Dimensionality in Physics by Armin Nikkhah Shirazi

Hi Armin. I think you are on to something with a theoretical study of dimensional abatement, as you call it.

There is an aspect of general relativity which might also be interpreted in terms of dimensions in the way you suggest. Bowler shows how length, time, mass, energy, etc. are supposed to vary with the gauge scale factor. Various experiments provide confirmation to first order.

There is a table in the Endnotes of my essay showing radial and transverse dimensional variability due to a gravitational field. See Ref 7: Bowler M.G., Gravitation and Relativity. Pergamon Press, Oxford (1976).

Cheers, Colin

Dear Armin,

I'm sorry that I'm not well-equipped to appreciate your main argument here, though it seems reasonable and well-argued. Your opening section certainly makes sense to me, and in fact I think your "intelligent alien culture" is onto something by treating distance, duration and mass as derived quantities. I was also intrigued by your treatment of "relative dimensionality" in terms of volume-boundary ratios, but it wasn't clear to me how much is gained by this. Part of my problem is that I don't have any intuitive notion of "dimensionality" as you present it... so while I don't doubt that your two principles are correct, I didn't get a sense of their importance. I'm guessing that you have some strong intuition that put you on this particular path, and I imagine that would be clearer to me if we had the second part of this essay.

Nonetheless I'm glad you're participating again, and I saw (in your comment to Terry Bollinger) that you're planning on taping a presentation on the Default Specification Principle... I'd be very interested to see that. I think this principle expresses a basic shift in how we think about possibility vs actuality, an important step toward making QM really understandable. In fact, I think the second part of my current essay would have made more sense if I'd had the space to include some discussion of this. The basic assumption I make is that everything is possible, to begin with, and the problem of creating a universe is essentially one of defining meaningful constraints. This is the same as what happens with quantum measurement - all the possibilities are there, until there's some constraining context that can specify one of them. The existence of an adequate context is all that's needed for something to become actual.

I could certainly relate to your Conclusion: "All of these facts are easy to understand, profound, and in retrospect, I believe, utterly obvious." I'm sure you're right that the great obstacle to working out "the next paradigm" is that the clues are so obvious they get taken for granted.

Best wishes,

Conrad

Dear Nikkhah

If you are looking for another essay to read and rate in the final days of the contest, will you consider mine please? I read all essays from those who comment on my page, and if I cant rate an essay highly, then I don't rate them at all. Infact I haven't issued a rating lower that ten. So you have nothing to lose by having me read your essay, and everything to gain.

Beyond my essay's introduction, I place a microscope on the subjects of universal complexity and natural forces. I do so within context that clock operation is driven by Quantum Mechanical forces (atomic and photonic), while clocks also serve measure of General Relativity's effects (spacetime, time dilation). In this respect clocks can be said to possess a split personality, giving them the distinction that they are simultaneously a study in QM, while GR is a study of clocks. The situation stands whereby we have two fundamental theories of the world, but just one world. And we have a singular device which serves study of both those fundamental theories. Two fundamental theories, but one device? Please join me and my essay in questioning this circumstance?

My essay goes on to identify natural forces in their universal roles, how they motivate the building of and maintaining complex universal structures and processes. When we look at how star fusion processes sit within a "narrow range of sensitivity" that stars are neither led to explode nor collapse under gravity. We think how lucky we are that the universe is just so. We can also count our lucky stars that the fusion process that marks the birth of a star, also leads to an eruption of photons from its surface. And again, how lucky we are! for if they didn't then gas accumulation wouldn't be halted and the star would again be led to collapse.

Could a natural organisation principle have been responsible for fine tuning universal systems? Faced with how lucky we appear to have been, shouldn't we consider this possibility?

For our luck surely didnt run out there, for these photons stream down on earth, liquifying oceans which drive geochemical processes that we "life" are reliant upon. The Earth is made up of elements that possess the chemical potentials that life is entirely dependent upon. Those chemical potentials are not expressed in the absence of water solvency. So again, how amazingly fortunate we are that these chemical potentials exist in the first instance, and additionally within an environment of abundant water solvency such as Earth, able to express these potentials.

My essay is attempt of something audacious. It questions the fundamental nature of the interaction between space and matter Guv = Tuv, and hypothesizes the equality between space curvature and atomic forces is due to common process. Space gives up a potential in exchange for atomic forces in a conversion process, which drives atomic activity. And furthermore, that Baryons only exist because this energy potential of space exists and is available for exploitation. Baryon characteristics and behaviours, complexity of structure and process might then be explained in terms of being evolved and optimised for this purpose and existence. Removing need for so many layers of extraordinary luck to eventuate our own existence. It attempts an interpretation of the above mentioned stellar processes within these terms, but also extends much further. It shines a light on molecular structure that binds matter together, as potentially being an evolved agency that enhances rigidity and therefor persistence of universal system. We then turn a questioning mind towards Earths unlikely geochemical processes, (for which we living things owe so much) and look at its central theme and propensity for molecular rock forming processes. The existence of chemical potentials and their diverse range of molecular bond formation activities? The abundance of water solvent on Earth, for which many geochemical rock forming processes could not be expressed without? The question of a watery Earth? is then implicated as being part of an evolved system that arose for purpose and reason, alongside the same reason and purpose that molecular bonds and chemistry processes arose.

