Can we see into a black hole? by Lawrence B Crowell

Lawrence Crowell

There are two issues here with evolution. Biological evolution is the theory on the relatedness of species. The question of how life came about to start is an open question at this time, and is not germane to biological evolution. An understanding of how life came about involves issues of self-organizing chemistry and the conditions required for that. At this time we are largely ignorant about this problem.

When it comes to intelligence, this appears to refer to intelligent design (ID). Darwin made reference to the problem of irreducible complexity (IC), though he did not call it that. IC is the cornerstone idea to ID. If something is found which absolutely is not reducibly complex then the theory of evolution is falsified. So IC is a statement on the falsifiability of a theory. So far none of the structures proposed to be IC, flagellum, eyes etc, have been demonstrated to be irreducibly complex. A statement on the falsifiability of a theory is not a theory itself. In fact IC can't ever be itself falsified. It can be demonstrated to be false for specific examples, but it can't in general be shown to be false. A scientific theory is by definition falsifiable, so IC fails to serve as a scientific theory.

Again, when it comes to the origin of life, or how self-organizing biochemistry emerged, that is an open question. What ever processes were involved have been either destroyed or seriously buried away. So as yet that is an open question. Maybe evidence for this exists on Mars or the other planetary bodies. Only the future will tell.

Cheers LC

[deleted]

Dr. Lawrence B Crowell,

Lets see how this flies:

Well I don't think I am moving at the speed of light in a fourth dimension. I will wait for empirical confirmation of that idea. However, the equation you give can be formed without using that approach. And, the time dilation equation follows from it. There is one challenge to the interpretation of that equation that I can maybe adequately make in this forum setting. So, here it is:

The time dilation equation is actually the t dilation equation. The t in physics equations is a measure in time (some duration of some physical activity) and not of time (as in a testable property in itself). All activity is measured with respect to a standard of activity. That standard can be chosen by virtue of its exhibiting as stable as practical cyclic activity. For example, if one wished to measure the rate of cyclic activity A, one would compare it to the standard for cyclic activity. Both of these cyclic activities are material in nature and are therefore subject to effects brought upon them by other material objects. In other words, they both are variable.

We use the name seconds for the unit of measurement in physics equations: however, in the most fundamental sense, the units of t should be referred to as cycles of the standard chosen. So, by measuring cyclic activity A against the standard cyclic activity B, The true fundamental form of the units for both of them is (#cyclesA)/(cycleB). The property of time is no more affected by this action than it is by the hands of my watch. All activity requires time to occur. The time taken is a duration in time simply because time is passing during the activity. Time itself is not a physcial property that can be sliced up, contained, or molded into a new form.

James

Jonathan Dickau

Hello Lawrence,

I just finished reading your essay from Exceptional Nature to the end, having digested the set-up before. It was remarkably lucid, considering how complex some of the Math is, and how greatly your skills with it exceed my level of sophistication. It seems that quantum criticality, resulting from the graphene-like behavior on the M2 brane, is the crucial point to understand.

I like the way this results in fractal-like scaling of cosmic structures. That's pretty neat. From what I can grasp, it's almost like the quantum phase transitions are occurring on a 2-d sheet. I agree there are congruent connections to pursue which unite the Stringy and Braney theories with LQG. It may indeed be a matter of how we deal with the duality of an 8-dimensional (Octonion) framework with the lower dimensional (2 1) space.

In Causal Dynamical Triangulation, their basic building block is the 4-simplex, and they do a Monte Carlo simulation where timelike edges of adjoining blocks must line up, which is what makes it causal. They find it describes a universe that is 2-d near the Planck scale - that evolves through fractional dimensions to become 4-d spacetime for macroscopic volumes. I have wondered, since reading about this and after seeing the paper by Baez and Barret on the 10-j symbols, if perhaps what needed to be considered is how we deal with defining basic concepts like dimensionality and orthogonality.

People doing Loop Quantum Gravity like the idea of a universe that's 2-d near the Planck scale, but String Theory people like 10 dimensions to play with. Well; if our humble 4-simplex can be flattened into 2-d (yielding a 5-pointed star in pentagon representation) or unfolded into a 4-d object, that's pretty neat. But if the granularity of space is 2-d near the Planck scale, and the 10 faces of the simplex are viewed as mutually independent projected directions in space (i.e. - by re-defining orthogonality near the Planck Scale), there is perhaps another road to exploring the duality between the spaces in which LQG and String Theory operate.

