Copernicus showed how apparent motion in the heavens indicates actual motion of the earth. In this blog, I present a postulate that apparent motion in quantum phenomena (light, electrons and quarks) indicates actual motion of the universe we live in.
1st Rule (Frame of Reference): The greater universe is a 4-space filled with light
Definitions:
The Greater Universe: A universe of 4-dimensions (4--space) filled with light and innumerable hyperplanes (3-dimensional universes) .
Light: An exceedingly refined 4-dimensional fluid which fills the immensity of the greater universe and infuses most everything in it. Some might wish to call this 4 dimensional fluid, the aether.
Observercentricity: An emphasis of the observer's relevance in explaining natural phenomena.
Excentrics: Free constants which must be inserted into theories in order to make them come out right.
PF Axis: In Einstein's spacetime, it is the one dimensional time element of the universal fabric; In a moving universe theory, it is the spatial axis along which the universe moves.
Discussion:
The mathematician, Theodor Kaluza, may well have been the first to posit the existence of a fourth physical dimension. Using Einstein's spacetime as a foundation, Kaluza decided to apend a fourth spatial dimension to spacetime to see what it would look like. Imagine his surprise, when several equations spontaneously arose from the mathematical formalism, which turned out to replicate Maxwell's equations for the electromagnetic field.
Convinced this could not be coincidence, Kaluza sent his equations to Einstein, thinking that perhaps he had unified the electromagnetic and gravitational fields. Einstein was so delighted by Kaluza's promising work that he recommended the paper for publication.
Once published, mathematicians the world over dissected and eventually disproved Kaluza's postulate. As fate would have it, Kaluza's universe of four spatial dimensions and one temporal dimension gave rise to electrons much more massive than observation could support. So Kaluza's theory was mothballed for a time, until it could be dusted off and renovated as a foundational concept in string theory.
It was Kaluza, then, who opened our imagination to the possibility of a fourth spatial dimension and who suggested that light was a four-dimensional phenomenon. If the electron had not fatally wounded Kaluza's universe, perhaps people today would esteem the name Kaluza, as Einstein. But that was not to be.
These days we primarily believe our eyes, so the most compelling evidence that there is no fourth spatial dimension is not founded upon something as esoteric as a heavy electron. Disproof lies in the fact that we cannot see this fourth dimension. If we could see it...if we could observe this fourth dimension, perhaps then we would believe.
The problem with observation is that any given observer must make absolutely certain he occupies the highest possible dimension before he can say with certainty that he observes the truth. I am reminded of Edwin Abbott's wonderful work called Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions. I first came across this magnificent, little book in my early 20's while attending university. I was so enamoured by the book upon my first reading that I quickly read it twice more in succession, then forced myself to put it down so as to return focus to my studies.
The story tells of a lowly Square who lives on a vast flat plane. Written in the same fashion as a journal or memoir, Square describes the culture, traditions and religions of his homeland. He also tells of his interactions with the inhabitants of Pointland and Lineland. But perhaps most interesting of all is Square's discription of his first contact with a sphere--an extradimensional personage capable of altering his size, of transforming himself into a point, of viewing and influencing objects located in "closed" spaces, of vanishing completely from the surface of Flatland, yet maintaining the ability to converse as if from "nowhere".
While I understand well enough that Flatland is a fiction, I also see a certain truth in Abbott's Flatland. It reminds us that inspite of our best observational efforts, sometimes we miss important details because we have by custom or tradition limited our vision. Sometimes we miss whole dimensions.
Take Ptolemy, for example. Ptolemy was a brilliant scientist with an astonishing depth of understanding. In his day and for nearly 1500 years after his death, he commanded every bit of the respect that Newton and Einstein do today. Ptolemy tried to make sense of the patterns he saw in the motions of the moon, the sun, the planets and the stars. But in analyzing these patterns, Ptolemy imposed two basic assumptions: first, the earth is unmoving in the center of God's creation; and second, God created the universe based upon perfect and circular symmetry. So Ptolemy opined that celestial bodies rode upon crystal spheres, which rotated around a stationary earth.
