Hello Brian,
Your theory seems like it was written to please the antitheory elders and John Baez, instead of to adavance physics. I don't know how much longer the antitheory/quantum gravity regimes are going to last, so you may wish to focus more on physics and *physical* reality, than pleasing elders who spend their time devising crackpot indexes, instead of following their curiosities and contemplating *physical* reality, in this brief life. Sure, it might be harder to find employment with Baez et al right this momemnt, but at least you'll have the clear conscience that true, heroic physics survives and thrives by.
"Follow your bliss and don't be afraid, and doors will open where you didn't know they were going to be" -- Joseph Campbell
In Disturbing the Universe, Freeman Dyson writes, "Dick [Richard Feynman] fought back against my skepticism, arguing that Einstein had failed because he stopped thinking in concrete physical images and became a manipulator of equations. I had to admit that was true. The great discoveries of Einstein's earlier years were all based on direct physical intuition. Einstein's later unified theories failed because they were only sets of equations without physical meaning. Dick's sum-over-histories theory was in the spirit of the young Einstein, not of the old Einsetin. It was solidly rooted in physical reality." --Freeman Dyson
So you see, Brian, you would be wise to root your theory in *physical* reality, no matter what the elder snarkers tell you. Life is fleeting, so you ought ride with the Greats--not the groupthinkers.
Below you will see a list of the *physical* questions asked and answered by the *physical* theory of MDT. Moving Dimensions Theory proposes a new universal physical invariant--a most powerful force of unification across all realms--the fourth dimension is exapnding relative to the three spatial dimensions at the rate of c. From this simple postulate, and its equatin dx4/dt=ic, all of relativity may be derived; and motion, change, and time and all its arrows and assymetries naturally emerge, while we are offered a *physical* model for entropy, quantum nonlocality and entanglement, Huygens' principle, and Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle.
I would suggest that you come up with a theory that asks and answers the *physical* questions below, instead of merely trying to please the *Baez elders," even though they will be judging these essays. Earlier you wrote, "If everything I have spent precious time and money learning is wrong, then should I drop physics and go to law school? I'd be sad, the laws of man are not as cool as the laws of nature."
Yes Brian, I am sorry that you are now becoming liberated from the block universe and frozen time. You will have to finally cowboy up now and leave wormholes, tiny little vibrating strings, multiverses, time travel fantasies, and parallel universes behind. It is time to read the foundational papers--Einstein, Bohr, Heisenberg, and Dirac. You will have to find your own way now, independent of spacetime atoms, bouncing universes, time machines, and quantum gravity youth camps. Yes indeed--you write, "the laws of man are not as cool as the laws of nature," and that is exactly why physics has ground to a halt--for it has replaced the laws of nature, such as MDT, with the laws of man and their snarky bureuacracies which pen millions of indecipherable papers so as to drown out the lone voices of *physical* curiosity and reason. String theory, loop quantum gravity, multiverses, the landscape, hamsters, geometric mysticism, E8, and snarky quantum grvaity regimes, which have made a most profitable religion out of consistent, hand-waving failure, are on their way out, as they are all based on pseudo-laws made by men who placed the bottom line over the higher ideals and cash over curiosity.
If we are to go forward, Brian, we must go back to that heoric age of physics, where brave, honorable physicists met on the battlefield of *physical* reality, instead of snarking and sniping physicists from high up in their ivory towers of fiat groupthink, counting their grant money and planning trips to Tahoe and Hawaii.
"If we are to go forward, we must go back and rediscover those precious values - that all reality hinges on moral foundations and that all reality has spiritual control." --Martin Luther King Jr.
