Humana anima non est forma in materia corporali immersa, vel ab ea totaliter comprehensa, propter suam perfectionem
St. Thomas Aquinas

If you realize that all things change, there is nothing you will try to hold onto
Lao-tzu

Synchronicity is something which physicists do not know about, nor would they wish to
A well-known physicist and student of Wolfgang Pauli
 

Sometimes physicists prefer to remain anonymous. I would like to comment on the opinion of a leading theoretical physicist who was not, to the best of my knowledge, a student of Wolfgang Pauli, but would certainly prefer to remain anonymous. I will refer to this person as 'Professor X'.

Here is the opinion of Professor X sent to me by email on Wed, 23 Oct 2002 19:24:15 +0100:

"You do not know enough theoretical physics to help with any research in that area."

What area? I am trying to follow the steps of Wolfgang Pauli who suggested a solution to the mind-matter problem in January 1948, and has published numerous papers and monographs co-authored by Carl Jung. All of them consistently ignored and forgotten by the established theoretical physics community. These efforts of mine resulted in a new framework for mind-brain relations, which I called trialism, since it presupposes not two but three ontologically different entities. The idea is not original at all, the only new element in it is the conjecture about a universal time arrow, which serves as the physical basis of the psychological time arrow. Hence the task boils down to pinpointing the problems in modern theoretical physics, which would require the universal time arrow for their unique solutions. If there are such solutions already proposed, then mine will be redundant, and I will consider them wrong. (I tried to explain the proposal for two modes of time in the universal time arrow in my email to Todd Brun, Tito Vecchi, and Carlos Castro.)

I had many conversations with Professor X in the past four years, but the only piece of information relevant to the task stated above was the following text sent to me by email on Fri, 25 Oct 2002 16:46:34 +0100:

"As for time, wrist-watches and Diff(M), one of the key things that emerged from all the discussions on the problem of time was that although it is true that, because of the Diff(M) action, no physical meaning could be attached to a point on the space-time manifold, a physical meaning *can* be attached to specifying a space-time location by the values of various physical quantities. Karel Kuchar is probably the person who has done most work on this, but it is something that number of people have remarked on in recent years. For example, \phi is a scalar field on the manifold and $X$ represents the space-time coordinate of a particle, then although \phi(x) has no physical meaning (if x is a point in the space-time manifold) nevertheless $\phi(X)$ *does* have a meaning: ie you can talk in a Diff(M)-invariant way about the value of a field where a particle 'is', and similarly for a trajectory. And, after all, general relativity does seem to work well as a theory, and yet I can certainly read the time on my wrist watch!"

Now, if this is an answer, what could have been the question? Amazingly, the question had nothing to do with the answer! My request to Professor X, send by email on Thu, 24 Oct 2002 20:34:51 +0300, was the following: "To prove me wrong, please explain to me what kind of time is implied by 'moving points around' in Diff(M)-invariance, and how can your wristwatch read it." The reply I got from Professor X was more than elusive, to say the least.
 



Note added on November 5, 2007:

To comment on the notion of "trajectory" in the email above: while it may be true that "... $\phi(X)$ *does* have a meaning: ie you can talk in a Diff(M)-invariant way about the value of a field where a particle 'is', and similarly for a trajectory",  the whole truth behind the seemingly innocent adverb "similarly" is that the so-called trajectory belongs to a dead frozen block universe, firstly, and secondly -- it belongs to a single solution of the GR equations of motion (a single solution of the GR equations of motion determines 'a spacetime', where a notion of proper time is associated to each timelike worldline, C. Rovelli), which has somehow emerged from the whole spectrum of all possible (infinitely many) solutions in quantum gravity, much like a single trajectory (C. Rovelli) of a quantum particle emerges from the quantum "dough" in QFT (R. Penrose). The notion of 'proper time' associated to such trajectory is unphysical (Butterfield & Isham), in the sense that there is no 'natural' way to single out some preferred or global 'proper time', due to the absence of any background "grid" (called here 'global mode of spacetime') in present-day in GR. Therefore, if Professor X wishes to "talk in a Diff(M)-invariant way about the value of a field where a particle  'is' ",  the first off task is to explain the alleged "unobservable" (not Diff(M)-invariant) proper time [tau] along spacetime leaves (called 'global mode of time'), and answers the question in my email from Thu, 24 Oct 2002 20:34:51 +0300: "what kind of time is implied by 'moving points around' in Diff(M)-invariance, and how can your wristwatch read it."

Regrettably, my opponent chose to evade this question (perhaps because it came from "just another crank"). However, the question shows the greatest mystery of GR: the nature of "points" in the context of the principle of general covariance, after Einstein. The ćther comes back again, alive and well, being placed ] between [ the points of the underlying manifold. It is completely hidden in present-day GR, hence the alleged "dynamics of GR" is entirely generated by constraints: "The dynamical data do not explicitly include a time variable" (Karel Kuchar). And we face two insurmountable problems in quantum gravity: 'the embarrassment of richness' (the multiple choice problem) and 'the embarrassment of poverty' (the global problem of time), after Karel Kuchar. I believe my opponent was familiar with these issues, at least because Karel Kuchar spent a sabbatical year at Imperial College.

Now, let's zoom on the particular example from Professor X.

My opponent talks about some scalar field  \phi on the manifold (see above), and examines two entirely different situations: (i)  x  as a "point" in the spacetime manifold, and (ii)  $X$  as the spacetime coordinate of a particle, endowed with a fleeting "meaning" by  $\phi(X)$ . Although in case (ii) the spacetime coordinate of a particle has been fixed -- after being 'moved around by Diff(M)-invariance' -- at a point in the spacetime manifold, it is only the particular scalar field  \phi that converts case (i) into case (ii). (The explicit dynamics of this conversion, in both gravitational and quantum realms, was indeed the subject of my talk at Imperial College, scheduled on 27 November 2002; see below.)

In other words,  x  as a "point" in the spacetime manifold does not exist like a building displayed on a map. A real building exists 'out there' (classical determinism), and can take different, and of course fictitious, "coordinates" in different maps, which can indeed be disregarded, in line with the famous statement of Hermann Weyl: "The introduction of numbers as coordinates ... is an act of violence whose only practical vindication is the special calculatory manageability of the ordinary number continuum with its four basic operations" (
Philosophy of Mathematics and Natural Science, 1949).

NB: Notice the immediate consequence from the requirement for active diffeomorphism: the 'building' must exist as some form of reality (potential reality), in order to preserve its "sameness" (cf. Kurt Lewin) under all possible coordinate transformations (cf. Mihaela Iftime). It can't exist 'out there' (classical determinism), because it will impose a fixed background spacetime in GR. Einstein was fully aware of these consequences from the principle of general covariance, and was trying for full three years, from 1913 to 1915, to avoid the principle of general covariance, because it "takes away from space and time the last remnant of physical objectivity".

Thus, we need 'potential reality' to understand the requirement for active diffeomorphism. In present-day GR, this new (to theoretical physics) form of reality is missing.

To elaborate further on the metaphor of 'building displayed on a map', the only way to observe a building in GR is through some map (=spacetime), hence the building will inevitably acquire some fictitious "coordinates" in that map, but these "coordinates", and the coordinate "time" in which the building may evolve, are unphysical, because such definitions of time "provide no hint as to how their time might be measured or registered" (Butterfield & Isham).

In the case of classical determinism the ontological status of the building would be 'objective reality out there', in which case the points from its "spacetime" would be the fundamental constituents of such classical determinism. These "points" will of course be re-labeled (or "colored" with nail varnish; see below) in different maps with which the same building would be displayed, but the invariant structure that would remain unchanged upon such (passive!) transformations would be 'the same building' as 'objective reality out there' ('bare finger nails', see below), and subsequently the bare spacetime "points" would be dead fixed as well.

If that was the case chosen by Mother Nature, the localization of energy would be 'simple' (compare it with the case studied by Tullio Levi-Civita in 1917), and there would be no "quasi-local" complications from non-tensorial quantities due to the Equivalence Principle, as explained by Hermann Weyl in 1922. In fact, the problem of defining energy in GR was recognized by Hilbert even before Einstein formulated -- with the crucial help from Levi-Civita -- the basic principles of GR.

To sum up, GR cannot in principle be formulated on the basis of classical determinism, because it will inevitably lead to an aether pertaining to such dead fixed spacetime points, as well as absolute reference frame, as implied in the non-relativistic cosmological picture here.

The fundamental lesson from GR is that such classical determinism is not even a convenient approximation to the potential reality of spacetime "points". The potential reality may be ignored only in those cases in which quantum or gravitational effects (cold dark matter or dark energy) are vanishing small.

I tried to explain this lesson from GR to my teenage daughter in the following way: Imagine you cannot see your finger nails "bare", without nail varnish. One way to think of such peculiar situation is that your bare finger nails are somehow hidden "in the dark", and they can show up only after you cover them with your nail varnish, with different colors depending on your mood. A second option would be to simply forget about "bare" finger nails, since you can't see them anyway, and claim that you obtain the nails on your fingers only by coloring them (with some "scalar field  \phi", say), because "bare nails" may not exist in principle. Einstein was very much disturbed from this second possibility, because it obviously "takes away from space and time
the last remnant of physical objectivity" known at his time. Well, I think we can solace Uncle Einstein by suggesting a third possibility: your "bare" finger nails do exist, but belong to a special form of reality, called 'potential reality'. Notice the great advantage from such interpretation: both the bare finger nails and their color become flexible, by obtaining their color only relationally, in line with the so-called 'dynamical determinism'.

This new form of determinism  is completely different from the old fashioned determinism you used to derive the first option, so it may take some time for you to understand it. Just keep in mind the rule of 'relational ontology': the necessary and sufficient conditions for something, call it A, to exist at a given instant (local mode of spacetime) consist of negotiating and correlating its instantaneous state with 'not-A', or 'everything else in the universe'. The latter is the only remaining possibility to define rigorously an object in GR, because there is no fixed "grid" we can 'hold onto': the paths in GR are only created dynamically, by 'walking'.
 


 

Your brain can do it, too. This is how the "brain" of Mother Nature adjusts the global "context", hence fixes the 'inertial mass' of all physical bodies in the universe (recall that a truck requires more energy to be accelerated in ten seconds from zero to 100 km/h than your mom's car, so in this sense the truck has more 'inertial mass'). But this "fixing" of the inertial mass (along with the "cold dark matter") is still a great mystery, because the "gravitational field" is not like the field that sticks the magnets on the fridge in the kitchen: the "gravitational field" is 'pure geometry' and hence has no intrinsic energy. In a way, the energy is delocalized and belongs to "the forest" itself, yet it can show up only through some particular "tree".
 

Got a headache? Don't worry, it's natural. I can show you dozens of academic studies dedicated to some ad hoc postulated mysterious "scalar field" through which the so-called "dark energy" enters spacetime, and you'll get a real headache. But let me try to explain the puzzle with two actors, who you know very well: George Clooney and Robert De Niro. The former would always play 'George Clooney', whether it is Emergency Room (IR), or Ocean's Thirteen, or a Nespresso commercial, say. Quite the opposite with Robert De Niro: if he presents a character, it is always an entirely different person who has nothing to do with 'Robert De Niro'. He is indeed a great actor, and if you try to grasp his personality, it would be like trying to determine the "intrinsic" camouflage color of an octopus. In this sense, Robert De Niro is a good metaphor for the "dark energy", while George Clooney is more like that "scalar field" mentioned above. Capiche?

(To be specific, the "crack" through which the holistic or "dark" effects of "the forest" get smuggled in GR (producing the "colored octopus") can be revealed by recalling that no genuine Dirac observable can exist in GR: the set that is supposed to encode the complete gauge invariant information by Diff(M)-related configurations cannot exist in principle, just as the complete (or global) presentation of a quantum system by a set of all observable (or local) states of that same quantum system, for Hilbert space dimension greater than two, cannot exist in principle, as we know from Ernst Specker. Briefly, in QM and GR we do not have a well-defined notion of 'set': metaphorically, "the forest" that defines the 'set of trees' cannot be completely described with the properties of the "non-local" or "quasi-local" trees. Stated differently, we are not dealing with 'countable infinite' (denumerably infinite) colored pieces shaken in a kaleidoscope.)

Going back to your finger nails, all this means that the infinitely many possible "colors" of your nails are engaged in perpetual negotiation and correlation 'outside the train' (compare it to the emergence of a single "trajectory" in QFT; cf. R. Penrose above). And since you're confined 'inside the train', you cannot witness the infinitely many negotiating steps taken 'outside the train', which are "projected" into one instant from your (local) time, as read by your wristwatch (cf. Macias & Hernando). You might only notice that this relational ontology produces quasi-local effects 'inside the train', and that the train gains more fuel by accelerating its speed, being driven by the "dark energy" of the stuff 'outside the train'. The latter is the last remaining 'relational background' with respect to which the "brain" of Mother Nature can produce the quasi-localized explications of 'His thoughts' inside 'the train' (local mode of spacetime). Otherwise the task of producing the "picture" of your train will be impossible (we need to answer the question 'with respect to what?'), because it will be like "trying to paint a painting without any canvas". Capiche?

Let's go back to the 'building displayed on a map'. On the one hand, GR allows for the genidentity (Genidentität, cf. Kurt Lewin) of the building -- 'the building per se' -- to be preserved and sustained in all maps, provided the building is Diff(M)-invariant (see the principle of maximal permutability, John Stachel). But on the other hand, the building does not exist like 'objective reality out there' (classical determinism), because in GR there is no unaffected flat spacetime in which the constituents of the building would be tied/fixed to particular points from that fixed underlying spacetime. In this sense, the reality of 'the building in GR' is completely different from the (fake, strictly speaking) case of 'objective reality' in classical physics and STR. Yes, 'the building in GR' is real, but it only casts its different perspectives or "shadows" in different maps (context-dependant presentations), while 'the building per se' has become totally illusive in GR (as Plato would have said). To recover 'the building per se' and unveil the physical objectivity in GR, we need to recover the true dynamics of GR, and the first step is to recover the hidden "grid" of the global mode of spacetime, which Karel Kuchar dubbed Perennial, since it refers to an "all time [tau]" that is "eternally present". Then the next step will be to build a brand new "trajectory" of states of the building, each of which will be a brand new, re-created, instantaneous snapshot of 'the building per se' in a brand new, re-created, 4-D spacetime -- in the same vein as the dynamically build 'quantum phase space' and Heraclitian time of Unruh & Wald (cf. K. Kuchar (1992), Time and interpretations of quantum gravity, kvk.pdf, p. 40).

And speaking about the dynamics of GR, it's worth remembering the simple metaphysical considerations from St. Augustine: there must be a state of "non-being"  ]between[  the points from the spacetime manifold, such that these "points" can be individuated and labeled 'in time', or else they will fuse into one single point of eternity, which people call 'block universe'. Hence we need Kuchar's Perennials and an "all time [tau]" that is "eternally present" (global mode of spacetime).

It is very important to stress that Bill Unruh prefers to talk about an "explicit (but unmeasureable) time", which Marco Spaans could perhaps demonstrate with a triplet of three-space regions, hence making the 3-D space time-orientable from the outset, by showing that every "point" from 3-D space is endowed with a time-orientable mechanism: it has a "history" and a "future". Hence we need three (not two) states. It remains to be seen whether Marco Spaans will implement the Bayes' learning rule to "orient" an arbitrary point in 3-D space toward its "history" and "future". Bottom line here is to reveal the blueprint from the phenomenon of transience cast on the 3-D space, because it is impossible to deduce it from the matter fields we drop later on that 3-D space (P. Joshi).

Recall also the discovery made by Kevin Brown: in addition to the usual 3+1 dimensions, there could be two additional, "curled up" dimensions of angular orientation to represent the possible directions in 3-D space. Regarding the interaction between spacelike separated events, Kevin Brown stressed that the "hyperboloid surface has infinite area, which suggests that any interaction between spacelike separated events would correspond to the transit of an infinitely massive particle. On this basis it seems that these interactions can be ruled out." But if we interpret the potential reality as physical reality, its mass density would be infinite. It would indeed look "infinite", because we can't impose some provisional cut off at the Planck scale, as we do by "estimating" the latent mass and energy density of the quantum vacuum (in our case, we operate with two Aristotelian 'ideal endpoints', as depicted with the drawing here). Hence I believe Kevin Brown has made a real discovery. I regret that can't contact him by phone or email, to express my deep admiration for his brilliant work.

In my just-another-crack opinion, this is the genuine dynamics of GR: the "trajectory" will pass through infinitely many re-created maps (3-D hypersurfaces), and the resulting dynamics will be totally different from the current "block universe". We cannot derive the dynamics of GR from just one instantaneous 'state of the building' for which we've solved the Einstein field equations, and have "collapsed" the 'building per se' onto one spacetime only. We can do that only in classical mechanics: once you capture an instantaneous state from the trajectory of your Frisbee, you can recover (approximately) the whole history and future states of your Frisbee along that trajectory, because you have an underlying unaffected flat spacetime that you can 'hold onto'.

