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Spacetime may in some ways be a condensate or due to a phase transition which is induced by Higgs-like behavior. I would not call spacetime the Higgs field. In fact the Higgs field is only somewhat related to the scalar field induced inflationary field, or inflaton.

Tachyons are vacua configurations on two of the 26-dimension of the bosonic string. These are "removed," so to speak by flying off to infinity in the big bang, or they appear associated with black hole singularities. The Cumrun Vafa work on tachyon condensates does illustrate some parallels with the Higgs field. My paper discusses tachyon condensates with black hole interiors and complementarity. They are involved with transitions between string types. I discuss this in my essay:

http://www.fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/494

Cheers LC

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You might see if your model can be expressed according to a Born-Infeld action that has M-theory content. The AdS-CFT duality is one of the major developments of the 1990's which was advanced further into the BTZ-black hole or AdS-black hole result outlined in Susskind's book "Black Hole Wars."

These results are of course not the end of the story. The duality appears to exist and this indicates that quantum information is preserved in quantum gravity. As yet we don't know how this conservation takes place, where I think it involves quantum error correction codes.

Cheers LC

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Lawrence,

The idea of "space" reall comes out of geometry. But geometry only has to be enforced by the postulates from which it's built. On the other hand, the "space" that General Relativity and the Einstein equations refer to is subject to a speed of light constraint and a stress-energy curvature/compression relationship; gravity atually alters the path of light within this 'cosmology' space. 'Cosmology' space, and the causality that must exist, are subject to a path-of-light natural law that doesn't appear anywhere in 'geometric' space. It's like the two things that we call space are different. I'm not an expert on Minkowski space, but I'm pretty sure there isn't a postulate that says that causality cannot occur above a velocity c. 'Cosmology' space, the thing that satellites/planets/stars/etc. exit in, has built into it the Laws of Motion, a speed limit c, and all the other laws of physics. Some people even say that gravity waves can distort it. But geometric space has none of this. A Higgs field supplies the mass, which immediately invokes the laws of motion via momentum (conservation of momentum)/kinetic energy/etc. Ricci curvature describes the deviation from Euclidean space. But that is simply because the path of light is forced to change because of gravity. It's as if 'cosmology' space is occuring on some kind of a surface/brane/Higgs field or something, which provides for all these things (light path, QM, laws of motion, mass, ...), but can, itself, be distorted by gravity. These are my reasons for wanting to call it something other than space; a Higgs field comes closest to describing this 'surface'.

Ray,

I think space-time, which should be called a Higgs field IMO, is quantized. But if it is, does the standard Planck constant, h=6x10-34J-s, supply enough energy-time to fit it? The fact that you have to "fit in" gravity really makes me think that gravity won't fit at all. Electromagnetism operates by photons which seem to define and limit the brane. Gravity which operates by gravitons, seems to be off of the brane. Gravity is more than capable of distorting space (e.g. black holes). It's as if gravitons are tachyonic. I disagree with the idea that tachyons "fly off to infinity"; maybe Lawrence actually watched them fly off, but it sounds like a mathematical simplification. I think that gravitons are hyperspace forces that can distort 'cosmological' space. Gravitons, I think, are vibrations in a different lattice. I think that's why QM and GR can't be unified.

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What happens if I explain it this way. You and I sitting/standing in two overlapping spaces: gravity-space and QM/electromagnetic-space. Here are there properties:

QM/EM-space: c = 3x108m/s and h = 6.6x10-34J-s.

Gravity-space: c'>>c, h'>>h.

There are two sets of quantum waves that handle position and momentum. When a high enough density of mass occurs, due to QM/EM oscillators or defects/oscillations in QM/EM-space, it causes the gravitons (c' and h') to vibrate. This effect causes QM-EM space to distort.

Is that a clearer picture? The Higgs field would have to be a manifestation of QM/EM space. We might also be talking about either two different tesselations, or one tesselation fitting inside of another tesselation.

Dear Lawrence,

Simply counting dimensions: I have four dimensions of spacetime, a 2-D M2-brane (with an SO(2,4) algebra) on dimensions five and six, a dual 5-brane (with an SO(5,1) ~ SO(2,4) algebra) on dimensions eight through twelve, and the odd-man-out seventh dimension may be a second time dimension. Some of these algebras may look similar to the AdS_5/CDT_4 Maldacena duality.

Dear Jason,

It may be that a quantized spacetime has similarities with the Higgs boson, but I am not ready to equate them. You said "Electromagnetism operates by photons which seem to define and limit the brane. Gravity which operates by gravitons, seems to be off of the brane. Gravity is more than capable of distorting space (e.g. black holes)." I agree. I consider dimensions eight through ten to be a Gravity-brane that contains massive WIMP-Gravitons. Gravitons travel freely on the seventh dimension, and are external to our observed 4-D spacetime, but affect spacetime via geometry.