In any case, I enjoyed your paper. It seems likely the quark-gluon plasmas at RHIC have generated some quantum black holes already, although the results appear inconclusive. It will be interesting to see whether future experiments confirm your expectations of what we will find inside a black hole. It is likely that the mini ones we observe in the lab will yield more information than cosmic ones, but we'll have to see.

All the Best,

Jonathan

[deleted]

Dr. Lawrence B Crowell,

"When it comes to intelligence, this appears to refer to intelligent design (ID). Darwin made reference to the problem of irreducible complexity (IC), though he did not call it that. IC is the cornerstone idea to ID. If something is found which absolutely is not reducibly complex then the theory of evolution is falsified. So IC is a statement on the falsifiability of a theory. So far none of the structures proposed to be IC, flagellum, eyes etc, have been demonstrated to be irreducibly complex. A statement on the falsifiability of a theory is not a theory itself. In fact IC can't ever be itself falsified. It can be demonstrated to be false for specific examples, but it can't in general be shown to be false. A scientific theory is by definition falsifiable, so IC fails to serve as a scientific theory."

I do not argue from a creationist viewpoint. I do not agree with the IC viewpoint. I do not have a religion. What I do have is the understanding that dumbness cannot evolve into intelligence. Even Darwin stepped away from addressing this challenge. The properties offered to us by theoretical physicsts, in general, represent dumbness, purposelessness, toatally inanimate properties from which to construct this universe. This does not work out. The alternative is to look for the real properties, not yet known or admitted to, that can logically give rise to intelligent life. Call it intelligent design if you wish; however, this problem has nothing to do with the book of Genesis. It has to do with scientifically explaining the real universe.

James

[deleted]

Dr. Lawrence B Crowell,

"Biological evolution is the theory on the relatedness of species."

I should have addressed this. If this is all that biological evolution is, then it, I think, it remains at the level of the minor evolutionist. Darwin extended this concept to a general evolutionary process for all lifeforms by appealing to our imaginations. I remember reading his push for accepting this concept and experiencing a feeling similar to when religious groups try to win new converts. "I know that you too will come to believe if you allow yourself to be immersed over time in these ideas." Those aren't his words. I agree with his conclusion that all of life evolved. However, he didn't have enough empirical evidence available to prove his case. He had to rely on reason. However, he recognized where reason met its match.

I respect his decision to not speculate about the development of intelligence. I think today's concept of Evolution goes far beyond the relatedness of species. The modern view appears to me to be driven by a desire to find a way out of including intelligence in the evolution of the universe. If intelligence can be dismissed as a necessary property, then God is removed from consideration. Now, I don't know about God, but, I do know that modern evolutionary theory is often used for unscientific purposes.

I think the theory of evolution must address the evolution of intelligence or it remains, conceptually, much like the level that Darwin left it. I think if Darwin were still alive today he would be working as hard as he could to find the means to include the evolution of intelligence in coordination with the evolution of biological forms. Perhaps he would have believed that dumb mechanical type fundamental properties could evolve into highly intelligent life, but, I like to think that he would have chosen to move us forward toward learning the real story.

James

Lawrence Crowell

James,

A cyclically occurring system is essentially a clock. We use clocks to measure time, or in an operational sense time is what a clock reads out. I am not going to get into philosophical hair splitting of measuring in time or of time. That is almost like homoousios versus homoiousious. Time in classical mechanics is a one dimensional space, or is modeled as such. The motion of particles is parameterized by this one dimensional space with some fiducial or initial time and condition. I agree that time is not something you can isolate in a chamber like molecules, but you can't really do that with space either --- if you think about it. So in relativity theory the one dimensional time space is unified with the space of three dimensions according to a set of transformations or a symmetry.

Whether time, or for that matter space, are real in a standard sense. They can be thought of as purely model systems, which we perceive according to how matter and energy behave. The problems which faced physics in the late 19 th century were solved by doing this, and some of the consequences of relativity were confirmed. They have been consistently confirmed.

