The Library of Alexandria and the 3-2-1 Backup Principle

The Library of Alexandria was the largest library of antiquity, founded in the 3rd century BC. It kept hundreds of thousands of documents, mainly in Greek, among which there were many religious texts, stories or scientific writings originally written in another language, translated into Greek.

The library was therefore the greatest holder and custodian of knowledge in the world at that time. The greatest cultural loss of mankind is that the library was eventually completely destroyed. It has been a serious disaster on several occasions as to how it finally disappeared for good, there is no unified position.

It is even sadder that the library was built with the very purpose of making copies of everything possible for the scribes, so they tried to accumulate as complete a collection as possible. We can say that what was available in written form at that time, there was a copy of it in the library. A huge catalog was even made of the large number of documents and books stored in the library.

Science, religion and culture lost an unimaginable amount and quality of knowledge with the destruction of the library. Unfortunately, the most important reason for this was that, in accordance with the development of the world at that time, the books were practically only made using parchment, which burns easily and quickly. But if there had been texts engraved in clay or documents written on metal scrolls, they would have been scattered and disappeared or destroyed in the storms of history, as a result of repeated attacks and destruction on the library.

Unfortunately, this was not the only example of the brutal destruction of humanity’s cultural treasures. During the destruction of images, icons, statues, paintings and carvings fell victim to religious fanaticism on several occasions. And let’s not forget, there were also book burnings in the 20th century, and although these were also brutal and inhuman acts, they did not cause irreparable damage.

But let’s go back to the Library of Alexandria. Could the destruction have been avoided? Probably not. Could at least part of the library, the most important documents, have been preserved? The answer is yes. The books of the Holy Scriptures, the Old Testament, the New Testament, and the apocryphal writings were able to survive because the texts were constantly copied, and they tried to take the copies to as many places as possible. The best way to preserve your content is to copy and distribute it. Today, of course, it is easy to describe this, since individual books and documents can be copied and distributed in a matter of seconds in digital form. But whether our digital treasures are really safe is not so certain anymore.

Many people store their hard-to-collect digital information, photos, videos, and books on their smartphones, tablets, desktop computers’ hard drives, flash drives, or cloud-based storage, which is in vogue these days. Then something happens, and the user suddenly realizes that nothing remains of his feared and unobtainable treasures stored in a single place. The reason for this is that digital information is extremely vulnerable, and very few people know this.

I myself was twice faced with the moments in which digital information can be destroyed, once the power supply destroyed two hard drives in my machine at the same time, one of which also contained the saves of the other, another time my 500 gigabyte mobile winchester was on the carpet , while I was copying it, I started watering my flowers, and when I stepped off the chair, I managed to step on the device that was working. The case was not designed for such a load, all it took was to bend it enough so that the moving heads touched the moving plate, and the device was destroyed in an instant, with almost 500 gigabytes of material on it. Anyone who has ever worked with a 1.2-megabyte floppy disk or a 20-megabyte hard disk knows that this is a hundred thousand times the amount of data.

In both cases, the fact that I already applied the 3-2-1 backup principle saved me from complete data loss, which is actually the main topic of this article. I thought it was important to write about this because I have often seen how people who use digital technology take it for granted that what is available to them now will also be available safely in the future. And as I wrote, living examples prove that this is not the case.

What is this 3-2-1 principle? We must make 3 backups of our data , this does not include the original data, so we must have a total of 4 copies of all the data we consider important. Why? We could see that in my case, a power supply destroyed not only the original content, but also its save, so if I had only one save, I would have been in a lot of trouble.

backups on at least 2 types of media, for example a hard drive and a cloud-based backup, or a hard drive and optical discs (CD, DVD, Blu-Ray, M-Disc), larger organizations also use tape units for multiple backups. But we can also save to a flash drive, but we have to know that a flash drive can become inaccessible in an instant, I’ve also encountered this before, after a few writing errors, suddenly we can no longer connect the device, the operating system no longer recognizes the content disappears.

Finally, 1 : a copy of the save set should be stored elsewhere, preferably as far away as possible. In large companies, there may be a requirement that there must be hundreds of kilometers between storage locations. This would obviously be excessive in a home environment, but keeping the hard drives in a separate room is already a basic requirement.

Let’s take as an example a large American company with a lot of customer and other business data, they apply the 3-2-1 principle, their backups are stored in basement rooms several kilometers from each other near the beach. Then comes a hurricane that floods both storage facilities. If they are lucky, the contents of the disks can still be saved, if they are unlucky, then their company has gone bankrupt, as they cannot continue the work.

