Hello, dear Vladimir!

You always write great essays! And most importantly - give beautiful drawings. "The truth is to be drawn ..." (A.Zenkin. "Scientific counter-revolution in mathematics"). You are right: «There is a necessity to examine our philosophy of knowing. By their very nature our best theories are merely our best guesses, and there is no guarantee that better theories may not be discovered contradicting present assumptions and / or presenting new ones. »Good luck in the contest! Regards, Vladimir

Dear Vladimir

Nice to address another Vladimir!

Thanks for your encouraging comments about my essay. It was new territory for me . Now having looked into this aspect of physics, I respect philosophers much more than I did before!

I will read your essay soon. Good luck to you too.

Vladimir

Dear Vladimir,

Thanks a lot for your kind words.

Seems like we are thinking much in the same direction, and after reading your essay I am even more convinced that the top-bottom approach most commonly used will fail to uncover everything that is to know about the universe due exactly to the cloud of unknowing. Using a bottom-up approach could be used as a possibly much needed "reboot" of the field giving the oppertunity to both build up physics without the constraints of the accepted view, which by all means is mainly exellent and brilliant science, and in addition give the possibility to view this physics with much less of our everyday intuition clouding our view. And I especially like your view of writing and reading information. I believe that this view can help us understand quantum mechanics in a less confused way.

Respectfully,

Kjetil

Dear Kjetli,

Thank you - yes a 'reboot' of the field is what is needed. That was exactly the subject Fix Physics of my essay for last year's contest.

As you say much of current physics is "exellent and brilliant science" because somehow theoretical premises predict and confirm experiment. Many of us protesting the situation however feel that the foundations on which this science is built are physically unrealistic and lead to dead-ends and to mistaken views as well as to the brilliant successes.

The hardest part of this rebooting is to convince people to recognize that ideas like a constant speed of light, that gravity is due to warped spacetime, that the photon is a point particle, and that probability is a property of the zero-point vacuum are embedded in the Cloud of Unknowing. They may well be physically wrong, as my alternative model points out. Unfortunately I do not have the training and resources to prove my ideas to the satisfaction of the mainstream. But I am trying!

With best wishes for your work.

Vladimir

Dear Vladimir,

A well written and nicely illustated essay.

I completely agree with you that "it from qubit" is a much better view of at least part of the universe as I develop in my own essay

https://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/1789

There is a cloud of unknowing due to very basic nature of quantum measurements we are allowed to perform. The general idea of contextuality, ecompassing quantum contextuality, would be that one can only be aware of what is compatible with our questions, and the latter follow from our restricted knowledge. This idea can be given a quite rigorous mathematical form for qubits.

My best regards,

Michel

    Dear Vladimir F. Tamari

    Unfortunately, your essay is too large for self-service capabilities of my computer, but I agree with " ABSOLUTE REALITY AND RELATIVE OBSERVERS ".

    I also believe that:REALITY Of course ABSOLUTE.

    http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/1802

      Hello Vladimir,

      I believe I am qualified to comment on your essay in a helpful way. My first ever essay to this forum was submitted late last week and should appear sometime this week; hopefully. The title of my essay is "Hierarchical Space-Time", and I use my understanding of cognitive mechanics to "project a different vision of the Cosmos" and a potential solution which I think you will appreciate. I will let you decide if my advice is worth taking.

      I suggest that you think of "lattice" as a "coordinate system", and then think of the fundamental building blocks of the "ether", i.e. local-signs, and as something more fundamental then a qubit. At the heart of a qubit is a field derived from matter, or matter itself, and as you said yourself, you are looking for the stuff from which matter is made. I think Edwin Klingman would agree with me when I say that our understanding of qubits is appalling, this because we have built a map from a map which itself is potentially derived from the mirage which is our understanding of particle-wave duality. I would suggest you think of the Michelson Morely experimental results as being based on a flawed premise and look to philosophy and logic for an alternative, something which you have already started. And while I think you should look beyond the qubit, I think you are looking in the right direction.

      Good Luck.

      Zoran.

        Dear Vladimir,

        I have read your article and your site also. You has presented beautifully and artistically formated work. There are many attractive ideas also. But I want be honest with you and tell you what I am thinking. Your work is nice essay only and no more in my view. I am so sorry, but ideas and hypotheses in physics are imputed a lot of and this process continues with non stop. But It just corresponds to a trivial method of test-error that can not be seen as right way in science my dear!