I could go on a whole lot about time, in particular with the different notions of quantum time and relativistic time. But my time right now is limited and I will spare that for later.

When it comes to evolution, the imposition of intelligence is not likely to ever fly in the biological community. The idea means there are elements of will or choice in the nature of life which is not identifiable in science.

Cheers LC

[deleted]

Dr. Lawrence B Crowell,

I understand. Thank you for your time.

James

Lawrence Crowell

Jonathan

Thanks for the good review. I did not break out fractal geometry in this, but it lurks in the wings. I indicate first what underlies this structure and then indicate how this leads to fractal geometry. I will get to loop variables and related systems at the end.

The underlying construction here involves the Leech lattice. The 27 dimensional Jordan exceptional algebra describes the 26 dimensional bosonic string when a light cone condition is imposed on the system. This involves three copies of the octonions related to each other by triality, which are 24 dimensional, plus two independent scalar terms. Modulo the triality condition this is a gauge-like theory in 8 plus 2 = 10 dimensions, which is embedded in 11 dimensions according to the light cone condition, or the infinite momentum condition as Susskind calls it. The system is then in greater generality a 24-dimensional Leech lattice system with two time dimensions. That might sound a bit odd, but I then break the symmetry of the system. One of the octonions is broken into H_4xH_4+permutations of 8 according to the Weyl group. H_4 is the four dimensional analogue of the dodecahedron or its dual icosahedron. This is the 120-cell, called the hyperdodecahedron or dodecachoron, which is a polychora with 120 octahedron boundaries, 720 pentagons, 1200 edgelinks and 600 vertices, and Schlafli index {5; 3; 3}. The dual is the 600 cell, with 120 vertices which define a group under quaternionic multiplication. This group is sometimes called the binary icosahedral group, which is a double covering of the icoshahedral group. The symmetry group of the 600-cell is the Weyl group H_4 ~ {3; 3; 5}, a group of order 120_2 = 14400.

The octahedron will tessellate a hyperbolic three dimensional space, see attachment. I worked out how the H_4 or dodecachoron will tessellate a four dimensional hyperbolic space. Now, these hyperbolic spaces might sound intimidating, yet the two dimensional version is the Poincare disk, which I attach as well in an Escher print. I need to write up this proof and get it published --- I did this last August, but other concerns have kept me away from doing that write up. This hyperbolic space then exists in the anti-deSitter spacetime AdS_5, with group structure SO(4,2) ~ SU(2,2). This space has a duality with conformal fields on the boundary of the AdS, which is the celebrated AdS/CFT duality of Maldacena. I am currenlty working out how the Jordan matrix derives the Born-Infeld action, which is the cornerstone of M-theory and AdS/CFT duality. The conversion of the closed string into an open string on the M_2 brane I work in my paper is a simply stringy aspect of M-theory.

Fractal geometry enters into the picture (finally) with the branching which occurs in the tessellation. This is easily seen with the image of the Poincare disk. There are arcs which leave the boundary, reach into the interior and then return to the boundary. In the AdS spacetime these are particles which leave at an energy close to infinity, and approach the boundary again in the limit of zero energy. This describes a renormalization group (RG) flow. RG flows have fractal structure to them with Hausdorff dimensions, such as if you work the Polchinski-Wilson renormalization group. The tessellations describe this according to the branching of the tessellation. At each vertex there are other flows which intersect a particular flow. The renormalization group flow then has a self-similar structure to it, which quantum mechanically is related to the so called cauliflower fractal.

The RG flow stops at a finite energy where particles assume masses comparable to their energies. This stopping is related to how it is there is a quantum critical point in the determinant of the cosmological constant. It is also related to something called the zitterbewegung, or the confined vibrational motion of particles, where the electron is the standard case.

