Scales Solve the Continuous vs. Discrete Paradox by Ray B Munroe

Dear Ray

Thanks for putting your above post to me on my thread. Modify and improve understanding is indeed the result, but you're not quite on target yet. I post my response below.

"Ray. Hmmm, you need to slow down a bit (to below C?). I make it clear I'm not trying to overthrow anything!! And yes, the jets are also explained without needing optical illusions.

Firstly; Of course SR gives the same result ('c') this IS SR. But, - as we understand it it has paradoxes, unfalsifiable contraction & circular logic, is non compliant with QM, and can't have the fields of GR and now the CMBR! Lets' get real Ray, it's not perfect it's a mess, so all I say is; - Hey! if we think carefully there's a way SR may work without ANY of the messy bits, and unified with QM!

So.. are you saying; "Don't be silly, it's all fine as it is, the theory can't possibly be right so I'm not even going to bother checking it out."??

For those who HAVE made the effort and SEEN it Ray, someone who says that... ..well I'm sure you can imagine how they'd be perceived. I rate your perception higher than that, but do understand how unlikely you may feel this is.

Unless of course you're using the standard model of new physics!; - (ignore, criticise, deny, then claim it's self apparent). I that case It's way further on than I'd hoped!

Frankly I already wrote long ago it's able to be consistent with the Dirac Sea, as with lattices, as it ALLOWS (though not necessarily demands) a background frame, (not one giant bus but 'infinitely many') and provides a quantum matrix (ions & scattering) to implement change to em energy propagation (rate/f/lambda).

The superluminal jets are simply 'Incentric' streams, - small buses within bigger buses within bigger buses, on planets in solar systems in galaxies etc. Light changes speed at plasma shocks around matter to do 'c' in the local 'bus.' THAT'S what's new! and suddenly all else slots neatly into place at last. I really do hope you get this as it seems we could be heading for an astonishing ridiculous situation where it's only (some) physicists who can't understand how physics might really work!!! It needs bright physicists to help falsify it, fine tune it and work on the quite vast consequences.

there are some other papers to read in the string and in the references (stacks of empirical evidence) which may also help. With the 1st paper already in Peer Review this is no joke Ray, and I hope you can maybe give it a just a little respect.

And I really hope you give understanding it a decent shot."

Very best wishes

Peter

Hi Peter,

Did I disrespect you? I read your essay, and felt that it underemphasized the importance of the vacuum, and the permitivity and permeability of free space. I did not say that I disagree with your results - in fact, we may not be as different as you think. By the way, I haven't rated your essay yet either - I like to think about ideas for a few days before I vote on them.

Of course, I learned the Standard Model in graduate school, but if you have read any of my FQXi essays, recently published articles, or book, then you would know that I consider the Standard Model an insufficient guess at reality. You are trying to clarify the understanding of SR and GR. I am not fine-tuning our understanding of SR and GR because I'm working towards a Theory of Quantum Gravity and a TOE. What good is a "TOE" that doesn't explain Quantum Gravity? Read some of the earlier posts on my thread that explain the possible stability of the gravitational near-singularity, and confirm your expectations of the importance of tori. I don't quite equate changing buses with quantum gravity.

Please read Sections 5.5 and 7.5 of my book.(You may need to click on the "Preview" button under the picture of the front cover for a free partial preview). It will give you an idea of just how "non-Standard" my ideas are.

My ideas also include tachyons that travel faster than the speed of light. If you recall, I am a "Cosmic Ray" whose newest vehicle has 150K miles on it, is 11 years old, and would probably blow up if I pushed it over 80 mph (130 kmph). So I'm not very familiar with traveling faster than c, my analogies are just different from everyone elses!

Have Fun!

Dr. Cosmic Ray

Dear Ray Munroe,

Thanks for your views and I stress you to, please,go thro' my web-site that I have mentioned in my essay and there you find complete answer for your problems on QG.In it I have given the basic field equation of the QG field in tensor form.In it I have also said how Immirzi-parameter is related to QG field.

