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derivation of the speed of light

June 5, 2007

Wow. It’s been a year since I last posted, but that doesn’t mean I’ve stopped. It’s been a difficult year. But I’ve worked out some exciting stuff from the concepts developed in the prior posts–did that title get your attention?!! Well, maybe not, but let me explain.

When one realizes that our existence is a scaleless system, all kinds of implications start popping up, and one in particular has really held my attention: where does that speed of light constant come from in a system with no scale–a system that emerges from nothing to a scale of infinite range? I realized, perhaps the speed of light c is an anomaly of measurement, not the real “speed”. In fact, a scaleless system would suggest that the speed of light is infinite (or alternatively, no time passes when covering any distance). It turns out that the Lorentz transforms work when thinking this way, and that the speed of light we measure is a ratio of infinities–and an incorrectly measured ratio at that! This can be seen by letting the c in the Lorentz transform go to infinity. The actual measured speed of an object is always relative to something else, for example a stopped object with speed zero. We can arbitrarily choose what number to assign to a moving object, and if we choose to assign infinity to a photon, then any object moving slower than a photon moves with a speed relative to the photon–a ratio of infinities that becomes finite.

What is so remarkable about this approach is the realization of how arbitrary the speed value is–but where does that speed of light constant come from? An answer comes from the ring hypothesis that permutes this whole journal. If every massive particle constitutes a folding or spiraling of the path that a photon takes, the Lorentz transforms geometrically emerge (see previous discussions–the Lorentz transform beta emerges from the fact that a cylindrical spiral unrolls into a triangle with c as the hypotenuse, v as one side, and the spiral speed around the cylinder diameter as the other side). The time interval of a single iteration of the spiral defines a clock for the particle, and as the relative speed of the particle increases via another frame of reference, the time to traverses a cycle increases, thus causing the time dilation indicated by the Lorentz transforms of special relativity. The photon, with its straightened out path, constitutes a particle with an infinitely long time interval. Measuring the speed of a particle in its frame of reference will always be zero–but we get a finite speed of light by measuring the limit of a particle such as an electron relative to a rest frame of reference. But here’s where we make a “mistake” in our measurement–we use a clock defined by the particle *in the rest frame* rather than in the particle’s frame. The resulting computation results in a ratio of infinities (assuming the ring hypothesis) that is finite and fixed for that particle.

Great, that explains how a finite speed arrives from a scaleless system with infinite speed–but why that particular number? In a scaleless system, the particular number means nothing–its only significance is the geometrical ratio of infinite speeds!

In my next post, I will discuss why this analysis explains the problem of particle size. The biggest objection to the ring hypothesis that I espouse is the fact that particle accelerator experiments show that the electron (for example) is infinitely small. But–the ring hypothesis posits that ring particles must get or appear to get smaller as relative speeds increase. I hypothesize that if a means to measure a static electron is found, it will be found to have a much larger size than an accelerated particle, and that the size will vary as the beta of the Lorentz transforms. It turns out it should be very difficult to measure a ring particle’s size! More on that in the next post.

Agemoz

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Tieing Scaleless Systems to Rings

June 29, 2006

I’ve talked about scaleless systems and am attempting to work through corollaries that result from such systems. I’ve begun to come to the realization that in the scaleless system, it is not possible to have a nothing system, which is a wonderful discovery–because that means we don’t have to try to answer the question when did a something system emerge from a presumably earlier nothing system. Scaleless systems are scaleless in both time and space, and over infinite range the math permits any construction–there is no meaning to the idea of a truly empty system. That’s hard for me to grasp as being true, but there’s no question that the math of infinities permits that conclusion.

I want to back up a little bit and tie in some of the physics I’ve talked about previously, because it connects in an interesting way to this subject. I recently read a book review (wish I could remember the title) which indicated there’s growing disenchantment with string theory. Not that I’m even remotely qualified to judge, but I’ve always felt that string theory, in particular, adding n dimensions to our existence, is a copout–trying to make the mathematics of quantum theory and relativity co-exist by adding degrees of freedom. This isn’t getting us closer to a solution, it’s just expanding the covering space of solutions to include both. I don’t buy it–particularly because I’ve learned to trust my abilities to see. I have this instinct that says if there were other dimensions, critters would have evolved to hide/grow in them, and for survival we would have developed eyes that would see in those dimensions. I think the only way we could have more dimensions is if there were no connections between our dimensions and the space covered by the other dimensions–and if that is true, then for all intents and purposes, those other dimensions don’t exist as far as we are concerned.