In Dark Matters, Dr. Percy Seymour writes, "Albert Einstein was a great admirer of Newton, Farady, and Maxwell. In his office he had framed copies of portrtais of these scientists. He had this to say about Farady and Maxwell, in "Maxwell's Influence on the Development of the Concept of Physical Reality": "The greatest change in the axiamatic basis of physics--in other words, of our conception of the structure--since Newton laid the foundation of theoretical physics was brought about by Faraday's and Maxwell's work on electromagenetic phenomena" --p. 33-34, DARK MATTERS
In his book Einstein, Banesh Hoffman tells us: "Meanwhile, however, the English experimenter Michael Farady was making outstanding experimental discoveries in electricity and magnetism. Being largely self-taught and lacking mathemtical facility, he could not interpret his results in the manner of Ampere. And this was fortunate, since it led to a revolution in science. . . Ampere and others had conentrated their attention on the visible hardware--magnets, current-carrying wires, and the like--and on the numbers of centimeters separating the pieces of hardware. In so doing they were following the action-at-a-distance tradition that had devloped from teh enormous success of the Newtonian system of mechanics and law of gravitation. . .But Faraday regarded the hardware as secondary. For him the important physical events took place in the surrounding space--the filed. This, in his mind, he filled with tentacles that by their pulls and thrusts and motions gave rise to the electromagnetic effects observed. Although he could thus interpret his electromagnetic experiments with excellent precision and surprising simplicity, most physicists adept at methematics thought his concepts mathematically naive."--BANESH HOFFMAN, EINSTEIN
I can just picture John Baez hopping on String Theory Founder Michio Kaku's time machine and traveling on back to read his crackpot index to Farady! But then, Einstein had a picture of Farady in his office, and not Baez, even though Baez hop on Kaku's time machine and go back and replace Faradya's picture with his own, at any moment!.
"The trouble with physics" today is that it has placed snarky math and ad hominem attacks ahead of physics and *physical* reality. Countless anti-physicists look at postmodern patterns that they claim to be pretty, but which have little, if anything to do with *physical* reality, nor *physical* mechanisms; and they then set about to destroy the careers and condemn the curiosities of anyone who doesn't see the non-beauty of their anti-theories. The conforming, weak-minded, obedient grad students who agree that the unwieldy, postmodern, anti-theory math is beautiful are further trained to never ask questions regarding physical reality, and to actively castigate and impugn true physicists. So it is that physics grinds to a halt as physicists are exiled from the postmodern groupthink academy, and replaced by the "John Baez's" and their state-funded crackpot indexes, which are used as sledgehammers to destroy natural curiosity and true physicists; and keep the unprecedented cash (Maxwell and Faraday and Einstein never saw such massive funding!) flowing towards the antitheorists for their postmodern math projects, which of course rank extremely high on Baez's very own crackpot index:
http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/crackpot.html
One of the sociological phenomena that is occurring here, is that when one is a crackpot with tenure and funding for crackpottery (by one's own definition and index), one's major concern becomes to destroy the higher competition--those with natural curiosity and a love of *physical* reality. The *real*--physics and Moving Dimensions Theory--is cast as unreal by the rich regime, while the *unreal*--quantum gravity and snarky math games--is cast as real physics. Well, of course progress in physics grinds to a halt, but this only compounds the problem, as their private failure must be projected onto others, and the cult of failure snowballs, attracting more and more weak-minded grad students and postdocs, who get free trips to Aspen and Hawaii for conferences, for merely going along with the hoax of the week, and proving their worth to the wealthy Regime by launching ad hominem attacks against true physicists and physics. Having no natural curiosity of their own, nor penchant for physics, they readily take up the job of hired mercenary, swearing allegiance to the orders shouted down from the top of the groupthink regime.
I always picture John Baez hopping on String Theory Founder Michio Kaku's time machine with his best/snarkiest grad students, traveleing on back in time to read his state-funded crackpot index to Boltzman and Bruno and Farady and Maxwell and Galileo and Einstein, laughing at them, and then hopping back on the time machine, high-fiving his grad students as Boltzman commits suicide, and making it back just on time for their quantum gravity conference in Aspen or Hawaii, where they surf and ski with glee--where they dance and sing and make youtube videos. You can see why progress in theoretical physics has ground to a halt. More federal/foundation money was spent on Baez's plane tickets last year than has ever been applied to Moving Dimensions Theory in all of time. And that is the way the antitheorists want it.
Neither Einsetein, nor Bohr, nor Wheeler, nor Feynman, nor Dirac, nor Weinberg, nor even Pauli ever had crackpot indexes, but then again, they were all physicists who contributed to physics. What we have today, instead, is institutionalized failure and groupthink, bolstered by Baez's crackpot index. As quantum gravity and computing are on tehir way out, leaving the index as Baez's most famous contribution to physics, I would not be surprised if he soon offers a class on it, "Advancing One's Career by Ad Hominem Attacks and Destroying the Heroic, Honorable Spirit of Physics 101."