Once we accept the principle of general covariance (after Einstein) and its modern Diff(M)-formulation (cf. J. Stachel), both the building and the map will lose their status of 'objective reality out there' (classical determinism). Einstein struggled with this painful situation long before he formulated GR in 1915 -- with the crucial help from Levi-Civita -- and finally chose to adhere to the principle of general covariance, at the expense of losing "the last remnant of physical objectivity". In my just-another-crank opinion, the only way to keep the principle of Diff(M)-invariance and recover the 'physical objectivity' of GR is to move to a broader level of reality, called 'potential reality'. It is designed from the outset to include the "non-tensorial" variables in GR, which are interpreted as effect of the Holon, hence will inevitably look "dark" in present-day GR. Let me again stress that the Diff(M)-group needs to be extended by including brand new transformations pertaining to 3-D space.

Unlike in STR, where the metric acts as a background structure given a priori, in Einstein GR the metric is treated as a field which not only affects, but also is affected by, the other fields present. The resulting relational presentation leads to "disappearance of time" in background-independent theories (cf. John Baez), in the sense that the 'time of facts', which we know from classical mechanics and STR ('classical determinism'), is not valid for the whole trajectory, but pertains to just one instant from it; hence the frozen "block universe". And because there is no background spacetime in present-day GR, we cannot derive the "trajectory" from that single instant. The non-linear, bi-directional "talk" (J. Wheeler) continues at every instant from the non-tensorial "time" [tau] (cf. C. Rovelli and B. Bolen), as depicted with the lake metaphor here, and at each of these instants the non-tensorial "time" [tau] is being dynamically converted into an 'observable time of facts', in such a way that you can say "yet I can certainly read the time on my wrist watch!", after Professor X. But again, due to the active diffeomorphism freedom, the geometrical "points" cannot be identified by any fixed material content of 'objective reality out there', as explained by J. Stachel and Butterfield & Isham: there are no fixed paths in GR, because "paths are made by walking" (Antonio Machado).

To be specific, if all Type I matter fields (P. Joshi) could have been presented in present-day GR as "smooth objects" and "thus ‘well defined’ on any point of space" (Corichi & Zapata), the "walk" would be well-defined at any point of 3-D hypersurface and up to its "boundaries", and subsequently no "singularities" and Cauchy problems would have ever emerged in GR.

Notice again that the "walk" is inherently relational and quasi-local. It is also flexible, hence cannot be derived from 'the laws of an instant'.

If we choose to collapse this quasi-local "walk", we will inevitably face the Cauchy problem for the Einstein equations (J. Stachel) and many other discrepancies, chief among which is that there is no natural way to embed in GR the holistic (or "dark", as some people call it) energy of the Holon.

Briefly, if we wish to understand the dynamics of GR (instead of using some slippery poetic expressions such as "... and similarly for a trajectory"; cf. above), we need quantum gravity to explain (i) the whole spectrum of all possible "spacetimes", and (ii) the selection mechanism that singles out one possible solution (=spacetime) in the context of some particular scalar field  \phi : Mother Nature does not suffer from Cauchy problems. The bold statement by my opponent -- "yet I can certainly read the time on my wrist watch!" (cf. above) -- tells nothing about the mystery of GR. (Does his wristwatch read the proper time [tau] along the stack of spacetime "leaves", in ADM presentation? Is the cosmological time, as read by his wristwatch, some "Dirac observable"? How would he cook up a time-orientable spacetime in the first place?) Another bold statement was his opinion on my knowledge in theoretical physics (see above), which he reformulated on October 12th this year, again without providing even a shred of evidence.

With the benefit of the hindsight, it is clear that my decision to cancel the talk at Imperial College, scheduled for 27 November 2002, was right. My opponent, Professor X, kindly invited me to talk under his roof, but informed me that only "three, maybe four people" have shown interest in it. Which makes me wonder, how was the talk advertised by him in the first place. It was certainly not announced at Imperial College web site in October 2002.

Perhaps it cannot be ruled out that my opponent had privately told his colleagues that some crank wishes to speculate on GR. Anyway.

My next talk is scheduled for Sunday, 21 September 2008 (read a brief introduction here), and will be delivered in Munich. I will certainly invite all my opponents, but it is not clear whether Professor X would act as a gentleman, by placing his cards on the table prior to 21 September 2008.

 

D. Chakalov
November 5, 2007
Last update: Christmas 2007

 


The whole story was about a well-known problem of reconstructing a classical spacetime from nonlocal diffeomorphism-invariant observables. We can not use the trajectory obtained with the recipe described above for solving any of the problems of quantum gravity. This trajectory gives us nothing but the pathologies of the classical spacetime manifold. It can not, even in principle, gives a hint to some fixed instant of time, simply because in canonical classical GR we do not have any background. The only entity we could 'hold on' is the global mode of time and space. I believe this is a new road toward quantum gravity.

I hope my CD ROM "Physics of Human Intention" will live long enough to find some open-minded theoretical physicists who would like to explore the heritage from Pauli and Jung, as well as my efforts. The reward could be enormous. We might be able to develop not only a complete theory of quantum gravity but also learn to use our brains far more effectively, by exploring the phenomenon of Synchronicity. There are some staggering problems in the immediate future. It is an open future, up to the unknown unknown. The phrase 'this is a local problem' is already an oxymoron. We are interdependent. We have to help each other. The world is not the same after 9/11.

However, Professor X says: "You do not know enough theoretical physics to help with any research in that area."

So be it.
 

Dimi Chakalov [email protected]

Monday, October 28, 2002, 23:59:11 GMT

--
P.S. Since I "do not know enough theoretical physics to help with any research in that area", let's try The Gospel according to St. John, and think of some kind of 'absolute vacuum' which can be "polarized" by God only [John 1:1], hence producing a physical universe which is constantly expanding by its negative mass counterpart (cf. below). The net effect of combining [pool of negative mass] & [physical universe] will be zero. A quiet silent Nothing or 'absolute vacuum'. It may be full of Cognition [John 1:1] but that's a bit different story.

We know from textbooks that the only truly isolated system is 'the whole universe', which raises the question: isolated with respect to what? Isolated from what? From some mirror "negative" word maybe? Not really, the task is far more subtle than constructing a mirror world with one spatial and three temporal "dimensions". Let's keep in mind one of the cosmological constant problems: the cancellation of all but one part in 10120. (Read about vacuum energy here.) That's how the negative world should be coupled to 'the whole universe', i.e., to the only truly isolated system. This peculiar 'truly isolated system' might not have any physical beginning. It could be infinite in the past and future, singularity-free, and without particle horizon (George Ellis and Roy Maartens, gr-qc/0211082, Fig. 1). Moreover, the ultimate fate of the universe is undecidable (Paul Frampton and Tomo Takahashi, astro-ph/0211544; Hitoshi Kitada, gr-qc/9910081): "Time is Nature's way to keep everything from happening all at once" (John Wheeler). Our potential future is open up to the 'unknown unknown', hence our possible states do not, and can not form a set. These possible states exist in the form of propensities or potentialities, and can not be normalized, which leaves a window for totally new things to emerge in the future by creatio ex nihilo. This is the physical basis of our non-unitary free will: everything is possible. If you want it, you can make it happen.

I've sent the email printed below and the link to it to many theoretical physicists, hoping to receive their critical comments and suggestions. Meanwhile I will try to read some physics textbooks, as suggested by Mr. Walter Polansky from U.S. Department of Energy eight and a half years ago.
 

Dimi Chakalov [email protected]

Tuesday, November 5, 2002, 21:29:47 GMT
Last update: Wednesday, November 27, 2002, 9:43:12 GMT
 

==
Subject: The acceleration of the universe
Date: Sun, 03 Nov 2002 14:38:21 +0200
From: Dimi Chakalov <[email protected]>
To: [snip]

Dear Colleagues,

May I ask a question.

Is it possible that the acceleration of the universe is caused by some pool of negative mass, along the lines suggested by Sir Hermann Bondi [Negative Mass in General Relativity, Reviews of Modern Physics 29, 423 (1957)]? It seems to me that if we need to find some uncancelled forces and free acceleration, the hypothetical pool of negative mass could fit the job: it will be attracted to the positive mass of the universe, while the latter will be repelled by it, hence the system [pool of negative mass] & [physical universe] will accelerate the physical universe, in violation of Newton's third law, without limit and with constant acceleration.

I will highly appreciate your comments and suggestions.

The reason for asking this question can be found at my web site.

Thank you for your time, as read by your clock.

Regards,

Dimi Chakalov
http://members.aon.at/chakalov
--
Dead matter makes quantum jumps; the living-and-quantum matter is smarter.
 

--
P.S. (Sun, 03 Nov 2002 16:40:54 +0200)
I've been trying to think of the system [pool of negative mass] & [physical universe] in the framework of Ted Newman's H-space (E.T. Newman et al., The metric and curvature properties of H-space, Proc. R. Soc. A363, 445 (1978); A. Garrett Lisi, It's all in GR: spinors, time, and gauge symmetry, gr-qc/9804033), but nothing came out of this exercise. The classical gravitational field is an antisymmetric tensorial field, and I don't know how to re-formulate the task in order to include the negative mass sub-system. Probably this is not a promising approach. I hope to hear from you.

D.C.
 

 

Subject: History as sequential conjunction
Date: Tue, 27 Feb 2007 10:06:05 +0200
From: Dimi Chakalov <[email protected]>
To: Smaragda Kessari <[email protected]>
CC: Chris Isham <[email protected]>,
     Charis Anastopoulos <[email protected]>,
     Konstantina Savvidou <[email protected]>

RE: Smaragda Kessari, Affine histories in quantum gravity: introduction
and the representation for a cosmological model, Class. Quantum Grav. 24
(2007) 1303-1329


Dear Dr. Kessari,

May I ask a question. I wonder what would happen to the sequential conjunction

" a_1 is true at time t_1, and then a_2 is true at time t_2, and then ..., and then a_n is true at time t_n "

if the alleged truth values of propositions are 'neither true nor false but somewhere-in-between', after

C.J. Isham, Is it true; or is it false; or somewhere in between? The logic of quantum theory. Contempory Phys., 46(3), 207-219 (2005)

Aren't such truth values UNdecidable à la Gödel? I will appreciate the opinion of your colleagues as well.

BTW my efforts to follow Chris' program (type-IV scheme, gr-qc/9310031) can be read at

http://www.god-does-not-play-dice.net/Xiao.html#outline

Kindest regards,

Dimi Chakalov
--
http://www.god-does-not-play-dice.net/Straumann.html#hobby
It is extremely difficult to induce penguins to drink warm water
John Coleman

 

==============

Subject: Re: History as sequential conjunction
Date: Wed, 28 Feb 2007 17:18:21 +0200
From: Dimi Chakalov <[email protected]>
To: Isham, Christopher J <[email protected]>
Cc: Charis Anastopoulos <[email protected]>,
Savvidou, Konstantina <[email protected]>,
Smaragda Kessari <[email protected]>

Dear Chris,

Thank you for your reply.

> " a_1 at time t_1, and then a_2 at time t_2, and then ..., and then a_n
> at time t_n"
>
> In this form, there is nothing in principal to stop one from assigning
> generalised truth values to this history proposition. In particular, there
> is no bar in principle to constructing a topos version of the
> consistent-histories formalism.

To me the key concept in the word "then", as I haven't been able to unravel its 'driving nature' in your hypothesis. If the truth value of proposition 'if A *then* B' is 'somewhere-in-between' true and false, I personally can't grasp the "driving force" of such sequential conjunction in the first place.

Which is one of the reasons why I was wondering what is the difference, if
any, between your 'somewhere-in-between' truth value and the one in Gödel's undecidable propositions.

Please tell me which paper of yours I shall read to find the answers to these two puzzles. I believe the first one goes back to Kurt Lewin,

http://www.god-does-not-play-dice.net/Stachel.html#C2

As to the second puzzle, I really can't grasp the difference b/w your
'somewhere-in-between' truth value and the one in Gödel's undecidable
propositions. Please advise.

Kind regards,

Dimi


=============

Subject: Re: History as sequential conjunction
Date: Wed, 28 Feb 2007 23:19:43 +0200
From: Dimi Chakalov <[email protected]>
To: Isham, Christopher J <[email protected]>
Cc: Charis Anastopoulos <[email protected]>,
Savvidou, Konstantina <[email protected]>,
Smaragda Kessari <[email protected]>

Dear Chris,

> One of the main original motivations for inventing the HPO version of
> consistent histories (which is what Smaragda Kessari uses) is that the
> formalism generalises very easily to situations where there is no
> background time, whilst still supporting the structure of a 'quantum
> logic'; so the 'then' is not essential to the fundamental idea. For
> example, one could consider causal sets, or whatever other thing one
> fancies for models of 'space-time'.

I am unable to understand how one can introduce causality but consider the 'then' issue not essential. By 'causality' I understand the general feature of your sequence

" a_1 at time t_1, and then a_2 at time t_2, and then ..., and then a_n at
time t_n"

in which the notion of 'then' drives/carries 'a_1 at time t_1' to 'a_2 at
time t_2', etc. Hence the formal structure is 'if A then B', where A denotes
'a_1 at time t_1', and B denotes 'a_2 at time t_2'.

So, the proposition 'if A then B' is either 'true' or 'false'. I have no idea what happens to it when you apply the 'somewhere-in-between' truth
value.

> However, to understand these issues properly one needs to delve quite
> deeply into some of the background philosophy as well as the, not so
> trivial, mathematics. For example, the topos ideas are more compatible
> with a `coherence' theory of truth than a 'correspondence' theory. If
> you are interested in these things you might like to look at a series of
> four papers by Andreas Doering and myself that will be hitting the web in
> the next few days. This is a large piece of work (hence the four
> papers!) that presents a general theory for applying topos ideas to
> physics. The key idea is to associate a formal language of a certain sort
> (a higher-order, typed language) with each physical system. One can
> than show that any theory of physics can be interpreted as finding a
> representation of this language in a topos. A lot of general issues can be
> discussed within this framework.

I am seriously interested in applying topos ideas to physics, and will study
your papers very carefully. I trust you have suggested solutions to the
problems acknowledged in your neo-realist paper quant-ph/0508225 v1, from 30 August 2005.

> There is no link between topos truth values and Gödel's undecidable
> propositions.

So the daunting question is still open, and it goes back to the 'then' issue
from my preceding email. Unless, of course, you show the difference between your 'somewhere-in-between' truth value and the one in Gödel's undecidable propositions. I cannot find any difference whatsoever, but, as you once said, I "do not know enough theoretical physics to help with any research in that area."

As ever,

Dimi

=====

Note: Perhaps the reader has already noticed the "link" between topos truth value 'somewhere-in-between' and Gödel's undecidable propositions: they are identical. The theories from which they have been derived are drastically different, of course. In the case considered by Chris Isham, the problem originates from the well-known statement of Erwin Schrödinger about the realism in quantum theory, which can be read here.

As to the undecidable propositions, Kurt Gödel stated "... that a complete epistemological description of a language A cannot be given in the same language A, because the concept of truth of sentences of A cannot be defined in A. It is this theorem which is the true reason for the existence of undecidable propositions in the formal systems containing arithmetic" (S. Feferman, Kurt Gödel: Conviction and Caution, Philosophia Naturalis 21, 546-562 (1984), p. 554).

Thus, in both cases we have undecidable, 'somewhere-in-between-true-or-false' propositions. Big mess. Perhaps the undecidable truth value of propositions in the topos approach to quantum theory would be cleared in a meta-theory such as quantum gravity, which contains  A  (=quantum theory) as a limiting case. Only in such meta-theory (=quantum gravity) the concept of truth of sentences of  A  (=quantum theory) can be made comprehensible. Otherwise he and his younger colleagues "will get "down the drain" into a blind alley from which nobody has yet escaped" (Richard Feynman).

Not surprisingly, Chris Isham says that I "do not know enough theoretical physics to help with any research in that area." It's dead obvious that I can't help him with these undecidable, 'somewhere-in-between-true-or-false' propositions. Sorry.


D.C.
February 28, 2007

=================


Subject: Re: History as sequential conjunction
Date: Thu, 1 Mar 2007 02:51:51 +0200
From: Dimi Chakalov <[email protected]>
To: Isham, Christopher J <[email protected]>
Cc: Charis Anastopoulos <[email protected]>,
Savvidou, Konstantina <[email protected]>,
Smaragda Kessari <[email protected]>


On Wed, 28 Feb 2007 23:07:29 -0000, "Isham, Christopher J" wrote:
[snip]

"The dynamics, and hence the causality, is coded into the decoherence functional and, of course, in the various consistent sets of histories. In the case where there *is* a background time (to which the labels (t_1, t_2,...) in your proposition refer), one could say that the quantum representation of these propositions is in the `Schrodinger picture'. If one were to construct a topos analogue of the consistent history theory (which is still an open research problem, although certainly doable) then the same general principles would apply."

