The Prometheus Factor and Three Key Indicators of an Advanced Society by Stuart Marongwe

Stuart Marongwe

Essay Abstract

We find ourselves in the 21st century due to the efforts and conscious decisions of generations before us. The technological advances and freedoms we enjoy have come by largely through sacrifice, foresight and an enduring curiosity to understand the world and worlds around us. Here by freedoms I am referring to freedom from all forms of bondage including ignorance. In this essay I shall argue that the salient features of a culturally advanced society are its efficient use of green technologies, advanced information, data acquisition and communication technologies and the ability to understand and harness the fundamental forces of nature in particular gravity.

Author Bio

Stuart Marongwe is a Physicist at McConnell College in Botswana. His research interests are in Quantum gravity and Quantum Cosmology. He often takes long walks into the singing grasses of the African bushveld for inspiration.

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Stuart Marongwe

I would like to include as an addendum, that I have a paper accepted for publication in the International Journal of Geometric Methods in modern physics www.worldscientific.com/toc/ijgmmp/0/ja called The Nexus Graviton: A quantum of Dark energy and Dark Matter in which Dark matter and Dark Energy are explained as different manifestations of Quantum gravity.

For example the energy of the graviton is calculated as E = hH where h = Planck's constant and h is the present Hubble constant as determined by the WMAP collaboration H= [math]2.30 \times 10^{-18} s^{-1}[/math]

the cosmological constant is calculated as

[math]\Lambda =3\frac{ E^2_0}{h^2c^2}=1.76\times10^{-52}m^{-2}[/math]

More importantly an equation of quantum gravity is derived which includes dark matter, dark energy and baryonic matter contributions. MoNDian behaviour of Dark Matter is also derived.

Regards

Stuart

Joe Fisher

Dear Doctor Marongue,

Your essay was so thrilling to read, I fear I may not be able to sleep because of the intellectual intensity your words inspired in me. I do have one little quibble I hope you do not mind me mentioning.

All of the so-called physics sub-atomic particles are abstract. I contend that all of space must be jam-packed with trillions and trillions of real particles. A considerable number of these real particles must be millions of times smaller than the abstract Higgs Boson. All of these real particles must have an infinitesimally small surface and a sub-surface. Because they have a surface, they all travel at the constant "speed" of light. Their sub-surfaces must travel at an inconsistent speed that is less than the constant "speed" of light. This is why each of these real particles is in a different place. This is why no two real particles could ever be identical.

Scientists for years have been telling me that stars collide and cause a Super Nova. It would be physically impossible for any star to collide with any other star because each star is unique and each star is set at a unique distance apart from all other stars. In order to collide with another star, a star would have to travel in the opposite direction to the light it had already emitted at a speed that was faster than the light it had already emitted.

Now the folks at the Hadron Collider are telling me that they can cause sub-atomic particles to collide. They can do no such thing. Although the vacuum inside of the collider does not contain air, like all of space, trillions and trillions of naturally formed real particles remain. When the opposite directional energy pulsations are activated in the collider, it causes the real particles to congregate until they reach a miniscule critical mass. At that time, a spark appears. As light does not have a surface the spark has to adhere to the tiny surface the compressed real particles are providing. Almost instantly, the surface collapses, and the real particles resume pretty much the position they were in before they were agitated.

There is no physical way the abstract Higgs Boson is going to be photographed. The CERN folk will do what scientists always do. They will fudge the figures.

Joe Fisher

Stuart Marongwe

Dear Joe Fisher

Thank you for your post. It gives me great pleasure to know that my essay has inspired you to think and question the foundations of physics in search of a way forward.It has been highlighted by the Dark Energy Task Force that nothing short of a revolution in our current understanding of nature is required to understand Dark Energy.The fact that you are begining to formulate new ideas about reality is an activity you will find both exciting and be held in awe at the elegance of nature.However to get to the truth we apply the scientific method. We gather data, find a suitable hypothesis to explain the facts and make predictions which can be tested.I am requesting you to take your ideas a bit further. Gather some facts and organize them and come up with an idea based foremost on what is known about nature and then make new predictions on the behaviour of matter. Who knows you might be having an idea that will steer humanity to a pleasant future.

Keep intouch

Kind regards

Stuart

Joe Fisher

Stuart,

Reality is not experimental. Nothing sensible ever came out of a laboratory. Each event that takes place in a laboratory is unusual, unreasonable and unnecessary. Thank you for your careful sentiments though.

Joe

Christian Corda

Dear Stuart,

As I promised in my FQXi page, I have read your beautiful Essay, which gave me a lot of fun. Here are my comments:

1) As I am a physicist of gravitation, I strongly appreciate the importance that you give to a better understanding of gravitational theory in your nice dream that the ultimate goal of the humanity is to reach for the stars and colonize worlds beyond our own.

