The discovery of X boson as a further evidence for nuclear string model

Anomalies seem to be popping up everywhere, also in nuclear physics and I have been busily explaining them in the framework provided by TGD. The latest nuclear physics anomaly that I have encountered was discovered in Hungarian physics laboratory in the decays of the excited state ⁸Be* of an unstable isotope of ⁸Be (4 protons and 4 neutrons) to ground state ⁸Be (see this). For the theoretical interpretation of the finding in terms of fifth force mediated by spin 1 boson see this.

The anomaly manifests itself as a bump in the distribution of e⁺e^- pairs in the transitions ⁸Be*→ ⁸Be at certain angle between electrons. The theoretical interpretation is in terms of a production of spin 1 boson - christened as X - identified as a carrier of fifth force with range about 12 fm, nuclear length scale. The attribute 6.8σ tells that the probably that the finding is statistical fluctuation is about 10^-12: already 5 sigma is regarded as a criterion for discovery.

The assumption about vector boson character looks at first well-motivated: the experimental constraints for the rate to gamma pairs eliminate the interpretation as pseudo-scalar boson whereas spin 1 bosons do not have these decays. In the standard reductionistic spirit it is assumed that X couples to p and n and the coupling is sum for direct couplings to u and d quarks making proton and neutron. The comparison with the experimental constraints forces the coupling to proton to be very small: this is called protophoby. Perhaps it signifies something that many of the exotic particles introduced to explain some bump during last years are assumed to suffer various kinds of phobies. The assumption that X couples directly to quarks and therefore to nucleons is of course well-motivated in standard nuclear physics framework relying on reductionism.

Two observations, and the problems created by them

TGD inspired interpretation based on nuclear string model is based on two observations and potential problems created by them.

1. The first observation is that 12 fm range corresponds rather precisely to p-adic length scale for prime p≈ 2^k, k=113 assigned to the space-time sheets of atomic nuclei in TGD framework. The estimate comes from L(k)= 2^(k-151)/2L(151), L(151) ≈ 10 nm. To be precise, this scale is actually the p-adic Compton length of electron if it where characterized by k instead of k₀=127 labelling the largest not super-astrophysical Mersenne prime. k=113 is very special: it labels Gaussian Mersenne prime (1+i)^k-1 and also muonic space-time sheet.
   
   
2. A related observation made few days later is that the p-adic scaling of the ordinary neutral pion mass 135 MeV from k=107 to k=113 by 2^-(113-107)/2=1/8 gives 16.88 MeV! That p-adic length scale hypothesis would predict the mass of X with .7 per cent accuracy is hardly an accident. This would strongly suggest that X boson is k=113 pion.
   
   
3. There is however a problem. The decays to photon pairs producing pion in l=1 partial wave have not been however observed. This creates puzzle. If X is ρ meson like state with spin 1, it should have same mass as pionic X? This is not plausible.
   
   

The pleasant surprise was that the scaled Γ(π→ γγ) turned out to be consistent with the experimental bounds reported in the article! I must admit that it took almost two weeks to realize that the conclusion of the authors based on the limits on gamma pair decay was wrong in TGD framework.

There is however a problem: the estimate for Γ(π, e⁺e^-) obtained by p-adically scaling the model based on decay virtual gamma pair decaying to e⁺e^- pair is by a factor 1/88 too low. One can consider the possibility that the dependence of f_π on p-adic length scale is not the naively expected one but this is not an attractive option. The increase of Planck constant seems to worsen the situation.

The dark variants of weak bosons appear in important role in both cold fusion and TGD inspired model for chiral selection. They are effectively massless below the scaled up Compton scale of weak bosons so that weak interactions become strong. Since pion couples to axial current, the decay to e⁺e^- could proceed via annihilation to Z⁰ boson decay to e⁺e^- pair. The estimate for Γ(π(113), e⁺e^-) is in the middle of allowed range. The success suggests that the couplings of mesons to p-adically scaled down weak bosons could describe semileptonic decays of hadrons and explain the somewhat mysterious origin of CVC and PCAC.

Effective action approach

One must construct the effective action for the process using relativistic approach and Poincare invariance.

1. The effective action in the fifth force proposal involves the term giving rise to the decay Z→ ⁸Be+X. ⁸Be*==Z is treated as effective U(1) gauge field Z_αβ = ∂_αZ_β - ∂_βZ_α expressible in terms of vector potential Z_α. The corresponding term in the effective action density is proportional to ε^αβγδ Z_αβ∂_γX ∂_δY. Here X is pseudoscalar meson and ⁸Be==Y scalar. The coupling constant parameter has dimensions of length squared.
   
   
2. In the recent case a reduction to the level of single color bond takes place so that Z_αβ is replaced with ρ_αβ representing spin 1 colored bond and pseudo-scalar X with the colored analog of π(113).
   
   
3. Second term in the effective action describes decays of pseudoscalar X to gamma pair and electron pairs. The scaling of standard model produces gamma+gamma decay rate below the experimental upper limit. The scaling of standard model produces a rate which is by a factor about 1/100 too small. The description in terms of coupling to p-adically scaled down variant of Z boson via axial current leads to a prediction consistent with experimental limits. Also the dark variant of Z boson can be considered as a model but now the rate is by order of magnitude smaller than the lower limit proposed in the article. Also the decay of ordinary pion could proceed by same mechanism.
   
   
   

Model for color bonds of nuclear strings

One should also construct a model for color bonds connecting nucleons to nuclear strings.

1. In nuclear string model nuclei are identified as nuclear strings with nucleons connected by color flux tubes, which can be neutral or charged and can have net color so that color confinement would be in question in nuclear length scale. The possibility of charged color flux tubes predicts the existence of exotic nuclei with some neutrons replaced by proton plus negatively charged color flux tube looking like neuron from the point of view of chemistry or some protons replaced with neutron plus positively charged flux tube. Nuclear excitation with energy determined buy the difference of initial and final color bond energies is in question.
   
