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The Plague Lockdown continues with slight relaxations. In the absence of human disturbance in this remote hideaway on the ocean shore, abstract thinking proceeds apace, so much so that the next oat cuisine innovation and beach detritus creation remain incomplete.
Alternative Physics
The ‘Crisis in Cosmology’ rumbles on with no resolution in sight between the model which measures the supposed expansion rate of the universe from supernovae luminosity and the model which measures it from anisotropies in the cosmic microwave background radiation. Jim Peebles, one of the main architects of the Lambda-CDM Big-Bang Cosmology has gone on record to say that he still considers it mostly correct, although incomplete, despite its limitations.
Those limitations do look serious. Peebles himself comments on the resemblance of the dark matter and dark energy hypotheses to the discredited Ptolemaic Epicycles idea.
Some people begin to wonder if the entire theoretical edifice may have structural faults. Yet few seem prepared to question what has become, since the 1930s, the fundamental assumption of cosmology – The Expansion Hypothesis. Ditch that by explaining cosmological redshift by another mechanism, and suddenly everything becomes clear and phlogiston free: -
https://www.specularium.org/hypersphere-cosmology
Whilst awaiting confirmation or falsification of that, (343K reads and counting), speculation upon the nature of the quanta continues.
If ‘All science is either physics or stamp collecting’ (Rutherford) then The Standard Model of Particle Physics largely remains at the stamp collecting level without a coherent theory. It consists of little more than a big catalogue of ad hoc assumptions and particle types defined by a large number of parameters about whose origin we have no clues and with which we cannot calculate much, particularly about the insides of nucleons. The default Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum physics strongly implies that either the underlying reality lies forever beyond our understanding and/or that no underlying reality really exists at all.
Surely, we can do better than that.
A few hours tinkering with a bathrobe belt anchored at each end into heavy books on a glass table confirms the possibility of rotating a point in three dimensional space through 7200 to return it to its original orientation without tearing the belt or leaving a twist in it. You really need to do this ‘hands-on’ to appreciate the contra-intuitive strangeness of rotations of space itself. A continually rotating point in space would send out twists followed by un-twists in all directions in space.
This form of rotation known as SO(3) forms the basis of Milo Wolff’s ideas about The Wave Structure of the Electron
http://mwolff.tripod.com/point.html
Here what we call a ‘particle’ appears as the point where an incoming ‘spherical wave’ rotates by SO(3) and then becomes an outgoing spherical wave. In this model we can consider a particle as a rotating point which creates the appearance of waves in the field of space, alternatively we can consider waves as disturbances in the field of space which come together to create the appearance of particles.
The outgoing wave appears as a time reversed form of the incoming wave.
The outgoing and incoming waves would together constitute a spherical Standing Wave in spacetime with the ‘particle’ at its centre and its ‘field(s)’ surrounding it.
Such time reversal, the idea that phenomena can go both ways in time forms a crucial component of the Transactional Interpretation of Quantum Physics.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/226312851_Transactional_Interpretation_of_Quantum_Mechanics
Such Temporal Symmetry readily explains the strange quantum phenomenon of Entanglement in which two particles once in contact can still show apparently instantaneously correlated behaviour when separated to arbitrarily large distances. In TIQM, waves pass backward in time from the particles to the point when they separated and correlate their behaviour.
In Quantum Superposition a particle can appear to occupy two (or more) mutually incompatible states at the same time, or rather it can appear to behave ‘as if’ it must have occupied incompatible states immediately before interacting and exhibiting behaviour because it doesn’t do both behaviours, just one of them chosen randomly.
A combination of Entanglement and Superposition leads to the popular idea that a particle can ‘be’ in two places at once.
Superposition implies that a particle can exist in two (or more) states at the same place, so what separates those states?
The idea of Imaginary Time may supply a possible answer. If time has the same three dimensionality as space then plainly we can only easily observe a single dimension of it, well we cannot really even observe that, we merely infer it because of the apparently linear sequences of events, we don’t usually see something do two separate things at once.
The two ‘other’ unobserved dimensions of time would constitute a plane of Pseudo-Space somehow at right angles to observed time (and space).
If spacetime does have three dimensions of time, then the waves associated with particles could also travel through imaginary time if the pseudo-space of imaginary time can undergo a similar rotation to ordinary space. The Transactional Interpretation could then model Superposition as an Entanglement across the pseudo-space of Imaginary Time.
