Is Nature Trying To Tell Us Something?
Robert L. Oldershaw
no string/brane exotica,
no sparticles,
no WIMPs,
no supersymmetry exotica,
no extra-dimensions,
no mini-black holes,
no Randall-Sundrum gravitons,
no greased porker Higgsy,
and nothing beyond the considerably pre-LHC standard model, which has
26-30 adjustable parameters.
Then there is the 120 orders-of-magnitude vacuum energy density
crisis., the incompatibility of GR and QM, the cluelessness about the
dark matter which is virtually the entire Universe, ...
The relevant question is: Is nature trying to tell us something?
Perhaps that we are struggling so ineffectively because we are working
within the wrong general paradigm?
RLO
Fractal Cosmology
http://www3.amherst.edu/~rloldershaw
Dirk Bruere at NeoPax
Well, Nature is telling us what it always has - that our understanding
is far from perfect. However, it is not clear (obviously!) what
assumption(s) we are making that seem utterly reasonable now but which
will turn out to be simply wrong.
Any suggestions?
--
Dirk
http://www.neopax.com/technomage/ - Magick and Technology
Robert L. Oldershaw
[ Your display is set for the "US-ASCII" character set. ]
[ Some characters may be displayed incorrectly. ]
On Aug 27, 3:08 pm, Dirk Bruere at NeoPax <dirk.bru...@gmail.com>
wrote:
>
> Well, Nature is telling us what it always has - that our understanding
> is far from perfect. However, it is not clear (obviously!) what
> assumption(s) we are making that seem utterly reasonable now but which
> will turn out to be simply wrong.
>
> Any suggestions?
>
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Definitely!
Physics has suffered because of its inability to bring the fundamental
symmetry: relativity of scale, into its theories.
Weyl, Einstein, Dirac and a host of others tried repeatedly to
accomplish this, but it never seemed to work.
However, if your emphasis is on studying nature, instead of studying
mathematical models, then you can see how nature accomplishes this.
Nature cannot have continuous conformal symmetry because that strongly
violates our empirical knowledge of nature.
But discrete conformal symmetry does not need to conflict with
empirical results.
[[Mod. note -- Newtonian mechanics+gravitation, special relativity,
electromagnetism, and general relativity are all scale-invariant
(i.e., they have continuous conformal symmetry). Quantum mechanics
is also scale-invariant, but we usually apply it to physical systems
where electrical charge is quantized, and this combination isn't
scale-invariant. That is, a hydrogen atom has a definite size,
and a blown-up or scaled-down hydrogen atom (with the same electron
and proton charges) wouldn't be a solution of the quantum mechanics
and electromagnetic field equations.
-- jt]]
If the laws of physics, especially gravitation, are recast with
discrete conformal symmetry, then you get a new and completely
different understanding of nature in terms of a discrete self-similar
hierarchy that has no bounds.
With this new paradigm you can unify GR and QM, explain the fine
structure constant, demystify h-bar, resolve the vacuum energy density
crisis, predict the exact nature of the dark matter, retrodict the
masses of all particles (including the electron), and have a proper
understanding of the hierarchy of Planck scales.
This new paradigm predicted pulsar-planets, and it predicted the
hundreds of billions of unbound planetary-mass objects recently
inferred as roaming free throughout the Galaxy. It makes an exact
prediction for the dark matter mass spectrum.
I have a website that serves as a teaching resource for this new
paradigm.
Eric Gisse
wrote:
> [ The following text is in the "ISO-8859-1" character set. ]
> =A0 =A0 [ Some characters may be displayed incorrectly. ]
>
> On Aug 27, 3:08 pm, Dirk Bruere at NeoPax <dirk.bru...@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> > Well, Nature is telling us what it always has - that our understanding
> > is far from perfect. However, it is not clear (obviously!) what
> > assumption(s) we are making that seem utterly reasonable now but which
> > will turn out to be simply wrong.
>
> > Any suggestions?
>
---------------
>
> Definitely!
>
> Physics has suffered because of its inability to bring the fundamental
> symmetry: relativity of scale, into its theories.
In what way would you say physics has suffered?
