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Binocular Rivalry Blog

by Sid Deutsch

     The following essay deals with “binocular rivalry.” Unfortunately, it is necessary to illustrate the subject with a drawing, but drawings are not allowed on Blogs (to the best of my knowledge). Therefore, please click on Essay #40 of www.siddeutsch.org to see the drawing in question, Figure 1.    

     The essay is inspired by an article in the April 2010 issue of Scientific American: “Faulty Circuits,” by Thomas R. Insel, pp. 44-51. His main thesis is that “Neuroscience is revealing the malfunctioning connections underlying psychological disorders  . . .  Many illnesses previously defined as ‘mental’ are now recognized to have a biological cause: in autism, for example, it is an abnormality in the connections between neurons, often attributable to genetic mutations; schizophrenia is now viewed and treated as a developmental brain disorder.  . . .  certain other mental disorders such as depression, obsessive–compulsive disorder or post-traumatic stress disorder could also be physiological disorders of the brain.”

     In binocular rivalry we have a circuit that, at first, seems to be faulty. More serious investigation reveals, however, that the circuit serves well toward “survival of the fittest” in certain dangerous circumstances.

     Consider Fig. 1(a). Hold this figure about 20 cm (8 inches) from the eyes, and look at the central dot. (I am assuming that the reader has normal vision.) Now relax your gaze as if you are looking off into the distance. As you do so, the image seen by the left eye moves to the right so that the ´ lands to the right, as in Fig. 1(b), while the + ends up in the center above the (b). At the same time, the image seen by the right eye moves to the left, so that the + lands to the left, as in Fig. 1(b), while the ´ ends up in the center above the (b), superimposed upon the left eye’s +.

     When the square surrounding the + and ´ fuse together, you will get a quasi-stable image. (Note: Some people have difficulty getting this optical effect.)

     The reason that the eye images shift laterally when we go from 20 cm to

a distant location, of course, is that the vergence angle, the angle the eyes make with each other, has to change. This convergence operation is performed rapidly and automatically, not under our conscious control, via a built-in feedback system. (As the distance to the object of interest changes, the shape of the eye lens is also changed, if possible, by accommodation muscles, so as to maintain focus. This accommodation is also rapidly executed by a feedback circuit that is not under our control.)

     Returning to Fig. 1(b), where the + and ´ are superimposed in the center: Almost immediately, you will lose the +, or the ´, or bits and pieces of the + or ´. The reason is that there is a conflict between the left eye’s + and the right eye’s ´. According to Wikipedia, “Binocular rivalry was discovered by Porta (1593, as cited in Wade, 1996). Porta put one book in front of one eye, and another in front of the other. He reported that he could read from one book at a time and that changing from one to the other required withdrawing the ‘visual virtue’ from one eye and moving it to the other. . . . [Binocular rivalry] interests people who see it as a key to finding a neural correlate of consciousness. . . .  When one image is presented to one eye and a very different image is presented to the other, instead of the two images being seen superimposed, one image is seen for a few moments, then the other, then the first, and so on, randomly for as long as one cares to look.”

     Where, in the visual system, does this blocking-out occur?

     From the eyes, the optic nerves lead to two structures called the lateral geniculate nuclei (LGNs). If we follow the optic nerves carefully, we see a remarkable bifurcation: Approximately half of the axons from each eye cross over, so that one of the LGNs ends up with fibers from the left half of the visual field, and the other receives fibers from the right half. From the LGNs, the signal proceeds to the primary visual cortex at the back of the head. In other words, the visual field is split in half, and the two halves are separately processed without our being aware of the bifurcation. An object that moves from right to left in the visual field instantaneously “hops” across the gap between the left and right hemispheres. The neural networks are obviously continuous although they are physically separated. It is “natural” for the left hemisphere to handle the right half of the visual field, and vice versa, because rays of light cross over in passing through the lens of the eye.

     The LGNs are layered structures. It is obvious that the blocking-out of various parts of the + and ´, in binocular rivalry, must take place in one or more layers of the LGNs.

     Although the blocking-out may be an entertaining effect, it must be seriously preserved and fostered by millions of years of evolution. Consider, then, the dire consequences if the left- and right-eye superimpositions went unchallenged:

     I happen to have macular degeneration. The central portion of my right eye’s visual field is distorted (horizontal and vertical lines are bent), reading is impossible, and the area is darker than normal because of many dead retinal cells (so explains my eye doctor). (The peripheral vision remains undistorted. I can detect a sneak attack from the right or left.) Nevertheless, I have absolutely no problem in reading, writing, or driving a car because that distorted central right-eye contribution is blocked out of conscious experience!

