The late professor J.A. Wheeler--"the last notable figure from the heroic age of physics lingering among us -- a man who could claim to be the student of Bohr, teacher of Feynman, and close colleague of Einstein"--was a very, very humble man, considering his massive accomplishments; and very kind to give me the time of day, with that eternal twinkle in his eye, which shines on, even though he has departed this world. So often it is that the
Greats have Great Humility, and Benjamin Franklin's thirteenth, and most important precept, was "Humility: Imitate Scorates and Jesus."
I remember Wheeler clenching his fist one day while looking out the window of his Jadwin Hall office, and stating that "today's world lacks the noble," and then turning and smiling and saying, "and it's your generation's job to bring it back." I was just a twenty-year-old junior, nodding silently and anxiously in agreement, and those words have stayed with me and meant more and more over the years, as they seem to explain so much about postmodern life--our disregard for the classical eternities and Einstein's 1912 Manuscript (which I get the feeling nbody here has yet read, or is going to read), and our arrogance that has lead to the current financial crisis/wealth transfer to the top, the breakdown of the family, and the resounding lack of progress in physics, other than the progress that has been made by deconstructing the classics, which tends to work better in realms that do not require empirical evidence.
I also remember standing in PJ Peebles' office that year, when I had him for quantum mechanics, and asking him, "when a photon is emitted from a light bulb, do we really not know where it's headed? Is it really just a probabilistic wave expanding at the rate of c?" "Yes," he said. And that stuck with me, because this is what quantum mechanics telles us. And relativity tells us that the ageless photon stays in the exact same place in the fourth expanding dimension. Ergo the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions. dx4/dt = ic. It really is that simple, and yet the world yet refuses to see. But the world shall.
It was many years later that I wrote that equation down, but somehow I sensed it that year, walking between Peebles' and Wheelers' offices. Somehow I sensed the block universe did not exist, and I knew that someday I would rise to free time and liberate us from frozen time and frozen theoretical physics.
Legend has it that Einstein eventually came up with relativity because he so often contemplated what it would be like to catch up with light--a pursuit which began in his childhood. I often wonder, had Einstein known that light actually propagates as a spherically-symmetric probabilistic wavefront at the rate of c--had he actually known quantum mechanics--would he have seen that the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions, or dx4/dt=ic?
What's really funny to me is not that people try to refute MDT, but that they try to refute the timeless, ageless photon, free will, quantum entanglement, nonlocality, entropy, time and all its arrows and assymetries, simple math, elegance, relativity, and novel physical theories that come with a postulate and equation.
MDT: The fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions: dx4/dt = ic
What's even funnier to me is that while refuting the obvious, profound, and simple, people stubbornly want to hold onto the block universe, time travel into the past, wormholes, tiny little vibrating strings and loops that make different colors of light travel at different c's, hyperspace, and other complete and unadalturated mythologies which don't make logical sense, and which have no empirical basis whatsoever. I have often made the joke that parallel universes, which are supposedly always popping in and out of existence, exist just long enough for theoretical physicists to get tenure, but disappear before the experimentalists can get tenure.
And yet, I maintain that physics ought be about *physics.*
Hundreds of years from now someone will read these words and know that one lone cowboy stoop apart the madding crowd to state what he sees, to state what he saw.
Both Einstein and Minkowski wrote x4 = ict, but they never saw that this naturally implied dx4/dt = ic. All of relativity is right--it's just that change is now forever wedded into the fundamental fabric of spacetime with dx4/dt = ic. I know they will ignore this and continue to raise tens of millions for mytholgies, while training grad students in the art of sycophancy, thuggery, and anonimity, and picking the best to reward with a few pennies now and then from their millions, as senior citizen physicists dictate the questions, banning those who wer eborn with their own curiosities, like Einstein, Newton, Bruno, Galileo, and every other scientist and artist who has ever contributed to art and science.
