Hi Armin,

I am reposting because maybe you forgot about me. I am really interested in your opinion about whether our theories have anything in common or not. I don't care for the rating. But if you are busy sorry for bothering you.

Very good essay indeed. I rated it very high, one simple reason, my theory is the concrete implementation of your idea. I postulate that reality is nothing but a mathematical structure, then I end up with a line and do whatever is possible on it, and bang, QM is born along with space , matter and energy. One advantage in my system is that time becomes just a change of state.

I do disagree with the last two paragraphs, but they are relatively minor issues, and I am ready to discuss that and others if you like. Please take a look at my website you will be happy. I hope you can do basic programming.

The programs are at my website

http://www.qsa.netne.net

please make sure you unzip the file properly, the code is in JavaScript, the programs are very simple. also see the posts in my thread for some more info.

you can find my essay at this link

http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/1877

Thank you.

P.S. my ancestors are from Pars province. I listened to you piano piece. Why do Iranian music sound so sad even when they are meant to be happy ? I guess it is superposition!!

Adel

    Dear Adel,

    I did not forget about you. After I went to your website, I was impressed that you had written a program to simulate basic standard QM results, and I wanted to take more time to understand your approach more deeply before I comment, especially because you start out with lower-dimensional objects, a central part of the framework that I am working on.

    With all the essays it is a little overwhelming just to answer the ones authored by the people who have posted on my column, but I will post a response soon.

    Thank you for your patience,

    Armin

    Dear Basudeba,

    You wrote: "We want clarity of our thought by asking questions that we feel important."

    Good, from your response it is evident to me that unfortunately you misunderstand the meaning of the spatial derivative and the Schroedinger equation. I will try to explain, and hope that you will receive my explanations in the spirit of the words you wrote.

    First, on the spatial derivative: It refers to a rate of change of some quantity (in the denominator) as you change position along the specified coordinate. Let us suppose we want to know how a field, symbolized by, say, F, varies as we consider positions along the x-axis. We would then write

    [math]\frac{dF}{dx}[/math]

    to denote the rate of change of F with respect to a change of position along the x-axis.

    If dF/dx=0 then that means the F is constant along the x-axis. Note that the constant need not be 0, because all the spatial derivative tells us is how F changes as x changes. It does not tell us anything about the value of F itself. if F is greater than zero, then F has the same constant value everywhere along the interval of x that you are considering, and if F is smaller than zero then it has the same negative constant value everywhere along that interveal. if F=0, then it is zero everywhere along the interval of x that you are considering.

    If dF/dx is smaller than 0, then the Field Strength decreases as you go farther along x (i.e. it becomes weaker). Again, this tells us nothing about the value of F itself, at any point it could be positive, negative or zero but in the direction of positive x it will be less than at that point, and in the direction of negative x it will be greater.

    If dF/dx is larger than zero, then the Field strength increases as you go farther along x, this is just the opposite of the previous case, again with no implication for the value of F itself.

    The quantity

    [math]\frac{d^2F}{dx^2}[/math]

    tells us the "rate of change of the rate of change" of F as we go along x. Notice that we are still considering the rate of change along one direction, not two, as you seem to think.

    If d^2F/dx^2=0, then this means that the rate of change of F (i.e. dF/dx) is constant. Note that the constant need not be zero. If the constant dF/dx is greater than zero, then this means that the rate at which F changes as x changes is positive, so F becomes larger at a constant rate as x increases. If the constant dF/dx is negative, it means that F becomes smaller at a constant rate as x increases. If it the constant dF/dx is zero, it means that that F remains the same constant value as you go along x, but again, this does not mean that F itself is zero (see above).

