John,
That is ok it takes me awhile to do the same also. It is better to think it through than to jump to quick conclusions.
It may be that we are looking at energy and structure differently. So far when you talk about energy it seems that you are talking mainly about electromagnetic energy. When I talk about energy I am going to a much lower level and to an all encompassing concept of motion. All things whether they be electromagnetic energy particles (or waves) or matter particles are made up of motions. These motions constitute the true energy as the motive force behind all large scale motion effects and resistance to motion effects that are generally attributed to forms of energy such as mechanical, electromagnetic, and potential energy, etc. They also constitute all structural components such as matter particles and all the large scale structures that are made from them. The only difference between electromagnetic energy (your energy) and matter particles (your structure) is that the matter particles contain an additional motion in the fifth dimension that causes its path in the first three dimensions to be curved rather than the straight-line path of energy. This curvature of its path causes the matter particle's path to curve back upon itself to create a continuous local closed path for its motion to travel in. As viewed from my viewpoint matter or structure is just the next step up from energy particles in a hierarchical structure of motions. Both matter (structure) and energy are completely composed of the most fundamental entity, which is motion. Through interactions all of the motion contained in a matter particle can be transferred to other matter or energy entities causing the particle of matter to cease to exist. The same can happen to energy particles. The motions that they were composed of continue to exist, however, in the other matter or energy particles that they were transferred to. A matter particle's fifth dimensional motion is the same as its fourth dimensional motion or its motions in the first three dimensions. It is only where the motion is located in the dimensional system that gives it its particular properties that it adds to the structure of the matter particle. This is the same for energy particles except they do not have a fifth dimensional motion. Instead of saying that energy is what exists and it manifests information/shape/structure, I would say that motion and the dimensional system exist and contain information and motion manifests or shows itself in the form of energy and matter (shape/structure) through the dimensional system. At the next higher level of translation, the energy is the mediator that manifests or allows us to detect and understand the matter structures, but the matter structures are really not just made of matter, they are the result of a delicate interplay of both energy and matter, which is in turn the result of the overall equilibrium between energy's natural tendency to expand (travel in a straight line) and matter's natural tendency to contract (travel in a curved path). When we say that something was in the present, but is now in the past, we do not mean that it has now ceased to exist because all of the energy has drained out and the matter that is left has collapsed into a black hole. As an example, if your car gets old and you take it to the recycling plant and it is melted down, it no longer exists as your car and is on the global level in the past, but the metal still exists in the form of that complex energy and matter interplay. It has only changed its shape through a series of motions. Structure does not need to collapse for time to pass. Expansion of energy is also not necessary for time to pass. As a particle of matter is traveling through its enclosed path time goes by because it travels through a distance at a given motion amplitude. The matter particle's structure has not collapsed for the time to go by neither has the energy that is traveling in that enclosed path expanded for the time to go by. Instead the motion that would cause the expansion and the motion that would cause the contraction work together and counteract one another to create a stable path structure to make a stable matter particle structure. Yet time has occurred due to the motion through a distance or the change in position, which has occurred. When you look at your desk, it may look as though it is not moving and, therefore you may think that it is not experiencing time, but if you could look much closer at it you would see the molecules have vibrating motions, the atoms are moving in the molecules, the matter particles are moving in the atoms, the matter particles are moving in their enclosed paths, and various other interactions are occurring with external motion interactions with photons and matter particles, etc. If you back far enough away from the desk, you would see that it is moving around the earth's center and moving around the sun, etc. All of these motions through distances with various motion amplitudes generate time for the desk. At this point it would be a good idea to look more closely at information and how it works in all of this. Let's start with the simplest structure, a single motion in a single dimension. This motion contains three main entities of information. They are position, direction, and motion amplitude. The direction information is needed because of the bidirectional nature of the dimension to choose between one of the two possible paths of motion progression. It is set at the beginning of the motion and can only be changed as the result of an interaction with another motion or possibly the end of the dimension. Because it has only two possible states it only requires one bit to store it in information terms. The position information would also be set at the beginning of the motion and could be changed by the motion amplitude information or by an interaction with another motion. The motion amplitude information is also set at the beginning of the motion and can only be changed by an interaction with another motion. Notice that in the absence of an interaction with another motion or with the end of the dimension, the only information that can change is the position information and that change is controlled by the motion amplitude information. At any given present moment the motion amplitude information determines what the change in position information will be in the next moment. The only thing that would change as time goes by is the position information. The motion amplitude information determines how much that change will be for the next moment. The present motion conditions set up the changes for the next present motion conditions. I used the example of moments as if time is divided into some indivisible small unit called a moment, but that is not what I meant to convey. I was just trying to show it in a way that could be easier to visualize. Think of the moments getting smaller and smaller until they merge into a continuum. The result is still the same only you have analog information control instead of digital control. As you can see it all occurs in the present. The position information is continually updated at the rate determined by the motion amplitude information. Notice there is no need for anything to go into the future to inform it to change the position information by some amount. If you know the motion amplitude information content you can use it to determine the position of the motion and the value of the position information at some point in the future, but it does not exist that way until that future point becomes the present. Likewise, as the position information content changes, its previous contents no longer exist and become a part of the past. Only the present actually ever exists. The information entities are all conserved. Only the content of the information within the entities can change. In this case it is the position information that changes within the position information entity.