Basically, Baez et al.'s crackpot index is used by today's antitheorists to keep physics and physicists out of the academy, as *physical* reality has no need for their groupthink. And so we have all their quantum gravity regimes, populated by useful idiots who were hand-picked by being those who never rose above Baez and his snarky, unheroic methods. When history is written, it will be noted antiphysicists such as Baez used state funding to support their crackpot indexes and their snarky, jetsetting ways, instead of the simple logic and beauty of Moving Dimensions Theory.
In Disturbing the Universe, Freeman Dyson writes, "Dick [Richard Feynman] fought back against my skepticism, arguing that Einstein had fialed because he stopped thinking in concrete physical images and became a manipulator of equations. I had to admit that was true. The great discoveries of Einstein's earlier years were all based on direct physical intuition. Einstein's later unified theories failed because they were only sets of equations without physical meaning. Dick's sum-over-histories tehory was in the spirit of the young Einstein, not of the old Einsetin. It was solidly rooted in physical reality." --Freeman Dyson
Smolin writes in TTWP that Bohr was not a Feynman "shut up and calculate" physicist, and from the above Dyson quote, it appears that Feynam wasn't either:
"Mara Beller, a historian who has studied his [Bohr's] work in detail, points out tha there was not a single calculation in his research notebooks, which were all verbal argumen and pictures." --Smolin's The Trouble With Physics
Despite the fact that physics was advanced by physicists focusing on *physical* reality, as opposed to playing with snarky equations, here is how John Baez rules via ad hominem attacks and namecalling: "For people who think they can do fundamental physics without much math, the correct answer is not "no!" so much as "I doubt it, but go ahead and try". Most such people are crackpots and will produce nothing but nonsense, but someone might succeed, and only time will tell." --http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=615
"Most such people are crackpots," Baez writes. Well, what does he call all the people who contributed to the failure of his quantum gravity regime?
Then, later on in teh blog, Cool Hand Luke rides in, like a Cowboy, to set Baez straight:
"I would like to ask Baez to please refrain from saying things such as, "Most such people are crackpots and will produce nothing but nonsense, but someone might succeed, and only time will tell."
Saying things such as "Most such people are crackpots," just because they might value logic, reason, and truth over math, does not advance the culture nor physics.
Arxiv.org is filled with papers that are in turn filled with math-math that has never born any fruit. Reading Woit's and Smolin's books, a strong case could be made that today's crackpots prefer math. Why is it that government-funded mathematical nonesense is deemed superior to truth, logic, physics, and reason?
I hope that Baez someday has an opportunity to read the original papers of Faraday, Boltzman, Maxwell, Einstein, Bohr, Newton, Wheeler, DeBroglie, and Einstein.
You will notice that the simple logic, reason, and motivation are all contained in beautiful words which far eclipse the presence of math. Read Penrose's THE ROAD TO REALITY, and you will find far more math, but Penrose hasn't done much in the realm of physics, other than The Emporer's New Mind.
Indeed, Faraday's notebooks and papers barely contain any math-he lead with logic, reason, and physics, as did Einstein, and then they both sought out the math that captured the physical reality. Same with Ludwig Von Boltzman, who many called a "crackpot" in his day.
At any rate, none of the Great's papers nor notebooks nor books spent that much time talking about who were and who weren't the crackpots of their age. In fact, I have found no mention of the word "crackpot" throughout all their noble, lasting work. And all of their eras produced far more noble and enduring advancements in the realm of physics than has the last thirty years of our era.
Perhaps the time Baez invests in his crackpot contemplations could be better spent advancing physics. There is no need for ad hominem attacks and name-calling, and we should all be humble with regards to the mysterious nature of science. We do not know where tomorrow's revolution will come from-curiosity cannot be dictated nor legislated; and thus it should never be castigated nor impugned with snarky namecalling. Curiosity must remain free.
And while Baez's cataloging of "big questions" is fun, all great scientists have ever asked their own questions, following their own curiosity; from Kepler, to Newton, to Einstein, to Feynman.
