Wonderful piece, Vladimir,

No surprise that models based on gears that you mention fascinate me since my model, ("An Artist's Modest Proposal") involves magnet gear trains and spatially repeated magnet matrices.

Regarding the question of "real" models, I came across a sentence in a skinny book for laymen by Feynman in which he disabuses his audience of imagining that atoms are in any way mechanically determined devices. He says, "There are no gears down there." I Googled and also found the following by Feynman: "...I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics. So do not take the lecture too seriously, feeling that you really have to understand in terms of some model what I am going to describe, but just relax and enjoy it. I am going to tell you what nature behaves like. If you will simply admit that maybe she does behave like this, you will find her a delightful, entrancing thing. Do not keep saying to yourself, if you can possibly avoid it, 'But how can it be like that?' because you will get 'down the drain', into a blind alley from which nobody has yet escaped. Nobody knows how it can be like that."

It is uncanny this long-held view that seems to be applied only to quantum physics - the restriction against physical models born of speculative reasoning. Imagine how limited the science of astronomy would be today if it had imposed on itself a similar restriction for the past 85 years.

Vladimir, you have written and painted a beautiful essay. Truth is beauty, and all that...

With admiration,

Ken

    Dear Vladimir Tamari,

    You wrote to Vladimir Rogozhin: "You might have faith in Einstein's ontological views - he wanted clarity and logic..but unfortunately he based his physics on imaginative assumptions that have lead to many dead-ends. For example his proposal for a point photon absorbed and emitted as a particle has lead to the concept of quantum probability a mathematical convenience with no physical meaning at all. His concept of a fixed speed of light (c) led to the strange unphysical ideas of flexible space and time and to the cancellation of the ether from nature, an unnecessary and costly detour."

    If I recall correctly, you wrote somewhere that Einstein might have arrived at the correct result from wrong premises.

    Did you find a flaw in my endnotes?

    Regards,

    Eckard

    Dear Eckard you have quoted me correctly. I read your endnotes but please forgive my being unable at this time at this time to enter into the long and technical discussions comparing our viewpoints which vary but do share some common points. My last year's fqxi essay "Fix Physics!" hints at my position, as does my Beautiful Universe theory where I feel one starts with a discrete 'ether' lattice in one timeless state that changes.

    Later I hope.

    Vladimir

      • [deleted]

      • Post #160

      Dear Ken,

      Thank you for your very interesting kind and encouraging message.

      I have long admired your magnetic top 'gear trains' with which you made physical, conceptual and computer-simulated models of the electrons whirling around an atom. The concept is so utterly beautiful, and I have acknowledged its inspiration on my work in my 2005 Beautiful Universe Theory BU also found here. I encourage readers to read about your Artist's Model Proposal of the Atom also on your fascinating www.kennethsnelson.net website. It is only by the way that I mention your being one of the greatest sculptors of the 20th. c. !

      You once told me that physicists of the Feynman school of thought discouraged your forays into physics and told you 'nature does not work that way'. That is so very wrong. Feynman was too practical and too busy designing the atom bomb and his Quantum Electrodynamics theory to try too hard to 'understand' Quantum Mechanics the way we and many others want to understand it: as a physically realistic phenomena that can be understood by physical models.

      Unfortunately and ironically, I firmly believe that it was Einstein himself (despite his protestations about God playing dice and spooky interactions at a distance) who was mainly responsible for this state of affairs. The duality he introduced in his point photon concept eventually lead to probability being accepted as the physical basis of QM. In his Special Relativity Einstein made c constant and brilliantly deleted the ether, an unnecessary move that has lead to a dead end blocking quantum gravity progress.

      Back to our gears. In your atom their edges behave as if they are linked together by actual teeth - there is no slippage which works well there. In my BU 'slippage' is also allowed and is in fact necessary to explain phenomena like light bending in a gravitational field. A BU gear affects the next gear less and less the more the next gear is spinning. Were it not so light speed would become infinate because a local motion is instantly linked to the furthest 'gear' in the Universe. What a pity Maxwell's ether gear model was put aside as a sort of conceptual outdated toy: it contained a very important physical truth in it.

