A New Prize

MAMA

The Multiverse Award for Magnificent Awareness

To be presented to the 'greatest' person / exemplar of this, in the year from 17th October 2017 to October 16th 2018 inclusive.

Prize

A specially made trophy /artwork by a chosen living artist, designer or craftsperson

Reason for the award:

To inspire a global heightening of awareness that may help to improve life on Earth generally.

To illuminate and celebrate a being of magnificent awareness

Defining Magnificent Awareness

The winner will help to define what that is, but the precept here is that magnificent awareness, or magnificence, should mean qualities, actions, performance, creativity, achievement or impeccability that magnifies well, from its local context to a greater / multiversal context, such that they resonate globally. So, to be capable of this magnificence the exemplar should be attuned to, or reach out to, the greater universe that extends from the locality.

Eligibility

Every person on the planet is eligible, not excluding fauna or flora (though these would need to be nominated by a human)

Nominating

You can nominate your suggestions for appropriate living exemplars by tweeting to @Markthestars and perhaps including a link to some further description, reasons, or true story for the nomination. Nominating can be done continuously throughout the year, but the plan will be for a selection of 48 nominees to be announced on April 11th 2018 by the @MarktheStars. Further nominees may be added after then, to a total limit of 80.

The Prize giving

The prize giving day will be 17th October 2018 (at a venue to be announced in due course), in the evening. Also that evening will be announced the artist or craftsperson chosen to create the trophy for the next year's prize.

The Prize for 2017/18 has been made by (me) @MarktheStars, as the founder of the award and an artist interested in the multiverse hypothesis ( both as an ultimate scientific understanding of the universe and as a precept or paradigm that may change the nature of human awareness for the better).

The Multiverse and Awareness.

Here is my artist's statement to explain why I link the multiverse with awareness.

Back in 1994, I was aware of a certain astronomical puzzle, that the cosmos appeared to be too young (at 10 billion years - according to calculations then from the Hubble constant) to account for the apparent evolution. Then I realised that if the cosmic expansion had accelerated over a period of time the cosmos would be older, answering that particular puzzle (having observed the acceleration from 1998, we now calculate the visible cosmos to be at least 13.7 billion years old). Note, it is very curious that although this age problem was widely known, no one (or no known scientists) had ventured the view that it could be because the cosmos had accelerated apart. I would cite this as an example of a lack of awareness in the consensus view of a certain time.

But what could account for the acceleration? I saw an answer, that if we were actually in an infinite universe surrounded by infinite other (pre-existent) cosmoses then there'd be a gravitational pull resulting in the accelerating expansion of our cosmos. This answer also dealt with another puzzle, the clumping of matter as the cosmos expands, for the rate of acceleration should be proportional to a collective mass and thus subdivisions of the mass expand more slowly, resulting in clumping. The theory could also account for auto-homogeneity, possibly displacing the need for inflation theory (which many others and I consider an unsatisfactory non-physics theory).

To complete the theory I had to answer what is called the Olbers paradox - i.e. 'Why, if the universe is infinite (and eternal), is the background /night sky dark?' The answer to that could again be gravity, the gravitational shift of the light/radiation from the infinity to a theoretical invisibility. And some of that light, from the neighbouring cosmoses, could account for some of the cosmic microwave background radiation (and some component of the Hubble redshift).

At that time, no one (in science) was receptive to this model or would publish it in an article, so to be sure to put the theory out there I expressed in a text in a painting (titled 'The Eternal and Infinite Universe' which was exhibited in a group show in Reading Berks, Jan 95. It attracted little attention, however, in 1998, astronomers (and now Nobel prize winners) Saul, Perlmutter and Riess started to make observations (of Supernovae type 1(a) (standard candles)) that showed the cosmos had been/ is accelerating apart. This observation was not expected or predicted by anyone in the scientific community (but supported my theory). Gravity was supposed to slow down the cosmic expansion, not accelerate it.

A Change of Minds

Since the observation of accelerating expansion (aka dark energy) in the cosmos, the general idea of the 'universe' has gradually changed. Prior to the unexpected observation, some notable scientists were so certain of their understandings and models (e.g. that the universe was 'closed' (now wrong)) that they predicted we would have a theory of everything by the turn of the millennium. Such hubris has been demolished and replaced with (hopefully) a more humble perspective and, I am sure, a greater general/public interest in the mysteries of the cosmos. Also, where before there was almost complete unanimity that the 'big bang' was the start of the universe, the attitude has shifted towards considering the possibility of a multiverse already existent, from which the big bang is just another emergent cosmos. That's my theory, but then, if the attitudes have shifted, and the theory actually predicted the observed acceleration, why have scientists been so slow to even consider the theory as a candidate, never mind accept it as the theory that explains the observations (and without having to resort to contrived physics)?.

