Comparing Apples to Inches by John Brodix Merryman

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

Thanks Tom.

While I haven't followed the thread of logic to really make this point before, I've wondered whether math doesn't treat fractions as a form of infinite regression, a la Zeno's paradox and effectively avoid dealing with some of the complications of nothing/zero. Using zero as a marker is necessary, but that really makes it a one. Geometry treats the center point of the coordinate system as zero, but if it is a one, doesn't that mean the blank sheet of paper, without any marks, is the real zero?

Alan,

It's not like I'm really arguing it from a conventional perspective, but I think there is another side to it. Consider nodes and networks. In reality they create and define each other. Form follows function. By looking at the particles and trying to understand their interactions is like trying to understand the network only as connections of the nodes. You don't get the larger emergent effects. Physics doesn't seem to see these larger effects as they are. Their results just spin off into blurry multiworlds.

So are quarks actually some little particle, or is that simply a convenient designation for what is going on that we are not seeing?Maybe the three quarks are qualities of the proton, which we measure, but don't really separate. Maybe gravity is part of the larger emergent structure of mass. I don't know, but physics doesn't really know either.

In that sense, we exist within this zero/absolute and that's why everything balances out, but can't collapse in toto, only as particular points scattered across the void.

That's the thing, John. A blank sheet of paper, analogous to spacetime without matter, is a "real" zero insofar as the continuous functions of classical physics are concerned. The warping caused by matter makes it possible for us to differentiate that nothing from the curvature that is something. What's fascinating is that we know by observation that the overall curvature is very nearly 1.0 -- like a sheet of paper with a single symbol on it. Very suitable for a T-shirt, no? :-)

Geometry, OTOH, is abstract. The point is dimensionless, just the case of a line of measure zero.

Tom

Tom,

Does the symbol create the sheet of paper, as would be premised by Big Bang theory, or does the paper permit the symbol? An expending metric, that of redshift, would suggest the first, but a stable metric, the speed of light, would suggest the second.

As an abstraction, we should treat geometry as a useful model and nothing more. Otherwise we must account for that other mathematical principle that multiplying anything by zero equals zero. So a dimensionless point doesn't exist. The problem so often with math is that people treat the principles they like as absolutes and ignore the ones they don't like and that defeats the purpose. The Planck unit is where divisibility meets its limit, but this is inherently fuzzy because defining it further would require a level of definition beyond the planck scale. Math is modeling.

John,

I enjoyed reading your essay. Most was familiar to me from previous discussions we had in these blogs. But the style of writing was easy, smooth and clear. I liked it. Since we agree in many fundamental views (especially as it concerns cosmology) I hope your essay makes it to the 'finals' -- along with Peter's and Georgina's and Eckard's and many others that now seem to converge on the same 'view' of physical reality. Who knows. If a sizable number of essays in the final round play on the same central theme then our call for greater 'physical realism' may begin to be taken more seriously by the judges. I will definitely give you a good rating and hope you make it to the final round!

Recalling our discussions on cosmology. I have a curiosity and concern I like to share with you.

In my essay I show that Thermodynamics (The Fundamental Thermodynamic Relation as well as The Second Law) requires that physical time be 'duration', t-s, rather than 'instantiation', t=s. Thermodynamics as I argue asserts that 'every physical process (event) takes some duration of time to occur'. This, of course, fits well with my claim that 'there is accumulation before manifestation' of energy. My curiosity -- and physicist's concern -- is that Thermodynamics thus would seem to invalidate GR where 'events' in the Universe are given (x,y,z,t) coordinates in a spacetime continuum. Clearly, time so used in GR is 'instantiation' t=s, and not 'duration' t-s as I argue is required by Thermodynamics. And if GR violates Thermodynamics, wont then the Cosmology based on GR and deeply Thermodynamical, also be false?

This goes well with your notion of 'counting clicks' (instantiation) rather than 'counting the time between clicks' (duration).

Wishing you well,

Constantinos

John,

As usual - very thought provoking stuff!

Constantinos,

I think spacetime geometry is equivalent to epicycles, in that it is trying to give a physical explanation for how time goes from past to future, since that is the bedrock of rational thought. As opposed to the simple fact that we have the relationship inverted, much like it is actually the earth which is rotating and not that the sun actually moves. Remember that for their time, epicycles were extremely advanced math and laid the foundations for much of the cosmology and physics that came after, once the correct pivot was established and all the parts came together in a much more simplified whole.

Safe to say, for those who have spent their lives loading the old program, this just "does not compute."

