By John Cryan

Neutrinos, those tiniest of ‘known’ ‘fundamental’ particles, have lately hogged quite a bit of the news from physics and astronomy. First came the announcement that there is a ‘cosmic neutrino background’ to go along with the cosmic microwave background found earlier. Both are supposed to be actual living leftovers of the original Big Bang variously pinned at around 13 to 14 billion current years ago.

Then came the more soberly revisionist idea that maybe all these neutrinos flying about the Universe (upgraded to the status of ‘most abundant particles in . . .’) represent a form of universal compound compositing (or actually, de-compositing) akin to car exhaust – the buildup of particulate waste – pollution from all the exploding supernovas and/or colliding black holes in (cosmic?) history. (!)

Before this series of solipsistic pronouncements issued, I quietly speculated that because several varieties of neutrinos with varying masses and flavors had been discovered in particle accelerators and later in more and more parts of Nature (pure and experimentally manipulated to find them) and because neutrinos have the seemingly magical qualities of passing unaltered through the Earth and other large massive objects (and just how do we actually ‘know’ this?), as well as hurtling the length and breadth of the Universe at nearly the speed of light (ditto), and because quantum physics, the current gold standard of science, posits a waveform for every particulate action (aka Schroedinger’s infamous collapsing equation), using mock-continuous thought, there must be a variation of TTT propelling neutrinos in their awesomely near-immortal voyages. How could they go so fast for so long and avoid hitting anything unless they’re pigging out on, using for power, and thus clearing out, the free chaons blocking their way (aka ‘chaonic friction’), those very tinyprimal nuisances forming spacetime that are keeping us and all would-be aliens from going down to the sea of space in ships? And how do those neutrinos ‘oscillate’ – i. e. continually vary from one form to another? Cosmic metamorphic amplitude!

So I am taking that back, and replacing it with a slightly more elaborate theory. Actually, I’m taking that back, too. Let’s start with something simple and stupid. When Occam speaks, we’d better listen.

Suppose all those neutrinos don’t come from very far away at all. What if they’re continuously and locally (I know, there’s no locality, but you know what I mean) produced everywhere by a common initiating process, namely, electromagnetism? Which in turn is produced by many other particles formed from the Standard Model’s now-declared ‘complete’ periodic chart interacting with one another?

I know; these big bursts of neutrinos have been tracked, by neutrino-detecting telescopes and other ingenious arrays, all the way back to their sources, sometimes in galaxies billions of light years away.

But neutrinos are not all that comes out of those distant places. All kinds of other energy reaches us from far, far away. But the vast majority of it is in the form of electromagnetic radiation, which causes the formation of neutrinos to begin with. Could it be that the neutrinos are only a continuously produced byproduct of all that electromagnetic radiation we’ve previously detected coming from ‘bright’, ‘visible’ sources? With both of those adjectives continually expanding by the invention and deployment of better and better telescopes, until by now they have almost lost their meaning?

These questions are leavened by one anchoring fact: the only thing any telescope (or our own eye) sees is the impact of that final form of any particle upon its surface. We, and our many-splendored detection machines, ‘see’ nothing else. After that, it’s all inference. Our brains pick up where our eyes leave off. Here’s where the troubles begin, as in my Old Sod. The Quandaries of Measurement and Perception, intertwined like Ursa Minor and Ursa Major. With no Polaris to navigate by. On the basis of a single, nodal impression, especially if multiplied innumerable times, a new mythology takes form and grows.

This surely gives pause to Occam. Dulls his shiny razor. Einstein once said make everything as simple as possible, but not one bit simpler. The simplest explanations are, of course, the lowest hanging of fruit. The easy nodes we pick off and eat with the most gusto. What about the rest of the tree?

Data block is real not because of the data itself but how it is collected. False rigor comes about when we let projection exceed by far what we actually have experienced, or, more likely nowadays, what our our observing and measuring machines have. Scientific empiricism is made hollow by projection. It is human instinct, survival-level adaptation, that compels us to immediately project from limited ‘facts.’

And it is absolutely stunning how fast we project from numbers to the divine. The quest for ultimate causes, which are ultimate nodes, rules science. In other words, religion. How do we break this lock?