By identifying atomic forces as having their origin in space, we have identified how they perpetually act, and deliver work products. Forces drive clocks and clock activity is shown by GR to dilate. My essay details the principle of force dilation and applies it to a universal mystery. My essay raises the possibility, that nature in possession of a natural energy potential, will spontaneously generate a circumstance of Darwinian emergence. It did so on Earth, and perhaps it did so within a wider scope. We learnt how biology generates intricate structure and complexity, and now we learn how it might explain for intricate structure and complexity within universal physical systems.

To steal a phrase from my essay "A world product of evolved optimization".

Best of luck for the conclusion of the contest

Kind regards

Steven Andresen

Darwinian Universal Fundamental Origin

Armin,

Yes indeed. Already done. Identified across a wide range of sciences. Even cosmology, papers published and essays here scored top 10 inc. 1st & 2nd. I recall you made good connection with some.

The problem is that even when an established theory leaves anomalies and paradoxes no better fit theory can replace it due to the way our minds work; We build mental models and compare input to those. It its a poor fit we reject it.

That's the 'cognitive dissonance' I discussed last year. It's just the human condition and current state of our intellectual evolution. Indeed, (like you so far!), many don't bother to even look! Those who do, properly, are rewarded.

Yes, it goes well beyond SR, i.e. replacing the 'Law of the Excluded Middle' to remove all paradox from logic, solves Stellar Aberration at last, etc. etc. All published & archived, some on arXiv, i.e. Resolution of Kantor and Babcock-Bergman Emission Theory Anomalies . and in videos. I decided if it was correct it should do the impossible; Unify SR and QM. That's what this years essay does. If you get to read it first see the 8 part sequence I've just put on my posts to familiarise yourself with an outline to fit the ontology to.

It's an amazing discovery (in Bells words & as he anticipated) so I hope you get to study it.

Very Best, and well done for yours, very good and agreeable apart from that one point. But 'agreement' isn't a scoring criteria of course (so I pencilled it in for well above its present level)

Hope yours gets in the top group. Very best.

Peter

Armin, thanks for your response. To your point 1. - I agree. Within the current paradigm of course it's understood that there's a basic connection between electric and magnetic fields, and that makes it harder rather than easier to see the possibly more radical relationship you're pointing out.

Likewise with your four principles... though I'm unclear about the concept of a "timelike hypersurface," otherwise my first reaction is, sure, why would this not be true? That makes it harder to see what's going on in your argument - as you say, 'this may even be alleged to be so obvious as to be trivial." For example, it does seem obvious that "the only objects that can actually exist in 4-dimensional spacetime are 3 dimensional objects." It's not until you take the next step and say an 11-dimensional spacetime can not contain 4-dimensional objects that it ceases to seem trivial.

I'm not suggesting your arguments are trivial, only that the method of presentation may be backwards, for readers new to your approach. It might make sense to begin with the consequences that are clearly different from what we expect to be true, and show they're grounded in principles that seem clearly true.

Now I know from experience that in working out fundamentally new ideas, one rarely has a lot of choice about presentation. I've done the best I can with my own FQXi essays, but I've never been able to stand back and say, I could have done this very differently... at least, not till after the contest was over - then (with help from friends and commenters) I gradually gain some clarity about my errors in strategy.

And I face a problem that's maybe very similar to yours: for me, everything follows from the simple fact that things in our universe are observable and measurable. Hard to find anything more obvious and seemingly trivial than that! So maybe once this contest is over I'll be able to take my own advice about presentation.

Thanks again - I look forward to seeing your further development of these thoughts.

Conrad

Dear Armin,

"The dimensionality of every space-like hypersurface of Minkowski spacetime is everywhere the same." -- what you are referring to is Universal Consciousness. I welcome you to read Consciousness is fundamental Geometry Of Dimensions

Love,

Sridattadev.

Dear Armin,

I followed up your excellent tip about Brans-Dicke and found that Yilmaz's exponential metric is what I call the Machian metric.

Dicke has said that Yilmaz's field equation is the local field equation needed for the exponential metric in isotropic coordinates. It has been shown to violate the equivalence principle. Although I expect the violation is beyond our current means of detection, this possibility can be set aside as less than ideal.

I think that the problem with this sort of modification is that it does not address the basic issue, which is that a multiplicative process duplicating relativistic composition needs to be incorporated, instead of trying to add something as compensation. It looks like the field equations would need to be modified in a way that has not been proposed. And that is information gained!

Regarding your dimensional theory and special relativity, if you look at the transverse variation due to gravity in my table of dimensional variability, you will notice that it exhibits the same sort of variation as the Lorentz factor, on substituting that for the gravitational scale factor. Perhaps it is less of a conceptual stretch to see GR as having two branches of dimensionality (radial and transverse), if SR is considered to be associated (somehow) with the transverse branch by virtue of their matching dimensional variability.

Many thanks, and best wishes,

Colin