A Mystic Dream of Four by Douglas Bundy

The most common observation in comments I've received so far is that my essay is hard to understand, but I'm afraid that this is the common lot of all serious attempts to explain the nature of time. For me, the concept of time is not easy to grasp, unless we reduce it to a progression of numbers. Like the ticking of a clock, the constant, incessant, march of time is nothing more than a succession of natural numbers, 0, 0+1, 1+1, 2+1, ...n+1, and so on, ad infinitum.

However, in assuming that time is just the inverse of space, we imply that space too progresses, and that this progression of space is just like the progression of time; that is, it's a succession of natural numbers, 0, 0+1, 1+1, 2+1, ...n+1, and so on, ad infinitum. In this way, these two simple progressions, or succession of natural numbers, become two, reciprocal, aspects of one space/time progression, fulfilling Minkowski's prediction that they must eventually be seen as one entity.

Nevertheless, that the dimensions of the two, inverse, aspects of this space/time progression must be inverse as well, seems to follow from the tetraktys, as explained in the essay. This leads to the question of units. How do we define the physical units of space and time? Do we use meters and seconds? Well, yes, but we know from physical equations, which predict physical phenomena very accurately, that the fundamental, or natural, divisions of these units cannot be simply powers of ten, as neat as that would be.

Physical equations are based on motion of mass, or conservation of mass/energy. Equations of the standard model's elementary particle interactions, for instance, depend on the constants of energy and motion, while equations of general relativity's gravity depend upon the constants of mass and motion. So, these three constants of mass, energy and motion are viewed as "universal" physical constants, which, as Max Planck first showed, can be combined to obtain a fundamental length, called the Planck length.

But this length is very, very small, and, consequently, the energy at this length, or the energy that would be required to probe this length, is far beyond anything man can imagine being able to generate, and even if he could, it appears that the act would only generate a black hole. Yet, as John Baez wrote in 2005:

"To be picturesque, we can say that if we have a black hole about the size of the Planck length, and we try to locate it to an accuracy equal to its radius, the Heisenberg uncertainty principle makes the momentum of the black hole so poorly known that there may be enough energy around to create another black hole of that size! I warn the reader to take this with a massive grain of salt, since there is no good theory of this sort of thing yet - much less any experimental evidence. But people have sharpened this sort of thought experiment and seen that things get awfully funny at the Planck length. By analogy with particle physics, one might expect processes involving virtual black holes to be very important at this length scale. Hawking and others have written interesting papers on reactions induced by virtual black holes... but I would not take these predictions too seriously yet."

It is this "awfully funny" theoretical situation at the Planck length that causes physicists to believe that space becomes emergent, and if space does, then, since time is connected to space as spacetime, this implies that time must be emergent as well. But how do you do physics without time? Carlo Rovelli and others, such as John Barbour, try to answer this question based on the Wheeler-DeWitt equation.

However, the approach that is the subject of my essay avoids the problem altogether by redefining the fundamental lengths of space and time, not based on mass, energy and motion, but rather based on motion and frequency. Of course, physics itself is based on motion and frequency, in the form of harmonic motion, but this motion is always the 1D motion of mass, which is the only motion recognized by physicists. With Planck's and Einstein's discoveries, it became possible to use these same principles of harmonic motion with energy and frequency, but it was necessary to quantize the energy in terms of angular momentum and the enigmatic concept of quantum spin, replacing the dimensions of the momentum of moving mass, with the dimensions of Planck's constant and frequency in the physical equations.

Once this was accomplished, in quantum mechanics, the door was opened that eventually led to the celebrated standard model of elementary particle interactions. Yet, again, this model requires the dimensions of mass, energy, and motion to work its wonders, and these have to be put into the model as parameters, causing Hawking to call it "ugly and ad hoc," in this respect, from the perspective of those seeking a fundamental theory of physics.

Fortunately, by redefining the nature of space and time, as we have done in my essay, as two, reciprocal, aspects of one entity, motion, we have eliminated the problem of a parameterized theory like the standard model, but we face the challenge of discovering how nothing but motion leads to the observed mass/energy and interactions of particles that are now not elementary, but emergent.

So, with this new approach, the question of how do we do physics without space and time becomes a question of how do we do physics with ONLY space and time. From what we've learned so far, the latter question appears much easier to answer, with all due respect to Carlo and John.

Oops, I'm sorry Julian. I don't know why I called you "John" in the comment above.

Since I've shared a preliminary version of my essay with some who wanted more exposition and less abstraction, the typical reaction has been "This is better than the one you submitted, why didn't you submit it instead?"

The answer is that it's hard to know what to cut out. The essay requirements for an accessible, but rigorous, treatment are difficult to fulfill, within the allotted size and space specs.

In the preliminary version (version 5!), I was within the 10-page limit, but a little over the 5,000-word limit. Three versions later, the final version was within both limits, but by then I had taken out so much background material that it made it harder for uninitiated readers to follow the logic of the paper.

Consequently, I've been persuaded to make the preliminary version more widely available, so here is the link:

http://www.lrcphysics.com/storage/documents/Mystic%20Dream%20Prelim.pdf

Let me know what you think. Did I blow it?

I think it's incredible! Very nicely done Doug.

Doug,

I agree with Jen. Well done indeed. However, I have some questions on the preliminary essay you posted above. I see that its title is different. It's called "The Trouble with Spacetime: The Rise of the Planck Length, The End of a System of Theory, and What Comes Next." Why did you change it, and what the heck is "a system of theory?"

BTW, you used the same term on page 1 of "A Mystic Dream of Four:"

"One of these new approaches reformulates the four-dimensional spacetime of general relativity theory (GR), into the four-dimensional space/time of a new system of theory, called the Reciprocal System of Physical Theory (RST), which leads to the development of a new quantum theory of motion, based on 3D vibrations, the vibrations of 3D balls, rather than the vibrations of 1D strings."

I never heard of a system of theory before. Please explain.

