Higgs boson vs Rebirth

I've recently attended a talk on "Investigating Effects of Past Life on Present Life". The speakers include Ajahn Brahm and Peter Mack. Ajahn Brahm in particular had mentioned that the Higgs boson which recently had a Nobel Prize to its name have less evidence for it than rebirth, he has a Physics degree. 

For the uninitiated, Higgs boson is the last entry in the Standard Model of particle physics, the particle that explains how the rest of the fundamental particles acquire their mass. The Standard Model is used to build up subatomic particles, which leads to atoms, molecules, cells, living beings, the earth, and everything in the universe (not counting dark matter and dark energy). 

Rebirth is saying that after death, if one still have ignorance and craving, there would be a birth again, depending on the kamma (actions) of the individual, the form of the rebirth maybe in human or in other realms (most obvious to us, animal realms). So after death, the kamma and ignorance (including memories, some personalities) are transferred from one body to another. 

Well, seeing that I have a Physics degree too and I'm a Buddhist too, I decided to investigate this.
http://cms.web.cern.ch/news/observation-new-particle-mass-125-gev http://www.atlas.ch/news/2012/latest-results-from-higgs-search.html
From these two websites, the way to find Higgs, an elementary particle is to find the evidence of the things it decays into. If there are events above and beyond the known background noise, then above a certain threshold (which is 5 sigma, or one in a million chance that this is due to the background noise) then the discovery can be claimed. The fact that two different detectors did it without sharing data to each other makes it all the more certain that this is not a fluke, it's real. The way that they know how to find these events is also to gather a lot of data, throw out the useless ones that doesn't fit into the model for detection, and then choose the ones that gives the signal. In a sense, even through it is just two different laboratory announcing the same discovery, the discovery was made by at least a thousand events on each energy levels (or a few hundred events above the background noise) selected among many more collisions events per second, running 24 hours daily in the LHC back in 2012.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S037026931200857X This paper detailed how some events are only predicted and expected to be observed to have about 100 or less events per energy level for the distribution. Regardless of the actual no. of events, the statistical analysis would confidently suggests that the Higgs is very unlikely to be a fluke and thus verified.

Now let's see the evidences for rebirth.

It would be instructive to see a case for rebirth first. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sT0B4V_kowo

James, a little boy in an American Christian family knows a lot about planes have nightmares about crashing in planes. He said that he was fighting the Japanese in World War Two in a boat called Natoma, as in a previous life where his name was James. There was no normal way for the boy to learn about planes as he was looking at children programmes. Investigation by the skeptical parents and Carol Bowman eventually revealed that there was a pilot named James in the mission in world war two, the plane crashed, and the pilot died. They eventually found previous life James' sister and information no one else could have known were shared. They also had a closing burial for the previous James in the middle of the sea where the boy James broke down and cried. 

http://www.medicine.virginia.edu/clinical/departments/psychiatry/sections/cspp/dops/dr.-stevensons-publications/STE17.pdf
This paper by Ian Stevenson on cases on reported rebirth by American children gave an indication on how the cases for rebirth are investigated. It is mainly through interviews, and cases are considered solved only if there are verifiable names or details about the previous lives that could be found in the real world but would not be possible for the child to learn in any normal way possible (abnormal way would include telepathy, the hypothesis about rebirth is that the knowledge came from memory of the past life). Not only they have to provide the verifiable details many of them are around 20+ details, those details has to confirm with what is found in reality for the cases to be solved.

The paper, published in 1983 said that there was over 2000 cases of such types around the world, assuming half of them are from India, which has 77% of solved cases, it means 770 cases of solid rebirth data to support the theory of rebirth. However, we need to think if we only need one data to show that the worldview of "there is no rebirth" to be false and untenable or do we need more? Typically, more is better, as statistics can be used to determine if the case is by chance or a fluke. However, it is hard to imagine how one can fluke a solid case of rebirth where according to this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-1BvpDZwiw and various other sources, there are cases where the family is not a believer of rebirth, there are cases where the children and family do not stand to gain by giving such data to the researchers and there are cases where it is impossible to explain the particular knowledge to be gained by the children other than rebirth. The knowledge can be the habits of the previous lives, the exact hiding place for a secret stash of cash, the shortcuts and knowledge of roads far from the main street, the knowledge of how things were arranged when they were alive in the previous life, and most of all, the emotional connection that cannot be faked between the previous family and the new child.

