Fred Hoyle’s IFS Lecture December 1982

Once the reader gets to the later parts, it becomes somewhat abstract and the reader may not be able to get through it without a background in chemistry and physics. Chapter Nine, when the phrase “Order Out of Chaos” is developed, is difficult. Despite this, it is much more accessible than a scientific paper on the subject. It may take two or three reads to fully absorb the ideas presented. Overall it is one of my favorite reads.

Some important conclusions from the book:

• The arrow of time objectively exists and it arises from non-equilibrium and irreversibility at the microscopic level.
• The 2nd Law of Thermodynamics can be understood as a selection principal. It operates as a negative on allowable initial conditions, in other words it restricts systems with certain initial conditions from existing.
• Time travel to the past is not allowed by thermodynamics because time reversal requires infinite information concerning the initial conditions of the system, an impossibility to an observer in the universe. This implies that information is closely connected to irreversibility and time.
• Thermodynamics can be expressed from dynamics through the idea of correlations and internal-time operators. Thus, dynamics has been extended once again (general relativity, quantum mechanics, and chaos theory).
• The universe as a whole is in a non-equilibrium state and it is an irreversible process with pockets of reversible dynamics.
• In general, one of the goals of the authors is to make dynamics and thermodynamics consistent with each other.

There are numerous analogies with eastern cosmologies which may help readers understand the wild results and conclusions of modern physics. The book is perfect for those without a strong background in the quantitative sciences who wish to understand what quantum physics reveals about the universe. Although dated, (1979) it is inspirational and should get readers excited about reading more up to date books.

As a metaphor, Bohm takes the experiment introduced by John Heller, shown below, and explains that the original oval shape drops of dye can be thought of as an explicate ordering of color and structure in time and space. After the experiment proceeds, this explicate order mixes into the glycerin system. Now, imagine the implicate order as consisting of the glycerin and dye system modified via the rotation. The system contains the original explicate ordering of the drops, in other words the existence of the dye as drops of individual colors is encoded by the glycerin system.

BUT, up to now the metaphor has been like a “time-reversal.” The real point of Bohm is that if the system is now rotated in the opposite direction, the dye will condense out of the system as an explicate order of color and shape identical to the original. This is how he suggests that the universe, i.e. the implicate order of the holomovement forms all explicate orders, including consciousness, observed by humans.

Science is not a religion; scientists are not priests who defend a fixed doctrine. Scientists who simply ridicule or resort to name calling are doing a disservice to science in a time when science is being attacked on many fronts – by religions, governments, and corporations. Scientists who forsake truth for tenure, personal prestige or their own beliefs are just as dangerous to science as any external threat. And this does not exclude Herndon himself.

As a reader of science subjects, I find the ideas of Herndon to be a fresh and fascinating departure from the status-quo. This is what science is all about, proposing preposterous ideas and then proving them right or wrong. His theory is nothing short of a revolution in the subjects previously mentioned. Even if it turns out to be false, they still provide food for thought and may even perhaps result in a more developed and better understanding of the true nature of natural phenomenon.

In light of all the exoplanet discoveries of the Kepler Space Telescope there is even more reason to seriously consider investigating the theories presented by Herdon. Of the thousands of exoplanets discovered thus far, there is a large fraction of Jupiter type planets which lie within the orbit of Earth. In fact there are so many such exoplanets that the question should not be: “Why are there so many Jupiter type planets in such close proximity to their host star?” but should rather be: “Why does our Solar System not contain Jupiter type planets within Earth’s orbit?”

Even if Herdon’s theory is incorrect regarding the history of our Solar System, his proposed theory is a physical possibility, i.e. there is at least one planet or moon which has had its atmosphere stripped away in the universe. It would therefore be silly not to study the theory. Don’t mathematicians study topics which have no current application? What is the issue with studying situations that did not occur in our Solar System?

I suggest first reading: A New Basis of Geoscience: Whole-Earth Decompression Dynamics

and then reading his book mentioned earlier (his book also contains this paper, among others).

For a list of his papers – J. Marvin Herdon on arXiv.org.

There are probably hundreds of new reactor designs. Kirk’s favourite is the Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor (LFTR). He talks extensively about its benefits, its problems, its safety, and how it can be put into operation. Hopefully, people will see his arguments as valid and convincing. Read more on his blog: Energy from Thorium. Gordon McDowell’s videos present the ideas of Sorenson in a clear and concise manner and there are numerous lectures and talks given by Sorenson on YouTube.

I would also recommend James Mahaffey’s book, Atomic Awakening.

The approach of Prigogine lies in understanding the importance of Poincaré Resonances on dynamics and the construction/destruction of correlations at the microscopic level. How these resonances and these correlations behave leads to macroscopic features and the breaking of time symmetry. He deals with solving these Large Poincare Systems outside of the Hilbert Space; this is a concept which is important to biology and human social sciences. Because in these fields, we are always dealing with a system (human beings) which is far from equilibrium and behaves in novel and creative ways.

In other words, life, as  a non-equilibrium dissipative structure emerging from the non-living world, needs to be studied under the auspices of “The End of Certainty.” Irreversible processes and long range correlations are critical to understanding the development of self-organization and the novelty of life.

All social sciences deal with a biological organism (humans), which is a product of non-equilibrium processes. Even Prigogine and the book itself are correlated with the mass of knowledge produced by humanity in the 20th century. In other words, his ideas and those of all scientists are subject to the same non-equilibrium dynamics which Prigogine talks about in his book. Resonances and correlations in the social sphere can lead to amazing discoveries or a lack thereof.

One subject that I think could see development from Prigogine’s ideas is economics. Economics should be considered: “The study of non-equilibirum dissipative structures created by the self-organized social species known as homo sapiens, to reproduce and adapt in the biosphere called ‘Earth.'”

What I thought about the most was the concept of correlation creation and destruction. In terms of self-organizing systems and financial markets, perhaps crashes are correlation destruction events, while bubbles are correlations spreading through time. And after a crash occurs, correlations can be created which makes a crisis even worse.