Thanks Jen and Larry,

I appreciate the kudos. Obviously the title of the earlier version of the essay is a play on the words of the title to Lee Smolin's book, where he refers to "The End of a Science." This he attributes to many in the string theory community, who are want to follow the lead of Steven Weinberg in embracing the "anthropic principle." Since string theory research has ended up with a "landscape" of a practically limitless set of possible string theories, depending upon how the Calabi-Yau manifold is used to compactify their extra dimensions, the chances of finding a theoretical string theory universe that predicts the observed universe have diminished significantly.

Hence, one may abandon the effort to find a theoretical universe altogether, and just subscribe to the idea that, like microbes in a Petri dish, we are only able to observe the universe because it happens to have the right conditions for our growth, but the existence of those conditions are just a matter of chance, they are not due to any set of identifiable initial conditions the orderly consequences of which inevitably lead to what we observe as the physical structure of the universe.

However, the message of my essay is not so harsh as that. It's not the end of a science, but the end of a system of physical theory that we are facing, and, even then, it's not really the end of that system, it's only the end of misapplying it that we are referring to.

What is meant by "a system of theory,' as opposed to just 'a theory," can best be understood starting from David Hestenes' description of Newton's program of research (see: http://tinyurl.com/3st2g7). Newton, as Hestenes explains, "...is rightly regarded as the founder of the science called mechanics," and "rightly deserves the title...[not only] because he integrated the insights of his predecessors into a comprehensive theory, [but because he also] inaugurated a program to refine and extend that theory...[T]herefore, [Newton's mechanics] is more than a scientific theory, it is a well defined program of research into the structure of the physical world."

As Hestenes goes on to explain very lucidly, the goal of Newton's program is to describe and explain all properties of physical objects, in terms of "a few kinds of interactions among a few kinds of particles," but the "great power of [the program] is achieved by formulating [those] generalities...in specific mathematical terms." The key mathematical terms he refers to, of course, are the position of a particle over time: He writes: "To express the continuous existence of the [moving] particle in some interval of time, the function x(t) must be a continuous function of the variable t in that interval. When specified for all times in an interval, the function x(t) describes a motion of the particle."

Thus, Newton's program of research was a "system of theory" based on this very important definition of motion. As Hestenes goes on to explain, "The central hypothesis of [the system] is that variations in the motion of a particle are completely determined by its interactions with other particles." These interactions are the f=ma interactions, from Newton's second law of motion, which leads to the characterization of Newton's system of theory as one that rests on the law that asserts that "a definite differential equation [determines] the motion of a particle, only when the force f is expressed as a specific function of x(t) and its derivatives." This is still the system of theory, even after the limits of the meaning of the terms position and momentum were realized, with the advent of quantum mechanics. Even though force is now understood more in terms of particle exchange, this doesn't alter the fact that the "dictum" of Newton's system of theory, has always been understood to be, "focus on the forces," as Hestenes puts it.

Now, Carlo Rovelli argues in his essay that it is possible to formulate physics in a different manner, that doesn't necessarily have to rely on the function x(t), which I see as tantamount to defending a new system of theory. His is a new system, which formulates particle interactions on a basis that changes the central role of time, t, in Newton's system, by placing it on the same level as x.

However, the Reciprocal System of Physical Theory (RST), is a new system of theory that alters the definition of motion itself, in that it also places t on the same level as x, but in a different manner: It eliminates x altogether, in the sense that the position x of a particle is not necessary to define motion, as it is in Newton's system, but it defines motion from the observed scalar progression of space and time itself. Thus, the new system separates the familiar vectorial motion of objects from location to location, from an inherent scalar motion that constitutes the particle itself.

In the application of the new system, described in my essay, the 1D function, x(t), of particle motion, is replaced by a 3D function, v(t), of pseudoscalar motion, and it then becomes possible to return force to its original definition, as a property of motion, since the motions giving rise to the forces of particle interaction can now be identified in the new system, and there is no need to resort to an ill-advised concept of autonomous forces, as required under the old system, where the underlying motions of the forces, defined by the inadequate definition, x(t), cannot be identified.

Certainly, there is much, much, more that has to be said on such a fundamental subject, but I hope this helps.

Doug

Ahhh.....the votes make sense now.....

[link:forum.rstheory.com/viewtopic.php?t=1235&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=15&sid=ff9eec37000b10bb24bc0565db97166a][long link][/link]

"Accordingly, I've now entered the contest by submitting a paper entitled "A Mystic Dream of Four," which can be read on the FQXI site:

http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/267

I hope there will be other papers submitted from the RS community. I would like to be able to cast my vote for one.

Doug

--

"Although there's a long ways to go yet in the FQXI contest, I'm happy to report that, so far, out of about thirty papers, "A Mystic Dream of Four," is currently in the number two spot in restricted voting, and in the number five spot in the public voting.

This will no doubt change before the end of the contest, and the essay could end up near the bottom, when all is said and done, but for right now, at least, it's great to see an RST-based paper obtaining such a prominent position in this world-wide showcase.

At the moment, the only essay ahead of it in the restricted voting (the vote that counts for cash awards) is "Forget time," by Carlo Rovelli, a famous physicist that has published many papers, including papers with Lee Smolin and Abhay Ashtekar, such as:

Carlo Rovelli, Lee Smolin Spin Networks and Quantum Gravity 1995-11-15

Carlo Rovelli, Lee Smolin Discreteness of area and volume in quantum gravity 1995-05-29

Carlo Rovelli, Lee Smolin The physical hamiltonian in nonperturbative quantum gravity 1994-01-24

Abhay Ashtekar, Carlo Rovelli, Lee Smolin Weaving a classical geometry with quantum threads 1992-07-13

Abhay Ashtekar, Carlo Rovelli, Lee Smolin Gravitons and Loops 1991-09-15

Abhay Ashtekar, Carlo Rovelli, Lee Smolin Self Duality and Quantization 1991-06-01

and many more. These three guys are the most prominent physicists at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, up North in Robin's part of the world, and Carlo's colleague, Smolin, is a member of FQXI's Scientific Advisory Board.

