The End of the Millennial Decade. What's in Store for the 2010's?
Rock Brentwood
find that problems with current theories are being misidentified as to
their nature and essence ... and that the true nature of the problem[s
are flaws] in the edifice of classical theory that just happened to be
inherited by the later-emerging [paradigms]"
This is an excerpt from the closing account "The End of the Millennial
Decade" related more fully below and the key point being conveyed.
This was meant to be the closing section of "Space Magazine" [1] on
the Twin Pylons of Physics (i.e. Quantum Theory and General
Relativity) and the role of Cosmology. And I thnk the discussion
contained therein represents a new insight on the resolution of the
problem of "bridging the gap" between the two foundations.
First, a few comments about the "Magazine". Given the name "Space",
the front cover may need some explanation. It is an elaboration of the
account, related in 1995 [2] and 2004 [3], of Akallabeth. There are
two features (of interest to the Physics and Cosmologist) of this
story and of the larger comendium (Silmarillion) which it is part of.
(a) The representation (in the story Ainulindale) of the Universe as a
holographic projection of the eternal present at "Time 0", and of Time
0, itself, as a "music of the cosmos". This is one of the earliest
precursors of the general idea behind Holography, whose latest
incarnation is found in Padmanabhan's account of gravity as an
effective entropic force.
(b) The topology change that takes place at the end of Akallabeth. The
topology change is a parable of the change from the ancient perception
of a flat Earth to the later perception of a round Earth. It is also
analogous to the signature change invoked by Hawking's no boundary
conjecture.
Both of these were to be starting points of the (yet to be written)
cover article. But here's the closing essay.
The End of the Millennial Decade.
What's in Store for the 2010's?
We are in the midst of a convergence.
The line between observation and exploration is progressively
blurring. Is it astronomy when we view a planet through a telescope
from our own world? Does it continue to be so as the vantage point
draws closer, from orbit around that world? Does a sunset on a remote
world count as an observation of that celestial body up close? What
would we then call it if in the nighttime sky of the distant world, we
end up catching sight of a point of light that just happened to be the
Earth?
Those who came of age in the 1980's are probably at least as familiar
with the sequel to the movie 2001, as they are with 2001, itself. Like
its counterpart, it was set in a future that has now become the
present and reflected a great yearning to reach up and out toward the
stars. In the sequel, 2010, it was the machine that was vindicated,
while the human was revealed to have been the actual villain in 2001.
Today, in the real 2010, it is the machine that is going out while the
great yearning in the human race to do the same remains to date
unfulfilled.
As our "telescopes" morph into the robot vehicles that view these
celestial bodies up close, or through more powerful lenses into the
near-vacuum of outer space, the products of these observations are now
being made available for all. And so a second convergence is taking
place: the line between the amateur and professional astronomer is
being blurred.
The consequences of opening up archives, that once only professionals
had been privy to, should not be understated. For, the yearning to
reach out for the stars is also a hunger for knowledge of what's out
there and a need to understand where we are and where we come from. It
is a hunger to know and understand the very laws that govern nature
both here and up there.
Today, natural law rests on two foundations over which stand the Twin
Pylons of physics: General Relativity and Quantum Theory. Each is a
paradigm unto itself, but they are bridged by a gap and do not form a
self-supporting arch.
That is the dilemma of these times. The search for resolution has gone
on for over a century and has largely come up empty. Today, part of
this search involves a field called Quantum Cosmology, which hopes to
use observations of the earliest epochs of the cosmos as a guiding
hand to steer our way toward a new paradigm.
Cosmology plays an important role here. The reason is simple: since
the time of Newton, the fundamental laws of nature have dealt
exclusively with rates of change. They are concerned with "where
things are going" rather than with "where things are".
That means every application of natural law, no matter how mundane,
must be framed as a "boundary value problem." Taking this process to
its logical conclusion, the question of why things are what they
actually are, telescopes all the way back to the ultimate boundary
condition: Time 0 - the Big Bang.