Criticism of such research can be that rebirth cases are mainly by one person: Ian stevenson, what if he decided to fake all his data? http://monkeywah.typepad.com/paranormalia/past-life-research.html this website shows a lists of past life researchers: Jürgen Keil, Ian Stevenson, Jim B. Tucker, Satwant K. Pasricha, Erlendur Haraldsson, Majd Abu-Izzeddin, Titus Rivas, Antonia Mills, and many others. This list itself has more support than Higgs boson in terms of no. of independent observation of data of rebirth.

In addition, many books has been published for the public over the years on this type of research: http://letusponder.hubpages.com/hub/10-books-about-Reincarnation this website lists 10 books.

Looking at the evidences part, I would say that rebirth has a stronger case for it if only because the evidences and research for it has been around longer than the Higgs, and there are many more independent researchers on the same topic.

The main difference between these two is obviously public opinion which is largely shaped by opinions of scientists and certain religions. http://www.comparativereligion.com/reincarnation3.html#reincarnation3 in this website for example, the author had looked at evidences for rebirth, even in early Christianity, yet reject it because of philosophical grounds (that if rebirth and kamma are true, there would be no beginning and no end, obviously the author has not come across the 4 Noble Truths) and attachment to certain words in the current Bible. The bias in public opinion is not only fueled by attachments to current forms of certain religion (the YOLO, you only live once, meme popular nowadays can also count as part of a belief system) it is also fueled by scientific dogmatism.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JKHUaNAxsTg Ajahn brahm also mentioned this, the video has actually been removed from the official TEDx website. In this video, it says that the worldview of most people are that science has explained everything we know about the world and the rest is just details to be filled in. This is a belief system. He said that there are 10 dogmas we take for granted from this belief system, none of them stand up very well under close observation.

1. Nature is mechanical, we are machines,
2. Nature is unconscious, we are just an illusion of consciousness since we are made up of atoms, 
3. Laws of Nature are fixed and the same,
4. The total amount of energy and matter is always the same,
5. There are no purposes in nature, evolution, etc...
6. Biological heredity is material,
7. Memories are stored in the brain, via connections,
8. Mind is inside our heads,
9. Psychic phenomena like telepathy are impossible, 
10. Mechanistic medicine is the only one that really works, the others maybe placebo effect etc..

These are the default worldview of "educated" people. The speaker, a scientists says that we overlook data that suggests that the constants of nature change (measurements of these changes over time and are averaged out, even these changes over the years, but it's a constant! So nobody bothered to investigate why.), or that our minds extends out of our brains (we can feel if people stare at us from behind). 

 

Alan Wallace in his book Hidden Dimensions, argued that currently the investigation of science is limited by these scientific dogma, not allowing proper research into phenomenons produced by the mind and insisting on unsuitable scientific method to investigate such a different phenomena. In the science of contemplation, he says, one should not demand that all datas to be objective, but subjective, personal experiences of an individual should be a valid data point as a foundation to begin research into the phenomena of the mind. When we investigate biology, we don't use the language of particle physics. 

 

I believe that due to this widespread delusion that scientific dogmatism is scientific method, support and acceptance for rebirth is not there even when the data in this field has been established for so long. Contrasting it with the science which has Albert Einstein, produced quantum physics, the basis of our electronic appliances, atom bombs, Physics has it easy to have the Higgs receiving so much more recognition by the public even before the scientists themselves are completely sure they have discovered it. 

 

Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow in their book The Grand Design said that a good model is

1. elegant
2. contains few arbitrary or adjustable elements
3. Agrees with and explains all existing observations
4. Makes detailed predictions about future observations that can disprove or falsify the model if they are not borne out.

In this sense, comparing two competing hypothesis of "there is rebirth" and "there's no rebirth, all evidences are coincidences or a conspiracy or anything else", we can see the hypothesis that satisfies the criterias above. 