Interesting to think some of these guys might at least read the paper. In the meantime, because so many said that, while they voted for my paper, they didn't understand it, I posted an earlier version of it in the discussion forum that is less abstract and more expository:

http://www.lrcphysics.com/storage/documents/Mystic%20Dream%20Prelim.pdf

Some readers of this earlier version of the paper have wondered why I didn't submit it instead of the later version, and maybe I should have, who knows.

Regards,

Doug

Hi Andreas,

If your conclusion is that the merits of the essay are reduced by my attempt to encourage members of ISUS with a report of the success it has enjoyed to this point, I think you are quite mistaken in this respect.

If you are insinuating that the votes it's received are because of that encouragement, you are really mislead. Not only were most of the public votes that have been cast for it, already cast in its favor at that point, but also not many ISUS members would be inclined to support it in any event. Let me explain why.

The purpose and objective of ISUS, which has been around for more than forty years, is to promote the works of Larson. However, for the last few years, I have been developing an RST-based theory that departs from Larson's own application of the system, maintaining that it's his system of physical theory that is his greatest contribution, not necessarily his subsequent development of theory using it.

As previously explained in the posts above, it's Larson's recognition of the relation of space and time as two, reciprocal, aspects of motion, and the nature of the symmetry of space and time, that constitutes a new system of theory, because it is not based on the same 1D function, x(t), as is Newton's system of theory.

The spatial position, x, of an object, which does not change in Newton's system, is constantly changing in Larson's system. This constant change is not with reference to the set of locations satisfying the postulates of geometry, which we normally think of when we think of space, but rather it is a change of the space of the 3D progression, which is the space aspect of the object's inherent motion, the scalar motion that constitutes the object and gives it its properties of mass, charge, spin, etc, in the system.

The reference for this motion, its physical datum, is the unit motion, c. In Larson's theoretical development, this motion consists first of a discrete linear vibration, then rotations of the vibration, and in the case of the atomic elements, two such rotational systems are combined. This leads, in a remarkable way, to the periodic table of elements, based on a 4n^2 relationship of discrete scalar motion combinations (see: http://www.lrcphysics.com/wheel).

However, Larson was never able to calculate the atomic spectra, other than hydrogen, from these combinations of discrete scalar motion, even though he was able to calculate the inter-atomic distances in molecular substances, using closed form equations. Consequently, filling this so-called "lacuna" in Larson's theoretical development has been the challenge facing ISUS members ever since.

My efforts to meet this challenge have resulted in the concepts described in my essay, which, as you can readily discern by reading it, depart substantially from Larson's approach. The most surprising development to come from it are the regular combinations of discrete units of scalar motion that form the entities of the standard model, as demonstrated by the toy model of the first generation, and the subsequent formation of the elements of the periodic table, illustrated in the essay.

However, let me assure you that many members of ISUS are skeptical of these results, and are far from convinced that this is the way to go. Therefore, you will undoubtedly perceive that my attempt to encourage them with an update of the essay's progress in the contest was just that, and not an attempt to stuff the ballot box. Had this not been the situation, the essay would have had many more than 15 public votes by now.

Cheers,

Doug

The interesting conversation is going on in Carlo's forum. The point of his essay is "that dynamics can be expressed as correlations between variables, and does not NEED a time to be specified," while it's the flow of time (Hamilton's "order in progression") that is emergent. Evidently, some commentators have construed this to mean that he intends to replace dynamics with the thermal time hypothesis.

But Carlo explains: "The thermal time is only the one needed to make sense of our sense of flowing time, it is not a time needed to compute how a simple physical system behaves. The last can be expressed in terms of correlations between a variable and a clock hand, without having to say which one is the time variable. Therefore the question about the flow of time defined by bodies at different temperature is a question about thermodynamics out of equilibrium. Unfortunately, like much of today's physics, I have not much to say on this. In any case, I am aware that the thermal time hypothesis is highly speculative. I would like the readers to keep it separate from the main idea defended in the essay, which is that mechanics can be formulated without having to say which variable is the time variable."

In his response to this statement, John Merryman writes: "My point is that time and temperature are both descriptions of motion. Temperature is the level of activity against a given scale. Time is the rate of change relative to a given reference frame, or point. If you change the level of activity, you affect the rate of change. The candle burns faster if it is hotter. As a person in space ages slower than a person in a stronger and more active gravity field. So there is the element of time in temperature and the element of temperature in time."

This is interesting from several points of view. First, the "motion" of temperature is scalar, just as John states. Like the prices of the stock market, temperature "moves" "up" or "down" relative to a given point. Its relative increase, or decrease, can be described as motion, but the motion is scalar; that is, it has no direction in space. Likewise, time is measured as a scalar change, but just as the motion of an object from location to location cannot be described without a change of time, so too the scalar change of temperature cannot be measured without a change of time.

In other words, there can be no motion, vectorial or scalar, without a change in time. Thus, to assert that "time and temperature are both descriptions of motion," as John does is not accurate. Motion, by definition, requires two, reciprocal, changes of scalar quantity. Time is one of these changing scalars, while the other may be distance, prices, or temperature.

In the case of Rovelli's timeless point of view, the motion of a clock is still a change of two, reciprocal, positions; that is, the hands move in one direction, while the face moves in the opposite direction, but, as he writes, "General relativity describes the relative evolution [i.e. relative change] of observable quantities, not the evolution of quantities as functions of a preferred one. To put it pictorially: with general relativity we have understood that the Newtonian "big clock" ticking away the 'true universal time' is not there."

This leads to the conclusion that evolving the wave equation in time, in a quantum theory of gravity, will not make sense; Indeed, it [would be] "quite unnatural in a general relativistic context," because, in this context, there is no way to determine which variable is the evolving variable, which variable is the preferred choice to be the independent variable that evolves the equation. It is in this sense that he urges us to "forget time" in our quantum gravity theory.