   
2. The color magnetic flux tubes are analogous to mesons of hadron physics except that they can be colored and are naturally pseudo-scalars in the ground state. These pion like colored flux tube can be excited to a colored state analogous to ρ meson with spin 1 and net color. Color bonds would be rather long flux loops with size scale determined by the mass scale of color bond: 17 MeV gives estimate which as electron Compton length divided by 34 and would correspond to p-adic length scale k=121>113 so that length would be about 2^(121-113)/2=16 times longer than nuclear length scale.
   
   
3. If the color bonds (cb) are indeed colored, the mass ratio m(ρ,cb)/m(π,cb) need not be equal to m(ρ,107)/m(π,107)=5.74. If the ρ and π type closed string states are closed string like objects in the sense as elementary particles are so that there is a closed magnetic monopole flux tube along first sheet going through wormhole contact to another space-time sheet and returning back, the scaling m(ρ/π,107)/m(ρ/π,113)= 8 should hold true.
   
   

Model for ⁸Be* → ⁸Be +X

With these ingredients one can construct a model for the decay ⁸Be* → ⁸Be +X.

1. ⁸Be* could correspond to a state for which pionic color(ed) bond is excited to ρ type color(ed) bond. The decay of ⁸Be* → ⁸Be +X would mean a snipping of a color singlet π meson type closed flux tube from the color bond and leaving pion type color bond. The reaction would be analogous to an emission of closed string from open string. m(X)=17 MeV would be the mass of the color-singled closed string emitted equal to m(π,113)=17 MeV. The emitted π would be in l=1 partial wave so that resonant decay to gamma pair would not occur but decay to e⁺e^- pairs is possible just like for the ordinary pion.
   
   
2. Energy conservation suggests the identification of the excitation energy of ⁸Be* as the mass difference of ρ and π type colored bonds (cb): E_ex(⁸Be*)=m(ρ,cb)-m(π,cb)= m(π,113)= 17 MeV in the approximation that X is created at rest. If one has m(ρ,cb)/m(π,cb)= m(ρ)/m(π) - this is not necessary - this gives m(ρ,cb)≈ 20.6 MeV and m(π,cb)≈ 3.5 MeV.
   
   
3. This estimate is based on mass differences and says nothing about nuclear binding energy. If the color bonds carry positive energy, the binding energy should be localizable to the interaction of quarks at the ends of color bonds with nucleons. The model clearly assumes that the dynamics of color bonds separates from the dynamics of nuclei in the case of the anomaly.
   
   
4. The assumption about direct coupling of X to quarks and therefore to nucleons does not makes sense in this framework. Hence protophoby does not hold true in TGD and this is due to the presence of long color bonds in nuclear strings. Also the spin 1 assignment would be wrong.
   
   

To conclude, this new nuclear physics is physics of the magnetic body of nucleus and involves hierarchy of Planck constants in an essential manner, and the proposed solution to the mysteriously puzzle decay rate π(113)→ γγ could turn out to provide a direct experimental proof for the hierarchy of Planck constants. It also suggests a new approach to the leptonic decays of hadrons based on dark or p-adically scaled down variants of weak interactions The proposal for the explanation of the anomaly in charge radius of proton involves physics of the magnetic body of proton (see this). TGD inspired quantum biology is to high degree quantum physics of magnetic body. Maybe the physics of magnetic body differentiates to its own branch of physics someday.

For details see the article X boson as evidence for nuclear string model or the chapter Nuclear string model of "Hyper-finite factors, p-adic length scale hypothesis, and dark matter hierarchy".

For a summary of earlier postings see Latest progress in TGD.

Badly behaving photons and space-time as 4-surface

There was a very interesting popular article with title Light Behaving Badly: Strange Beams Reveal Hitch in Quantum Mechanics. The article told about a discovery made by a group of physicists at Trinity College Dublin in Ireland in the study of helical light-beams with conical geometry. These light beams are hollow and have the axis of helix as a symmetry axis. The surprising finding was that according to various experimental criteria one can say that photons have spin S=+/-/1/2 with respect to the rotations around the axis of the helix.

The first guess would be that this is due to the fact that rotational symmetry for the spiral conical beam is broken to axial rotational symmetry around the beam axis. This makes the situation 2-dimensional. In D=2 one can have braid statistics allowing fractional angular momentum for the rotations around a hole - now the hollow interior of the beam. One can however counter argue that photons with half odd integer braid spin should obey Fermi statistics. This would mean that only one photon with fixed spin is possible in the beam. Something seems to go wrong with the naive argument. It would seem that the exchange of photons does not seem to correspond to 2π rotation as a homotopy would be the topological manner to state the problem.

The authors of the article suggest that besides the ordinary conserved angular momentum one can identify also second conserved angular momentum like operator.

1. The conserved angular momentum is obtained as the replacement
   
   J=L+S → J_γ= L+γ S .
   
   
2. The eigenvalue equation for j_γ for a superposition of right and left polarizations with S=+/- 1
   

   a₁× e_R exp(il₁θ)+a₂ × e_L exp(il₂θ) ,
   

   where l_i and also s_z=+/- 1 are integers, makes sense for
   

   γ =(l₁-l₂)/2 ,
   

   and gives the eigenvalue
   

   j_γ= (l₁+l₂)/2.
   

   Since l₁ and l₂ are integers by the continuity of the wave function at 2π (even this can be questioned in hollow conical geometry) (l₁+l₂)/2 and (l₁-l₂)/2 are either integers or half integers. For l₁-l₂=1 one has J_γ= J_1/2= L+S/2, which is half odd integer. The stronger statement would be that 2-D S_γ =S/2 is half-odd integer.
   
   

There is an objection against this interpretation. The dependence of the angular momentum operator on the state of photon implied by γ= (l₁-l₂)/2 is a highly questionable feature. Operators should not depend on states but define them as their eigenstates. Could one understand the experimental findings in some different manner? Could the additional angular momentum operator allow some natural interpretation? If it really generates rotations, where does it act?

