Programmed Reality

One of the keys to understanding our reality is found in a very unusual and anomalous experiment done over 200 years ago by Thomas Young.  The philosophical debate that resulted from this experiment and its successors during the quantum era of the 20th century may hold the key to understanding everything - from bona fide scientific anomalies to cold fusion and bigfoot sightings.

If you are unfamiliar with this experiment, please watch the Dr. Quantum cartoon on the Double Slit Experiment.  It provides a good explanation of two paradoxes that have puzzled scientists for many years.  In summary, here is the conundrum:

1. If you fire electrons at a screen through a single slit in an otherwise impenetrable barrier, there will be a resulting pattern on the screen as you might expect - a single band of points.

2. If you fire electrons at a screen through a barrier with two slits, the pattern that will build up on the screen is not one of two bands of points, but rather an entire interference pattern, as if the electrons were actually waves instead of particles.  

This is one paradox - that electrons (and all other particles) have dual personalities in that they can act like both waves and particles.  Further, the personality that emerges matches the type of experiment that you are doing.  If you are testing to see if the electron acts like a particle, it will.  If you are testing to see if the electron acts like a wave, it will.  

3. Even if the electrons are fired one at a time, eliminating the possibility of electrons interfering with each other, over time, the same pattern emerges.

4. If you put a measuring device at the slit, thereby observing which slit each electron passes through, the interference pattern disappears.  

This is the more mysterious paradox - that the mere act of observation changes the result of the experiment.  The implications of this are huge because they imply that our conscious actions create or modify reality.

Dr. Programmed Reality will now provide the definitive explanation that Dr. Quantum could not:

1. Electrons, along with photons, all other particles, and ultimately everything, are really nothing but information.  That information describes how the electron (for example) behaves under all circumstances, what probabilities it will travel in any particular direction, and how it will reveal its presence to our senses.  That information, plus the rules of reality, fully determine how it can appear sometimes like a particle and sometimes like a wave.  Because it is really neither - it is JUST information that is used to give us the sensory impression of one of those personalities under various circumstances.  Paradox 1 solved.

2. The great cosmic Program that appears to control our reality (see my book "The Universe - Solved!" for evidence), is also fully aware of the state of consciousness of every free-willed observer in our reality.  As a result, the behavior exhibited by an electron under observation can easily be made to be a function of the observation being made.  Paradox 2 solved.

If you don't believe that, here is the piece of pseudo-code that could represent the part of The Program that controls the outcomes of such experiments (each state of each object consists of all spatial coordinates, plus time, and directional vectors):

while(time!=EndTime) {
   ...
   for n=1 to AllParticlesInTheUniverse {
   ...
      Object=Particle(n)
      CurrentState(Object)=AcquireState(Object);
      ObservationState(Object)=CollectObservationalIntent(AllObservers(Object));
      NextState(Object)=CalculateNextState(CurrentState(Object), ObservationState(Object));
      ApplyNextState(NextState(Object));
   next n
   }
}

It's all there - full control of the outcome of any experiment based on the objects under test and the observational status of all observers.  Any known quantum mechanical paradox fully explained by 1970s-vintage pseudocode without the need for the hand waving of collapsing wave functions or zillions of parallel realities.

Tags: double slit experiment, wave/particle duality, quantum mechanics, wave function, program, thomas young, information, programmed reality
Categories: Physics | Programmed Reality | Quantum Mechanics | Science

So Craig Venter created synthetic life.  How cool is that?  I mean, really, this has been sort of a biologists holy grail for as long as I can remember.  Of course, Dr. Venter's detractors are quick to point out that Synthia, the name given to this synthetic organism, was not really built from scratch, but sort of assembled from sub-living components and injected into a cell where it could replicate.  Either way, it is a huge step in the direction of man-made life forms.  If I were to meet Dr. Venter, the conversation might go something like this:

Jim: So, Dr. Venter, help me understand how man-made your little creation really is.  I've read some articles that state that while your achievement is most impressive, the cytoplasm that the genome was transplanted to was not man made.

Craig: True dat, Jim.  But we all need an environment to live in, and a cell is no different.  The organism was certainly man made, even if its environment already existed.

