#67. The Trembling-Network Theory of Everything [physics]

PH

Red, theory; black, fact. 

I continue to mine the idea that the world of appearances is simulation-like, in that how we perceive it is strongly affected by the fact that our point of view is inside it, and illusions are rampant.

The slate-of-givens approach is intended to exploit consilience to arrive at a simplified physics that attributes as many phenomena as possible to historical factors and the observer's point of view. Simplified physics is viewed as a stepping-stone to the one, true TOE. The existence of widespread consilience implies that such exists.

The basic theory

The underlying reality is proposed to be a small-world network, whose nodes are our elementary particles and whose links ("edges" in graph theory) are seen collectively as the fields around those particles.

This network is a crude approximation to scale-free, but is structurally only a recursion of three generations (with a fourth in the process of forming), each comprised of two sub-generations, and not an infinite regress. The first generation to form after the big bang was a bunch of triangular networks that we call baryons. In the next generation, they linked up to form the networks underlying light atomic nuclei. These, and individual protons, were big enough to stably bond to single nodes (electrons) to form the network version of atoms. Above the atomic/molecular/electromagnetic level, further super-clustering took on the characteristics of gravitation, whose hallmark seems to be rotation. At the grandest cosmological scales, we may be getting into a fourth "force" that produces the foamy structure of galaxy distribution. The observations attributed to the presence of dark matter may be a sign that, at the intra-galactic scale, the nature of the "fields" is beginning to shift again.

I conjecture that throughout this clustering process, a continuous thermal-like agitation was running through all the links, and especially violent spikes in the agitation pattern could rupture links not sufficiently braced by other, parallel links. This would have been the basis of a trial-and error process of creation of small-world characteristics. The nature of the different "forces" we seem to see at different scales would be entirely conditioned by the type of clusters the links join at that scale, because cluster type would condition the opportunities for network stabilization by cooperative bracing. 

Reconciliation with known science

Formation and rupture of links would correspond to the quantum-mechanical phenomenon of wave-function collapse, and the endless converging, mixing, and re-diverging of the heat signals carried by the network would correspond to the smooth, reversible time-evolution of the wave-function between collapses. The experience of periodic motions would arise from resonances in closed paths embedded in the network. When you see the moon move across the sun in an eclipse, <11-27-2020: no net links are being made or broken; the whole spectacle somehow arises by an energetically balanced creation and rupture of links.>

The photoelectric effect that Einstein made famous can be given a network interpretation: the work function is the energy needed to simultaneously break all the links holding the electron to the cluster that is the electrode, and the observation of an electron that then seems to fly away from the electrode happens by calculation in the remaining network after it has been energized by heat-signal energy in excess of that needed to break the links, reflecting back into the network from the broken ends.

How distance would arise

All the ineffably large number of nodes in the universe would be equidistant from each other, which is possible if they exist in a topological space; such spaces have no distance measure. I think it likely that what you experience as distance is the number of nodes that you contain divided by the number of links connecting the cluster that is you with the cluster that you are observing. It remains to figure out how some of the concomitants of distance arise, such as delay in signal transmission and the cosmological redshift.

Reconciliation with the finite speed of light

11-01-2020: The time-delay effect of distance can be described by a hose-and-bucket model if we assume that all measurements require link breaking in the observer network. The energy received by the measuring system from the measured system is like water from a hose progressively filling a bucket. The delayed overflow of the bucket would correspond to the received energy reaching threshold for breaking a link in the observer network. The fewer the links connecting observer to observed relative to the observer size (i.e., the greater the distance), the slower the bucket fills and the longer signal transmission is observed to take.

11-02-2020: The above mechanism cannot transmit a pulsatile event such as a supernova explosion. It takes not one, but two integrations to convert an impulse into a ramp function suitable for implementing a precise delay. Signal theory tells us that if you can transmit an impulse, you can transmit anything. The second integration has already been located in the observer cluster, so the obvious place in which to locate the first integration is in the observed cluster. Then when the link in the observer cluster breaks, which is an endothermic event, energy is sucked out of both integrators at once, resetting them to zero. That would describe an observer located in the near field of the observed cluster. In the far field, the endothermic rupture would cool only the observer cluster; most of the radiative cooling of the observed cluster would come from the rupture of inter-cluster links, not intra-cluster links. Thus, hot clusters such as stars are becoming increasingly disconnected from the rest of the universe. This can account for the apparent recessional velocity of the galaxies, since I have conjectured that distance is inversely proportional to numbers of inter-cluster links.

Predictions of the fate of the universe

We often hear it said that the reason the night sky is black is that the expansion of the universe is continuously creating more space in which to warehouse all the photons emitted by all the stars. However, the network orientation offers a simpler explanation: inter-cluster links at the grandest scale are being endothermically destroyed to produce the necessary cooling, and the fewer these become, the longer the cosmological distances appear to be. I suppose that when these links are all gone, we all cook. The microwave background radiation may be a harbinger of this. Clearly, my theory favours the Big Rip scenario of the fate of the universe, but a hot Big Rip.

Accounting for the ubiquity of oscillations

05-01-2021: At this point, an improved theory of oscillations can be offered: Oscillating systems feature 4 clusters and thus 4 integrators connected in a loop to form a phase-shift oscillator. These integrators could be modeled as a pair of masses connected by a spring ( = 2 integrators) in each of the observer and observed systems ( = 2 x 2 = 4 integrators).