One certainity is this-those who find the big answers get to ask the big questions. And the questions are ultimately asked in words-not in numbers." --http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=615
Not only does Baez lack humility, but it is a lack of humility that is born by a complete misundertsanding of how physics and science and art and philosophy and freedom advance--via hard work, humility, and an exaltation of teh Truth over snark. One gets the sense that Baez was 1) trained to worship antitheories and postmodern maths and 2) snark those with *physical* curiosities as crackpots. And after no progress is made in physics, he was given funding to create more grad students in his own image. And hence, frozen progress in physics is institutionalized, and the riches, wealthiest physics establishment in all of history contributes the very least, while flying its Czars of groupthink to fancy conferences in lush locales.
But I have faith that FQXI will help change all this!
And I have fiath that we will soon be able to ask *physical* questions regarding *physical* reality in the academy, free from fear and intimidtation!
The late professor J.A. Wheeler--"the last notable figure from the heroic age of physics lingering among us -- a man who could claim to be the student of Bohr, teacher of Feynman, and close colleague of Einstein"--was a very, very humble man, considering his massive accomplishments; and very kind to give me the time of day, with that eternal twinkle in his eye, which shines on, even though he has departed this world. So often it is that the
Greats have Great Humility, and Benjamin Franklin's thirteenth, and most important precept, was "Humility: Imitate Scorates and Jesus."
I remember Wheeler clenching his fist one day while looking out the window of his Jadwin Hall office, and stating that "today's world lacks the noble," and then turning and smiling and saying, "and it's your generation's job to bring it back." I was just a twenty-year-old junior, nodding silently and anxiously in agreement, and those words have stayed with me and meant more and more over the years, as they seem to explain so much about postmodern life--our disregard for the classical eternities and Einstein's 1912 Manuscript (which I get the feeling nbody here has yet read, or is going to read), and our arrogance that has lead to the current financial crisis/wealth transfer to the top, the breakdown of the family, and the resounding lack of progress in physics, other than the progress that has been made by deconstructing the classics, which tends to work better in realms that do not require empirical evidence.
I also remember standing in PJ Peebles' office that year, when I had him for quantum mechanics, and asking him, "when a photon is emitted from a light bulb, do we really not know where it's headed? Is it really just a probabilistic wave expanding at the rate of c?" "Yes," he said. And that stuck with me, because this is what quantum mechanics telles us. And relativity tells us that the ageless photon stays in the exact same place in the fourth expanding dimension. Ergo the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions. dx4/dt = ic. It really is that simple, and yet the world yet refuses to see. But the world shall.
It was many years later that I wrote that equation down, but somehow I sensed it that year, walking between Peebles' and Wheelers' offices. Somehow I sensed the block universe did not exist, and I knew that someday I would rise to free time and liberate us from frozen time and frozen theoretical physics.
Legend has it that Einstein eventually came up with relativity because he so often contemplated what it would be like to catch up with light--a pursuit which began in his childhood. I often wonder, had Einstein known that light actually propagates as a spherically-symmetric probabilistic wavefront at the rate of c--had he actually known quantum mechanics--would he have seen that the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions, or dx4/dt=ic?
What's really funny to me is not that people try to refute MDT, but that they try to refute the timeless, ageless photon, free will, quantum entanglement, nonlocality, entropy, time and all its arrows and assymetries, simple math, elegance, relativity, and novel physical theories that come with a postulate and equation.
MDT: The fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions: dx4/dt = ic
What's even funnier to me is that while refuting the obvious, profound, and simple, people stubbornly want to hold onto the block universe, time travel into the past, wormholes, tiny little vibrating strings and loops that make different colors of light travel at different c's, hyperspace, and other complete and unadalturated mythologies which don't make logical sense, and which have no empirical basis whatsoever. I have often made the joke that parallel universes, which are supposedly always popping in and out of existence, exist just long enough for theoretical physicists to get tenure, but disappear before the experimentalists can get tenure.
And yet, I maintain that physics ought be about *physics.*
Hundreds of years from now someone will read these words and know that one lone cowboy stoop apart the madding crowd to state what he sees, to state what he saw.