What’s that got to do with scaleless systems? Actually something rather interesting. It allows me to conclude, for now, anyway, that the causality required by relativity is a much more interesting problem than the curvature induced by the mass-energy tensor. It is extremely clear in my mind that the greatest evidence of something that will revolutionize our understanding of our existence is the causality of particles and the non-causality of coupled particles. If we use any wave based model of particles such as my ring theory described previously, a clear way to visualize this fairly accurately is to understand that the group wave of a particle’s structure is constrained by the speed of light, but the phase of the particle waves (for example the phase of the waves moving at the speed of light in a loop in my ring theory) translates in space with no time passing. In other words, the mass formed by the rotating wave is a group wave phenomenon, but the fundamental wave has a phase–and there is an inertial aspect to the group wave, but NOT the phase. So information carried by phase is instant (thus answering the dual slit experiment, Aharanov experiment, or Aspect experiment conundrums), but trying to push the particle around involves modifying the group wave structure and is limited by relativity to a fraction of the speed of light. This is an utterly profound observation, because it strongly suggests that time and space are illusory–they emerge from a scaleless system, rather than having always been there. Why do I conclude this? Because at least one property does not appear to operate in the spacetime model, but rather operates with no connection to the model. For example, the Aspect experiment instant coupling of phase coherence of one of two quantum entangled particles is hypothesized to be an instantaneous resolution of phase at two different places. Note that no information actually passes–only the knowledge of what the other particle must be (spin up or spin down). Any actual information transfer would require a mass exchange, which is limited by the group wave properties of particles such as in my ring model.

This is an incredible outcome of quantum mechanics trying to resolve with relativity. Space and time dimensions are symmetry breaking properties. They emerge from a bunch of photons, that, in some sense of the word, are all in the same place at the same time. It is really starting to look like–a scaleless system! So why is it that photons only interact with particles when they have matching spatial and time coordinates? Smart question you ask, I need to discuss that soon. My thinking at this point is that these scaleless photons have a scaleless property that must match before others with the same property will interact–only then are the photons “in the same place”!! Chew on that for a bit, I think you’ll see the logic of that!.. But there are a lot of other questions that also result from this hypothesis, so I’ll save that for later.

But now, a huge question emerges. Why wouldn’t phase information be limited by the speed of light, after all, the wave itself is limited to the speed of light. Actually, it isn’t. In the frame of reference of the photon, light leaves the source and arrives at the destination in no time. It is only when you bend the wave in a circle, that you cover an infinite distance, and *then* time emerges–and then you can say: Holy Cow, a scaleless system in a loop! The time to traverse one loop (again, from the perspective of the wave) is 0 time, but do it an infinite number of times, and the particle exists for a non-zero time. The same thing can be done in space–a photon, in its frame of reference, never covers any space–it is emitted at the same place as it is absorbed (in its frame of reference). But this is a scaleless distance! There is some infinitely small scale for which the photon covered a distance.

So, it should be amazing, or it was to me anyway, how scaleless systems permit the emergence of time and space from photons that do not know time or space. What does that say about resolving the non causal quantum effect of coupled states? Could we maybe somehow use this phase information in a new way to communicate faster than the speed of light? The problem will be that, while we may be able to do a bunch of phase manipulations, the process of converting the resulting phase to a detected output (using a sensor) forces coherence of the phase state, and this is an intrinsically randomizing process (hence the physicist’s view that no information can be transmitted via entangled states at faster than the speed of light). More importantly, what does all this say about our existence? And where is God in all this? Oh, this is such a great subject, I want to give it its own posting, coming up next. I hope you are as excited as I am about all this–to me it’s a big breakthrough that hints of major strides forward in understanding our reality.

Agemoz

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Scaleless systems

April 22, 2006

We’ve examined the evidence of our local reality and dug in a bit into some science to make some conclusions how our common global reality, assuming there is one, would work. I have gotten to a point where an extension of known science seems to make sense– this extension declares that mass particles are rings of waves–to be more specific, for electrons and positrons. Quarks, muons, and other particles probably have similar structures but will have different masses or may be more complex forms of EM waves. To see that rings are but one reasonable solution, look at Schroedinger’s equation. Usually it is used to show solutions of electrons around an atom, but that is because the differential equation has been set up as a single charged entity around a massive unmoving core (the nucleus). The ring solution comes from assuming no massive core, but rather two charged entities orbiting each other. There are higher order solutions as well, and when you go to the relativistic solutions (Klein-Gordon, e.g,) then other stable or semi-stable particle solutions also emerge, I think. Note carefully though–Maxwell’s equations (the basis of the Schroedinger equation) is not enough to come up with real-life particle solutions. It will yield rings, but not the specific rings of our existence. Something else quantizes the ring size and mass. Currently quantum mechanics describes this, but doesn’t really explain it. That’s one of the questions I ask and maybe will delve into later, but right now I am taking a more general path. All this study has forced us to address the initial state that formed this existence, and has resulted in asking the question, “can something be created from nothing?”.

As discussed before, it is likely that what most of us describe as nothing is more correctly called a vacuum, and that probably really is not really nothing. The famous old question of why light is the only wave that does not require a wave medium has the rather obvious and over-discussed answer–it does have a medium, we just can’t see it–the infamous ether of 80 or so years ago. Michelson and others successfully proved that there cannot be a fixed ether with some interesting experiments done back in the 60’s if I am not mistaken. However, that, along with experimentally observed pair production from a vacuum, does actually point strongly toward the idea that while there may be no absolute ether, vacuum is not truly nothing. So–we have to realize that a true nothing is somewhat difficult to describe or come by, and more importantly, we cannot use our vacuum or scientific results and studies of vacuums to declare any properties about nothing. Through some amount of thinking I realized we have to set some rules and definitions for nothing, and then try to build on that to see what something might emerge.

