Time

So I've been thinking about what the C's said about time not existing. So if there is no time, there's two possibilites:

1. Nothing happens
2. Everything happens all at once

#1 is the trivial solution. Zero. The other solution is the interesting one. So everything and anything is happening all at once. The eternal now. The "many worlds" theory. Everything anyone has ever done or is going to do exists somewhere, right now, in paralell. Then I though about that old Buddhist koan:

Flag is moving. No, wind is moving. No, MIND is moving.

And then I though about what that guy Seth was saying, that we create our own reality?

So reality is static. It's all encoded somewhere. We're the ones moving through little bits of this hyperdimensional space. Every decision we make changes what "universes" we get to see next. We're creating our own "reality", by the path we're taking through this bigger invisible space that we can't "see". Which is governed by the decisions we make on a continual basis.

Maybe this prison that these "aliens" are keeping us in, isn't so much a physical prison, as it is trying to limit and influence the "path" we're taking. They want to restrict us to "universes" in which they dominate. And that breaking out of it is a matter of making decisions that take us into areas of this hyperspace that they don't want us going in.

If everything has already happened, or is happening, why can't they be content to lord over those slivers of space where they do get to rule over everything, and leave the rest of us alone?
 
John Chang said:
We're the ones moving through little bits of this hyperdimensional space. Every decision we make changes what "universes" we get to see next. We're creating our own "reality", by the path we're taking through this bigger invisible space that we can't "see". Which is governed by the decisions we make on a continual basis.
I like this. It's very similar to how I think of it. I kind of take off from Ouspensky's "snail" analogy.

Ouspensky said:
So far we have considered higher animals: a dog, a cat, a horse. Let us now take a lower animal - a snail for example. We know nothing about its inner life, but we may be sure that its perception is very different from ours. In all probability a snail's sensations of its surroundings are very vague. It probably feels warmth, cold, light, darkness, hunger, and instinctively (i.e. incited by the pleasure-pain guidance) it crawls towards the uneaten edge of the leaf it sits on and draws away from a dead leaf. Its movements are governed by pleasure-pain; it always advances towards the one and retreats from the other. It always moves on one line - from the unpleasant towards the pleasant. And, in all probability, it knows and senses nothing except this line. This line constitutes the whole of its world. All the sensations entering from outside are sensed by the snail on this line of its motion. And these come to it out of time - from potentiality they become actuality.

For a snail the whole of our universe exists in the future and the past, i.e. in time. Only one line exists in the present; all the rest lies in time.

It is more than probable that a snail is not aware of its own movements; making efforts with its whole body it moves forward towards the fresh edge of the leaf, but it seems to it that the leaf moves towards it, coming into being at that moment, appearing out of time, as the morning appears to us.

A snail is a one-dimensional being.

Higher animals - a dog, a cat, a horse - are two-dimensional beings. To them space appears as a surface, a plane. Everything outside this plane lies for them in time.

Thus we see that a higher animal - a two-dimensional being as compared to a one-dimensional — extracts one more dimension out of time.

The world of a snail has one dimension - our second and third dimensions lie for it in time.
The world of a dog has two dimensions - our third dimension lies for it in time.

An animal may remember all the 'phenomena' it has observed, i.e. all the properties of three-dimensional bodies it has come into contact with, but it cannot know that that which for it is a recurring phenomenon is in reality a permanent property of a three-dimensional body - an angle, or curvature, or convexity.

This is the psychology of the perception of the world by a two-dimensional being.

For it a new sun will rise every day. Yesterday's sun has gone and will never recur again. Tomorrow's sun does not yet exist.
The discussion goes on into very interesting areas in Ouspensky's book Tertium Organum. He compares the perceptions of the snail to things like dogs and horses. He did not, however, compare the snail to a bird which flies high above the landscape where the snail is crawling along "in time" and that the bird can see that all the snail is going to encounter "in time" exists already.

Now, if the "bird's eye view" can be an analogy of a 4D view, obviously, something is "higher" than the bird's view; say an observer of the planet who is "flying" in space. But then, there is something still higher than the space observer and that would be a being observing from out in the universe, seeing the whole of the solar system at once.

