Now Broadcasting in Planck Definition by Craig J. Hogan

Craig,

If given the time and the wits to evaluate over 120 more entries, I have a month to try. My seemingly whimsical title, "It's good to be the king," is serious about our subject.

Jim

Greetings Professor Hogan,

I am happy to see you have an essay here, which I am eager to read and comment on. More people should be aware of this research, which rightly can be called foundational, as it examines those foundations. It will be interesting to see how much progress you and your team have made toward observing Planck scale variations. I wish you the best of luck in the contest.

Regards,

Jonathan

Dear Professor Hogan,

You correctly observe that "These two great theories [(SR,GR) & QM] of twentieth century physics have never been fully reconciled" . I would argue that they will never be reconciled as the two relativity theories are marble theories, i.e. based on infinitesimal particles that have solid properties, whereas QM is based on a wave theory of wave functions derived from the second order differential wave equation.

You also write "It uses a technique based on laser interferometers like those used to measure gravitational waves." Please enlighten me, have I missed the announcement that gravitational waves have indeed been detected, my current knowledge is that the experiments searching for gravitational waves all continue to return a null results.

Speaking of laser interferometers, i.e. the Michelson-Morley apparatus, there is a serious flaw in the theoretical analysis that relativistic effects are the reason for the Lorentz invariance. Using Einstein's marble analysis then it is explained - no argumentation. However, replace the marbles with a wave like the laser beam in your experiments, and applying Doppler shifts at the point of reflection when observing in a different reference frame then SR does not explain the null result of the MM experiment.

I really hope that you can find time to read my essay, actually just the appendix will do, as in the appendix the above analysis is presented.

Good luck with this competition and the Holometer

Craig,

As of 7-6-13, 7:53 am EST, the rating function for your essay is not available. Sorry I can't help you out right now by rating your essay. NOTE: I have logged in using a PC and a MAC and different browsers but it appears to be a site function issue.

Manuel

Craig,

I have sent an email requesting that FQXi extend to those of you who had their essay posted on July 5, 2013, be allowed additional days to compensate for the days of not being able to rate these essays.

My experience in conducting the online Tempt Destiny (TD) experiment from 2000 to 2012 gave me an understanding of the complexities involved in administrating an online competition which assures me that the competition will be back up and running soon. Ironically, the inability of not being able to rate the essays correlates with the TD experimental findings, as presented in my essay, which show how the acts of selection are fundamental to our physical existence.

Anyway, I hope that all entrants will be allocated the same opportunity to have their essay rated when they are posted, and if not possible due to technical difficulties, will have their opportunity adjusted accordingly. Best wishes to you with your entry.

Manuel

PS I will be reviewing and rating your entry after this function has been turned back on.

Dear Craig

I wish interesting results from Holometer experiments.

Yuri

Mr. Hogan,

I'm trying to replace the differential calculus with a particular version of polar coordinates.

This new coordinate system should be useful in quantum physics. But, the formula that represents the 'idea, it worked for my essay in this contest. I would like an opinion.

Thank you.

http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/1903

Dr. Hogan,

I found your essay to be exceptionally well-written. As you point out, the, "two great theories of twentieth century physics have never been fully reconciled, because their core ideas are incompatible."

You also note that:

1. ". . . experiments with quantum systems prove that states in reality are not localized in space."

2. ". . . the entire system is described by a wave function of possibilities."

3. "Any combined system is literally more than the sum of its parts; a composite system contains information that cannot be separated into information about one subsystem or another."

4. ". . . the quantum correlations created by interactions that we interpret as the collapse of a wave function - are entirely delocalized in space and time."

5. ". . . in quantum field theory, the quantized system is a mode of a field wave extended in space and time - a delocalized state."

6. "Quantum delocalization inspires a view of the world made not so much of material as of information. This idea may be extended to space and time as well as matter. Some properties of space and time that seem fundamental, including localization, may actually emerge only as a macroscopic approximation, from the flow of information in a quantum system."

7. ". . . but these days we could just as well say that it is all about figuring out how the system of the universe works - how its instructions are encoded, and what operating system it runs on."

I find these points thought-provoking, and have a couple of questions. As you point out, a combined system is literally more than the sum of its parts. Because the core ideas of the two great theories of the twentieth century are incompatible, yet both 'work,' might it be possible that each theory describes two very different aspects of the same system? What if the universe was, in fact, an information system? If so, might it be possible that quantum field theory describes the behavior of the 'software' aspect of the system, while the Theory of Relativity describes the behavior of the universe's 'hardware,' i.e., its physical objects?