In TGD framework this question relates interestingly to the assumption that space-time is 4-surface in M⁴× CP₂. Could X⁴ and M⁴ correspond to the two loci for the action of rotations? One can indeed have two kinds of photons. Photons can correspond to space-time sheets in M⁴× CP₂ or they can correspond to space-time sheets topologically condensed to space-time surface X⁴⊂ M⁴× CP₂. For the first option one would have ordinary quantization of angular momentum in M⁴. For the second option quantization in X⁴ angular momentum, which using the units of M⁴ angular momentum could correspond to half-integer or even more general quantization.

1. For the first option (photons in M⁴) angular momentum J(M⁴)=L(M⁴)+S(M⁴) acts at point-like limit on a wave function of photon in M⁴. J(M⁴) acts as a generator of rotations in M⁴ should have the standard properties: in particular photon spin is S=+/-1.
   
   
2. For topologically condensed photons at helix the angular momentum operator J(X⁴)=L(X⁴)+ S(X⁴) generates at point-like limit rotations in X⁴. If M⁴ coordinates - in particular angle coordinate φ around helical axis - are used for X⁴, the identifications
   

   J(X⁴)=k J(M⁴) , L(X⁴)=k L(M⁴) , S(X⁴)=kS(M⁴) .
   

   are possible.
   
   

3. In the recent case X⁴ corresponds to effectively a helical conical path of photon beam, which is effectively 2-D system with axial U(1) symmetry. The space-time surface associated with the helical beam is analogous to a covering space of plane defined by Riemann surface for z^1/n with origin excluded (hollowness of the spiral beam is essential since at z-axis various angles φ correspond to the same point and one would obtain discontinuity). It takes n full turns before one gets to the original point. This implies that L(X⁴)=k L(M⁴) can be fractional with unit hbar/n meaning k=1/n when the angle coordinate of M⁴ serves as angle coordinate of X⁴.
   
   
4. For n=2 one has k=1/2 and 4π rotations in Minkowski space interpreted as shadows of rotations at X⁴ must give a phase equal to unity. This would allow half integer quantization for J(X⁴),L(X⁴) and S(X⁴) of photon in M⁴ units. S(X⁴) corresponds to a local rotation in tangent space of X⁴. The braid rotation defined by a path around the helical axis corresponds to a spin rotation and by k=1/2 to S(X⁴)=S(M⁴)/2= 1/2. Hence one has effectively S(M⁴) =+/- 1/2 for the two circular polarizations and thus γ=+/- 1/2 independently of l_i: in the above model γ=(l₁-l₂)/2 can have also other values. Now also other values of n besides n=2 are predicted.
   

   l_i can be both integer and half odd integer valued. One can reproduce the experimental findings for integer valued l₁ and l₂. One has j=l₁+1/2=l₂-1/2 from condition that superpositions of both right and left-handed spiral photons are possible. If j is half-odd integer, l₁+l₂=2j is odd integer. For instance, S(X⁴)=1/2 gives l₁-l₂=-1 consistent with integer/half-odd integer property of both l₁ and l₂. For j=1/2 one has l₁+l₂=1 and l₁-l₂=-1 giving (l₁,l₂)=(0,1).
   
   

5. Is there something special in n=2? In TGD elementary particles have wormhole contacts connecting two space-time sheets as building bricks. If the sheets form a covering of M⁴ singular along plane M² one has n=2 naturally.
   
   

One can worry about many-sheeted statistics. The intuitive view is that one just adds bosons/fermions at different sheets and each sheet corresponds to a discrete degree of freedom.

1. Statistics is not changed to Fermi statistics if the exchange interpreted at X⁴ corresponds to n× 2π rotation. For n=2 a possible modification of the anti-commutation relations would be doubling of oscillator operators assigning a_k(i), i=1,2 to the 2 sheets and formulating braid anti-commutativity as
   

   {a_k(1),a_l(2)}=0 , {a^†_k(1),a^†_l(2)}=0 , {a^†_k(1),a_l(2)}=0 .

   [a_k(i),a_l(i)]=0, [a^†_k(i), a^†_l(i)]=0, [a^†_k(i), a_l(i)]=δ_k,l .
   

   This would be consistent with Bose-Einstein statistics. For n-sheeted case the formula replacing pair (1,2) with any pair (i,j≠ i) applies. One would have two sets of mutually commuting (creation) operators and these sets would anti-commute and Bose-Einstein condensates seem to be possible.
   
   

2. One can worry about the connection with the hierarchy of Planck constants h_eff=n× h, which is assigned with singular n-sheeted covering space. The 3-D surfaces defining ends of the covering at the boundaries of causal diamond (CD) would in this case co-incide. This might be the case now since the photon beam is assumed to be conical helix. Space-time surface would be analogous to n 3-D paths, which co-incide at their ends at past and future boundaries of CD.
   

   Does the scaling of Planck constant by n compensate for the fractionization so that the only effect would be doubled Bose-Einstein condensate. It woud seem that these condensates need not have same numbers of photons. The scaling of cyclotron energies by n is central in the application of h_eff=nh idea. It could be interpreted by saying that single boson state is replaced with n-boson state with the same cyclotron frequency but n-fold energy.
   
   

3. In the fermionic case on obtain n additional degrees of freedom and ordinary single fermion state would be replaced with a set of states containing up to n fermions. This would lead to a kind of breakdown of fermion statistics possibly having interpretation in terms of braid statistics. And old question is whether one could understand quark color as h_eff/h=n=3 braid statistics for leptons. At the level of CP₂ spinors em charge corresponds to sum of vectorial isospin and of anomalous color hypercharge which is for leptons n=3 multiple of that for quarks. This could be perhaps interpreted in terms of scaling in hypercharge degree of freedom due to 3-sheeted covering. This picture does not seem however to work.
   
   

To sum up, also M⁴ angular momentum and spin make sense and are integer valued but for the system identifiable as topological condensed photon plus helix rather than topological condensed photon at helix. Many-sheeted space-time can in principle rise to several angular momenta of this kind. Symmetry breaking go SO(2) subgroup is however involved. The general prediction is 1/n fractionization.

