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  • Post #63

Hi Vladimir,

I had to think hard before replying, because I recognize your research as idiosyncratic, and I don't wish to tinker with subtleties that I don't understand. So I'm going to use a broad brush, and try to get across that while quantum mechanical theory indeed resembles a building in progress -- relativity theory is nothing like that. Relativity is a mansion designed and built complete.

The eminent relativist George Ellis has explained or implied the mathematical completeness of relativity ("top down causality") much more elegantly than I am capable of. In this year's round of essays, he casts a wide and fine-meshed net that captures modern information theory on the microscale, to smoothly connect the theories of relativity and the quantum on the large scale. Like Einstein, as you say, if the net were to be torn, George would have to start all over -- and as we know, the finer the mesh, the greater the risk.

I apologize in advance for the length of what follows. I think that a series of exchanges last month, between James Putnam and me in the FQXi blog "Essay Contest 2012: Questioning the Foundations," gets across my point of view.

I start:

"Hi James,

One area on which Richard Gill and I agree is that a mathematical model must be independent of experiment. I'm in a rather difficult position defending Joy's framework, because he started out by alienating -- and this is no exaggeration -- every mathematician on the planet ("disproof"). It's a huge irony, because it's the mathematicians, brought up on theorem proving, who would naturally ally themselves with a creative coherent argument if they have or can acquire the background to understand it. Physicists couldn't care less; physicists as a rule take mathematics "off the shelf" and try to fit it into what they are doing experimentally (whether real or gedanken). The job of a mathematician is to create new mathematics.

That's the rub. We can't create "new physics." We can only explain the physics we have. So a physical theory is tested by measured correspondence of a phenomenon against its mathematical explanation. That's what makes quantum mechanics so successful; it is vulnerable, however, to being the victim of its own success. That is, if the mathematical theory were completed, it would not be coherent -- how do we know this? -- because quantum theory at any scale is not coherent without the assumption of nonlocality. Mathematical completeness cannot be compatible with nonlocality, either mathematically or physically.

Einstein stood by his philosophy, "I am not interested in this or that phenomenon, in the spectrum of this or that element; I want to know His thoughts -- the rest are details." In this respect he thought like a mathematician rather than a physicist. Completeness is what the "Old One" imagines. Relativity is mathematically complete in the classical domain.

Believe me, there are many days when I wished I hadn't signed on to this dispute. I've got my own program. And even with the overlap, the distraction is taxing and wasteful of my time. If we are going to be intellectually honest, though, we cannot dismiss arguments that are inconvenient, or that lie outside the rules we have prescribed for ourselves.

When we create new mathematics, we have to be ready to change or reinterpret some rules. When it's complete, *then* we can speak of how it corresponds to the "real world," a physical experiment. Otherwise, we are merely cobbling up explanations for what the real world *appears* to be telling us -- and that doesn't guarantee that we really got the true message (hence, Joy's "illusion of entanglement")and usually, we are simply validating what we already know to a reasonable certainty. A mathematically complete explanation that predicts an unexpected outcome, OTOH, has much greater explanatory power.

Tom

James replies:

"I am unclear about this statement:

'Mathematical completeness cannot be compatible with nonlocality, either mathematically or physically.'

I understand it to be saying that: Since relativity theory is mathematically complete, and, since quantum theory is not, that it is assumed that quantum theory must evolve into a state where it can be absorbed into a fuller theoretical framework dominated by relativity theory.

James

My reply:

"Well put. It's that, yes, but more:

Mathematical language, despite its reputation among many unfamiliar with it, is not mystical. It's built of definitions and theorems rather than bricks and mortar, yet the abstractions are every bit as solidly joined as the best-built dwelling. Imagine that a builder invites you to view your new house from a hilltop. You look down and see a foundation hole, a rickety frame, a partly finished wall, a crumbling chimney. "We're making progress," he says. "When will it be completed?" you ask. He looks puzzled, "What do you mean?"

