Dear Donatello,

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

    • [deleted]

    • Post #24

    Donatello,

    I do not know how to rate these essays. First, at this late date I have only read a fraction of the essays. Second there is a wide range of essay "types": there are essays for the general background readers (non-technical), there are technical, accurate, essays that bring no new ideas, there are technical essays that bring up a thousand ideas. Lastly, they are essays like yours that defend a clear point in a technical way. It is difficult to translate ideas in Physics into non-mathematical terms. It is also difficult to show a solid mathematical proof for new ideas. It might be impossible to do both at the same time.

    I did not rate any of the essays.

    Your essay does have QM. I need to go through it a few more times. I think your essay is along the lines of my essay (we are past the voting deadline and my essay is for the general reader).

    All the best,

    Jeff

    Dear Ken,

    thank you for the citation added (even though the long delay) in your paper arXiv:1003.4273 [Time-symmetric boundary conditions and quantum foundations] to my paper arXiv:0903.3680 [Compact Time and Determinism for bosons: foundation].

    As you have already noticed, in my essay (thank you also for the congratulations for this first phase on the contest) I show the possibility of a consistent interpretation of quantum mechanics in terms of boundary conditions, but the validity of my approach is not limited to non relativistic physics like in your case.

    Cheers,

    Donatello

    Dear Alan,

    if you are interested in the unification between electromagnetism and gravity I recommend you to read about the Kaluza's "miracles" or about the Weyl's original proposal for gauge interactions.

    Best regards,

    Donatello

    a month later
    6 days later

    Dear Joe,

    Try to compare with your program the duration of a solar year with the age of the universe, you will see that it is of the same order of the difference between a single period of the cesium clock (~10^-10 s) and a second. Then you may note that it is of the same order of the difference between a single periodic of the internal clock of an electron (~10^-20 s) and the reference periodic of the cesium atom.

    In this way you can figure out that trying to investigate the electron dynamics with a cesium clock, or the other precision clocks now available, is like to study the cycles of the seasons by using the age of the universe as reference cycle. The only way you can describe a system with too fast periodicity with respect you reference clock is a statistical way, just like for a dice rolling too fast with respect to the resolution in time of human senses. 't Hooft noticed that "there is a deep relationship between a particle moving very fast in a circle and the quantum harmonic oscillator". What I have found is that there is actually a deep parallelism between cyclic dynamics and quantum mechanics, the periodicity is the periodicity of the so called de Broglie internal clock.

    Best regards,

    Donatello

    Dear Joe,

    Try to compare with your program the duration of a solar year with the age of the universe, you will see that it is of the same order of the difference between a single period of the cesium clock (~10^-10 s) and a second. Then you may note that it is of the same order of the difference between a single periodic of the internal clock of an electron (~10^-20 s) and the reference periodic of the cesium atom.

    In this way you can figure out that trying to investigate the electron dynamics with a cesium clock, or the other precision clocks now available, is like to study the cycles of the seasons by using the age of the universe as reference cycle. The only way you can describe a system with too fast periodicity with respect you reference clock is a statistical way, just like for a dice rolling too fast with respect to the resolution in time of human senses. 't Hooft noticed that "there is a deep relationship between a particle moving very fast in a circle and the quantum harmonic oscillator". What I have found is that there is actually a deep parallelism between cyclic dynamics and quantum mechanics, the periodicity is the periodicity of the so called de Broglie internal clock.

    Best regards,

    Donatello

    Caro Donatello

    Your paper is highly mathematical, while I like to think in terms of models that one can imagine and illustrate visually and mechanically (not a bad method, Maxwell used it at first !). I found intriguing similarities and basic differences in our approaches. You describe relativistic gears having a "close relationship between the quantum harmonic oscillator with angular frequency ¯ w = 2p /Tt , that is the mode of an ordinary quantum field with energy ¯E = h¯w¯ , and a classical particle moving along a circle of periodicity Tt . By assuming the time period Tt on a lattice with N sites".

    In my fqxi paper and in my earlier 2005 Beautiful Universe proposal on which it is based, I have described a universe made up of a lattice of spinning dielectric nodes interacting with each other as 'slippery' spherical gears transferring angular momentum in units of (h) by induction.

    I think one of the main differences in our approaches (if I understand yours correctly) is that you describe your system using the formalism of (SR) spacetime. I see interactions as absolute in timeless universe, perhaps as you describe in a stroboscopic way, as you nicely describe, but the stroboscope illuminates all the lattice instantaneously. I would greatly value your reading the papers and hearing your expert feedback.

