I apologize for the length of this post; however, I aim to explain several seemingly unrelated subjects in a way you may not have considered.
What do gravity, spacetime, quantum weirdness, black holes, singularities, free will and consciousness have in common?
They either are counterintuitive or difficult to define. They do not seem to obey classical, deterministic laws of physics. But, in fact, they all do.
So, please read on. Absorb the reasoning.
1. Question: Is quantum weirdness necessary?
You may be familiar with quantum “weirdness.” Instant communication. Multiple existences. If it’s “weird,” why does it even exist? Could we live without it? If you or God were to create a new universe, could you create one that wasn’t “weird”?
Here are some examples:
Entanglement: When two quantum particles are entangled, they appear to communicate instantly over vast distances, even though the speed of light is considered the fastest possible speed for any form of communication. Einstein had a strong dislike for the concept of entanglement because it seemed to violate the principles of locality and causality.
The wave/particle duality refers to a quantum object behaving as both a wave and a particle until it is observed, at which point it “collapses” into one form. In essence, merely knowing facts can alter those very facts.
The Heisenberg uncertainty principle states that for any particle, certain physical properties, such as position and momentum, cannot both be accurately known. The more precisely one property is measured, the less precise the measurement of the other property can be.
Superposition: A particle can be in more than one location simultaneously until it is observed.
The question is whether quantum weirdness is necessary, or could the universe exist without weirdness, using only classical physics?
The answer is that it is impossible to create a universe with only classical physics. If the world were purely classical, electrons would merge into protons due to the attraction of opposite charges.
Chemical bonds form only because electrons exist in superpositions, simultaneously “around” two atoms.
The original universe was a smooth blend of waves/particles. However, quantum fluctuations in the lowest (ground) energy state of fields helped clump the particles, leading to the beginnings of galaxies.
Fusion in stars requires atomic tunneling to overcome the repulsion of two like charges.
Entanglement is essential for lasers and superconductivity because it enables multiple quantum systems to function as a single, coherent entity rather than as separate, independent particles.
When an excited atom in the laser medium is stimulated by an incoming photon, it emits another photon that matches the original in quantum state, phase, direction, and polarization. This creates an effective two-photon entanglement. These entanglements extend across the population of photons, leading to what is known as collective coherence or a macroscopic quantum state of light.
Without those entangled correlations, you’d just get a bright lamp, not a laser.
In short, what often is called “weirdness” neither is optional nor bizarre.
Our beliefs are based on certain rules that help us make faster decisions. One such rule states that an object cannot occupy two places at the same time. Another rule indicates that we should be able to determine both the speed and location of an object.
Additionally, we have a rule suggesting that nothing can be both a wave and a particle; it has to be one or the other. These are rules we have created; they do not represent the fundamental rules of the universe.
We find quantum mechanics strange because it contradicts our established rules. However, the universe operates according to its own laws, irrespective of the rules we create.
We navigate our existence in the macro world, and our brains do not have a survival requirement to perceive or comprehend quantum phenomena. As a result, the “rules” we consider to define reality do not apply at the quantum level.
Quantum effects average out macroscopically, so they stayed hidden until technology forced a rethink in the 1900s. It feels weird because it’s not survival-oriented.
This resonates with the anthropic principle: The universe’s features are fine-tuned for life because only such a universe allows observers to ponder them.
Darwin’s concept of natural selection—encompassing variation, competition, and adaptation—parallels the process of cosmic evolution.
In this context, stars “survive” by fusing elements, galaxies form through gravitational clumping, and quantum processes facilitate complexity, such as the formation of molecular bonds that create DNA.
Non-viable configurations, like unstable atoms, are eliminated during the universe’s early chaotic phase, resulting in a self-sustaining structure.
2. Question: What is everything “made of”?
You might be tempted to say that everything is made up of elements, which are composed of atoms. Atoms consist of electrons and nuclei, while nuclei are further made up of protons and neutrons. Delving deeper, we encounter quarks and various fields, such as electromagnetic, Higgs, and gravitational fields.