For a summary of earlier postings see Latest progress in TGD.

Could the replication of mirror DNA teach something about chiral selection?

I received a link to a very interesting popular article from which I learned that short strands of mirror DNA and mirror RNA - known as aptamers - have been be produced commercially for decades - a total surprise to me. Aptamers bind to targets like proteins and block their activity and this ability can be utilized for medical purposes.

Now researchers at Tsinghua University of Beijing have been able to create a mirror variant of an enzyme - DNA polymeraze - catalyzing the transcription of mirror DNA to mirror RNA also replication of mirror DNA. What is needed are the DNA strand to be replicated or transcribed, the mirror DNA nucleotides, and short primer strand since the DNA polymeraze starts to work only if the primer is present. This is like recalling a poem only after hearing the first few words.

The commonly used DNA polymerase containing about 600 amino-adics is too long to be built up as a right-handed version and researchers used a much shorter version: African swine fever virus having only 174 amino-acids. The replication turned out to be very slow. A primer of 12 nucleotides was extended to a strand of 18 nucleotides in about 4 hours: 3/2 nucleotides per hour.
The extension to a strand of 56 nucleotides took 36 hours making 44/36= 11/9 nucleotides per hour. DNA and its mirror image co-existed peacefully in a solution. One explanation for the absence of mirror life is that the replication and transcription of mirror form was so slow that it lost the fight for survival. Second explanation is that the emergence of mirror forms of DNA polymerase and other enzymes was less probable.

Can one learn anything about this?

1. Chiral selection is one of the deep mysteries of biology. Amino-acids are left-handed and DNA and RNA double strands form a right-handed screw. One can assign handedness with individual DNA nucleotides and with DNA double strand but web sources speak only about the chirality of double strand. If the chirality of the DNA nucleotides were not fixed, it would have been very probably discovered long time ago as an additional bit doubling the number of DNA letters.
   
   
2. What could be the origin of the chirality selection? Second helicity could have been loser in the fight for survival and the above finding supports this: fast ones eat the slow ones like in market economy. There must be however a breaking of mirror symmetry. Weak interactions break of mirror symmetry but the breaking is extremely small because the weak bosons mediating weak interaction are so massive that the length scale in which the breaking of mirror symmetry matters is of order 1/100 times proton size. This breaking is quite too small to explain chiral selection occurring in nano-scales: there is discrepancy of 8 orders of magnitude. The proposal has been that the breaking of mirror symmetry has been spontaneous and induced by a very small seed. As far as I know, no convincing candidate for the seed has been identified.
   
   

According to TGD inspired model chiral selection would be induced from that in dark matter sector identified in terms of phases of ordinary matter with non-standard value of Planck constant h_eff/h= n. In living matter dark matter would reside at magnetic flux tubes and control ordinary matter. TGD predicts standard model couplings, in particular weak parity breaking. For h_eff/h= n the scale below which weak bosons behave as massless particles implying large parity breaking is scaled up by n. Large parity breaking for dark matter becomes possible in even biological length scales for large enough h_eff.

The crucial finding is that the states of dark proton regarded as part of dark nuclear string can be mapped naturally to DNA, RNA, tRNA, and amino-acid molecules and that vertebrate genetic code can be reproduced naturally. This suggests that genetic code is realized at the level of dark nuclear physics and induces its chemical variant. More generally, biochemistry would be kind of shadow of dark matter physics. A model for dark proton sequences and their helical pairing is proposed and estimates for the parity conserving and breaking parts of Z⁰ interaction potential are deduced.

For details see the article Could the replication of mirror DNA teach something about chiral selection? or the chapter Evolution in many-sheeted space-time of "Genes and Memes".

For a summary of earlier postings see Latest progress in TGD.

One step further in understanding the origins of life

I learned about very interesting discovery related to the problem of understanding how the basic building bricks of life
might have emerged. RNA (DNA) has nucleotides A,G,C,U (T) as basic building bricks.

The first deep question is how the nucleotides A,G,C,U, and T emerged.

1. There are two types of nucleotides. Pyrimidines C and T/U ) have single carbon 6-cycle. Purines A and G in turn have single 6-single and 5-cycle fused attached together along one side. Purines are clearly more complex than pyrimidines.
   
   
2. U.K. chemist John Sutherland demonstrated a plausible sequence of steps leading to the emergence of pyrimidines. Purines turned out to be more problematic. Leslie Orgel and colleagues suggested a possible pathway but it produces purines in too tiny amounts.
   
   

Now a group led by Thomas Carell in Ludwig Maximilian University have found a more plausible mechanism.

1. Carell and colleagues studied the interaction of biomolecule formamido-pyrimidine (FaPy) with DNA and found that it also reacts to produce purines. Could FaPys have served as predecessors of purines? (For formamide see this and for the class of chemical compounds known as amines see this).
   
   
2. The first step would have been a copious production of amino-pyrimidines containing several chemical groups known as amines. The problem is that the are so many amines and they normally react indiscriminantly to produce many different compounds. One wants mostly purines so that only one critical amine is wanted.
   
   
3. When Carell and his team added some acid to the solution to decrease its pH, a miracle happened. The extra protons from acid attached to the amines of the amino-pyrimidine and made them non-reactive. There was however one exception: just the amine giving rise to purine in its reactions! The reactive amine also readily bonded with formic acid or formamide. Hence it seems that one big problem has been solved.
   
   

The second challenge is to understand how the building bricks of RNA and DNA combined to form longer polymers and began to replicate.

1. One prevailing vision is that so called RNA world preceded the recent biology dominated by DNA. The goal has been to achieve generation of RNA sequence in laboratory. Unlike DNA RNA sequences are not stable and long sequences are difficult to generate. DNA in turn replicates only inside cell and the presence of what is known as ordered water seems to be essential for this.
   
   
2. This step might involve new physics and chemistry and I have considered the possibility that the new physics involves magnetic bodies and dark proton sequences as a representation of the genetic code at the level of dark nuclear physics. There is no need to add that the fact that dark proton states provide representations for RNA, DNA, tRNA, and amino-acids (see this) looks like a miracle and I find still difficult to believe that it is true and for genetic code. Also the representation of vertebrate code emerges in terms of correspondences of dark proton states.
   

