Comparing Apples to Inches by John Brodix Merryman

Peter,

I think I get a bit of what you are saying. Bit of thinking out loud here...

Consider it in terms of a version of the uncertainty principle as applied to the relationship between infinity and the absolute. With all of reality being expressed as manifestations on the scale between these logical parameters. Infinity is pulling the waves out to completely flat dissolution, while the absolute is constantly tripping them up as an inertial state of point particles. Now take it down to the range physics like to work in. Particles/waves, position/momentum. Does it fit that physical reality is a manifestation of the tension between inertia and infinity? Consider the idea of the holographic universe, where every point is a reflection of the whole.... Entangled particles?

It seems physics is more willing to consider an absolute, with the singularity, possibly black holes, but there is a tendency to shy away from infinity, yet what draws light out so far and so fast, except the void? If the universe were truly finite, it would seem the boundary would be evident, yet all we really see is what we don't see, the horizon line imposed by the limit of how far light can travel, before it completely fades away/ is redshifted off the visible spectrum.

These distances get thrown around as bunches of numbers, but think for a moment just how far that light from the edge of the visible universe has traveled. It has been moving at the speed of light for over 13 billion years! and we can still isolate it as coming from a specific galaxy. Could it be sufficiently clear, if it actually traveled as individual quanta? Given the ways this light has been bent through all the intervening gravity fields and crossing other radiation, it only seems comprehensible as a continuous emission, such that there is a continuum of light hitting that detector and the photons all develop at the same point on it.

I guess I'm getting off the idea of infinity and absolute, but it's a relationship I'm trying to find a way to understand.

I'm not arguing against the idea of C being relative to the particular field, such that this field could be moving at v, relative to another, but I do sense there is some element of inertia/absolute which is at the basis of mass and the tendency of energy to collapse into it.

Marius,

Thanks. These thoughts don't always line themselves up very clearly, so it's nice to get some confirmation that others see logic in them.

John

I entirely agree about red shift. Space had impedance. But I'm not seeing what you're seeing, and confused between infinity/ absolute/ inertia, which I see more as perhaps red wine, a continent, and a gyroscope. I do believe science is far more connected than we think, but I can't help you with those at present! except perhaps...;

From here, I see many local 'absolutes' as relative inertial frames. Do read my response to Edwin which explains better. You say 'bent', I say yes, but that is simply refracted by the plasma (which we know refracts) and also thus delayed.

And, yes, it's eventually red shifted into the infra red. It's so simple that black holes may even be red giants first before they accrete enough mass to fade from our visible spectrum, as with distance. Betelgeuse may even be close to becoming a black hole! It would be 'pulsating' in size as the event horizon moves with gravitational potential (and with a Lagrangian point not an 'infinite' singularity at it's centre of mass).

Are we all crazzy or is it me?

Best wishes

Peter

Peter,

Think of it in terms of basic whole numbers, zero to infinity. There seems to be a tendency to treat fractions as another form of infinity, a la Zeno's paradox and to treat zero as little more than the point between positive and negative.

The question with physics though, is what is the primary state and how do we derive this complex reality from it. Many people like to focus on something, be it anything from a platonic mathematical realm, to a spiritual entity, to spheres, to photons, to singularities, to primordial intelligence. They all raise the question of where did the god/photon/singularity/etc. come from?

The only way to get beyond that question is to propose it all came from nothing. So what is nothing? Is zero a point between a particle and its anti-particle? What if there are many such dualities? Is there a field of "nothing?" If we can have a point as nothing, wouldn't it be worth considering nothing as a field? Doesn't it really make some basic sense, that rather than zero being the center point of the coordinate system, that it be the blank sheet of paper? The non-fluctuating vacuum?

Rather than the entire universe arising from a singular point of nothing, wouldn't it possibly make at least equal sense that nothing would be an infinite field underlaying reality? If every point in this field is potentially fluctuating, wouldn't that have the effect of expanding space? And since this fluctuation would be mutually attractive, couldn't it then collapse into vortices of negation? Isn't that effectively what we see, stripped of theory; expanding distances, interspersed by vortices of collapsing residual mass, which then pretty much radiates the energy back out across the vacuum?

So back to the question of why do I associate absolute and inertia;

For one thing, I'm considering a slightly different understanding of inertia. Conventionally inertia refers to an object in motion staying in motion. Yet this motion requires some initial force, so if we go back a step before even that initial effect, there is motionlessness. The idea of perfect motionlessness might seem meaningless in the context of a point singularity, but not if we are looking at this as a field. As the neutral state, this vacuum field is the zero point between all positive and negative elements.

With temperature, the absolute is the negation of all motion, yet not of space and what is inertia, but the absence of effect, even that of the initial effect?

Scored 8 on two votes! This is going to ruin my carefully nurtured crackpot image.

FQXi is giving away 1.8 million to discuss time. http://www.fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/813

Why didn't they give that away in the first contest? Oh, wait, I didn't win anything anyway.

Dear John,

beautiful essay. I particularly like your question, "apple or inch?".

