A preamble:
I do not
hold a Phd. in…anything. Heck, I don’t even have a master’s degree. My lack of
formal degrees or specialization merely suggest a slight laziness of a kind ;-)
But that doesn’t stop me from having a deep genuine interest in science and a
passionate curiosity about the nature of reality. As the late Jean-Jacques
Cousteau once said: “What is a scientist
after all? It is a curious man looking through the keyhole of nature, trying to
understand what’s going on.” Of course, one needs to look with a logical
mind. I think I have a smidgeon of that too. But sometimes, logic needs to be
trumped momentarily by imagination (and I seem to have way more of that!), to
consider alternatives, the “what-ifs?” that are fundamental to the momentum in
science.
I have such
a “what-if” idea and I’d like to share it.
I am but a
humble geophysicist, working with applied physics in the pursuit of mineral exploration.
And even here, I am somewhat of an impostor, having actually completed a
bachelor in Earth Sciences rather than pure geophysics. Since I’m in the
business of finding NiS, I get to work with electromagnetism a lot and
experience firsthand a series of wave-particle causes/effects related to that. I
suppose some of my hobbies also benefit my perspective: photography and music
(both fundamental expressions of a frequency nature – light and sound). I’m
clearly aware of my blatant ignorance in many topics and on the details of
topics that are even close to my profession and hobbies. So the ideas I’d like
to bounce around are not rooted in mathematical or even scientific rigor, but
are rather philosophical in nature. Please don’t hold it against me…
Ok, enough
preliminaries. On to the big ideas…
Standing on the
shoulders of giants
Einstein’s
famous equation E=mc2 has to be the epitome of contemporary pop-culture
physics (sorry Newton, you lived in another era…honorable mention to Hawking).
It revolutionized our perception of our reality and kindled new exciting
research, culminating, it can be argued, to quantum theory and other fun stuff
like string theory and quantum gravity loops etc. But it also created all
kinds of puzzles for many of the smartest minds on the planet that have
since tackled these topics. I feel we are now at an impasse such as we were
with Newtonian physics. C’est à dire,
the equations that we use are good at approximating
results; hence the success in field experiments, but there’s something missing.
The brightest minds already know this and are working hard at it.
Another language
What if we
only had to change our language
slightly in order to shift our perception to another level? Akin to what
Einstein did with relativity and special relativity – granted he did this with
more mathematical rigor. I feel - and I’m not alone nor the first - that a
major problem in our perception and understanding of ‘reality’ is our
propensity to believe space-time exists and is the fabric of reality and use that
as the fundamental benchmark. It is forgivable. After all, our biology and
resulting perception of the electromagnetic spectrum and matter is inescapable.
Yet, we have transcended that limitation greatly with mathematical tools,
technological prowess, general cleverness and imagination. Quantum theory is a
good example. It is only burgeoning and could soon propel us out of the bend on
Moore’s Law curve on an exponential upshot of evolution. Things could change
quickly.
Articles
questioning the existence of time and/or space are increasingly popping up in
the general culture, trickling down from the scientific ivory towers. Time:
that pervasive property that seems to enslave our existence and destiny from a
beginning to an end. Some have good arguments to suggest it doesn’t exist, such
as David Deutsch. Others say space and time cannot coexist. Space: that vessel that holds us and all the things
dear to our hearts, and the rest, as a ‘bubble’ we can roam and the ‘where’
where “stuff happens”.
Breaking for new
ground
This is
where I want to take the metaphysical sledgehammer out and support Bohm in his
quest for truth: I would like to encourage, as others are increasingly doing,
that the fabric of reality is simply energy and that space (at least as defined
as the navigable topology of matter) and time (the sequencing of ‘events’) both
don’t exist (they may be emergent or perceptual by-products/illusions like some
have suggested).
Rather,
let’s imagine that energy is singular and expressed ‘quantum-ly’ in a
non-linear particle-wave duality. This may set up Einstein’s famous equation
for a makeover, because although accurate, there’s more to it in my intuition…
And this is
where I’m afraid I can only offer philosophical leads and that my personal computation capacities dry up…
·
Instead
of time, could we speak in terms of polarization?