Motion and gravity

11-30-2020: Motion would be an energetically balanced breaking of links on one side of a cluster and making of links on the other. This could happen on a hypothetical background of spontaneous, random link making and breaking. Acceleration in a gravitational "field" would happen if more links are coming in from one side than the opposite side. More links will correspond to a stronger mutual bracing effect, preferentially inhibiting link breaking on that side. This will shift the making/breaking equilibrium toward making on that side, resulting in an acceleration. <12-11-2020: The universal gravitational constant G could be interpreted as expressing the probability of a link spontaneously forming between any two nodes per unit of time.>

Dimension and direction

01-13-2021: It is not clear how the direction and dimension concepts would emerge from a network representation of reality. If distance emerges from 2-way interactions of clusters, perhaps direction emerges from 3-way interactions and dimension arises from a power law of physical importance versus the number of interacting clusters in a cluster of clusters. This idea was inspired by the fact that four points are needed to define a volume, three are needed to define a plane, and two are needed to define a line.

02-13-2021: Alternatively, angle may be a matter of energetics. Assume that new links form spontaneously at an unalterable rate and only link rupture rate varies. The heat injected by link creation must be disposed of by a balanced rate of link rupture, but this will depend in detail on mutual bracing effects. If your rate of rupture of links to a given cluster is minimal, you will be approaching that cluster. The cluster with which your rupture rate is highest is the one you are receding from. Clusters with which you score average rupture rates will be 90 degrees off your line of travel. The distribution of clusters against angle is predicted from geometry and the appearance of the night sky to be proportional to sin(θ), but a random distribution of rupture rates would predict a bell curve (Gaussian) centered on the average rupture rate. Close, but no cigar. The tails of the Gaussian would produce a sparse zone both fore and aft. Moreover, since there must always be a maximum and minimum, you will always be heading exactly toward some cluster and exactly away from some other: not what we observe.

03-06,07-2021: That the universe is spatially at least three-dimensional can be reduced to a rule that links do not cross. Why the minimum dimensionality permitted by this rule is the one we observe remains to be explained. 

Momentum

Momentum can be explained by attributing it to the network surrounding a cluster, not to the cluster itself. Heat must flow without loss (how?) from in front of a travelling cluster around to the rear (I hope eventually to be able to purge this description of all its directional assumptions), suggesting closed flow-lines through the larger network reminiscent of magnetic field lines. (This is similar in outline to Mach's explanation of momentum, as being due to the interaction of the test mass with the distant galaxies.) It seems necessary to postulate that once this flow pattern is established, it persists by default. An especially large cluster in the vicinity will represent a high-conductivity path for the heat flow, possibly creating a tendency for links to form perpendicular to the line of travel and offset toward the large cluster, which might explain gravitational capture of objects into stable orbits. Finally, the overall universal law would be: heat of link formation = heat of link rupture + increases in network heat content due to increases in network melting point due to increases in mutual bracing efficiency. A simple concept of melting point is the density of triangles in the network. Still to be explained: repulsive forces.

Repulsive forces

04-04-2021: Repulsive forces are only seen with electromagnetism and then only after a local network has been energized somehow. When particles said to be oppositely charged recombine, neutral atoms are re-formed, which creates new triangles and thus increases melting point. The recombination of particles said to be of like charge creates relatively few triangles and is therefore disfavored, creating the impression of mutual repulsion.

 

More on the origin of momentum

Inter-cluster links are not individually bidirectional in their heat conductivity, but a (usually) 50:50 mixture of unidirectional links going each way. Momentum and spontaneous First Law motion become prevalent in classically-sized networks due to small imbalances in numbers of cluster A to cluster B links versus cluster B to cluster A links. This produces a random pattern of spontaneous heat flows across the universe. Converging flows burn out links (and are thus self-limiting) and diverging flows preserve links, causing them to increase in number locally. This process nucleates the gravitational clumping of matter. A directional imbalance in the interior of a cluster causes First Law motion by spontaneously transporting heat from front to back. Front and back are defined by differences in numbers of inter-cluster links (to an arbitrary external cluster) among subsets of cluster nodes.

Case study of a rocket motor

For a rocket motor to work, we have to assume that one of these asymmetrical links can only be burned out by heat applied to its inlet end. During liftoff, the intense heat down in the thruster chambers burns out (unidirectional) links extending up into the remainder of the craft. This leaves an imbalanced excess of links within the rocket body going the other way, leading to a persistent flow of heat downward from the nose cone. This cooling stabilizes links from overhead gravitationally sized clusters ending in the nose cone, causing them to accumulate, thereby shortening the "distance" from the nose cone to those clusters. Meanwhile, the heat deposited at the bottom of the rocket progressively burns out links from the rocket to the Earth, thereby increasing the "distance" between the rocket and the Earth. The exhaust gasses have an imbalanced excess of upward-directed asymmetric links due to the temperature gradient along the exhaust plume that serves to break their connection to the rocket and create the kind of highly asymmetrical cluster required for space travel. <04-11-2021: The details of this scenario all hang together if we assume that link stabilization is symmetrical with link burnout: that is, it is only responsive to what happens at the inlet (in this case, cooling).> Since kinetic energy is associated with motion, the directional link imbalance must be considered a form of energy in its own right, one not sensible as heat as usually understood.

