Mark Sheeky Artworks

The Shape of Cause to Effect

Everything that happens now, the current state of the universe, is a direct result of the state of the universe one tick ago. The state of the universe one tick ago is the result of its state one tick before that, and so on.

Could this be true for all time?

The first, amazing conclusion when considering this is that, at some point, somewhere at the instant start of time, this could not be true. That there had to be a start without a precursor and that the pattern of all things would be made by the initial conditions of the universe, and that time would somehow emerge or be kick-started into existence. This seems to be the predominant idea in current science.

Let's think about this. Assuming that an infinite amount of energy, or stuff, shines out in a fixed space, like a sphere or hypersphere. This smooth white ball conveys nothing and could not change. Some sort of pushing forwards, a kick, is needed. It is essential that there is a deformation of sorts to create a particular type of seed of information, something that will grow in a fashion that will not lead to perfect stability, and not puff away to nothing or pure randomness either.

What if the sphere was not a sphere but a different shape, that had different sizes of dimension, a rugby ball perhaps, or a more complex shape, like an origami dragon or something? A homogeneous flow of information covering this shape must stretch in unusual ways such that it could never explore it all. It would behave like a puzzle with no solution, one where the solution seemed ever closer, but always a little out of reach, somewhat like, well, the laws of physics themselves. No matter how much we know, no matter how close we feel we are to knowing everything, a final truth seems just a little out of reach. This could be the very nature of the universe itself, and if so, there can never be a solution to understanding the universe beyond knowing that it was unknowable.

Perhaps a point of time with no precursor is impossible. There is a second alternative to the cause-to-effect model of the universe; that all existence follows this pattern for all time, forever. This would mean that time would be infinitely large; or at least as large as space, the finite distance between its two most distant objects. Even here, an initial emergence or explosion of information would be needed at some point, to define the shape of everything that followed, wouldn't it?

There's something magical about fractals, pretty shapes like The Mandelbrot Set. These seem to contain the correct mix of order and chaos to create life-like complex arrangements of patterns that include finite patterned areas, like our galaxies and planets, and areas of infinity, like the black holes that we see. The areas typically shaded black in a Mandelbrot Set represent infinity, where the calculation could continue forever without conclusion. It is interesting that supermassive black holes appear to have existed since the start of the universe and that their formation is still unexplained. These objects, filled with infinities, seem to match the properties of the black areas of a Mandelbrot Set, as though we were living inside a giant multi-dimensional fractal.

One thing that fractals have is symmetry, even The Mandelbrot Set has perfect vertical symmetry, and other types of fractal tend to have other perfect symmetries. The universe we see does not appear to have this symmetry; if this were the case then there would necessarily be one of me typing this now, somewhere, and one of you reading it. Perhaps this is the case, in some domain beyond the visible, detectable horizon.

Fractals use complex numbers, which due to their mathematical utility must be a fundamental part of the universe itself. It is the crunching of these that determine the look of the fractals. Any theory that unifies physical laws must necessarily unify mathematics.

If all of existence follows the cause to effect model forever, then perhaps there could be an exact symmetry across the time dimension to create a fractal type pattern. What we think of as the start of the universe is acually the point of reflection, and everything before that point would move, as we would think, backwards.

An interesting thing about The Mandelbrot Set is that, at the point of reflection, its line of virtual mirror is filled with infinities. Perhaps these reflect its state of shapes to come. Perhaps this area of mock compression could appear like an enfolded shape, crunched and compressed, ready to give birth to it large scale forms.