Jim: But wait a minute.  Aren't we all man-made?  Wasn't that the message in those sex education classes I took in high school?  

Craig: No, the difference is that this is effectively a new species, created synthetically.  

Jim: So, how different is that from a clone?  Are they also created synthetically?

Craig: Sort of, but a clone isn't a new species.

Jim: How about genetically modified organisms then?  New species created synthetically?  

Craig: Yes, but they were a modification made to an existing living organism, not a synthetically created one.

Jim: What about that robot that cleans my floor?  Isn't that a synthetically created organism?

Craig: Well, maybe, in some sense, but can it replicate itself?

Jim: Ah, but that is just a matter of programming.  Factory robots can build cars, why couldn't they be programmed to build other factory robots?

Craig: That wouldn't be biological replication, like cell division.

Jim: You mean, just because the robots are made of silicon instead of carbon?  Seems kind of arbitrary to me.

Craig: OK, you're kind of getting on my nerves, robot-boy.  The point is that this is the first synthetically created biological organism.

Jim: Um, that's really cool and all, but we can build all kinds of junk with nanotech, including synthetic meat, and little self-replicating machines.  

Craig: Neither of which are alive.

Jim: Define alive.

Craig: Well, generally life is anything that exhibits growth, metabolism, motion, reproduction, and homeostasis.

Jim: So, a drone bee isn't alive because it can't reproduce?

Craig: Of course, there are exceptions.

Jim: What about fire, crystals, or the earth itself.  All of those exhibit your life-defining properties.  Are they alive?

Craig: Dude, we're getting way off topic here.  Let's get back to synthetic organisms.

Jim: OK, let's take a different tack.  Physicist Paul Davies said that Google is smarter than any human on the planet.  Is Google alive?  What about computer networks that can reconfigure themselves intelligently.

Craig: Those items aren't really alive because they have to be programmed.

Jim: Yeah, and what's that little code in Synthia's DNA?

Craig: Uhhh...

Jim: And how do you know that you aren't synthetic?  Is it at all possible that your world and all of your perceptions could be completely under programmed control?

Craig: I suppose it could be possible.  But I highly doubt it.

Jim: Doubt based on what? All of your preconceived notions about reality?

Craig: OK, let's say we are under programmed control.  So what?

Jim: Well, that implies a creator.  Which in turn implies that our bodies are a creation.  Which makes us just as synthetic as Synthia.  The only difference is that you created Synthia, while we might have been created by some highly advanced geek in an other reality.

Craig: Been watching a few Wachowski Brothers movies, Jim?

Jim: Guilty as charged, Craig.

Tags: craig venter, synthetic life, artificial life, synthia, robots, ai, artificial intelligence, programmed reality, nanotech, matrix, synthetic, artificial, venter, biologists
Categories: AI | Future Tech | Life | Nanotech | Programmed Reality | Robotics | Science

I am always amazed at how such bright physicists discuss scientific anomalies, like quantum entanglement, pronounce that "that's just the way it is" and never seriously consider an obvious answer and solution to all such anomalies - namely that perhaps our reality is under programmed control. 

For the quantum entanglement anomaly, I think you will see what I mean.  Imagine that our world is like a video game.  As with existing commercial games, which use "physics engines", the players (us) are subject to the rules of physics, as are subatomic particles.  However, suppose there is a rule in the engine that says that when two particles interact, their behavior is synchronized going forward.  Simple to program.  The pseudocode would look something like:

for all particles (i)
     for all particles (j)
          if distance(particle.i, particle.j) < EntanglementThreshold then
               Synchronize(particle.i, particle.j)
          else
          end if
     next j
next i

After that event, at each cycle through the main program loop, whatever one particle does, its synchronized counterparts also do.  Since the program operates outside of the artificial laws of physics, those particles can be placed anywhere in the program's reality space and they will always stay synchronized.  Yet their motion and other interactions may be subject to the usual physics engine.  This is very easy to program, and, coupled with all of the other evidence that our reality is under programmed control (the programmer is the intelligent creator), offers a perfect explanation.  More and more scientists are considering these ideas (e.g. Craig Hogan, Brian Whitworth, Andrei Linde) although the thought center is more in the fields of philosophy, computer science, and artificial intelligence.  I wonder if the reason more physicists haven't caught on is that they fear that such concepts might make them obsolete. 

