The Discreet Charm of the Discrete by Paul Halpern

Hi Paul,

I like the holon idea and your essay, holons are something like my "particles made by their properties" in my essay, so maybe the ideas there are not so strange as it appears to be (and I have to read something more about holons and related stuff :-)

But, in my opinion, holons assumed to be "... a photon (or other fundamental field) of highest energy and lowest wavelength" should be highly "reactive", and a Universe filled up with such particles, permeating everybody and anything, would be an extremely dangerous place. A holon particle stream would be by definition far more destructive than cosmic gamma-ray bursts.

What comes me to mind as a resolution to this problem is an idea of "holon confinement", e.g. in a string ? AFAIK, string confinement of quarks was proposed in the literature sometime ago.

Best regards,

-Joachim.

Dear Paul,

I find your proposal intriguing and intelligent. The analogy you draw, between the 'ultraviolet catastrophe' and the discrepancy between theoretical and observed values of the cosmological constant, seems apt. In that context, however, I would point out that Planck's "solution" (to the former) was purely a mathematical device--the beginning, not the end, of many unresolved issues.

I also liked your "mailbox" metaphor. It might prove helpful in clarifying the nature of 'information', which seems to be a glibly misused concept these days. In a number of submitted essays, there is reference to information being 'stored' or 'encoded', when the author simply means that there is continuity within reality itself, and from one description of reality to another, (at another time, for instance). While organisms explicitly need to model their environment, encoding it in some representation, there is no reason to assume that physical reality in general does this. The information is encoded by physicists, not necessarily by the world they study.

Thanks and best wishes,

Dan

Dear Professor Halpern,

Your essay provides much food for thought. I would like to know how in the scenario of a holon falling into a black hole this idea can be reconciled with the GR prediction that the holon becomes gravitationally blueshifted.

Thank you,

Armin

Paul,

Incisive argument for holons that led me with the weight of your argument in each direction you took including your holon thrust.

I haven't heard many looks into a dark energy explanation that work.

Quite persuasive and scholarly.

Jim Hoover

Only this Essay and my comment reminding about Holometer

http://www.fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/946

Hi dear Prof.Halpern,

Congratulations, the evolution is so important.....quantum spheres.....H....CNO..Hydrospheroids about 3.4billions......CH4 H20 HCN H2C2 NH3....time evolution rotating spinning proprotions.........UNICELLS....differenciation......pluricells.....sponges ..mmedusas.......humans................UNIVERSAL SPHERE.

The encoding is rational simply.

Best Regards and good luck

Steve

Dear Paul,

You are welcome.I liked your essay, it's rational, we need that.

Best Regards

Steve

Hi both,

As part-historian of physics, I feel I have to clear up a myth contained in here. Planck did not introduce the quantum of action (initially written as an epsilon, to be taken to zero) to resolve a problem in the UV part of the spectrum (the bad behaviour predicted by the Rayleigh-Jeans law), but rather with the Wien law, in the infrared part of the spectrum. It was Wien's law that he sought to recover with his own formula for the blackbody energy. It really ought to be called the "infrared catastrophe". The historical evidence points to the fact that Planck was not aware of Rayleigh's analysis when he proposed his idea - Rayleigh's proposal came in June, and Planck's in the October of 1900 - there was no correspondence and no publication at this stage). Also, quite interestingly, the name "ultraviolet catastrophe" wasn't coined until 1911, by Paul Ehrenfest.

Best,

Dean

Dear Paul Halpern

I thoroughly enjoyed your essay, that started with a reference to the much-maligned Lord Kelvin. He also conjectured that the ether is made up of 'knots' which may well describe holons or twistors or the lattice nodes of my own theory. I have tried to show in my in my earlier 2005 Beautiful Universe paper on which my present fqxi paper is based that if these universal building blocks have dielectric properties and angular momentum, their precise mutual interactions may well account for matter, space, radiation and dark matter. Dark energy will be the natural result of the mutual electrostatic repulsion of these nodes, probably self-assembled in an FCC crystal-like configeration. I also proposed experiments to test the graininess of the vacuum. In a fqxi discussion here with Tommaso Bolognesi I proposed a variation of my experiment in which two parrallel standing waves in vacuum may exhibit moire patterns with a phase much larger than the wavelength of the original universal node (or holon - I like the word and will check Koestler's book) length. I would greatly appreciate your reading my papers and hearing your expert reaction.

With best wishes.

Vladimir Tamari