Your idea of collective collaboration is inspiring.

cheers

Sreenath B N.

Ray, Thanks. My money was always on you to get it first.

I agree, P&P and the condensate were among a dozen important aspects squeezed. But I do like falsifiability. See first line of my abstract (..'unknowable'). I also had to judge prejudice (if presented as an 'ether' theory) when it must first stand on pure, but initially complex, logic. The same's true of the LT which (you asked "what's new") is relegated to a local minor league, which I can see the fans objecting to!

I have a good plan for your car - aim it the right way on a spinning planet orbiting a sun flying through your galaxy, and you should get a few extra mph out of it! Same with your book, which I did indeed look at. Very nice, but of course you now need a new one. I could agree with some bits, but winced at others. I'm not a fan of canonball bosons. It's logical there's something (dark energy potential) with P&P at 2.7 degrees in the CMBR rest frame, but a condensate (yes, a 'scale') below 'matter'. We now need to stop denying it's there (allowed by the DFM) and zero in on all it's properties. We only know ANYTHING by it's properties - and we know stacks about the (dis)continuum, or 'C' field of Edwin. If you're on board with the new paradigm and are the first physicist to get the book out...!

And I haven't rated yours yet either. It does now seems to be creeping up in my estimation! I think you have the required ability to take a few steps back for new overview.

Speaking of that, did you find the hidden toroid black hole evidence in the essay? (photographic evidence). And, a few scales further up, see the scale model of a universe (possibly ours 12m years ago) in my short logical conclusions paper (fig 1). It also gives you the answer to the above, plus another black hole photo (or call it the light scattered off the 'dust cloud' around the event horizon if we prefer). http://vixra.org/abs/1102.0016

For QG I agree, the DFM only provides the mass and mechanism for curved space time and equivalence with Inertial mass. There is a local property change of the (sub matter) condensate caused by condensation. I don't see that as using 'boson' particles, but could be wrong, which is why it's currently peripheral. However, we should realise it's not just Relativity that needs a bit of action from Occams razer to tidy it up! I have however never been able to reconcile Tachyons with the logical picture either. Sure I can see relative superluminal phase velocity, superconductivity, tunneling, incentric jet motion etc, but would need to find a description more consistent with those to stop feeling they're incongruous to intuitive science. Do help me on that if you can.

Best wishes

Peter

PS. If anyone told me they'd derived life after death scientifically? Yes I'd have first assumed they were a nutter!

Nice, Ray! You're getting ever better at lassoing highly rareified technical concepts and wrestling them into the range of ordinary discourse. Applause.

With you as with Lawrence, I don't find it practical at the moment to engage in an intense technical exchange (we tend to do that continuously on the blog forums anyway), but there are a couple of outstanding issues on which I want to extend my compliments:

One is a clear explanation of why supersymmetry plays such an important role in modern physical theory. One grows weary of having it compared to medieval scholasticism or recreational mathematics, neither of which is even close to the actual case. The other is your penultimate statement about the divide between string/membrane and kissing sphere/cdt models -- right on. As you're aware, unification of those models is the point of my own research.

Thanks for a great read, and good luck in the contest.

All best,

Tom

Thanks, Tom!

Dear Sreenath,

I like your ideas, but the reality is that I might not have time to read your web-site before the end of this contest. There are many essays that I have not yet read (and many that I need to read again), and I have gotten some good ideas and insights from most of the essays that I have read.

I am a bit surprized that your blog has not attracted much attention. Perhaps I can make some comments and try to stir up some interest.

Good Luck & Have Fun!

Dr. Cosmic Ray

Dear Peter,

Thanks for the comments on my blog site!

I also like falsifiability. Chapters 4 and 6 of my book tie into experimental data, and are falsifiable. The obvious problem is that most everything that I have done since is so speculative that it isn't yet obvious to me if it is or isn't falsifiable (although the lattices that I use are fundamental to Solid State Physics). I like the fact that some of my ideas may tie into Coldea et al's magnetic quasiparticle mass-ratio experimental results. I also like Vladimir Tamari's ideas that may tie into Gingras' magnetic spin ice quasiparticle experimental results.