Where Causal Dynamical Triangulation (CDT) and loop quantum gravity is of interest is when one takes this structure and Wick rotates it to a de Sitter spacetime. We obviously do not live in a universe with two time directions. So the t - -> -it on one of the time dimensions maps this structure into the de Sitter spacetime we actually live in. Well, as a caveat I should say we live in a universe which is asymptotically approaching a de Sitter vacuum. There are a lot messy stuff going on with local clumps of matter and the breakdown of RG flow going on. Now loop variables and related systems come into this because what I have been working up has twistor construction in it. Yeah, let's not forget them! They are Penrose's original combinatorial system of doing quantum gravity. So assume we have in a low energy setting the AdS spacetime that maps into a dS spacetime under the Wick rotation. Yet the endpoints of RG flows perturb this spacetime into another configuration with local bumps, waves, black holes and so forth. Now black holes are most important, for black holes in the universe have connections to a BTZ black hole in the AdS. I sort of ignored that bit here, but that is an important aspect of this system. There are I think connects with these other combinatorial aspects of quantum gravity on the dS spacetime after the Wick rotation from AdS to dS is performed.

I have an extended paper in this blog dated sept 22, where I start to lay out how I think LQG might fit into this picture. I became blocked in this effort and felt I needed to post this promised extension. I think somehow the constraints of LQG, and maybe as well the CDT structures, fit into this picture somehow. I think these are really versions of twistor theory, or some aspect of it, in some way. If you read my extended paper you will see how I work on the AdS-black hole, and I started to work up a LQG (strictly spacetime) version of this.

Cheers Lawerence B. CrowellAttachment #1: 2_Hyperbolic_orthogonal_dodecahedral_honeycomb.JPG Attachment #2: Escher_Circle_Limit_III.jpg

Lawrence Crowell

James,

My sense is that you need to study some of these issues further. Some study of relativity is probably advised. Special relativity is 104 years old and general relativity is 91. The basic concepts there are essentially old hat really. In terms of age it is comparable to the maturity of Newtonian mechanics when Adams or Jefferson were President of the US. Relativity theory is pretty much old stuff these days.

Cheers LC

[deleted]

Dr. Lawrence B Crowell,

I think you could have said something more responsive to my messages. If this message is supposed to make it clear that relativity theory is truth and any modern phycisist or any up-to-date scientifically inclined, well read, layman would understand this then so be it. I will continue to spend my time cleaning up the misdirections of the last 104 years. I will move on now. You are very generous with your time and knowledge, and, you are to be commended for this. Best of luck in the essay contest.

James

Lawrence Crowell

Of course in science all we support theories as tentatively true, not absolutely true in the sense of mathematical proofs. This not only holds for relativity theory, but Newtonian mechanics as well. In relativity and Newtonian mechanics there are also clearly model structures, such as in Newtonian mechanics there are those radial lines of force or gravity field, which can be argued to be model structures. So I am not arguing that relativity is the absolute truth, but as a tentatively true physical system of understanding it works very well.

Cheers LC

[deleted]

Dear Frank,

Have you explained the long-range attractive behavior of Gravity (I understand you have attractive and repulsive Gravity)? Have you unified the nuclear forces? Have you explained the origin of mass? Can you explain why we only observe 4 dimensions?

Lawrence's next paper contains ideas that may challenge Relativity as we know it. Lawrence and I are working on a TOE that follows much of the accepted mathematical formalism of Physics.

I've had an out-of-body experience and defied Gravity in a dream. I do believe in the power of the mind and soul. Perhaps dreams are an insight into the powers of the mind and soul. Even so, if we don't/ can't understand the full power of a dream/ mind/ soul, then using this as the basis for a TOE will be incomplete. As a simple example, if your mind doesn't comprehend the unseen nuclear forces (that we know must be real - the like-charged protons of an atomic nucleus would fly apart without the strong nuclear force to hold them together), then how can your soul or dreams incorporate these forces into a TOE and utilize the power of these forces?

I'm not asking you to stop working on your ideas. I'm sure you think you are on a fertile path, even though I think you're way off base. Maybe you'll accomplish your mission some day. I just think you are a little too pushy, and you need new material. Data and math would be good...

Have Fun!

Ray Munroe

Lawrence Crowell

Frank Martin DiMeglio wrote: Hi Lawrence. The following proves that sting theory is a waste of time.

Maybe sting theory is a bit more limited than string theory. I work on a number of problems. One of them involves the physics of insect flight. If you caught one of my early posts on my blog I related how I helped my son map out anthills. I have alsways found insects interesting --- they will outlast us by a billion years. So sting theory might refer to the physics of the flight of bees and wasps. If you do enough hands on work there you get stung a bit by the buggers. The physics of insect flight is rather tough, and I got into a while back when I heard again the phrase about how physics can't understand the flight of a bumblebee --- Rimsky Korsakov besides.