Future directions

05-28-2021: To make further progress, I might have to assume that the links in the universal network are the real things and that the nodes are just their meeting places, which only appear to be real things because this is where the flow of energy changes direction. I then assume that all links are directional and that pairing of oppositely-directed links was actually the first step in the evolution of the universe. Finally, I decompose these directional links into an inlet part joined to an outlet part. With this decomposition, a link pair looks like this:

⚪⚫

⚫⚪

Notice the interesting ambiguity in how to draw the arrows. A purely directional link recalls the one-way nature of time and may represent undifferentiated space and time. A final decision was to treat a repulsive force as a link whose disappearance is exothermic, not endothermic, because this indirectly allows the formation of more of the default kind of link.

#65. Baryogenesis [physics]

PH

(Part 5, Deprecated)

#54. Reality is Virtual but the Host Computer is Analog. [physics, chemistry, neuroscience]

PH

Red, theory; black, fact.

The nucleus around which a TOE will hopefully crystallize.

Here is my idea of what lies behind the veil of space time: something like a Turing machine, but with a multiplicity of tapes and a multiplicity of processors. Each tape corresponds to one elementary particle in space time and the processors implement only Hebb’s rule, a rule of learning first discovered in neuroscience, and that governs correlations among signal sources. The tapes are polymer-like, and their ongoing elongation by polymerization at the ends causes the passage of time. This elongation is associated with a white-noise signal unique to each particle/tape/strand because the monomers are sampled from a population with a Gaussian size distribution.

06-26-2019: A theoretical schema showing the basic strand-processor interaction. The theory borrows from the Turing machine concept, Hebb's rule of learning, and the chemistry of polymerization. Black, one information-bearing polymer strand; blue, processor; red, monomers.

07-03-2019: A more complex, two-strand scheme. The monomer cloud has been omitted for clarity.

07-09-2019: A still more complex, three-strand

scheme. Assumption: at a given point, multiple strands can adhere to the same processor, and vice-versa.

06-26-2019: The first illustration is my current best guess as to what a "Hebb processor" is like, but as we say, "Many questions remain." The short, black lines are the catalyzed ligation points between "monomers," and these are the points of attraction to the processor. If the rear pull-off point encounters a big gap between ligation points, the processor will advance an unusually great distance in one step, creating an unusually long catalytic pocket at the front, which will have a selectivity for longer monomers, thereby implementing a copying mechanism. (Causally, this is backwards, but the alternative seems to involve a messy discussion of chemical equilibria.)

This “machine” is presumed to be naturally occurring and to belong to a particular stage in the physical evolution of the universe. (i.e., I make no appeal to arguments of intelligent design, even by space aliens.) By the anthropic principle, the machine is not necessarily typical of all structures extant at that stage. <06-04-2020: In other words, we are living in a natural subworld that is simulation-like in that the view from within is entirely unlike the view from without, but the two views are lawfully related by something that could be called the "subworld law," an example of which is given below, i.e., "d = K/rxy." (This concept is nothing new because it could also serve in outline as a description of human conscious experience, which is most unlike a mass of neurons signaling to each other in the dark.) Thus, the Theory of Everything could turn out to be a series of nested subworld laws.>

The length of a strand relative to some interior point is a Gaussian white-noise time-series signal with an upward trend just steep enough to eliminate negative slopes. I will deal here with the detrended version of this signal because, on the laboratory distance scale, both the observed system and the observer will share the same trend, preventing its direct observation. Moreover, the polymerization process is postulated to preserve a permanent record of the detrended signal. Therefore, while the future does not exist in this model of time, the past is perfectly preserved. A set of distinguishable time series is called “panel data” and is a Euclidean space by the mathematical definition and can therefore map onto and explain physical space, at least on the laboratory scale.

Imagine some panel data consisting of two time series, X and Y, representing two elementary particles. Take a slice of this data ten samples long and plot them as two ten-dimensional vectors, X and Y. The dot product of these vectors is then easily computed as x₁y₁ + x₂y₂ + … x₁₀y₁₀. A Euclidean space is defined as an affine space (i.e., containing no special points like the origin) where the vector dot product is defined. Recall that this dot product is equal to the length of X times the length of Y times cosθ, where θ is the angle between the vectors. Moreover, cosθ is here equal to rₓy, aka Pearson’s r, a measure of correlation between signal sources. Pearson's r is commonly used in the sciences, including neuroscience, and ranges from -1 for negative correlations to +1 for positive correlations; zero indicates no correlation.

I conjecture that rxy represents distance in space time, and vector length represents mass-energy in space time. An rxy of 0 would represent infinite distance and an rxy of 1 would represent 0 distance, a state found only in black-hole singularities or the big bang singularity. Processes would be experienced as close together because they are correlated  (Previously suggested in Post #4.), not correlated because they are close together. The latter is the usual assumption, usually rationalized as being due to the easy exchange of synchronizing photons or virtual photons at close range. However, we seem to be moving here toward the elimination of the light/photon construct from physics. Good riddance; it was always pretty dicey.

(Deprecated, Part 6)

07-25-2015 to 07-27-2019: A simpler possibility is d = K/rxy and rxy = K/d. This change advantageously limits how small space-time distances can become, thereby eliminating infinities from gravity calculations. K is this minimum length. With this revision, the dot product of two vectors in the simulation becomes equal to gravitational binding energy.