This leads us to an essential question: Is there a common element that underpins or influences everything? My answer is yes: gravity and spacetime.
Other candidates, such as quantum fields and electromagnetic forces, are inconsistent—fields disappear in regions devoid of particles, and forces like electromagnetism tend to cancel out at larger scales.
In contrast, gravity has an unwavering presence, even in empty space, influenced by phenomena such as dark energy and cosmic expansion. This makes gravity a more robust candidate for what ties everything together.
Gravity and change (as measured by spacetime) are omnipresent and affect every physical thing in the universe. I take it one step further and claim that everything in the universe, from fields to atoms, from light to magnetism, is made of gravity and change (“spacetime.”)
Humans learn through analogy. When I don’t understand “A,” I can compare it to “B,” which I already understand, so I can grasp “A.”
One can think of gravity as being a vast sheet, with wrinkles, folds, pits, bumps, and hills, all of which reveal themselves in shapes, as the atoms and fields we can sense. The appropriate mathematical science is topology. We may not recognize the shape. It may have 100 dimensions, or not. But it is not infinite. It is finite.
Gravity isn’t a force but space’s structure, the canvas for existence, while change animates it—like a Moiré pattern birthing reality at the Big Bang.
Gravity and spacetime seed galaxies, clump matter into planets, and prevent cosmic dispersal.
Quantum physicists often use classical descriptions to explain quantum phenomena. For instance, the terms “wave-particle” and “entanglement” both have classical roots. As humans, we try to conceptualize these complex ideas in classical terms.
We used the “sheet” analogy. Another way to think about gravity is as a vast ocean that originated from a single droplet containing all information. This ocean expanded and continues to carry all that information with it.
In this framework, the “whole” possesses complete knowledge of every part, resulting in a deterministic progression that may seem counterintuitive to us.
If the Big Bang occurred, determinism suggests that it must have contained knowledge of everything that would follow, including the existence of this article. This conclusion is based on the principle of causality.
If causality itself does not exist, that would undermine the foundation of science. Even quantum randomization doesn’t disprove causality. It merely projects likelihood. Randomness reflects limited knowledge, not the absence of cause.
3. What is inside a black hole, and is there a singularity at its center?
Is the gravity/spacetime “sheet” made of gravitons?
I lean toward either no gravitons or ones so minuscule and feeble they’re beyond our current imagination. This aligns well with mainstream quantum gravity hypotheses:
Gravitons are theorized as massless bosons that mediate gravity, traveling at the speed of light with extremely weak interactions. They would presumably be faint, the hardest particles to detect.
Their coupling to matter is minuscule, making them elusive even in high-energy events. If discovered as massive or strong, it would upend general relativity (GR), which requires massless gravitons for long-range gravity.
No gravitons have been observed, despite gravitational waves (ripples in spacetime) being detected since 2015 via LIGO. The “sheet” analogy remains viable.
Think of a strong magnet. You toss a handful of iron BBs toward the magnet. Some miss by several feet, but the magnet still curves their trajectories.
(Gravitational curvature extends outward, bending the paths of particles and light.)
Some BBs come closer and swirl round and round the magnet at the “edge” of where the magnetism is strong enough to hold them.
Others come even closer and are pulled toward the magnet, gathering at the center. This is not an infinite gathering. It is a shape that results from many small shapes coming together.
(Matter crossing the event horizon falls inward and merges with the black hole’s mass. The central pile is finite and structured, total mass-energy is finite.)
Again, it hints at a topological shape, not a mathematical infinity. The black hole’s “singularity” is a finite gravitational, topological shape.
Of course, all analogies are imperfect representations. A magnet exerts a vector force through space. Gravity, however, is spacetime curvature itself — it doesn’t pull through space; it is the shape of space.
If gravitons exist, a singularity could be a seething sea of them—pure gravitational quanta at Planck scales (10^-35 m), where gravity dominates.