Since you believe it is doable, I will patiently wait to see the 'Schrodinger picture' of these propositions with 'somewhere-in-between' truth values.

"As I have said, there is no connection between Godel's theorems and the
multi-valued truth statements in topos theory. A multi-valued truth
assignment is not `undecidable', it is just multi-valued. They are not at
all the same thing."

I know they look different on paper, but I cannot think of any *physical*
examples that are distinguishable on the basis of 'multi-valued truth
assignment' vs. 'undecidable', because 'single-valued truth assignment' is
the only option for 'decidable', hence 'multi-valued truth assignment' goes
inevitably in the basket of 'undecidable'.

To be specific, I ask you to suggest one physical example, within a theory A , which would induce propositions of 'multi-valued truth assignment'. Then we'll see whether they can or cannot be reduced to 'single-valued truth assignment' in some meta-theory B , such that B includes A as a limiting case, after Gödel. If you can think of one *physical* example in which such reduction is impossible, I will accept your claim "they are not at all the same thing" as relevant to physics.

Alternatively, if all examples you can think of can indeed be reduced to 'single-valued truth assignment' in some meta-theory, then there will be no difference between the two cases, yours and Gödel's. They would look different on paper only. It happens.

Just one *physical* example, please. That will be the proof of the pudding.

Kind regards,

Dimi


============

Note: Notice the linked text above: it will bring you to the "number" [phi], which "enumerates" the potential explications of the Holon. These potential explications are both 'many' (hence the 'multi-valued truth assignment') and ONE, because the Holon is ONE entity as well. This is the meta-theory referred to above. In the framework of this meta-theory, there are no "undecidable" nor "multi-valued truth" assignments to propositions, thanks to the dual nature of the Holon. This is the crux of the new form of reality, called 'potential reality'. This was also the subject of my first talk with Chris Isham on November 13, 1998.

Fifty-two months have passed since Chris Isham delivered his opinion on my knowledge in theoretical physics, yet he still haven't found some spare time to support it with any fact against the potential reality. I've urged him twice, in private conversations and very politely, to put his arguments on the table. He refused, politely. Now I am trying to play the game 'his way', without even having a clue what he and his younger colleague, Andreas Doering, have written in their forthcoming four papers "that will be hitting the web in the next few days", as he put it above.

All I am asking is for one physical example that would support Chris Isham's view on that 'multi-valued truth assignment', and prove that I am indeed a moron who, after working in this field since 1972, still does not know "enough theoretical physics to help with any research in that area." After waiting 52 months, I believe can say 'enough is enough'.


D.C.
March 1, 2007, 2:22:34 AM GMT

==============


Subject: Re: History as sequential conjunction
Date: Thu, 1 Mar 2007 14:28:25 +0200
From: Dimi Chakalov <[email protected]>
To: Isham, Christopher J <[email protected]>
Cc: Charis Anastopoulos <[email protected]>,
Savvidou, Konstantina <[email protected]>,
Smaragda Kessari <[email protected]>


Dear Chris,

Fifty-two months ago, on Wed, 23 Oct 2002 19:24:15 +0100, you wrote the following: "You do not know enough theoretical physics to help with any research in that area."

You have failed so far to deliver even one shred of evidence in support of your claim. It is a very serious claim, since it effectively says that, after working in that area since January 1972, I am still a moron. No need to say it in plain Victorian English. You were subtle like a sledge hammer.

You are again implying, in a very polite but utterly clear fashion, that I am a moron, who has failed to comprehend the essential difference between
topos theory and set theory.

All I was asking you, in my preceding email from Thu, 1 Mar 2007 02:51:51
+0200, to deliver just one *physical* example of propositions of 'multi-valued truth assignment'. Mother Nature does not use topos theory or set theory. We do, as a "map" that is supposed to describe properly the unknown real "territory" of Nature.

It's a bit like this. Suppose you keep an animal in your house, which has gray skin, weights 2 tons, eats grass, and has a trunk. You may claim that it is not an elephant, because the way you look at it, through your topos theory, suggests that it is an entirely different animal. But to me and the rest of the world it could be an elephant.

Show me please your animal -- just one *physical* example. Then we'll see whether it can be an elephant who just looks to *you* different to the rest of elephants.

Just put your animal on the table, please. That's all I am asking for. No need to educate me in the basic basics of topos theory and set theory. I will in turn try to show you that your animal could very well be an elephant, as known to all people who use set theory.

I am respectfully waiting to see your concrete physical example. The only way we can correct and adjust our "maps" is by looking at the real territory. And that was what I've been asking you for: just one *physical* example that would induce those 'somewhere-in-between-true-or-false' propositions.

An elephant is an elephant. Let me see your animal, please. It may very well look different to you, as seen through your topos theory, but I am not at all sure that such difference could save your theory and justify your departure from your research program in quantum gravity: please see the reference to your gr-qc/9310031 in my first email on this subject. It may turn out that your topos "perception" of your animal/elephant is nothing but an artifact from your topos-based theory, hence you will perhaps understand how far you can go with such theory on the road to quantum gravity, as outlined in your gr-qc/9310031. Maybe I am "more Chris Isham" than you :-)

Sorry for this long email. Please produce one concrete physical example that would induce propositions of multi-valued truth assignment. Thank you very much in advance.

Kind regards,

Dimi


----- Original Message -----
From: "Isham, Christopher J" <[email protected]>
To: "Dimi Chakalov" <[email protected]>
Cc: "Charis Anastopoulos" <[email protected]>; "Savvidou,
Konstantina" <[email protected]>; "Smaragda Kessari"
<[email protected]>
Sent: Thursday, March 01, 2007 09:57
Subject: RE: History as sequential conjunction


Dear Dimi

It would take too long to describe all this in an email, but one of the
critical points is that one has to work *inside* the topos when using the
logic. This can change dramatically the interpretation of the logic and
associated truth values. For the topos that we use in quantum theory there *is* a meta-language, although that need not always be the case, but that still has nothing to do with Godel's theorems, and it doesn't mean that the propositions can be reduced in a metatheory in the way you suggest.

It is worth remembering that each topos is a possible *foundation for
mathematics itself* that is an alternative to the foundation based on set
theory, and one has to be careful not to assume that issues in set theory
are still true in a topos. For example, there are topoi in which the axiom
of choice is known to be *false*, whereas of course, according to Godel, it is undecidable in ordinary set theory.


Kind regards

Chris

Dean of Natural Sciences
Professor of Theoretical Physics
Huxley Building, Room 517
Imperial College
London SW7 2BZ
UK

Tel: 020 7594 7841
Secretary: 020 7594 7843

===================
 


Subject: Generalised propositions in the quantum theory
Date: Thu, 1 Mar 2007 18:58:06 +0200
From: Dimi Chakalov <[email protected]>
To: Andreas Döring <[email protected]>
Cc: Isham, Christopher J <[email protected]>,
Smaragda Kessari <[email protected]>,
Savvidou, Konstantina <[email protected]>,
Charis Anastopoulos <[email protected]>


Dear Dr. Döring,

I learned that you and Prof. C. Isham have been granted $75,000 to study Topos Quantum Theory, and am particularly interested in your observation that "sigma has no elements but, nevertheless, this object has many sub-objects that can be interpreted as generalised propositions in the quantum theory",

http://www.fqxi.org/aw-isham2.html

Please drop me a line when your papers are posted on ArXiv.org server.

My efforts to speculate in your field of expertise can be read at

http://www.god-does-not-play-dice.net/Brown.html#brain
http://www.god-does-not-play-dice.net/Straumann.html#hobby
http://www.god-does-not-play-dice.net/Xiao.html#outline

Kindest regards,

Dimi Chakalov


====================

Subject: Topos theory and ‘neo-realist’ quantum theory, arXiv:0712.4003v1 [quant-ph]
Date: Thu, 27 Dec 2007 07:49:51 +0200
From: Dimi Chakalov <[email protected]>
To: Andreas <[email protected]>
Cc: Jeremy Nicholas Butterfield <[email protected]>, John L Bell <[email protected]>

Hi Andreas,

You wrote (p. 14): "We want to emphasise that mathematically, the above construction is perfectly well-defined. It remains to be worked out if a physical and logical meaning can be attached to it."

I am patiently waiting for it. Please try a simple case of KS Theorem at

http://www.god-does-not-play-dice.net/Professor_X.html#Bayes

In case you are interested in GR, see

http://www.god-does-not-play-dice.net/Professor_X.html#Kalina

You also wrote (p. 19): "... more truth-values than just 'true' and 'false' ... Apart from that ('totally true' and 'totally false' - D.C.), there are many other global elements that represent truth-values between 'totally true' and 'totally false'."

I discussed this issue with Chris on Tuesday, 25 January 2005, and believe have clearly explained the problem, to the extent to which he didn't produce any counter-argument. Briefly, I'm afraid you are on a wrong track. The "truth" value should be YAIN: see the first link above.

If you and/or your colleagues are interested, please don't hesitate to write me back.

If you choose to ignore this email, let me quote again from your paper: "The problem is all inside your head".

Regards,

Dimi
-----

Note: Chris Isham and I had a stimulating discussion in his office at the Imperial College in London on Tuesday, 25 January 2005, regarding the ridiculous situation with the 'bare space points' in present-day GR: we "kill the time" with the so-called block universe, but leave a background of bare points with fixed spatial relations. In my just-another-crack opinion, this is totally unacceptable. We should remove this fixed spatial background, or else there is no chance to develop a background-free theory of quantum gravity. The way I see it, the only way to remove this fixed spatial background in GR is by introducing a brand new (at least to Chris Isham) "background" called global mode of spacetime. In our talk on Tuesday, 25 January 2005, Chris mumbled something about the topology of space, but didn't produce any clear suggestion, up to this day.

The other issue we discussed was the "truth value" YAIN. There are a number of reasons to insist on YAIN, as opposed to the proposed toposification of quantum theory, producing a spectrum of truth values "totally true -- something in between -- totally false" (see above). Firstly, the summation over all truth values yields YAIN. I believe this is clear to both Andreas Döring and his eminent co-author, so if they wish to proceed with their project, I believe they should totally redesign the topos theory, to make it applicable to quantum theory. In my just-another-crack opinion, such task is not feasible. As of today, Isham & Döring cannot explain even the superposition of states (Paper II, pp. 31-32):

"This is clearly an area in which further research is necessary. In particular, we would like to know if there are any generic properties of a truth object as an element in (XXX). Or, to put it another way, is there an analogue for truth-objects of the superposition of states? This is a very important subject for future research."

And also an endless math jungle, resembling the one of Alain Connes. Forget it.

Perhaps Chris Isham believes there are no insurmountable problems with the normalization procedure in his approach, but I haven't seen 'the proof of the pudding'. Just try the Schrödinger cat -- the interference pattern with "negative" regions, in Wigner presentation, here.

The second reason for insisting on YAIN can be grasped by pondering on the nature of 'potential reality' and the "oranges <--> apples" transition: unitary transformations between the two realms are impossible. Forget it.

And the third reason is that the "truth" value of Gödel's UNdecidable propositions (read Hitoshi Kitada) is indeed UNdecidable, or simply YAIN. Notice that this third issue is very complex, since it goes straight to non-unitary transitions of 'the universe in its local mode of spacetime', along the universal/master cosmological time arrow: read John Wheeler. The future is open, up to 'the unknown unknown'.

So, if you ask Chris Isham whether he will write an update on the prima facie questions in quantum gravity by 21 September 2008, he will probably respond with YAIN.

The last paragraph of Chris Isham's Lectures on Quantum Theory: Mathematical and Structural Foundations (reference here) reads: "The central issue in all this is really the phenomenon of quantum entanglement, and its striking contrast with the reductionist concepts of Western philosophy."

But how does this entanglement stuff exist? Read the opinion of Chris Isham above. Apart from that, he is indeed a charming person.
 

D. Chakalov
December 31, 2007
Last update: January 2, 2008

 

==============

Subject: Re: History as sequential conjunction
Date: Fri, 2 Mar 2007 01:56:46 +0200
From: Dimi Chakalov <[email protected]>
To: Isham, Christopher J <[email protected]>
Cc: Charis Anastopoulos <[email protected]>,
Savvidou, Konstantina <[email protected]>,
Smaragda Kessari <[email protected]>


Dear Chris,

I'm afraid you are applying what I call 'the Bulgarian/Russian logic': the
statement [X] is wrong, because it contradicts what was initially rejected
by it.

> The problem really *is* a mathematical one not physical.

I have initially rejected your statement that the crux of the matter were
math.

It is not math, Chris. You may think, hope, believe that it is math, but as I said many times *the ultimate test* of the alleged difference -- if any -- between your propositions of multi-valued truth assignment and the undecidable propositions can *only* be delivered with concrete physical examples and their proper examinations.

If I make some error, then you will move in and use your math. All of it --
your choice.

> If you like I can send you advance copies of the first three; the fourth
> one we are still tinkering with

I'm glad to learn that you haven't yet released your first three papers. Maybe you and Dr. Döring will take into account my arguments. But I cannot deliver them unless you first produce at least one concrete physical example that would induce propositions of multi-valued truth assignment.

Then I will try to *solve* your problem, and if I succeed, you and your
colleague will draw conclusions as to whether your theory is redundant or
not. Again, if I make some error, you will move in and use your math.

Please produce one concrete physical example that would induce propositions of multi-valued truth assignment. Thank you very much in advance.

> I have never said that you are a moron, not would I ever do so.

You did not say it explicitly. After what you actually said, there was no
need to add, in plain flat English, that I am a moron. That too would have
been redundant.

Let's not waste time anymore, okay? Please put your cards on the table. I
believe have identified an error in your neo-realist paper quant-ph/0508225 v1, from 30 August 2005, which I suppose you haven't fixed in your forthcoming four papers, and the result from this error will be that you have not resolved any of the problems acknowledged in your quant-ph/0508225 v1.

Let me try to show you where you went wrong. Just produce one concrete physical example that would induce propositions of multi-valued truth assignment.

Thank you very much in advance.

As ever,

Dimi

----- Original Message -----
From: Isham, Christopher J
To: Dimi Chakalov
Cc: Charis Anastopoulos ; Savvidou, Konstantina ; Smaragda Kessari
Sent: Thursday, March 01, 2007 23:38
Subject: RE: History as sequential conjunction


Dear Dimi

The problem really *is* a mathematical one not physical. Let me try to be
specific. The important thing in the applications I have in mind is the
*internal* logic of the topos, and in the cases we are talking about this is
not Boolean: which is a very good reason why it cannot be reduced in way you described in a previous email. The topos version of quantum theory is full of such propositions.

Whether or not this programme is ultimately useful remains to be seen. The goal of the research programme is, in fact, not to get a new picture of quantum theory but rather to construct a new set of tools for constructing theories of physics in general. Such theories would look very different from those constructed using set theory, and the conceptual interpretation that goes with them is different too. I am my collaborator are about to put onto the web a sequence of four papers that describe these ideas in far more detail. Certainly, the programme has gone well beyond the point reached in the paper of mine you have been reading. If you like I can send you advance copies of the first three; the fourth one we are still tinkering with

I have never said that you are a moron, not would I ever do so. But to
write meaningfully about topos ideas one does need to read the underlying
mathematics, and that takes a long time.

Kind regards

Chris

 

=============


Subject: Re: History as sequential conjunction
Date: Fri, 2 Mar 2007 13:06:31 +0200
From: Dimi Chakalov <[email protected]>
To: Isham, Christopher J <[email protected]>,
Charis Anastopoulos <[email protected]>,
Savvidou, Konstantina <[email protected]>,
Smaragda Kessari <[email protected]>


Dear Smaragda, Ntina, and Charis,

Sorry for including you in this email conversations. Chris has so far sent me seven email messages, from

Wed, 28 Feb 2007 13:46:45 -0000
Wed, 28 Feb 2007 18:37:26 -0000
Wed, 28 Feb 2007 23:07:29 -0000
Thu, 1 Mar 2007 07:57:49 -0000
Thu, 1 Mar 2007 13:35:24 -0000
Thu, 1 Mar 2007 21:38:36 -0000
Fri, 2 Mar 2007 06:25:55 -0000

Regrettably, none of these messages contains the concrete physical example I've been asking for. Sorry for wasting your time. If some day Chris decides to get professional and delivers this concrete physical example, I will comment on it at my web site, and will send you the link. That's all.

Now I will reply briefly to his last email from Fri, 2 Mar 2007 06:25:55 -0000.

> I am sorry, let me try again.

Chris, you don't even read my email, not to mention think on it. I have
repeatedly told you that I don't need to be educated on topos theory or set theory. I will not use any of them. Instead, I will try -- if you give a
chance some day -- to demonstrate that your topos ideas are REDUNDANT (=more than is needed, desired, or required; not needed).

> That is all I am saying, but it does not need any particular physical
> example to demonstrate because it is true for almost all of them.

Please get professional, for God's sake! I do NOT need your opinion. I need at least one concrete physical example to show you where and how you went wrong.