Both Einstein and Minkowski wrote x4 = ict, but they never saw that this naturally implied dx4/dt = ic. All of relativity is right--it's just that change is now forever wedded into the fundamental fabric of spacetime with dx4/dt = ic. I know they will ignore this and continue to raise tens of millions for mytholgies, while training grad students in the art of sycophancy, thuggery, and anonimity, and picking the best to reward with a few pennies now and then from their millions, as senior citizen physicists dictate the questions, banning those who wer eborn with their own curiosities, like Einstein, Newton, Bruno, Galileo, and every other scientist and artist who has ever contributed to art and science.
And Einstein's Relativity may be derived from dx4/dt= ic, which represents a more fundamental invariance of this universe--the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions. Einstein introduced relativity as a principle--as a law of nature not deduced from anything else, and well, I guess I was dumb enough to ask, 'why relativity?' And I found the answer in a more fundamental invariance--the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions, or dx4/dt = ic.
And not only can all of relativity be derived from this, but suddenly we are liberated from the block universe and time and progress in theoretical physics are unfrozen. And change is seen in a most fundamental equation that *weaves* change into the very fabric of space-time, where it needs to be, as change pervades every realm of physics and all acts of *physical* measurement. And suddenly we have a *physical* model for entropy, time and its arrows and assymetries in all realms, free will, and quantum mechanics' nonlocality, entanglement, and wave-particle duality. The fourth expanding dimension distributes locality, fathering time. MDT accounts for the constant speed of light c--both its independence of the source and its independence of the velocity of the observer, while establishing c as the fastest, slowest, and only velocity for all entities and objects moving through space-time, as well as the maximum velocity that anything is measured to move. And suddenly we see a *physical* basis for the dualities--for space/time, wave/matter, and energy/mass or E=mc^2. Energy and mass are the same thing--it's just that energy is mass caught upon the fourth expanding dimension, and thus it surfs along at "c."
The biggest tragedy of postmodern physics is not that it doesn't accomplish anything, but that it has banned the asking of foundational questions, without which, nothing can be accomplished.
MDT asks, and *answers*, the following, all with its simple postulate and equation:
What is the *physical* reason for length contraction? What *physical* entities of this universe give rise to length contraction? What deeper *physical* reality dictates that any moving object must be foreshortened in the direction of its motion? What is *physically* going on on a deeper level? There must be some *primary* cause--some universal invariant--for length contraction, time dilation, entropy, entanglement, nonlocality, and time and all its arrows and assymetries, and all the dualities--space/time, mass/energy, and wave/particle.
And then, as time went on, I found I was able to answer a wide array of foundational questions with: "Because the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimension: dx4/dt = ic." And I went back to Einstein's original words in his 1912 Manuscript and found that he had never quite provided a deeper motivation for setting x4 = ict, other than that it works! Well, x4 = ict because the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions.
And this small recognition of a primary universal invariant answered an abundance of questions with a *physical* model. And when diverse questions spanning all realms of physics are answered by a common *physical* model, surely that points the way towards unification!
One reason I think String Theory and Loop Quantum Gravity have not made much progress is because they have not been asking the fundamental questions I enumerate below. Rather, a system is set up where grad students and postdocs apply for grants to work on questions asked by the people with the funding, who while not ebing successful at physics, have been quite successful at science fiction and raising funds. Max Planck, Joseph Campbell, and F.A. Hayek all tell us why this does not work:
"New scientific ideas never spring from a communal body, however organized, but rather from the head of an individually inspired researcher who struggles with his problems in lonely thought and unites all his thought on one single point which is his whole world for the moment." --Max Planck
And again we see the primacy of the honest individual in the classic, epic hero's journey!
"A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man." --Joseph Campbell
In King Arthur's Court, is was dishonorable for a knight to follow another knight into the woods, but rather they had to find their *own* path, like Dante did.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monomyth
And the Nobel Laureate economist F.A. Hayek agrees!