 

1. Rebirth, having a simple, well defined way of how it happens (via kamma) and transmission of kamma and ignorance (includes memory here) from one body to another seems much more elegant compared to having to utilize all sorts of different explanations depending on the weakness of a particular case of rebirth. 
2. Rebirth contains far less arbitrary or adjustable elements (when combined with kamma) to explain why a person is borned poor or rich etc....as compared to the simple luck element which is just a summary of many different complicated variables suggested by the no rebirth theory. Besides, having to use different explanations to refute each individual cases, the no rebirth theory would have much more adjustable elements compared to rebirth theory.
3. Rebirth theory can explain all data suggesting rebirth, no rebirth theory would have a very hard time to explain most of them, in some cases, it is impossible to explain the case without assuming rebirth or very performed telepathy/ miracle. The alternative explanations to rebirth is also not as elegant or they have more adjustable elements.
4. The alternative hypothesis of no rebirth cannot predict any possible thing to verify or falsify. In contrast, there is this prediction system amongst the Tulkus in Tibet where a great master would leave a prediction letter of where to find his or her next life after his passing away.  http://www.dalailama.com/biography/reincarnation

Thus having read all these, I hope that you would leave behind your scientific dogmatism, use an open and critical mind to investigate the links above, especially on evidences of rebirth to see if you're really unbiased, really scientific, what's your honest conclusion?

For me, it's as Ajahn Brahm said, rebirth has already been proven. To avoid this to be a dogma, please do your own research and read up. I did mine. Here's another case to get you started: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GCcmr6UeNSY

Analysis of Four Elements and the current view of what materials are from Physics

Avatar the Last Airbender, has as its main theme the four elements of olden times. Captain Planet also employs the concepts of Earth, Fire, Wind, Water, and adding the mind component: Heart.

Traditionally there is the belief that every physical object is made up of these four elements. I'm going to analyze these elements, the Buddhist interpretation of these, and the Physics knowledge of these.

No. 1: Four elements as states of matter. 

One might see the analogy of Earth-solid state, Water-liquid state, Air-gaseous state, and Fire-plasma state. In Physics, they seem to differ only in the temperature/pressure gradient. However, now we know more than these, in the extreme cold end, there is the Bose-Einstein Condensation, in the extremely hot end, there are the conditions near the Big Bang, including quark-gluon soup and in the extremely high-pressure end, anything classical can be squeezed to become a Black Hole.

No. 2: Literally.

So, let's take them literally, that all other physical things are made up of a combination of earth, fire, water, air. It doesn't make sense now because we know that these are not the fundamental components of what makes our world. It's the atoms and molecules, crystal structures and condensed matter, gases, plasma etc...

No. 3 Historically, 

It is possible that this thinking exists due to the spread of Buddhist teachings into Greek and it has remained unquestioned for almost two thousand years. So according to history, we should go back to the main source to investigate what did the Buddha meant when he taught these.

No. 4 Buddhist interpretation Link

The commentary to the sutta had taught these four elements along with their characteristics of them.

Earth is the solidity element, it contains hardness, roughness, heaviness, softness, smoothness, lightness. Water is the cohesion element, containing flowing, cohesion. Fire is the heating element that has heat, coldness. And finally air, the motion element that has to support, pushing.

So let's stop here for a while and bring in the physics mind to analyze what we have so far. According to ideas in Physics, it makes no sense to talk about coldness, there is only heat that transfers from higher temperature to lower, not cold that transfers from lower to a higher temperature. There is experimental evidence for that in the form of radiation emitting from hotter stuff and even colder stuff. Since the radiation is of the same electromagnetic nature, it does not need two different names. In fact, it makes more sense to call it heat because when a material absorbs the radiation, it gets hotter.

So the commentaries couldn't have been talking about the ultimate heat as it is, or else they are wrong. Indeed, going back to commentaries, the context for teaching the four elements is for the meditator to be able to discern for themselves what does all those 12 characteristics are, one at a time. It is how we can directly see physical reality for ourselves, not really on what physical laws does it works with.

No. 5 The Suttas Links: MN28, MN 140

I'll just copy and paste them here:

"And what is the earth property? The earth property can be either internal or external. What is the internal earth property? Anything internal, within oneself, that's hard, solid, & sustained [by craving]: head hairs, body hairs, nails, teeth, skin, flesh, tendons, bones, bone marrow, kidneys, heart, liver, membranes, spleen, lungs, large intestines, small intestines, contents of the stomach, feces, or anything else internal, within oneself, that's hard, solid, and sustained: This is called the internal earth property. Now both the internal earth property & the external earth property are simply earth property. And that should be seen as it actually is present with right discernment: 'This is not mine, this is not me, this is not my self.' When one sees it thus as it actually is present with right discernment, one becomes disenchanted with the earth property and makes the earth property fade from the mind.