At home, it is worth selecting a master copy, this can be one of the mobile Winchesters that we can take with us in an emergency. But if we are even more careful and want to be prepared for the event that we are not there when the trouble happens, we also save our most important sources, images, and writings to an Internet storage location. In this case, it is worth encrypting the content with a password that we will remember even in our dreams . And, of course, we have to keep in mind the availability of the Internet storage space and the associated password.

The 3-2-1 system is not perfect either, there are situations, such as a war attack, which has become a tangible danger these days, in which case we are powerless. But, for example, a massive solar flare, which can destroy all electronic devices, is unlikely to cause any damage to our data stored on M-Disc. But we don’t have to prepare for extraordinary situations, since there are other things more important than the security of our data, but for cases and malfunctions that occur in general, even often. The 3-2-1 system is suitable to prevent these and avoid data loss.

How does the save system relate to the Library of Alexandria? Let’s imagine that the librarian at that time would have known and assessed the threats to the library and would have known the 3-2-1 rescue principle. Then they could have created another library outside of Alexandria, as far as possible, say in the British Isles, there would have been two copies of each text in
both libraries, and one of the copies would have been burned into clay, or scratched into metal plates, or engraved on stone tablets for posterity. But perhaps even better than the 3-2-1 principle would have been to use the technique used by viruses, to spread as quickly as possible, as many copies as possible, over as large an area as possible.

If any of the rescue and preservation methods had really been used, we cannot estimate how much richer religion, science, culture, and humanity would be now. We could have in our hands the most ancient writings about the creation of the world, about the flood, we could read 6-8 thousand year old texts or their copies, maybe we could also have in our hands the very first written Old Testament. We would have a direct report on the Trojan War, Atlantis, maybe even some reports on aliens visiting our Earth.

Unfortunately, the Alexandrian library could only be completely reconstructed with the help of a time machine, but the chances of this are very small, since a time machine would generate paradoxes that would probably never build such a structure.

So we have no other option but to accept that humanity has already lost the Alexandrian library forever, with contents that we can never, ever recreate.

English translation: January 9, 2024

The Age of the Universe

The age of the Universe, according to the current position of science, is approx. 13 billion years. Scientists regard this value as a number valid for everyone, independent of the observer. Indeed, anyone who has already learned about the bizarre, paradoxical consequences of the special and general relativity theory can immediately feel that something has been swept under the carpet here again.

According to the theory of relativity, time (duration) is dependent on the observer, it depends on the relative speed of the observer and the observed object. In the theory of relativity, the distance traveled in four-dimensional space-time is an observer-independent invariant, but neither the distance traveled in space nor the time required for this is independent of the observer.

A direct consequence of this is that we cannot talk about the age of the Universe or its size without saying what kind of observer these values refer to. Obviously, if we don’t leave the Earth, we can say with a good approximation that the age and size of the Universe are of the same value for every person on earth.

However, once we leave Earth, the situation will be different. In the twin paradox thought experiment, we see that if an astronaut leaves Earth at near the speed of light and returns after a few years in onboard time, he will find that much more time has passed on Earth during his journey. If we now ask the astronaut and his twin left on Earth, who are hopefully still alive, how old the Universe is, they will give two different answers. When they set out, they must have agreed that the Universe was the same age according to both of them. On arrival, however, they will already have a different opinion, the astronaut will say that the Universe is younger than his partner on Earth.

To increase the contrast a bit, imagine a situation in which alien astronauts bring life to Earth three and a half billion years ago, and when they are convinced that life has settled on Earth, they take off in their spaceships and at a speed very close to the speed of light they visit a lot of other viable planets and give life to previously lifeless planets everywhere. Then they return everywhere to see what happened. If they visit us these days and ask how old we think the Universe is, they will be very surprised, because there can be a difference of billions of years between our opinion and theirs. After all, they were constantly on the road, their own time passed more slowly than ours. They live in a younger Universe than we, who owe our existence to them.

To make the situation even more absurd, let us now contrast the positions of the Bible and science on this matter. Based on the Bible, theologians put the age of the Earth and the Universe at about six thousand years, while scientists accept the above-mentioned approximately 13 billion years as valid. They argue against age determination based on the Bible, that there are objects on Earth and in outer space that are obviously older than six thousand years.

We, on the other hand, can easily imagine an astronaut who has been traveling at a speed very close to the speed of light in his spaceship since the beginning of the Universe, so that, according to his on-board clock, only six thousand years have passed since the beginning of his journey, so he will say that he is only six thousand years old Universe. Of course, this does not mean that we can make the argument of the Bible acceptable, we only highlight that if we give up the concept of absolute space and time, as the theory of relativity does, we have to face unpleasant consequences .

