Cherished Assumptions and the Progress of Physics by Jonathan J. Dickau

Steve Dufourny

Hello Eckard and Jonathan,

you like the play Jonathan and the strategy, me also now, I am begining to play you know. I will send you a book about my 3D spheres and its spherization, and don't say me that it is a lisian appraoch :)

The Nash equilibrium you know ?

Steve Dufourny

Hello Thinkers,

a sphere torus, relevant like in the p- adic numbers and their taxonomy. The 3D is everywhere even at our walls. I invite you to insert the classment of numbers correlated with volumes in a pure Cantorian approach. The groups of spheres appear with determinism. The Reals R, the Rationals Q and the Qp can be harmonized. The limits must be inserted with the biggest universal 3D meaning. The hidden varibales are rational. The body of p- adic numbers show the real spherical road when the groups are well analyzed.the rotations spinal and orbital take all their meaning. The finite groups and the infinities can be classed in a pure spherical oscillation, periodic ! Don't forget the asolute value for a real understanding of or symmetries, don't forget that a symmetry fermions/bosons in a pure 3D is not a mathematical symemtry due to the -.Of course the 0 appears with 1 like a pure universal logic.

Don't forget also so that the axiom of dimensionality is not verified, so it implies a lot of things for our proportions due to the rotations of my spheres.

Regards

[deleted]

Jonathan,

You might consider further dissecting the intellectual dynamic in physical terms. Yes, children do explore in a non-linear, expansive fashion, but the end result is adulthood, where we settle into a stable, linear order and routine. Much as stem cells start out with the potential to be any part of the body, but to actually function as useful, mature cells, have to settle into a particular function. In many ways, this process is reductionism. It is quite useful and necessary in its linear, distillate focus. Eventually though, it becomes a closed set and subject to the old meaning of entropy, using up its stored energy and unable to access more, since that would disrupt its mature definition and routine. So it eventually dies and residual energy is dispersed out into the environment. There is this constant inductive/deductive cycle of expansion and contraction, that has no final goal, as that would simply be one more declining closed set of complete order, with no need for further expansion.

So we step back and see what stage of the cycle we currently inhabit and what lays in store, further along the pattern. I think that in current physics, just as with the current economic situation, we are at a frothy top, where efforts to continue on the present trajectory only result in blowing ever more ephemeral bubbles. So the slide back down from this top will be a form of reductionism, as all the weaker ideas struggle to survive and stronger ideas, like rocks poking through a crashing wave, become more evident. Obviously we all have different perspectives on which are the strong ideas and which are the frothy waves, but only time/evolution of the process will sort them out. Then we will repeat the process, using these new foundational concepts to further expand our understanding of reality.

[deleted]

Not to imply this isn't what you are doing, but just wanted to emphasize how the intellectual process is a reflection of the physical process.

Jonathan Dickau

Thanks John,

I like those ideas.

Even mature minds don't need to harden, however. Pete Seeger, in his 90s, has a very active mind - even for scientific topic - and has still got a more youthful demeanor than some people in their 40s. Plasma physicist Padma Shukla has such playfulness and youthful exuberance for Physics that it's hard to believe he is in his 80s.

From what I have seen, playing keeps you in the game.

Regards,

Jonathan

Jonathan Dickau

Thanks again,

Regarding "the intellectual process is a reflection of the physical process."

I agree whole heartedly! To costructivists, determination has a dual role that is part measurement and part a creative act; that's where the construction part comes in. One can certainly make generalizations to all of learning.

all the best,

Jonathan

[deleted]

Jonathan,

It is a very universal pattern. One to which even physical theorists are subject.

It's not that one can't maintain a vital outlook as an adult, but it requires a degree of objectivity many institutions, consciously or sub-consciously, frown on, given the natural tendency to promote acolytes and demote skeptics. Neither societies or organisms could long function otherwise. Nature long ago developed a process to deal with it though. Regeneration.

