The Larson Research Center

Last night, the second installment of Nova’s program, “The Fabric of the Cosmos” aired. As expected, this episode, “The Illusion of Time,” was just as grating as the last one, “The Fabric of Space.”

The reason is that they treated space and time as “spacetime,” focusing on Einstein’s discovery of how vector motion affects time. It doesn’t occur to any of them, as far as I can tell (and I am familiar with the ideas of most of the physicists on the program), that the reason motion affects time is that time is an aspect of motion. Instead, they view time as something mysteriously apart from motion.

They make a big deal out of the arrow of time, and the fact that the forward direction of time is not incorporated into the laws of physics (i.e. the equations can be reversed as far as time is concerned without changing the result.) However, they don’t seem to notice that, if all motion stops, then so does time, since time can only be measured by motion.

Sitting there, I thought, what if all motion in the universe really did stop, so that it became frozen at absolute zero? Then, what if all the frozen objects were removed from the universe? Would anything be left? According to the big bang theory, the amount of space in the universe, as well as the amount of matter, is finite. Therefore, the amount of space in the emptied universe would be some measurable quantity.

Now, if this quantity of space in the emptied universe were to be subsequently increased somehow, it would have to be increased over time, or if the amount of space were decreased, it would have to be decreased over time. Clearly, there is no other way, and we know that space is indeed increasing in the universe.

Similarly, if time were increased… - but wait a minute - what does it mean to increase the amount of time in the universe? When all objects are removed from a frozen universe, does a finite amount of time exist in it at that point? I guess their answer would be that a certain amount of spacetime exists (imagine a loaf of bread containing slices of time), but what does this mean? Does it mean that for every cubic light-year of space there is a cubic light-year of time?

Certainly not. We can’t say this, because time is zero dimensional; that is, it is a scalar magnitude, with no direction in space. So, then, how much time is in the hypothetically frozen universe? The only way to express it is as a scalar quantity, a number that tells us how many moments passed since the beginning (i.e. since the big bang in their cosmology). But what does the number representing the elapsed time of the universal expansion mean, if not that a certain quantity of motion, or a certain increase of space over time, occurred since the big bang?

The trouble is, of course, this scenario requires a point of view that is outside the universe, since no observer can exist in the frozen universe by definition. However, if we admit this God-view, then it is clear that time would have to continue for the observer, but if we don’t admit it, then the observer’s observation stops at the moment the universe is frozen, and we must conclude that time stops as well.

But what do we mean, then, when we say space and time are frozen? Obviously we mean that the continuous increase of space and time has hypothetically ceased. Now, what should be just as obvious, is that the subsequent increase of either one cannot begin without the increase of the other; that is, an observable change in the magnitude of space requires some change in the magnitude of time, while an observable increase in the magnitude time requires some change in the magnitude of space.

One might argue that, while space can’t increase without a corresponding change in time, time could conceivably increase without a concomitant increase in space. The trouble with that argument however, is that one could never know. Time can only be measured over space, just as space can only be measured over time. Without a change in space, it’s not possible to detect a change in time. The bottom line here is that a change in space requires a change in time as well, and vice versa.

Yet, an LST physicists might want to still argue that motion is defined as a change of position, not a change in size, and in a universe without objects, motion itself is not detectable. How can one determine that the size of an empty universe is changing? There aren’t any grid lines to indicate a change of scale. He would be right, of course, but, by the same token, he would also have to believe that the space of a universe that was expanding with matter, could reasonably be expected not to expand without matter. This is a pretty difficult argument to make.

It’s easy to see that the discussion would quickly lead to consideration of the so-called dark energy and dark matter, but we will have to wait for a future episode of the program to get into that. 

Last night I watched the Nova program “What is Space?”, the first hour of the series by Brian Green, based on his book, The Fabric of of the Cosmos. In the text on the program’s page at the NOVA website they talk about clues which indicate that space is something, not nothing, but in the film the scientists don’t describe these clues as indications of anything. They speak as if the clues were facts of something.

However, these “facts” are unraveling. They are proving to be quite elusive for researchers at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) experiments. So far, they have found no evidence that the strings of finite length, which are supposed to be composed of vibrating nothingness, exist in the extra dimensions that the theorists have imagined to contain them.