Best regards,

Cristi

Hi John,

I enjoyed your essay. You have packed a lot of good ideas in there, as usual, and never a moment to loose interest. I agree that the difference between counting and measuring is very important for how we comprehend reality.An interesting and original way of approaching the competition question.

I am reminded of the art lesson in which one must draw the spaces between objects rather than the objects themselves, to correctly portray their relationships. While the image produced allows the objects to be recognized it is irrefutably different from the image of the objects drawn without particular regard for the gaps between them.

Georgina,

Your point about the art lesson reminds me of the dichotomy between eastern and western ways of thinking. How they think in terms of context and we think in terms of objects. I wonder if modern physics had evolved primarily in an eastern environment, whether it would be anything like we have now, with the focus on particles, waves, fields, strings, etc, rather than seeing them as artifacts of a larger context. It's like we can see the other side and know it's there, but we still just don't see it from that side. It's like the spinning ballerina; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Spinning_Dancer

In discussing the point I make about time being the future becoming the past due to activity, rather than the present moving from past to future, it's been pointed out to me that in eastern and native American thought, the past is in front of the observer and the future is behind, because one can see what is in front and knows the past, but can't see behind, or knows the future. From an objectively physical point, it makes sense as well, since events occur, then are observed and then the information moves beyond the observer. We, in the west, actually have the more primitive view, since the past to future perspective is essentially based on the subjective perspective of the observer, as they move through their context. Even in Einstein's fourth dimension, it is the motion of the point of reference in the three dimensional space that is the fourth dimension.

I guess the inherent physiology of this goes to the heart of why it is really difficult to change peoples views, since it's not even a conscious decision and people have built their entire world view on a particular perspective.

One of the reasons I focused on the cosmological question is that I know I'm not getting any attention from the PTB, so I took the chance that serious evidence against BBT might start showing up by the time these essay's are being examined. Quite a long shot, but there have been some interesting observations of very distant galaxies since then. Though, of course, no one is actually questioning the model. It will be interesting and Good Luck.

Cristi,

Sorry for not responding, but I became a bit overwhelmed trying to examine the various essays and have been only taking it in in small doses.

John,

It seems to me that the point of your essay is that it is the way we think about things that creates in our minds what they are. The physics being built with those imagined realities. But that in itself may have been misleading and needs reconsideration. Which you do in your essay. Starting from scratch would not be easy at all. But getting the Duplo together right before the fiddly Lego pieces is essential.

Georgina,

Another part is the way things are that creates our minds, such as the right brain being a thermostat and the left a clock. I originally got this insight from E. O. Wilson, who described the insect brain as a thermostat. The point being it doesn't have any complex analytical or conceptual abilities, but merely reacts to energetic inputs. Which in many ways, describes the basis of our emotional functions. Hot/cold, attraction/repulsion, etc. It's that on/off, up down dichotomy.

On the other hand, our linear, rational side is effectively a form of clock, it that it's constantly calculating cause and effect, ie, using one click of the series to predict the next.

Then accord these two effects of motion, time and temperature with their spatial counterparts, distance and volume. When Einstein used three dimensions to describe space, he was using the vector of dimension to try to encompass the scalar of volume. When he was relating space to time, it was as a function of distance to duration. As I've argued previously, we could use ideal gas laws to say temperature is another parameter of volume, since changing the volume of a quantity of gas will have an inverse effect on its temperature. As a way of analogy, think of it as a balloon. If we reduce the volume, the temperature goes up, so like a ballon, squeeze it in one way and it bulges out another way. Just as with time and distance, if we accelerate mass close to the speed of light, its internal clock slows down, thus by increasing its external motion, we have the opposite effect of decreasing its internal motion.

Now because our rational side of the brain is the linear side, this correlation of vectors seems far more conceptually fundamental than the correlation of scalars, so "four dimensional spacetime" rings more bells than volume and temperature.

It's recently been proven that ants do know how to count footsteps, so they have a "clock" in their brains too.

Yes, yes, yes! I couldn't agree more John. This is just my kind of essay. This bit stuck out for me incidentally:

"What if there is some other way for light to be redshifted, proportional to distance? For one thing, it would make a far less complicated cosmology."

Yes, there is another way if the structural visualisation of the photon is envisaged. This is what's missing imo, a common sense pictorial representation of reality. Just as we know someone so much better if we've known them as they've grown up, so we will know the truth when we finalise a simulation model of reality from the moment of creation. It's not impossible or even too difficult imo. Just ditch everything and start from scratch. That's what I did and I think I've just about cracked the lot. Thanks again for an excellent essay which I've given you 10 for.

Yes, of course, I was getting a bit over excited. Not so much ditch everything, but assume a fundamental error had been made in the course of science history, is what I meant. Thanks again John.

Alan,

I think one of the primary conceptual fallacies afflicting physics predates the discipline. It is the basic assumption of time as the present moving from past events to future ones. While this is our evident experience, so is it evident that the sun moves across the sky from east to west. The problem was trying to construct of physical theory to explain it, prior to understanding the elementary fact that it is the earth which rotates west to east.

Same for time. It is the changing configuration of what exists which turns future potential into past circumstance. We don't travel the fourth dimension from yesterday to tomorrow. Tomorrow becomes yesterday because the earth rotates. Time is an effect of motion, not the basis for it.

