The Universe - An Effect Without Cause by Philip Gibbs

Dear Philip,

What is your opinion about SPF symmetry and Scale dimension , which are found in the Theory of Infinite Nesting of Matter (subject of my essay)?

Sergey Fedosin

Dear Philip,

You touch upon a fundamental topic, that of actually putting in question causality as foundational, as it has been done for other properties such as as locality and reality. If I understand you don't reject causality as a property of reality but you do so as a fundamental property, in other words causality is an emergent property given the emergent property of both space and time from general relativity. I couldn't fully get whether "complete symmetry" was perfect symmetry, and how the process of symmetry breaking is explained in your proposal, such as chiral properties at various levels of organisation of matter. I explain quite well several concepts that deserve attention, such as the holographic principle and the theories of information around black hole theoretical research.

Hi Phillip,

I really enjoyed your thoughtful essay, and its emphasis on the import of symmetry and consistency. In my journalistic work I've written quite a bit about the holographic principle as well as the potentially fractal distribution of large scale structure and am always intrigued by connections drawn between the two. If you are not already familiar with it, you may find Jonas Mureika's work interesting.

My essay here deals with holography in an entirely different context, but in case it is of interest to you, I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Regards,

Amanda

Dear Philip I hope this finds you well

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Hello. This is group message to you and the writers of some 80 contest essays that I have already read, rated and probably commented on.

This year I feel proud that the following old and new online friends have accepted my suggestion that they submit their ideas to this contest. Please feel free to read, comment on and rate these essays (including mine) if you have not already done so, thanks:

Why We Still Don't Have Quantum Nucleodynamics by Norman D. Cook a summary of his Springer book on the subject.

A Challenge to Quantized Absorption by Experiment and Theory by Eric Stanley Reiter Very important experiments based on Planck's loading theory, proving that Einstein's idea that the photon is a particle is wrong.

An Artist's Modest Proposal by Kenneth Snelson The world-famous inventor of Tensegrity applies his ideas of structure to de Broglie's atom.

Notes on Relativity by Edward Hoerdt Questioning how the Michelson-Morely experiment is analyzed in the context of Special Relativity

Vladimir Tamari's essay Fix Physics! Is Physics like a badly-designed building? A humorous illustrate take. Plus: Seven foundational questions suggest a new beginning.

Thank you and good luck.

Vladimir

After studying about 250 essays in this contest, I realize now, how can I assess the level of each submitted work. Accordingly, I rated some essays, including yours.

Cood luck.

Sergey Fedosin

Dear Philip,

I am just asking you to check mine work if you can find time

essay (Vixra.org)

If you do not understand why your rating dropped down. As I found ratings in the contest are calculated in the next way. Suppose your rating is [math]R_1 [/math] and [math]N_1 [/math] was the quantity of people which gave you ratings. Then you have [math]S_1=R_1 N_1 [/math] of points. After it anyone give you [math]dS [/math] of points so you have [math]S_2=S_1+ dS [/math] of points and [math]N_2=N_1+1 [/math] is the common quantity of the people which gave you ratings. At the same time you will have [math]S_2=R_2 N_2 [/math] of points. From here, if you want to be R2 > R1 there must be: [math]S_2/ N_2>S_1/ N_1 [/math] or [math] (S_1+ dS) / (N_1+1) >S_1/ N_1 [/math] or [math] dS >S_1/ N_1 =R_1[/math] In other words if you want to increase rating of anyone you must give him more points [math]dS [/math] then the participant`s rating [math]R_1 [/math] was at the moment you rated him. From here it is seen that in the contest are special rules for ratings. And from here there are misunderstanding of some participants what is happened with their ratings. Moreover since community ratings are hided some participants do not sure how increase ratings of others and gives them maximum 10 points. But in the case the scale from 1 to 10 of points do not work, and some essays are overestimated and some essays are drop down. In my opinion it is a bad problem with this Contest rating process. I hope the FQXI community will change the rating process.

Sergey Fedosin

Yes if someone is rated low their position goes down, its a terrible problem with the system LOL.

I never expeted this essay to do even as well as it is doing now because many people think wrongly that temporal causality is fundamental and vote accordingly. I am happy that I made the point nevertheless.

You might notice that your essay jumped up in the community rating. I am voting for some essays today, where some that are a tad below the level they should be at are getting high scores from me. Your essay if fairly commensurate with what I wrote.

Cheers LC

Thanks, I voted for you some time ago. There is a lot of movement at the moment, good luck

Your essay might just be in the level to where it could be judged by the final panel. Indeed things have been moving around a lot. According to Brendan the system has a glitch. I dropped from #2 to #106, then up to #54 and am now below #70. I think the system has been hacked. Supposedly it is to be "put back together," but I don't think that really happened. The contest in the last 24 hours has been corrupted. I am passed up now by a fair number of complete nonsense essays. I have thrown in the towel on the whole thing at this point. I was hanging around #20-25 for a couple of weeks, which I think was then an honest rating. I was hoping that it would at least go back to that. It appears a lot of damage is being permitted to remain, so why should I care at this point?

Cheers LC

I enjoyed your essay Phil.

And I also noticed a lot of jumps in ranking. I saw Lawrence at #1 for a while, then down in the seventies a few hours later. This does seem unlikely to be a natural occurrence, but I hope they can sort it out.

Good Luck!

Jonathan

If the present standings hold up I think there are eight people tied in 35th place including you and LC, so well done if that is correct. I dropped quite a few places near the end but with the numbers so close it would not have taken many votes to make that happen and perhaps I had been helped by some of the votes that were discounted. In any case I am happy to have taken part and there are some great essays in the top places so I think it is a worthy result.