Without strings, or more precisely, without the extra dimensions in which to imagine length of strings in various modes of vibration, the concept of the fabric of space that somehow can be twisted and warped enough to move objects, exposes the contradiction between the “facts” of general relativity that lead to small distances in extremely warped space and the “facts” of quantum field theory that posits virtual charges popping in and out of warped space at the same time.

This situation must embarrass LST theorists to no end, but they don’t act or talk like it does. Instead, they make movies for the masses, playing with computer graphics, like children in a high tech science museum, who don’t understand the science, but are fascinated by the displays and models that can be played with anyway.

Here’s the point: There is no point. There is no point that can be consistently defined as having no spatial extent, but yet can carry a charge on its non-existent surface, like an electron or positron. If nothing is perfect, something must be imperfect, by definition, but then how can something come from nothing?

Thus, the very definition of particle, let alone that of space, is jeopardized by their convoluted theories. Regardless, they press on, looking for a Higgs “particle” to get them out of the impasse, by providing a field to generate a force of gravity, which presumably would do away with the concept of warpable space, generating gravity without force.

We have to give them credit, though, because, even though they are looking through a glass darkly, they get many things right. They have the speed of light right and the relations that govern the electromagnetic fields right. These form the corner piece of the puzzle they are seeking to solve, and there’s probably no going back from those first principles, but to replace the dark glass with something more transparent, they are going to have to recognize the fudges that they have accepted in several of their fundamental concepts, most notably in the concepts of motion and force, but also in the concept of points. 

However, to get the concept of point right, they have to get the concept of motion right first. A start would be to consider that the simplification of Dirac’s equation for the electron, through the application of Feynman’s model, invoking quantum field theory, described by Penrose’s “zigs” and “zags,” the “zitterbewegung” of Dirac’s theory and the crux of Hestenes’ work on the electron, could really be a three-dimensional, space/time oscillation.

A three-dimensional space/time oscillation has to be scalar motion, by definition, since it involves a change of size, a simultaneous 1D, 2D and 3D change of size. However, by the failure to recognize such an oscillation as an example of scalar motion, and, therefore, the redefinition of a point that this requires, the mathematicians keep getting all tangled up in their universe of imaginary numbers. Clearly, as John Baez now admits, this experience is like “wading through molasses” (see here.)

Redefining space and time as simply the reciprocal aspects of motion changes the rules of the game entirely, but without throwing out what we already know that is true, just what we know that is not true.

The next episode of Brian’s NOVA program is entitled, “What is time?” A concept even more enigmatic than the concept of space, to be sure.

Several years ago, as President of ISUS, I led the fight to document Larson’s RST in Wikipedia. It was arguably one of the most protracted Wikipedia struggles ever waged at the time (everything has been deleted since then). We eventually lost the battle and everything about Larson was deleted, ostensibly on the grounds that Larson’s work constitutes original research. A while later, another member of ISUS managed to write a short biographical article, which was deleted just last week, after being in existence for several years. This time the reason given for deleting the article was that Larson is too obscure a figure, and he and his work are not “notable.”

Resisting the urge to rant over this, I just want to point out for the record, in this the most obscure of blogs, that Larson’s Reciprocal System of Physical Theory (RST), the universe of motion, is proving to be much more successful than Newton’s system of physical theory, which we refer to as the Legacy System of Physical Theory (LST), in the fundamental assumptions each brings to the table vis-à-vis the observations of experimentalists.

The LST’s fundamental assumption is that nature can be explained in terms of a few fundamental interactions among a few fundamental particles. These particles are assumed to exist within the framework of space and time. True, the framework has been greatly modified over time, as the LST transformed it via the enigmatic and incompatible principles of relativity and quantum mechanics, but Newton’s system of physical theory, his program of research, we might say, has remained unchanged.

In contrast, the program of research that pertains to Larson’s universe of motion is based on the assumption that there are no fundamental particles playing upon the stage of space and time. His new system assumes that space and time do not exist as independent entities, but are merely two, reciprocal aspects of the one component of the universe, motion, which exists in discrete units forming the observed particles of matter and anti-matter and explaining their interactions.

Fortunately, this radical difference, in the fundamental assumptions of the two systems of physical theory, enables investigators to compare how well observations conform to either system. For example, to explain the particle interaction of gravity, the LST postulates that the nature of space must conform to the principles of non-Euclidean geometry, while the RST emphatically insists that the universe conforms to Euclidean geometry: Recent observations confirm that the geometry of the universe is exceedingly flat (Euclidean.) Hence, RST 1, LST 0.

