Reality Was Born Analog But Will Digital Die? by Alan Lowey

Hi Alan,

I finally figured out the Moebius strip combined with the toroidal lattice based on Buckyball symmetries. I made a paper model. The next step is to cut up two Soccer balls, and put them back together as a torus.

Have Fun!

Dr. Cosmic Ray

Dear Alan, I like the fact that in the several analogies to mechanical models that you have presented , you have stressed the importance of chirality - handedness - any model that aspires to show how the universe works has to explain that. You will have to do more to demonstrate how this one attribute translates into the very complex phenomena of physics ranging from electromagnetism to gravity. You should use your simulation skills to more fully present graphically the ideas you only touched upon in a handful of sweeping verbal statements. Good luck, and as 'Cosmic Ray' says have fun!

Best wishes from Vladimir.

Hi Alan,

You left questions on several forums. I left answers on my blog site, but had not heard any responses from you, so I thought I should repost those responses here.

Thanks for the Congratulations.

I think this question ultimately reverts back to the question "Is Nature fundamentally Discrete or Continuous?"

I said that Reality is an effectively an intertwined "twistor-like" hybrid of both. This permits wave-particle duality, and permits us to observe "continuous realities" such as fields that are modeled as if they are continuous "ad infinitum" (as Cristi Stoica claimed), as well as "discrete realities" such as electric charges that are modeled as if they are non-divisible quanta. I liked Cristi's presentation, but I asked him to define "continuous ad infinitum" if infinity cannot exist in a finite Observable Universe (13.7 billion light years is a very large size, but it isn't infinite). The reality is that these "continuous fields" probably break down somewhere around the 10^-31 cm scale, and this is where the spacetime lattice model is required for a proper understanding of the Black Hole "singularity" (it may also be related to the Dirac Sea and Constantin Leshan's Quantum Vacuum Hole).

Ed and I traded books, and have been discussing each other's ideas since the last essay contest. I like his GEM-like ideas and agree that this could represent part of the continuous nature of reality. As a particle physicist myself, I think he is "off-base" with regard to his claim of 4 fundamental particles, but I'm also tired of arguing a point that I consider obvious. I think that Ed's model has a single triality, and therefore requires scales and S-duality to explain the two required trialities in his model: Color (he doesn't have a QCD field), and Generations (similar to Garrett Lisi's triality of generations).

I like your helical screw idea. Perhaps there is a mixing of transverse and longitudinal waves (that implies an effective mass) that includes the properties of scales. Recall that electromagnetism is ~10^40 times stronger than gravity - and this requires a scale. Ed Klingman's 10^60 also requires a scale, and I think that he has improperly modeled 10^120~(10^60)^2 rather than 10^120~(10^40)^3. Effectively, this requires your screw threads to be logarithmic - finer threads for weaker forces such as gravity and courser threads for stronger forces such as electromagnetism. In this sense, the threads for gravity may be so fine (outside of a Black Hole) that they seem to be stripped out.

I think that the unification of forces requires scales - which is why I dedicated this essay to scales and how they explain the continuous and discrete natures of relaity.

I see that you left this message in several forums. My previous answer involved scales moreso than screws, but I thought that I should explore more details about your Archimedes screw.

I think that there are details that have been largely overlooked here. First, there is the "pitch" of a screw thread. In the US, most of our screws are pitched such that we turn "right to tighten, or left to loosen", but screws with the opposite pitch can also be manufactured. About 20 years ago, many propane gas cylinder tanks had opposite threads - I guess that the assumption was that you would try to "turn left to loosen", but always tighten instead - until you read all of the safety directions and realized that you didn't know what you were doing. They have since changed propane gas cyclinder threads back to the standard pitch - I guess that you don't want people to accidently loosen a tank while they thought they were tightening it.

Conclusion - By changing the pitch of an Archimedes' screw, you can make it attractive or repulsive.

Another detail is the rotation of the screw. It should be obvious that if we change the rotation of a screw - say from Clockwise to Counter-clockwise, then the direction of the force induced by the Archimedes' screw changes.

Conclusion - By changing the rotation of an Archimedes' screw, you can make it attractive or repulsive.

I think that all of these ideas may tie into CPT symmetry. Perhaps handedness (parity) and antimatter (charge) (4 different permutations) are related to these concepts of pitch and rotation (also 4 different permutations).

Personally, I have no problem modeling a Field line or a String with an Archimedes' screw (with variable thread spacing), but realize that the resultant force could be attractive or repulsive - as is electrostatics.

Now we need to explain why gravity is strictly attractive. Is there more to gravity (say within a Black Hole or in a scale of greater complexergy) such as Quantum Gravity, Holographic Gravity, my WIMP-Gravity (see my book), or Edwin Klingman's GEM Gravity? And we only observe the attractive side? Or is this tied into CPT symmetry such that attractive gravity moves forward in time, and repulsive gravity moves backwards in time (which would look attractive and forward)? I don't know...

I think there is enough that we truly don't understand about the origins of mass and gravity that we shouldn't get too overconfident in our models.

One more thought that may be significant:

Earlier, I mentioned that the Archimedes' screw needs an effective mass and longitudinal degrees-of-freedom similar to a Z boson in order to physically represent the concept of screw threads.

Photons are expected to have zero rest mass so that they can have a pure inverse-distance-squared dependance - so where is the effective mass? This may require mass-energy correspondance such that photons have an effective mass given by E = mc^2 = hf.

Have Fun!

