The Larson Research Center

A huge scientific/political scandal has come to light, with the leaking of the University of East Anglia’s depository of documents and correspondence.  The documents show criminal malfeasance on the part of UN global warming scientists, who shamelessly manipulated their data and coldly exerted their political influence on the scientific community, in order to perpetrate a climate change hoax upon the world.

The stunning revelations come just as the global elite are about to convene a meeting of scientists and global leaders in Copenhagen, Denmark, to establish the official world response to the cooked-up crisis, a fundamentally transforming remedy to be financed by an unprecedented system of regressive taxation levied upon the world, but especially upon the United States and United Kingdom populations.

It’s a scary thought, but most of the world is unaware of what is happening and its long-term consequences, a situation that parallels another famous meeting of scientists at Copenhagen in the early 20^th Century.

Although the latter meeting was not held in the shadow and context of white-collar crimes and scientific fraud, the imposition of a scientifically controversial point of view upon the world with lasting and transforming effects upon society was the same. The world would never be the same after the scientific interpretation of quantum mechanics was formed in Copenhagen.

The prospective irony is rich, but, hopefully, the current Copenhagen agenda will be derailed by the new revelations in time to prevent the incalculable social damage that is looming before us. Unfortunately, in the case of the last “Copenhagen interpretation” of reality, there were no last-minute discoveries to prevent the transformation of thought that would eventually lead to the trouble with physics that we find ourselves in today.

Nevertheless, it’s useful to look back to see if time has given us the necessary perspective to discern the mistakes that were made. Unlike the concocted global warming “crisis,” the “quantum” crisis was real. It was what the ancient Greeks might have called the “all is number” crisis. Their worldview that “all is number” was crushed by discovery of the fact that the square root of 2 is not a number. It was eventually replaced by the worldview that, except in the limit, there is no way to definitively describe segments of a continuous magnitude with a number. However, once again nature had a surprise in store for investigators. Even though the square root of 2 exists only as a ratio, not as a number, nature’s fundamental unit of energy is a number!

I certainly wouldn’t want to invite comparisons of Al Gore to Niels Bohr, but they each are identified as the leaders of their respective movements. In Bohr’s case, the cause, which he championed from Copenhagen, was something called “complementarity,” the idea that nature has a dual face. On one side, her constituents behave as continuous waves; On the other, they behave as discrete numbers. We can only observe one side, or the other, never both sides together, yet the reality is, insisted Bohr, they exist as both simultaneously, just as a coin has two faces.

In Gore’s case, it’s much the same, except he’s trying to convince us that the global elite are NOT two-faced, that they have only one, benevolent face, that there is no evil complement to the one face presented to the world, the face promising to save the world. However, the new discoveries unveil the hard-to-believe reality of yet another version of the Copenhagen principle of complementarity.

While the new discoveries at East Anglia show the evil face of Gore’s two-faced movement, you wouldn’t know it from the mainstream media reports, whose elite corporate owners obviously have a vested interest in it. Likewise, you won’t hear much from the mainstream physics community on the new discoveries that reveal how to escape the trouble with physics that the Copenhagen interpretation, that all is not number, has foisted upon the world. What it boils down to in the end is this: Everyone must think through things for themselves. We cannot let the uncritical views, repeated over and over again by authority figures, define our worldview.

Reality may, or may not, have two faces. I, for one, think it does, but the crucial evidence to help us decide the truth behind the interpretations of these movements is to be found in their failures, not their successes. The failure of the green movement is a moral issue, not a scientific one. The failure of the theoretical physics movement is a mathematical one, not a moral one. However, when it comes to funding their causes, neither community is beyond attempting to bury the inconvenient truths.

For those who haven’t heard yet, a new FQXI essay contest has been announced. The subject is on the limits of physics. The question to be answered is “What’s Ultimately Possible in Physics?”

As always, this question is closely related to “What’s ultimately possible in mathematics?” The Greeks found and explored the paradoxes that these two questions lead to, but in the euphoria that comes out of our possession of advanced technology, we delude ourselves into thinking that we’ve solved the problems of thought they wrestled with.

Of course, this is not true, as Peter Lynds, in my favorite essay of the last contest, pointed out. When one recognizes the kingpin role that the enigmatic concept of the charged electron plays in our modern civilization and that the concept is so difficult to reconcile with consistent principles, we have to just sweep it under the rug like dirt that can’t be picked up.

I want to submit an essay for the contest, but the effort it would take is daunting. I’ve lost so much intellectual momentum trying to raise money that the inertia that I would have to overcome may require more energy than I can muster.

We’ll see.

The FQXI contest is over. The big winner is Julian Barbour, but there are many other winners of lesser prizes. Unfortunately, my essay, “A Mystic Dream of Four,” is not among them. Too bad. I would have liked to have seen some sort of visible impact on the traditional thinking of the judges, given the unprecedented invitation to try to do so.