Do you have an infinite number of buses and bus stops with an infinite number of discrete reference frames, or am I way off-base?

I use stacks of cannonballs as analogies for fermions because it is easier to describe than an FCC lattice. I think that the bosons are the reciprocal lattice and behave like "struts" between centers of cannonballs in our 3-D space.

Yes - I am aware of the "slingshot" method for speeding up space probes. My van would probably fall apart...

I also like tokamaks. I worked on the TEXT tokamak at the University of Texas, Austin in 1981-82.

I have wild ideas that might unite several of our ideas (you, me, Crowell, Gibbs, Lisi, Castel, Sreenath, Tamari, Leshan, Duforney, perhaps Lowey and Klingman). It goes something like this:

A static Black Hole does not collapse on its singularity because a buckyball-shaped lattice of spacetime (or quantum gravity) prevents said collapse. In the case of a rotating Black Hole (most stars rotate so most Black Holes should as well), torsion effects cause a pair of nested buckyball lattices to morph into their homotopic cousin, a lattice-like torus in a rotating (rotation = time along Steve Duforney's ideas?) and apparently 3-D space with 120 lattice sites. Each of these 120 sites, contains one of Vladimir Tamari's tetrahedra (which may also be related to Gingras and Section 7.2 of my book) which are also rotating (another time dimension?) in an (another set of spatial dimensions?) apparently 3-D space. Along the lines of my ideas (and Laurent Nottale's), these different 3-D shapes - torus and tetrahedra - may exist at different spatial scales (I suspect that the tetrahedra are much smaller than the torus) with different time scales (different rates of rotation for torus and tetrahedra). In this case, the Black Hole "singularity" is at the center of the donut hole, and is either empty (like one of Constantin Leshan's quantum spacetime holes) or permanently confined - we will never know.

Carbon-60 buckyballs have superconductor properties that expel electric fields. Wouldn't it be cool if these spacetime (or quantum gravity) lattices (buckyball or lattice-like torus) had properties that allowed them to expel gravitational fields? And wouldn't this be close to some of Klingman's GEM-like ideas?

This model contains 120x4=480 degrees-of-freedom plus basis vectors (at least 8? two 3-d spaces and 2 times?). This looks a lot like an E8xE8* ~ SO(32) where one E8 is strictly real, and the other E8* is stricly imaginary (Theoretically, the TOE needs complex representations whether we like it or not as this may be the most appropriate way to include CP symmetry violation - recall that tachyons have imaginary mass). We require imaginary numbers for the mathematical modeling to be complete, however we also admit that we might not be able to observe this part of "reality" (although we may use the Kramers-Kronig Relation for some implications), and therefore anticipate that any observer should be able to measure half (at most) of the dynamic variables present in any given experiment.

One of these E8's is a corrected version of Garrett Lisi's E8 TOE (he never should have had bosons and fermions in the same lattice representation - they should be in reciprocal lattices to one another). If we break these E8's into H4's (such that E8~H4xH4*), then we may have an H4xH4* representation that is similar to Edwin Klingman's 4 particles and 4 fields - I don't think that Ed is necessarily wrong - I think that his model might use the same triality symmetry for color and generations, and is not complete.

Each point in the toroidal lattice is the end of a string (that should be rotating in response to the tetrahedra). Within the Black Hole, these strings expand outwards as Sreenath's logarithmic spirals until the scale is "diluted" enough that we have a reasonably flat, continuously-differentiable spacetime outside of the Event Horizon.

If these strings also rotate (as implied above), and have the dimensional (probably extra-dimensional because it has different scales for gravity and electromagnetism?) equivalent of "screw-threads", then the strings may behave like Alan Lowey's Archimedes' Screw idea to transfer force along the direction of the string (now an infinitely-thin "flexible screw").