      Again thank you. I feel that your views will soon be triumphantly vindicated.

      Vladimir

      Dear Ken,

      Thank you for your very interesting, kind, and encouraging message.

      I have long admired your magnetic top 'gear trains' with which you made physical, conceptual and computer-simulated models of the electrons whirling around an atom. The concept is so utterly beautiful (readers can see the attached figure of your gears), and I have acknowledged its importance and that of your Tensegrity principle in my 2005 Beautiful Universe Theory BU also found here I encourage readers to read about your Artist's Model Proposal of the Atom. Also on your fascinating www.kennethsnelson.net website. It is only by the way that I mention your being one of the greatest sculptors of the 20th c. !

      You once told me that physicists of the Feynman school of thought discouraged your forays into physics and told you 'nature does not work that way'. That is so very wrong. Feynman was too practical and too busy designing the atom bomb and his Quantum Electrodynamics theory to try too hard to 'understand' Quantum Mechanics the way we and many others want to understand it: as a physically realistic phenomena that can be understood by physical models.

      Unfortunately and ironically, I firmly believe that it was Einstein himself (despite his protestations about God playing dice and spooky interactions at a distance) who was mainly responsible for this state of affairs. The duality he introduced in his point photon concept eventually lead to probability being accepted as the physical basis of QM. In his Special Relativity Einstein made c constant and brilliantly deleted the ether, an unnecessary move that has lead to a dead end blocking quantum gravity progress.

      Back to our gears. In your atom their edges behave as if they are linked together by actual teeth - there is no slippage which works well there. In my BU 'slippage' is also allowed and is in fact necessary to explain phenomena like light bending in a gravitational field. A BU gear affects the next gear less and less the more the next gear is spinning. Were it not so light speed would become infinite because a local motion is instantly linked to the furthest 'gear' in the Universe. What a pity Maxwell's ether gear model was put aside as a sort of conceptual outdated toy: it contained a very important physical truth in it.

      Again thank you. I feel that your views will soon be triumphantly vindicated.

      VladimirAttachment #1: Snelson_gears.jpg

      Your essay is by far the best illustrated one I have seen. It's the prettiest; and you avoided the esoteric maths that I have found in many. That being said, I think your conclusion about nature being the same thing as information is flawed; but the journey to that conclusion was very enjoyable.

      - Kyle Miller

      Dear Kyle

      Thank you for your kind words - it helped that I am an artist and designer !

      While maths is essential in physics, I feel it could also lead one astray because all sorts of different math can describe the same situation. I feel that realistic physics true to nature should be visualizable as a physical model or figure.

      Other essays had very nice illustrations - for example the one by Stanislav Smirnov.

      Now that you mention it - I did say in the abstract that informational content is the same as IT at the smallest scales. I should have said that at those scales the concept of information becomes meaningless - there is only IT=Qubit a hypothetial building block in my theory. The information channel has zero length. It is only at the macro scale that we can read any information embedded in Nature.

      Maths can be misleading..words too!

      Vladimir

      Dear Eckard - I have now responded to your interested paper on your page. I quote my rather hasty comments to your numbered endnotes and suggestions as follows:

      1) ...there is no common time but different local times. Suggestion 1: Negative values of d or t, respectively...

      VT-By requiring that all observers see things in the same way Einstein made simultaneous time impossible. If you dispense with this requirement and assume absolute time...in fact NO time, a universal state can be dealt with all over the Universe.

      2) Infinitely long rigid bodies (coordinate systems) ...Suggestion 2: As already Leibniz understood for numbers, one may arbitrarily choose only one measure

      VT--Well not only infinitely long, but if you take a given reference frame and make it expand to fill the entire Universe you have absolute space! In my Beautiful Universe Theory also found here I have found that there is no necessity to start with Special Relativity - why distort apace and time unnecessarily if Lorentz transformations in an absolute Universe suffice?

