A Derivation of the Quantum Phase by Armin Nikkhah Shirazi

Hi Irvin,

It's good to hear from you. I empathize with your dilemma. I am an aspiring author also, and currently unpublished. From what I've read about the peer review process, it sounds like it can brutal.

I have a couple of suggestions that I hope will help. I'm not sure what journals to which you have submitted your papers, but you might contact Christian Corda, who was in the last essay contest. You can get his contact info from his forum thread. He is the Editor in Chief of the Hadronic Journal along with another cosmology journal. He seems like a genuinely nice person and should give you a fair chance and good feedback for improvement, if needed.

Secondly, another physicist, Amrit Sorli, who has posted quite a bit in the past on FQXI, has published his paper "Is Time an Illusion" at Physics Essays. Their URL address is http://physicsessays.org/

He and his co-author received some good press from this paper in such magazines as Scientific American, PhysOrg.com and BBC Focus. The only minor drawback to Physics Essays is that they insist that the paper be submitted in both English and French. I'm sure you could recruit someone to translate for you, if you don't know French. I know there are on-line companies that will do it for a fee.

Unfortunately, it seems there are too many closed minded journals and editors. Since your papers are uniquely creative, it makes them a target for criticism, rather than judged on their merit. Don't let two rejections hold you back. Submit them to as many journals as possible until you get someone to notice. Remember that Einstein's original paper wasn't taken seriously, until by happenstance, Max Planck read it and recognized its importance. Just think of it as the price you must pay, if you want to change the world.

Wishing you all the best,

Dan

Hi Wilhelmus and Dan,

First, Dan:

Thank you so much for your suggestions. You have mentioned venues that were not on my radar screen at all. Before I contact them, though, I will attempt to check how well they are generally regarded.

I should also mention that I was contacted by a publisher who has offered to publish the follow up paper as book (even though it is only 19 pages long?). Evidently, they go through university archives and check for theses that they wish to publish, at no cost to the author.

I checked and it appears that it is legitimate publisher, but that the quality of their publications is regarded by the academic community generally as low. This may not be too surprising considering that (they claim) they've published over a million titles (I seriously doubt that there even exist anything close to a million high quality science papers).

If all else fails, I may just go with them. In case you wish to find out more, I can forward you the email with the faq etc. if you like.

Thank you again for your suggestions.

Now, Wilhelmus:

I'm glad that the A/V issue got settled.

About your questions:

1. As I mentioned before, I am not convinced that the Planck scale is as significant as currently people think it is because, again, it lacks a solid theoretical foundation. Dimensional analysis based on a plausibility argument is not enough in my book to qualify as a solid theoretical foundation. This is not to say that I absolutely don't think nothing will happen at that scale, just that I am more skeptical than the rest of the physics community on this point.

As to what exactly happens at that limit, this is really the same astute question that Dan asked me a while back. You see, I only postulated that such a limit exists. I did not specify how it is actually approached, or how to mathematically carry out the operation of taking the limit. The reason I haven't done this is because I simply don't know how, other than that below the limit, the notion of space is postulated to be as imaginary as the notion of 4-space is to us. This is a very important subject and I strongly suspect that a detailed description can only be given in the context of quantum field theory, not plain quantum mechanics. Unfortunately, this is a subject on which I am still not well-versed. I can tell you however what my current train of thought is (subject to change as I get more educated): As before, I don't think that you "lose a dimension" (which implies that you modify the repository but ultimately still keep it) but that really spacetime vanishes, "all at once", as it where. The problem is, of course, that for any quantity involving finite distance this would prima facie conflict with relativity. So the idea is that instead of focusing on a particular volume element, you focus on a (quantum) object over a small interval of time (therefore you are considering a 4-dimensional object), and that the change at that limit is really a change in the object's behaviour, perhaps something analogous to a phase change (e.g. going from ice to liquid water). There is a very intriguing fact that quantum field theory is formally very closely analogous to thermodynamics.

A more visual analogy is as follows: Surely you have seen photomosaics (if not, you can see one here:

http://click7.org/image-mosaic-generator/?create

At a sufficient large magnification, all you see is a juxtaposition of pictures. But as you step back, you notice that all these pictures come together to form a bigger picture. My current working hypothesis is that the emergence of spacetime from areatime may have to be modeled as something similar, except that the component parts have one fewer dimension.

But, keep in mind, this is all speculation. I really don't know, and I don't have anything near a substantive quantitative model to back it up.

