What is time? When no one asks me, I know.
When asked to explain it, I . . . I don’t know.
- St. Augustine, c. 400 A.D. -

Here’s a new description of static, moving, and psychological time for readers both adventurous and traditional in which temporality is grounded within the workings of a quantized space. Psychological time relies, additionally, upon the workings of our phenomenal consciousness for which there will be a brief description. While I hope you’ll find this idea to be scientifically compliant, like all new ideas, it has a fabulous chance of being wrong and is written in the declarative mood only to ease the text.

Part One: the set-up

a quantized space
Consider that tiny grains of space make up the volume of our universe. The grains consist of particle properties, though, while each grain has a “real,” or measured value for volume, its remaining properties such as charge, spin, mass, or momentum are of entirely unmeasured value. Without measured value, a property can only exist as an idea, an abstraction, and if space is quantized in this manner, it would explain why the grains are so hard to find; without measured value, there’s nothing to measure . . . nothing to detect. As a blend of values both measured and unmeasured, each grain of quantized space is a kind of “cosmic emulsion” of abstract particle properties with discrete volume.

the background
But between the grains is the important part, for here lies the required background of our quantized space. It’s an immaterial background, of course, a background which is neither spacial nor temporal for, if it were either of these things, it would already exist in grains of space.

The only sort of “thing” which is both real and immaterial is an abstraction, an idea, and every idea . . . is an awareness. (Think about it. Every idea is, indeed, an awareness of something.) Because ideas are of the same immaterial, non-spacial nature as the background, we can consider the background to be a suitable “place,” as it were, for all abstraction. In this way, we can consider these immaterial realities to be the same reality; an abstract background of awareness.

It’s important to understand that the background cannot be nothing. Space-time quanta require a real container, the non-spacial container of an immaterial background. Such a background has the function of keeping the quanta quantized, or separated; the background’s “location”² is between the grains. We can perceive, or acknowledge the background as real because it has real properties of function and location. That is, it has a “something” upon which you can focus your attention. A “nothing” cannot exist with properties of reality, function, or location. Nor can a nothing be truly acknowledged. A nothing can only be imagined.

for example . . .
In just the same way that the property line between you and your neighbor’s house forms an abstract border, the abstract background forms the property line, or border of each grain; an abstract perimeter that limits the extent to which the grain’s particle properties are in force. Each perimeter forms an elision with those of its neighbors, and the network extends as the abstract background throughout the universe, much like the elision of property lines between you and your neighbors — a complete abstraction — extend throughout a city, limiting the forceful effect of individual ownership.

particle evolution
A grain’s unmeasured properties will remain abstract unless they receive measured value. With measurement, the grain can no longer maintain its abstract nature and will collapse down to a discrete particle. Throughout the universe, some relatively few grains have collapsed to particles in this way to make up everything we know.

Particles undergo changes of state, or “activity.” For this reason, the activity of every particle — or coherent object made of particles — will necessarily generate an idea of that activity simply because the object is evolving within an abstract background of awareness. The generated idea is, in fact, an evolutionary idea whose function it is to bring about an object’s discrete emergence in each moment.

The evolutionary idea of the object — be it a particle, an atom, a molecule, a protein, your brain, body, an exaltation of larks, our biome, the Earth, the solar system, our galaxy, or the entire universe — is a nested description of the coherent object’s constituents in terms of its measured property values. It’s a “vibrational idea,” if you will, of the object’s activity; its states of being, or changing property values of each moment. Likewise, the vibrational idea is constantly updated and refreshed by the object’s activity, or “vibration,” which the vibrational idea notices in each moment of its object’s evolution.³

A vibrational idea is a function of the background, the compendium of all abstraction. As such, it can only operate in accordance within the laws of nature and the asymmetric structure of awareness (an awareness cannot become unaware). This will later become important to the issue of time’s arrow.

CC&E — an evolutionary process
An evolutionary, or vibrational idea evolves its object as a snapshot of physical reality through the blending of its measured values with the unmeasured values of the most likely grain. The “most likely grain” is determined by means of probability, one of the many natural laws by which the vibrational idea must abide as a function of the abstract background. The blending of measured with unmeasured property values causes the grain to collapse down to the discrete particle which emerges here in spacetime.

for example . . .
The vibrational idea (vi) of an electron contains all of the information regarding the properties of the electron (charge, spin, energy, mass, momentum, etc.) in the form of their specific measured values. The convergence, or blending of the vi with the grain’s abstract properties sets the unmeasured property values of the grain to the discrete, measured values of the electron’s idea at which point the grain can no longer maintain its abstract nature and condenses, that is, collapses down to that particular electron which emerges here as⁴ a static moment of spacetime. Within the snapshot of each emergence—a particle’s state of being—the vibrational idea notices the changed values of its object and becomes updated. In this way, the evolution of all objects takes place through the process of convergence, condensation, and emergence, or CC&E for short.

what causes collapse? ⁵
During each emergence of the electron, for example, it’s vibrational idea in the background is confirming the measured values of its discrete form and filling the most likely grain with those values for it’s next emergence. Although the electron may typically spend a trillionth of a second⁶ in a single state of being, this duration is not fixed. Rather, time spent in any one state is variable depending upon

• the process of setting a grain to the measured values of a particular particle,
• the grain’s inability to maintain its abstract nature once it has received measurement,
• the activities of the atom to which that particle belongs,
• the needs of other objects into which that particle is nested,
• and changes to the particle’s “speed through space”² as per special relativity.

In this way, particles evolve not in isolation, but in concert with other interdependent objects with which it is “nested” and which may evolve more quickly or slowly depending upon their evolutionary needs, all of which causes an object’s state of being to vary in duration.

Part Two: time . . . and its arrow

Relativistic time, psychological time, Newtonian time, flow of time, static time, imaginary time, absolute time, idealist, proper, and relational time: Time is a word which has been applied to many things, all of which begin with the most existential property of objects both material and abstract. Let us explore just two forms of this fundamental property:

• the static time, or duration of an object’s unchanged state of being, and
• the moving time of object evolution, the abstract process of CC&E.

Armed with concepts of static and moving time, we can proceed to an explanation of time’s arrow as well a description of our very own temporal experience, or psychological time which will firstly require a brief description of the phenomenal consciousness upon which it relies.

static time
Stars, people, cars, and your bicycle all appear to be on the move here in space. But they’re not. Rather, it is the abstract action of CC&E — the evolutionary process — which will turn out to be the only moving time there is. But firstly, there is a kind of motionless time which occurs right here in our quantized world, and this is the static time of pure duration. Each moment of static time is an object’s state of being during which nothing changes; a snapshot, devoid of all motion. We can know that the events and occurrences of our physical world exist in static moments simply because space and time are inseparable (“spacetime”) and so, if space is quantized into grains, time must be as well.

And of course they are inseparable. It’s not that there’s some “moment,” or external mechanism of temporality waiting to capture the emergence of an object’s state in a moment of time. Rather, it’s the other way around; each static state of an object’s being emerges as a static moment of time. One does not emerge from the other, they are the same; an object’s state of being is its static moment.

The duration of a static moment is purely relational. That is, the measurement of its “staying power” is not determined by some cosmic time-keeping device or temporal substance which pervades the entire universe. Rather, the durative property of an object’s static moment can be “measured” only in relation to the static moments of other objects; i.e., “Oh, look! This object’s static moment has gone out of existence while that object’s moment is still here” or, “Oh, look! That object has re-emerged almost three times during this object’s state of being.”

As explained earlier, the duration of an object’s state, its static moment, is not fixed. It is completely variant, determined only by its evolutionary needs through the evolutionary process of CC&E. However, as an object’s constituents become more numerous, or increase in complexity, it’s static moments become smaller in relation to objects of lessor complexity. Our electron, for example, belongs to a coherent object, an atom of several particles, which will have a relatively smaller static moment of duration in which the activities of all of its particles can be captured as⁴ a state of being. As an object increases in complexity, it’s static moment becomes smaller and smaller up to the complexity of the universe itself which has a static moment of just a single Planck time of just five-hundred-million-trillion-trillion-trillionths of a second (5.4 x10⁻⁴⁴/second).⁷ That is, the increasingly complex vibrational idea of each increasingly larger nested object evolves as a decreasingly shorter static moment, or state of being in relation to other objects.