    Best wishes from Vladimir

      Caro Vladimir,

      thank you for your interest in my work and, though I am very busy with the publication of new papers based on the same idea, I'll try to read your paper. At a first scan it looks a huge work and I highly appreciate your effort to interpret QM.

      By the way I would like to point out that I am not assuming a time period on a lattice, in my model the space-time coordinates are analog, though they are cyclic. If I well understand your wonderful pictures the analogy with your idea can be obtained by associating to every space-time point (to a field in a space-time point) intrinsic space-time periodicities, depending on the content of four-momentum in that point and according to the relativistic geometrodynamics. This maybe are what you call dielectric nodes and I call, oversimplifying, relativistic gears.

      In the conclusion, I give some remarks about the flow of time as emerging from the particular "coincidences" of the phase of all these gears. This aspect is rather philosophical and conceptual, I should expand this idea in some future work.

      Best wishes to you,

      Donatello

      5 days later

      Ciao V. P.,

      my road brought me to Melbourne and I ready to continue it.

      a month later

      Dear all,

      I would like to thank the FQXi community for this fourth prize. It represents an important encouragement to continue in the extremely hard (and urgent) task of promoting original ideas in physics.

      What quantum mechanics is telling us is that elementary systems are intrinsically and dynamically cyclic.

      I hope this idea will continue to stimulate discussions.

      Best regards,

      Donatello

      2 months later

      • [deleted]

      • Post #35

      Dear Dr. Donatello,

      You are absolutely correct, the visible universe is cyclical in nature and the invisible singularity or universal I or god is the cosmological constant. Please see the absolute truth, mathematically expressed as zero = i = infinity.

      If universe is the meaning of understanding of one's surroundings, then it is created with every birth and destroyed with every death. Universe is in a steady big bang state. Multiverse is just multiple interpretations made by bodies and minds of the conscience (soul or singularity). What one perceives of self (soul) is not the same as another, this is the multiverse with in the universe that we live in. The moment a thought arises the universe comes to existence. If one can still the mind to absoluteness then there will be absolutely nothing. This state of absoluteness is called Nirvana (Moksha), immortality. One who knows thy self is immortal.

      Love,

      Sridattadev.

        a month later

        Hi Sridattadev,

        thank you for interest in my idea. The derivation of your equation zero = i = infinity is not exactly what I mean for "mathematics". By the way ...

        ...love,

        Donatello

        PS: You should read about Augustine of Hippo.

        6 months later

        IMPORTANT UPDATE: my recent publication on Ann. Phys. (2012) confirms the importance of a cyclic interpretation of elementary systems in physics. From the conclusion, two of the main results are:

        ► gauge interaction can be derived from the invariance of the theory under local transformations of variables as gravitational interaction can be derived by requiring invariance under diffeomorphisms.

        ► field theory in cyclic 4D, without any further assumption than intrinsic

        periodicity, provides the possibility of a geometrodynamical and semi-classical description of scalar QED

        --------------------arXiv:1110.0315 --------------------

        Gauge Interaction as Periodicity Modulation

        Donatello Dolce,

        Annals of Physics (2012), Received 6 November 2011. Accepted 13 February 2012. Available online 22 February 2012.

        The paper is devoted to a geometrical interpretation of gauge invariance in terms of the formalism of field theory in compact space-time dimensions [arXiv:0903.3680]. In this formalism, the kinematic information of an interacting elementary particle is encoded on the relativistic geometrodynamics of the boundary of the theory through local transformations of the underlying space-time coordinates. Therefore, gauge interaction is described as invariance of the theory under local deformations of the boundary, the resulting local variations of field solution are interpreted as internal transformations, and the internal symmetries of the gauge theory turn out to be related to corresponding local space-time symmetries. In the case of local infinitesimal isometric transformations, Maxwell's kinematics and gauge invariance are inferred directly from the variational principle. Furthermore we explicitly impose periodic conditions at the boundary of the theory as semi-classical quantization condition in order to investigate the quantum behavior of gauge interaction. In the abelian case the result is a remarkable formal correspondence with scalar QED.

        Highlights

        ► Gauge interaction is inferred from local space-time geometrodynamics.

        ► Gauge symmetries are related to local space-time symmetries.

        ► Scalar QED is derived semi-classically as modulation of periodic phenomena.

        ► Quantum mechanics is associated to a cyclic nature of elementary systems.

        ► Every free elementary particle can be regarded as a reference clock.

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