Essay Abstract

In Section 1 the three words comprising the question "Is Reality Digital or Analog" (D/A?) are defined further. In Section 2 Key aspects of physics are probed using (D/A?) and contradictions pointed out. The incompatibility of an analog Gravity and an analog-digital Quantum Mechanics are traced back to Einstein's point-photon and his flexible spacetime. Without a unified theory it is fruitless to decide about the basic makeup of the universe. Space and Time, Electromagnetic Radiation, Matter and Gravity, and Quantum Mechanics in general are examined with (D/A?). In Section 3 (D/A?) is answered within a new Beautiful Universe model ToE 'Theory of Everything' proposed from first principles. A universal lattice of identical spherically-symmetrical interacting dielectric nodes exchanging angular momentum through magnetic induction, in units of Planck's constant (h) is proposed. The 3 space dimensions and time, vacuum, matter, radiation, dark energy and dark matter are derived from the causal, local self-assembly and Hamiltonian evolution through interactions between neighboring nodes. Each node represents a miniature Bloch sphere, at a variable rate depending on node rates of rotation, and the orientation of their axis. The model explains matter as nested polyhedral patterns of nodes locked by tensegrity yet capable of soliton-like translation. Quantum effects are the result of the diffusion of momentum in a wave pattern through the lattice. Gravitational potential equals node rotation, but its force is due to the spring-like twisting geometry of the node axes in the regions of space between matter.

Author Bio

Vladimir F. Tamari studied physics and art at the American University of Beirut where he met and was inspired by Buckminster Fuller (around 1960). He invented and built 3D drawing instruments. In the 1980's he joined the Optical Society of America to keep up with the field and holds U.S. patents for inventions based on his Streamline Diffraction Theory to cancel diffraction in telescopes. Beautiful Universe: Towards Reconstructing Physics From New First Principles (2005) is referred to here. He paints in watercolors and has designed Arabic fonts for Adobe. He has lived in Tokyo for the past 40 years.

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  • Post #2

Hello dear Vladimir F.Tamari,

Nice to know you.

I am happy to read that kind of work.

It would indeed be quite ironic for me not to take into account these extrapolations.

I love indeed the spheres,it is the fundamental basis of my theory of Spherization.

But I slowed down to turn them into monologues. It is no longer necessary.

For your work, it is very interesting, that being said, I think the general point of view mixes some not-fundamental, and therefore, involve some confusions.

Indeed,here is some examples ,the Lie algebra, the extradimensions, the symmetry (misinterpreted, without limitation, any laws,...),the Dark energy The fundamentals are much more than speculations, subjectivities, unfounded.

But I like your work, be sure,I just like the rationalities simply.A string is divisible, a spher no.Your analogy with Boch sphere is relevant....the volumes!!! these volumes of the ultim fractal( from the main central sphere) are universal and specific.The rotations spinals and orbitals imply the difference.

Have you considered different volumes of spheres? for a concrete calculation of all mass and their polarities of evolution?The nodes shall be more rationalized at my humble opinion.

Regards

Steve

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    • Post #3

    Dear Steve nice to know you too! Thank you for appreciating the Bloch sphere on the node in the illustration - I added it at the last minute. However the nodes themselves are the ones that define space, so they can have no volume, just angular momentum and symmetry. Kind regards Vladimir

    BTW Can we please avoid short lines in the replies as the server displays them as double spaces, that needs scrolling down by the poor reader thanks.

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    • Post #4

    You are welcome, thanks also. You are right indeed. It's a bad habit.

    Best

    Steve

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    • Post #5

    Steve I owe you an apology for complaining about the double spaces, especially since your message was so courteous! Vladimir

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    • Post #6

    Hi dear Vladimir,

    No you are right, it is a bad habit these double spaces.

    Good luck in this contest.

    Best

    Steve

    7 days later

    Hello Vladimir,

    Fantastic artwork you have in your paper! Very interesting material. It is in my list for study. I will come back with questions.

    E. Harokopos

    Ephkharistou (thanks) Efthimios I will be happy to answer your questions. This explains a bit about the how the illustrations were made. In my research I have put down ideas using the limits of my knowledge and abilities - if the basic model has any merit it will need to be developed further by professional (and younger) researchers!