As humans, we cannot perceive the shorter static moments, let alone a Planck moment, although we perceive huge collections of these moments as events. The causal ordering of these events and, in particular, our unique ability to remember and anticipate them, imparts upon us the immersive feeling of some substance or mechanism which moves us through a temporal sort of existence, and this we call “psychological time.”

While the motion of psychological time will turn out to be real, it’s not provided by some temporal “substance” or mechanism here in our discrete world of static moments. Here in spacetime there exists only the insentient, static relationship of discrete moments to each other; causally ordered states of being devoid of any occurrent change or passage of time on the part of some celestial clockwork or external timekeeper. In this way, while the arrow, or causal arrangement of static moments is real, any temporal relationship or motion is not. That is, there is no temporal motion from one static moment to the next. Rather, there is a causal relationship between one static moment and another—a causal relationship without temporal motion, yet one which has been thought of as the arrow of “time,” and will be explained below.

Objects often undergo changes to their “location” or, more accurately, changes to their position relative to other objects.² The values which represent an object’s new position in each moment is also accomplished through the evolutionary work of the object’s vibrational idea (vi). Although we have thought of the rate of this repositioning as an object’s speed, or “motion through space,”² in actuality, there is no motion. Once the most likely grain has received measurement, for example, the particle emerges at this position instantly, it doesn’t “move” there.⁸

moving time
In addition to our quantized world of grains and static moments during which no change occurs, is the continuum of the abstract background in which all change occurs. It is only in the the background that we find the occurrent change of moving time, an actual passage of time which turns out to be the evolutionary process of CC&E, itself; the only motion there is.

The process, or temporal motion of CC&E consists of

• the updating of property values from the current state of being,
• the vi’s adjustment of these values for its next emergence,
• the vi’s blending of those values with the unmeasured values of the most likely grain,
• and the grain’s condensation, or collapse to the measured values of the discrete object.

time and its dilations
Once again, changes to an object’s “motion through space” will cause the duration of its static moments⁹ to vary, not only in relation to those of its own, but in relation to the moments of other objects throughout the universe. This is because an object’s evolutionary motion, or “motion through time” has, according to special relativity, a value that is shared with its rate of positional change, or “motion through space.” The combined value of an object’s motion through space and through time is shared and always maintained at the speed of light, “c.” In this way, as an object’s motion through space is increased, its evolutionary process of CC&E — its temporal motion — is decreased to maintain the overall value of c.¹⁰ This is why the clock in motion reads a lessor time than the stationary clock; the moving clock’s static moments are longer than those of the stationary clock because some of its evolutionary motion, or time, has been diverted to its increased motion through space. That is, when the evolutionary process is slower, the clock evolves (“runs”) more slowly.

light
How, then, would light maintain CC&E, its evolutionary process, or temporal process, plus the speed of light through space in each moment? Because a photon can exist only at the speed of light, it’s duration as a static moment could only be zero since all of its static duration in space been diverted to evolutionary motion. And so, for light to evolve at all, it must be unnecessary for it to emerge discretely as each static moment of zero duration. Rather, it must be that massless particles like photons and gluons do not evolve in grains at all, in which case there is nothing to download or emerge through the evolutionary process of CC&E. In this way, a massless particle exists only in the abstraction of its vibrational idea in the background and, upon interaction with a discrete particle, the photon’s only discretely emergent effects must be those of heat and momentum.¹¹

the “arrow of time”
Our world evolves casually in one direction by means of its vibrational ideas. What is it, then, about the vibrational idea that it prefers, as it were, the causality of forwardness among the temporal opportunities allowed by physics? That is, why does time’s arrow point persistently forward?

Remember that every idea is an awareness, and that all vibrational ideas begin in the background as an awareness of their object’s activity? Well, that’s the answer! The arrow of time is actually an arrow of causality, and it points forward, or causally because

• the laws of nature are a set of uni-directional awarenesses throughout the background of which the vibrational idea is one,
• the vibrational idea is the agent, or operator of the evolutionary process and,
• without self-awareness, the vibrational idea of an insufficiently sentient object — nearly every object — is without the agency of free will to violate or suspend the uni-directional nature of its own awareness, as we can, and function in accordance with nature’s permissions rather than its laws.

Here’s how it works: As the evolutionary agent of CC&E, the vibrational idea comes into being as the awareness of an object’s measured properties and the laws of nature. And, despite the permissions of physics, awareness is one property of nature whose asymmetric structure is uni-directional. That is, once it is created, an awareness cannot become unaware. In turn, the vibrational idea’s awareness of nature’s laws is what propels the causality of evolution as a one-way process.

And so, once the vibrational idea’s awareness of the measured property values of its object are established, be it an electron, a microtubule, or a tree, it cannot evolve them backward in contravention of nature’s laws by which it has evolved them forward. To do so would violate, for example, entropy, a fundamental law of nature. With free will and the permission of physics, however, we conscious, self-aware creatures are different and whimsically violate entropy each time we spend the extra energy in contravention of thermodynamics to make ice cubes, build houses, launder clothing, tidy our rooms, or hop on a plane. However, these are all local violations of entropy. For the predominantly unconscious objects throughout the universe, a more general retro-causality of backward time — a true playing of the film backwards — in violation of entropy is an impossible reversal of the awareness of every vibrational idea and so, for the totality of all vibrational idea’s, the reversal of time’s arrow remains only an opportunity within physics and not a law of which they are aware or by which they are governed.

Part Three: psychological time

Recall that CC&E is a temporal motion which takes place as the abstract, evolutionary process of discrete objects. A version of this process is also at work in the evolution of abstract objects such as your mind. So for just the last few minutes, think of consciousness as an immaterial reality, an abstraction. Because we don’t find abstract objects here in space, consider our conscious mind to reside in the non-spacial background of all abstraction. If so, what is the mechanism by which our brain activity here in space corresponds to the activity of our mind in the background?

the microtubule network
As an abstraction, your mind begins in the background as a vibrational idea of your brain. More specifically, it’s an idea of your smaller and infinitely more manageable microtubule network. (In the illustrations below, the brain icon represents the microtubule network, or “MTN.”) This lattice-like assemblage of tubulin protein forms a kind of skeletal highway for the movement of sub-cellular organelles like mitochondria and ribosomes within neurons and guides the growth of their axons and dendrites. The microtubule network appears to be the smallest coherent object to pervade the entire brain, yet the largest object whose vibrational idea can most easily bring about, or evolve, the sequential dynamic patterning of its protein modifications which are the source of all brain activity. In this way, the vibrational idea of the microtubule network is the “tubulin code.”

In the same way that the electron was described earlier to evolve by means of CC&E, your microtubule network is a coherent object, and it evolves through the process of CC&E as its vibrational idea blends with those grains which, by means of probability, are most likely to become the particles of which it is composed in each state of being, or static moment of its evolution. Just as before, the blending imparts measured values to the grains’ unmeasured particle properties causing the grains to collapse down to yet another state of your microtubule network. And, in each moment, its vibrational idea is refreshed and updated by the new activity.

Like most vibrational ideas, the vi of your microtubule network exists as a present-tense awareness of its object, “is,” with no idea, or memory of its self in the past, nor anticipation of its self in the future.

personal and impersonal ideas
For the sake of the cognitive process described here, there are two kinds of ideas: Personal ideas are those of which your mind is composed; the thoughts and memories of your experience. Impersonal ideas, on the other hand, are those which exist outside of your mind. Impersonal ideas come in two further categories; eternal and human. Eternal ideas are those which are discovered but not created buy us. They include basic awarenesses like the laws of nature, pure mathematics, and particles properties which are evident throughout the workings of the universe. As the basic awareness of the abstract background, eternal ideas existed long before brained creatures were here to think about them . . . and will long remain should we cease to exist. The second sort of impersonal idea is a human idea. Human ideas are those which are created by us and include our human descriptions of eternal ideas (nature’s laws, mathematics, and particle properties, etc.) along with their applications to industry, world peace, religion, music, art, language, thimble design, and cooperative divorce. An impersonal idea of either sort, eternal or human, becomes a personal idea when we invite, or incorporate it into our mind.