Capiche?

> So you have not identified an error in any of these papers.

Of course I have. And it is not for the first time that I found errors in
your papers -- I mean, serious errors. You are incredibly overconfident and
don't even read what I say, and when I repeat my argument in our private
talks, in your office, you say nothing. You just keep quiet. Take one
example: your statement in "Prima Facie Questions in Quantum Gravity",
gr-qc/9310031, p. 14:

"The background Newtonian time appears explicitly in the time-dependent
Schroedinger equation (3), ... "

You just can't go more wrong than that. I have explained why you are wrong, have given you links to my web site, where you can read the whole argument and a simple Gedankenexperiment that explains it, but you just keep quiet.

> Please cut out the polemic Dimi.

Do it then. Show me your 'somewhere-in-between' animal. Then I shall quote from 1935 Schrödinger's "Die gegenwärtige Situation in der Quantenmechanik" (I've sent you the link many times), and then will comment on your observation that "sigma has no elements but, nevertheless, this object has many sub-objects that can be interpreted as generalised propositions in the quantum theory",

http://www.fqxi.org/aw-isham2.html

If you have solved the task from 1935 with your "generalised propositions in the quantum theory", I will be deeply surprised. In case you have failed, as I expect from what you've written so far in the context of your topos
perspective, I will show that I can indeed solve this task known since 1935, hence your hypotheses are *redundant*: see above.

Unfortunately, you stubbornly refuse to get professional, and only deliver
statements not supported by any concrete physical examples whatsoever.

If you wish to reply, please do it professionally, and put your cards on the
table.

If you wish to ignore it -- fine. You can bring a horse to the water but you
cannot make him drink.

Take care,

Dimi


----- Original Message -----
From: "Isham, Christopher J" <[email protected]>
To: "Dimi Chakalov" <[email protected]>
Cc: "Charis Anastopoulos" <[email protected]>; "Savvidou,
Konstantina" <[email protected]>; "Smaragda Kessari"
<[email protected]>
Sent: Friday, March 02, 2007 08:25
Subject: RE: History as sequential conjunction


Dear Dimi

I am sorry, let me try again. Take almost any (interesting:-)) proposition
in quantum theory then, in our topos interpretation, it has a truth value
that belongs to a logic (a Heyting algebra) that is not Boolean. What this
means is that, in the *internal logic* of the topos it cannot be handled
just using logical structures drawn from the normal world of set theory.

Actually, one should distinguish between the logic of the propositions, and
the logic of possible truth values, since they are not the same. It is
perhaps easier, and less contentious, to talk about the former. In the case
of quantum theory, these propositions are represented by sub-objects of the 'spectral presheaf', and the logic which these satisfy, is not Boolean, and cannot be made so (indeed, that statement is one version of the
Kochen-Specher theorem) That is all I am saying, but it does not need any
particular physical example to demonstrate because it is true for almost all
of them. So you have not identified an error in any of these papers. Of
course there may well be things that are wrong, but it is not what you are
saying.

[Note: Perhaps Chris Isham wishes to imply that "there may well be things that are wrong" in his neo-realist paper, although their mathematical presentation could be correct. But there is no need to make errors in both the key idea and its math presentation -- the first error is enough. D.C.] 

But we seem to have drifted away from the starting point for this discussion which was your message to Smaragda about consistent histories and logic. In fact, it remains an interesting project to properly work out a topos version of the consistent histories formalism, and I think that perhaps this is where your great interest in time will be most satisfied.

Please cut out the polemic Dimi. You know perfectly well the reaction you
get from almost all of our colleagues when you send them emails like the
ones below. They either tell you to get lost, or they ignore you completely. Smaragda is perfectly correct when she says that I would not bother to reply to you the way I do if I thought you were a moron. So why not accept that at face value for once?

Kind regards

Chris


==========


From: Dimi Chakalov <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: History as sequential conjunction
Date: Fri, 2 Mar 2007 13:58:51 +0200
To: Isham, Christopher J <[email protected]>
Cc: Smaragda Kessari <[email protected]>,
Savvidou, Konstantina <[email protected]>,
Charis Anastopoulos <[email protected]>

Hi Chris,

> I did, in fact, answer your question, and professionally too, but you just
> don't get it.

No, you have not answered my question and arguments regarding your blatant error with "the background Newtonian time appears explicitly in the time-dependent Schroedinger equation". You have not said anything whatsoever. None. Zilch.

Please refresh your memory.

Again, if you wish to get professional, show me your 'somewhere-in-between' animal.

If not, please don't waste my time.

Dimi


 

Note: As of today, 2 March 2007, the content of the four paper by Chris Isham and Andreas Döring, which "will be hitting the web in the next few days" (see above), is completely unclear. Once they appear on ArXiv.org server, I will certainly study them, with great scrutiny. What is known so far is the following statement by C. Isham, regarding the scope of these papers:

"The key idea is to associate a formal language of a certain sort (a higher-order, typed language) with each physical system. One can then show that any theory of physics can be interpreted as finding a representation of this language in a topos. A lot of general issues can be discussed within this framework."

Let me write the introductory section of my forthcoming review. I shall be very brief, for a number of reasons, one of which is that nobody is sponsoring my efforts (as opposed to those by C. Isham and A. Döring; see above).

 


REVIEW

of four papers by C. Isham and A. Döring

 

1. Introduction

Recently, Chris Isham (Dean of Natural Sciences and Professor of Theoretical Physics at Imperial College, London) and Andreas Döring (Postdoctoral and Advanced Research Fellow at Dept of Physics, Faculty of Natural Sciences, Imperial College, London) have presented four research papers, entitled: [..........] .

Their intention is "to associate a formal language of a certain sort (a higher-order, typed language) with each physical system. One can then show that any theory of physics can be interpreted as finding a representation of this language in a topos. A lot of general issues can be discussed within this framework." (C. Isham, private communication)

Since we, and presumably the authors, are primarily interested in open question of quantum theory, let me begin with reminding the fundamental, and still unresolved (as we shall see later), challenge of quantum theory.

As stressed by Erwin Schrödinger in 1935:

"The rejection of realism has logical consequences. In general, a variable has no definite value before I measure it; then measuring it does not mean ascertaining the value that it has. But then what does it mean?"

Suppose we, and presumably the authors, wish to suggest some key ideas to reveal the unique nature of quantum realm, which is drastically different from 'the objective reality out there' from classical physics. What kind of 'quantum realism' can be derived from their four papers?

Specifically, what kind of "formal language" can be associated with quantum systems, and what sorts of "general issues" can be discussed within their topos framework?

What can we gain from their efforts, as compared to the current 'shut-up-and-calculate' interpretation of Quantum Mechanics?

Let me begin by examining one concrete physical example provided by C. Isham and A. Döring. In their paper "..........", they wrote:

" .......... [the example is still missing!] .......... "
 

[To be continued]

D. Chakalov
March 2, 2007



Update March 5, 2008: The four papers mentioned above didn't contain any concrete physical example.

The latest sequel dated 2 March 2008 (A. Doering, C. Isham, 'What is a Thing?': Topos Theory in the Foundations of Physics, arXiv:0803.0417v1 [quant-ph]) didn't offer any concrete example either, but it is worth providing some excerpts, which I will leave without comments. Just follow the links.
 

D. Chakalov
March 5, 2008
 

Andreas Döring and Chris Isham, arXiv:0803.0417v1 [quant-ph]:

p. 183: "Of particular interest is the problem with which we motivated the scheme in the first place: namely, to find tools for constructing theories that go beyond quantum theory and which do not use Hilbert spaces, path integrals, or any of the other familiar entities in which the continuum real and/or complex numbers play a fundamental role."

p. 172: "A translation can at best give a faithful picture of an arrow, but it cannot possibly ‘know’ about the more complicated contextual structure of the larger category. Clearly, both technical and interpretational work remain to be done."

p. 136, footnote 98: "The ideal monad has no windows."

p. 15: "Of course, as always these days, Google will speedily reveal all that we have omitted."

 


 



But of course. Perhaps many physicists would agree that quantum theory needs to be changed, if only they knew how to do it.
For example, in a letter dated 13 November 1935, John von Neumann wrote to George David Birkhoff: "I would like to make a confession which may seem immoral: I do not believe in Hilbert space anymore" (reference here).

This is the crux of the challenge: the Hilbert space has to be modified or perhaps even replaced by 'something else'.

Erwin Schrödinger has explained the task in 1935; read his famous quote from Die gegenwärtige Situation in der Quantenmechanik above.

In my opinion, we need to keep the quantum state as 'not possessing any definite, macroscopically describable state'.

Stated differently, we have to preserve and protect the quantum state -- before, during and after its measurement/observation -- from being entirely and irreversibly converted into some 'definite, macroscopically describable, state'. Which in turn means that we have to deal with two things -- the quantum state and its fleeting "projections". Which is why we need to modify the Hilbert space, or perhaps even  replace it by 'something else'. I opted for the latter.

To cut the long story short, I believe have suggested a new interpretation of QM, based on 'potential reality'. Instead of Hilbert space, I suggest a new kind of phase space, called 'quantum phase space', which is rooted on 'potential reality', and changes at each and every instant of 'correlated quantum reality'; please see a hint from the Bayes’ rule below and follow the links. In the context of the 'forest metaphor', we cannot directly observe the forest itself, but all trees have a common "forest core", because any tree is what it is due to the rest of the trees in the forest (relational ontology); and this "forest core" is exactly 'potential reality'.

If we decide to 'copy' its value in the quantum realm and 'paste' it into the world of tables and chairs, we will encounter the puzzle explained by Erwin Schrödinger in 1935. In my opinion, we can only resolve it with 'potential reality'.

We simply do not have any other option to explore. We need to keep the quantum state 'alive and kicking', as not possessing any definite (macroscopically describable) state before, during and after its measurement/observation. The human brain can do it (try it also here), and because the brain is a piece of matter, the quantum matter should do it as well (or maybe even better).

Hence the motto of the so-called PR2 interpretation of QM: Dead matter makes quantum jumps; the living-and-quantum matter is smarter. I've been trying to explain it to Chris Isham ever since our first meeting on 13 November 1998.

We are, in fact, dealing with three kinds of reality: physical reality, potential reality, and the ultimate reality of 'the monad without windows' or Aristotelian First Cause.

It doesn't matter if people insult me, either politely, like Chris Isham, or not (like some LSC members). It doesn't matter if people keep quiet and totally ignore what they've learned from this web site.

You just can't change Mother Nature.



D. Chakalov (a.k.a. "just another crank")
October 15, 2007
Last update: November 19, 2007


P.S. The last email from Professor Chris Isham reminded me of how the established academic scholars reacted to the hypothetical positron particle, suggested by their colleague Paul Dirac, Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge University from 1932 to 1969.

There was a joke circulating in the established theoretical physics community at that time (probably originating from Niels Bohr's colleagues in Copenhagen), about how to catch a live elephant: we know that elephants are very curious animals, so all we need is to place a billboard at their path walk, explaining the Dirac Sea. The elephant will read it and will be so astonished that will drop down unconscious, after which we can safely catch the elephant. Well, Paul Dirac "blinked" in his publication and choose to talk about neutrons instead of positrons. And his colleagues were very gentle on him.

Not so with Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann and their discovery dubbed cold fusion: they couldn't publish their experimental results in any high-ranked journal, and back in 1989 some established academic scholars even accused them in professional misconduct, until the undisputable evidence of the nuclear origin of cold fusion was demonstrated and published in Naturwissenschaften this year (reference here).

To finish this gentle reminder on the "predictive power" of the established theoretical physics community, let me quote from Popular Mechanics, March 1949:

"Where a calculator on the ENIAC is equipped with 18,000 vacuum tubes and weighs 30 tons, computers in the future may have only 1,000 tubes and perhaps only weigh 1 1/2 tons."

And also Robert Millikan, Nobel Prize in Physics (1923):

"There is no likelihood man can ever tap the power of the atom."

But how to identify and separate sound and perspective ideas from the babblings of the cranks? It is actually quite easy: cranks make errors which every professional physicist can pinpoint (example here). All you have to do is to avoid what I called, after my personal experience, 'the Bulgarian logic': "the statement [A] is wrong, because it contradicts what was initially rejected by it."

In the case under consideration, one concrete action would be to recall the basic basics of GR and immediately raise your voice against the Advanced LIGO and LISA, instead of keeping quiet, like the established theoretical physics community, Chris Isham included.

Another, and also very desirable, reaction to the issues discussed here would be to examine under great scrutiny the textbook version of QM, after Paul Dirac: "...a measurement always causes the system to jump into an eigenstate of the dynamical variable that is being measured...''. It definitely cannot even address the main challenge explained by Erwin Schrödinger in 1935, on which I tried to elaborate above. Therefore:

There are two alternatives: we should either (i) delete 'the quantum reality' with the "collapse" or (ii) keep it and delete the "collapse". The first was explored extensively since the inception of QM, but nobody has so far managed to reconcile QM with STR. The second option has been the scope of research of many brilliant physicists, most notably Henry Margenau. The proof of the pudding, however, is again the 'common denominator' for QM and STR. To underscore this crucial requirement, I dared to call my efforts 'Proper Relativistic interpretation of QM' & 'Potential Reality interpretation of QM', or PR2 interpretation of QM, despite being branded as "just another crank" by Chris Isham, Dean of Natural Sciences and Professor of Theoretical Physics at Imperial College, London.

I hope Chris Isham will never wind up in a situation in which he could rely on math only, without being able to test the physical "output" from his topos models with some physical example, because this may drag him into an endless math jungle, similar to that of his colleague A. Ashtekar. In both cases, Loop Quantum Gravity and the toposification of Quantum Theory, there is indeed 'an essential germ of truth', which in the latter case can be clearly shown with the following excerpt from C. Isham's quant-ph/0508225 v1, p. 16:

"This is no problem in the conventional formalism since, there, one never gets reduction to an eigenstate for which there is zero probability of finding the associated eigenvalue. Or, more precisely: such zero probability events are swept under the carpet as never happening."

This is 'the essential germ of truth': the potential reality itself is like a
"forest core" residing "inside" all trees (see above), hence it can never be exposed in the physical realm (cf. also John's jackets parable here). And because we must include the potential reality, the quantum dynamics is inherently non-unitary, despite the fact that the probability for observing the "forest core" is zero, and will always remain zero. Aristotle called it The Beginning and 'The First Cause'. If it were possible to be exposed in the physical realm, the First Cause would be subjected to the teleological time (cf. Stephen Leacock) of the local mode of spacetime, and will cease to be 'The First Cause'.

NB: We can reveal the "forest core" (potential reality) also in the primary object of geometry -- the point. The Holon in the global mode of spacetime is 'the universe as ONE', thanks to which it can "perform" an infinite (actual infinity) series of acts in one instant from the local mode of spacetime. Recall the Thompson's lamp paradox, and try to figure out what is the 'state of the lamp' at the limit '2 min': is it "on" or "off"? YAIN -- is the right answer, because the potential reality itself, residing "inside" the geometrical point, cannot be exposed in the physical world. The alternative option has far-reaching consequences, one of which is that there would be a fully scientific explanation of The Beginning, after which the whole theology would be annihilated, by being converted into science. Thank God, this is impossible.

All this is widely known, and if Chris Isham wishes to express it with topos theory, it should be agonizingly clear to him that he simply can't do it. Suffice it to say that in topos theory you can't separate the UNspeakable "forest core" (potential reality) from its normalizable explications in the local mode of spacetime constituting the quantum phase space. The latter is dynamical, while the former is being rooted on the ideal monad (see below). It looks to us like an 'empty set' from which everything evolves in a strictly non-unitary, creatio ex nihilo fashion: read John Wheeler here.

Can you express the "evolving" empty set of 'potential reality' in topos theory? Can you show the "darkness" of a room with a flashlight? Besides, every physical explanation is inevitably, by its very nature, teleological, hence it is impossible to describe a self-acting, ONE entity empowered by The First Cause. You should somehow insert a special "blank spot" into your theory, but you can't do it in topos theory. No way. Fuhgeddaboudit.

To be specific, here is just the first pitfall (A Topos Foundation for Theories of Physics, Paper I, p. 2): "Propositions about the system are handled using Boolean logic. This requirement is compelling in so far as we humans think in a Boolean way."

This requirement is certainly not "compelling". The calculations performed by computers are indeed based on Boolean logic, but we, humans, do not think exclusively in a Boolean way. Chris Isham should be fully aware of this faculty of the human brain, because I personally have explained to him the case of [YAIN], at least twice, in 2003 and in 2006. And since the brain can do it, the quantum matter should do it as well. Isn't this a simple argument?

Yet he choose to ignore it. And here's the result (Paper II, pp. 31-32): "This is clearly an area in which further research is necessary. In particular, we would like to know if there are any generic properties of a truth object as an element in (XXX). Or, to put it another way, is there an analogue for truth-objects of the superposition of states? This is a very important subject for future research." And also an endless math jungle, resembling A. Connes' one. Anyway.