It is a widely held expectation that the inconsistencies that have
accumulated beneath each of the Twin Pylons will all somehow be
magically erased when the arch between the two is finally completed.
It is an expectation just as widely held that this completion will be
heralded with the arrival of the ever-sought theory of "Quantum
Gravity". Many speculate whether we're now "almost there" with the
latest protagonists in this litany of candidates being Loop Quantum
Gravity or String Theory. We just need someone to come along with that
one last novel insight or clever trick.
New insights, however, will not come by clever applications of novel
ideas or technical tricks. The paths have all been well-trod by the
most prodigious minds, now. Logic dictates, instead, that when our
searches far and wide keep coming up empty, that we should perhaps be
looking down to see if the answers are not, in fact, already staring
up at us under our very noses. The problem with having expectations is
that we can end up being so busy looking this way and that, that we
will fail to recognize the answer, even when we're looking right at
it, because it bears no resemblance to expectation.
New insights or breakthroughs can also be found by reexamining old
fundamentals. For, it is frequently the case that the foundations that
we take for granted today were laid in a time when people had less
background in key areas relevant to these fundamentals. Many new
insights are routinely discovered, over time, regarding the very tools
we use for analysis; that simply have not been integrated back into
the foundations. They were not available to people at the time the new
paradigms arose, but would have substantially altered the subsequent
development of those paradigms, if they had been.
As a result, a growing number of gaps emerge, remaining unseen beneath
the accrual of habit, linguistic and notational conventions that,
themselves, had been laid before those new insights were gained. So,
they remain buried out of sight, out of mind, as does the opportunity
to resolve them; only showing up as the very flaws seen further up
each of the Twin Pylons that made it impossible to form a self-
sustaining arch between the two.
One of the consequences of revisiting the foundations is that we may
find that problems with current theories are being misidentified as to
their nature and essence. We may find, for instance, that the so-
called "divergence" problem in Quantum Field Theory is actually a
problem that is both rooted and resolved in the context of field
theory of the 19th century; and that the true nature of the problem
was as a flaw in the edifice of classical theory that just happened to
be inherited by the later-emerging Quantum Theory, but which otherwise
is unrelated to Quantum Theory. We may find that problems, such as the
infamous "problem of time" are actually flaws in the way we relate
relativity (and Lorentzian geometry) to non-relativistic theory (and
its associated Galilean geometry), rather than problems that require
insights specialized to Quantum Theory.
Indeed, the "problems" we find can run much deeper, representing gaps
within the older paradigm of classical physics, rather than anything
specific to either Quantum Theory or Relativity. Thus, the task of
"revisiting the foundations" means that even Newtonian Physics bears
reexamination as a classical theory. It can just as easily be flaws
located within classical theory which lead to apparent inconsistencies
further up, in each of the Pylons, but which otherwise have nothing
whatsoever to do with Quantum Theory or Relativity.
Over the course of the 20th century, a large and growing number of
issues had come to be lumped into the category of "stuff we'll get
solved when we come up with the theory of Quantum Gravity when it
finally becomes available, so we'll just ignore them for now." In our
opinion, this way of handling the issues - which has become all-too-
common - is an all-too-convenient way of avoiding inconvenient facts.
In the process of deferring a growing heap of unresolved questions to
an as-of-yet non-existent theory, should we not first be asking
whether we might not actually be deferring the questions to a
permanent limbo by this ploy?
In recent times, people such as Jacobson and Carlip have suggested
that a Quantum theory of gravity may not even be necessary. Others,
such as Sardanashvily, Mangiarotti or Padmanabhan suggest that forcing
a gun-point marriage of the two may simply be wrong. We add to this
the suggestion that a theory possessing independent quantized
gravitational degrees of freedom may be a mathematical impossibility.