To emphasize his point, Carlo analyzes the moving hands of the clock to show that it's only an arbitrary choice of reference points, even in non-relativistic frames, that provides us with a measure of the reciprocal changes (like the pendulum and pulse example, which of the two "clocks" is the clock measuring time?)

What's interesting about this is how it doesn't contradict Hamilton's concept of "order in progression," which he proposed as an intuitive basis for algebra, to put it on an equal footing with geometry, which is grounded in the scientific intuition of space. That is, we can observe the properties of space. We can see that it's limited to three dimensions, that each dimension has two, opposed directions, and that its magnitudes, in certain cases, are incommensurable.

But this is not so with algebra, a fact that troubled Hamilton immensely (see my preliminary essay for more on this:

http://www.lrcphysics.com/storage/documents/Mystic%20Dream%20Prelim.pdf).

But given that one moment of time is either equal to, earlier than, or later than, another moment (the point John is trying to make in his discussion with Carlo, although I haven't quoted the relevant text of the discussion here,) it's possible to use this order in progression to put algebra on an equal, scientific, basis with geometry, as Hamilton was able to show for two dimensions, at least.

What Carlo has done is to show that you can't measure the order in just one of the two progressions; that is, since space and time are reciprocal aspects of the same thing, like two sides of the same coin, we cannot measure one without the other. It takes two, reciprocal, progressions to measure distance, and it takes two, reciprocal, progressions to measure time. Another way to say the same thing is that space cannot be measured without motion, just as time cannot. Space does not exist without time, anymore than time exists without space, because, again, they are two, reciprocal, aspects of one thing, motion.

We can easily prove that space, defined by a set of points, satisfying the postulates of geometry, is only a history of past, or contemplated, motion. The distance between the points can either be the result of an object's motion that occupies the locations at different times, or it can be the contemplated distance between calculated points. The fact that either of the two reciprocal variables entering into the calculation can be selected as the independent variable is not, however, the important point. The important point is that ONE of them must be selected.

In the space/time progression of my paper, the two, reciprocal, progressions are distinguished by their physical dimensions. Thus, time may be the zero-dimensional aspect, and space the nonzero-dimensional aspect, or vice versa. It makes, no difference, except in one you get a progressing spatial pseudoscalar, and in the other you get a progressing temporal pseudoscalar. With one, the motion creates expanding space coordinates, while with the other, expanding time coordinates. In each case, a time (space) s can be measured along their worldlines, which is not the time t of x(t).

Hence, I agree with Carlo, we can forget which variable we must designate as the "time" variable in quantum gravity, but the variable we choose must be zero-dimensional.

Regards,

Doug

I can tell that you are an intelligent, committed and driven person and this makes me feel like a bastard for writing arguments against you:

1)

In your essay you write, "...recognition that all forces are properties of motion." I suppose you could say force is a property of motion but that property is the rate of change in motion. This has been summarized by Newton in his second law as F = m * dV/dt.

2)

From what I am able to mathematically extract from the Jargon of your idea and that of RS theory (http://rstheory.org/) is the pivotal argument is centered around the kinematical equation X(t) = V*t. Your reciprocity argument hinges on this equation being rewritten as X(t) / t = V and t / X(t) = 1 / V. I should point out that all three of these equation are identical but you use X(t) / t and t / X(t) as if they represented distinct physical properties.

3)

Your derived values of discrete space and time as:

tn = 1.5198 x 10-16 seconds

sn = 4.5563 x 10-6 cm

are experimentally falsified. The shortest measured interval of time, that I am currently aware of, is the attosecond, 10^-18 s. Your space interval is in the nanometer range while atoms are in the angstrom range,

10^-10 M. Your large space interval would outright prohibit the existence of subatomic particles.

I think a study of the twin paradox and its resolution might persuade you against a classical theory based solely on motion. Although I disagree with your arguments I would still like to encourage you to keep an interest in physics.

Hi Brian,

Thanks for your comments and your concern. I know it must sound awfully naïve to claim that force is a property of motion, at this late stage of physical science, when for centuries the prevailing attitude of the physics community has regarded force as an autonomous entity, but please bear with me, while I try to explain.

First, the fact is that, as you correctly point out, force is defined as a product of mass and acceleration, but it's important to recognize that the reason for this is because when a quantity of units of moving mass, momentum (or quantity of motion) is accelerated, the time rate of change in the velocity of that quantity, the acceleration, is an acceleration of each unit of mass on an individual unit basis, and we label the total, i.e. the product of the acceleration and all the mass units collectively, with the word "force."

The crucial point is that the label "force" is simply used to refer to the time rate of change in the quantity of motion, or in the momentum, of the set of mass units in the equation. Clearly, the label cannot be properly treated as an autonomous entity apart from motion, by definition. Therefore, every fundamental force must be the label of a fundamental motion, even if that motion appears impossible to identify.

Next, you conclude that I'm making a false distinction between identical physical properties. You wrote: "...the pivotal argument is centered around the kinematical equation X(t) = V*t. Your reciprocity argument hinges on this equation being rewritten as X(t) / t = V and t / X(t) = 1 / V. I should point out that all three of these equation are identical but you use X(t) / t and t / X(t) as if they represented distinct physical properties."

I don't know how you came to the conclusion that this equation you have written, as the pivotal "reciprocity argument," does not represent distinct physical properties. The pivotal reciprocity argument is that the true nature of time is found in its reciprocal relation to space, in the equation of motion. Hence, if we write X(t) = V*t = (s/t)*t = s, so that space, s, is a function of time, then rewriting it as X(t)/t = s/t and t/X(t) = t/s = 1/(s/t) clearly does represent distinct physical properties, lest we maintain that the dimensions of velocity, s/t, cannot be distinguished from the dimensions of energy, t/s, something we obviously don't want to do.