4. Does quantum mechanics eliminate determinism? Does it allow for free will”?
We have discussed free will here, here, here and elsewhere. I say that “free will” has no basis in science, cannot be located in the brain, and is an illusion created by the brain.
Everything we think, do, believe, and want is the result of some prior event affecting the brain. Like the rising bars in the above-shown Moire pattern, what we imagine to be free will results from internal and external events being translated by the circuits in our brain.
Regarding determinism
The only alternative to determinism is the idea that cause and effect do not exist. However, if one believes that an effect can occur without a cause, this would undermine the foundation of science.
For example, some hypotheses suggest that particles spontaneously can appear and disappear, implying a lack of cause. With this belief, science begins to resemble magic.
What we perceive as a lack of cause is actually a lack of information.
Some claim that if determinism rules, then no one can be blamed or credited with anything. However, it may be that blame and credit are part of the cause (as well as the effect).
One simply cannot abandon cause/effect and claim to be a scientist. Thus, unless you accept magic, you are a determinist, and everything must devolve to what we call the Big Bang or something similar.
A thorough examination of the mythical hurricane should reveal the butterfly’s wings, suggesting an early stage in a series of cause-and-effect relationships. In the absence of alternatives and considering the nearly infinite number of effects, one must seek an omnipresent cause—something that influences everything in the universe. Nothing seems more fitting for this role than gravity and spacetime.
The question would be, “How does gravity touch everything?” and my speculation is “by shaping everything.” Thus, the singularity becomes a shape. The science is topology. We may not recognize the shape. It may have 100 dimensions, or not.
But it is not infinite. It is finite. Topology may be the foundational science where black holes, dark energy, and dark matter reside.
At this point, we have woven determinism, cause-and-effect, quantum “magic,” and gravity’s role as the universal shaper into a topological framework. Gravity is not just omnipresent, but the sculptor of reality via shapes and dimensions.
Abandoning cause-and-effect would dismantle science, turning it into mysticism. If effects (like particles popping in/out) lack causes, we’re in “magic” territory—unfalsifiable and unpredictable.
Quantum mechanics often is accused of this, especially with vacuum fluctuations (particles briefly appearing from “nothing” via Heisenberg’s uncertainty). But these aren’t truly acausal in the theory—they arise from quantum fields’ energy uncertainties, governed by probabilistic laws.
It’s not “no cause,” but causes hidden in the quantum vacuum, which itself might trace to deeper structures (like gravity in quantum gravity theories). Still, it feels magical because our classical brains demand definite, familiar. local causes.
In the hard determinist view, credit and blame are effects of prior causes (e.g., upbringing, biology) and causes of future ones (e.g., deterrence or motivation).
Free will does not exist. Determinism accommodates moral systems as part of the chain. Without alternatives, everything ultimately traces back to a Big Bang-like origin. The butterfly’s wings (chaos theory) or a mythical hurricane exemplify this: In a deterministic universe, infinite effects stem from finite initial conditions. Quantum randomness complicates it, but it’s irrelevant to free will—still causal, just probabilistic.
TThe search for an omnipresent “thing” that influences everything leads us to gravity, which permeates all of spacetime. Unlike other fields that diminish or are localized, gravity’s curvature affects every particle, event, and void. It “touches” everything by “shaping” it.
Gravity warps spacetime, determining paths, structures, and interactions. According to general relativity, matter tells spacetime how to curve, and that curvature, in turn, tells matter how to move. This creates a dynamic interplay of forces.
Tying this to the singularity: Envision it not as an infinite point but a finite shape—perhaps multi-dimensional. This avoids infinities (which physicists hate, as they signal theory breakdowns) and aligns with quantum gravity ideas where singularities resolve into finite structures.