"And what is the liquid property? The liquid property may be either internal or external. What is the internal liquid property? Anything internal, belonging to oneself, that's liquid, watery, & sustained: bile, phlegm, pus, blood, sweat, fat, tears, oil, saliva, mucus, oil-of-the-joints, urine, or anything else internal, within oneself, that's liquid, watery, & sustained: This is called the internal liquid property. Now both the internal liquid property & the external liquid property are simply liquid property. And that should be seen as it actually is present with right discernment: 'This is not mine, this is not me, this is not my self.' When one sees it thus as it actually is present with right discernment, one becomes disenchanted with the liquid property and makes the liquid property fade from the mind.

"And what is the fire property? The fire property may be either internal or external. What is the internal fire property? Anything internal, belonging to oneself, that's fire, fiery, & sustained: that by which [the body] is warmed, aged, & consumed with fever; and that by which what is eaten, drunk, consumed & tasted gets properly digested; or anything else internal, within oneself, that's fire, fiery, & sustained: This is called the internal fire property. Now both the internal fire property & the external fire property are simply fire property. And that should be seen as it actually is present with right discernment: 'This is not mine, this is not me, this is not my self.' When one sees it thus as it actually is present with right discernment, one becomes disenchanted with the fire property and makes the fire property fade from the mind.

"And what is the wind property? The wind property may be either internal or external. What is the internal wind property? Anything internal, belonging to oneself, that's wind, windy, & sustained: up-going winds, down-going winds, winds in the stomach, winds in the intestines, winds that course through the body, in-and-out breathing, or anything else internal, within oneself, that's wind, windy, & sustained: This is called the internal wind property. Now both the internal wind property & the external wind property are simply wind property. And that should be seen as it actually is present with right discernment: 'This is not mine, this is not me, this is not my self.' When one sees it thus as it actually is present with right discernment, one becomes disenchanted with the wind property and makes the wind property fade from the mind.

And interesting enough, there is a fifth one,

"And what is the space property? The space property may be either internal or external. What is the internal space property? Anything internal, belonging to oneself, that's space, spatial, & sustained: the holes of the ears, the nostrils, the mouth, the [passage] whereby what is eaten, drunk, consumed, & tasted gets swallowed, and where it collects, and whereby it is excreted from below, or anything else internal, within oneself, that's space, spatial, & sustained: This is called the internal space property. Now both the internal space property & the external space property are simply space property. And that should be seen as it actually is present with right discernment: 'This is not mine, this is not me, this is not my self.' When one sees it thus as it actually is present with right discernment, one becomes disenchanted with the space property and makes the space property fade from the mind.

From these it is clear that the Buddha meant this as another way of thinking about our bodies and the world outside of us in a simplistic way with the main goal of us seeing things as they are, not mine. So that disenchantment would arise.

The Buddha was not interested in advancing Physics when he taught this.

No. 6 Four Elements as fundamental particles

Earth: hardness, roughness, heaviness, softness, smoothness, lightness. 

This would translate to interaction forces between the fundamental particles, if not for the presence of water, so I would map this as the substance, eg. quarks, electrons itself. 

Water: flowing, cohesion.

Gluons, or force particles between the substances. 

Fire: heat, coldness.

Temperature as scalar field across spacetime. A non zero temperature also corresponds to particles as the Unruh effect demonstrates. 

Air: supporting, pushing. (motion)

Energy itself? Kinetic energy, potential, etc, can also be part of gluons. 


Updated for No. 6. 

Earth is the solidity element, which is Pauli’s exclusion principle for fermions. The particle physics terminology is found in the poster you posted. For bosons, like light, can occupy the same space at the same time. Pauli’s exclusion principle for fermions, specifically electrons means no 2 electrons can share the same exact quantum properties in the same space and at the same time. This allows for atoms to be built and chemistry. Since the normal solidity we experience via touch is from electromagnetic repulsion between the electron clouds of the atoms, the element of solidity somewhat includes the electromagnetic force as well.

Water is the element of cohesion, which is easiest to map to all the bosons, the force carrier particles. That are the 4 fundamental forces of gravity, electromagnetism, strong and weak nuclear force, as well as any other fundamental force we might discover in the future.

Air is the element of motion, thus it’s basically kinetic energy.

Fire is the element of heat, so temperature. The 3rd Law of Thermodynamics which says that nothing can reach absolute zero temperature (0 Kelvin) is one guarantee that there’s the element of fire everywhere. Black holes used to be thought of as not having temperature, but after Hawking’s radiation discovery, it too has a temperature.

If we want to see a unifying commonality behind the 4, we can see it as energy. Fire is heat energy, Air is kinetic, water is gravitational potential energy, electromagnetic energy (electricity, light etc), Earth is E=mc2, mass-energy.