   This suggests that the replication of DNA and takes place at the level of dark proton sequencies - dark nuclear strings - serving as a dynamical template for the biological replication. Also transcription and translation would be induced by dark process. Actually all biochemical processes could have as template the dynamics of molecular magnetic bodies and biochemistry would be kind of shadow of deeper dynamics.
   
   

3. There is actually support for dark proton sequences. Quite recently I learned about the article of Leif Holmlid and Bernhard Kotzias (see this) about the superdense phase of hydrogen. In TGD superdense phase has interpretation as dark proton sequences at magnetic flux tubes with the Compton length of dark proton coded by h_eff/h≈ 2¹¹ to electron's Compton length (see this). Remarkably, it is reported that the superdense hydrogen is super-conductor and super-fluid at room temperatures and even above: this is just what TGD predicts.
   

   The dark protons in TGD inspired quantum biology (see this) should have much longer Compton length of order of the distance between nucleotides in DNA sequences in order to serve as templates for chemical DNA. This gives a dark Compton length of order ≈ 3.3 Angstroms from the fact that there are 10 codons per 10 nm. This gives h_eff/h≈ 2¹⁸ .
   

One can return back to the first step in the genesis of DNA and RNA. The addition of protons to the solution used to model prebiotic environment to make it slightly acidic was the key step. Why?

1. Here cold fusion might help. Cold fusion is claimed to take place in electrolysis involving ionization and charge separation. The electric fields used in electrolysis induce ionization and thus charge separation. For me it has however remained a mystery how electric fields, which are extremely tiny using the typical strength of molecular electric field as standard are able to induce a charge separation. Of course, every chemist worth of his salt regards this as totally trivial problem. I am however foolish enough to consider the possibility that some new physics might be involved.
   
   
2. The mechanism causing charge separation could be analogous to or that discovered by Pollack as he irradiated water bounded by a gel phase (see this): in the recent case the electric field would take the role of irradiation as a feeder of energy. Negatively charged exclusion zones (EZs) were formed and 1/4 of protons went somewhere.
   

   The TGD proposal (see this) is that part of protons went to magnetic flux tubes and formed dark proton sequences identifiable as dark nuclear strings. The scaled down nuclear binding energy favours the formation of dark nuclear strings perhaps proceeding as analog of nuclear chain reaction. This picture allows to ask whether dark proton sequences giving rise to a fundamental representation of the genetic code could have been present already in water (see this).
   
   

3. How DNA/RNA could have then formed? Could the protons making the solution acidic be dark so that the proton attaching to the amine would be dark? Could it be that for all amines except the right one the proton transforms to ordinary proton and destroys the chemical reactivity. Could the attached dark proton remain dark just for the correct amine so that the amine would remain reactive and give rise to purine in further reactions? Could A,G,C,T and U be those purines and pyrimidines - or even more general biomolecules - for which the attachment to dark proton does not transform it to ordinary proton and in this manner affect dramatically the chemical properties of the molecule? What is the condition for the preservation of the darkness of the proton?
   
   

See the chapter Quantum criticality and dark matter of "Hyper-finite factors, p-adic length scale hypothesis, and dark matter hierarchy" or the article One step further in the understanding the origins of life.

For a summary of earlier postings see Latest progress in TGD.

Gut cells having no mitochondria survive: evidence for quantum credit card mechanism

Gut cells can survive without mitochondria (see this)! There are many other strange findings. Visible and IR light energize human skin cells transferring energy for the cells- the analog of photosynthesis. Some spiritual groups and also traditionally the people called saints are reported to survive by using only sunlight as their source of metabolic energy. NASA has studied sleigh dogs able to run for days without eating and showing no signs of getting tired.

Could photosynthesis work also in animal mitochondrial cells? The basic mechanism could be essentially the same: electron transfer chain providing energy to pump protons through cell membrane against potential gradient. This is the key step of both photosynthesis and cellular respiration. After that protons flow spontaneously back through ATP synthase and liberate energy to build ATP from ADP. This is like power plant. In plants solar photons provide the energy for electrons. In the animal cells dark photons with large h_eff=n×h (transforming now and then to biophotons) could do it. In the case of IR lmetabolism electrons could send to the energy source dark negative energy IR photons, which decay to ordinary IR photons. This would be an active variant of metabolism and time reversal of the usual mechanism: I have called it quantum credit card mechanism or remote metabolism. I wrote about this a blog posting some time ago.

Now even mitochondria are missing! Could remote metabolism work also without mitochondria? ADP→ ATP transformation should occur since ATP is the universal energy currency. Could it take place as remote metabolism by sending negative energy photons to the cells having the mitochondria. The electron transfer chain is preceded by Krebs cycle extracting the energy from nutriens: could the absorption of negative energy photons induce the decay of nutrient without transfer of energy to electron chain of the mitochondria. The hungry gut cell without mitochondria would be allowed to eat in the table of the luckier ones. Again one quantum objection against vulgar darwinism. This would be like kicking laser from population reversed state to ground state by phase conjugate negative energy irradiation.

For background see the chapter Macroscopic quantum coherence and metabolism as different sides of the same coin of "Biosystems as conscious holograms" of the article Pollack's mechanism and photosynthesis

For a summary of earlier postings see Latest progress in TGD.

Evidence for the notion of magnetic body from brain synchrony without corpus callosum

I received a link to a rather baffling finding about brain. Neuroscientists have believed that the two hemispheres communicate via the neural pathways associated with corpus callosum: kind of communication cables would be in question. Many areas of brain behave synchronously, which has led to the notion of resting state network.

The team led by Michael Tyszka, associate director of Caltech Brain Imaging Center, has however discovered that the resting state network seems to work normally in people born without corpus callosum! As if brain hemispheres were communicating by some other means than neural signalling! This finding challenges not only the views about the origin of brain synchrony as being created by neural circuits but also the models of autism and schizophrenia explaining them in terms of impaired communications between hemispheres.