The promise that awaits us in the 2010's is that with the blurring of
the lines between observation and exploration, and with the
convergence of the worlds of the professional and amateur, as our
archives are opened up, new Einsteins will appear from unseen quarter
to show us what lies hidden in plain view. He or she may very well be
that homeless person you see wandering out on the street who found the
answers by just looking at the obvious, without the prejudices of the
seasoned professional; or perhaps a housewife in the middle of the
prairie who's been quietly studying the latest data in the comfort of
her own home.
When that time arrives, will we also have answers to the very question
that gave title to this issue? And what will they then say of our
endeavors from the previous century? Paying homage to Tolkien, who we
opened up this issue with, we offer the following:
One should not bank too much on the idea of "the ever-forthcoming
quantum gravity finally arriving, as raiders on vessels from
downstream, to win the day." In the most surprising plot twist of all,
the corsairs seen coming up the river may unfurl a banner that
bespeaks classical physics, while quantum gravity vanishes in the
mists of time with the aether as nothing more than an army of ghosts.
Notes:
[1] Space Magazine (photo layout)
http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=401532&id=100000483800536&l=349573effd&ref=fbx_album
Right now, this is nothing more than a concept (and it doubles over as
a calling card).
[2] "Untold Story of the line at infinity"
sci.math, August 25, 1995; September 3, 1995.
[3] "The True Horizon", The Fourth Wave, TransVision 2004 (Toronto)
A surviving link remains on the Wayback Machine:
http://web.archive.org/web/20070223031804/federation.g3z.com/FedSeries/TV04/03.htm
Dirk Bruere at NeoPax
>
> New insights, however, will not come by clever applications of novel
> ideas or technical tricks. The paths have all been well-trod by the
> most prodigious minds, now. Logic dictates, instead, that when our
> searches far and wide keep coming up empty, that we should perhaps be
> looking down to see if the answers are not, in fact, already staring
> up at us under our very noses. The problem with having expectations is
> that we can end up being so busy looking this way and that, that we
> will fail to recognize the answer, even when we're looking right at
> it, because it bears no resemblance to expectation.
Actually, it seems that new insights are going to be forced by ever
increasing amounts of unexpected observational data that can only be
fitted into the current paradigm by adding more epicycles. The most
obvious candidates are of course, the hypothesized dark matter and dark
energy. However, there do seem to be oddities bubbling at the edges from
the Pioneer anomalies to variations in radioactive decay correlated with
the orbit of the Earth. If we can't put it all together in the coming
decade something will definitely be amiss.
--
Dirk
http://www.transcendence.me.uk/ - Transcendence UK
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/onetribe - Occult Talk Show
Phillip Helbig---undress to reply
<dirk....@gmail.com> writes:
> Actually, it seems that new insights are going to be forced by ever
> increasing amounts of unexpected observational data that can only be
> fitted into the current paradigm by adding more epicycles. The most
> obvious candidates are of course, the hypothesized dark matter and dark
> energy.
One could take the point of view that we somehow know (how?) how much
matter there is in the universe and somehow know (how?) that the
cosmological constant is exactly zero (which implies that there is a
degree of freedom which is not expressed; the burden of proof is on the
one who claims this, not on the one who takes the well tested view that
nature makes use of all degrees of freedom except when prohibited by
conservation laws (and, again, the burden of proof is on the one who
proposes a new conservation law)) and thus dark matter and dark energy
are "epicycles". On the other hand, one could take the point of view
that we have a physical theory about the universe which works for a
range of parameters which have to be determined by observation. From
this point of view, dark matter and dark energy are just observationally
determined parameters. (Had observations produced something which could
NOT be fit by an 80-year-old theory of cosmology, then one would have
indeed needed a new insight.)
The ancients knew just some of the planets. When Uranus was discovered,
was it an "epicycle" or was it just an observation? At least since
Newton, the number of planets isn't something special, it is just
something which can vary from star to star and has to be determined
observationally. The ancients had some armchair theories explaining why
there were only the known number of planets. Cosmology since Friedmann
is more akin to Newtonian solar-system physics, not to the systems of
the world of Ptolemy etc.