Moreover, a mixed rotation in a plane of one spatial dimension and one pseudo spatial dimension might explain electromagnetic charges and fields, whilst rotations purely in the plane of pseudo-space might model nuclear charge and its extremely short range spatial field effect.
Rotations in occluded dimensions in general might explain the apparently probabilistic behaviour of reality and the manifestation of the whole suite of fundamental particles.
The study of Natural Philosophy seeks to explore the cosmos by any means necessary to understand the universe. A century or two ago Natural Philosophy split in two and Science and Magic went separate ways. A fuller understanding of the universe will need to include both. The ‘occluded’ or hidden dimensions of time symmetry and the pseudo-spaces of imaginary time may provide the bridge which joins them back together.
It may take a while to explore and explicate this mathematically.
Magic
Ian Read who ran several Runic courses on Arcanorium College has asked me to ask around to see if anyone has saved them, as he no longer has copies himself. If you do have copies please get in touch with me. Pete.
The Epoch Owners Club has started to attract participants http://epochownersclub.freeforums.net/
Politics
Some Chaoist Political Thinking for the silly season.
Liberty, Equality, Fraternity!
How sweet that French revolutionary slogan sounds - yet it all ended in slaughter, dictatorship, and war. Fraternity rarely extends far without Patriotism.
Liberty and Equality contradict each other. If people have liberty they will compete as individuals and groups, and Equality will decline. Most developed economies have some redistributive mechanisms that take some power from the winners and distribute it to the losers to stabilise the system, but inequalities will always develop in any culture that permits Aspiration.
Equality of Outcome comes at the price of complete loss of Liberty.
Equality of Opportunity leads to the dominance of Meritocracy.
Thus, any mixture of Liberty and Equality will lead to some Social Friction.
Liberty and Multiculturalism do not sit comfortably together either. Left to their own devices within a society, subcultures will tend to self-segregate to preserve their own culture and to favour their own people. Most developed economies have some mechanisms to prevent subcultures becoming too insular or too dominant over others.
Multiculturalism implies restrictions upon Liberty, freedom of speech, and choice.
Acculturation, and the halfway house of Integration also imply some limitations to Liberty.
Multiculturalism and Acculturation create a great deal of Friction when a society attempts to promote both at the same time; when for example, it encourages the retention of a religion whilst discouraging all the social practices and attitudes that go with it.
Thus, cultures which import or contain other cultures can expect some Social Friction in addition to the Social Friction arising from the Liberty-Equality dichotomy.
Advocates of Equality will often attempt to conflate the two, and to brand culturalism as racism. The Champagne Socialists and the tiresome ‘Woke’ of the loony left specialise in this. Both the extreme left and the extreme right have a vested interest in worsening race relations.
Low Social Friction leads to dull and less creative societies. Moderate Social Friction leads to Creative Chaos in a society, and so does a lot of it, but that also brings a great deal of destructive Entropy as well.
Wealth acts rather like heat in thermodynamics, it only does useful work when unevenly distributed. If you force its even distribution, then you need other mechanisms to get things done. Naked force provides the mechanism of choice in all communist societies.
Asking how much inequality you want in a society seems oddly akin to asking how much crime you want in a society. The kneejerk answer of ‘none’ always implies a personal commitment to obeying all laws at all times, no matter how wrong or situation inappropriate they may seem.
The optimum level of Social Friction and Creative Chaos seems to arise when 1% of the population owns no more than 10% of the wealth, and no subculture or minority accounts for more than 1% of the population. Beyond these levels expect plenty of Entropy as well. There must come a point beyond which little will remain to unite us in diversity.
The current UK policy of trying to maintain economic growth despite low productivity by importing from other cultures cheap labour and skilled people more cheaply educated abroad does not seem indefinitely sustainable or cost effective. Neither did the British Empire, and for exactly the same reason - Entropy build-up.
A few of my favourite political notions: -
“Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.”
― George Orwell, 1984. (i.e. Retroactive Enchantment by censorship.)
“As a rough rule of thumb; everyone before 1800 was a bastard in today’s terms”
– An eminent historian of my acquaintance.
(If humans still exist in 200 years’ time, they will probably say the same about us for wrecking the planet.)
The ideal political system consists of a mixture of Monarchy, Aristocracy, and Democracy.