So, for each level, there is a different "time context." Where does it stop and what is "ultimate time"?
 
Here are some of Gurdjieff's thoughts on "time" from his first book "Beelzebub's Tales to his Grandson". I personally found them to be very helpful when considering the subject.

Gurdjieff said:
But since you, my boy, do not yet have any idea of the exceptional peculiarities of Time, you must first be told that genuine Objective Science defines this cosmic phenomenon thus: 'Time in itself does not exist, there is only the totality of the results issuing from all the cosmic phenomena present in a given place.'

Time in itself no being can understand by Reason or perceive by any outer or inner being-function. It cannot even be sensed by any gradation of the instinct present in every more or less independent cosmic concentration. It is possible to evaluate Time only by comparing different cosmic phenomena occurring under the same conditions and in the same place where Time is being considered.

It should be noted that in the Great Universe all phenomena, without exception, wherever they arise and are manifest, are simply successive, lawful 'fractions' of some whole phenomenon which has its prime arising on the Most Holy Sun Absolute. In consequence, all cosmic phenomena, wherever they proceed, have an 'objective' significance.

And these successive, lawful fractions are actualized in every respect, even in the sense of their involution and evolution, according to the fundamental cosmic law, the sacred Heptaparaparshinokh.

Time alone has no objective significance, since it is not the result of the fractioning of any definite cosmic phenomenon Issuing from nothing, but always blending with everything while remaining self-sufficiently independent, Time alone in the whole of the Universe can be named and extolled as the 'Ideally Unique Subjective Phenomenon.'

Thus, my boy, Time or, as it is sometimes called, the 'Heropass,' is unique in having no source on which its origin depends, and it alone, like "divine Love," always flows independently and blends proportionately with all the phenomena present in all the arisings in any given place in our Great Universe.

Again I say, you will only be able to understand clearly everything I have just told you when I specially explain to you, as I have already promised, all the aspects of the two fundamental laws of world-creation and world maintenance. Meanwhile, simply remember this: since Time has no source of its arising, and its presence cannot be precisely established, as can be done for all other phenomena in every cosmic sphere, Objective Science has, for its examination of Time, the same 'standard unit' that is used to determine exactly the density and quality, in the sense of the vivifyingness of their vibrations, of all cosmic substances present in every place and in every sphere of our Great Universe.

And this standard unit for the evaluation of Time has always been the moment of what is called 'sacred egokoolnatsnarnian sensation,' which appears in the Holy Cosmic Individuals dwelling on the Most Holy Sun Absolute whenever the vision of our Uni-Being Endlessness is directed into space and directly touches their presence.

This standard unit was established in Objective Science to make it possible to define and compare with precision the different degrees of subjective sensation of conscious Individuals as well as what are called the 'diverse tempos' of the various objective phenomena which are manifested throughout the spheres of our Great Universe, and which engender all cosmic arisings, both large and small. The chief particularity of the process of the flow of Time consists in this: it is perceived in the same way and in the same sequence by the presences of all cosmic formations of different scales.

To give you at least some notion of what I have just been saying, let us take as an example the process of the flow of Time in any drop of water in that decanter on the table. Each drop of water in that decanter is, in itself, a whole independent world - a world of 'microcosmoses '. In that little world, just as in other cosmoses, there arise and exist relatively independent, infinitesimal 'individuals' or 'beings'.

For the beings of that little world, Time flows in the same sequence as that in which it is sensed by all individuals in all other cosmoses. These infinitesimal beings, like the beings of cosmoses of other scales, have the experience of a definite duration for each of their perceptions and manifes­tations and, like other beings, sense the flow of Time by comparing the duration of phenomena around them.

Like the beings of other cosmoses, they are born, grow up, unite and separate for what are called 'sexual results', they also fall ill and suffer, and ultimately, like everything existing in which Objective Reason has not become fixed, they are as such destroyed forever. The entire process of existence of these infinitesimal beings in their tiny world requires a proportionate duration of time, which as in other worlds ensues from all the surrounding phenomena manifested on that cosmic scale.

