Hello, my name is nigel and I love this site

[nigel]

Hi everyone

I found this amazing site while searching for a page on the Einstein metric. I will be reading and absorbing the material here and would like to share some of my recent readings on philosophy and its intersection with mathematics and physics. Firstly the grounding of this site seems to be the wave basis of reality. I depart from this in thinking of space as being separate from the wave, that is what this site seems to suggest is new to my worldview (I am a great believer in the expanding worldview), to me it allows the complexity of reality. Waves behave differently in different structures (waveguides).

So space will have a structure or geometry if you like and we all know the historical progression from a world on the back of a Turtle to Atlas then the “ether” and then Special to General Relativity and finally the eleven dimensions of String theory.

So any mental map of the universal wave-guide needs the mathematics of low dimensional topology. One discussion I have with my students is “OK you have heard of the Big Bang well if the Universe is expanding what is it expanding into?".

There has been an exciting development in the research into low dimensional topology, recently a fundamental mathematical conjecture the “Poincaré conjecture” has been proved. I wont bore you with the mathematical details other than to say the mathematics involved has endless applications in understanding the structure or shape of the universe.

Of great interest is the quixotic personality of the mathematician
“Grigori Perelman” ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grigori_Perelman )who has provided the solution and the fact that he used a functional from string theory (this seemed to upset many pure mathematicians) as an important tool in solving this problem that has defied the best mathematical minds for a century.

My philosophical interest stems from the space that I exist in and finding a grounding for my existence in that space. This is what attracts me to the world view found on this site, that is starting from a simple (metaphysical?) principle of no distinction between the wave and its guide.

This methodology was certainly beloved of Einstein who always demanded elegance, simplicity and beauty from his theorys and especially his mathematics. It is ironic to think that his field equations are indeed are aesthetically pleasing but have defied an analytical solution for nearly a century.

I am searching for the ontological structure and state of being that transcends the atomic worldview and focus on the connections between objects. Once again I express my thanks at finding a center of knowledge that supports this view.

In the past this search has led to the philosophy of art and aesthetics, in particular the branch of German philosophy that culminated in the work of Roman Ingarden (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Ingarden), Ingarden is a realist and in many ways the focus of this site in finding the essential unity of objects and the many quotes emphasising the search for a truthful realism, his ideas may complement the philosophical web found here.

Anyway if anyone is interested with the intersection of my readings into “Perelman's” work and the wonderful ideas on this site please let me know.

Kindest Regards
Nigel

[Aireal]

Welcome Nigel

Glad to have you here. After this post, I will check out the link you gave on Perelman. I have not heard of the "Poincare conjecture" before. Now I am not the greatest at math, but I do not mind being bored with it at all. Sooner or later I must always dig into the math behind things, reguardless if I want to or not.

Actually W.S.M. does consider space as being seperate from waves. Spherical scalar waves do permeate space and we refer to the quanity of scalar waves in a given region of space as the wave density of space, so the terms may be misleading at first. Our concept of space ties in with the question you address to you students, "if the Universe is expanding what is it expanding into?"

I have been working on understanding the science behind W.S.M. theory, but the philosophical implacations are far reaching, and discussed often on this forum. As you are a teacher of science, a lover of philosophy, art and aesthetics, I feel you will enjoy this forum, and have much to share with us as well. Glad to have you aboard.

[nigel]

Hi Aireal

Thanks for your welcome, some details you might be interested in.

You seem to have a good physics background you probably comfortable with the idea of a 4 dimensional space. The conjecture deals with the properties of surfaces in space with dimensions greater than 3, something we call a 3 sphere, and the other objects in 4 dimensional space with the similar properties.

Think of a globe of the world (a sphere) this is a 2 sphere, an object embedded in 3 dimensional space. It has many nice properties with many math names but many of them can be thought of as it’s quality of “smoothness”. We can cut it (surgery) and stretch it out to a flat surface an use that surface as a reliable map because the scale of distance (isometric) and angle (conformal) are preserved.
It would be nice to know what surfaces in 4 dimensions can be mapped like the 3 sphere and have the analogous “nice” properties, this is what the conjecture presupposes, here is a unhelpful statement of the conjecture.

“Consider a compact 3-dimensional manifold V without boundary. Is it possible that the fundamental group of V could be trivial, even though V is not homeomorphic to the 3-dimensional sphere?”

The fundamental group is an interesting and very useful concept that allows you to draw conclusions about a surface and the surfaces it can map to in a "nice" way like the globe to the 2 dimensional map (Mercator’s projection).

A manifold can be thought of as a surface.

Homeomorphic is the isometric and conformal (actually not quite as strong) properties.

