Essay Abstract

This essay considers eight basic physical assumptions which are not fundamental: (i) spacetime as the arena for physics, (ii) unitarity of the dynamics, (iii) microscopic time-reversibility, (iv) the need for black hole thermodynamics, (v) state vectors as the general description of quantum states, (vi) general relativity as a field theory, (vii) dark matter as real matter, (viii) and cosmological homogeneity. This selection ranges from micro-physics to cosmology, but is not exhaustive.

Author Bio

The author studied physics and chemistry at the University of Vigo. He worked on scientific bodies as the Ilustre Colegio de Químicos de Galicia and was a CSIC research assistant in biogeochemistry and hydrodynamics of Rias, participating in several conferences, reports, and monographs. The author founded juanrga and the project knowledge (an open academic encyclopedia), and is working in a unified formulation of physics, chemistry, and biology.

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Dear Juan Ramón González Álvarez,

Your choice of assumptions to challenge is quite good. Unitarity seems a good place to start. You note that the Schrodinger equation describes the unitary evolution of an isolated system but fails to describe non-unitary evolution during measurement. You discuss a generalization of Schrodinger, noting that this allows abandonment of philosophical determinism in favor of probabilistic nature.

I also agree with your rejection of the time reversibility assumption. I have my own approach to the 'arrow of time' but in any case the assumption is clearly wrong.

Only my intuition tells me that 'black hole thermodynamics' is unfounded. That plus some silly conclusions that otherwise competent physicists reach regarding holography. Jonathan Dickau's essay points to some new interpretations of entropy that I intend to check out.

I strongly agree that quantum state vectors are not fundamental. For my approach to this please read my current essay, The Nature of the Wave Function.

The case for GR not being an ordinary field theory is more open, and I look forward to reading your viXra paper on this topic.

Your dark matter assumption also seems correct to me. While I don't accept MOND, there are other possibilities. As you point out, direct evidence is skimpy to non-existent.

I think you convincingly argue, as do many other current authors, that modern physics is chock full of incorrect, or at least highly questionable assumptions.

Edwin Eugene Klingman

    • [deleted]

    Juan,

    I note that you submitted your essay to viXra yesterday (Aug-7-2012). Even if you have arXiv credentials, I doubt any criticism of the generally accepted assumptions, some essentially taught as facts, would stay in arXiv very long.

      Frank,

      let me quote here to Max Planck:

      "A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it."

      10 days later

      Dear Juan

      I read your paper negating eight 'fundamental' assumptions of physics. I agree in principle with your choices but your treatment is highly technical and is mostly beyond my mathematical knowledge. For a more descriptive paper giving my seven questions about fundamental assumptions, please read my fqxi essay Fix Physics! . It is based on my 2005 Beautiful Universe Theory which I would be honored if you also look at. As you see I have high hopes that Nature operates on principles simple enough for me to understand!

      Best wishes

      Vladimir

        Dear Vladimir,

        Thank you for sharing your thoughts. I am going to read all the essays and, thus, yours is in my reading list too!

        Regarding your hopes about Nature, as once Einstein said: "Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler".

        Best regards.

        9 days later
        • [deleted]

        I believe that challenging many of the orthodox views of contemporary theoretical physics is fully justified and ought to be encouraged. Your essay is far from being a comprehensive and decisive rebuttal of these deeply ingrained assumptions, yet is a step in the right direction.

        Your essay resonates well with ideas that I've published over the years concerning the relevance of nonlinear dynamics, chaos and fractals in quantum field theory.

        Ervin Goldfain

          13 days later

          Dear Juan,

          I like your excellent essay and totally agree with your viewpoint. I wish you good luck in the contest.

          As you know, our community ratings will be used for selecting top 35 essays as 'Finalists' for further evaluation by a select panel of experts. There is a possibility of existence of a biased group which promotes the essays of that group by rating them all 'High' and jointly demotes some other essays by rating them all 'Low'. Therefore, any biased group should not be permitted to corner all top 'Finalists' positions for their select group.

          In order to ensure fair play in this selection, each participants in this contest should select about 50 essays for entry in the finalists list and RATE them 'High'. Next they should select bottom 50 essays and rate them 'Low'. Remaining essays may be rated as usual, if time permits. If all the participants rate at least 100 essays this way then the negative influence of any bias group will certainly get mitigated.