I’m sure Larson would have been able to pull it off. It’s an interesting thought to contemplate, but, still, a useless one too, since us lesser lights are left to carry on as best we can without him. It is interesting to note, however, how happy the judges were with Barbour’s “crystal clear and engaging” essay that argued for something called “ephemeris time.” This is the time that transforms Newton’s notion of absolute time into a set of vector motions described by energy conservation laws. 

In his excellent treatment, Barbour was able to delight the judges by once again glorifying the venerated action principle, making it crystal clear that they still prefer that sort of thing over the type of innovative thinking that Larson was so good at. So, in the final analysis, maybe he wouldn’t have had any better luck than I had, in spite of his genius.

I guess it’s just too hard not to imagine that the change we call time is inextricably connected with the changing locations of heavenly bodies, even after all these centuries of mankind’s astonishing progress in understanding the structure of the physical world. You would think that the knowledge that we now have of the inherent oscillations of radiation and its constant speed of propagation, relative to all matter, would lead us to conclude that the space/time equations associated with it might be trying to tell us something about the nature of space and time in general that has nothing to do with the changing locations of heavenly bodies, but then that’s just me.

I expected Carlo Rovelli would win a juried prize, with his “Forget Time” essay, but he lost out to Barbour, Kiefer and Carroll, all of whom sought to find a way to transform time in their essays rather than to forget it. The remainder of the winners, were also, as expected, either professors, post docs, or grad students working on their PhDs under the tutelage of PhDs. As far as I can tell, not one prize was awarded to an “independent researcher.”

While this is understandable, given the community running the program, and the fact that so much noise accompanies the thinking of independent researchers, it nevertheless leaves us to ponder once again the wonder of mankind’s experience: The pace of our enlightenment seems to be governed by the birthing of gifted children more than the schooling of learned scholars.

Nevertheless, I’m grateful to FQXI for inviting the commoners to the festival.

Currently, my RST-based essay is ranked number 2 out of more than 70 essays submitted in the FQXI essay contest on the nature of time. This ranking is somewhat flattering, but also misleading in a way, because of the dynamics created by the contest rules. 

Nevertheless, it’s been a worthwhile effort for many reasons, regardless of the contest’s outcome, even though, in the process of reading the essays and engaging in the discussions, I’m reminded of Henry David Thoreau’s acerbic, yet penetrating, social comment:

There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root, and it may be that he who bestows the largest amount of time and money on the needy is doing the most by his mode of life to produce that misery which he strives in vain to relieve.

While I wouldn’t go so far as to say that this sentiment applies perfectly to the troubled physics community, it clearly holds in some limit. Yet, paradoxically, I really feel that FQXI’s substantial contribution, marshalling the resources of the community willing to address fundamental issues, is striking a blow at the roots of the “evil” of theoretical physics, by leveling the playing field somewhat.

It is said that modern man does not face any philosophical challenge not already thoroughly explored by the ancient Greeks, and though many like to divorce physics from philosophy, in the end it cannot be done.

A case in point is clearly seen in the essay contest. The number 1 ranked essay by far is Carlo Rovelli’s essay, “Forget time.” However, the rationale for his injunction is motivated by the pursuit of a quantum gravity theory, which ultimately clashes with the essay by Peter Lynds, “Time for a Change - The Instantaneous, Present and the Existence of Time,” invoking the philosophical arguments of the ancient Greeks, concerning the paradox of the discrete and continuous notion of change. The point is, these two essays would never have been placed viz-a-viz, if it weren’t for the efforts of the Foundational Questions Institute, so maybe this is an exception to Thoreau’s conclusion.

In any case, Rovelli’s argument seems fundamental enough: General relativity shows that time is not absolute in the sense that it shows that the time of one system is a function of another’s time, or vice-versa. It doesn’t seem to matter, and, given this fact, it can be argued that a mechanical system, even a quantum mechanical one, based on a variational principle of action, can be formulated without a “special ‘time’ variable.”

This leads Rovelli to posit that time is not a preferred physical variable of nature at all, and that there are no preferred thermodynamic equilibrium states a priori, but all variables of a physical system are equivalent. In contrast, Smolin argues, in a non-contest essay, that the unit space/time progression trips up this argument, from a practical standpoint (although not in those terms of course): His argument is simply that the universe is just too big to work in terms of Rovelli’s abstractions. The limits of communication due to the speed of light in 4D spacetime, and the limits of precision in measurements, ultimately defeat Rovelli’s mathematical model, according to Smolin.

In my case, the RST posits that all observables stem from the space/time progression, which implies that the ultimate equilibrium is the equilibrium between the increase of space and the increase of its reciprocal, time, as two different aspects of the same thing, a universal change. Since this approach preempts the notion of thermodynamic equilibrium, it refers the argument over the nature of time to an even more fundamental principle of cosmology.