Dirk Bruere at NeoPax
[repost of comment that was posted 29Sept and subsequently never
appeared, nor was rejected]
Well, one could go the whole way and just come up with some curve
matching equation and 30 or so parameters inserted by hand. A computer
running a genetic algorithm might be quite useful in generating any
number of variations on the algorithmic compression theme. Any new data
and you just add another parameter and run the program again. However,
that's not what I would call "real" physics.
Phillip Helbig---undress to reply
<dirk....@gmail.com> writes:
> > The ancients knew just some of the planets. When Uranus was discovered,
> > was it an "epicycle" or was it just an observation? At least since
> > Newton, the number of planets isn't something special, it is just
> > something which can vary from star to star and has to be determined
> > observationally. The ancients had some armchair theories explaining why
> > there were only the known number of planets. Cosmology since Friedmann
> > is more akin to Newtonian solar-system physics, not to the systems of
> > the world of Ptolemy etc.
>
> Well, one could go the whole way and just come up with some curve
> matching equation and 30 or so parameters inserted by hand. A computer
> running a genetic algorithm might be quite useful in generating any
> number of variations on the algorithmic compression theme. Any new data
> and you just add another parameter and run the program again. However,
> that's not what I would call "real" physics.
This straw man does not resemble modern cosmology. 80 years ago,
relativistic cosmology was fully in place, with just 3 parameters: the
Hubble constant H, the density parameter Omega and the cosmological
constant lambda. These were not somehow drawn out of a hat but derived
from basic physics. Today, 80 years later, with a HUGE amount of data,
one can fit the observations with just these three parameters. This is
the opposite of the situation you describe. The fact that despite the
huge amount of data still available an 80-year-old theoretical framework
provides a good description of all observations is remarkable evidence
in favour of this theoretical framework.
Dirk Bruere at NeoPax
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/04/newtonai/
"In just over a day, a powerful computer program accomplished a feat
that took physicists centuries to complete: extrapolating the laws of
motion from a pendulum�s swings.
Developed by Cornell researchers, the program deduced the natural laws
without a shred of knowledge about physics or geometry.
The research is being heralded as a potential breakthrough for science
in the Petabyte Age, where computers try to find regularities in massive
datasets that are too big and complex for the human mind and its
standard computational tools."
...
"Lipson and Schmidt designed their program to identify linked factors
within a dataset fed to the program, then generate equations to describe
their relationship. The dataset described the movements of simple
mechanical systems like spring-loaded oscillators, single pendulums and
double pendulums � mechanisms used by professors to illustrate physical
laws.
The program started with near-random combinations of basic mathematical
processes � addition, subtraction, multiplication, division and a few
algebraic operators.
Initially, the equations generated by the program failed to explain the
data, but some failures were slightly less wrong than others. Using a
genetic algorithm, the program modified the most promising failures,
tested them again, chose the best, and repeated the process until a set
of equations evolved to describe the systems. Turns out, some of these
equations were very familiar: the law of conservation of momentum, and
Newton�s second law of motion. "
Rock Brentwood
> Today, natural law rests on two foundations [...]
> The search for resolution has gone
> on for over a century and has largely come up empty.
> One should not bank too much on the idea of "the ever-forthcoming
> quantum gravity finally arriving, as raiders on vessels from
> downstream, to win the day." In the most surprising plot twist of all,
> the corsairs seen coming up the river may unfurl a banner that
> bespeaks classical physics, while quantum gravity vanishes in the
> mists of time with the aether as nothing more than an army of ghosts.
J. Oppenheim
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1IdOMEJKw0Q
ArXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/1811.03116
Phys. Rev. X *13*, 041040, 2023-12-04
https://journals.aps.org/prx/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevX.13.041040
Best viewed with "Godspeed" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2_6mpqshY7c)
Klaus Badelt, from The Time Machine, because ... I knew in advance. :)
Google access will be closing down in a few weeks. It was nice knowing you all (mods).
I may return from time to time via Pan; else it's all gone over to those Stack Exchange sites.