2. It appears to me to be more self-consistent that, yes, the process continues with increasingly larger scales, than that it stops at spacetime. I briefly alluded to that in my follow-up paper, noting that the fact that Dark Energy and Dark Matter are phenomena which are essentially "invisible" at our scale may be a hint. Also, I should mention that I have come up with a toy model, taking into account the additional dimension at larger scale and a simple modification of Newton's laws to take this and the changed dynamics to allow for stable orbits that seems to replicate and thereby give axiomatic underpinning of MOND. In case you're not familiar with it, MOND (Modified Newtonian Dynamics) was developed about 25 years ago by an Israeli Astrophysicist to explain the galactic rotation curves. It is strongly considered only by a about 1% of astrophysicists, in large part because it seems unmotivated physically, but also because it does not account for the dynamics of galaxy clusters very well(to learn more, google "Mond Pages").

However, I am nowhere near going public with this because I still need to learn a lot more about galactic dynamics and cosmology and because, once again, the ideas are so unfamiliar that it would permanently put me in the crackpot category.

Anyway, thanks for your comments.

My dear Armin,

It is increadible how our thinking is paralel, please if you want read my essay, the last remark Imade on the essay is indeed about the Planck length that I use as a limit to begin my "free thinking", ,The last results from the INTEGRAL point to a length of 10^-48m, I indicate here like you do yourself that it is not the exact length that is important but the fact that there is a limit, this limit is for me the border of the causal universe and the beginning of the Total Simultaneity (This is a different view of yours), I can start this free thinking because all physicists before me are doing the same, great example is string theory (I have immense doubts about that) and Loop Quantum Gravity 5a theory that I like). You talk about MOND , I fully agree with that , I too have great problems with black matter dark forces etc just to explain that the other 95% of the material around us that we don't understand and cannot observe obeys to same "laws" as the 5% we are aware of. You might be interested in the view of a countryman of mine Eric Verlinde, see http://fqxi.org:community:articles/display/132, he sees garvity emerging from a higher dimension and not as abasical force.(like image mosaic).

I hope you will take some time to read my essay and will be happy to read your comments on the thread there.

have a nice weekend and

keep on thinking free

Wilhelmus

Hi Wilhelmus,

Thank you for your comments and I regret that the comments I am giving below may be perceived by you as negative. I'd much rather say complimentary things, but on the other hand, I think it is important to give honest feedback.

First, about the limit. The notion of a limit is a very specific one. It implies a specific quantity with a specific magnitude, and typically also the variation in some quantity as the limit is approached. If you postulate a limit, you have to at least specify what it is a limit of. In my paper, I used axiom I as a mathematical expression to indicate, as specifically as I could, that the fundamental assumption is a limit on spacetime itself (i.e. a quantity that has dimensional units of L^3*T), and that this limit is approached by letting L^3 (*not* L, which is what you seem to be thinking) go to zero. This is very different from postulating that there is a minimum length or minimum time.

There are current modern theories that postulate that there exists a minimum length (such as LQG) but these theories can hide the difficulties that such postulated length or time limits pose by the fact that these limits are not measurable using current technologies. The theoretical difficulties that postulating such length/time limits pose are formidable and that is why such theories are presently regarded as little more than speculation (even though they are called "theories", they are more appropriately *highly speculative* theories, which is a *completely* different animal from our established theories like quantum mechanics and relativity).

To just give you a little bit of a taste, let me briefly review one major problem the assumption of a lower limit on length bring about: According to special relativity, if an object is moving relative to you, you will observe its length to be contracted (i.e. shorter)in its direction of motion as compared to an observer who is at rest relative to that object (assuming properly calibrated measurements). So if that object had (in its direction of motion relative to you) a minimum length, say 10^-48 m, in the frame of an observer at rest, then its length according to you (since its length is contracted) would be even shorter! But if it is a "minimum length" it can't be shorter by definition in any frame (including yours) for then it wouldn't be a minimum length. So either your assumption of a minimum length is wrong, or you have to change special relativity. Because special relativity is one of our best confirmed theories, people are very hesitant to change it, unless you can come up with a changed version that predicts something that you can measure and that is different from what special relativity predicts, do the experiment and show that your changed version gave the correct prediction, not special relativity.

So, you see, there are problems with assuming that there is a minimum length, and physicists who make this assumption typically try to find a way to solve these by proposing modifications to the established theories like special relativity, but this is like messing with the foundation of a house: If you change one thing, it will affect other things, and you will have to change other things, which in turn force you to still change other things and so on. And keep in mind, I have only told you of one problem, there are others. It is therefore not a trivial thing to postulate that there exists a minimum length scale.

