Gravity and the Nature of Information by Edwin Eugene Klingman

Dear Edwin. Hello, and apologies if this does not apply to you. I have read and rated your essay and about 50 others. If you have not read, or did not rate my essay The Cloud of Unknowing please consider doing so. With best wishes.

Vladimir

Edwin,

I very much appreciate your thought provoking essay. You gave me much to think about!

You can represent the dualism of the C-field using a 2D complex space (Eddington's phase dimension). Widening the phase angle indicates an increase in the conditional entropy of the observer (corresponding to the expansion of spacetime). Narrowing the phase angle indicates an increase in entanglement entropy (gravity). (See my essay "A Complex Conjugate Bit and It".)

In Eddington's hypersphere model universe, the toroidal topology of a spin 1/2 particle and the universe is the same. As with the dualism of the C-field, one can envisage winding states reciprocally generating meridial mass flow. The radius R of the winding states stretches towards the maximum limit (the Cosmic Event Horizon) as quantized meridial mass states diminish to a continuum (de Sitter spacetime). Conversely, as R deceases, the spacing between the winding states grows smaller until they form a continuum at the quantum critical point, where entanglement entropy is maximum.

A hypersphere can turn inside out and fold back into itself, like a Clifford torus. The lines of latitude and longitude are interchanged, and with them, the corresponding mass flows. A 720 degree spherical rotation of a spin 1/2 particle has analogs in homotopy group inversion on a hypersphere. If we consider passing "inside" a 1/2 particle, the winding and the meridial states flip at the crossover. Maximum entropy winding states in de Sitter space become minimum entropy meridial flow in AdS diminishing to a continuum. In effect, we now have the same physics (in reverse) at i/R as we did at R.

Best wishes,

Richard Shand

Hi Edwin,

I kept wondering why I have not been seeing any posts regarding interesting essays, under the "Recent Forum Posts". It just dawned on me that only posts about blogs, not essays, appear there now. Bummer!

I recently encountered this essay, from a local college, that I think you might find interesting, in the context of your essay:

Fields and Particles and Being

The essay, by Dylan Casey, begins on p. 57 of the PDF file.

The essay is published in "The St. John's Review". St. John's is a rather unique, small liberal arts college, whose entire curriculum is devoted to reading and discussing "Great Books". Consequently, the faculty members, called tutors, are well versed in the history of philosophical and scientific thought. Dylan Casey is a physicist, turned tutor. His essay concerns how notions about the nature of "particles" and "fields" evolved over the centuries and into modern Field Theory. Because of his position, at the college, he is rather more cognizant of the distinction between actual physics and metaphysical speculation, than most modern physicists.

The essay begins by noting the problem of "Action at a Distance", encountered in Particle Interactions. It then notes that Faraday "coined the term field", to avoid this problem; particles don't interact, at a distance, with other particles, they only interact with the field they are immersed in. Subsequently, Maxwell and Einstein delved into the origins of such fields and hit upon the notion that particles might disturb the field near them, and these disturbances propagate, at finite speed, towards other particles, and thereby alter the field near them, thereby altering their response to their local field.

This brings me to your intriguing "master equation". As you know, I'm not particularly fond of pulling mathematical rabbits out of physical hats. But I like the idea of starting solely with a single, self-interacting field. But why assume that the *entire* field is interacting with itself? Perhaps, given any finite speed for the propagation of disturbances, and a large physical universe, only localized interactions are possible, like schools of fish, and flocks of birds. The evolution of the interaction occurs as a result of the constantly changing subset of the field, that is actually influencing any given particle, at any given moment.

I could say more regarding my take on gravity as geometry, consciousness, the Holographic Principle and the like, but, at least for now, I'd mainly like to hear your thoughts regarding global vs. local self-interaction.

Let me give you a little more idea of where I am coming from. You are familiar with some of my concerns regarding the usage of Fourier Transforms in Field Theory. Let me be explicit about it, in the present context. Spatial Fourier Transforms integrate over all space. Temporal ones integrate over all time. But, they cannot integrate over a disturbance that has not yet arrived, unless one reintroduces instantaneous action, not just at a spatial distance, but temporal, future ones, as well. Hence they cannot be a correct model for any local interaction. This is why communications engineers introduced concepts like "instantaneous frequency" as opposed to "Fourier Frequency", to extract information from only localized fields.; localized in both space and time.