Just as we can make a 2 dimensional map of the globe and use it to get around we can now be sure what 3 dimensional surfaces to do the same thing for, these will be the surfaces in space we are grounded on.
That is mathematics can now be sure what embedded manifolds in 4 dimensional space modelled by relativity will have the same nice properties that we have taken for granted in 3 dimensions.

This seems to be intuitively logical and only to be expected, however space has many surprises (like zero, infinity, Cantors set and cardinal numbers just to mention a few) and we will only discover them when we can start to navigate with confidence.

As to the question “what it is expanding into", it seems to me we are at the threshold to understanding

Kindest Regards Nigel

[Aireal]

Nigel

Thanks for the complement, but my formal education is limited. I only have a two year A.S. degree, and only got that later in life. I am mostly self educated. I was a union stage hand for most of my life, which allowed me plenty of free time to pursue my interests, of which their are many. Example, I was working on a body armor design in 1986 and needed to use force vector diagrams, calculate impact forces for various bullet tip diameters, ect, so I learned the required physics and math to complete my work. I was working on radiation shielding for space travel when I happened upon this site. Thus I have ended up with a somewhat varied informal education over the course of my life. So please overlook my gaps in knowledge.

That being said, the subject of your post has been of interest to me since I first read Flatland at the age of eleven. The first question to come to my young mind was, is there other dimensions than the 3 plus time that we are used to. Soon though, other questions rose from that one. Would these other dimensions be of a higher or lower order than ours, or do both exist, and does it affect us? In other words, are our dimensions curled up inside larger dimensions of space, like many mystics and philosophers suppose? Or are they curled up inside ours, much like some current theories suppose? Or even could there be both kinds? Next question is of course, if they exist, does it matter to us, meaning do they have a percieved effect on our reality?

I am familier with the concept of curved space and how you can have a finite region without a boundary. My knowledge of topology is limited to its use in normal mapping, but I can follow some. the (surgery) should be the mathematical process by which one dimension can be removed to produce a map that perserves distance and angle of scale (isometric and conformal). This would be simular to the way a flat 2 dimensional "orange peel" map of the world is made today from a 3 dimensional globe.

The unhelpful quote where V could be trival and not homeomorphic to the 3-dimensional sphere, I understood in this manner. The fundamental aspects of a manifold can be mapped in this way, even though V as a whole does not readily convert (morph) into 3-dimensions. The fundamental group can be thought of as the "surface" of this other dimension, giving us points of referance. As these manifolds are modeled on the curved space of relativity, we can be fairly confident that the same "nice properties" (laws of physics) apply there as well.

Once a map can be construsted for dimensions one removed from ours, perhapes some of the questions that have troubled me since childhood can be answered. Thank you you the information in this reguards, I hope I have understood it correctly.

Off topic, normally the forum is busier than this, however Geoff and Karene, the main forces behind this site, have just returned from vacation, and traffic seemed to have dropped off in their absence. As I mentioned before, I came here by mistake when I was working on my radiation shielding. I went to many sites during that time. However I recieved more help from Geoff and others involved with W.S.M. than I recieved from sites related to my work. So I came back here to learn more about it. I found my level of knowledge in physics and math to be lacking, and have been trying to retify that in my spare time, exploring the science behind W.S.M. in the process.

Best Reguards
Charles

[nigel]

Hi Charles
Seems like you have had an amazing set of experiences to date, you have a good grasp of the ponicare conjecture, just to straighten out a few details;

Quote “The fundamental group can be thought of as the "surface"”.

The fundamental group is actually a property of a surface, think of the surface of the orange, you could draw a circle (or any other closed curve) you can then contract the circle to a single point, this means it has a trivial fundamental group (order zero), now think of a doughnut, you could draw a circle around the doughnut so it goes thru the hole in the middle, now the only way to contract the circle to a point is to cut thru the donut so it is has a different fundamental group (order 1) now if I glue two doughnuts together like chain links I could get two circles like that and it would have a different fundamental group again (order 2).

Actually to a topologist the characterisation of the fundamental group to the surface can be so strong you can identify the two objects so your understanding was essentially correct. I think this is proof you have a natural understanding of or gift for mathematics.

I posted this stuff on the conjecture on this site mainly because I have spent most of my free time (not much) trying to understand what Perelman has done, I find it a healthy thing to share your interests and I know you really understand something better when you try to explain it to others.

Today I was thinking about Zenos paradox, Achilles and the tortoise, and it all makes sense when you think of time as a dimension. Achilles catches up thru time not space? What do you think?

Here is a link to a bbc doco on infinity where a brief discussion of Perleman work occurs, I know there is a good discussion on infinity on a previous post on this forum, maybe you had found it already, if not it does elaborate on infinity and eternity which came up in the previous posts. (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/documentary_archive/5349064.stm).

Good on you for exploring physics and math, maybe someone with more experience in topology will pick up on this post and the discussion will grow.

