Thanks Georgina --
I suspected our watergarden planet contained other minds in tune with the 4-dimensional themes I'm struggling myself to grasp in the essay, which took a few more months of Sundays to paint together than I'm comfortable counting. Bursting forth in thunder here at the outset rather than concealing it like a card shark at the poker table, I do not believe in a unique big bang, nor in singularities stable in time and space, nor in the definability of time and space outside of subatomic/ supercosmic limits where spacetime's hyper-ether lurks, and believe instead that imminently tractable statistical properties of the CMB -- which either are soon to be (via NASA's WEBB space telescope = successor to Hubble) or already have been measured but are being cravenly ignored as calibration error across mission, ie, COBE, WMAP, PLANCK, etc -- will reveal compelling proof that our cosmos is immeasurably older than the precision cosmologists' current calculation of 13.14159265 billion years or whatever it is. (Parse the coded pi hiding in there?)
As noted in the following post-last-minute conversation with an editor at fqxi, a surprise snowstorm interrupted final editing, so I'm trying to improve the tripping flow and cogency of the grandiose themes awkwardly embraced in the final paragraphs which frankly baffle all of us: navigating the fourth dimension is not something any member of the human intellect can claim familiarity with, much less mastery over. Excepting physicists of course, able to Emperorically embrace the invisible-new-clothes, internal self-inconsistency of wave-particle duality -- and an atom-sized proto-universe with a definable size but without a definable edge (the boundary problem inflated away by Guth to swept-under-the-rug unobservability) -- while ignoring competing ideas such as Hoyle's and mine typically dismissed with those of the dimwit conspiracy theorists. (See typical reactions to these revolutionary ideas on reddit thread 'photon-torpedo'ing the concept of photons toward extracting dark matter from light'...)
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Dear fqxi,
Have attached revised essay and references in pdf, with substantially more changes than that of obtaining permission from Cosmologist X to publish our personal communication which you requested and I forwarded to you yesterday.
Allow me to propose with no misrepresentation of truth the following compromise -- between publishing propriety, personal privacy and rhetorical intrigue -- toward protecting the identity of a source speaking on condition of anonymity regarding a professionally sensitive matter:
reference 10: Personal communication by email in January 2014; publication permission granted March 2015 by anonymous Emeritus Cosmologist X of University Y in U.S. New England state Z
(Reference to the eastern US university balances a complementary source at Stanford on the west coast, but I would embrace whatever further editorial changes to my wording might be desired by FQXi.org)
I much appreciate the deadline extension; permit me to legitimately invoke the classic winter excuse of being delayed and unable to complete final editing on time due to actually having to hike a kilometer and a half to wifi access through a raging blizzard as night fell March 4. Fortunately, the blinding snow was just heavy enough to prevent the lurking horde of grizzly bears from detecting and devouring me in the darkness...
(PS -- I've been entertaining hopes of completing my doctoral work for years, and would much appreciate any connection to a suitable dissertation adviser that the FQXi staff might be able to forge. The essay contest may build just this bridge, but I attached transcripts/photo if relevant to anyone... I suspect I'd have gotten along well with the legendary self-described spherical bastard Fritz Zwicky (a symmetrical bastard from all spherical angles of view), but alas was born a bit late... and Feynman's bongo drumming would have given me seizures. Perhaps I should approach Leonard Susskind who's career path I've ambled along as an over-educated journeyman, he a plumbing tradesman, me a carpenter...)
Appreciate your time and professionalism,
Kevin Bootes
Independent Physhematician = degree work in PHYsical oceanography, fiSHEries and MATh
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As a Smullyanesque mathematical logician and minority in what I'm assuming to be a forest of fqxi physicists and engineers, I much expect and quite appreciate the low score of 3 you noted, an encouraging reassurance that we're onto something rather meaty, beaty, big and bouncy here (to quote a childish old song lyric from the early 70's before I was old enough to be aware of things beyond my proto-universe of Dr. Seuss, Mary Poppins, Lego, and mom) in pointing out the flawed photoelectric-effect logic of Feynman's QED toward empirically refuting the reality of photons, quarks and all other zero-dimensional, un-structured point particles imagined to exist with the smooth, gem-like spatial and temporal continuity of billiard balls colliding with elastic perfection across the cosmic table of events comprising our observable 3slice of spacetime.
Schrodinger's purring dead cat would likely thrill more to the shadowy hunt of particulate mice composed not of standard-model baryonic matter, but of what might instead be termed sparqleonic, more akin to the burning tips of children's sparklers -- erupting in sprays of quantized light flashes dancing to the harmonic cadences specified in atomic physics that generate the well-known spectral distributions of both atmospheric rainbows and astronomic absorption/emission lines -- than to atoms as vibrating spheres exchanging corpuscular photons.
Under construction for more than 2 decades, the essay continues evolving toward demonstrating that combining logical consistency with quantum physics' non-locality requires that the belief in photonicorns (= photon unicorn) amounts to the final lingering remnants of the classical Einsteinian continuists, and is analogous to the contemporary vestigial hind limbs concealed below the skin of whales and boa constrictors (= skeletal remains of legs not yet cleanly swept off evolution's serpentine blackboard). Like life in Wheeler's mythical ever-living Universe, understanding eternity is a work in perpetual progress...
Looking forward to participating in an online 'exploring quantum physics' course at Coursera taught by two U of Maryland profs due to begin March 30. Quoting their message to new enrollees:
"The goal of this course is to introduce you to quantum physics and help you achieve a deeper understanding of the subject through working out real-life problems and examples, with the focus on those particularly relevant to modern science and technology. We are going to learn many important and exciting things about quantum mechanics, including Feynmanian path integral formulation, topological quantum phases, quantum dissipation, etc. After successfully completing the course, you will have a deeper understanding both of the fundamental laws which govern the physical world around us, and ongoing developments at the forefront of modern science. We also hope that for some of you, this course will become the first step toward your own career as a quantum scientist or engineer.
We look forward to seeing you in class!
Charles Clark and Victor Galitski
Joint Quantum Institute"
I'm a stumbling klutz with computers and itech but am pretty well acquainted with the fuzzy ideas of quantum mechanics, so perhaps we could attempt to answer each others questions if you have time to participate in the class... plenty of in-class resources online if not... would appreciate any difficult but respected quantum mechanics textbooks you could recommend?
Closing with a rhetorical question by famous physicist and big-bang skeptic John Archibald Wheeler:
"What good is a Universe without Life in it?"Attachment #1: princesstommi.JPG