I must add after this remark of Narendra Nath on 'method as a retreat' that this is very curious reaction from Scientists who are based on theories of other Scientists who constantly refer to God or mystic numbers such as J. Kepler or I. Newton. D. Bundy is even based on the same mystic number four that Kepler used!
For sure it is coming from Algebra that gives the illusion of neutral scientific language cutted from mysticism or metaphysics.
The comment of F. Le Rouge appears to indicate as if there is clear cut separation between science & mysticism. To me all mysticism/mysteries lead to scientific endevours. May i request Le Rouge to kindly comment on several conjectures that have been made in my essay about the nature of primordial matter, dark matter, etc. These are not confirmed at all by experiments done yet or likely in the immediate future. Logic can proceed based on available information from cosmological expts. that are hard to conduct with reasonable precision. Other parameters questioned in my essay are the constancy of speed of light and the strengths of the four force-fields we talk about in Physics.
To conclude, let us keep our philosophical freedom to the extent possible lest we curtail ourselves from missing some mystical links that may provide the answer to the relative truths we seek in science. Doug Bundy's essay is within scientific domain as per my critical assessment. But assessment of others may differ and yet we all are friends/comrades in our scientific enquiries. The wider the vision the better is the scope for unravelling the mystery!
Dear NN
I have read through your essay and thank you for an interesting contribution. The essay starts with a summary of some of the important questions in physics and cosmology and is followed by a short section outlining some ideas from particle physics to explain dark matter. You end with a page about how our knowledge of the universe may come to us through contact with a cosmic consciousness as (I think) advocated by followers of meditation and yoga.
You mention the idea that values of physical "constants" changed in the early universe as an explanation for the evolution of particles. The idea of changing constants is of course one that a few physicists are quite keen on. The more conventional view is that it is an unnecessary hypothesis and constraints on changes in physical constants are already very tight, but certainly it is not ruled out. Your main idea seems to be that there are heavy "neutral quarks" which decayed in the early universe to form baryonic matter, then as the physical constants changed the particles became stable and remained as dark matter. I am not aware of any theories of dark matter that use this idea but that is not my area of expertise. Probably it is an original concept but of course you would have to add more details about the processes to make it testable. Most theories of dark matter propose a stable weakly interacting particle that we have not yet seen in colliders either because it is too heavy or because it belongs to a hidden sector which does not couple strongly to ordinary matter at low energies.
While most of your commentary on known physics is sound, there are a few minor errors. For example you say that the c,b and t quarks have no spin or isospin, this is not correct. They are all spin half paricles and the six quarks form three isospin doublets (u,d) (s,c) and (t,b).This error does not affect your argument but you would need to know the standard model better if you want to build a new model of particle physics beyond it.
Conciousness and cognescence are interesting subjects. I personally consider it to be more of a metaphysical area than something with direct connections to particle physics and quantum gravity but you are not alone in thinking otherwise. It would have been nice to read more details about this connection in your essay rather than in cited material, especially since you did not use up your full limit of words and pages! I would also like to have seen you write more explicitly about the role of time in your theory since that is the subject of the contest.
We are entering a very exciting era in the development of physics because we are starting to get new data from cosmology and colliders which will be used to form the next generation of theories beyond the standard models. For example I would draw your attention to new measurements of correlations in the cosmic background that do not fit any predictions. There are also measurments of leptonic physics from the PAMELA cosmic ray telescope and from the CDF detector at the tevatron which strongly suggest new results. This could be just a small part of what we can expect once we have new data from the LHC at CERN and from other cosmological observations such as the Planck cosmic background observer due for launch soon. It is a great time for new ideas like yours but you need to get the physics details right and document them clearly with quantitative calculations if you want to establish your priority. I hope these comments are useful and I wish you best luck.
Dear Philip,
May i say how delighted i am to see your detailed comments of great value. Please bear with my mistakes, being a 100% experimentalist in this essay competition dominated by pure theoreticians. i personally don' wish to emphasize this distinction, as Physics is both.
Mistake about the three other quarks,s, c and t is regretted as i just looked up some wrong notes. However, these three don't constitute our baryonic matter. The non-baryonic nature of dark matter induced my imaginative thinking to present the ideas i have stated. i agree that these need concrete shape where i believe in the necessity of a theoretician for collaboration. My problem lies in my retirement from University service 15 yrs back and no interaction with active faculty locally, most of them not interested in what i am doing!