Kindest Regards Nigel

[Aireal]

How you doing Nigel?

Thanks for clearing up my understanding of the ponicare conjecture. It truely is an absorbing topic of interest, I hope others find it as interesting as I do.

On Zeros paradox, I was reading about it not that long ago in the book "Einstein's Universe" by Nigel Calder. It was being used of course to explain relativity to the layman, but it was the first time I have ever seen that old Greek tale used in this manner. In the book Nigel Calder describer two space ships on a journey. The slightly faster ship allows the slower one a head start. In the simple example he used, it was apperant that the second ship would need to be much faster if it was to catch the first ship before it reached the speed of light because after that it could never catch up, reguardless of how long the journey was. However the example did not touch on the dilation of time. To the outside observer, time will have stoped for both of them upon reaching light speed, but this would not be the case from their point of view. Once time dilation from speed is added to this picture, it becomes quite complex, and depends on which point of perspective you view it from. As the first ship to leave would already have its clock slowed down before the second ship took off, given the right starting conditions, the second ship could catch up thru time if not space.

Of course this ties in with the Gamma Factor, and another paradox that has drawn my attention. Nothing can travel faster than light, but the speed of light is relative to the observer. Lets give an example of a ship leaving Earth at a 1g acceleration for a distant star. The speed of the ship is being tracked from Earth and from the ships internal systems, based on a map of the stars and relative postion of the ship to them. When the ship "observes" it's speed to be 71% of the speed of light, an observer from Earth would see the ship as just reaching the speed of light. As the ship continues to accelerate, the navigater would be forced to assume that the maps of the stars made on Earth was incorrect, and the distances between stars are much shorter. At 90% of the speed of light, from the ships viewpoint, the distance between stars would be 7 times less than the maps from Earth would suggest. When the crew of the ship returns to Earth, the cause of this decrepancy becomes clear, they have aged less than the people at home. Less time passed for the crew, which gave the impression of faster than light travel. This relative affect of time impacts how we measure distance. So if speed affects our view of distance, how can distance be accuratly defined? Nearly every object in the universe has a speed relative to our movement through space, does this affect our judgement of the distances involved? Is there a true cosmic scale of distance unaffected by this? Topology may be relevant here also.

On infinity. You should post that link on infinity you gave on the infinity thread we have. Several people who do not support W.S.M. come to our forum just to discuss that topic, but they seldom venture from that thread. If you read that thread you will find that I have posted on it some, but nor extensivly. I am a Native American Indian and spent a lot of my youth speaking with old indains, learning what I could before their wisdom was lost to time and lack of interest. I noticed that "primitive cultures" do not have the problems comprehending infinity that more "advanced" cultures do. I believe this stems from the world view held by primitive cultures where many things are considered infinite in nature. Mathematicains seem to have the greatest problems when it comes to infinity, solutions with infinities in them are frowned upon. Math breaks the universe into finite numbers which can be observed and worked with, which leads to a more finite world view than that held by primitive cultures. Advanced cultures define and make finite many of the things considered infinite by less technologicly advanced cultures, thus losing over time the mental grasp they once held on the concept of infinity.

I am glad you gave the link on infiity in you last post, I will be listening to the lecture Part One: Space and the Universe when I am done posting here. As an added benifit, I found a link to Branson and his Virgin Spaceship company of which I was unaware of. Once I locate an e-mail address for them I will send them a copy of my concept for radiation shielding for future use, if they ever have need of it. I have always been a scientist at heart. I followed my dad and became a union stage hand for most of my working life, and enjoyed every minute of it. But I would have been just as happy being in a lab somewhere contemplating the universe and the many mysteries it holds.

Till we speak again, Best Reguards

Charles "Little Feather" Laster

[nigel]

Hi Charles

Thanks for your great post, it was really world view expanding that stuff on zeno’s paradox, fantastic!

Firstly would like to take a minute to relate the ponicare conjecture to the main thrust of this site (of which you are a lot more familiar than me).

Getting back to the surface of the orange( 2 sphere) embedded in 3 dimensions, we draw our circles(or any closed curve) and we can contract it to a point with out cutting the surface, and as aspiring topologists we consider any surface with this property as equivalent (for topological purposes). As an example the doughnut (torus) isn’t equivalent as shown previously.

What is interesting is in 3 dimensions these circles we draw on the 2 spheres are the natural wave fronts that would propagate on this surface.

Now let us transcend to the 4 dimensional equivalent the 3 sphere, the cirles will now become 2 spheres (oranges) as we add the dimension in, that is the natural wave front on our 3 dimensional surface embedded in our 4 dimensional space, we find are the good old friends, the spherical matter waves.

It seems to me the proof of the conjecture is a support to the physics beloved of this wonderful site.