Vibrational ideas begin as impersonal ideas of the eternal sort. They come about when the background’s asymmetric structure of awareness (an awareness cannot become unaware) notices a discrete object within its presence functioning in accordance with natural law, as only it can. While impersonal ideas generally become personal when you invite them into your mind, the vibrational idea of your microtubule network is unusual in that it becomes the foundation of your mind itself when it attains the present-perfect state of self-awareness; your first personal idea.

vibrational representations
Every idea exists throughout the background as a vibrational representation of the microtubule network activity of the creature whose mind has experienced that particular idea. The following sections will describe how the vibrational representation of an idea becomes a personal idea within your mind when it blends, that is, “resonates,” with the particle property values of the vibrational idea of your own microtubule network activity. This is the evolutionary process of your mind, and it occurs through the same evolutionary process of CC&E, described earlier, by which particles evolve, though just a bit more detailed.

Two examples follow but, at risk of presenting too much too soon, let us specify here that a vibrational representation (V-Rep) exists in the form of measured property values of our microtubule network (MTN). To be more precise (Big Breath), a vibrational representation is a “nested” list of the measured particle property values of the sequential set of microtubule network patterns which have either blended with or been observed upon those grains of potential spacetime that emerged as the microtubule network activity of some creature when that creature’s mind experienced that particular idea. (Exhale!) During the evolutionary process of your mind, or cognition, the V-Rep of measured property values for the idea will blend with the property values of your vibrational idea (vi) to create an experience. Once a V-Rep is acquired by the vi, the vi begins the cognitive process when it evolves those property values in the most likely grains to become your MTN in the following cycles of its evolution by means of CC&E.

for example, self-awareness¹²
The vibrational idea of your nascent microtubule network initially notices only the activity of the object to which it is obligated; your MTN. In each moment, through the evolutionary process of CC&E, your vibrational idea resonates in the background with a V-Rep of the present-tense idea for the noticing, the purely rational meaning of “is,” or “something happens” but with no understanding of its self as an entity; only that it exists as a present moment with no memory of a previous nor anticipation of a following moment. The present-tense noticing continues to occur in each moment, during which time the vibrational idea of your MTN, enriched with the values of the V-Rep, blends with those grains of potential spacetime which, by means of probability, are most likely to emerge as your microtubule network. During this blending of abstractions (C: convergence) the unmeasured properties of the grains are set to the measured values of your vibrational idea, and this causes the grains to collapse (C: condensation) down to those particles of matter and energy which then emerge (E:emergence) as as each moment of your microtubule network’s evolution. The particle property values from each cycle of CC&E are updated to your vibrational idea.

But then, because every idea is an awareness, the vibrational idea of your microtubule network soon begins to notice its SELF being updated by the evolution of its object. That is, it begins to notice-its-self-noticing. This is the telltale sign of self-awareness. More specifically, in addition to being stimulated by the phenomenal activity of the network, the vibrational idea of your MTN is stimulated by its very own abstract activity of noticing! The idea of the self-noticing resonates in the background with the simplest rational idea of self-awareness; the vibrational representation of the present-perfect tense; ‘an entity exists which has been and continues to be.’ Once again, this V-Rep (the set of MTN particle property values of some creature, any creature of the trillions of creatures, deep past or distant future, who have experienced some notion, any notion, for this idea), now a part of your MTN’s vibrational idea, has become just one of the many sets of evolutionary property values which are observed (C: convergence) upon those grains of potential spacetime that are most likely to evolve as your MTN in the next moment. Accordingly, those are the grains which dutifully collapse (C: condensation) down to your MTN (E:emergence) as its next static moment, or state of being.

The resultant network activity, which now includes the rational idea for self-awareness, works its way back through your brain and down into your body where it creates interoceptive motions,¹³ and these motions are sensed by your brain which brings about new microtubule activity. The new activity is noticed, that is, updated to your vibrational idea which resonates (C: convergence) this time with the V-Rep of an irrational meaning for the bodily motions; “I am!” or, “I have been and continue to be!” This second, irrational meaning is the emotion and it provides significance for the previous, rational idea of self-awareness. At that moment, the vibrational idea of your microtubule network becomes (C: abstract condensation) your earliest mind (E: abstract emergence),¹³ ¹⁴ an “existential core” consisting primarily of various forms of the verb “to be” from which your more familiar mind will now develop . . . and all of this has happened by means of the recursive evolutionary process of CC&E.

In the following moments the new mind—formerly the vi — goes on to evolve the MTN in the usual manner which collapses to discrete form and emerges here in spacetime. In this way, the microtubule network is the NCC, or neural correlate of consciousness.

synchronization and resonance
Vibrational representations for ideas like the present-perfect tense (impersonal-eternal), “I am” (impersonal-human), yourself (personal), five things (impersonal-eternal), the number 5 (impersonal-human), a Chopin mazurka (impersonal-human), a bug bite (impersonal-human), or the half-integer spin of a fermion (impersonal-human) come in the form of measured property values of MTN activity. V-Reps exist every where and every when throughout the abstract background. Because they are abstractions, the vibrational idea of your MTN will blend, or “resonate” with the MTN pattern sequence values of any V-Rep which is similar enough to that of your vibrational idea, much in the way that clock pendulums which are out of phase will pull together and synchronize their swing in unison if placed upon the same shelf. The vibrational idea’s successful acquisition of a V-Rep through the blending of these abstractions will then become expressed in successive moments of your MTN, and the activity of successive moments will bring about an experience through the similar acquisition of an irrational meaning as previously described. In this way, the vibrational representation of a human idea comes in the same MTN configuration for all humans, and your mind acquires ideas through a “best resonance” between its current ideas and a new ideas which are vibrationally represented by the same or very similar MTN property values. That is, “learning” is a ‘best-resonance of ideas’ based upon your experience.¹⁵

The resonance between vi’s and V-Reps depends, of course, upon the fact that the structure of the MTN and its activities are generally the same within a species of brained creatures such that when I say “bug bite,” unless you are a entomologist your MTN will most likely configure itself like mine and every other human since the dawn of bug bites. As a result, the vi of your MTN’s property values will resonate very well with the aural stimulation, “bug bite,” and go on to become an experience for you through the process of CC&E as described earlier. For this reason, while the MTNs of early and modern humans might be similar enough to understand each other’s thoughts, a human’s musings in the form of human MTN patterns will resonate with few, if any, of a bat’s musings whose MTN and resultant V-Reps are, of course, in the form of a bat’s, such that you’ll never know what it’s like . . . to be a bat.¹⁶

availability
Because they are abstractions, every impersonal idea that ever was or ever will be is always available throughout the abstract background of quantized space in the form of a vibrational representation with which you are able to resonate. This giant compendium of V-Reps got into the background because each cognitive process brought about interoceptive mind-body interactions which modified our microtubule network. These modifications were updated to the vibrational idea of ourselves in the background where they progressed on to become complete ideas. The ideas were communicated to others where they, likewise, became completed thoughts which were updated to the background edifice where they can now blend, or resonate with other vibrational idea’s of similar configuration.

for example . . .
Lucy Australopithecus may have regarded fire as a comforting warmth for the very first time, as opposed to a fearful danger, when she was finally able to resonate with some simplified idea of children singing ‘round a campfire three million years later. The pleasant concept of fire was always available to her thanks to the timeless, placeless nature of abstraction as the background of a quantized space. Likewise, the riddle of dark matter will be solved in the near future when someone’s creative notion of it is able to resonate well enough with a satisfying description of dark matter; an idea with which our present notions are unable to resonate but one which has always been there and available for the taking . . . or, I should say, for the resonating!

psychological time
We’ve considered the evolution of the mind in conjunction with the essential participation of its physical body. Compared to the simpler, single-step evolution of present-tense objects through CC&E, the mind’s two-step evolution through the same process brings about the abstraction of its present-perfect identity, continuity and memory.

That is, while the evolutionary process of CC&E is the temporal motion of discrete objects of the present-tense (proto-awareness), the same process is the temporal motion of abstract objects of the present-perfect tense (self-awareness), or psychological time.

