Topological Solitons of Ellipsoid Field - Particle Menagerie Correspondence by Jarek Duda

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

Please feel free to ask question if you don't understand something. I would be also greatful for remarks related to my essay (in opposite to your previous one).

Jarek

Dear Jarek,

Thanks for the link... I do find things like this interesting. There were a lot of popular articles last year about a psychology experiment that supposedly demonstrated precognition; interesting, but I never took it seriously. I did repeat the experiment myself for fun, but of course got the expected answer.

Just to clarify: I certainly do NOT reject causality; rather, my entire approach (causal metric hypothesis) is based on taking causality to be fundamental. I do reject manifolds as fundamental, and there are certainly good physical reasons for doubting the infinite divisibility of space, but the principle reason is because they possess properties that seem physically irrelevant or even absurd (see Banach-Tarski paradox, for instance).

My view is that the physical ideas should be simple and well-motivated (e.g., cause and effect), and the mathematics should be whatever it has to be to get the job done. I believe many scientists view continuum manifolds as "natural" out of habit because the structures involved are often mathematically convenient enough to permit nice, exact, combinatorial-type calculations. I think this is partly "anthropocentric:" our brains "like" manifolds, but automatically protest at a causal structure with even a few thousand elements, even though examples of the latter are all over the place.

Oh well... I wouldn't much mind if I were wrong about manifolds: most of my mathematical work deals with them! Your model will be wonderful if it works out. Take care,

Ben

Dear Ben,

About causality, what I believe in is the Lagrangian mechanics we use from QFT to GRT. It gives very clear time symmetric picture, for example through action optimization formulation: the present is the equilibrium between past and future - both are equally important.

We have natural intuition of time asymmetry, there is no doubt in the 2nd law, but the fundamental equations are time/CPT symmetric. It means the asymmetry is a property of the specific solution we live in: relatively close to Big Bang having everything in one place - low entropy and so creating entropy gradient. It also started reason-result chain leading to our intuition.

Much better controlled situation (than precognition) to search for this symmetry is e.g. quantum erasure, especially in configuration we can later control the earlier outcome I've linked.

And I'm not saying that your approach is wrong, but that you should make it more predictive for comparison with the reality.

Thanks,

Jarek

ps. Here is great thought experiment to het intuition about this time-symmetry: GRT doesn't forbid nonorientable spacetime: with time-reversing loop ...

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

Sergey,

I'm not here ... I'm not doing science for 0-10 score, but to find a better understanding. I'm here for discussion - counting e.g. for a single constructing counter-argument to my reflections ...

Dear Jarek,

You're absolutely right... I will certainly have to connect with what's already established for it to ultimately be good for anything. I've been thinking about this in isolation (not self-imposed, you understand!) for only about 3 years, though, so I do ask for a bit of a honeymoon!

Thanks for the link... I personally view these things as indications of possible shortcomings in GR, but I may be oversimplifying. Take care,

Ben

Dear Ben,

I emphasized that this is only a thought experiment to really feel the time symmetry deeply written not only in GRT, but in all Lagranian mechanics we use, like QFT. Personally I'm also far from being convinced to GRT - it's extremely controversial, while its simple approximation: gravitomagnetism is enough to explain all we can measure and naturally unifies with electromagnetism...

So good luck and please let me know if you would like to switch to solitons,

Jarek

Dear Jarek

Congratulations for your essay - I am proud that I alerted you to this fqxi contest. While I only understand it qualitatively, I can see that you have excellent grasp of your ideas and have presented them consistently in the text, and beautifully in the illustrations.

As I mentioned in our previous discussions, I agree with your idea about a particle as a soliton pushing its surrounding wave field ahead of it. Within such particles and around them there is an exquisite order due to rotation of spin axis as you have shown in your Figure 4. While your treatment concentrates on particles and is on a very sophisticated theoretical level, I have described such a way of thinking (classical spinning magnetic-like nodes creating topological fields; a particle passing from one slit while its field goes through both slits; the neutrino as a soliton discontinuity in the field, etc.) in my qualitative 2005 Beautiful Universe Theory upon which I based my fqxi essay Fix Physics! .

I cannot prove it or show it in detail, but I feel that your concepts reflect an even deeper order in Nature, causal and linear at the tiniest levelsand in the vacuum itself. "Random vacuum fluctuations and virtual particles" may one day disappear from the lexicon of physics to be replaced by the sort of simple realistic mechanical and topological effects we both describe in different ways.

By the way your kaon/hyperon twisted loop of Fig. 6 resembles the shape of the electron orbits in Kenneth Snelson's fqxi essay. Perhaps you can kindly comment on his idea - he is a famous sculptor and the inventor of tensegrity (balance through compression/tension in a configuration), and has interesting ideas about atomic structure. He is 85 and has had little encouragement from mainstream quantum theorists.

Finally please allow me to attach a figure showing a test I proposed for the idea that the electron 'pushes' its field in the double slit experiment as in Couder's video. If the double slits are each smaller than the particle in size so that it cannot pass, yet interference of its wave field still occurs because the wave-field can pass through.

I wish you all success.

VladimirAttachment #1: 5_Particledoubleslit_.jpeg

Dear Jarek

Excuse me for throwing in some yeast after the bread is long since baked! I have only recently read your essay. It is thought-provoking and in a peculiar way both visionary and basic. Most interesting. And - yes! - intuitively very attractive.

I like the way you show a seemingly non-violent way to unite the theories of micro- and macro cosmos. I also like the way you go back to basic, not least to de Broigle, whose particle-wave duality was far more direkt than it (too soon?) became in the hands of Schrödinger, Heisenberg and Bohr.

This far I have no clever questions to ask, but for sure I look forward to read your other publications on this subject. Until then, thank you for good reading!

Best regards

Inger Stjernqvist