Now I would like to share with you some recent experiences,

I am working in a very remote location in the centre of Australia, at a town called Alice Springs; this is an ancient and sacred place where the indigenous protectors have suffered to the magnitude of your own people.

The country is so dry, and it is one of the hottest places on earth. There is a special tree there the “Red Gum” that miraculously survives in the dry riverbeds and blesses everyone with its shade.

There is a sacred caterpillar that lives in the soil around the tree, this sacred animal originally shaped the land in the dreamtime (world), this caterpillar emerges from the sand after the rain and travels form the riverbed to the higher ground.

The school where I work blocks one of its traditional routes. There has been much suffering and death from sickness and accident at this school. I have talked to people about creating a caterpillar corridor so the sacred journey can continue unimpeded.

Nothing has come of this to date, the indigenous people have lost the ability to protect the environment here due to the encroaching civilisation and the social illness of the neighbouring tribes who come into the town and have no respect for the original tribal owners and elders the Arrende people. Please Charles say a prayer for the Arrende people and their sacred catapillar.

May your people always be blessed.
Nigel

[Aireal]

Nigel

Now I understand how the ponicare conjecture applies to this site. First a little story. One of my greatest strengths is also one of my greatest weaknesses. I can picture things in 3-D in my mind with great detail. I can rotate the image in my mind, zoom in and out, and allow time to pass and watch the changes. The amount of information I can process this way is considerable, entire blueprints can be held in my mind. This has had great practicle use in my life. However it has had a negative affect also. In my youth it allowed me to avoid the need for math in many things. This of course caused problems with my science and math teachers who did not understand how I could get correct answers to problems with little to no math used in the process. of course as I progressed in life, I encounted problems for which I need math, but did not have the proper background. This also caused problems when I went to college later in life. Placement tests ranked me high in several areas, so I was put in advanced physics and pre-cal courses right away. However I never even had a full semester of algebra before this point, and never had a geometry of trigonometry course in my life. So it was a struggle for me when I first went to college. While there though, we touched on N-dimensional and matrix math which reawakeded my interest in this area.

My ability to picture things in my mind is limeted to 4-dimensional Ecludian space. Other dimensions intrigue me because they are beyond the ability of my mind to percieve. They can only be explored by math of which I am not yet capable of. One of the main conserns I had was can these other dimensions impact or effect our dimensions. In Flatland, the residents of the 2-D world saw a sphere passing through first as a point, which grew to a circle, returned to a point and then vanished. What they saw was the wave front passing through. A wave front passing through our 3-D world be percieved as first a point, which grows into a sphere, and contracts back to a point. This concept could apply to any scale, from sub-atomic to universe sized. This I can picture in my mind, and see that it has many implacations.

Work on the ponicare conjecture has other important aspects I believe. If my mental picture is correct, there should be a slight differance in the spherical waves generated by a N-Dimemsional wavefront than those which originate in our dimensions. These should show up in the orthological and/or vector components of the expanding wave front in our dimensions. This may allow us in the future to determine if a given spherical wave has it's origin in our dimensions or N-dimensional space. I have no idea how a test could be devised for this, but solving the ponicare conjecture opens up this possability.

So you are in Australia. Geoff Haselhurst also lives in Australia, but near the coast, which one I can't remember at this moment. I was touched by your story of the Arrende people and their sacred catapillar. I will remember them in my thoughts and prayers, and hope that their culture may be preserved. This topic is also dear to Geoff's heart. Once he catches up on things and returns to the forum, I am sure he would enjoy speaking with you about this himself. The culture and history of my people have enough in common with the native people of Australia that I have always felt a connection with their plight.

On a lighter note, I listened to the lecture on that link you gave on infinity. I enjoyed it very much, but there was one point I wished to discuss with you. When they brought up the subject of God and infinity, they said that God was qualitivly infinite, but not quantumly infinite. Meaning God is not broken down into small descrete parts. I have alwayes disagreed with this viewpoint. If there is a God who existed before all things, infinite. Then the only material God would have for the work of creation is God itself. God would have to use his own energy to create matter. Therefore every single particle and every speck of energy in the entire universe is but a piece of God, and God is truely infinite. Science in its attempt to understand the universe is really on the path to understanding God. Thus science and religion should not be at odds with each other, for both are on a path to understanding God. There is no one path to understanding God because all people are not of one mind. We are all individuals, seeking the path that has the greatest meaning to us personally. So my spirituality has never been in conflict with my love of science. I wish that was true for more people.

Well I have rambled one long enough for now, till we speak again, best reguards.

Charles

[nigel]

Hi Charles

Once again a great post, I find your ideas both refreshing and intriguing, I think your lack of a formal maths training is more an advantage than disadvantage, (please forgive the following if redundant);

algebra is necessary, there are some really great programs to help you do this one of my favourites is freely available on the web, it is called "are you ready for calculus" at (http://www.math.buffalo.edu/rur/rurci3.cgi).