So what we object to in today’s position of science: if we reject the concept of absolute time, then how can we say that the Universe has the same age for all observers. The two statements are not compatible. If, on the other hand, the age of the Universe depends on the observer, then the philosophical and scientific consequences of this should also be explained. In this case, we can easily find an object in the Universe that is older than we consider the Universe to be. A bizarre consequence of discarding absolute time is that different observers may measure the background radiation temperature differently.

The principle of relativity states that the laws of physics are the same in different systems. It’s so beautiful, really. But if we add to this the fact that observers in different systems measure the age of the Universe differently, then it is no longer so reassuring.

I would only ask future authors that when they talk about the age of the Universe, they should always add that roughly thirteen billion years is actually a subjective time, we earthly people measure, consider, and feel the Universe to be that old. And let’s not confuse this value with an extraterrestrial who will tell us a much higher or much lower value when we ask him about it.

December 9, 2012

English translation: January 5, 2024

Why Is Motion Impossible?

2,500 years after Zeno of Elea, I came to the same conclusion as he, using the simple tools of logic: movement is impossible. Also, of course it is possible, since I go to work every morning and go home every afternoon, experience shows that there is movement and the world is in constant motion.

The more precise formulation is therefore that according to our experience there is movement, but with our ordinary concepts and the logic we use, it is inexplicable how it is possible and how it works. Something fundamental is missing from what we experience, feel and think about movement, something fundamental without which the whole thing has no meaning.

Towards the end of the working day, I thought it was time to go home, and guided by some inspiration, I formulated this by saying out loud, “Well, let’s port home.” Then, walking on the sidewalk in the rain, I said to myself: “Well, let’s teleport home.” And as I walked, taking one step after another, I imagined myself stepping on the atoms of space, and I realized that I was actually jumping on particles of space, teleporting from one to another in the void between two particles.

Movement is actually teleportation!

Zeno completely revealed all the problems related to movement with only the tools of logic, his paradoxes perfectly show why movement cannot be interpreted with the tools of human logic. And although many people have already tried to present the paradoxes as not real problem, in fact they are still unsolved to this day.

To a first approximation, the movement is simple: given two points in space, the starting point and the end point, and a body, in the simplest case a point of mass, which travels from the starting point to the end point in a finite time. The difficulties begin when we try to imagine the details of this process. The space between the two points can be continuous or made up of discrete points, we cannot currently imagine a third possibility.

Let’s look at the case of continuous space, in this case there is an infinite number of points between the starting point and the end point, which the body passes through during its movement, and which it touches during its movement. Zeno showed that motion is not only not possible, but also cannot begin, we cannot say which point is closest to the starting point, i.e. there is no point next to the starting point. So if we imagine the movement in such a way that the body touches the points between the start and end points in a row, then we are in trouble, since we cannot arrange the points in a row, because there is no point next to a point, no immediate neighbor, even from any point we believe that it is the next point, there will always be another point that is closer to the starting point. In the case of continuous space, we cannot describe the movement locally, i.e. we cannot break down the movement between the start and end points into smaller movements, because while we can identify the start and end points, we cannot identify the points through which the movement passes, we can only say that these points are between the start and end points. No matter how small we choose the distance between the two points, the problem remains the same, regardless of size.

Now let’s imagine that the space is discrete, i.e. there is a finite number of points between the starting point and the end point, we can assign a subsequent point to each point. Let’s now take two adjacent points, let the movement start from one and end at the other. Since the moving body also consists of field quanta, imagine a single field quantum moving between two adjacent field quanta. This takes time, if it didn’t, there would be motion at infinite speed. Moreover, the space quantum must have an extension, otherwise there could be no non-zero distance. But this is an extension in which you can’t move, we either jump through an entire quantum of space, or we stay where we are. And since we cannot be between two space quanta, the jump is momentary, time passes when we are in one space quantum.

On the other hand, the stadium paradox of Zeno clearly shows that discrete space does not solve the problem of movement either. If a body “A” moves to the left relative to “B” by one quantum of space during one quantum of time, and a body “C” moves to the right relative to “B” by the same amount, then “C” is moving to the right relative to “A” by two space quanta in one time quantum, which is impossible. For this reason, time cannot be quantized in the same way as space, and there cannot be a maximum speed, because this speed can always be exceeded due to relative motion.

There are two solutions, one is the special theory of relativity, the other, which I like more, is absolute space-time, because in this case we have to relate all movements to absolute space, and in comparison there can be a limit speed. In this case, however, two bodies can move relative to each other at a speed higher than the limit speed, without exceeding the limit speed in relation to absolute space. However, this is also a rather strange consequence.

So we see that neither the continuous nor the quantum nature of space explains how motion is possible locally. The real solution, therefore, looks like it cannot be grasped locally, but only globally, i.e. with logic alone we reached to the point where quantum mechanics reached with entanglement, the Bell inequality and the Aspect experiment. Reality is non-local.