(The Classical Greeks worked that out long ago)
Absolute Monarchy leads to Despotism.
Absolute Aristocracy leads to Oligarchy.
Absolute Democracy leads to Mob Rule.
The unelected judiciary and the unelected civil service now provide more effective checks and balances to absolute mob-rule democracy than does the aristocracy and the monarchy in the UK.
The EU failed badly here. All the power in the EU lies with its civil service which became a gigantic faceless bureaucratic Synarchist Oligarchy that completely controls mere figurehead leaders and a puppet parliament.
All schemes for Utopia seem to end in Dystopia
The best political systems seem those in which nobody wins, and the Social Friction remains at a sufficiently high level to maintain Creative Chaos but does not become so high that a lot of Entropy occurs.
We have not had a significant body count from internal politics in Britain since the seventeenth century civil war. In that period, we lurched from absolute monarchy to ‘parliamentary’ autocracy and eventually back to a peculiar messy compromise of constitutional monarchy, influential aristocracy, and gradually increasing democracy. Arguably the resulting system maintained its extraordinary dynamism for three centuries partly by externalising its excess friction in colonial and imperial activities.
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Magic News.
EPOCH OWNER’S CLUB. An enthusiast has opened this new site with my blessing, and I shall participate. Membership costs nothing, except perhaps your immortal soul, although you will need to show that you do have a copy.
http://epochownersclub.freeforums.net/
Pandemic Thoughts.
The British response to the pandemic bumbles on, charity and goodwill fill many of the gaps. Lockdown began rather late with only moderate levels of enforcement and compliance. However, the British people would probably not have accepted an early lockdown without evidence of a substantial death toll. Protective equipment levels and testing rates remain below demand, but we do not have directed labour and a command economy. British death rates do not look so good (so far) compared to some other countries, yet we do live on an absurdly overcrowded little island. Authoritarian cultures like China and Germany seem to have done better, but would you want to live there? Sometimes freedom costs lives. Do not blame the government, the alternatives seem far worse. ‘Scientific Advice’ does not mean that all scientists know and agree on everything – except until well after the event.
Herewith another sci-fi beach detritus creation: -
‘Scrap Metal Raid’
The Lithonians come from a heavy-element poor system and build ships with many stone and ceramic parts. Here a Lithonian Cruiser escorts a Tug on an expedition to a derelict forge world.
Ships from ground down construction block fragments plus a few vape wicks and bits and pieces from a dead electric razor. I suppose the whole thing stands as a metaphor for beachcombing. Plenty of rock, but not much metal. (I decline to use the hideously abundant plastic detritus on aesthetic grounds, although I suppose it would remove an infinitesimal fraction of it.)
Haute Cuisine.
Experimental Oat Cuisine recipe numbers 5 & 6 of 8,127 – (a large sack of oats lasts an exceptionally long lockdown). – OAT PIES!
It has proved both possible and rewarding to make pastry out of porridge oats: -
Mix porridge oats with about a fifth flour and a tenth oil (preferably olive oil), add a little water and stir and knead till it forms a thick dough like ball.
Grease up a cupcake baking tray with a little margarine or butter. Squish and roll the dough out thin on a floured board and cut out circles to form the pie cups and lids.
Savoury filling: - flaked tuna mashed up with mango and lime chutneys and hot peri sauce.
Desert filling: - dried mixed fruit and chopped glace morello cherries mingled with grated 85% cocoa chocolate. No sugar!
Bake for about 30 minutes at 1700.
The desert version tastes far better than those sickly mince pies that christmas inflicts on us annually.
Esoteric Physics News.
The previous blog did indeed ignite a spark, a specialist in Geometric Algebra got in touch.
Can we navigate through the mind-storm of bivector rotational planes, multivectors, pseudoscalars, and spinors in n-dimensional spacetime (where n remains debatable) to immanentize the prime axiom of Hermes Trismegistus - the unity of the Microcosm and the Macrocosm? In short, do the quanta of elementary particles phenomenise isomorphically to the vorticitating hypersphere of the entire universe?
BREAKING NEWS 2/6/20 : - https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/06/200601134612.htm
<But the patterns do not just show that the universe is not symmetric, but also that the asymmetry changes in different parts of the universe, and the differences exhibit a unique pattern of multipoles.