Once you have mastered the stuff at this site the next objective is what I consider the mathematicians bible Spivak's book "Calculus" which you can read about at (http://www.mathpop.com/bookhtms/cal.htm).
To get thru this material while working for a living could take up to 18 months, but believe me it is worth it. You could then consider yourself more than ready to study undergraduate mathematics(a challenge good for anyone’s soul).

Mathematics at the level above high school/college is very different and requires a high level of creativity and what I would call an ability to make identifications and see equivalences.

Now I will digress into some philosophy and sociology of learning. The greatest error in philosophy is to compartmentalise or to categorise, to be obsessed with measure, however how else can we progress?

That said I want to venture into a dangerous area so I need to tread carefully.

The unfortunate but accepted theories of learning practised in the dominant paradigm of the west is a corrupted mishmash of:

1) a misreading of "Piagets cognitive Model (read it here)(http://honolulu.hawaii.edu/intranet/committees/FacDevCom/guidebk/teachtip/piaget.htm).
2) Vygotsky's Social Model (read it here) (http://www.kolar.org/vygotsky/).

Both these men were outstanding philosophers and scientists, however their ideas have been endlessly misrepresented and distorted.

It is amazing how Piaget has been ladled as a child psychologist, (this is like calling Einstein a patent clerk) ignoring his outstanding contributions to mathematics, philosophy, computer science and artificial intelligence. (Personally I have learnt more of set theory and number theory from reading Piaget than anywhere else).

Most western academics in the field of learning will tell you your ability to learn falls away from your early twenties, this follows from erroneously applying Piagets congestive stages and is absolute rot,

Russian behavioural science teaches that your peak ability to learn mathematics is at around 45, my personal belief is it is different for every individual. I guess what I am trying to say it is never to late to get back on the path of learning mathematics, no matter what anyone tells you.

Now I digress into extremely unsafe territory, having worked as an educator in the remote regions I have noticed (and their is some early research backing this observation) a difference in the way indigenous people learn mathematics and this strongly intersects with your last post.

It is an increased ability to visualise geometric and algebraic structures, just as you stated. This is an amazing thing and I am completely unqualified to comment on the reasons why, as the whole concept gets way to close to some ugly and revisionist genetic theories best left unmentioned. I only state it so you can possibly realise where this comes from and why, and I quote directly from your post

"I can picture things in 3-D in my mind with great detail. I can rotate the image in my mind, zoom in and out, and allow time to pass and watch the changes. The amount of information I can process this way is considerable, entire blueprints can be held in my mind. This has had great practical use in my life. However it has had a negative affect also."

Your teachers let you down in as much as they were not aware of the difference in your learning style and failed to steer you around the obvious dangers, not just in failing to develop your algebraic skills but in instilling a need for algebra and eventually its offspring topology to deal with the higher dimensional constructs that no "flatlanders" can visualise no matter how latent the willingness to anthromorphise.

Finally the most abused word in the modern lexicon is quantum, my god it is an abused word, and their is no subject misunderstood more than quantum mechanics, if it helps I interpret it more as in counting (to quantify), remember in quantum mechanics we say for example there are these so called energy packets (discrete is often the term), there are these so called quantum particles like photons, but never forget we take them completely on faith, we can never be certain where the are, or where they are going or even to put them the into boxes (they have an annoying habit of tunnelling out). The pesky things can even escape from black holes. Worse they seem to communicate at a distance(entanglement), personally like Einstein I take an empirical view(as in the sense of metaphysical realism), God does not play dice though I believe I have enough evidence to declare he/she has a highly developed sense of humour.

I have spent a lot of time studying phenomenology, that is a branch of scientific philosophy you may be interested in looking at sometime, a phenomenologist is open to the truth wherever it shines, thru feelings, art or experiment.

Kindest Regards Nigel

Notes: for the interested reader

1. “metaphysical realism” outlined by Roman Ingarden in his work “The Controversy over the Existence of the World” Spór o istnienie Świata (Controversy over the Existence of the World), PAU, Vol. I, Kraków: 1947, Vol. II, Kraków, 1948

Ingarden taught that, as long as we approach realism(what is the world particles or waves) problem from the standpoint of epistemology, the result will be that there is no way to establish the existence and knowledge of a mind-independent world. Metaphysical realism take the ontological (the grounding/empirical)) rather than an epistimological(catagories/particles) path.

[Aireal]

Nigel

Many thanks for the links to help with my math. I can tell I will be hitting the books for a while, but improving my math will be well worth the effort. I am not familier with Piaget's Cognative nor Vygotsky's Social models, but I will read the links you provided.

