The Leiden-Effect: Consciousness Attracts
What predictions hold true when consciousness is considered fundamental?
Consciousness Attracts — The Leiden-Effect
A little background:
I’ve studied astronomy and cosmology at Leiden Observatory in the Netherlands. Specializing in large scale structure formation in dark matter gravitational N-Body simulations and the detection of super-massive black holes through optical interferometry.
Drs. B.M.R. Heijligers — A life in pictures
A visual resume of my academic journey
Outer space
A few years ago the theory of Erik Verlinde on entropic gravity caught my eye.
Wikipedia:
In 2009, Erik Verlinde proposed a conceptual model that describes gravity as an entropic force.[4]
He argues (similar to Jacobson’s result) that gravity is a consequence of the “information associated with the positions of material bodies”.[5]
This model combines the thermodynamic approach to gravity with Gerard ‘t Hooft’s holographic principle. It implies that gravity is not a fundamental interaction, but an emergent phenomenon which arises from the statistical behavior of microscopic degrees of freedom encoded on a holographic screen
In verlinde’s 2011 article “On the Origin of Gravity and the Laws of Newton” [https://arxiv.org/pdf/1001.0785.pdf] he tries to explain the principle of an entropic force as such:
Entropic Force. An entropic force is an effective macroscopic force that originates in a system with many degrees of freedom by the statistical tendency to increase its entropy. The force equation is expressed in terms of entropy differences, and is independent of the details of the microscopic dynamics. In particular, there is no fundamental field associated with an entropic force. Entropic forces occur typically in macroscopic systems such as in colloid or bio-physics. Big colloid molecules suspended in an thermal environment of smaller particles, for instance, experience entropic forces due to excluded volume effects. Osmosis is another phenomenon driven by an entropic force.
Perhaps the best known example is the elasticity of a polymer molecule. A single polymer molecule can be modeled by joining together many monomers of fixed length, where each monomer can freely rotate around the points of attachment and direct itself in any spatial direction. Each of these configurations has the same energy. When the polymer molecule is immersed into a heat bath, it likes to put itself into a randomly coiled configuration since these are entropically favored. There are many more such configurations when the molecule is short compared to when it is stretched into an extended configuration. The statistical tendency to return to a maximal entropy state translates into a macroscopic force, in this case the elastic force
Now i’ve left the field of astronomy some 17 odd years ago and my string theory has always been a bit rusty. The basic idea as I understand it is that gravity would not be a fundamental force.
The movement towards mass would be caused by a thermodynamic difference in entropic pressure of the quantum-entangeled strings. A region of space has a lower entropy when a mass is placed within in.
A relevant prediction of this model would be different kind of behaviour of gravity over very long distances. Verlinde in his 2016 article “Emergent Gravity and the Dark Universe” elaborates on this.
Here he elucidates that from a string theory perspective the universe consists out of a dark energy ground states build out of and matter is formed by excitations to this matter.
“The transition by which matter appeared has removed an amount of energy and entropy from the underlying microscopic state. “
“We start by showing that adding matter to de Sitter space decreases its entropy content.”
In 2016 Margot Brouwer from the university of Leiden applied Verlinde’s model of emergent gravity (EG) to observations of weak gravitational lensing of galaxies and finding a result compatible with observations with 1 degree of freedom less then the current dark matter model. It slightly underestimates the amount of gravitational force closer to the center of galaxies yet gives the current model a run for it’s money, though it doesn’t beat it in absolute accuracy.
Inner space
On a seemingly unrelated topic and in my quest to understand the nature of reality including consciousness I stumbled upon the following article:
in which they find a surprisingly simple result: “normal wakeful states are characterized by the greatest number of possible configurations of interactions between brain networks, representing highest entropy values. Therefore, the information content is larger in the network associated to conscious states, suggesting that consciousness could be the result of an optimizations of information processing”
Given the following premises:
- Gravity is an emergent property generated by a decrease in entropy in a volume of space associated with the introduction of matter.
- Consciousness arises through maximization of possible spaces.
leads me to the following hypothesis:
Leiden-Effect: Organic life and it’s associated conscious experience has an entropic gravitational effect beyond that of mere matter/mass.
This hypothesis leads me to the following 2 testable predictions:
- Besides a distribution of matter component in the analysis of rotation curves or gravitational lensing events, a distribution of consciousness component needs to be taken into account.
- The high energy cosmic ray power spectrum in near earth orbit is affected by life and consciousness on earth.
April 2024 Note: The flyby-anomaly could be an unexpected side effect of entropic gravity and the leiden effect.
Postscripts:
Stephen Wolfram’s model of non-linear time means that reality consists of at least two time dimensions flowing in opposite directions.
This can be understood by looking at Conway’s Game of life and realizing that in this world of cellular automatons there is no “normal” causal relationship between “objects” that seem to move across the board. There are no objects in Conway’s game of life.
Disclaimer: I imagine you will not believe a single word
Personal Note:
This is a work in progress. Over the last 3 years I have had the incredibly rewarding experience of suffering from a full on writers block. I never imagined that the reason could be as simple as being dyslexic. My promise to you: I will share what experience has shown me, as well enough as I can and as excellent as I dare.
Know that right now I do not expect more then <#4Percent> of the readers to be able to relate to what and how I am writing.
UPDATE
Somewhat later I read:
To be continued…
Version 1: May 20, 2019, 4:45:48 PM on Quora.com