Rob McEachern

I forgot to mention something important. It occurred to me, while reading Casey's essay; while the introduction of fields may provide a solution to the action at a distance problem, another, more fundamental problem remains. How do particles sense/measure the field? None of our hard-won technology can do it. And we keep building *bigger* instruments, like telescopes and particle colliders to increase the sensitivity to the things they do sense. So, when you drastically decrease the instrument size, down to a single electron, with no internal structure, how can that little bit of unsophisticated technology accurately sense the field around it, so that it can response accordingly? Even when you consider particles to be merely some aspect of the field, such as a resonance or vortex within the field, if the field evolves, why don't the nature of the particles evolve along with it? Why is an electron always an electron? Do electrons in different parts of the universe, subject to different localized fields, behave differently than those in the field near us?

Rob McEachern

Hi Edwin Eugene Klingman,

Nice work, It gets my highest mark and I also admire Alfred Korzybski.

Don Limuti

Hi, Edwin,

Thanks you. That does clarify a lot. I am in the midst of a move to another city, so spare time is scarce, but will reread your essay and respond again. I am very glad to have gotten into this discussion on FQXi, brings me up to date on a lot of issues. The depth of the mess into which philosophy of physics has fallen is startling, but I should have been forewarned by my own original doctoral thesis as to the problems ahead given what philosophers of science were saying in the 1960's.

Our views might indeed be compatible. I will have to think through your thoughts above with another reread of your essay.

Blessings, Earle

Edwin,

I did not mean to give the impression that i agree with the assumptions of quantum field theory. Let me explain the point I am interested in regarding "local interaction".

Assume, for the moment, that Newton's law of gravity is valid, namely that gravity is dependent on the inverse square of the distance between masses. If this force were to act instantaneously at a distance, then all masses, even those infinitely far away, would have to be integrated into the total force. But, if the effect of the force has to travel, at a finite speed, then a distance threshold exists, at which masses more distant than the threshold have no effect, since the force has not had enough time to propagate out to that distance. Hence, the force law remains an inverse square, out the the threshold distance, then becomes a step-function, and the force becomes identically zero. Furthermore, the distance threshold constantly increases, so that the amount of mass within the threshold also increases.

Comparing such a force, to Newton's force, would result in an apparent repulsive force (dark energy), that is actually not repulsive, but just diminished effective mass, acting upon very distant objects. The force law appears to evolve, but the cause is not a change in the force per unit mass, but a change in the amount of mass that acts upon another mass.

In your master equation, it is not the del operator acting upon the field, but the other side of the equation that I wonder about. I am not sure how the field times the field could represent the situation described above, in which the "effective" field, is a constantly changing subset of the total field. Unlike Newton's case, one cannot integrate over all space in order to determine the field. Determination of the field would be highly dependent on the initial conditions, namely, the distribution of masses, as they are "swept into" the effective threshold range.

It is also interesting to think about General Relativity, from this non-geometric point-of view. Objects do not respond gravitationally to where other objects are, but instead respond to where they used to be. The greatest differences between these two types of response, occur in situations in which the relative geometry changes the fastest. Hence, in the solar system, one would expect the fastest moving planet, Mercury, to have the greatest discrepancy between the two models; like the advance of the perihelion of Mercury.

Rob McEachern

Hi Edwin,

It's the step functions I don't see that bother me. Starting out in physics, I learned about using differential equations to describe data. Then, in numerical analysis, I learned to approximate derivatives with finite differences. In other words, initially, I came to think of differentials as the "accurate" description, and differences as the "approximate" description. I now have come to believe the exact opposite. Differentials admit of infinite bandwidths and step functions. I see no empirical evidence that such things exist in reality. Hence, differential equations are merely approximate representations of a finite bandwidth reality. They cannot, by themselves, implicitly define a finite bandwidth process. All the information content that limits the bandwidth must come from outside the equation - from the auxiliary conditions.

For me, the issue is not it from bit or bit from it. It is bit from finite bandwidth. It is the finite bandwidth of reality, that makes it exactly describable via discrete samples, but only approximately describable via differential equations that do not properly model the bandwidth.

