Below the Fabric: Scientific Theories Supporting the Metaphor

In part 1 of our odyssey, we visualized an endless black tapestry—warm, unbroken, and throbbing with life—on which glowing conscious gemstones materialized at thread crossings. This poetic imagery did something remarkable: it gave life to the daunting question:

Could we be living in an emergent reality, our consciousness itself emergent from deeper, concealed realms of being?

In Part 2, we move on to frontier physics to see if this vision has more basis in reality. To many's surprise, an increasing number of physicists and theorists suggest models in which space, time, and gravity itself are not fundamental—but emergent from unseen structures in higher dimensions or deeper laws of physics.

The Scientific Imagination: Emergent Spacetime

Higher Dimensional Resonance Theory (2024)

Physicist Andre Carnevali da Silva has recently suggested that higher-dimensional wave patterns project three-dimensional patterns of structures in lower dimensions into what we perceive as reality. This is remarkably reminiscent of the intertwined threads of our conceived fabric, implying the possibility of resonance in an invisible dimension creating the building blocks of our cosmos, including the force of gravity itself.

In our analogy: the radiant gemstone is a localized expression of underlying vibrational forces throughout the tapestry.

Simulating Spacetime in the Lab

Researchers have also developed testable ring systems in the laboratory that mimic spacetime-like phenomena. These mimic the way massless particles may move on the boundary of higher-dimensional space and provide us with an idea of how spacetime might arise from interactions between the underlying constituents.

Just as threads in our conceived tapestry—what looks uninterrupted and coherent may have originated in extensive systems of small interplays.

Machine Learning Uncovers Emergent Dimensions

A captivating crossover between physics and AI is underway as scientists are using machine learning to recreate unseen higher-dimensional gravitational fields from observed data in condensed matter systems. This implies our observed cosmos might be just an image or shadow of a more multifaceted reality we can't directly experience.

Its blindness to threads mirrors our own blindness as witnesses to the workings of deeper reality.

General Relativity as an Illusion?

Effective Field Theory Approach

General Relativity, the current theory of gravity, can be only an approximate theory—an accurate description in most situations, but not fundamental. At high energy or at small scales of order of quantum mechanics, more basic structures can exist, suggesting that spacetime and gravity itself arise from more primitive ingredients.

In our allegory, it's not a rope pulling the gemstone—gravity is a weave pattern in the fabric.

Quantum Entanglement and "It from Qubit"

The "It from Qubit" idea prescribes that patterns of entanglement drive spacetime geometry. This resonates with theoretical frameworks such as the AdS/CFT correspondence, which postulates one can derive a higher-dimensional gravitational universe from a lower-dimensional system with no gravity—precisely as in our crumpled, knotted, emergent universe analogy.

✨ Each aware gemstone signifies another point in an extensive interconnected web of nodes weaving the actual shape of reality.

Erik Verlinde’s Emergent Gravity

Verlinde's controversial hypothesis stipulates that gravity is not an actual fundamental force. Rather, it arises as an emergent phenomenon out of statistical thermodynamic principles—namely, information's desire to disperse and entropy's drive to increase. In his theory, gravity is an entropic force and an emergent consequence of information flux and microscale freedoms of movement.

Gravity in this understanding is a derivative of the tendencies of the fabric to self-organize rather than an enforced action from something else.

Bridging Imagination and Physics

So how does our philosophical image of an aware gemstone on an endless threadbare tapestry fit in with forefront science?

Imaginative Metaphor	Scientific Parallel
Infinite black material	Quantum fields / Higher-dimensional structures
Crossing threads	Quantum entangled states / Interactions between fields
Conscious gemstone	Emergent observers / Localized excitations
Fabric twisting into shape	Gravity, spacetime, and life from deeper laws
Unseen threads	Hidden dimensions, quantum gravity, and entropic structures

What starts in imaginative wonder is now being reflected by theoretical physics as well: the world we see can be an illusion of layered depth, an interface to some much deeper and more complicated substrate.

The Evolving Lens of Consciousness: A Final Reflection

If Emergentism is true both scientifically and figuratively, we—along with the gemstone—might never be fully able to perceive the threads beneath us. But with science, narrative, and self-consciousness, we might be able to start to sense the contours of the loom. With changing tools, theories, and metaphors come potentially changing conceptions of consciousness, being, and the deeper geometry of reality itself.