If we look at the current scenario, we have different branes with different properties, and we should not expect to be able to unify the Standard Model and a quantum General Relativity in four dimensions. But I think unification is consistent in twelve dimensions. Obviously, we do not live in twelve dimensions, so these dimensions have collapsed and introduced the Spontaneous Symmetry Breaking that prevents us from clearly seeing the original lattice.

The space-brane and the gravity-brane are two different tessellations with potentially different values of h and c. Would the vacuum expectation value (vev) also be different? Or is the Higgs field a property of the space-brane, and the gravity-brane has a different sort of Higgs? If you look at my Ref [3], you will find many "Higgs" type particles (with corresponding fields) in my Super Yang-Mills 444-plet.

Have Fun!

Ray Munroe

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Hi Ray,

I think we have some agreement. The terminology is pesky, I'll try to refine that. I'm drawing a distinction between two kinds of space: Photon-space and Gravity-space. Photon-space, alternatively EM-space or even "Higgs" space. Photon space, with standard c and h, is responsible for light, electromagnetism, and particle mass via whatever Higgs mechanisms are discovered. Curvature or compression of photon space has energy relationships which are part of the Einstein equation. Kinks in photon-space are hadrons, leptons, and of course photons. Photon-space provides the connection, mass m, between particles, and the laws of motion. Photon-space also gives rise to QM. The tesselation of photon-space using standard c and h is proceeding normally, whatever the right geometry is, we'll eventually figure it out.

Gravity-space has a tesselation that is based on c'>>c and h'>>h. Curvature (compression) in photon-space due to gravitationally significant objects, translates (haven't quite solved this part) into charge in gravity space. Negative energy expands space as if it were a negative charge. Positive energy compresses space (black holes) as if it were a positive charge. I'll continue devleoping this idea.

By the way, you mentioned a scalar fermion. I'm curious how you arrived at that. A scalar fermion might be interpretated as a vector with identical components, x = [x x x x=ct]. Our universe which expands at the speed of light might be a scalar fermion.

Gravity-space particles, such as a gravity-Higgs, are unknown at this time. I'll develop that, along with "gravity-space".

Dear Jason,

What you are calling "photon space" and "gravity space" are probably the same as what I call the space-brane and the gravity-brane. I don't know for sure that these branes have different values of c and h, but I wouldn't be surprised if they do. My "scalar fermions" are the sf in Table 3, and the paragraph below Table 3 clarifies their basic properties.

Have Fun!

Ray Munroe

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Hi Ray,

Physicists release their grip, their garantee that physics still works, at the event horizon. When the acceleration is high enough to stretch the photon-space (space-brane?), odd things start to happen. I'm so tempted to just rip the Einstein equations and conservation of energy apart; but I'll be good. The black hole surface area is proportional to its energy content, right? But the event horizon is just the point where the space-brane can't keep up with the acceleration. Yet, all I want is a hyperdrive; but I don't want to have to supply the energy of 50 universes to do it. I really need to work with more energy, but I don't want to blow up the universe. Lawrence, and others, have already said that quantum mechanics becomes unstable in the high acceleration zones of the Alcubierre drive; I guess that's where we get to blow up (intentional pun) the Planck constant. Whatever it takes to get into hyperspace, it doesn't seem to be calling attention to itself; let's invent a warp-boson and see what happens.

Warp bosons are like energy charges +E and -E. Let's imagine that they come in pairs; they are attached by a spring that extends between them; for now, we'll say that the spring is a displacement in the "mysterious" dimension. Since springs go with energy, and our charges are also energy (+E/-E), let's say that these special warp particle/forces are meant to satisfy the requirements for warp drive, only. They can't blow up the universe, but they can, with a very reasonable amount of spring energy, expand (-E) and contract (+E) space. But let's say that it comes at the expense of the Planck constant. Just for fun, let's say that are found naturally occuring as little bubbles of uncurved space, just floating around. Wouldn't you know it! When two of them combine, they just become a larger bubble. If you take alot of them and combine them, the bubble becomes large enough that you can step inside of them. Now you ask, well, don't springs, especially springs in particle physics, oscillate? Answer: do you know of any oscillation gravity fields? OK, maybe you can get them to oscilate, but they dampen out rather quickly. Now these springs that I mentioned, they exist in a "mysterious" dimension. But, wouldn't you know it, they just happen to line up with magnetic fields. What are the odds? Now Ray, your brave, right? You go inside of one of these warp bubbles with an electro magnet, and a battery. Your so brave! What happens? Let's say you want to visit me in Portland. So, you orient the magnet in the NW/SE direction (the N and S poles are oriented along the path from Florida to Oregon). The spherical bubble begins to change into an ellipse. You bump your head. This was just with the electromagnet unplugged. And, oh Ray! You brought a 9v battery. You slowly accelerate across the lawn. Go back and get a bigger battery. Now, as anybody with ADD/ADHD would do, you went and came back with a fifty thousand watt generator, a chair, and a crash helmet. Good thinking, Ray! So, you get inside of the bubble, an inertial frame unto itself, and here is what happens.