It is probably obvious to everyone that if there is a finite space with nothing in it, no something will emerge. But a possible answer, as discussed previously, comes if you let space and time be infinite in scale. You can no longer say with certainty (yet, at least) if you start with nothing, you will always have nothing, because the scale covers infinite range. A simple analogy is multiplying 0 times infinity. You started with nothing, but the infinity multiplicand means you may result in 0, in a finite something, or infinity. It simply is not defined. As a result, I see possibilities here. I haven’t come to the conclusion that if there is nothing, a something will always emerge, but I do see a way to answer Aristotle’s original nothing premise (there cannot be a beginning to time because otherwise something has to come from nothing). As a way of foraging through this apparently uncharted territory, I am proposing a mathematics of scaleless systems.

So here we begin. I define a true nothing system as a system which has no scale. That is, there is nothing in it that has a dimension that can be measured. I propose to build an artifice composed of a series of corollaries to this initial axiom, and see if this nothing-times-infinite scale idea results in any usable conclusions we can use. Since this journal is my blackboard for construction of these corollaries, don’t be surprised if I haul out the eraser, I’m thinking on my feet, so to speak.

A scaleless system has either no finite objects, or possibly only one finite object in it. If there are more, then one object could be used to measure the other, and scale is present in the system. Let’s just start with a one dimensional space, an infinite line. It is clear that there is no scale if there are no line segments in this space. A possibly interesting case is the case where there is only one line segment–since there are no other line segments, the scale of this one segment is undefinable and could be considered of infinite length. This may sound like pointless nitpicking–it’s obvious in our universe that there’s a lot more than one “line segment”! But it’s actually very important. It points out two things at least–first, how tricky it is to define nothing, since it could be argued that a system with exactly one thing in it might also be considered nothing (and thus provide a stepping stone from nothing into something)–and secondly, that the property that gives existence (non-nothingness) is the ability to compare or measure one object relative to another, not the actual placement or size of an object in a space.

Another corollary will be that nothing versus something is a definable state within a particular space. The easiest way to see this is you could have measurable objects (something) in space, but if they never change, you could argue there is nothing in the time dimension. An interesting question and stepping stone from nothing to something will be seeing if a transition from static space to something in time (movement) is possible. In effect, we have a scaleless system in time, and the question will become can a scaled system emerge. This is a wonderful example of the case where if there is only one object, it still can be a nothing system. It requires the existence of two objects before there truly is an existence of either.

Now if that line of thinking doesn’t give you a headache, wait til my next post!

Agemoz

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the rings of reality

December 28, 2005

OK, I,m back. Illness, then a family vacation, so I was out for a while.

I left off about a month ago with my study and analysis of reality. I began with a set of guidelines for this thinking journal, and then worked out a basic set of assumptions. From there, I spent a bit of time on the concept of truth (truth is not all that useful a concept) and meaning of life (even less useful a concept unless we realize that we have the freedom to define it). Then I got down to business and started to work on the concept of reality. It became useful to me to break that down to local reality (the only “real” reality, sensory input) and the implied global reality. The goal, at least for now, is to make statements about our common global reality. Most people go through life thinking we all share reality, but the fact is that none of us really do, and as a result, what that global reality is is much tougher to define than it appears.

To work on global reality, it is necessary to analyze our local reality and to see the limitations of our view of it. Traditionally, science has presupposed three dimensions and time, but these are assumptions with heavy baggage. I try to show that the only thing we are fairly certain of is that there are sensed objects that move. From here, we can choose to create three dimensions, but that is an arbitrary choice–we could assume that reality exists on an outward spherical spiral (reality is one dimensional) or consists of outward circular spirals (reality is two dimensional), or an infinity of other possibilities. Realizing that, I spend some time with space and time, trying not to head down these pre-arranged assumptions of science in an effort to see our local reality more clearly and to make better conclusions about our global reality.

I then describe the conflicting science views of the causal and quantum nature of global reality, the current most significant controversy/paradox of physics today. I gave a basic description of the special relativity transforms of frames of reference and of the quantum principle of entanglement. I want to assume that these views are both accurate descriptions of our global reality, so I prepared you for a circular line of thought (ahem, that’s a pun)– that circles, or rings, seem to show a way out of the paradox and simultaneously show a clearer picture of what our global reality is.

Let’s start by making a single assumption that I will call the founding assumption. All elements of the global reality travel at the speed of light.