And Einstein's Relativity may be derived from dx4/dt= ic, which represents a more fundamental invariance of this universe--the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions. Einstein introduced relativity as a principle--as a law of nature not deduced from anything else, and well, I guess I was dumb enough to ask, 'why relativity?' And I found the answer in a more fundamental invariance--the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions, or dx4/dt = ic.
And not only can all of relativity be derived from this, but suddenly we are liberated from the block universe and time and progress in theoretical physics are unfrozen. And change is seen in a most fundamental equation that *weaves* change into the very fabric of space-time, where it needs to be, as change pervades every realm of physics and all acts of *physical* measurement. And suddenly we have a *physical* model for entropy, time and its arrows and assymetries in all realms, free will, and quantum mechanics' nonlocality, entanglement, and wave-particle duality. The fourth expanding dimension distributes locality, fathering time. MDT accounts for the constant speed of light c--both its independence of the source and its independence of the velocity of the observer, while establishing c as the fastest, slowest, and only velocity for all entities and objects moving through space-time, as well as the maximum velocity that anything is measured to move. And suddenly we see a *physical* basis for the dualities--for space/time, wave/matter, and energy/mass or E=mc^2. Energy and mass are the same thing--it's just that energy is mass caught upon the fourth expanding dimension, and thus it surfs along at "c."
The biggest tragedy of postmodern physics is not that it doesn't accomplish anything, but that it has banned the asking of foundational questions, without which, nothing can be accomplished.
MDT asks, and *answers*, the following, all with its simple postulate and equation:
What is the *physical* reason for length contraction? What *physical* entities of this universe give rise to length contraction? What deeper *physical* reality dictates that any moving object must be foreshortened in the direction of its motion? What is *physically* going on on a deeper level? There must be some *primary* cause--some universal invariant--for length contraction, time dilation, entropy, entanglement, nonlocality, and time and all its arrows and assymetries, and all the dualities--space/time, mass/energy, and wave/particle.
And then, as time went on, I found I was able to answer a wide array of foundational questions with: "Because the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimension: dx4/dt = ic." And I went back to Einstein's original words in his 1912 Manuscript and found that he had never quite provided a deeper motivation for setting x4 = ict, other than that it works! Well, x4 = ict because the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions.
And this small recognition of a primary universal invariant answered an abundance of questions with a *physical* model. And when diverse questions spanning all realms of physics are answered by a common *physical* model, surely that points the way towards unification!
One reason I think String Theory and Loop Quantum Gravity have not made much progress is because they have not been asking the fundamental questions I enumerate below. Rather, a system is set up where grad students and postdocs apply for grants to work on questions asked by the people with the funding, who while not ebing successful at physics, have been quite successful at science fiction and raising funds. Max Planck, Joseph Campbell, and F.A. Hayek all tell us why this does not work:
"New scientific ideas never spring from a communal body, however organized, but rather from the head of an individually inspired researcher who struggles with his problems in lonely thought and unites all his thought on one single point which is his whole world for the moment." --Max Planck
And again we see the primacy of the honest individual in the classic, epic hero's journey!
"A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man." --Joseph Campbell
In King Arthur's Court, is was dishonorable for a knight to follow another knight into the woods, but rather they had to find their *own* path, like Dante did.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monomyth
And the Nobel Laureate economist F.A. Hayek agrees!
"The tragedy of collectivist thought is that, while it starts out to make reason supreme, it ends by destroying reason because it misconceives the process on which the growth of reason depends. It may indeed be said that it is the paradox of all collectivist doctrine and its demands for "conscious" control or "conscious" planning that they necessarily lead to the demand that the mind of some individual should rule supreme--while only the individualist approach to social phenomena makes us recognize the super-individual forces which guide the growth of reason. Individualism is thus an attitude of humility before this social process and of tolerance to other opinions and is the exact opposite of that intellectual hubris which is at the root of the demand for comprehensive direction of social purpose." -F.A. Hayek, The End of Truth, The Road to Serfdom
So it is that in asking my own questions, I had to find my own way through the woods. And in Arthurian Legend, which Joseph Campbell oft talks about, it is dishonorable to follow someone else's path through the forest, but instead, one must blaze one's own trail. Dante starts off alone in this dark woods in the Divine Comedy, and Morpheus tells Neo, "there is a difference between knowing the path and walking it." "I can tell you of the way, but you must find it and walk it on your own."