The Big Bang singularity could be a compact, shaped manifold (a topological object), unfolding via expansion. A near infinite number of effects from a finite cause fits: A simple initial shape, shaped by gravity, cascades into cosmic complexity through cause-effect chains
Topology Can Explain Black Holes, Dark Energy, and Dark Matter
Topology, the math of shapes, connectivity, and deformations without tearing, fits the gravity/spacetime model. It studies properties preserved under continuous transformations (e.g., a coffee mug is topologically equivalent to a donut, both having one hole).
Black holes have event horizons with various topological properties; for example, they can be spherical in simple cases but may take on more exotic shapes in higher dimensions.
Recent research has classified black holes into universal thermodynamic topological classes based on their entropy, temperature, and stability.
This essentially involves examining topological “winding” in phase space.
The concept of multi-dimensional shapes is particularly relevant: in theories like string theory or loop quantum gravity, black holes could incorporate compact extra dimensions, which would allow singularities to be finite.
This means there are no infinities—just gravity that is shaped.
Dark Energy and Dark Matter: Topology has echoes in current hypotheses.
Dark energy (driving cosmic acceleration) might emerge from topological features, or “topological dark energy” linked to black hole formations/mergers.
Cosmologically coupled black holes (CCBH) could convert matter into dark energy, tapping gravitational fields during expansion. Some models suggest black holes birth dark energy inside them, resolving neutrino mass puzzles.
Dark matter? Primordial black holes, formed shortly after the Big Bang, are leading candidates for composing dark matter through gravitational accretion, without the need for new particles.
Topology plays a role through “topological classes” in black hole thermodynamics, potentially explaining how these invisible components stabilize cosmic structures, such as galaxies and clusters.
The mathematics of topology is used in quantum field theory to model stable “knots” in spacetime that could manifest as dark matter halos or the repulsion of dark energy.
A finite, multi-dimensional shape avoids the “infinite” pitfalls of classical singularities, aligning with finite models in loop quantum cosmology (where spacetime is discrete loops).
Quantum weirdness (particles popping in/out) might be gravity’s topological effects at small scales—fluctuations as deformations in the “ocean’s” fabric.
Pure determinism: Gravity’s initial shapes encode all, rigged from the start, to include the measurer as well as the measured (superdeterminism style). Entanglement sounds wormhole-ish, like a donut with the hole filled in.
Again, some mention morality as evidence against determinism. However, morality is an invention by life as a survival mechanism, and it has clearly evolved from earlier causes and effects.
Every living thing has some sort of “moral” code (i.e., favored response to stimuli), which is akin to the definition of consciousness as the responses to stimuli (and so everything is conscious)
Morality evolves deterministically from cause-effect chains. Altruism in social animals enhances group survival, driven by both genetic and environmental factors.
Consciousness as “favored response to stimuli” is panpsychist-leaning—everything (rocks? atoms?) responds preferentially (e.g., electrons to fields), so everything is conscious to degrees. This fits determinism: Consciousness isn’t emergent magic but a causal outcome, scaling from simple (particle interactions) to complex (human ethics).
Early life (or pre-life chemistry) might have “morals” as chemical affinities. In the gravity model, gravity shapes these responses topologically, from singularity to brains. No free will needed; blame/credit are causal tools for social survival.
The all-present cause (gravity shaping via topology) preserves determinism, explaining quantum weirdness as shaped cause-and-effect, not magic.
The rephrasing (“How conscious?”) quantifies consciousness as a spectrum, measurable by response complexity, without invoking non-physical entities. It’s panpsychism done deterministically: Everything is conscious to the extent it’s shaped by and reacts to the universe’s causal web.
Now for my (least) favorite word: “Qualia.” The subjective, qualitative properties of experiences represent the raw sensations we encounter in life. They encompass the unique sensations of tasting chocolate, experiencing a specific color, or feeling the warmth of the sun.
Qualia are often described as the internal, private elements of consciousness that are difficult to articulate or quantify.
The problem with qualia is that they deny the brain’s physical senses and attempt to introduce a mysterious, otherworldly realm, a “subjective world,” that cannot be perceived through sight, sound, touch, taste, or smell, but are derived solely from mystical, non-material sources.