    Vladimir

    Dear Vladimir,

    I enjoyed your essay and diagrams. You clearly have a put a lot of thought and work into it. I would like to encourage you to keep working on it. Your analysis of other theories is hard hitting but I am mostly interested in your ideas. You have a valuable perspective. If you do develop it further (and I think you have the ability) it would be interesting to see equations for how two spheres transfer momentum. I have found this kind of formalism can help refine ideas. Overall I found your essay thought provoking!

    Kind regards,

    Russell

    Thanks Russell I appreciate your comments and encouragement. in my original and much fuller paper completed in 2005 Beautiful Universe on which my present fqxi paper is based, I have described the transfer of momentum between nodes more quantitatively in terms of the rotation rate and (h) and the direction the momentum is transferred to (the node-to-node geometry in the lattice). Another important factor is the rate of rotation of the node receiving the momentum which determines the speed of transfer of the energy. This creates the density or local potential of the lattice and variations in that create the 'curvature' due to gravity in BU. The nodes have spherical symmetry, but are themselves not 'matter' because matter (and everything else) is made up of them. All this needs a systematic mathematical description and simulation which I can barely do with my training and energy level at 68 and counting! Kind regards Vladimir.

    Hi Vladimir,

    I sympathize with the idea that everything (including the vacuum, energy, matter, antimatter, radiation, dark energy and dark matter) should emerge from the interactions of simple units. We have very good examples of complex phenomena resembling particle trajectories or life-like patterns, emerging from interactions of elementary, binary cells arranged in 2-D (Conway) and even 1-D (Wolfram) arrays. Your Kepler packing of magnetic dipole spinning nodes reminds me of Fredkin's theories, e.g. his 3-D Reversible Universal Cellular Automaton model.

    The hope of these approaches is to explain the highly complex in terms of the very simple, and I believe that the powerful notion of emergence (in computation) might indeed satisfy this need.

    But what I find annoying in cellular automata models, as well as in yours is that you assume (if I understand correctly) an infinite, pre-existing, regular lattice, for the game to start. That's very costly a structure to set up in one shot. Wouldn't it be much cheaper to have the 'ether' structure be built progressively, starting from (almost) nothing? In my experiments with algorithmic causal sets, meant as instances of discrete spacetime, the structure is a directed, unlabeled graph that grows. Depending on the underlying algorithm, some regular, grid-like structure can develop, on top of which localized structures may start playing their interactions; both the 'background' and the actors are produced by the same mechanism.

    Also, you attribute some state properties to your nodes, some labels, e.g. spin, in the same way as cellular automata assign a binary state (or ternary, in Fredkin's models) to the grid nodes. Let me just mention that, if one is concerned with (extreme) minimality, there is an alternative approach, that I explore in my essay here: one could try to use stateless, unlabeled nodes, and hope to see everything emerge from the dynamics of the graph growth. Ciao. Tommaso.

    Caro Tomasso

    Thank you for your interesting remarks. I looked at your paper again and this time I was struck by the similarity of your simulation Fig. 4 lower right to a print illustrating a paper on vortices in the ether by ... Descartes! I had reproduced this illustration as Fig. 22 in my original 2005 Beautiful Universe paper on which my present fqxi paper is based. I definitely do not assign spin states to the nodes! In my model there is an infinite number of possible spin orientations (the nodes are spherically symmetrical and in some cases when the nodes are not rotating they are totally neutral and do not react with their neighbors! The Bloch sphere was just to show how a node may express any quantum state.

    I envy you the training and means to simulate your ideas. That would be a very nice way to prove or disprove my and other minimal universal theories. Yes I based my model on a pre-existing crystal-like set of nodes which self-assembles because of induction forces as in Fig. 1 of my original paper. An 'organic' self-generating universe like you propose would be nice too, but my simplistic brain prefers a "nuts and bolts" approach. In the above paper I propose various experiments to prove or disprove the model, and if it is wrong, it is wrong. I also envy you your working in beautiful Pisa where Galileo must have walked and wondered. I will try to study your work more closely.