Thomas Ray

Hi Jonathan,

Bravo! As both science and journalism, this essay rates with the very best. Tightly reasoned, impeccably organized and a pleasure to read. I appreciate the intellectual courage and honesty it takes to reference the Joy Christian affair. Not surprisingly, my own essay builds on Joy's results, and I hope you get a chance to read and comment.

In your notes, you make the point, "The 3-sphere is an odd-ball ... as it has a Möbius-like surface." Joy makes use of that nontrivial property in his quantum correlation function. In an earlier paper (ICCS 2006) I describe it as a continuous projection between S^2 and S^4. My conviction is only stronger that the best ideas in foundational physics are converging on a complete continuous function theory that only a topological framework can accommodate.

All best,

Tom

Jonathan Dickau

Thanks so much!

I value your opinion Tom, and hope I have earned your high praise. I'll have to finish reading your essay, which I did download and glance at, and then weigh in on your forum page. As I remember, it looked quite interesting, and was well-written. I felt like I had to mention Joy's work in my essay, because of its potential significance, but I consciously tried to maintain a certain journalistic indifference - so as to avoid some of the heated emotionality the debate has raised.

I share your belief that geometry and topology hold answers that inform Physics, and I think it works in ways we have only begun to understand. I feel it is silly (or contentious) to impute that other people's work has less value (or is falsified) because you have a better idea, but if you can show your model gives good predictions where other models fail - that is a very good thing. I think P. Grangier may be right to say that what Joy has created is not, strictly speaking, a disproof of Bell's theorem; but I feel it has great value or marvelous potential nonetheless.

Regards,

Jonathan

[deleted]

Thanks, Jonathan. I agree with Grangier on this one point, and strictly from a mathematical viewpoint. Bell's mathematics is sound -- as I say in my essay, however, not correspondent to the foundations of physical reality.

Looking forward to further dialogue!

Tom

Joy Christian

Hi Jonathan,

Yes, indeed, thank you for taking the risk to mention my work in your essay. In fact I have seen it mentioned at least in four other essays posted here.

As for the "disproof" issue, according to my former PhD supervisor Abner Shimony---an undisputed authority on Bell's theorem after Bell---"no physical theory which is realistic as well as local in [the senses specified by EPR and Bell] can reproduce all of the statistical predictions of quantum mechanics." I have decisively disproved this statement of the theorem by constructing just such a local "theory." Therefore Bell's mathematical theorem no longer has the fundamental significance for physics it was thought to have.

This however does not mean that any attempt to produce a local model of physics can be successful from now on. One still has to satisfy the locality and reality conditions specified by both EPR and Bell to produce a genuinely local model of physics.

In any case, in the memory of Ray,

Have Fun!

Joy

Jonathan Dickau

Thank you warmly, Joy;

I appreciate your taking the time to weigh in here, and I agree with your statement above. It is as Tom said it in the previous comment; though Bell's Math is sound, just as Grangier said, we can no longer assume it has the same 'significance to Physics it was thought to have' (in your words), because Bell's presumed correspondence 'to the foundations of physical reality' (in Tom's words) is not entirely sound - or is at least likely to be flawed.

But it is amazing the amount of baggage that comes along, just by assuming that the overall geometry and topology of space is 3-d and semi-Euclidean in the sense of R3 projected linearly, rather than something more interesting. I'm not sure people can visualize what it means to live in a 3-sphere - a universe whose spatial fabric has a non-trivial topological twist - but I hope your work reveals more interesting twists and turns for us to explore.

All the Best,

Jonathan

Steve Dufourny

Soon I will be at New York you know Jonathan, hope we shall make interesting conferences there, in this wonderful town where all is possible. and REVOLUTION SPHERIZATION with faith and universality my friend.

I have always dreamt to visit New York me, and I love so much the medias, I am going to utilize them, like a tool, like a catalyzer .I am persuaded that USA will love my theory of spherization, and that a lot of people will like my theory and its pure universal meaning.The faith you say, indeed the universal faith. Just to revolutionate this earth. I need friends and medias.

