Ultimate Possibilities of Physics by Ben Baten

Posted to keep material together, since it could be useful for other reader to read this in conjunction with my essay. This is based on my (slightly edited) reply to Stephen Wolfram's essay on the FQXi site.

Dear Stephen-

Thank your for your interesting essay, although I have a different opinion about the suitability of a computational approach to fundamental physics. Basically, I have similar concerns with many other posted essays, which have a computational, philosophical or formal character. Without strict adherence to nature for development of a unified theory of physics, right at initial considerations, this leads to an unbound search for such a theory and many speculative discussions.

In your essay, the suggested 'discrete machine' or computational approach relies on formal axiomatic theory. This is, in my opinion, unlikely to provide an accurate representation of nature. In principle, an infinite number of machines can be imagined. Without guiding principle to reduce this number, this leads, as mentioned before, to an unbound search problem. In addition, certain machines may produce output that, deceptively, resembles observed natural behavior, although the output may never a good representation of nature when observing it at a small enough scale. Within the computational approach, it also remains to be explained how machines are created.

From within a 'discrete machine world' you'll not be able to comprehend nor completely accurately represent the possibilities of the 'analog' world, which nature appears to be. Theorems applicable to the world of discrete machines are in general not generalizable to the analog world. In addition, time is implicitly present in the operation of a machine, which makes it impossible to explain physical time from within a machine.

From my perspective, it is far more efficient to start a search for a unified theory directly with already observed 'known to be true' physical properties. This dramatically limits the search effort. These physical properties must be represented in terms of a minimal coherent formalism. From this theory it should be demonstrated that all observed quantum and relativistic effects appear and correspond to observed behavior within currently measured accuracy. This is essentially what Quantum Field Mechanics (QFM) attempts to do (see my essay). In the 'analog world' of QFM, interaction gives rise to unceasing pulsating phenomena. These quantum beat processes exhibit wave-corpuscular behavior (as Louis de Broglie suggested) and can be interpreted as massive particles. The mentioned pulsation has a finite duration (10^(-20) sec for electrons) and short spatial jumps (with a size equal to the Compton wavelength). This results in dynamically emerging discrete space and time, although the two attracting fundamental fields from which this behavior arises are 'analog and continuous'. In this analog world, dynamically emerging behavior has no relation to discrete machines and does not require multiple universes.

I have provided an -overview- of this theory and some of its extensions in my essay. The references provide the in depth rationalization. A slide deck on my website provides an alternative description.

Thanks again for your essay.

Regards,

Ben Baten

Posted to keep material together, since it could be useful for other reader to read this in conjunction with my essay. This is based on my (slightly edited) reply to the essay of Philip Vos Fellman, Jonathan Vos Post and Christine Carmichael on the FQXi site.

Dear Philip, Jonathan Vos Post, Christine,

I enjoyed reading your essay. The introduction gives a good overview of the issues with current physics. I believe that these issues cannot be resolved without adopting a fundamentally different perspective. The incompatibility of Quantum Theory and General Relativity (GR), at very small scales, is an indication that both may have some have fundamental issues. According to MOND, GR is also not valid at galactic scales and beyond. Hardly anyone is seriously considering the possibility that GR (although mathematically elegant) could be invalid in some subtle way and inhibits unification. Obviously, current phenomena that are supposedly validate (not falsify) GR should then be rationalized in a different fashion. In the past, some people have provided alternative explanations, but they have not stuck.

From my perspective, since the early 1900s, the development of physics has taken a wrong turn. The pursued highly formal approach has resulted in all kinds of supposedly existing non-observed interaction particles like gravitons, gluons, and weak bosons. This 'discrete' approach does not provide a good foundation for development of a truly unified theory of physics.