"If the universe has an axis, it is not a simple single axis like a merry-go-round," Shamir said. "It is a complex alignment of multiple axes that also have a certain drift.">
It does begin to look like the vorticitating hypersphere with Hopf fibration ‘axes’ as predicted by Hypersphere Cosmology here https://www.specularium.org/hypersphere-cosmology
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Magic News.
An enthusiastic correspondent has started putting together an online forum for THE EPOCH OWNERS CLUB, in which participants can discuss their work and experiences with it. I have had a look at the layout and format. It looks good and I will participate when he declares it open. Watch this space for further details.
Now Online at epochownersclub.freeforums.net
Haute Cuisine.
Oat Cuisine recipe number 3 of 8,127 – (a large sack of oats lasts an exceptionally long lockdown). - Savoury Oatcakes from Porridge Oats.
Note the non-quantitative nature of the entire Oat Cuisine Range. Cooking becomes so much more intuitive and creative and fun without measurement. After a hard day’s painstakingly accurate cosmological and quantum hypersphere mechanics, sculpting and cooking by eye comes as blessed relief.
Oil up a shallow baking tray and heat an oven to about 200 C. Mix porridge oats with about a fifth flour and a dash of oil, and add anything savoury to hand, like grated cheese, herbs, pepper, seeds, spices, etc. Stir in a little water till the mixture becomes a thick paste. Spoon dollops of the paste onto the baking tray and squish them flattish. Bake for about a quarter of an hour or until agreeably brownish and crispy. Delicious and fortifying, hot or cold.
Craftwork.
Beach detritus fantasy creations continue with this: -
Arachnid Empire Outpost, with nest cone, spidership, and termite slave towers.
The nest cone and base consist of some sort of lightweight building composite that washes up here, and which grinds away easily against flat stones or bits of scrap metal. The termite towers consist of lengths of sea rusted iron rod. The spidership started off as a grapnel fishing weight, a covering of araldite smeared all over it provided a surface which when gone over with a thick black marker came out with an insectoid sheen.
Pandemic Thoughts.
A Shub-Nigurath - Cthulhu perspective.
Life on earth only tried high intelligence comparatively recently. For billions of years it experimented with other strategies like giant reptilian bodies, aerial flight, and hundreds of millions of species of insect. Will the high intelligence strategy pay off? The most ‘intelligent’ species that has so far evolved has already done spectacular damage to most of the rest of life on earth. The so called Anthropocene (Human created) Mass-Extinction of other species proceeds at a terrifying pace, we have ripped up the earth and polluted the land, the skies, and the seas, and our numbers seem set to grow by billions more who will want gigatons more of everything.
Covid 19 looks like the biosphere taking a swipe at a rogue species, not a particularly vicious swipe because it probably won’t kill more than a mere one percent of us, but it could do much worse next time.
High intelligence seems a risky strategy for life on earth to pursue. In the long term it will only pay off if the high intelligence species manages to plant life from earth in other star systems. Otherwise life on earth will probably have shortened its own life expectancy by trying this experiment, unless the ‘intelligent’ species becomes truly intelligent.
Octachoron and Hypersphere.
Some Azathothian musings…….
Herewith a 3-dimensional representation of a 4-dimensional hypercube.
(Scrap wire and superglue, the araldite having run low, the whole perched on a spare pyramid,)
A hypercube can assist with the visualisation of the geometry and topology and rotation of a hypersphere in both cosmological and quantum contexts.
The hypercube consists of a four-dimensional cube, and it has many possible perspective representations in the 3 spatial dimensions that we can perceive.
Some preliminary thoughts on the applicability of hypersphere mechanics to cosmology and particle physics now follow: -
The 4-dimensional hypercube, sometimes also known as a tesseract, also has the mathematical name of an Octachoron as it has eight cubic cells. The eight cubic cells appear in the above model as the more obvious inner and outer cubes and the less obvious six truncated pyramids that join the inner to the outer cubes. In this 3-dimensional representation these six cubes become distorted by perspective into truncated pyramids. In a real four-dimensional cube, all eight cubes have the same size, so perspective has also made the ‘outer’ cube appear much larger than the ‘inner’ cube.
The Octachoron has the usual x, y, and z axes of a cube and of 3-dimensional space, and its fourth spatial axis w corresponds to the ‘diagonals’ joining the ‘inner’ and ‘outer’ cubes. In a hypersphere the fourth spatial dimension w will appear to 3-dimensional observers as a curvature or an acceleration.