No Flying Spaghetti Monster would be complete without meatballs, and these would be the Hebb processors alluded to in the opening paragraph. Each strand would have a processor on each end that may catalyze the polymerization process. Each processor would also be connected to a random point within the mass of strands. This connection moves along the associated strand like a phonograph needle,  reading the recorded signal while keeping pace with the growing end. The processor also has a front read-point in the present. The two read points may or may not be on the same strand. If a correlation is detected between the two read points, the correlation is permanently enhanced by a modification of the polymerization process, per Hebb’s rule. All the orderliness of the universe is supposed to emerge from this one type of calculation.

07-9-2019: At this point, we have not eliminated "space" from physics; we have merely replaced Euclidean space by another kind of space that is less structured, in which the "spaghetti machine" has its being. The new space is a "metric space" but has neither norm nor dot product axiomatically, although they can be present in simulation.The metric is bijective with the counting (natural) numbers and is equal to the number of "primordial time elements" (PTEs) in a polymer of same.

Degrees of correlation less than maximal are encoded in the processor as the number of strands adhering to the processor above the minimum for inter strand copying, namely two. One of these "middle strands," as I shall call them, is illustrated in the sketch of the three-strand scheme, and they putatively degrade the fidelity of the copying process and reduce Pearson's r in proportion to their numbers, while also introducing a time delay into the copying process, due to changes in the length of the processor. A reduction in Pearson's r, which increases the encoded space time distance, simultaneous with an increase in the copying time delay is responsible for the finite speed of light.

7-15-2019: If N is the number of middle strands on a processor, then a reasonable guess as to its effect on Pearson’s r would be r = 1/(N + 1). (Deprecated, Part 6) 07-22-2019: slight problem: the units analysis doesn't work out, so this paragraph is a work in progress.

07-25-2019: The problem is solved if we set the electron binding energy equal to the length of the projection of the electron vector on the proton vector. This is not the dot product and it has the correct units, namely mass-energy. The revised attempt to reproduce Rydberg's formula is:

ΔE = ||e||*(1/n₁ – 1/n₂), n₂ > n₁. (1)

The default interaction implemented by Hebb’s rule would be gravitational attraction. Black hole formation illustrates that gravitation has a built-in positive feedback, and this would derive from the positive feedback built into simple forms of Hebb’s rule.

07-9-2019: To provide my hypothetical Hebb processors with such a positive feedback, I postulate the following: Middle strands come and go in an energy-dependent excision/reintegration process and have a small loop of processor adhering to them when free, which explains how the processor length changes occur. A high-fidelity copying process releases more energy than does a low-fidelity copying process, and excision requires energy input. These ingredients, together with the fidelity-degrading property of a middle strand, should be sufficient for a positive feedback.

If the two read points are on the same strand, the result will be an oscillation. Electromagnetism could be the set of interactions peculiar to oscillating strands. The variance needed to express the oscillation would be deducted from a fixed total, resulting in less variance available to represent distances by its correlations. A smaller distance signal will be more rapidly modified by the Hebb processors, resulting in faster responses to forces and a smaller mass according to Newton’s a = F/m. Thus, we expect neutral particles to be more massive than charged particles, and this tendency is indeed found among the mesons and when comparing the proton and neutron. The relatively great mass of the proton and neutron and the nuclear strong force itself may emerge from a cyclic pattern of three strands (the quarks) connected by three processors. The example of the benzene molecule teaches us to expect novel results from cyclization. (07-31-2019: This will be a huge idea when asking what underlies the metric space alluded to above. 01-17-2020: The metric space may itself be a simulation running on a processor situated in a still simpler space, namely a topological space, in which only a few distinctions matter, such as inside-outside and closed-open. 01-17-2020: The great mass of the baryons may come from the chaos inevitable in the celestial-mechanics version of the three-body problem, but the three bodies would be the three quarks. Recall that in the present theory, noise amplitude corresponds to mass-energy, and fast chaos looks like noise. The three-fold nature of these particles may also create the three-dimensionality of space, but I am having trouble picturing this.

05-22-2020: An extension of this idea would be that chaos is the source of all mass and the properties of a timeline depend on how many highly-correlated others there are ("intimates") and the degree of this correlation. One intimate produces an oscillation but no mass; two or more produce chaos and some amount of mass. Intimacy can be understood as relative, leading to a hierarchy of relationships. The fact that three bodies are the minimum for chaos remains an attractive explanation for the three-dimensionality of space. Details remain elusive, but I am now trying for a holistic vision and no longer focusing narrowly on baryons.

05-22-2020: There may be an alternative kind of middle strand or mode of adhesion that enhances copying fidelity upon adhesion rather than degrading it. This amendment to the theory may be required to model interactions that appear repulsive.

Hebb processors with their rear read points in the distant past would open up long-distance communication channels in space time, giving us the by-now familiar experience of looking millions of years into the past through powerful telescopes, to see galaxies as they were when the universe was young. The communication would be instantaneous, but from an old source; not slow from a new source.

06-18-2019: The big bang:

I conjecture that the universe began in a singularity for a trivial reason: it initially had no way to represent information, let alone correlations, because all the incoming monomers were PTEs, identical in size and having the smallest possible size. A slow direct condensation reaction in the monomer pool then gradually built up larger blocks of PTEs, causing the average size of the items adding to the strands by polymerization to increase progressively. The standard deviation of the size distribution would likewise have increased. Space would have expanded rapidly at first, as predicted by the inflationary hypothesis, because the first little bit of polymerization entropy to develop would have had a disproportionate effect on the system's ability to represent information. The mass-energy of all particles has also been increasing ever since the big bang.