As for those who link native peoples ability to visualize to genetics, I would tend to disagree. The genetics vs. environment debate has raged a long time. Yes there are some genetic differances in native people compaired to the bulk of the worlds population, but these are minor. Culture and environment have much more to do with it. Visualization is a skill that can be learned, it is just a skill that is considered important to native cultures. As small childern we are told simple stories, little more than word pictures. As we grow, we are told that our dreams are important, that not only should we remember them, but that they contain important information that sometimes we even base our actions on. Later we are encouraged to seek visions for guidence and inspiration. Shooting a bow, thowing a spear or knife involves visualization. You must picture the number of flips the knife makes on its way to the target. If the target is moving, you must also picture its movement in time and "lead the target" so that target and knife arrive at the same point and location in time and space. You know in your heart the moment you release the weapon what the outcome will be. If the picture of the outcome was clean and sharp in you mind at the moment of release, you will hit the target. If your mental picture is not clean and sharp at that moment of release, you will miss, and you know it before it happens.

There is even scientife evidence to suggest it is a learned skill. Have you seen those pictures made up of dots, but when you stare at them a picture slowly appears in it. That technique actually came from research conducted into the effect of the visual cortex on learning. I got to meet the man behind that work. He was promoting a memorization and learning technique based on that work. He claims anyone can devolep a potographic memory. Stare at a list of names on a paper, without moving your eyes, just stare at the center of the paper for several minutes. Then look up at a blank wall, perferably white. You will see an after image of the list on the wall, which will quickly fade. As soon as it does, close your eyes and you should still be able to bring the vision of that list back up and read it for a short period of time afterwards. The more you practice this, the greater the time you will be able to bring the picture of this list back up.

I have not used his technique, my memory is not photographic, and I do not want it to be. I foresee a problem if this method is used too much. I spent my summers during high shool in a special summer shool called Upward Bound. You had to be two things to get in, dirt poor and have a high I.Q. score. One of the boys I knew there had a potographic memory. He decieded to memorize all the books in the college libary. About two weeks into his endevor, they found him at closing time curled up in the fetal postion, comatose. For at least the ten or so years I keep track of him, he never came out of it. He overloaded his visual cortex and his brains ability to process all the information he crammed into it. Anyone who uses this method of learning should take it slow and not push themselves. Visualization can be taxing if one over does it. A few months ago I tried to picture string theory in its entirity in my mind. I was only somewhat successful, and the effort gave me one of the worst headachs of my life, and left me unable to visualize anything for a couple of days. My first and probably last effort to picture multiple dimensions at once in my mind.

If you get the chance, like at my long post on this thread http://www.physics-philosophy-metaphysics.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=463

It is a model of the atom based on W.S.M. but from the perspective of quantum mechanics. I asked Geoff to look it over to make sure I am correct from the standpoint of W.S.M. theory, would you be so kind as to read it and see if I made any grave errors from the quantum mechanical standpoint.

I am unsure if God plays dice with the universe, but he definitly has a highly developed sence of humor, of that I can attest to.

Till we speak again, I got a lot reading do do on the links you provided.

Best Reguards
Charles

[haselhurst]

Hey thanks you guys.
I have been at the forum all day catching up on posts. It's 8pm and I'm bleary eyed - yet i still get pleasure out of reading your posts.
I will enjoy reading up on Roman Ingarden, pleased that he also writes on Art and aesthetics (we are planning a big art section on our site).

Nigel,
I hope over the next year to build a good mathematics section at spaceandmotion website. I want to do this for two reasons.

i) Because the WSM explains why numbers / mathematics exists in the universe. i.e. Waves can be counted, e.g. their wavelength velocity frequency and the number of wave centers. Further, waves behave in a logical necessarily connected manner, and this is the foundation for all logic including pure mathematics (it also explains how we can have senses due to our in waves, thus explaining the two fundamentals of science).

ii) Secondly, WSM really needs help from mathematicians to provide a solid mathematical physics foundation to this work (Milo Wolff has done some, but there is obviously a huge amount to do). So i figure getting pages up on maths will help expose WSM to more people who are interested in maths, and hopefully some of them can help.

Perhaps over the next 12 months you may be interested in helping. Most of the content i would get from the internet (I will write up a bit on the metaphysics of maths that will be original work). Anyway, it seems you have a genuine love of the subject, and most importantly you seem sensible / aware of the errors in physics that the WSM addresses - so you are in a perfect position to really help in this area.
No hassles - think about it!
But our spaceandmotion website does rank very well in Google, so your work will be read by a lot of people (power of the internet / Google!)

After reading all your posts today I am really impressed. Thanks.

Geoff


PS - The WSM solution to Zeno's paradox. There is no such thing as continuous motion of matter in space and time, there is only the wave motion of space. Thus matter 'particles' are really wave centers that form and disappear with each successive In Wave. So motion of matter is really in discrete little steps as each spherical In Wave flows through wave center. If you analyse any of the motion paradoxes from this foundation you will find their errors.