    If d^2F/dx^2 is smaller than zero, then this means that the rate of change of the rate of change is decreasing as you along x. Note that it dF/dx can be either positive, negative, or zero. If dF/dx is positive, then d^F/dx^2 smaller than zero means that the rate of change of F in the positive direction becomes smaller as you go along x. For every constant interval of x, the amount by which F becomes larger (more positive) decreases. if dF/dx is negative, then this means that the rate of change of F in the negative direction becomes larger as you go along x. For every constant interval of x, the amount by which F becomes more negative increases. If dF/dx=0 it means that F has reached a local maximum, it has gone as positive as it could, and now it is going to decrease in value further along x. Again, all of this has no bearing on the value of F itself, in any of these cases it can be positive, negative or zero (for example you can have local maximum that is negative if all the surrounding values for F are more negative).

    I will let you figure out what happens if d^2F/dx^2 is larger than zero, you have enough information to be able to do it. Please do it, for only then will you know whether you really have understood these concepts.

    Once you have done this exercise, can you guess what a third order derivative (d^3F/dx^3) means? Hopefully you understand now that it does not mean what you wrote above.

    All this is covered in any introductory calculus course or text. If you had calculus before, then I would suggest that you review it, and if not, then I strongly advise you to learn it before you make further attempts to clarify your thoughts about how the world works. I really think that without a minimum knowledge of calculus, it is not really possible to do understand how the world works.

    Now, on to the Schroedinger equation. Let me just mention upfront that you have written the time-independent Schroedinger equation. This is fine, but keep in mind that it only applies to states of constant Energy. If you want to describe the time evolution of any arbitrary quantum state, then you must use the time-dependent Schroedinger equation. It is the latter, incidentally, which has the imaginary numer i in it.

    The equation you wrote is the one dimensional Schroedinger equation which is used most often as a toy example when the dimensionality of the system does not matter for a particular problem. The three dimensional Schroedinger equation uses the three dimensional generalization of the spatial derivative, which is called the gradient. It is very straightforward to generalize the concepts mentioned above to three dimensions: You set up a coordinate system with three perpendicular directions, say i,j, k, and then do the same thing as above for each direction and sum.

    If what you said

    "A three dimensional equation is a third order equation implying volume. Addition of three areas does not generate volume [x+y+z ≠ (x.y.z)] and [x2+y2+z2 ≠ (x.y.z)]. Thus, there is no wonder that it has failed to explain spectra other than hydrogen. "

    were correct, then the Schroedinger equation would not even give the solution to the Hydrogen atom. The reason that it can't give an analytical solution for larger atoms (numerically, one can find solutions to arbitrary precision) is something much more subtle. But let me stop here and ask you to sincerely reflect on the following:

    You made some arguments based on elementary mathematical mistakes that any math/physics freshman could instantly recognize. Should that not give you pause to consider whether your other arguments might not be based on similar misunderstandings? I am not necessarily saying that all of your arguments are wrong, but I think that the above illustrates that it behooves you to check the basis of your arguments (especially the mathematics upon which it is based) before you use strong words like "proof" and "hoax" to make highly controversial claims. It is really in your best interest, because I doubt that many physicists will take the time to interact with you otherwise.

    Finally, let me mention that on one point I stand corrected: I said that "extra dimensions came later" (i.e. after the development of QM in the mid 1920's" and you wrote " Extra dimensions came before QM". The earliest use of extra dimensions in physics (as opposed to science fiction) that I know of is when Theodor Kaluza wrote to Einstein that he had developed a 5-dimensional theory that unifies EM with GR. I checked, that was in 1919, so you were correct.

    All the best,

    Armin

    Dear Armin,

    I congratulate you for this very interesting essay. I was a pleasure reading your writings and very interesting to see how you applied Wheeler's conception of the it and bit to all fundamental areas of physics.

    Best of luck,

    Salvish

      Hello again,

      I just noticed that in my explanation for the derivative I wrote "denominator" to refer to F but I meant, of course, numerator.

      Armin

      Dear Armin,

      I think you present these answers very thoroughly and it's interesting to see how our views of reality and information have evolved over time. You've explored the question much more objectively than some, which is how it ought to be.

      I wish you all the best in the contest - I've also replied on my page too.

      Regards - pleased to "meet" you!