     It is difficult for me to thread a needle, with one good eye, but this is hardly a drawback in “survival of the fittest.”

     I believe the binocular rivalry effect is strongly maintained by evolution because injury to one eye must be fairly common amongst “wild” animals in their young “childbearing days” or beyond, when they contribute to the care of offspring. In other words, the ability to block out “bits and pieces of the + or ´” makes it possible for an animal to maintain good vision using the available surviving visual elements. Slightly different is the case when a person with good vision uses Fig. 1(a) to get binocular rivalry; here, both eyes are competent, but their images are in conflict. The LGNs apparently look for conflict but, instead of war, they decide that might is right, after all. (The jingoistic slogan, “Might Is Right,” has been featured by the military.)

     Looking back to the beginning of this essay, we conclude that the binocular rivalry effect is not due to a “faulty circuit” as defined by Thomas R. Insel in his Scientific American article.    

                                                                                       <siddeutsch@ieee.org>

     By Sid Deutsch

      This is to call your attention to a remarkable paper titled “Hydrogen Without Tears: Addressing the Global Energy Crisis via a Solar to Hydrogen Pathway,” by Derek Abbott, in Proceedings of the IEEE, vol. 97, No. 12, December 2009, pp. 1931-1934. Abbott is in the Electrical & Electronic Engineering Dept., Univ. of Adelaide, Australia. 

     According to Abbott’s message, we should stop wasting time and money: Stop  constructing nuclear fission power stations, stop nuclear fusion research, stop large-scale wave, wind, hydroelectric, biomass, geothermal and solar cell power projects. Abbott writes “Using either large trough-shaped or parabolic-shaped mirrors, it has been demonstrated that focused sunlight can viably superheat water for generating electricity via a conventional steam turbine … This technique is called solar thermal. As little as a 500 by 500 km footprint is needed to supply the world’s energy needs – this is a tiny fraction of the world’s desert area.”

     Solar farm embodiments which are 4 by 4 km in size should do the trick. Abbott points out that “there are a range of possible energy storage options for storing energy during the day for nighttime use.”

     What’s wrong with present-day power supplies? Abbott’s text mentions disadvantages, including features that are frequently overlooked:

     Oil: “… we cannot continue to burn these resources, as they are critical for embodying industrial products such as plastics , paints, tires, and a host of petrochemicals. We need oil to lubricate engines and machines for many centuries      to come.”

     Nuclear fission: The decommissioning cost of a plant is $8 billion. We only have economically recoverable uranium reserves to last a relatively short time. There are issues of safety, storage of waste, and proliferation.

     Nuclear fusion: It is a technology that does not yet exist. The reactor will become irradiated with neutrons, requiring high decommission costs. Furthermore, fusion irrevocably transmutes lithium, a scarce resource.

     Wave, wind, hydroelectric, biomass, geothermal: All of these display enormous conversion efficiency losses.

     Silicon solar cell: This uses toxic chemicals, and the arsenic dopant is scarce.

     Electric vehicles: The world reserve of lithium for batteries will rapidly become exhausted.

     Hydrogen fuel cells: These use expensive membrane technology and exotic chemicals that will stretch the world reserves inventory.

     Abbott continues: “So how do we power vehicles? The solution has already been demonstrated by BMW, Ford, and Mazda, where vehicles are powered by internal combustion engines on hydrogen. … electricity from a given solar collector farm can  be connected via the grid to a desalination plant for electrolysis…. the low-tech collector technology would cost less than all the decommission costs of all the nuclear power stations needed to generate an equivalent energy. … In summary, the dominant scaleable vision is a solar-hydrogen economy, where solar thermal collectors are preferred to solar cells. Also for mobile storage, pure hydrogen (liquid and/or gas) is preferred to both electric batteries and hydrogen fuel cells. Placing this form of a solar-hydrogen economy as an end vision on our energy policy roadmap is a situation where everyone wins.”

     Many of the features Abbott advocates have been tested in small-scale projects. In my opinion, we should begin, ASAP, to design, construct, and test large-scale implementations of Abbott power supplies. It will revolutionize the renewable energy field. Perhaps Abbott will deserve to be awarded a Nobel prize!