Even more interesting is Zeno’s paradox of the arrow, where he asks about a flying arrow, how does the arrow actually know, that it flies. After all, at every moment of time it occupies the same part of space as in its state of rest, if we take a snapshot of a flying arrow, it will not differ in any way from a picture taken of a stationary arrow. Our first idea might be that the flying arrow still differs from the stationary arrow in something that we cannot see, but which is actually there in the arrow. It is impulse, which is actually velocity. The only problem with this is that the speed cannot be a property of the arrow, because the relative speed of two arrows flying in the same direction with the same speed relative to the surface is zero! So the two arrows cannot carry the velocity property, since each body moving in relation to them should show different information, for example exactly zero in relation to each other. And here the absolute movement arises again, because then each body carries with it the information of its speed relative to absolute space, and this information can be modified locally by movement relative to each other.

In relation to relative motion, it is not really the impulse that is interesting, but the kinetic energy. We would think that kinetic energy is the property of the moving body, but we can immediately understand that this is not the case if we examine the behavior of colliding bodies moving in different directions relative to each other. Two bodies colliding against each other can release enormous energy during the collision, while moving in the same direction at the same speed, they don’t even collide. How can the magnitude of the collision energy be so different, if kinetic energy is a property of moving bodies? We can say that the impulse is a vector quantity, so the direction is important, but the kinetic energy is a scalar, it has no direction. It seems that macroscopically and locally the movement cannot be explained in any way. We need quantum mechanics with its probability wave or guiding wave, we need the collapse of the wave function, irreversibility. And it is also necessary that the wave function extends to the entire Universe. And when the guiding wave collapses, teleportation actually takes place, the moving particle manifests at a single point, so that a moment later the guiding wave spreads out again to feel where and when the next collapse will occur. So there is no particle migrating from point to point, but a particle that disappears and reappears elsewhere and at a different time, which keeps the information about its movement in the global guiding wave, the relative movement is actually the interaction of the guiding waves.

Actually, we didn’t get very far. We are in the same place as Zeno, we can neither imagine nor explain the movement with our ordinary concepts. So here is something ordinary, which is locally inexplicable for now. Something that is, but that could not be. We cannot explain even the simplest phenomena in the world. We all move in space, but very few of us think about how it is possible, how it happens.

And at this moment, I don’t know of anyone who really understands what movement is.

Nyíregyháza, December 27, 2022

English translation: Nyíregyháza, November 29, 2023

Something Dark

Physicists are very proud of their theories. They often refer to how accurate their theories are, especially quantum electrodynamics (QED) and general relativity are the theories that are often cited for special accuracy. I don’t dispute it, there are some very nice results, and physicists can really be proud that their efforts are sometimes embodied in beautiful equations that can give us accurate predictions that we can check with our experiments, but unfortunately, for physics as a whole, the situation is amazingly bad at the moment. Not only can the accuracy not be expressed in many decimal places, the terrifying situation is that our theories, believed to be incredibly accurate until now, only provide information about 4% of the Universe. And this cannot be called excessive accuracy. Think about the fact that we constantly brag to our friends about how precisely we know our city, that we know where and how big every single blade of grass is on the street. Then he would show us 96% of the city and confront us with the fact that although we know our street perfectly, 96% of the city is uncharted. In addition, it would suddenly seem that this unknown 96% is destroying even the knowledge we believed to be perfect, of which we were so proud until now. And we are not so sure about that 4%.

Dark matter and dark energy: 96% of our Universe is something we know very little about. This is not the first case when scientists, encountering an incomprehensible phenomenon, try to explain it with the assumption of something new. Phlogiston, or life force, were similar, concepts that wore out over time because they were replaced by other, more plausible explanations.

For the time being, dark matter and dark energy still hold their own, the majority of scientists in the world accept them as really existing things, while a minority expresses strong doubts about them.

Now I don’t want to write about who is right in this debate, but about how easily concepts and names that are imprecise and even wrong can spread in science.

Even in its name, dark energy and dark matter reflect the haste and unnecessary effort that characterizes the scientific society so much and has always characterized it. Still, we could expect that as science develops, our concepts will become more and more precise, since how could we expect to know the truth about things that are even named incorrectly.

Dark matter and dark energy are not dark at all, contrary to their names. Not only do I find it amazing and unacceptable that something has been named so badly, but it is also incomprehensible to me that these incorrect names have gained ground among scientists without further ado and are used by practically everyone in the world without any doubt or reservation.

How could I believe scientists who can’t even name a strange phenomenon? Translated from a programmer’s point of view, it’s like I want to write a program without specifying exactly what the program will do. The only way to deal with the properties of elastic bodies is to call them elastic bodies and not cube balls. The flow of liquids can only be discussed if I know what a liquid is and what a flow is.