On Sunday, 21 September 2008, I plan to talk on the nature of space and time, commemorating the talk by Herman Minkowski in Cologne. The title of the talk is 'The Arrow of Spacetime'.

In my just-another-crank opinion, Einstein's GR is essentially incomplete, because it provides only the necessary conditions for describing gravity, while the sufficient conditions should be delivered with the Aristotelian Connection.

I will now finish this monologue and wait for the reaction of the readers of these lines (Chris Isham excluded, since he will never reply).



D. Chakalov
October 16, 2007
Last update: November 5, 2007

 

================================

Subject: Update?
Date: Wed, 3 Oct 2007 01:50:37 +0300
From: Dimi Chakalov <[email protected]>
To: "Isham, Christopher J" <[email protected]>

Dear Chris,

I know you're terribly busy, but just in case you have some spare minute in the following three weeks, please see

http://www.god-does-not-play-dice.net/Trautman.html#proposal

An update of your opinion from Wed, 23 Oct 2002 19:24:15 +0100 will be appreciated.

As ever yours,

Dimi
--


Note: If you click the image above, you'll read Isham_Christopher.pdf, in which Gerard 't Hooft said: “Isham believes another mathematical language may help, but I don’t think so. It sounds a bit as if describing the world in German is better than in Chinese.”

I'm afraid Gerard 't Hooft is right about Chris Isham's efforts to change Quantum Theory. The task is known since 1935, and I don't believe topos theory is adequate to it.

But since I "do not know enough theoretical physics to help with any research in that area", I will wait patiently to learn the professional opinion of Chris Isham, backed with facts or at least some arguments.

As a second option, I asked Chris Isham to provide his professional opinion on the writings produced by his LSC colleagues: just follow the URL at the email above. If his LSC colleagues (490 distinguished GR scholars) are right, then I certainly "do not know enough theoretical physics to help with any research in that area".

Of course, it would be preferable (although perhaps more difficult) if he could defend his opinion on my knowledge in theoretical physics by refuting the claim of Gerard 't Hooft, which I endorse. I believe have clearly explained my objection to Chris Isham's optimism regarding topos theory at our last meeting in Imperial College on March 9, 2006: the quantum reality cannot be modeled with the logic of propositions in topos theory -- 'neither true nor false but somewhere in between'. The logic of quantum reality is entirely different, since the question of whether 'the quantum state' is presented by one of the (infinitely) many classically-describable alternatives, smeared into some quantum dough (example from Einstein here), yields one and the same answer: YAIN.

The truth value of 'YAIN' is an entirely different case, not covered in topos theory. It always emerges upon the development of specific observational context in which the latent observable acquires a definite "eigenstate", because we're dealing with an Onta, as stressed by Henry Margenau. Here's a simple illustration with the '20 questions game', courtesy from John Wheeler:

"There had been a plot not to agree on an object to be guessed, but that each person, when asked, must give a truthful answer concerning some real object that was in his mind, and which was consistent with all the answers that had gone before." With only one question left, John Wheeler guessed: "Is it a cloud?" The answer was "Yes!" (John and Marry Gribbin, In Search of Schrödinger's Cat, Black Swan, London, 1998, p. 209; quoted from: Quantum Theory and Measurement, ed. by J.A. Wheeler and W.H. Zurek, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1983, pp. 182-213).

The answer 'cloud' -- a latent "eigenstate" of the context-dependant potential reality, in case you prefer QM jargon -- did not "exist" before the first question asked by John Wheeler, nor until the 19th answer. It was rather "extracted" from the Onta during the ongoing specification on the context, in perfect agreement with Kochen-Specker and Conway-Kochen theorems. As a comparative example, we may think of 'the ongoing specification on the context' as resembling Bayes’ learning rule. Notice, however, that we're talking about quantum ontology (see also Xiaolei Zhang), and not about some "state of knowledge", as in Bayes’ learning rule, hence the latter can only serve as a useful hint. In our case, the 'learning rule' would have to model the ongoing update and specification of the latent "eigenstate" up to its final, and perfectly correlated, "eigenvalue": one-at-a-time.

Perhaps the best way to explain the nature of 'potential reality' is by comparing it to something entirely different, namely, to some "hidden" quantum object which would exist 'out there'.

Look at Claudia Schiffer below, and imagine that she is sitting in a dark room, but you can elucidate certain parts from her body with a narrow torch, resembling the eigenvalue-eigenstate link from your QM textbooks.


 

Suppose you wish to observe her knee. As a result from the preparation for such measurement, your torch would simply point to her knee, which you would imagine to be in some "eigenstate" prior to your observation. Then you turn on the torch for a fraction of a second, and obtain the knee-eigenvalue for this particular observation, with 50% chance for her left knee, and 50% chance for her right one. If you wish to observe her eyes (suppose eyes and knees are "complementary observables"), you could also claim that her knee-eigenstate did not exist before you set the corresponding measurement context, at the expense of being unable to observe her eyes, yet Claudia Schiffer were always sitting 'out there' in the dark room, so all you had to do was to orient your measuring device toward either her knee or eyes, to set the 'measurement context'.

Even if you denounce the view of 'hidden reality out there' (e.g., Bohmian mechanics) and subscribe to the textbook version of QM, you would still think of Claudia Schiffer as Wheeler's smoky dragon which possesses the ability to exist in a "murky state of possibility -- to be anywhere, everywhere or nowhere at all -- until clicked into substantiality by a laboratory detector or an eyeball." Hence you'd reckon she is some "context-dependant reality", meaning some sort of "weakened" version of the objective reality we know from classical physics, yet still exists as 'physical reality out there'.

Many people develop such twisted understanding of Kochen-Specker Theorem and QM in general, because they just cannot imagine that quantum reality may not at all exist as 'physical reality out there'. They are forced to choose between two alternatives: (i) Claudia Schiffer as some hidden objective reality or at least "context-dependant reality", or (ii) Claudia Schiffer emerging miraculously upon observation, like creatio ex nihilo. So, they choose the first alternative, as a "lesser evil", and stubbornly refuse to read and study Henry Margenau. And the prevailing interpretation of QM becomes 'shut up and calculate', based on the so-called 'classical notion of ignorance' (J. Hartle, arXiv:0801.0688v2, p. 11), because people can't even think of the case in which 'the quantum state' would freely fluctuate between non-settleable bets and settleable bets (ibid., p. 1 and Fig. 1).

With the PR2 interpretation of QM, we have a third option for 'the universe as closed system', free from math pathologies: any time we look at Claudia Schiffer, we do not see the potential reality of Claudia Schiffer, but only her fleeting snapshot cast in our local mode of spacetime. Hence we always are dealing with two things -- (i) the potential reality of 'the quantum state', and (ii) its fleeting "projections". The second can be fitted in the Hilbert space (not without difficulties), but the first stays always outside it: see the interference pattern with "negative" regions, in Wigner presentation, here.

I believe Mrs. Schiffer would grasp her Platonic idea effortlessly, even if she isn't versed in the math from our QM and GR textbooks. Again, the quantum state is an UNspeakable kind of reality, which cannot be completely reproduced with its fleeting, and undenumerable, "projections" (see above), as we know after Plato.

The professional physicists are fully familiar with these very old ideas, yet they again stubbornly ignore them. The result can be seen in the latest talk by John Baez, "Fundamental Physics: Where We Stand Today" (2 November 2007, James Madison University):

"Mystery 1. What is making the expansion of the universe accelerate?

"Maybe it’s the energy of empty space!"

"We need at least 5 times more cold dark matter than normal matter!

"Or perhaps something more radical! Maybe general relativity is wrong."

Anyway. Let's go back to the '20 questions game' above. What was the truthful answer in the beginning of the game? Was it 'cloud'? YAIN. Was it 'not-cloud'? YAIN.

Likewise, does the zero vacuum energy gravitate? To be specific, are Wheeler's "cloud" and the non-zero vacuum energy density Lorentz-invariant (cf. Gerald Marsh, arXiv:0711.0220v1 [gr-qc], Eq. 2)?

I think the answer is also 'definitely positively YAIN'.

This is the essence of 'potential reality': a holistic state of the whole universe (called for brevity Holon), kept in the putative global mode of spacetime. The only way we can observe this new (at least to Chris Isham), broader form of reality is by its explications in the local mode of spacetime (read a historical note from February 1987 here). The potential reality itself is inherently UNspeakable, because it is rooted on the ideal monad (a.k.a. [John 1:1]).

Thus, everything we can directly observe in the physical world is not 'potential reality' but its localized explications in the local mode of spacetime; it is a bit like trying to demonstrate the "dark" state of a room with a torch. We can only infer the existence of 'potential reality' by examining its "dark" effects cast on the physical world. And because such "dark", or rather holistic effects constitute up to 96 per cent from the localized physical word, in terms of 'dynamic dark energy of [X]' and 'cold dark "matter" [Y]', we cannot ignore anymore these very old ideas from Plato and Aristotle.

And because nowadays everybody agrees that we need new ideas to tackle the 'dynamic dark energy of X', I was hoping that Chris Isham would pay attention to such radical ideas, since at the time of publishing his influential 1993 article "Prima Facie Questions in Quantum Gravity" the "dark energy" problem was still not acknowledged by the established theoretical physics community, and was not even mentioned in it.

Five years ago, I had a naďve hope that might get a job under the roof of Chris Isham, but he just declared that I "do not know enough theoretical physics to help with any research in that area". It is still unclear to me how and why he arrived at this conclusion. The excerpt below might shed some light on this puzzle:

"Isham is lenient towards new-age bestsellers like Gary Zukav’s The Dancing Wu-Li Masters and, more recently, Lynne McTaggart’s The Field. “They do contain valuable truths,” he says, “albeit from different perspectives than science provides.”

This is an excerpt from a recent (September 28, 2007) profile of Chris Isham, provided by The Foundational Questions Institute, and entitled: “Topos Or Not Topos (download link here). Perhaps he considers Mrs. Lynne McTaggart far more proficient in theoretical physics. Or maybe he simply doesn't like to learn about scientific perspectives that could ruin his efforts to "toposificate" the Quantum Theory.

Regarding the implementation of topos theory, Chris Isham stated in his Technical Abstract: "A key intention is to use this new framework for formulating, and giving physical meaning to, theories of quantum cosmology."

But do we understand QM and the quantum vacuum, to begin speculating on quantum cosmology?
Due to the so-called low geometric entropy, we cannot even begin by "assuming a FRW form for the metric, even approximately", argues Brett McInnes. The argument is that nothing can preserve and protect the FRW form for the metric from the perpetual "smoothness" of matter along the deflation time, and at some instant the entropy will reach a critical low value, such that the very structure of spacetime, encoded in the FRW form for the metric, will be irreversibly destroyed.

Then nothing could possibly resurrect it, because in the cosmological theories published so far there is nothing left to 'hold onto' (recall that the Holon in the global mode of spacetime has always zero entropy).

Roger Penrose gently avoided this crucial issue in his lecture "Before the Big Bang?", from 7 November 2005: click the drawing below.
 


 


John Baez tried much harder, but produced 19 exclamation marks and 18 question marks (John Baez, Fundamental Physics: Where We Stand Today, 2 November 2007).

As to Chris Isham, he could only offer a brief enigmatic footnote:

"The ideal monad has no windows."

Join the club, Chris!
 


D. Chakalov (a.k.a. "just another crank")
October 9, 2007
Last update: January 7, 2008
--

We haven't the money, so we've got to think!
Lord Rutherford, 1962 Brunel Lecture, 14 February 1962



=============

Subject: Re: Update?
Date: Fri, 12 Oct 2007 15:52:37 +0300
From: Dimi Chakalov <[email protected]>
To: "Isham, Christopher J" <[email protected]>

Hello Chris,

On Fri, 12 Oct 2007 09:58:33 +0100, you wrote:

> It is still not clear to me what exactly you are asking.

Prove that you are not just a theoretical physicist but gentleman as well.

> However, I note from reading your link that you have resorted to your
> usual tactic of being offensive whenever you encounter someone, in this
> case myself, who does not automatically endorse your views on things.

I am deeply hurt by your insulting statement in your email from Wed, 23 Oct 2002 19:24:15 +0100, and was hoping that you will find some time in the past five years to defend it, hence prove that you are not just a theoretical physicist but gentleman as well.

Nobody is expecting from you to "automatically endorse" my critical opinion
on your approach to quantum theory. Please read the arguments at the link in my preceding email below, and act professionally. It's about time.

Besides, we need not be friends to discuss quantum gravity. I believe the
issue is of paramount importance, and may lead to a breakthrough with vast theoretical and technological applications, comparable to those from the discovery of the quantum of action by Max Planck. The stakes are very high, so I am ready to take the risk of losing your (very questionable, I'm afraid) friendship.

Please do not respond by email, but write a brief paper on quantum gravity
and elaborate *professionally* on the arguments provided at the link below. You may refer to them as 'D. Chakalov, private communications, 13 November 1998 -- 11 October 2007'.

Kindest regards,

Dimi

-----Original Message-----
From: Dimi Chakalov [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: 11 October 2007 15:19
To: Isham, Christopher J
Subject: Re: Update?

Dear Chris,

> Can you be more specific please?

Yup. See
http://www.god-does-not-play-dice.net/Professor_X.html#update

Best - Dimi

 

============

Subject: RE: Update?
Date: Fri, 12 Oct 2007 15:14:09 +0100
Message-ID:
<[email protected]>
From: "Isham, Christopher J" <[email protected]>
To: Dimi Chakalov <[email protected]>

[snip]
> unfortunately, your current mode of writing suggests to everyone that
> you are just another crank.
[snip]

---------

Final note: Professor Chris Isham is undoubtedly a brilliant theoretical physicist, so it shouldn't be difficult to him to (i) defend his "toposification" of Quantum Theory or (ii) defend his LSC colleagues, whichever he prefers.

However, the first choice would force him to acknowledge a crucial error in his 1993 landmark article on quantum gravity, "Prima Facie Questions in Quantum Gravity" (see above), then re-examine his current project funded by The Foundational Questions Institute, and ultimately decide whether he should topos or not topos” the Quantum Theory. And because he is indeed a brilliant theoretical physicist, it is agonizingly clear to him that he should either develop some brand new topos/whatever theory, to accommodate the logic of 'potential reality', or simply forget about his current efforts, get back to his 1993 article, and start from scratch. On top of everything, he should acknowledge the ideas and critical comments from some 'outsider', by elaborating on the arguments provided above and producing a brief report on the new prima facie questions of quantum gravity, as I asked him in my last email.

The second option is to speak up on the so-called GW astronomy and show the errors of his LSC colleagues, taking the risk of demolishing their dream and exposing their totally irresponsible wasting of taxpayers' money, some of which come from his home country and may have been approved by his British colleagues (PPARC funding is currently at a level of some Ł1.500.000 per annum).

Thus, he has to choose between (i) a little, but perhaps highly unpleasant, scandal, and (ii) a big, and certainly highly unpleasant, scandal.

However, there is a simple way out from this troublesome situation: recall the established, albeit unwritten, rule that the academic scholars do not respond to "cranks". All he needs is to stereotype me as "just another crank". Bingo!

But there is a problem: a gentleman would never do it, because it is just not fair. Regrettably, it turned out that this is not a problem for Chris Isham.


D.C.
October 12, 2007
--

An important scientific innovation rarely makes its way by gradually winning over and converting its opponents: it rarely happens that Saul becomes Paul. What does happen is that its opponents gradually die out and that the growing generation is familiarized with the idea from the beginning: another instance of the fact that the future lies with youth.

Max Planck

=============

Subject: RE: Update?
Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2008 20:28:12 +0000
From: Dimi Chakalov <[email protected]>
To: "Isham, Christopher J" <[email protected]>
Cc: Jeremy Nicholas Butterfield <[email protected]>

Dear Chris,

Ten years ago, on Friday, 13 November 1998, I had the privilege of meeting you in your Office at Imperial College.

I believe have learned a lot from you and Jeremy, and wish to thank you both for your beautiful papers.

As ever yours,

Dimi
----
Dimi Chakalov
35 Sutherland St
London SW1V 4JU


===============================
Subject: RE: Update?
Date: Fri, 12 Oct 2007 15:14:09 +0100
Message-ID:
<[email protected]>
From: "Isham, Christopher J" <[email protected]>
To: Dimi Chakalov <[email protected]>

[snip]
> unfortunately, your current mode of writing suggests to everyone that
> you are just another crank.
[snip]


 

=============

Subject: UK support for "GW astronomy"?
Date: Sat, 13 Oct 2007 17:49:30 +0300
From: Dimi Chakalov <[email protected]>
To: Keith Mason <[email protected]>
Cc: [email protected]

Dear Dr. Mason,

I'm afraid you are wasting time and money (some Ł1.500.000 per annum)
for catching GWs,
http://www.god-does-not-play-dice.net/Trautman.html#proposal

Perhaps Prof. Chris Isham would agree to elaborate. I asked him to do so,
but he utterly refused.
http://www.god-does-not-play-dice.net/Professor_X.html#crank

Kindest regards,

Dimi Chakalov


============

Subject: Three greatest weaknesses, arXiv:0710.1675v1 [gr-qc]
Date: Wed, 10 Oct 2007 04:17:00 +0300
From: Dimi Chakalov <[email protected]>
To: Rafael <[email protected]>
Cc: "Isham, Christopher J" <[email protected]>

Dear Rafael,

In your talk at PASCOS-07 (arXiv:0710.1675v1 [gr-qc]), you stated: "Before doing so, however I want to mention the two greatest weaknesses that the model had."