Notes:

For experimental protocols pertaining to this model of time and phenomenal consciousness, please see doi 10.5281/zenodo.20328717 and doi 10.5281/zenodo.20127243

1. (Note temporarily removed).
2. Because space is quantized into grains and particles, they have no location within space since they are the only space there is. Likewise, there’s no “location” within the background, a timeless, spaceless domain of abstraction between grains. Rather, while we will use the word “location” for convenience, there is only the “relative position” of grains and parties to each other. Similarly, there is no “motion through space” or “speed through space” since particles and grains move neither through each other nor the abstract background. And so, while we will use these expressions for convenience, there is only frequency of emergence (“motion”) and rate of frequency of emergence (“speed”).
3. Which came first? The chicken or the egg? The problem of a circular causation here between the initial establishment of both the grain and the vibrational idea would be avoided if the discrete spacetime of particles would be an emergent manifestation of the more primary background of awareness. In this way, the primacy of a universal awareness — the abstract background — would somehow puff out grains of unmeasured particle property value to “get things going.” Through the initial observation of measured values upon a few grains on the part of awareness, the grains would collapse to discrete particles which would then be noticed by and updated to a new evolutionary function of the background — the vibrational ideas — as the ongoing agents in the evolutionary process of CC&E.
4. “. . . evolves its particle as a static moment . . .” rather than in a static moment. This distinction will become important later.
5. While the Schrödinger equation can describe the evolutionary process of a particle, it does not explain “the measurement problem,” or what causes a grain to collapse to the discrete form of a particle. Perhaps the disappointingly obvious explanation is that the duration of a particle’s emergence, or state of being is determined by the time required by its evolutionary process of CC&E, and that the condensation, or collapse of the particle occurs only when the abstract, unmeasured properties of the grain have attained measured values through that process.
6. That is some fraction of a “second” only in relation to the static moments of some time keeping device and not according to some external temporal mechanism.
7. This is the incomprehensibly short amount of time it takes for light, the fastest thing (3 x 10⁸mtr/sec, aka “c”), to traverse the smallest thing, a spacial distance of just a trillion-trillion-trillionths of a meter (1.6 x 10⁻³⁵/mtr, aka the Planck length.
8. BTW, this explains the observation of entangled particles . . . and quite possible the coherent, instantaneous motions (evolution) of any other grouped or nested objects with a single vibrational idea (e.g., an atom, exaltation of larks, or colony of ants): As a pair, entangled particles are evolved by a single vi such that the observed spin of one particle instantly evolves the other — no matter the spacial separation — since the vi is an abstraction which is in force throughout the background. IOW, no information is moving through space, so there is no violation of special relativity.
9. Size is also affected as per special relativity.
10. Conversely, if an object’s motion through space is decreased, its motion through time, the evolutionary action of CC&E, must increase to maintain the overall value of c.
11. Further, is it likely that nothing emerges discretely here in spacetime until its presence is either required or observed? If so, is it that the vi of all objects simply continue to evolve abstractly until their discrete emergences?
12. (Note temporarily removed.)
13. This may explain the temporal gap between the ‘readiness potential’ and ‘decision to act’ in Benjamin Libet’s experiment (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroscience_of_free_will). The two-step thought process in our description of consciousness would account for the gap. The first, rational meaning of a stimulation brings about bodily motions before the second step, the acquisition of irrational meaning, or emotion which completes the experience. The intervening bodily (interoceptive) motions require the evolutionary processing time of a physical object which accounts for Libet’s gap of a few milliseconds. Contrary to the conclusion of pre-determinism by some, thought seems to originate freely through the two-step process of moving time and the blending of random ideas of most likely resonance. See synchronization and resonance.
14. In this way, it turns out that the microtubule network is the NCC, or neural correlate of consciousness.
15. While “experience” is the number of ideas which your mind has acquired, “wisdom” might be a measure of their increasing complexity and significance.
16. Thomas Nagel, philosopher, “What Is It Like to Be a Bat?”, The Philosophical Review, October 1974.

If space were quantized into tiny grains, could gravity emerge from the shape of those grains and their interaction with the non-spacial background between them?

Part One . . . the set-up

Consider for just the next few minutes that space comes in tiny grains which make up the volume of our universe. The grains consist of particle properties. While each grain¹ has “real,” or measured volume, its remaining properties (charge, spin, mass, magnetism, etc) are completely unmeasured. Without measured value, these properties can only exist as ideas² and, if space is in fact quantized in this manner, it could explain why the grains would be so hard to find; without measured properties, there’s nothing to measure . . . nothing to detect.

Along with grains, space includes relatively few particles of matter and energy. These are the remnants of collapsed grains whose unmeasured properties have received measured value and make up every thing we know.

But between the grains is the important part, for here lies the required background in which they reside.³ It is, of course, an immaterial background which can be neither spacial nor temporal, for if it were either of these things, it would already exist in grains of space. We can know that our immaterial background is actually “there,” or real because—whether it be grains of rice or grains of quantized space—grains of anything require an enveloping field made of something which is not the thing it hosts. In short, the background of a quantized space must truly exist, and it must exist non-spacially; an immaterial reality.

And here’s the thing, ideas are immaterial and, as you would know more than anyone, they are also quite real. So for just the next few minutes, consider our immaterial background to be a suitable “place,” as it were, for ideas. Because every idea is an awareness (think about it!), we can consider our background of ideas to possess a property of awareness; an abstract background.

Each of the grains which make up our quantized space is, of course, contained by a perimeter, or border which limits its volume. Like a property line between neighbors, the grain’s border forms an elision with the borders of its neighbors, and it is the network of these borders extend throughout the universe to form the abstract background.⁴ In this way, the entirety of spacetime is something like a froth of soap bubbles. In our sudsy metaphor, the bubbles represent the discrete volumes of the grains while the bubbly network of impossibly thin walls represent the abstract background which contain their unmeasured properties.

All particles undergo activity, or changes of state in each moment. For this reason, the activity of every particle, or coherent thing made of particles,⁵ would necessarily generate an inevitable idea of that thing in the background because, again, the object is evolving within an abstract background of awareness. The idea of the object, whether it be a particle, a protein, a brain, a body, an exaltation of larks, or the Milky Way galaxy is a nested description of the coherent object’s constituents in terms of its measured property values; a “vibrational idea,” if you will, of the object’s activity, or changing property values from moment to moment.⁶ Likewise, the vibrational idea of the object’s measured property values is updated by the object’s activity, or “vibration” which the vibrational idea notices in each evolutionary moment.

For example, the vibrational idea of an electron contains all of the information regarding the properties of the electron such as charge, spin, mass, and magnetism with their specific measured values, and the blending of this idea, this abstraction, with the grain’s abstract properties will set the unmeasured property values of the grain to the discrete, measured values of the electron’s idea, at which point the grain can no longer maintain its abstract nature and collapses down to that particular electron. The vibrational idea becomes updated as it notices the changed values of its object.

Part Two . . . gravity

In spite of all this, the pertinent issue regarding gravity is simply that the grains are always larger than the particles to which they collapse in somewhat the way that a volume of water vapor condenses down to a smaller droplet.⁷ This is important because it means that a collapsed grain leaves an inevitable void in its place around the smaller, newly emerged particle. The void is, of course, a perfect vacuum within the non-spacial background which tugs, as only it can, upon the surrounding grains, thereby elongating these grains inward toward the particle as a kind of “conditioned space.” As the voided area becomes filled with elongated grains, outlying grains are pulled in, becoming less elongated with distance from the emergent particle.⁸ On a larger scale, all discrete objects are surrounded by regions of conditioned space whose grains have become elongated in this manner simply because all material objects have been collapsed down from grains of potential spacetime.

An elongation, or change in the grain’s shape from one moment to the next is a real, discrete motion in the direction in a particular direction, and the inevitable idea of this motion becomes yet another of the grain’s abstract properties. In the simplest circumstance, a particle which has been collapsed down from an elongated grain will emerge with the grain’s measured property of motion and evolve (move), as only it can, in the direction of the elongation toward the previously emerged particle! That is, the conditioning of quantized space through the elongation of its grains would describe the thing we call gravity.⁹ For example, the evolution of photons passing near a star will be affected as they collapse grains which have been elongated to various degrees such that the pathway of light will actually bend inward toward the star. Likewise, the pathway of a material object passing through a region of conditioned space will be similarly influenced by the elongation of the grains it collapses.