Neither dark matter nor dark energy is dark. Something is dark if nothing illuminates it, or if light falls on it, it does not let the light through, but absorbs it. If it reflects, I call it reflective, if it lets it through, I call it transparent. But I only call it dark if it doesn’t let the light through. If dark matter and dark energy were dark, we would not see anything from the surrounding galaxies, even a large part of our own galaxy would be invisible. According to today’s assumptions, this 96% “dark” matter fills everything, so if it’s dark, it also covers everything.

How can something be called dark when the most appropriate adjective would be transparent or invisible?

And why do we call one matter and the other energy, when we know very well that matter and energy are one and the same, can be converted into each other and transformed? It is true that the effects of the two phenomena are different, while one exerts a repulsive and the other an attractive force on matter, but this does not justify calling one matter and the other energy. This is another example of irresponsible, imprecise, hasty behavior, something that a scientist should despise and condemn. All self-respecting scientists should distance themselves from these fancy formulations and urgently come up with a more accurate name that is close to reality.

When it was asked what the medium of light could be, at least they gave it a name, the aether, which was at least not misleading. True, the idea was later discarded, but then the aether returned, whether we think of it as a vacuum full of energy, or as curved space-time, or as a material that enables and gives space to entanglement, but even the speed of 600 km/s measured by Cobe we can consider it as the measure of movement relative to the aether, the aether is definitely a good name, a good concept, and in no way misleading.

For the time being, I can’t make any suggestions as to how the two incorrect names could be replaced, especially since I doubt their existence. Before we come up with hypothetical types of matter that we know nothing about in the universe, only that they somehow have a gravitating effect on their environment, we should definitely examine the alternatives, for example, how gravity works at great distances.

When the aether was introduced into physics, they at least imagined what properties it should have: it immediately became clear that it should be both rigid and without resistance, that light waves should vibrate in it at the same time and that the planets should move without resistance, it was immediately apparent that it should be an extraordinary substance, if it really exists. Currently, I am not aware of any attempts that have described what other properties these two hypothetical types of matter should have besides their gravitational properties.

The rotation of galaxies cannot be explained by the theories so far, can dark matter help?

Transparency and penetrability, lack of resistance, are the same as the properties of the supposed aether. We also know that one attracts and the other repels matter, but we do not know if they interact with each other and with themselves: does “dark matter” attract “dark matter” or “dark energy” ”, and does “dark energy” repel itself and “dark matter”. I wonder why we do not detect any of them at the scale of the Galaxy and the Solar System? And is the quantitative ratio of the two and the ratio of the strength of their interaction fine-tuned, and if so, how much? How necessary are they for the existence of the Universe and life in it? Could it be that two strange phenomena are the most shocking examples of fine-tuning, or perhaps planning?

These are all very important and fundamental questions. In order for us to have any chance of finding answers to these questions, first of all we need to clarify our concepts and find a suitable name for these two rebels of the Universe, which somehow managed to resist our attempts to get to know them.

If we manage to get closer to their nature, it may be necessary to rebuild the entire physics, and it may even happen that the question of fine-tuning and planning will be thrown into a completely new light.

April 17, 2018 – May 21, 2018

English translation: November 23, 2023

Creation from Nothing

I was just watching a TED talk by Jim Holt, who wrote an imaginary equation: “God + Nothing = Something”. The question in connection with which this equation was formulated is the most fundamental question that a thinking person could ever ask himself: “Why is there something rather than nothing?” The final question, which we may have thoughts about, but which we will never answer.

But, as I pondered this, I suddenly became enlightened: because Nothing, is the Nothing, it not only has no matter and energy, but also has no information, no laws, no numbers, no mathematics, there is no possibility that anything from it, which different from nothing, can ever be created.

And to make it even more interesting, Nothing does not even possess the property of existence, so this question is not good: “Why is Something rather than Nothing?” Only something can exist, nothing cannot! The question is thus correct: “Why is there anything?” or “Why is there anything at all?”. Even the assumption that “There is Nothing” is false. Nothing inherently does not exist, nor can it exist. We cannot make a positive statement about Nothing, because any such statement would treat Nothing as existing, and Nothing does not exist. We can continue along this line of thought: we cannot formulate any statement about Nothing, not even this statement, which I was forced to write down.

The only way we can talk about Nothing is to be silent.

Since we cannot talk about Nothing, only Something can be the focus of our investigations, because we can make both positive and negative statements about it: “Something exists.”, “There is no such thing as Something.” With this last sentence, we almost showed how it is possible to somehow formulate a statement about Nothing, but this is also not a correct statement, since Something that does not exist is actually Nothing! Thus, we once again asserted something about Nothing, and we cannot do this, as we established before.