Now I can tell you what my opinion is, and bear in mind, this is only a belief, not a scientific argument which I can back up with facts: In my opinion, there is no theoretical lower limit on length or time (i.e. L or T) but there is on spacetime (i.e. L^3T). If the amount of Energy in the universe is finite, there might be a lower practical limit on wavelength, or inverse frequency (because Energy and wavelength or inverse frequency have an inversely proportional relationship). So given, my opinion, I think we do have a substantial difference in our views about a minimum length.

Second, about your paper. I tried to read it, but once again it was difficult for me to understand it. As far as I could tell, you seem to have the notion of quantized world consisting essentially of discrete building blocks given by what you call the "wall of Planck", below which our usual notions of causality, time and distance disappear, something you call "total simultaneity".

This is not an uncommon view, I believe, but it is still regarded as highly speculative. Our two most fundamental theories of nature are General Relativity and Quantum Theory. According to General Relativity, Spacetime is a smooth manifold, which directly contradicts the postulated existence of discrete building blocks greater than zero size. According to quantum theory, while certain quantities are quantized (and are therefore added "blockwise") there is no indication in the theory of fundamental length and time scales. It is true that under certain circumstances, such as a particle in a box with impermeable walls, the theory does predict that there are regions where you will never locate a particle (which would seem like a quantized length scale), but that is a consequence of the setup of that particular situation, not a fundamental result of the theory.

So currently, our established theories do not support your notion. But they don't seem compatible with one another either, yet both describe nature excellently within their own domains. So, it would seem reasonable to assume that the two theories can be made compatible to one another by changing one or both, and some physicists have used this as a way to introduce notions similar to yours.

After reading your paper, I would like to give you, if I may, some constructive suggestions on how to write scientific arguments more effectively. I have found that what I am suggesting below helps me personally both in thinking about a problem and in presenting it two others.

1) Always keep in mind that your number one priority in presenting a scientific argument is to communicate your ideas as clearly as possible. You could have the best idea in the world, but if you communicate it in such a way that no one understands it, then nobody else will know. If you have a friend with similar interests you could ask him/her to read your piece and try to explain back to you what they understood you to say. This will tell you whether you communicated clearly or not.

2) Before you even write up your paper, formulate your argument in a bullet or numbered point format, making sure that each point logically follows from the previous ones. This will help both you and the reader of the paper that is based on the argument constructed in this way, to understand your chain of reasoning more clearly.

3) Avoid, as much as possible, introducing non-standard terms or notation. But sometimes it is unavoidable, in which case you should make absolutely sure that you have the terms defined clearly and explicitly immediately after you introduced them. If you don't do this, it will be a lot less likely that people will seriously consider your argument.

4) Avoid, as much as you can, reference to results of speculative theories of which you may have at best only a superficial understanding to justify results from your own arguments. I get a very strong impression that you take all these speculative theories' results at face value and then try to show that your own notions are consistent with these. Very frankly, I am not sure that you even realize that there is a big difference between established theories like relativity and quantum theory on the one hand, and highly speculative theories like String Theory, Loop Quantum Gravity, and Verlinde's Entropic Force Theory on the other. The reader will likely know that you are not a researcher in one of these fields, so your reliance on the conclusions of these, I think, will diminish, rather than augment your credibility.

I should emphasize, however, that point 4) does not necessarily apply to established theories like Relativity and quantum theory. If you come up with a novel idea that leads to the same result as one of these theories, then generally that is a strength. But you still want to convey that you have a much better than superficial understanding of these theories, and you want to convey this as precisely and clearly as you can. For better or for worse, this usually means that you want to convey this in the form of a mathematical equation that leads to a known result.

Again, I wished I could provide you with more positive feedback, but I hope that you will find my comments helpful in the spirit of constructive criticism.

Armin

Hello again,

There is something else I wanted to mention. You got several positive comments from other members on your essay. I think you should take the sincerity of at least some of the comments with some measure of skepticism because they were made during the time when voting on the essays still mattered. Especially the first comment is a blatant and disgusting attempt by its author to win a high rating from you. I don't know if he succeeded but I seriously doubt that his compliments for your essay were honest.

Armin

Dear Armin,

Thank you very very much for the constructive remarks on my essay, I agree with you on all the points of how to write a scientific text, my only apologise is that this is the first time I wrote down my ideas in the form of an essay, ideas that I had for about six years already, then I met the advertisement in Scientific American about FQXi and the contest, so I thought why not ? Even the fact that I was admiitted in such a community of specialists was for me already a victory, after the prizes were contributed they put me (like your essay right now) for a month on the Forum Updates and really Armin , this was and still is for me arecognition of the (perhaps strange) ideas that I have for such a long time, my essay was published also in the Scientific God Journal (dr Huping Hu) so I think the idea is moving. Of course I am aware that this idea is not a complete theory but I am working on it, also thanks to critics that I receive from you.