"When can I expect to live in it?"

"Oh, you can't ever live in it. Wouldn't be safe."

"Excuse me?"

"We don't know when something might collapse."

You are incredulous. "Don't you have plans, drawings, blueprints, specifications?"

"Sure." He hands you the plan. It's an exact copy of the wreck you see below.

"But this doesn't tell me what the house is supposed to look like!"

"Of course it does," he says. "What do you see in the plan that's different from what you see below?"

He's got you there. You can't argue with success.

"That's pretty ugly," you say.

Again, he's puzzled. "Is there some law that says a house has to be pretty?"

You admit, "I suppose not."

"Well, then can you take care of this bill for the progress we've made so far?"

"It's in the mail," you say.

All best,

Tom

Vladimir

I am on holiday as of tomorrow morning. As such I undertook an interesting exercise (see my blog my post 27/7 07.40).

Remember, the 'movie' ultimately comprises stills. And there must always be physicality. That is, there cannot be a circumstance where the cause of a physical effect is not, of itself, physical.

Paul

Paul

I have responded earlier to the ideas you have put forward. As I told you I am really not interested. I find your repeated postings about the same thing distracting to me and those who wish to discuss my essay. I wish you will cease and desist.

I sincerely respect you and your zeal to research various ideas in physics, but this is not a blog but a forum, and this page is certainly not your blog page!

Vladimir

Dear Vladimir:

"The history of physics shows, 'physically realistic' theories open up new possibilities. Describing planetary motion using Kepler's ellipses rather than Ptolemy's epicycles led directly to Newton's gravity and beyond."

Well put! The essay was entirely enjoyable, and I'm interested to get to your Beautiful Universe theory in due course.

Best wishes!

Daryl

Dear Daryl,

Thanks for your cheering words. Both my experience as an inventor and artist gave me an intuition into both the nuts and bolts of devices and systems, and in the creative process that interacts with these things- and I am always amazed how many different intellectual and/or physical approaches can be made to design the same mechanism or theory. We have become too clever and it is this 'too cleverness' that is distracting us from finding the much sought-after unified physics close to the workings of nature.

I dare not utter the letters SR lest I invite another torrent of the sort of distracting posts I have been complaining about, but I feel that Einstein was 'too clever' and that in an absolute timeless ether-based universe relativity could have been (and hopefully will be) presented differently with light slowing down as it decelerates and curves in gravitational fields, for example.

I really should develop the math of relativity in the sort of model I proposed in Beautiful Universe but I know my limitations - I think geometrically not algebraically. Simulating (BU) would be great and I have a strong feeling the results of SR can all be reproduced from its basic node-to-node interactions at a maximum rate of (c).

Hope this makes some sense!

Vladimir

    Dear Vladimir,

    This does make some sense, although I've only been able to look briefly at your BU theory. I, too, primarily think geometrically, and I think you and I agree fairly well when it comes to relativity. Actually, in case you hadn't noticed, I wanted to point your attention to a response that I wrote to you on July 24 @ 6:47 GMT.

    Daryl

    Thanks Daryl you are very kind to take the time to detail your views. I have read your posts addressed to me on your page and also the one to Jim. Please make allowance for my somewhat limited technical ability to navigate the myriad details of SR and GR. Factor in the stamina of the grandpa set and that makes my reviewing and responding to all your points - as they well deserve - a question of time. Another problem for me is the interuptions of vapid or of off-subject posts that seem to pop out frequently from a certain source and do take out the pleasure of back-and-forth discourse.

    Let us keep in touch I value your ideas.

    Vladimir

    Dear Thomas

    Thanks for your message, and for taking my paper seriously enough to the extent that you felt you had to answer it, respecting its idiosyncratic nature, despite hinting about your disagreement or puzzlement about its contents. I enjoyed reading your exchanges with Putnam, and observations about Relativity and QM. What incomplete ugly architectural plan were you referring to in that exchange?

