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Vladimir,

Nature does operate on scales. I just think we focus too much on them. Knowledge is a function of distinctions, but reality is a consequence of connections.

Good luck in the contest.

Regards,

John

Thanks for that Vladimir. Of course, my doodles from the last essay competition! I'd better keep my cryptonaturalism hobby to myself. At the moment it involves using a 'no-glow' IR trail cam to be hidden inside a hollowed out log. It should arrive from the U.S any day now. I'm trying to film the local big cats around the Land's End area. There's plenty of evidence and I've seen the local 5ft puma myself. They're crafty as &*%! and so it takes a lot of skill. I'm still learning. Wish me luck.

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Vladimir,

I would add my views on this come from first appreciating many of the yin/yang type dichotomies of reality. Nodes and networks would be one, but probably the most insight has come from considering Complexity theory and the relationship of order to chaos. I would significantly amend this to say the opposite of order is energy, rather than chaos. Energy naturally adds to ordered systems at their points of weakness. This can serve to both increase the size of the system, or break it down. Think of a tree, where the growth pushes out the bark, expanding the cracks. Or it could be grass pushing up through a sidewalk, where the system/sidewalk, is breaking down. I think this also applies at the atomic level, when energy/quanta are that tipping point you refer to, where the structure snaps open as it is absorbing energy. With the size of the quanta more a function of the breaking point of the atomic structure than energy being a point particle. Rather than light being a bunch of dimensionless particles, it is more of a gas, that expands to fill its space. When the space is open, it acts like a spreading wave, but when it encounters matter, it builds up into the structure and pushes in the weak points.

The reason it seems chaotic in because of this tendency to push at points of least resistance and thus those least structured. Which causes distinctly non-linear reactions.

Dear Vladimir F. Tamari,

The abstract of your essay says it all. I agree to the same in totality. But where can we begin? When I started to think about these issues I was just about to be introduced to physics as a subject in high school (1965). I have an alternative approach which runs parallel to mainstream physics, and is not in conflict with experimental results or in fact mathematical formulations. The difference is only interpretation of mathematical equations. For example uncertainty principles are interpreted as binding of space by energy instead of probability or uncertainty in measurements without negating this interpretation under certain conditions. Similarly dealing with big bang, origin of universe, dark matter etc is seen as corollaries and extension of statement 'Space Contain Energy'.

This thought process takes mainstream formulations (laws and knowledge about universe) as facts to be linked into a uniform knowledge framework while minimising hypotheses and concepts. We have given a name Pico-Physics to the thought process that integrates physics known to us. The basic concepts are available at http://picophysics.org/ for review and comments.

I am participating with an essay '5-Dimensional Universe' . I invite you to have a look. I will consider it an honour to answer any comments you may leave for me. I will appreciate, if you can evaluate and rate my essay as well.

Thanks and best regards,

Vijay Gupta

    Dear Vijay Gupta

    Thank you for honoring me with your views. I have looked at your interesting blog, and see that you have been thinking hard about physics for so many years. Your intuitions are interesting and original. I like the name "Pico-physics" . Very small nodes of dielectric ether energy are the basic building block of my Beautiful Universe theory of physics. I will read your essay and comment there.

    With best wishes

    Vladimir

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    Vladimir Tamari

    I went through your interesting text exorting the recasting of the existing overall structure of Theoretical Physics. However, to see how the things really are, one has to dig deeper beyond the enjoyable artistic caricaturing.

    1. General points:

    - Scientific process. In scientific work, the appropriate hypotheses, assumptions are necessary to set up the calculational apparatus. The results of the calculations are confronted with the hard nuts and bolts of the experimental work. If this test does not work, one has to start all over again in a different way. Science moves bit by bit most of the time in an iterative manner based on "reasonable assumptions". The whole of science does not appear as a total revelation. It is a dynamical process. Moreover, a known scientific truth is always considered to be just as a relative truth.

    - Geometry and Algebra. Since the dawning of the discipline of Algebra almost a thousand years back, the Algebraic Equation has been the most potent instrument for scientific work in spite of the almost deification of this Geometry by the Ancient Greeks. Of course, one can represent geometrically a theme with a few dimensions, but the treatment of a large number of dimensions, for example, in the Hilbert vector-space is impossible. In fact, one can say without any hesitation that without this Algebraic Equation, quite likely, we shall still be in the stone age of Physics.

