https://matpitka.blogspot.com/2010/02/

Friday, February 26, 2010

Magnetic flux tubes and ocean bacteria as super-organism

Again new evidence for the role of magnetic flux tubes in living matter (I am grateful for the link to Mark McWilliams)! Now as potential carriers of oxygen making the population of sea bacteria act as a super-organism. See the New Scientist article The real Avatar: ocean bacteria act as 'superorganism'.

Sunday, February 21, 2010

Could high energy phosphate bond be negentropic bond with negative binding energy?

Most people assign the word "love" to the word "life" as their first association. There is a notable exception to this: scientists including biologists. Un-educated layman might however wonder whether one can understand life without identifying any physical counterpart for this notion (, which could be replaced with that of compassion, sex, or ability to act synergetically or just X if some of these notions sounds less un-scientific). Certainly the word "love" stimulates a deep feeling of disgust in a reductionistically conditioned scientist. But isn't the duty of scientist to win this kind of feelings and try to see whether this identification might be possible after all? The prize could be high: the understanding of what distinguishes between living and dead matter could change the entire culture. Who knows, maybe it could be possible to identify some poorly understood fundamental biological process allowing a quantitative model using a guess for what this physical correlate could be. The basic step of metabolism is at the core of life and indeed poorly understood, and I shall argue that the identification of the negentropic entanglement as the counterpart for the notion of love could allow to model quantititatively what happens in this process.

Before continuing general motivating comments about implications of negentropic entanglement are in order.

  1. Ordinary bound states are stable because they have positive binding energy. One can visualize this kind of binding as a jail: the second particle resides near the bottom of a potential well. Organized marriage is a social analogy for this situation. Negentropic entanglement makes possible bound states for which binding energy can have and perhaps even has always a wrong sign. The state is not prevented from decaying to free particles in state function reduction by energy conservation: Negentropy Maximization Principle (NMP) takes care that they remain correlated. The social analogy would be a voluntary marriage based on love. Partners are competely free to leave but want to stay together.

    One implication could be explanation for the stability of highly charged basic molecules of life such as DNA and ATP.

  2. The presence of the negentropic entanglement implies the directedness of the biological processes since the outcome of the state function reduction would be far from random since the behavior of negentropic bonds could be almost deterministic. In the case of time-like entanglement this would select only particular initial final state pairs so that determinism would emerge also in this sense and could lead to almost deterministic irreversible cellular automaton behavior characteristic for the living matter very different from the reversible determinism of classical physics and very difficult to understand in quantum context.

  3. The determinism would of course be only partial and would allow volition not spoiled by randomness of quantum jump. This would provide a general explanation for the ability of the living matter to overcome the second law basically implied by quantum randomness predicted by the standard quantum theory. This would happen in time scales shorter than the time scale of the appropriate causal diamond (CD) only but one would have hierarchy of CD meaning that in arbitrary long time scales there are levels of hierarchy at which second law is broken. The hierarchy of Planck constants would be also crucial since it would allow zooming up to arbitrarily long time scale. Non-equilibrium thermodynamics and cellular automaton models could be seen as phenomenological descriptions for the actual breaking of second law in the intersection of real and p-adic worlds.

I do not bother to do the painful transformation of the the tex file to html so that the reader interested in details can just click the six page article Could high energy phosphate bond be negentropic bond with negative binding energy?.

Monday, February 15, 2010

Life as islands of rational/algebraic numbers in the seas of real and p-adic continua?

The possibility to define entropy differently for rational/algebraic entanglement and the fact that number theoretic entanglement entropy can be negative raises the question about which kind of systems can possess this kind of entanglement. I have considered several identifications but the most elegant interpretation is based on the idea that living matter resides in the intersection of real and p-adic worlds, somewhat like rational numbers live in the intersection of real and p-adic number fields.

The observation that Shannon entropy allows an infinite number of number theoretic variants for which the entropy can be negative in the case that probabilities are algebraic numbers leads to the idea that living matter in a well-defined sense corresponds to the intersection of real and p-adic worlds. This would mean that the mathematical expressions for the space-time surfaces (or at least 3-surfaces or partonic 2-surfaces and their 4-D tangent planes) make sense in both real and p-adic sense for some primes p. Same would apply to the expressions defining quantum states. In particular, entanglement probabilities would be rationals or algebraic numbers so that entanglement can be negentropic and the formation of bound states in the intersection of real and p-adic worlds generates information and is thus favored by NMP.

A more concrete interpretation for the intersection of real and p-adic worlds would be as the intersection of real and p-adic variants of space-time surface allowing intepretation in both number fields. This intersection is discrete set containing besides rational points also algebraic points common to reals and algebraic extension of p-adics involved.