"The tragedy of collectivist thought is that, while it starts out to make reason supreme, it ends by destroying reason because it misconceives the process on which the growth of reason depends. It may indeed be said that it is the paradox of all collectivist doctrine and its demands for "conscious" control or "conscious" planning that they necessarily lead to the demand that the mind of some individual should rule supreme--while only the individualist approach to social phenomena makes us recognize the super-individual forces which guide the growth of reason. Individualism is thus an attitude of humility before this social process and of tolerance to other opinions and is the exact opposite of that intellectual hubris which is at the root of the demand for comprehensive direction of social purpose." -F.A. Hayek, The End of Truth, The Road to Serfdom
So it is that in asking my own questions, I had to find my own way through the woods. And in Arthurian Legend, which Joseph Campbell oft talks about, it is dishonorable to follow someone else's path through the forest, but instead, one must blaze one's own trail. Dante starts off alone in this dark woods in the Divine Comedy, and Morpheus tells Neo, "there is a difference between knowing the path and walking it." "I can tell you of the way, but you must find it and walk it on your own."
Could you ever imagine Eisenstein working on something he wasn't naturally curious about? The Greats were never sycophants, but that is exactly who today's funders surround themselves with. Pete Woit blogged aboutthe sycophancy in American academia.
Here are some of the questions that are answered with Moving Dimensions Theory's simple postulate and equation: "because the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions: dx4/dt = ic."
I know it is a crime to ask such questions, another crime to answer them, and yet another crime to answer them with a simple postualte and equation, as postualtes and equations represeting hitherto unsung *physical* realties have been outlawed, and the top grad students and postdocs are regularly sent forth to detroy them, while wearing masks, in the dark of night, for all sycophants must eventually transform into anonymous cowards,as the Nobel laureate economist hints at in his two chapters "The End of Truth," and "Why The Worst Get on Top."
But, yet, the fourth dimension moves. "E pur si muove!" as Galileo atated. We have been liberated from frozen time and the block universe! Ergo I have free will, and I shall use it to both ask and answer foundational questions in physics via MDT's simple elgance and beauty.
Below are some of the questions that are answered with Moving Dimensions Theory's simple postulate and equation: "because the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions: dx4/dt = ic."
0. Why time? Why time's arrows and asymmetries?
0.1 Why relativity? Why the principle of relativity? What deeper physical reality underlies relativity?
0.2 Why entanglement and nonlocality?
1. Why is light's velocity a constant c? Why relativity's postulates?
2. Why is light's velocity c independent of its source?
3. Why is it that nothing can travel faster than c?
4. Why does a photon, which travels at c, not age?
5. Why does a photon's spherically-symmetric probablistic wavefront define simultaneity--a locality in the fourth dimension?
6. Why are energy and mass equivalent? Why E=mc^2?
7. Why do all of time's arrows point in the same direction--towards dissipation, decoherence, and entropy?
8. Why do so many physicists say time is the fourth dimension, when Einstein never said x4 is time, but instead said x4 = ict?
9. Why can matter can appear as energy or mass?
10. Why is it that when matter appears as pure energy, it propagates at c through space?
11. Why does all matter have particle--local--and wave--nonlocal--properties?
12. Why does all energy have particle--local--and wave--nonlocal--properties?
13. Why is it that when matter appears as stationary mass it propagates at c through the fourth dimension?
14. Why is it that when matter appears as energy, it propagates at c through the three spatial dimensions?
15. Why is it that to move at c through space is to stand still in the fourth dimension?
16. Why is it that to move at c through the fourth dimension is to stand still in space?
17. Why is it that all objects move at but one speed through space-time--c?
18. Why is the universe expanding?
19. Why does radiation expand outwards, but not inwards?
20. Why do we see retarded waves, but not advanced?
21. Why is it that entropy imitates the general motion of all radiation and the universe's expansion--a spherically-symmetric expanding wave?
22. Why is it that Huygens' Principle, which underlies all reality ranging from QED to Feynman's many-paths, to classical physics, state that every point of a spherically-expanding wavefront is in turn a spherically-expanding wavefront?
23. Why are all photons described by a spherically-expanding wavefront propagating at c?
24. Why is it that two initially-interacting photons remain entangled, no matter how far they travel apart?
25. Why is it that two initially-interacting photons remain the exact same age, no matter how far they travel apart?
26. Why is it that Young's double-slit experiments show that both mass and energy have nonlocal wave properties?
27. Why is it that the collapse of the wave function is immediate in the photoelectric effect, and all other experiments?