    Ciao Vladimir

      Dear Vladimir,

      thank you for the pointer to the nice pictures by Descartes, which I had not seen before; in fact, the analogy with fig 4 in my essay is only superficial, since the former provides a 'static' snapshot of the vortices, while the latter is a whole spacetime, in which time progresses outwards. But it would be interesting to derive, at least in principle, the causal set for those cartesian vortices, and see how they would look like...

      You are right, the exploration of these models based on the relatively simple interactions of a moltitude of small entities greatly benefits from some simulation, and luckily the software I am using supports such experiments without need of much programming effort (probably less than what you put in your beautiful graphics!).

      As for the stateful (as opposed to stateless) nature of your nodes, I suppose what I meant is that even the fact that a node may or may not be rotating, as you write in your reply, corresponds to a node 'state'. A binary state. You may then consider angles of the rotation axis, in which case the state ranges in a continuous set.

      Dear Vladimir,

      Thank you for your kind remarks on my essay.

      I have not been able to understand from your essay how the Born probability rule emerges from your basic constructs. Maybe you could explain some more through posts here? Thanks.

      For me the emergence of probability follows by noting that there are fundamental reasons why the Schrodinger equation is modified by nonlinear stochastic corrections during the measurement process.

      Best regards,

      Tejinder

        Dear Tejinder

        Thank you for your interest in my ideas - contained in a remark to your very interesting essay here in fqxi.

        My idea about the origins of Born probability rely on a set of assumptions explained at length in my original 2005 Beautiful Universe paper on which my present fqxi paper is based. There was no space to explain things in detail in the fqxi paper kindly access the pdf of my earlier research through the underlined link above thanks.

        Figures pertaining to probability in my theory (section 2.7) are also attached herein as well. The idea is that the Schrodinger equation describes an actual wave of energy sweeping over a set of "particles" which are the universal nodes of which my model is made. It is like a picture moving on an LED monitor screen - the light in a given LED diode changes with time, but the LED itself stays in place. There is no wave-particle duality in my theory. In the 2D case energy in the form of angular momentum from one node is transferred to two adjoining nodes, and each of them to two others so that across the field of nodes the energy distribution has the form of a normal distribution, the bell curve of the probability function. In an actual 3D lattice each node gives its energy to 9 others. It is a diffusion process. These ideas will only make sense in the context of starting physics from scratch as outlined in my earlier paper.

        Please forgive my rather simplistic ideas that emerged from my stochastic artist's brain - if Nature is more complicated than this I will be unable to understand it!

        Your expert feedback is welcome with thanks

        VladimirAttachment #1: BUFIG29_opt.jpegAttachment #2: BUFIG28_opt.jpeg

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        • Post #16

        I am going to have to spend some time with your essay, but it is one with which it is worth spending some time. I have occasionally read that when you study quantum mechanics you are actually studying music. I have some reservations as to this as the currently held notions of music theory are really out in left field - way out. On the other hand, music is physics. It is its own particular physics with its own unique mathematics, which does not include tempered tuning.

        Thank you for replying to my essay. When I decided to enter this contest, I did not know what to expect but I am finding out that it really is an exciting exchange of ideas.

        I am wondering about that 1954 letter that Einstein wrote to Michelle Besso;

        I consider it quite possible that physics cannot be based on the field concept, i, e., on continuous structures. In that case, nothing remains of my entire castle in the air, gravitation theory [and of] the rest of modern physics.

        Suppose he is right?

        Tom Wagner

          Dear Tom

          Thanks for your very interesting note. Of course at the most basic level everything is related, and more specifically we may think of the physics - i.e. acoustics - of music and even of the musicality of some concepts in physics such as the vibrating strings of String theory. Herschel was a professional musician before turning to astronomy. Further back in time there is Newton's correlating colors with notes and Pythagorus' concepts of number, musical scale and the music of the spheres.

          Your own work on Structural Resonance sounds most interesting and I hope to study more about it in detail when you publish the material. Resonance of course is the basis of the first electronic musical instrument invented by Léon Theremin .