For them also a definite length of time is required for the process of their arising and formation, as well as for the various events in the course of their existence up to their final and complete destruction.

In the whole course of existence of the beings in this drop of water certain definite and successive what are called 'periods' of the flow of Time are also required. A definite time is needed for their joys and for their sorrows, in short, for every kind of indispensable being-experiencing, down to what are called 'runs of bad luck' and even including 'periods of thirst for self-perfection '.

I repeat, among them, too, the process of the flow of Time has its harmonious sequence, and this sequence ensues from the totality of all surrounding phenomena. In general, the duration of the process of the flow of Time is perceived and sensed in the same way by all cosmic individuals and by all completely formed units endowed with instinct, the only difference being due to the quality of their presence and of their state at the given moment.

However, my boy, it must be pointed out that although, for separate individuals existing in independent cosmic units, the definition of the flow of Time is not objective in the full sense of the word, their experience acquires a sense of objectivity for them, since they perceive the flow of Time according to the completeness of their own presence.
Gurdjieff said:
The same drop of water we have taken as an example can serve to give you a clearer understanding of this thought of mine. Although, from the standpoint of universal objectivity, the period of the process of the flow of Time in that drop of water is, for the whole of it, entirely subjective, yet for the beings existing within the drop of water itself, this same period of the flow of Time is perceived as objective.

To clarify this idea, those beings called 'hypochondriacs' who exist among the three-brained beings of the planet Earth can serve as another example. It often seems to these terrestrial hypochondriacs that time passes infinitely slowly or, as they would say, it 'drags phenomenally tediously.'

In exactly the same way, it may occasionally seem to some infinitesimal beings in that drop of water - assuming, of course, that there happen to be 'hypochondriacs' among them - that time drags phenomenally tediously. But in fact, according to the sensation of the duration of Time of your terrestrial favorites, the whole existence of these 'microcosmoses' lasts only a few of their 'minutes,' and sometimes only a few of their 'seconds.'

Now, my boy, so that you may understand Time and its peculiarities better, let us compare your age with the corresponding age of a being existing on the planet Earth. And for this comparison we must take the same standard unit of Time that Objective Science uses for such calculations. Bear in mind, first of all, that Objective Science has established - according to data about which you will learn later when I have specially explained to you the fundamental laws of world-creation and world­ existence - that all normal three-brained beings, and among them of course those arising on our planet Karatas, sense the sacred 'egokoolnatsnarnian' action, by which they define Time, forty-nine times more slowly than it is sensed by the Sacred Individuals dwelling on the Most Holy Sun Absolute.

Consequently, the process of the flow of Time is forty-nine times quicker for the three-brained beings of our Karatas than for the beings on the Sun Absolute, and this is the speed at which it also should flow for those breeding on the planet Earth. Moreover, it is calculated that, during the period of time in which the sun Samos completes its movement of closest approach to the sun Selos - the period considered as one 'year' on our Karatas - the planet Earth completes 389 krentonalnian revolutions around its sun Ors. It follows from this that our year, according to the conventionally objective calculation of Time, is 389 times longer than the period which your favorites consider a year.

You will surely be interested to know that these calculations were given to me in part by the great Arch-Engineer of the Universe, His Measurability, the Archangel Algamatant - may he be perfected unto the Holy Anklad! He explained them to me when, on the occasion of the first misfortune to the planet Earth, he came to the planet Mars as one of the sacred members of the third Most High Commission. And further calculations were given me by the captain of the trans-space ship Omnipresent, with whom I had several friendly talks on my journey home from exile.

Now you should note that you, as a three-brained being who arose on the planet Karatas, are at present only a twelve-year-old boy and, with regard to Being and Reason, exactly like a boy of twelve on the planet Earth who is still unformed and not yet aware of himself, an age all three-brained beings there live through in the process of growing up to the Being of a responsible being. All the features of your whole psyche - your 'character,' 'temperament,' and 'inclinations,' in short, all the particularities of your psyche that are manifested outwardly - are exactly the same as those of an immature and still pliant three-brained being there at the age of twelve.

