Relativity Is Not About Spacetime by Edward J. Gillis

Dear Edward Gillis,

A well written essay. I think you are correct that both space-time, relativity and non deterministic physics have to be accepted. How they can co-exist without contradiction has been an interest of mine for a long time. I agree with Vladimir Tamari in particularly liking your conclusion.

Good luck in the competition.

Edward,

"But, in order to make current theory logically coherent, we need to realize that relativity is rooted as much in the indeterminism that characterizes quantum theory as in the structure of space and time."

Do time and space both have a role in relativity's indeterminism and are causal relationships dubious or non-existent as time passes?

I'm somewhat confused.

Jim

Ed,

"I argue that relativity is not a guarantor of local causality, and is not about ontological features of spacetime." What impact would this have on my belief that the forces of gravitation might be cancelled, at least by advanced civilizations? Are message carriers like the graviton and the embedded anti-graviton -- assuming they exist -- possibly discontinuous?

Jim

Your paper makes a salient point. I will be posting an essay here in the near future which touches on this problem. I think the question that needs to be raised is how fundamental is locality. Quantum mechanics has a representation according to configuration variables in spacetime, or the momentum conjugate, but quantum state are fundamentally independent of such representations. Quantum wave equations are partial differential equations which define an oscillator at every point on a spatial manifold. Locality is "imposed" by assigning equal time commutators on this spatial slice. However, the wave equation is defined according to partial derivatives with time ∂_t which is a local time direction determined by the frame of an observer. If we were to quantize spacetime itself there would be no manner in which a Born rule exists in general. The reason is that light cones near the Planck scale become indistinct. A propagator of quantized spacetime according to standard QFT propagates this on spacetime, which runs into trouble.

I think then that spacetime is emergent from nonlocal or noncommutative geometry on a deeper level. In the reasoning of noncommutative geometry, geometry is replaced with groups. Underneath spacetime I think exists a quantized system of nonlocal amplitudes. At lower energy with the emergence of spacetime this enforces the Born rule for quantum waves at this larger scale.

Edward,

While your essay is quite dense for those of us with little formal education in physics, it does contain some interesting insights and seems to go in the right direction in terms of correcting the various misconceptions built into the current structure. I especially found your analogy of information with temperature quite interesting, since it mirrors some of my own perceptions and thus provides some deeper insight into the issue of non-locality, which seems to be a bit of a mathematical artifact, but difficult to unravel. I do think the concept of temperature is greatly overlooked, as a window into non-linear systems. While the focus is usually on its formal molecular definition, everything from cosmic background radiation, to economic statistics could be thought of as forms of temperature. E.O. Wilson described the insect brain as a thermostat and it could be argued that radios, as well as many other forms of electronic devices are also, as your profession suggests you well understand.

My own essay goes into a slightly different form of sensory misconception, the perception of time. We experience it as a series of events, from past to future and physics re-enforces this assumption by treating it as a measurement, but the actual physical process is the changing configuration of what is extant, collapsing probabilities into actualities. The future becoming the past. This makes it an effect of action(rate of change), similar to temperature(level of activity). Digging down into this, time dilation is due to changes in the level of atomic activity affecting the rate of macroscopic change.

Spacetime is then correlation of distance and duration, not causation of action. One could easily use ideal gas laws to formulate "temperaturevolume," but we don't confuse the needle with the scale, as we do with time.

Good luck.

Ed,

Thanks for the appreciation.

Unfortunately physics will have to look beyond its current static modeling to really understand the relationship between time and thermodynamics. That's why I keep droning on about this particular point about time not being an essentially static vector from past to future, but the dynamic process by which the future becomes past.

Edward,

I agree, human intuition has played a very active part in our understanding of nature. Human intuition is partially due to our human knowledge as well as fundamental facts of nature as they appear in different context in human observations.

The main task of physics/ Pico-physics is to bring forward the facts of nature in such a fashion that they are universally applicable (and not contradicted in any context). This may result into one or more set of universally applicable laws. The completion of the set is determined by complete explanation of human knowledge.

Historically, it is seen that collection of human knowledge has preceded the formulation of laws. Scientists are trying there best to change this sequence, being upbeat on observation. Cold fusion, neutrino traveling faster than light, Higgs boson are all examples of this urge to be able to change the sequence (laws follow collection and organization of knowledge). This will be possible when the set of laws is complete.

For Cat and laser pointer, and relationship to continuity of path, I believe it is due to conservation as seen in collected knowledge base, that intuitively brain even in animals with limited memory has a strong perception of continuity of path. It is not other way round; continuity of path is due to human intuition. The example only proves the point; universal laws are independent of object and observer.

Thanks and Regards,

Vijay Gupta

Ed,

Re: locality. As you're probably aware, the Bell's Theorem debate has found its way here, as was doubtless inevitable, with the JC and THR ensemble noisily unreconstructed. The best response to this intransigence IMO is to double down.

Do you see the Leggett inequality violations in the experiments by the Zeilinger and Gisin groups, coupled with the long and vast history of Bell violations, as relevant to your own thesis? If you want you could also bring in the Gisin group's moving reference frame experiment(s) specifically directed at relativistic Bohm, and Antoine Suarez' Before-Before gedankens. Also there's Charles Tresser's papers which argue that the locality assumption is unnecessary for violation of Bell.

The above pretty much exhausts my knowledge of the avant-garde stuff. Quite conceivably there's more. I don't know what essayist apart from yourself in the current crop thus far might both want and be able to address even part of it.

