenesis.

1. The presence of the Kähler field (em field is sum of Kähler field and second term) makes possible flow equilibria such as cell membrane, which are not minimal surfaces. These surfaces can be closed and stationary making possible isolation from environment crucial for living organisms.
   

   Spherical soap bubble is a good analogy: it is not minimal surface as the soap films spanned by frames are. They look locally like saddle surfaces with opposite external curvatures in two orthogonal directions, this implies that they cannot be closed surfaces. Bubble is not possible without a pressure difference Δ p between the interior and exterior of the bubble: the blowing of the soap bubble generates Δ p, and means external energy feed analogous to metabolic energy feed.
   

   Δ p is analogous to a non-vanishing voltage V over cell membrane. The electric field of cell membrane and the energy feed providing the energy of electric field as metabolic energy are essential for the stability. More generally, V would generalize to non-vanishing of energy momentum tensor of Kähler field with non-vanishing divergence serving as a correlate for the energy transfer between Kähler and volume (gravitational) degrees of freedom.
   

   This generalises to all morphologies, which correspond to closed surfaces. They necessarily involve both Kähler electric and magnetic fields coupling to the geometry to stabilize the morphology. This statement would give some content for the exaggerated claim that biology is nothing but electricity + Schrödinger equation that I heard during my first student year.
   
   

2. For instance, the presence of Kähler electric field can correspond to electric fields of cell membrane or along a part of body. If it is too weak, things go wrong in development. As was found decades ago, consciousness is lost if the electric field between frontal lobes and hindbrain gets too weak or has wrong direction. Cell dies if the membrane potential becomes zero and EEG disappears in death. Also microtubules have electric field along their axes essential for their existence.
   

   Michael Levin and his collaborators have discovered further fascinating connections between electric fields and morphogenesis. One of the discoveries is that the electric fields of the embryo are controlled by neurons of the still developing brain (see this). This conforms with the view that neurons and their MBs correspond to a higher level in the hierarchy than ordinary cells and there take care of control in longer scales. The MB of the developing brain would be the controller.
   
   

3. A non-trivial coupling (four-momentum transfer) between the volume and Kähler degrees of freedom requires that the energy momentum currents have opposite and non-vanishing divergences. For the energy momentum tensor of ordinary Maxwell field the divergence is proportional to the contraction of Maxwell current and Maxwell field so that the current must be non-non-vanishing.
   

   In TGD the energy momentum tensor is replaced with energy momentum current allowing to have well-defined notion of energy momentum and corresponding conservation laws. Now the divergence contains two terms. The first one is the contraction Tr(T_KH^k) of energy momentum tensor T_K of Kähler action with the second fundamental form H^k: this term proportional to T_K is new. Second term is proportional to the contraction j_KJ∇ h^k of the induced Kähler form J with Kähler current j_K and gradients ∇ h^k of imbedding space coordinates analogous the divergence of energy-momentum tensor j^{βFα_~β in the case of ordinary Maxwell action. One expects both terms to be non-vanishing.}
   

   For the mere Kähler action, which I believed for decades to determine the preferred extremals, j_K is either vanishing or light-like. In presence of coupling it can be both non-vanishing and time-like. The realization that cosmological term is present was forced by the twistor lift of TGD whose existence is possible only for H=M⁴× CP₂.
   

4. The predicted stabilizing Kähler (and em) currents would naturally correspond to the DC currents flowing along the body in various scales discovered already by Becker and found to be essential for the survival of the organism. In particular, Becker's DC currents are essential for the healing of wounds and in the regeneration of organs. In the first first aid stage of the healing DC currents are generated locally and after than central nervous system (CNS) takes care of the generation of the current (for TGD based discussion of Becker currents see this). Also this is easy to understand from the proposed stability criterion.
   
   

3.5 Metabolism

Metabolism is one of the key aspects of biology. We must eat and plants must busily photosynthesize in order to survive. But why metabolic energy feed is needed? Again a mystery.