The fact that quantum field theory describes a system in terms of a wave function of possibilities and that a quantized system is a mode of a field wave extended in space and time - a delocalized state, seems to lend itself to the possibility that it offers a description that might be akin to a description of the behavior of computer software stored in the 'cloud' of the Internet. Software in such a form would be neither 'here' nor 'there,' but 'everywhere,' and would remain in an undeterminable state until something triggered a 'collapse' of the wave system in the form of an 'answer' to a specific 'question.' What do you think?

As for the Theory of Relativity, what if it described the 'hardware' aspect of our universe. Any theory used to describe the behavior of physical objects would necessarily seem to be qualitatively different from a theory describing the behavior of software. Again, I would be interested in your thoughts on the matter.

At any rate, I enjoyed reading your essay, and think your insights are very constructive.

Best,

Ralph

Dear Professor Hogan,

I found your essay interesting, relevant and above all foundational. Any approach mentioning Planck scale has got to be along the right lines and yours, I think, hit the nail on the head so to speak. The potential experimental results of noise associated with Quantum Geometry is a fantastic prediction. I'm working on a geometric quantum gravity theory which reconciles the three paradoxes of cosmogony & partly unifies the forces of nature, so I found your essay personally very useful too.

Where can I find a "cosmic Internet Service Provider" please? Great phrase! :)

I've approached the contest using entropy, dimensionality and Fibonacci sequence. Hopefully you find the time to read it.

Best wishes

Antony

Dear Craig, I hope your experiment on the Holographic universe is successful. I offer my help in terms of ideas and resources if I may. I proposed that we are Tianming holograms living in holographic Multiverse. KQID shows that we are living inside the one singularity Qbit Multiverse that is instantaneouslly projected on the event horizon of our Multiverse that in turns instantaneously are projected into the bulk of ψτ(iLx,y,z, Lm). In other words, all things are one Qbit. I talked with Proffessor Leonard Susskind 3 weeks ago about his Holographic Principle whether he really believed in it. He said yes for sure. But he did not know the mechanism of how those bits are encoded on the event horizon of our universe or Multiverse or simply in a room. KQID offers this mechanism through what I called Einstein complex coordinates as simply generated in that dingularity Qbit according to Euler's formula e^it = cost t i sin t. If you have time please look at my essay Child of Qbit in time and please make comment if allowed. Best wishes, Leo KoGuan

Hi Craig,

The irreconcilable difference between Classical and Quantum Mechanics seems to me the fact that in CM particles are thought to be only the cause of interactions, whereas QM (the double-slit experiment, Schrödinger's cat etc.) can be understood only when we assume that particles, particle properties are as much the source, the cause as the product, the effect of their interactions, fitting a universe which creates itself out of nothing. As a consequence, In CM a particle has a surface separating some cause, mass, from its effect on the environment, its gravitational field, so here there is a border between matter and space, as if space, though curvable by mass, has additional properties independent from mass, so here particles are fremdkörper in an alien environment, as if matter and space have been created separately.

Though General Relativity is thought to be a background independent theory, I wonder whether in considering the mass of particles to be only the cause of forces, it doesn't reintroduce the absoluteness Einstein wanted to get rid of: whether GR isn't relative enough. In regarding the mass of a particle to be only the cause of interactions, as an absolute, privately owned quantity, as something which but for practical difficulties can be measured even from without the universe, we implicitly assert that the gram is defined even outside the universe which of course it isn't. This same misunderstanding is at the root of the idea that the Planck constant and Planck length are the universal minimum quantum of energy and the minimum length in the universe. If in blackbody radiation there are more energy levels per unit energy interval at higher temperatures so we need more decimals to distinguish successive energy levels at higher energies, then the energy gap between subsequent levels can become arbitrarily small. Though energy is quantified, there is no minimum limit to the size of the quantum. The Planck constant h then is like the number 1 in arithmetic, encompassing all values between 0.5 and 1.5. If we can measure the Planck constant more accurately, add another decimal to its value, at a higher energy, then we can write that number as 1.0, which includes all numbers between 0.95 and 1.05. So if in our equations we set h = 1, then every time we improve the accuracy of the Planck constant, we increase the magnifying power of our microscope with a factor 10. In other words, the extent to which spacetime is defined, detailed somewhere, depends on the local energy density, so space is not built from discrete units which have the same size everywhere. The higher the energy density in some area, the less indefinite, the more detailed spacetime is, whereas the farther from masses, the emptier spacetime is, the less different positions over a larger area differ physically, the less it matters energetically to a massive test where exactly it is, the less defined spacetime is, looks to the particle (so this is why there is no absurd high zero point energy). To be continued in the next post:

In my study I propose a mass definition based on the uncertainty principle in the expectation that using this in GR might fix its flaws: the less indefinite the position of a particle or mass center of an object is, the greater its (rest) mass is. As the indefiniteness in the position of an object also depends on the mass of the observing particle, their distance and relative motion, here mass is a relative quantity. Though one may object that it is not the mass of an object which varies with the distance it is observed from, but only its expression as gravity (''Intuition suggests that the state of affairs of matter and energy should not depend on how far away it is''), that only holds if the mass of objects only is the cause of forces. If in a universe where particles are both cause and effect of their interactions, particles cause, create one another, if particles express and at the same time preserve each other's mass by exchanging energy, then the observed object owes part of its mass to its energy exchange with the observing particle so mass isn't the constant, privately owned quantity CM assumes it to be but instead is an interaction-dependent quantity. That we always find an electron, say, to have the exact same mass isn't so much because it is a constant, privately owned quantity but rather because the measurement is a standardized interaction, executed in the exact same conditions.

The ''relativistic notion that reality is independent of an observer'', that there is an objectively observable reality at the origin of our observations (emphasis on 'objectively'), I refuted in my 2012 FQXi essay. There I also argued that, if particles cause, create one another, if mass cannot precede gravity nor the other way around, then we can no longer conceive of the speed of light as the (finite) velocity of light: instead, it refers to a property of spacetime, which is something else entirely.

If the universe would contain only a single charged particle so it wouldn't be able to express its charge, then it cannot be charged itself. If charge, if any property lives within interactions between particles, if particle express and preserve their properties by interacting, by exchanging energy, then in a photon transmission between A and B, all particles within their interaction horizons participate in the transmission, so ''experiments with quantum systems prove that states in reality are not localized in space'' indeed. Moreover, if particles only exist to each other if and for as long as they interact, exchange energy, then they would vanish from each other's universe if we could cut off their exchange as effectively as the image on a TV screen vanishes when we pull its plug. So it isn't just that ''any combined system is literally more than the sum of its parts'': without the sum there wouldn't even exist particles, so ''information in the real world is not localized in space and time'' indeed.

Regards, Anton

Dear Craig,

Interesting essay. I wish you luck with the contemplated experiment. Would you be surprised not finding a Planck length? What odds will you bet that it exists, 50:50? I am interested in knowing because contrary to most beliefs that any reality of a Planck length will be important only on the Quantum scale I believe on the Classical scale surprises await us.

Good luck in the contest. You can have a look at an amateur model of Planck pixels here.

Regards,

Akinbo

Dear Craig,

You have written a nice exposition of the ideas behind the Holometer experiment. Incidentally, Gennady Gorelik wrote an entry which seems to touch on related issues.

One thing that was not clear to me was how all the underlying parts all fit together. The ingredients seem to be

1. If the holographic principle applies, the information about events in spacetime is encoded on a one dimension-lower boundary

2. spacetime might be emergent from a statistical statistical theory

3. The bandwith of information transmission is limited by the inverse of the Planck time

4. The resulting blurriness at macroscopic scales is "hidden" by decoherence

Somehow it is difficult for me to combine these ingredients into one "big picture" but since you are doing an experiment, we will see what happens. Though you mention that if no blurriness is found, this will "experimentally prove a coherence of macroscopic space greater than what is possible with a Planck broadcast" I wonder if this would also rule out anything else beside 3.

I wish you all the best with your experiment,

Armin

If the information

Dear Craig J. Hogan:

I am an old physician, and I don't know nothing of mathematics and almost nothing of physics, but after the common people your discipline is the one that uses more the so called "time" than any other.

I am sending you a practical summary, so you can easy decide if you read or not my essay "The deep nature of reality".

I am convince you would be interested in reading it. ( most people don't understand it, and is not just because of my bad English). Hawking, "A brief history of time" where he said , "Which is the nature of time?" yes he don't know what time is, and also continue saying............Some day this answer could seem to us "obvious", as much than that the earth rotate around the sun....." In fact the answer is "obvious", but how he could say that, if he didn't know what's time? In fact he is predicting that is going to be an answer, and that this one will be "obvious", I think that with this adjective, he is implying: simple and easy to understand. Maybe he felt it and couldn't explain it with words. We have anthropologic proves that man measure "time" since more than 30.000 years ago, much, much later came science, mathematics and physics that learn to measure "time" from primitive men, adopted the idea and the systems of measurement, but also acquired the incognita of the experimental "time" meaning. Out of common use physics is the science that needs and use more the measurement of what everybody calls "time" and the discipline came to believe it as their own. I always said that to understand the "time" experimental meaning there is not need to know mathematics or physics, as the "time" creators and users didn't. Instead of my opinion I would give Einstein's "Ideas and Opinions" pg. 354 "Space, time, and event, are free creations of human intelligence, tools of thought" he use to call them pre-scientific concepts from which mankind forgot its meanings, he never wrote a whole page about "time" he also use to evade the use of the word, in general relativity when he refer how gravitational force and speed affect "time", he does not use the word "time" instead he would say, speed and gravitational force slows clock movement or "motion", instead of saying that slows "time". FQXi member Andreas Albrecht said that. When asked the question, "What is time?", Einstein gave a pragmatic response: "Time," he said, "is what clocks measure and nothing more." He knew that "time" was a man creation, but he didn't know what man is measuring with the clock.