– we may perceive time through the frequency expression of energy; the
non-intuitive concept here will be to contend that frequency is still a valid
phenomenon even if time doesn’t exist fundamentally.
·
Instead
of matter/space, should we look at ‘nodes’
or equilibrium/stability plateaus? Chemistry already has a good heads-up on
this with the periodic table (they’re only concentrating on one scale however)
– the order hierarchy of energy has been alluded to before – in that sense,
what do Moore’s law, evolution (e.g. human brain) and capacitors have in
common? The expression of energy as hierarchal organization of complexity. Why
does this happen? Have a look at this video. Quantum loops gravity theory is interesting
in the perspective of a feedback loop probabilistic nature of everything – how
the energy turbulence (spin foam) interacts with itself to produce higher order
patterns;
·
Understanding
and reconciling the electromagnetic field with the gravity field seems crucial because
fundamentally there’s only particles and
waves expressed from the singular energy source – these guys might be on tosomething…?:
·
Since
I contend that space-time doesn’t exist, it therefore cannot be bent – rather, I propose that fields are perturbed and we may need to start discussing interference, noise, harmonics, timbre, power/amplitude, decay,
lensing, feedback, filtering, tuning, modulation, attenuation, shielding and
the like – but on a mathematical basis addressed in the cosmological energy
context.
·
Looking
at the principle of convolution in
light of this thinking may be useful; i.e. the Universe we experience could in
fact be an energy source that is convolved – the question would then be, what
created a point energy source to convolve?
·
Could
we then express E=mc2 as a probability density function in order to
bring in what is observed at the quantum level? I.e.: to define the expression
of the energy convolution. Could we use a generalized Gram-Charlier expansion?
·
Regarding
the convolution lead, what about looking at the cosmological constant as noise
(i.e. feedback loops) – but where does it come from? What does the presence of
noise mean? Given an infinite nature, is the Universe just noise fundamentally,
with the emergence of any pattern inevitable?
My hope is
that minds smarter than my own will have the benevolence to consider this set
of ideas seriously and indulge work on it somehow. In this aim, I have
metaphorically base-jumped off a mountain without a parachute and sent it to
the following physicists and mathematicians on my birthday, September 9th, 2013
in order to ridicule myself:
Joseph
Polchinski - Professor of Physics, UCSBSean Carroll - Physicist, California Institute of Technology
Steve Giddings - Professor, Department of Physics, University of California
Nathan Seiberg – Physicist, Institute for Advanced Study
Abhay Ashtekar - Eberly Professor of Physics and Director of the Institute for Gravitational Physics and Geometry, Penn State
Lee Smolin - Founding and Senior Faculty member, Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics
John D. Barrow – Physicist, Dept. of Applied Mathematics & Theoretical Physics, Centre for Mathematical Sciences, Cambridge University
Andreas Albrecht - Professor of Physics, UC Davis
Terrence Tao - Professor at the Department of Mathematics, UCLA
Christopher Hirata – Mathematician, Caltech
Simon Saunders - Professor of Philosophy of Physics, Oxford
Eleanor Knox – Research fellow at the Institute of Philosophy, King’s College London
David Deutsch - Physicist at the University of Oxford
Steven Weinberg – Professor of physics, University of Texas
Willy Fischler - Professor of physics, University of Texas
Jacques Distler - Professor of physics, University of Texas
E. C. George Sudarshan - Professor of physics, University of Texas
Cecile DeWitt-Morette - Professor Emerita, University of Texas
Lawrence C. Shepley – Retired Associate Professor, University of Texas
Arno Bohm - Professor of physics, University of Texas
Duane Dicus - Professor of physics, University of Texas
Brian Greene - Professor Mathematics & Physics, Columbia University
Please do
share further if you think someone you know is genuinely interested in these
ideas. I am merely seeking the truth, which I am not finding online ;-). I wish
I had the ability to expand my perception to a more useful form but simpleton words
will have to do for now I’m afraid…the essence is in what is imagined...
We do not
die. We deconvolve or attenuate. For the privileged observer, given infinity, noise
is everything, and it can be wonderful.
Mathieu
Landry