PPS - I have a pet hate of 'higher dimensions' when they are used to explain science. I have hippy friends that frequently claim the existence of all sorts of things and just say that they exist in higher dimensions.
The world we live in is 3D (as in a sphere). And there is one further dimension to account for - time / change - obviously caused by the fact that we are dealing with spherical wave motions. This is one problem with
string theory, it is mathematical / multidimensional. And as I understand quantum physics / Schrodinger's equation, with the use of unlimited dimensions you can show just about anything to be true.
So I must better understand your work in this area Nigel (and I try to keep my emotions separate from my work as a philosopher! - but we are all human, this is hard to do!)
This also realtes to Bohm's pilot wave theory (following on from de Broglie) where the pilot wave is in abstract multidimensional space, and is non local in its effects on guiding the 'particle'. I think the real reason for this is that the de broglie wave is a phase wave with velocity c^2 / v, so it does actually propagate very fast and once this is realized then we should re-work this from a local (but faster than c) 3D space.
We can discuss this more over time.


I am knocking off - ABC TV beckons - Spicks and Specks is on, followed by IT (I like music and comedies!)

[Aireal]

Geoff

The subject of "higher dimensions" has been a love/hate subject since I was a kid and first broached the subject with my father.

Also there does not seem to be agreement on the use of other "dimensions" amoung mathematician. Some have explained them to me as being little more than mathematical notation and are not "other dimensions" in the real sense. Others have said their use implies the existance of these other diminsions. So I am confused.

Nigel and I have talked about the origin of scalar waves and how that could be a higher dimension. I agree with him, but I have not addressed this in my posts as I feel it is not relevent untill W.S.M. tries to address the formation of the universe or attains a far greater degree of detail. So far the effects of scalar waves can be addressed without the need to show their origin. While in our 3-D world they obey all the laws of science in 3 dimensions. This subject will have to be addressed at some point, but W.S.M. is not there yet, and much needs to be done before we are. Detailed mathematical modeling would be needed to show the minor changes in their effects to resolve this issue. The answer will rise out of the work we are doing now, time will tell. I feel that Nigel's approach to this complex problem is in harmony with W.S.M. and would show that the interconnection between all things extends to other dimensions as well.

In reguards to Bohm's pilot wave theory. I am unaware of this work. In my model I showed that reflection at the boundary of the standing wave center could create an in wave that would act as a wave guide for other in waves and make the electron more stable. Could this be related to Bohm's pilot wave?

[nigel]

Hi Geoff

Your position on time, higher dimensions ect … is really interesting from many perspectives. The existence of a simply connected 3 dimensional manifolds with “nice” properties (homeomorphic to the three-sphere) has been a problem for mathematicians for over 100 years [1]. The existance of these manifolds is important to a framework in which to interpret the solutions of the important equations of physics.

Your position on time is also interesting I have already responded to this extensively on the Intro to David thread. Engaging your position has opened up my mathematical thinking and now I am looking at metrics with a much wider perspective.

The problems [2] with string theory are well known, there are many arcane explanations as to why we cant discover the missing dimensions, which I wont, go into here. Actually to my understanding string theory uses quantum mechanics like a boundary condition that is QM is a low energy limit.

It is interesting you should mention the idea of an “abstract multidimensional space” which is a tool for calculations like approximations as opposed to possible physical spaces like the 4 dimensional space-time of General Relativity.

I agree we live in a 3-dimensional manifold, I am not sure as to whether this manifold is embedded in a 4-dimensional space time (Relativity) or that time is an intrinsic property of this manifold, caused by spherical wave motions (WSM). I am sure that both theories are incredibly interesting.

What I like about your work and what stands out as quite exceptional is the way your ideas are firmly grounded in the intellectual history of physics.

You have obviously spent a huge amount of time reading the original sources, and this has paid off in the following way.
You have obtained a high standard of what I can only describe as an ontology for the history of physics and the development of its core ideas (not to mention all the work on transcendent idealism and its opponents like Popper).

This ontology for the history of physics is valuable as it clarifies the competing ideas, on WSM ideas are firmly grounded, we can see where they came from and where they are going to.

I can see in your response’s how you are demanding a similar ontological discipline from our contributions, which while it may loose you a few friends, I feel you have every right to demand due to the incredible work you have put in here.

As a student of ontology I benefit from this. I have a commitment to a realist worldview, which can only be constructed through understanding the nature of the objects I am dealing with.

To answer another of your questions “ii) Secondly, WSM really needs help from mathematicians”

I am happy to help and I would like to focus on the implications of the solutions to Dirac’s equation (a technical way of saying this is I am interested in the ontological status of the spectrum of Dirac’s operator).