28. Why is there no way for an object to gain velocity without being reduced in length via relativistic length contraction?
29. Why does a photon trace out a null vector through space-time? How can movement across the universe describe a path of zero length?
30. Why does time's arrow point in a definitive direction?
21. Why does entropy increase?
32. Why do moving clocks run slow?
33. Why is time travel into the past impossible?
34. Why does free will exist?
35. Why is it that time is not frozen---how come the block universe does not exist? Why do we have free will?
36. Why does a photon's probabilistic wavefront travel at c?
37. Why is the velocity of quantum entanglement c? Why is it that only initially interacting particles can yet be entangled? Why is it that they must first share a common locality or origin, in order to share an entangled nonlocality when they are separated?
38. Why is it that in Schrodinger's equation, the first derivative with respect to the fourth dimension is proportional to the second derivative with the respect to the three spatial dimensions? Any change in position in the fourth expanding dimension is an acceleration in the three spatial dimensions.
39. Why is it that a photon emitted from the sun is red-shifted as it travels away? It's wavelength appears longer as it is measured against space that is less-stretched. A photon inherits the local geometry of the space-time where it was emitted.
40. Why do clocks in gravitational fields run slow?
41. Why are photons red-shifted as they move away from massive objects, and blue-shifted as they move towards them?
42. Why the conservation laws? Why does an object maintain its rotation in space-time, unless acted upon by an exterior force?
43. Why is the velocity of every object through space-time c?
44. Why is it that the only way to stay stationary in the fourth dimension is to move at c through the three spatial dimensions?
45. Why is it that the only way to remain stationary in the three spatial dimensions is to move at c relative to the fourth dimension?
46. Why does a photon have zero rest mass, and how does zero rest mass imply the velocity of light? None of the object's matter exists in the three spatial dimensions, but only in the fourth expanding dimension.
47. Why time's arrows?
48. Why time's asymmetries?
49. Why entropy?
50. Why is there an i in x4=ict?
51. Why is the velocity of light both independent of the velocity of the source and the velocity of the observer?
52. Why are light, time, and measurement so fundamentally related?
53. Why the - sign in-front of x4 in the space-time metric? What is different about x4?
Well, MDT answers all theses questions, and more, with a simple physical postulate and equation: "The fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions or dx4/dt = ic."
Over the years, MDT has provided a *physical* model that answered these and other questions, unifying diverse fields and physical phenomena in a common, simple principle.
Now as MDT unfreezes both time and progress in theoretical physics, it will be opposed by many. Furthmore, as MDT explains away wormholes and time travel into the past, which have never been seen but yet form the foundations of many modern religions adhered to by geometric mystics and soothsayers, it will be opposed even more. As MDT provides a simple equation and postulate that hearken on back to the heroic age of physics, instead of presenting indecipherable math that can be used to raise massive funding for some groupthink Matrix/corporate-state/MTV show, it will be opposed even more, by those in The Matrix who have nothing to gain by simple truth and beauty, and so much to lose--their illusions of grandeur.
I think all the questions started back in the late eighties/early nineties with "why length contraction?"
Why does an object become foreshortened in the direction of its motion? Why is it that the only way for something to move is to become shorter in the direction of its motion?
When I wondered about this, as when I pondered all the above questions MDT answers, I tried to envision the *physical* structure of space-time and reality that would account for the behavior. For ultimately physics is about physics, and sometimes, a mathematical equation comes forth which supports the physical reality--in this case of a ofurth expanding dimension: dx4/dt= ic.
And here is how it worked out while contemplating the physical reality underlying relativistic length contraction.
Consider a ruler--it gets shorter as it moves due to length contraction.
But wait, does not a ruler also appear shorter as it rotates? Consider a ruler at the end of a football field, parallel to the field goals. As it rotates, it will appear shorter and shorter to us, as we stand at the other end of the field, looking on. Have you ever noticed this illusion, as a rotating radar on a distant ship looks like something that keeps contracting and expanding? It is hard for us to tell it is rotating--rather we might actually guess that it is actually getting physically shorter and longer.
