I’m not a big fan of Ken Wilber-inspired “Integral Theory”, as it seems to require large doses of wishful thinking in order to be “truly universal”, i.e. “integral”. But I recently decided to have a look at a book by Ervin Laszlo that proposes a science-based “integral theory of everything”; the book is called “Science and the Akashic Field”. As expected, it has a lot of wishful thinking once the “Akashic Field” side kicks in. But when Laszlo discusses pure science, he gets down to some interesting ideas and theories (i.e., those not his own).

I’m still cutting thru this book, and I just read an interesting overview that Laszlo provides of current “Metaverse” theories. These are serious ideas put forth by cosmologists about where the Big Bang might have come from, what might have existed before our Universe arose, what else there is out there beside our Universe, and what might eventually become of our Universe. There are many very interesting (and very speculative) theories out there, including the “chaotic inflation” model of physicist Andrei Linde. Laszlo describes Linde’s theory of how our Universe and others form as somewhat akin to a bubble bath. Universes form like bubbles from a churning pool of water and soap, each one expanding and separating off from a cluster of others.

Very interesting. This brought back a childhood TV memory for me that has nothing at all to do with cosmology. It made me think of the Lawrence Welk Show and the champagne bubble machine that Welk used to set the mood when his orchestra was about to do a ballroom dance number. Ah, Lawrence Welk, the complete Nemesis of the youth-driven mood of the late 1960s. Brought to you by Geritol, Welk’s undyingly loyal sponsor (i.e., a vitamin tonic meant to put off dying on the part of Welk fans). I remember watching Lawrence Welk with my mother and father as there was nothing else of interest on TV on Saturday nights. But after tuning-in to the music of the Beatles and then the Stones and the Who and Zeppelin and Hendrix, watching Lawrence Welk and his old-fogie big-band entertainment every week was like scratching your nails on a blackboard. I can still hear that ritzy-ditzy little number that Welk opened the show with each week. I recently looked up its title, and it is just as cheesy as you would expect: “Bubbles in the Wine”.

Ah, strange memories from a strange theory. Linde was one of the inventors of the Big Bang Inflation idea, which says that the universe has expanded from the Big Bang (and continues to expand) not because of an explosive force, as the word “bang” would imply; but instead because somehow, new vacuum space was created and dispersed throughout the void. At first, there was a superhot plasma of unified, generic energy particles all jammed together, but somehow space was created and got between all those particles (allowing them to “cool” and differentiate into the various forces and kinds of matter in the Universe). And new space is still being created somehow throughout our Universe, making it bigger and spreading it further apart.

That is the process that “inflates the bubbles” in Linde’s Metaverse generation process. Wow, that is even more strange and freaky (and cool) than the late 60’s culture that swept aside Lawrence Welk and his own bubble inflation machine. No one really knows exactly what cosmic inflation is, but there are lots of mathematics that explain how it does what it does (sort of like quantum physics; it’s very strange and counter-intuitive, but the math works). I personally speculate that inflation is a way that extra dimensions are acting in our 3D + Time universe. I wonder if that extra space is somehow being “pumped in” from a 4th or 5th space dimension that we otherwise do not interact with, for whatever reason. Just my Stupid Wild-Ass Guess.

One of the not-stupid and not-wild-ass math concepts behind inflation involves the notion of “false vacuum”. In a nutshell, a “false vacuum” is a state of nothingness and emptiness which has a higher background energy level than the one we have in our Universe. Anyone familiar with the “Zero Point Energy Field” knows that even in a complete vacuum with entirely nothing going on in it, a lot of things still happen on the quantum level. Tiny particles and anti-particles form out of nothing, crash into each other, and vanish (as anti-matter obliterates matter). This just keeps on happening, a sort of “quantum foam” (ah, Bubbles in the Vacuum!). There have been all sorts of speculation on what the “Zero Point Field” means and whether it can be exploited (some said that the Nazis hoped to use it to defy gravity). Actually, Laszlo himself cites it in order to justify his “Akashic Field” along with paranormal phenomenon like ESP. Again, lots of wishful thinking in his book.

So our own vacuum is not exactly devoid of everything; it has a base energy level that you can’t get rid of. A “false vacuum” would be a vacuum with an even higher energy level, with more “bubbly” activity in it. Somehow, post-Big Bang inflation and Linde’s chaotic inflation Multiverse involves false vacuums in the bubble-making process (can’t say that I’m up with the detailed math and concepts behind Linde’s work). I don’t think that anyone has yet detected a false vacuum, but it seems to fit the theoretical pictures, and nothing rules it out.

The interesting issue brought up by the false vacuum concept is, could our own Universe be in a false vacuum bubble? I.e., is there something lower yet? As is chanted in limbo dance songs, “how low can you go?”. There is an interesting doomsday scenario, such that if some very high energy event somehow happens in the wrong place at the wrong time in our Universe, our current vacuum state could be “knocked out of its gully” and settle down into a new gully with a lower state. If that were to happen, the new state would start as a bubble, and then quickly engulf the entire Universe. And if that happened, all the rules of physics as we know them would change. Matter and particles and energy as we know them might no longer exist. So, all the galaxies and stars and planets and everything on those planets, including lifeforms (like us), would just vanish in a wink.

From what I read, cosmologists aren’t losing sleep over this. But you never know if there’s a Welk-like cosmic champagne bubble-maker out there somewhere, with a more-true vacuum bubble that has our name on it!