Having been following the news out of the LHC, they have pushed many of the boundaries for super symmetry quite far and haven't found any of what they are looking for. Combine this with the likelihood that evidence for a galaxy to be discovered, further away than the universe is presumed to be old, within the next few years, considering the current oldest discovered one is 13.2 billion lightyears away and I suspect the physics world is going to have some major earth guakes rattling in in the coming decade. Who knows, by the time this contest is finished in June, some discoveries, or lack thereof, might be rattling the china.

Chris,

Thanks. Good to hear from you again. I haven't been reading too many of the entries, but am meaning to get to yours. I burn mental fuses reading too much of this sort of stuff.

John,

Great title, catchy and somewhat profound.

"The main reason why particles won out over waves is because there is no suitable

medium in which such quantum waves might propagate and this is a very valid concern."

I contend that models can only simulate reality.

Jim Hoover

Jim,

Thanks. It is a bit scatterbrained, but I tried to cover a fairly broad range of ideas and bring them into some degree of focus in as few words as possible.

Here is another possible explanation for how light could be redshifted due to distance, courtesy of Israel Perez;

http://www.fqxi.org/data/forum-attachments/2008CChristov_WaveMotion_45_154_EvolutionWavePackets.pdf

From Dan Benedict's footnotes, here is another large hole blown in Big Bang theory;

http://www.americanscientist.org/issues/pub/2007/9/modern-cosmology-science-or-folktale

As with the many other problems with this belief system, if it can't be plastered over, it gets ignored.

Hello John:

I'm no horseman like you but have been around them a bit. Standing next to a scared horse is very scary and somewhat predictible, kicking and running etc. Figuring out the universe is much less predictible... but possibly someday, a divergent and thought provking essay like yours (or mine) might eventually aid understanding. It is great to have this essay contest available!

I enjoyed your essay. Good luck!

Joseph Markell

Dear John,

I very much appreciate the title of your essay, your courage to address some holy but perhaps nonsensical flocks of cows and the current discussion that arose from this attitude.

It does not matter that I do not agree with you on all details. For instance, I am left-handed and familiar with a lot of details concerning the hemispheres of brain.

I just feel challenged to take issue because you wrote:

"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."

Of course, our actions and our free will are part of the whole. Nobody doubts that the past cannot be changed. However, why do you contradict e.g. Shannon? Why do you deny the possibility to affect the future? I see no logical alternative but to strictly separate in physics between past and future by means of a mathematical ideal, a point, something that does not have parts.

I consider at lest Georgina Parry and Albert Einstein people who are called presentists. They do not consider the present in the sense of an intangible demarcation between past and future but deliberately imprecise as for instance in expressions like today, this year, or in the time being.

The more I am dealing with the idol Einstein, the less I respect him. When I read his seminal 1905 paper on relativity, I could not understand many details because they were obviously incompletely stolen from Poincaré without any hint. Perhaps, the editor Max Planck did not see any problem because he was familiar with this stuff. Recently, a German minister of defense lost his job because his dissertation plagiarized work without giving all due references.

While my judgment on Poincaré's method of synchronization is not yet complete, the book "The Special Theory of Relativity" by David Bohm did not convince me. Has the question really settled?

Regards,

Eckard

John

Good blog post, and excellent link from Israels refs. I also attach an up to the minute one Wilhelm has passed to me, and it's probably about time you followed that by looking at a recent preprint of mine ref a full paper in formal review.

Wills is a short review of another imminent publication; http://www.world-science.net/othernews/110223_blackhole.htm

My own is very fundamental and takes the discrete field (DFM) solution to CSL to some extraordinary logical conclusions. It's also consistent with your own views on the BB, and provides resolutions to a myriad of major issues, the smooth profile, the re-ionisation issue, the 'spiral' CMB assymmetry, etc etc etc.

It should not have been lost on you that while the redshift paper is quite brilliant, and fully consistent with the DFM (as is the other item above and all other latest data), they are all absolutely unequivocal in requiring an effective 'fluid medium' condensate of some sort (below condensed 'matter' - which cannot condense from nothing any more than it could in a big bang!).

Your arguments are generally excellent, but if you'll forgive me, and for positive reasons. I see two glaring weaknesses; One; the troglodytes will use and write you off with - the reversed tiem thing which is a perfectly reasonable way of looking at it but almost entirely semantic. .. And Two; the denial of any 'energy field' continuum (even though it's 2.7 degrees), which will neither let you in to the troglodyte society or endear you to the enlightened! (although I haven't heard you promoting that recently). With those two cleaned up a bit I think you have the basic concepts of a cast iron coherent theory.