To avoid the difficulty of explaining how a charged point particle (a particle of no spatial extent) can avoid the embarrassment of the infamous singularity that has plagued the LST for many decades, scientists resorted to the concept of strings, but this could only be proffered along with a concomitant introduction of extra physical dimensions, something the RST rules out: Very recent observations coming from the experiments of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) have greatly diminished the hopes of ever finding evidence of more than the three observed dimensions of space and the one of time. Hence, RST 2, LST 0.

Finally, in what may be the final iconoclastic blow to the LST, scientists have discovered that non-oscillating neutrinos, traveling from the LHC in CERN to Italy, seem to be arriving some 60 nanoseconds ahead of when they should, if they were traveling at the speed of light. Of course, it wasn’t long ago that neutrinos streaming in from the Sun were found to oscillate between flavors, giving them a slight mass, which slowed them down below the speed of light. Now, if the new results are valid, the faster-than-light neutrinos would have to have what we might call, for lack of a better term, anti-mass, or imaginary valued mass. 

To say the least, there is no room for such superluminal particles, called tachyons, in the LST. In the RST, on the other hand, they are a necessary and integral part of the system, inhabiting the cosmic sector of the universe of motion. Hence, RST 3, LST 0.

Perhaps today, Wikipedia is not the place to announce the score in this tête-à-tête contest of the two systems, but my bet is that, in some future version of this venerable member of the online community, there will be a place of honor for Dewey B. Larson and his new system of physical theory.

I tried to point out to John Baez, via Peter Woit’s blog, that by not recognizing that the “dimensions” of mathematics do not correspond to physical dimensions, the LST community is tripping up on a small, but very significant, stumbling block.

They equate the four levels of the tetraktys with four different, ad hoc, number systems, based on the ad hoc use of imaginary numbers: At the first level, 0 imaginary numbers are associated with the familiar real number system, but adding 1 imaginary number to the reals enables man to generate the marvelous complex numbers, the second level which provides the foundation of all the science and technology running the world today.

Recently, another number system has been widely incorporated in computer simulations and robotics that was invented in the Nineteenth Century, by Sir Hamilton, which is called the quaternions. Quaternions have found wide application lately, even though their true nature is misunderstood in most cases. This number system, residing at the third level of the tetraktys, incorporates three imaginary numbers.

Finally, at the fourth level, the octonions incorporate no less than seven imaginary numbers and are the subject of Baez’s Scientific American article, which Woit blogged about, because it ties octonions to string theory, and Woit’s purpose in life is to debunk string theory hype, whereever and whenever it appears.

However, Woit had to admit that Baez and his co-author were not actually hyping string theory: They were hyping octonions, declaring that, “if string theory is right, the octonions are not a useless curiosity: on the contrary, they provide the deep reason why the universe must have 10 dimensions: in 10 dimensions, matter and force particles are embodied in the same type of numbers—the octonions.”

This is a reference to the supersymmetry of string theory. It turns out that the only way to describe the elements of the theory without inducing anomalies, is to use the 8 “dimensions” of octonions plus the two extra dimensions of strings and time - a total of ten “dimensions.”

Of course, I tried to point out that the universe doesn’t have ten dimensions, it only has the three observed dimensions of space and the one observed dimension of time - the four dimensions of motion, if you will, and their inverses, but just as the members of the LST community can’t understand that motion doesn’t have to be one-dimensional, they also can’t seem to understand that each physical dimension has two “directions,” and that they should look into the mathematics of ten “directions,” instead of ten “dimensions.”

Unfortunately, however, in our era of political correctness, such views are squelched and Woit refused to allow my comment on his blog to be published. Oh, well. It’s their loss. We will continue to apply our meager brain power to the truth and keep plugging along to see what we can accomplish without their Cadillac brains and resources.

In the next post, I will begin to explain the integration of the geometry of Larson’s Cube, the mathematics of the tetraktys and the numbers of the new number line, which will enable us to desribe the preons of our version of the standard model in terms of more than the initial color combinations we have been using. Now we can put real numbers to the entities in the model, numbers that are related to the energy levels of the atomic spectra.

Proving once again that many times, by small and simple means, great things are brought to pass.