For the ancients, this cosmological principle was based on a revelation directly from God:

And the Lord said unto me: Now, Abraham, these two facts exist, behold thine eyes see it; it is given unto thee to know the times of reckoning, and the set time, yea, the set time of the earth upon which thou standest, and the set time of the greater light which is set to rule the day, and the set time of the lesser light which is set to rule the night. Now the set time of the lesser light is a longer time as to its reckoning than the reckoning of the time of the earth upon which thou standest. And where these two facts exist, there shall be another fact above them, that is, there shall be another planet whose reckoning of time shall be longer still; And thus there shall be the reckoning of the time of one planet above another, until thou come nigh unto Kolob, which Kolob is after the reckoning of the Lord’s time; which Kolob is set nigh unto the throne of God, to govern all those planets which belong to the same order as that upon which thou standest. And it is given unto thee to know the set time of all the stars that are set to give light, until thou come near unto the throne of God.

Here we see that the ancient idea of order is expressed in terms of different units of time; that is, the “times of reckoning,” or the times of measurement, differ one from another in an ascending order. According to this really ancient view, established way before the ancient Greeks came on the intellectual scene, there is no absolute time of reckoning, but only a relative order of such times, which accords with the findings of general relativity.

How then can this idea be reconciled with the RST? This new system of theory posits absolute magnitudes of discrete units of space and time, and thus it not only seems to be in the same predicament viz-a-viz Peter Lynds’ essay, as is the timeless quantum gravity theory of Carlo Rovelli, but it also faces the challenge of general relativity and ancient revelation, wherein both assert that time magnitudes are not absolute, but relative.

I guess it brings us to that Clintonian moment when we must insist that the answer depends on what the word “absolute” means. I’ll try to address that in the New Physics blog soon. Happy Thanksgiving America!

The crisis in theoretical physics is only matched by the crisis on wall street. Funny thing is, many people are blaming physicists (especially string theory physicists) for both crises. However, in a paper just now submitted to the Foundational Questions Institute (FQXI.org), as submission to their essay contest on the nature of time, I make the point that string theory attempts to explain the forces of nature, as a property of motion, and its success in this regard cannot be easily dismissed.

The trouble is, string theory is not based on a symmetry group. Of course, the LRC’s development of an RST theory also views force as  a property of motion, following Larson, but the good news is that it appears to fit into a mathematical group, even a mathematical field. In the essay, I tried to make this the central point, since it is symmetry, and its mathematical properties, that has come to play such a central role in theoretical physics.

It, turns out, however, that talking about mathematical groups makes people’s eyes droop with weariness. So, I had to use lots of graphics as an antidote of sorts. Even so, four out of four scientists that I asked to review it declined, one saying that he didn’t have the time nor the inclination to learn about another “theory of everything.” Since I didn’t use that phrase (I hate it), it must have been his own choice of words, after reading from the paper.

I can understand why it’s so hard for practitioners of normal science to take new ideas seriously, or even to take a serious look at new views, especially those offered from “uncommitted investigators.” It’s hard work, and people are so spread out, with hardly enough time to work on what they want to work on, let alone dive into completely unfamiliar territory, that they are very reluctant to help out.

So, today, I attended a lecture given by one of the scientists that turned me down, and listened attentively, while he reviewed all the scientific reasons why one should accept the “standard model” of cosmology. Yet, as each slide was presented and explained, I thought how the same data fits the non-standard cosmology of the reciprocal system just as well in most cases, and how true it is that our own conclusions are easily confirmed when that’s what we want.

Yet, without question, nothing we know today requires us to believe that the observed cosmic expansion implies that there was a beginning to the expansion. Indeed, the fact that evidence now suggests that there will be no end to the cosmic expansion, implies that there also was no beginning to it. If we entertain this notion, which the reciprocal system clearly urges us to do, we see that none of the data that we have gathered to date is inconsistent with the concept.

However, to entertain the possibility that a new concept is as consistent with observations as what we already believe requires some work on the part of investigators to understand how the new concept explains the data. If we contend that a logical process that explains the origin of matter exists that doesn’t include the highly concentrated energy and density of a common event, the burden is on us to explain how, but it’s impossible to do that if those who are to be convinced are thinking in terms of the familiar concept, while they consider the claims of the new theory.

The mastery of the new concept must come first, so that’s why we begin at the begin, with a new definition of space and time, as the two, reciprocal, aspects of scalar motion. It cannot be denied that this implies that the nature of the observed progression of time is that it is just the inverse of the observed progression of space, and that might be startling, and therefore difficult to entertain, but once it’s understood that it goes on to reveal an entirely unknown sector of the universe, as a heretofore unknown player in the drama, which we see unfolding before our eyes, there is just no going back. It’s like the discovery of the new world beyond the sea. Once that happens, the race to explore and colonize the new territory is on.

But try to explain that to an Italian scholar in 1508, who never heard of Chris, and who is convinced that it’s not worth his time to read a sailor’s fanciful tales of a new world, full of gold and treasure, when he has lessons to prepare for students, letters to write to his colleagues, and funds to raise for his work.