hi all. I dont recall I mentioned the oscillons phenomenon on this list before (the archive seems to be down as I write this). so, FYI.
some months ago I was going thru an old file of paper physics clippings/leads and ran into one on oscillons from 1996 based on a new york times article (see below). at the time I found the article in the 1st place, despite the cautiously optimistic tone in it & by the quoted scientists, I was sure that huge momentum would soon grow & be built around it. here it is over a half decade later, I had forgotten entirely about it, and went back and looked into the literature. there are indeed a smattering of oscillon papers out there, including several in the arXiv. oscillons are very similar to solitons, and solitons are well appreciated as a very interesting mathematical model that involves emergent schroedinger eqn. like properties. there are several entire books written on solitons. (particle like phenomena emerging from fiendishly complex nonlinear differential eqns.) however it seems to me that the full implications of oscillons have not been pursued. so far nobody is seriously suggesting they may be a big picture "theory of everything". but it seems obvious to propose them as a very viable/provisional candidate highly worthy of further research. I would certainly like to take credit for this hypothesis, but it would probably at least require me to write a real paper on the subject for anyone to cite/credit me (haha). this is my conceptual sketch of a TOE. I propose that some fairly simple CA rules on a 3D grid give rise to the same nonlinear oscillon equations. next, oscillons are a model for particles. oscillons can combine and separate into superparticles, that has already been demonstrated empirically in papers and experiments. (in fact a triad-like phenomenon is found already, and I immediately reminded of the quark model which come in 3's.) they have attraction and repulsion properties. I propose gravity is just a very subtle emergent attraction property arising from large collections of superparticles. perhaps one of the most striking aspects of oscillons that almost nobody has realized yet: the models give predictions for **fundamental masses** of (super)particles as an emergent property of the deeper simulation dynamics parameters, something that no other theories I know of can come close to, including (most conspicuously) the massive & venerable Standard Model built from decades of massive and painstaking 20th century research. frankly, I just dont know why there is not much excitement about oscillons in the larger physics community & esp among particle physicists at this point. Im hoping its just the relative obscurity of the subject & that it will change in the near future. imho, they could very well be the fundamental framework for 21st century physics. its a natural conjecture/hypothesis. yet I cannot find a single paper proposing that yet so far. moreover, recently on sci.physics.research I proposed that some fraction of the vast billions spent on supercolliders be invested into large oscillon simulations & investigations running on supercomputers or perhaps ongoing physical experiments, as a "hedge in the [expensive] bet". seems only reasonable to me. (physicists are right now planning a $6-8Billion dollar international supercollider.) there is no doubt one can create oscillon like supercollider experiments based on existing theory (projecting one oscillon into others either via a simulation or physical experiment), but nobody has tried that obvious idea yet. imho, its a vast open frontier/terra incognita worth exploring ASAP. following is a set of odds & ends, links, papers etcetera Ive collected/compiled on oscillons recently for your convenience. --- nice AMS article on solitons by Terng and Uhlenbeck with all the equations http://www.ams.org/notices/200001/200001-toc.html these are movies by Oleg Lioubashevski who is working with jay fineberg. clay oscillons notice a dipole & tripole configurations. the tripole configuration reminds me of quarks which combine in triplets as I understand it!! http://chem.ch.huji.ac.il/~olegl/Localized_states.htm michael cross caltech java simulations pattern formation in nonequilibrium systems http://www.cmp.caltech.edu/~mcc/Patterns/index.html this paper by crawford & riecke considers mathematical eqns for solitons and some of the attraction properties. I didnt notice if they observed repulsion. am still looking for a single paper observing attraction repulsion in general. http://xxx.lanl.gov/abs/patt-sol/9804005/ imho the above pictures seem eerily reminscent of ***quark*** interactions, possibly. I cant believe particle physicists seem not to be studying oscillons at all!!! patt-sol/9801004 Title: A Continuum Description of Vibrated Sand Authors: Jens Eggers, Hermann Riecke patt-sol/9703009 Title: Localized and Cellular Patterns in a Vibrated Granular Layer Authors: Lev Tsimring, Igor Aranson nlin.PS/0005052 Title: Nearest pattern interaction and global pattern formation Authors: Seong-Ok Jeong, Hie-Tae Moon, Tae-Wook Ko patt-sol/9909002 Title: Long-Lived Localized Field Configurations in Small Lattices: Application to Oscillons Authors: Marcelo Gleiser, Andrew Sornborger astro-ph/9806209 Title: Stellar Oscillons Authors: O. M. Umurhan, L. Tao, E. A. Spiegel nlin.AO/0203034 Title: Emergence of local and global spatio-temporal order on the way to equipartition: A nonlinear field model Authors: Marcelo Gleiser, Rafael C. Howell From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (V.Z.Nuri) Newsgroups: sci.physics.particle,sci.physics,comp.theory,comp.theory.cell-automata