2) I find very beautiful that you compare the transferring information from one human generation to the next with elementary particle physics where a particle is annihilated and only its information survives and is passed on to the next generation.

3) The idea that we could have "cybernetic egos" in near future gives me a bit of fear

4)I find a problem in your definition of higher order sub events when you write that "higher order sub events are more curled up according to GR than the low order events because of their high energy densities." In fact, the total energy depends on coordinates in general relativity. This is due to Einstein Equivalence Principle, which implies that one can always choice a reference frame, the one of the free falling observer, where the gravitational field is always null. This in turn implies that, although the gravitational energy has a global contribute, we cannot localize it. Thus, you cannot discriminate between higher order and low order sub events based on their high energy densities. Notice that, in my opinion, this is exactly the greatest difficulty that we today have in order to really quantize gravity.

5) Your statement on "the simultaneously increasing the Schwarzschild radius (same behaviour as an electron in an atomic orbital)" is in complete agreement with my Essay Bohr-like model for black holes: the route for quantum gravity

In any case, I find your Essay excellent, elegant and particular. Thus, I am going to give you an high score.

I have no access to International Journal of Geometric Methods in Modern Physics, but I have read the title of your paper which is very interesting and explains the reason of your questions in my Essay page. Can you send me a pdf copy of it via email?

I wish you good luck in the Contest.

Cheers, Ch.

Peter Jackson

Christian,

I've never managed to fully accept the bar to localisation of gravity. Perhaps you of Stuart can explain why a consistent local distribution can't mimic freefall. To analogise; If we're hit by a snowball or pail of water, or stand in a hailstorm then ok we experience anisotropic and quantized force. Yet if we immerse ourselves in deep water and float free, we may then have higher energy density all around us, but will feel no anisotropy. If the pressure has an anisotropic distribution?then we will still free-float, but gently move towards the lower pressure zone.

If gravity is held in pure plasma; free fermions and protons forming such a medium, then concentrations will act as the universe does at a macro scale, but surely not conflict with it's quantization as condensation (via the Higgs spin state if you wish) from some (non or 'anti' gravitational) dark energy background to allow QG.

Is that not consistently logical? or have I missed something?

Thanks

Peter

Stuart Marongwe

Dear Chris

Thank you for your encouraging comments.As we are studying the same phenomenon of quantum gravity I see us as birds of the same feather.I will send you a copy of my paper and perhaps it will explain question 4.

You are right to be afraid of cybernetic egos. Who knows how big they can grow and perhaps become the Skynet in Terminator or Agent Smith in the Matrix trilogy and therein lies the danger.However if we are can these avoid these worst case scenarios perhaps they can do us good...perhaps!

Kind regards

Stuart

Stuart Marongwe

Chris

Sorry for the typos in my last post. I have to disable the predictive text on my smart phone. I meant to say "if we can avoid these worst case scenarios perhaps they can do us good...perhaps! "

regards

Stuart

Peter Jackson

Stuart,

An essay densely packed with high powered quantum value and classically consistent logic. You may already be aware I agree with most, and I was pleasantly surprised at other connectivity with my own essay deriving QM classically. In particular I liked;

"...we end up with a four vector expressed as a wave packet in which waves superimpose to form the event and beyond the event they cancel out. Thus a quantum mechanical interpretation of an event of say a particle transiting from one state to another is that it is not a single event but a superposition of multiple finite events. These secondary events are grouped as first order, second order up to the nth order events."

That seems to precisely agree with my definition of a measurement interaction and progressive electron spin flip as a 2nd order distribution explaining the Bell cosine distribution. ..also;

"...for a particle to moves from point A to point B the two states become two points of a displacement four vector. This displacement vector is a superposition of a multiple sub events. The higher order sub events are more curled up according to GR than the low order events"

That's in perfect agreement with the recursive helical states from which I derive 720^spin and higher order distributions, and beautifully described. I've also described my Bloch sphere angles to surface points as four vectors, but here describing cones whose surface circumferential relationship produces the... anyway you'll see when you read it. I look forward to discussing and exploring the important related questions our essays raise.

I was a little disappointed when it ended. The green bit did seem a little 'tacked on', but the body had already sensibly described more than many whole tomes on QM. Do also see my question of Christian above.

Very well done. Excellent logic and presentation giving valuable insights in an excellent style. I see you seem to have been trolled to a ridiculously undervalued score. I hope mine will help, and wish you luck.