Next, you argue that deriving the natural units of space and time, by combining the constants c and Ry, as I have done, following Larson, is ruled out by empirical evidence. However, the claim is not that smaller intervals of space and time cannot be measured, but it is that these intervals are the intervals that enter into the fundamental physical equations such as E = mc^2 and E = hnu.

I must concede that the proof of this claim is yet to be provided. Certainly, it's the subject of ongoing investigation. In his work, Larson was able to obtain remarkable results with it, including the interatomic distances of many substances, and the clarification of many basic properties of matter (see Volume II of The Structure of the Physical Universe.)

However, his success was due to something he called the "inter-regional ratio," which was an empirically derived value that he explained, theoretically, as due to the statistical relationship between combinations of X(t) / t and t / X(t) units of motion, to put it in terms of your equation above.

This ratio, and the fact that space and time are reciprocals, leading to a concept of "equivalent space," together with the fact that the compounding of X(t) / t and t / X(t) units of motion, which constitute the theoretical atoms, actually result in net time structures, accounts for the apparent discrepancies in atomic and particle radii quite convincingly.

Finally, in applying the distinction between classical and relativistic theories, which clearly separates Newtonian mechanics in the limit of small potential and low velocity, from relativistic mechanics, to RST-based theories, you are mistakenly comparing apples and oranges. This distinction has to do with the physics of the one-dimensional velocities of the vector motions of mass, and is not properly applied to the n-dimensional scalar motion of RST-based theory, which takes a more fundamental position.

The best way to understand the regime of RST-based physics is to consider the dilemma of the charged point particle and its enigma, invoking Poincaré stresses, and the spectre of singularities, which string theory addresses so admirably.

Ok, I hope I have responded adequately to your criticisms, Brian. Please don't hesitate to continue the challenge. I really do appreciate your willingness to honestly engage in the discussion.

Doug,

I thought I should expand on my view a little;

"First, the "motion" of temperature is scalar, just as John states. Like the prices of the stock market, temperature "moves" "up" or "down" relative to a given point. Its relative increase, or decrease, can be described as motion, but the motion is scalar; that is, it has no direction in space. Likewise, time is measured as a scalar change, but just as the motion of an object from location to location cannot be described without a change of time, so too the scalar change of temperature cannot be measured without a change of time.

In other words, there can be no motion, vectorial or scalar, without a change in time. Thus, to assert that "time and temperature are both descriptions of motion," as John does is not accurate. Motion, by definition, requires two, reciprocal, changes of scalar quantity. Time is one of these changing scalars, while the other may be distance, prices, or temperature.

In the case of Rovelli's timeless point of view, the motion of a clock is still a change of two, reciprocal, positions; that is, the hands move in one direction, while the face moves in the opposite direction, but, as he writes, "General relativity describes the relative evolution [i.e. relative change] of observable quantities, not the evolution of quantities as functions of a preferred one. To put it pictorially: with general relativity we have understood that the Newtonian "big clock" ticking away the 'true universal time' is not there." "

Temperature is an average of a quantity of motion, not a specific motion. Time, on the other hand, is the duration of a specified process. The difference is that if the level of activity remains stable, temperature does not change. It can be defined as a specific point. On the other hand, time cannot be confined to a specific point, as that would imply the cessation of this particular motion. Just as the temperature of absolute zero would be the cessation of all motion. Think if you were to specify the exact location of the molecules of water which manifest the temperature; If they had an exact location, than they wouldn't have motion, the water would freeze and the temperature would drop. If you were then to specify the exact location of the sub-atomic particles of this ice, than it would effectively vanish, as there would be no relationship between what are nearly dimensionless points and than you would have a temperature of absolute zero. (In fact, there seems to be no base layer of substance, only emergent effects of more fundamental layers of motion. What are those 'dimensions' curled up inside strings, but the inner surfaces of smaller vortexes?) Any specified motion relative to its context creates the hands and face of its own clock and there is no 'true universal time.' So while temperature as an average can remain stable, time as a measure of specific motion cannot be defined as a exact point.

The problem with describing time as a dimension is that it implies specific points on a line, but if you describe time as a point, it is meaningless. Part of the problem has to do with describing space as three dimensional. Three dimensions are the coordinate system of the center point. The problem with this coordinate description of space is that the default state is assumed to be that dimensionless center point, thus if there is no energy and structure in space, it would shrink to this absolute zero point. While the point on a line between positive and negative numbers is zero, that doesn't mean zero is a point, but rather it is the absence of any numbers, or points. The real absolute for geometry is the blank sheet of paper, not the point at the center of it. The absolute is the vacuum. This means that energy and geometry define space, rather than create it, because there could well be any number of center points.

Also, space can be defined as volume as well as the distance implied by dimensionality. The same logic used to say time is the fourth dimension of space could be used to say that temperature is an additional parameter of volume, as they both relate properties of energy. Just as it takes a specific amount of time for light to travel a specific distance, therefore they are interchangeable, regulating the volume of a specific amount of energy causes its temperature to change accordingly. An useful example is the CMBR, which is described as decreasing in temperature as the volume of the universe expands.

Nature is a fluctuating vacuum, with distance and volume as description of the vacuum and time and temperature as description of the fluctuation. So space is the basis of motion, while time is a consequence of it.

Regards, John

sp: vortices

Larson has several other claims for instance his book Beyond Space and Time which describes the biological realm, and the unexplored third sector, referred to as the Metaphysical, or Ethical sector.

FQXI has a handful of members that include important theorists: Alan Guth, Dieter Zeh, Carlo Rovelli, Lee Smolin, John Barrow and Brian Greene. Additionally high profile Nobel laureates, Frank Wilczek and Steven Weinberg are members. Some of these theorists may be remembered in the same regard as a Newton or Einstein. If your essay were to win a juried prize that would make you a member of FQXI giving Larson, and his more exotic ideas, powerful street credit. Your prose and compassion for your idea may warrant a community prize but I have focused on your mathematics because an expert jury would not be fooled.

