Which of Our Basic Physical Assumptions Are Wrong? by Georgina Parry

Dear Ms. Georgina,

Thank you for taking the time and the trouble to read my essay. Thank you also for the extremely kind considerate comment you left.

Hi Georgina --

Your essay covers a lot of territory, and I found the list-structure a little bewildering, since each item on each list would take me some time to feel clear about. Similarly, there's so much going on in your diagram that I don't yet feel that I understand what it's saying, as a whole.

But this reflects the situation we're all in, if we try to envision the foundations of physics. There's such a vast amount of theoretical structure that's more or less well-verified, empirically. Most of the essays in the contest focus on one particular aspect of the problem, which makes them easier to understand. But like you, I imagine that at bottom the world does not reduce to a simple picture. The issue is to find the right question, that can get us on the track of understanding why the world is built as it is. And I can see that's what you're trying to work out here.

One comment -- I like the fact that you're thinking of the "Image Reality" as integral to the picture, as well as the "Object Reality". In my essay ("An Observable World") I tried to develop a different but perhaps related approach. First, I made a distinction between the subjective "image" constructed by an observer and the environmental structure of communicated information the observer has access to. I think it's this communications structure that physics needs to describe, while what any particular observer does with the physically available information is a separate issue, not relevant to fundamental physics.

Second, I think that once we have a framework that lets us understand the structure of the informational environment we live in, we'll see a different relationship between it and the "Object Reality". I think of the factual reality in physics as the information content that's defined and conveyed by the web of communicative interaction. And my hope is that by understanding how and why such a web could evolve, we'll be able to understand the very complex, mutil-layered patterns of objective fact we find in physics -- extremely complex and indeterminate at a fundamental level, yet relatively simple and highly deterministic at the level at which observations and measurements are made.

Getting back to your essay, it looks to me as though there are a great many interesting ideas here. Apart from this essay contest, which prompted you to build a remarkably comprehensive picture, I hope you're able to work out some of the many specific issues you raise in another format, that would let what's special in your approach stand out more clearly. I had a similar problem in my essay -- even after cutting out many points that seemed very important, I still ended up putting so much into the essay that I'm sure many readers found it hard to grasp.

Thanks -- Conrad

Hi Georgina,

I like the way you connect philosophical matters with empirical ones, and agree with many of the views you defend here. Also that persistent paradoxes and anomalies are key to identifying phenomena beyond the known.

As a systems philosopher I think you are spot on when you say:

"The relationships of everything allow the Object universe to function and become, rather than just exist. The relationships are integral to the arrangement of the constituents, being the variables and parameters that produce force for change or the potential for change."

Can you send me a high-res copy of your diagram 1 please? My email address is on the 1st page footer of my essay. Thanks!

Good luck, you deserve to do well in the competition,

Best wishes

David

Georgina,

Nice Essay and excellent choice of presentation style. I can only classify how a fan of GR and QM would attempt to explain uncertainty on the quantum level existing in block time as a conundrum. You point out so many other gems too.

Good luck to you.

Thank you very much indeed for your positive feedback. I have sent an email.

Dear Georgina,

I like how you used de Bono's thinking hats. Even the most creative scientists may find help in using simple strategies to improve lateral thinking. The result is interesting and beautiful, congratulations.

Best wishes,

Cristi Stoica

Dear Georgina,

Thank you so much for the diagrams and other info - very interesting! More feedback to follow. Have also emailed back.

Best wishes,

David

Dear Georgina,

I thought your essay had an interesting analysis and discussion of the situation we find ourselves in in the universe, and I liked your upbeat conclusion.

Cheers,

Lorraine

I have just read your essay and I like your holistic approach.

I jumped at a couple of details that surprised me that you according to my own assumptions has got wrong. But that is the backside of trying to grasp the whole thing instead of concentrating on a single piece. It is a super-human undertaking to get everything right, covering many diverse fields.

The two things I jumped at was:

1. The Twins Paradox.

"This paradox is due to misuse of theory".

Physically, it is not a paradox at all. Clocks and chemical processes just runs like syrup at relativistic speeds. The travelling twin is preserved, because he hasn't experienced the same amount of time as the earth-bound one. This is experimentally proven with atomic clocks in jet-planes in the early 1970's.

2. Expansion of the Universe.

"The red shift evidence for expansion may possibly be due to the continual universal motion of the Earth"

I am not sure I understand your hypothesis of choice, but... no.

Several ideas has been put forward as alternative explanations for the red-shift: Light-speed is not constant, but slows down. Or: Everything shrinks and gives an illusion of distances growing. Those ideas simply does not fit observations.

These remarks is not ment as mocking. I think you have made a great contribution to the community as a fellow amateur cosmologist.

Good luck in your further studies.

PS.

I have answered your post in my essay home page.

Dear Andreas,

Some thought about the two issues you raised.

Re.the twins: Considering what time is within the explanatory framework used to answer the essay question. In Object reality there is only uni-temporal-Now, everything existing exists simultaneously. Passage of time is the simultaneous change of the whole universe, iteration by iteration, (configuration by configuration using J.C.N Smith's description). Different passage of time for different parts can not occur. Relativity is still possible because it pertains to the output fabrication of data processing and not the foundational Object reality.