Let’s see if everything everywhere would have these 4 elements as claimed by the Abhidhamma. Fire is verified to be universal due to the 3rd law of thermodynamics. Air, motion is sort of guarantee as well due to the abolition of Newtonian’s absolute space with the general and special relativity, hmmm… maybe gravity should be part of the air. Also, there’s zero point energy due to the uncertainty principle of momentum and position. As things get closer to absolute zero, the momentum becomes closer to zero and if the uncertainty of the momentum becomes small enough, the particle’s position becomes fuzzy, so motion is always there in the quantum world.

Water, yes, so far as we know, gravity interacts with every particle, as well as the weak nuclear force, but maybe dark matter doesn’t interact with the weak nuclear force, that’s why we cannot find them yet in particle accelerators.

Earth, fermions are explained (Pauli’s exclusion principle), well, if we include mass as part of the earth, all particles which interact with the Higgs are counted. Which leaves photons and gluons. Maybe the push-pull relationship they exert on the fermions does explain some of their earth-like properties. Like we can use light to push spacecraft with solar sails as light too has pressure. Or just a simple inverting of the water part, since fermions are interacted by bosons in the water analysis, then we can just say that all bosons interact with at least one fermions.

So the notion of kalapas having all 4 elements each might not be too crazy a notion. Just needs creative mapping.

The Beginning (with some updates to be friendly to all)

The beginning of the universe is a great story to tell, however, the history of how physicists found the current theory of the beginning of the universe is very interesting as well. Let’s add in another spice to this. Religions in general also said something about the beginning or non-beginning of the world. Being a Buddhist, I would like to see how well does Buddhism fair in this respect in light of the current cosmology.

Too often have I seen religious people trying to use science to support their own religion. That is until a scientist criticized that the theory of science that they are using is outdated or worse: misrepresented.

I hope not to fall into their company, but to be fair to both Physics and Buddhism, I shall attempt to present each field from their own point of view and not use one to prove or disprove the other. Yet, if I slip up somewhere, I’m sorry.

First we start with Buddhism, then the description about cosmology along with the comparison.

In Buddhism, there is this Kalama Sutta (AN 3.65) in which the Buddha told the people of Kalama village that there are ten specific sources which knowledge should not be immediately viewed as truthful without further investigation to avoid fallacies:

1.       by revelations,

2.       by traditions,

3.       by rumor, gossip, hearsay,

4.       by scriptures,

5.       by logical conjecture (alone),

6.       by it is a point of view or common sense,

7.       by having considered the reasons (philosophical dogmatism),

8.       by agreement with one’s own theories,

9.       by experts,

10.    by the thought “this monk is our teacher” (authority).

but when you know for yourselves that,

•       these qualities are skillful,

•       these qualities are blameless,

•       these qualities are praised by the wise,

•       these qualities, when adopted & carried out, lead to welfare & to happiness,

then you should enter & remain in them.

In science, theories must be verified and vetted by the experimental or observational data.

So you can see that Buddhism is much more interested in teaching the avoidance of evil, the doing of good and purification of mind. This is the central teachings of Buddhism. Why so? Because there is kamma and rebirth.

Take for example a quote from this sutta (SN 15.13):

From an inconceivable beginning comes transmigration. A beginning point is not evident, though beings hindered by ignorance and fettered by craving are transmigrating & wandering on.

Because beings undergo rebirth due to ignorance and craving, the central teaching is to recognize that there is suffering in life which is to be understood. And the cause of these suffering is due to ignorance and craving which is to be abandoned. The abandoning of the cause would lead to the end of suffering which is to be attained and the way to the end of suffering, morality, mental development and wisdom is to be developed. These are the Four Noble Truths in Buddhism, the first and central teachings of the Buddha.

True to its spirit of asking us not to just believe but to investigate, the Buddha repeatedly ask his disciples to practice meditation or mental development so as to be able to see into the workings of the mind and past lives to directly verify for ourselves the truth of kamma and rebirth. Before that, it remains a working hypothesis for those with faith to start on the journey.

So questions like "Is there a beginning?" is of no importance to Buddhism as the Buddha said that one would die before those things are answered, emphasizing that he is only interested in leading people towards the end of suffering, not philosophical questions.

Thus conventional wisdom in Buddhism would itself be enough for a Buddhist to not be bothered by the development of cosmology in Physics. However, as I am both a Physicist and a Buddhist, this is of some interest to me.