General relativity and QFT (via the standard model) are, in their
respective domains, remarkably unchallenged.
Scale invariance, on the other hand, is not an observed property of
the universe we live in.
>
> Weyl, Einstein, Dirac and a host of others tried repeatedly to
> accomplish this, but it never seemed to work.
No, what those scientists tried to do was _unify_ gravitation and
quantum theory. "Relativity of scale" is a concept largely restricted
to yourself.
>
> However, if your emphasis is on studying nature, instead of studying
> mathematical models, then you can see how nature accomplishes this.
>
> Nature cannot have continuous conformal symmetry because that strongly
> violates our empirical knowledge of nature.
Does it?
Continuous symmetries such as Lorentz invariance have no known
violations, and charge/parity/time invariance are almost exactly true.
Further, we have the discrete symmetry group of the standard model
which has worked pretty well so far.
BTW, do not complain about the Higgs unless you put it in context with
other predicted particles such as the top quark.
>
> But discrete conformal symmetry does not need to conflict with
> empirical results.
>
> [[Mod. note -- Newtonian mechanics+gravitation, special relativity,
> electromagnetism, and general relativity are all scale-invariant
> (i.e., they have continuous conformal symmetry). =A0Quantum mechanics
> is also scale-invariant, but we usually apply it to physical systems
> where electrical charge is quantized, and this combination isn't
> scale-invariant. =A0That is, a hydrogen atom has a definite size,
> and a blown-up or scaled-down hydrogen atom (with the same electron
> and proton charges) wouldn't be a solution of the quantum mechanics
> and electromagnetic field equations.
> -- jt]]
>
> If the laws of physics, especially gravitation, are recast with
> discrete conformal symmetry, then you get a new and completely
> different understanding of nature in terms of a discrete self-similar
> hierarchy that has no bounds.
Except the laws of physics are not conformally invariant.
Take GR for example. The theory is diffeomorphism invariant, but not
conformally invariant. Which makes me wonder why you base your
'theory' of conformal invariance off a theory that is manifestly not
conformally invariant.
>
> With this new paradigm you can unify GR and QM, explain the fine
> structure constant, demystify h-bar, resolve the vacuum energy density
> crisis, predict the exact nature of the dark matter, retrodict the
> masses of all particles (including the electron), and have a proper
> understanding of the hierarchy of Planck scales.
Unless one actually checks the predictions for, say, your particle
masses. The last time this was brought up, the lower bound on how
wrong your answer was, was roughly forty standard deviations.
The standard confidence level of a discovery is five standard
deviations.
>
> This new paradigm predicted pulsar-planets,
Distinguish between 'I think pulsar planets exist' and 'my theory
makes a definitive prediction of planets around pulars with a specific
range of masses, periods, spins...'
You have the former. Not the latter, which would have been
interesting.
> and it predicted the
> hundreds of billions of unbound planetary-mass objects recently
> inferred as roaming free throughout the Galaxy. It makes an exact
> prediction for the dark matter mass spectrum.
Yes, it does make an exact prediction.
You predict a discrete range of ~Jupiter mass, ~0.1 M_sol and ~1 M_sol
as the components of dark matter. Unfortunately, after roughly 15
years of MACHO searches the most that has been found are some Jupiter
mass unbounded objects.
Notice how you emphasisze "hundreds of billions" in order to make the
observation sound more important than it is.
1) Only a few events were actually observed. Hundreds of billions is
an extrapolation, which both you and the author are (well, the author
is) careful to point out that may not be correct.
2) You neglect to mention the large body of surveys like [super]MACHO,
OGLE [1,2,3] which specifically sought out these objects, and you do
not have any sort of explanation. Currently you say 'But Hawkins...'
while ignoring the arguments I've made against him, as well as the
arguments other published authors have made.
3) The various MACHO surveys are not incompatible with the unbound
planets discovered, as is discernable if you actually read them.
4) Finally, 'hundreds of billions' translates into jack squat in terms
of percentages of the overall required dark matter mass budget. I have
not seen you discuss this even once.
Of course you won't really discuss this, because write-only posting
means you don't have to deal with the harsh reality of your theory
being wrong.