Non-equilibrium thermodynamics is one attempt to answer this question. Thermodynamical equilibrium is completely uninteresting, entropy is maximal and in the case of local dynamics the state of system is completely determined by a small sample of it. However, if one has energy feed, situation changes since equilibrium becomes flow equilibrium. The energy feed guarantees that there is macroscopic dynamics rather than mere thermal motion at microscopic level.

Also in this case one has essentially the same situation everywhere unless one introduces macroscopic parameters - also energy flow - depending on time and position to get something more interesting. Simple reaction kinematics determined by differential equations can be replaced with that determined by partial differential equations obtained by allowing diffusion. Also temperature, pressure and other thermodynamical parameters can be allowed to depend on position and time. Turing proposed a model for the coloring of Zebra as outcome of this kind of dynamics. The model for neuronal membrane and nerve pulse generation is also a rough model trying to reproduce basic facts about nerve pulse generation using thermodynamics for neuronal membrane regarded as a capacitor. This is of course a mere parametrization of the situation involving a lot of parameters. TGD leads to a quantum model for the situtation. Also the interpretation about the role of nerve pulse patterns at neuronal level changes dramatically.

In non-equilibrium thermodynamics one speaks of self-organization. One can generalize this notion to quantum self-organization and the crucial criticality associated to the transitions between different self-organization patterns generalizes to quantum criticality. Could these transitions correspond to spatio-temporal self organization patterns, behaviors, functions, programs. This in turn leads to deep connections with conformal symmetry (even its generalization in TGD), fractality, and universality of the dynamics. It is a pity that biologists do not seem to know much about these possibilities.

Now the philosopher starts to talk about ontology. Try to be patient. In standard physics the 3-D time= constant snapshot defines the state. This belief has led to weird proposals: in quantized general relativity one ends up with a proposal that there is no time.

Could it be that 4-D deterministic time evolution between initial and final states could be more fundamental than the 3-D snapshot? Could superpositions of these 4-D evolutions define quantum states. If so, the state function reductions would occur between these superpositions and their non-determinism would be consistent with the determinism of field equations. Free will would not break laws of physics. It would be like starting new deterministic computer program. Our philosopher calls this ontology Zero Energy Ontology and claims that it leads to a theory of consciousness as a generalization of quantum measurement theory. Irritating.

3.6 Does metabolic energy feed generate conscious information?

The basic question about the role of metabolic energy remains, says the philosopher. What is its real role? Energy feed generates structures and structural complexity means information. It seems that metabolic energy feed involves also a feed of information or generation of information. And because living systems are in question, philosopher cannot avoid the question whether this information is actually conscious information. Is there any other kind of information than conscious information?

To this question standard physics has no answer: it can only describe entropy mathematically and identification of information as lack of entropy is the easy answer suggested in lack of anything better. The question about a possible measure for conscious information analogous to Shannon entropy is one manner to end up with p-adic physics as a correlate of cognition and the necessary fusion of real and various p-adic physics leads to adelic physics. Adelic physics in turn predicts - surprise- surprise - a hierarchy of phases of matter labelled by the value of Planck constant. These phases residing at these somethings defining the networks - magnetic flux tubes - make possible macroscopic quantum coherence inducing the coherence of living matter.

3.7 Genetic code

Genetic code definitely represents information. Is it really an outcome of thermodynamical fluctuation? Is there some deep mathematics associated with the genetic code?, asks the philosopher now. Be patient!

Genome contains also intronic portion: most of it consists of introns and the intronic portion is the larger the higher the evolutionary level is. The prevailing interpretation has been as "junk". Is it really junk?, wonders philosopher. Luckily, the attitude that trash bin represents the highest level of evolution has begun to slowly change to more rational one.

Could there be a beautiful mathematics behind genetic code? Could it be something similar to codes in computer science and have not only one representation - the chemical one - but numerous representations? If computer science would have developed before genetics - this question would have been completely natural and we would probably know a lot about these representations. Could this dark matter with large Planck constant at these mysterious somethings identified by our philosopher tentatively as magnetic flux tubes realize the really fundamental representation of the genetic code and also of of DNA, RNA, tRNA, and amino-acids in information theoretic sense? And could also radiation provide realization of genetic code necessary for communications?

