Hi Carolyn,
Thank you, yours is a delightful essay that puts forward a specific model for thinking about the cosmos. I had some questions about it though. You wrote:
> Without energy there can be no matter and no Universe.
This would be a materialist assumption, rather than a realist assumption. In other words, there could be realistic theories that do not start with matter/energy. The matter/energy could be emergent in such theories.
> The time period of the space quantum will determine the maximum speed at which information can transfer from one quantum to another.
This sounds a bit like essayist Vladimir Tamari's Beautiful Universe model. But I think his quanta are fixed in space, and provide for more of an ether model.
> Axiom 5: Time is discrete and a quantum of time has a fixed time period.
This is useful for a computational model, which I like. But does this require asserting a priviledged frame of reference and violating a tenet of SR? Or is time defined locally and coordinated in some way?
> The maximum speed of travel in the Universe would apply to everything in the Universe including the speed of gravity
Is this in accord with observation? Or do you mean the speed of gravitational waves rather than gravitational force?
> Since the force will only occur as a function of the surface area of the touching resonances the force would follow a 1/r2 law. These are the properties of gravity.
Do you mean Newtonian gravity (which is a 1/r^2 central force) or GR (which is not)?
> When we make a measurement the "cloud" is "frozen" to a particular state (i.e. the position of the individual resonances). After the measurement the resonances are free to move again into a multitude of possible energy states.
Do you have a model for quantum entanglement or the delayed choice experiment?
> As local resonances create and annihilate, and space globally moves (curved space-time), a statistical nature of the Universe emerges and time could become asymmetrical.
I wonder if it might have something to do with the emergence of resonance via synchronization that you mentioned earlier.
> This 'information' comes together as resonances allowing IT to form.
I do like the potential for emergence that your model has.
> Wheeler's "IT from BIT" refers to information defining the Universe; that by using information we are in some way creating the Universe. This assumes that we have a unique place in the Universe and that without us the Universe does not exist - an idealist viewpoint. The alternative view is that substances can exist without human intervention - the realists.
The simulation paradigm that I detail in my essay Software Cosmos suggests that the material world, the "It"s, exist as a result of calculation, from "Bits". It can be realistic in the sense you give here, as the cosmos does not rely on any single observer in order to exist. However, it can define layers of reality below the physical, and so is not materialism. Thus it can model our sense of conscious awareness. I would be most interested whether you would see my picture as a way to apply your model.
Hugh