      Antony

      Armin,

      You are very well informed on the philosophy of foundational physics and have presented a very valuable contribution to the debate on information.

      You have made a good case that information comes from the underlying spacetime rather than the matter. Do you think that spacetime itself could be emergent?

      Phil

        Dear Armin

        I read parts of your paper, and am writing this whilst listening to your lovely piano music on your YouTube channel. In fact halfway through the reading I stopped to make a painting, inspired by the nice combination of the encouraging physics and the flowing music.

        I say encouraging because the question of background independence in Special Relativity, and as you demonstrate in Quantum Mechanics, has been a stumbling block in physics. Ever since Einstein arbitrarily decided that c was constant and therefore banished any idea of a background, the concept of an aether has become almost a dirty word in physics. This is regrettable not only because Einstein (Leyden 1920) said it was needed in GR, but because in recent years it has become obvious that QM requires some sort of vacuum 'substance' wherein the zero point energy resides.In fact you did not mention the ether in your essay either.

        Anyway I have a theory a work-in-progress Beautiful Universe Theory also found here in which the background is identical to the 'it' of physics - i.e. the medium is the message. I agree with you that 'the quantum object can be represented 'in terms of a superposition of these, and formatted in terms of information it is called a qubit'- - however in my theory that qubit is the very 'it' in a universal lattice - so it=qubit.

        With best wishes

        Vladimir

          Dear Marina,

          Thank you for reading my essay and your flattering comments. I just read your wonderful essay and will post my comments in your column shortly.

          As far as Prof. D'Ariano's comment is concerned, I hope he did read the entire essay and not just the first part, because from reading his essay I found that in some aspects our views do not seem that far apart, though you are of course correct concerning the aspect of background-dependence. Thank you for calling my attention to pror. Boroson's essay, I will read it shortly.

          Thank you also for your honest critique. All too often I find in the author's columns comments that are little more than either (spam) requests to read their (the commenter's) essays or attempts to ingratiate themselves with the authors to get a high score, so it is refreshing that you don't fall into that category. I try not to either, even though I am sure that it will have earned me some low scores, but, oh well, so be it. As for section 2, well I regard it as the set-up on which the development subsequent sections rest, but I agree I could have enlivened it some more. I will experiment with the paragraph layout to see whether in future essays I can improve this aspect.

          Thank you again, and I wish you all the best,

          Armin

          Dear Adel,

          I have now looked at both your paper, your website and your program and will now post some questions in your column.

          Armin

          Dear Adel,

          Thank you for your comments. I think it is quite possible that one day physics and mathematics will be unified. I am not sure which paragraphs you are referring to, because the last paragraph sums my entire paper. I will shortly give my own comments on your paper in your column. I am glad that you enjoyed my music, I have two persian style pieces on youtube, I'd be curious which one you thought sounded sad.

          All the best,

          Armin

          Dear Armin,

          You ask me a couple of head scratching questions over at my blog, let me "retaliate". Talking of backgrounds, about which you know so much, particularly section 4 of essay:

          1). When a celestial body curves the space around it according to GR, is this curved space carried along with the orbiting body's motion?

          Or

          2). Does the body leave this space behind, thereby uncurving it, while curving the previously uncurved space in its new orbital location?

          Or

          3. Is there a third consideration?

          If you answer positively to 1), would this not be important to experiments like the Michelson-Morley expt?

          If it is 2) you answer positively to, will such a space capable of being curved and uncurved, not be a 'substantival' background? Taking note, that with the action-reaction principle, something can only be said capable of being acted upon IF it can also react. Then as you ask me will this reaction be instantaneous?

          One head-scratching turn deserves another!

          Regards,

          Akinbo

          Permit me to copy Peter Jackson (he has a theory) and Edwin Klingman (focused on gravity). I also invited Bram Boroson when I saw your post.

          Hello Satya,

          You said:"So you can produce matter from your thinking or description of matter called information from nothing..?"

          If that's what you think my essay claims then you have completely misunderstood it. I don't even know where to start. I'll let you read my essay first before I enter a discussion.

