John,
Your essay seems as compact as a neutron star since light does escape in the form of word packets with great perspective width. Your ideas are fresh to me and thought provoking. I deal with light and space too but with more convention. Hope you can check out mine. I will need to think about yours.
Jim Hoover
John,
Seems to be sparse reviewing and rating in this essay contest. I am revisiting those I have reviewed and see if I have scored them before the deadline approaches. I find that I have not scored yours and am doing so today. Thanks for your Olympic-sized comments.
Jim Hoover
John,
Good to be in another contest with you. I too bashed out an essay on Space just in time to meet the deadline. We both agree it is fundamental.
I could not resist going after a TOE based on a novel concept of a graviton. I go after what the curvature of space-time means. This investigation results in a malleable ether that explains: 1. the curvature of space-time and 2. why the speed of light is independent of an objects motion.
I know this conflicts with a pure void which is aesthetically pleasing.
This is a long shot, but do visit my essay. I like to believe it enhances the beauty of the void and you will like it.
Thanks for your fine essay: "The vacuum might fluctuate, but first you need the vacuum.
Don Limuti
Dear John,
Replied to your comment on Flavio and Chiara's 'Demolishing Prejudices' essay, however as i understand our fqxi gui you will not get pinged by that. So pasting the comment in here:
Dear John, Flavio, Chiara,...
love the way dialogs evolve in the fqxi competition/collaboration format.
Came back to 'Demolishing Prejudices' to reply to a different thread and got caught by 'Do NOT spend...'. Being closely related to oppositional defiant disorders, i was immediately in.
takedown of cosmology and inflation is excellent, thank you. That it leads to classifying redshift, accelerating expansion, anomalous radial dependence of galactic rotation,... as 'optical effects' gives a nice little perspective shift. Suggests to me that until we understand how quantum gravity is related to the photon the 'Do NOT spend...' injunction is well advised.
staying with the optical effect for a moment, in particular to have an understanding of what goes on in the near field at the Planck length in photon emission and absorption seems essential in quantum gravity.
I like what is said about time, that it emerges from 'action', or more precisely from inter-actions. Pauli vacuum wavefunction is that of the geometric objects of 3d space - point, line, plane, and volume elements of geometric interpretation of Clifford algebra. No time there.
Interaction of two wavefunctions can be modeled by geometric product of Clifford algebra - sum of inner (dimension lowering) and outer (raising) products. Inter-action generates the 4D Dirac algebra of flat Minkowski spacetime. Time emerges from interactions of the enigmatic unobservable wavefunction.
Dear John,
Your view that 'space is basis' seems intuitively perceptive and powerful. In the language of geometric Clifford algebra (the geometric interpretation of the particle physicist's matrix representation is unfortunately lost in the mainstream), the Pauli matrices are the basis vectors of 3D Euclidian space, and the Dirac matrices those of flat 4D Minkowski spacetime.
very much like your view on 'optical effects'. Thank you.
Best regards,
Pete
Stefan (and John) - It could be that the world is deterministic at the fundamental level, say for instance at the level of the unobservable wavefunction, and becomes probabilistic only with the phenomenon of emergence.
Peter,
Rushing off to work so reply further later, but just mention I got into physics as a way to better understand society, given the powerful physical forces permeating it.
Here was a FQXi entry of some years ago, addressing the social aspects of it.
https://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/1981
Dear John Merryman
I have read your essay and suggest that you read Dark Matter http://vixra.org/pdf/1303.0207v3.pdf
I also invite you to read my essay on wave-particle and electron spin at: https://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/3145 or https://fqxi.org/data/essay-contest-files/Rajpal_1306.0141v3.pdf
Kamal Rajpal
Dear John
Nice to meet you again, I think a lot of advancement in science but since you interested from Philosophical aspect of science raher than details I hope you will be entrested my essay
https://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/3143
I will come back to comment yours after reading.
Thank you for sharing knowledge,
Best wishes
Bashir
Dear John,
Thank you for the lengthy and detailed comment you wrote on the page for my essay. I appreciate it.
In response to your essay, I would agree with you that there has been considerable confusion between space as the void, empty of all content, and space as a vacuum, which is perhaps empty of ordinary matter but which can still be characterized in terms of various fields, vacuum energy, and so. I would further agree with you that only the former of these is simple and primitive enough to deserve to be thought of as the basis. Maybe the void is not quite nothing in a metaphysical sense, but it is closer to metaphysical nothing than a vacuum which has various properties. You are correct to point this out.
Laurence Hitterdale
Lawrence,
Thank you for reading, commenting and appreciating the point that while physics is largely based on the vacuum as a field, it goes out of its way to deny that space is the basis of that field, insisting on abstract geometry.
I wouldn't even call it the void, because to paraphrase; "Nature abhors a void." Just that no matter how filled this void is, it is an unbounded equilibrium. The zero, the flatline, around which all fluctuates.