Because normal light waves do not blue shift we can see that a light wave does not create tension as it expands as a balloon does. This means that it would be more like a gas that would just get thinner with fewer molecules per unit of space as it expands rather than some type of cohesive entity that would be bound together as a single unit and would exert tension on itself as it was stretched. This would be more in line with the idea of the wave front being composed of individual photons than just a solid wave front. Another thing that seems to me to be an indication of the photon concept is that because the wave weakens in relation to the square of the distance it would seem that a wave front that had traveled billions of light years would be too weak to be able to generate photons at the end of its travel. On the other hand, if photons were initially generated they would each continue to contain the same amount of energy (motion) as long as they did not interact with anything on the way to the destination. You would just see fewer photons the farther away you were from the source because they would be spread further apart. At least a great part of the red shift is caused by interactions between light particles and sub-light particles. Sub-light particles are particles that travel in the first three dimensions at composite velocities less than the speed of light. They do not contain fourth or fifth dimensional motions and so they travel in a straight line like a light particle, but because they do not possess a fourth dimensional motion they do not exhibit frequency, wavelength, or variable mass effects. They do not have the angular components that generate the dynamic mass effect in energy particles because these are generated by the fourth dimensional motion, which they do not possess, so they only have a very small mass effect that is due to their composite three dimensional motion. They usually do not interact with matter particles because their mass effect is below the threshold of matter interactions, but they would interact some with energy particles. They would tend to slow the energy particle down in some direction in the first three dimensions, but this would cause motion to be induced back into the particle's composite three dimensional motion from its fourth dimensional motion to restore it to the speed of light. The net result would be a slight reduction in the fourth dimensional motion, which would cause the frequency of the photon to decrease, its wavelength to increase, and its variable dynamic mass effect to decrease. Or to put it another way, it would be red shifted. The greater the distance that the photon traveled the greater number of such interactions it would experience and this would mean that the red shift would be proportional to the distance traveled.
First we do not actually live in a three dimensional world. Our structure is just such that we can only directly observe the first three. We can indirectly sense the fourth dimension by the frequency, wavelength, and variable mass effects that a fourth dimensional motion causes in energy photons and matter particles. We can indirectly detect the fifth dimension by the curvature effect that a fifth dimensional motion causes in an energy photon to change it into a matter particle. We are used to thinking of three dimensions in terms of grid structures with length, width, and height delineated by reference lines with some zero point at the intersection. If you could look at the whole universe at once from outside of it, you might be able to see some preferred directions so that if you traveled in a certain direction you would be able to say I am traveling in only dimension number one and if you then stopped and turned ninety degrees in the proper direction and then started moving again you could then say now I am traveling only in dimension number two, etc., but from our perspective in which we only see a small part of the universe and we see it from inside of it, we have no visual cues to generate absolute coordinates. When we generate coordinates they are, therefore local constructs that are not tied in any way to actual dimensions and therefore one such construct can greatly vary compared to another one in its alignments of dimensional lines because the chosen alignments are either randomly chosen or are chosen in relation to some particular structures in the universe with no standard references for all such constructs. The concept of dimensional lines is much like the concept of moments that I used above. You can just think of adding more and more lines parallel to the existing lines until you have a continuum. The best that we can do at this time is to think of the combination of the motions in one, two, or all of the first three dimensions (the three dimensional composite motion) as producing a certain composite motion amplitude in some direction in the first three dimensions. We cannot determine how much of that motion is produced by dimension one, two, or three. We also cannot tell whether the motion is aligned with one of the dimensions with all of the motion coming from that dimension, whether it is aligned with two dimensions so that the motion is the composite motion of those two dimensions, or whether the motion is shared by all three dimensions. For most practical situations it really doesn't matter though. If space was infinitely dimensional, it would take an infinite number of coordinates to describe a given location in it. You are right that temperature does vary with volume. If you are going to use that concept in regard to the whole universe, you would need to know at least either the initial or at least some earlier temperature and volume and either the present temperature or volume. The present temperature appears to be roughly known, but the other variables are not known by man in this world at this time.