And so, from all I have just said it follows that although, according to our calculation of Time, you are only a boy of twelve, not yet formed and not yet aware of himself, like any boy of that age on the planet Earth, nevertheless, according to the calculation based upon the subjective understanding of your favorites and their being-sensations of the flow of Time, you have already existed not twelve but all of 4,668 years.
 
I dont know if this goes with this thread but here it is anyway: I kinda always thought of our choices as imaginary time. Kinda like how imaginary numbers exist perpendicular to the regular or real number line. And each choice moves us from one "universe" to another. We don't notice the shift because we don't think in those terms, but that is how we actively move from parallel universe to parallel universe: by making choices.

The problem is it's a bit like Sliders (anyone remember that show?), everytime we make a choice we may have an idea of where we'll end up, but just like the show, most of the time its completely random and no where closer to "home".

I wanna go home.
 
Now, where were we? Time.

I just finished reading "The Time Traveller's Wife." It is a pretty strange book for a number of reasons, and I'll say right up front that it is pretty slim on science. But, what it lacks technically, it makes up for by posing interesting questions about what Time Travel might actually be like. A number of these issues have occurred to me in the past, namely one in particular: how can you "locate" yourself? I mean, if you had a time machine and you needed to set a "dial" to say where you are supposed to go, what would you use to calibrate it? After all, calendars are arbitrary. What we might call June 23, 500 BC would be designated as something else entirely to the culture of the time, and even other calendars of the present.

So, maybe if we could try to figure out what would be the "direction" finder, or the "locator switch" (I'm lousy with technical terms, I just make 'em up as I go), then we might get some kind of clue about Time itself.

Then, of course, there is the problem that things change over time. What was once a barren landscape could, in different times, have a city, a farm, covered with water, etc. So how do you make sure that you don't land on a spot where something is there that you don't want to encounter?

And another thing the book brought up was what can you take with you? The guy was "chrono-impaired," which meant that his dna had a weird glitch and when he was stressed, he just "disappeared" from here and appeared some other time and place. There was a "tendency" to go to places of significant emotional import, being drawn like "gravity," but he could never "travel" with clothes or anything that wasn't part of his physical body. So, he would end up in places stark naked, and often in a real bind to get some clothes or to defend himself.

But, by the same token, any injuries he sustained while time-traveling, he brought back with him...

So, all of these questions are interesting in terms of thinking about Time, I think.
 
Not that you need another John here... but if you think of yourself as a worldline moving through a spacetime lattice and then think of moving in space without moving in time you kind of get the "no time" idea though it's more that the time degree of freedom is not what you really think it is. To have time as we generally think of it, you kind of have to count your steps which is related to the quantum phase degree of freedom. This is also related to spacetime being complex rather than just real (coordinate-wise) and perhaps related to gravity beyond GR (MOND, Higgs, conformal transformations).

"Two part personality, the flower and the vine"
S. Nicks
Sleeping Angel
 
'no place' and/or 'no time'
Living nowhere and nowhen is a description I've heard for a photon. A being of light would perceive its entire worldline all at once.
 
John G said:
Not that you need another John here... but if you think of yourself as a worldline moving through a spacetime lattice and then think of moving in space without moving in time you kind of get the "no time" idea though it's more that the time degree of freedom is not what you really think it is. To have time as we generally think of it, you kind of have to count your steps which is related to the quantum phase degree of freedom. This is also related to spacetime being complex rather than just real (coordinate-wise) and perhaps related to gravity beyond GR (MOND, Higgs, conformal transformations).

"Two part personality, the flower and the vine"
S. Nicks
Sleeping Angel
What is "spacetime lattice"? What are "quantum phase degrees of freedom". I do not understand.....

ark
 
What is "spacetime lattice"? What are "quantum phase degrees of freedom".
Ark, hi, I'm the John G to whom you briefly talked to about Terence Tao papers on Peter Woit's blog. Tony Smith mentioned your Quantum Future website to me in an email and from there I found my way here. Any time I talk about physics, especially if it's unusual, it's most likely a Tony Smith idea. Tony's "Spacetime Lattice" is a 4-dim Feynman Checkerboard, here's a couple links:

http://www.valdostamuseum.org/hamsmith/FynCkb.html
http://www.valdostamuseum.org/hamsmith/USGRFckb.html

Also, here's Tony's view of light cone beings:

http://www.valdostamuseum.org/hamsmith/allspaces.html#masslesslife

The quantum propagator phase is mentioned in the first and third links above.
 