          Armin

          Dear Salvish,

          Thank you very much for your compliments. It looks like our essays were posted almost at the same time, I will shortly leave a comment in your column.

          All the best,

          Armin

          Dear Philip,

          Thank you for reading my essay and for your comments.

          Yes, absolutely I think that spacetime is emergent. But as you know, this in and of itself is not such a new idea. Where I think my approach might differ those of others is that 1) I assume that the pre-emergent objects exist in a lower-dimensional analog of spacetime and 2) I try into account how the pre-emergent objects would manifest themselves to spacetime observers. I believe the default specification principle I mentioned in my entry is a key to understanding why lower dimensional objects would manifest themselves in terms of a superposition of the spacetime objects into which they could emerge as a actualizable possibility, where the physical process of 'actualization' is currently called a measurement.

          I have incorporated this principle in a framework in which it is applied to the worldlines: The worldline of an object in a 2+1 analog of spacetime cannot be the same kind as a spacetime worldline because it is made out of fewer quantities. But if such objects lack spacetime worldlines, then, by the application of the default specification principle, they would have to manifest themselves to spacetime observers in terms of the superposition of all possible world-lines that connect two 'actualization' events. This is already the 'sum over histories', but one can also find an explanation for the existence of the phase factor e^(iS/hbar) from this. The short, 5-page paper can be found here:

          http://proceedings.aip.org/resource/2/apcpcs/1508/1/422_1

          But I also uploaded it to ViXra.

          It would make me very glad if you took a look at it.

          Best wishes,

          Armin

          Dear Vladimir,

          Thank you for your comments and I am so happy that my work in two different fields has inspired you to make a painting. This is really flattering. I hope that soon I will have more youtube videos of my music (I have composed about 100 works) and also one recent physics talk I gave in Sweden posted.

          I happen to take the constancy of the speed of light at face value. In fact, my entry to the very first FQXi essay contest was entitled "A Derivation of the Speed of Light Postulate". I don't know if it will change your mind, but perhaps you will find it interesting.

          As for an aether, I know that in general relativity spacetime is sometimes treated like a fluid. In fact, there are mathematical arguments that the Navier-Stokes equations of hydrodynamics can be used in general relativity. So, I agree that this is all very suggestive of an aether. I have my own ideas about how this is possible, but they are far from ready for prime time. Let me just mention that I don't see an aether in the usual sense as a solution to this conceptual problem.

          I will take a look at your paper and post my comments/questions there.

          Again thank you for your feedback and all the best,

          Armin

          PS. Will you let us see the painting when it is finished?

          Dear Akinbo,

          I hope I did not offend you with my tough questions. In my view, perhaps the most valuable function a contest like this can serve is that we can provide each other constructive feedback. Compliments and such are nice, but how much do we really learn from them?

          My purpose in asking those questions was not to put your idea down, but to suggest areas which, if they are addressed, will make your ideas that much more potentially successful. I revisited my post to check if I inadvertently used condescending or insulting language. I began my questions with:"I think that you will need to provide answers to some of the questions below before more people will take this idea seriously" and ended them with "Your writing style is very lucid and if you can find satisfactory answers to these questions it would make your position much stronger."

          So, I don't think I did, my feedback was genuinely meant in the spirit that we can all learn from each other if, when we notice some potential weaknesses or problems in each other's ideas, we share our insights. In that spirit I am perfectly happy to field tough questions from you. My only regret is that you are asking me about General Relativity, an established theory. It would have made me even happier if you had asked me a "head-scratching question" about my own ideas, but here we go: [btw, you are welcome to ask any expert you like to join the discussion, I'd rather have my statements checked by such a person than not]

          I have the impression from the way your worded your question that you are still in a subtle way thinking about some underlying absolute rest frame, but, as you know, in GR there is no such thing. Coordinates are totally arbitrary. It is therefore more illuminating to first consider your question in a frame in which the body is at rest. Assuming the body is spherically symmetric, non-rotating, and without a net charge, and gravitational fields from other bodies can be neglected, the Schwarzschild solution would appropriately describe this situation. The solution tells us that the curvature of space-time extends in a spherically symmetric manner radially outwards from the body and vanishes at infinity.