Whoopy doo, you say. We already know that the speed of light (ignoring quantum perturbations for now) is the maximum speed for any real particle. Wait. Read that more carefully. All elements travel AT the speed of light! Not any slower, not stopped! First, let me define element as a basic building block of our reality, and for the time being I will assume that that field element is an electromagnetic entity. I really should be more rigorous but I don’t want to get bogged down with that now, I want you to see the power of the overall concept before trying to fill in the details. To help visualize this abstraction, recognize that aggregate combinations of these elements can easily be seen to form a photon, a massless particle with momentum that moves at the speed of light.

If an aggregate can be formed in a ring, the elements move at the speed of light around the ring. The founding assumption is still being met, but the aggregate now is free to move at any speed less than the speed of light (at the speed of light, it’s easy to use geometry to see that there’s no way to meet the founding assumption, a ring requires transverse motion such that a field element would have to be moving at greater than the speed of light). Here’s the amazing thing about this idea–if you move this aggregate ring, the founding assumption requires that the aggregate particle obeys the Lorentz Transforms! Not only that, but it requires that the aggregate particle obeys the Heisenberg uncertainty principle of quantum mechanics! It also gives the particle mass (by converting the field entities momentum into ring distortion when a force is applied) and computes both electrostatic attraction and repulsion (a current problem in physics is electrostatic attraction, which has a momentum problem–shooting photons at another particle should not cause attraction because momentum is not conserved). There’s another very interesting aspect to this idea–the dichtomy between “free” particles such as photons, and “bound” particles such as electrons. Both sets of elements travel at the speed of light, with no apparent time passing over the time of their travel, and no mass, only momentum, in the frame of reference of their direction of travel. By folding the path of motion into a ring, a symmetry breaking occurs, and sublight speed, sublight lengths, and particle mass all emerge.

It does many other things as well, and I want to auger in a bit to detail why I can make such a bold set of statements. In the end, I believe that the founding assumption will allow us to create a model of the global reality that resolves the paradox between causality and quantum entanglement, and much more important, will give us a guiding light into the very deep waters of our global reality. Let’s start with the Lorentz transforms. If you recall, these transforms describe how space and time distort when an observer looks at something (say, a clock) that is moving at high speeds relative to himself. I ask you to look at this clock as if it were composed of these aggregate particles. In fact, it is probably easiest to visualize the clock as a single aggregate particle obeying the founding assumption. Now. Use geometry to describe how this clock changes when you accelerate it to high speeds. Use the time for the particle elements to complete a single loop from the observer’s perspective to determine the apparent time of the clock. If you do the geometry, you will discover (and be a bit shocked like I was) to discover that this founding assumption leads to the Lorentz transforms of special relativity! All you need is the founding assumption (all elements go AT the speed of light) and rings. If you need a hint, note that in space time, a ring will form a spiral or a cycloid (or a combination of the two, depending on the ring’s orientation). Unroll the spiral, enforce the speed of the ring entities, and see what happens to the aggregate component dimensions and the time to cycle around the spiral.

Is that astonishing or what! Next time, I’ll derive it a bit, then go into why the property of mass and inertia fall out of this.

You may wonder, when will we ever get to the heavy duty stuff, like “Is God there” and “Why am I here, what is my purpose”, etc–All I can say is, be patient with me, I’ll get there–trust that this foray into some pretty deep science is necessary to set a valid foundation for those questions. If I don’t do that, the chance of my finding a valid path (the truth, if you wish) is much, much smaller. Global reality is incredibly deep and the number of false paths are so many.

agemoz

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Time for a bit of physics for discussing time

October 18, 2005

In my last entry, I began my attempt to dissect time. If we are going to deeply think about reality, we are just going to have to come to terms with what we think space and time are–we can’t sweep this under the rug. If you’ve followed this journal, you’ve watched me start with the most basic set of assumptions, then form an artifice (collection of connected abstractions) that starts within our brains and reaches out to form conclusions about the only data we have, the personal reality called our sensory input. From that, I have used the most-likely principle to conclude that there is a hypothesized common global reality from which many entities (you and I) are drawing personal realities from. Some fascinating principles emerge when we take this path–but now we are at the point where we are breaking down how to describe this global reality based on what we see/sense of our personal realities. By breaking down a difficult concept into effective abstractions of subunits, sometimes we get a much more accessible view of the whole. I then discussed how difficult it is to get an accurate breakdown of a reality when the machinery that observes and analyzes that reality (our senses and brain) is made of the same machinery. I call that the sampling problem–how do you make an accurate assessment of how something works if your sensing mechanisms are limited (can only sample aspects of the working object under study, global reality in our case). I then show how a mind with sensing, abstracting, and random perturbing capability can possibly achieve that–and then set about to do that.

So here we are. We’ve seen how the only sensory input we have is spatial objects that move. From that, we form abstractions such as those called dimensions and time. Time is an especially difficult object to work with, mostly because of this sampling problem–we must operate in time, conclusions are causally generated, so creating an accurate abstraction of time that is useful is especially hard because we can’t get outside of time to see what it really is. Space actually is just as hard, but mathematics has a set of operands and morphologies that make it easier for our minds to wrap around useful properties of describing it. Even so, that is somewhat of an illusion–we need spatial discrimination to describe spatial description, so the sampling problem is just as big a limiting factor.

