Dress me like a Penguin and send me to Oslo.

 

If  the conjecture below is true, I deserve to go. References below. The question is how would I test it?

 

But first, dig this:

 

1) Witten in a lecture for the rest of us, states that that the inverse square law leads to a paradox: What keeps an electron from spiraling into a proton or other nucleus of choice? Choice word: spiral. Why would an electron spiral? Why wouldn't it plunge directly in like a meteor and bury itself?  That is an image for sure. Hang with this. The reason . If the electron has ANY velocity vector other than a vector that points straight at the proton, then it must spiral, faster, heavier, tighter, think of the gees. As it goes faster, it gets heavier per the Lorentz term:

 

 

so the spiraling in equation is governed by this. That √(1-v2/c2) thing works for everything. It contracts lengths, dilates times and increases masses. On any Sunday the electron could have any velocity vector, pointing out of it like the fronds of a dandelion. But no matter what velocity vector it ha, that electron is going down baby, right into the nucleus. UNLESS it has electron escape velocity. What is the electron escape velocity? The answer will depend on the direction. If you are pointing just to barely miss the proton, you will have to have a different speed, than if you are traveling normal (dead into) the proton, so the answer is a distribution of vectors and what is the shape of that distribution? Is it a sphere with a missing wedge? or is it more distorted? Reflected light, sound, and antenna radiation patterns can all be modeled as a distribution of vectors with a shape that depends on the reflecting surface properties. Nuff said.

 

2) Witten asserts that six string theories are special cases of one grand "superstring" theory. This is astonishing.

 

3) Witten asserts that Feyman diagrams are a special case of a more topologically interesting shape. This is wonderful.

 

4) Witten asserts that all particles appear to be manifestations of strings in different vibrational configurations. This is unifying.

 

Here is my own Oslo moment, my own silly daydream.

Please call this "Van's conjecture", or if you prefer, "Squinting man conjecture".

 

I was thinking about leptons (like electrons and positrons), about baryons (like protons and neutrons) and I was thinking that every time we build a more powerful superconducting supercollider, that instead of finding a few primitive particles like the basic quarks, new particles just keep popping up, like we were manufacturing them or something. This is unsettling to find escalating complexity with increasing collision energy because it makes closing the periodic table of baryons difficult. Congress is unhappy with big science!

 

But here is my insight, and please hang past the first sentence. There is no closure. Whenever we increase the energy of collision, we are placing a tiny string loop in yet another vibrational mode, that will have associated with it, its own eigenvalues and physical properties. The harder you bang anything with a hammer, the more harmonics you generate. More energy, more harmonics. More harmonics, more apparent properties. So we can only bound the number of new particles by their energy (or modal harmonics). If we smash them together harder or faster, we will just create new vibrational modes that have their own unique physical properties. No closure. This is a very beautiful and powerful idea. We have a LOT of experience with the vibrational states of electrons in the hydrogen spectra. If we allow the quarks themselves to just be specific vibrational configurations of strings then things start to work out and make sense. This jives very well with the way we think about photons and radiation in the first place. So why not.

 

This conjecture creates the obligation to construct an experiment to test it. But in fact, those experiments are the very collision experiments we have already done to find the existing categories of constituent subparticles, so that data needs to be looked at.

 

End Oslo moment.

Space is One Dimensional

 

Now I have something very different I would like to say, and I must put it in a different paragraph so as not to endanger or contaminate the previous idea. Call this one, "Space is one dimensional". Imagine that instead of being 12 dimensional, tthe universe is constructed as a one dimensional set of adjacent and very tiny string loops.

Peano curve

Now since that square represents the whole universe, you can't see the string loops, they are too small. Imagine a long string that has been folded in the plane to make a set of horizontal lines that are all connected together and then that has been folded or corrugated again to fill three space. Now imagine little tiny loops living side by side all along the one dimensional curve that has been folded. Adjacencies that weren't there before appear because of the folding that has occurred. Now imagine you are a little kid asking, "where does space end?" and wrestling with the paradox that where does space end, and if it ends, can you just go past that? If the universe is a set of consecutive adjacent strings then imagine a line of them going through two oblique diagonal rows in my face. One set of my particles are associated with one section of the line, and the next  line of particles are connect to the previous by a folded curve that goes to the edge of the universe and back again it time to be part of my face. It this line were to be unfolded, the two rows of particles in my face would be separated by the width of the universe.

