THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS NOTHING

Would you like to know what everything is made of, where your mind comes from and why it is hard to be completely happy with the decisions you make? This book sets out a different scientific view that seeks to provide answers to difficult questions like these. It explains where feelings and emotions come from, and it looks at how we can judge if we are acting ethically. The new paradigm is able to delve into the nature of spirituality and its relation to societies and religions. Not only does this book tackle these hard questions, it proposes solutions to some puzzling scientific mysteries. The idea of a universe made of particles and space is abandoned, and it is replaced with a universe of cells made from quantum stretches. This paradigm is both fascinating and compelling. Some of the findings are quite shocking. The book explains how we can understand the world around us in terms of cells and their boundaries. Cells are everywhere. The room you are in is a cell, the chair you are sitting on is a differently shaped cell, and the molecules of air that you are breathing are very small cells. The sun is a very big cell, but not as big as a galaxy cell. All these cells are made out of quantum stretches. They are called quantum stretches because they all add up to make extensions that form extension cells. It is these extension cells that make up everything that we are aware of in the Universe. There are no spaces between cells. There is no such thing as nothing. We can make an analogy with soap bubbles; one can think of the Universe as being made of bubbles (extension cells) of all different shapes and sizes. We can see through big bubbles; they correspond to space. We cannot see through clusters of billions of tightly packed atom size bubbles, because they form a foam. We can however recognise solids from grains of sand to mountains because we can see the outer boundaries of the 'atomic foam'. There are no particles to go searching for in this universe. The things we call mass and electric charge are all bound together with the quantum stretches of a universal quantum field. We don’t need dark matter or dark energy, and we only need one type of electricity not two. In this cellular model, we can explain the nature of light without the need to think of it as both a particle and a wave. And, in a way not possible in a particle-space universe, the book explains how gravity, the apparent expansion of the Universe and radioactivity are all interlinked with chaos theory and the speed of light. The extension cell paradigm describes a Universe that is infinite in both time and space. It recycles itself. It has no beginning and no end. In the extension cell view, every quantum stretch comes with quantum awareness. So every cell has a level of awareness. Atom cells have very primitive awareness that is limited to knowing their positions in the Universe. When cells reach the level of complexity of, for instance, an amoeba, they have accumulated sufficient self-awareness to be classed as living. They use their awareness to carry out intelligent behaviour to seek food in order to maintain their existence, grow, and reproduce. Larger clusters of cells form the animal and plant kingdoms. We ourselves are a cluster of cells made of organ cells that are in turn made of biochemical cells that are made of molecule cells. The cluster of cells of which we are made, including our brain cells, give us a memory and a level of self-awareness that we recognise as human consciousness. The extension cell paradigm enables us to investigate the nature of the human condition. There are explanations for why we are such good toolmakers and tool users. And how we make use of a special tool called 'society'. We see how societies themselves can be viewed as living organisms. Human conscience emerges from our need to balance the egos of the different societies to which we belong. We go on to ethics; looking at whether we have free will; how we should relate to one another; how we should relate to our environment and how we fit into the entire Universe. The extension cell paradigm demonstrates that the properties of a cell of infinite size are the same as those that many people attributed to God. The extension cell idea also gives a rational explanation for the nature of spirituality, the possibility of extra sensory perceptions and the emergence of religions. The final chapter in the first section of the book looks at the world of words and ideas. It explains how non-fictional and fictional writing, mathematics, the arts and music can be seen as both human tools and organisms in their own right. The second and much shorter part of this book sets out the mathematical basis for the first section. (The first part uses just one very well explained equation.) It explains why particles and space cannot exist. Then a simple line extension cell is built up from some quantum stretches. The resulting field structure is illustrated and an explanation is given for how a three dimensional universe can be built up from extension cells. A book suggesting that an extension cell view gives a better scientific explanation of the Universe and our place in it than the current particle-space view cannot help but be controversial. So it has been written in a conversational style to encourage the reader to be open minded to the new ideas. There are numerous helpful diagrams and an extensive glossary with explanations of scientific terms and words used with specific meanings that the reader will come across in the text. This book offers a radically different view of the Universe and your place in it.