Wobbly Universe

In step 1 (which I recommend reading first) I explained that the universe may be understood as a blob of stuff that has high tension inside like steel only stronger, but which is continuous inside, having no atomic structure whatsoever. From this beginning, I will show that what naturally follows eventually leads to something that looks just like our universe.

The important thing that I mentioned was that a self-contained blob of stuff will vibrate according to a wave equation which is well understood physics. Also it was mentioned that stretching the blob quite naturally increases the tension locally and leads to a change in the velocity of the waves.

Although we are told by physicists that the speed of light is constant in a vacuum we are also told that space is not Euclidean, that the metric of space time is affected by the presence of energy. By this they mean that there is more space near a massive body like the Sun than there ought to be. Having the amount of space vary all about while keeping the speed of light constant is exactly equivalent to having regular Euclidean space and a variable speed of light. This is obvious if you think about it. The difference is that my mind, and I think roughly 100% of humanity, finds thinking in Euclidean terms much easier. Also, understanding the reason for a change in the velocity of light as being varying tension of the fabric of space is in keeping with all previous normal physics.

One little aside here is that I think that Einstein looked at such a model but did not find it workable. I believe that was because he did not allow for the possibility that the speed of light at any one place would be different in different directions. But we will later find that it is so. So, you should understand that what I am telling you is not inconsistent with Einstein and relativity, but is a simpler way of looking at the same thing, and more naturally leads to insights.

It has been said that a picture is worth a thousand words, so I now propose to illustrate my argument with actual pictures of real matter in real physics experiments to illustrate clearly where I am heading. I want to give you an appreciation of the sort of things that can happen when vibrations cause motion in matter. There have been several famous people over the years who have looked in this direction.

The first is Ernst Chladni who studied the vibrations in solid plates subjected to forced vibrations by using a violin bow on them. To make the vibrations visible, he scattered sand on the plates and wherever it vibrated a lot it got kicked about until it settled in the nodes, the places where there was not much movement. Examples of vibration patterns.

Although Chladni was recognised for his work, no-one really took it further for almost two centuries when Hans Jenny began a study of vibrations in powders and fluids which he called Cymatics. Jenny was a doctor and was interested in the healing properties of sound, but he found much more. He found examples of simple combinations of tones that caused powders to make formations that look remarkably like living creatures. The beauty of the forms that he found and the great variety is of utmost importance in helping us to understand how vibration is the basis of everything that exists.

Having studied cycles, another name for vibrations when they are slower, and having then found out about Hans Jenny, I was keen to do my own experiments in cymatics.

Actually the thing that gave me the final impetus was an experience that I had with a cup of tea. I noticed that when I put it down on a hard table, a circular pattern of waves came from the outside of the cup towards the centre where it got stronger through being concentrated by focusing as it came to a point. I experimented with jiggling the cup on the table top to try and get the right frequency for the wave. Well I succeeded and was rewarded with a hot jet of tea in my eye!

So the decision was made to make an apparatus that could make controlled vibrations so as to understand what happened with these waves. A computer speaker was turned on its side and a little platform made to hold sand or water in a small circular dish. Then a sound could be played through the speaker and I could control the volume and frequency and even play several notes at once if I wanted to. These experiments have confirmed my suspicions that all properties of matter arise from vibrations. They show a possible basis for electric charge. They show a basis for chemical bonds to form at various angles and much more.

When I played a sound into this system, the first thing that appeared was a set of circular rings just as I had seen in my cup of tea. No surprises there, until I increased the volume a bit. Then suddenly the central circle was surrounded by six more circles all touching it, and a set of ladder type waves came out from these six circles towards the edges. If I gradually reduced the sound the pattern suddenly reverted to the original set of concentric circles. Gradually increasing caused a sudden switch back, there were never any in between states.

Increasing the volume still more caused another sudden transition to a more complex state. Actually, state is an interesting word here because we refer to states of matter, and the transitions were very much like the changes of state of matter between solid, liquid and gas.

This is a photo taken from a video of water being vibrated by sound using the apparatus shown above in the third state when things really broke loose from rigid structure. Note that the light source reflects into the camera only when the water is horizontal, so it shows the tops and bottoms of waves as light. The sloping sides of the waves result in darker areas in the pictures. There are a number of centres in the wave forms, and in particular there are four arranged in a square pattern with three wave steps between them.

