ESSAY SUBMISSION: Are Dimensions Imaginary?

[Bob Mandeville]

Dear Folks,

I think that I am a very late arrival at a wonderful party having only just discovered and immersed myself in the writings and YouTube postings of Bernardo Kastrup - but I do hope that I have also found a resonance in the critically enquiring but kindred spirits of this forum.   It has been truly glorious to see Bernardo tackling head-on the nay-sayers leaving them struggling in the wake of his verbal speedboat.

For many years I have been pursuing an obsessional thought experiment but only found wonderful encouragement in the experimental side of Physics and Image Processing having been totally rebuffed or ignored by theoreticians who (possibly rightly) told me to get on with my day job as a physician.

I am sending, as a new thread, the latest iteration of this thought experiment in which the central role of the Universal Consciousness is played by “Now,” with the implication of how that might define the primitives of the physical world and a hope for it surviving its own falsifiability in the near future.   I do hope that it will be accepted and then torn to shreds in a constructive way so that the debris can be all the stronger for that process.  I do realise that what this essay attempts to do is only justifiable by the very fact of being testable - with that test scheduled now for next Spring.   There are further workings that I have developed as a Prezi but I will not burden you with those yet.

With that I hand this over for your judgement - please excuse UK spellings.   I am also ignorant of "Canned Response" and have not developed this - apologies.

Bob Mandeville - Glasgow

Are Dimensions Imaginary?

…the presence of the Lord in all that moves in this moving universe

Isha Upunishad - N A Nikam 1974

The Challenge

This is likely to be seen in the future as the “golden age” of Physics when so many of its predictions have been realised and so many people are actively employed in developing technologies arising from it.   However, in our current paradigm of “The Standard Model” there lie two incompatibilities: General Relativity on the macro scale and Quantum mechanics on the micro scale.   These two have always failed to bind together in spite of strenuous attempts to stretch the bounds of our imagination, and now this is amplified by increasing areas of ignorance including an explanation for the underlying Universal Consciousness necessary for Quantum Mechanics.

This is an attempt to leave the current paradigm in place but then delve down below the fundamentals of our paradoxically familiar and yet strange universe by journeying into the beginnings of our own lives.   The only excuse for you to continue reading this is that in the immediate future the model this process reveals will be falsified or verified by first-class data from experiments already scheduled that will test its own unlikely predictions.

The birth of dimensions

The missing component in science is the very thing that we most of all experienced as newborn babies - an awareness based on the present moment - Now.  The key point in all our lives was that moment when we found ourselves rudely ejected from a comfortable and timeless womb.   Suddenly we were in a world of satisfactions and dissatisfactions that will turn out to be the pattern for the rest of our lives but initially experienced as an incomprehensible roller-coaster.   It then becomes crucial to our newborn selves to start to get to grips with the controls for these events in order to learn how to anticipate and even influence them.

The very act of a baby touching something at a “Now” combined with the simultaneous inputs from other sensors in muscles, joints, eyes, and our innate clocks starts to establish coordinates for distance and time in specifically evolved deep neural and physiological networks.   Length, depth, height and time seem as natural to us as the air we breathe and these primary dimensions are currently fundamental concepts in science as space/time.  The central role for these mental constructs is enormously important for our individuation and so any tinkering about with them risks totally disorienting us.

The Babylonians formalised dimensions to allow them to measure and record sizes and times, and that epoch is presently looked upon as being the foundational golden age of science.  It is from this that our observational science and mathematical philosophy have grown with developments from geometry to astronomy that are rooted in the initial concept of those primary dimensions.

A thought experiment

If we disassemble a dimension such as length or time and attempt to remove the baby’s touch of “Now” then we cannot even start to measure let alone continue and end the measuring process.   In the case of length the dimension collapses into a mere direction which could be a centimetre or stretch across the universe.   Without a “Now” moment we cannot start, continue or end the clock which will no longer tick, and the time could be a flash or a billion years.   All life, and indeed all movement, requires a “Now” for without it there can be no before and after, and therefore there can be no change, and without any change there can be no flow of energy or power.  

It is difficult to accept that the abstract concept of a metre or an hour contains within it an implicit “Now” as they seem to stand alone, but if we employ that metre or hour then we bump up against a “where” or “when” and that involves the immediate touch of “Now.”   We have integrated “Now” into our lives so completely from the time before we were born that we have a collective blindspot to its central role.

Using an etymological back-formation from the word Dimension what we identify as “Now” can become a “Mension.”   When this combines with the purely directional “Mension” (perhaps “Always”) the composite will get us back to our familiar world of “Di-mensions.”   This back-formation for the word Dimension and adoption of Now and Always is without doubt gimmicky but perhaps can only be justified by their component familiarity.