This makes the Octachoron a useful visualisation tool when considering the dynamic behaviour of a hypersphere which we usually represent in three dimensions as either a point surrounded by a spherical surface representing the antipode of that point, or as two spheres of equal size with every point on the surface of each sphere in contact with a corresponding point on the other, (imagine them rolling all around each other) and the centres of each sphere representing the observer and the observer’s antipode.
In the Octachoron each of the six truncated pyramids lies antipodal to the one opposite to it across the ‘inner’ cube. Strange as it may seem, the ‘inner’ cube lies antipodal to the ‘outer’ cube, analogous to the way in which the ‘central’ point of a hypersphere projected into 3 dimensions has its antipode point spread out into a spherical surface around it.
Visualising the rotations of a hypersphere remains exceptionally difficult as it has no obvious planes or edges to act as reference points. However, the Octachoron does provide a model of four-dimensional closed space which also comes with built-in three-dimensional Cartesian axes x, y, and z, corresponding to the edges of the undistorted ‘inner and ‘outer’ cubic cells.
As these videos show, rotating an Octachoron through a plane of one of the x or y or z directions and the fourth-dimension w, turns it inside out and back again: -
VIDEO https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5Qh2XpoCsY
The following diagram shows a side view of an Octachoron undergoing an 1800 rotation about a wx plane from one end of the diagram to the other. Note than in addition to turning the figure inside out, the rotation also turns each cell into its mirror image.
Using the quaternion algebra of rotations, we can equate an 1800 rotation with i2 as it inverts the figure (i2 = -1).
Thus, by Hamilton’s formula i2 = j2 = k2 = ijk = -1
if we equate i, j, and k with a 900 rotation about the wx, wy, and wz planes then a 900 rotation simultaneously about each will completely invert the Octachoron or Hypersphere and turn it ‘inside out’ and into its mirror image, a further 900 rotation of this kind will restore the original configuration. Note that each rotation can have two possible directions designated + and -, or r and l. Such rotations about three planes simultaneously only work as above if they all have the same direction.
An Octachoron rotating in the -i-j-k mode would effectively act as an Anti-Octachoron to an Octachoron rotating in the +i+j+k mode. This may underlie the manifestation of fermion quanta as either particle or anti-particle.
This triple rotation involving the w axis would appear in three-dimensional space as a spherical wave traveling either inwards or outwards depending on its sign. It may explain the origin of gravitational and electromagnetic and perhaps nuclear fields. On the cosmological scale it provides a model for the hyperspherical vorticitation, the special kind of rotation which prevents the cosmic hypersphere from collapsing under its own gravity.
Now all fundamental particles have a measurable Spin corresponding approximately to rotations in three dimensions by rotation about a single xy, xz, or zy plane. The somewhat peculiar nature of this Spin may arise from its origin as an isoclinic double plane spin such as xy/wz.
In addition to Spin, fundamental particles can also have one or more of two properties which can come in THREE possible ‘strengths’ viz-
Electromagnetic charges of 1/3, or 2/2, or 1 (or their negatives)
Particle Generation (charges?) of 1, 2, or 3 (or their negatives)
Plus, fundamental particles can in principle have one of three possible Nuclear Charges (designated red, blue, and green (or their anti-colours)) although only composite particles exhibiting all three or a charge - anti-charge configuration have any kind of stability.
Now if time has three dimensions rather than just one as commonly assumed, and all three lie mutually orthogonal (at right angles) to each other (as with space), then the two time dimensions orthogonal to the direction of observation used by an observer constitute an imaginary time plane corresponding to probability lying at right angles to time. Imaginary time would constitute a sort of ‘Pseudo-Space’ by the Minkowski formalism that counts time as an imaginary space.
As the two axes of pseudo-space, which we can designate u and v, must also lie mutually orthogonal to all the spatial dimensions x, y, and z, a number of further rotational possibilities and degrees of freedom become possible, viz-
ux uy uz vx vy vz wu wy wz
Between them these ‘exotic’ spins may somehow account for the electromagnetic, nuclear, and generational charges of fundamental particles.
Work continues………… I put this out there to see if it ignites any sparks.