Please wrap your brain around that and let me know what you think?

Have Fun!

Dr. Cosmic Ray

Ray

That looks absolutely spot on to me, I think it's a done deal. Some may accuse you of foolishly missing Buriden's ass, but as two fall out of the equation anyway you end up with SUSY.

The only issue is it's now precisely equivalent to the theory in Tommy Gilbertson's essay! How fast are your publishers?

Having fun

Peter

Tom and/or Ray,

Tom speaks of "a clear explanation of why supersymmetry plays such an important role in modern physical theory."

Just why does supersymmetry play such an important role in modern physics? Since superpartners have not been observed at the same masses as the Standard Model particles, super symmetry cannot be an exact symmetry.

When I first tried to understand why SUSY was deemed so important, it seemed that it simply made it easier to cancel undesirable artifacts. And then I found Schwarz and Seiberg in the 1999 Review of Modern Physics state: "Boson-fermion cancellation is at the heart of the applications of supersymmetry."

But even this is threatened by the fact that LHC has found no evidence of SUSY. And the important thing is that, even if they do find it in the future, it will imply masses so large that SUSY "will no longer perfectly cancel out the troublesome quantum fluctuations that SUSY was meant to correct." [3 Mar 2011 Nature Vol 471]

At what point does one admit that SUSY was a 'patch' or 'fix' to a problem (or problems) and that the 'fix' isn't there? And that it is a sign of much deeper problems with current theory.

Thanks for playing,

Edwin Eugene Klingman

Hi Ed,

Within your own model, you have 4 fundamental particles (times 3 generations) and 4 fundamental fields (times 3 spatial dimensions?). How can you unify these distinctly different kinds of phenomena (particles behave discretely, fields are continuously differentiable) within the same framework?

I have suggested that particles and fields may be reciprocally-related lattices and scales (I know that when I get into scales, that this is represented by something like a Mandelbrot or Cantor Set, and implies a Multiverse that we shouldn't be able to directly observe, but could be responsible for the Cosmological Constant if it becomes necessary to describe this in terms of "leakage" from a scale of greater complexergy). Now we need a scale operation (such as Lucas numbers) or matrix operation (like the definition of reciprocal lattices) to unite these fundamental & fundamentally different type of phenomena.

If SUSY exists, then it is definitely a broken symmetry (we don't see scalar selectrons with a mass of 511 KeV).

I think that SUSY is the clear answer for several reasons:

1) Particles behave like fermions, fields behave like bosons (after second quantization), and SUSY relates these so that we may unite them in a single TOE.

2) SUSY is a beautiful theory that solves the Hierarchy problem of the Standard Model (SM) - Why is the Weak mass scale (Z mass ~ 100 GeV) stable against radiative corrections from the GUT/ TOE mass scale (Planck mass ~ 10^19 GeV)? If SUSY is not true, then this is a significant "fudge" that would otherwise destroy the Standard Model. Ironically, I suspect that most of the SUSY opponents are SM proponents, and don't realize that SUSY is critical to the radiative-correction-stability of the SM.

3) String theory predicts SUSY. I am a String Theory proponent, but am concerned about the falsifiability of a theory that has 10^500 possible ground state solutions... Is it a Theory of Everything, a Theory of Anything, or a Theory of Nothing [practical yet]?

4) Hyper-SUSY is my extension of SUSY to incorporate the 5 expected fundmental spins (0, 1/2, 1, 3/2 and 2) h-bar, and expected scales.

If the Weak scale is the ONLY scale that exists (other than the Planck scale), then the Higgs and SUSY should exist at the Weak scale. Degree of fine-tuning goes as ratio-squared. If the Z mass is ~ 100 GeV, then SUSY masses of ~ TeV require fine-tuning of ~1 part in 100, SUSY masses of ~ 10 TeV would require fine-tuning of ~1 part in 10,000, and the Hierarchy problem becomes a significant problem again...