They needn't worry.  Their jobs are still to probe the workings of the "cosmic program."

 

Tags: entanglement, programmed reality, pseudocode, physics engine, gaming
Categories: Gaming | Particle Physics | Programmed Reality | Quantum Mechanics | Science

Tachyons, entanglement, cold fusion, dark matter, galactic filaments.  Just when you thought physics couldn't get any stranger...

- THE VERY COLD: Fractional Quantum Hall Effect: When electrons are magnetically confined and cooled to a third of a degree above absolute zero (See more here), they seem to break down into sub-particles that act in synchronization, but with fractional charges, like 1/3, or 3/7.

- THE VERY HIGH PRESSURE: Strange Matter: The standard model of physics includes 6 types of quarks, including the 2 ("up" and "down") that make up ordinary matter.  Matter that consists of "strange" quarks, aka Strange Matter, would be 10 times as heavy as ordinary matter.  Does it exist?  Theoretically, at very high densities, such as the core of neutron stars, such matter may exist.  A 1998 space shuttle experiment seems to have detected some, but repeat experiments have not yielded the same results.

- THE VERY LARGE DIMENSIONAL: Multidimensional Space: String theories say that we live in a 10-dimensional space, mostly because it is the only way to make quantum mechanics and general relativity play nicely together.  That is, until physicist Garrett Lisi came along and showed how it could be done with eight dimensional space and objects called octonions.  String theorists were miffed, mostly because Lisi is not university affiliated and spends most of his time surfing in Hawaii.

- THE VERY HOT: Quark-Gloun Plasma: Heat up matter to 2 trillion degrees and neutrons and protons fall apart into a plasma of quarks called quark-gluon plasma.  In April of 2005, QGP appeared to have been created at the Brookhaven National Laboratory's Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC).

My view on all this is that it is scientific business as usual.  100 years ago, we lived in a smaller world; a world described solely by Newtonian Mechanics, our ordinary everyday view of how the world works.  Then, along came relativity and quantum mechanics.  Technological advances in laboratory equipment and optics allowed us to push the limits of speed and validate Relativity, which ultimately showed that Newtonian Mechanics was just an approximation of the larger, more encompassing theory of Relativity at slow speeds.  Similarly we pushed the limits of probing the very small and validated Quantum Mechanics, which showed that Newtonian Mechanics was just an approximation of the larger, more encompassing theory of Quantum Mechanics at large scales.  In the 1960's, we pushed the limits of heat and energy, discovered  and found that our Quantum Mechanical / Relativistic Theory of the world was really just an approximation at low temperatures of a larger theory that had to encompass Quantum Chromodynamics.  Now, we are pushing the limits of temperature, or the slowing down of particles, and discovering that there must be an even larger theory that describes the world, that explains the appearance of fractional charges at extremely low temperatures.  Why does this keep happening and where does it end?

Programmed Reality provides an explanation.  In fact, it actually provides two.  

In one case, the programmers of our reality created a complex set of physical laws that we are slowly discovering.  Imagine a set of concentric spheres, with each successive level outward representing a higher level scientific theory of the world that encompasses faster speeds, higher temperatures, larger scales, colder temperatures, higher energies, etc.  How deep inside the sphere of knowledge are we now?  Don't know, but this is a model that puts it in perspective.  It is a technological solution to the philosophy of Deism.

The second possibility is that as we humans push the limits of each successive sphere of physical laws that were created for us, the programmers put in place a patch that opens up the next shell of discovery, not unlike a game.  I prefer this model, for a number of reasons.  First of all, wouldn't it be a lot more fun and interesting to interact with your creations, rather than start them on their evolutionary path and then pay no further attention?  Furthermore, this theory offers the perfect explanation for all of those scientific experiments that have generated anomalous results that have never been reproducible.  The programmers simply applied the patch before anyone else could reproduce the experiment.

Interestingly, throughout the years, scientists have fooled themselves into thinking that the discovery of everything was right around the corner.  In the mid-20th century, the ultimate goal was the Unified Field Theory.  Now, it is called a TOE, or Theory of Everything.

Let's stop thinking we're about to reach the end of scientific inquiry and call each successive theory a TOM, or Theory of More.