One can for instance speculate with the possibility that there is electromagnetic communication between brain hemispheres. This does not look a bad idea at all: nowadays it is possible to extract information about EEG so that pilots are able to control the flight of tiny flying object by imagining what the object should do. Technological applications will probably appear in the market soon so that anyone can have robots controllable by thoughts.

This mechanism is consistent with the TGD inspired view about brain. This view however encourages to consider also a more imaginative explanation. In TGD Universe living system involves besides organism and environment also magnetic body (MB) acting as an intentional agent receiving sensory input from organism and controlling it. MB has hierarchical onion-like structure. For instance, brain hemispheres have their own MBs, and entire brain its own MB serving as a "boss" for the MBs of hemispheres.

Communications between magnetic body and part of organism take place using dark photons having non-standard value h_eff=n×h of Planck constant and thus energy E= h_efff, which should correspond to ordinary photons with energies above thermal energy: otherwise quantal effects are masked by thermal fluctuations. Bio-photons in the visible and UV range could result in the transformation of dark photons to ordinary photons. The frequency range of dark photons depends on the level of the layer of MB characterized by h_eff and wavelength corresponds to the size scale of the layer.

In the case of brain the transfer of sensory information to MB would be realized as EEG - wavelength of 7.8 Hz radiation is order of the circumference of Earth so that MBs for brain would be really large. In Zero Energy Ontology (ZEO) control signals would be realized as negative energy signals propagating backwards in geometric time and having phase conjugate laser light as a counterpart in ordinary physics. This explains Libet's finding that neural activity precedes conscious decision. Coordination by using EEG rhythms would be part of control analogous to work songs.

The MB of entire brain controls it and could naturally do this via the intermediate control of brain hemispheres forcing them to operate in the same rhythm. Brain synchrony and resting network would not be produced by resonant neuro-circuits as usually believed but by the spatiotemporal coherence of the EEG radiation from the MB of entire brain forcing brain hemisphere MBs to oscillate in the same rhythm and in turning synchronizing the brain hemispheres. This would be like forcing soldiers to march in the same pace and brain hemispheres could co-operate without any neural communication between hemispheres. The communication between hemispheres would be needed for more refined collaboration involving "discussion" between hemispheres: hemispheres of a person without corpus callosum would be like soldiers obeying blindly the orders. This might be also an essential element of autism and schizophrenia.

For a summary of earlier postings see Latest progress in TGD.

Palmer's Invariant Set Theory and TGD

Tony Smith told me about the Invariant Set Theory of T. N. Palmer involving p-adic numbers and asked how it relates to TGD. As a rule this kind of questions are very useful and also now the questions forced to refresh my understanding about the notion of p-adic imbedding space and I realized a possible connection between finite measurement resolution, p-adicization, and hierarchy of inclusions of hyper-finite factors. The work of Palmer involves rather original ideas although our views about physics are radically different.

1. What makes Palmer's work interesting from TGD point of view is that it involves p-adic number fields. p-Adic topology is assumed to provide a natural description for a space U of 3-D Universes. U could be seen as analog of Wheeler's superspace formed by 3-geometries or the "World of Classical Worlds" of TGD. The space I_U is identified as an invariant set (IS) for an iterative dynamics in U assigned to a quasi-cyclic cosmology. IS would be expressible in terms of Cantor sets in the space U. Space-time would correspond to an orbit M_U of 3-space in U.
   
   
2. Palmer assumes that the physics is basically classical and deterministic albeit non-computable and that this picture about dynamics could reproduce the predictions of quantum theory. To show that this is the case is a formidable challenge: since one should deduce not only the description in terms of quantum states but also quantum measurement theory and non-deterministic state function reduction with its strange rules.
   

   In TGD Universe classical physics is exact part of quantum physics: the very definition of WCW geometry assigns to 3-surface a 4-surface as analog of Bohr orbit associated with it - the interpretation is in terms of holography. This implies the replacement of path integral with functional integral. There is no attempt to reduce quantum to classical.
   
   

3. In Palmer's approach p-adic distance function for the points of invariant set (IS) is introduced and single large p-adic prime is suggested to characterize the topology. This brings strongly in mind models for spin glass energy landscape, which has ultrametric topology (also p-adic topologies are ultrametric). The 3-spaces have metric with Euclidian signature. The challenge is to deduce Einsteinian space-time picture for the orbits M_U in U. The Minkowskian signature of space-time metric is the challenge. Also Einstein's equations should follow from this framework.
   

   In TGD framework p-adic physics is identified as a physical correlate of cognition and p-adicization of physics is carried at all levels: imbedding space level, space-time level, and WCW level. Single state space characterizes quantum states and can be interpreted as real or p-adic since the coefficient field is assumed to be extension of rationals. All number fields are fused to single structure and one obtains what might be called adelic physics (for the latest progress in the construction of p-adic geometries as "smooth" discretizations with discrete algebraic points of real geometric objects replaced with p-adic monads see the article). This makes it possible to satisfy field equation also at the p-adic level.
   
   

In the article "Palmer's IST and TGD" I summarize Palmer's theory in more detail and discuss possible TGD analogies for the notions of Palmer, in particular for his iterative dynamics.

For a summary of earlier postings see Latest progress in TGD.

p-Adicizable discrete variants of classical Lie groups and coset spaces in TGD framework

p-Adization of quantum TGD is one of the long term projects of TGD. In the sequel the recent view about the situation is discussed. The notion of finite measurement resolution reducing to number theoretic existence in p-adic sense is the fundamental notion. p-Adic geometries replace discrete points of discretization with p-adic analogs of monads of Leibniz making possible to construct differential calculus and formulate p-adic variants of field equations allowing to construct p-adic cognitive representations for real space-time surfaces.

This leads to a beautiful construction for the hierarchy of p-adic variants of imbedding space inducing in turn the construction of p-adic variants of space-time surfaces. Number theoretical existence reduces to conditions demanding that all ordinary (hyperbolic) phases assignable to (hyperbolic) angles are expressible in terms of roots of unity (roots of e).