The only way is to use mock-continuous thought, which exceeds the limitations of linear logic arriving at only a narrow conclusion, through imitation of what Nature is actually, and constantly, doing.

If we do that, we can return to the picture of neutrinos as locally-produced particles everywhere and realize this is just one end of a long explanatory continuum. Of continuously acting, and interacting, processes, not just single-node outcomes. For science to advance, we have to get beyond the quest for the simplistic prizes of ‘Eureka!’ moments, and move fully into a mock-continuum intellectual realm that integrates related nodes into continua, and interacting continua into a bigger picture of Reality.

So in the case of neutrinos, that means looking first at the continuum of neutrino origins and movement. At one end is the notion that neutrinos are short-range, locally produced particles which can originate anyplace in the Universe. At the other end is its opposite, the idea that somehow a single neutrino originating in super-energetic events far, far away can actually travel millions or billions of light years to reach us here on Earth, never mind the supernatural proposition of passing intact through the Earth, or some other massive body. In other words, a paradox. The most simple and common type, a binary or mirror paradox of opposites supporting a continuum of mixed conditions between them.

Now things get really interesting. We’ve thrown away Occam’s razor for something much more subtle, and in the process opened ourselves to a whole universe of possibilities out of one set of observations.

But we can’t stop at just one continuum. What about the spacetime-bound matter continuum? What are the chances any neutrino can pass through solid matter? What would it take to do that?

We know photons can pass through transparent solid matter, but how they do it is still at issue. There is a continuum from relatively ‘pure’ transparency, through varying degrees of translucency, into varying degrees of opacity, to the purest forms of leaden temporal opaqueness, in chemical compositions.

Let’s back up and look only at the issue of any bound-chaonic matter passing through spacetime. It boils down to a group of attached chaons energized at least slightly beyond total freedom being able to resist the repulsive forces creating a latticework barrier against such cross-chaonic movement. In the absence of a process like TTT, in which the free chaons are co-opted by the extra energy possessed by the group of bound chaons to ‘join the party,’ at least for a short while before being expelled by the bouncer, how could this little gang of temporarily united chaons make it through the free-chaonic mob?

The simplest answer to the question of photons passing through solid matter is that solid matter isn’t solid at all. There’s more spacetime, i. e., free chaons, between and among the layered bound-chaonic components of ‘solid’ matter than there is solid matter, thus creating room for ‘transparency.’

That explanation also explains why gravity is inside us doing all that aging damage constantly. And there’s more and more accumulating submicroscopic evidence supporting the ‘loose matter’ theory.

So maybe a tiny little bound-chaonic particle like a neutrino could just sneak through all that looseness.

But what about blasting its way through the free-chaonic matrix of spacetime? If a spaceship can’t do it

over long distances, how could a tiny neutrino possibly resist the forces of free-chaonic ‘erosion’ ?

One answer is a resurrection of my original theory: Neutrinos (and maybe other small bound particles) travel using a version of TTT. But that would mean diminishment, or energy loss, as they travel.

Just like photons, they’d get littler and littler as they shed chaons and their energy in a wavelike pattern.

On the surface of it, that theory has a lot of appeal. It conforms with the quantum postulate that every particle, and indeed every piece of solid matter, generates a waveform, or perhaps multiple waveforms.

But like much of quantum theory, it elides common sense, which is based on our sensory perceptions.

On the other hand, if electrons can collect up the free chaons (or at least some of them) in front of them, aggregate them, and turn them into photons that they then fire off like so many tiny hypersonic missiles, why can’t other big, long-lasting subatomic particles all do the same? This would certainly account for cosmic rays, which can apparently consist at times of fired-up protons, neutrons, and other big subatomic and even atomic (often minus the electrons) stuff flying very long distances (but how long we don’t really know) at nearly light speed (that ‘nearly’ is meaningful).

But if we take the existence of paradoxes in the temporal sphere as a given, there is yet another, more intriguing, explanation. Remember that in binary, or mirror paradoxes, one can establish mirror symmetry through the collapse of three-dimensional objects onto a two-dimensional surface. But one can also produce mirror asymmetry, through a mathematical process called handedness, or chirality.

As the name suggests, our hands exhibit this quality. You cannot project the collapsed two-dimensional form of your three-dimensional left hand onto the corresponding form of your binary-mirrored right.