Because the only true TOE is Programmed Reality.  QED.

Tags: physics, programmed reality, cosmology, quantum mechanics, fractional quantum hall effect, strange matter, strangelets, multi-dimensions, string theory, quark-gluon plasma, quarks, qcd, quantum chromodynamics, toe, gut, grand unified theory, unified field theory, entanglement, cold fusion, tachyons, dark matter, galactic filaments
Categories: Cosmology | Future Tech | Particle Physics | Physics | Programmed Reality | Quantum Mechanics | Science

Evidence for Programmed Reality is starting to pour in from all fields.  The latest comes from Gamma-ray imaging from deep space.  Here's the deal:

Extremely high energy photons are known as gamma rays and are generated only in really cool places like Cern and supermassive black holes that power galaxies.  The cosmologically-originated gamma rays tend to come in bursts and there are special telescopes, such as MAGIC (Major Atmospheric Gamma-ray Imaging Cherenkov Telescope) that detect and measure these bursts.  According to all known laws of physics, all photons no matter their energy level travel at exactly the same speed, namely the speed of light.  Problem is that several gamma ray detectors have noticed that gamma rays from distant galaxies arrive on earth at slightly different times, which makes no sense.

Unless you consider that space is quantized.  Then, the photons have to work their way through the quantum "froth" and the low energy photons can do it easier than the high energy ones, much like radio waves through a low pass filter.  So says Italian physicist Giovanni Amelino-Camelia.  A couple references on this theory include an FXQi article and a recent article from New Scientist.

The reason this effect isn't normally noticed is that the influence of quantized spacetime is so small, conventional experiments will not demonstrate its impact.  However, as we probe deeper into space and increase the sensitivity of our instruments, we ultimately get to a point where we measure things that demonstrate that the status quo in physics is just an approximation, much as Newtonian physics is just an approximation of Relativistic physics at slow speeds or Quantum Mechanics at large scales.  The recent quantization noise in the GEO600 Gravity Wave Detector is a case in point.  Because it is the most sensitive instrument of its kind, it has reached a resolution limitation that may indicate the granularity of the universe.  With MAGIC, a similar situation exists.  Because it is highly sensitive, it can detect signals whose origin are so far away that they allow for propagation deviations to occur over such a vast region of space.  The 4 minute anomaly that MAGIC observed occurs over 500 million light years.  That means that it is detecting a deviation of 1 part in about 65000000000000 (65 trillion), which apparently is enough to break known laws of physics.

I'm interested in this because the underlying reason for this may very well be the quantization of space.  If so, this and the GEO600 experiments are the first to detect it.  And, for anyone who hasn't read "The Universe - Solved!" or meandered through this website, I ask the question:

Why might reality be quantized and not continuous?

It takes an infinite amount of resources to create a continuous reality, but a finite amount to create a quantized reality.  By resources, I refer to bits, the information that it takes to model reality.  In order to program a virtual reality, there must be quantization.  It is impossible to develop a program with unlimited resolution.  So the very fact that our reality is quantized may be considered strong evidence that reality is programmed.

What other reason could there be?   

   
Tags: gamma, gamma rays, deep space, programmed reality, simulation, magic, speed of light, photons, quantum froth, quantum foam
Categories: Cosmology | Physics | Programmed Reality | Quantum Mechanics | Science

Physicists tell us that gravity is one of the four fundamental forces of nature.  And yet it behaves quite differently than the other three.  A New Scientist article breaks down the oddities, a few of which are reproduced here:

- Gravity only pulls.  It doesn't appear to have an opposing effect, like other forces do.  Notwithstanding the possibility that dark energy is an example of "opposite polarity" gravity, possibly due to unseen dimensions, there appears to be no solid evidence of it as there is with all other forces.

- The strength of other forces are comparable in magnitude, while gravity checks in at 40 orders of magnitude weaker.

- The fine-tuned universe, a favorite topic of this site, includes some amazing gravity-based characteristics.  The balance of early universe expansion and gravitational strength had to balance to within 1 part in 1,000,000,000,000,000 in order for life to form.