Could you ever imagine Eisenstein working on something he wasn't naturally curious about? The Greats were never sycophants, but that is exactly who today's funders surround themselves with. Pete Woit blogged aboutthe sycophancy in American academia.
Here are some of the questions that are answered with Moving Dimensions Theory's simple postulate and equation: "because the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions: dx4/dt = ic."
I know it is a crime to ask such questions, another crime to answer them, and yet another crime to answer them with a simple postualte and equation, as postualtes and equations represeting hitherto unsung *physical* realties have been outlawed, and the top grad students and postdocs are regularly sent forth to detroy them, while wearing masks, in the dark of night, for all sycophants must eventually transform into anonymous cowards,as the Nobel laureate economist hints at in his two chapters "The End of Truth," and "Why The Worst Get on Top."
But, yet, the fourth dimension moves. "E pur si muove!" as Galileo atated. We have been liberated from frozen time and the block universe! Ergo I have free will, and I shall use it to both ask and answer foundational questions in physics via MDT's simple elgance and beauty.
Below are some of the questions that are answered with Moving Dimensions Theory's simple postulate and equation: "because the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions: dx4/dt = ic."
0. Why time? Why time's arrows and asymmetries?
0.1 Why relativity? Why the principle of relativity? What deeper physical reality underlies relativity?
0.2 Why entanglement and nonlocality?
1. Why is light's velocity a constant c? Why relativity's postulates?
2. Why is light's velocity c independent of its source?
3. Why is it that nothing can travel faster than c?
4. Why does a photon, which travels at c, not age?
5. Why does a photon's spherically-symmetric probablistic wavefront define simultaneity--a locality in the fourth dimension?
6. Why are energy and mass equivalent? Why E=mc^2?
7. Why do all of time's arrows point in the same direction--towards dissipation, decoherence, and entropy?
8. Why do so many physicists say time is the fourth dimension, when Einstein never said x4 is time, but instead said x4 = ict?
9. Why can matter can appear as energy or mass?
10. Why is it that when matter appears as pure energy, it propagates at c through space?
11. Why does all matter have particle--local--and wave--nonlocal--properties?
12. Why does all energy have particle--local--and wave--nonlocal--properties?
13. Why is it that when matter appears as stationary mass it propagates at c through the fourth dimension?
14. Why is it that when matter appears as energy, it propagates at c through the three spatial dimensions?
15. Why is it that to move at c through space is to stand still in the fourth dimension?
16. Why is it that to move at c through the fourth dimension is to stand still in space?
17. Why is it that all objects move at but one speed through space-time--c?
18. Why is the universe expanding?
19. Why does radiation expand outwards, but not inwards?
20. Why do we see retarded waves, but not advanced?
21. Why is it that entropy imitates the general motion of all radiation and the universe's expansion--a spherically-symmetric expanding wave?
22. Why is it that Huygens' Principle, which underlies all reality ranging from QED to Feynman's many-paths, to classical physics, state that every point of a spherically-expanding wavefront is in turn a spherically-expanding wavefront?
23. Why are all photons described by a spherically-expanding wavefront propagating at c?
24. Why is it that two initially-interacting photons remain entangled, no matter how far they travel apart?
25. Why is it that two initially-interacting photons remain the exact same age, no matter how far they travel apart?
26. Why is it that Young's double-slit experiments show that both mass and energy have nonlocal wave properties?
27. Why is it that the collapse of the wave function is immediate in the photoelectric effect, and all other experiments?
28. Why is there no way for an object to gain velocity without being reduced in length via relativistic length contraction?
29. Why does a photon trace out a null vector through space-time? How can movement across the universe describe a path of zero length?