The alternative 'continuous' approach is to appreciate the observed existence of four fundamental interactions and develop a reality-based theory based on this. This results in an interaction theory which shows the real existence of only massive particles and photons (no virtual particles). In this theory, space and time are discrete and dynamically emerging, which addresses some of the issues you discuss on page 5 of your essay wrt time intervals. It turns out that discreteness of space and time are extremely important elements to enable unification of quantum behavior and relativity. Time follows from a kind of periodic clock behavior of an oscillation quantum beat process, much in line with the original ideas of Louis de Broglie. A very short overview of the theory that covers this can be found in my essay (which admittedly includes some shortcuts, but all results are rationalized in the references). In this essay, I also provide some critical remarks about incompatibility of GR and quantum behavior. I would also like to point you to a slide deck on my website for another perspective. I don't expect many people to agree with this style of physics, because it goes against the current thinking of trying to solve unification by formalization.

I agree with many of Barbour's thoughts on time. However, where I fundamentally disagree is his idea that time does not exist. The non-existence is, in my opinion, based on formal manipulation of formulas without appreciating the physical origin of those formulas.

On page 6 you describe that the Schrodinger equation has unwelcome consequences for thermodynamic reversibility. Strictly, Schrodinger's non-potential equation holds for a free single massive particle (electron) and possibly also for a collection of free bound particles. The fact that Schrodinger's equation is time symmetric is a mathematical artifact, because it ignores the irreversibility of time at a more fundamental level (see QFM-II report on my website).

Thanks again for your essay.

Ben Baten

Greetings,

I've downloaded your essay. It may take me a while to digest, but I will have comments before long.

All the Best,

Jonathan

Hello again,

Yes, it was me above. Login expired, or maybe I had logged out. Back to you soon.

All the Best,

Jonathan

Ben

I've studied it and considered it and all it's implications very carefully. There's some good imaginative thinking there, and there's no solid disproof. But I'm now convinced you're riding slightly the wrong horse. That's not because it flies in the face of GR, I have no problem with that at all in pronciple, but it's because it doesn't resolve any of the big issues in physics or astronomy, and that's what we need to find. In this case we musn't be distracted by thheories that don't acheive that.

I say that with some confidence as the similar but critcally different field based Discreet Field Model (DFM) does exactly that, and is far more inductively provable.

Do you believe math alone can make EM waves (light) blue shift when it reaches a planet moving towards it's source? Do you beleive 'lateral waves' can actually exist in nature, without something actually moving, as well as just on an oscilloscope? Do you beleive the surface of an expanding light sphere stays exactly spherical when part of it moves into a galaxy moving relative to the space outside the galaxy. How could that possibly be so if it moves through the galaxy at 'c'. etc.

The answers to these are all derived simply from the DFM. I implore you to have a proper look and think about it. It was very hidden beneath my essay 'Perfect Symmetry' as I was testing the interest of self interested scientists in agendas other than their own! But you'll see from the posts just a few have had that eureka moment. Check it at http://vixra.org/abs/0909.0047

Bets wishes

Peter Jackson

Hi Peter (part 1)-

Thanks for reading the essay in more detail and I appreciate the effort to understand it. You're one of the few people to provide feedback. I get the impression that people just vote without taking the time to really understand my essay. I can deduct this from scores varying from 1 to 10, both from the community and public, without leaving comments. I don't care so much about the scores, but hope that people start to look at QFM as a more seriously alternative and use it to question current physics.

In my opinion, there is something fundamentally wrong with the way current physics is pursued and is unlikely to lead a unification of theories. Unfortunately, I have not been able to indicate all reason in my essay and the description of QFM may lack full depth since I have used references. I will indicate a few more reasons below, but a full explanation can be found in an upcoming report.

Let me give my provide a response to your feedback and specifically dissect one of your main statements:

"But I'm now convinced you're riding slightly the wrong horse. That's not because it flies in the face of GR, I have no problem

with that at all in principle, but it's because it doesn't resolve any of the big issues in physics or astronomy, and that's what we need to find. In this case we must not be distracted by theories that don't achieve that."