These two interpretations for the intersection of real and p-adic worlds need not be independent. The absence of definite integral in p-adic number fields suggests that the transition amplitudes between p-adic and real sectors must be expressible using only the data associated with rational and common algebraic points (in the algebraic extension of p-adic numbers used) of imbedding space. This intersection is discrete and could even consist of a finite number of points. For instance, Fermat's last theorem tells that the surface xn+yn=zn contains only origin as rational point for n=3,4,... whereas for n=2 it contains all rational multiples of integer valued points defining Pythagorean triangles: this is due to the homogenity of the polynomial in question. Therefore p-adic-to real transition amplitudes would have a purely number theoretical interpretation. One could speak of number theoretical field theory as an analogy for topological field theory.

This picture has also a direct connection with consciousness.

  1. Algebraic entanglement is a prerequisite for the realization of intentions as transformations of p-adic space-time sheets to real space-time sheets representing actions. Essentially a leakage between p-adic and real worlds is in question and makes sense only in zero energy ontology. since various quantum numbers in real and p-adic sectors are not in general comparable in positive energy ontology so that conservation laws would be broken. Algebraic entanglement could be also called cognitive. The transformation can occur if the partonic 2-surfaces and their 4-D tangent space-distributions are representable using rational functions with rational coefficients in preferred coordinates for the imbedding space dictated by symmetry considerations. Intentional systems must live in the intersection of real and p-adic worlds. For the minimal option life would be also effectively 2-dimensional phenomenon and essentially a boundary phenomenon as also number theoretical criticality suggests.

  2. The generation of non-rational (non-algebraic) bound state entanglement between the system and external world means that the system loses consciousness during the state function reduction process following the U-process generating the entanglement. What happens that the Universe corresponding to given CD decomposes to two un-entangled subsystems, which in turn decompose, and the process continues until all subsystems have only entropic bound state entanglement or negentropic algebraic entanglement with the external world.

  3. If the sub-system generates entropic bound state entanglement in the the process, it loses consciousness. Note that the entanglement entropy of the sub-system is a sum over entanglement entropies over all subsystems involved. This hierarchy of subsystems corresponds to the hierarchy if sub-CDs so that the survival without a loss of consciousness depends on what happens at all levels below the highest level for a given self. In more concrete terms, ability to stay conscious depends on what happens at cellular level too. The stable evolution of systems having algebraic entanglement is expected to be a process proceeding from short to long length scales as the evolution of life indeed is.

  4. U-process generates a superposition of states in which any sub-system can have both real and algebraic entanglement with the external world. This would suggest that the choice of the type of entanglement is a volitional selection. A possible interpretation is as a choice between good and evil. The hedonistic complete freedom resulting as the entanglement entropy is reduced to zero on one hand, and the algebraic bound state entanglement implying correlations with the external world and meaning giving up the maximal freedom on the other hand. The hedonistic option is risky since it can lead to non-algebraic bound state entanglement implying a loss of consciousness. The second option means expansion of consciousness - a fusion to the ocean of consciousness as described by spiritual practices.

  5. This formulation means a sharpening of the earlier statement "Everything is conscious and consciousness can be only lost" with the additional statement "This happens when non-algebraic bound state entanglement is generated and the system does not remain in the intersection of real and p-adic worlds anymore". Clearly, the quantum criticality of TGD Universe seems has very many aspects and life as a critical phenomenon in the number theoretical sense is only one of them besides the criticality of the space-time dynamics and the criticality with respect to phase transitions changing the value of Planck constant and other more familiar criticalities. How closely these criticalities relate remains an open question.

A good guess is that algebraic entanglement is essential for quantum computation, which therefore might correspond to a conscious process. Hence cognition could be seen as a quantum computation like process, a more approriate term being quantum problem solving. Living-dead dichotomy could correspond to rational-irrational or to algebraic-transcendental dichotomy: this at least when life is interpreted as intelligent life. Life would in a well defined sense correspond to islands of rationality/algebraicity in the seas of real and p-adic continua.

The view about the crucial role of rational and algebraic numbers as far as intelligent life is considered, could have been guessed on very general grounds from the analogy with the orbits of a dynamical system. Rational numbers allow a predictable periodic decimal/pinary expansion and are analogous to one-dimensional periodic orbits. Algebraic numbers are related to rationals by a finite number of algebraic operations and are intermediate between periodic and chaotic orbits allowing an interpretation as an element in an algebraic extension of any p-adic number field. The projections of the orbit to various coordinate directions of the algebraic extension represent now periodic orbits. The decimal/pinary expansions of transcendentals are un-predictable being analogous to chaotic orbits. The special role of rational and algebraic numbers was realized already by Pythagoras, and the fact that the ratios for the frequencies of the musical scale are rationals supports the special nature of rational and algebraic numbers. The special nature of the Golden Mean, which involves 51/2, conforms the view that algebraic numbers rather than only rationals are essential for life.