A good team of real revolutionaries and conscious universalists. I just take the time to make my visa and my passport and let's go for the SPHERIZATION REVOLUTION of USA .I will have a lot of freinds, you shall see !

Regards

Steve Dufourny

Ps I am a christian .

You cannot lie.

[deleted]

Dear Mr. Dickau,

Although your essay was exceptionally well written, your introductory comment about children (possibly being brainwashed) into obtaining symbolic thinking capability at age two and a half was one of the most saddening pieces of literature I have ever read. No so-called civilized child has ever been taught how to obtain its own food, or find its own shelter, or to exist clad only in its own skin. Not one Reality 101 class has ever been taught in any school. Yet every single child is taught to parrot the nonsensical abstract numbers 1,2,3. As I have thoughtfully pointed out in my essay Sequence Consequence, the sensible reality of here and now is obtainable by all. Unreasonable human addicted concentration on the abstractions of the mystical there and then such as mathematics is the province of the arrogant few.

Jonathan Dickau

Thanks Joe!

The fact is; I agree with you - at least on some level. We cut our children short from what they might learn through playful exploration by hooking them into a singular view of the world - the idea that there is one correct description. Alison Gopnik calls this distinction the "Lantern vs Searchlight" approach. Once the parents intercede in play a few times too often, the emphasis for the child shifts to pleasing the role model and doing things their way - the parents' way - in imitation.

This is indeed very sad. The same thing is observed in Music education, where very young kids are quite uninhibited and eager to join in for music making of all kinds, but a year or two later - it is as if someone flipped a switch and only the 'good singers' will open their mouths at all! Once we start to tell our kids they are doing it wrong, or badly, they stop trying to experiment on their own 'to see what comes out.'

As for numbers; little kids have an innate sense of more or fewer, but they need to learn the distinction between none and one of something, before they can grasp the abstraction of 1,2,3. I guess I'll have to check out your essay, Joe; but I heartily recommend the book "Biology of Transcendence" by Joseph Chilton Pearce. If you have not already found this work, I predict it will become one of your favorite books.

All the Best,

Jonathan

[deleted]

Dear Jonathan,

The FQXi contest challenged me to question nearly anything except causality and measurable quantities. Because I feel that the peers are hoping for unexpected ideas that do not hurt, I see this an unfulfillable desire, and I cannot even cheat myself, I have to hope they will nonetheless accept my submitted essay by the end of this week. My arguments are mistakable as primitive. They seem to be outdated and in some respect contrary to yours. Edwin Klingman named some authors of essays with which I tend to agree at least in part: Daryl Jantzen, Israel Perez, Jonathan Kerr. I should add some more, at least Alexander Kadin. Let's nonetheless look for agreeable among us insights that are not necessarily in a lazy one-to-one relation to mandatory tenets.

Having said what I consider most important, I cannot resist to cautiously tell you that I am someone who does not like intuitive metaphors like a tired point. When I was a little boy, many years before I heard of Euclid, I already understood a point as something non-tangible that does not have parts. Fattening a tire beyond the center seems to be impossible to me. Do not get me wrong. I have no problem to imagine all sorts of maneuvers, transformations and the like. I see myself merely aware of logical self-deceptions in case of equating model and reality.

Begging your pardon,

Eckard

[deleted]

Mr. Dickau. The observations at a distance (in cosmology) that you reference are [importantly] related to creations of thought and to the uniformity/sameness (but unpredictability, on balance) and contradictions that they involve/reveal. Our understanding of outer space is significantly limited.

The basics of typical/ordinary experience (including vision) are fundamental to physics, theory, and the understanding. Please, open your eyes to the direct experience of/by the body. Do not lose sight of that. You have fine ability, and you are considerably more open minded than many at this site. Good luck with your work.

Combining, balancing, and including opposites is key.