Reality doesn't split into multiworlds at every quantum superposition. It's the collapse of those possibilities which is the future becoming the past.

There can be no dimensionless point in time because that would freeze the very motion creating it. Much like trying to take a picture with the shutter speed set at zero. This lack of an absolute instant means an object cannot be distinguished from its activity, whether its a particle from its wave, or a car from its context.

We can't have free will if the present is dimensionless point between past and future, since we can't change the past or affect the future, but if it's the motion of the present turning potential into effect, our actions are part of the whole.

I think there are various other conceptual issues causing trouble for physics. For one thing, it's based on a western, object oriented view of reality, rather than an eastern context oriented view. So we keep isolating objects/particles/waves/strings/etc. from their situation and then find it's all kind of fuzzy and not as absolutely precise as we assume it must be. Just think how different modern physics would be, if it had evolved in the east. It probably wouldn't even be physics, but called something like "contextuality." We wouldn't be looking for supersymmetric particles, because we would understand opposites are not something which annihilate each other, but balance each other and give context and deeper dimension to reality. The yin and yang, up and down, positive and negative of everything.

It's sort of a simplistic view, but complexity only covers errors in logic, it doesn't cure them.

I like the simplicity of your thinking, yet don't quite agree on the points you're making. A lot of science did emerge from the east, when the Muslim empire was at it's zenith. I've done a lot of eastern book reading and although I think different worldviews help individuals in different communities the basic underlying dynamics of nature are the same. The results would be pretty much the same. Their interpretation of how we should live our lives may be very different, but the picture of reality if it emerged as a t.o.e from the eastern empire would be near identical.

I think I have found the stumbling block of modern physics btw. It is the simple idea of using an Archimedes Screw analogy to explain gravity. Newton missed a trick. Look at the dynamic diagram and see how this can represent a graviton. The red ball indicates the direction of force. Now imagine the whole screw moving to the bottom right of the screen. This is how a force carrying particle/wave can be visualised. When it interacts with another particle/wave a force of attraction is induced. Now imagine that this Archimedes screw travels around a wraparound universe, or hypersphere. It would emerge on the other side as a force of repulsion i.e. dark energy. Think about it and you'll be amazed.

Alan,

It does provide an interesting concept to explore the possibilities implicit in spin. Though with many ideas, it is possible to carry the analogy too far and lose the meaning, as you get wrapped up in the details. Sort of like the momentum of a pendulum swings past its point of attraction. I only say this because I'm not getting all the connections you are seeing, but have seen the propensity to over project too many times.

I guess my point about eastern ways of thinking is that I suspect we do focus a bit to much on what is actually physical and then the closer we examine it, the more blurry it gets. This leads to a point I don't have time to get into at the moment, which is that I think space, in having no physical properties, is both equilibrium state and infinite. Which makes it that invisible void, the missing piece of the puzzle, we keep trying to patch over with something physical, but keep getting lost.

A good example of just how little we do know about the forces of attraction:

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=particles-that-flock&WT.mc_id=SA_DD_20110211

John: okay, I was talking about the object reality, as defined in Georgina's essay, as being EXACTLY like a helical screw and not just an analogy. It's the image of a GRAVITON imo and can be nothing else. Do you accept the graviton idea or do you reject it for a spacetime continuum image of reality?

Alan,

I'm somewhat cautious as to the nature of anything. I can understand how the idea of a screw might solve the contradiction of an attraction particle, but I don't know that the particle is the best conceptual solution for every effect. Gravity may well be a composite of attraction and vacuum effects. All that can really be said is that it's a property of mass/structure to consolidate, as opposed to the nature of radiation to expand.

But when one considers the work of quantum mechanics and the six building blocks of nature being six quarks, with spin properties, then this FITS the particle model. It's only Newton's inability to postulate a mechanism for the force of gravity that has left it in it's mathematical form. His equation denotes a lack of ORIENTATION for a particle mechanismfor gravity! He has left the solution lacking in detail. He has left the solution in mathematical form which dictates a non-particle solution. The graviton has no place in his famous equation. He has skewed science from the outset and Einstein never changed it for a graviton model. This is the reason for the current problems imo. The answer is easy. Just wait until the penny drops..

John,

We have always fundamentally disagreed, so there's no point rehashing the physics of spacetime.

However, I do appreciate that mathematics agrees with you on the difference between counting and measuring, and that it does lie at the heart of "why" digital and analog coexist. We measure probabilities (a continuous interval between zero and one) for a particle to exist; we count the discrete particles. There's a delightful story about the great Polish mathematician Sierpinski, who was waiting on a train platform with his wife, in a high state of agitation. "What's wrong?" she asked. "We're missing a bag," he replied. "No," she said, "all six bags are here." "They are not!" he shot back -- "I've counted them several times now: zero, one, two, three, four, five!"

How one starts counting determines the outcome, and certainly quantized spacetime depends on that "smallest measurable quantitity." Zero isn't measurable, however -- it's a number, but not a quantity. That's what Einstein was up against, the appearance of singularities.

Tom