Reality Is Analogue: It Exists in the Flow of Time and Space. by James Lee Hoover

Jim,

I like how you touched on many topics, yet your essay still flowed nicely.

We (humans) are just on the edge of starting to understand. You showed how long the path is in front of us.

All the best,

Jeff

Jim

An enjoyable read, thank you, and worth a higher position. Rather than discuss black holes etc. here I give you a link, for a short paper I think you'll enjoy, derived from the basic theory I give here and a paper currently in Peer review. our views need updating.

And a test, (try it before you link to the above can you spot the black hole in the piccies in my essay. It's only visible via lensing. The solution is in the paper.

Enjoy, and do tell me if you can follow the logic in my essay (you must read it slowly and absorb it), and views on the paper.

Best wishes

Peter

OK, Jim, this absolutely non-scientific brain followed maybe one-forth of the topic and reasoning presented. I didn't read others, so I can't compare to them, but you definitely caught my interest and attention with several of the topics with which I am familiar. I can say that you tweaked my interest enough that I'll at least scan (and maybe read) articles I run across that cover this topic. What I also can say is that I don't expect to read Hawkins anytime soon. You know what that says at my age. :-) Thank you for including me. I do enjoy your writing. Hugs Noreen :-)

Jim,

I really enjoyed your essay, which offers an intriguing depiction of the flowing nature of reality. I like your metaphor of the Phoenix, and your emphasis of renewal. It is interesting that many ancient cultures depicted the cosmos as an endless cycle.

Best wishes,

Paul

Dear James,

I wanted to say hello and let you know I enjoyed your essay. I like how it touches on the limits of what we can know about reality. Your discussions of black holes and quatum mechanics are interesting, and I wanted to ask a bit more about your thoughts on the quantum mechanics side. Do you think physics will get to a clearly defined point where it says this is as far is we can figure and nothing can be explored deeper? Does it seem like we will always be able to find ways to explain existing theories with deeper models?

Thanks for your interesting essay!

Kind regards, Russell Jurgensen

Dear Jim,

I have just finished your essay and must say it was enjoyable. Your essay has a poetic quality missing in most of the entries. One of my favorite lines:

"The long waves of cosmic truth appear to wash upon our shores like an almost 14 billion year old ejection of a super-volcano, the ultimate eruption models calls the Big Bang, this being our way of explaining the phantom forces that still echo in our observatories of earth and near-space. But even the microwave image of the cosmic background reveals a curtain covering the Big Bang"s origin."

This one paragraph carries considerable weight. I hope you enjoyed my essay as much, as I would agree we have similar interests.

Best Regards,

Dan

Jim your essay posed an interesting argument in support of reality being Analogue in nature.

It was easy to read. You did not over burden the reader with excessive speculations regarding symmetries, string theory, etc. There seemed to be enough discussion of digital events to support your argument.

It is of course difficult to describe Analogue reality since, it is by nature complicated and can not be easily modeled.

The essence of what I derived from your essay follows, is simplistically stated and may be off base:

"Can Analogue reality be thought of as Time? As Time smoothly flows, it encompasses a multidimensional digital reality composed of all digital occurrences occurring within the Analogue reality at any given point in time. These occurrences involve all digital processes and properties of space, matter and energy."

I think your essay presents rational arguments that are at the very least on par with other essays I have read.

Hi Jim,

Thanks for your kind comments in my forum.

You're in good company. As Einstein said, "I'd like to think that the moon still exists even when no one is looking at it."

Nice read. I like the historical breadth of your essay, which adds much interest. Good luck in the contest.

All best,

Tom

Jim,

I wouldn't invest all the importance of this contest in the rankings. Like everyone else I would like to make the cut, but I accept that there will be many deserving essays that don't, and probably some undeserving ones that do. I think you are going to see some radical changes in the standings by Tuesday, anyway.

The essay forum is still a great oppportunity to get your work before a lot of influential folks in the physics community, no matter the prizewinning outcome.