Jonathan Dickau

Thanks. I shall remember the balance is important, Frank.

And yes the direct experience is key. Go out in the woods or country, far from city lights, on a clear night; you will see the sky is ablaze and experience the feeling that the Earth and yourself are part of the greater Cosmos. But it's hard to see the stars when you are standing in the city.

We're out in the middle of the cosmos either way, but these days people need to get away from the crowd, just to have that experience with their own senses.

All the Best,

Jonathan

Avtar Singh

Dear Jonathan:

I enjoyed reading your well-written and comprehensive paper on the cherished assumptions. I completely agree with your statement:

"There will always be frontiers in Physics, horizons we cannot reach and must speculate about instead. It is best, therefore, to be aware that any of our cherished assumptions could be wrong, and to remember the assumptions we do not know we have made might be an even greater problem."

What is missing may be more important than what is included but wrong. While the existing and well-cherished theories and assumptions may have been proven correct based on classical experiments performed as per the established scientific method, serious inconsistencies (singularities) and paradoxes (dark energy, dark matter, quantum gravity, multi-universes etc.) result when applied to predict the observed universe at cosmic scale. These paradoxes are shown to be the artifacts of the missing physics in my posted paper - " From Absurd to Elegant Universe".

The paper demonstrates that the current paradoxes are artifacts of the missing physics of the well-known phenomenon of the spontaneous mass-energy conversion such as observed in the spontaneous decay of quantum particles, wave-particle duality, and Hawking radiation [7] involving the evaporation of black holes mass. A new Gravity Nullification model (GNM) is proposed to describe the missing (hidden variable) physics of the spontaneous conversion of mass to energy. This is integrated into a simplified form of general relativity to provide a GNM based Universe Expansion (GNMUE) model, which predicts both the observed linear Hubble expansion in the nearby universe and the accelerating expansion in the distant universe. The integrated model resolves many of the paradoxes haunting physics and cosmology today. The proposed model eliminates singularities from existing models and the need for the incredible and unverifiable assumptions. Predictions of the model show a close agreement with the recent observations of the universe. The integrated model is also shown to resolve inconsistencies between quantum mechanics and general relativity. GNMUE provides consistent answers to key fundamental questions:

• Did the universe have a beginning - the Big Bang? Does it have an ending?

• What is the true nature of time and space? Is the universe expansion accelerating?

• Could the speed of light be exceeded? What is C? Do the universal constants vary with time?

• Are there parallel universes and multi-dimensions beyond ordinary three space and one time dimension?

• Is uncertainty or randomness the fundamental property of the universe?

• Is photon mass zero?

• Why the cosmological constant is so small as compared to that calculated by quantum mechanics?

• Is there non-locality in the universe?

• What is quantum gravity? Does quantum gravity have an absolute time?

• Is there dark matter or anti-matter? Do black holes exist?

• What governs the creation and dilation of matter?

• What governs the quantum versus classic behavior and the inner workings of quantum mechanics?

• What is the ultimate universal reality? Is it digital or analog or else?

In summary, all the above questions and the related assumptions currently cherished as answers are shown to be mere artifacts of the missing physics that must be included in a universal theory to avoid any paradoxes and inconsistencies.

Sincerely,

Avtar Singh

Jonathan Dickau

Absolutely!

Thanks very much Avtar. I agree that missing insights may be the key, and that you have found an important insight that is often overlooked. I'm very pleased that you are aware of the inconsistencies you cite, especially with the current paradigm in Cosmology, and choose to grapple with them rather than let the cumbersome workarounds we now have stand as answers.

All of Physics is ripe for a shake up, right about now, and the next revolution will probably be more about things we knew but ignored - because they were assumed insignificant - than it will be about explicit assumptions made in error. Ofttimes people wrongly feel there are no better answers, and they try to make do with the answers offered by the current crop of experts.

But if people were willing to think for themselves, some of those answers would not stand. Let us hope we have a few free-thinkers on this forum.