The Anthropic Principle explains all this via a combination of the existance of zillions (uncountably large number) of parallel universes with the idea that we can only exist in the one where all the variables line up perfectly for matter and life to form.  But that seems to me to be a pretty complex argument with a few embedded leaps of faith that make most religions look highly logical in comparison.

Then there is the Programmed Reality theory, which as usual, offers a perfect explanation without the need for the hand-waving Anthropic Principle and the "Many Worlds"
interpretation of quantum mechanics.  Gravity is not like other forces, so let's not keeping trying to "force" it to be (pardon the pun.)  Instead, it is there to keep us grounded on the planet in which we play out our reality, offering the perfect balance of "pull" to keep every fly ball from flying out of the stadium (regardless of the illegal substance abuse of the hitter), to make kite flying a real possibility, and to enable a large number of other enriching activities.  While, at the same time, being weak enough to allow basketball players to dunk and planes to fly, and to enable a large number of other enriching activities.  Our scientists will continue the investigate the nature of gravity via increasingly complex projects like the LHC, unpeeling the layers of complexity that the programmers put in place to keep scientific endeavor, research, and employment moving forward. 

   
Tags: science, gravity, physics, anthropic principle, programmed reality, simulation, physics, science, cosmology, big bang, unified field theory
Categories: Cosmology | Programmed Reality | Physics | Science

A great article in Scientific American, "A Quantum Threat to Special Relativity," is well worth the read.  

Locality in physics is the idea that things are only influenced by forces that are local or nearby.  The water boiling on the stovetop does so because of the energy imparted from the flame beneath.  Even the sounds coming out of your radio are decoded from the electromagnetic disturbance in the air next to the antenna, which has been propagating from the radio transmitter at the speed of light.  But, think we all, nothing can influence anything remotely without a "chain reaction" disturbance, which according to Einstein can not exceed the speed of light.  

However, says Quantum Mechanics, there is something called entanglement.  No, not the kind you had with Becky under the bleachers in high school.  This kinds of entanglement says that particles that once "interacted" are forever entangled, whereby their properties are reflected in each other's behavior.  For example, take 2 particles that came from the same reaction and separate them by galactic distances.  What one does, the other will follow.  This has been proven to a distance of at least 18 km and seems to violate Einstein's theory of Special Relativity.

Einstein, of course, took issue with this whole concept in his famous EPR paper, preferring to believe that "hidden variables" were responsible for the effect.  But, in 1964, physicist John Bell developed a mathematical proof that no local theory can account for all of Quantum Mechanics experimental results.  In other words, the world is non-local.  Period.  It is as if, says the SciAm article, "a fist in Des Moines can break a nose in Dallas without affecting any other physical thing anywhere in the heartand. "  Alain Aspect later performed convincing experiments that demonstrated this non-locality.  45 years after John Bell's proof, scientists are coming to terms with the idea that the world is non-local and special relativity has limitations.  Both ideas are mind-blowing.

But, as usual, there are a couple of clever paradigms that get around it all, each of which are equally mind-blowing.  In one, our old friend the "Many Worlds" theory, zillions of parallel universes are spawned every second, which account for the seeming non-locality of reality.  In the other, "history plays itself out not in the three-dimensional spacetime of special relativity but rather this gigantic and unfamiliar configuration space, out of which the illusion of three-dimensionality somehow emerges."

I have no problem explaining all of these ideas via programmed reality.

Special Relativity has to do with our senses, not with reality.  True simultaneity is possible because our reality is an illusion.  And there is no speed limit in the truer underlying construct.  So particles have no problem being entangled.  

Many Worlds can be implemented by multiple instances of reality processes.  Anyone familiar with computing can appreciate how instances of programs can be "forked" (in Unix parlance) or "spawned" (Windows, VMS, etc.).  You've probably even seen it on your buggy Windows PC, when instances of browsers keep popping up like crazy and you can't kill the tasks fast enough and end up either doing a hard shutdown or waiting until the little bastard blue-screens.  Well, if the universe is just run by a program, why can't the program fork itself whenever it needs to, explaining all of the mysteries of QM that can't be explained by wave functions.  

And then there is "configuration space."  Nothing more complex than multiple instances of the reality program running, with the conscious entity having the ability to move between them, experiencing reality and all the experimental mysteries of Quantum Mechanics.