Specifically the problem is: If rebirth requires a physical universe for beings to be reborn into, then Buddhism requires a beginningless model of the Universe.

Now let’s look into the cosmology picture of the beginning.

In Physics, the idea that there was a beginning came about in a hard fight in the field of cosmology. In the early days, Einstein (and most people then) believed the Universe was static, contrary to what his equation of General Relativity says, he added a term called the cosmological constant to the equation to reflect his belief. Later Einstein admitted that the universe is not static due to observational data by Hubble. He called his modification of the equations of General Relativity his greatest blunder. After that there were two main schools of thought.

First was the steady state theory which says that the universe is infinite, and that the observation that it is expanding because it has always been expanding. The idea is that not only is the universe the same overall in space, but it is also the same in time! The constant density of the universe can be explained by matter spontaneously coming into existence so that the universe is always in this state, and therefore have no beginning.

Second is the now familiar big bang theory. It says that if the universe is expanding now, then it must have been in a state of very high density. Extrapolating back in time, we get the beginning of the universe when the density goes to infinity. The universe was of zero size. Currently the estimated figure is 13.8 billion years ago. The moment of the big bang is called the singularity, the ridiculous state of the universe where most laws of physics break down.

Now if this article, or dialogue between Buddhism and Physics were to occur at that time, then Buddhists most likely bet that further observations will eventually support the steady state theory. After all, the Buddha himself said that there is no way to conceive of a beginning.

The Buddhist point of view towards the beginning is that if there is a effect, there must be a cause. Tracing back to the cause, it is an effect of another cause. Repeating this formula, how could we have a first cause without something causing it to happen? [1]

In almost the same sense, this is the physics dilemma too with the big bang theory. Once you are at the singularity, what caused it to expand in the first place? What guarantees that all the laws of physics that comes after is conducive for a life bearing universe? [2]

I for one am glad that I wasn't an active engaged physicist Buddhist at that time. Or else I would have a great punch in the face to my faith when experimental evidence supports the big bang theory and the steady state theory has died down.

This story above tells us of the danger of trying to mix up science and religion, using science to support or to disprove religion.

When the big bang theory won out, physicists have been working on the details of almost every part of the evolution of the cosmos. Even up to now, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN would be recreating the conditions near to the big bang and exploring the new physics there (the LHC would be restarting around 2015).

The singularity is the problem. Physicists haven't solved it yet because the largest problem so far is the combination of the 2 main pillars of modern physics: General Relativity and Quantum physics near the singularity. General Relativity is used when gravity is strong or cosmological scales are considered. Quantum physics is more at home with the behavior of nature at the very small scales. Both theories are incompatible in a fundamental level. Yet, near the singularity at the region called Plank scale where gravity is strong and the size is very small we must use a theory that combines General Relativity and Quantum Physics harmoniously. This is so that we can not only predict everything that happened up to the Plank scale, but also beyond it, where physicist are confident that the singularity from General Relativity will fade away in light of a more accurate model of the universe: Quantum Gravity. [3]

There are two possible contending Quantum Gravity theories currently popular and both of them predict a different scenario to replace the singularity. They are the

·         M-Theory, the 11 dimensional form that combined 5 string theories (everything is made up of strings of Plank length). M-theory contains branes (fundamental things that are more than just one dimensional) too. It is General Relativity in the language of Quantum.

·         Loop Quantum Gravity, that spacetime is made out of quantized loops; it is Quantum theory in the language of General Relativity.

To know how the universe began, we should look at how it could end. There were proposals of how the universe will end. One of the most symmetrical way for it to end is the natural combination of the big crunch plus the big bang, producing a big bounce. It requires that the universe is dense enough so that gravity will pull everything back together again in the reverse of the big bang into a big crunch. Then by some magic of Loop Quantum Gravity, after passing through the Plank scale, a super repulsive gravity is generated, hence the cause of a big bang can be explained, and there can be no beginning to the universe, or series of multiverses, separated in time.

It's a beautiful theory that can fit right into Buddhism. And if Buddhists happen to cling on to this idea, they will soon be disappointed as well because the theory of the infinite big bounce has a theoretical flaw.