How am I going to progress with this? After all, a lot of famous thinkers and physicists have devoted their extremely intelligent minds to studying the concept of space and time, and as far as I can tell have not penetrated very far. I will start by taking two currently established scientific principles, plus one random perturbation of my own mind, and show how they create a possible abstraction of space and time that not only appears to be self-consistent but seems to (at least for me) follow a most-likely path. From there I will leave the scientific world behind and start heading down the question of God and some deep abstractions that will be extremely hard to “wrap our minds around” in a conclusive way.

The two scientific principles that I started with in the last entry are the special relativity formulas for time and spatial dilation called the Lorentz Transforms, and the principle of quantum entanglement. Let me provide a hopefully basic but accurate summary of what those are.

The Lorentz transforms simply are mathematical ways of describing how space and time appear in different frames of reference. If you are an observer, and you happen to be moving relative to an object, these laws describe how the spatial and temporal properties of the object would be distorted compared to if you were not moving. In particular, suppose the object was a circular clock. If you are not moving compared to the clock, you will see a circular clock whose time will match your time. If you are moving relative to the clock (or equivalently, if the clock is moving relative to you), the circle of the clock you see will appear squashed in the direction of movement, and the time that the clock shows you will be slower than your own time. The Lorentz transforms simply describe mathematically what these distortions will be.

The Lorentz transforms have the interesting property that if the relative movement is so fast that it is at the speed of light, the circular clock you observe will be squashed to a flat line and the time you observe will be stopped (it will look to you like, no matter how much time passes for you, that the clock never counts any time). One consequence of this is that a beam of light will appear to have the same speed no matter how fast you are moving relative to the beam of light. Another very important consequence is that no physical object can go faster than the speed of light (in spite of the tripe you read about tachyons or group light wave experiments). Quantum mechanics does allow for small perturbations about the speed of light, but reality under special relativity is shown to be causal–the word meaning that there is no way to somehow do a Star Trek warp speed faster than light of a space ship, a person, or a subatomic particle. Not only that, but only a massless object such as a photon of light can even reach the speed of light. Anything with mass has to go slower. Particle accelerators can take something like an electron and speed it up to very very close to the speed of light, but will never reach it.

There you go–that’s special relativity in a nutshell–there’s a huge amount of other stuff that can be drawn from that theory, but that’s all I need for where we are going. There is a much bigger theory that brings a mathematical analysis of gravity and energy distributions into the picture (general relativity) but for my path I am now taking I will not being going there any time soon.

Next is quantum entanglement. Now we need to review that observed objects have been found to be made of molecules, which are usually small collections of atoms, which are composed of a nucleus of subatomic particles surrounded by a cloud of electrons (or a nucleus of subatomic antiparticles surrounded by positrons). Subatomic particles not only form atoms but also exist in their own right and are grouped in various ways. I won’t go into that here, but just note that subatomic particles include electrons, positrons, quarks, photons (for light) and so on. Quantum mechanics deals with how particles behave, in particular, the wave/particle dualism for all particles exemplified by experiments such as the two-slit experiment that demonstrates the wave/particle duality and Aspect’s experiment that demonstrates the quantum entanglement behavior.

Quantum wave/particle duality can be simplified simply by stating that in our reality, what we call particles that are localize in space is actually a poor way to describe their behavior. They actually have properties both of localized objects and distributed waves, and the mathematics of quantum mechanics details that accurately describes the behavior of those entities we call particles, among other things. In particular, we will use the fact that when we shoot a particle at two holes spaced sufficiently close to each other (the two slit experiment), the particle will act more like a wave and will actually pass through both holes–but if we put a detector at each hole, it will suddenly behave as if it only went through one or the other hole. It is an intrinsic property of particles that if you try look at the particle, it will resolve as a particle and lose its wave properties. This experiment brings out the fundamental principle that when a particle is acting as a wave it can have two states (eg, being “red” and “blue”) at the same time, but as soon as you look at it, it instantly becomes either red or blue, it can’t keep that wave like property of both. There is a paradox here, and we go into that a bit.

The second quantum principle is related, and is demonstrated by the Aspect experiment. It simply states that it is possible to create two entangled particles with wave like properties that are complementary, like the “red” and “blue” I just described. Both particles can then move apart, keeping their simultaneous wavelike “red” and “blue” properties at the same time for both particles (as long as we dont look at either one). Just like the two slit experiment, as long as we don’t look at either particle, they both will retain the “red” and “blue” characteristics simultaneously. As soon as we look at either particle, we will see either a red or blue particle, the simultaneous characteristic of red and blue will resolve to one or the other. Now here’s where it gets really really bizarre, and is the hopeless subject of endless philosophizing.. If you look at one of the two particles that have by now separated by a vast distance, it will (just like in the two slit experiment) look like either a red or blue particle–but now the other particle will resolve *always* to the other state. By observing one resolve to one state, you have forced *instantly* with no time passage, the other particle to resolve to the other state.