Actually, because the light patches may be tops or bottom of waves these centres are 3/2 wave lengths apart. These waves are standing waves, existing for many hundreds of oscillations although moving about slowly while maintaining a similar pattern. Being 3/2 or 1.5 wavelengths apart meant that when one centre was up the other was down and vice versa. To make this clear I have marked the diagram with red and blue to show the alternate half waves. Whenever the red centres are up the blue ones are down, and then they swap over. All the red circles are up together when the blue circles are down together and then again they swap over.

The seemingly remarkable thing is that every wave supports every other wave. By this I mean that all other red centres lie a whole number of wavelengths from any given red centre and all blue centres lie something and a half waves from a red centre. Again all blue centres lie a whole number of waves from other blue centres and red centres lie something and a half waves from blue centres.

I have called this "seemingly remarkable" because it is initially very striking. However as we think about it more we find that it makes perfect sense. Every one of these waves is supporting every other one in its continued existence. All the energy that leaves any wave arrives at every other wave with the correct phase timing to sustain that wave. All waves are sustained by all other waves. Therefore as fast as the energy in them dissipates it is re-established again. This is the principle on which all the standing wave structures in the universe are sustained.

Not only do the waves sustain each other by their unique patterns of distances apart, but they also have unique arrangements in certain directions in space. In the diagram above showing the waves in the circular dish there are also visible wave patterns that look like ladders running away from the circular patterns to the circular dish at the side where they reflect back again.

This diagram shows that in the direction of one of these ladder patterns the whole thing is again totally phase synchronised with each and every one of the wave centres. The red and blue alternating lines show the pattern of wave tops and bottoms which are standing waves. Whenever the blue lines are up the red ones are down and then they swap over so that the red ones are up and the blue ones down.

So again the pattern is self sustaining. The reflected waves from the side of the dish return energy to all of the wave centres in the correct phase to sustain them. These ladder like sets of waves travel out in eight different directions from the central active area of the dish. The eight directions result from the symmetries of the four central wave centres arranged in a square.

There are no things in the universe. All things are illusions. Everything is really made of waves which are continuous processes and not things, every moment dissolving, every moment being recreated. Those that say that everything in the universe is connected are speaking the truth.

The two colours that I have used here may be considered to represent the two charges of positive and negative found in matter. However we should not take the comparison too far at this point, because we live in a 3 dimensional world and not a 2 dimensional one like this dish of water. In the 3 dimensional world the centres can be arranged in much more complicated patterns in space, but the essential principles remain the same. There are centres which try to remain at distances apart that are whole numbers of wave lengths for like charge and something and a half wavelengths for unlike charge.

Also, one aspect of this experiment is rather artificial, that being the circular dish. We do not know the shape of the universe. However what has been demonstrated by Chladni and physicists that followed him is that all shapes have a unique set of different vibration modes that they can contain. These modes are all characterised by lines that represent nodes running through them where there is rotation but no movement, and centres where the vibrational movement is strongest and where there is no rotation. We may understand rotation as being like magnetism. We may understand movement as being like electrical charge.

Also, the dish reflects back some energy from the sides and we have to keep feeding more sound energy in to keep the process going. In the real universe, there is nowhere that energy can leak out to, so those problems goes away and it sustains its vibrations for extremely long periods of time.

There is one other thing that is worth noting about the circular wave patterns which is most evident when the volume is lower and the pattern is simply concentric circles. That is that the central waves are slightly further apart than the outer waves which are more regularly spaced. Actually this same pattern is observed in the orbits of the inner planets, where the distance from the Sun to Mercury is a little larger than the distance to Venus and then to Earth is a little less again.

This variation in wavelength is not surprising in standard physics, it results from the variation in wave speed with the depth of water and the surface tension of the water which changes near the centre due to the greater energy concentration there. I simply note that this explanation matches with the arguments that I gave for the tension of the aether varying around energetic bodies. If you are a physicist and can handle non-Euclidean space, then by all means think of it that way, but I find this way less brain strain.

Well, we have seen that material under vibration can lead to interesting structures in space that are more complicated than we are likely to imagine if we just start thinking about it. Already we can see the possibilities of explaining electric charge and magnetism as properties of motion. Charge relates to centres which may come in two polarities. Magnetism relates to local rotation about a point. Anyone who understands a little physics will recognise that this rotation of the magnetic field does explain the behaviour of charged particles which curve when travelling through a magnetic field.

We have seen that the our potential universe blob of matter may indeed be able to sing. The next exciting installment will show that it can in fact sing in tune. And once that is established, it will be shown why the universe has all the different structures from very large to very small and how they relate to each other. Click at the right to subscribe via RSS and get the future installments.

Move on to step 3.