Cheers LC

Ray Munroe

Dear Lawrence and Frank,

I have plenty of ants, wasps and bees in my yard if you want to expand your studies of Sting Theory. Those insects thrive nearly year-round here in Florida. If you prefer to study String Theory, I'm sure we could find a ball of yarn.

Have Fun!

Ray Munroe

[deleted]

Hello Lawrence ,Ray ,Frank,James ,all ,

It's well that ,you speak about the hymenoptera ,the ants ,the apis ,the vespas don't sting ,only if you aren't in harmony with them in your ecosystem.They are our friends these hymenopteras ,very interesting this sociability .I have selected several plants for the polinisation .They disaper our bees ,ants and others ,it's catastrophic really .Don't be afraid about their stings .But let's help them to re born .

Dear Ray ,I don't think what these insects are on the good road ,they disapear in Florida due to an add of chaotics systems and utilisations .(Phytopharma products ,insecticids ,fongicids ,foods for soil chemicals,more a decrease of the vegetal mass ,more an increase of towns ,more the consummation of their honney thus like (a+b)²=a²+2ab+b² ....thus conclusion ,it's time to act very very quickly .

They need helps these hymenopteras,but too ,the coleopteras,the odonates,the lipedopteras ,and many others friends .They are a part of the complemenatrity .

All is linked and the soil is the key with the multiplication of plants more the composting and the harmonisation .

Just a thought

Best Regards

Steve

Lawrence Crowell

News flash: I kept saying these ideas of frequency dependencies, such as from LQG, on the speed of light were wrong. Well read 'em and weep

http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2009/oct/HQ_09-254_Fermi_anniversary.html

http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/0908/0908.1832.pdf

String theory makes a nice prediction that the quantum foam which produces this effect is valanced or renormalized out from observable physics.

I have been having long hard arm wrestling sessions over this. This makes me absolutely giddy! Bye bye loop quantum gravity breaking of the Lorentz group at small scales -- YIPEEE!!! There are litterally thousands of theory papers now which are worth less than toilet paper. God it feels good. :-)

This pretty much does rule out some quantum gravity theories. Various models of quantum gravity, except string/M theory , have spacetime broken into struts and links near the Planck scale. This results in the breaking of Lorentz symmetry (spacetime symmetry of relativity) at very short scales. These models include LQG and Dynamical Triangulated Causal Nets and so forth, have these features. The one alternative to string theory which fly through this problem is twistor theory, which in what I am working on with string/M-theory does emerge. These various models are going to have to be either seriously revised or scrapped.

Loop Quantum Gravity is not dead though. In fact I have been working, rather unsuccessfully to be honest, on how LQG could be a system of constraints which exist in a map from the string/M-theory AdS_5 spacetime to the physical (the real universe) de Sitter spacetime. String theory works on the anti-de Sitter spacetime, but that is not the universe. It maps to the de Sitter spacetime under a Wick rotation. A BTZ black hole on AdS spacetime makes this rotation-map difficult, but I think the BPS charge of that black hole maps to the LQG constraints on physical spacetime. This problem has proven to be abominably difficult though. But I think something like this has to happen. String/M-theory stuck forever in the AdS domain does not do as much good for understanding this universe.

Lawrence B. Crowell

[deleted]

Hello dear Lawrence ,

It's always a pleasure to read your explainations .This one is very well written and well thought .

Lawrence ,what do you think about Feynman diagrams ?

Regards

Steve

[deleted]

Dear Frank,

I am not your enemy. I agree that the Physics community does need paradigm changes. Admittedly, I also have a bias that one should give serious study to areas that one chooses to overthrow. Don't be surprised by that. I can assure you that there are many PhD physicists who would simply choose not to respond to your persistent and repetitive blogs. It is effort to counter a proposal.