    2. Specific points

    1: The search of scientific truth - Nature's laws, has to move via different groping ways. Of course, the endgame has to be one Algebraic Equation that unifies all the interactions/ forces of Nature in a testable way. In this context, the things seem to moving in the right direction. After the unification of the E and M fields by the Maxwell's equations, one has managed to unify the EM with the nuclear weak interaction in the Particle SM that also deals with the strong interaction via the QCD. One has found interaction mediating bosons for all of them: Photons (EM), W^+-, Z° (weak interaction) and gluons (strong interaction). They have just found a scalar boson that may be the Higgs boson of the Higgs field that massifies the different particles.

    2. Nature of time. This has been a controversial point since the confrontation of Leibniz and Newton: one believed in the physical reality of time, while for the other, it was just a relation between the different things around. In QM, if one considers that the total energy: normal energy + gravity as negative energy, in the universe is zero, it becomes a timeless configuration space with all of its eigenvalues: past, present and future, present. However, the things are different in the classical domain of SR and GR with spacetime, where this time is integral part of them. We live the daily tribulations of this time coordinate. Let us see how one resolves this contradiction between the two sides.

    3. Speed of light. This speed in vacuum is constant. Due this constant speed, the time coordinate has to suffer the dilation that we live and use every day via clocks. There is a bundle of theories that contest this constancy of c, but a lot of experimental work done so far to test these theories, shows that Δc/c is < 10^-13.

    4. Gravity. In GR, the gravity is the curvature of spacetime. Moreover, the local GR is relative because it obeys the fundamental Local Gauge symmetry. Moreover, the red shift work in the gravitational field shows a change in energy of radiation, but not any change in its speed. Hence, the concept of refractive index suggested by Eddington cannot treat the problem.

    5. Photon. The idea of wave-particle for the Photon led de Broglie to his particle-wave relation for massive particles. This relation is the only basis for QM. Now, if one supposes following Planck, that this photon behaves as a particle only when it is absorbed or emitted and it is a wave when in flight, then, what does happen to the massive particles in flight? Will they be also only waves? Will then QM apply only to objects in flight?

    6. Quantum probability. In QM one uses operators that operate on the wavefuction that represents the system under treatment. The measurement on the system tells one in which of the (sub)state of the system's basis states it is. This, in the context of QM, leads directly to the quantum probability concept. As QM is nonlocal in nature, the entanglement of particles in a wavefunction is independent of time and their separation distance - now, reached more than 400km! As to the system of dipoles, first one has to treat them via QM and define their overall wavefuction and then see their behavior under different relevant operators. A CM treatment of this problem is not sufficient

    7. Standard Model of particles. The SM is a highly complex QM model obeying, like the GR, the local gauge symmetry, where, as said before, different interactions are mediated by different and known bosons: Photons, W^+-, Z ° and gluons. They have to deal with 6 types of quarks, 3 types of leptons and three types of neutrinos through a particular group of symmetry. To say anything significant, your dipole-based system has to pass through all these highly controlled quantum stages.

    8. Dark energy and dark matter. The DE is supposed to be repulsive and DM attractive relative the normal gravity. The CMB results from the Planck instrument in space along with the other activity with different types of telescopes, may give a clue as to their nature in the near future.

    9. Ether. One has to find and pin down this Ether in some way, first, before riding the horses of ethereal conjectures.

    Finally, as we move forwards, due the nature of things - conspiracy of Nature?, Physics is becoming more and more complex to deal with , but not at all a Gordian knot that can be cut with some classical sword.

      Dear Professor Asghar

      Thank you for your reasoned and detailed response to my paper. Most professional physicists of your accomplishment and standing might have dismissed my sweeping calls for 'fixing physics' without my providing the necessary foolproof plan how to do so. Instead you kindly took it seriously and gave a much-appreciated detailed rebuttal. I will try to answer your objections:

      1. Your General Points:

      Agreed that hypothesis are essential to build physics on- but in my view the assumptions that have led to how physics is practiced could be recast. The FQXI essay rules discouraged us putting forth our own theories, but I have a vision of a possible 'new physics' . Perhaps my Beautiful Universe (BU) theory is an outline of a dream - or a mirage? at this stage. But that theory gave me some confidence to cast a critical eye on present day assumptions. As you say starting out with new assumptions requires a lot of patient nuts-and-bolts work by expert mechanics before judging if the new structure works at all and if so if it is better than the current methods.

      - I disagree however that algebra precedes and is superior to algebra. Al-Hassan Ibn Al-Haythm's establishment of the scientific method and his discoveries about vision and light where described in pure geometrical language. Newton's calculus in the Principia was derived by purely geometrical methods. And Einstein revered geometry and was totally ignorant of tensor algebra when he invented General Relativity. His geometrical intuitions had to be famously cast in algebraic language with the help of others. In his lecture on "Geometry and Experience" Einstein shows his preoccupation with geometry. Late in his life Dirac too declared he had a geometrical vision behind his physics but alas did not give details. Algebra makes geometrical insights easier to express but they are not more basic.