I think your model has a third weakness: it assumes that something, call it 'dynamic dark energy of X', produces time, and at the same time evolves in that same time (the so-called coincidence problem).

You also wrote: "But in a fundamentally discrete theory, recovery of the continuum *is* a problem, ... "

I believe have communicated to you a simple idea to resolve the problem right after the 60th birthday of Chris, remember? See

http://www.god-does-not-play-dice.net/Trautman.html#continuum

Will be happy to elaborate.

It's a pity I couldn't attend Chris' Festschrift nor PASCOS-07 -- three years have been wasted.

Take care,

Dimi

 

========================

Subject: Re: arXiv:0710.4297v1 [gr-qc]
Date: Wed, 24 Oct 2007 16:37:57 +0300
From: Dimi Chakalov <[email protected]>
To: Florian Beyer <[email protected]>

Hi Florian,

> since DDE was not the main issue of my work, the discussion of it in my
> thesis was not supposed to be complete. Sorry, if I missed something.

It is indeed a crucial issue, since the current treatment of DDE inevitably leads to logical mismatch, resembling the way Baron Munchausen dragged himself and his horse out of the mire. If you wish to resolve it, I think your whole Thesis will be enhanced dramatically.

Best - Dimi


========================
 

Subject: "Emergent Gravity" ŕ la Jack Sarfatti (gr-qc/0602022 v21)
Date: Sun, 21 Oct 2007 06:10:40 +0300
From: Dimi Chakalov <[email protected]>
To: Jack Sarfatti <[email protected]>

Jack:

Eleven years ago, you called me "an arrogant fool", and last year you added "crackpot", "crank" and "kook."

If you plan to update your gr-qc/0602022 v21, don't miss some simple ideas from Aristotle,

http://www.god-does-not-play-dice.net/Trautman.html

D.C.

On Mon, 27 Mar 2006 18:54:49 -0800, Message-Id:
<[email protected]>,
Jack Sarfatti wrote:


>> Ten years ago, you called me "an arrogant fool", remember?
>
> No. I have forgotten who you are completely.

[snip]

> Now, you really are a "crackpot", "crank" and "kook."


=================

Message-Id: <[email protected]>
From: Dean Rickles <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: The Ashgate Companion
Date: Wed, 5 Dec 2007 00:52:12 +1100
To: Dimi Chakalov <[email protected]>
Cc: [email protected],
Dean Rickles <[email protected]>
X-Mailer: Apple Mail (2.752.3)

Dimi,

You won't receive the kind of polite response Chris Isham gave from me: instead, I cordially invite you to get stuffed. Do some real work instead of writing all of these stupid, rude emails - and go learn some physics if you're genuinely interested in it!

Any further emails from you will be directed to the trash with a spam filter, so don't bother.


Yours unprofessionally,
Dean Rickles


On 04/12/2007, at 11:53 PM, Dimi Chakalov wrote:
>
> Hi David,
>
> In arXiv:0712.0149v1 [quant-ph], you wrote: "In practice we actually
> have a well-developed relativistic quantum theory: quantum field
> theory (QFT)."
>
> I'm afraid you are wrong. Try to derive the classical limit of QM from
> STR with the Gedankenexperiment at
>
> http://www.god-does-not-play-dice.net/Adler.html#Arbatsky
>
> More at
>
> http://www.god-does-not-play-dice.net/Trautman.html#Zeh_note
>
> http://www.god-does-not-play-dice.net/Professor_X.html#Bayes
>
> I wonder if you'd respond professionally or keep quiet, as usual. If
> you choose the former, you may be able to shrink your paper to three,
> max. five pages. I will be happy to help you save some paper and make
> The Ashgate Companion more readable.
>
> Dimi

-----------

Note: My initial email printed above was to David Wallace (Dean Rickles' email was in the CC: list), regarding his contribution to Ashgate Companion to the New Philosophy of Physics, edited by his colleague Dean Rickles. As of today (December 5, 2007), the Companion is still not listed as forthcoming publication at Ashgate.com.

The 85-page manuscript of David Wallace, dated July 2007, was posted as arXiv:0712.0149v1 [quant-ph]. As stated in the abstract, it is "a preliminary version of an article to appear in the forthcoming Ashgate Companion to the New Philosophy of Physics." Further, David Wallace wrote: "I don't advocate any particular approach to the measurement problem (not here, at any rate!) but I do focus on the importance of decoherence theory to modern attempts to solve the measurement problem, and I am fairly sharply critical of some aspects of the "traditional" formulation."

David Wallace was indeed very frank and critical of some aspects of the traditional formulation, but failed to acknowledge that the "decoherence theory" may be promoted from wishful thinking to sound physical theory only by proving that (i) the alleged particle's path in
Wilson cloud chamber (after Nevill Mott's paper from 1929) consists of "points" of "very rapid decoherence", and (ii) there is some real object (unknown to the author of these lines) that connects these points into a continual trajectory of "decohered histories" with particular duration that matches the lifetime of the "decohered" particle, as recorded with the wristwatch of the observer. I wouldn't like to comment on the first requirement (perhaps Wojciech Zurek would like to elaborate), but the second one boils down to the task of mapping the intrinsic time of quantum particles (follow the links above) to the time variable used in STR, which Erwin Schrödinger found insurmountable.

Thus, the "decoherence theory" and all the other "traditional" efforts are for the birds: the conflict between QM and STR is not resolved. It is a bit like converting oranges (quantum objects) into apples (classical objects), and back to oranges -- see my email to José Isidro below. Firstly, the oranges do not evolve into apples by unitary transformations, and secondly -- apples fully comply with STR, while those poor oranges that are converted into "quasi-classical" apples don't. See Bub & Pitowsky below.

If David Wallace or anyone else can shed light on this puzzle know since 1931, a new path toward quantum gravity may be established, and perhaps we all will take the advise from Gell-Mann & Hartle that "quantum mechanics is best and most fundamentally understood in the framework of quantum cosmology".

To elucidate this situation, David Wallace would only have to examine the Gedankenexperiment suggested at the first link from my email above, and then he would arrive at the research done by Kevin Brown. I believe all this can be comfortably spanned over five, instead of eighty-five, pages. No problem. (Since I'm not "stuffed", I'd probably need ten pages.)

Finally, David Wallace stated (p. 73): "At present we know of at most one realist (and classical-logic) solution to the measurement problem: the Everett interpretation." However, there is no explanation in Sec. 4.6 of the alleged "probabilities" in Everett interpretation (e.g., Huw Price and Hilary Greaves), and although D. Wallace mentioned a well-known paper by Hemmo & Pitowsky ("not only Born’s rule but any probability rule is meaningless"), their arguments are kept under the rug. Most importantly, there are no references to the seminal papers by Nevill Mott and Erwin Schrödinger in arXiv:0712.0149v1 [quant-ph].

I personally found these omissions inexplicable.


D. Chakalov
December 5, 2007
Last update: December 6, 2007


=====================


From: Dimi Chakalov <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: The Ashgate Companion
Date: Tue, 4 Dec 2007 17:40:11 +0200
To: [email protected]
Cc: Dean Rickles <[email protected]>

P.S. I did send two email messages to Dean, very polite indeed, requesting his latest masterpiece, so that I can comment on his insights. Never heard from him. I regret that your younger colleague choose to behave like an insulted virgin and didn't accept the challenge. I do believe you can do better.

D.C.

 

=================


Subject: The proof of the pudding
Date: Fri, 28 Dec 2007 04:24:30 +0200
From: Dimi Chakalov <[email protected]>
To: Jeffrey Bub <[email protected]>, Itamar Pitowsky <[email protected]>


RE: J. Bub and I. Pitowsky, Two dogmas about quantum mechanics, arXiv:0712.4258v1 [quant-ph]


Dear Jeff and Itamar,

You stressed (p. 18) that "... no particular atomic correlational event is selected as the 'state' in a sense analogous to the classical state ...", but how would you reconcile QM with STR? A simple Gedankenexperiment clarifying the classical limit of QM derived from STR is waiting for you at

http://www.god-does-not-play-dice.net/Adler.html#Arbatsky

More at

http://www.god-does-not-play-dice.net/Professor_X.html#Bayes

Good luck with your pudding.

Dimi

-----

Note: J. Bub and I. Pitowsky mentioned an excellent question posed by Allen Stairs (0712.4258v1, p. 17): "What do tigers supervene on?" A careful examination of this question will undoubtedly end up with the transition from quantum to classical regime (cf. José Isidro below), and since STR is undoubtedly valid for the latter, I suggested to derive the classical limit of QM with the help from STR. Not only Bub and Pitowski have ignored all my email sent in the past four years, but Jeffrey Bub has ignored a crucial observation made by Erwin Schrödinger about the probabilities used in QM. In a letter to Einstein dated 18 November 1950, Schrödinger wrote:

“It seems to me that the concept of probability is terribly mishandled these days. Probability surely has as its substance a statement as to whether something is or is not the case — an uncertain statement, to be sure. But nevertheless it has meaning only if one is indeed convinced that the something in question quite definitely is or is not the case. A probabilistic assertion presupposes the full reality of its subject.”

Jeffrey Bub quoted this excerpt from Schrödinger's letter in his reflections on QM (Interpreting the Quantum World, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1997, p. 115), but perhaps hasn't had time in the past ten years to think carefully on the orange <--> apple conversion (see above). QM says nothing on "how events unfold in a measurement process" (0712.4258v1, p. 3). It is manifestly pointless to search for some clue within the present-day formulation of QM on "how events unfold in a measurement process", because in the quantum realm there are no 'events' nor 'probabilities'. And the "measurement" isn't a 'process' either.

No path whatsoever can connect Hilbert space with Minkowski spacetime. Read Schrödinger.

D.C.
December 28, 2007

 
=================

Subject: Classical apples <--> quantum oranges
Date: Mon, 28 Jan 2008 15:19:02 +0200
From: Dimi Chakalov <[email protected]>
To: Aleck <[email protected]>

Dear Alex,

Thank you for your detailed reply.

> When the resolution is "poor", that is the ratio of the physical
> resolution and the De Broglie length is very large, we do not
> see the small details, and the path of the particle has a dimension
> 1. The information about the fine details has been lost, dissipated.

What I understand is this: when the resolution gradually increases or "gets better", we would enter the quantum realm of "oranges", and the rules of
"classical apples" will not hold anymore.

If my understanding is correct, can you (i) formulate 'the quantum state of
oranges' that would be independent from ANY context whatsoever (KS Theorem) set by the classical apples, and (ii) suggest the rules and the dynamics of partitioning 'the quantum state of oranges' into 'potential quantum observables' that would pertain to a given observational context set by the classical apples?

For if I understand QM correctly,
http://www.god-does-not-play-dice.net/Professor_X.html#Bayes

the freedom of quantum oranges to become 'quantum observables' *under
particular context* is related to the imaginary phase of their "wave".
Otherwise all observables will be commuting, and we would be dealing with, say, some stochastic mechanics of hidden-by-poor-resolution quantum oranges. The latter would exist 'out there' and wait patiently for some relevant observational context to show up (cf. Wheeler's smoky dragon at the link above). If that is the case, there will be no need to introduce 'potential reality' and its new ontology presented with REVERSIBLE 'being <--> becoming':

[quantum being] <--> [becoming context-dependant observables]

I wonder if you would elaborate on these issues in arXiv:0801.3311 v3
[quant-ph].

Best wishes,

Dimi
----

Note: It seems to me that [becoming context-dependant observables] can be fitted into the Hilbert space (not without difficulties), but the [quantum being] itself lives always "outside" it. Also, the [quantum being] is (i) not directly observable, and (ii) evolves in a non-unitary fashion during the universal time arrow, being rooted on its source, the ideal monad. The latter is 'alive and well', but has no "windows" or 'context-dependant observables', meaning its/His [phi] = 0 .

Who says I don't use math?

D.C., a.k.a. "just another crank"
January 28, 2008


=================

Subject: arXiv:0710.3544v1 [math-ph]
Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2007 04:13:17 +0300
From: Dimi Chakalov <[email protected]>
To: <[email protected]>

RE: Under what conditions is it possible to transform any given
quantum-mechanical state into the *classical* regime, and bring it back into its quantum-mechanical state?

Dear Dr. Isidro,

If the question above is of interest to you, perhaps you may wish to see

http://www.god-does-not-play-dice.net/Trautman.html#Zeh_note

Regards,

Dimi Chakalov


===================


Subject: arXiv:0804.0169v1 [gr-qc] 1 Apr 2008
Date: Fri, 4 Apr 2008 17:11:03 +0300
From: Dimi Chakalov <[email protected]>
To: Jose M Isidro <[email protected]>
Cc: [email protected], [email protected]


Jose M. Isidro et al., 1 Apr 2008: "Real time, denoted T , is the physical variable measured by a real clock; it is to T that the quantum of time applies. (...) J.M.I. thanks Max-Planck-Institut für Gravitationsphysik, Albert-Einstein-Institut (Potsdam, Germany) for hospitality extended over a long period of (real!) time."
 

Hi Jose,

I like your contribution to April 1st. But just in case you were (to some extent) serious, I think you might learn something about the "real" time only if you solve its puzzle at

http://www.god-does-not-play-dice.net/Professor_X.html#Isidro

http://www.god-does-not-play-dice.net/Petkov.html#ADM

Take care,

D.
 

=================

Subject: Waiting for Godot
Date: Fri, 2 Nov 2007 17:10:27 +0200
From: Dimi Chakalov <[email protected]>
To: Ying-Qiu Gu <[email protected]>
Cc: Xiao Zhang <[email protected]>

Dear Dr. Gu,

Thank you for your kind reply from Fri, 02 Nov 2007 22:14:14 +0800.

> I have a look on your big problems.

These are *our common* problems, as long as we use diff geometry,

http://www.god-does-not-play-dice.net/Trautman.html#pedestrians

> Why should we ask its origin? Why not ask similar questions for $G$
> and $e$?

Because, unlike the cosmological constant, $G$ and $e$ do not produce
*logical* contradictions in cosmology,

http://www.god-does-not-play-dice.net/Professor_X.html#Munchausen

> As for the gravitational wave, I think its existence seems not a problem,
> the true problem is how to understand it.

Here I fully agree.

> My opinion is that, (1) The gravity is naturally weak, and the spacetime
> is rigid.

... and you need to separate the metric filed into two parts: an UNdisturbed referential background from the *same* metric filed, with respect to which you should detect the "ripples" of the disturbed part of the *same* metric filed. Again, that simply does not make sense,

http://www.god-does-not-play-dice.net/Trautman.html#proposal

> (2) The gravitational wave seems to be undetectable in usual sense,
> because the observer, instruments and even light rays comove with it.

Of course! Prof. Angelo Loinger has produced a rigorous proof of this fact. See also the article by Hermann Weyl from 1944.

> (3) The energy of the gravity can not be understand as that of common
> matter fields such as photons, we can not adequately define it and find
> out its conservation law. Whether it exists or not is really a problem,
> and it has not any practical influences on theoretical research.

It is really a problem for those who wish to *measure* it -- 490 theoretical physicists from LIGO Scientific Collaboration are chasing it with the LIGO "detector" that cannot detect any *quasi-local* gravitational energy contribution in the first place! All this insane effort looks like Samuel Beckett's "Waiting for Godot", only cost BILLIONS.

I wonder what would be the opinion of Prof. Xiao Zhang.

Best regards,

Dimi Chakalov

> ----- 原始邮件 -----
> 发件人: Dimi Chakalov <[email protected]>
> 日期: 2007年 11月 2日, 星期五, 上午1:43
> 主题: arXiv:0710.5792v1 [physics.gen-ph]
> 收件人: Ying-Qiu Gu <[email protected]>
> 抄送: Xiao Zhang <[email protected]>
>
>
> > Dear Dr. Gu,
> >
> > You wrote: "A good choice for the coordinate system of the spacetime
> > manifold is much helpful to solve the solution of the Einstein's
> > equation."
> >
> > How about a good choice for the spacetime manifold itself? Please see
> >
> > http://www.god-does-not-play-dice.net/Trautman.html#pedestrians
> >
> > I have great respect for physicists from your country, and hope you
> > can solve the 2060-year old puzzle at the link above.
> >
> > Regards,
> >
> > Dimi Chakalov


===============

Subject: Future dark energy research, astro-ph/0609591 v1
Date: Fri, 2 Nov 2007 05:16:25 +0200
From: Dimi Chakalov <[email protected]>
To: Edward W Kolb <[email protected]>
Cc: [email protected], [email protected], [email protected],
[email protected], [email protected],
[email protected], [email protected],
[email protected]

Dear Rocky,

I hope my email messages sent since 8 April 2001 have been safely received.

