Dear Dan,

Congrats for making it to the last 35 and in sight a hard prize to earn.You deserved that because of a lot of stress and strain you put in to your essay thro' your wisdom and imagination.

Soon I will be in touch with you.

Sincerely

Sreenath.

Dear Dan,

Congratulations on your dedication to the competition and your much deserved top 35 placing. I have a bugging question for you, which I've also posed to all the potential prize winners btw:

Q: Coulomb's Law of electrostatics was modelled by Maxwell by mechanical means after his mathematical deductions as an added verification (thanks for that bit of info Edwin), which I highly admire. To me, this gives his equation some substance. I have a problem with the laws of gravity though, especially the mathematical representation that "every object attracts every other object equally in all directions." The 'fabric' of spacetime model of gravity doesn't lend itself to explain the law of electrostatics. Coulomb's law denotes two types of matter, one 'charged' positive and the opposite type 'charged' negative. An Archimedes screw model for the graviton can explain -both- the gravity law and the electrostatic law, whilst the 'fabric' of spacetime can't. Doesn't this by definition make the helical screw model better than than anything else that has been suggested for the mechanism of the gravity force?? Otherwise the unification of all the forces is an impossiblity imo. Do you have an opinion on my analysis at all?

Best wishes,

Alan

    Dear Dan,

    Thanks for your response.Regarding suggesting any experiments or observations that would be able to support my theory,I want to make the following clarification.

    There are two ways which allow you to verify my theory.One in the classical world by observing phenomena going on in BHs by observing their dynamics.A BH,according to me,is a Hole of 'perfect vacuum' and contains 'no' matter inside it but the mass surrounding this Hole determines its 'radius',according to the well known equation R = 2GM/C^2. This Hole is characterised by Temparature and Pressure inside it.It is the presence of this Hole (which we call BH) prevents matter from falling into Singularity, thro' the force of QG.It is the violent interaction between the crushing matter and the resistance offered by the BH results in the emission of Jets by the BH with enormous power.The jet of mass gains energy of the order of 10^14 times the initial energy with which it enters the BH at its 'event-horizon'.This is nothing but the ratio of QG energy to self (or free) energy available to particles as a result of intense gravitational interaction taking place at the 'event-horizon'.

    The second way of verification is much easier. Remember that classical world is related to the micro (quantum) world by the relation r/R =2πGβ/c2 .According to this relation,the role played by QG can be seen 'directly' in explaining the energy possessed by micro-particles in the quantum-world thro' the 'Interaction-Table' (IT).To know this,please,go thro' IT and make yourself thorough with it.IT is also 'Chart of Elementary Particles' with their 'Decay-Times'.

    More on this after your response.

    Sincerely

    Sreenath.

    Alan,

    Thanks, for your correspondence. Your "Archimedes screw" analogy is an interesting one, however, I'm not convinced that gravity is created by a gauge field like those of the three other fundamental interactions. In this case, there would be no gravitons, and your analogy would be a non-starter.

    Sincerely,

    Dan

    16 days later

    An interesting essay on what obviously is a hot topic these days. Not being well versed in cosmology, I can't comment intelligently on the substance of your essay. I'd find it helpful if you'd explicitly list the predictions which your ideas allow which might be subject to falsification via experimental evidence during our possible lifetimes.

    Shoehorning your topic into the theme of this year's competition is a bit of a stretch, imo, but I can't blame you for trying. So far so good. Had you been just a bit more crafty you might have titled your essay 'Is Reality Digital or Analog?' and then gone on with it just as you did. (Joke)

    In case you've not seen it already, there's an interesting piece suggesting a possible alternative to dark matter which may be found at http://arxiv.org/pdf/1104.0160v1

    Good luck in the competition!

    Cheers,

    jcns

      J.C.N. Smith,

      Thanks, for your remarks. I had much more to say, but ran out of space. As for not fitting the topic, I definitely took a much different approach than many of the essays. I used a holistic rather than reductionist method; after all, to me, reality encompasses the whole. The main point is that all cosmic spacetimes consist of the superposition of a extremely large number of discrete spacetimes created early in the cosmic cycle and evolving continuously in a cyclic fashion for an indeterminable amount of cycles.

      As for verifying evidence in our lifetime, my model will have a signature acceleration that should be revealed with the next generation of telescopes that will allow us to probe type 1A SN at an even higher redshift. Plus, IMHO, the standard model cannot support the evidence of a 13.2 billion year old galaxy that has been recently observed. Is 500 million years really long enough for a uniform gas to cool, condense, create stars, the stars to gravitate to protogalaxies, and for the the solar mass BHs to merge into the supermassive black holes (SMBHs) at their centers? I predict that we will observe even older galaxies or protogalaxies, perhaps even emerging from the SLS. I also hope to complete the Lense-Thiring precession calculations and compare them to the DM observational data.

      I'm presently working on a more rigorous version of my model, that will include all of this and more and hopefully will be able to have it published in a peer-reviewed journal. I'm also presently awaiting the outcome of a second essay written for the Gravitational Research Foundation that fits nicely with this one.

      Thanks, for the reference and for your interest,

      Dan

      Dan,

      Thank you for your added comments. At the risk of being a "nit-picker," I believe Thirring is spelled with two r's. I know you'd want such things to be as correct as possible.

      Again, good luck! I'll look forward to following your progress in the competition and beyond.

      jcns

      J.C.N. Smith and all readers,

      You may be interested in another excellent paper from Joy Christian. He is affiliated with both Oxford Univ. and the Perimeter Institute. He has been one of the most reasonable minded physicists that I found recently, although some of his work can get quite technical. His paper on a generalized SR (combined SR with Hamiltonian mechanics) argues for a Heraclitean universe and against the "block universe". The first half of this paper is assessable for physicists and laymen alike, the second half gets more technical. This paper represents the best in foundational physics IMHO. He starts with a solid philosophical and historical base, builds his theory on proper mathematics, then suggests possible observations to determine its legitimacy. His paper can be found here (http://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/0610049v2)

      Best Regards,

      Dan