    In writing my fqxi essay I took to heart the caution not to 'shoehorn' my own pet theory into the discussion. But now that I think of it, for a person like you taking my fqxi essay at face value it might read like a manifesto by an unwashed anarchist advocating to demolish all that is best and truest in civilized physics and beyond for no good reason.

    As I hinted in my essay my criticisms spring from a vision of what a simple harmonious unified physics might be freed from the assumptions I mentioned - i.e. my Beautiful Universe Theory . I know it is by no means a complete program, and to make its few physical assumptions work it has to be developed by experts in many fields. But implicitly criticizing a program that states at the outset that Relativity must be 'reverse engineered' by saying it is not like Relativity is an oxymoron!

    Yes Relativity is complete - that is exactly its problem! It is so structured as to shut out possibly important aspects of reality, viz. the ether, a timeless universe, and worst of all, the possibility of an absolute physics not dominated everywhere by the observer's point of view. Einstein proposed *absolute observation* (c is constant) but this made the Universe relative. But why insert an observer in every point in the universe? What if one starts by saying the Universe is absolute (where c has a maximum but can slow down in gravity), and only in cases of measurements involving inertial frames, *observation is relative* subject to Lorentz transformations. No observer need be present in GR - who is going to measure the speed of a light ray, Ray, as it curves around the Sun? We can simply apply what we know of the dynamics of deceleration and curvature in classical physics.

    I have a lot of respect for the brilliance and hard work of the people who have developed QM and like Ellis refined Relativity, but obviously some basic things are not working, else fqxi would not exist and the present Foundational Question would not have been posed. Being a speculative forum what is wrong with considering a new starting point and building on it from there one notion at a time? It requires an open mind, perhaps even an empty one such as the one I may be privileged to posses :)

    Thanks and cheers.

    Vladimir

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    • Post #71

    Dear Tamari

    I found your essay interesting and I do see where we share some of the same thoughts, that's why I like it. I will critique it one item at a time because I tend to talk a lot when I get going.

    "As will be discussed below, some may actually be wrong (that the photon is a point particle, rather than a spreading quantum of energy."

    This is how I see it, if it looks and acts like a wave then it is a wave, now if it looks and acts like a particle then it is a particle. Where we went wrong in the past since we forsaken the aether for special relativity is that we thought the photons were both a wave and a particle, as Einstein alluded to, but it is not.

    In our surroundings if a particle is moving through something fluid-like, air or a liquid, it gives off a signature wave that tells us that it was there. A photon, a gauge boson, moving through a bosonic condensate would do the same, give off a wave signature in the condensate that tells us something passed by. Now how I see it is the Photons are acually gluons with a build up of charge, e-plus e-minus charge pairs, that add up to 0.

    The BEC-like particles in the medium that the photons passes through are diamagnetic to other bosons unless they are occupying the same state but they are paramagnetic to all other matter unless they are close to absolute zero. As a result the aether, (bosonic condensate), was affected by that passing particle similar to what a particle would behave like in a fluid-like medium as mentioned above. Remember in a BEC Helium II phase change below 2.17 degrees Kelvin helium acts like a boson and is superfluidity, diamagnetic, superconductor that obeys the Bose statistic. Now Fermions, Fermionic condensates - quarks, leptons, act similar to BEC at even lower temperature.

    Since the Higgs boson was almost confirmed as existing within 5 sigma of accuracy then we are about to rename the aether as the Higgs field. Imagine Aristotle's look when he finds out that he isn't finally getting the Nobel prize for Physics for his aether theory after 2,400 years, some other guy named Peter Higgs is getting it.

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      • Post #72

      Dear Tamari should be Dear Vladimir, sorry for the typo.

      Ron

      Hi Vladimir,

      You ask "What incomplete ugly architectural plan were you referring to in that exchange?"