        I suggest to try opposite way i.e. try to clean the science from what is possible to remove! I have gone on this way and have got to a terrible thing - in the physics remain absolutely nothing but only quant of field, that can explain all! I mean as conceptually and by quantity - in same time!

        Best wishes to you!

          Hi Vladimir,

          Your proposed universal lattice of qubits has a lot in common with a Higgs condensate based on quaternions. Qubits and quaternions are both represented by two complex numbers u and v. A quaternion can be considered to be made from a qubit (u,v) as well as its twisted complement (-v,u*), explicitly carrying both true and false conditions. Just how these might operate as a computer that decides where matter exists is mystery of course.

          Qubits can be displayed using the Bloch sphere. There are ways to visualize quaternions through their spectra which is the subject of my essay.

          The word 'condensate' evokes an image of evenly spaced droplets either on a surface or as a cloud - quite apt considering the title of your essay.

          Cheers,

          Colin

            Dear Michel

            Thank you for your kind message, and I am happy it has made some sense to a person of your high level of achievement - I can only express my ideas more or less qualitatively - it is my own personal Cloud of Unknowing! The reason I advocate qubits is that they are spherically symmetric, as are the nodes of my Beautiful Universe Theory (BU) . Normally Qubits are regarded as manifestations of an abstract Hilbert space of infinite dimensions. It recently occurred to me that these 'dimensions' can be understood as directions extended beyond the qubit in the universal lattice - each extension normal to a 'slice' of the lattice - Hilbert space made physically manifest in 3D as in Fig. 31 of the (BU) paper regarding Heisenberg matrices.

            I still need to understand your concept of contextuality to see if I have misunderstood your basic premises.

            With best wishes,

            Vladimir

            Dear Hoang cao Hai

            Thank you for your message. Sorry the illustrations in my essay made it into about 1.4 MB file. I prepared a 226 kb. version of the essay that I can email to you if you wish.

            Yes reality is absolute!!

            With best wishes

            Vladimir

            Dear George

            Thank you for your kind comment and frank friendly opinions. Yes I agree with you my work is only qualitative. I am now working hard - within my capabilities - to write programs to simulate my 'Beautiful Universe' model.

            Your ideas are fully supported by mathematical analysis, but it is hard to know how the essential electron you posit fits with the rest of physics - it needs more study. In my work I too posit one type of building block, and I show how from its interactions with neighboring blocks many phenomena can be explained. A solid mathematical description like yours would be great.

            There is lots of room in physics for detailed solid analysis of specific hard-headed ideas like yours, and also for speculative necessarily incomplete model-making like mine.

            With best wishes,

            Vladimir

            Dear Zoran

            I look forward to your essay and wish you luck in the contest. Of course what you say makes sense if you think of quibit as some sort of particle...I added the qubit appelation to my posited universal building block as an afterthought because it has 'spherical degrees of freedom ' and its mathematical properties immediately equate the stuff of the universe with its quantum properties - please read my response to Michel above about a similar point. I wrote:

            "The reason I advocate qubits is that they are spherically symmetric, as are the nodes of my Beautiful Universe Theory (BU) . Normally Qubits are regarded as manifestations of an abstract Hilbert space of infinite dimensions. It recently occurred to me that these 'dimensions' can be understood as directions extended beyond the qubit in the universal lattice - each extension normal to a 'slice' of the lattice - Hilbert space made physically manifest in 3D as in Fig. 31 of the (BU) paper regarding Heisenberg matrices."

            Best wishes

            Vladimir

            Dear Colin

            Thank you for your very interesting response to my paper. Over the years my initial ideas of a vacuum structure made up of bipolar spinning building blocks have been confirmed in my mind - for example by a recent realization that the crystal like lattice has an infinite number of directions that can be traced to ever-further nodes from any one node - which I suppose can be interpreted as dimensions in a Hilbert space.

            I have read and commented on your highly technical but beautifully written and illustrated fqxi essay paper. I found it gratifying that you associate a Higgs condensate with the type of lattice I envision. In my Beautiful Universe theory matter consists of nodes locked by (+ and -) magnet-like attraction spinning in place and activating resonant spins in the surrounding nodes, forming its infinite gravitational field. When the particle acquires inertia and moves it pushes the field in front of it - much like the way I have recently heard the action of the Higgs interpreted. It is a Mach-like interpretation, but istead of stars the affecting objects are the tiniest vacuum units.