John G said:
What is "spacetime lattice"? What are "quantum phase degrees of freedom".
Ark, hi, I'm the John G to whom you briefly talked to about Terence Tao papers on Peter Woit's blog. Tony Smith mentioned your Quantum Future website to me in an email and from there I found my way here. Any time I talk about physics, especially if it's unusual, it's most likely a Tony Smith idea. Tony's "Spacetime Lattice" is a 4-dim Feynman Checkerboard, here's a couple links:

http://www.valdostamuseum.org/hamsmith/FynCkb.html
http://www.valdostamuseum.org/hamsmith/USGRFckb.html

Also, here's Tony's view of light cone beings:

http://www.valdostamuseum.org/hamsmith/allspaces.html#masslesslife

The quantum propagator phase is mentioned in the first and third links above.
OK. This is better. So, we are talking about a hypothetical idea. The hypothesis being that space, and also "time" - if such a thing exists, are, from the very beginning, discrete. But if so, there is nothing "between" the lattice points. Assuming that there is a something "between" lattice points goes beyond and, in fact, contrary to Tony Smith (and earlier many other philosophers and physicists) idea. I have nothing against any hypothesis, provided it is stated explicitly as a hypothesis.

In the third link Tony writes:
Tony said:
They see which part of their world-line is at what time by the value of its quantum U(1) phase, so that a world line look like a helix.
Here Tony assumes that there is an extra, fifth dimension, that is circular, and that this dimension is somehow related to the "phase of the wave function". How exactly it is related - Tony can not say, because no one knows. No one is able to derive quantum theory from first principles in such a way that it is in agreement with what we know and what we see. As Feynman wrote: "nobody understands quantum theory". Assuming that space (and perhaps time) are discrete, but the "phase" is continuous, is somewhat strange. Not impossible, but strange. Tony also writes
Tony said:
As the universe expands, there may be a quantum fluctuation that repeats the process by creating a new cosmological Expanding Insanton.
Here comes another subtle word: quantum fluctuations. This word is often being abused, and Tony is guilty here as well. No one knows what are quantum fluctuations. If there are any fluctuations, they are not quantum, because quantum theory, the standard one from the textbooks, knows only about continuous evolution of the quantum state. What fluctuates are data, but no one knows what are data, their existence is denied by quantum theory, according to which only the "state", the "wave function" is real. There is no place for "data" that can be "created". The things are different if we move beyond the standard quantum theory, but if so, it needs to be explicitly stated. Otherwise there is a confusion.


ark
 
OK. This is better. So, we are talking about a hypothetical idea. The hypothesis being that space, and also "time" - if such a thing exists, are, from the very beginning, discrete. But if so, there is nothing "between" the lattice points. Assuming that there is a something "between" lattice points goes beyond and, in fact, contrary to Tony Smith (and earlier many other philosophers and physicists) idea. I have nothing against any hypothesis, provided it is stated explicitly as a hypothesis. Tony assumes that there is an extra, fifth dimension, that is circular, and that this dimension is somehow related to the "phase of the wave function". How exactly it is related - Tony can not say, because no one knows. No one is able to derive quantum theory from first principles in such a way that it is in agreement with what we know and what we see. As Feynman wrote: "nobody understands quantum theory". Assuming that space (and perhaps time) are discrete, but the "phase" is continuous, is somewhat strange. Not impossible, but strange.
For Tony, spacetime is an emergent concept. At the highest energy, most fundamental level Tony has only a hyperfinite von Neuman algebra (Clifford algebra to be exact). So one could actually say that most fundamentally Tony has no spacetime. By hyperfinite Tony means I think that although there is fundamentally a finite amount of information and discrete values (even for the phase I would think), it is often very useful to take the limit out to inifinity and treat degrees of freedom as continuous. Tony for example does use 8 continuous complex spacetime dimensions a lot as in D5/D4xU(1). The phase by the way in this picture is part of the D4 subalgebra (the 4th Cartan subalgebra degree of freedom to be exact). If one goes up from D5 to E6-E7-E8 then one gets to the string theory part of Tony's model. Back in the lattice picture, Tony has fermions at the vertices and bosons on the links (related to Planck length bosonic strings).

