Apropos of nothing: I wonder what the hype-masters like F. Wilczek and L. Krauss are going to say if the latest resonance turns out to be a spin 2 particle?

Robert,

For some time I have liked this poem:

"To see a World in a Grain of Sand

And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,

Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand

And Eternity in an hour"

-William Blake

Didn't know its significance in terms of scalar reality for a long time.

Jim

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    • Post #16

    Dear Robert Oldershaw,

    I was a little surprised by the brevity of your essay but I think that may be misleading because you have introduced some very big ideas in that short space. I would have found more background discussion of those ideas helpful to me because I am not a trained physicist, astronomer or cosmologist.I feel that you have just given me a small appetiser and now I have to go and search for the main meal. Which may have been your intention.From what Alan writes it sounds like it is waiting on your web site.

    To contrast with your own experience, the limit of my practical astronomy has been trying to interest my son's in the subject. Tying to identify the features on the moon, compared to a small moon globe, and looking at Venus with a not very powerful telescope.

    I think that patterns including fractals have perhaps been rather neglected due to a prevailing reductionist attitude within physics, that has sought to explain what exists from a hypothetical bang and inflation rather than an ongoing process of self organisation.I have touched upon pattern generation control at different scales, from a biological perspective, in my essay.I can understand your assumption 2.I still don't understand what "scale is absolute" means. False assumptions 3.

    That the gravitational constant may not be constant over different scales seems a good suggestion to me. I think that perhaps at the smallest scale particles are unable to cause the kind of disturbance of the environment that is responsible for gravitational attraction of other bodies and deflection of light from its default path.

    I hope you generate lots of interest in your work.Good luck.

      Hi Jim,

      This little poem by the strange and wonderful William Blake has appealed to me ever since I was an adolescent.

      I use it as one of the "philosophical essence" quotations on my website. It captures the feeling of relativity of scale quite nicely.

      Here is another quotation that has appealed greatly to me of late:

      "The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift." - Albert Einstein

      Amen. Time to show the Platonists, and their misleading over-idealizations, the door. Time to start studying nature again, instead of analytical abstractions. Time for natural philosophers to rise again to their proper leadership roles in fundamental physics.

      Robert L. Oldershaw

      http://www3.amherst.edu/~rloldershaw

      Discrete Scale Relativity

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      • Post #18

      Hi Georgina,

      I am not trying to win contests or prizes, but rather to get people thinking about a completely new paradigm for understanding nature.

      My very brief essay, which could have been expanded into at least 3 books, is just an invitation to some key ideas of the new paradigm. My website is the comprehensive resource for studying this new discrete fractal paradigm that I call Discrete Scale Relativity.

      Absolute scale is a simple idea. If every hydrogen atom, neutron star or galaxy had an absolute size, mass and spin period, then this would be absolute scale.

      On the other hand, if each of the discrete self-similar cosmological Scales has its own proton, H atom, etc., then there are an infinite number of differently "sized" protons, H atoms, etc., and that would make their scale relative to the particular cosmological Scale that you arbitrarily choose as your reference Scale.

      In other words if there are an infinite number of cosmological Scales and each has its own hydrogen atom, then what is the "size" of the H atom and is it big or small? The answers only make sense within a given Scale. They are not appropriate for nature as a whole because scale is relative.

      And in still other words, absolute scale works for small discrete parts of nature's hierarchy, like the Atomic Scale or the Stellar Scale or the Galactic Scale, but not for the entire hierarchy.

      Hope this is helpful.

      Robert L. Oldershaw

      http://www3.amherst.edu/~rloldershaw

      Discrete Scale Relativity

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      • Post #19

      Hi Robert,

      thank you for explaining. I'm going to have to get my head around that. I think I understand what you mean. A big galaxy might have a big hydrogen atom and a self similar small galaxy might have a small hydrogen atom. ? - You are right the absolute scale is an assumption. I had never really thought about that before. So your plan to get people thinking is working!

      Actually things are a little different in a discrete fractal hierarchy with exact self-similarity.

      Galaxies correspond to subatomic particles: nuclei and particles shortly after a supernova explosion [the "big bang"] in an object on the Scale just above the Galactic Scale. Galaxies are very compact (relative to their Scale), move at high velocities (100-700 km/sec) and are part of a global expansion.