The Greatest Evil: The Population ExplosionI am writing about the obvious: If, by some magic, we could cut the population in half, it would reduce the demand for oil by half, reduce carbon dioxide pollution by half, reduce the need for food and water by one half, and so forth.Of course, reality would be more complicated than simply dividing by 2. But the general idea remains valid.I call the population explosion “the greatest evil” because it is the basis for much of the conflict in the world today. The “have-nots” need more food and water, but near-maximum output has been reached. Everybody has to drive a car, but the price of gasoline keeps increasing as it becomes more difficult to extract the precious stuff. Since many articles and books have been written about this complicated subject, what can I add in this short essay? I can add that, despite the obvious problems, almost nobody mentions the population explosion!Here is a prime example: C.N.R. Rao wrote the guest editorial in Science magazine on 10 July 2009. He is a National Research Professor at the Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research in Bangalore, India. Here is the first paragraph of his “Science in the Future of India”:“India has voted for science. In May, half a billion people cast their ballots, and they decisively favored spurring the development of the world’s second most populous nation. The reelected Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his new coalition government have made a commitment to reduce poverty and disease, create employment, and stimulate rural and industrial development. Attaining these goals will require substantial new investments in science and technology (S&T) plus much greater investments in human capital.”Not a word here, or in the remainder of the editorial, about the disastrous population explosion, despite the fact that 60% of the Indian population is below the age of 25. Apparently Rao (and others) do not consider it to be “disastrous.” Why is this so?Perhaps it is tied in with religion. The theory is that only God can make a baby so, despite DNA evidence about a “blueprint,” each pregnancy is regarded as a “blessed event.” A second viewpoint is that more people translates into more persons “of faith” who will join and support the religious establishment. Third, as people become more miserable, they turn to a belief in God, and prayer, as their only hope.Perhaps Rao is motivated by patriotic fervor: Let’s have large families to supply “cannon fodder,” suicide bombers, and terrorists who, when they grow up, will blow up the infidels. But there are non-religious and non-patriotic aspects, such as wanting a large family to assist in running the farm or business, and insurance against being left alone in old age. And then there are the individuals who think that making babies is fun, and why worry about responsibilities that may surface nine months later?Whatever the reasons for Rao’s reticence, the rest of us could constantly proclaim that the population explosion is evil. We could applaud every exhortation that the average woman should have a maximum of three pregnancies. There could be government-sponsored financial incentives towards a limit of three pregnancies. There is much wringing of hands over today’s low employment in the construction industry, but we could have mixed feelings about that: The industry could repair and replace existing homes, not build new homes for the “baby boomers”; the latter can occupy ancestral hand-me-downs.But hope springs eternal. As it is recognized that a maximum breeding density has been reached, the population explosion has shown signs that it is leveling off.The “Economist” of 29 October 2009 has avery interesting article, full of facts and figures, about how “lower fertility is changing the world for the better.” The reason for the fertility drop is that women are being liberated. “The move to replacement-level fertility is one of the most dramatic social changes in history. … it  is changing traditional family life by enabling women to work and children to be educated.”