30. Why does time's arrow point in a definitive direction?
21. Why does entropy increase?
32. Why do moving clocks run slow?
33. Why is time travel into the past impossible?
34. Why does free will exist?
35. Why is it that time is not frozen---how come the block universe does not exist? Why do we have free will?
36. Why does a photon's probabilistic wavefront travel at c?
37. Why is the velocity of quantum entanglement c? Why is it that only initially interacting particles can yet be entangled? Why is it that they must first share a common locality or origin, in order to share an entangled nonlocality when they are separated?
38. Why is it that in Schrodinger's equation, the first derivative with respect to the fourth dimension is proportional to the second derivative with the respect to the three spatial dimensions? Any change in position in the fourth expanding dimension is an acceleration in the three spatial dimensions.
39. Why is it that a photon emitted from the sun is red-shifted as it travels away? It's wavelength appears longer as it is measured against space that is less-stretched. A photon inherits the local geometry of the space-time where it was emitted.
40. Why do clocks in gravitational fields run slow?
41. Why are photons red-shifted as they move away from massive objects, and blue-shifted as they move towards them?
42. Why the conservation laws? Why does an object maintain its rotation in space-time, unless acted upon by an exterior force?
43. Why is the velocity of every object through space-time c?
44. Why is it that the only way to stay stationary in the fourth dimension is to move at c through the three spatial dimensions?
45. Why is it that the only way to remain stationary in the three spatial dimensions is to move at c relative to the fourth dimension?
46. Why does a photon have zero rest mass, and how does zero rest mass imply the velocity of light? None of the object's matter exists in the three spatial dimensions, but only in the fourth expanding dimension.
47. Why time's arrows?
48. Why time's asymmetries?
49. Why entropy?
50. Why is there an i in x4=ict?
51. Why is the velocity of light both independent of the velocity of the source and the velocity of the observer?
52. Why are light, time, and measurement so fundamentally related?
53. Why the - sign in-front of x4 in the space-time metric? What is different about x4?
Well, MDT answers all theses questions, and more, with a simple physical postulate and equation: "The fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions or dx4/dt = ic."
Over the years, MDT has provided a *physical* model that answered these and other questions, unifying diverse fields and physical phenomena in a common, simple principle.
Now as MDT unfreezes both time and progress in theoretical physics, it will be opposed by many. Furthmore, as MDT explains away wormholes and time travel into the past, which have never been seen but yet form the foundations of many modern religions adhered to by geometric mystics and soothsayers, it will be opposed even more. As MDT provides a simple equation and postulate that hearken on back to the heroic age of physics, instead of presenting indecipherable math that can be used to raise massive funding for some groupthink Matrix/corporate-state/MTV show, it will be opposed even more, by those in The Matrix who have nothing to gain by simple truth and beauty, and so much to lose--their illusions of grandeur.
I think all the questions started back in the late eighties/early nineties with "why length contraction?"
Why does an object become foreshortened in the direction of its motion? Why is it that the only way for something to move is to become shorter in the direction of its motion?
When I wondered about this, as when I pondered all the above questions MDT answers, I tried to envision the *physical* structure of space-time and reality that would account for the behavior. For ultimately physics is about physics, and sometimes, a mathematical equation comes forth which supports the physical reality--in this case of a ofurth expanding dimension: dx4/dt= ic.
And here is how it worked out while contemplating the physical reality underlying relativistic length contraction.
Consider a ruler--it gets shorter as it moves due to length contraction.
But wait, does not a ruler also appear shorter as it rotates? Consider a ruler at the end of a football field, parallel to the field goals. As it rotates, it will appear shorter and shorter to us, as we stand at the other end of the field, looking on. Have you ever noticed this illusion, as a rotating radar on a distant ship looks like something that keeps contracting and expanding? It is hard for us to tell it is rotating--rather we might actually guess that it is actually getting physically shorter and longer.
These youtube videos almost illustrate this rotating radar effect:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jd6ZxHk2-zA&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMlsmqWSo8A&feature=related
And I saw that relativistic length contraction is a rotation of sorts. The ruler is rotated out of our three spatial dimensions. But what is it rotated into? It is rotated into the fourth dimension. But why, when this happens, does the ruler always, always propagate in the direction of its foreshortening? Well, it is because the fourth dimension--the dimension which the ruler is being rotated into--is moving! Thus relativistic length contraction is always, always accompanied by a change in velocity.