After that, once we have realized that Nothing does not exist, our equation takes the following form: “God = Something”. So Creation did not start from Nothing, God created our world from Himself. I don’t even understand how the idea of creation from nothing could even arise, since even the Bible clearly states: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” There is no question here of creation from nothing, rather separation and shaping is what took place: chaos was shaped into order by inputting information from the Creator, the first representatives of this order were the sky and the earth. The Creator has always been in possession of the information, in other words the Logos, the Word, has always been with him (the Gospel of John is also clear about this). That is why creation was possible with the word: “Let there be light.” This is the projection and imposition of information onto chaos. This is Creation itself.

For many people, the above explanation is not acceptable, there are those who call the idea of Creation or Intelligent Design ridiculous, outdated, and nonsense. They are the atheists who have not yet been able to come up with an explanation that is acceptable to everyone, yet they are arrogant and self-confident when they declare about creation from nothing. Let’s be clear, neither the idea of Creation nor the theory of spontaneous creation from nothing is a scientific explanation, neither stronger nor weaker than the other. The scientific method derives statements from known elements, with assumptions and proofs, which can be verified experimentally, and in the best case, it also comes up with predictions that can later be verified by new measurements. Creation, or creation from nothing, cannot be verified experimentally, and we have no starting assumptions, at least assumptions that everyone could accept. So we have nothing to start from, and we can’t verify either, so I don’t call the teaching of Creation science, nor the theory of creation from nothing in modern physics.

Both the religious and the atheistic part of humanity would do better to accept this and not try to ostensibly move the debate into scientific territory, for creation from nothing, by its very nature cannot be handled by scientific methods. We must see that we all live in the same world, and that we all row in the same boat, and face the same difficulties, when it comes to explaining origins. Here, force, or even violence, impatience, incomprehension of the other camp, authoritarianism and orthodoxy lead nowhere. Unfortunately, the offenses listed here are committed by both fervent religious and fervent atheist thinkers, we are all at the forefront of mistrust and misunderstanding of the other.

What is left for us then? Clear thinking, but it’s not probative. We need to know that we can only produce theories with different probabilities and varying degrees of acceptance regarding the origin of the world, but their general acceptance can always be based on faith. Belief in Intelligent Design is the same belief as atheists’ belief in creation from nothing. We cannot decide between faith and belief with reason.

However, there is a very interesting question that believers and atheists alike can think about and debate with each other, and which may even have an acceptable result for everyone. This question is about the nature and role of Mathematics in the creation and functioning of the world. I wrote it with a capital letter on purpose, as a proper noun, because now it is not included as a field of science, but as a Platonic idea that exists independently of everything.

When we think about whether there was something that existed before the creation of the world, we think about things of a material nature. Naturally, the believers do not understand the existence of God in this, they think of him as existing from eternity. For now, we can’t do anything with time either, we can also imagine a world created together with time, but it doesn’t lead to any contradictions if we accept that time could have existed before the beginning of the Universe. Whether infinite time could have passed until the present moment deserves a separate discussion, but it is certainly conceivable that time could have existed before the creation of the Universe, even if it does not extend infinitely into the past.

God and time can therefore stand as independent entities from the other components of the Universe. But what about Mathematics? Can there be Mathematics independent of the Universe?

When scientists talk about the Multiverse, an endless series of universes, about worlds in which laws are different, matter is different, life is different, they never mention Mathematics. I have never read or heard about something like that the Mathematics is different in some worlds of the Multiverse. Why? Because we can easily imagine multidimensional worlds in which the law of gravity is different, or in which there are interactions of a completely different number and quality, we can even consider completely empty worlds acceptable, but we have not yet tried one thing: to imagine a different Mathematics. It seems that everything that one “discovers” in Mathematics was somehow already a part of our world before, and it was not an exception that previously seemingly useless mathematical tool later turned out to be excellently used by theoretical physics for its own purposes. Even non-Euclidean geometry is part of our world, at least of the Mathematics that exists in our world. So it looks like we can’t imagine a color we haven’t seen before, in the same way we can’t invent mathematics that is different from ours. We are nothing more than explorers wandering in the infinite landscapes of Mathematics.

And what is even more surprising: we can easily imagine Mathematics without the material world! Of course, we could say to this: but if there is no one in whose mind Mathematics can “live”, then how could it actually exist? The truth is that it is enough if one is an idealist and can already imagine Mathematics independent of all material existence.

And we have already received the components of the world: God (Information, Logos, Word), Time, Consciousness, Matter (mass, length, charge, …?), and Mathematics. Four of them could already have existed before the currently known Universe, so the creation actually “only” affects Matter.