For details see for instance the article TGD inspired theory of consciousness and the chapter Quantum Theory of Self-Organization of "Bio-Systems as Self-Organizing Systems".

Tuesday, February 02, 2010

A request for help

I have not written much during the last month. The reason is that I have been trying to defend myself against the worst virus attack I have experienced during these years. As I already told, the hell got loose at New Year Day. Within week I had to admit that it is impossible to work with the old Windows machine. My childish hope was that it would be something technical like the failure of the hard disk. I bought a new Mac, something highly non-trivial in my difficult life situation as unemployed. I am grateful for those people who made this possible.

WinEdt is an excellent program and I wanted to continue to use it. I bought also Windows 7 and Parallels to my brand new iMac and began to work again in optimistic mood. Soon files however began to disappear, be replaced with empty ones or become corrupted. The hard disk had not been the source of problems. It was a virus attack but not by ordinary hackers: standard firewall programs continually failed to find anything. I began to see the bigger pattern as I learned from news that Microsoft had known already at autumn that also Windows 7 Ultimate contains a hole allowing computer criminals to take a control over the machine. The government of Germany had even warned citizens about Windows Explorer. With some deeply irrrational motivation I had used Windows Explorer once before I had realized that I shouldn't do it. Was this the fatal mistake? I do not know.

I decoupled Windows 7 completely from Mac OS and hoped for the best. Again I was too optimistic. This particular working day began with the discovery that my invisible enemy had deleted almost all chapters in one of the books. This kind of sadism really beats me down. So much hard work has gone to developing these chapters. These files are really my flesh and blood. I was too sad to even try to check what they had done to the other books. Time Machine -the backup system of Mac - saved the situation as it has done many times during the last week. This is fine and the graphics of Time Machine is enjoyable art but there is of course no point in a continual downloading of the earlier tex files. I really want to do some real work too.

I have tried to understand what the ingenious and cruel trick could be. Could the tex files representing my life work be infected so that any attempt to work with them breaks the hell loose. No help from re-installing the operating system, or buying a new computer, or even changing to a new operating system. Or is a selective virus in question? Could they use a virus able to get to any computer but activating only in the desired target so that the virus would not find its way to the data basis of any firewall program? Recognition of the target would be easy using the information obtained using Spyware. The letter combination "TGD" for sufficiently many times is all that is needed for recognition. So simple it could be.

I has been incredibly difficult for me to accept as a fact that that there is some individual or some group doing this completely purposefully. Everyone of us knows that there are sadistic psychopaths around us and that ordinary benevolent human beings can behave like beasts as a group but it is almost impossible to believe that it is just me who could become the victim. Every one of us works desperately to keep the illusion that all human beings are basically human or at least human to me.

Again and again I have asking who could be behind this terror. Single person? A psychopath? A religious or political fanatic? Some mad scientist who wants a revenge? Or is it a group, a kind of collective psychopath consisting of ordinary human beings who would not do anything like this as individuals? Maybe. TGD is the realization of the great dream about unification. This is an undeniable fact. Equally clear is the fact that the establishment cannot admit the situation publicly since this would be a confession that something incredibly stupid and cruel comparable to what happened in Soviet biology during the days of Lysenko has taken place. Maybe the complete silencing of me using even the dirtiest tricks is believed to make possible to avoid the scandal. Unrealistic of course and horribly cruel. I have worked now 32 years without receiving a single coin of direct funding for my work. I have never had a research position. The power holders of science have systematically suppressed my attempts to communicate my life work by applying censorship in both journals and archives. My mission is the only thing I still have. I am begging only for the possibility to use my remaining years to fullfll this mission. Even this they want to prevent. It would be more merciful to kill me physically. I cannot find words to express how deep disgust I feel towards the people responsible for this terror. The people behind this do not deserve to be called human beings.

After this month of continual terror I am ready to confess that I am completely helpless. Every attempt to overcome the situation has failed. A top computer professional would be needed but I am unemployed with a minimum income and living much below the poverty limit so that this is completely outside my reach. I still have a lot to give for the human kind and I can therefore only beg for help. Maybe some-one reading this and realizing how horrible things are happening in Big Science could do something.