      Galaxies contain pulsars. Pulsars contain subatomic nuclei.

      Galaxies, pulsars and nuclei are the exact same thing on different cosmological Scales, so long as you carefully use their physical characteristics to make sure you have identified specific analogues (say an alpha particle from each Scale).

      Don't worry - learning a completely different way to understand nature takes some time. But once you work at it a bit the insights and understanding come increasingly fast.

      The degree of unification offered by Discrete Scale Relativity vastly exceeds anything that has come before.

      RLO

      Discrete Scale Relativity

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      • Post #21

      Thanks again for taking the time to explain. It is something I will have to think about to really understand what you are saying.

      To gain a working understanding of Discrete Scale Relativity and the new fractal cosmological paradigm, one needs to read 2 papers.

      These papers are Papers #1 and #2 at the "Selected Papers" page of

      http://www3.amherst.edu/~rloldershaw

      They go through the technicalities, retrodictions and predictions of the paradigm.

      What is meant by a "cosmological Scale" is defined using the Atomic Scale as the archetypal and best known example.

      The self-similar scaling equations and how to use them can be found in these papers.

      After mastering the material in these 2 papers, one becomes a leading expert in Discrete Scale Relativity, since virtually all the members of the physics community have ignored this new paradigm for 35 years and remain clueless about it. :)

      When the dark matter is identified, I expect that DSR's definitive predictions of its mass spectrum will be vindicated and the barrenness of the old paradigms of particle physics and cosmology will be revealed for all to see. The 40-year No-Show for "WIMPs" is a preview.

      RLO

      DSR

      http://www3.amherst.edu/~rloldershaw

      5 days later

      Robert

      I like your idea that the scale of things is highly stratified. I realise your concept is primarily directed at the cosmology side of the scale, but I can see the relevance to the tiny scale. If there were scale effects -from whatever cause- then there could be discontinuities in the manifestation of the physics. Which in turn could explain why quantum coherence does not apply to living cats, for example.

      Thank you

      Dirk

        Hi Dirk,

        Assuming that Discrete Scale Relativity applies only in the cosmological realm is not correct. It applies to ..., Subquantum, Atomic, Stellar, Galactic, ..., Scales. It unifies the physics of all scales of nature.

        -----------------------------------------------

        7/18 "manifesto" from nature online:

        String theory has failed to even generate a single definitive prediction after 44 years of hype.

        SUSY promises much, but nature (via LHC, Tevatron, etc) says: "No, no, no".

        The more you objectively study the "Higgs Mechanism" the more it sounds like it was cribbed off the back of a cereal box. Expect multiple additional epicycles to keep the thing floating.

        The standard model has 7 serious problems that clearly show that it is purely heuristic model-building.

        Conclusion: We need to start over with a new paradigm for the 21st century. New ideas from a new generation of theoretical physicists. Trying to patch up the old paradigms of cosmology and particle physics is just going to keep us wandering in the desert for another 40 years.

        The new paradigm will almost certainly be based around the discrete cosmological self-similarity of Discrete Scale Relativity.

        Robert L. Oldershaw

        http://www3.amherst.edu/~rloldershaw

        Fractal Cosmology

        7 days later

        ADDENDUM:

        If you cannot resolve the vacuum energy density crisis,

        if you cannot explain the fine structure constant,

        if you cannot identify the dark matter,

        if you cannot predict the masses of fundamental particles,

        if you cannot reconcile General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics,

        if you cannot explain why galaxies exist, or come in radically different flavors like ellipticals and spirals,

        then you do not know diddly-squat about the cosmos.

        Particle physicists seem to be making it up as they go. Here's a nice example: They could not find a single free quark, so they made it a "law" that quarks are hidden inside other particles (just so!).

        It's mainly Ptolemaic epicycles in theoretical particle physics, no matter how vociferously they sell it to a credulous public.

        Robert L. Oldershaw

        http://www3.amherst.edu/~rloldershaw

        Discrete Scale Relativity

        16 days later

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        • Post #26

        Hi,Robert

        Are you familiar with this book?

        http://www.amazon.com/Scale-Relativity-And-Fractal-Space-Time/dp/1848166508

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          • Post #27

          Your point of view close to Spinoza's philosophy a religion of nature.Nature - is the cause of itself(Causa sui).He was the closest in their outlook for the Einstein.