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Something extraordinary came out of the bubonic plague of 1665-6. Isaac Newton retreated to the family farm and developed the equations of gravitation. Hopefully, this current lockdown may lead to some interesting innovations.
With a provisionally credible and currently unfalsified model of the Yog-Sothian hyperspherical geometry of the cosmos awaiting confirmation: -
https://www.specularium.org/hypersphere-cosmology
Thought returns to the microcosm of the quanta, the realm of the blind mad god Azathoth.
At present we have a model encompassing a considerable number of types of quanta each of which may have its own type of field and each of which can behave as both a point particle and as an extended wave and which can apparently exist in several contradictory states at once and which can apparently have instantaneous connections at any distances. We have mathematical recipes for some of these phenomena, but the maths involves un-visualisable concepts and abstract dimensionalities and some of the phenomena remain apparently completely random.
How in hell does the tiny stuff apparently underlying the whole of reality really work?
The following musings consist of hand-waving arguments, intuitions, guesses, and speculations, the supporting maths may follow later.
Firstly, Fields. According to quantum field theory, every quantum consists of an excitation of a quantum field that extends throughout all of space. This implies that maybe four or perhaps twenty-four different kinds of fields pervade all of space. Do the quanta subtend these fields around themselves or should we regard the fields as more fundamental and the quanta as mere disturbances in them? If, as in General Relativity, mass-energy tells space-time how to curve, and space-time tells mass-energy how to move, then they both represent aspects of the same phenomena. Any particle of mass appears as a curvature that extends throughout all of space, it merely appears to have a solid boundary around it because of short range electrostatic effects. So perhaps quanta and fields represent aspects of the same phenomena and we should regard neither as separate nor more fundamental.
Gravitational waves and electromagnetic waves always appear to propagate at the speed of light, in accordance with the idea that such waves represent moving disturbances in such fields originating in the accelerations of objects carrying mass or electric charge. However static masses and electric charges give every appearance of exerting instantaneous effects over any distance although the forces do decline by the inverse square of distance where Euclidian geometry applies. Arguments over whether static fields exert instantaneous or lightspeed effect continue but seemingly instantaneous effects do appear in the non-local models of some interpretations of quantum mechanics.
Thus, the daunting Particle-Wave Duality of most interpretations of quantum physics perhaps needs extending to an even more daunting Particle-Wave-Field Triality before we can make any real sense of it.
The Field component of reality probably does not need four or twenty-four components, it probably consists of a single Field with a somewhat greater than 3-space, 1-time dimensionality. A Field with a symmetrical 3-space, 3-time dimensionality with both 3d space and 3d time curved to form a hypersphere might do the trick. A 3s3t spacetime metric appears to offer just exactly enough degrees of freedom to account for the manifestation of all the quanta observed so far. (It predicts an additional Duon boson only, and it denies that the Higgs mechanism applies to this universe and that we have really detected a Higgs boson.)
See https://www.specularium.org/3d-time for some preliminary speculations.
In addition to having probability lying at right angles to ‘ordinary’ time in an orthogonal plane of imaginary time (in an observer’s frame of reference) we probably need to accept the two-way nature of time that most of the physics and some of the magic suggests. This does not seem restricted to the realm of the ultra-small as the following example illustrates: -
We can easily observe back-reflection when looking at a widow with low light or darkness behind the window. We can see a reflection of ourselves and our surroundings in the window as some of the light hitting it reflects off the front surface of the glass, whilst some of it goes through the glass (as others can see us from the other side of it). Now the amount of light which becomes reflected back off the front surface depends on the thickness of the glass!
This seems deeply weird. How do light quanta anticipate the thickness of the glass before deciding whether to bounce off it or to go through it? The Transactional Interpretation of Quantum Physics seems to offer an explanation. In this interpretation, the forward wave function of each quantum of light goes through the glass and it also reflects off the glass as well in search of an electron in someone’s eyeball or in the scenery to act as a receiver. Potential receiving electrons send a confirmation wave BACKWARDS IN TIME down the wave path to the electron which emitted the light quantum in the first place. The thicker the glass the more trouble the forward and backwards waves have, so a handshake between forward and backward waves along the air only reflection path becomes more likely. The handshake results in the collapse of the completed wave function and the effective exchange of a ‘particle’ of energy between emitting and receiving electrons. The wave functions act like a mysterious type of aether which acts across time to feel out possible futures.