I have mentioned the significance of a priori known information, many times in these discussions. An a priori know bandwidth can be built explicitly into a difference equation, but not a differential equation.

Rob McEachern

Edwin,

I was playing a bit fast and loose with the bandwidth terminology in my previous post. Let me be more precise. Think of the del operator being modeled as either an Infinite Impulse Response (IIR) spatial filter or as a Finite Impulse Response (FIR) filter. By integrating over all the masses out to infinite, Newton's law models the operator as an IIR. But if signals propagate at finite speeds, the correct model must be an FIR filter, but one whose response grows at the speed of propagation.

As long as all the masses are within the range of the FIR response (as in most earth bound experiments), the models produce exactly the same results. But at cosmic distances, they differ. The difference results from the finite extent of the filter's "action" rather than a difference in the inverse square law.

Rob McEachern

Hi Edwin Eugene Klingman,

Thanks, for a most positive review. You captured my work perfectly. I am under no illusions a fundamental discontinuity of motion (not time and space) can be accepted readily (the gene thing). But allow me to suggest to you that at some time in the future you may walk up thinking: "why did I ever believe that matter and energy must have a continuous existence".

Given that just about all entrants in this contest have the gene, it is amazing how well I am doing.

And Siri tells me that Edwin Eugene Klingman is master of the game"

Thanks,

Don L.

Hi Edwin Eugene Klingman,

Thanks for posting on my blog. That was very kind of you to point out to my readers that I believe in the continuity of space-time. That is something that I do not explicitly point out and it should be.

We are very close in outlook.

One of my goals is to topple the uncertainty principle. Do you have similar leanings?

What do you think of this notion: photons and particles do not move, but they do change positions. What we call velocity is actually a calculation from position to position. If this does not immediately drive you crazy, checkout this experiment that I believe can be performed:

http://www.digitalwavetheory.com/DWT/20_Experiments-_QM.html

Nothing moves but everything changes....

I do not know if you can agree with a lot of my speculations, but I appreciate your openness.

You and a few others make this contest great.

Thanks,

Don L.

Edwin,

Don't take my comments about IIR and FIR filters to literally, in the mathematical sense. Rather, I'm trying to develop two visual analogies, for "self-interaction", one for fields causing gravity, one for particles causing gravity. Call them "Gravity on the surface of a Pond" and "Gravity on the surface of a Petri Dish".

Field View - Gravity on the surface of a Pond:

Boats move on the surface, and create wakes. Wakes propagate outward and disturb the other boats.

Particle View - Gravity on the surface of a Petri Dish - FIR version - non-Newtonian:

A "Big Bang" scatters individual bacterial cells (matter) across an expanding Petri dish. At first the distances between them are too great for any interaction to occur between the scattered cells. But each cell develops into an expanding colony (FIR filter taps), expanding outward at some propagation speed (same as wake in previous model). Eventually some colonies touch others and a central force (like a spring) is created, by the strands of the colony pulling together with a force inversely proportional to the distance squared.

Particle View - Gravity on the surface of a Petri Dish - IIR version - Newtonian:

Same Big Bang scattering, except that instead of scattering individual cells that grow into colonies, it scatters infinitely large colonies (IIR) so that the force producing strands are instantly put in place, all the way out to infinity, rather than having to grow outward at some propagation speed.

In the Field View, a wave-like signal propagates between the masses, and produces the interaction.

In the Particle View, an "operator" associated with each mass, the strands, expands outward, either instantly or gradually, until they contact other operators, and cause an interaction. In the field view, a "sensible" signal expands outward to meet a static sensor. In the particle view, the sensor (filter or operator) expands outward to meet a static entity being sensed.

Neither the disturbance in the field, nor the operators are directly detectable. But the resulting interactions would produce detectable movement of the masses. How would the movements differ, if the force between the masses was always the same, as Newton's inverse square, or whatever?

The IIR, Newtonian Petri Dish results in a global, instantaneous action-at-a-distance. But the FIR, non-Newtonian interaction is localized by the finite, but growing size, of each colony's force producing strands, or "lines of force".

Rob McEachern