All the Best,

Jonathan

Avtar Singh

Dear Jonathan:

Continuing on my previous post, I also agree with your statement:

"The point is that reality and the universe are unified - existing as a congruent whole. Rather than seeking a route to the unification of fundamental forces and entities, scientists should observe how nature is already unified, and highlight the unity that is already there, or the unifying concepts already in play. ....... They are connected more directly too, and all things form a congruent whole. There are no truly isolated systems, as everything is part of its environment and also helps to create that environment. I think this assumption will stand the test of time."

Yes, indeed, the above approach to science is again vindicated in my posted paper - " From Absurd to Elegant Universe", which provides the following new wholesome perspective on the universal reality encompassing the partial Newtonian, quantum, discrete, and non-discrete realities. The universe is shown to be a cosmos with a relativistic order and not chaos founded on uncertainty. The model also unfolds the following universal realities:

• The universe represents an eternal and omnipresent continuum of mass-energy-space-time following the conservation laws.

• Relativity, and not uncertainty, rules the universe's connectivity and non-locality via space-time dilation.

• Quantum reality represents only partial reality and must be augmented with relativistic considerations to represent the universal wholesome reality. The relativistic universal reality exists irrespective of the observer. Paradoxes of quantum measurements and quantum reality (entanglement, tunneling, multiverses, multi-dimensions and anti-matter etc.) are artifacts of the observational limitations imposed by the fixed space-time. A measuring instrument interprets the quantum phenomena (V~C) from a Newtonian (V~0) frame of reference, hence the quantum realty represents a truncated (collapsed wavefunction) partial reality resulting in the observed weirdness. In order to describe the true universal reality, proper inclusion of the relativistic effects is essential in interpreting the quantum observations performed in and limited by the fixed space-time.

• There is no multiverse. There is only one single quasi-static universe entailing various relativistic states of the one whole continuum of mass-energy-space-time (uncollapsed quantum wavefunction). The various relativistic states (at various V/C) of one mass-energy-space-time continuum may appear (allude) to a quantum observer (situated in fixed space-time) as parallel universes (multiple sets of mass-energy-space-time at various V/C). GNMUE model described in the paper provides a bridge between the discrete (V

Avtar Singh

The following got truncated from my post above:

In summary, your suggested approach to science, rather than sticking to the old cherished assumptions, is vindicated by my paper to provide a true wholesome reality and solution to many of the paradoxes currently paralyzing science.

Sincerely,

Avtar Singh

Jonathan Dickau

Thanks Avtar!

I like it. A lot of mysteries go away when we remember that particle decay not only liberates energy, but nullifies the mass those particles held onto. It is a blessing that you are here to let people know the little things (sub-atomic particles) matter, and that when a portion of the universe's quota goes away, their mass does too. It makes sense, but is easily forgotten or assumed untrue if we imagine that various entities have a longer half-life than is real.

All the Best,

Jonathan

[deleted]

Jonathan, A good essay about the way we use assumptions, well done.

Interesting point about the way homogeniety of apce became an assumption in cosmology. Did you know that Lamaitre actually looked at more general cosmological solutions in which space was not homogenious? I think it was just a working assumption that was adopted that the universe is homogeneous and it was supported by observation for a long time, especially CMB. The wroking assumption becomes a principle when people learn about the model and take it more seriously than it was originally intended. Homogeniety beyond the observable horizon is not supported by observations or logical necessity.

I also agree that spacetime may lose its dimensionality. Such things are probably emergent.

Jonathan Dickau

Thanks greatly Phil,

The universe doesn't look quite homogeneous to me, but I didn't remember about LeMaitre, though I probably learned he was working with other models. I know Hubble had his doubts about the expanding universe notion, and looked at other ideas just as seriously. Working assumptions were adopted by the mainstream, and once held long enough became principles, just as you say.

Emergent spacetime is likely what's real; the question is "from what?"

All the Best,

Jonathan

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