On Sun, Jan 04, 2015 at 02:10:51PM -0800, 'Chris de Morsella' via Everything List wrote: > > > > Russell’s observation that “The ultimate theory of everything is just a > theory of nothing.” seems intuitively correct to me… though I have no > rigorous proof for this sense of it ringing true for me. > > > > I was in ignorance that Russell had written a book on this; and just > downloaded the pdf – so thanks Liz for bringing it to attention. Beginning to > read it now…. > > Another excellent passage: “Something is the “inside view” of Nothing”. Nice! > And this view from the inside looks so infinitely full of all manner of > emergent stuff. I agree with the premise that perspective is paramount in > coming to terms with and to understand the spooky weird nature of quantum > reality; perspective also provides a powerful tool to explain the “something > from nothing paradox”. Something does seem like it could be how Nothing looks > from the perspective of being within itself – as opposed to the bird’s eye > view from outside -- Max Tegmark uses Bird’s Eye view to describe this > outside privileged perspective… looking down on the examined system from an > outside perspective (even if that system, is everything that is… it is still > valuable as an intellectual tool to be able to view this from the outside > perspective as well).. but I digress, back to the book. > > > > One question for Russell, wonder what his thoughts are on the continued > viability of Quantum Loop Gravity hypothesis – which you mention as being one > of the contenders along with String Theory – for the unification of all the > fundamental forces into a single theory -- given the findings of the ESA > experiment that has showed that spacetime must be smooth down to scales > trillions of times smaller than the Planck scale. >
Thanks for your kind words. Actually as to whether loop gravity or string theory or something else is the way to go, I really don't have a dog in the fight. I was merely commenting on my confidence that gravity will ultimately be unified with electro-weak-strong forces in some manner, but being agnostic as to how. My personal opinion is that measured values are constrained to be rational - there can only ever be a countable number of distinct observer moments. Yet this down not imply space is "quantised" or discrete in any way. It is quite possible there is no lower bound to the difference between two measurements. So it doesn't surprise me that space ends up being smooth at scales far smaller than the planck length. I would be more suprised at the opposite conclusion, as it implies a lack of symmetry (grids are not rotationally symmetric, except at specific angles). As for unification of GR and QM, one wildly speculative thought I've had is that matter is due to knots in space-time, and that the different types of particle relate to the different types of knots possible in a 4D Riemannian manifold. Some knots are easier to undo than others, explaining different particle lifetimes. Mass appears as curvature of space, so the knots have mass due to the twist they impart on spacetime. But importantly, matter does not "curve spacetime", as is typically said, but matter is more of a topological defect. I have no idea if this idea has legs - I don't currently have the mathematical chops to work it through, and unfortunately also insufficient interest to acquire the necessary mathematical skills. -- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Principal, High Performance Coders Visiting Professor of Mathematics hpco...@hpcoders.com.au University of New South Wales http://www.hpcoders.com.au Latest project: The Amoeba's Secret (http://www.hpcoders.com.au/AmoebasSecret.html) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
