Roger Penrose: "String Theory Wrong And Dark Matter Doesn't Exist"

Comparing Kaku and Penrose is ridiculous. Penrose has done actual important work.

String Theory is an unprovable cutting edge mathematical theory of how some physicists maintain grant funding and reap publishing royalties. It’s brilliant if you ask me.

I fully admit I have no deep understanding of string theory, but still I'm going to say that when you start adding lots of dimensions to your hypothesis just to make your "beautiful math" work, it kinda feels like you're more interested in keeping the hypothesis artificially alive than finding out any fundamental truths.

Penrose is right, at least in terms of semantics. A scientific theory is defined by its ability to predict the behavior of yet-unstudied systems. String "theory" is more of a string "hypothesis": consistent much of what we know, but not established enough to be predictive in nature.

If it's a choice between Penrose and Kaku, I'll take Penrose any day.

Fun fact: the universe is exactly the same size now as at the moment of the Big Bang; it’s still exactly 1 universe big, when measured in universes.

Dark matter isn't an answer. It's a question mark masquerading as an answer.

I've never bought into the idea of gravitons. It's like chalking up a mystery to an unknown particle. You wouldn't be like, "hey inertia is weird so there's probably an unseen particle there. I'll call it an inertron!"

The book by Roger Penrose that he was trying to write for ten years is now written. In the last chapter he proposes an origin for dark matter. The proposal emerges from a simple picture for the Big Bang: It came out of the Big Crunch of the previous "aeon" of the universe. The two aeons are joined by a three-dimensional surface ("a moment in time") where light rays travel in straight lines and space-time is flat up to a scale factor whose sign flips as you cross the boundary into our aeon from the old one. Dark matter emerges (somehow) from that scale factor as does the mass of the elementary particles. The particle physics is not in the book, but this proposal for the origin of dark matter is.

Penrose is a real scientist because he holds skepticism in very high regard. He doesn't just "believe" in things the way a lot of scientists do.

I was looking for Roger Penrose saying "dark matter doesn't exist" in vain. In his book on CCC, he states "In the subsequent aeon, the new "omega-bar" (my description of his symbol which looks like a lower case omega with a bar across the top) matter that comes about initially takes over the degrees of freedom present in the gravitational waves in the prior aeon. Dark matter seems to have had special status at the time of our Big Bang, and this is certainly the case for omega-bar. The idea is that shortly after the Big Bang (presumably when the Higgs comes into play), this new omega-bar-field acquires a mass, and it then becomes the actual dark matter that appears to play such an important role in shaping the subsequent matter distributions, with various kinds of irregularities that are observed today". He then goes onto say that both dark matter and dark energy (the latter in the form of a gravitational constant) are both essential components of CCC. Has Roger changed his opinion since the CCC book was published?

Michio Kaku is the Depak Chopra of physics

String theory does not belong to Kaku. He did not propose it. It's misleading to refer to it as Kaku ''s string theory.

"Dark Matter" is simply another term for unexplained gravity. We have a really good understanding of gravity on a planetary scale or a solar system scale. We can apply mathematical formulae based on mass calculations and make highly accurate predictions every time. But those same formulae don't work out on a galactical scale. Basically, galaxies are producing more gravity than their accumulated mass would suggest, based on our current understanding of it. And no one knows why. So yeah, maybe dark matter isn't a thing. But there's still some unexplained force that is holding these spiral galaxies together, because based on our understanding of gravity, these spiral galaxies should be obliterated from their own rotation.

Sir Roger Penrose is the only science communicator I still believe. The others seem to try to sell us something.

This basically means we have no clue how our universe works.

I wish everyone would stop treating Time as a dimension - it's completely different, separated from the way spatial dimensions act. In fact - only "SPACETIME" exists as an inseparable "existence" - in fact - it's even wrong to think about these things as "dimensions", but better as "the only possible configuration of existence" (which always represents itself in "3 dimension").

Honestly, a part of discouraged me while studying astrophysics was how fervently the scientific community was clinging to ideas like "inflation" and "dark matter" which are clearly fantasies or worse.... are sort of patches to keep together an overarching failing view of the universe, a bit like the ptolemaic epicycles or the aether...

How come you put Penrose and Kaku at the same level? One is Nobel laureate which means his theory was proved by experiment and observation. The other is just making mathematical panthasies and making hyped so called predictions.