There is sacred law in physics called the second law of thermodynamics. It states that entropy, the measure of disorder, always tend to increase in a closed system. Applied to the universe as a closed system, entropy does not get reversed during the phase of the big crunch. The arrow of time is still toward disorder. Eventually, with each new universe, the entropy will increase and makes the next cycles longer and bigger. As the previous cycles are shorter, there will be a beginning. Thus the multiverse in time idea is ok, but still has a beginning. However, stronger than this flaw is the observational data.

Data from 1998 cosmological observation suggests that the universe is not showing signs that it is slowing down, but rather it is accelerating out at an increasing rate. [4] This created the need for postulating dark energy (we called it dark because we have no idea what it is) as the source of this repulsive force. Eventually our universe most probably will die by the Big Rip, where everything expands out faster than the speed of light with respect to everything else, including the subatomic particles in our body. Thus a Big Crunch is not likely to be the end of our universe.

Now I’ll present three different possible theories of beginningless universe and a closed universe with a beginning in cosmology literature.

First, the inflationary universe theory is required to explain a number of observational data in the universe. According to it, the universe expanded faster than the speed of light for a while near the beginning and then stopped and expanded at the slower than the speed of light rate. Most inflation theories allows that some parts of the universe to keep on inflating while some other parts stop to create a universe. Ours could be one of them. Thus stretching this back to the past and to the future, we get an infinite series of multiverse with no need for a beginning and no end. In fact there’s a recent paper of possible observational data for this model. [5]

Second, the Baum-Frampton model gives an application of how a model of dark energy can lead to a sudden turnaround of a small patch of universe to a small volume just before the Big Rip. That patch will have its entropy reset (by throwing out most of the stuffs in the universe) and then inflation restarts the cycle, beginning the Big Bang all over again. This also produces more universes for each cycle. If there is an infinite amount of universe, then there would be no primordial (first) universe. [6]

Third, the Steinhardt-Turok model. This model is based on M-theory and assumes that our universe lives on a 4-dimensional brane (a fundamental object of the theory) that can collide with another universe of 4 dimensional brane in a higher dimension. Each brane is infinite in volume thus allowing for the accelerated expansion of the universe. In fact the expansion would clear the universe to vacuum again (solving the entropy problem) before gravity pulls two neighboring branes to another collision, producing the Big Bang. The collision would also explain away the things that standard cosmology uses inflation to explain. Since this cycle can repeat indefinitely, there is no beginning to this type of multiverse. [7]

Finally, in the book The Grand Design, the authors said that because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist. It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going. [2]

However the discussion is far from ending in cosmology, reference [8] argues that there is a beginning for eternal inflation, cyclic evolution, and the emergent universe. Reference [9] replies that for all practical purposes, the universe is past eternal. This is because of the existence of future eternal universes. Imagine that time is like a real line in mathematics that starts from zero to positive infinity. We are like the people living far on the real line, even if the universe started at time zero, and we can’t see the zero. To us, there is practically no beginning!

In conclusion, for physics, the field of cosmology is far from dead, it’s just the beginning to gather more and more accurate data for precision cosmology.

From the side of Buddhism, there is no practical need to care about these models too. The best consistent model for Buddhism would be the Baum-Frampton model for predicting that the universe expands and contracts (there are other Buddhist texts that says the world expands and contracts), yet taking the lesson from the story above, I would not put down any money to bet that this model will ultimately win out amongst others. Who knows what’s the next top model in cosmology will be?

So, for Buddhist, the conclusion is the same as always. Paraphrasing Richard Feynman, shut up and meditate.

Bibliography

[1]	Dalai Lama, The Universe in a single atom, United States of America: Morgan Road Books, 2005.
[2]	S. Hawking and L. Mlodinow, The Grand Design, Bantam Books: United States of America, 2010.
[3]	S. Hawking and R. Penrose, "The Singularities of Gravitational Collapse and Cosmology," Proc R Soc A, vol. 314, pp. 529-548, 1970.
[4]	Riess, A. G. and others, "Observational evidence from supernovae for an accelerating universe and a cosmological constant," Astron.J., vol. 116, pp. 1009-1038, 1998.
[5]	S. M. Feeney, M. C. Johnson, D. J. Mortlock and H. V. Peiris, "First Observational Tests of Eternal Inflation," Phys. Rev. Lett., vol. 107, no. 7, p. 071301, 2011.
[6]	L. Baum and P. H. Frampton, "Turnaround in Cyclic Cosmology," Phys. Rev. Lett., vol. 98, no. 7, p. 071301, 2007.
[7]	P. J. Steinhardt and N. Turok, "Cosmic evolution in a cyclic universe," Phys. Rev. D, vol. 65, no. 12, p. 126003, 2002.
[8]	a. [hep-th], "arXiv:1204.4658".
[9]	a. [hep-th], "arXiv:1204.5385".