I frequently hear that Albert Einstein’s Special Relativity forbids the Aether. This opinion is voiced by people who believe that Einstein rejected the aether. Instead, Einstein abandoned the aether because it was controversial, and he didn’t need it for his relativity theories. But see for yourself what the Master wrote in “Ether and the Theory of Relativity,” an address given on 5 May 1920 at the University of Leiden. Please click onto
http://turnbull.mcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Extras/Einstein_ether.html.
It is a remarkable document.
Special Relativity is an almost obvious, simple model of how light travels from one object to another in the Universe. The conjecture in this essay is that this requires an aether that is carried along as the Universe expands; more exactly, expansion of the aether defines the expansion of the Universe.
Physics Nobel prizewinner Frank Wilczek (in 2004, the Gross-Politzer-Wilczek award for “asymptotic freedom”) has resuscitated the aether in his new book, The Lightness of Being: Mass, Ether, and the Unification of Forces. Wilczek’s aether is quite different from the classical Maxwell-type aether: The new aether is a space-filling medium that is teeming with extremely small virtual particles that come and go, as revealed by quantum mathematics. In the present essay, however, we only consider the “space-filling” aspect of the aether.
Special Relativity requires celestial objects that are not accelerating, that are part of an inertial frame or inertial platform. Although this is never exactly true, it is approximately correct because the accelerations are small compared to the velocity of light. Let’s assume, therefore, that two planets are acceleration-free: The first planet is US, the Earth. The second planet, THEM, is receding from US at a speed, relative to US, of 100 million meters/second. This is one-third the velocity of light, which is 300 million m/s as measured on Earth (these are approximate values, of course).
According to Special Relativity – and this is a very sensible and reasonable assumption – the velocity of light is, also, 300 million m/s as measured by the people on planet THEM, relative to THEM. The empirical evidence is that the spectra of celestial objects  – electromagnetic field output versus frequency – are the same everywhere we look in the Universe, except for a Doppler frequency shift toward red if the object is retreating from US (and blue if it is approaching).
Consider this simple scenario: An unimaginably powerful beam of light is sent from US toward THEM. It starts out at a speed of 300 million m/s, but gradually increases in speed to 400 million m/s as the Universe expands. The beam finally arrives at THEM with a speed of 300 million m/s relative to THEM, but 400 million m/s relative to US. The gradual increase in speed is accompanied by a stretching of the wave that constitutes the beam. It stretches by a factor of 4/3, a ratio of 1.33, which corresponds, by definition, to a red shift of z = 0.33.
The controversial argument presented here is that there is no way that a light beam, by itself, would stretch by a factor of 1.33. This requires that the Universe should be filled with the aether, whose density decreases as the Universe expands. The aether, of course, carries the light beam along, imposing the stretches needed to keep the local velocity of light constant at 300 million m/s. But the aether raises several questions: Does it consist of tiny particles? Does the aether cause the expansion of the Universe? How does the aether originate? At the present time, the answer to these questions is that nefarious word, “Somehow,” or we don’t know.
Two of the famous conclusions that accompany special relativity are time dilation and length contraction:
1) That unbelievably powerful beam of light reveals that, as seen by US, the clocks on planet THEM run slow; in the present example, which is receding from US at 100 million m/s, their clocks run slow by a factor of 0.943. In fact, this time dilation applies to the entire planet THEM; the inhabitants age more slowly than we do (but, relative to themselves, aging is normal).
2) Another revelation, as seen by US, is that all objects on planet THEM are shortened in the direction away and towards US.  In the above example receding at 100 million m/s, length is contracted by a factor of 0.943.
Time dilation and length contraction have nothing to do with an aether, and that is why Einstein could ignore the aether. They depend only on the 300 million m/s local velocity of light. A few simple geometrical constructions shows why, on a receding (or approaching) object, relative to US, time dilation and length contraction would be observed (see Figs. 8-1 and 8-4 in my 2006 book, Einstein’s Greatest Mistake; Abandonment of the Aether).
Please don’t visualize the above light beam as suddenly speeding up from 300 to 400 million m/s. Nothing could be further from reality. The expansion is the gentlest of breezes, barely perceptible to local inhabitants. Consider the following oversimplified model (which hopefully contains a grain of truth): The expansion begins at the Center of the Universe point (COTU) point, with the outer edge shaped like a sphere, expanding at the speed of light, the radius increasing at a rate of 300 million m/s. A light-year is 9.460 × 1015 m so that, at the present age of the Universe, 13.7 billion years, the radius of the Universe as a sphere is
9.460 × 1015 × 13.7 × 109 = 1.296 × 1026 meters.
Evidence that the Universe is finite comes from H.W.M. Olbers (1758-1840). He pointed out that the night sky of an infinite, homogeneous universe should be bright, no different from the daylight sky. This notion is called Olbers’s paradox. Wherever we look, the integrated effect of distant, and yet more distant, stars and galaxies should yield nothing less then a bright, sunlit sky everywhere. According to this simple test, it appears as if the Universe is finite, with the Earth at its center, because the night sky is uniformly dark.
To get a more palatable scenario, imagine that we have a stick 300 million meters long (the distance light travels in one second) reaching out from the COTU point. How much does the end of the stick stretch in one second? Here we have a simple proportion: The radius of the Universe, 1.296 × 1026 m, increases by 300 × 106 m in one second. Then the stretch of the stick, x, is to its length, 300 × 106, as the increase in radius, 300 × 106,  is to the radius, 1.296 × 1026. We get that x = 7 × 10–10 m, or x = 7 angstroms. That is an easily visualized and familiar distance because the diameter of an atom is one angstrom, and the diameter of a water molecule is 3 angstroms.
In 100 years, the stretch gets longer by a very respectable 2 meters! During a human lifetime, then, we may be able to measure the local expansion of the Universe.
What about the people living near the edge of the Universe, where things are hopping at nearly the speed of light? Well, they are ignorant of all that commotion. Relative to them, the nearby celestial objects are practically stationary. Looking back toward US on Earth, they conclude, from the red shift, that the Earth is moving away from them as the Universe expands. It is all a matter of relativity.
As seen from the Earth, the sky is reasonably uniform (except for the Milky Way), but finite, so perhaps we happen to be at or near the COTU point after all. Perhaps people who live near the edge of the Universe, on the other hand, looking at the sky, see half of it blacked out; they “see” the void of outer space, which is devoid of the aether, and  filled with a true vacuum.