About the LCA at geneva and the scope of Microwave Anisotropy studies using a satellite telescope installed on the other side of moon, i am hoping for more useful information coming from the latter rather than the former.The reason lies in the first billion years of turmoil the initial universe experienced for which no Physics has yet been developed.My innovative ideas can then be checked through expts. checking on distant matter that was present in the first billion year of the Universe.
The other point you may not have an adequate background concern the techniques of Yoga/meditation that were developed over 3 centuries back by an Indian saint known as PATANJALI. These techniques have now been revived for modern living. My two MSS attached as postings immediately
after the posting my essay will provide some background in this regard. These are ' Science Interface with Spirituality' and ' Inconstancy of the Physical Constants and Strengths of the force-fields'. Full text are there on this very site in my first 2/3 postings, supplement to the main essay text.
As a practicing scientist, i also don't mix 'consciousness' with physical science. What i know through personal experience is the capability of these ancient technique lies in quietening the mind.from distracting anxieties/tensions of life. The latter controls all our thought processes and the brain activities. Thus, a sort of personality change comes into play widening the mind with enhanced clarity and all-encompassing nature. That provides a good hunting ground for innovative thinking. Then, one needs to establish such ideas in the scientific methodology. The latter also is to be considered as open to expanding paradigms and not closed to what existing knowledge restrictions!
.
Dear Philip,
in my response i missed a few shortcomings that you were nice to point out. For example, my essay does not have any specific mention about 'The Nature of Time'. You are very right. Implicitly, it exists through the inconstancy of physical constants and the the strength of the force-fields! Surely the impact may enhance if i add some aspects on it explicitly.
Two aspects of present physics, the fourth dimension involving time occurs as x4= ict and the other concerns E=hf, f, the frequency of vibration. In the first, time like space coordinates has a linkage with the velocity of light, treated as constant, as also the ultimate limit of velocity for any matter in the universe. The query arises if c is not a constant. In fact small variations towards higher side have already been observed in cosmology for light coming from objects 12 billion years away. In my essay, i indicate that that in the first billion year of existence, the Universe was expected to be in a very volatile state and velocity may well be much higher than the value of c accepted today. The other query relates to energy/frequency relation through 'h'. The latter is considered a quanta of energy, but what about its being a quanta of time too!(time is inverse of frequency).
Next, we can question the linearity of time too and any non-linearity may well take care of the variation in the value of c as observed. Another interesting point emerges from the possibility of higher dimensionality than 4 and the existence of several universes. What will the be scales of time in different universes/ higher dimensionality of a given universe?
Motion is the primary character of the universe and there are the well known linear, rotational, vibrational (including s.h.m.)and spinning motions. All these motions need to have the corresponding force-fields. Motion is tied to change in space coordinates with time and the energy of motion is implicit. Then, time/energy conjugation in measurement with inherent uncertainty complicates the
space/time concept. Is time merely a fourth dimension of space or is it independent of it as well as the velocity of light ( as per x4= ict relation)?
Your enlightening comments as well those of other authors/ commentators are most welcome on this post!
I still await the comments of the public as well as other authors in this competition on my last post made just a week back! I hope the Organizers will take note of my postings here and on other essays, in the context that my essay does not discuss TIME explicitly. i have tried to fill that gap by discussing TIME explicitly through the postings.
Time as a physical concept of science is not vague. However, there is a vast vagueness when one brings in the role of awareness/consciousness into the working of the human mind in totality. Then all the possibilities open up and time loses the uniqueness it has in Physics. Science Interface with Humanity/Spirituality(not religion) appears to be an area that can help enrich the Methodology of Science, in order to further the cause of SCIENCE to much higher levels!
Hello Narendra. Even though I do not share the idea of a cosmic Consciusness that governs the matter and the energy of the universe, also I think that there seems to be a kind of "soul" in any event, composed by the information coming from such actions or the same matter and energy. And I think that it is a topic that must be discussed in an exchange of ideas as the one provided by this contest.