Hey physicists - get your heads out of the physics books and start thinking about computer science!

(thanks to Poet1960 for allowing me to use his great artwork) 

Tags: nonlocality, non-locality, quantum mechanics, programmed reality, many worlds, parallel universes, entanglement, relativity, special relativity, physics, computer science
Categories: Philosophy | Programmed Reality | Quantum Mechanics

Here's an interesting idea.  To avoid an impending disaster, all you have to do is forget your past.  So says physicist Saibal Mitra at the University of Amsterdam.  Even changing the past seems to be possible, believe it or not.

His idea is predicated on accepting our old friend, the Everett interpretation of Quantum Mechanics, aka the Many Universes theory.  According to Mitra, if the collective observers memory is reset prior to a cataclysmic event, such as a species ending asteroid impact, the state of the universe becomes "undetermined."  As a result, it has an equal likelihood of following any of the many subsequent paths, most of which should have nothing to do with an asteroid impact.  And so, by selectively forgetting our past, we can avoid certain doom by starting with a clean slate of future outcomes.  See this New Scientist article.

There is something unsettling about the logic, but his paper seems to be on firm footing: http://arxiv.org/abs/0902.3825.  And the implications are fascinating.  Not happy with how last year's Superbowl turned out?  Keep a single copy of the event, erase everyone's memory, replace all archived bits of history relating to the game, and then we can all sit back and watch the recording again.  Mitra says if we do that, there's a good chance Arizona will win.  Watching the same tape!  Well, maybe not the same tape.  Because once the universe became undetermined again, the physical tape could have encoded any number of outcomes.

This a vaguely reminiscent of "Last Thursdayism," which is one of the possible aspects of Programmed Reality.  Once the universe is reset from an observational standpoint, we would never know the difference and an entirely different future course of events is possible.  If you make the restart point somewhere in our current past, then the recent past can be changed too.  Programmed Reality explains it all! 

Tags: everett interpretation, last thursdayism, quantum mechanics, programmed reality, parallel universes, many worlds
Categories: Philosophy | Programmed Reality | Quantum Mechanics

GEO600 is a large gravitational wave detector located in Hanover, Germany.  Designed to be extremely sensitive to fluctuations in gravity, its purpose is to detect gravitational waves from distant cosmic events.  Recently, however, it has been plagued by inexplicable noise or graininess in its measurement results (see article in New Scientist).  Craig Hogan, director of Fermilab's Center for Particle Astrophysics, thinks that the instrument has reached the limits of spacetime resolution and that this might be proof that we live in a hologram.  Using physicists Leonard Susskind and Gerard ‘t Hooft’s theory that our 3D reality may be a projection of processes encoded on the 2D surface of the boundary of the universe, he points out that, like a common hologram, the graininess of our projection may be at much larger scales than the Planck length (10-35 meters), such as 10-16 meters.

Crazy?  Is it any stranger than living in 10 spatial dimensions, living in a space of parallel realities, invisible dark matter all around us, reality that doesn't exist unless observed, or any of a number of other mind-bending theories that most physicists believe?  In fact, as fans of this website are well aware, such experimental results are no surprise.  Just take a look at the limits of resolution in my Powers of 10 simulation in the Programmed Reality level: Powers of 10.  I arbitrarily picked 10-21 meters, but it could really be any scale where it happens.

If our universe is programmed, however, it is probably done in such a way as to be unobservable for the most part.  Tantalizing clues like GEO600 noise give us all something to speculate about.  But don't be surprised if the effect goes away when the programmers apply a patch to improve the reality resolution for another few years.  

Thanks to my photogenic cat, Scully, for providing an example of grainy reality...

Tags: gravity waves, hologram, holographic universe, programmed reality, spacetime resolution
Categories: AI | Cosmology | Programmed Reality | Quantum Mechanics

Although shallow oil wells were drilled in China as early as the 4th century, the first commercial oil well was drilled in Canada in 1858 at the height of the industrial revolution.  Since then our use of and reliance upon it has skyrocketed.  Also since then has been a continuous debate on the origin of oil.  In one corner, weighing in at 25 billion barrels a year, we have the biogenic theory, aka dead plants and animals.  In the other corner, weighing in at 900 billion gallons a year, we have the abiotic theory, aka chemical reactions inside the Earth. 