      3) Michelson's experiment ...Lorentz, merely managed to rescue the ether hypothesis in a rather mysterious manner. Length contraction has never been directly observed. Suggestion 3: The velocity of light c equals to the distance d between the position of emitter at the moment of emission and the position of receiver at the moment of detection divided by the time of flight t: c=d/t.

      VT-- I have yet to prove it, but in relation to the above theory I thought a lot and concluded that relativity 'works' in a discrete ether lattice where light speed c is a maximum but can be less if the local density increases (for example due to gravity).

      4) Poincaré's method of synchronization uses a signal that is emitted from A and then reflected from B back to A. While this method is correct on condition the distance between A and B does not change, it otherwise destroys symmetry and synchrony between A and B.

      Suggestion 4: Synchronization can be performed by means of clock transport. If the ABA method is preferred then the change of the distance during measurement must be known for calculating a compensation of its influence.

      VT--In both cases it is clock time that changes, not time itself as a dimension. And if a meter is flown its length changes not space itself as a dimension. Spacetime in SR is an unnecessary formulation that 'works' for the wrong reason (that c is constant).

      Vladimir

      Dear Yuri - more importantly I also read it!!

      Good luck

      Vladimir

      Dear Jonathan - thanks. I rated your wonderful essay on July 6 and rated it immediately. Good luck to you. May we meet on fqxi 2014 !

      Vladimir

      Dear Vladimir

      18x0.017=0.306

      3/10 approx 1/3

      just confirmation of old observation

      http://vixra.org/abs/0907.0008

      http://vixra.org/abs/1212.0030

      My pleasure Vladimir,

      Very original thinking.

      Best wishes,

      Antony

      Dear Vladimir,

      I have now finished reviewing all 180 essays for the contest and appreciate your contribution to this competition.

      I have been thoroughly impressed at the breadth, depth and quality of the ideas represented in this contest. In true academic spirit, if you have not yet reviewed my essay, I invite you to do so and leave your comments.

      You can find the latest version of my essay here:

      http://fqxi.org/data/forum-attachments/Borrill-TimeOne-V1.1a.pdf

      (sorry if the fqxi web site splits this url up, I haven't figured out a way to not make it do that).

      May the best essays win!

      Kind regards,

      Paul Borrill

      paul at borrill dot com

      Vlad,

      Wow! Well done. I was watching the shuffling nervously for you. I hope your heart could stand the stress! Congratulations.

      I think it's really now all on a level playing field again. (My third top 10 in a row but nothing to show for it yet). But what a rich bunch of essays. You beat a heap of other high quality work.

      Best of luck with the judges.

      Peter

      Congratulations Vladimir!

      I second Peter's commendation. According to Brendan's contest blog - you are in the finals! I wish you luck, and sympathetic treatment from the expert judges.

      All the Best,

      Jonathan

      Dear Peter and Jonathan

      Thanks for alerting me to my essay making it to the finalists yaaaay! - I was not aware of it - considering the last-minute ups and downs in the ratings. And congratulations for you too achieving your peer's highest estimation (including mine of course). I was wondering how many of these 4.3 and/or other essays are by fqXi members - those that will be automatically shunted in as explained by Brendan at the outset? With the best of luck and regards!

      Vladimir

        Hi Vladimir,

        Let me join Peter and Jonathan to congratulate you for making the list. I was anxious just like you that no member would displace the both of us. I would not have been happy that your essay did not make list when I see some not so good being in the final list.

        Regards,

        Akinbo

        Hi Dr. Ojocv vvvvvvvv

        Oops sorry my grandson has added his contribution. Appreciation and congratulations for your excellent essay making it past the penultimate hurdle.

        With best regards

        Vladimir