Please read the enclosed and considering before responding. (It may prove a test of whether or not you can doing what you're asking the relativists running with blinkers to do, forget initial beliefs and go with the logic)!

Very best wishes

Peter

PS I'm waiting with interest for a response from Tom on his essay string.

Eckard,

I agree mathematically separating past from future with the present as a point is a very effective and logical model of the relationship, but it's still a model. To the degree I see the effect of time as a consequence of motion, I feel that being able to understand the process creating this effect means peeling away those concepts to see the foundation from which they rise. Georgina is better at fleshing out the argument, but we seem to be in agreement on the principle that there is simply energy, in its various forms, moving about in space. Due to our particular physical situation of being both personally mobile and immersed in this field of motion, it does create a dichotomous effect of whether we are moving through it, or it is moving around us. We conflate the effect of change in the environment with our own motion through it. Therefore we consider the future as being in front of us and to which we are physically moving toward. In many respects, this forces us to focus on that point of contact our immediate consciousness perceives, with our context and thus reality is perceived as existing at this point of the present. As Georgina has pointed out, all the information consolidated in that point of perception travels different distances and for different durations, so it is an amalgam of motion. In this sense, the concept of four dimensional spacetime is actually a very useful model, but must be understood as a model of how information and energy interact.

As I keep pointing out, there can be no dimensionless point in time, as that would be like taking a picture with the shutter speed set at zero. Conversely, too long a shutter speed and everything is blurred together. Essentially our minds do function as just such a series of near instants, otherwise the world would be a blur.

So it's not as though I'm completely disagreeing with the various interpretations and understandings of time, but just trying to put them together as different perspectives of a larger reality. In that regard, I do focus on the two directions of time, etc, as a way to challenge convention.

As for Einstein, he has doing this work 100 years ago, at a time when monarchies still prevailed in Europe, the automobile, airplane, telephone, etc, were in their infancy and narrative structure had yet to meet deconstructionism. Yes, he does have many precedents and his hagiographers tend to edit these foundations, but that is life. It chews up the past in order to feed the future.

Peter,

I find your ideas of moving fields quite interesting, but given my own serious limitations of time, education and intent, can't really give them the attention they deserve and so tend to leave such more focused observations to those with the abilities to address them.

I do understand the two directions of time is semantic on some levels, but it does does address some vexing issues on other levels. It could equally be argued that whether the sun moves across the sky, or the earth rotates on its axis is an equally semantic distinction. Both are true, but the delineation of the relationship had significant effects on how humanity understood its relationship with the universe. That it gets dismissed, I find amusing, to put it bluntly.

It's not that I'm denying the energy field continuum, as I do feel my concluding observations on light as a continuous medium requires it as implicit, but that I feel there is a deeper issue about the function of space which gets overlooked. I'm not saying it even has any physical effect of attraction or repulsion, as both are forms of energy acting on other forms of energy, but that its very non-existence sets parameters that have consequences. Rather than go over the various points, simply consider that the alternative to an infinite and absolute field is the singularity. In simple geometric terms, zero is posited as the centerpoint of the coordinate system rather than the blank space. So before simply dismissing space as an effect of measurement, consider the parameters intrinsic in any alternative.

I will read, I promise!!!

Pardon me, but I have many friend who are complete troglodytes. Some of whom I have to go work with shortly.

John,

Do you really deny the line because it is too small for your car to drive on it? After its shutter is closed, your camera does not get input anymore. I hope you and Georgina will distance yourself from Einstein's presentism. Is there really a mysterious somewhere hidden process that creates time or could we agree that we need the notion time as to describe all processes?

I do not consider "the future as being in front of us and to which we are physically moving toward". I rather consider two aspects of the notion future:

- something particular that we can steer to some extent but not predict for sure and

- in a more general sense an abstract order of all not yet observable features of and events within certainly ongoing processes.

I do not see "our immediate consciousness" perceiving something "as existing at this point of the present". I rather see our consciousness a quite normal spatially distributed process located in the past as are all processes in reality. The point now is as abstract as central point of earth.

You wrote: "In this sense, the concept of four dimensional spacetime is actually a very useful model, but must be understood as a model of how information and energy interact."

Here I strongly disagree. I did not take the effort to read Georgina's discussion after I realized that her arguments got diffuse. Can you please summarize what if any I should try to understand on a clean logical basis?

What about Poincaré and Lorentz, did you deal with the synchronization on which spacetime has been based?

While I guess, the dissertation by zu Guttenberg was not important, Einstein might have stolen something wrong with definitely serious consequences for the history of physics, not necessarily something valid for good.

Eckard