Devoid § 6

The 'revealing' part

The first level of energy’s self interaction causes confined energy with an attractive force. When viewed from a particle physics point of view, this is the first force carrying particle, and there might only be one. It also has a particle associated to it. (More on that later.) The amount of energy needed to recreate a similar particle is humongous.

This is the first and the strongest force (or one of the first and strongest forces) in the universe. The range is infinite, or rather “the entire universe”. Still, it is considered the weakest. That is a misunderstanding. To us, it appears to be the weakest. The reason is as follows (hints of this were already in the previous chapters):

At the first interaction of energy, the confined parts are attractive. The mediator of this attractive force is the first force carrying particle, with a mass similar to the energy of the first interaction. (This is an unimaginably large mass, and the amount of energy that ends up becoming the universe is a lot.)

As seen in previous Devoid chapters, from that same interaction space and time emerge simultaneously. This causes the earlier mentioned force carrying particle (and its associated particle, the graviton) to spread out. In the newly emerged space, the same occurs, spreading out that first force carrying particle even further. As this particle is spread out that much, the part we currently get to interact with is infinitesimally small, hence it appears to be the weakest force to us.

That is the underlying mechanism that lets us experience the force of gravity as weak.

A 'New' form of matter

The earlier mentioned forms of confinement aren’t considered matter, because those don’t interact in an electromechanical way. They are also much larger than we can imagine. And, because we only tend to think of matter as stuff that can’t pass through itself, we don’t realize it is everywhere.

Just as the first force carrier particle was being spread out resulting in the apparent weakness of gravity, there are some other kinds of particles being spread out similarly. This causes layers of huge particles that hardly interact. As later forms of confined energy pass through those layers, there are multiple parts of such a particle slightly interacting with it, causing us to detect a huge number of hard to explain particles in several groups (some of which can be seen in the standard model). And every particle in a group is highly identical.

Some of the particles that were created during the earliest energy interactions have been spread out so extremely that they hardly interact at all and are not affected by the exclusion principle. The wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation give a hint of the various sizes these ethereal particles can be, and there is no real size limit as they grow along with the expansion of the universe.

Although we hardly notice any of this, it becomes apparent at the extreme edges of general relativity and all throughout quantum mechanics. In a way, the extremely huge, hardly interacting particles are the missing link. They kind of are the hidden variables that make it appear like there is a collapse of the wave function, and spooky action at a distance.

There are huge particles that hardly interact, because they were extremely spread out by the expansion of space.

A 'new' understanding of gravity

As was mentioned in an earlier chapter, ultimately, everything is confined energy. The extreme levels of confinement that happen below the Planck scale causes mass with two parts that are similar to the parts of matter and antimatter.

(For lack of better words, they will be called matter and antimatter here, although these probably aren’t the kinds we are familiar with yet.)

The masses always have an attractive force, and these matter and antimatter parts are causing changes is space (and time). And the more confinement there is, the higher the masses are, which causes even more attractive forces and changes in space.

At this stage, most of the matter and antimatter gets back together and converts back into energy, causing repulsive forces pushing some matter and antimatter away from each other. While this is taking place, there is also still more energy interacting with itself, causing even more confined energy. When these get very high in mass, some collapse into virtual black holes, trapping a lot of matter (both matter and antimatter). Although these virtual black holes only exist for an unimaginably short moment of time, they do temporarily cause an extreme attractive force. While this is happening, they simultaneously evaporate into energy and the cycle continues.

This cycle creates a relatively stable field throughout the universe. Everything we know passes through it and, depending on the speed, gets to interact more or less with this field. It’s not really about the size of the stuff passing through it, but the amount of confined energy it contains. 

The higher the amount of confined energy, the more interactions in that region, resulting in more attractive forces. It is the average of these forces throughout all the confined energy’s that causes the attractive forces between all the forms of confined energy. That is what we experience as gravity. And part of what we feel when accelerating is caused by the sudden increase in the amount of virtual black holes we get to interact with. And magnetism is analogous, but at a small scale.