Ptolemy's suppositions, based largely upon his extensive observations of the heavens, gave him authority to suggest that heavenly bodies moved in this way. The stars trace their circles or arcs across the firmament of the sky as do the sun and moon. Almost every observation from an earthly perspective seems to indicate that the heavens and their occupants move in circles. Even the path the planets traverse across the heavens seems circularly based, with the exception of what is called retrograde motion--periods during which some of the planets move back across the heavens before resuming their proper circular track.
Retrograde motion threw Ptolemy for a loop, so Ptolemy threw the loop right back and suggested that during retrograde motion the planets engage in circular epicycles, which are also associated with equants and deferents. These epicycles were referred to as excentrics, which can be literally interpreted as off-center.
Excentrics were the chink in Ptolemy's theoretical armor. Copernicus, and later Kepler and Newton, would use their considerable mathematical powers to show that excentrics were a proof that Ptolemy's two assumptions were false. The earth is not at rest, and heavenly motion is not necessarily circular or symmetric
Flatland and Ptolemy's description of the universe help us to see that observation is not necessarily authoritative. Sometimes we observe motion in the things around us that are indicative of motion in ourselves. And just as the assumption that the earth was stationary led to a millenia and a half of error, so I would argue if we insist on describing the observable universe as occupying a special and stationary position, we are liable to introduce misconception and error. Observation is very important, but it is not preeminent. Observation must be interpreted through just the right lense. If it is not, the observation leads us awry.
Yet the two great theories of our age are based largely upon the preeminence of observation. This is especially true in quantum mechanics where the whole field is so enamoured with the observer and the observed that it fails to describe what the universe would be like in our absence. In general realtivity, the emphasis on observation has more to do with the special status of the observer who has the perogative to declare himself stationary and central if he associates himself with an adequate inertial or gravitational frame of reference. I call this emphasis on the observer in modern physics "observercentricity," and I would argue that observercentricity (like geocentricity of Ptolemaic times) has led us into error
Ptolemaic-like excentrics abound in today's physics: Time stops at the event horizons of black holes; some quantum particles are thought to carry out a kind of temporal retrograde motion; a number of free constants (excentrics) grace the charts of the standard model of particle physics; dark matter and dark energy still lie obscured behind our modern version of the Dome of Fixed Stars; and the seven messy dimensions of string theory look an aweful lot like Ptolemy's crystal spheres. With every passing day, we seem to approach the quantum equivalent of Ptolemaic cosmology.
Spacetime and the Pointescope
The universe as Einstein defines it is 3 spatial dimensions bound together with a single temporal dimension. We sometimes refer to this construct as 3d + 1d.
The single dimension of time can be thought of spatially as a line. All along that line are an infinitude of temporal points. Current cosmology suggest that this line has a beginning (the Big Bang), so the line is a ray. It has a terminal beginning point. Current cosmology also suggests that the universe will expand forever, so we can imply that our line has no terminal ending point.
I am going to call this temporal line the PF axis and orient it in an up/down position with P (the past) above and F (the future) below. In truth, Einstein’s spacetime structure does not really regard temporal divisions like past, present and future as real, but for the sake of labeling the line, I will make a distinction. Hidden within each and every temporal point on the PF axis is the information required to configure all energy, matter and space at that point in time.
Let’s consider what this means: Imagine I have a pointescope, a device that replicates the placement and structure of all energy, matter and space in the observable universe when I apply the pointescope sensor to a point on the PF axis. NOTE: the configuration displayed would indicate the ACTUAL locations of all things, not the observed locations from any specific point in space.
If I drag the sensor along the line, I watch the unfolding of the information of subsequent points on the line. Naturally, I can wave the sensor back and forth on the line, and when I do, each point reveals precisely the same 3d spatial configuration with each pass of the sensor. The spatial points contain static information. In other words, the spatial information in any given temporal point never changes. The spatial configurations all along the line are determinate.