Here comes another subtle word: quantum fluctuations. This word is often being abused, and Tony is guilty here as well. No one knows what are quantum fluctuations. If there are any fluctuations, they are not quantum, because quantum theory, the standard one from the textbooks, knows only about continuous evolution of the quantum state. What fluctuates are data, but no one knows what are data, their existence is denied by quantum theory, according to which only the "state", the "wave function" is real. There is no place for "data" that can be "created". The things are different if we move beyond the standard quantum theory, but if so, it needs to be explicitly stated. Otherwise there is a confusion.
For Tony the preexisting data is I think the Clifford Algebra protospace from which the bosonic strings and the many-worlds possibilities emerge.
 
What type of emergence is he referring to? It is ok to envision spacetime as a lattice, but if You do so only from the 'outside in' you would end up with no spacetime, whereas spacetime itself is a continuum, and must therefore necessarily exclude the possibilty of 'no spacetime'.
Emergent spacetime is a fairly popular concept even in conventional superstring theory. David Gross is a big advocate of it. The motivating idea is that spacetime acts much more like something is acting on spacetime rather than just acting in spacetime. The AdS/CFT duality between spacetime and brane field theories is supposedly an example of how emergent spacetime might work (though AdS/CFT is not the real world). For Tony Smith, the duality is a D5 subalgebra of E6 thing. Both approaches I think can sort of be (very imprecisely) visualized as a hypersphere with the branes on the boundary and spacetime inside. David Gross asks without answering what then replaces spacetime as the (to borrow your word) continuum that contains everything. For Tony it's Clifford Algebra. Tony uses an infinite-dim Clifford Algebra to approximate what is really just a very big-dim Clifford Algebra. Thus Tony ends up with continuous structures to approximate discrete ones. For some things like Feynman paths, Tony does use the actually more realistic discrete structure. Some things are more easily done with the discrete structure and some more easily done with the continuous approximation.
 
John G said:
For Tony, spacetime is an emergent concept. At the highest energy, most fundamental level Tony has only a hyperfinite von Neuman algebra (Clifford algebra to be exact).
I do not understand this statement. What is "energy"? If we have only a hyperfinite algebra, and nothing more, then we do not have "energy", whether high or low.
So one could actually say that most fundamentally Tony has no spacetime. By hyperfinite Tony means I think that although there is fundamentally a finite amount of information and discrete values (even for the phase I would think), it is often very useful to take the limit out to inifinity and treat degrees of freedom as continuous.
But what for? If we have a nice model of the universe, in which all is discrete, why to abandon it and say: we do not like it. So we replace it with another model. And what is this other model, that "more useful"?
Tony for example does use 8 continuous complex spacetime dimensions a lot as in D5/D4xU(1).
Is it really space-time? Equippped with what geometry? What is the explanation for gravitation there? Gravitation seems to be the fundamental, universal force. I am not aware of it being explained or modelled within "D5/D4xU(1)". I am also not aware of quantum theory being modelled or explained within this model.
The phase by the way in this picture is part of the D4 subalgebra (the 4th Cartan subalgebra degree of freedom to be exact).
I admit that although I understand the terms, I do not understand at all what the model is about. What it is supposed to model, what it does not model, what is relation of this model to gravity, quantum theory, electromagnetism etc.
If one goes up from D5 to E6-E7-E8 then one gets to the string theory part of Tony's model.
Why would one even want to go to string theory?
Back in the lattice picture, Tony has fermions at the vertices and bosons on the links (related to Planck length bosonic strings).
How many fermions does Tony have? One fermion? Five fermions, or 12367000 fermions?
(Snip) For Tony the preexisting data is I think the Clifford Algebra protospace from which the bosonic strings and the many-worlds possibilities emerge.
I wish I would understand how even one "world" can "emerge" from some Clifford algebra.
 