WHY ALIEN SPACESHIP UFOs ARE IMPOSSIBLE

(The following was posted on the SciAm community site on 19 June 2008. Also see Skeptical Briefs, June 2008, p. 3.)              …..UFOs (Unidentified Flying Objects) are in the news again. But it is high time that our media stop speculating that alien spaceship UFOs may have been sighted. Such sightings are impossible! In science, it is dangerous to use a word like “impossible,” but this essay shows that this is the appropriate way to characterize alien spaceship UFOs.
The proof is based on a simple equation. That makes it out-of-bounds for the brand of material published in the Op-Ed pages of The New York Times, but it is OK as a less restricted Blog.
Equations shouldn’t be ridiculed; after all, the editors—and people in general—have become accustomed to another simple equation: E = mc^2. How did scientists manage to sneak E = mc^2 into the public domain? That equation has been around since 1905, but the specter of insufficient energy has recently shown its face, so the public is now paying attention.
It was amazing that one could get a tremendous amount of energy from a small amount of uranium. The explanation is that c^2 (the speed of light squared) is a huge number—approximately 1 X 10^17 (meters/second squared). So even a small amount of mass (m) multiplied by 1 X 10^17 can supply an awful lot of energy. The famous equation will soon be in the headlines again as the United States plans and constructs many nuclear power plants to decrease our dependence on oil from the countries that breed suicide bombers.
Al Gore, Thomas Friedman, and other harbingers of doom are rightly urging us to start thinking about energy. In line with this, our media editors should get acquainted with this UFO-related equation: E = mv^2/2. Admittedly, it is a bit more complicated than E = mc^2, but well within the capabilities of an intelligent layperson.
What does E = mv^2/2 mean? The E stands for kinetic energy—the energy required to get a space ship, or any flying object, into its orbit. Here is why alien spaceship UFOs are an impossible nightmare for most people (or an impossible dream, for alien spaceship UFO enthusiasts): If one substitutes realistic values for m and v in the equation and does the arithmetic, she’ll find that E is so huge that it is beyond belief. The distances in outer space are so vast that the velocity of a space vehicle has to be one-tenth the speed of light if it is expected to reach Earth in a reasonable period of time. That means that v^2/2 is around 1 X 10^14.
What about m (mass)? Well, the Mars Lander—in which a crew could live for 260 days—weighs 130 metric tons. A spaceship UFO, even with small creatures, would have to weigh at least 200 metric tons (200,000 kilograms). After all, it has to carry its own fuel (surprise)! Substituting the numbers, we get E = 1 X 10^20 (watt-seconds).
So what does that mean if we offer a layman’s explanation? The entire capacity of the United States power system is one trillion watts (1 X 10^12). If we could by some magic harness the entire output of the U.S. power system behind a space vehicle, it would take 1 X 10^8 seconds—three years—to get it up to speed!
So, that alien spaceship UFO that was sighted by several reliable witnesses had a three-year shove by the equivalent of the entire U.S. output. Can you believe it? The UFO enthusiasts simply retort with: “They come from a superior civilization. They can somehow do it.” That’s the most nonsensical idea ever launched. The laws of physics and chemistry are the same everywhere in the universe.
So the next time somebody claims to have spotted a spaceship UFO, your response should be “I agree that you saw something, but it could not possibly be an alien spacecraft.”