07-25-2019: Therefore, by equation (1), we expect that spectral lines from ancient luminous matter will be redder than comparable lines from contemporary matter, as found by Hubble, which explains the cosmological red shift.

01-17-2020: Another perspective would be that the future is a false vacuum, the past is a true vacuum, and the present is the ever-expanding boundary between. The false-vacuum decay would be driven by entropy increase, not enthalpy (i.e., heat content) decrease (which is allowed by the second law of thermodynamics), because only the interior of the true-vacuum bubble would be occupied by information (i.e., the timelines).

"I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams." Hamlet, II.ii

#33. Big-electron Theory [physics]

PH

Red, theory; black, fact.

Some of the paradoxes and weirdness of quantum mechanics can be dispelled if we assume that any particle that can be diffracted isn't really there: we are only looking at the center of spherical symmetry of a much larger, possibly cosmologically large, wave function. Furthermore, this center of symmetry is only an abstraction, like the north pole of the Earth. Like the fields that we impute to them, quantum particles would have a wave function amplitude that decreases asymptotically to zero with distance from the center, and thus would have no well defined outer boundary. I shall denote this lack of an outer boundary by calling particles or wave functions "expansive."

Elementary particles seem submicroscopic in size because the wavelength of the corresponding wave functions is often submicroscopic, which imposes a requirement for the centers of symmetry of two such "particles" to coincide with very great precision before an interaction can be observed. This would be the case if the default interaction were characterized by destructive interference almost everywhere, which only switches over into constructive interference when the centers nearly coincide. An assumption needed for further development of this theory is that interaction is contingent on the development of expansive constructive interference. (In this post, I confine my attention to scattering-type interactions.)

The common presence of  accelerations in our universe combined with a finite speed of light might suggest that expansive wave functions would quickly fill up with incoherence, destroying their usefulness as explanatory causes. However, if there are no non-expansive elementary particles, we just have expansive interacting with expansive to produce every acceleration. Once you get entirely away from the tiny-electron idea, it is not at all clear that any incoherence could ever develop. Such may well occur to a limited extent under some conditions, however, but it may take more detailed mathematical treatments than I am prepared to carry out to characterize these conditions. One naturally suspects that Relativity theory is based on such limited incoherencies.

Two baffling kinds of experiment seem amenable to the big-electron treatment: diffraction of "particles" of matter like electrons, and entanglement experiments.

Electrons fired in a vacuum at a pair of closely-spaced slits, with a photographic plate situated on the other side of the slits, will produce a diffraction pattern on the developed plate consisting of alternating exposed and unexposed bands. These are interpreted as locations of constructive and destructive interference between "matter waves" emanating from the two slits under the stimulation of the electron beam. If the intensity of the beam is lowered to the point where only one electron is "in the chamber" at a time, thereby eliminating the possibility of inter-electron interactions inside the chamber, the diffraction pattern develops just as before. It merely takes longer. Now here's the weird part: all this could happen only if each electron goes through both slits at once! This is truly weird if we try to use the traditional tiny-electron picture, but much easier to visualize using the big-electron picture.

Entanglement of two particles that persists over distances measured in kilometers is also easier to understand if we remember that the experimental apparatus is itself made up of expansive wave functions and is therefore mostly overlapped with the two particles being studied throughout the experiment.

If all this is true, we live in a vast web of inter-validating illusions called the particle model.

#31. The Russian-dolls--multiverse Part II [physics]

PH
Red, theory; black, fact.

6-05-2017

Forget what I wrote last post about "thin dimensions"; leptons arise as electromagnetic wave functions originating in p2 that are transported into our p3 universe/condensate by ordinary diffusion and convection. Wave functions in p2 that are already leptons become our baryons when they are transported in. The only kind of wave functions that are "native" to a given frame of reference are electromagnetic (photonic) in that frame of reference. If they subsequently propagate towards increasing p (inwards) they gain mass as matter; if they propagate towards decreasing p (outwards), they first lose mass as matter until they are photonic (i.e., massless) and then gain mass as antimatter.

6-20-2017

This scenario gives rise to previously unconsidered solutions to outstanding problems in cosmology. For example, dark matter could be just excess electrons that lack protons with which to bind. You would have to argue that we don't see them because they would collectively appear as a potential that is smooth on all but galactic scales, and it is only variations in potential, aka electric fields, that cause scattering of probe particles. Such variations would be common only in neutral matter.

6-05-2017

To produce stable leptons from in-migrating photons, the first condensates, the p2s, would have had to be rotating simultaneously about three mutually perpendicular axes, by the assumptions of two posts ago. If this is impossible for p3 physics, we have to appeal to the possibility of a different physics in p1 for any of these ideas to make sense.

A "universe" is something like an artist's canvas with a painting in progress on it. First, nature makes the blank canvas, and then, in a second stage, puts the information content on it. Consider the moon. It formed out of orbiting molten spray from the collision of two similarly-sized planetesimals. In the molten state, its self-gravity could easily round it up into a perfect sphere which could have solidified with a mostly smooth surface. Call this smooth surface the "canvas." Subsequently, the very same force of gravity would have brought down meteors to cover the surface in an elaborate pattern of craters. Call this the "painting." 