This particular idea of a quantized space, called Inter-Spacial Abstraction (ISA), may offer explanations for other phenomena, too.¹⁰

Notes

1. The smallest grain of potential space-time could measure approximately 10⁻¹⁵ /meter, just one quadrillionth of a meter. By comparison, the smallest theoretical unit of space is only 10⁻³⁵/meter, the “Planck” length!
2. If I say, “electric charge,” you think of a particular property of particles perfectly well even without the stated orientation of positive, negative, or neutral charge. This is possible because the property of charge exists both discretely and as as an idea.
3. It is likely that grains emerge from the background. While their continual emergence may explain dark energy, their variable size may help to explain dark matter. (Pls. see the Medium article “Dark Matter: a shy unicorn?”)
4. For the sake of clarity, the illustrations show considerable separation between the grains in order to accommodate call-outs and arrow indicators. In actuality, of course, the abstract background formed by the elision of borders completely immaterial and has no spatial thickness. Along with unmeasured properties, the background contains all vibrational, personal, and philosophical ideas including the laws of nature. (Pls. see the Medium article “Consciousness and Quantized Space” or the book, Between Space, 2nd ed., for a fuller description of the abstract background, its mechanics, and the unique form of its abstractions.)
5. For our purposes, coherent objects are those with a singular function like an atom, a molecule, or a protein; not your bicycle, a diamond ring, or an ice cream cone. The removal of particles from a coherent object would alter or damage its singular function.
6. The tiniest moment is the “Planck time” of about 10⁻⁴⁴/seconds; a trillion-trillion-trillion-billionths of a second. If space is quantized into tiny grains, then time must be quantized into tiny moments simply because space and time are always together, “spacetime.” That is, a quantized space, its constituents and its objects, must evolve from one quantized moment to another (though, moments are temporally unrelational and their durations are variable — See new article, Time).
7. The collapse, therefore, is really more of a condensation and, in the same way that water cannot maintain its gaseous phase when condensed down to the liquid phase of a droplet, a grain cannot maintain the unmeasured properties of its abstract nature when condensed down to the measured properties of the discrete particle. It’s probably more complex than described here where, for the sake of simplicity, a single particle is shown to have collapsed down from a single grain. In fact, the smallest particle (about 10⁻¹⁶/mtr.) is so much larger than a Planck-sized grain of 10⁻³⁵/mtr. that it could be that trillions of grains forming a particle-sized region of space collapse down to the components of a single particle.
8. In accordance with established laws of gravity, elongation should decrease inversely with the square of distance from an object.
9. In this way, the elongated grain becomes a kind of “graviton,” with the motion of elongation as emergent property of a conditioned space.
10. 1. The concept of a particle’s evolution by means of its vibrational idea (Vi) would explain entanglement where the singular object of a particle pair, consisting of two spatially separated particles, is evolved simultaneously by the Vi (located “everywhere” throughout the abstract background), even when just one of the pair was observed. 2. Likewise, according to ISA, “superposition” is simply the ubiquity of ideas throughout an abstract background of spacetime. 3. A stifled particle near the center of a black hole can no longer undergo changes of state, even zero point energy. Consequently, it goes out of discrete existence. Its Vi, however, remains and evolves it at some other needed location in spacetime. (For more on this, see the articles and book cited above.)

Has anyone explored whether a cat, a nematode—or a QM-unaware human for that matter—could bring about (“observe”) the wave or particle result of a double slit experiment?

But going further, I suspect that consciousness is actually an abstract effect . . . and that true abstraction cannot emerge from a physical thing. If so, is the “hard problem” actually an impossible problem? TMI for here but, if interested, you can peruse an unfortunately dense (but short!) summary of this idea under my name here in Medium—the one about consciousness.

Gary Blaise

9 min read

·

May 20, 2021

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Sculpture by Alexander Girard

For just the next few minutes, think of consciousness as an immaterial reality, an abstraction. This idea relies upon a couple of preliminary notions. One is that space is quantized, or comes in tiny grains set within a background that is neither spacial nor temporal.¹ This same immaterial quality belongs to all truly abstract objects, or ideas, including mathematics, particle properties, the laws of nature, and possibly consciousness. The other notion is that ideas are real, abstract objects and do not exist here in spacetime. Because we don’t find abstract objects here in space, could abstraction itself provide the non-spacial background of a quantized space in which the abstraction of our own consciousness resides? If so, what is the mechanism by which the activity our brain here in space corresponds to the activity of our mind in the background?

it begins with space . . .

Imagine that our universe is made up of tiny grains which consist of particle properties. While each grain² has a “real,” or measured volume, its remaining properties (charge, spin, mass, magnetism, etc) are completely unmeasured. Without measured value, these properties can only exist as ideas³ and if space is, in fact, quantized in this manner, it might explain why the grains are so hard to detect; without measured properties there’s nothing to measure . . . nothing to detect.

Along with a great multitude of grains, space includes a few discrete particles of matter and energy. These are the remnants of collapsed grains whose unmeasured properties have received measured value and make up every thing we know.

But between the grains is the important part, for here lies the background in which they reside. It is, of course, an immaterial background which can be neither spacial nor temporal, for if it were either of these things, it would already exist in grains of space.⁴ We can know that our immaterial background exists; that it is real. Whether it be grains of rice or grains of a quantized space, grains of anything require an enveloping field of something, a something which is not “made of” the thing it hosts. Besides, this immaterial field has a real function. It keeps space quantized by keeping the grains separated from each other. Additionally, you can focus your attention upon it; you know what it is, why it is, and “where” it is. That is, the background of a quantized space must truly exist, and it can only exist as an immaterial reality.

Ideas are immaterial too. And, as you know better than anyone, your ideas are quite real. Immaterial realities. And here’s the thing: the only “things” which are both immaterial and real are abstractions, ideas, and every idea . . . is an awareness. (Think about it. Every idea is an awareness of something.) So for just the next few minutes, consider the immaterial background of a quantized space, an abstraction, to be a suitable “place,” as it were, for ideas. Further, because every idea is an awareness, we can consider our immaterial background of ideas to be an abstract background of awareness.

Like the abstraction of the property line between you and your neighbors, the background forms the property line between each grain; an abstract border that limits the extent to which the grain’s particle properties are in force. Each border forms an elision with those of its neighbors, and these extend throughout the universe as the abstract background⁵ much like the elision of property lines between neighbors extend throughout a city limiting the forceful effect of individual ownership. In this way, the entirety of spacetime is something like a froth of soap bubbles. In our sudsy metaphor, the air pockets represent the discrete volumes of the grains while the bubbly network of impossibly thin walls represent their borders; an abstract background which contains the grains’ unmeasured particle properties.

All particles undergo activity, or changes of state in each moment. For this reason, the activity of every particle, or coherent thing made of particles,⁶necessarily generates an inevitable idea of that thing in the background simply because the object is evolving within an abstract background of awareness. The idea of the object, whether it be a particle, a protein, a brain, a body, an exaltation of larks, bait ball of sardines, or the Milky Way galaxy is a layered, or “nested” description of the coherent object’s constituents in terms of their measured property values; a vibrational idea,⁷ if you will, of the object’s activity, or changing property values from moment to moment. Likewise, the vibrational idea (vi) of the object’s property values is updated by the object’s activity, or “vibration,” of which the vibrational idea is aware, or “notices” in each evolutionary moment.⁸

particle evolution . . .

The vibrational idea of an electron, for example, contains all of the information regarding the properties of the electron such as charge, spin, mass, and magnetism with their specific measured values,⁹ and the blending of this idea, this abstraction, with the grain’s abstract properties will set the unmeasured property values of the grain to the discrete, measured values of the electron’s idea, at which point the grain can no longer maintain its abstract nature and collapses down to that particular electron. That is, the viof the particle in the abstract background emerges here in spacetime as a material object.

As a coherent object made of particles, your brain evolves in the same manner and its vibrational idea is updated in each moment by the activity of its material object . . . your brain.