      The point is that in fact, there is no architectural plan in quantum theory, which isn't even a true theory by my strict standards of correspondence between theory and result, which can also be interpreted as correspondence of language and meaning, or of blueprint to structure. In quantum theory, "What you see is what you get." (George Ellis has some elegant explanations in his essay forum on this "top down" relation between abstraction and physical realization.)

      What you see as weakness in relativity, I see as strength. You write, "It is so structured as to shut out possibly important aspects of reality, viz. the ether, a timeless universe, and worst of all, the possibility of an absolute physics not dominated everywhere by the observer's point of view. Einstein proposed *absolute observation* (c is constant) but this made the Universe relative."

      Actually, Einstein knew -- and intended -- that general relativity is incomplete. In fact, he objected to the label "relativity" for his theory (Mach was the true relativist), thinking that it should be called the theory of invariance or something similar. History overruled him. What general relativity does do, is to completely explain gravity in the classical domain, the large scale structure of the universe. It's a bit misleading to say that relativity is "dominated everywhere by the observer's point of view," because the actual physics is the same for every observer ("all physics is local").

      "But why insert an observer in every point in the universe?" Because an observer already exists at every point in the universe, as Bose-Einstein statistics demonstrates. That's what allows any number of bosons to occupy any point, in contrast to Fermi-Dirac statistics in which a massive particle (fermion) can occupy only one state at one time. The reconciling of bosonic properties with fermionic properties in a smoothly connected theory of quantum gravity is an open problem.

      "What if one starts by saying the Universe is absolute (where c has a maximum but can slow down in gravity), and only in cases of measurements involving inertial frames, *observation is relative* subject to Lorentz transformations. No observer need be present in GR - who is going to measure the speed of a light ray, Ray, as it curves around the Sun? We can simply apply what we know of the dynamics of deceleration and curvature in classical physics."

      Right. But if one is going to propose a non-symmetric field theory one had better prepare to meet the same challenges that Einstein tried to overcome in his failed version ("The relativistic theory of the asymmetric field"). You seem to be using the term "observer" as a conscious agent -- physicists don't generally assign that meaning; observation refers to the interaction between a measuring apparatus (which could mean human observer but doesn't have to) and the source of the measurement.

      "Being a speculative forum what is wrong with considering a new starting point and building on it from there one notion at a time?"

      Not a thing! And I didn't mean to say or imply such; it's why I declined to offer a step-by-step critique of your framework. I know that your idea is all of a piece -- " ... a dynamic universal lattice where energy is transmitted locally from node to node at a maximum of c but at slower speeds when the nodes have greater potential as in a gravitational field." That's completely plausible, as is Garret Lisi's lattice-based E8 theory. Mathematicians don't deal in physical plausibility, however -- we are concerned with the abstractions (theorems, arguments, domain and range) that explain why this particular physics is preferred over any other equally plausible explanation.

      So go forth and be imaginative! That's what makes life worth living, isn't it? And no one needs anyone else's permission, or a license, to do it.

      Tom

      Dear Ron

      Thanks for your message. Do we both agree then that the photon is a a wave of particles? Gluons? That would certainly fit in with my lattice nodes having dielectric magnetic properties e-plus and e-minus as you say. Sounds a bit like Dirac's sea of electrons. You lost me in the discussion of BEC I will really have to study all that - as I mentioned in my note on your page particle physics is something I really need to study but have not done so in any serious way.

      From what you say about particle-wave properties of photons do you imagine it like the Cerenkov radiation? My idea is somewhat different - that nothing actually moves in space just energy patterns exhibited by stationary nodes.

      Aristotle getting the Nobel? Hmm perhaps for some of his ideas, but imagine the embarrassment when all his other discounted ideas (rate of fall depending on weight of object, sight is caused by ocular rays emitted by the eyes, the four elements, etc etc) come to light!

      Cheers

      Vladimir

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      • Post #75

      Vladimir

      "Do we both agree then that the photon is a a wave of particles? Gluons?"