Lawrence and Steve walk up, and watch everything. You throw the switch and energize the elextromagnet. Lawrence is good at watching things fly off to infinity. He watches as the +E and -E warpspace charges begin to dipole. The -E warp-charge builds up behind Ray (space expands), and the +E charge builds up in front, causing space to contract. Sorry Ray, I don't know whose dog that was, but it got sucked into the black hole in front of you. Now, with Lawrence's keen vision, he watches the dog get translated along the surface of the ellipse, from the black hole front, along the sides and out the back of the expanded space. Amazingly, Fido is ok! He pukes.

Next, Lawrences observes the photon-space (space-brane) start to move along the blackhole-ellipse center-white hole pathway creating equal and opposite momentum. Then, Ray flies off to infinity in his home made hyperdrive. Sorry Ray, you flew right past Portland. I didn't see you fly by, my vision isn't that good. But USAF watched you leave Florida at .5c. After that, there were funny lights and you went off radar. Do you know how to navigate from outerspace?

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Corrections:

Physicists lose their grip on physics inside of the boundary of a Schwartzchild sphere (a surface of a Planck size black hole).

That was a 50 thousand watt DC generator. Don't ask me where Ray got that!

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Dear Jason,

Poor Fido. I used to teach Astronomy - maybe I could navigate by the stars if I gain control of the craft before I get too far from Earth (did I survive the ionosphere and the cold vacuum of space?). I hope I packed lunch! It would be fun to visit Portland for the weekend, but it sounds like Lawrence and Steve have the easier jobs. I melted too many things when I was an experimentalist - you really don't want me to handle the 50 kW generator.

I'm not sure what these warp-bosons are. I think you need a Black Hole. Ask Lawrence if you can borrow his foolish observer.

Have Fun!

Ray Munroe

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Dear Lawrence,

Einstein's equations cost energy if you want to compress space. If you want to expand space, then you need negative energy, right? Warp bosons, which is a cool name, is actually a particle pair. One particle is a contracted space that wants to expand, like our universe. The other is a contracted space that wants to expand in the -R (-radius) space. It might look like gravity. But for a delicate balance between them, they will want to exchange space-brane (photon space) until they neutralize each other. By sheer coincidence, the space that they exchange travels along the surface of the "bubble". If you're inside of the bubble, your safe. This flow of this photon-space/space-brane has to (will hopefully) engage the space of our universe so that the laws of motion are consistent.

There are some things I'm uncomfortable with. This method, which was inspired by the Alcubierre drive, seems to assume that space will have friction enough to create velocity.

On an interesting note, it is important that Fido land at the same speed he was moving when he got sucked up. If he went shooting out the back, then more energy would have to go into the system, possibly 10 universes worth. Mmm...

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The Maldacena duality is AdS_6 ~ S^5, where the SO(4,2) ~ SU(2,2) gives the extended AdS. There is of course the AdS_5, which is the original AdS spacetime with group SO(3,2). That whole gemish AdSo+S^5 sits in 11-dimensions.

I am working up this paper, but trying to to haste it along too much. The FQXI paper is really a sketch with some of this. Having advanced some of this in areas I might now work up a paper here on the Jordan algebraic structure of this, which includes how to do the AdS physics here.

Cheers LC

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Dear Ray,

The last essay was addressed to you, not Lawrence, sorry.

Given a spatial and reciprocal lattices that describe both position and momentum, the model suggests that acceleration occurs with quantum leaps from one momentum eigenstate to the next. Since there must be a net zero momentum, one must apply an equal and opposite momentum (like a jet plane thrust) in the other direction. When gravity warps space, it does so in all directions, unlike a gravity based hyperdrive that has to push off of the crystal or push off of the space-brane itself.