Developing the concept of split dimensions

We know that there is an underlying symmetry in many aspects of our universe and so it is natural to suppose that the twin Mensions of Now and Always must be symmetrical in the sense of being mutually “imaginary” to each other.  As such each would independently have three degrees of freedom in direction and three degrees of freedom in rotation.  
Non-locality which is such a feature of Quantum Entanglement may illustrate the imaginary aspect of the relationship between the two Mensions - from our point of view which is Always-based the uncertainty resolves only when the wave-functions collapse to reveal the underlying connection between the entangled quanta carried by the Now Mension.

It is here that the discredited word “Ether” comes into play but this is divided into two: with Mass equivalent quanta being carried by Always, and Energy equivalent quanta being carried by Now.   Quantum carriage in this context means having an individual identity outlined by the carrying Mension and excluding it.  This gives reason for the granularity of quanta and passage of quanta between the two states perceived by us as either moving in wave form as energy with their own intrinsic uncertainties, or having localities in space as mass equivalents.  The further corollary is the necessary alternation between these forms so that quanta of energy can only be expressed in the real world as temporary mass equivalents having defined positions where the two Mensions flip - when the Now carrier reveals its quanta in the Always at the collapse of the composite wave function - before transforming into yet other expressions of energy.  This is a hugely difficult concept to visualise given the seemingly simple world we are surrounded by. 


Developing the concept of carrying and excluding

We already know about Fermionic exclusion from the Pauli Principle applied to the energy shells of electrons around atoms.   We have it on the authority of Richard Feynman no less that within current physical models there is no convincing explanation for this real effect which is central to the operation of atoms.  However, in this hypothesis the energy quanta would be carried and defined by the excluded Now and would thereby not be available for quanta of the same energy and spin.   If we extend and extrapolate with the application of symmetry, quanta of mass must also exclude the carrying Always but this exclusion would be manifest radially.   The exclusion by mass of the Always Mension would be marked by a Symmetrical Pauli Exclusion of expression of other mass quanta.  This is an extrapolation from the current into the unknown and it is this feature of this hypothesis that will soon be able to be tested.

Using this extrapolation, quanta of energy would then be defined by exclusion of Now in moving spherical wavefronts demonstrating non-locality whereas the quanta of mass would have coordinates and would be defined by exclusion of Always radially.   A further suggestion is that alternation between these two states allows the potential splitting of the quanta before re-radiation in accordance with the thermodynamic direction towards entropy.

Proof-testing this hypothesis

The publication of the image of the black hole at the centre of the distant M87 galaxy by the Event Horizon Team has set a new standard in precision by its use of multiple linked telescopes forming a huge Earth-sized array.   The published image is notable for the roundness of the black hole girdled by asymmetrical radiation emanating from the circling matter.   The reason given by the team for the lack of radiation seen in front of the circular face of the black hole is that the limit of detection was only one tenth of the rim radiation and could not be expected to pick this up (New Scientist-Editors Pick 1st June 2019 ).   There must be radiating matter circling between us and the black hole as this can be deduced from the very asymmetry of the image with the two sides showing the Doppler effect - one brighter as it circles towards us and the other dimmer as it circles away from us - with the completion of the disc connecting the two being across the face of the black hole as we see it.

The next project for the Event Horizon Team to image is a great deal closer to us as it is the black hole which is at the centre of our own galaxy, the Milky Way, in Sagittarius A✭.  This time there will be an augmented array of telescopes which when combined with the black hole’s comparative proximity leads to an expectation of far better definition.   The Earth is not far from the main plane of our galaxy and it is likely that the radiation from the matter in the accretion disk spiralling into the central black hole will also be in the same plane, and if so it is almost obligatory that the disk of orbiting matter will be seen edge on.  

The common expectation is that the image of the central black hole will now reveal the presence of the intervening circulating disk due to the nearness of Sagittarius A✭ to us and the increased sensitivity of the array.    However, the Symmetrical Pauli Exclusion principle outlined above predicts that:

1. the disc will remain resolutely round and black at all levels of sensitivity without any trace of radiation: there can be no collapse of the wave function reaching the array when there is no carrying Always due to the black hole at the centre of the expanding wavefront preventing any expression of mass by its Symmetrical Pauli Exclusion.    
2. if a circulating star could be imaged by the macro array actually crossing between us and the black hole then its light would blink out completely as it crossed in front of the hole.  

Answering the Challenge?

Current experimental observations in Physics have given us data that are reproducible and exquisitely precise although the current underlying explanations for them are beyond normal human reason.  Dimensions as constructs of the human brain will continue to serve us as well in the future as in the past since we cannot orientate ourselves on a daily basis without reference to them and the equations derived from those dimensions will continue to be just as valid. 