If one takes this concept and applies it to a universe of constantly moving and spinning objects, ranging from the tiniest particles to the biggest celestial spheres, and further complicate that by adding the resultant spiral and helical motions and path trajectories generated over spacetime for everything moving all at once, which is, was and always will be the state of the Universe from beginning to end, what comes out of it at very small scales is that some bound-chaonic objects can actually use the free chaonic matrix of spacetime to propel themselves through structural and functional (i. e., dynamic, or kinetic) asymmetry, which provides a bigger target in the ‘rear’ of the object than in the ‘front.’ In other words, the propelled object acts as the tip of a triangular-shaped ‘spear.’ The free chaons ‘behind’ it push harder than the ones in ‘front.’ The triangle is the Eidos of the paradox of symmetrical asymmetry.

The ‘three body problem’ posits that three independent bodies are unstable, and can cause a lot of havoc, or unintended consequences, aka chaos. But three interdependent bodies can form a triangle, the most stable structure in construction practice. Out of that paradox of stability and functional asymmetry comes a ‘miracle’: a nonbinary structure for the ages, seen in the arrangement of quarks in the strong force to form nucleons, and now in the apparent longevity, speed, durability and penetrating power of neutrinos. What other signs will we find that the future of science lies in coming up not with answers, but a solid moving picture of the many and shifting ways our Universe operates, and evolves while in motion, to keep us alive, functioning, and optimistic for our future, temporal and ultimate?

Postscript: A Farewell to Neutrinos

I have so little time left I must cram this epigram onto what seemed a day ago to be a finished text.

There is the matter of Time to broach. Specifically, its inflation and our diminution by that ugly fact.

It turns out that, naturally and unintentionally (I hope), Time Inflation has bollixed our long-range timekeeping, and with it, our assumed abilities to peer back all the way to The Beginning.

It also turns out there are several ways to show Time Inflation is real, other than the ravings of old folk out of time, and not just a big cosmic joke.

One of them happened when some ancient ‘living fossil’ insects were thawed out and brought back to life. They moved very, very s-l-o-w-l-y. They once had more Time, and now they don’t.

The other one is happening right now. We can now run little ‘movies,’ like old-fashioned Rotoscopes, tying together many images on digital flip cards, then playing them over and over for our amusement

and edification. With all the farther and farther-seeing telescopes we’re launching and building here on

the last relatively light-unpolluted vestiges of Mother Earth, we can compare the movements of newer and older galaxies relative to one another. The older they are, the s-l—o—-w——e———r they move.

This explains why the Webb, in particular, has astonished. All those fully formed galaxies and big black holes so far back means we’ve blown the calculation, bigtime. The Universe is far older than we think. Unless we can get a handle on back-calculating Time Inflation and its acceleration, we won’t know how much older. But definitely, very very old.

That means we haven’t seen anything close to The Beginning. The Big Bang.

It also calls into question both the cosmic microwave background and the recently dubbed cosmic neutrino background as actual Big Bang remnants, rather than just the leftover hisses and clanks of the earliest celestial machinery rumbling to life and breaking itself in. Just as those primeval roars resolve themselves in later ‘jalopy’ days to the fondly recalled creaks and groans preceding vehicular demise, both background noises are mere faint reminders that there was a fabricated origin story behind our most beloved creations, the ones that truly transport us. But we are nowhere near the original Factory.

Nor will we ever be. Chaonic Erasure insures that. The Mysteries of the Universe remain intact, and will for all our temporal lifetimes. There are some things science cannot touch. Life’s better that way.

That doesn’t mean we won’t stop trying.

As much as we try to search around and rediscover virtue, our ancient passions and obsessions still rule

our lives and our actions. Science is not only not immune from these, it is propelled by them. So are all the other arts – really, everything we do while awake, and a huge amount also while we are not.

So the best we can do is just roll with that. Socrates, Plato and Aristotle all had their differences, each generation backtalking with the ones preceding and following, all the way down to the present day. But we know who and what we are. We also know how to live good lives. These things come to us naturally, through a process of cultural osmosis akin to the ways religion has become totally sublimated and therefore, unnecessary. Civilization is not dying. It has just barely gotten started. Party on!