Nevertheless, I perceive the subject in the reverse order; that is to say, they are matter and energy and their interaction what build the information (or spirit or soul). Even more, there does no seem to be that entity (information, spirit, cosmic consciousness) in the universe that exists without a supporting media, such as matter and/or energy. And we know about this because many venerable and wise men, both ancient and young, not only meditated, deeply and transcendentally on it, but in addition they demonstrated it (most of the affirmations), so much with experimental proofs as mathematically.
My bests wishes.
Venerando.
Venerando, thanks for the post.What you or i think are open to modification during our 'short' life on this earth, an insignificant part of the universe. In my essay, i have attempted to discuss this problem under some 'holistic considerations'. Human awareness is confined to an individual and it has levels of consciousness during the wakeful, dream and deep sleep stages. In the fourth state of meditation when an individual is aware but his mind is in deep rest,on the lines of deep sleep, there is still another higher level of consciousness. The latter being non=physical in nature, it is not to be proved as per our usual science methodology. It is experienced by each self as something more universal than an individual normally encounters. It gets reflected when one's mind is quiet in the sense of outward universe, such as are experienced in a good meditative state. There appears then the source of all individual or some like to call it differentiated consciousness, as a part of the universal or undifferentiated consciousness. It naturally answers the anomaly about what existed before the Bigbang resulted in our physical universe 13.7 billion years back. In scientific terms, one may say alternately that a potential Unified Field of 'infinite ' energy exists permanently and it may create one or more Universes, as per Its own intelligent design. We are already a witness to its capability by way of how our Universe has developed during its life!Its awareness level is supreme cosmic consciousness. Science will require a change in its present methodology in a holistic manner to include the non-physical entity called consciousness. In a common man's language , may i quote Einstein in his personal reflections." I was deeply considering some problems in Physics during the 1900 decade and my own thinking was not able to provide me the breaking ideas.Then all of a sudden,these came from somewhere outside my thought processes. What I did was to comprehend the relevance, and then use the tools of mathematics i knew ro provide me to shape the same into viable theory".We all need to note how universal consciousness ( with total Storehouse of Knowledge)can assist us provided we are in a such a receptive state of our mind, full of comprehension, talent and required level of discrimination! Spirit is just another term one uses for individual consciousness that is residing in a living body. Let us examine the term you use by way of 'information'. Prof. Eccles, a Nobel awardee neurologist of Oxford University, UK who happen to observe the neurons in the Supplementary Motor Area ( SMA) of the brain to get activated when no activity was anticipated. He postulated that there exists a non-physical entity that surrounds the SMA and records interactions that takes place with the outside. It does not die but carries such information about these interactions well beyond the death of the brain/body. May i end by expecting your return post to continue such discussions for the benefit of us all!
Physics is defined as the study of matter and energy. I prefer your definition that the universe is described by conservation and change. It shows the difference between textbook knowledge and physics wisdom gained only through experience.
My senior year I took nuclear and particle physics from Uriel Nauenberg, it should have been called the standard model 101. We covered the electromagnetic, weak and strong nuclear forces. The course started with the Schrodinger equation which became the Klein-Gordon and Dirac equations. Then the class started to get difficult, it seemed like we were studying Lagrangians for months. I was amazed when all of them came together to give the complete electro-weak Lagrangian. My freshman year he told my class we were only studying 4% of the universe. In his standard model course I think he was preparing us for the remaining 96% of physics. You are the second wise physicist I've met who emphasizes the power of the standard model to the younger generation.
Thinking that the fundamental constants may not be so constant makes me wonder if they may be a series that converges but is initially "wild". It would also be amazing if inflation could be tied to a repulsive strong nuclear force. I won't comment on your idea of consciousness because I believe that is a large component of your spirituality. I think your spirituality is what gives your discipline and dedication so I won't touch it. However, I think there is an additional distraction that is relevant to science. It is the fear of death. A scientist will not be able to pursue the truth unless they let wrong ideas die.
Dear Brainy Brian,
i appreciate your 'fresh' comments.The idea is wrong or right is not an easy preposition in Sciences. History is full of ideas rejected earlier got revived later with fresh force. Ascientist survives if he is open to freshness and developes no biasis o/c what his teachers have taught or authorities tell him about. A student and his teacher are basically at the same footing in our quest for new knowledge!