            Hi Yuri,

            Yes, I am quite aware of all of Nottale's work.

            Whereas I applaud many parts of his general outlook and his call for a fractal model of nature, I find the following problems with his proposed paradigm.

            1. Nottale assumes that there are upper and lower limits to nature's hierarchy.

            2. Nottale accepts the conventional scaling for gravitation and believes in the conventional Planck scale.

            3. Nottale downplays the crucial role that dark matter plays in cosmology.

            My research suggests that each of these assumptions is profoundly wrong, especially #1.

            His Scale Relativity may apply within any single given discrete cosmological Scale of nature's hierarchy, but I seriously doubt that it is the correct fractal paradigm for the entire infinite and eternal hierarchy.

            I have been a great admirer of Spinoza since I was made aware of his work by the work of Einstein.

            I firmly believe that Spinoza has given humanity the final word on the true identity of "God", although very few seem to agree with Spinoza, Goethe and Einstein that the infinite eternal hierarchical Universe, with its elegant laws, principles and symmetries, is all in all.

            God = Nature = everything natural and nothing supernatural.

            If others need a more anthropomorphic God, let them believe what they will. I would only argue that they are selling God short, in fact infinitely short.

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            • Post #30

            Robert

            You can read my posts in essay of Philip Giibbs.

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            • Post #31

            Robert

            There are all my observations.

            http://vixra.org/author/yuri_danoyan

            My be you can catch some intersection with your interest?

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            • Post #32

            Dear Robert,

            I totally agree with you on questioning the 3 assumptions as given in the abstract, but for different reasons from your self-similar cosmology where I can see how they would be refuted. Just taking the idea seriously that the metric-field equations of General Relativity describe a closed physical surface of space-time is enough to question whether the 'constants' are really constant in an absolute sense. For a closed universe with radius R, physical analysis leads to the conclusion that the cosmological constant must depend upon R, and that GR formulated on a local basis could have a gravitational constant dependent upon R. Given that 2 of the 3 'constants' would then vary with the radius R of the universe, the suspicion would be that the speed of light would also vary with R, which would obviously effect conclusions from astronomic observations if correct. Assumption 1 being wrong - ticked.

            Of course in GR, the scale R is not physically defined in a properly measurable sense and extensions to GR by adding extra dimensions can inherent this feature, as my Kaluza-Klein theory does. In a KKT like mine the compactified dimensions have the Planck scale L and the physical scale of the universe is then physically defined in units of L, ie. R/L is a physical quantity. But then L is only measurable in terms of itself, and so L is not an absolute physical scale. Assumption 3 being wrong - ticked. I understand that you don't like such cosmological models with upper and lower length scales.

            For me, assumption 2 is wrong because the last step down in scale is blocked by mathematical incompleteness and so reductionism fails for this reason. Although this refutation of the 3 assumptions is different from yours, the key can also be viewed as being a reassessment of scaling in GR.

            Best wishes,

            Michael

            Hi Michael,

            For many years I have tried to interest people in the possibility that G is not an absolute constant, but rather has an infinite series of discrete values - one for each cosmological Scale (i.e., ..., Subquantum, Atomic, Stellar, Galactic, Metagalactic, ...).

            Two relevant points are:

            1. Einstein put the conventional Newtonian G into GR because it gave the right answers for the macrocosm. However, nothing in GR requires that the value of G be the absolute conventional Newtonian value.

            2. If one seriously considers the possibility that G is not absolute, but rather has a infinite series of discrete values - one for each self-similar cosmological Scale (i.e., ..., Subquantum, Atomic, Stellar, Galactic, Metagalactic, ...), then one has the makings of a new discrete self-similar paradigm for understanding nature on all Scales in a highly unified and elegant manner.

            Maybe if Discrete Scale Relativity's definitive predictions concerning the exact mass spectrum of the galactic dark matter are verified (say, by the NuSTAR X-ray telescope), then those who have studiously ignored this new paradigm for over 3 decades will be inclined to learn about its true potential.

            Best,

            Rob O