Now for the limit of a "length", you indicate L^3*T, what do you mean by that (sorry I am not aprofessional physicist) if you say that L^3 go to zero I think thatyou mean that the volume (L^3 ?) is goin to zero, So you postulate that V is going to zero (you compare this L^3 with the surface of the object and use a ratio for that, that in principle is mathematical, but introducing a "measurable" unit like a meter it becomes a causal entity,isn't it ?), but does this in a different way not introduce also a length limit ? The volume as a matter of fact is L^3.

You are so right when you say that my idea is also pure speculation, indeed I make use of the fact that the L I am talking about is not measurable, this is why I told you that my "free thinking" is starting here, perhaps that is too easy, but I took this liberty because of the fact thet almost all other theories also begin at this not measurable limit, my point is that I am searching for a limit for the causality, as for the moment I am convinced that this is not the Planck length but it exists somewhere.

The limit of causality when you are thinking further is perhaps not pointed out by a "length" as you indicate every length is contracting when it is moving relative to an observer, on the other hand you may think that once this "length" is achieved relative to the observer cuasality does not longer exist and that is why time is standing still for the photon, you say the photon is no longer in our universe , in fact say the same

The lower limit of spacetime exists you mention, not the limits of length and time, but the building blocks of space/time are vomume/time are xyz/time how comes that x,y and z are not down limited ? if they are greater as zero there must be a limit or is this not a fixable limit(sorry if I am so stupid).

I fully agree with you also that I need to write more to the point, it is my eldest son who read it before i published, both said the same as you and so I made already changes but not enough I think, however in the Scientific God Journal I introduced chapters and so on, next essay will be more clear.(i Hope, if you agree I will sent it to you before)

Again thanks a lot for your constructive apports and let us keep in contact.

Wilhelmus

Hi Wilhelmus,

I did not know that this was your first attempt at writing an essay. When I first started out, my very first essay that expressed my ideas would have been subject to the exact same criticism that I gave you and probably a lot more, so don't feel bad. This is something that takes a lot of practice. My ideas have gone through many, many drafts and the version here is very different from my first few attempts, and the journey (to write better scientific essays) is still far from over for me, and in fact may never end.

Now, about your question: I basically just wrote out Axiom I in words, and (sorry I should have explained this) I used the capital letters L and T to indicate the dimensional units. So L^3*T is just the dimensionality of U_4, just as L^3 is the dimensionality of V.

If you recall, I was arguing in my essay that our current view is that as we consider a volume element to go to zero, everything (including spacetime) is assumed to go to zero. You won't usually see this assumption stated this way, but you can realize this indirectly, because our description of particles as point-like implies this. Point-like particles are zero-dimensional.

So I wanted to make clear that I was assuming something fundamentally different, namely that even after a volume element goes to zero "something" remains: it is not spacetime but areatime. That means that even in the limit in which there is no more space (V=0), there is a non-zero quantity of something, and this has, of course, a magnitude attached to it.

Ok, so why not introduce a length limit? Well, first, as mentioned before the introduction of such a limit brings along with it a host of known problems that physicists are still grappling with. But apart from that it is really not necessary, because I postulated that the shape of this quantity of areatime is variable.

Here is an analogy with volume (because volume is easier to visualize than areatime): Suppose you have a cube with side 1m, and just for the sake of argument, let's say that the volume of this cube constituted a limit, but that its shape was allowed to remain variable. It's volume is 1m^3, but you can still avoid going below this limit at very small distance scales, as long you can compensate along the other directions. So, for example, you can flatten one side to 10^-49 m, but if the product of the other two sides is larger than 10^49 m^2, the volume is still above that limit. So you see, I can limit xyz without limiting x, y or z individually if I am allowed to keep the shape variable. This is something I explicitly assumed for the postulated limit.

Also, I still get a sense that there is a very important aspect of special relativity (SR) that you may not have realized, so let me point it out.

Recall that one of the postulates of SR is that all inertial frames are equivalent. There is no such thing as an "absolute" inertial frame of an observer in spacetime. This implies that it is perfectly acceptable to consider there to exist frames that are arbitrarily close to the speed of light. Let us consider a frame that was in motion relative to the earth at 99.999999999999% the speed of light (i.e.v=0.999999999999999c) . The diameter of the earth is 12, 756 km but, to keep it simple, let's round this down to 10,000 km 10^4 km, which is 10^7m (remember, this is relative to an observer frame who is stationary with respect to earth). What is the diameter of earth in the frame of the moving observer?

