Dear Rüdiger,

I would like to comment on your recent "The Inverted Big-Bang",
physics/0407071,

http://xxx.lanl.gov/ftp/physics/papers/0407/0407071.pdf

I'll try to follow the style of your paper, but will be very frank. You
wrote:

"Particularly bizarre is the inversion of space at the big-bang. "Space in a sense turns its inside out, Bojowald says. "This can be visualized with an ideally spherical balloon which looses air. It remains an empty balloon such that all its parts clash together – as in a singularity. Now one has to imagine that instead of clashing the parts can freely move through each other and simply move forward. The balloon then again expands with the former inside pointing outward, and vice versa."

I believe this is NOT a smooth transition, firstly, and secondly -- a 3-D left glove will be inverted into a 3-D right glove "after" the inversion of space. Time will change its "direction" after the breaking
point, too.

The nature and the "duration" of the breaking point of this space inversion are totally unclear. Let me again quote from your paper:

"In contrast to the Wheeler-DeWitt equation Bojowald's equation is not a differential equation but rather a difference equation. The reason for it is the discrete internal time structure. That means: The time  n  does not "flow" continuously (and thus does not have arbitrary values represented by real numbers), but rather runs in abrupt steps (represented by integers). It is similar to a movie film whose frames follow in such quick succession that our eyes believe and the brain recognizes it as one fluent movement – yet in reality it is a rapid sequence of single snapshots. Today – and already fractions of a second after the big-bang – the film of the universe runs in such a way that it can be described very well with classical or semi-classical physics (the Friedmann equation in general relativity and the Wheeler-DeWitt equation). The individual snapshots of the big-bang become recognizable only under the sharpened eye of quantum geometry."

The postulated 'discrete internal time structure' has a long history,

http://God-does-not-play-dice.net/philosophy.html#continuum

I'm afraid Martin Bojowald is not aware of the pitfalls. He is still trying to solve the immense problems from the unknown physical inner product,

http://God-does-not-play-dice.net/Bojowald.html#Kevin

http://God-does-not-play-dice.net/Kuchar.html#Martin

It is still believed that space and time can be either absolute (Newton) or relative, but what if we can 'have our cake and eat it'? The solution may be highly non-trivial,

http://God-does-not-play-dice.net/Nicolai.html#note

I'll be happy to explain my proposal at GR18 next year,

http://God-does-not-play-dice.net/GR17.html#last

It will be great if GR18 can be hosted by the Albert Einstein Institute in Golm. The fun part is just around the corner! :-)

Regards,

Dimi
--
http://God-does-not-play-dice.net
 

Note: Rüdiger Vaas has published a very interesting paper, "Why Neural Correlates Of Consciousness Are Fine, But Not Enough", Anthropology & Philosophy 3, 121-141 (1999),
http://www.swif.uniba.it/lei/mind/texts/t0000009.htm

More on the physical correlates of consciousness here. See also "The Duel: Strings versus Loops", physics/0403112 .
 

D. Chakalov
September 1, 2004