Now consider the neutronium core of a neutron star, viewed as a p4, or small universe. The tremendous energy release of the catastrophic gravitational collapse in which it forms homogenizes all the matter into pure neutrons, thought to be a superfluid. This creates the "canvas." Subsequently, matter and energy from our p3 migrate into the super fluid without enough energy release to homogenize them, producing a "painting" of leptons (our photons), baryons (our leptons), and "uberbaryons" (our baryons). Indeed, the neutron-star core is actually thought to be not pure neutronium, but neutronium containing a sprinkling of free protons and electrons (as seen in p3, of course).

#29. My Second Theory of Everything [physics]

PH

Red, theory; black, fact.

This post comes from considering how wavelike, low-frequency light becomes particle-like, high-frequency light as frequency is smoothly increased. Waves are continuous, whereas particles are discontinuous; how, then, does the breakup occur?

You have to put the source in the picture. Recoil of the source atom sends the wave function off in a specific direction, but the wave function is known to expand (about its center of symmetry?) as it goes. Presumably, it is the vector sum of these two motions that must equal the speed of light; either one is presumably free to take on some lower speed, say, that of a pitched softball. I conjecture that as frequency increases, the particle-like drift of the center progressively dominates the mixture at the expense of the local, wave-like expansion of the wave function about its center. This is how I see waves morphing into particles as the frequency increases. 

These ideas suggest the existence of a unique, watershed frequency at which both motions are equal, and equal to one-half the speed of light when the vectors are aligned. I suspect that this frequency lies in the terahertz range, between radar frequencies and the far infrared, partly on the basis that this seems to be the last part of the electromagnetic spectrum to find technological use. The non-dominance of either the particle or the wave model in this range may translate into a perfect storm of undesirable properties. That comment about the softball, however, suggests the possible existence of easy, classroom experiments with these frequencies that illustrate wave-particle duality.

These considerations brought me to the following set of TOE assumptions, some from relativity theory, some in apparent contradiction of it, and some from quantum mechanics:

• There is an absolute frame-of-reference, which I shall call "#."
• All motions seen in this frame of reference will be observed to occur at the speed of light (c); no more, but no less, and only this frame of reference has this property.
• All speeds lower than c are illusions caused by the motion of the observer's frame of reference.
• That which moves always at c is not a wave function, but a phase marker of some sort within it, such as a zero crossing or a wave crest.
• The local wave function evolution relative to its center of symmetry combined with the drift of that center relative to # always travels at c relative to #.
• If local evolution is an expansion along all wave function radii, you have light; if it is a rotation about the center of symmetry (i.e., motion perpendicular to radii), you have matter.
• Light wave functions will be like nested spherical shells, whereas matter wave functions will have a lobar, angle-dependent structure like a p-, d-, or f-orbital in theoretical chemistry. The lobes are essential to provide a contrast pattern that could, in principle, be observed to spin.
• The presence of one axis of rotation produces the neutrino; two simultaneous axes of rotation produce the mesons; three produce the remaining stable particles, e, p, and n. If the three rotational rates are distinguishable, the resulting structure has a handedness.
• The matter/antimatter dichotomy arises from this handedness, when combined with a law of conservation of spin that would result from space initially being symmetrical. 
• The mesons should have an ability in 3-space to flip over into their corresponding antiparticles.

#26. The Phasiverse [physics]

PH

Red, theory; black, fact.

The nucleus around which a TOE will hopefully crystallize.

3-29-2017

I will be arguing here that our reality, the world of appearances, is encoded in the relative phases of an ineffably large number of oscillators, each of which is a kind of primitive clock.

An early interpretation of the theory of quantum mechanics was that there is a harmonic oscillator somehow assigned to each point in space, and that these account for the matter fields of the universe. Examples of such oscillators (the definition is abstract and mathematical), unsuitable for easy, weekend universe creation, would be masses bouncing up and down on springs, and electronic devices called tank circuits, which are just one capacitor connected across the terminals of one inductor, plus taps on the inductor for getting the energy in. (I am thinking here of the Hartley oscillator, of which I built half a dozen as a teenager.)

If a bunch of such oscillators can communicate with each other (exchange oscillatory energy), this is called coupling, and it can make the oscillators tend to pull each other in to the same, common phase. The Huygens's clocks experiment begins with two old-school pendulum clocks in a case with their pendulums swinging in some random phase relationship. The next day,  mysteriously, the pendulums will always be found swinging in opposite directions. The coupling is evidently due to tiny, rhythmic forces travelling through the common case from clock to clock.

If the coupling is positive, as assumed here, (it's negative in the above experiment), the phase pull-in effect becomes stronger the closer the two phases approach each other, causing a positive feedback effect. This is very reminiscent of Hebb's rule in neuroscience and the tendency of natural attractive forces such as gravity to depend inversely on distance. I have already offered Hebb's rule in these pages as an abstract rule of attraction and binding in a scheme for polymerizing spaceless but noisy "time lines" into a three dimensional network that approximates the space we live in. However, oscillators make better space-forming entities than these "time lines" on a number of counts.

First of all, the phase pull-in effect alluded to above provides a simple answer to questions such as where the organizing principle comes from. All you need to explain is where the oscillators themselves all came from, how they oscillate, and why they are coupled. Since the oscillators begin life in spacelessness, it is hard to see how they could avoid interacting to produce a coupling effect. Second, oscillators need no past or future; they can arise as a succession of causally related nows that alternates between two contrasting forms. (Since we haven't gotten as far as space yet, these would have to be abstract, spaceless entities that smack of yin and yang.) Figures in Conway's game of Life would seem to be examples of this alternation.