Dr. Cosmic Ray

Hi Alan,

There is a smooth homotopy between a pair of nested soccer balls and a lattice-like torus. Such a torus would have 120 vertices. If each vertex is one of Vladimir Tamari's spinning tetrahedra AND a 4-Qubit (along the lines of Philip Gibbs' and Lawrence Crowell's essays - I expect the discrete end of a 4-qubit to look like a tetrahedron), then these spinning tetrahedra may be twisting a 4-braided rope (a screw-like string).

Four times 120 yields 480 degrees-of-freedom, which looks a lot like a 16-dimensional SO(32) ~ E8 x E8* TOE.

I'm also playing with the idea of four soccer balls being deformed into a trefoil knot. This might represent a 31-dimensional Spin(32) or SU(32) TOE.

The bizarre aspect of the trefoil/ tetrahedra model is that we can define two different kinds of "chirality" - left- or right-handed trefoil knots, as well as left- or right-handed (S or Z) twisted rope. Perhaps this is "over-kill", and I only need the (two different chiralities of trefoil knots) times (four soccer balls per knot) times (sixty vertices per soccer ball) ~ 480 degrees-of-freedom ~ SO(32) TOE.

Have Fun!

Dr. Cosmic Ray

Hi Alan,

I covered those details on my blog about a month ago, but to summarize:

I think that spacetime has a discrete lattice structure at small scales ~10^(-31) cm, and that this lattice structure prevents the full collapse of the Black Hole into its "singularity", and prevents "infinity" (as the singularity) from occuring in our scale. IMHO, if any information can be "overwritten" by the singularity, then all information can be overwritten, and the Black Hole becomes an infinite Spacetime vacuum cleaner (which is not a good thing...).

If Spacetime becomes a discrete lattice, then what lattice structures would be most stable? My "crazzy' Belgian friend Steve Dufourny thinks the most stable structure is a sphere, but what keeps a sphere from deflating under massive gravitational pressure? This is why I proposed a Buckyball (soccer ball, geodesic dome/ sphere). Carbon-60 can form a Buckyball lattice, and has superconductor properties that expel electromagnetic fields. What if Spacetime can also form a Buckyball lattice (at scales of order 10^(-31) cm), and can expel gravitational fields? Such a structure could prevent the full gravitational collapse of the Black Hole "singularity". I would expect nested Buckyballs of alternating symmetries that would eventually build up a deformed Diamond lattice (deformed because it has a "hole" at the "singularity" point)

What happens in a rotating Black Hole? In his essay, Sreenath points out that a rotating Black Hole would apply a great deal of torsion to its core. Such torsion could morph a pair of nested Buckyballs into their homotopic cousin, a lattice-like torus. The torus figure ties in with Peter Jackson's ideas, but - once again - this torus must have lattice-like properties so that the massive gravitational pressure does not deflate it.

I think that the trefoil knot idea is a possibility, but really does start to look like "overkill" - the torus idea is "good enough".

I know that you are catching up to speed with the terminology that some of us use. I have found Wikipedia to be a good starting place for understanding many of these concepts.

Have Fun!

Dr. Cosmic Ray

Hi Alan,

Dirac was Prof Emeritus at Florida State University when I was an undergrad student there. I came up with the early version of my Quantum Statistical Grand Unified Theory (QSGUT) in January 1979 as a 20-year-old Senior. My friends thought I should show Dirac the idea, but I was chicken. I regret that now... He and his family are buried within 50 yards of my grandparents, so I visit his grave on occasion. I am a huge fan of Dirac's.

There is Renormalization and the Renormalization Group Equations. I'm also not a big fan of Renormalization - basically dividing one infinity by another infinity to get a finite observable. My argument is that infinity cannot exist within a finite Observable Universe. As a grad student, I studied Renormalization closely. I wanted to overthrow it in favor of my own QSGUT - as I saw these two ideas being conflicting competitors. However, I can honestly say that Renormalization makes about as much sense as does L'Hopital's rule. I finally decided that if Renormalization and QSGUT are both "true", then the Correspondance Principle demands overlapping observables to be equal, and this hybrid concept was the origin of Variable Coupling Theory in my book.

Regarding the Renormalization Group Equations (RGE's), these tell us the Perturbation Theory changes of couplings with energy scale. They are as legitimate as any perturbation or Taylor Series expansion approach can be. IMHO, the most awkward part of the RGE's is the Strong Coupling. Because the Strong Coupling IS NOT much less than unity, it is a poor candidate for these types of power series approximations. In my latest paper on QSGUT, I model the Strong Force differently (with Fermi rather than Bose statistics - which implies a Cooper-pair-like phenomenon at an unobservable small scale), and get results that appear to be more accurate without using the Renormalization Group Equations.

Perhaps some of these concepts are "fudge factors" that were required because of improper modeling...

Regarding the Standard Model (SM) in general. I learned it so that I could try to rewrite it. A TOE should not be as ugly as SU(3) x U(1) x SU(2). This spinning torus/ tetrahedra model implies a TOE similar to SO(32) ~ E8 x E8*. If you study Garrett Lisi's E8 TOE, you might agree with me that there is a certain amount of beauty encoded in these geometrical lattice-like "TOE's" such as the Gosset lattice and the Torus/ tetrahedra lattices.

Have Fun!

Dr. Cosmic Ray

Hi Alan,

I've heard you talking about your "Inclination Hypothesis", but I haven't read your idea yet. A screw has stiffness that allows it to impart lateral motion, and perhaps cause extra inclination. But what if that "screw" is a flimsy set of twisted sewing threads? It would not impart any significant effect, IMHO. Also - be careful taking on Newton. Newton's Laws work very well in their realm of applicability.

Have Fun!

p.s. - I recently watched a TV special on the Maunder Minimum from 1645 to 1715. It related a reduction in the number of Sun Spots with a Little Ice Age.

Have Fun!