To see why Mathematics can stand on its own feet without anything else, it is enough to look at the foundation of number theory starting from the empty set. The empty set is a rather interesting “something”. It is and it is not at the same time. It exists and does not exist at the same time. In addition, there is a potential hidden in it, from which the natural numbers emerge, and from them the entire Mathematics emerges.

If we really want to talk about creation from Nothing, then there is no better example than Mathematics. It is born from the empty set and is infinite both in terms of its elements and its statements, it is inexhaustible and cannot be limited by its own tool, logic, escapes any effort to understand it. Timeless and infinite, it will always contain unverifiable true statements, and we will never be able to prove that it is without contradictions and is complete.

If anything can be really close, it’s God and Mathematics.

We could say that everything that has been discussed so far is completely unnecessary, even meaningless. I think differently, I call all this philosophy, which delights and amuses, sometimes brings you closer to enlightenment, and it is certainly interesting in that you write things that you think at the moment of writing, in this way this activity is completely analogous to creating from nothing. Everything I’m writing about Creation right now is Creation itself. It’s like Escher’s two hands drawing each other as they create each other from Nothing. And that makes you cringe a little. That’s why it’s good to write such things.

But to end with a concrete argument: I would also like to speak briefly about the theory of creation, which is the most popular among atheist scientists today. They present this as a theory of creation from nothing, then they bring up the quantum vacuum and the indeterminacy relation, zero-point energy and virtual particles, and they can continue to consistently talk about creation from nothing, of course without seeing that they did not actually start from nothing, and without providing any verifiable evidence (we have seen that such cannot exist, but atheists are deeply silent about this). This nothingness therefore consists of the following components: time, vacuum (which is not empty), physical laws (indeterminacy relation), mathematics (this is necessary for physics), and wonder. This is necessary for such a virtual bubble to pop out of the vacuum, which does not disappear immediately, but begins to inflate and creates the Universe we know today. Not out of nowhere, I can’t emphasize this enough!

Whether we are from nothing or not, we live here in this world anyway, we are able to think even about abstract concepts like Nothing or Something.

Today, the world again has become somewhat more, information is formed from words, thoughts, which all contribute to the increase in complexity.

Who knows, maybe we are nothing more than the tools of Something, with which we “draw out” the world from Nothing…

Nyíregyháza, June 11, 2018 – July 1, 2018.

English translation: November 8, 2023.

Is the World Endless

I wonder what we can learn about this, probably one of the most fundamental questions facing humanity, if we just use our common sense and call on just a few basic, everyday experiences?

First, we need to clarify in what sense we are examining the infinity of the world. As a first approximation, and this will probably be sufficient, we can consider three types of infinity. Infinity in space, time and events. The latter perhaps needs some further explanation, by historical infinity I mean the number of states of the world, i.e. the inexhaustibility of the world’s phase space, i.e. whether the same thing can happen in the same way again. We will talk more about this later. Of course, the three infinities mentioned are related to each other, as we will see.

Perhaps the simplest is the issue of temporal infinity, and it can certainly be surprising. I myself never thought how simple this question could be handled, until I read the thoughts of an ancient Greek philosopher (I don’t remember who this brilliant philosopher was, only the clarity and simplicity of the thought caught my attention right away). He thought that the world’s past could not be infinite, because infinite time simply could not have passed until the present moment. Infinity is a possibility. If we start counting from one up, it is easy to imagine that we can continue counting to infinity, but we will never reach the last number. Infinity is therefore a possibility that will never be realized, therefore it is infinite. If time is infinite in the past, it is, on the other hand, an embodied infinity, an infinity of which we grasp one end, but the other end is not just a possibility, as in the case of numbers, but a realized infinity. And for this we think that it cannot exist. In fact, the problem with all three infinities is that one can only deal with objects in one’s thoughts that have some kind of equivalent in reality. And infinity is not like that. We have no experience of infinity, we can imagine the possible infinity, but not the actual infinity. Everything in our life has a beginning and an end, but these things with a beginning and an end follow each other in time, seemingly without end, but for us it is a possible infinity and not an actual, experiential infinity, since with our mind being finite in temporal and spatial sense, as well as finite in complexity, we cannot experience infinity.

But I have to admit, now that I’ve tried to explain why it’s clear that infinite time couldn’t have passed until now, I really feel I can’t. I feel it’s simply obvious, but I can’t give a completely exact argument for it. Fortunately, we can list physical arguments against temporal infinity. It looks very much like the Universe is developing in one direction, from hydrogen to helium, from that to carbon and oxygen, and the line ends with iron. Iron is the end of the fusion life of stars, even heavier elements can be created in a supernova explosion, but the fusion era of the Universe will end sooner or later, this requires a finite amount of time, so if the Universe is infinitely old, then there would be no more stars. The world would be filled with black holes, in thermodynamic equilibrium, in the state of heat death, and would actually be in this state for an infinite time, since compared to its infinite past, the finite star age would actually be a flash of time. This is also the problem with the infinite past, that compared to it, any finite duration is actually as if it never happened, compared to infinite time, any finite time shrinks to zero duration.