I plan on submitting an essay that I have put a lot of work into and someone may punch it full of holes, but all is not lost. In the process of bringing it to fruition I learned a great deal more about the universe and being wrong can be the most humbling and character building of experiences.

This will be my last post so I would like to give you some parting advice. Your sole focus on Larson is creating group think and destroying your creativity. Also put down the physics books written for a general audience and study the textbooks. If you stay with RS theory without ever mastering the fundamentals of physics you stay frustrated. Your prose is there now we just need to get you up to speed on mathematical proofs!

Hi John,

Thanks for expanding on your ideas. In my case, however, I'm forced by the postulates of the RST to follow their logical consequences. The first postulate is:

The physical universe is composed entirely of one component, motion, existing in three dimensions, in discrete units, and with two reciprocal aspects, space and time.

The first challenge is to understand what this postulate means. The first question most people ask upon encountering it is "The motion of what?" The traditional cosmological premise was that space is a pre-existing container of matter. However, as we now know, with the advent of Einstein's general relativity theory (GR), Lemaître proposed what became known as the Big Bang theory (BB) of cosmology, which he called his "hypothesis of the primeval atom" that posits that the universe is composed of space, time, and matter, but with a beginning, a starting point characterized as the beginning of motion, the outward motion of matter, but not the motion of matter into a pre-existing container of space over time, but rather the motion of matter together with the motion, as expansion, of space and time, as well.

As an application of GR, the BB arises from the spherically symmetric dust solution of Einstein's field equations. Thus, like the standard model (SM) of particles physics, the BB model of cosmology has free parameters. Of these, two are the cosmic time coordinate t and the comoving radial coordinate r, which Dr. E uses as the basis for his moving dimensions theory (MDT). We can say without contradiction that, in contrast to the time and space of the steady state theory cosmology, which it replaced, the time and space of BB cosmology expands, or increases, and it increases from a theroretical beginning point in the past.

In contrast to BB cosmology, then, cosmology based on the first fundamental RST postulate has nothing to say about a beginning, or an endlng, and upon reflection we can see that this is because it posits only the expansion of space and time, defined as motion, leaving out Lemaître's "hypothesis of the primeval atom" of matter. Instead, it posits that matter is composed of discrete, or quantum, units of space and time.

But how on earth is it possible to go from the continuum of a uniform expansion of space and time (as a dustless solution to Einstein's field equations we might say) to the units of a discretium of space and time? This question plaqued Einstein, who wrote to his friend Walter Dällenbach:

"The problem seems to me [to be] how one can formulate statements about a discontinuum without calling upon a continuum (space-time) as an aid; the latter should be banned from the theory as a supplementary construction, not justified by the essence of the problem, [a construction] which corresponds to nothing "real." But we still lack the mathematical structure unfortunately. How much have I already plagued myself in this way."

The solution to this problem is described in my essay. We can observe the expansion of time; We can observe the expansion of space, and we can observe that the relation of the two, as the reciprocal aspects of motion, is constant, the constant c. In light of the postulate, then, this leads us inexorably to the observation that, since we have learned that continuous waves and discrete particles are dual aspects of the same phenomena, the concept of vibration is key to the concept of quantization, which then leads us to look for a constant of vibration that might correspond to the constant of uniform motion.

The Rydberg constant may not be the correct one, but it's a likely one to start with. You might say it's a candidate for the "pulse" of the universe, with which we can measure the periodicity of the "swinging chandeliers" we see all around us, if you know what I mean.

Brian wrote:

"Your prose is there now we just need to get you up to speed on mathematical proofs!"

Sounds good to me Brian!

Doug,

To a certain extent we arrive at somewhat similar conclusions from vastly different foundations, in that I've come to doubt the central premise of an expanding universe.

I certainly didn't set out to disagree with the cosmological standard model when I first tried to make sense of it, but one particular observation has led me to where I am now. It is that, "Omega=1."

If, as tests by COBE and WMAP would seem to prove, the rate expansion of space is evenly balanced by gravitational contraction, Lemaitre's Big Bang theory doesn't make sense. If the expansion of intergalactic space is offset by the contraction of gravity, then there is no overall expansion, because these gravitational wells are effectively consuming the expanding space. When this first occurred to me, it seemed some sort of cycle would better explain the situation, where the mass falling inward, expands back out as energy, until it cools and starts to collapse again. This would logically explain why these opposing effects are in overall balance.

It seems quite likely that the cosmic redshift is evidence of Einstein's cosmological constant, which was originally proposed to balance the universe and prevent gravity from causing it to collapse. So I find it interesting that the effect attributed to dark energy has been found to fit the cosmological constant. If space, or the path light travels across it, expands at a constant rate, this would cause redshift to compound, so that the further light travels, the greater the multiplier effect and so the faster the source appears to recede, until it appears to be traveling away from us at the speed of light. Obviously this creates a horizon line over which visible light will not pass, though black body radiation would.

The original understanding of galaxies simply flying away from each other was modified to say that space itself has expanded from an initial point because it would otherwise appear that we are at the center of the universe, given that other, non local galaxies are redshifted so that they all appear to be moving directly away from us. It seems to me the flaw in this logic is that the speed of light should have to increase accordingly, since it is our constant measure of space, but this doesn't make sense. If two galaxies are x lightyears apart and the universe doubles in size, are they 2x lightyears apart? If so, that's not expanding space, but an increasing distance in stable space. If they still appear x lightyears apart, as the speed of light increases along with the expansion, by what measure are we saying the universe is expanding, since no matter how big it gets, everything still appears the same distance apart?

