Interferometric detection of gravitational waves: how can a wild roam through mindless mathematical laws really be a trek towards the goal of unification? by Christian Corda, Reza Katebi, and Nathan

Although I too am perplexed about the relevance, I'm happy to pose a question about the theoretical basis of radiant (as opposed to geometric) gravitational waves.

It seems to me that there are two incompatible theories of gravitation, the quantum theory having been introduced without bothering to refute Einstein's earlier geometric theory.

If gravitation is due to the warping of spacetime geometry, it's easy to imagine an imbalanced binary radiating ripples of warping intensity, and if kinetic/potential energy is being lost to the system, then it is being gained by the universe at large... but the theoretical introduction of radiation by analogy with electromagnetism is an added complication that as far as I know has never been justified, except possibly to bring gravitation into the department of quantum physics.

You can see my argument at http://eujournal.org/index.php/esj/article/view/1692 if you like.

Jim

Dang! I gave you a decent score this morning and now you have dropped terribly. I was early on near the top and fell to 5.6 and then climbed up.

We were kicking around a year and a half ago an idea with solitons and tunneling states with rotating black holes. I came up with a bit of something recently that might feed life into that. The idea was that the Kerr frame dragging around a black hole was quantum mechanically analogous to the Josephson junction. I have found this connects with S-duality.

It looks as if you affiliation has changed. It looks a little more solid than what you had. I too need to get myself better situated.

Cheers LC

Dear Christian, Reza, and Nathan,

I enjoyed reading your well-written and instructive essay about gravitational waves and the foundational role of general relativity for the entire physics and other fields. We know from Galilei and Einstein that the fundamental laws of physics are the same everywhere, at any scale, and for any observer. The role of the observer is paramount both in relativity and quantum mechanics, being immersed in a world which in its turn affects, and as Wheeler says, the universe is participatory. This can be seen in many modern approaches to inflationary cosmology, quantum mechanics, and the problem of why these particular fundamental laws and constants are at the basis of our universe. It appears miraculous how mindless laws gave rise to intelligences who were able to predict and measure the gravitational waves, or, if I don't exaggerate too much by saying this, to detect the EEG of these brainwaves of the brain of the God of Einstein and Spinoza, or, as Einstein put it, to know His thoughts. Good luck with the contest!

Best regards,

Cristi

The Tablet of the Metalaw

Thanks for the good word on my essay over at my site. Sorry to see that your essay seems to have dropped a lot. I have you a high score the other day. I think it was a 9, with 1 deducted for seeming a bit off from the central point of the essay prompt. I wrote the following in response to your statement about unitarity and equivalence principle.

My sense is that the equivalence principle and the unitarity principle are versions of the same thing. Because of this they do not generally hold completely for general experimental conditions. It is really similar to the duality between reality and locality in Bell's theorem. You can have one, but not the other. The same I think happens here in that if you can measure all quantum states in a nondestructive way (weak measurements, etc) you then have some small deformation of the equivalence principle. On the other hand if you measures the EP to complete accuracy this is traded off by some inability to account for quantum states in a unitary manner.

Cheers LC

I got bombed with a 2 yesterday. I will say the essays near the top are pretty good, with one notable exception IMO.

I am not that wedded to any particular thoery or paradigm. I tend to wear different hats at various times. By doing that I am freer to think about things. The one person who most often restricts a person's freedom is themselves.

In physics the so called fine tuning problem has two components. The first is from the Higgs field. The П†^4 theory has vertices with four "legs," which makes it the center of mass renormalization. For Оґ the cut-off scale mass renormalization terms are of the form (О»/Оґ^2)^n, which means that for a large number of diagrams they have to cancel properly at ~ 1/Оґ^2. We may then think of this scale as being from the mass scale of the Higgs ~ 200 GeV to the string or Planck scale of 10^{19}GeV which is about 16 or 17 orders of magnitude. We then have to get the theory tuned to within 1/Оґ^2 ~ 10^{-32} orders of magnitude.

We then of course have vacuum bubbles which give energy to the vacuum. This would not be a problem for QFT if we only dealt with energy differences. However, for gravitation we have that gravitation involves the absolute mass-energy in space and so from the cosmological constant of 10^{54}cm^{-{2} to the Planck scale curvature of 10^{66}cm^{-2} there is then a 10^{120} fine tuning issue. We may think of the vacuum as due to self-interacting П†^4 bubble, say two loops connected at a vertex. For the Higgs field this is О»/Оґ^4, which has 10^{64} to 10^{66} orders of magnitude fine tuning problem. This is of course from the Higgs scale to the Planck scale. If we include the low energy scale where the 3 Goldstone boson fields are absorbed as longitudinal degrees of freedom down the cosmological scale we then recover the quantum gravity fine tuning.

Of course this is pretty horrendous. However, if we can transform this problem into another guise it might be avoided, or at least ameliorated. This is to look as a soliton version of this theory. Consider the fermion, which in the Thirring fermon theory gives a sine-Gordon soliton for the condensate of that field. We then have that the fermion superfield with

ОЁ = П€ + C(Оё-barA + ОёA-bar) + ОёОё-barF

and the Thirring condensate giving the sine-Gordon dynamcs as

ОЁ в†' exp(ОЁОЁ).

This of course carries over to the scalar field as well, where the Higgs field is a condensate at the low energy domain with the important Higgs vev = Ој/2О». In this way the fine tuning with the Higgs field can be connected to the problem with gravitation.

Another way to think of it is Gauss' theorem and holography. The CFT on the AdS boundary, or the equivalent on a black hole horizon (holographic screen) is evaluated on a bounding surface. In the case of black holes with an inner and out horizon this is evaluated on two surfaces. In the bulk however, where one has gravitation, there is more than just the difference in energy. However, holography tells us, as really does Gauss' theorem, this should not be terribly relevant. The gravitational or cosmological fine tuning should be pinned to the field theoretic fine tuning. The QFT fine tuning is ultimately due to the Higgs field.

Cheers LC

Dear Professor Christian Corda,

Please excuse me for I have no intention of disparaging in any way any part of your essay.

I merely wish to point out that "Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler." Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955) Physicist & Nobel Laureate.

Only nature could produce a reality so simple, a single cell amoeba could deal with it.

The real Universe must consist only of one unified visible infinite physical surface occurring in one infinite dimension, that am always illuminated by infinite non-surface light.

A more detailed explanation of natural reality can be found in my essay, SCORE ONE FOR SIMPLICITY. I do hope that you will read my essay and perhaps comment on its merit.

Joe Fisher, Realist

Dear Christian,

Thanks a lot for your comment on my essay.

I have read with great interest the work of yourself and the co-authors.

The gravitational waves trembled through the text.

The goal of any wave is insecure, it goes on and on.

You also deserve a high rating.

best regards

Wilhelmus

Dear Christian Corda,

When I first read your essay, I too thought that you had missed the point of the essay. But after reading your comments I now understand that you simply placed another interpretation on the question and you actually answered extremely well from that perspective. After all, the mindless math did make predictions for over a century, and gave rise to considerable aims and intentions necessary to evaluate the model.

I think it's also relevant to focus as you do on development of the 'mindless math', with logical mistakes made along the way and consequent changes in predictions and interpretations.

So congratulations on finding a unique but relevant perspective and handling it well!

My best regards,

Edwin Eugene Klingman

Hi to you 3,

Mr Corda,

I am happy to see your participation to this contest.Hope you are well.

Congratulations for your relevant papper.

All the best from Belgium