I guess the nature of awareness and intelligence can change, yet still have its blind spots, its dated assumptions. Long ago Newton considered how gravity would resolve in an infinite universe and came to the well reasoned conclusion (using the shell theorem) that there would be no gravitational vector from a surrounding infinity of objects. This is still the logic of prominent scientists. But as I show in my paper (published here in the blog), there is a certain fault in using the shell theorem to model the gravity, for it can just as well be used to show that there would be an accelerating expansion between distant objects, and this latter use of the theory accords better with Einstein's relativity inspired review of Gravity. Also, (as I explain in the paper), with Einstein's proven theory that gravity takes time to travel (gravity waves) we have a gravitational affect that accounts for the delay before the acceleration expansion of the cosmos begins. Einstein of course also considered gravity in an infinite universe, but he stared with the wrong assumption which was (again) the consensus view of his era, that the universe was a steady state (and that the infinite universe would be a universe not a multiverse). He did not consider a big bang surrounded by infinite others (wherein the mathematical model changes to predict an accelerating expansion (in my paper)).

There are further and much more recent observations that increasingly support the model. The Gaia telescope has shown an unexpectedly high redshift value for objects in the cosmos generally (which would again say the cosmos is younger than it should be). This however could be on account of a progressive gravitational redshift from the dark infinity (a gravitational 'pull' will also be attended by a redshift). And then there are some anomalies in the cosmic microwave background radiation that challenge inflation theory. The 'cold dark spot' in the cmbr, that happens to be surrounded by a relatively warm light ring, could be some evidence of a gravitational lens (like a small nearby cosmos) which means the cmbr, or some part of it, would be radiation coming directionally from a far distant background beyond our cosmos (as suggested in my original theory).

One can expect people and scientists to take some time to come round to what must be the ultimate understanding of the universe, beyond which there are no further boundaries or greater conceptions; an infinite multiverse surpasses all. And we have historically always seen the universe as smaller / within the bounds of our limiting imagination than it has proved to be. But there are certain implications about the possibility of an infinite multiverse that appear very challenging to science and are the reason why it may be a theory where science does not want to go (for a long time). Nevertheless they are implications that crop up in quantum physics too, concerning the nature of reality.

Some have referred to the possibility of many other realities, infinite histories, not just elsewhere but here in this space, within you and without you, so no reality is absolute.

That is a delight for our imaginative minds of course, our love of stories that transport us. But there is, I find, an even greater and more challenging implication. That any reality in this context of a multiverse cannot exist or persist other than being attended by what must be, in effect, intent, or agreement, or a creative relationship with awareness. Without a decision maker (not once upon a time but always present) there is no formal reality anywhere. We see hints of this ultimate truth in quantum physics, but I won't go into the full reasoning here. I'll just say this is the reason for associating awareness with a multiverse.

One can nevertheless withdraw from this ultimate knowledge and still see that the multiverse paradigm is set to change the human psyche and heighten our awareness. We have to be more humble and less vain in our outlook, knowing the whole universe will always be beyond or grasp. We can be more optimistic about the long term future of life, here and elsewhere, for in this model there is not a cold dark death to the universe. Instead there'll be a time to witness the expanded parts of other cosmos (overlapping like Venn volumes), maybe see new cosmoses emerge in the distance. We will know it is no longer appropriate to be absolutist about anything, for reality itself is not. That feeling we have that we are personally the centre of the universe we will understand is the same truth /illusion that every reference point has. And we are all equal and equally insignificant against the infinity; not important, yet also all unique and special (for in being gravitationally connected with surrounding infinite cosmoses our universe is one with infinite variables, meaning replication of the whole you and your context is impossible - an infinite universe that means infinite variety.

And if it is awareness that creates the universe then awareness will want to see it through an infinite variety of perspectives. We might even have to modify our view of Darwinian evolution, not just to allow the idea of intent (rather than accident) in evolutionary change but intent in a co-operative mutually supportive, variety-favouring whole life system.

And on that final thought here, Professor James Lovelock with his Gaia hypothesis pointed out that human civilisation is in danger of breaking such a co-operative relationship with all life on Earth (or Gaia herself) which would lead to our demise, in favour of other life to continue and emerge. So now is the time to wake up and be aware.

Mark TheStars