On The Composition of the Universe

by Paul E. Black

I was surprised to find a very unusual statement about the composition of the universe printed in Brigham Young University's student daily newspaper. The potential implications of the statement stunned me. If the statement is true, BYU has made an astonishing leap of scientific knowledge. Brace yourself, gentle reader, for the astounding statement verbatim [Dai94]:

The Universe is printed on recycled paper.

The best minds in physics [Laf94, Efi93] consider quarks to be the building blocks, not paper, recycled or otherwise. Why aren't they aware of this? Why does the newspaper continue to publish just this tantalizing tidbit with no further explanation? How could the universe be printed on recycled paper? Several possibilities came to mind.

  1. Marshall Cline points out that the statement may be literally true, and in fact, foreshadows the latest string theory [Gre00]. Read his intriguing and concise treatise.

  2. The basic composition of the universe is not quarks and bosons, but common paper.

    This can be quickly dismissed by a simple experiment: light a match. Did the universe catch fire? No? (It didn't for me, either.) This demonstrates that the universe is not composed of the same material as the Sunday funnies. Actually the situation is more complicated than that. There are several alternatives which must be considered before that conclusion is justified.

  3. Kelly Hall suggests that the universe is made of paper which has a very high ignition point [Hal95], just like the supposedly combustible stuff the Gas company sends at the beginning of winter when you try to light your furnace.

    This can be dismissed by a similar experiment: light two matches. The sophist may claim that the ignition point is higher still, but consider arc welding, the exhaust from military jets taking off, volcanos erupting, or television ads for Corning's "Visions" sauce pans. Anything which still doesn't ignite can't be paper. (However it may be like wet campfire wood at 9 o'clock at night when dinner hasn't been cooked, yet.)

  4. The universe is made entirely of paper: there is no oxygen with which the paper can burn.

    Even in an inert atmosphere, paper will char at high temperatures. I haven't observed the universe charing around birthday candles or the sun, have you? Additionally the existence of air is the basis for classical, brilliant work [Cos71].

    Clearly, then the universe is not made of paper. But could the reality be something more subtle, more esoteric? Consider the following:

  5. The universe is a simulation, like a tic-tac-toe game, and doesn't really exist. In other words, everything which appears to exist, all the interactions which appear to take place, are actually just marks on paper. We are part of a grand simulation on a cellulose computer.

    This is patently absurd. Imagine all the paper that would be required to record the position, momentum, superpositions, and quantum entanglements of every star, planet, rock, atom, and photon in the known universe. (Of course, that could be why the paper must be recycled.)

  6. Colin Grace suggests [Gra96] the key may be in the meaning of the word recycled. The Oxford dictionary gives one definition of the word as, return to a previous stage of a cyclic process. So the Universe doesn't burn every time we light a match is because it continually recycled (returned) to some previous stage. Think of it: the basic building block of the Universe is the pulp of wood or some other fibrous matter (again from the Oxford). Are quarks made from some fibrous material?

    This cannot be entirely ruled out, but seems unlikely. Paper bank notes begin to fray and wear out after only a year in my wallet. How much faster would quarks wear out, especially those that are heavily used? Where do we return (recycle) used quarks to get shiny, new ones?

  7. Spencer Proffit gives [Pro97] an entirely different reading. Just as computer information is backed up, a copy of the universe is saved by being printed on recycled paper. Thus when the universe crashes it is restarted from the printed back up copy. Deja vu is merely when you have an experience, then the universe crashes and is restarted duplicating the action.

    Proffit points out that this brings up a plethora of questions: Why isn't the universe stable? What if Microsoft plans to create their own and compete with the current one? (Maybe this is a Microsoft universe; that would explain why it crashes so often and why Microsoft dominates the industry.) How often are backups done? Why is recycled paper the media of choice? We do not speculate on these further.

    Although BYU trumpets this astounding idea, this reviewer finds absolutely no basis for it and many contradictions with mainstream science. Perhaps it is a "fringe science" matter, such as, N-rays, polywater, or Pons & Fleischmann's cold fusion [Str94]. (After all, BYU is geographically close to the University of Utah.)

    References

    [Cos71] Cosby, William H., Jr., Ed.D., Why is There Air?, 1971.

    [Dai94] The Daily Universe, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah, May 16, 1994, page 1.

    [Efi93] Efimov, Garii Vladimirovich, and Ivanov, M. A., The Quark Confinement Model of Hadrons, 1993.

    [Gra96] Grace, Colin, <balaam@ozemail.com.au>, private communication, April 19, 1996.

    [Gre00] Greene, Brian, The Elegant Universe: Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions, and the Quest for the Ultimate Theory, 2000.

    [Hal95] Hall, Kelly, <hall@cs.byu.edu>, private communication, 1995.

    [Laf94] Lafferty, George, Adventures in Physicsland, New Scientist, April 9, 1994, vol 142 no 1920, pp. 40 - 42.

    [Pro97] Proffit, Spencer, <Spencer_Proffit@byu.edu>, private communication, April 12, 1997.

    [Str94] Storms, Edmund, Warming Up to Cold Fusion, Technology Review, Vol. 97 No. 4, May/June 1994, pp. 19 - 29.

    Modified Tue Feb 11 10:07 2003

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