For SU(2) one obtains as a special case Platonic solids and regular polygons as preferred p-adic geometries assignable also to the inclusions of hyperfinite factors. Platonic solids represent idealized geometric objects ofthe p-adic world serving as a correlate for cognition as contrast to the geometric objects of the sensory world relying on real continuum.

In the case of causal diamonds (CDs) - the construction leads to the discrete variants of Lorentz group SO(1,3) and hyperbolic spaces SO(1,3)/SO(3). The construction gives not only the p-adicizable discrete subgroups of SU(2) and SU(3) but applies iteratively for all classical Lie groups meaning that the counterparts of Platonic solids are countered also for their p-adic coset spaces. Even the p-adic variants of WCW might be constructed if the general recipe for the construction of finite-dimensional symplectic groups applies also to the symplectic group assignable to Δ CD× CP₂.

The emergence of Platonic solids is very remarkable also from the point of view of TGD inspired theory of consciousness and quantum biology. For a couple of years ago I developed a model of music harmony relying on the geometries of icosahedron and tetrahedron. The basic observation is that 12-note scale can be represented as a closed curve connecting nearest number points (Hamiltonian cycle) at icosahedron going through all 12 vertices without self intersections. Icosahedron has also 20 triangles as faces. The idea is that the faces represent 3-chords for a given harmony characterized by Hamiltonian cycle. Also the interpretation terms of 20 amino-acids identifiable and genetic code with 3-chords identifiable as DNA codons consisting of three letters is highly suggestive.

One ends up with a model of music harmony predicting correctly the numbers of DNA codons coding for a given amino-acid. This however requires the inclusion of also tetrahedron. Why icosahedron should relate to music experience and genetic code? Icosahedral geometry and its dodecahedral dual as well as tetrahedral geometry appear frequently in molecular biology but its appearance as a preferred p-adic geometry is what provides an intuitive justification for the model of genetic code. Music experience involves both emotion and cognition. Musical notes could code for the points of p-adic geometries of the cognitive world. The model of harmony in fact generalizes. One can assign Hamiltonian cycles to any graph in any dimension and assign chords and harmonies with them. Hence one can ask whether music experience could be a form of p-adic geometric cognition in much more general sense.

The geometries of biomolecules brings strongly in mind the geometry p-adic space-time sheets. p-Adic space-time sheets can be regarded as collections of p-adic monad like objects at algebraic space-time points common to real and p-adic space-time sheets. Monad corresponds to p-adic units with norm smaller than unit. The collections of algebraic points defining the positions of monads and also intersections with real space-time sheets are highly symmetric and determined by the discrete p-adicizable subgroups of Lorentz group and color group. When the subgroup of the rotation group is finite one obtains polygons and Platonic solids. Bio-molecules typically consists of this kind of structures - such as regular hexagons and pentagons - and could be seen as cognitive representations of these geometries often called sacred! I have proposed this idea long time ago and the discovery of the recipe for the construction of p-adic geometries gave a justification for this idea.

For details see the article p-Adicizable discrete variants of classical Lie groups and coset spaces in TGD framework or the chapter Number Theoretical Vision of "Physics as Generalized Number Theory".

For a summary of earlier postings see Latest progress in TGD.

Pollack's mechanism and photosynthesis

An obvious idea is that Pollack's mechanism is the predecessor of photosynthesis. The question is therefore whether photosynthesis could involve the formation of exclusion zones (EZs) by the analog of Pollack's mechanism leading to charge separation taking place also in photosynthesis. Pollack's mechanism creates in presence of radiation and water bounded by a gel at the boundary of water and gel an EZ, which is a layer negatively charged water with effective stoichiometry H_1.5O consisting of layers with hexagonal structure. The TGD inspired proposal is that hydrogen bonded pairs of H₂O molecules are formed and that each of them loses one proton as dark proton at magnetic flux tubes outside EZ. The notion of many-sheeted space-time and topological ield quantization are essential elements of the proposal. Same phenomenon could be caused also by irradiation by sun light.

The light dependent step 2H₂O → 4H⁺ +4e^- + O₂ of photosynthesis pumps protons through thylakoid mebranes (see the illustration). The electrons excited by photons of sunlight are transferred along electron transfer chain and lose energy used to pump protons through the thylakoid membrane and being thus transferred from stroma (outside of the membrane) to grana (inside of the membrane) against electric gradient. ADP transforms to ATP as these protons return to back through ATP synthase. This step is repeated again and again.

Could dark protons created by the analog of Pollack's mechanism be involved with photosynthesis as its fundamental step already present in its primordial variant? In what step the protons are transformed to dark protons by this mechanism?

1. The model of cell membrane leads to a proposal that pumps and channels quite generally are dark magnetic flux tubes and protons (and also other ions) are transferred through them as dark protons (dark ions). This would imply
   almost dissipationless transfer.
   
   
2. The protons are pumped as dark protons through the thylakoid membrane along dark magnetic flux tubes serving as pumps using the energy provided by electrons flowing down in the electron chain. The dark protons return from grana through ATP synthase as dark protons as ATP is generated and transform with some rate back to ordinary protons in stroma. Otherwise the fraction of dark protons would steadily increase.
   
   
3. This leaves two options under consideration. Already the step 2H₂O → 4H⁺ +4e^- + O₂ step 2H₂O → 4H⁺ +4e^- + O₂ creates dark protons by a generalization of Pollack's mechanism or this step creates ordinary protons transformed by Pollack's mechanism to dark protons as they are transferred to dark magnetic flux tubes serving as pumps. The first option looks more plausible.
   
   

What is interesting is the electron transfer chain is involved also with the cellular breathing. There are various light therapies using red or IR light, and they seem to provide basically metabolic energy. Cells would act like plant cells and the analog of photosynthesis could be in question. This would explain the claims that the members of some religious cults can practically live utilizing only sunlight. I have actually proposed that analog of photosynthesis storing the energy by ADP+P_i→ ATP type process using standard machinery could be actually involved and transfer the energy of IR light to metabolic energy further distributed by ATP.