It is not a problem to me that you bring up such topics because I believe in searching for the truth in all aspects of reality, so some topics like consciousness or other aspects of how our minds work and religion, etc. (that might be considered taboo to those who have their minds closed in such areas) are perfectly acceptable topics for study to me. That you have through your intuition developed the concept that we are essentially individual cells of some deeper being is interesting because if you look at the Christian scriptures, especially the New Testament, it is evident that God is saying that he is using this world to make a body for himself with each of us given the choice to become a member (a part) of that body if we desire. The scriptures say that God made us in his image and since we are composed of a spirit that generates our intents, a soul that turns those intents into thoughts, and a body that turns the thoughts into physical actions, it would be expected that he would be composed of a similar structure. In the scriptures it says that God is a spirit and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth, so that is the first part. It also says that there is one mediator between man and God, the man Christ Jesus. This places him in the position of our soul which is the mediator between our spirit and our body and translates the things from the spirit so that the body can understand them and translates those things from the body so that they are received by the spirit. As far as the ones who choose to become parts of his body are concerned, it says that in Christ we are many members, but one body, that Christ is the head of the body, and that God is the head of Christ. Another thing that I find interesting is that when we are conceived we get a part of our physical makeup from our mother through the information that is written into the DNA in the mother's egg and we get the rest from our father from the information that is written in the DNA in the father's sperm. The egg cannot generate a man's body on its own and the sperm doesn't do so either. It takes both joined together to generate a man's body. In the scriptures it says we must be born again. That our first birth is for the birth of our body, but this second birth is for the birth of our spirit. This implies that when we are born into this world we have both parts that are needed to have a whole body, but only half of the information needed for our spirit to be born. It appears that we have the half that communicates with and has the necessary information to take care of our body, but don't have the other half of the information that allows us to connect to and understand how to work as members of God's body. This only comes when we get the other information needed so that our spirit can be born of God. In the scriptures, Jesus says the words that I say unto you they are spirit and they are life. This indicates that the information needed for the birth of a complete spirit either is the scriptures or at least it is contained in the scriptures and that only by taking that information in can a man have all the necessary information to allow his spirit to be born so that he is complete. The ones that do not choose to become parts of his body are used as parts of the machinery to make the body, but in the end when the body is complete they will be destroyed along with the rest of this world because the body is being made to last without end so the manufacturing plant won't be needed any more after the body is complete. A new world will be made that is better than this one for God (in his body) to live in. It appears that in that world entropy will not exist as it does here because it says that when you make something it will continue and not deteriorate as things do here, as an example. I have always found it interesting how it is that the world is constructed in such a way that one thing will be made in the image of another thing so that even if we can't see what an atom looks like directly we have larger scale things in the world such as the solar system from which we can derive concepts that can be used to gain an understanding of the things that we cannot see directly. These kinds of things are interesting to me, but if they are not to you just let me know.
I don't have to get back to work, but I do need to get some sleep.......
I saw your P.S. just before I sent this so I will take a quick P.S. to your P.S., but don't expect too much as I am tired. If the photon that is generated from the wave front gets its energy level from the entire wave front and not just from the part of the wave front at the point of contact, the energy coming from the parts of the wave front that are lets say millions of miles away on the other side of the expanding wave front would have to travel faster than the speed of light or else it would take an extremely long time to generate the energy photon. Energy does not create or consume information. It only can change the specific values stored in an information entity by causing one value to increase while another value decreases, as an example.