          You are requested to read and rate my essay titled,"Wrong Assumptions of Relativity Hindering Fundamental Research in Physical Space".

          Finally I wish to see your excellent essay reach the list of finalists.

          Best Regards

          G S Sandhu

            Dear Juan,

            I really enjoyed your essay. It is one of the few submissions that covers a broad range of physical phenomena rather than focusing on a particular assumption. One question: how does the Liouville space approach that you mention in several of the sections fit together with the extended gravity theory you mention in section 8? In particular, does the spacetime approximation in section 1 yield Minkowski space only, or is it more general? Thanks, and take care,

            Ben Dribus

              Dear Ervin,

              I agree on that there is still much room for the improvement of our understanding of nature. Unfortunately, the size constraints for this contest impede a detailed discussion of the topics considered in my essay or even to enumerate other topics which I could not mention.

              Thank you for sharing the resonance with your own ideas.

              Dear Gurcharn,

              Thank you for the comments and good desires.

              I plan to read and rate all the essays. Therefore, yours is in my list too.

              I have given the highest rate to several essays that I like either because they resonate well with my own ideas or because I did learn something important from them. My surprise is that three of those essays are not currently among the finalists.

              Regards

              Dear Dribus,

              It is a delight to me to know that you enjoyed it!

              I decided to cover the broadest possible range of assumptions for emphasizing that science, and physics in particular, is very far from being a discipline close to the end.

              The Liouville space approach is independent of the details of the potentials involved in the generator of time translations. As a consequence, the generalized gravitational potentials mentioned in [11] and the associated generalized electromagnetic potentials mentioned in the Phys. Rev. E papers cited in [11] fit perfectly in the Liouvillian approach.

              The spacetime approximation mentioned in section 1 gives Minkowski spacetime if you start from ordinary coordinates xi. I prefer to derive Minkowski spacetime because of its fundamental role in Maxwellian electrodynamics, non-geometric gravity, quantum field theory, and others. But if you apply a canonical transformation to generalized coordinates qi you can derive other spacetimes using the same procedure.

              Precisely, the last two weeks I have been working in a new formulation/interpretation of quantum mechanics, based in a Liouvillian approach, that eliminates all the paradoxes/limitations of the usual formulations/interpretations. For instance, we obtain a generalized kind of quantum states without the deficiencies and limitations of the Wigner quasi-probability distributions of the ordinary phase space formulation of quantum mechanics. I wait this new paper to be finished the next week and I will link to it when ready.

              5 days later

              Juan,

              "General relativity is derived as a geometrical approximation to the field theory of gravity."

              How do we get beyond the approximation when so little is known about the properties of gravity. I look at observation and the existence of dark energy in my essay.

              Jim

                Dear hoang cao hai,

                thank you for your interest. Unfortunately I do not understand most of your post. Moreover, I do not know why you make some of your claims. For instance, you say that "the mass of everything change when moving from the Earth to the Moon" but the ordinary concept of mass that particle physicists use and denote by m is an invariant. Regarding weight, I use the ISO definition W = mg.

                Regards.

                Jim,

                We can go beyond general relativity somewhat as Einstein went beyond Newtonian theory. We use our physical intuition and available theoretical tools and propose some generalization, which is later checked.

                The generalization described in my essay has been confronted with astrophysical data and we found excellent agreement, with data from hundred photometry and kinematics observations. I have also studied the confrontation with cosmological data and it seems that we also found a good concordance. I will wrote something about dark energy in your forum.

                Regards

                I have just finished a work Positive Definite Phase Space Quantum Mechanics, where I offer details on the Liouvillian formulation of quantum mechanics, which I mentioned in my essay. This is the abstract:

                Still today the discussion about the foundations, physical interpretation, and real scope of quantum mechanics has never ceased. It would be wrong to dismiss these issues as mere philosophical problems, because questions of consistency and interpretation are not devoid of practical utility. We present the foundations and main properties of a positive definite phase space quantum mechanics. A new quantization procedure is proposed as well. This new interpretation/formulation eliminates conceptual and technical difficulties from quantum mechanics: (i) many paradoxes typical of the wave-particle duality, EPR experiments, macroscopic superpositions, and collapse of wavefunctions disappear; (ii) the elimination of the wavefunctions from quantum theory is in line with the procedure inaugurated by Einstein with the elimination of the ether in the theory of electromagnetism; (iii) it is useful in considering the classical limit, can treat mixed states with ease, and brings certain conceptual issues to the fore; (iv) confirms the ensemble interpretation of the wavefunctions, derives its statistical interpretation, corrects the temporal dependence of the old wavefunctions, and considers pure classical states --localizable states-- beyond the Hilbert space; (v) the quantum equation of motion is of the Liouville kind and star-products are not needed, simplifying the formalism; and (vi) eliminates the hypothetical external quantum field of the pilot wave interpretation, solving its problems on the status of probability, and correcting well-known inconsistencies of the Bohm potential. Finally, we offer some perspectives on future developments and research in progress.