I insist, that for "measuring motion" we should always and only use a unique: "constant" or "uniform" "motion" to measure "no constant motions" "which integrates and form part of every change and transformation in every physical thing. Why? because is the only kind of "motion" whose characteristics allow it, to be divided in equal parts as Egyptians and Sumerians did it, giving born to "motion fractions", which I call "motion units" as hours, minutes and seconds. "Motion" which is the real thing, was always hide behind time, and covert by its shadow, it was hide in front everybody eyes, during at least two millenniums at hand of almost everybody. Which is the difference in physics between using the so-called time or using "motion"?, time just has been used to measure the "duration" of different phenomena, why only for that? Because it was impossible for physicists to relate a mysterious time with the rest of the physical elements of known characteristics, without knowing what time is and which its physical characteristics were. On the other hand "motion" is not something mysterious, it is a quality or physical property of all things, and can be related with all of them, this is a huge difference especially for theoretical physics I believe. I as a physician with this find I was able to do quite a few things. I imagine a physicist with this can make marvelous things.

With my best whishes

Héctor

Professor Hogan,

Do excuse me; I am a decrepit old realist. You wrote: 'Reality is that multitude of possibilities, a set of relationships. In general, definite, observable outcomes are impossible to predict." I did not understand what you meant. As I have explained in my essay BITTERS, one real unique Universe is occurring, once.

Unique, once is not plural. Unique, once is not possible it is inevitable. Unique, once is not relatable. Unique, once can be observed, once. Unique, once does not have an outcome or an income.

Good luck in the contests. I am sure the judges will be impressed with your fine essay.

Joe

Craig,

I was aware of the possibility of a quantum granularity in space at around the Planck length from you previous work. However, your concept of Planck broadcast really put a whole new spin on the idea. Very intriguing and well explained!

You invoked the scale-dependency of entanglement as the reason why space-time doesn't appear to be noticeably fuzzy. Eddington introduced the idea of the phase dimension, which measures scale as quantum uncertainty. An increase in the phase dimension, from the size of an elementary particle to the size of the universe, corresponds to an increase in position/time entropy and a reciprocal decrease in momentum/energy entropy (which vanishes towards the Planck limit). Applying quantum information theory, the position/time entropy (de Sitter space-time) emerges from the erasure of entanglement information by the observer. (See my essay "A Complex Conjugate Bit and It".)

This supports your contention that the fidelity of space-time can change depending upon where something is relative to an observer.

Best wishes,

Richard Shand

Professor Hogan

Richard Feynman in his Nobel Acceptance Speech (http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1965/feynman-lecture.html)

said: "It always seems odd to me that the fundamental laws of physics, when discovered, can appear in so many different forms that are not apparently identical at first, but with a little mathematical fiddling you can show the relationship. And example of this is the Schrodinger equation and the Heisenberg formulation of quantum mechanics. I don't know why that is - it remains a mystery, but it was something I learned from experience. There is always another way to say the same thing that doesn't look at all like the way you said it before. I don't know what the reason for this is. I think it is somehow a representation of the simplicity of nature."

I too believe in the simplicity of nature, and I am glad that Richard Feynman, a Nobel-winning famous physicist, also believe in the same thing I do, but I had come to my belief long before I knew about that particular statement.

The belief that "Nature is simple" is however being expressed differently in my essay "Analogical Engine" linked to http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/1865 .

Specifically though, I said "Planck constant is the Mother of All Dualities" and I put it schematically as: wave-particle ~ quantum-classical ~ gene-protein ~ analogy- reasoning ~ linear-nonlinear ~ connected-notconnected ~ computable-notcomputable ~ mind-body ~ Bit-It ~ variation-selection ~ freedom-determinism ... and so on.

Taken two at a time, it can be read as "what quantum is to classical" is similar to (~) "what wave is to particle." You can choose any two from among the multitudes that can be found in our discourses.

I could have put Schrodinger wave ontology-Heisenberg particle ontology duality in the list had it comes to my mind!

Since "Nature is Analogical", we are free to probe nature in so many different ways. And you have touched some corners of it.

Regards,

Than Tin

Dr Hogan

I would like to now your opinion

http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/1818

Yuri