Best wishes

Peter

Stuart Marongwe

Hello Peter

Thank you very much for reading and appreciating my essay. I do not mind the trolls as long as there are folks like you to exchange ideas with. It seems our different are converging towards a solution. You have given Christian and I something to think about which I am doing right now. Will post a reply once I have chewed it a bit more.

regards

stuart

Douglas Singleton

Hi Stuart,

I liked the space colonization aspect of your essay. I'm a fan/supporter of space exploration. Also the development of green technologies is important to make sure we have the time to develop things like some kind of drive mechanism that will get us to the stars. But I am a bit more pessimistic about the time scale for this i.e. a propulsion system that would carry instrument/humans to other stars. And one has to keep in mind that this may not be possible. What I mean here is that wormhole/warp drive type of propulsion systems, which could in a time short compared to the human life span reach other stars, may not be physically possible according to the laws of Nature. At this point we don't know enough physics to say one way or the other. But certainly having a better/any understanding of QG would seem to be important to determining if such exotic propulsion systems are physically possible. Even in the absence of such exotic drives there are proposal like project Project Daedalus which would use fusion propulsion to reach nearby star systems but taking a long time relative to a human life span (50 years to reach Barnard's Star at ~10% light speed).

I didn't see such a pressing need for quantum computers although they are certainly a cool idea and should be pursued. But the research in quantum computing seems a bit tangential to the stellar exploration idea. Quantum computers if they could be made to work would of course be useful for a host of things including planetary and interstellar exploration. The main problem here is how to avoid decoherence. Also I think quantum computers if they can be made to work are further in the future. I remember reading a article some time ago that a group at Stanford (or MIT maybe?) had made a crude quantum computer which could factor 15 (factoring numbers is one of the things a quantum computer should be able to do much quicker compared to a classical computer).

Overall a nice essay. I enjoyed it very much. Best of luck.

Doug

Stuart Marongwe

Hi Doug

I much appreciate your well thought comments.I understand your point of view that our first ticket to the stars may be a millenia away. Here is my view: I think history is not a linear evolution of events.Opportunities always arise and we need global citizens who can recognise it.This can only be achieved if the citizenary is well informed and value knowlege as a commodity that can be sold by puting it to practical use. To have a an informed citizenary we need to invest in IT infrastructure.

With knowledge of Quantum physics we have managed to develop nuclear techonology and electronics. Likewise with knowledge of quantum gravity we may develop "gravitonics"- the technology to generate or absorb gravitons just as photons or neutrons are manipulated in photonics and nuclear technology.

Currently our propulsion technology is based on Newtonian mechanics which special relativity gives a speed limit.However if spacetime can be manipulated the constraints on speed can be removed.The technology to do just that can only be obtained if we increase our financial and human resources into this endeavor.

Best regards

Stuart

Andrej Rehak

Dear Stuart

I appreciate your passion. Though, I see that your solution rely on inherited conjectures (one shouldn't interpret it as knowledge). If you want to construct Schwarzschild's radius sr or a Black Hole BH, try using their geometrical description; sr=2rd, BH=(d=1), where d=g/c, and g=ra/c

And if you ask me, now and here I am on the self-sufficient planet Earth. From now and here, I do not want to abandon it, and I do not want to colonize other planets worlds in the name of the phrase of the extinction of the humanity. In the infinite spectrum of life, where is and what is humanity anyway? Is there a definition, and if there is, who defined it and in the name of who? What is the current paradigm? How did it all started and how will it all end? :)

Regards

andrej

Stuart Marongwe

Dear Andrej

Thank you for your appreciation.Well colonizing other worlds does not mean abandoning our world. As for gravity try reading my paper on quantum gravity at http://www.worldscientific.com/doi/abs/10.1142/S0219887814500595

Kind regards

Stuart

Michael muteru

I have rated your essay to the best of my understanding,-its great.About the universe,we have a tool that precludes Gravity,relativity and quantum mechanics in a mathematically logical and intuitive way,using model dependent realism,like cartography.to literally describe a landscape using stringy properties of the reality-universe.kindly take your time also to rate/review my essay-living in the shadows of the sun

Stuart Marongwe

Dear Mike

Thank you for reading my essay. Will read and evaluate your essay.

kind regards

Stuart

Luca Valeri

Hi Stuart,

I referenced your essay in my answer to the comment of Charles Gregory St Pierre. I hope you don't mind. You might have a look at it. If you find the time it would also be nice if you could read my essay and comment on it.

Best regards,

Luca

Stuart Marongwe

Luca

Thank you very much for appreciating my essay will certainly read and evaluate you essay.

kind regards

Stuart

James Hoover

Stuart,

Certainly the fundamental force of gravity seems to be the least understood and a force that impacts the source of humankind's origin and future. I share the same concerns though I emphasize the human mind as a microcosm of the universe and our key to a viable future.

Interesting ideas, Stuart.

Jim