          Einstein was a gifted violinist (but that does not make him a string theorist). Your quoting his letter to Besso where he wonders if his physics would be meaningful if fields are not continuous is most relevant in the context of this contest. His core discovery in general relativity that gravity and acceleration are one would still be a key result in a digital universe, his protest to the contrary notwithstanding. I have tried to show in my in my earlier 2005 Beautiful Universe paper on which my present fqxi paper is based that GR would be greatly simplified in a digital universe, reduced to the 'optics' of refraction in a medium of variable density.

          Best wishes for success in your music and physics! Vladimir

          10 days later

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          • Post #18

          Dear Vladimir,

          I like your ideas, but need to reread them. These spinning tetrahedra also sound closely related to Gingras' magnetic spin ice quasi-particle analogy to Dirac's Magnetic Monople.

          This is a post that I left on my thread @ topic #816:

          "Hi Steve,

          I was at the beach for the last couple of days. It was relaxing to get away. What if the "sphere" is a Buckyball that surrounds the Black Hole "near singularity", and "spinning" tetrahedra (Vladimir Tamari's basic idea - perhaps of red-green-blue-white "color"?) are situated at each of the 60 vertices (of the Carbon-60 Buckyball). This would yield 240 degrees-of-freedom similar to Garrett Lisi's E8 roots, but we would only have 3 dimensions at each of two different scales (the 3-D buckyball scale, and the 3-D tetrahedra scale). I've always liked Buckyballs, and one of the discoverers of Carbon-60, Sir Harry Kroto, lives im my neighborhood.

          In case of a rotating Black Hole, the Buckyball symmetry may not be stable enough, and two nested Buckyballs may transform into their homotopic cousin, a lattice-like near-torus (similar to a lattice-like Tokamak) with spinning tetrahedra at each of 120 vertices. This would yield the 480 degrees-of-freedom of a Supersymmetric model similar to Lisi's.

          I need to reread Vladimir's essay, and think more on these ideas."

          Have Fun!

          Dr. Cosmic Ray

          Thank you Dr. Cosmic Ray nice to hear from you. I need to rest my eyes for a while after successful cataract surgery. Will answer your interesting points in a week or so. For a full description of my ideas (with buckyballs included) please read my earlier 2005 Beautiful Universe paper on which my present fqxi paper is based. Lisi's E8 far too complex than need be. A few years ago I emailed Dr. Kroto asking whether a buckyball constructed of dipole "rods" has a weak spot due to Brouwer's theorem (it says a vector field on a sphere always has a vortex) but no answer. More later.

          Cheers Vladimir

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            • Post #20

            Hi Vladimir,

            You asked "whether a buckyball constructed of dipole "rods" has a weak spot due to Brouwer's theorem".

            My guess is that IF the buckyball has a weak spot due to Brouwer's theorem, then this weak spot would be part of a hexagon. Clearly, the pentagons have the wrong symmetry for this type of instability, but if a Buckyball is orientated similarly to Figure 2 of The Nature of Dimensions, then it might have a weak spot (and this weak spot might be partially responsible for inducing a triality of generations). If a sphere collapses due to this instability, then the natural new shape would be toroidal. Two nested Buckyballs are homotopic to a torus, so I anticipate that this new toroidal "lattice" should have the equivalent of 120 Carbon sites (although this "lattice" is comprised of the very fabric of Spacetime near the Black Hole "singularity", and not actual Carbon atoms - the same concept as Subir Sachdev's graphene analogy [Reference 12 of the above linked paper] to the Holographic Principle). If we place a spinning tetrahedron at each of those 120 sites, then we may have as many as 480 degrees of freedom on the surface of our torus (plus the frame degrees of freedom), which may be related to an E8xE8*~SO(32) TOE of order 496.

            I especially like the pentagon symmetries of the Buckyball (and my TOE), because these pentagon/pentagram symmetries lead to the possible application of the Golden Ratio, as experimentally determined by Coldea et al [Reference 6 of the above linked paper], and as pictorially represented by the appendix figure in my essay.

            Have Fun & may your eyes continue to heal!

            Dr. Cosmic Ray