Scientific American recently published an article by John Baez and John Huerta on the use of octonions in string theory. Their motivation was that octonions “may explain why the universe has the number of dimensions it does,” if string theory is right.

The number of dimensions of the universe they refer to is either ten, which includes the eight dimensions associated with the LST tetraktys, one real and one, three or seven imaginary dimensions, plus two more swept out through space as a 1D string propagates, or else eleven dimensions, which includes one more, when the 2D membranes of M theory propagate through space over time.

These ten (string) or eleven (membrane) dimensions are to be understood in terms of the mathematical operations used in describing a unified picture of a physical universe that has two sectors, one sector consisting of the observed matter particles (spin 1/2), the other a mirror image of the first, but consisting of force particles (spin 1), an idea called supersymmetry in string theory.

If it weren’t for the extra dimensions that strings or membranes sweep out over time, say the authors, the interactions of force and matter particles can be described with simple multiplication within the tetraktys (thus providing a unified description of nature), but “[The evolution over time] changes the dimensions in which supersymmetry arises, by adding two—one for the string and one for time. Instead of supersymmetry in dimension one, two, four or eight [of the tetraktys], we get supersymmetry in dimension three, four, six or ten [for strings, or four, five, seven, or eleven for membranes.]”

In other words, they need to keep the mathematics confined to the dimensions of the tetraktys (of course, they don’t use the word tetraktys, but the shortcut is useful in referring to “the standard collection of one, two, four and eight dimensions.”) This is understandable, because the Bott periodicity theorem proves that there are no new phenomena beyond the dimensions of the tetraktys. Yet, instead of accepting this, they spend billions of dollars and decades of time looking for the evidence that the universe can escape the tetraktys!

But it is the eight dimensional octonions of the tetraktys that works out for strings. Using the four-dimensional quaternions, or the two-dimensional complexes, or the one-dimensional reals introduces anamolies, in which string theory breaks down. String theory and M theory (presumably) are only self-consistent and anamoly free, when the system is described using the eight dimensional octonions.

“So,” they conclude, “if string theory is right, the octonions are not a useless curiosity: on the contrary, they provide the deep reason why the universe must have 10 dimensions: in 10 dimensions, matter and force particles are embodied in the same type of numbers—the octonions.”

Regular readers of the LRC’s three blogs will probably be wondering why in the world do these people insist on complicating the algebraic picture, by counting the real and imaginary numbers as mathematical dimensions that correspond with physical dimensions? I cannot for the life of me answer that question. It is a complete mystery to me why they can’t see that the three physical dimensions of space and the one of time are embodied in the tetraktys.

It’s clear that there are two inherent “directions” of dimensions; that, instead of the numbers one, two, four and eight of the tetraktys representing physical dimensions, these numbers represent the physical “directions” of space and time, the 20 = 1, 21 = 2, 22 = 4, and 23 = 8, “directions” of the 4D tetraktys, corresponding to the point, line, area and volume of geometry.

When we construct the right lines and circles of Larson’s Cube, with its two balls (eeew, that’s hard to write!), we get a wonderful picture of the discrete and continuous structure of the physical tetraktys, which corresponds perfectly to the observed space and time of our universe. 

The only thing that remains is to set it in motion; that is, describe how it changes over time. However, it’s not the vectorial motion of the LST we should envision, which is so misleading, but rather the scalar motion of the RST, which does not add an extra two, or three, dimensions to the 4D tetraktys, thus eliminating the vexation of extra dimensions that is so perplexing to the LST community.

The idea of supersymmetry, that there are material and cosmic twins, one the inverse of the other, in all but magnitude, then falls out within the four space/time dimensions of the tetraktys, revealing an inverse tetraktys with four time/space dimensions, if you will, in which the dimensions of space and time are swapped, where time has three dimensions and space has one dimension.

It is just so simple, but don’t look for it to appear in a Scientific American article any time soon. 

Update: I should point out that the expansion/collapse of the 3D oscillation adds two “directions” to the eight “directions” of the tetraktys. If we call the eight diagonals in Larson’s Cube dimensions, which is what the LST would do, then the inward and outward “directions” of these over time would constitute two additional dimensions in that sense, I suppose.

I can see how this thinking evolved from the correlation of 1D vector motion with numbers on the number line, but when it is realized that scalar changes in space and time are legitimate instances of motion, as well, it clarifies the whole picture.