Chapter 4

The macro world

4.2 What is matter?

How can we understand the concept of matter if there is nothing that cannot be further divided? We explained earlier that particles of matter can be described as standing longitudinal waves at wave centres with a remarkable accuracy, and that mass is energy and energy is vibration.

So, what exactly is matter and how does it relate to fundamental forces such as gravity?

Perhaps the best description of this idea came from Albert Einstein: in his general theory of relativity, he introduced the term spacetime and described gravity as its curvature [3]. And so, thanks to Einstein we can start to understand that gravity is not what causes the curvature of spacetime, gravity “is” the curvature of spacetime.

If we are to speak the language of philosophy for a moment (our apologies to the scientists), we can picture our material world as a thought structure (!), and the material distribution of this thought in time and space only copies the location and motion of spacetime’s force centres, which are this thought, and this is how they manifest themselves to the observer. So the force (thought) structure of spacetime is the main defining element.

Can you imagine for a moment that there could be fractally structured force centres in our world, and that everything we call mass would gather around these centres? And that matter would only copy the force (thought) structure of our world?

Do you think we would then need cosmic inflation in order to explain the smoothness and homogeneity of the observed universe, which contemporary cosmology solves by the (perhaps somewhat artificial) theory of inflation [51]?

Matter is one of the manifestations of the thought structure and essence of our world. We perceive it as something solid and tangible that takes up space – as the building material that our entire world is made of. Matter binds the energy of force centres within itself. This energy manifests itself as a vibration in its life and time progression.

We have described time as the oscillations between two poles, space as span between these two poles, and motion as observation. If we can understand our world as a thought structure, then matter is the perception that depicts this thought structure and makes it visible to us in our observation (in all its time and space manifestations).