I do not understand this statement. What is "energy"? If we have only a hyperfinite algebra, and nothing more, then we do not have "energy", whether high or low.
The something more is simplex physics and the "high energy" is related to having total connectedness though Tony mentions as you do that physics is not easily definable at this level in conventional terms. Tony does get Clifford Algebra out of it.
http://www.valdostamuseum.org/hamsmith/simph.html

But what for? If we have a nice model of the universe, in which all is discrete, why to abandon it and say: we do not like it. So we replace it with another model. And what is this other model, that "more useful"?
Tony uses volumes of complex domains for mass and force strength calculations. He describes going from the lattice to a complex domain as going from discrete Clifford Algebra basis elements to a real Clifford Algebra superposition of basis elements.
http://www.valdostamuseum.org/hamsmith/HDFCmodel.html#calculations

Here's some philosophical stuff about using infinite-dim vs finite-dim Clifford Algebras
http://www.valdostamuseum.org/hamsmith/II1vNfactor.html

Is it really space-time? Equippped with what geometry? What is the explanation for gravitation there? Gravitation seems to be the fundamental, universal force. I am not aware of it being explained or modelled within "D5/D4xU(1)". I am also not aware of quantum theory being modelled or explained within this model.
The geometry is a bounded complex domain, here's a link where Tony references you a few times:
http://www.valdostamuseum.org/hamsmith/cdomain.html

This spacetime is actually emergent down at the GUT level. The D4 is similar to SU(5) GUT. Gravity would be the Spin(5) subalgebra rotations, boosts and translations.

Tony uses a BRST quantization.
http://www.valdostamuseum.org/hamsmith/coquad.html#cohomology


I admit that although I understand the terms, I do not understand at all what the model is about. What it is supposed to model, what it does not model, what is relation of this model to gravity, quantum theory, electromagnetism etc Why would one even want to go to string theory? How many fermions does Tony have? One fermion? Five fermions, or 12367000 fermions? I wish I would understand how even one "world" can "emerge" from some Clifford algebra.
It's an A-D-E series of Lie Algebras derived from Clifford algebra producing a Theory of Everything. D3 gives gravity plus Higgs, D4 adds in color/electroweak, D5 adds spacetime, E6 orbifolding adds one generation of fermions (The 2nd and 3rd generations in Tony's model are kind of composite particles involving connections to internal symmetry space).

E6/F4 gives a 26-dim bosonic string theory with the bosonic strings interpreted as world-lines in the many-worlds.
http://www.valdostamuseum.org/hamsmith/stringbraneStdModel.html

E7 / E6 x U(1) gives a 27 (complex)-dim bosonic M-theory like ones Susskind and Smolin have written about.
http://www.valdostamuseum.org/hamsmith/Rzeta.html#27diMtheory

E8 / E7 x SU(2) gives a 28 (quaternionic)-dim bosonic F-theory.
http://www.valdostamuseum.org/hamsmith/StringMFbranegrav.html
 
John G said:
I do not understand this statement. What is "energy"? If we have only a hyperfinite algebra, and nothing more, then we do not have "energy", whether high or low.
The something more is simplex physics and the "high energy" is related to having total connectedness though Tony mentions as you do that physics is not easily definable at this level in conventional terms. Tony does get Clifford Algebra out of it.
http://www.valdostamuseum.org/hamsmith/simph.html
What is "energy"? And which energy is "high" and why should some be called high? High in comparison to what? Remember - we have only Clifford algebra, there are no "particles", there are no "waves", there is no gravity, no electromagnetism? How "energy" emerges out of that? Do you have an answer?