                Dear Juan,

                I agree with you that Time reversibility is not fundamental. We use very simple microscopic time-reversible equations but in reality in every process take place dissipation of energy and interaction of numerous particles. If we include dissipation in equation of motion the processes will have known final and the arrow of time appears. In the Theory of Infinite Nesting of Matter which is the subject of my essay black holes are impossible. Also I am sure that at the level of particles is Strong gravitation. Instead of general relativity may be used Lorentz-invariant theory of gravitation (LITG). LITG is similar to electromagnetism which already has quantum form. I suppose the dark matter is due to nuons which are similar to white dwarfs by their properties but have such mass as nucleons. More about it in the article: Cosmic Red Shift, Microwave Background, and New Particles. Galilean Electrodynamics, Spring 2012, Vol. 23, Special Issues No. 1, P. 3 - 13.

                Sergey Fedosin

                  Mass is defined by

                  [math]m = \frac{\sqrt{E^2 - (pc)^2}}{c^2}[/math]

                  It can be shown that this is an invariant. Indeed, the mass of one electron, me, is the same here and in the Moon.

                  • [deleted]

                  Juan, I enjoyed reading your paper. Your insights into the assumptions of what is fundamental science run parallel to my own.

                  In respect to time, I show that forward, linear time is actually a *pulsed*, forward, linear time. I show that spacetime, itself, has quantum structure and is precisely quantified as a quantum rotating magnetic field (Aether unit), which has two-spin structure. Subatomic particles reside only in 1/4 of this structure. There are only four observable fundamental and stable subatomic particles in our forward time perception of the Universe, which are the proton, electron, antiproton, and positron. There should be four similar particles in the backward time direction.

                  Part of the spin structure of quantum space is that it spins in both forward and backward time. For reasons likely related to the geometry of the quantum Aether unit, subatomic particles in our perceived Universe see only the forward time spin direction. Thus in each quantum moment the subatomic particles move half spin in forward time direction, and then are dormant during the Aether's backward time direction.

                  It is because actual Aether oscillates in both forward and backward time that we perceive in our minds that we are always in the present, even though the matter of our body and world appears to be in a state of linear, forward time. It is as though matter acts like a time diode on the Aether. Linear time only exists when there is matter around to measure it by.

                  The Aether Physics Model easily addresses your other insights, as well. Dark matter is quantifiable within a Newtonian system of physics. It can be derived from physical constants and it exists as strings of mass.

                  Black holes are not super massive objects, but rather a region where the Aether is so dense that it unravels. When the Aether unravels, the matter it contains also unravels. The centers of galaxies are simply the ends of the Universe, which act kind of like a bathtub drain for matter and Aether.

                  The precessions of the planets are caused by pinched space, and I show the quantification and the structure for how space is pinched. It occurs with the binding of a proton and electron to form a neutron. As I mentioned, the proton and electron exist in different quadrants of an Aether unit. Two Aether units can thus fold over on to each other thus pinching the fabric of spacetime while forming the composite neutron particle. Notice that neutron stars are the densest forms of matter. With the space pinched near the surface of the star, the space around the star is actually thinner than it otherwise would be. Newton gravitational rules still apply, but a correction for the reduced density of space must be accounted for. This correction factor will be directly related to the neutron mass of the star, and not the proton and electron mass.

                  Also, the neutron cores of stars cause such an extreme pinching of the Aether that large portions of the star's core implodes along with the collapsed Aether, which leads to supernovas. It is the implosion event that creates gravitational waves, and which I claim are recognizable by certain solar x-ray patterns. In other words, I believe I have been witnessing gravitational waves from across the Universe on a near daily basis just by watching solar x-ray behavior.

                  We are coming to the same conclusions in our different works. I could comment more, but the response is getting long. You have good insights and I wish you success in the contest.