Illustration 1

Caption 1
Abstraction is not a space-time property — it cannot exist in space. For every object in space, a vibrational idea(vi) of that object exists between grains of space. An object evolves in space when its vibrational idea blends with the most likely grains, setting the grains’ abstract values to the discrete values of the vi whereupon the grain can no longer maintain its abstract nature and collapses to that particle. If there’s a “miracle” here, it’s the compound nature of the grains; a cosmic emulsion of unmeasured properties (abstract) with measured volume (discrete).

the awareness of brained creatures . . .

The vibrational idea of every object — as well as the philosophical idea of every thought — that ever existed, or ever will exist, always exists in the abstract background. This is because an idea of any sort is an abstraction; a reality of an immaterial nature which can only exist within an abstract field outside of space or time. A background-dependent quantized space provides the perfect framework for this requirement with the non-spacial field of its abstract background. The immaterial property of the background hosts all ideas and enables your mind, which begins as the vibrational idea of your brain,¹⁰ to acquire ideas, or meanings whose origin may be well in your past . . . or in your distant future.

Your mind comes about as an idea in the background. You mind grows, or acquires further ideas by blending with those with which it best fits, or “resonates” based upon its experience.¹¹ In the simplest case, your brain is initially stimulated by some physical event which brings about a change in brain activity. The activity updates your brain’s vibrational idea which blends with a purely rational idea, or meaning for the stimulation in the abstract background. The enriched vi then blends with the most likely grains to evolve as your brain. Those grains collapse to the particles of your brain which emerges in each moment with an activity reflecting the newly acquired idea. The activity works its way back into your body where it brings about interoceptive motions, or physical feelings. These motions, however subtle, further evolve your brain’s activity which, in turn, further updates its vibrational idea. The vi then blends with an irrational idea, or meaning in the background for the interoceptive motions. Importantly, this secondary meaning is the emotion which lends significance to the earlier, rational idea. The combination of rational idea with an emotion (irrational idea) always yields a complete thought, an experience. The first of these is the creation of your mind as an abstract entity in the present-perfect tense.

what’s doing the blending? . . .

The vi of your brain is, more specifically, the vibrational idea of your microtubule network, or MTN.¹⁰ It’s the smallest structure capable of bringing about an avalanche of brain activity yet it’s the largest structure whose vibrational idea of its many measured property values will easily blend with other ideas or grains of potential spacetime. Because the vi of the microtubule network is continually updated by the network’s activity, the vi exists in the form of the network’s measured property values; the many sequential sets of values which represent the network’s protein modifications and conformations (“brain activity”) which occur during any particular thought. Likewise, when the MTN is stimulated by a phenomenon of either a physical or mental nature, this enriched vibrational idea of the MTN’s activity blends with meanings for the phenomenon in the background, meanings which already exist in the form of the MTN activity patterns¹² of those creatures who firstly thought them. In this way, cognition and learning is an abstract process of “best resonance” between your MTN property values and those meanings, or ideas of similar measurement.

Illustration 2

Caption 2
The interaction of an abstract mind with a physical brain is integral to your mental life. The vibrational idea of the brain (MTN) and its object (the MTN) are shown above in the onset of self-awareness. Every idea is an awareness. Previously, the vibrational idea of your MTN was an awareness only of the present tense, “is” (each moment with no memory of a previous moment). It achieved the present-perfect tense, “I am” (I have been and continue to be), through the inevitable awareness of its own update process. This elevated your vibrational idea to the status of a mind; the abstract, self-aware entity known as you. A newly emergent mind continues its initial development in this manner by noticing its own evolutionary process as it acquires additional tenses of the verb “to be.”

your mind . . .

Self-awareness, for example, was brought about through this evolutionary process when the vibrational idea of your MTN noticed-its-SELF-noticing the world around you as it was updated by your brain’s activity. Your updated viblended with some previously established rational idea of self-awareness and this meaning was expressed in the evolution of your brain activity which worked its way back into your body, bringing about interoceptive motions, or physical feelings. These motions altered the activity of your MTN which further updated its vibrational idea. The enriched vi then blended with an irrational idea, the emotional meaning of “I am.” The blending of the rational meaning with an emotion was your first thought and, with that thought, the vibrational idea of your MTN became your mind.

Your mind functions by means of resonant ideas¹³ and interoceptive feelings, none of which would be possible without a background-dependent quantized space. For a more detailed version of this article, please see https://garyblaise.medium.com/its-about-time-and-its-arrow-ae30e003e10a , or the book (note 5, below).

testability

Please contact the author regarding eventual possibilities for experimentation; the required falsifiability for concepts and postulates made in this piece.

Notes

Title page image: Sculpture by Alexander Girard

1. This is a background-dependent quantized space, as opposed to the background-independent sort in which the quantized bits make up the entirety of nature. (For more, please see the book, note 5, below.)
2. The smallest grain of potential space-time could measure approximately 10⁻¹⁵/meter, just one quadrillionth of a meter. By comparison, the smallest spacial measurement is only 10⁻³⁵/meter, the “Planck” length.
3. If I say, “electric charge,” even without a stated disposition of positive, negative, or neutral charge, you think of the particle property of charge perfectly well. This is possible, of course, because the property of charge exists as that peculiar immaterial reality known to creatures like you as an “idea.”
4. So that special relativity will not be violated, space and time must always be together; spacetime.
5. For the sake of clarity, some of the illustrations show considerable separation between the grains in order to accommodate call outs and arrow indicators. In actuality, of course, the abstract background, like a property line, is formed by the elision of perimeters and has no spacial thickness. Along with unmeasured properties, the background contains all vibrational and philosophical ideas including the laws of nature.
   (Please see the upcoming edition of Between Space (2026) for a fuller description of the abstract background, its workings, and the form of ideas.)
6. For our purposes, coherent objects are those with a singular function like an atom, a molecule, or a protein, and not your bicycle, a diamond ring, or an ice cream cone. The removal of particles from a coherent object would alter or damage its singular function.
7. The bold type distinguishes the vibrational idea (vi) of an object from philosophical ideas like thoughts and memories. Vibrational ideas of coherent objects are “nested” such that a particle’s vi of measured property values such as charge, mass, and spin are regulated by the components of the atom’s vi, regulated by the molecule’s, by the protein’s, the organelle’s, the cell’s, etc. According to this concept, an entangled particle pair is a single coherent object governed by means of a singular vibrational idea, an abstraction of the background, such that simultaneous collapse across vast space-time separations are unimportant and special relativity is never violated.
8. The tiniest moment is the “Planck time” of about 10⁻⁴⁴/seconds; a trillion-trillion-trillion-billionths of a second. If space is quantized into tiny grains, then time must be quantized into tiny moments simply because space and time are always together, “spacetime.” That is, a quantized space, its constituents and its objects, must evolve as each static moment, or state of bneing. Please see A New Model of Time, https://medium.com/@garyblaise/its-about-time-and-its-arrow-ae30e003e10a.
9. Electrons, photons, quarks, and other particles are identified by their measurable properties which undergo states of change, or static moments as they evolve, or exist “through time.” See article, ibid.
10. The vibrational idea of your brain is, more accurately, a vi of your brain’s microtubule network (MTN), a wispy, filamentary structure (aka; cytoskeleton) within each neuron that reaches out (axons and dendrites) to connect with other neurons (via synapses), thereby forming a network. The brain’s function as manager of your body means that the vibrational idea of your MTN is, essentially, a nested vi of your entire physical body.
11. Experience is the number of ideas which your mind has acquired, while wisdom might be a measure of their increasing complexity and significance.
12. Because meanings exist in the form of measured property values of MTN activity, the MTN would be the neural correlate of consciousness (NCC).
13. This is, essentially, the observer effect and it’s how objects, including your brain, evolve in each moment. According to this idea, the effect’s double-slit experiment demonstrates a blending of abstractions: your mind’s awareness and expectation of the particle’s location updates the probability within the particle’s vi with which it blends, or “converges.” The enriched vibrational idea then blends with the most likely grain, setting the grain’s unmeasured values to the measured values of the vi resulting in the grain’s collapse, that is, the vi’s space-time emergence as a discrete particle.

As we search for a dark matter to explain gravitational lensing and the rotation curve of spiral galaxies, here’s an idea involving the simplicity of space itself.