Using the Length contraction formula, we get:

[math]L'=L*\sqrt{1-\frac{v^2}{c^2}}=10^7m *\sqrt{1-0.99999999999999^2}\approx 10^7m*10^{-7} m=1m[/math]

In the moving frame, the earth would be contracted to about a 1 m diameter along the direction of relative motion. What is the point of this example? It is this: There was nothing special about this frame. I could have chosen a frame that was going faster by adding fortynine 9's to the percent figure of this moving frame. In this other moving frame, the diameter of the earth would be contracted to 10^-49 m. And again, there is nothing special about this frame. It is *extremely* close to the speed of light relative to us, but it is just as good as your rest frame. If you think that this speed is unrealistically fast for any actual object, you are still thinking inadvertently in terms of absolute frames.

So you see, the problem with Special relativity postulating a length limit is actually worse than my previous explanation may have given you to believe.

But as I said before, it is possible that such a length limit does exist, but then special relativity (and actually General Relativity and Quantum theory in their present form) have to be changed. And a lot of researchers in fundamental physics try to do just that.

If you really wish to continue your development in this area and have your views seriously considered, then you will have to seriously study the subject matter. There is an excellent web resource for aspiring theoretical physicists that was created by your own countryman Gerardus 't Hooft. It can be found here:

http://www.staff.science.uu.nl/~hooft101/theorist.html

Good luck and best wishes,

Armin

The formula did not come out right, here is another attempt:

[math]

L'=L*\sqrt{1-\frac{v^2}{c^2}}=10^7m *\sqrt{1-0.99999999999999^2}\approx 10^7m*10^{-7} m=1m

[/math]

If this doesn't come out right either, you can just paste the equation below into any online latex editor (google) to see what it looks like

L'=L*\sqrt{1-\frac{v^2}{c^2}}=10^7m *\sqrt{1-0.99999999999999^2}\approx 10^7m*10^{-7} m=1m

Armin

Dear Armin,

Thanks a lot for your help, the site of 't Hooft is very very good, I am going to study it.

What you indicate with the SR and the observer that is going almost at the speed of light is clear to me, it explains that we are have to regard it as "local" velocities, the subjects do not perceive their relative lengnth or volume if you want that is realtive to other observers who are speeding at even more as the speed of light (see for example the CMBR , the origin of this is about 45 billion lightyears away and is speeding at (much) more as the speed of light from us, but perhaps I am just simplifying here too much.

I come back to you

best regards

Wilhelmus

To anyone who is interested,

I'd like to mention that I recently posted a paper which gives a conceptual discussion of the framework that I have been working on, and which is hopefully accessible even to those who only understand the basics of quantum mechanics.

It is entitled "A Novel Way of `Understanding' Quantum Mechanics"

It can be found either at Deep Blue, the University of Michigan repository at

http://hdl.handle.net/2027.42/86651

or at

http://www.vixra.org/abs/1110.0005

I appreciate any feedback. Thanks

Hi Wilhelmus,

Thank you for your response. I am using the concept of time as it is used in relativity, but I apply it to areatime. The concept of time in relativity is counterintuitive and even today, there are still many people who do not accept it. As you know, it distinguishes between the concept of coordinate time and proper time, where the proper time is proportional to the distance or interval in spacetime. Because this simple if counterintuitive conception of time explains lot of facts about our worlds with very few additional assumptions ,I do believe that relativity provides a correct description of nature and that includes the way it treats the concept of time.

Really, I have the impression that your problem is with the concept of time as it is used in relativity. I would advise you to first learn it thoroughly, and then if you still do not accept it, at least you know exactly what it is that you are rejecting. If you take this advice and then appreciate how many seemingly disconnected facts about nature suddenly fit together just with this conception, whereas otherwise they would seem to be totally unrelated, you may just change your mind and choose not to reject it.

Armin

Hi Armin,

As far as I see it, I have no problem at all understanding time in relativity, it is that I have a problem in understanding your text on page 5 and 6 :

* you are making a difference in the "nature" of time in three dimensions and that in two dimensions, of course it is difficult to design a twodimensional clock, but I think that is not neccecerry because time is "emerging" (in my point of view) and in fact not existing (see also Julian Barbour's PLATONIA : "There is no passage of time, merely a set of unconnected instants, or "nows", In my essay it is the consciousness that is able to form these lines), so in fact from my point of view you are treating time as if it is a real dimension that is changing when the number of dimensions are changing (like in your A/V ratio .