I am a physicist and I will explain why our scientific knowledge refutes the idea that consciousness is generated by the brain and that the origin of our mental experiences is physical/biological (in my youtube channel you can find a video with more detailed explanations). My arguments prove the existence in us of an indivisible unphysical element, which is usually called soul or spirit. Physicalism/naturalism is based on the belief that consciousness is an emergent property of the brain, but I will discuss two arguments that prove that this hypothesis implies logical contradictions and is disproved by our scientific knowledge of the microscopic physical processes that take place in the brain. (With the word consciousness I do not refer to self-awareness, but to the property of being conscious= having a mental experiences such as sensations, emotions, thoughts, memories and even dreams). 1) All the alleged emergent properties are just simplified and approximate descriptions or subjective/arbitrary classifications of underlying physical processes or properties, which are described DIRECTLY by the fundamental laws of physics alone, without involving any emergent properties (arbitrariness/subjectivity is involved when more than one option is possible; in this case, more than one possible description). An approximate description is only an abstract idea, and no actual entity exists per se corresponding to that approximate description, simply because an actual entity is exactly what it is and not an approximation of itself. What physically exists are the underlying physical processes and not the emergent properties (=subjective classifications or approximate descriptions). This means that emergent properties do not refer to reality itself but to an arbitrary abstract concept (the approximate conceptual model of reality). Since consciousness is the precondition for the existence of concepts, approximations and arbitrariness/subjectivity, consciousness is a precondition for the existence of emergent properties. Therefore, consciousness cannot itself be an emergent property. The logical fallacy of materialists is that they try to explain the existence of consciousness by comparing consciousness to a concept that, if consciousness existed, a conscious mind could use to describe approximately a set of physical elements. Obviously this is a circular reasoning, since the existence of consciousness is implicitly assumed in an attempt to explain its existence. 2) An emergent property is defined as a property that is possessed by a set of elements that its individual components do not possess. The point is that the concept of set refers to something that has an intrinsically conceptual and subjective nature and implies the arbitrary choice of determining which elements are to be included in the set; what exists objectively are only the single elements (where one person sees a set of elements, another person can only see elements that are not related to each other in their individuality). In fact, when we define a set, it is like drawing an imaginary line that separates some elements from all the other elements; obviously this imaginary line does not exist physically, independently of our mind, and therefore any set is just an abstract idea, and not a physical entity and so are all its properties. Since consciousness is a precondition for the existence of subjectivity/arbitrariness and abstractions, consciousness is the precondition for the existence of any emergent property, and cannot itself be an emergent property. Both arguments 1 and 2 are sufficient to prove that every emergent property requires a consciousness from which to be conceived. Therefore, that conceiving consciousness cannot be the emergent property itself. Conclusion: consciousness cannot be an emergent property; this is true for any property attributed to the neuron, the brain and any other system that can be broken down into smaller elements. On a fundamental material level, there is no brain, or heart, or any higher level groups or sets, but just fundamental particles interacting. Emergence itself is just a category imposed by a mind and used to establish arbitrary classifications, so the mind can't itself be explained as an emergent phenomenon. Obviously we must distinguish the concept of "something" from the "something" to which the concept refers. For example, the concept of consciousness is not the actual consciousness; the actual consciousness exists independently of the concept of consciousness since the actual consciousness is the precondition for the existence of the concept of consciousness itself. However, not all concepts refer to an actual entity and the question is whether a concept refers to an actual entity that can exist independently of consciousness or not. If a concept refers to "something" whose existence presupposes the existence of arbitrariness/subjectivity or is a property of an abstract object, such "something" is by its very nature abstract and cannot exist independently of a conscious mind, but it can only exist as an idea in a conscious mind. For example, consider the property of "beauty": beauty has an intrinsically subjective and conceptual nature and implies arbitrariness; therefore, beauty cannot exist independently of a conscious mind. My arguments prove that emergent properties, as well as complexity, are of the same nature as beauty; they refer to something that is intrinsically subjective, abstract and arbitrary, which is sufficient to prove that consciousness cannot be an emergent property because consciousness is the precondition for the existence of any emergent property. The "brain" doesn't objectively and physically exist as a single entity and the entity “brain” is only a conceptual model. We create the concept of the brain by arbitrarily "separating" it from everything else and by arbitrarily considering a bunch of quantum particles altogether as a whole; this separation is not done on the basis of the laws of physics, but using addictional arbitrary criteria, independent of the laws of physics. The property of being a brain, just like for example the property of being beautiiful, is just something you arbitrarily add in your mind to a bunch of quantum particles. Any set of elements is an arbitrary abstraction therefore any property attributed to the brain is an abstract idea that refers to another arbitrary abstract idea (the concept of brain). Furthermore, brain processes consist of many parallel sequences of ordinary elementary physical processes. There is no direct connection between the separate points in the brain and such connections are just a conceptual model used to approximately describe sequences of many distinct physical processes; interpreting these sequences as a unitary process or connection is an arbitrary act and such connections exist only in our imagination and not in physical reality. Indeed, considering consciousness as a property of an entire sequence of elementary processes implies the arbitrary definition of the entire sequence; the entire sequence as a whole is an arbitrary abstract idea , and not to an actual physical entity. For consciousness to be physical, first of all the brain as a whole (and brain processes as a whole) would have to physically exist, which means the laws of physics themselves would have to imply that the brain exists as a unitary entity and brain processes occur as a unitary process. However, this is false because according to the laws of physics, the brain is not a unitary entity but only an arbitrarily (and approximately) defined set of quantum particles involved in billions of parallel sequences of elementary physical processes occurring at separate points. This is sufficient to prove that consciousness is not physical since it is not reducible to the laws of physics, whereas brain processes are. According to the laws of physics, brain processes do not even have the prerequisites to be a possible cause of consciousness. As discussed above, an emergent property is a concept that refers to an arbitrary abstract idea (the set) and not to an actual entity; this rule out the possibility that the emergent property can exist independently of consciousness. Conversely, if a concept refers to “something” whose existence does not imply the existence of arbitrariness or abstract ideas, then such “something” might exist independently of consciousness. An example of such a concept is the concept of “indivisible entity”. Contrary to emergent properties, the concept of indivisible entity refers to something that might exist independently of the concept itself and independently of our consciousness. My arguments prove that the hypothesis that consciousness is an emergent property implies a logical fallacy and an hypothesis that contains a logical contradiction is certainly wrong. Consciousness cannot be an emergent property whatsoever because any set of elements is a subjective abstraction; since only indivisible elements may exist objectively and independently of consciousness, consciousness can exist only as a property of an indivisible element. Furthermore, this indivisible entity must interact globally with brain processes because we know that there is a correlation between brain processes and consciousness. This indivisible entity is not physical, since according to the laws of physics, there is no physical entity with such properties; therefore this indivisible entity corresponds to what is traditionally called soul or spirit. The soul is the missing element that interprets globally the distinct elementary physical processes occurring at separate points in the brain as a unified mental experience. Marco Biagini