Artificial Intelligence & Cases of Rebirth

Well, strictly speaking, artificial intelligence is not under Physics purview, and cases of rebirth are not needed in the study and practice of Buddhism. Yet, both are quite close to Physics and Buddhism respectively and both are related and very real.

The current field of artificial intelligence is very obvious in terms of the voice activation control. Just look at Apple's Siri.  Sorry, I'm really lazy to explain the basics of A.I. which I don't think I have enough knowledge of anyway. There is this Turing test and Cleverbot. Well, not the best conversationalist, but still she gives unexpected answers sometimes. The point that I want to make is, that as computers and technology improve, as the internet gets more and more information from us, as the research in A.I. increases and gets better and better....

Eventually, we can see the top down and the bottom up approaches may make up something that resembles humans. Especially if we add in one more technological advance called quantum computer. There has been some speculations that human brains and thinking involves something quantum-like, and thus making a quantum artificial intelligence may have a better chance of it getting to one stage we call self-awareness. Where it is an another being, with feelings and free-will, not just complicated expressions of trillions of lines of codes.

Buddhist psychology may offer some help in this regard where the mind is analysed in terms of four aggregates: Feelings, perception, mental formation and consciousness. Each of these maybe programmed separately, but also somehow fits in together again. If a knowledgeable Buddhist is working on A.I. development based on Buddhist psychology, that is.

Anyway, let's say that one day we have a real self-aware A.I. What will it be like? In Buddhist terms: Can it gain enlightenment? Is it fundamentally different from us because it can think in parallel, and we can't? Does it have until 8 consciousness (Mahayana concept)? Or just 6? Does it even suffer like us?

A more interesting question is: what if the self-aware A.I. is just like the case of rebirth?
Here are some videos of these case studies in case you're unfamiliar.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GCcmr6UeNSY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ir9Xs1Q9T5g
In case this happens, then A.I. or robots are just new bodies and consciousness for beings to be reborn into.

Then, can we differentiate between the A.I. who undergoes rebirth and A.I. that does resemble humans but are fundamentally different because they do not suffer like us. (No craving.) Yes it seems quite easy to differentiate them then. Maybe the Buddhas and Bodhisattva may manifest into them too! Interesting ideas for science fiction.

Ultimate and conventional Truth- Lagrangian, Noether's Theorem

Today in my Advanced Dynamics class, in the process of showing Noether's Theorem, I found an interesting connection with Buddhism and the play of different generalized coordinates that you can put in the Lagrangian.

The power of the Lagrangian way of doing Classical Mechanics is that one can choose any generalized coordinates to solve the same problem, so some coordinates maybe more suitable to the problem than others. Also if the Lagrangian does not have explicit dependence on one particular coordinate (called cyclic coordinate) in the chosen generalized coordinates, then there will be something that is conserved. Specifically, it's the conjugate momentum of the Lagrangian with respect to the cyclic coordinate. If the generalized coordinate is chosen badly, then one might not see this symmetry and the conserved quantity may not be so obvious.

Let's call the generalized coordinate that we can see the symmetry directly as Q, and the one that we cannot, let's call it q. It might be for example that although q does not reveal the symmetry directly, but the equation of motion that it generates from the Lagrangian might be simple and usable in our everyday life. And the Q form of the Lagrangian might be more troublesome to interpret in its equation of motion form, so a transformation to the q view would make the equation easier to work with.

This is what I see as the duality between conventional truths and ultimate truths as well. (Do note that there is a range of q and Qs, but there is only one ultimate truth, and the conventional truth maybe many, but should not be too complicated either.)

So in the conventional truths, (coordinate q), there exist you, me, I, the car, etc... which makes everyday living and talking (equations of motion) smooth and easy. Yet in this view, we cannot see the conserved quantities of everything. That's where the ultimate truth comes in (coordinate Q) wherein the true nature of the situation is revealed and we see impermanence, non-self and subject to suffering in all things (timelessly-corresponding to the conserved quantities) and yet it is not convenient to operate in purely ultimate truth view. One would have to say: "this 5 aggregates has arisen the wish to go to abandon some water at the particular location wherein the electromagnetic waves are shielded from the light receptors of other 5 aggregates." which in conventional terms is: "I would like to go to the toilet."