* "Hypothetical objects in areatime cannot have a spacetime history", I understand your view, it is as if the point in the two dimensions becomes a line in the three dimensions (beginning of your text), this is a good mathematical way of representing the extra's that are appearing when you are adding a dimension, only time cannot be treated like thet (I think, and also others) The symmetry you are adding on page 6, by comparing the proper time Ta in areatime with the proper time T of an observer in spacetime and the transformation you think is needed to arrange this idea , including the so called "perpendicularity" (I think you took that from the fact that when adding a dimension the line that was the point is penrpendicular on the point with reference to the x and y axes) but I really doubt this view also because of the reasons that I mentioned above.

* Your idea of actualisation with regard to these diminishing dimensions is very understandable, an endless quantity of possibillities is "falling down" to one (like in a FEYNMAN diagram), but this way of visualisation is not nececerrily the base of a new theory I think. You mention (page 11) "the collapse process is in fact the mechanism by which all of spacetime emerges from spacetime". In fact this is the essence of your view of reality, mathematically it "seems" at the first sight all right, but try to dig deeper and you will see that every comparision has its "LIMITS", it is at these limts,in my humble opinion, that your theory differs in essence with mine, this is not bad at all , because we all are thinking in areas where nor you nor me can do and repeat experiments, you may think that you are more scientific because of the fact that you know more formula's, I fully agree with that, but it is not my goal to become also a "specialist", however I learn each day, and I hope you do too.

keep on thinking free

Wilhelmus

Hi Wlhelmus,

On your first point, again I have the impression that the difficulty is with exactly understanding what the concept of proper time in relativity is.

Let me state it explicitly:

In special relativity, in cartesian coordinates, the spacetime interval

[math]

ds^2

[/math] is defined as

[math]

ds^2=c^2dt^2-dx^2-dy^2-dz^2

[/math]

(you can also flip the signs,but that is irrelevant here). Notice that the time here is *not* the proper time, it is called the coordinate time.

The proper time

[math]

d\tau^2

[/math]

is defined as

[math]\frac{ds^2}{c^2}

[/math]

so that we can express the proper time also as

[math]

c^2d\tau^2=c^2dt^2-dx^2-dy^2-dz^2

[/math]

For areatime, the analogous proper time

[math]c^2d\tau_A^2

[/math]

is

[math]

c^2d\tau_A^2=c^2dt^2-dx^2-dy^2

[/math]

do you see that they are different? Also, because spacetime in Special relativity does not have a Euclidean geometry you cannot directly compare dx and dy in spacetime with areatime.

so the argument is that because you cannot use

[math]ds_A^2=c^2d\tau_A^2

[/math]

to measure distances in spacetime, you cannot age along

[math]d\tau_A^2

[/math]

in spacetime. Conversely, if something ages along

[math]d\tau_A^2

[/math]

it cannot age along

[math]d\tau^2

[/math]

and since no time is passing for it in spacetime, it cannot have a spacetime history in its frame (It can have an areatime history in its frame, though).

I believe that to someone who understands relativity this argument should be obvious, which is why I only put it in words in my paper. Also, Julian Barbour's conception of time is by no means generally accepted. I would say that his is also what I previously referred to as a "highly speculative theory", but special relativity is not.

As for the visualization *It is only an analogy*. Quantum Mechanics has something very similar, it is called the wave function collapse, and it has been an open problem for the last 80 years or so to understand what it means, and whether it even actually occurs. I am not aware that anyone has tried to connect the wave function collapse to the collapse in terms of the analogy. Please be clear that the actual mechanism I propose for the wave function collapse is different from the analogy. I have the impression you have confused my analogy with the actual explanation I propose.

(Also, a Feynman diagram has nothing to do with the wave function collapse, it is simply a diagram that visually depicts certain equations that model interactions between particles).

Yes, I do try to continually learn, and I would like to suggest the advice that I have tried to follow myself, which is to try to make sure that one really understands the concepts one mentions, because if you use them differently from the way they are normally used it becomes difficult to communicate with others. Also, some people when they notice that someone totally uses terms differently from the way they are normally used will stop taking seriously what that person says. In an ideal world, people would be more patient, but I have experienced myself that the real world is not like that.

Armin

Hi Armin,

thank you for your "clarifications".