      Yes, how I view it is that it is the wave propagated from the photon particle passing bosonic particles, (higgs boson, w boson, z bosons, gluons bosons and maybe the axions bosons) in the higgs field that I have been referring to as the aether.

      "Aristotle getting the Nobel? Hmm perhaps for some of his ideas, but imagine the embarrassment when all his other discounted ideas (rate of fall depending on weight of object, sight is caused by ocular rays emitted by the eyes, the four elements, etc etc) come to light!"

      I was just attempting a little humor, however everybody who got the Nobel prize at one time in their history will be found to be fallible, imagine what people are going to say about the standard model, relativity, and what we wrote here 2,400 years from now.

      Ron

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        • Post #76

        Vladimir

        Oh by the way your particle illustration on your essay is similar to what I was talking about.

        Thanks

        Ron

        Ron

        Your photon picture is a bit different than mine, but maybe because we do not completely understand each other's ideas.

        About Aristotle's Nobel there is nothing wrong with a bit of humor and while you are at it give one to Al-Hasan Ibn Al-Haytham (Hazen) the poor fellow is mostly ignored when the discovery of the scientific method is discussed, even though his work in optics had all of its hallmarks.

        And yes physics will be unrecognizable perhaps in a few decades from now! Here is a predicted consequence if the particle picture in my essay and theory is right (a wave field surrounding locked elements with rotational energy: In a double slit experiment a particle larger than either of the two slits will push its own field through the slits and they interfere even though the particle itself cannot pass through. See attached graphic for a description of the proposed experiment.

        VladimirAttachment #1: 1_Particledoubleslit_.jpeg

          Dear John

          Apologies for the late response I just your messages tucked away in the thread.

          Instead of the sort of arm-waving physics to describe our almost identical notions of how light spreads out as a wave, but is absorbed gradually, I can now point you to superlative experimental and theoretical analysis of this effect. In my essay I mentioned Eric Reiter's work on what he calls the anti-photon. You can now read his own fqxi essay on this forum.

          I belatedly started reading Wolfram's New Kind of Science and find he has an interesting take on such concepts as complexity and chaoes.

          Vladimir

          Hi Tom

          Thanks for your clarifications. I will have to re-read your post and think about these things some more. I may not have expressed myself very well, and the issues are complicated enough without the misunderstanding of what I or you mean by 'observer', measurement, and such terms. I simply meant there is no need to have GR account for light-cones at each point in the universe. A local light cone implies an accounting of what an observer at that point could or could not 'see'.

          Yes, its great to have a "License to THIMK" (sic) to use the 1950's gag.

          Vladimir

          5 days later

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          • Post #80

          Hi Vladimir,

          Thank you for your kind comments on my essay. I liked your essay and think that your building analogy very nicely captures an uncomfortable truth.

          In response to your comments on my essay and your BU theory, you are indeed correct that the compactified dimensions of Kaluza-Klein style theories (KKT) give a basis for cellular automata models (CA) such as your BU theory. To account for all the particles and particle forces the minimum number of such extra dimensions is 7 - this is a general conclusion in physics and not specific to my work - but the simple case of 1 extra dimension gives the picture in 1 spatial dimension of a tube like a hosepipe. The character of KKT is such that physical measurement of the length of the tube - the spatial dimension - is effectively in terms of the cross-section, which has the effect of dividing the length into discrete units that can be modelled in terms of the cells of a CA model. In terms of a previous essay question: is reality analogue or digital? the answer in KKT seems to be both as the analogue spatial dimension is measured in discrete units. However, the intrinsic error of measurement using a fixed measuring stick is ½ the length of the stick - I show that this effect alone can give the Heisenberg uncertainty relation. In terms of cells in a CA, imagine two touching cells and then place a third cell on top them centred on the point at which they touch; this is effectively two neighbouring cells overlapping each other by half. This would model the measurement error limit to the digitising of space to a CA model. Of course in a CA model with non-overlapping cells such as yours this should be modellable by a suitable choice of update rules between the cells.