Tony (whom I invited to read this discussion) wrote to me today with some explanations, but these explanations bring more questions than they answer to . So for instance Tony writes me:
As to where gravity comes from in this picture, the Cl(8) bivector Lie algebra Spin(8) has a subalgebra the conformal Spin(2,4) = SU(2,2) which produces gravity by the MacDowell-Mansouri mechanism
So I go the cited page to read there:
Mohapatra (in section 14.6 of Unification and Supersymmetry, 2nd edition, Springer-Verlag 1992) shows that if the scale and conformal gauge degrees of freedom are fixed, then a Lagrangian with the conformal group as gauge group gives the usual Hilbert action for gravity:...
This brings immediately the question: WHY Lagrangian? How Lagrangians emerge from algebra? I do not understand the rules of this game. If we are going to derive the structure of all that exists from some simple structure (Clifford algebra), then we should not mix all of the hand waving that physicists used to do in the past. As far as I know no one understands why Lagrangians work and where they are coming from. Some would say that they come from Feynman integral, but why Feynman integral? And what is Feynman integral anyway. So I am totally lost. I see many ideas, I understand some of them (after all I consider myself an expert in several areas that Tony is touching, like complex domains, gravity, quantum theory) but I am not getting the logic of the game.

ark

Update: Tony wrote to me today (Feb 27) about "Lagrangians from algebra". I wrote back to him
Ark, on the Signs of the Times Forum,
you ask why I use the Lagrangian that I use.

My Lagrangian for 4-dim spacetime with CP2 internal symmetry space
is inherited from a Lagrangian over 8-dim spacetime that comes
from the Cl(8) Clifford Algebra.

The Cl(8) Clifford algebra structures give Lagrangian components
as follows:

8-dim vector part -> 8-dim base manifold over which the Lagrangian
density is integrated

28-dim bivector part -> gauge boson curvature term of Lagrangian density

16-dim spinor part -> 8-dim fermion spinor particle and
8-dim fermion spinor antiparticle part of
Lagrangian density

Further details and the physical interpretation of the other parts
of Cl(8) are given on my web site, as are details of how the
4-dim spacetime Lagrangian appears when you break the full octonionic
symmetry of the 8-dim spacetime by introducing a preferred
quaternionic subspace (it can be thought of as "freezing out" at
lower energies such as where our experiments are done).

I should note that the (not 1 to 1) supersymmetry between
the 28 gauge bosons and the 8 fermion particle types
may be useful in cancellations for ultraviolet finiteness for
the 8-dim spacetime, which is useful for the 4-dim spacetime Lagrangian
of the corresponding low-energy theory,
and
that the 3 generations of fermions for 4-dim spacetime come
from the structure of the dimensional reduction from 8-dim spacetime
due to freezing out of a preferred quaternionic subspace.
(The 8-dim spacetime fermions have only one generation.)

As I would hope might be clear from the above,
the Lagrangian is NOT just made up ad hoc,
it is a natural construction based on the structure of Cl(8).
I wrote to him back what follows:
On 27 Feb 2006 at 11:14, Tony Smith wrote:

> 8-dim vector part -> 8-dim base manifold over which the Lagrangian
> density is integrated

Dear Tony

Let me try to understand first just this part. What is your 8-dimensional
manifold, and how you define your "Lagrangian density"?

Best,

ark
Now something to have a good laugh about. Tony wrote me another email a while ago, explaining more about the Lagrangian. The anti-spam software of my mailer classified Tony's email as a SPAM. Here is the diagnosis:

Spam detection software, running on the system "webbox", has
identified this incoming email as possible spam. The original message
has been attached to this so you can view it (if it isn't spam) or block
similar future email. If you have any questions, see
the administrator of that system for details.

Content preview: Ark,you ask "... What is your 8-dimensional manifold,
and how you define your "Lagrangian density"? ...". The 8-dim manifold
is S1xS7 which is the Shilov boundary of the bounded complex domain of
type IV(8) that corresponds to the type BD(I) rank 2 symmetric space
Spin(10) / Spin(8)xU(1) [...]

Content analysis details: (6.3 points, 5.0 required)

pts rule name description
---- ---------------------- --------------------------------------------------
0.3 FROM_HAS_MIXED_NUMS From: contains numbers mixed in with letters
2.0 FROM_HAS_MIXED_NUMS3 From: contains numbers mixed in with letters
1.3 PORN_4 URI: URL uses words/phrases which indicate porn 2.5
...
:D
 
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