What is the time required for such an alternation? The question is meaningless; they just do it. With no past or future, the special status of the present becomes self-explanatory, alleviating some of the cognitive dissonance that goes with the concept of a unified space-time. This space-time, and the even more bizarre idea that it is warped by mass-energy as if embedded in an even higher-dimensional space, starts to look like a device to visualize one's way to solutions to problems that have their origin in unvisualizable spacelessness.

A great many oscillators all with the same phase is not an interesting universe. However, suppose this is impossible because of "train wrecks" happening during the synchronization process that produce frustration of the synchronization analogous to spin frustration in spin glasses. An example would be a cyclic relationship of oscillators in which a wave goes around the loop endlessly. Such cycles may correspond to particles of matter in our universe, and the spiral waves that they would throw off into surrounding space may correspond to the fields around such particles.

A black hole or galaxy would be surrounded by a tremendous number of such radiating fields. The resulting desychronization of the oscillators making up the surrounding space would increase the average phase difference between phasically nearby oscillators, thereby inhibiting their coupling, thereby inhibiting the travel of signals generally through the region. Result: the speed of light is reduced in the vicinity, resulting in the bending of light rays, called gravitational lensing. Notice how easily we derive an effect that formerly required General Relativity.

The next level of description deals with where the oscillators come from.

4-23-2017

Let us jettison the particle model altogether at this point and assume the universe to be made of the waves themselves, with no need for generating objects. These waves might have a tendency to synchronize as a fundamental given. If it is not fundamental, maybe the explanation for it can safely be left to a future generation of physicists. (The image I get at this point is of a series of temporary camps struck during the ascent of some stupendous mountain, for step-wise consolidation of gains, with the grail of the TOE located at the summit.)

As a second thread of this argument, I note that some of the phenomena characteristic of quantum theory can be explained as due to the practicalities of representing functions like waves, practicalities that are always in your face when programming a computer, but never mentioned in the physics I have read so far. In programming, you have to define memory space for all variables, which is always, ultimately, an integer or a set of integers, with both a maximum and a minimum (nonzero) amount that can be represented.

Quantization could be due to the presence of small quantities comparable in size to the value of the least significant bit of an integer-like entity. (Deprecated, Part 4)

#21. Is Higher Math Really Undiscovered Physics? [physics]

PH

Red, theory; black, fact.

This post was inspired by the realization that to progress in physics, we need to accept the Newtonian position that absolute space exists. Not only that, but that it is complicated, like a network, crystal, or condensate. Too many fundamental constants of nature (20, according to Lee Smolin) are required to explain the behaviour of supposedly elementary particles with no internal structures to which such constants could refer.

Thus, the constants must refer to the vacuum between the particles, now more readily understood as a complex medium. Looking at the pattern set by the rest of physics and cosmology, such a medium is more readily understood as a condensate of myriad "space-forming entities." Matter would be flaws in this condensate, entropy left over from its rapid formation. Energy may have the same relation to time: irregularities in its rate of progression.

To theorize about how space formed and what came before it, we have to give up visualization, obviously. I suspect this will be a big deal for most physicists. However, the abstractions of higher math may be an island of understanding already existing on the far side of the spatial thought barrier.

In other words, sets, integers, categories, mappings, etc., may be concrete things, and not abstractions at all. Presumably, our spatial and temporal reality still bears the properties it had from the very earliest stages of the universe, co-existing with later-developed properties, which have enabled mathematicians throughout history to access the deepest levels of description of reality, deeper than space time itself.

Consider set theory. Can the familiar concepts of set, union, intersection, and complement be placed into correspondence with physical processes and objects in today's space time to make a case that set theory is pre-spatial physics, so primordial as to be literally unimaginable if thought of as the rules of a real universe? To get started, we have to begin with Leibniz's monads, the "empty set," now considered a real thing. (If you must visualize these, visualize something ridiculous like Cheereos™ floating in milk, when the bowl has reached the single-layer stage.)

The physical process of binding is prefigured by the set-theoretical operation of union. In the simplest case, two monads combine to form a second-order set.

The physical process of pattern recognition, which is, in essence, energy release, is prefigured by intersection. Note that with intersection, the internal subset structure of the set is important, suggesting that the "operating system" of the universe at this stage must keep track of such structures.

We can associate a size measure with a set, namely the total of all the monads inside it once all subsets have been accounted for. The usefulness of numbers in dealing with the world is explained if this size measure is the basis of laws governing what sets may combine as unions and in what frequency (i.e., fraction of all sets extant.)

The fact that most of physics seems to be governed by differential equations may be prefigured by a tendency of these combining laws to depend on the difference of two sizes. The set-theoretical operation of complementation may prefigure the existence of positive and negative charge and the Pauli exclusion principle of fermions, on which molecular complementarity interactions depend.

#20. The Two-clock Universe [physics]

PH

Red, theory; black, fact.

The arrow of time is thought to be thermodynamic in origin, namely the direction in which entropy (disorder of an isolated system) increases. Entropy is one of the two main extensive variables of thermodynamics, the other being volume. I would like to propose that since we live in an expanding universe, the direction of cosmological volume increase makes sense as a second arrow of time; it's just not our arrow of time.

One of the outstanding problems of cosmology is the nature of dark energy, thought to be responsible for the recently discovered acceleration of the Hubble expansion. Another problem is the nature of the inflationary era that occurred just after the Big Bang (BB), introduced to explain why the distribution of matter in the universe is smoother than predicted by the original version of the BB.