As I place the Pointescope at the terminal beginning point of the PF axis, a tiny little Planck length sized hologram comes into view. This hologram represents modern cosmology’s description of the state of the universe at the moment of the Big Bang. This hologram also represents what mathematicians might call a hyperplane—a static configuration of the universe at a given moment in time. Every point on the PF axis is associated with a corresponding hyperplane of the universe as it existed at that very moment.
As I to drag the sensor a very slight distance along the PF axis, the hologram quickly becomes significantly more expansive as the universe inflates. Continuing down the line, I would see the intensely hot beginnings of our universe, the cooling effect as the universe expands, the coalescence of matter to form enormous stars and galaxies, the beginnings of the Milky Way, the birth of our Sun and Earth, the Solar System’s demise and the entropic cooling that occurs as the PF axis reaches out into infinity.
On a more personal note, if I were to adjust my Pointescope to focus upon the configuration of all energy, matter and space in my vicinity, I would holographically view my birth, the look on my face when I first ate ice cream, my first steps, my first words, and all the other details of my life till my last breath. The temporal points would even show me that, because they contain static information. The spatial configurations all along the line are determinate—even the day of my death. They exist already in Einstein’s spacetime.
Changing Spacetime into 4-Space
Lee Smolin suggests in his book The Trouble with Physics that this conception of space and time as a frozen and determinate fabric may be the reason why we have trouble reconciling the theory of general relativity and the theory of quantum mechanics. Let’s consider a new alternative, but first we have to shatter some precious aspects of our current, collective world view.
Our current world view tells us that light moves in relation to all things at the velocity we call “c”. It also tells us that the universe, which contains all space and all directions, has nowhere to go. In other words, the universe does not move. It may appear to expand from our present point of view, but taken all in all, the whole of spacetime is fixed and unmoving. Both of these postulates, that light moves at “c” and that the universe is fixed and unmoving, represents one possible interpretation of the evidence. But there is another possible interpretation.
I’ll remind the reader again that humankind once thought that the earth was at rest and the heavens in furious motion. Our assumption was that the Dome of Fixed Stars was moving on a 24 hour rotation around the earth. We also thought that the other celestial bodies, the sun, moon and planets, were moving upon crystal spheres of there own. We were wrong then, and we are wrong now. Apparent motion in the heavens is actually indicative of the intrinsic motions of the earth. Likewise, apparent motions in the quanta (light and fundamental particles of matter) are actually indicative of the intrinsic motions of our observable universe.
Our new world view tells us that light is at relative rest in relation to all things in the observable universe, but that the universe moves in such a way that light appears to be moving at the velocity we call “c”. This new world view requires us to reconsider what energetic means. In the old world view, energetic meant that a particle was moving faster. But in a new world view, it is the universe itself that moves and gives the impression of motion to “energetic particles”.
When we assume an observercentric position, we tend to take our observations much too seriously. Like Ptolemy, we may observe light in motion and come to the conclusion that light moves. It does not occur to us that our observable universe might be moving through a greater 4-space filled with light. If light is at rest, and the observable universe moving, we have to train ourselves to look at the world in a completely new way. The question is not "How can anything energetic possibly be at rest?" But rather, "How can anything energetic possibly be in motion?"
Changing one's world view requires a significant rewiring of one's brain. It is not unlike the shift in thinking that was required of people at the time of Copernicus, Kepler and Galileo. For 1500 years everyone had assumed that the earth was at rest, and suddenly they were asked to imagine an earth moving at what seemed impossible speeds both in revolution and in rotation. Before Copernicus, we had asked ourselves, "How could anything possibly live on a planet which moves at the speeds required to account for a daily rotation and yearly revolution around the sun?" Given what we know now, we can hardly imaging a planet sustaining life without rotating on an axis and revolving around a star. The appropriate question today is "How could anything possibly live on a planet which does not rotate and revolve around a star?"
Which takes us to the 2nd rule (Freedom of Action).
03-19-2008 01:55 AM 