      2: Your Specific Points

      1. I was careful to insist on the success of the various branches of physics today - but stressed that they are based on incongruous assumptions making further progress difficult or impossible - for example between QM and GR. Algebra has shown a pattern, but I feel some effort can be diverted to search for possible new approaches, and gave my reasons for doing so with the limits of my knowledge and the 9-page essay limit. In this essay I was merely trying to encourage searching in new ways - nothing wrong in that- right?

      2. The hypothesis that time is not a dimension but a record of experience of different universal states links with my suggestion that flexible space-time (considered as dimensions) is an unnecessary and distracting basic assumption to SR and beyond. This is my intuition based on thoughts of interactions in a universal ether in which matter (using Fresnel's great expression) is permeable to the ether. This view of matter and ether was just being developed for example by a late essay by Hertz when Einstein blasted the whole thing away by his too -clever assumption about constant c in an etherless world.

      3. The measured constancy of c is because measuring rods contract at the same rate as clocks slow down in inertial frames.

      4. I cannot myself rebut your learned objections to describing gravity in terms of Eddington's (n) , but the concept of (n) is too beautiful to be wrong, so to speak, and all I am saying is that is is worthy of further analysis.

      5. The photon as a wave is different from massive particles. As I have suggested in my (BU) matter nodes affect the surrounding nodes (ie the combined gravitational / em field) creating de Broglie waves in that field - as I sketched in the illustration accompanying Q5 in my essay.

      6. As with my other ideas here and elsewhere my suggestion that Quantum Probability is an artifact of the neoclassical geometry of a dipole field has to be seen in context with my (BU) theory. It makes a lot of sense there.

      7. Sadly you are absolutely right that my (BU) model of ether dielectric nodes needs a lot of work to build a meaningful explanation of SM relations. I feel it can be done by studying polyhedral node configurations, but that is work enough for another lifetime! All I am saying is for some smart young prison to try it out - is the electron a tetrahedral arrangement of magnetic like ether elements in an attractive-repulsive linkage?

      8. In (BU) theory the acceleration of the universe is due to the repulsion between the vacuum ether nodes, and the same acts to 'compress' matter it surrounds. Its just a theory and of course I hope one day it may prove right.

      9. How do you pin down the horse you are riding on? If everything is made of a universal ether its granularity may well be impossible to prove experimentally - although in my (BU) paper I have suggested some ways such as the diffraction of one light beam by a 'grating' made up of standing light wave. I know this has been done experimentally, but if it is done in an absolute vacuum it is a strong indication that 'something' in the standing wave acts to diffract the incoming light.

      The Gordian simile was made by my friend David when he proofread the essay - he is a great poet (like you are) and summed it up in this way. Physics is the result of patient detailed work, but maybe mentally cutting wrong assumptions as in brainstorming sessions is the first step to any progress.

      Again I really thank you for your reasoned and honest assessment of my little piece. Can I hope that in your next post you can give your opinion in the form of an expressive haiku?

      With kind regards, Vladimir

      Professor Asghar

      Re "nature of time". The concept of time is false, because there is no corresponding physically existent phenomenon. In a sequence there can only be one at a time. Timing rates change, per se (ie irrespective of type). It compares numbers of changes in sequences and identifies difference. So this concept relates to difference between physically existent states, not of them. Physically, there is alteration. Humans have a measuring system (timing) to calibrate the rate at which alteration occurs.

      Paul

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      Dear Vladimir,

      It is always a bit tearing apart to get away from oneself and its musings simply because:

      In the scheme of things,

      There is a tussle of forces

      For dice balancing

        Thank you Asghar for your nicely balanced 5-7-5 syllable haiku as per request!

        It is indeed important to get away from oneself and its obsessive musings ... let me leave the monitor and enjoy tha magnificent pattern of clouds outside.

        Vladimir

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        Vladimir,

        Welcome, this entaglement with the outside:

        In the afternoon,

        Patterns of high, musing clouds;

        Circadian swallows

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        Hi Vladimir,

        I'm sorry to be late joining the crowd in adding my thanks to you for a job well done in presenting an interesting, well written, and nicely illustrated essay tackling some key topics which are badly in need of tackling.