          Let us now imagine that we transform to a frame in which the body is moving. As you know, since according to special relativity moving objects will be observed to be length contracted, we should expect a similar effect here, but the difference is that whereas in special relativity spacetime is flat, here it is curved. This means that the Lorentz transformations could only be applied to infinitesimally small regions because only in that limit can spacetime still be considered flat. The overall result would then have to be patched together from the transformations in those infinitesimally small regions. Although I have not consulted a reference on this, I believe that the net result is that in the moving frame the body would no longer be spherically symmetric . This would imply that that the gravitational field would also not be extending in spherically symmetric manner from the body. Although one would need to do a calculation to be sure, I would guess that the shape would be ellipsoidal in that frame.

          Now to your question: The speed of gravity is generally assumed to be the same as the speed of light, but in this situation it does not matter because the body had already set up a gravity field before we even considered it. So the "perturbation in space and time" essentially moves at the same speed as the body as long as we consider just rectilinear motion. I think that in frames in which the body is also rotating additional subtleties may come into play. So, of the choices you have given me, it seems that 1) describes the situation fairly, as long as you remember that the range of gravity is infinite. This means that in a sense, in that frame, the curvature of all of spacetime changes as the body moves. Although the finite speed of gravity implies that far away regions will "find out" about the change of location of the body with a time delay, keep in mind that in those regions information about a change in the previous locations was also transmitted with the same amount of time delay, so that there is no net time delay in the local change in curvature far away from the body (i.e. all the changes occur with the same time delay).

          Now to your question about MMx. I think this is a truly excellent question. The frame in which we would normally consider the MMx is the one in which the body is stationary, and hence the gravity field is symmetric. Neglecting any variations in the gravity field due to inhomogeneities in the density of the body or of its surface, I would say that in that frame the gravity field should have no effect because space, though curved, is still isotropic and this is one of the key assumptions on which our understanding of its results rests.

          However, as mentioned above, when MMx is considered in a frame in which the body is moving, then then the gravity field is no longer extending radially outward in a spherically symmetric manner in that frame. Let us imagine interferometer arms that are sufficiently long and suppose a sufficiently sensitive detector of fringe shifts for the following argument: Since the field is no longer spherically symmetric, neither is the field strength. According to GR, light is observed to travel more slowly in stronger gravity fields (The speed of light is still c locally, where, because the observer himself is subject to the same gravitational field strength, this effect cancels out). So if this is the case and a light beam traveling in one direction encounters a different gravity field than another one traveling in the perpendicular direction, then this should affect the relative travel times, and this should be detectable via a fringe shift. But the effect is frame-dependent whereas whether a fringe shift is detected or not is not frame-dependent.

          Is this a paradox? I have never read about this situation anywhere, nor thought about it until you asked the question, so see what you did, Akinbo? Good job!

          The only way to be certain is to actually do the calculation but I think there is no paradox. Rather I suspect that the resolution lies in the fact that the same Lorentz contraction that was responsible for changing the gravity field in the first place also introduces both length contraction and time dilation effects which effectively cancel gravitational effect, so that the net result is no fringe shift. However, because the effects we are talking about are non-linear, it is possible that my answer is wrong or incomplete.

          I would be interested to see what the experts have to say on this (though I have had a GR course and one on the philosophy of GR, I am by no means an expert on it).

          Well hope you are satisfied, it just may be that more people than just me will be scratching their heads, ha!

          All the best,

          Armin

            • [deleted]

            Hi Armin,

            Thanks for your detailed response in my thread, really much appreciated. Of course you are right about the presentation(last minute jobs are always lousy), I will prepare some material for you in the next day or so and see if I can be more convincing.

            Regards,

            Adel

              • [deleted]

              That post is mine, I did not log in !