Hey, I thought you said that special relativity was causal? That nothing could be done instantly, that no actions could take place over distance faster than the speed of light, and that only massless particles such as photons of light could even travel at that speed? How come we can take two quantum entangled particles separated by a vast distance and instantly (and I really do mean instantly) force the state of one just by looking at the other? Both theories have been proven to be valid beyond the shadow of any reasonable doubt, verified by experiment to the point that we know we are accurately abstracting both theories. There you are–the big paradox of physics, time, and space. What’s so cool about this, is anytime you have something that just plain doesn’t make any sense, you have a revolution AND a revelation about to happen. This one is critical for us and for my thinking–we have some powerful clues that will take us much closer to breaking down what global reality is. It is so exciting because we are on the cusp of something incredibly important. It just needs one important event, one important discovery, and the balance will be broken, and humanity will take a step closer to God. Or, alternatively, I have a serious case of megalomania and spouting pointless verbiage. You will have to decide for yourself!

And with that, I bring in my loop idea, and maybe you’ll see a path open up for you…

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oooh a little physics, and one big honking howler

October 13, 2005

Continuing my thoughts about time. Time and space, actually–just like special relativity says, it’s pretty clear they are deeply coupled–and in fact even a non-physicist like me can see good evidence that observation of time (objects that move) has strong parallels to the observation of objects, the perception of displacement and size. In the last post I showed another crucial parallel–the asymptotic behavior toward infinity, or toward 1/infinity–how both spatial and temporal observations by a thinking being–in fact the existence of the thinking being–will zoom to a scale in such a way that there may be no such thing as truly empty space (or non-existent motion). Did it–or does it–really happen that way? I haven’t gotten to the point yet where I would say this scenario is the most likely one of how things came into being. But there’s no question that one of the most important questions of reality may be more subtle than traditional philosophical approaches.

Aristotle asked the question, how did something come from nothing, and used subsequent analysis to show there could be no beginning of time (hopefully I have my facts right here as far as Aristotle, but that’s not really relevant, the point is still there). This question may have a more subtle answer, though, because since there is no absolute scale, either spatially or temporally, it sets up a new element to this philosophical discussion. Since the lack of absolute scale appears to be observationally valid (I’m going to put aside the question of whether the speed of light or Planck’s constant define an absolute scale for right now, just with the comment “I don’t think so” and plan to come back to address this later), this leaves an opening for a true infinite range, which opens the door for a way both for objects to form into existence and for motion of objects to occur at some scale of time either infinitely small or infinitely large when there was nothing before. It’s definitely not possible at finite scale ranges–there’s no way to get a finite set of objects from an empty set using finite dimensions. Equivalently, in the time dimension, if nothing ever moves, you can’t find a subdivision where something is moving–in a finite timescale.

Trying to find a way out of this quandary (how did something (our existence) come from nothing) I thought, well suppose there’s a “something” somewhere, and a “nothing” somewhere–but that’s impossible, because in order for both to be true in our existence, you can form a set that includes both–which then means that there is no way to form a true set of nothing. That forces you to divide the existence possibilities to either a true nothing, with no neighboring somethings, or an existence that always had a something somewhere. This line of thinking is the box that caused Aristotle to conclude there could never have been a beginning to time.

But–as soon as your dimension range, either spatially or temporally, goes to infinity (either large or small), then the door opens out of the quandary and a way for objects to form and motion to begin from a true nothing emerges. Not only that, but you might be able to then conclude that a true nothing is impossible in a absolute scale-less existence, but I haven’t quite gotten to the point where I buy that yet. Nevertheless, the lack of an absolute range on either time or distance poses an interesting question for both the existence of objects and the fact that they move.

Now, given that we like that possibility, and thus seeing that the Aristotelean absolute nothing/something universes are too limited in describing what likely describes our existence, let’s take an interesting trip down some science principles. I will generally accept established scientific knowledge as most likely because of the constant peer review/cross checking and experimental verification of the knowledge. I’m going to trot in a couple of philosophical old war-horses here. First, the Lorentz equations of special relativity that describe how objects transform as they are viewed in different frames of reference (moving at a velocity relative to each other). Second, that grossly misinterpreted, over-interpreted, and generally totally misunderstood principle of quantum entanglement. I don’t like to, because of all the baggage people have attached to it–but it really does say something critically important about both time and space, so I need to go there.