It is still a mystery to me why accumulating mass/energy is responsible for Newtonian gravity. Yes, the Einstein equations say it does; they say that curvature (compression) creates energy density as either mass, momentum, or a gravity field. What happens if the tesselated lattice just has too many vibrating lattice strings in the same place? Does it overwhelm the crystal lattice? DOes it make the lattice sag?

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The horizon area is proportional to the entropy of the black hole.

The paper by Barcelo and co. in this FQXI area illustrates how the Alcubierre warp drive results in Unruh-like radiation which makes it unstable. I really doubt for a number of reasons these things will happen.

To be honest we may simply never really move out into space much. It is great for astronomy and science. The Hubble repair mission 2 months ago worked out great, and I can see men in space facilitating that sort of thing. Maybe solar power satellites in geo-sych are possible which might require human maintenance. Maybe service trips to facilities at Lagrange points or the moon are also possible as well. But frankly, space is lethal and very dangerous, and very energy intensive and expensive.

Cheers LC

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Dear Friends,

As usual, Lawrence is the voice of reason. Space is very dangerous. This is a serious problem that has kept NASA from sending people to Mars. But I can also relate with Jason because I hate to say that something is impossible. I'm tired of hearing that a TOE is impossible (and reading mountains of Philosophy to support why). Still, I wouldn't be surprised if the Universe is full of pockets of life that are separated by the "speed of light" barrier. If the speed of light can be cheated, we should have aliens here (unless we are that boring).

Is there a trick with AdS/CFT boundaries? Could we use this physics to jump into another brane and hope c is different? How do we cross the boundary? Is it a Black Hole horizon?

Have Fun!

Ray Munroe

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No, unfortunately we can't jump across branes. We might think of open strings which connect D-branes for cosmologies as corresponding to wormholes, or quantum wormholes. The string has two D0-brane (partons) connected by a type of flux tube. So to get a macroscopic wormhole we generate a gas of these partons and merege them into some sort of large tube. The problem is that this runs into huge stability problems, similar to trying to maintain a stable large N quark-gluon system.

I answered a question of yours on my blog area.

Cheers LC

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I was considering the idea that tesselating space with a position/momentum lattice might imply that there are position/momentum eigenstates. High energy density might result in only very high position/momentum states being available. I'm simply trying out a Pauli Exclusion Principle approach. Inside the black hole, the gravity field is so large that everything that can move has to move within the rarely used tachyonic energy levels. But in a black hole, who cares about Unruh radiation.

My warp-boson idea was kind of based on what is needed for the Alcubierre drive to work. But I think that conservation of momentum might kill the idea. Just because you have a black hole attached to the front of your space ship, and a white hole on the back of your space ship, it doesn't mean that you are going to fly across space FTL. The whole problem is that you need to supply have equal and opposite FTL momentum. Of course, FTL momentum is an oxymoron because it implies that your pushing off of a crystal that doesn't support FTL velocities.

It is true that even the tesselation idea is, itself, hypothetical. We don't know if there really are Schwartzchild hyperspheres whose outer surface is space itself. Then again, if these Schartchild spheres did exist, to what degree would they imitate the atomic structure, using space for bands, instead of electrons. Are they forced to be hard shells like bowling balls? If they're more like atoms, are there n=1,2,3... shells? Are the shells on the outside or on the inside?

Ray,

I agree with you; I don't like the word 'impossible'. But if Unruh radiation is part of the problem, ... I'm getting a headache. I'll be sitting in my naturally occuring warp-boson, thinking about it.

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Doesn't the Big Bang theory squash the tessellation of marbles (Schwartzchild spheres) theory?

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The Planck volumes or spheres are minimal volumes that can carry a quantum bit, and if excited with enough energy are elementary black holes.

There is a distinction between the warp drive and tachyons. Tachyons have imaginary mass-energy, while warp drive bubbles involve negative mass-eneergy. So a tachyon might be thought of as the "square root" of the warp bubble. I am not saying I think this is the case, but it might be worth working out.

Cheers LC

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These Planck volumes/spheres sound like they have energy bands of space or space-time. A level n>=2 represents a black hole. Going back to solid state, there are valence bands and conduction bands. Valence/conduction bands comes from neatly arranged atoms; atoms are made of positive and negative charges. These positive/negative charges also have electric fields. Does this mean that Planck spheres with conductions bands of space can be thought of as having charges of positive/negative space with fields that can move/accelerate space? Do I get to have a tractor beam, too? Cool!

Seriously, these excited Planck volume states look like they could provide a hyperspace region for us. But falling out of hyperspace (or black hole space) requires that we prevent our energy from leaking out. Maybe warp-bosons simply remain in the n=2 state unless a certain amount of energy is supplied to get them to drop down into n=1. I'm just kicking around ideas.