Walter Russell English: Paradox of the infinite universe.

The infinite

I have always wondered how this world could be a melting pot of infinite forms. I marveled at the thought that I would never come across two fragments of something exactly alike. When I say infinite I don’t mean very many, infinite means that no shape ever repeats itself in space or time, not even expanding at the microscopic level down to the atomic level. I have learned over the years that no two leaves of the same tree, no two grains of sand, no two fly wings, no two eye-pupils, no two fingerprints or even no two drops of water are exactly the same, ever, not in all eternity or the immensity of space. It’s overwhelming to think about, isn’t it?

This has been demonstrated by scientists at the crystallographic level. The saying we have always heard: “No two snowflakes are alike“, which actually meant: no two ice crystals crystallize exactly alike. It is true, absolutely all of them at the microscopic level are different. Professor Ken Libbrecht has managed to create two virtually identical flakes in the laboratory conditions, but he himself admits: “I like to call them identical twin flakes because they are like identical twin people, they are very similar, but they are not really perfectly alike“. (1)
And we are talking about flakes of less than a millimeter. If we extend this to any crystal of any element or molecule we can think of, exactly the same thing happens. We will never find two exactly alike. Similar, yes, almost identical too, but not a single exact one in the whole extension of the universe since the Big Bang occurred.

As you can see, this world is truly extraordinary, much more than we might imagine. However, one day you arrive at school and your teacher explains to you that the minimal elements that make up all that infinite matter are identical to each other, that all the atoms of the same element are exact, precise tracings of each other. And your head does not quite understand it. (I am not going to go into its structure yet in debate).

Átomos de hidrógeno idénticos. Bloques mínimos de la materia

Fig 1. Element H2. Minimum blocks of matter.

You start from the largest and narrow the focus down to the microscopic and even more and it is still infinite. Then you get to what we can no longer see and can only measure indirectly or calculate mathematically and it turns out that this infinity of infinite forms suddenly breaks down. Suddenly, protons are all exactly the same, electrons are all exactly the same, and therefore equivalent atoms are exact to each other. What has happened when you cross that boundary? Is it not possible that there is a problem of precision or perception in the measurement? There is a gulf so wide that we should not be uncomfortable with it.

Paradox

And here comes the paradox of the infinite universe that I expose. Let’s make an abstraction, let’s suppose that the universe is composed of Lego blocks equivalent to atoms. Hydrogen would be the smallest block of a single unit wide, Helium would correspond to the block of two units and so on up to element 98 of the periodic table, the last one that is believed to appear in a natural state. In this case, what do you think, would it be possible that identical blocks would be able to create an eternally infinite universe of unlimited forms, no matter how tiny these blocks are?

In my opinion, it is not possible. If you build with identical blocks, sooner or later, with more or less spatial or temporal amplitude, you will end up with exactly the same shapes. Repeatable atoms would generate repeatable molecules and these identical crystals. However, we have already seen that this is not the case in our universe. In other words, a totally infinite universe must also be infinite in its smallest units. At this point someone might say to me: “well, an infinitesimal modification can generate an enormous change, that has already been demonstrated”. Indeed, this is precisely what Chaos Theory postulates, however, in order to explain this fact, this theory develops fractals and these end up repeating themselves sooner or later. We need something else.

So I’m going to launch a risky hypothesis, but a nice one nonetheless: What if there were no two identical hydrogen atoms? What if the atoms of the same element and their electrons and protons were actually all slightly different from each other and interacted in ways we don’t yet understand?

Walter Russell

With this paradox of the infinite universe in mind, Walter Russell and his cosmogony came into my life. And he was the only one able to give an answer to my idea of a completely infinite universe.

I will explain how… For Walter Russell atoms are structures similar to solar systems, nebulae or galaxies and all of them, therefore, as we affirm for the solar systems and galaxies we see, are infinite in their forms.

Estructura átomos Walter Russell (Paradoja del universo infinito)

Fig 2: Evolution of the structure of elements/atoms
by Walter Russell

Walter Russell postulates that all the elements that make up matter, the atoms, are infinitely transforming into each other as they grow and evolve, as do galaxies or solar systems from nebulae or debris disks.

His approach to atoms would certainly explain an eternal universe of infinite forms. You see his drawings and you integrate them in a natural way, as if we had already known it for a long time. Nevertheless, I know that accepting his theory today would break too many dogmas, but if science has done anything for hundreds of years, it has been to break dogmas. In my opinion, although I do not know if this genius was right in his theory, it is undoubtedly a beautiful way to imagine our universe. I feel that as we get closer to the smallest, Walter Russell’s ideas will be revealed.

The problem we encounter today when measuring the tiniest thing is that phenomena occur that we do not know about and that can make us assume that equivalent particles are identical. Surely at a sufficient distance all galaxies or planets and stars would also seem the same to us despite how different they seem to us now at our distances with the help of telescopes. Thus, we may be measuring a quality of them that would be equivalent, such as gravity or the pressure/charge they exert on their surroundings. We already know that in particle physics we measure the effect, not the cause; and equal effects can be produced by slightly different blocks.

I think that perhaps this universe is developed in this way precisely so that there is no interference between dimensions. Which would justify that we cannot measure beyond a certain limit. Even time helps this separation, since its perception also changes with size, as it does with gravity or velocity.

There is still a long way to go before we can be sure of Walter Russell’s conception of the elements, but it would provide a solution to the paradox of the infinite universe. Perhaps we should begin to consider this possibility that was already proposed by ancient sages, that everything is relative and that size is only an illusion of perception, so that if we could perceive the tiny we could probably also observe a melting pot of infinite forms.

Today we know about the radioactivity of certain heavy atoms that causes them to transform, losing energy, becoming different throughout their life, slowly, until they even become different elements. It is a beginning to start to understand how diverse our small universe can be.

Once again Walter Russell wonderfully reminds us how limited the human mind and its restricted knowledge is. We must be humble and recognize that we still have a long way to go. At the end of the day, those of us who are fascinated by the keys to this universe have to be thankful, otherwise the human journey would be much more boring.