I'm afraid there is a logical mismatch in the theories of DDE,
http://www.god-does-not-play-dice.net/Professor_X.html#Munchausen

A possible resolution is outlined at
http://www.god-does-not-play-dice.net/Trautman.html#pedestrians

Should you and/or your colleagues have questions, please don't hesitate.

Regards,

Dimi


============

Subject: An old puzzle from Lucretius and Weyl
Date: Thu, 1 Nov 2007 20:51:08 +0200
From: Dimi Chakalov <[email protected]>
To: [email protected], [email protected], [email protected],
[email protected], [email protected], [email protected],
[email protected]


http://www.god-does-not-play-dice.net/Trautman.html#pedestrians

Professional comments will be highly appreciated.

Dimi Chakalov
--

Note: Recall Karel V. Kuchar, Canonical quantum gravity, gr-qc/9304012 v1, 8 April 1993:

"... because perennials are constants of motion, it does not matter when they are observed. (...) This does not make me too happy either. If all time [tau] is eternally present, all time is irredeemable."

In my just-another-crank opinion, the time [tau] is indeed eternally present, only it pertains to the potential reality "outside the train". Besides, we need not be virgins to capture it. Just follow the links.

Some forty years ago, James Anderson suggested to define operationally ‘general covariance’ as absence of what he called ‘absolute structures’ (James L. Anderson, Principles of Relativity Physics, Academic Press, New York, 1967). The idea seems straightforward (D. Giulini, gr-qc/0603087 v1): "An agent which dynamically acts but is not acted upon may well be called ‘absolute’ -- in generalization of Newton’s absolute space. Such an absolute agent should be eliminated." And it is indeed eliminated in the local mode of spacetime ("inside" the train), being placed in the Holon (global mode of spacetime) as 'potential reality': it will not feel any backaction whatsoever upon acting on the local mode of spacetime, because the "recoil" from the local mode of spacetime will only add one more potential state to the Holon, hence will only enrich its "memory". It is like adding one more point to the those from a finite volume of space. In other words, the non-Archimedean 'potential reality' can happily absorb any number of backactions from the local mode of spacetime, without being "pushed" back: the Aristotelian First Cause does not obey Newton's laws of motion. (In case some people are horrified by this last statement, I suggest them to ponder on the "dynamic dark energy", as explained here and here.)

As stated above, I plan to talk on the nature of space and time in Munich on Sunday, 21 September 2008, commemorating the talk by Herman Minkowski in Cologne on 21 September 1908. The title of my talk is 'The Arrow of Spacetime'. I shall elaborate on the puzzle from Lucretius and Weyl and the "engine" of the universal arrow of time, after which will propose a 'scale relativity principle' pertaining to the nature of 3-D space. Namely, I will argue that that physical objects are indeed "large" and "small", but only with respect to the macroscopic scale of tables and chairs. Once a physical object increases its size toward 'the Large', the metric of space in 'the Large' will be altered accordingly, in such a way that a table with length two meters, stretched to the size of a galaxy, will be again "two meters" in its scale-dependent presentation in 'the Large'. The inverse alteration of the metric of space holds for the dimensions of bodies in the direction toward 'the Small' -- there are no "genuine" nor absolute dimensions of physical bodies, according to this so-called scale relativity principle. If we could somehow follow the two-meter table, as it runs towards the Planck scale, it will always remain to us, as "co-moving" observers, a table of length two meters, although now it will look to an observer at the macroscopic scale like a microscopic object with size of an elementary particle, which is inside a macroscopic 3-D sphere. Likewise, if the same two-meter table would be stretched, say, to the size of a galaxy cluster, it will be again a two-meter table to its "co-moving" observers, but now the macroscopic observer will see it as being outside the surface of the same macroscopic 3-D sphere (cf. the cage surface; more here). This is because the spatial relations of 3-D space, such as inside/outside, or small/large, are strictly valid only at the macroscopic scale. The latter stands as 'the beginning' of both the quantum world and the world of 'the Large' dominated by the "dark effects" of gravity, such as cold dark matter and dark energy. Stated differently, when we observe or measure some large/small object, relative to our macroscopic length scale at the local mode of spacetime, we imply an "axis" orthogonal to the surface of our macroscopic 3-D sphere, which is needed to produce the 3-D space itself. This new "axis" is fused with the "axis" of time, hence the fundamental asymmetry of time is due to the irredeemable faculties of 3-D space (large/small, inside/outside, and left/right): we are dealing with one object, called spacetime.

The underlying idea is again a very old one, and can be expressed as 'the mutual penetration and conflation of the Large and the Small', which I reserve for the Holon state of the whole universe (global mode of spacetime). If we imagine looking at the whole universe en bloc from the global mode of spacetime, perhaps we could observe the dimensions of physical bodies from the perspective of a preferred observer, namely, "along" the putative axis of simultaneous "space inversion". Then perhaps we would see that a table with length 2 m in the macro-world (the length scale of tables and chairs) has been "spanned" over a region of 3-D space in micro- and mega-scale, in such way that the same table now covers simultaneously an elementary particle and a galaxy cluster in the local mode of spacetime, yet the table will always keep its length of "two meters" to such preferred observer in the global mode of spacetime. Hence an UFO can take the whole travel of "two meters" just by being partly in the local mode of spacetime, and partly in the global one (recall also the demo of D.D. Home from 16 December 1868).

Notice that the Holon, if interpreted (wrongly) as 'physical stuff', would show up in GR and QFT as "negative mass", while it is interpreted here as 'potential reality'. Clearly, a lot of work is needed to include all types of mass into GR and verify the hypothesis above.

To sum up, all this is (i) based on the proposition that the "number" of points in an arbitrary but finite 3-D sphere is a "constant" denoted with [phi], and (ii) refers to the emergence of 3-D space in quantum gravity, as well as to the hypothetical ability of the human brain to design modified timelike geodesics resembling, but not limited to, those of UFOs. Notice also that my intention is not to explain the origin of inertia, but only to suggest some Machian-like ideas, ensuing from the proposition that everything we observe locally has already (retarded causality) been influenced by 'the rest of the universe': think globally, act locally. For if we model the universe as a brain, perhaps we can get a glimpse at 'His thoughts', without invoking any "fine tuning" or "anthropic" miracles.

The talk on 21 September 2008 (in plain broken English) will (hopefully) suit the general audience, and no math will be used. Sorry, but the math is still to be discovered. As Albert Einstein acknowledged:

"In the first place, we entirely shun the vague word "space," of which, we must honestly acknowledge, we cannot form the slightest conception."
 

D.C.
November 2, 2007
Last update: November 22, 2007

 

===================

Subject: Third International Conference on the Nature and Ontology of Spacetime
Message-ID:
<[email protected]>
Date: Thu, 7 Feb 2008 01:15:23 +0200
From: Dimi Chakalov <[email protected]>
To: Peter Minkowski <[email protected]>,
William G Unruh <[email protected]>,
John D Norton <[email protected]>,
Robert Geroch <[email protected]>

Dear colleagues,

Regrettably, I won't be able to attend the conference, and to benefit from your professional criticism. The basic ideas of my intended contribution are outlined at

http://www.god-does-not-play-dice.net/Petkov.html#ADM

I wonder if you could find some spare time for my efforts.

Sincerely yours,

Dimi Chakalov


===================

Subject: Does the ćther exist ]between[ the points of the underlying manifold?
Date: Thu, 8 Nov 2007 14:29:37 +0200
From: Dimi Chakalov <[email protected]>
To: [snip]

Dear colleagues,

Sorry for my bulk email.

I will highly appreciate your opinion on the ideas suggested at

http://www.god-does-not-play-dice.net/Professor_X.html#is

http://www.god-does-not-play-dice.net/Trautman.html#continuum

http://www.god-does-not-play-dice.net/Trautman.html#center

http://www.god-does-not-play-dice.net/Trautman.html#pedestrians

Regards,

Dimi


=====================

Subject: The "neguentropique"
Date: Thu, 8 Nov 2007 16:43:25 +0200
From: Dimi Chakalov <[email protected]>
To: Jeanne MALLET <[email protected]>

Dear Jeanne,

Thank you for your interest in my efforts. Please see

http://www.god-does-not-play-dice.net/Azbel.html#self

and try the following experiment with your own brain:

Imagine a cube made of white plastic material with a 3 cm rib, painted blue, which is cut into 27 little cubes with a 1 cm rib. How many little cubes will have three blue sides, how many will have two, one or none?

We have two things to consider: the rotating cube, and the rotator. The latter has the peculiar faculty of 'self-acting' (much like matter fields, coupled by gravity, become 'self-acting'), and is completely outside thermodynamics, being a genuine "negentropic" entity. But it is *not* some mental stuff, like mind or consciousness,

http://www.god-does-not-play-dice.net/Rosinger.html

If you have questions, please write me back.

Best wishes,

Dimi


============================

Subject: Changing TPS, arXiv:0711.3048v1 [gr-qc]
Date: Mon, 26 Nov 2007 16:25:57 +0200
From: Dimi Chakalov <[email protected]>
To: Federico Piazza <[email protected]>
Cc: [snip]

Dear Dr. Piazza,

I like the first two paragraphs from your paper. You also said that "it is possible to assign a tensor product structure (TPS) to a system by specifying a set of accessible observables", so maybe you'd be interested to see an old metaphor from Wheeler,

http://www.god-does-not-play-dice.net/Professor_X.html#Bayes

I personally don't believe that 'accessible observables' would necessarily form a *set*; you can see 4 "elements" that don't form a set at

http://www.god-does-not-play-dice.net/Brown.html#brain

I will appreciate your comments.

Regards,

Dimi Chakalov

 

=================

Subject: Just a gentle suggestion, in plain flat English
Date: Thu, 29 Nov 2007 02:32:24 +0200
From: Dimi Chakalov <[email protected]>
To: [email protected]

Steve:

I you wish to learn something new about GR and its "dark energy", check out

http://www.god-does-not-play-dice.net/Professor_X.html#Kalina

http://www.god-does-not-play-dice.net/Professor_X.html#Bayes

http://www.god-does-not-play-dice.net/Trautman.html#Zeh_note

Alternatively, if you prefer to keep ignoring all the information from me sent by email in the past four years, don't bother to read and study the text at the links above. Perhaps the worst thing that can happen to a really smart physicist like you is to get hit by a Nobel Prize.

Dimi
-----
 

Note: Steven Weinberg lives in his own "multiverse" and is dedicated to "anthropic reasoning" (clearly an oxymoron). The brainwashing effect from such religious beliefs is demonstrated in [Ref. 1].

Well, we live in a free world, and everybody is entitled to some nice and cozy fantasy world, sometimes even supported by The Office of Naval Research of US Navy [Ref. 1], but Prof. Weinberg had the guts to claim that Einstein had made a "mistake" [Ref. 2], and even tried to mislead people about Einstein's legacy.

That's too much, so I have no choice but to get really frank.

Recall the objection of Einstein to present-day QM here; it is from 1950s [Ref. 3].

Nobel Prize Laureate Steven Weinberg cannot resolve it. All he could do was to use some slippery poetic expressions, such as "considerable progress" [Ref. 2]. But because nobody has solved the puzzle known since 1935, there is no way to evaluate the ongoing (and pretty chaotic) efforts "toward the resolution of the problem". You don't hear baseball players saying 'we believe have made considerable progress toward an eventual home run'. It's just not professional.

Worst of all, Steven Weinberg tried to mislead the readers of Physics Today that Einstein were against the probabilistic rules of QM.

Einstein was not against the probabilistic rules of QM. Einstein was not terribly stupid, as Steven Weinberg implied in his article [Ref. 2].

Einstein was against the replacement of 'physical reality' with the Born rule. But Steven Weinberg is comfortable with it, and teaches his students in 'shut up and calculate' QM. And ignores everything at this web site.

The worst thing that can happen to a really smart physicist is to get hit by a Nobel Prize. Some people can never recover.


D. Chakalov
November 29, 2007
Last update: November 30, 2007


[Ref. 1] S. Weinberg, Living in the Multiverse, arXiv:hep-th/0511037v1

S. Weinberg: "... Martin Rees said that he was sufficiently confident about the multiverse to bet his dog’s life on it, while Andrei Linde said he would bet his own life. As for me, I have just enough confidence about the multiverse to bet the lives of both Andrei Linde and Martin Rees’s dog.
...

"This material is based upon work supported by (...) , and also grant support from the US Navy, Office of Naval Research, Grant Nos. N00014-03-1-0639 and N00014-04-1-0336, Quantum Optics Initiative."


[Ref. 2] Einstein's Mistakes, by Steven Weinberg. Physics Today, November 2005, pp. 31-35
http://www.physicstoday.org/vol-58/iss-11/p31.html

Steven Weinberg: "Einstein rejected the notion that the laws of physics could deal with probabilities, famously decreeing that God does not play dice with the cosmos. But history gave its verdict against Einstein -- quantum mechanics went on from success to success, leaving Einstein on the sidelines.
...

"So where do the probabilistic rules of the Copenhagen interpretation come from?

"Considerable progress has been made in recent years toward the resolution of the problem, which I cannot go into here."


[Ref. 3] Christian de Ronde, Interpreting the Quantum Wave Function in Terms of 'Interacting Faculties', arXiv:0711.4738v1 [quant-ph]; see Sec. 2.2 and p. 24 (ontological potentiality)


====================

Subject: arXiv:0805.3781v1 [hep-th]
Date: Tue, 27 May 2008 04:46:46 +0300
From: Dimi Chakalov <[email protected]>
To: [email protected]

Steven:

In Sec. III, Application to Inflation, you wrote:

"To illustrate the use of the tree theorem of Section II in cosmology, we will consider a simple semi-realistic model, in which a single scalar field evolves in an unperturbed Robertson-Walker metric [xx] of zero spatial curvature."

I think you are 'not even wrong' with that "single scalar field".

If you use the Internet, check out

http://www.god-does-not-play-dice.net/Petkov.html#ADM

http://www.god-does-not-play-dice.net/Szabados.html#Hilbert

Many of the ideas at the links above are from the time when you weren't born, and are widely known. It makes no sense to ignore them.

Take care,

Dimi

 

====================

Subject: To be or not to be local: An update
Date: Mon, 10 Dec 2007 18:43:16 +0200
From: Dimi Chakalov <[email protected]>
To: Alain Aspect <[email protected]>
Cc: [email protected], [email protected], [email protected]

RE: Alain Aspect, To be or not to be local, Nature 446 (19 April 2007)
866-867
http://npg.nature.com/nature/journal/v446/n7138/full/446866a.html

Alain Aspect: "It is then natural to raise the question of whether one
should drop locality — which equates to the impossibility of any
influence travelling faster than light — or rather drop the notion of
physical reality."


Dear Dr. Aspect,

Eighty years have passed since the Fifth Solvay Conference, yet you are still framing the tantalizing question in the subject line in the framework of our knowledge from 1927.

For an update, may I suggest you to check out

http://www.god-does-not-play-dice.net/Professor_X.html#Bayes

http://www.god-does-not-play-dice.net/Trautman.html#Zeh_note

http://www.god-does-not-play-dice.net/Professor_X.html#Kalina

Kindest regards,

Dimi Chakalov

 

===================

Subject: arXiv:0711.1976v1 [physics.gen-ph]
Date: Fri, 16 Nov 2007 14:52:45 +0200
From: Dimi Chakalov <[email protected]>
To: Knud Thomsen <[email protected]>
Cc: José del R Millán <[email protected]>,
Martin Jermann <[email protected]>


Dear Dr. Thomsen,

I read your latest paper with great interest. It seems to me that the binding process clearly suggests that the physics of the brain is far from being understood, at least in the framework of current quantum theory.

I wonder if you or some of your colleagues would be interested in experimental research. The theoretical framework is outlined at my web site; the predicted effect may be dubbed Brain-Controlled Cold Plasma (BCCP). If confirmed, one could expect a wide range of possible applications, from nanotechnology (directed growth of crystals) and
brain-controlled systems

http://www.idiap.ch/current_projects.php?project=27

to natural healing (Naturheilverfahren).

Please notice that the theoretical considerations are based on those developed by Pauli and Jung, hence direct action of the human mind on matter is excluded from the outset.

Kindest regards,

Dimi Chakalov
http://www.god-does-not-play-dice.net
----

Note on 'Neurophysiology 101 For Quantum Physicists': Every human being has a unified perception, meaning all sensory inputs are combined into one coherent percept. We have two eyes and yet do not “see” two images, nor do we perceive the color, motion, shape and other visual attributes of an object separately. These attributes are broken up into isolated fragments and are “processed” by distant sections of the brain, yet these separate processing are somehow unified into one coherent perceptual experience. The unified nature of perception of all sensory modalities brings up the puzzle of how these parts are being brought together -- extremely fast, effortlessly, and error-free. This is termed 'the binding problem', and has been tacitly bypassed by almost all researchers in the physics of the brain.
 