        I was particularly struck by the clear, concise presentation of your Q2: Does Time Really exist? This is a topic near and dear to my heart, as you will discover if you find time to read my essay here, Rethinking a Key Assumption About the Nature of Time.

        I'll be going back and looking at your essay and your references in greater detail. For now, suffice it to say thanks again!

        jcns

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          Paul

          We are only after the "physically existent phenomenon". If the dimensions of a rod reflect the "sensation of space", then, should not the relativity-inflicted physical dilation on clocks/atomic clocks, reflect some "sensation of time"?

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          Anon

          "We are only after the "physically existent phenomenon".

          Absolutely, and that is the whole point. Having eradicated all metaphysical possibilities, we have two knowns: 1 Physical existence is independent of sensory detection. 2 Physical existence involves alteration. This means physical existence is a sequence, and that can only occur one at a time, because the successor cannot occur unless the predecessor ceases. In other words, there is a definite physically existent state as at any given point in time (timing, a point in time, ie the unit of timing, being the fastest rate of change in reality).

          Now, this involves a vanishingly small degree of change and duration, but it must be so. Otherwise physical existence cannot occur. The key point here being that it reveals the falsity of attributing the concept of time to being a characteristic of a reality (ie a physically existent state). It is concerned with the difference between realities, not of a reality. Physically, there is alteration, and the timing system calibrates the rate at which that occurs.

          The concept of space is different in that it does correspond with a physically existent phenomena. Space per se, does not exist, physically existent phenomena do. Space is a correct way of conceptualising the relative size/shape of any given physically existent phenomenon. That is, it conceives of the 'occupation' of 'spatial points' bt any given physical phenomenon (a spatial point being determined by the smallest existent phenomenon in reality), ie relative 'spatial footprint'.

          Paul

          Thanks JCN SmithI

          I have read your well-written and interesting essay on Time and commented there on it.

          Vladimir

          Thank you Asghar for another beautiful haiku.

          Steve I am glad to say that this year you sound happy and optimistic and encourage you to create your own poetry and physics blog - helas! my French is very limited although I love the language of Fermat, Descarte Fresnel and Poincare. Good luck.

          Vladimir

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          Dr.Smith,

          Some cosmologists have heve been considedring for a while the universe as a configuration space in a sort of Darwinian evolution with some quantitative predictions . This evolution reflects/represents time - the operational time, that is controled by the laws of physics such as its dilation in the SR and GR. Of course, here as you say, the present, the past and the future do have their individual significance.

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          There is no time dilation in SR. Einstein defined SR as involving:

          -no gravitational forces

          -only motion that is uniform rectilinear and non-rotary (which is in effect, stillness)

          -fixed shape bodies at rest (no dimension alteration)

          -light which travels in straight lines at a constant speed (no curvature)

          There are many quotes to substantiate this. In other words, SR is not 1905. It evolved as a resolution of the "apparently irreconcilable" (page 1 1905) issue between the two postulates (section 7 SR & GR). In simple terms, light is in vacuo, objects are not, in 1905. So they cannot co-exist. In SR everything is 'in vacuo'. In GR, nothing is.

          Paul

          Thanks Asghar and Paul for your discussion about time. Whatever SR says or was interopreted as later, it 'works' vide the extensive experimental evidence. In my view however it is not time itself that dilates (or not) but clocks move slower (or do not). In other words I like to interpret SR as affecting physical properties (length of a rod, rate of rotation of clock gears etc.), not the dynamics of space and time dimensions as Einstein and Minkowski proposed in "spacetime".

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          Vladimir

          What works is not SR. I can only ask you again to please read my post 13/7 11.24 (and then 11/7 19.33) in my blog. After all, it was you who said a cold case review was an "excellent" idea.

          Now, clocks are just objects. So if objects are subject to dimension alteration then so too are clocks. That does not mean that timing has altered, as you say. The issue is, was the Lorentz concept of dimension alteration correct, because that is what really underpins Relativity. The subsequent explanations of it (courtesy of Poincare & Minkowski) are incorrect, because they did not understand time. And then Einstein substituted light speed for distance in an incorrect way in an expression of time. Which is why, apart from the fact that the variance (ie in dimension), if indeed there is one anyway, is attributed to the wrong factor (ie time and observation), light speed keeps occurring in so many equations. Because another fundamentally obvious question is: what has light got to do with it? And the answer to that is invariably, nothing. It has no physical association whatsoever. But it does so happen to be the physical phenomena which enables sight. However, even that is a coincidence, the first mistake was not based on that. Though it has provided a 'get out clause' to the subsequent jumble, ie it's all to do with observation and timing.

          Paul