That is where the underlying mechanism that led to the Higgs field comes from.

Understanding time dilation and length contraction

With the new understanding of gravity, we can repeat what was said in an earlier chapter about time and space, but let’s add time dilation and length contraction in the mix. 

It all starts with energy interacting with itself. Everything we can observe, no matter how different it may appear, has energy as its origin. Matter is the most familiar form and also one of the most compressed forms of confined energy. As energy interacts with itself which causes space and time to emerge exponentially, some of the energy gets confined. 

The confined forms of energy causes lesser space and time to emerge in those regions. Because the interaction of energy is also still going on there, there is more confinement of energy at multiple levels until it becomes what we call matter.

The more matter a region has, the more pronounced the lack of emergent space and time gets. This lack of space and time becomes more apparent at very high speeds, and in the direction of travel objects are shorter. 

That is where one of the underlying mechanisms that lead to length contraction and time dilation comes from.

Where did most of the antimatter go?

While energy interactions are taking place, equal amounts of matter and antimatter are created, and they cancel each other out in a burst of energy. In the places where the amount of energy confinement is great enough to cause virtual black holes to form, not all matter and antimatter pairs get to cancel out. So, while both matter and antimatter are trapped in black holes, they cancel out, leaving most of only one type of matter ending up trapped inside the black holes.

The cycle where virtual black holes rapidly come in existence and evaporate out of existence is something that is continuously happening throughout space. That cycle will someday be observable, and a huge detector will not be necessary for that.

As the energy self-interactions are also going on throughout black holes, the emergent matter and antimatter keeps recombining into energy and virtual black holes again. This goes on throughout the black holes, but at the edge, some of that gets to leave the black holes in various forms of radiation. But most antimatter resides in all kinds of black holes.

And because we call what is on the outside (that part what we are very familiar with) ‘matter’, most of what stays behind in the virtual black holes throughout the universe is called the opposite, ‘anti-matter.’

Antimatter didn’t disappear, but is hidden in plain sight. Unfortunately, we can’t see the inside of black holes with our current sensory technology (2024).

That are some of the underlying mechanisms that led to the apparent lack of antimatter in the universe.

Let there be light. 

What we know as light is actually the conversion of confined energy back to energy. Some examples of this are evaporating black holes or the recombination of matter and antimatter.

The earlier mentioned multiple cross-sections of interaction where pockets of various very dense forms of energy particles form, are at first moving at a distance so small that no detectable electromagnetic radiation is emitted. This mostly happens because it is being absorbed due to the high density of the confined energy particles created by the surrounding interactions.

As the space between these energy particles expands, the first familiar kinds of force carrying particles emerge (more on this in the next chapter). 

When the distances become even greater, other configurations of energy confinement emerge, and it all begins to look a lot like what we are familiar with. This is how we go from energy to gravitation, through quantum chromodynamics and -electrodynamics to the electromagnetic universe and matter. 

It was no accident that thinking about light led to great scientific advances throughout history. 

If you are open-minded enough, you should by now have realized that it is the photon where it all starts. When the first energy confinement happens, it all behaves much like a photon that is trapped. We could have easily called the fundamental energy a photon.

But just as we needed names to make it easier to communicate about the elements, we did a similar thing with the photon. In the case of the elements, it would be hard to easily communicate about the reactions of the elements by only addressing them by proton number. 

(It’s easier to say that iron interacting with oxygen forms rust.)

The interaction of the photon with itself at various levels of confinement makes it appear like there are several forces (or force carrying particles) that cause the existence of the particles that form matter. 

As the first force carrying particle is spread out so much throughout the universe, we don’t recognize it as being a photon anymore. Because the way it interacts changes, we named it differently, like the gluon and the hypothetical graviton.

All forms of radiation are basically the recombination of matter and antimatter that converts them back into energy.