If we have multiple scales (as Notalle and I expect), then we have a Planck Scale, a Weak scale, and at least two more scales. Now it isn't clear that SUSY must live at the Weak scale - other possibilities exist. I'm not happy throwing out an idea that may be difficult to prove or falsify (Although Section 6.1 of my book points to a Cosmic Ray anamoly from ~100 TeV to ~10,000 TeV that may indicate a new scale), but that is where I currently stand with this idea.

Have Fun!

Dr. Cosmic Ray

p.s. - Ed and Peter might want to read B N Sreenath's essay. Sreenath tries to build an equation for Quantum Gravity - in similar fashion to Ed's Master Equation. Sreenath's description of equivalence is similar to Peter's (acceleration comes in discrete energy packets - each of these packets would represent a different inertial frame and a different bus in Peter's essay and analogies - if I understand them correctly...).

Have Fun!

Ray,

The following is duplicated on my thread:

We probably can't get too far on your first question of "How can you unify these distinctly different kinds of phenomena (particles behave discretely, fields are continuously differentiable) within the same framework?" The answer has to do with the Calabi-Yau manifold nature of the particle 'condensation', which I am in process of writing up. I came to this result 5 years ago, but thought it 'too far out' to include in my books. Yet after reading Yau's recent book, "The Shape of Inner Space", I realized I was right all along, and am finishing up the material I left out earlier, as well as adding to it.

As for reciprocal lattices, they obviously are useful for condensed matter physics. I don't see the need beyond that. I reject the Multi-verse and believe the C-field supplies the Cosmological Constant, as it is the only 'real' thing that I know of that supports inflation.

We both agree SUSY, if it exists, (it doesn't) is not an exact symmetry.

As for "Particles behave like fermions, fields behave like bosons (after second quantization), and SUSY relates these so that we may unite them in a single TOE", The first is factually true (behavior) but SUSY is completely unnecessary in my opinion, and in my model. And we've discussed second quantization before, with regard to phonons. It's a mathematical tool, not a physical reality.

You say, "SUSY is a beautiful theory", [in the eye of the beholder] which the Nature article says inspires 'religious belief' [very prevalent these days in physics of the unseen], but as I explain above, it was designed as a patch or fix to cancel unwanted anomalies, and LHC has shown that it does not exist in the mass range necessary to make this work. So even if it SUSY does exist at higher masses, it won't do what it was designed to do. I don't see this as beautiful.

You say further that "If SUSY is not true, then this is a significant "fudge" that would otherwise destroy the Standard Model." My theory already destroys the Standard Model, so that is a given for me. No problem there.

You say: String theory predicts SUSY. I am a String Theory proponent, but am concerned about the falsifiability of a theory that has 10^500 possible ground state solutions...". But Ray, I reject String Theory as a misinterpretation of the C-field model of the proton, leading to forty years of effort, producing nothing, predicting nothing, explaining nothing, and confusing many. I could write an essay on the failure of strings, but not in the space of a comment.

You say: "Hyper-SUSY is my extension of SUSY." Will it work if SUSY disappears?

You say: "If we have multiple scales (as Notalle and I expect), then we have a Planck Scale, a Weak scale, and at least two more scales." I don't believe we have multiple scales, although I am indebted to you and Nottale for the realization that 'scale invariance' implies 'motion invariance'. And the "Hierarchy problem" is not a problem, to me, but a 'solution' that prevents the universe from scrunching down to a point.

Ray, I do not doubt that, if my model were ever accepted, you would find a way to map it into a symmetry, a mathematical umbrella to unify the 4 particles and 4 fields, possibly the E8~H4xH4*, that you suggested. You might balance the degrees-of-freedom for 4 particles (times 3 generations) with 4 fields (times 3 spatial dimensions). I will be happy to see that, if it should occur (as will you, in all likelihood.) But I'm pretty sure it will not require any more particles, any strings, any more universes, or any more dimensions, nor will it be based on a 'computer-in-the-sky'. It will be based on the four fields (in four dimensions) giving rise to all known particles, and nothing else.