Scrub that. It is all change again.

My sympathies Phil,

I was a bit surprised at the final outcome, having been ranked in the 70s most of last week. I guess some folks who liked my essay waited until late on the final day to vote. It appears that - unless some of the higher ranked papers are disqualified - only one of us made the cut. Although I gave both you and Lawrence 8s, I almost feel like I should apologize for edging you out, but I will boldly carry the torch forward.

Who knows? Maybe some of the odd fluctuations at the end was Ray 'flexing his muscles' on the other side, to help assure that one of us two would someday get into the winners circle - since we both came close twice before. I will doubtless carry forward his belief that Physics should be fun (it is!), and I do champion one or two of his ideas in my essay, so that would probably be motivation enough.

However; you have my appreciation, as here in the physical realm, you are almost certainly one of those people who helped to put me in the running for the final phase of the contest. Thank you!

All the Best,

Jonathan

Phil

Recently i read Freeman Dyson other review

Interesting his attitude to philosophy and Wittgenstein.

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2012/nov/08/what-can-you-really-know/

To Phil Gibbs,

I just read your essay. I did not understand everything but see where you are going; getting rid of causality. Wow! It is a risky one.

Kick a ball and the cause is your foot. You could concatenate to the Big bang and... I leave that to a certain bread of philosophers. The cause here is evident. But sometimes the cause has no foot. This is where we should look for causality.

Drop a ball and it will go for the ground in a spontaneous way. -Spontaneous- is the key word here. The universe has evolved in a spontaneous way for the last 14 billion years. .. So, I would say that there is a cause out there. There is not a single cause, like breaking a billiard. No, there is only one type of cause and it is everywhere in various quantities, the smallest one being the quantum of action. Now physics is our own appreciation of the universe, a relationship. It has nothing to do what the universe is made of and what makes it tick. Any metric description is bound to have a trace of our own presence in it, a stain that masks the vision of a universe without us watching.

I agree that space does not really exist. We make it in our mind. But time is an actual spontaneous process that drives every other spontaneous processes. If local time flow slows down, the clock slows down and vice-versa. If the local time flow were to stop, would the clock stop? No, it would cease to exist, because existence (of any particles) consists in replacing locally the flow of time. This local time deficit created by this substitution is this local slowing of time caused by matter we call gravitation.

In my essays, I explained how something can be created from nothing. To avoid a contradiction, nothing and something AT THE SAME TIME, a bit of -time- separates the two. But for this statement to be valid in all circumstances, only one substance can do this and it is time itself. This big O universe is a continual explosion, existence running towards (or into?) non existence. This explosion that started with the Big Bang still rages silently to this day and we call it under another name without knowing it; the flow of time. The bubbling quantum vacuum is this explosive process. Waves travel this explosion as higher rate of explosion following a lower rate of explosion. The explosion, the movement of the EM waves, the fall of a ball to the ground, the clouds in the sky and waves on the ocean... only one type of cause. In our own words, things tend to exist more (higher probability) where time runs slower. A universe of time exploding into a timeless void (maximum differential) gives us an expanding universe.

I know it lacks pizzaz, equations, metrics, .. But it is driven by the simple logic of the rule of non-contradiction that protects the identity of what exists. And logic is scale invariant; what goes for here goes for galaxies , and the rest. In other words, a universe that contains something that exists, must abide by the rule of non-contradiction, which in turn, can only allow time to exists as opposite of nothingness. (No choice) A universe with poor sobs like me asking too many questions can only be made of an explosion of time and it variations of rates. Everything being of the same nature makes a universe totally operational on logic. (addition, substitution etc.).

O.k.! What do we do with that? No idea. That is your department.

Cheers,

Marcel,

"The Relativistic Rocket" [at http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/Relativity/SR/rocket.html]

Hi, I hope this is being or can be read by Philip Gibbs who (I understand) originated the UCR article with the above title in 1996. Thanks very much to both Philip and editor Don Koks, for this readable and rigorous article .

I had been wondering about the feasibility of long-distance, interstellar, space travel (I am a student at the UK's Open University, studying a planetary science and astrobiology module). This musing was prompted by being downhearted at the prediction that we may not find out whether Jupiter's moon Europa has an ocean containing life until after my time [largely a consequence of the difficulty in sending a suitably-equipped spacecraft to Europa and then drilling, contamination-free, through its ice shell and so on].

This reminded me of the conundrums of interstellar relativistic travel. These generally refer to the slower passage of time back on Earth, compared to the relativistic travellers. But, why worry about that, I conjectured? Let the travellers be selfish and enjoy the trip out. Don't worry about getting back home, or even sending back messages. So then, how much fuel would be needed for the travellers to get somewhere interesting in a reasonable time? Your article pointed quickly in a helpful direction - for understanding the basic parameters of the situation.

This is a topic of endless interest (e.g. the American sci-fi author, Robert Heinlein, wrote an excellent juvenile novel "Time for The Stars" back in the 1950s). The usual perspective is that we want to hope that news of such travels can come back home quickly. If you forget about that and just focus on the journey, then getting somewhere useful (maybe about 100lyr away), ceases to be impossible and becomes at least faintly feasible (though to call the challenges "non-trivial" would be classic understatement!). I imagine that even when fuelling has been sorted-out (maybe harvesting hydrogen en route - though how can you scoop gas when you are going so fast?) there would still be big problems in navigation and avoiding bumping into things! And the building of a suitably comfortable & safe spaceship in which all this could be accomplished and so on.

Getting a handle on the basic quantities and numbers does help in at least thinking it over! So, thanks again.

Paul Cairns paul@cairns-family.eu