From some perspectives the light quantum or photon exists only as a wave/anti-wave exchanged between electrons, but what about the electrons themselves and everything else we think of as ‘matter-particles’? Matter quanta also exhibit wavelike qualities too, and perhaps in a six dimensional vorticitating hyperspherical universe they may consist of overlapping wave/anti-waves that go right round the universe with the endpoints representing particles and the antiparticles they may rotate into at their antipode points.
I have a few thoughts on this which I have not fully explicated or incorporated into hypersphere cosmology yet, but it goes a bit like this: -
In Cramer's Transactional Interpretation of Quantum Physics, we can view a 'photon' as an exchange of retarded and advanced waves between electrons.
In some senses we can consider photons as the endpoints of standing waves.
'Matter' particles also have wavelike properties as de Broglie showed.
Milo Wolff takes this a step further with his Wave Structure of Matter and has matter particles as the points where inward and outward standing waves converge, but he has the inward waves reflected from the entire universe.
In Hypersphere Cosmology every point in the universe has an antipode point.
Thus every 'matter particle' may consist of the endpoint of a standing wave that goes right round the universe with an 'anti-matter particle' at the other end of it.
Thus, the universe could have an overall matter-antimatter balance with the two kept well out of each other's way.
Perhaps we should regard The Field, in which quanta exist as wavelike or particle-like excitations or which quanta subtend around themselves, not as something which fills spacetime but as spacetime itself.
Lockdown has achieved some remarkable results: - Reduced fossil fuel use and carbon emissions, zero economic growth, wildlife thriving, men growing their hair back to a proper hippy length, fewer people buying pointless stuff and junk, everybody devising new forms of self-entertainment and looking out for their friends and relatives, the professional classes home educating their offspring better than schools, people having time to reflect on who and what really matters to them in this life.
Perhaps after this pandemic finally ends, we should institute some form of annual three-month public holiday every year.
Historically we have tended to favour oats for high performance creatures like racehorses, gladiators, and highlanders. It seems a good move to base most of one’s carbohydrate intake upon the proteinaceous and roughage rich foods of oat porridge and oatcakes.
So, herewith in response to the overwhelming acclaim for savoury Tuna-Porridge in the previous blog, a sweet dish to complement it: -
Oat Cuisine Recipe Number 2 of 8,127, (a large sack of oats lasts a long lockdown). Place a cupful of oats in a saucepan, add dried mixed fruit, glace cherries, any nuts or bits of fruit available, a teaspoonful of powdered ginger and/or mixed spice, a splash of dark rum and a little water. Warm with stirring until it forms a thick paste. The nutritious result usually tastes like a delicious hot fruit-cake puree.
Another beach detritus sci-fi spacehulk: - The Orbital Space Monitor ‘Misanthropy’.
The Misanthropy has a bad attitude. It fires upon anything that approaches the abandoned star system it has guarded for several millennia - a sort of metaphor for social isolation.
The base consist of the end of a charred aluminium drinks can recovered from a beach fire pit. The spacehulk’s body consists of a rare sea worn volcanic bolide of iron rich vesicated basalt. A few drops of Araldite hold it all together.
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Magic works in Practise but not in Theory.
I vaguely remember making this statement to Gordon White during a rather peculiar interview. We had found a large table in an empty waterfront pub and set up a microphone and recording apparatus. During the course of the prolonged interview the pub filled up with besuited office types and even the table we occupied became crowded with rather bemused clerical and administrative workers taking frequent sidelong glances at us and pretending not to listen as we ploughed on with the strange metaphysics and barely believable biography. As the general hubbub around us rose we had to speak louder and louder.
The quote keeps getting fed back to me by correspondents and it deserves further analysis; the principle seems to crop up everywhere you look.
Newton’s formulae for Gravity work well in Practise, allowing us to calculate planetary orbits, spacecraft trajectories, and the behaviour of cannonballs and falling apples. However, the Theory that the formulae imply doesn’t really make sense as it means instantaneous force at ANY distance. Neither Newton nor anyone else really liked this. The later addition of the idea of a ‘gravitational field’ doesn’t really make the problem go away. Einstein’s new General Relativistic description of gravity as spacetime curvature dispensed with forces and gave even more accurate Practical astronomical predictions, but it also leads to the unresolved Theoretical catastrophe of spacetime singularities. Work continues, hypersphere cosmology might do it.
https://www.specularium.org/hypersphere-cosmology
Quantum physics presents another example. The formulae of quantum mechanics give outstanding Practical results, allowing us to build electronic devices and lasers, however, despite the efficacy of the pragmatically derived formulae, humanity does not have a coherent and generally agreed Theory of how quanta do their stuff. Many consider that quantum field theory has only epistemological value, it describes merely our limited knowledge about quanta; it doesn’t, or cannot in its current form, describe them directly. Work and controversy continue.