Part One . . . the set-up

Consider for just the next few minutes that space comes in tiny grains which make up the volume of our universe. The grains consist of particle properties, though, while each grain¹ has a “real,” or measured volume, its remaining properties (charge, spin, mass, magnetism, etc) are completely unmeasured. Without measured value, these properties can only exist as ideas² and, if space is in fact quantized in this manner, it might explain why the grains would be so hard to find; without measured properties, there’s nothing to measure . . . nothing to detect.

Along with the grains, space includes a few discrete particles of matter and energy. These are the remnants of collapsed grains whose unmeasured properties have received measured value and make up every thing we know.

But between the grains is the important part, for here lies a background from which they have emerged.³ It is, of course, an immaterial background which can be neither spacial nor temporal, for if it were either of these things, it would be both of these things and already exist in grains of space. We can know that our immaterial background is actually there, or “real” because — whether it be grains of rice or grains of quantized space — grains of anything require an enveloping field made of something which is not the thing it hosts. In short, the background of a quantized space must truly exist, and it must exist non-spatially; an immaterial reality.

And here’s the thing, ideas are immaterial as well. And, as you would know more than anyone, they are also quite real. So for just the next few minutes, consider our immaterial background to be a suitable “place,” as it were, for ideas. Because an idea, any idea, is always an awareness of something, we can consider our background of ideas to, itself, possess a property of awareness; an abstract background. As you digest this notion, imagine how a material object placed within an abstract background would necessarily generate an idea of its presence; that its presence would be noticed.

Each of the grains which make up our quantized space is, of course, contained by a perimeter, or border which limits its volume. Like a property line between neighbors, the grain’s border forms an elision with the borders of its neighbors, and it is the network of these borders which, taken together, form the abstract background.⁴ In this way, the entirety of space-time is something like a froth of soap bubbles. In our sudsy metaphor, the bubbles represent the discrete volumes of the grains while the bubbly network of impossibly thin walls represent the abstract background which contain their unmeasured properties.

All particles undergo activity, or changes of state in each moment. For this reason, the activity of every particle, or coherent thing made of particles,⁵ would necessarily generate an inevitable idea of that thing in the background because, again, the object is evolving within a background which is abstract. The idea of the object, whether it be a particle, a protein, a brain, a body, an exaltation of larks, or the Milky Way galaxy is a nested description of the coherent object’s constituents in terms of its measured property values; a vibrational idea, if you will, of the object’s activity, or changing property values from moment to moment.⁶ Likewise, the vibrational idea of the object’s property values is updated by the object’s activity, or “vibration” of which the vibrational idea is aware, or “notices,” as it were, in each evolutionary moment.

For example, the vibrational idea of an electron contains all of the information regarding the properties of the electron such as charge, spin, mass, and magnetism with their specific measured values, and the blending of this idea, this abstraction, with the grain’s abstract properties will set the unmeasured property values of the grain to the discrete, measured values of the electron’s idea, at which point the grain can no longer maintain its abstract nature and collapses down to that particular electron. The vibrational idea becomes updated as it notices the changed values of its object.

In spite of all this, the thing which is relevant to the issue of dark matter is simply that the grains are always larger than the particles to which they collapse in somewhat the way that a volume of water vapor condenses down to a droplet.⁷ This is important because it means that a collapsed grain leaves an inevitable void in its place around the smaller, newly-emerged particle (see diagram, above). The void is, of course, a perfect vacuum in the non-spacial background and it tugs, as only it can, upon surrounding grains, thereby elongating those grains inward toward the newly-emerged particle as a kind of “conditioned space.” As the voided area becomes filled with elongated grains, outlying grains are pulled in, becoming less elongated with distance from the emergent particle.⁸ On a larger scale, all objects are surrounded by regions of conditioned space whose grains have been elongated in this way simply because all objects have been collapsed down from grains of potential space-time.

An elongated change in the grain’s volumetric shape from one moment to the next is a real, discrete motion in the direction of the elongation, and the inevitable idea which is created by that motion becomes yet another of the grain’s abstract properties. In the simplest circumstance, a particle which has been collapsed down from an elongated grain will, of course, express the grain’s measured property of this motion and move (evolve) in the direction of the elongation toward the previously-emerged particle! That is, the conditioning of quantized space through the elongation of its grains would describe the thing we call gravity.⁹ For example, the evolution of photons passing near a star will be affected as they collapse grains which have been elongated to various degrees such that the pathway of light will actually bend inward toward the star. Likewise, the pathways of objects passing through a region of conditioned space will be influenced to various degrees by the elongation of the grains they collapse.

Part Two . . . “dark matter”

Elongated grains, with their inherent property of motion, exist throughout the universe — it’s how things move around — and they exist in numbers which are proportional to the density of surrounding objects. Simply put, fewer grains exist where there are fewer objects. Furthermore, not only are grains fewer in regions of object sparsity, they are also (relatively¹⁰) larger. That is, and pertinent to the mystery of dark matter, an excess of grains never occurs where there will be nothing to collapse, and they are larger in regions of object sparsity simply because there is no efficient reason for them to be so numerous and small. In other words, space comes in just enough grains to accommodate the evolution of its discrete objects and, in this way, there are always enough grains (“empty” space) between objects to keep things properly separated, whether those objects be the particles of an atom, the molecules of a compound, or the galaxies of a cluster.

According to this idea, the cosmic web is not due to the gravitation of some kind of dark matter. Rather, it’s because the larger grains of a region displace the smaller ones out to the regional edges. The perimeters of neighboring regions form a domain of smaller grains which evolve as the objects of the web structure we observe. In this way, it is not the gravity of a “dark matter” which pulls things together into this web-like structure, it is the inevitable pushing apart, or displacement of smaller grains by larger grains out to their regional edges where the smaller grains evolve as particles of matter.

The effect of progressively larger grains would be plainly evident in the rotation speed of spiral galaxies. While an electron, for example, may collapse grains at approximately the same rate throughout a galaxy, those grains in the relatively sparse outer-arm regions will appear to move at a much greater or even super-luminal speed simply because the grains being collapsed are relatively so much larger¹⁰ out there, thousands of light years away from the inner regions of greater density. Likewise, large objects will appear to move faster in the sparse outer-arm regions since the grains being collapsed are larger.

Imagine, if you could, a magnifying glass through which you can observe a single particle evolving through a line of grains set in a row on the table right in front of you. Now, as you move the magnifier back, you will observe the grains to become larger . . . and larger. As you do this, the particle, likewise, appears to evolve from one grain to the next faster . . . and faster! Though imperfect, the example gives you a feeling for what is happening.

Alternatively, the notion of a “spacial domain” might explain the rotation curve problem. The domain is a vast region of space with its own state of fundamental motion compared to the universe around it. The great disc of space, for example, which is occupied by our spiral galaxy, the Milky Way, could be thought of as a spacial domain in that the fundamental motion of its space is set apart from the space around it in a wheel-like rotation, somewhat reminiscent of how objects caught in the whirlwind of a tornado can seem stationary in relation to the relative motion of objects outside it. Perhaps the genesis of spacial domains, and a whirling one like ours in particular, is found in the quantum fluctuations of an early universe, the eddies of which would have grown during the earliest micro-moments of inflation to the size they are today. Matter in motion, evolving in grains within the space of such a fluctuation, would grow with inflation and continue to move through its already-rotating space. From the perspective of another galaxy far, far away, stars near the edge of a rotating domain would appear to move faster than they should. The motion of stars near the edge of our own galaxy, however, does not appear to be excessive since we are all moving together within in same domain of space, a domain whose fundamental motion seems perfectly stationary to us.