In SR the flow of time is a. relative to the mass and b. dependant on the relative velocity of subjects. I never met the so called areatime that you introduce (logic because it is your idea). Your formula's above are clear the difference is the dz^2, simply because you treat a dimension less in your so called areatime.

However the essence of your theory is the A/V ratio , this subject we treated together and I understand now your point of view, only I still think that you are mixing up mathematical approach and the material approach. In your exemple you begin with a sphere, but you can also take a cube I think, the surface of a cube is 6 x a^2, the volume a^3, so the mathematical ratio of A/V is always 6/a, whatever cube you take, this A/V ratio becomes very little when we go to the material universe and agree upon a "length". then you can go up and down in the ratio, if I take the Planck length as the minimal length where our physical laws are still working then you get an A/V ratio of 6/ root of hG/2pi c^2 = 6/1.6x10^-35m. In my opinion that is the minimal A/V ratio (as for now) call it the Planck A/V ratio. In my opinion this is the ratio where causality disappears, the arrow of time is no longer valuable, you say that there disappears only one dimension and you enter in your areatime, you still accept time and so the a

sorry hit a wrong button, so I continue :

you still accept the arrow of time, which I don't.

Both our views are as I think not compatible, but we both are exploring our own "new" reality, I am happy to discuss with you and really it gives me lots of thoughts, there is still one thing that I would like to mention : take a look at the fractal universe, there you can go infinitely up and also down, without loosing or gaining any dimensions, it is in my opinion a typical mathematical universe, where ratio's are fix, so please understand that only when you inroduce a specific "agreed upon" length the ratios are also taking values that are taking avery minimal and also maximal size, it is these "relative" sizes that you and I use to explain our ideas.

best regards and

think FREE

Wilhelmus

Hi Wilhelmus,

You said:

"In SR the flow of time is a. relative to the mass and b. dependant on the relative velocity of subjects."

Roughly speaking yes, but that applies to coordinate time. I am referring to **proper time** in my paper. Proper time is invariant, it is proportional to the invariant interval.

Please, Wilhelmus, I almost have the impression that you are taking my suggestion to study physics as an insult, it is not meant as such. It is meant to help you communicate your ideas more effectively and also to help avoid elementary misunderstandings when reading someone else's work. You don't need to be a "specialist" in relativity or quantum mechanics but you do need to have at least a minimum background if you want to hold an in-depth discussion about these topics. The difference between coordinate time and proper time is something that is taught early on in relativity. If you don't understand the difference, you cannot claim that you understand relativity.

You said:"I never met the so called areatime that you introduce."

Well, the term is mine, but the idea of a 2+1 spacetime is not new, in fact often toy models in general relativity use this to simplify some of the mathematical difficulties to study certain situations. See for example http://books.google.com/books/about/Quantum_Gravity_in_2+1_Dimensions.html?id=C0_HROt5D8YC

You said:"Your formula's above are clear the difference is the dz^2, simply because you treat a dimension less in your so called areatime."

The difference is actually more subtle: You see, because areatime is postulated to be the lower limit, you *cannot* directly relate dx in areatime to dx in spacetime or dy in areatime to dy in spacetime. What that means is that it is not just that the z-direction vanishes, but that spacetime "as a whole" is replaced by areatime. So, strictly speaking, I should have labeled the dx and dy in the formula above for areatime with a subscript A.

You said:"However the essence of your theory is the A/V ratio."

No, the essence of my theory is its axioms. I am really surprised that you are saying this after I've been explaining several times that the A/V ratio is a **plausibility argument**. Therefore it cannot be the essence of my theory.

You said: In your exemple you begin with a sphere, but you can also take a cube I think, the surface of a cube is 6 x a^2, the volume a^3, so the mathematical ratio of A/V is always 6/a, whatever cube you take, this A/V ratio becomes very little when we go to the material universe and agree upon a "length". then you can go up and down in the ratio, if I take the Planck length as the minimal length where our physical laws are still working then you get an A/V ratio of 6/ root of hG/2pi c^2 = 6/1.6x10^-35m. In my opinion that is the minimal A/V ratio (as for now) call it the Planck A/V ratio.

if you want to posit a rigid cubic lattice as the lower limit of spacetime, you have to explain how the symmetries of spacetime are preserved, for instance how you address the length contraction problem (remember, I mentioned before that loop quantum gravity has essentially the same problem)

You said:"you still accept the arrow of time, which I don't."

I accept the definition of proper time, as defined in the theory of relativity. The arrow of time is a separate problem that is not addressed in my papers.

You said: "Both our views are as I think not compatible, but we both are exploring our own "new" reality, I am happy to discuss with you and really it gives me lots of thoughts."