            I have only recently come to grips with how qubits actually operate - through auditing an edx online course CS191x QM and quantum computation you might find interesting. I could intuitively understand how the nodes rotate in a Bloch sphere and influence neighboring ones, but wish I had your sophisticated math to describe their workings more convincingly.

            With best wishes

            Cheers indeed

            Vladimir

            Dear Vladimir,

            I have down loaded your essay and soon post my comments on it. Mean while, please, go through my essay and post your comments.

            Regards and good luck in the contest.

            Sreenath BN.

            http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/1827

            Thank you Sri Sreenath I have read and will comment and rate your interesting essay.

            Vladimir

            Dear Vladimir,

            Thanks for going through my essay. When a scientific theory has the power to clearly explain all facts concerning a physical phenomenon and even predict some hitherto unknown facts and these are subsequently verified, is it not describing reality? But then what is reality according to you. If a theory is constructed adhoc and can explain only a limited number of facts connected to a phenomenon then you are right in rejecting it; but if it has the above mentioned power, you got to accept it as long as it contradicts no known fact. It is true that reality is having many facets and it is the task of science to find them. If GR and QM have succeeded in their task, why can't we trust them?

            Regarding storing information, if according to the widely accepted theory of 'big bang' the mass of the whole universe was squeezed to a dimension 25 orders of 'magnitude' smaller than that of an atom (Planck's length), why can't the information of the whole universe too be squeezed at least to the dimension of an atom? More over, information is not like mass/matter and there is no reason why it can't be stored in smaller and smaller areas as technology progresses.

            I have gone through your essay once, but I want to go through it one more time before I post my comments and which I will do in a day or two.

            Best of luck,

            Sreenath.

            Dear Sreenath I see you have posted here a copy of your reply to me on your own page. Although this could get confusing I will do the same and duplicate my response here:

            In my essay I described how all our knowledge and theories are separated from Reality by a cloud of unknowing. I stressed that precisely because of the overwhelming attitude of physicists these days of accepting elements of Einstein's Relativity (flexible spacetime, fixed speed of light ) and of QM (probability) and elevating these concepts to actual unquestionable and complete physical truths about Nature. They are nothing of the sort. Yes they work in their own ways, but in other ways they not contradict each other. QM needs a vacuum structure (the Higgs field?) but Special Relativity cancelled the aether. SR assumes a fixed speed of light, but (as Einstein himself admitted) GR requires a variable speed of light. QM is full of strange, weird, magical explanations that totally contradict experience. I suggest a more realistic explanation (see below). The photon is supposed to be a point particle, but Eric Reiter showed it is not. The list can go on.

            Relativity can be expressed through Lorentz transformations where clocks slow down (not time as a dimension) and measuring sticks (not space as a dimension) contracts . GM can be expressed without SR as a density gradient in space. In QM Born's probability interpretation is just that - a mathematical convenience that is not derived from actual physical observation. One can go on saying "but every QM measurement is probabilistic". True but there is another interpretation of QM where probability emerges from an exquisite crystal-like order of the Universe. I have such a theory: Beautiful Universe suggesting such an approach.

            Now I understand what you meant about the Big Bang 'atom' and the information of the Universe. I thought you were talking about one single atom in AD 2013! Forgive the misunderstanding.

            With best wishes,

            Vladimir

              Dear Vladimir,

              Thanks for your inciteful essay. According to you, the object (reality or Nature) is absolute in nature and exists in itself, and it cannot be known by the subject (mind) completely as there exists 'a cloud of unknowing' between the subject and the object. I want to know, how far a subject can know about an object by squeezing this 'cloud of unknowing?' so that we can have a much better knowledge of reality. I, sincerely, hope that you know answer and I want to know it.

              In the end of your essay, you are idetifying Nature with Information. Are these two views compatible? If, yes, I want to know how?

              Besides yourself being a physicist and a philosopher, you are also a 'gifted artist'. Your art work is very impressive and helps in conveying your thoughts to any one with ease.

              I will give you maximum score that you can expect from me.

              Best of luck in the contest.

              Sreenath.