Subject: fredkin-wolfram thesis, more evidence Date: 2002-08-18 09:49:06 PST fyi, more really golden circumstantial evidence Ive just run across in favor of the fredkin-wolfram thesis on universe as a CA. this link by gerard westendorp.. electric circuit diagram equivalents of fields .. heat conduction,acoustics, navier stokes, electrostatics, maxwell eqn, curves spacetime, klein gordon, dirac, etc.. these are all cellular type arrays. the circuits can be converted directly to CA rules. http://www.xs4all.nl/~westy31/Electric.html I have a book that does this for the QM or QFT field in a diagram, but I havent been able to locate it again yet. next, the amazing field of ***oscillons*** that is very obscure and unknown right now!! imho this is **breakthrough** work that I saved in 1996 when I read the NYT article. I felt that scientists didnt understand the full implications & were downplaying them. yikes!! what we have is a physical system with purely ***local*** interactions among microscopic particles, but which gives rise to emergent properties such as soliton particles called "oscillons". they have been observed to exhibit characteristics such as **attraction** and **repulsion**. it appears to me one could very likely get a **schroedinger eqn** system from these experiments. and notice how mass is defined as agglomerations of the microscopic particles. it suggests that **space** and **mass** is really a false dichotomy of our high-level-system "objective" perceptual prejudice!! I cant find anyone studying the attraction/particle/repulsion properties yet. could the ZPF just be the analog of the energy pervading the systems below??? this is all based on a nature article. I cut & pasted this off a web page. the work on this remains somewhat obscure and nobody seems to be making the deep connections yet!! I dont see much mathematical research yet, its very empirical from this angle. where is the next einstein anyway? wink here are pictures of clay oscillons from 1999 followup work.. a picture is worth a thousand words.. remember, "attraction & repulsion properties" and surrounding wavefunctions!!! http://www.aip.org/physnews/graphics/html/oscillons.html I predict research into these deep links will ***explode*** in the near future. it crosses many boundaries of physics!!! from what I understand physics reduces particle intereractions to a combination of computing sch. wavefunctions and electrostatic attraction/repulsion for the complete dynamics. but in oscillon models these are unified into a single model!! they are an emergent property of the oscillon rules. **beautiful** circumstantial evidence for a TOE based on oscillon theory. paul umbanbowar web page with good oscillons info, movies, & simulations etc http://super.phys.nwu.edu/~pbu/ >From The New York Times, 9/3/96 GRANULES, IF JIGGLED, MIMIC PATTERNS OF ATOMS AND MOLECULES by Malcolm W. Browne "A group of physicists at the University of Texas has reported an astonishing discovery: when a thin layer of tiny brass balls is spread over the flat bottom of a container and the container is jiggled up and down at a certain rhythm, the balls spontaneously organize themselves into patterns that seem to mimic behavior of atoms, molecules and crystals. "Simply by tuning the rate and intensity of the jiggling, the Austin-based group headed by Dr. Harry L. Swinney induced the creation of tiny peaks and dimples in an otherwise flat layer of brass balls the size of sand grains. These peaks and dimples, which the group has named "oscillons," react with each other almost the way electrical charges interact: similar oscillons, like similar electric charges, repel each other and move apart, while opposite oscillons attract each other and even seem to form stable bonds. "Sometimes, as shown in a series of remarkable photographs published in the current issue of the journal Nature accompanying the Texas group's report, the peaks and dimples even join together to form objects suggestive of atoms. Some join to form molecule-like objects, including polymers, and others form checkerboard arrays suggestive of the atomic lattice structures of crystals.... "Dr. Sidney Nagel, who heads a group of physicists at the University of Chicago studying granular materials...worries about drawing too many inferences from analogous but very different systems, for example, the brass-ball patterns seen at the University of Texas, compared with the analogous behavior of real electric charges, atoms, molecules and crystals. Interactions at the molecular and atomic level obey the statistical laws of quantum mechanics, while brass balls in motion are governed by Newton's classical laws of motion. "I think that what Harry Swinney has done is fascinating," Nagel said. "He has these beautiful, very intriguing patterns that have charge-like characteristics, attracting or repelling each other, and interacting in complex ways. "But we understand much more about what happens at the quantum mechanical level than we do about the behavior of granular materials in motion. For the brass-ball analogy of quantum mechanical processes to be useful, we would have to find some link between the analogy and the reality. I don't think right now we have a good idea where the analogy starts or ends, and although there certainly seems to be an analogy there, we have to be careful of it. " Journal References of effect: Umbanhower, P.B., Melo, F. and Swinney H.L. "Localized excitations in a vertically vibrated granular layer," Nature, Vol 382 No. 6594, August 29, 1996, p.793-796 New and Views- "Patterns in the Sand," P.B. Umbanhower, Nature 389, 541