Think about this: Who are you creating your theory for? If it is just for yourself, then you don't need to study relativity or quantum mechanics, you can make up whatever you want.

But I get the impression that you want to share your theory with others and get them to consider it seriously. In order for that to happen, you have to be aware of what has been done already. The reason is that otherwise it could happen very easily that your theory conflicts with things that we have already observed to be different and then your theory is shown to be wrong.

If you don't study the subject matters i.e. relativity and quantum mechanics, you won't know all the observations you have to make sure your theory agrees with. Also, it is only through the study of these subject matters that you gain an appreciation for what creating a new theory actually entails. For example, can you state what experiment can be performed to test whether your theory is correct?

You said:"take a look at the fractal universe, there you can go infinitely up and also down, without loosing or gaining any dimensions, it is in my opinion a typical mathematical universe, where ratio's are fix, so please understand that only when you inroduce a specific "agreed upon" length the ratios are also taking values that are taking avery minimal and also maximal size, it is these "relative" sizes that you and I use to explain our ideas."

I see no physical motivation for introducing fractal dimensions into my idea. Also, at this point I do have a self-contained model. What is needed at this stage is peer criticism, which has been very difficult for me to obtain.

I hope that you do take my advice seriously. Read again what `t hooft says in the introduction of his theoretical physicist page. I wish you good luck in your endeavor.

Armin

Thank you Armin for the exhaustive reply,

perhaps I am more a philosopher as a scientist.

Yes I want to discuss my ideas with others in order to know if I am just crazy or perhaps trying to find new solutions in science, that untill now seems to be stuck.

No my ideas cannot be tested , just like the 10 dimensions of string theory and so on, only my idea is simpler.

Axioms are starting points that can be choosed personnally, I have other axioms as you have, but that gives us stuff to discuss. As a matter of fact I think that each human being has his own unique reality with his own axioms, this is what makes our world interesting but also dangerous, becuase every human also has the tendancy to think that he has the only TRUTH, I don't.

Of ciurse you too have different ideas as the scientific world around you, that is a good thing, but be carefull that you do not get chained in your own ideas that is why I always end my posts with :

keep on thinking free

Wilhelmus

Hi Wilhelmus,

You said:"perhaps I am more a philosopher as a scientist."

I like to think of myself in similar terms.

You said:"Yes I want to discuss my ideas with others in order to know if I am just crazy or perhaps trying to find new solutions in science, that untill now seems to be stuck."

I don't think your ideas are crazy, but I do think that in order to be able to be considered as solutions for some of the current problems they will have to be stated in much greater detail and expressed more precisely. And ideally they should make testable predictions.

You said"Axioms are starting points that can be choosed personnally, I have other axioms as you have, but that gives us stuff to discuss. As a matter of fact I think that each human being has his own unique reality with his own axioms, this is what makes our world interesting but also dangerous, becuase every human also has the tendancy to think that he has the only TRUTH, I don't."

Indeed, I agree with you that each of us has his own frame through which to perceive reality and that there is a real danger of mistaking that with an absolutely correct frame.We need to be as vigilant as you are about that.

You said:" Of ciurse you too have different ideas as the scientific world around you, that is a good thing, but be carefull that you do not get chained in your own ideas that is why I always end my posts with :

keep on thinking free"

Well, while I did spend a lot of time thinking about these ideas, this is part of what is required to develop them into full-fledged theories. But now that the basic version of my theory is out I want to work on some other ideas I have as well. I will very shortly post a paper abut the difference between the concept of mass in quantum theory and in general relativity which is directly related to the dimensional theory, and then I have three other papers in preparation (over the next few months) which deal with completely different topics in fundamental physics and philosophy of physics.So yes, I am trying not to chain myself to just one set of ideas.

Armin

Hi again Armin,

It is true that you can give the most grounded answers when you are aware of all the details that are hided behind the essence of a question, the dnager is also to get lost in the details, so in this area of time (21th century) it is quite impossible to know all the details just as it was in 18th century, that is the reason that I am not diving into text books but when I don't understand an expression (sometimes these scientists talk abrakadabra) I go first to Wikipedia an study the thing, it is together with Google a treasure of knowledge. Also I think that just by not loosing yourself in details can reveal the essence that is important for my way of constructing and understanding the "reality".

I hope really that you keep me informed of your future papers, I just bumpted in your latest paper by accident during my search for truth, therefore my e-mail address is

wilhelmus.d@orange.fr

keep on thinking free

and best regards

Wilhelmus