Religion provides perhaps the most spectacular example of something that works in Practise but not in Theory. Billions of people find the Practise of their religion perfectly satisfactory, yet the Theory behind every religion remains completely self-contradictory and nonsensical. Paradoxically, only psychological Theories of religion (rather than theological ones) can make any sense of the phenomena, but you cannot make religions out of these, or can you?
As far as we can tell from archaeology, the Practise of Magic has continued since the dawn of human sentience, yet it remains a Practise in search of a Theory.
Underlying the Practise lies the reality that intent and imagination can make things happen. Exactly how this works has remained the subject of thousands of years of Theoretical debate.
The early Shamans modelled the effect as arising from the ‘spirits’ of animals and natural forces. Pagan magicians attributed the effect to the intercession of the gods and goddesses of their pantheons. Monotheist magicians attributed it to their god or to various of his angels, devils, and demons. Those three magical paradigms all also flirted with necromancy at times and invoked the supposed powers of the dead.
Materialist philosophies stimulated a new flowering of magical theory. Everything from magnetism to the supposed luminiferous ether supporting electromagnetic radiation became co-opted as a model or an analogy for the mechanism of magic. The discipline of parapsychology attempted to render magical effects objectifiable and repeatable but in doing so it removed most of the conditions under which they can manifest and it achieved little more than trivial probability distortions which tended to decline as the experimental setup itself drained motivation away. Magicians should remain thankful for the failure of parapsychology; they cannot convict us for it now.
Some magicians remain content with the ‘bare’ theory that intent and imagination can make things happen and do not overly concern themselves with the ‘how’. Others take a variety of views of entities and egregores and ‘spirits’ with some arguing for their separate independent existence and some arguing that purely mental constructs of such phenomena (tulpas) would have indistinguishable effects anyway.
‘Nobody understands quantum physics’ as Richard Feynman, one of our most noted quantum physicists, wryly observed. Nobody understands how magic works either, at present we just have formulae and recipes for making desired results more likely.
Quantum physics continues to offer the prospect of some sort of mechanism for the implementation of magical intent, perhaps they both work for similar reasons, perhaps not, but if they do, then the Theoretical elucidation of either may throw some light on the other and leads to improvements in the Practise of both.
Presently, a combination of the Psi-ontological realism of the PBR theorem with Cramer’s Transactional Interpretation of QM seems to offer some promise although it remains unclear how intention interfaces with this.
Lockdown on a remote shore has involved some inconveniences but also some unexpected freedoms, like day long reading sessions and no showers for a month in order to conserve resources for cooking, (an old soldier once told me that you only ever need to wash armpits groin and feet, the rest takes care of itself - and so far so good).
With limited resources, culinary innovations can occur, I proudly present Tuna-Porridge, - breakfast of champions. Soak some oats for a few minutes in a small amount of water, add a tin of drained tuna flakes, season with chili sauce and whatever savoury herbs and spices you have. Heat with continuous stirring till it goes into a thick paste. Awesomely nutritious and filling and it tastes delicious. It would also make a great pie, pasty or flan filling.
The lack of a fully equipped shed at first seemed a concern, but beachcombing combined a little improvisation led to these: -
The Ankh topped Pyramid of Shub-Niggurath, plus a tetrahedron which doubles as a simplified Pentachoron.
The Elder Goddess Shub-Niggurath represents the Cosmic Biota. The Egyptian Ankh symbolises Life. The entire edifice signifies ‘The Intent of Life’, (A spell for hope in these dark times as Death stalks the land).
The Ankh-like iron bolt came from an ancient wooden shipwreck and needed a lot of tar removing from it. The pumice like stone may consist of volcanic pumice or lightweight composite building material wreckage that got washed in by the tide, grinding it away against a flat rock gave the pyramids their facets.