Edwin Eugene Klingman

Ray,

Interesting presentation.

Does the "unnaturalness of infinity" apply to the many recycling universe theories? Do you consider such a concept infinity? My idea of an analogue universe suggests such a universe.

Jim Hoover

Hi Ed, The following is duplicated on your thread:

Obviously we could disagree for the rest of the essay contest period, and I don't see the point.

IMHO, SUSY is a more perfect symmetry than the SM, and you haven't fully descrbed your symmetry (I'm only guessing that it is an H4xH4*). To Tom's point, SUSY is predicted by String Theory and fixes a significant problem in the SM (the Hierarchy problem) - but the prediction supercedes the "fudge" (the theory is more fundamental than the apparent "epicycle").

I know that your theory is different from the SM, and your origin of mass is different, so your ideas might not be plagued with the identical problems that plague the SM. How do you explain the origin of mass? How do you explain the radiative stability of the Weak Scale (W and Z masses)?

If my multiple scales exist, then SUSY may not be Weak-scale, and may be harder to pin down. The people who oppose SUSY either think that the SM is perfect without it (bad assumption) or have other odd-ball ideas that may or may not work out, and certainly aren't any more beautiful than SUSY. Occam's Razor is a balance between Simplicity (I often equate Simplicity and Beauty) and Necessity (a theory needs to explain as many details as possible - does your theory explain Weak-scale stability or is that another epicycle?).

Have Fun!

Dr. Cosmic Ray

Hi Ray,

I arrived at reading your super essay, I just take one essay a day and wish that I had read it before, you on your side are a professional scientist with a great mathimatical background , when I see a lot of formula's it makes me like an alergic, that is why my essay is pure text (it is the first time that I took part in a contest, next time there will be more order))

The ideas that I wrote down I carry them with me already a long time and it was already an honour to be published, like you mention above, FQXi is en environment where you can meet friends and talk about the essence.

Now for your essay :

ou intoduce 5 scales of which the top scale is the MULTIVERSE and the lowest the SUB QUANTUM SCALE, my idea is that these two become the same at the limits of our universe (for me at one end the Planck Scale and at the other end C) I place these sub quantum scale units in what you name the Multiverse, in my opinion this Multiverse is not an addition of universes but a infinite (Cantor set ?) of space/time possibillities , I am still searching for a good expression, and here Ray I think I miss mathematics, but as I am retreated I will start to pick it up.

We both agree that gravitation is en "effect" of this for me fifth dimension 5your multiverse)

I hope that you can still find a spare moment to read my essay (topic 913) and perhaps give some for me useful additions and perhaps have some fun with it.

The best of luck possible in our classic scale

Wilhelmus.

Dear Wilhelmus,

Thank You for your comments!

I imagine that the Multiverse is an infinite (or at least near infinite) Cantor set (or Mandelbrot set or something related to self-similar fractal scales). It would be very interesting if the top scale (Multiverse) and the bottom scale (sub-quantum or Dirac Sea) are related. In my assumptions, the Multiverse is responsible for gravity, and the Dirac Sea is responsible for the origin of mass. Which came first - the chicken or the egg? the gravity or the mass? the Multiverse or the Dirac Sea? They are intimately realted... As such, we are hybrid creatures who have simultaneously risen from the base scale(s), and fallen from the superior scale(s).

I apologise. All of my papers have a certain amount of math. I held back (a little bit) on the amount of math in this paper, but felt that a certain amount of equations and numbers were necessary to explain my theoretical inspiration and mathematical ideas. I also enjoy the papers based on language and logic, such as Julian Barbour's and Tom Ray's, that don't include as much math.

I will try to get to your paper (and the prior request by Jim Hoover) as soon as possible. Some of these essays deserve a couple of read-throughs and contemplation, so I understand your one essay a day limit, but the deadline is quickly approaching!

Good Luck & Have Fun!