Then, I am going to point out something I think is true but science does not (the “howler” of the title of this entry). Here’s where I’ll try to be really clear, and not fool any reader into thinking something is established scientific truth when it isn’t. Here we go–my own pet idea is that electrons and positrons, as well as many other particles, are loops of electromagnetic fields. Oh boy, you’re going to shoot that one down fast, especially if you’ve had any physics background at all, and I accept that. So, since this is my journal, and I hold the magic marker, I’m going to go there anyway, and you can choose to keep reading, or write me off as a crank and dump this journal. That’s your prerogative and your right. But I’ve thought about this for a while, and if you keep reading I think I can give you some interesting thoughts, that come around and seem to be consistent with some currently non-explained phenomena, such as the problem of electrostatic attraction. I’ve actually developed seven different “pillars” that support this loop idea–but I will be very honest with you and tell you that observation in particle accelerators have established a size of the electron and similar particles to be apparently to be infinitely small, apparently refuting the loop idea (note, the loops of string theory, which *is* taken seriously in some physics circles, are far smaller, at the scale of Planck’s constant, and do not involve loops of electromagnetic fields). This is just my idea, and you’ll have to decide whether you want to go along with this part of my thinking. I’ve got lots of other places I want to go in the future that aren’t going to be nearly so controversial that you can visit later if you like.

WHOA, why am I making such a big deal in this journal of particles as loops? Because–if you do that, not only does it appear to explain some hitherto unanswered questions, and not only do I think there are good analytic reasons why experiment appears to refute the idea (but doesn’t really), but it forges a very beautiful picture of what space and time are–and hence form a very interesting and rich picture of the physical nature of reality. So if you can trust that I will be as honest and forthright as I can, let’s step into this world I have drawn and see what appears.

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time in a box

October 7, 2005

It is time to address time. I’ll have to be more careful with this than anything I’ve attempted to think about, because this word is the abstraction for something that evades logical thinking. We can use some variation of mathematical set theory, number theory to describe the concept of space, but time isn’t quite so easy to put into a category, much less a set. I will probably generate several issues as I wade through this one, and I suspect my thinking will take some twists and turns before anything interesting emerges (assuming that something will).

First, let’s start by making statements about reality–the local one (my own reality). What is it that we sense that we call time? One thing is for sure, just like space–we don’t sense the passing of time, or even the width or depth of space. The ONLY THING WE SENSE ARE OBJECTS THAT MOVE. If nothing moved, we would not sense time. Even internal to our brain we can initiate a timer (count seconds, for example) to note the passing of time. If our brains could not move charges within neurons, we would not even internally have a sense of time passing. Similarly, if we cannot see or feel objects we would have no sensation of spatial distance. It is safe to say that the only reality is–objects that move. We construct the abstraction of time and distance to help our brains make sense of the world, but that is a choice we make, it is not part of our local reality! Only objects that move are valid parts of our reality. In fact, let’s go one step further. What does it mean for there to be an object that moves? Quite simply, our brain gets a sensory input, takes a snapshot or an abstraction of it in memory, then is able to compare further sensory input with that memory. Our brains sense that the object moves or changes when enough traits of the object remain in our sensory input such that our brains identify that there is a match to the abstraction in memory, but some traits differ (such as where is it).

So one key point of time–it would not be recognized by us if we did not have memory.

Yeah, so what–memory is a time process, you say. I say, no it is not. It is a form of duplicating the sensory input and does not have to have time. But the interesting thing here is we perceive time when the sensory input and the copy DIVERGE IN IDENTIFIABLE TRAITS. I can almost envision a world where no time really passes, but generation of a sensory input and its copy occur and diverge that gives us the SENSATION OF TIME PASSING. I think you can play the same game with spatial separation–no spatial separation really exists, but this ability to correlate edges of an object at different points is harder for me to visualize right now, I have to think about that.

Note that I am specifically referencing our own local reality, the sensory input each of our brains receive. What does that say about the hypothetical global reality? You know, the one that I have concluded does really exist, and is the centralized and consistent source for each of our local realities?

You see, one thing I’ve been pretty sure of for a while is that since there is no absolute time or distance scale, our existence will form in a universe that would zoom in or out to whatever scale that objects occur. Suppose the global reality is actually only one cubic meter in volume. Ignoring the issue of sensing the boundaries for the moment, if we are in size only 10^-35 meters in height, and our atoms and subatomic particles still smaller, it would be indistinguishable from a universe whose actual size is 10^35 meters and we are 1 meter in height. Yes, that’s obvious–but what might not be so obvious is the idea that our existence will zoom in both spatially and timewise to whatever scale permits distinct observable objects. There’s another way to say it–suppose the universe is totally empty except for some tiny warps. The entire existence will form around those tine warps, because nothing exists at any other scale. You can go one step further, and see how a universe with nothing in it may give rise to one with something in it: watch carefully as I perform this magic trick:

If there is nothing in the universe at all, you could argue that the universe will “grow” to infinitely small or infinitely big until something emerges. It’s this property of scale over infinity that makes it possible for something to emerge where there was nothing before. And what’s cool about this–the same concept applies to time. Perhaps everything takes 0 time (that example of memory being abstraction copies of sensory input, diverging over 0 time). But then our sense of time will expand to cover the 0 time! Our whole lives will fit within that infinitely small amount of time, and our sensation of how much time actually passed will be huge. This is really weird because the concept works whether you approach infinitely small or infinitely big! This is all possible because as you approach infinity, the concept of nothing ceases to stay constant, you could almost say there is a symmetry breaking as you go from nothing over an infinitely big or small scale. A weird thought–what if the Big Bang formation of the universe was actually a massive shrinkage as the universe *shrunk* infinitely down to a domain such that stuff began to emerge, but appeared as a massive explosion relative to our emerging (shrinking) existence!!