So let’s accept that the world had a beginning. Unfortunately, we are not helped by this either, because we have no experience of what it is like when nothing exists and the world suddenly pops out of nowhere. Our everyday experiences all show that every consequence has a root cause that precedes it, so we can’t do anything with the image of the world that appears out of nowhere without a cause.

It can therefore be concluded that the more likely answer is that the world has a beginning and is not infinitely old, but we humans cannot be satisfied with this answer either. It can be safely stated that we can have thoughts and opinions about the temporal infinity of the world, but no real reassuring answer to the question can be given.

In fact, we can get to the same point in relation to spatial infinity, the likely answer to this is that the world is not infinite in space, but we cannot be satisfied with this answer either, since we have no experience of what it is like to reach the end of the world and there is no more to go, even though there is nothing to prevent us from doing so. We could accept only one imaginable finite world as it is: in a finite but limitless world, we can never reach the edge of nowhere, on the other hand, if we start in one direction, sooner or later we will return to our starting point without turning around. Although this is very strange, it is conceivable and acceptable. This spatial world is incompatible with temporal infinity, because, for example, the gravitational effect of the mass in it circles the world endlessly, in the same way photons also circle endlessly, which would result in a world multiplying itself infinitely.

Regarding the spatial and temporal infinity of the world, there is a very ancient experience that precludes the world from being infinite both in space and time, and this is none other than the dark night sky. And although our ancestors have always lived under such a dark sky ever since they became conscious as humans, it took a doctor named Olbers to think about this simple fact and to draw far-reaching conclusions from it. If there are an infinite number of stars in space, then no matter which direction we look in the sky, sooner or later our eyes will come across a star. Dust and gas nebulae can hide stars for a while, but what absorbs light sooner or later emits that light, so this cannot cause the darkness of the sky. The world is therefore certainly finite either in space or in time, or if it is infinite in space and time, it cannot contain an infinite number of stars, so the infinite space beyond a limit is already completely empty. At least we can state this much with absolute certainty.

Finally, let’s look at the issue of infinity in events. This is a very important question, because there is a popular misconception that in an infinite universe everything can happen, even an infinite number of times, in other words, there can be an infinite number of copies of us, in an infinite variety of environments, one of us is currently writing Chinese, and the other of us he lives in a Hungary whose borders are washed by three seas. However, the fact that the world is infinite – we have seen that it is probably not – does not mean that all kinds of events take place in it in an infinite number of ways. It is also possible to imagine an infinite world in which only Earth has life, all the other, infinite number of planets are lifeless. And not only is there not an infinite number of human histories, but there is only one, the one that takes place here on this one Earth. Infinite space and time does not necessarily mean infinite variety, although this may provide the basic idea of many sci-fi books or movies, but it is not necessarily true, an infinite world can also be infinitely simple and bleak also.

However, the repetition of events can raise another interesting question, and that is the theme of eternal return, if the Universe reaches a state identical to its previous state, does this mean that everything will repeat itself from then on? If the world is deterministic, then yes. However, many signs point to the fact that quantum mechanics is the guarantee that the world is not deterministic, so the repetition of a previous state does not mean that the entire sequence of events will take place again, as this would result in a Universe that repeats its fate endlessly. According to our current knowledge, the Schrödinger equation, which describes the behavior of the micro world, is not deterministically responsible for the production of measurable macro states, so different outcomes of the same events are possible.

The infinity in events raises another question, which is related to another aspect of infinity, namely the problem of infinite divisibility. If time and space are infinitely divisible, this may raise problems at least as serious as the infinite extent of space and time. Perhaps it is no coincidence that energy cannot be divided into arbitrarily small portions, perhaps the same situation with space and time, it is not continuous, but quantum. Such a world, if it is not infinite in either space or time, and now it seems very likely, it results in a finite state space, i.e. the finitude of events is also ensured, i.e. the Universe can repeat its previous states. It follows from indeterminacy that if you step into the same river once, you will not go through your own fate over and over again, but it is still possible that the same states will repeat themselves over and over again, if not in the same order, i.e. it is possible , that the complexity of the Universe is finite.

Is this world of finite complexity capable of take all of its states, or does it only repeat a small subset of them over and over again, even if the individual events follow each other in different orders?

And is the event when a conscious mind suddenly understands the functioning of the Universe part of the event field of the Universe? Or is this exceptional event part of a subset that the Universe state vector never reaches?

February 2, 2013

English translation: November 7, 2023