The question of what might cause light to redshift and thus our perception of space to expand is an open question. For one thing, I think that light must effectively travel as waves and it is only when it contacts some sufficiently opposing force that if effectively "condenses" out as a quanta of light, or photon. For one thing, this would explain why light remains so focused when it travels over billions of light years. If it were traveling as discrete particles it would seem the potential for scattering would be much greater and there would be enough instances of diffused light to measure this. It might explain redshift as well. The idea of "tired light" was dismissed for the very reason that light was so clear and if anything had interfered with the photons to slow them, the scattering would be apparent, but if light travels as a wave, the further it expands, the more area it has to cover and this increase in volume would reduce the energy of a wave, but not its focus, as that would quantize out as an individual photon.

I could offer some more points on this, if I go through my brain some more, but either you see my position or not, so I'll expand the context.

You propose something similar to Dr. E's theory of the expanding fourth dimension. As I pointed out to him, if, as he seems to suggest, this expanding wave is light, or represents light, than according to Einstein, light is the constant and gravity is actually shrinking the three dimensional geometric space, relative to this standing wave.

What if, as seems likely, there is both expansion of light and contraction of gravitational structure. Then add to that my observation of a cycle balancing these two sides out. So what you have is light/energy expanding out as continuous waves from all directions, in all directions, so that the space defined by these waves is effectively expanding. They then either reach a point where they connect with/ground out on something else, much like a lightning bolt quantizes its energy to a single connection point. Or they travel so far that they fall off the spectrum of visible light and end up as a sea of black body radiation, which would have a clear demarcation temperature of 2.7k, because that is the "dew point/phase transition" above which it isn't stable and starts to condense out as interstellar gases. These than start to collapse back down and start the gravitational process all over again. This gravitational collapse eventually reaches the point where it heats back up and ignites, radiating the energy back out as waves. So you have both an expanding continuum and a collapsing discontinuum.

Since, as I argued in my own entry, time is energy going past to future, while the information and structure are the effect of events which go from being in the future to being in the past, than these two sides of the cycle are effectively the two directions of time. As the energy goes from one event to the next, all this discontinuous structure amounts to information which is first in the future, be it our individual lives, or those of stars and galaxies, then ends up in the past. Even Big Bang theory posits the entire universe as a unit which is first in the future, then is present, then is past, as its internal narrative goes from beginning to end.

I realize this is all speculation and given personal experience, is for nought, since astrophysics dismisses any theory not founded on the Big Bang model. This is actually more a problem for them than me though, as I am not a scientist, only someone motivated by curiosity. Even the leading physicists admit physics has been spinning its wheels for a generation. The result has been that in an age when all the sciences have been advancing at warp speed, the next generation of visionaries have tended to go to those sciences which are making the most advances, because there is the ability to question and re-examine anything and everything, while physics has been taken over by the disciplinarians who can most closely hew to the central tenets that have been laid down, with the hope of someday reaching the top of the pile and adding a few more steps. The problem is they lack the vision to realize every step they have taken was originally wild speculation in its day and out of that coalesced a reasonably workable model, but one which any number of cracks might still run through the foundations and only be plastered over in time. Since only those who make it to the top of this ladder are allowed the prerogative of questioning it, it isn't questioned, as those at the top of the ladder are the ones most dependent on it. They speculate about such things as multiple universes to explain this one and "block time" rising out of the fact that narrative is modeled as a dimension, while those of us on the outside offering ideas are the cranks.

Regards, John

John,

I understand what you are saying, but on the other hand professional physicists are continuously deluged by the half-baked ideas of the public, and they understandably become inured to this kind of thing. Yet, my hope is similar to Lee Smolin's, which is that one of us non-professionals could help find the mountain in the landscape of possibilities that the professionals would then be able to scale. Did you happen to catch the Science Friday show with Brian Green and Lee Smolin? If you read my preliminary essay, you will find part of my original narrative on the show in there, but I'll repeat it here in its entirety, for the first time, just for you:

Begin narrative:

After discussing Smolin et al's criticism of string theory's failure to predict new physical phenomena, and the effective suppression of new ideas due to its thorough domination of academia, they turned to discussing the physics crisis itself.

As Green explained how tests of the consistency of string theory calculations, and comparisons with the established concepts of physics, show that the "theory comes through with flying colors every step of the way and keeps us thinking that things are at least headed in the right direction," Flatow turned to Smolin and asked, "Well, Lee, what would be wrong with that, if things are working like that?"

Smolin's answer was very telling, and it's well known in the community: In spite of these favorable things that one can say about string theory, there are some very important things that "it doesn't come close to doing," asserted Smolin. Then he hit the nail squarely on the head:

"If you really put quantum mechanics together with the description of space, then we know, from general considerations, that the notion of space should disappear. Just like the notion of the trajectory of a particle disappears in quantum mechanics, ...the same thing should happen to space and the geometry of space."

"So far, string theory doesn't address this very directly," Smolin said, "while other approaches do," referring, of course, to his own continuum-based theory of quantum gravity, called loop quantum gravity (LQG), but before he could explain this further, Flatow took a call from a listener who suggested that "thinking outside the box," is what's required, which momentarily distracted the conversation away from the idea that "the notion of space should disappear," in the union of quantum mechanics and the description of space (the spacetime of relativity theory).

Smolin replied to the listener's comment, stating that, while he agrees with her, he definitely feels that it has to be the trained minds of professional physicists that do the "out of the box" thinking, who "go back in the decision tree," looking for new answers to foundational questions, because only they are prepared to readily scale the true mountain of knowledge, once the location of the highest peak in the landscape is discovered. Whereupon Flatow interjected with the obvious conclusion, in the form of a penetrating question:

"Are we at a point now, where you just have to sit and scratch your head and think, "We need some revolution, don't we?" I mean, we need a revolution in physics; maybe, we need a new physics!"