That’s some big stuff to chew on! More to come.

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the problem of time (and maybe space too)

October 2, 2005

Hmm, so I spent some time last time with defining reality in terms of a local reality (our personal sensory input) and the related concept of a global reality (some sort of composite reality independent of me as an observer). The local reality that I experience I will state is real and for now unquestioned. It is simply the sensory input that the processing and storage parts of my brain receive. As explained in the last entry, the global reality is a hypothesized reality that I am concluding (see the last entry) is greater than the sum of all of the individual local realities. While such a definition of a global reality excludes a number of other possible realities that my personal reality is a part of, I am choosing it as a most likely way to view global reality.

But I want to augur in a bit, that is, now I want to take this global reality as I see it, and delve into what is it! I could do the same thing with my local reality, and it would be more valid–but that would hide this intermediate step I am taking. I am assuming that I as a thinking observer am relatively unimportant in the global existence, and I want to think (for now) as if the local reality is just a single view of something much bigger–and to try to make conclusions about that much bigger reality (the global reality) even though its existence is really hypothetical.

So–if you’re willing to take that step with me, let me take my magic marker I am writing with, and try to draw an abstraction of this global reality. To do this, I will draw on a little bit of science–I’ll pull in some general principles that have been verified scientifically and use that to augment my own observations. Obviously there is a big danger doing that, and the collection of assumptions that come along with doing that starts to get large. Nevertheless, for now, let me try that and see if it shows signs of validity–all the while being wary of this new collection of assumptions. This is going to take a few entries, I think.

I see two pieces of global reality. I see stuff in space, apparently in unique places. This stuff, and my observations and thinking processes also seem deeply connected to the second part of global reality, the concept of things/concepts/memories changing–time. Space stuff, and time. Note not space! But space stuff. This is important–I’m always trying to be alert to assumptions I am making–and I would be making one if I said I am aware of space! I am not. I have no sensory input that says there is space, I only have sensory input of light (sight, touch (warmth of infrared electromagnetic waves)) or electrostatic or chemical interactions (touching a surface, taste, smell, hearing all result from electrostatic repulsion of surface atoms in our fingers, eardrums, smell may have some chemical bond triggers to nerves). From the ways the objects appear in our eyes and touch, our brain infers spatial separation. But it should be pretty obvious that I have no sensory input of spatial separation itself, only the apparent separation of objects. It’s going to be a very important question to determine if this apparent separation is a mental abstraction that allows our brain to make sense of this world. In fact, I see good reason to believe that space itself is an abstraction, and is not a correct description of global reality. It’s definitely NOT part of my local reality for the reason I just described–I can’t sense it. But my sensory input definitely does feed back information in a consistently ordered way that implies this spatial separation exists in the global reality. So, the crucial question becomes–which is it? Is spatial separation of objects “real” (using that principle of trusting what my senses tell me) or is it an abstraction made by mind to allow me to abstract the uniqueness of different objects.

Similarly with time. In a given instant, my sensory input is static–there is no way to directly sense that time occurs, that change occurs. Somehow, my mind is clearly taking my sensory input and is retaining a sensation that objects not only are in unique places, but the relative placement of objects has differed (moved). Once again, what is really going on in the global reality, and what is going on in the abstraction generation section of my brain? These are very deep questions, and I am about to go even deeper, to the point of utter confusion–at least temporarily until my thinking tries to sort this out. Here it is–when I am saying, my brain may be creating the abstraction of unique spatial position and the sensation of different spatial positions over time, I must understand that my brain is clearly part of the set of objects that appear to reside in unique physical spaces. I must understand that the concept of generating an abstraction is clearly the result of various timed and spatially distinct regions/pathways/computation units interacting to produce a summation result. It’s easy to see the importance of digging into this question, because it gets to the heart of the difficulty of defining space and time–if my own brain is responsible for forming the sensation of spatial separation and time changes, it is doing it because it apparently has components that are spatially separated and are changing! This is, I think, a very good argument (along with the principle of trusting that our sensory input can be trusted to tell us the way things really are (most of the time, ie most likely)) for saying that the apparent property of spatial separation and time changing are “real” to the global reality and are not the results of brain abstracting something else to appear to be spatial separation and time changing.

That is so crucial, because it really helps us to understand what is going on–and has the side effect of giving some insight into what our consciousness is. But I’m not going there now. I want to stick to global reality. So if our brains aren’t somehow synthesizing spatial separation and time changing, what the heck are they? Oh boy, this is going to be fun–I hold the magic marker, and with it I’m going to try to create an abstraction for them! And it has to be weird–and you’ll just have to wait for the next entry to see where I go..

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