"But it does not appear that he fully grasped the need to explain the nonlocal correlations that Bell (later) clearly identified."

No he did not. Bell, however, did. In his last paper (1991) he scoffs at reconciliatory attitudes towards quantum non-locality and points to a GRW type resolution of the quantum measurement problem.

In my view, however, the resolution of quantum non-locality comes from identifying the error Bell made in the very first equation of his famous paper. You can find a full discussion of Bell's error in my book, and a one-page refutation of his theorem in the attached paper.

Good luck with the essay contest.

Joy ChristianAttachment #1: 17_disproof.pdf

Dear Edward J. Gillis,

Yours is a most impressive essay, well thought out and well argued. It assumes Bell's inequality is valid -- an assumption I reject -- but yet I agree with your conclusion that "in order to make current theory logically coherent, we need ... indeterminism...".

You point out that our brains, "figuring out what we can control" have biased our intuition in favor of determinism. Again, I agree to an extent, but I do not find free will fitting into a deterministic view and yet my intuition is comfortable with it.

As I recall Bernard d'Espagnat noted three assumptions: realism, inductive reasoning, and locality (linked to speed of light). Believers in Bell tend to retain logical inference at the expense of local realism. Perhaps this should be reconsidered.

Several essays in this contest suggest that space-time, locality, unitarity, and causality are "emergent", that is, not fundamental, but artefactual, emerging from deeper fundamentals, akin to temperature emerging from statistical ensembles of particles. Yet they apparently assume that logic and math survive even when space-time, locality, and causality have vanished (coming 'as close to "nothing" as possible').

I have presented logic and math as emergent from real structure (in 'The Automatic Theory of Physics') and if I am correct, then one cannot assume that one can banish spacetime, locality, and causality and yet retain logic and math. [To do so one must be a 'Platonist', having a religious belief in some realm of 'math' not unlike religious belief in a 'Heavenly realm'.]

Thus my intuition and my experience tell me that reality is both 'real' and 'local' while they also inform me that logical coherency is not universal. For instance this FQXi contest contains a number of 'logical maps' that span various regions of the 'territory' [physics], but they are logically inconsistent with each other [and potentially contain logical inconsistencies within themselves.] If anything, this problem grows worse daily, as new math and new physics ideas branch in new directions. Despite the claims of various schools of physics, there is no coherent 'Theory of Everything', nor does one seem to be in sight. Many deny even the possibility of such. Given this state of affairs, I am ever more inclined to believe that the Bell'ists have made the wrong bet, trading local realism for logic, and losing on both counts.

Although is is incompatible [to that extent] with your essay, I invite you to read my essay, The Nature of the Wave Function, for one approach that assumes local realism is fundamental.

Best of luck in the contest,

Edwin Eugene Klingman

E.E.K.:

"As I recall Bernard d'Espagnat noted three assumptions: realism, inductive reasoning, and locality (linked to speed of light). Believers in Bell tend to retain logical inference at the expense of local realism. Perhaps this should be reconsidered."

It'd be neat to see some cites for this other than the insistence of Tom Ray and Joy Christian. Here's from page 6 of "An experimental test of non-local realism," the concluding paragraph of the Zeilinger group's experiment which violated the Leggett Inequality (and those guys are nothing if not Bell aficionados ... Leggett can be thought of, roughly, as an extension of Bell):

"We believe that the experimental exclusion of this particular class indicates that any non-local extension of quantum theory has to be highly counterintuitive. For example, the concept of ensembles of particles carrying definite polarization could fail. Furthermore, one could consider the breakdown of other assumptions that are implicit in our reasoning leading to the inequality. These include Aristotelian logic, counterfactual definiteness, absence of actions into the past or a world that is not completely deterministic[.]"

Also if you checked out the link I posted on your thread to David Harrison's U of Toronto site (he's another one of them) you'd discover that he specifically brings up the logic assumption and notes that it too may fail in Bell tests. You really ought to familiarize yourself more with the thinking and writing of people who believe in BT instead of accepting on faith what its detractors say about those people and their opinions.

Hi nmann,

I'm happy to hear that others are thinking the same way that I am. I try to keep up with Nature, Science, and Phys Rev Lett every week,and arXiv's as I become aware of them, but if I waited until I thought I was up-to-date on every last word, I would never post. I'm spending most of my time working out the details of the work in my essay. You are mistaken to imply that I am following Joy and Tom's lead, as I don't accept his model, only his framework (as do his harshest critics).

And as happy as I am to hear that others are questioning even logic, I am, as far as I know the only one who has developed a theory of emergent logic and math based on physical structure, so I've gone beyond merely mentioning the possibility. You might try to familiarize yourself with my arguments before commenting as above.

And having decided for myself that Bell is incorrect, I do not feel the need to faithfully follow those who are still in his spell. As Feynman noted in his Nobel acceptance lecture, "Since they had not solved the problem, I did not have to pay too much attention to what they did." [probably not his exact words, but the lecture's online.]

Anyway, thanks for making me aware that others are now thinking this way.

Edwin Eugene Klingman

Dear Edward,

I like the logical presentation of your essay. You say that "Relativity is an expression of the observational equivalence of spacetime descriptions of physical processes. This observational equivalence is due to the essentially probabilistic nature of quantum theory."

But finally, in your opinion, which of our basic physical assumptions are wrong in Relativity or in Quantum Theory?

G S Sandhu

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Just for the information of other readers, Edwin's model is NOT based on my framework. Whatever it is based on, it has nothing to do with my framework.