However, Smolin's reply to this conclusion reveals just how difficult it is for the minds of professionals, trained from the start in what Thomas Kuhn termed "normal science," to think "outside of the box." Instead of agreeing with Flatow's conclusion that a "new physics" is required, he demurred. "Nothing can happen without experiments," he asserted laconically, deftly inferring a different meaning of the phrase "new physics," which is a phrase that today is commonly used to refer to new experimental anomalies, not a new foundation for theoretical physics, something that is nearly inconceivable to the professional physicist. Yet, the truth is, the trouble with physics is not due to a lack of available, inexplicable, empirical data, but to the fact that there is no satisfactory explanation of the existing data from many, many experiments, including the anomalous results behind the so-called dark energy and dark matter enigmas, and the famous Yang-Mills mass-gap problem, to name just a few.

Clearly, however, Smolin revealed his hand with his comment: While he's certainly dismayed with the emphasis on string theory research, which seeks to unify the discrete with the continuous through modification of the current discrete paradigm, with which the string theorists are most familiar, Smolin and company prefer to approach the problem from within the context of the current continuous paradigm, with which they are most familiar.

Smolin's argument is not that a new foundation for theoretical physics is required, but that a shift in academic research emphasis is required, from the "let's modify the existing discrete theory" to solve the problem (string theory), to the "let's modify the existing continuous theory" to solve the problem (loop quantum gravity). The pressing need, from Smolin's point of view, is to complete the "unfinished revolution," which Planck and Einstein started, by exploiting Einstein's concept of the continuum, in order to unite the disparate theories, instead of modifying Einstein's concept of the quantum, in order to unite them.

Yet, the most logical conclusion that naturally occurs to the non-professional, didn't escape Flatow: "We need a revolution in physics; maybe, we need a new physics!" he had interjected, implying the need for a completely new foundation for theoretical physics, which doesn't require the reconciliation of two, incompatible, theoretical concepts of space and time, one static and fixed, the other dynamic and changing, but finds a new concept of space and time that works as nature works; that is, a new concept that works as the dual properties of one component, where the discrete and continuous realities are simply two aspects of the same thing.

Truly, as unpalatable, as unlikely, and as inconceivable, as the prospect is to the many of the minds of today's practitioners of "normal science," the possibility that a totally new solution exists that would revolutionize existing discrete and continuous concepts, and that would explain the dual quantum and continuum nature of reality, as two aspects of the same entity, has to be regarded as a legitimate alternative that needs to be seriously considered, though it may seem iconoclastic to today's scientists.

Evidently, as the NPR interview continued, since Smolin had dismissed the possibility of a "new [theoretical] physics," which he had suggested, Flatow turned to Green to get his comments, and Green seemed more willing to admit that something truly revolutionary in physical concepts is needed in our conception of space and time:

"I full well believe that we will, when we do complete this revolution that Lee is referring to, have a completely different view of the universe. I totally agree with Lee, that everything we know points to space and time not even being fundamental entities...We think that space and time...rely upon more fundamental ideas...What those fundamental entities are...that make up space and time, we don't know yet, ...but, when we get there, I think that we will learn that space and time are not what we thought they are. They are going to morph into something completely unfamiliar, and we'll find that, in certain circumstances, space and time appear in the way we humans interpret those concepts, but fundamentally the universe is not built out of these familiar notions of space and time that we experience."

Flatow stumbled a little, trying to get his head around an idea of what this might mean in terms of changes to existing concepts, which prompted Green to add:

"It would change the very notion of reality...We all think about reality existing in a region of space and taking place through some duration of time, but we've learned that those basic ideas of the arena of space and the duration of time are not concepts that even apply, in certain realms, and if the notions of space and time evaporate, then our whole conception of reality, the whole container of reality will have evaporated, and we'll have to learn to think about physics and the universe completely differently."

End of narrative

Of course, I believe that this new notion of reality is that everything consists of nothing but motion, a reciprocal relationship of space and time. However, it took me two months of full-time effort to simply write a ten-page essay in 5000 words on it, because there is so much to say that it's easy to get off track, when trying to capture it succinctly.

Many of the things you mention are interesting, and I would love to discuss them with you sometime, but the challenge I face right now is to try to convince Green, Smolin and company, to take a serious look at this mountain that I'm writing about. I think it's worth scaling, but he's right - you and I are not prepared to do it. We can only try to get their attention. Sometimes I have wished that Steven Weinberg were my uncle. LOL!!

Doug,

I admire you your determination. In my own effort to make, what seems to me, a few very obvious points, some of which I've gone over here, it is like wandering through Alice's wonderland. I try making what seem simple observations, like events going from being in the future to being in the past constitutes an opposing direction of time and you would think something so basic would be well covered and any first year physics student could point out how its already been incorporated, but it's like I've happened upon some tribal sect and their mysterious rituals. If they are not trying to explain some version of block time and everything exists in some meta-dimension, than they will try denying it outright, or say,"it's not in the equations...." For crying out loud, tomorrow becoming yesterday is not in the equations!!!!!

So I admit I really haven't fully grasped all of what's involved with QM and generally have a basic understanding of relativity, but I really do get the impression they really are smoking something. Even their own theories and tests show the expansion of space is balanced by the contraction of gravity, yet pointing out this cancels out an expanding universe just doesn't register. I thought when the Hubble telescope went up, it would find evidence of processes older then could be explained within the timeframe of Big Bang theory and there were galaxy formations at the edge of the visible universe which were lager then could be explained, light spectrums showing mature later generation stars out on the edge, even stars in our own galaxy that were just about as old as the entire universe, yet they hardly blinked. I guess if you can swallow inflation theory, the rest is easy.

Not to mention asking how space expands from a point, when the speed of light remains relatively stable. They just don't have responses.

So you can see that now they are talking multiple universes to explain this one, many worlds growing out of every quantum fluctuation, etc., I'm just not surprised anymore and I know I'm not getting any straight answers either. If you think humanity has outgrown mass delusion, just look at the world's biggest credit bubble build on the notion that wealth is created by loaning money and expecting interest to be paid, when the only way to get the additional interest into the system is to loan more money. We have come a long, long way in the last hundred years, but I get the impression the people at the top are just today's witch doctors.