If a man on an exercise bike peddles away next to a man who is standing reading a newspaper we would not consider passage of time to be different for the two men, though they may subjectively experience time passing faster or slower. The man who is exercising will have a higher metabolic rate, there will be more chemical activity occurring in his body but the men still exist at the same time. Therefore amount of chemical change, which may be relevant to ageing, is not the same as passage of time.

Ageing is due to accumulation of deleterious changes that have occurred to the body. As space is inhospitable,with low gravity and more radiation, that are bad for the human body, the travelling twin should be expected to age more than the stay at home twin. Not because of a difference in time but environment. The two environments are too different, a fair comparison can not be made and it can not be said that the travelling twin will age less.

Re.red shift: The framework I have proposed depends upon continual change of position of matter as it travels along its Object universal path considered overall all scales . So rather than a stationary Earth at the centre of an expanding universe, the image reality, there is an Earth in motion through the unobserved Object universe. Rotating, orbiting, moving with the solar system and galaxy. The Earth moving away from the origin sources of the data that is being received and processed into the Image Universe. I don't think total motion of the observer has been accounted for when considering -what- is being observed.

I don't think what I have said implies any difference in what what would be observed but just gives another way of interpreting what is going on; consistent with the RICP explanatory framework, allowing relativity and QM to co-exist without contradiction.

Thank you for your kind words, Georgina

Thank you : )

But I -have been- affected. It is cruel on all of the honest participants who now do not know where they stand.

Thanks lorraine,

I appreciate the feedback.

Georgina

Dear Cristi,

thank you so much. I really appreciate your positive feedback. Georgina : )

Let's drop the red-shift thoughts and take another round at the twin paradox.

The two men at the excercise bikes in your example experience time the same because the electrons move around the cesiums atoms in their bodies the same number of times per second. But if the peddling mans feet peddle the bike very fast, the electrons around the cesium atoms in his feet will move a little slower, so that he ends up a bit older than his feet. That is in a physical, chemical and ultimately biological sense. There is still a common now for both men, but the ticks of Universal time ticks away faster in the slower moving mind of a moving person.

(I promise to question myself if this is a wrong assumption of mine, I am sure to learn something new from it).

PS.

Cesium may not be very abundant in human flesh, but I used to live down wind from Chernobyl, so I know at least me and my brother have some of it. He can be the peddler and I the paper-reader :->

Dear Andreas,

I'm glad that you read my reply and have thought about it.I should perhaps say that relativity, in my opinion, is all about what will be observed and not about what is occurring at the foundational level of reality. I think it is also necessary to separate ageing from passage of time. In the explanatory framework I am using there can be no difference in time for anything as there is only one time to be at, which is the uni-temporal-Now. That's important.

The -amount- of movement in observable space-time is not inversely related to the the amount of time that has passed at the foundational level of reality. Passage of time is related to the (unobserved) Object universal movement at all scales not just movement at the scale at which the observation has occurred. Length and time are related in the space-time fabricated -output- of observation because of the -data transmission delay- effect.

An analogue clock that is running fast compared to one correctly calibrated is not experiencing faster passage of time though that is what it is indicating. Likewise any clock that shows a different time for any reason. That is not saying there is not a physical phenomenon occurring but I don't think it should be taken at [: )]face value.

I may perhaps relate this to George Ellis view, expressed in his essay and thread, that there is 'top down' control of some processes. At the end of my essay I also hinted that reductionism may not always be sufficient to adequately, or best, explain what is occurring. Within this explanatory framework rather than time being controlled by the movement of electrons in atoms it is due to sequential change at the Object universal scale, in the (foundational unobserved), reality.

Hello Georgina,

It appears you are still in the game. Good to see you made the finals (assuming there are no more chaotic oscillations). May the judges treat your work kindly, and see the value you bring to the table.

All the Best,

Jonathan

Dear Georgina,

I see you perhaps a bit too nice. In other words, I would rather like you to not praise Einstein's relativity as an unquestionable fact but declaring externally existing foundational spacetime wrong. Minkowski credited Einstein, and he could also have credited Poincaré. I do not see any chance to ignore their redefinition of time and space and be nonetheless a good relativist fellow.

Relativity, in your opinion, is all about what will be observed and not about what is occurring at the foundational level of reality. You also think it is necessary to separate ageing from passage of time. In the explanatory framework you are using there can be no difference in time for anything as there is only one time to be at, which is the uni-temporal-Now.

Your essay is not the only one I see maneuvering between orthodox relativists and own more ore less common sense arguments. While your idea to alternatively explain redshift will perhaps not enlighten anybody, I very much appreciate and support your intention.

My own suggestion for resolving the matter is slightly different and definitely hurting to many: Observers and subject reality do not play any central role in it. You know, I am distinguishing alternatively between what has already become irreversible reality and what might possibly happen.

Spacetime is always thought like a model that is based on experience, i.e. its explanatory and predictive power necessarily relates to the past because it is obviously impossible even at the most basic level to know and consider all possible influences. You did perhaps mean about the same when you called spacetime emergent.

Best wishes,

Eckard