 

The reason I like the "Space is 1D" idea, is that then the universe is like a long running word, that is curved back on itself to create new possibilities. and the shape of that extent is what defines where space is. Beyond this extent, nothing is defined, and space does not exist.  If we join the free ends of this Peano-like curve (and I'm not saying that Peano is the folding shape) then the universe is just a loop of consecutive little loops and the big loop has no end, and the little loops have no end, just vibrational modes. This could lead to a more satisfactory explanation of coupled photon paradox and other spooky, "action at a distance" ideas that are popping up now and then. Also the universe itself could be vibrating like one of its strange loops and waves could propagate across the folded front, but also along the original line. I don't know how you would find this line, or determine one loops adjaceny to another, but it is interesting.

 

Now I am going to take this one step further. Call this section, "funeral for the time traveler". This loop of loops I have just defined is vibrating in space, from moment to moment, in incredible, but finite complexity, but it cannot remember itself. Now contrary to the belief that is brainwashed into us by photos, film, recorded video and sound, I assert that space does not remember where it was in the past. There is no "room" for that. It just vibrates and we all make foggy memories with a set of retinal images that deceive us into believing that the past exists and is something we could visit. We cannot time travel to the past except by looking at old movies, or other images that were recorded. We have read-only access to the past to the extent that it was recorded, and with all the limitations of those recordings. So it is pointless to search for time travel backwards. Time travel forwards is allowed by the "twins paradox" of relativity, but you have to leave and come back and fly in a space ship that travels a significant fraction of the speed of light, and that is tough to do with oil prices these days. Nuclear power could change that, but if you hit so much as a fleck of paint, you would disintegrate with a blinding flash. Because of this I want to have a party called, "funeral for the time traveler" where we all get drunk and eulogize and grieve that we cannot travel in time. This rite of passage will let us turn our attention to more important things.

 

There are two great dreams of physics, time travel, and anti-gravity boots.  One of them is dead. We need to deal with it.

 

- Van

 

 

-----Original Message-----
From: Pete
Sent: Thursday, September 25, 2003 6:01 PM
To: L. Van Warren
Subject: Re: Edward Witten

 

I had a bit of trouble following probably 30% of what he was talking about. Next time I come over I'll ask you to paraphrase this stuff for me.

From what I do understand... it's almost as if we're a program running on God's computer, based on these dynamic loops. Like you've said a million times, it's not necessarily the loops themselves, but the connections between them that allows for such humanly-incomprehensible complexity.

 

I guess!

- Pete

----- Original Message -----

From: L. Van Warren

To: 'Nick Warren'; 'Naomi Warren'; 'Pete'; 'Beth'; 'Marilyn Fulper'; 'Lynn Warren'

Sent: Wednesday, September 24, 2003 8:49 PM

Subject: RE: Edward Witten

 

The contest results are described here.

 

Cheers,

 

- Van

 

 

-----Original Message-----
From: L. Van Warren
Sent: Wednesday, September 24, 2003 8:48 PM
To: 'Nick Warren'; 'Naomi Warren'; 'Pete'; 'Beth'; 'Marilyn Fulper'; 'Lynn Warren'
Subject: Edward Witten

 

A group of students at Cornell in a contest were given the task of using data mining techniques (similar to knowledge mapping) to explore papers in theoretical physics.

 

They obtained several interesting results.

 

The most interesting result they obtained was the discover that Edward Witten is the most influential physicist of our time.

 

He has a simple lecture on string theory here. It gives me goose bumps, because for the first time it unlocks the fact that all particles, electrons, protons, gravitons, are manifestations of a loop vibrating in different modes.

 

Read this short, handwritten lecture. It will take you no time, and you will start to get the picture of where things actually are.

 

Cheers,

 

- Van