Why this is important is in the fact that the way we interpret the initial solutions of Diracs relativistic QM is where we find the beginning of the Standard Model.

This follows from that it was in the interpratation of these solutions that we first find the use of the idea use of the concept of spin and thus the beginning of the classification of "particles" in terms of the Standard model, that is spin …3/2,1,½, 1/3, 0, -1/2 –1/3,.. and on it goes without end apparently.

Now it is interesting to note that Dirac’s operator is not bounded below, there is a major problem here (not in the epistic sense) that is the infinite negative energy spectrum does not correspond to observed experimental results (ground states), so as always not letting a good theory go by the wayside just because it fails to correspond to reality, mathematical physicists have modified Dirac’s operator to make it correspond to observed reality.

This has led to a huge complexity in Relativistic Quantum Mechanics (and in my opinion is a mistake [3]). My latest thinking/idea is to go back into the history of physics and look at ways to interpret this unbounded negative energy spectrum.

The natural question of how could this work help WSM, well

1) it was from this operator that the whole of the Standard Model evolved (it is fundamental to the SM), the anomalies in the spectrum of this operator have never been addressed just bypassed. Trying to interpret the spectrum of this operator in terms of WSM would seem to me to be a legitimate program.

2) Also the latest challenge to the SM apart from the slow death of String Theory is the apparent discovery of Neutrino oscillations, itself an amazing anomaly found in the “particle” first theorised by Pauli. It is interesting that the only model for Neutrino oscillations comes from wave mechanics.[4]


3) It could provide a mathematical side to complement the already well established history of physics found on the WSM site, it could show the historical nexus of Erwin Schrödinger's wave mechanics, the matrix mechanics of Werner Heisenberg, and the emergence of the Dirac formalisim as a child of wave mechanics, matrix mechanics and Relativity which then established the foundations of the accepted SM which is now more widely recognised as an incomplete theory.

Now some of the ideas listed here use areas of physics that are apart or contradict WSM particularly [4], however even in [4] the momentum is the de Broglie momentum, calculated from the wavelength of the “particle” it is not calculated using a mass. The actual mass terms could possibly be replaced with an energy expression [5] related to the “wavespace” (WSM) or manifold to develop an alternative model for Neutrino oscillations based on WSM.

Once again I acknowledge that this is a forum for Discussing the Dynamic Unity of Reality, these links and concepts have been introduced to compare and contrast WSM (Space, which causes and connects matter) to the competing establishment theories of physics (Science as a study of matter/particles).

Thanks once again Geoff for all your work here and in particular Direct Material Realism[6] as I am absolutely sure string theory is not going to describe reality.

I believe we share a common goal that unites us as philosophers of science no matter what our conceptual framework. That is to connect to reality and hence to each other.

Kindest Regards Nigel

Notes
[1] http://mathworld.wolfram.com/PoincareConjecture.html
http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Low-DimensionalTopology.html
http://arxiv.org/pdf/gr-qc/9212003 technical

[2] http://www.americanscientist.org/template/AssetDetail/assetid/18638?&print=yes
"It's not even wrong." Pauli Quote

[3] Diracs operator was built on solid and established program of physics, it used results from Einstein’s Relativity and Wolfgang Pauli's work in interpreting Atomic spectra (the hydrogen spectra in particular), and Schrödinger’s wave mechanics. To arbitrarily change his work just to make it conform to a particular interpretation of experimental results could well be a mistake.

[4] http://www.ps.uci.edu/~superk/oscmath3.html

[5] we can always find a possible wave related energy expression to try instead of using the kinetic energy of a particle (as in Quantum Electrodynamics, where the energy can be derived from the curvature of a geodesic for the manifold (an integral operator))

[6] Direct Material Realism http://www.spaceandmotion.com/Philosophy-Immanuel-Kant-Philosopher.htm.

[haselhurst]

Hi Nigel,
Very interesting - I just wish I understood it better. But I will learn, I have come to realise how feeble our minds are at adapting to new knowledge - it takes time (wave motions)!

I have copied you post and sent it to our little WSM theorists group. Hopefully it might lead to some interesting discussions.

I really like your attitude!
And appreciate your time and thoroughness.
All the best,
Geoff

[Aireal]

Nigel

I found an open source platform for numerical computation. It can be downloaded for free from this site. http://www.scilab.org/download/stable/scilab-4.0.exe

And here is another one called, Maxima, a computer algebra system. found here. http://maxima.sourceforge.net/ Which looks simpler to use.

I did not know what grade level you teach, but thought it might be usefull to your students.

[nigel]

Thanks Aireal

This will come in really handy.

I am currently trying to summarise Yang Mills in contrast and relation to WSM, I just posted a brief account on the "Hello from Byron New Energy" thread if you are interested. I hope you are travelling well.

Kindest Regards Nigel