Suppose that the entropy of the universe slowly oscillates between a maximal value and a minimal value, like a mass oscillating up and down on the end of a spring, whereas the volume of the universe always smoothly increases. Thus, entropy would trace out a sinusoidal wave when plotted against volume.

If the speed of light is only constant against the entropic clock, then the cosmological acceleration is explainable as an illusion due to the slowing of the entropic increase that occurs when nearing the top of the entropy oscillation, just before it reverses and starts down again. The cosmological volume increase will look faster when measured by a slower clock.

The immensely rapid cosmological expansion imputed to the inflationary era would originate analogously, as an illusion caused by the slowness of the entropy oscillation when it is near the bottom of its cycle, just after having started upward again.

These ideas imply that entropy at the cosmological scale has properties analogous to those of a mass-and-spring system, namely inertia (ability to store energy in movement) and stiffness (ability to store energy in fields). The only place it could get these properties appears to be from the subatomic particles of the universe and their fields. Thus, there has to be a hidden network of relationships among all the particles in the universe to create and maintain this correspondence. Is this the meaning of quantum-mechanical entanglement and quantum-mechanical conservation of information? However, if the universe is closed, properties of the whole universe, such as a long circumnavigation time at the speed of light, could produce the bounce.

These ideas also imply the apocalyptic conclusion that all structures in the present universe will be disassembled in the next half-period of the entropy oscillation. The detailed mechanism of this may be an endothermic, resonant absorption of infrared and microwave photons that have circumnavigated a closed universe and returned to their starting point. Enormous amounts of phase information would have to be preserved in intergalactic space for billions of years to make this happen, and here is where I depend heavily on quantum mechanical results. I have not figured out how to factor in the redshift due to volume expansion.&&

#4. My First Theory of Everything (TOE) [physics]

PH

Red, theory; black, fact.

Alocia and Anaevia

In my first post, I made a case for the existence of absolute space and even suggested that space is some kind of condensate (e.g., a crystal). The divide-and-conquer strategy that has served us so well in science suggests that the next step is to conceptually take this condensate apart into particles. The first question that arises is whether these particles are themselves situated in an older, larger embedding space, or come directly out of spacelessness (i.e., a strange, hypothetical early universe that I call "Alocia," my best Latin for "domain of no space." Going even further back, there would have been "Anaevia," "domain of no time." Reasoning without time seems even trickier than reasoning without space.)

What came before space?

The expansion of our universe suggests that the original, catastrophic condensation event, the Big Bang, was followed by further, slower accretion that continues to this day. However, the resulting expansion of space is uniform throughout its volume, which would be impossible if the incoming particles had to obey the rules of some pre-existing space. If there were a pre-existing space, incoming particles could only add to the exterior surface of the huge condensate in which we all presumably live, and could never access the interior unless our universe were not only embedded in a 4-space, but hyper-pizza-shaped as well. The latter is unlikely because self-attraction of the constituent particles would crumple any hyper-pizza-shaped universe into a hypersphere in short order. (Unless it spins?) Conclusion: the particles making up space probably have no spatial properties themselves, and bind together in a purely informational sense, governed by Hebb's rule. 

Hebb's rule was originally a neuroscience idea about how learning happens in the brain. My use of it here does NOT imply that a giant brain somehow underlies space. Rather, the evolutionary process that led to the human brain re-invented Hebb's rule as the most efficient way of acquiring spatial information. 

Hebb's rule pertains to signal sources: how could hypothetical space-forming particles come up with the endless supply of energy required by pumping out white noise, waves, etc., 24/7? Answer: these "particles" are the growing tips of time lines, that themselves grow by an energy-releasing accretion process. The chunks that accrete are variable in size or interrupted by voids, so timeline extension has entropy associated with it that represents the signals needed by Hebb's rule.

I am well aware of all the space-bound terms in the previous paragraph (underlined), supposedly about goings-on in Alocia, the domain of no space; however, I am using models here as an aid to thought, a time-honored scientific technique.

Is cosmological expansion some kind of accretion?

I imagine that Alocia is home to large numbers of space-like condensates, with a size distribution favoring the microscopic, but with a long tail extending toward larger sizes. Our space grows because these mostly tiny pre-fab spaces are continually inserting themselves into it, as soon as their background signal pattern matches ours somewhere. This insertion process is probably more exothermic than any other process in existence. If the merging space happens to be one of the rarer, larger ones, the result would be a gamma ray burst bright enough to be observed at cosmological distances and generating enough pure energy to materialize all the cosmic rays we observe.

The boundary problem

I suspect that matter is annihilated when it reaches the edge of a space. This suggests that our space must be mostly closed to have accumulated significant amounts of matter. This agrees with Hawking's no-boundary hypothesis. The closure need not be perfect, however; indeed, that would be asking a lot of chance. Imperfections in the closure of our universe may take the form of pseudo-black holes: cavities in space that lack fields. If they subsequently acquire fields from the matter that happens to hit them, they could evolve to closely resemble super-massive black holes, and be responsible for nucleating galaxies.

Conclusions

• Spatial proximity follows from correlations among processes, and does not cause them.
• Any independence of processes is primordial and decays progressively.
• The universe evolves through a succession of binding events, each creating a new property of matter, which can be interpreted as leftover entropy.
• Analysis in the present theoretical framework proceeds by declaring familiar concepts to be conflations of these properties, e.g., time = change + contrast + extent + unidirectional sequence; space = time + bidirectional sequence.