The effects of gravitational lensing (as seen in the title photo with its giant arcs and distorted galaxies), located so far away from the luminous material of a galactic cluster, would also be caused by the greatly increased size of grains in the cluster’s sparse outer regions. A distant, hidden galaxy whose light flows around a cluster’s periphery of grains which have become relatively larger will, of course, appear to lie much farther away from the mass of the cluster than if the light had passed through a similar region of smaller grains. That is, the image of the hidden galaxy will appear to be displaced farther outwards from the cluster, giving the impression that the cluster is in possession of more gravity than its luminous material would suggest.¹¹

NOTES

1. The smallest grain of potential space-time could measure approximately 10⁻¹⁵ /meter, just one quadrillionth of a meter. By comparison, the smallest theoretical unit of space is only 10⁻³⁵/meter, the “Planck” length!
2. If I say, “electric charge,” you think of a particular property of particles perfectly well even without a stated orientation of positive, negative, or neutral. This is possible because the property of charge also exists as . . . an idea.
3. The continual emergence of grains from the background may help to explain dark energy. (Pls. see the Medium article “Dark Matter: a shy unicorn?” for how grain size may affect dark matter.)
4. For the sake of clarity, the illustrations show considerable separation between the grains in order to accommodate call outs and arrow indicators. In actuality, of course, the abstract background formed by the elision of borders has no spacial thickness. Along with unmeasured properties, the background contains all vibrational and philosophical ideas including the laws of nature. (Pls. see the Medium article “Consciousness and Quantized Space” or the book, Between Space, for a fuller description of the abstract background, its mechanics, and the unique form of its ideas.)
5. For our purposes, coherent objects are those with a singular function like an atom, a molecule, or a protein; not your bicycle, a diamond ring, or an ice cream cone. The removal of particles from a coherent object would alter or damage its singular function.
6. The tiniest moment is the “Planck time” of about 10⁻⁴⁴/seconds; a trillion-trillion-trillion-billionths of a second. If space is quantized into tiny grains, then time must be quantized into tiny moments simply because space and time are always together, “space-time.” That is, a quantized space, its constituents and its objects, must evolve from one quantized moment to the next.
7. The “collapse,” therefore, is really more of a condensation and, in the same way that water cannot maintain its gaseous phase when condensed down to the liquid of a droplet, a grain cannot maintain its abstract (unmeasured property) nature when condensed down to the discrete (measured property) form of a particle. It’s probably more complex than described here where, for the sake of simplicity, a single particle is shown to have collapsed down from single grain. In fact, the smallest particle (~10⁻¹⁴/meter) is so much larger than a Planck-sized grain of 10⁻³⁵/meter, that there could be trillions of grains forming a particle-sized region of space which collapse down to the sub-components of a single particle.
8. In accordance with the law of gravity, elongation decreases inversely with the square of distance from an object.
9. In this way, grains are a kind of graviton since gravity and motion are the emergent properties of a conditioned space. For more on this, please see my article, gravity, an idea of motion, here in Medium.
10. While the size of grains may appear to vary greatly across the universe, all grains measure out to be the same size simply because a grain is always the smallest unit of potential space (possibly 10⁻¹⁴/meter). On the other hand, the size of particles (approximately equal-to-less-than 10⁻¹⁶/meter) and objects collapsed down from them, do not change and you might therefore suspect that particles would begin to run into each other as the grains they must collapse become larger . . . and especially as these grains become larger than the required space between evolving objects such as between the particles of an atom. But collapsed grains are constantly being replaced by new grains of potential space-time — especially the relatively large ones found in the vast, empty tracts of the cosmic web — which emerge from the non-spacial background and at a greater rate than that by which they are collapsing. So there’s not only plenty of “room” for particle evolution, the universe is expanding because the newly-emergent grains have discrete volume, pushing everything apart. The expansion of space in this manner could help to explain dark energy. You can learn more about this idea in my book (pp. 156 — 161), linked just below this article.
11. Because a grain’s measurement is invariant despite apparent size, the length of any fixed number of grains in a row will always give the same value. If grains are, perhaps, 10⁻¹⁵/meter, then the length of 10¹⁵ grains in a row will always be one meter regardless of their varying size. This is why, assuming as we have, that grain size is invariant across the universe, we would expect to see lensing effects nearer a cluster’s luminous material when, in actuality, if a lensing effect (from our point of view) is predicted to occur, say, 1 light year’s distance from a cluster, that effect may appear much farther from the cluster depending upon the progressive increase in the size of the grains involved. The measured distance in terms of the number of grains is the same in either case. (Likewise, could far distant objects be nearer than we think simply because the intervening grains may be larger and fewer to traverse?)

Gary Blaise is the author of Between Space: the Science of Consciousness and Eternity, 2nd edition, 2022.

Once upon a time, before Covid, elementary schools depended largely upon the help of parent volunteers. With the advent of a vaccine and return to on-site education, parents may once again enjoy the volunteer experience. This piece, written just before Covid sent us all home, was requested of me by a San Francisco Title-1 school to encourage incoming-parent volunteerism.

It may sound ridiculous, but helping out in our school cafeteria will turn out to be one of my life’s richest experiences. After six years now, my fifth-grader is graduating to middle school, and so, it’s time to move on. But it will be with some difficulty that I tear myself away from the great relationships I’ve developed with kids and staffers in the cafeteria on Mondays.

It all began six years ago in that first week of school when someone asked if I could help with the settling of our new kindergarteners at lunch, the opening of their plastic containers, and general clean-up of the cafeteria afterwards. I happily volunteered since my kindergartner had no pre-school experience and might find my presence comforting on that first, unfamiliar day of school. Sadly, I was wrong, and when lunchtime came I found him having a terrific time with his new friends—doing just fine without me, thank you very much!

Starr King is a large school with three lunch sessions and, though I was asked to help only with my son’s class in the first session, I remained that day for all three; not just because the custodian was overwhelmed, but because there seemed to be more children in need of help settling down than the limited staff could offer. I continued coming on Mondays.

Initially, I was rewarded for my efforts by many of the kids who quickly take a liking to you and wiggle their way into your heart. While it certainly felt good to attend these children, there were also some for whom my perceived presence as a relatively privileged person brought about a strongly negative reaction. I had never experienced anything like this. It became such a downer that I considered abandoning the endeavor altogether. But within two years of the most terrible of child scrutiny, some of these kids found me innocent on all counts. They began to engage me in a genuinely friendly manner and I was glad I had stayed on as things improved. Of the newly befriended, two or three of these children became surprisingly reliant on my weekly presence; so much so, that, whenever a holiday fell on a Monday, I made sure I was there on Tuesday!

It feels good, of course, to support a troubled child and especially one who is so happy to see you. I must also say how good it feels to be able to help a child in your own way. As a parent volunteer, it’s just you and them; you don’t need to know — you’re not permitted to know — a thing about the people and problems in their young lives. Once a troubled child lets you in, you can “adjust the dials,” as it were, to more positive settings as you see fit while, by comparison, interactions between staffers and children are more strictly controlled by school district.

Unlike grownups, children have a much simpler way understanding people. They seem to look directly inside you, operating right past adult obstacles like age and race to judge you up or down with surprising accuracy. Should you receive a favorable assessment, watch out!, for it could be you who is chosen by them to provide a weekly moment of delight. These, of course, are moments which they may soon forget or relinquish to a less conscious region, but they are real, eternal moments all the same in which you were allowed by them to install some useful thing of joy, however small, that will become a deep and permanent part of their psyche.

And here’s the thing . . . I was the lucky recipient of great parents, but if you happened to be an unhappy or troubled child who didn’t get the love and attention you deserved, well, we all know that you can’t go back and get it now, don’t we. But wait! You can, amazingly, experience, and hence, receive the very same feeling of love and attention which was denied you then by giving it to a child now who will appreciate you for it every Monday. Out of practice? No experience? That’s okay. I found that children are surprisingly patient with these things and not yet as skilled as we at holding a grudge should you get it wrong.

Sometimes, the significance of a thing can take you by surprise. This usually-rewarding-but-sometimes-disturbing experience with children has been one of my life’s most unexpected yet meaningful experiences and, if you can manage to get away at lunchtime, I wish the same delights for you.

As the parent or guardian of a school-aged child, it’s particularly easy to get involved, it’s so easily worthwhile, and you’ve got only these few short years to experience it, and then . . . it will be too late. There are other rewards, too. You hear great jokes (Q: Why do sharks like salty water? A: Because peppery water makes them sneeze.), you get great compliments (Currently, two of our youngsters think I smell good. I rarely hear this from grown-ups.) and, unlike grown-ups, they honestly misjudge you to be younger than you really are!

So if you, like me, are concerned about your age — or how you smell — why pay to “see someone” twice a month when you can be seen every week, for free, at Starr King!

It all starts at noon. See you there!