Inflation of the Uiverse in the first minutest fraction of second is truly mysterious and i just speculated about it. It may be due to 'negative' gravity functioning at that stage ,as unified field had not yet broken into any of its four components, as per the logic behind Creation. We can't deal with why of Creation and only can talk about 'how' of what got created in Nature!
Hope you get to read this post before postings close on dec., 01. best of luck for the success of your beautiful essay!
Dear Narendra, please excuse my late response.
I know what you are talking about. It is reflected in the wikipedia pages http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panpsychism or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_Consciousness . It is one of the approaches we can take, for example, in the fact of some ideas and discoveries that arises at same time in far away places, from not interconnected people. Someone believing in a universal awareness could think that it was due because a multiple manifestation of that "smart energy".
But there are also other justifications. For example, you can read the Kuhnian paradigm shifts theory (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradigm_shift ) explaining why these scientific revolutions arises.
The key, I think, is in that no awareness or intelligence or information seems to exist independently from matter and energy. These three concepts seems to be strongly dependent one from each other.
Regards,
Venerando.
Thanks, Venerando, as the postings close i wish you all the best for the success of your excellent essay. Life goes on and our discussions will hopefully lead to more meaningful discussions in the future!
Dear Narendra,
About your question:
"What may happen if the 'c' is not a constant'. The realtion x4 = ict then assumes special significance. Similarly, E = mc^2 faces questions re. the concept of Energy. In my essay, i have discussed the early universe and the consequence of marked shift of the value of 'c' to be on higher side for the light coming from source 12 billion years away! How would your attempt take care of such possibilities?"
My opinion, which is a new-born idea, and not arises from deeper research of this interesting question, is the following.
I will assume that 'c' depends on the position and time, c=c(x, t). In this case, I would rescale the time, at each point of space, so that 'c' becomes constant. We can do this, because we have the freedom to reparametrize the time. If we can't reparametrize it locally, then we would encounter photons with different speeds, according to their ages and places of origin.
If you want, you can use this freedom of changing 'c' to create a theory which adds parameters, like gauge theories do. My guess is it that it will add nothing new to the actual general relativity, it is only a change of coordinates, and the proper time of a line of universe will still be given by the length in the semiriemannian manifold.
I believe that, if 'c' depends on time and space, we can make it constant by proper reparametrizations, and that the present observations don't offer us basis for believing otherwise. But who knows, maybe it worth trying this way.
Best wishes,
Cristi Stoica
"Flowing with a Frozen River",
http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/322
Dear Cristi,
i am so happy to see your response and i will like to believe you when you say that reparametrizations will solve the points indicated. If one does it with time, what will be the consequences on the nature of space, will it not get accordingly distorted! May be distortion in space may well account for creation of fresh matter. On similar grounds, distortion in time may create extra energy, over and above that came with the creation of the Universe.
What are your ideas on what existed prior to the creation of the Universe? The non-physical ' consciousness' is being projected as such. The Unified field we talk of may well have existed as a potential field with immense energy and intelligence to unfold the evolution design of the Universe!! Your mind is far more fresh than mine being over 75 yrs. old!
Dear Prof. Narendra,
Because of my overloaded schedule of today, I was able only now to check your discussion thread, so I apologize. I definitely agree with you, that the spacetime will get distorted by the reparametrization.
"May be distortion in space may well account for creation of fresh matter."
I believe that, depending on the pattern of the distortion, it may be associated with creation of matter. I don't know precisely how the speed of light varies, and if it is only time dependant, or vary as well in space. If I presume that it varies with time only, this may account both for creation of energy and for a change in the expansion rate. Perhaps, based on the variation of c with time, we can get a toy cosmological model.
I believe that this reparametrization may work for 'c', but if we want to do the same for other "variable constants", we have to check for each one of them the possibility.
"What are your ideas on what existed prior to the creation of the Universe? The non-physical ' consciousness' is being projected as such."