D. Chakalov
December 22, 2007


=====================

Subject: "Mind Wars", talk by Jonathan Moreno, 26 September 2007
Date: Sat, 22 Dec 2007 17:07:44 +0200
From: Dimi Chakalov <[email protected]>
To: Jonathan Moreno <[email protected]>
Cc: William Safire <[email protected]>,
Russell Foster <[email protected]>,
Colin Blakemore <[email protected]>,
[email protected],
[email protected],
John Jefferys <[email protected]>


Dear Professor Moreno,

It was a pleasure to watch you and your colleagues, thanks to the webcast at DANA Centre web site

http://www.danacentre.org.uk/events/2007/09/26/320

My efforts can be read at

http://www.god-does-not-play-dice.net/Professor_X.html#Thomsen

http://www.god-does-not-play-dice.net/Trautman.html#Janks

It believe it is possible to develop brain training aimed at enhancing the binding process itself. This would probably require feedback training based on, but not limited to, non-invasive monitoring of gamma waves. The subject is undoubtedly very tricky (I emailed Prof. John Jefferys a few years ago on this matter), yet I believe the task is doable.

Is it possible that such brain training will be abused by various research institutions? I suppose they will try very hard but will fail: it's like one finger of your hand trying to keep all its dirty secrets from the other fingers. Likewise, if all people being trained in BCCP (cf. the second link above) are indeed connected/entangled by their common "brain of the universe", they can't harm each other, nor hide their common "secrets".

I suppose all this would sound "gonzo" only to those who are not aware of the Chinese research in what they call 'chi'.

Wishing you and your colleagues a nice white Christmas,

Dimi Chakalov


===================

Subject: "Dynamic Dark Energy", with George Clooney and Robert De Niro
Date: Mon, 24 Dec 2007 17:25:42 +0200
From: Dimi Chakalov <[email protected]>
To: [email protected],
[email protected],
[email protected],
[email protected],
[email protected],
[email protected],
[email protected],
[email protected]


http://www.god-does-not-play-dice.net/Professor_X.html#Kalina

Merry Christmas!

Dimi


===================

Subject: The fourth explanation
Date: Thu, 3 Jan 2008 03:50:36 +0200
From: Dimi Chakalov <[email protected]>
To: Don N Page <[email protected]>

Hi Don,

You wrote (arXiv:0801.0246v1 [physics.gen-ph], p. 9): "There are three general types of explanations that are often put forward."

Please recall our correspondence in the past five years, and check out

http://www.god-does-not-play-dice.net/Trautman.html#center

http://www.god-does-not-play-dice.net/Trautman.html#pedestrians

You also wrote: "I am indebted to discussions with (...) and others whom I don't recall right now." Something wrong with your memory?

Take care,

Dimi
 

====================

Subject: arXiv:0706.1109v2 [gr-qc], p. 25: "The full metric may not be geodesically complete."
Date: Wed, 16 Jan 2008 05:44:35 +0200
From: Dimi Chakalov <[email protected]>
To: Roy Kerr <[email protected]>
Cc: Matt Visser <[email protected]>,
Celine Cattoen <[email protected]>


Dear Dr. Kerr,

I think the metric must be geodesically INcomplete *in principle*, because the feature of 'geodesic incompleteness' is a distorted presentation of the *absence* of the generic flexibility of gravitational systems in present-day GR textbooks,

http://www.god-does-not-play-dice.net/Professor_X.html#Kalina

In other words, if some day you or any of your colleagues wish to find out what is the so-called Kerr black hole -- if any --, you will have to remove the 'geodesic incompleteness'. But if you succeed, I bet you will wind up doing GR along the lines suggested at the link above, in which case you may discover that 'geodesic incompleteness' is an artifact from the incomplete presentation of the true dynamics of GR: Mother Nature doesn't suffer from 'geodesic incompleteness' or Cauchy problems for Einstein equations.

I'll be happy to elaborate, if you are interested.

This is my second, and last effort to contact you by email. If you ignore it, keep in mind that you have deliberately chosen NOT to understand your discovery. The choice is yours.

Sincerely,

Dimi Chakalov
----

Note: If it were possible to remove the generic ambiguities in present-day GR without referring to the quantum-gravitational potential reality, then everything written at this web site would be redundant, and thus wrong.

If you "force" a quantum-gravitational system to evolve on a rigid Cauchy hypersurface, it will inevitably produce a distorted presentation of some 'geodesic incompleteness': after some point, the answer to the question of the dynamics will be YAIN. And in present-day GR textbooks, YAIN means 'geodesic incompleteness': an artifact from the rigid Cauchy hypersurface.

At this web site, YAIN means 'flexibility': see 'dynamical determinism'.

It is highly unlikely that Roy Kerr would be interested in my interpretation of his discovery. As of today, its trustworthy-like application in astrophysics can only be done with 'shut up and calculate', because the full metric must be geodesically INcomplete in principle. Pretty annoying, no? Amazingly, some people prefer just that: 'shut up and calculate'.

As Roy Kerr stressed back in 1963, "it would be desirable to calculate an interior solution...". Only you can't. You will inevitably hit "negative mass" and "geodesic incompleteness". That's how the potential reality shows up in present-day GR textbooks. Since you can't remove it, you better use it.


D.C.
January 16, 2008
 

====================

Subject: Ellis’ 1984 notion of finite infinity
Date: Mon, 7 Jan 2008 23:18:37 +0200
From: Dimi Chakalov <[email protected]>
To: [email protected]
Cc: [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected]

Hi George,

If you or some of your colleagues wish to revive the idea of 'finite infinity' and tackle the dynamics of 'the only truly isolated system' -- the whole universe -- may I suggest you to try the First Cause,

http://www.god-does-not-play-dice.net/Trautman.html#Planck

http://www.god-does-not-play-dice.net/Trautman.html#continuum

Wishing you and your colleagues all the best for 2008,

Dimi
 

====================

Subject: The reference fluid: arXiv:0801.2564 v2 ?
Date: Thu, 17 Jan 2008 08:52:58 +0200
From: Dimi Chakalov <[email protected]>
To: Jorge Pullin <[email protected]>
Cc: [email protected], [email protected]

Hi Jorge:

I read your latest paper [Ref. 1], and am really puzzled by your ability to carefully avoid all the information from your web page, as created on 4 September 2002,

http://www.god-does-not-play-dice.net/Pullin.html

As if you knew nothing about it.

A 'perfect clock' [Ref. 1] that would MEASURE the "intrinsic time interval associated to any timelike displacement"

http://www.god-does-not-play-dice.net/Jacobson.html#1

should be TOTALLY HIDDEN to all objects that obey the laws of relativity theory, because such perfect clock would pertain to 'the whole universe' and would send its 'tick' to all objects in the whole universe *en bloc*. And that requires a preferred reference frame -- the same that was employed by the "dark energy" to expand the metric of space during the inflation -- smoothly, and *en bloc*.

In other words, it is manifestly pointless to search for the 'reference fluid' of GR, in GR: it has been expelled from GR from the outset.

Metaphorically speaking, if you're blindfolded and cannot see the sunlight, don't claim that 'sunlight' does not exist,

http://www.god-does-not-play-dice.net/Petkov.html#Vaas

Up to 96 per cent from the stuff of the universe is "dark", so why don't you take a look at your dedicated web page?

http://www.god-does-not-play-dice.net/Pullin.html#flow

If you and Dr. Gambini decide to update your arXiv:0801.2564v1, feel free to write me back, and I will elaborate extensively,

http://www.god-does-not-play-dice.net/Professor_X.html#Bayes

http://www.god-does-not-play-dice.net/Professor_X.html#Kalina

Regards,

Dimi

----
[Ref. 1] Rodolfo Gambini and Jorge Pullin, Modern space-time and undecidability, arXiv:0801.2564v1 [gr-qc]

(p. 1) "(O)ne cannot measure distances and times beyond a minimum level of uncertainty"... "One ends up describing how certain objects change when other objects, taken as clocks, change."

(p. 2) "(W)e will discuss the form of the evolution equation of quantum mechanics when the time variable, used to describe it, is measured by a real clock."

(p. 4) "A pure state inevitably will become a mixed state due to the impossibility of having a perfect classical clock in nature."
----

Note: Why is the "intrinsic time interval associated to any timelike displacement" (cf. Ted Jacobson's textbook here) totally hidden? Because, if we use the present-day (and seriously ugly) terminology, it will be "dark": see the "dark" shift from hypersurface 1 to the "neighboring" hypersurface 2.

Just click the image below to read the explanation proposed.



 

Try to unravel this "dark" shift in Bob Wald's 1984 GR textbook: read p. 4, "... in a sufficiently small (notice the poetry - D.C.) neighborhood of a given event", and pp. 252-268 from Ch. 10.

The same "dark shift" works in the "GW lake" here. In the local mode of spacetime, it "points" to all directions in 3-D space. It is omnipresent. It refers to the "direction" in which the very 3-D space "moves", to produce the arrow of spacetime -- contrary to the statements in Bob Geroch's textbook here.

It goes without saying that the "intrinsic time interval associated to any timelike displacement" will have to be totally hidden in the local mode of spacetime, or else we wouldn't have any theory of relativity.

Notice that the arrow of spacetime will inevitably produce "waves", as explained here. The mechanism by which such quantum-gravitational "waves" are being generated is suggested here (please recall that you can't find the source of quantum waves explained in QM textbooks). Yes, GWs exist, but -- no, they can't be detected with LIGO, LISA, and the like, because the latter are blind and deaf to the quasi-local dynamics of these "waves". For if you try to measure the "displacement" of spacetime from GWs in the local mode of spacetime only, it will be zero, as proven by Angelo Loinger (physics/0506024 v2, pp. 2-3): "if we displace a mass, its gravitational field and the related curvature of the interested manifold displace themselves along with the mass." Locally, the "dark shift" from hypersurface 1 to the "neighboring" hypersurface 2 (see above) is zero. In order to detect the "dark shift", you need to stay connected "on line" to the global mode of spacetime w.r.t.w. such "dark shift" (=elementary increment/cycle of spacetime) occurs. Which in turn means that the proper GW detectors have to be build as 'self-acting systems', just like the human brain: we think about the brain, with the brain. Notice that the dynamics is highly non-linear, and recall that the current GR doesn't allow you to employ the proper time [tau] along the "adjacent" hypersurfaces.

LIGO Scientific Collaboration (490 distinguished scholars) disagree. They deeply believe that the "direction" of GW propagation is like that of a bean of light: say, from a fixed location in the sky placed at the center of the Galaxy toward the L-shaped arms of LIGO on Earth (cf. Marie-Anne Bizouard et al., gr-qc/0701026 v1). Which in turn means that the quasi-local, or rather global component of GW dynamics is completely unaccounted for. And this 'global component' is the omnipresent "direction" of GW propagation (see above), which covers all directions in 3-D space simultaneously, en bloc: "the whole universe must know about everything instantaneously" (Mike Zucker).

But again, LIGO Scientific Collaboration (490 distinguished Jehovah's Witnesses of GW astronomy) disagree. Actually, they just don't care.

Now, imagine this. One day Jorge Pullin says gently to his wife: 'Sweetheart, why don't you tell your boss to convert those long, dark, air-conditioned tunnels of LIGO to wine cellars, as Dimi suggested in 2006?'

Or imagine even more optimistic scenario: Jorge Pullin and his colleagues respond professionally to my proposal, because they are genuinely interested in quantum gravity, and also because are concerned about the global climate change. Regarding the latter, we need clean and unlimited energy source, correct? Well, if the universe works like a huge brain, the only tool you'd need to tap into your own "dark" energy is right above your neck. No need to kill innocent people and kids in Iraq. No need to have your kids brought back in body bags either.

I sent my Research Proposal to U.S. Department of Energy in March 1994, but the sole response from DoE from April 8th same year was a sarcastic letter from Mr. Walter Polansky, who suggested that I should read physics textbooks. So be it.

More on September 21st.


D.C., a.k.a. "just another crank"
January 17, 2008
Last update: January 25, 2008


====================

Subject: Re: The Brans conjecture
Date: Sat, 2 Feb 2008 05:27:00 +0200
From: Dimi Chakalov <[email protected]>
To: Carl H Brans <[email protected]>
Cc: Bahram Mashhoon <[email protected]>,
[email protected], [email protected],
[email protected], [email protected]

Dear Dr. Brans,

I haven't yet received your reply (if any) to my email from Mon, 04 Sep 2006 19:07:35 +0300. My interpretation of the origin of 'exotic smoothness', with reference to your paper from May 2007, can be read
at

http://www.god-does-not-play-dice.net/Petkov.html#ADM

Perhaps you wouldn't agree with the ideas at the link above, but if you share with me your professional objections, I will be happy to elaborate.

I extend this offer to your colleagues as well. Regardless of your beliefs in GR, I hope you'll at least "remain agnostic on Sundays".

Sincerely yours,

Dimi Chakalov



====================

Subject: Warp Drive: A New Approach, arXiv:0712.1649v2 [gr-qc]
Date: Wed, 12 Dec 2007 16:42:01 +0200
From: Dimi Chakalov <[email protected]>
To: Richard K Obousy <[email protected]>
Cc: Gerald Cleaver <[email protected]>,
Miguel Alcubierre <[email protected]>,
Institute for Space and Nuclear Power Studies <[email protected]>,
Mohamed S El-Genk <[email protected]>,
Gary S Bekkum <[email protected]>,
Mohammad Mansouryar <[email protected]>,
Paul Murad <[email protected]>,
Glen A Robertson <[email protected]>,
[email protected]

Dear Dr. Obousy,

I read you latest paper with great interest. May I comment on the final statement: "One vital aspect of future research would be how to locally manipulate an extra dimension."

If we model the universe as a human brain (Ulric Neisser's cognitive cycle), the spacetime topology may be R4 x [global mode of spacetime], so it won't resemble Klein's Bottle [Ref. 1],

http://www.god-does-not-play-dice.net/Trautman.html#continuum

http://www.god-does-not-play-dice.net/Trautman.html#pedestrians

http://www.god-does-not-play-dice.net/Professor_X.html#Lucretius

I will be happy to comment on your efforts, provided you and your colleagues do the same for mine.

Kindest regards,

Dimi Chakalov
----
[Ref. 1] Richard Obousy, Gerald Cleaver, Warp Drive: A New Approach, arXiv:0712.1649v2 [gr-qc]
http://arxiv.org/abs/0712.1649

"Kaluza's idea suffered from a very obvious drawback. If there is a fifth dimension, where is it? In 1926 Oskar Klein suggested that the fifth dimension compactifies so as to have the geometry of a circle of extremely small radius [17]. Thus, the space has topology R4 x S1. One way to envisage this spacetime is to imagine a hosepipe. From a long distance it looks like a one dimensional line but a closer inspection reveals that every point on the line is in fact a circle."


==========================
 

Subject: Re: Warp Drive: A New Approach, arXiv:0712.1649v2 [gr-qc]
Date: Wed, 12 Dec 2007 23:03:09 +0200
From: Dimi Chakalov <[email protected]>
To: "Obousy, Richard K" <[email protected]>

Hi Richard,

> Thanks for your interest in our paper.

It is a professional paper, and it was a pleasure to read it. Yet I personally see no reasons to speculate on extra-dimensions.

> On first reading, your approach sounds quite metaphysical/philosophical.

The math is yet to be discovered, so it is indeed metaphysical.

> Also, I'm not sure what it meant by 'global mode of spacetime'.

Think of it as the entity that creates -- dynamically -- a perfect continuum out of its counterpart, the so-called 'local mode of spacetime',

http://www.god-does-not-play-dice.net/Trautman.html#continuum

> I will take the time to read your attached links to try to understand
> your perspective.

I will appreciate your professional feedback. Will keep it private and confidential.

Regards,

Dimi
----

Note: There are good reasons to argue that Nature cannot be modeled by neither continuous (A. Einstein, Grundzüge der Relativitätstheorie, Vieweg, Braunschweig, 1956, S. 163) nor discrete field. Why not introduce both continual and discrete presentation of Nature? Perhaps this is the only option we have to explore.

I am not stubbornly adamant in the theory of three forms of reality outlined above, and am fully open to suggestions. It's a bit like choosing the right tool for getting a job done, so if Richard Obousy or anyone else can suggest a better tool, I will be happy to explore it. It just seems to me that the vast majority of theoretical physicists feel "dedicated" to their favorite tools and can't live without them.

Perhaps all we need is new math for the Atom of Lucretius and Aristotelian First Cause, to model the universe as a human brain. Of course, we can't verify, by any conceivable experiment or observation, whether some 'mental reflection' from the brain of the universe does, or does not, exist. Thank God, this is indeed impossible.

Merry Christmas!


D. Chakalov
Christmas 2007