1. The theory does not resolve the big issues of physics.

You know that unsuccessful attempts have been made to unify Quantum Mechanics and Relativity Theory. My essay describes an attempt that unifies quantum and relativistic behavior, but in a rather unconventional way. This can only be done if one adopts the (substantiated, see motivation of the existence equation (2.1)) view that there is a deeper level of physical reality such that the notions of space and time can clearly be substantiated. Space and time, which are more or less taken as a 4-dimensional background in current theory, are now provided with a transprarant physical interpretation and its is clear that

time is not a dimension (one cannot go backward). Without this understanding it is, in my view, impossible to unify theories of physics and to comprehend their limitations. Current theories are largely mathematical frameworks. An attempt to unify these theories, or provide something fundamentally better, without a reality-based approach results in a substantial degree of abstract guessing, which unfortunately pervades current physics.

In my essay, the quantum beat process (which performs oscillation and rotation) that massive particles execute unifies quantum and relativistic behavior, which is expressed by -h=-Edt+pdx, from which e.g. the Lorentz transformation and the fundamental equations of e/m theory follow (see my website for details). I think that this result is already remarkable: with little, physically motivated formalism a lot can be obtained: insight in the character of space, time, and the derivation of all main results of e/m theory from a basically quantum equation, i.e. -h=-Edt+pdx.* No other theory has been able to do this. Although the physical scale of these results is small, they resolve 'big issues'.

2. It flies in the face of GR.

Indeed, this follows from this theory. When Einstein developed GR, he used Special Relativity as a starting point, already being based on the assumption that space and time are all pervasive (global) and continuous. This led him to GR. I maintain that, based on Kirilyuk's fundamental work, the starting assumptions of GR are incorrect. In fact, according to QFM, the 'locality' of the quantum beat process in terms of local generation of discrete space points does not allow a global description of space as an omnipresent entity. Obviously, this is intuitively very strange. Protofields are omni-present, but space points are dynamically generated in the omni-present compound of protofields.

3. The theory does not resolve the big issues of astronomy (I assume you mean cosmology) If GR is not applicable to global scales according to QFM (see point 2 and MOND seems to suggest this as well), this implies that something is fundamentally wrong with current understanding of the cosmos and GR cannot be used as a basis for development of a unified theory of physics. This is a negative result, but indicates that a fundamental reassessment of physics may be required.

The issue of dark matter may be resolved in QFM (see Kirilyuk's work), yielding equations which resemble MOND.

4. We must not be distracted by theories that don't achieve solving the big issues.

I maintain that current physics is unable to explain the 'small issues' and therefore cannot explain the 'big issues'. QFM at least tries to tackle the big issues that are apparent at quantum scale, which results in a better view of the issues at a much larger scale.

Am I riding the wrong horse slightly? Is it imaginative? First of all, QFM is self-consistent. This can be checked by consulting the reports on my website or Kirilyuk's work. I have also critically assessed QFM against many other theories and observed phenomena and no other theory has given me a convincing solution for many of the serious issues that I raised. QFM appears to me a much better than the other alternatives being pursued, although I stay open for alternatives.

Hi Peter (part 2)-

5. The 'do you believe questions' that you raise.

Obviously, math alone does not make something physics. I hope that you do not deduce this from my essay in which all behavior is obtained from the protofields and their interaction (which is better motivated in the notes associated with the essay on the website), and motion of perturbations in protofield. Also waves can only exist if there is 'something' moving. Current physics cannot say what is moving, it ignores the existence of something (aether = protofields). I will read your paper in detail. In general, I learn more from alternative views than current formal models, since the former often raise more interesting issues.

* Note that this equation was also obtained by David Bohm with a different interpretation of dt and dx and can also be found in other literature assuming continuous time. In the essay, I also refer to an experiment that appears to confirm the internal oscillation of electrons.

Ben Baten

Hi all ,

Dear Mr Jackson ,

Do you beleive the surface of an expanding light sphere stays exactly spherical when part of it moves into a galaxy moving relative to the space outside the galaxy. How could that possibly be so if it moves through the galaxy at 'c'. etc.?

???????? It is confused that .Don't complicate the simplicity .A real dynamic exists .The evolution is specific .

Could you elaborate a little please your words pragmatically ?

Regards

Steve