Dr. Cosmic Ray

Ray,

I agree about disagreeing. I think this last round started with the Nature article that says SUSY doesn't appear to be there, which was 'new'. You keep trying to fit my theory into your framework, and it simply does not fit. I don't think in terms of symmetry, as I've explained elsewhere. The H4xH4* was your suggestion, and I'm just going along with it. In my view symmetry was the best tool for interpreting scattering data, and is useful in molecular and condensed matter physics, but is emergent, not causal.

Whatever the genesis of SUSY, it doesn't appear to be there or to solve the problem it was believed to solve. That's just an apparent fact. Denial won't make it go away. And I am not a member of the religion of strings, as I've explained several times how these arose as a misinterpretation of C-field-based proton-proton scattering data.

I've answered the questions in your third paragraph elsewhere on these threads several times and it's in my 'Chromodynamics War' book that you have.

I have been thinking about your 'scales', and I'd like to 'walk back' one of my comments. I said above that "I don't believe we have multiple scales,..." but I'm not sure that is true. I don't know enough about your scales (yes, I've read your paper on them) but I have recently seen an aspect of the C-field that may best be described as 'scales'. I'm putting more thought into this, because I don't know how to represent it mathematically, or describe it well verbally, although I can depict it graphically (it's topological in nature). So maybe you're right on the existence of two scales, (although I draw the line at the Multi-verse).

So when you say: "If my multiple scales exist, then SUSY may not be Weak-scale, and may be harder to pin down. The people who oppose SUSY either think that the SM is perfect without it (bad assumption) or have other odd-ball ideas that may or may not work out, and certainly aren't any more beautiful than SUSY. Occam's Razor is a balance between Simplicity (I often equate Simplicity and Beauty) and Necessity (a theory needs to explain as many details as possible - does your theory explain Weak-scale stability or is that another epicycle?)."

I guess you have to put me in the 'other odd-ball ideas' category, since I don't fit in the SM school or the SUSY school. I believe my theory is by far the simplest theory (and the most beautiful) that produces all known particles and no other particles, so that's Occam's razor enough for me. I believe my model does explain 'Weak-scale stability', but that's based on a loose understanding of what exactly is meant by that term.

Looks like we're moving into the final phase. It's been stimulating, and I've enjoyed our back-and-forth.

Edwin Eugene Klingman

Dear Jim,

You and I seem to agree on many controversial points.

I agree with a Multiverse that is so large (possibly infinite?) that we can't observe it all because of our speed of light scale limit, and a finite age for our Observable Universe "locality".

I agree with Supersymmetry - Fermions and Bosons are fundamentally different enough that we need SUSY to combine these concepts into a single TOE (if such exists!).

I like to play with models. If one seems to work, then I keep building on it. If one obviously fails, then I put it aside (for another application later?).

You mentioned that String theory is analog, and this certainly agrees with classical wave theory (a traveling wave on a string), but I think that these strings may also have discrete modes of vibration (like the frequencies of a piano string) that may behave quantum-like (I think that Philip Gibbs and Lawrence Crowell have been having such a discussion on Lawrence's blog site). This ties into a wierd quantum-classical behavior of strings and Philip Gibbs Qubits of Strings. In my models, the end of the string may behave like a site in a discrete lattice.

The BB and BH's seem to be two different sides (bringing forth new life vs. melting down death and decay) of the same coin (singularity). I don't think that a singularity can exist in a finite Universe, therefore the BB must be part of the Multiverse, and BH's must not be "infinite vacuum cleaners". In my blog thread, I have proposed ideas and geometries that may prevent the BH from becoming a true singularity.

You suggested that large BH's may swallow smaller BH's until - ultimately - our observable Universe consists of a single Super BH. I don't know... It is true that gravitational fields effectively stretch out towards an infinite range (falling off as inverse-distance-squared), but it would be difficult (if not impossible once spacetime has collapsed to a point?) for a large BH to move a smaller BH.

Your essay was very readable.

Good Luck and Have Fun!

Dr. Cosmic Ray