          In my Kaluza-Klein theory - S10 unified field theory (STUFT) - the particles arise as topological defects, which in a digitised CA model would appear in a form similar to the multi-cell model of a particle you depict in Fig 16 of your paper. The issues for a CA model like yours are finding the right geometry for the cells in combination with the possible states of the cells, and then finding the correct update rules to model the physics. For the above reasons, I would expect such a CA model for a KKT like mine to exist in some form. I would then expect my proof that Gödel's incompleteness is the underlying reason for Quantum Theory to apply to such a CA model: I predict that the CA model would support universal computation and display computational irreducibility (the form Gödel's incompleteness takes in CA models).

          Best wishes

          Michael

          Hi Michael

          Thanks for your kind comments about the fqxi essay. You correctly evaluate my BU model as a species of cellular automata (CA). I sometimes think of it as a sort of self-operating 3D abacus inasmuch as self-assembly creates a lattice structure. In the original CA the only 'action' involved is a two-state on-off for each cell. You mentioned that 7 dimensions are required by physics - I would be grateful for an online reference about this to study.

          In my Beautiful Universe (BU) nodes there are the following degrees of freedom: 1-rate of rotation or spin of a node in units of (h). 2- two degrees of freedom in the orientation of a cell in spherical coordinates. I wonder how these would count in terms of 'dimensions'. I also feel that the usual 3 spatial and one time dimension are emergent from the node interactions themselves. You have diagnosed exactly what is needed in my theory: As to geometry I think a face-centered-cubic (FCC) lattice is a reasonable starting point ( adopted over the other Kepler packing, following N. Cook, see below). The update rules still need to be to be quantified. Although it is not exactly a BU 'particle' treating three nodes as bar magnets interacting classically lead to a model one aspect of the Strong Force so the rule required may be similar in BU.

          Yes The Uncertainty relations in CA emerge exactly are as you stated them. In the case of the two overlapping cells you describe it will be just like the Airy diffraction limit! I strongly feel that orderly diffraction (ie diffusion) in a lattice is the cause of both uncertainty and probability in QM. In Fig. 29 of (BU) you can see how this is illustrated in 2D (the case you describe) and also in a 3D lattice. The trouble of considering KK in BU is that it is a sort of an add-on to Special Relativity's 4-D spacetime. In BU I totally ignore SR as a starting point and think that discrete Lorentz transformations in an absolute universe are enough to describe relativity in the lattice.

          By the way Fig. 16 of BU which you referred to is from my friend Norman Cook's work. I told him about the fqxi contest and he has contributed a very thorough explanation of his FCC-based nuclear structure theory. More support for our sort of approach to physics, so please encourage his work.

          I will have to re-read your essay and think about the interesting points you raised including your fascinating conclusion that Gödel's theorem has applications in basic physics!

          With best wishes,

          Vladimir

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            • Post #82

            Hi Vladimir

            In response to our different pictures of how light travels through an aether, higgs field. I use a field of particles made of bosons, of which the higgs particle is also made of to demonstrate my aether. In other words in my belief the higgs field should also explain the duality of light. But where I deviate from the current understanding of the Higgs field is that like heavier gas particles in our atmosphere, the higgs bosons are the closest to matter where the farther away from matter you get the lighter the bosonic field that is generated. In other words that is why we can see throughout the universe because most of the bosonic field in interstellar and intergalactic space is made of mass-less gluons.

            Oh by the way that is an interesting way to explain the double slit experiment. I have a different view of how that would work in my view it all depends on a bosonic condensate. That's why if you try to observe it the effect goes away like it would in a BEC, by observing it we are disrupting it informational lines of communications.

            Sorry for the late response I was out of town for a while, good luck on your essay

            Ron