I had the original idea for Quantum Statistical Grand Unification (QSGUT - in my book) in 1979 as a 20 year-old Senior in Physics at Florida State University. My friends told me that I should show the idea to Paul Dirac, who was an Emeritus Professor at FSU at the time. I chickened out. What if he took the idea? What if he laughed at the idea? For decades, only my closest friends ever got to see my "crazy" idea. One of my graduate school professors called it a "Nobel Effort", but wasn't interested in helping me finish it. I purposely studied the Standard Model and Renormalization in graduate school hoping to overthrow them one day. A funny thing happens when you study something that you once thought was mysterious. You understand its mysteries and how to apply them. Rather than trying to overthrow Renormalization (after all - it is weird to divide an infinite number by another infinite number to get a finite one), I used the Complementarity Principle to marry Renormalization with QSGUT and create Variable Coupling Theory.

The Standard Model (SM) is very ugly, but it works. Any unification must contain the SM as a subset. If you have unified Gravity and Electromagnetism, then your model must include Maxwell's Equations, General Relativity, and Quantum Electrodynamics as a minimum requirement. One would naturally expect many of the other theories and mysteries of the Universe to fall out somewhere along the way. I compare Unification (whether we call it GUT or TOE) to adding fractions by finding the Least Common Denominator:

[math]1/2+1/3+1/6=3/6+2/6+1/6=6/6=1[/math]

and the apparently complicated becomes simple (but contains all of the components of the original idea).

If you want the Physics community to follow your idea, you will need better than what you have done thus far. Am I stuck in my own biases? Are people like Jonathan Dickau and James Putnam, who know some theory but are not as constrained with biases, more or less likely to overthrow the system than people like Lawrence and I, who have studied our individual fields and asked questions on the fringes? I don't have the answer. And believe it or not, I am cheering you on to a deeper understanding of your goal.

Have Fun!

Ray Munroe

Lawrence Crowell

I tend to get a little annoyed when ever people throw around the world "paradigm." There has been a lot of heat generated over Thomas Kuhn's "Scientific Revolutions" over the years. I of course read this many years ago, and I don't think it is completely without merit, but it also puts too much emphasis on the social aspects of science. People who often throw around the idea they are "making a new paradigm," often have little to back it up. Oldershaw is raising up the heat and entropy over his new paradigm on the article section "Tying up the universe with strings," about the Andre Linde work, here on FQXI, but his actual physics is a bit low on content IMO.

There exists a range of scientific work according to its impact on our basic understanding. It is not as if there are these blockbuster paradigm shifts which occur every century or so which punctuates otherwise normal science. There is a range of importance to how discoveries and theoretical work changes our understanding of things. In physics there have been in the last several of decades a number of major developments, such as the standard model or the AdS/CFT correspondence. These might not rank with the size of Einstein's relativity or the development of quantum mechanics. Further, quantum physics was developed by a number of physicists who for the most part did ground breaking work, but maybe not on the scale of Einstein's relativity achievements. Then of course maybe the really great paradigm shifter was Newton, but of course there were a fair number of subsequent considerable developments in subsequent time, Lagrange, Euler, Gauss, Faraday, Carnot, Helmholtz, Hamilton, Maxwell, Boltzman, Gibbs, ... , before the so called modern physics. We might then go back to Galileo, who really started the whole idea of physics

Cheers LC

Ray Munroe

Dear Lawrence,

I think this essay contest is experimental evidence for the existence of paradigms. As part of our core belief systems, you and I are open-minded to concepts such as Black Holes, Strings and GUT's/ TOE's. But we have also encountered people in this contest who have the opposite opinions as part of their core belief systems. We have both received many 1's with only a few negative comments. Did they dislike our math or our paradigms? It is natural to have biases. Many people have favorite sports teams, or favorite political parties. Some people purposely support the underdog. Some people even define themselves in terms of which "team" they support.

As I understand paradigm shifts, if a concept is finally proven or dis-proven, then the "losing team" acknowledges the fact and accepts the now dominant paradigm (that may have existed beforehand but did not dominate). We could consider Special Relativity a paradigm shift that solved the aether problem (that existed beforehand). But a paradigm shift can be more subtle. Often, the losing team never quits fighting, and you literally have to wait for an entire generation to die off before a paradigm shift is fully realized.

Love it or hate it - Biases are a part of science. And the situation is compounded by the fact that experiment hasn't caught up with theoretical speculation.

Have Fun!

Ray Munroe

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