The “fossil fuel” theory was first proposed by Russian scientist Mikhailo Lomonosov in 1757 who suggested that bodies of animals from prehistoric times were buried in sediments and were transformed into hydrocarbons due to extreme pressure and temperature forces over millions of years.  The argument is supported by sound biochemical processes, such as catagenesis.  In addition, the evidence of organic pollen grains in petroleum deposits implies (but does not prove) organic origin.

The abiogenic or abiotic theory actually has its origins the 1800s, when proposed by French chemist Marcellin Berthelot and Russian chemist Dmitri Mendeleev.  According to their theory, hydrocarbons are primordial in origin and were formed by non-biological processes in the earths crust and mantle.  The theory received a modern boost by Russian geologist Kudryavtsev, studying Canadian oil sources in the 1950s and Ukrainian scientist Chekaliuk, based on thermodynamic calculations in the 1960’s, who both arrived at the same conclusion.  Esteemed and late planetary scientist Thomas Gold from Cornell University (from whom I once took a course in astronomical theories), added to the evidence in his book “The Deep Hot Biosphere.”  The theory has also attained laboratory support via experiments at Gas Resources Corporation in Houston, Texas which produced octane and methane by subjecting marble, iron oxide, and water, to temperature and pressure conditions similar to that 60 miles below the surface of the earth.  Also, deep drilling around the world has discovered oil at depths and in places where there should never have been biological remains.  Referring to natural gas wells drilled by the GHK Company in Oklahoma at 30,000 feet and Japanese wells at 4300 meters, Dr. Jerome Corsi (political scientist with a Ph.D. from Harvard University) noted:

“Even those who might stretch to argue that even if no dinosaurs ever died in sedimentary rock that today lies 30,000 feet below the surface, might still argue that those levels contain some type of biological debris that has transformed into natural gas. That argument, a stretch at 30,000 feet down, is almost impossible to make for basement structure bedrock. Japan's Nagaoka and Niigata fields produce natural gas from bedrock that is volcanic in nature. What dinosaur debris could possibly be trapped in volcanic rock found at deep-earth levels?”

Some oil reserves even seem to have the ability to be automatically refilled, like a drink at a burger joint.  Gulf of Mexico oil field Eugene Island 330, for example, saw its production drop from 15,000 barrels a day in 1973 to 4,000 barrels a day in 1989, and then suddenly spontaneously reversed and was pumping 13,000 barrels of a “different aged” crude in 1999.  In fact, according to Christopher Cooper of the Wall Street Journal, “between 1976 and 1996, estimated global oil reserves grew 72%, to 1.04 trillion barrels.”  Considering the doubling of reserves in the Middle East alone, University of Tulsa professor Norman Hyne noted that “it would take a pretty big pile of dead dinosaurs and prehistoric plants to account for the estimated 660 billion barrels of oil in the region”

The argument is all very interesting and gets quite political as one might imagine.  But my interest revolves more around the basic question of why oil is even there at all.  Both sides propose some fairly complex theories to account for the very existence of petroleum, let alone its uncanny ability to refill known reserves automatically.  Doesn’t it almost seem like it was placed there just for our use? (see much more on Programmed Reality elsewhere on this site)

And now, there is the fact that some hydrocarbons, like methane, are known to occur throughout the solar system on supposedly lifeless planets.  Take, for example, the most recent announcement in "Nature" and "Scientific American" that a Lake Ontario-sized lake has been discovered on Saturn's moon Titan that is composed of hydrocarbons, specifically liquid ethane.  By some estimates, the contents of this lake could be equivalent to as much as 9 trillion barrels of oil.  Even NASA suggests that Titan could have "hundreds of times more liquid hydrocarbons than all the known oil and natural gas reserves on Earth."

Anybody see anything wrong with this picture?  Were there dinosaurs on Titan? 

Doubtful! 

Therefore, it seems to me, Titan gives the abiotic theory of oil a fairly sizeable boost.

(apologies to those who have read my book, "The Universe-Solved", as much of the background on this topic come verbatim therefrom) 

 

Tags: abiotic oil, titan, programmed reality
Categories: Cosmology | Programmed Reality