(The following was posted on the SciAm community site on 16 May 2008.)
One of the basic refrains of the Intelligent Design (ID) people is that the characteristics of the Universe were deliberately set, by some sort of intelligent “force,” so that life could originate. The ID argument is that relatively small changes in the specifications would make life impossible. This viewpoint is echoed in a book by Paul Davies, “Cosmic Jackpot: Why Our Universe is Just Right for Life.” The explanation for the subtitle is that the biological ingredients have the optimum values needed to construct DNA molecules, and so forth.
For example: The four most important organic elements are carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen (CHON). They come together in a semi-infinite number of ways to form the ensemble of living creatures. But look more closely at any of these CHON atoms: at the center is a positively-charged nucleus, surrounded by negatively-charged electrons. We know how much the nucleus and electrons weigh; we know how strong the pull between positive and negative charges happens to be. But we don’t know why they have this weight, or why the charges yield a certain force value.
Because Davies thinks of himself as a scientist, he doesn’t really believe the ID stuff. On pp 195-198 we have a section titled “Intelligent Design in Biology Is Magic, Not Science.” But on p 268 he writes “Yet I do believe that life and mind are etched deeply into the fabric of the cosmos, perhaps through a shadowy, half-glimpsed life principle, and if I am to be honest I have to concede that this starting point is something I feel more in my heart than in my head. So maybe that is a religious conviction of sorts.”
The purpose of my essay is to put Davies out of his misery, so to speak, via a conjecture that explains the “just right for life” mantra without invoking an intelligent deity. It is, simply, that the natural “constants” are not constant, that they change with time.
The most representative natural “constant” is the speed of light, which is now 300 million meters/second (or 186,000 miles/second). I cite two important physicists whose thesis is that the velocity of light is not constant:
1) Allen Rothwarf, in “An Aether Model of the Universe,” Physics Essays, September 1998. (The “aether” is the medium that carries electromagnetic waves.)
2) Joao Magueijo, “Faster Than the Speed of Light: The Story of a Scientific Speculation,” Penguin Books, 2003.
The speed of light is determined by the “permeability” and “permittivity” of the aether. We have precise measurements of their present-day values, but we have not the slightest notion as to why they have these values. My conjecture is that these values, along with the characteristics of CHON atoms, keep changing slowly with time. There is no empirical data that support a change in the speed of light with time but, if it is true that the Universe is expanding, there is every reason to believe that the aether density decreases, and this changes the speed of light.
It is almost obvious, therefore, that the Universe has gone through various phases:
Phase 1: Extending from the Big Bang to time (t) = 6 billion years, life as we know it could not exist. Cosmologists in general agree that the Universe is 13.7 billion years old. My figure of 6 billion years, for the termination of Phase 1, is a wild guess. In this early phase of the Universe, the structures of CHON atoms were such that it was impossible for these atoms to stick together, in proper sequence, to form anything like a DNA (or RNA) molecule. Other complex molecules could form, but none of them were viable.
At t = 6 billion years, the velocity of light was 453 million m/s (based on equations derived in Rothwarf’s paper.)
Phase 2: Extending from t = 6 to 11.2 billion years, during which the Earth formed at 9.15 billion years, it was easy and natural for CHON atoms to stick to each other. Eventually, given the millions of places where a proper “soup” formed, and millions of years for molecules to grow as their atoms stuck together, the simplest of DNA (or RNA) molecules formed. Without any predators, the first living cell multiplied until all of the available chemical “food” or energy was consumed. Then the slow process of mutation, and survival of the fittest, began.
At t = 11.2 billion years, the velocity of light was 332 million m/s.
Phase 3: Extending from t = 11.2 to 20 billion years (the latter figure is another wild guess). This is the phase in which we now find ourselves. Mutations and survival of the fittest have, after some 4 billion years, given birth to homo sapiens. There creatures are very intelligent, and they know a great deal about DNA molecules, but they cannot synthesize the most primitive of viable cells. The reason is that the CHON atoms are different from what they were in Phase 2; they don’t stick together in a manner to form the simplest of living cells. There’s not much that can be done about it, because one cannot take a bottle filled with Phase 3 aether particles, and compress them to duplicate Phase 2 conditions. We cannot originate life, but we can propagate existing life.
At t = 20 billion years, the velocity of light will be 248 million m/s.
Phase 4: Extending from t = 20 billion years to infinity, the natural “constants” will change to the point where life becomes impossible. A living cell, in Phase 4, will not be able to function. Gradually, as the Earth goes from Phase 3 to Phase 4, the population of complex biological forms will decrease. Finally, even the simplest of cells will fail to reproduce. Life will end because CHON atoms will not be capable of forming viable combinations. Again, complex molecules can form, but none of them will be viable. Since the Sun is expected to explode at around t = 20 billion years, no “people” will be around to “enjoy” the spectacle.
Actually, if the natural “constants” change with time, it messes up all of the time values so that the Universe is not 13.7 billions old. The 4 phases remain, but with different intervals of time. Hopefully, the Intelligent Design notion, that some kind of intelligent force molded the Universe, is a nonsensical proposal that, also, will no longer be viable.