3.8 The mystery of replication

Replication is one of the deepest mysteries of biology. It is really something totally counterintuitive if cell is seen as a sack of water plus some chemicals. We have a lot facts about what happens in the replication at DNA level but how this miracle happens is a mystery. At cell level the situation gets even more complex.

Philospher thinks that behind the chemistry there might lurk a much simpler quantum dynamics and that chemistry only makes its best to mimic this deeper dynamics. Is biochemistry controlled by something? Does this something provide a template for the dynamics at chemical level? The idea about the presence of this something popped up already in the mystery of EEG. What could this something perhaps receiving sensory information from vertebrate brain and maybe providing feedback as control signals affecting also chemistry?

Now our brave philosopher attacks the length scale reductionism again. Isn't it quite too much to require that all these replications in different length scales would result as accidental "emergences" due to thermodynamical fluctuations? Could the dynamics be fractal with same patterns - for instance replication - occurring in different scales. Could this dynamics be induced what happens on this something.

Philosopher also suggests a concrete model for the controlling level: dark matter with large value of Planck constant h_eff/h₀=n at magnetic flux tubes and asks whether the conjectured dark realization of DNA in various scales performs the fundamental replication inducing in turn the biological replication in various scales as a mimicry? Morphogenesis controlled by the hierarchy of dark realizations of genetic code would be the basic vision. This would simplify the situation enormously but in totally different manner than length scale reductionism.

3. 9 Evolution

I forgot perhaps the most important piece from the original text. Philosopher cannot avoid the question "What is evolution?"

In standard biology evolution is mystery. If one believes on standard thermodynamics, evolution is impossible by second law and the eventual heat death is unavoidable. Evolution means generation of structures and second law indeed states that all gradients die so that the finals state is totally uninteresting homogenous stuff.

I already mentioned the weird proposal that biology is just an enormous thermodynamical fluctuation. Boltzmann brain was indeed a kind of fad of pop physicists for some years ago. The idea - if you want to call it such - was that Boltzmann brains - and also ours - popped up from the multiverse by a complete accident. One could even argue that this occurred only at planet Earth to make the claim more plausible. This is however not science anymore, this is just pure plain idiocy.

Philosopher asks questions and now the most obvious questions are following. Is evolution something much more general than biological evolution? Is evolution a basic aspect of physics as already cosmological evolution suggests? Is evolution "must", something completely unavoidable? What could force it?

The Universe governed by second law certainly does not allow evolution: just the contrary. Could the increase of entropy and increase of conscious information and development of cognition relate somehow? It has been argued by that biological evolution involves increase of the rate of entropy production as any-one can see by just looking around. These two things are not the same but are they somehow related.

Philosopher gets now childishly excited. We must just tolerate. Our philosopher already mentioned that p-adic physics as physics of cognition not only leads to a measure for conscious information - something very non-trivial - but to adelic physics fusing physics in various number fields. Adeles form a hierarchy labelled by the dimension of the extension of rationals inducing the extension of p-adic number fields labelled by primes. This dimension corresponds to the effective value of Planck constant and the larger it is, the larger the scale of quantum coherence is.

This has been already said but now comes the basic point and philosopher gets really excited. Since the number of extensions of rationals with dimension larger than given integer n is finite and the number of those with dimension larger than n is infinite, this dimension is bound to increase in statistical sense in the sequence of state function reductions recreating the quantum Universe again and again. Evolution is unavoidable! This is like random work from origin upwards. The height from the origin unavoidably increases.

Even more, the total negentropy coming from various p-adic sectors turns out to be larger than the entropy coming from the real sector. The bad news - not actually a news - is that increase of this negentropy is accompanied by the increase of entropy: civilizations indeed have the bad habit of polluting their environments. The good news is that negentropy increases faster than entropy: for a trivial extension of rationals from which everything would have started, negentropy equals to entropy. But for more complex extensions it is larger.

For references see 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.