These youtube videos almost illustrate this rotating radar effect:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jd6ZxHk2-zA&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMlsmqWSo8A&feature=related
And I saw that relativistic length contraction is a rotation of sorts. The ruler is rotated out of our three spatial dimensions. But what is it rotated into? It is rotated into the fourth dimension. But why, when this happens, does the ruler always, always propagate in the direction of its foreshortening? Well, it is because the fourth dimension--the dimension which the ruler is being rotated into--is moving! Thus relativistic length contraction is always, always accompanied by a change in velocity.
Rotate something into the fourth dimension, and it gains a translational velocity. Give something a translational velocity, and it will appear foreshortened in our three spatial dimensions. All because the fourth dimension is expanidng relative to the three spatial dimensions or dx4/dt = ic.
Then, right after I pondered length contraction, the - sign in the space-time metric puzzled me. Why does x4 have a - sign in-front of it? How is x4 different from the three spatial dimensions? What is a photon telling us by defining a null vector? A photon can cross the universe, and yet not travel at all? Ahaha! For in the fourth dimension, it has not moved, as the fourth dimension has been moving with it, just as a surfer stays with the wave they ride. This brings de Broglies' pilot waves to mind...
Well, that's some of the story behind MDT. A very early version of it appeared in my 1998 dissertation:
http://elliotmcgucken.com/dissertation.html
And I am forever indebted to J.A. Wheeler, through whom I first encountered not only these questions, but the courage to ask them. Wheeler always used to say, "I want to know what the show is all about, before it's out." And not only were foundational questions allowed and encouraged in his office, but one could not enter nor leave without naturally asking them. His Great Spirit has moved on, and while the past is no longer real, the immortal soul is, as Socrates concludes:
"I think Socrates, said Cebes, that even the dullest person would agree, from this line of reasoning, that the soul is in every possible way more like the invariable than the variable.
And the body?
To the other.
Look at it in this way too. When soul and body are both in the same place, nature teaches the one to serve and be subject, the other to rule and govern. In this relation which do you think resembles the divine and which the mortal part? Don't you think that it is the nature of the divine to rule and direct, and that of the mortal to be subject and serve?
I do.
Then which does the soul resemble?
Obviously, Socrates, soul resembles the divine, and body the mortal." --The Phaedo
For some reasons I wrote a lot of sonnets that first year in grad school--often during quantum mechanics. At the end of the semester, when the professor was passing out the exams, he looked at me and said, "You will do very well on this! You took many notes!" I guess he thought I was taking notes the whole time. I've never been much of a class learner, but I made up for it by staying up late, reading the quantum texts. It wasn't always efficient, but here're some of the poems I wrote in quantum mechanics--I sent them to Wheeler during that first year of grad school:"
"cxl.
Now suppose we have a hole in a slate,
A photon from a source passes on through,
And it darkens a grain on a film plate,
To say it went through the hole would be true.
Several photons pass through, we wait a bit,
And quite a simple pattern we do see,
A bright spot directly behind the slit,
Fading away as you move outwardly.
We choose to add an additional slit,
The photon seems to have a decision,
It must choose one of them through which to fit,
For photons are not allowed to fission.
But now there are fringes, common to waves!
In this manner, can particles behave?
cxli.
What's seen is an interference pattern,
Which is common to every type of wave,
On the vast ocean or from a lantern,
This is the way every wave does behave.
Though you think particles blacken the spot,
Between the source and plate light is a wave,
As to its whereabouts we can say not,
Such is the way reality behaves.
These ghostly facts are true of all matter,
Electrons and protons and you and me,
We're but empty waves that somehow matter,
Striving to comprehend reality.
Wavy winds blow, our consciousness is lit.
It makes up our mind, our minds make up it.
cxlii.
"The question is to be or not to be,
Whether it is nobler within the mind,
To believe in indeterminacy,
Or refute that God plays dice in the wind.
Are there many worlds, or only just this one?
And is Schrodinger's cat alive or dead?
Of p and x, can we only know one?
And of Wigner's good friend, what can be said?"
He smiled and said, "no question, no answer,
This above all, science holds to be true,
Love is in the mind of the romancer,
And the kind of love determines the view."
He looked up to the sky, a sky few see,
A sky filled with a child's curiosity."
Best,
Dr. E (The Real McCoy)