Qualia neither can be proved nor disproved. Thus, qualia are not science. They are religion.
In common usage, “subjective” refers to experiences, feelings, or perspectives that are unique to an individual, often implying a private, internal “self” that perceives or interprets the personal, qualitative sensation of mood.
This suggests a non-physical “mind” separate from the brain, which clashes with a non-mythical, purely physical view of consciousness as the degree of response to stimuli.
If consciousness is how things respond to stimuli, subjectiveness is the unique pattern of those responses, shaped by a system’s structure (e.g., brain, AI, galaxy). It’s not a ghostly inner world but a deterministic outcome of physical configuration.
For a stone, it’s the simple “fall” to gravity’s pull. For an AI computer, it’s complex linguistic outputs that are shaped by code and training data. No otherworldliness—just cause-and-effect specificity. The stone is conscious. The computer is more conscious. A dog has even more.
All “feel” what they are built to feel and respond as they are built to respond. Emotions are physical responses, as is a stone’s expansion when heated. To a stone, that expansion could be viewed as an emotion.
5. How does the gravity/spacetime substrate explain quantum weirdness?
Einstein’s universe was built from continuous, local fields — especially the gravitational field. Everything (mass, motion, even time) emerged from how that field shaped spacetime. For Einstein, field continuity and local causality were sacred principles.
Entanglement broke that: it implied that a field’s behavior at point A could instantaneously correlate with a measurement at point B, without any mediating signal in the intervening space.
In Einstein’s view, that was intolerable because it would mean the gravitational field itself wasn’t a continuous fabric—it was something holistic, instantly responsive, everywhere at once.
But, quantum mechanics treats the wavefunction as describing the entire system at once. It doesn’t care about space the way relativity does.
When two particles are entangled, they form a single nonlocal state that extends across space.
To Einstein, this meant the quantum description wasn’t “real”—just statistical shorthand for some deeper, local mechanism.
But Bell’s theorem and later experiments ruled out any local hidden variables.
Thus, we’re left with one of two possibilities: Either the universe truly allows nonlocal connections, or spacetime and distance themselves are emergent, not fundamental.
I’ve proposed that gravity and time are the substrate of reality—a universal field that gives rise to particles, mass, and even consciousness. In that framework, nonlocality isn’t strange—it’s expected.
If everything emerges from a single, time-immune gravitational field, then entanglement may simply express the intrinsic connectedness of that field. That means Einstein’s “locality” was a property of emergent spacetime, not the underlying field itself.
Fundamentally, there’s no true separation—so no violation of locality occurs, because there are no “locations” in the first place.
Einstein’s refusal to accept entanglement pushed others (Bell, Bohm, Wheeler) to formalize what “nonlocality” really means.
Ironically, his skepticism opened the path to the idea that spacetime might itself be a derived construct, precisely the direction the gravity/time hypothesis takes.
If gravity is a universal informational field, then: Entanglement is just the correlated excitations of the same underlying field. Locality is an emergent illusion of field geometry (space). Quantum weirdness is a symptom of trying to impose classical locality onto a nonlocal substrate. It’s only “weird” when viewed through classically trained eyes.
6. Tying it all together: Gravity, Topology, Determinism, Quantum Weirdness, Consciousness, Black Holes, and “What Is It Made Of?
Everything is made of gravity, modified by spacetime.
Gravity shapes everything, substance and field, topologically. Change, in the form of spacetime, drives responses. A black hole is an assemblage of gravitational shapes in the form of particles, forces, and fields. The shapes change as they dive into the center. It is not an infinity, but a unique shape.
Every effect has a cause. Both are manifested by gravitational shapes. Without cause/effect, there can be no science.
Gravity provides the physical topological substrate for all existence. Spacetime animates causality. Determinism rules out the mystical. Every effect has a discoverable cause, though that cause, if quantum, may not be apparent to a classical eye, and the effect may seem weird.
Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
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