If we were to be able to rework the underlying story and could establish the Symmetrical Pauli Exclusion principle by the two-stage proof testing given above then all the accumulated mathematical approach to Quantum Mechanics and General Relativity could continue to be used with only a nod to its unifying form.   The benefit of developing a new underlying paradigm might be in the production of a different narrative to the origins of the universe with particular reference to its Universal Consciousness.   Furthermore the particle/wave duality, the laws of thermodynamics, “Dark Matter,” “Dark Energy,” cosmic inflation, the “Arrow of Time” and other unexplained aspects of the universe may find a place in such a theoretical framework.   

However, before anything else, the concept has to survive the ordeal of its potential falsification and so will live or die with the next observations of a black hole by the Event Horizon Team which, unfortunately, have had to be postponed until Spring 2021 due to the coronavirus pandemic.

[Santeri Satama]

Not much to do with metaphysical idealism, though refreshing physicalism with new mathematical and geometric intuitions can be fun and interesting.

keskiviikko 6. toukokuuta 2020 13.19.55 UTC+3 Bob Mandeville kirjoitti:

We know that there is an underlying symmetry in many aspects of our universe and so it is natural to suppose that the twin Mensions of Now and Always must be symmetrical in the sense of being mutually “imaginary” to each other.  As such each would independently have three degrees of freedom in direction and three degrees of freedom in rotation.

Structuralism is build on binary oppositions, post-structuralism criticizes this as too rigid and mechanical. For example, deconstruction of time as nominal opposition of mathematical objects could ask, where is the verb? Also, empirical idealism associates closer with Intuitionist philosophy of mathematics, which does not accept formal claim of "actual infinity" but insists with the usual intuition that infinity grows without closure.

Using this extrapolation, quanta of energy would then be defined by exclusion of Now in moving spherical wavefronts demonstrating non-locality whereas the quanta of mass would have coordinates and would be defined by exclusion of Always radially.   A further suggestion is that alternation between these two states allows the potential splitting of the quanta before re-radiation in accordance with the thermodynamic direction towards entropy.

"Now" is the point-like wave center? "Always" a line? On flat plane, or is curved surface allowed?

If curved surface is allowed, I've enjoyed thinking about dropping a stone on the surface of a sphere. Lets call the origin of wave fronts North-Pole. Traveling along the surface of the sphere, wave fronts start coming "inwards" at the South-Pole. Imagine floating in sea and all waves coming towards you. What happens at the point they meet? Maybe they become a stone that pops up from the sphere, giving a reversible film that looks same regardless of which end you start looking from. Maybe instead of collapsing/decohering into a particle wave fronts continue inwards, becoming inner surface of what was outer surface, maybe they do both. The place where they meet, is it a wormhole? a black hole? A black hole in black hole? What if the wave fronts that continue to flow inwards drop a new wave center at each point they meet the outer surface as they continue back to North-Pole? What happens there? If they continue as new outer layer from North-Pole to South-Pole third time, we get outer, middle and inner layer, which becomes continuously  stretchy rubber balloon that the wave fronts can stretch in any shape, a balloon inside balloon etc.

If the wave fronts are the event horizon, who decides what happens? Other than imagination?  

[Bernardo]

Hi Bob,

I think this is more appropriate for submission to a technical journal, as you are making what seems to be an eminently technical, testable proposal. I don't think it is suitable for the blog.

You also make some significant jumps in the argument line that aren't trivial. Consider, for instance, this passage:

Using an etymological back-formation from the word Dimension what we identify as “Now” can become a “Mension.”   When this combines with the purely directional “Mension” (perhaps “Always”) the composite will get us back to our familiar world of “Di-mensions.”   This back-formation for the word Dimension and adoption of Now and Always is without doubt gimmicky but perhaps can only be justified by their component familiarity.

Fine. The point seems to be an interesting etymological play with the word 'dimension,' perhaps with some real-world implications at a metaphorical level. No problems, I follow you. But then this:

We know that there is an underlying symmetry in many aspects of our universe and so it is natural to suppose that the twin Mensions of Now and Always must be symmetrical in the sense of being mutually “imaginary” to each other.  As such each would independently have three degrees of freedom in direction and three degrees of freedom in rotation.  
Non-locality which is such a feature of Quantum Entanglement may illustrate the imaginary aspect of the relationship between the two Mensions

Here you suddenly -- and in my view without any explicit justification -- move from a metaphorical, etymologic point to actual physical entities. This is too large a bridge and it would certainly require a lot more elaboration and explicit justification. In other points of your writeup you seem to also do something similar.

Anyway, I would encourage you to pursue more peer-review for the subjects you broach in your essay.

Cheers, Bernardo.