Dear John Brodix Merryman,
You wrote a good essay, drawing attention to the fact that the space is fundamental. Your essay would be even better if you were familiar with the principle of identity of space and matter of Descartes. He says
matter is space and space is matter that moves. Descartes physical space is a matter, in which there are no voids. But if they are formed, then, according to him, close instantly. However, given modern notions that the speed of light is the limit for any real movements in the New Cartesian Physics States that the voids in the space close to the speed of light. For intelligent people from this moment begins the real physics. Look at my essay, FQXi Fundamental in New Cartesian Physics by Dizhechko Boris Semyonovich
Where I showed how radically the physics can change if it follows this principle. Evaluate it according to your fundamental concept and leave your comment there. Then I'll give you a rating. Do not allow New Cartesian Physics go away into nothingness, which can to be the theory of everything OO.
Sincerely, Dizhechko Boris Semyonovich.
The consciousness of the people resists the recognition of the identity of space and matter Descartes, because they used to think that I live in an empty space - it is convenient for them. While there was no reason to think otherwise. However, there will come a time when the level of education of the people will depend on their understanding of this identity. This requires the necessity to eliminate the difficulties in science. Fundamental should save our thinking, i.e. to be simple and straightforward. Physical space, which for Descartes is a matter that is the basis for fundamental theories in science.
You might like to look at the sky and it seems to you empty infinite space in which it moves large and small body. However, this impression is deceptive. According to the principle of identity of space and matter Descartes, space is matter that moves. When Copernicus asserted that the Earth revolves around the Sun, it had, according to Descartes, to add that along with the Earth revolves around the Sun, all the solar space. Space is what built the world.
If the believer to ask, where is God? He will answer - in the sky. When you look into infinite space and I think that is the body of God, that needs to be asked, and how it works? The answer is simple, all the changes around and our weight is the result of his actions. In space contains information about changing the world. Time is a synonym of total moving
Sincerely, Dizhechko Boris
Boris,
The problem with the concept of God is it assumes a spiritual absolute would be an ideal from which we fell, when it would be an essence from which we rise. More the raw consciousness of the new born child, than the hard won wisdom of the old man. In physics terms, more the field, than the point particle. We think consciousness is an effect of thinking, but it is the other way around. Thinking is how we express consciousness. Consciousness is the medium, thought is the message.
John ,
The space is called a field if every point has a potential.
The principle of identity of physical space and matter allows us to extend physics to living matter. For this we need to pay attention to the fact that matter within the body is the same as outside it. Our brain creates an image of the outside world not within themselves and in the space around themselves. This image of the outside world has an active nature, as it controls the body.
Sincerely,
Boris
Boris,
We are a part of our context. There is no more dualism between the organism and the ecosystem, than between the mind and the body. It is just that our minds function by freezing moments, then making distinctions and judgements. Information is much more about the differences, than the continuities. Then we focus on the most distinct, so it is any wonder nothing seems to fit together, when we look at it most closely, but it all just flows along, when we are just being there?
John,
We are part of the space, which for Descartes is a matter. No more dualism between matter and space, between mind and body. Consciousness arises when a body appears the ability to create in space the image of the external world and to remember him for discernment and judgment. In the center of this image of the external world is the body that created it and which is actively positioning itself to prolong its existence. John, thanks for the discussion. I give you a 10 and wish you success in the contest. Look at my page, FQXi Fundamental in New Cartesian Physics by Dizhechko Boris Semyonovich
Do not allow New Cartesian Physics go away into nothingness, which can to be the theory of everything OO.
Sincerely, Boris.
John,
I hope you're feeling a little more inspired about life now. I'm very positive having cracked the great test of the discrete field dynamics we've discussed past essays. Long live 'space'! Scoring yours now for a deserved bump up from 5.8. Hope you'll do mine if not done yet.
Did you ever read last years essays, like mine on how we think? Scientists and all humans alike. US politics looks great fun from over the pond. I suspect we'll all remember this time fondly.
Very best wishes.
Peter
Peter,
Sorry, but I only gave you a 9. It was a couple of days ago and I'd just scored Ed a 10, since he really is focusing on the issue of time, which has been my pet peeve. Space might be foundational, but that's like a flatline is more fundamental than a heart rhythm. If you want to know who I'm riffing off, give Tom Ray a good score. He deserves it. I really only entered to join the discussion and I think the most interesting one I had was with Christinel Stoica, where he was willing to present a fairly establishment position and still listen to my point of view. As it went on for 22 posts, it did get into detail. If you want to read it, it's on his thread, starting Feb 19.
Good luck and good to see the outsiders doing so well.
Regards,
John
You have covered quite a bit of ground in your short essay, but your instincts are really pretty good. You say that yesterday becomes tomorrow because the earth spins, but you also mention that the present moment coalesces (from yesterday) and then dissolves (into tomorrow). In any event, it would seem like yesterday became the present and the present will become tomorrow because the earth spins.
Will tomorrow become the present? Will the present become yesterday? This seems to logically follow from saying that tomorrow becomes yesterday as the earth turns.
You note that the earth spins in only one direction, which is true, and so that sets the direction of time. However, the earth spin and therefore the period of the day changes measurably over time and so earth's spin points time in all kinds of different directions.
Although entropy and therefore temperature are good at pointing macroscopic time's arrow, is really quantum phase decay that points quantum time's arrow. After all, the universe becomes more ordered with time despite Shannon entropy always means less order, not more order. It is the entanglement entropy of quantum gravity that drives the shrinking universe to more order.