Rotate something into the fourth dimension, and it gains a translational velocity. Give something a translational velocity, and it will appear foreshortened in our three spatial dimensions. All because the fourth dimension is expanidng relative to the three spatial dimensions or dx4/dt = ic.
Then, right after I pondered length contraction, the - sign in the space-time metric puzzled me. Why does x4 have a - sign in-front of it? How is x4 different from the three spatial dimensions? What is a photon telling us by defining a null vector? A photon can cross the universe, and yet not travel at all? Ahaha! For in the fourth dimension, it has not moved, as the fourth dimension has been moving with it, just as a surfer stays with the wave they ride. This brings de Broglies' pilot waves to mind...
Well, that's some of the story behind MDT. A very early version of it appeared in my 1998 dissertation:
http://elliotmcgucken.com/dissertation.html
And I am forever indebted to J.A. Wheeler, through whom I first encountered not only these questions, but the courage to ask them. Wheeler always used to say, "I want to know what the show is all about, before it's out." And not only were foundational questions allowed and encouraged in his office, but one could not enter nor leave without naturally asking them. His Great Spirit has moved on, and while the past is no longer real, the immortal soul is, as Socrates concludes:
"I think Socrates, said Cebes, that even the dullest person would agree, from this line of reasoning, that the soul is in every possible way more like the invariable than the variable.
And the body?
To the other.
Look at it in this way too. When soul and body are both in the same place, nature teaches the one to serve and be subject, the other to rule and govern. In this relation which do you think resembles the divine and which the mortal part? Don't you think that it is the nature of the divine to rule and direct, and that of the mortal to be subject and serve?
I do.
Then which does the soul resemble?
Obviously, Socrates, soul resembles the divine, and body the mortal." --The Phaedo
For some reasons I wrote a lot of sonnets that first year in grad school--often during quantum mechanics. At the end of the semester, when the professor was passing out the exams, he looked at me and said, "You will do very well on this! You took many notes!" I guess he thought I was taking notes the whole time. I've never been much of a class learner, but I made up for it by staying up late, reading the quantum texts. It wasn't always efficient, but here're some of the poems I wrote in quantum mechanics--I sent them to Wheeler during that first year of grad school:"
"cxl.
Now suppose we have a hole in a slate,
A photon from a source passes on through,
And it darkens a grain on a film plate,
To say it went through the hole would be true.
Several photons pass through, we wait a bit,
And quite a simple pattern we do see,
A bright spot directly behind the slit,
Fading away as you move outwardly.
We choose to add an additional slit,
The photon seems to have a decision,
It must choose one of them through which to fit,
For photons are not allowed to fission.
But now there are fringes, common to waves!
In this manner, can particles behave?
cxli.
What's seen is an interference pattern,
Which is common to every type of wave,
On the vast ocean or from a lantern,
This is the way every wave does behave.
Though you think particles blacken the spot,
Between the source and plate light is a wave,
As to its whereabouts we can say not,
Such is the way reality behaves.
These ghostly facts are true of all matter,
Electrons and protons and you and me,
We're but empty waves that somehow matter,
Striving to comprehend reality.
Wavy winds blow, our consciousness is lit.
It makes up our mind, our minds make up it.
cxlii.
"The question is to be or not to be,
Whether it is nobler within the mind,
To believe in indeterminacy,
Or refute that God plays dice in the wind.
Are there many worlds, or only just this one?
And is Schrodinger's cat alive or dead?
Of p and x, can we only know one?
And of Wigner's good friend, what can be said?"
He smiled and said, "no question, no answer,
This above all, science holds to be true,
Love is in the mind of the romancer,
And the kind of love determines the view."
He looked up to the sky, a sky few see,
A sky filled with a child's curiosity."
Best,
Dr. E (The Real McCoy)