If the Universe was created by a non-physical consciousness (NPC), then such an entity transcends the spacetime. We may view the place for this being before the Universe, after it, and outside it in the same "time". And even inside, if we see NPC like an artist living in his own painting. I see the physical world consisting in a geometric spacetime, with the physical law shaping it, and the appropriate initial/final/boundary conditions for life and intelligence. The term "initial condition" is misleading, because an initial condition can be equivalent with a final condition, or even a condition distributed in different places and instants. Maybe it is our mind that provides the (delayed) initial conditions, like in an anthropic principle, with or without using the idea of multiverse.
"The Unified field we talk of may well have existed as a potential field with immense energy and intelligence to unfold the evolution design of the Universe!!"
Maybe the initial burst of energy and the final purpose (the intelligence) are two complementary poles, Shakti and Shiva. In the same time, viewing from "outside" the spacetime, there is no duality. There is no difference between initial and final conditions.
When we will grow up, we may be able to read the fingerprints of a NPC in the initial/final conditions. Maybe we will find no fingerprints. Maybe we will never know.
"Your mind is far more fresh than mine being over 75 yrs. old!"
Thank you for your appreciation, and I wish you a long and happy life. From our short discussions, which I enjoy so much, I can say that your mind is much younger than the age you mentioned!
Cristi Stoica
"Flowing with a Frozen River",
http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/322
Cristi,
Truly enjoyed your using the words Shiva- Shakti and expressing thoughts of apparent duality being unity in reality. To me, this is the essence of our discussion. At the physical level, duality appears to exist. But at the level of consciousness the same turns into unity.
As per Indian scriptures, Shiva is the 'nirakar swarup' potent but non-kinetic energy, while the corresponding Shakti or Devi Swarup (Divine shape)is the corresponding kinetic or dynamic energy. Although the sex distinction is not applicable to the All-powerful, the distinction made in Shiva-Shakti is analogous to 'male -female' aspect.
Your encouraging remarks are valuable for me, thanks!
Narendra,
I enjoyed your essay, wisdom and encouraging comments. Sadly, I will not be able to reciprocate a restricted vote. My apologies, I voted already and gave my votes to essays I felt were so far ignored but unique. Your email address did not make it into your last post on my forum. My email address is:
derangedphysicsnerd@gmail.com
I am also very interested in nuclear physics. Future generations must ensure that fusion only occurs in city tokamaks and never in tomahawk missiles above them.
You have done correct thing to support the unique and ignored essays. I being in late 70's also thought of encouraging unique essays by youngsters like you , who have their whole professional career ahead of them. It is a bit strange that your ID is also designed after the title of your essay! Yes, my career started with experimental Nuclear Physics, studying reactions mainly through study of de-excitation gamma rays. Did some studies with pulsed beams. Later, i shifted my interest to surface physics, characterization and modifications using Ion Beams from accelerators. We have an Inter University facility in New Delhi which has one purchased and two home built ion accelerators. On retirement, i switched to the area of industrial consultancy in technology that helped me with some Patents. Also, i devoted some efforts towards interfacing Science with Spirituality, meaning Humanity at large. These are reflected in my essay posted and also two other MSS attached as first postings on my essay site itself. It will be a pleasure for me to interact with youngsters like you, as per your own desire! I certainly am fully with you that technology in future should be 100% used towards relieving the problems humanity faces today. We all need to work towards universal peace, brotherhood and respect for all societies that got developed over the globe!
Dear Narendra Nath,
The change in some physical constants, if it really occurs, can remain not detected by the local observer. This is evident on an example of change in the speed of light in an essay The Theory of Time, Space and Gravitation. The reason of this consists in strong connection of physical constants with other physical quantities including the time.
Regards,
Robert Sadykov
Dear Robert,
The measuremnent of 'c' has been made from e.m. signals coming from distant objects about 12 billion years away. the velocity was measured after storing the signals in large telescope arrays in Australia. It came out to be higher than the accepted value beyond the error range. Thus the measurement appears genuine. But if time scaling is changing too over the years, then you are right that itbis just because of the dependence on time that the value of'c' has come to be higher!
f you kindly see my essay, there are two posts appended soon after the essay was put on the website in Sept., 08. It contans two other preceeding MSS's that i happen tompen down, one 'Science Interface with Spirituality' and the other ' Inconstancy of the Physical Constants and Strengths of the Force/fields'.
IT is quite possible that the Physics of the early Universe may not be what we we have developed for our universe over the past few hundred years.