Tom

Dear Jim,

You and I seem to agree on many controversial points.

I agree with a Multiverse that is so large (possibly infinite?) that we can't observe it all because of our speed of light scale limit, and a finite age for our Observable Universe "locality".

I agree with Supersymmetry - Fermions and Bosons are fundamentally different enough that we need SUSY to combine these concepts into a single TOE (if such exists!).

I like to play with models. If one seems to work, then I keep building on it. If one obviously fails, then I put it aside (for another application later?).

You mentioned that String theory is analog, and this certainly agrees with classical wave theory (a traveling wave on a string), but I think that these strings may also have discrete modes of vibration (like the frequencies of a piano string) that may behave quantum-like (I think that Philip Gibbs and Lawrence Crowell have been having such a discussion on Lawrence's blog site). This ties into a wierd quantum-classical behavior of strings and Philip Gibbs Qubits of Strings. In my models, the end of the string may behave like a site in a discrete lattice.

The BB and BH's seem to be two different sides (bringing forth new life vs. melting down death and decay) of the same coin (singularity). I don't think that a singularity can exist in a finite Universe, therefore the BB must be part of the Multiverse, and BH's must not be "infinite vacuum cleaners". In my blog thread, I have proposed ideas and geometries that may prevent the BH from becoming a true singularity.

You suggested that large BH's may swallow smaller BH's until - ultimately - our observable Universe consists of a single Super BH. I don't know... It is true that gravitational fields effectively stretch out towards an infinite range (falling off as inverse-distance-squared), but it would be difficult (if not impossible once spacetime has collapsed to a point?) for a large BH to move a smaller BH.

Your essay was very readable.

Good Luck and Have Fun!

Dr. Cosmic Ray

Jim,

I just realized that I had not commented on your thread, although I had responded to your comment on mine [which I interpreted as a compliment!]

You say: "Most models are digital representations of analog events." We are in agreement on this and that the universe is analog. Many of the essays here are of the opinion that the universe is a digital computer, but if it is to be considered a computer, I believe it is an analog computer. Digital computers are programmed with ones and zeros, stored and retrieved from somewhere, but analog computers are made of real physical components and are 'programmed' by connections.

But the most basic analog physical entity is a 'field', and, as Ray states above, "It is true that gravitational fields effectively stretch out towards an infinite range..." so this means that the analog computer essentially extends over the entire universe. And the essence of such a field is its 'connectivity', which is essentially what General Relativity is all about.

As I remarked to you on my thread, "I begin with a conjecture that only one thing exists in the 'beginning' and that seems to imply a field (which is almost by definition analog.) The logical development of this conjecture leads to a 'threshold' or 'universal constant' and it is this that allows the separation of the universe into two categories, 'above' and 'below' the threshold, and this supports the evolution of 'form' inside the universe, which continues to 'in-form' reality until we reach the universe that you describe in your essay, a reality that "vibrates with life".

So thanks again for reading and commenting on my essay, and thanks for coming down on the side of analogue reality.

Edwin Eugene Klingman

Dear James

I enjoyed the unhurried and poetic pace of your essay, based as it was on well-considered and relevant issues in physics and - I am not sure if I am right in labeling it thus - philosophy.

We may not differ so much about our definition of reality as you implied in your note on my essay. You seem to feel there is an absolute reality out there independent of human observers. That is exactly what the physics part of my paper implies - an absolute universe but different observers see it differently. This is the opposite of Einstein's SR whereby he posited that observation is absolute (the speed of light) but the universe (space and time dimensions) are relative and dependent on inertial frame speed.

Best wishes from Vladimir

Hi Jim,

I was thinking more about the large BH swallowing the small BH. I think that this may be a quantum tunnelling event. It could potentially disrupt spacetime enough to cause something like a white hole. You might bounce the idea off of Lawrence Crowell.

Have Fun!

Dr. Cosmic Ray