The metabolic machinery for cellular breathing contains so called oxidative phosphorylation (OP) as a basic step: OP adds to ADP a phosphate giving metabolic currency ATP. ATP in turn distributes the metabolic energy further. OP uses electron transport chain to transfer metabolic energy from NADH by NADH → NAD⁺ H⁺ +2e^-. The electrons go through the electron transport chain as in photosynthesis and transfer protons outside the mitochondrial membrane very much like in photosynthesis. The protons return through ATP-synthase and induce ADP+P_i → ATP.

The metabolic energy must come from somewhere and OP indeed follows Krebs cycle in which the energy is extracted from nutrients and given to the NADP molecule. The photon energy could be feeded directly to OP electron transfer chain just as photon energy is transferred to this chain in photosynthesis. The presence of electron transfer chain is necessary and one must feed the electrons and protons to this chain somehow.

1. Could the analog of photosynthetic reaction 2H₂O → 4H⁺ +4e^- + O₂ with visible photons replaced with IR photons produce dark protons? Whether this is energetically possible and whether the electrons have high enough energies to drive the dark protons through the membrane is far from clear. One can of course imagine, that the number of pumped protons per electron is lower than usually.
   
   
2. A mechanism that I have called quantum credit card and remote metabolism looks more plausible. The splitting 2H₂O → 4H⁺ +4e^- + O₂ could occur - not by absorption of positive energy photon but by emission of negative dark IR photon with the energy of visible photon. Cell would actively suck metabolic energy from IR light source. The emitted dark negative energy IR photon would decay to ordinary IR photons in reverse time direction, which would look like fusion in standard time direction and is thermodynamically non-favoured. ZEO predicting kind of syntropic processes to occur in living matter
   would be an essential prerequisite.
   
   

At deeper level metabolic energy might correspond to negentropic entanglement and thus information. Information could be the basic metabolic currency.

For background see the chapter "Macroscopic quantum coherence and metabolism as different sides of the same coin or the brief note Pollack’s mechanism and photosynthesis.

For a summary of earlier postings see Latest progress in TGD.

Re-incarnation as a basic prediction of TGD inspired theory of consciousness

Life has been hard for skeptics during last two decades. A typical skeptic has as building bricks of his ego the items in the list of notions that they regard as pseudoscientific. This allows to attack the people who have the gift of imagination and passion for genuine understanding, which skeptics unfortunately do not possess. What makes attacks easy that no arguments based on contents are needed and the skeptic need not waste his time by trying to understand the arguments of the person to be labelled as pseudoscientist or crackpot.

The typical rhetoric tricks used begin from replacement of Dr X with Mr X and end up with the "conclusion" that the work of Mr X is totally incomprehensible. I have learned that rather often skeptic of this kind is an academic dropout who never managed to do his MsC. Obviously, the role of skeptic became a manner to survive socially and retain the illusion "I am a scientist". During last decades the list of pseudoscientific notions has shortened item by item as quantum biology and quantum consciousness have emerged as respected branches of science. The notion of re-incarnation has been certainly regarded as one of safest pillars supporting the ego of skeptic but even this pillar is in danger to fall down. Poor skeptics.

It is indeed amusing how fast the attitudes change as ideas evolve and experimental data emerge. Only few years ago I could not say anything definite about reincarnation in the framework of TGD inspired theory of consciousness. Now it has become an unavoidable prediction of zero energy ontology (ZEO), which itself is a "must" in TGD framework.

The prediction related to re-incarnation is however not quite what one might have expected. In death of self a reincarnation as time reversed conscious entity takes place. For time reversed self subjective time evolution corresponds to evolution in a reverse direction of geometric time. The next death/reincarnation after this re-incarnation gives rise a mental image for which the arrow of geometric time is the original one.

Can one test this prediction? If one accepts the predicted fractal self hierarchy in which sub-selves correspond to mental images of self, this is possible. I am too lazy to retype basics about ZEO, CDs, and about how self as generalized Zeno effect emerges and just assume that reader knows the basic concepts or sees to trouble to refresh her knowledge about them.

1. Self hierarchy predicts that also our mental images are conscious entities. Motor-sensory dichotomy naturally corresponds to sub-self and time reversed sub-self. That is sensory mental image and that associated with motor action induced by sensory input. Motor action initiated in the geometric past at the opposite boundary of causal diamond (CD) (this explains Libet's finding that conscious decision is preceded by neural activity in geometric time). Note that motor action does not proceed from brain to muscles but in reversed time direction from muscles to brain! This conforms with the vision in which magnetic body is intentional agent.
   
   
2. To proceed one must identify EEG correlates for the sub-selves (mental images) and their time reversed re-incarnates. Here the work of Fingelkurts brothers working in Finland helps. They postulate what they call operational architecture of brain (OA) having operations (O) and operational modules (OM) as building bricks. Quasi-stationary EEG segments are assumed to serve as correlates for operations and synchrony of these segments associated with various locations in brain tells that they belong to the same OM.
   

   Synchrony means spatio-temporal coherence - not only spatial - and is very natural concept in ZEO, where 4-D CDs and space-time surfaces inside them serve as geometric correlates of selves. Synchrony implies that these EEG segments at different spatial locations begin and end at the same time. Between EEG segments there is rapid transition period (RTP) allowing to distinguish segments from each other. Quasi-stationary segments of EEG have average duration is about .3 seconds.
   

   The translation of this picture to TGD framework is rather straighforward. Operations correspond to sub-selves and OMs to collections of them forming sub-selves of self. CDs (sub-CDs) in turn serve as geometric correlates for selves (sub-selves). The quasi-stationary segments of EEG become correlates for sub-selves/mental images. Operational module corresponds to a self/CD having sub-selves/sub-CDs with synchronous EEG segments. The average duration of mental image would be about .3 seconds.
   

   Two sub-sequent quasi-stationary segments separated by RTP would correspond to sub-self and its re-incarnation in the original time direction. Note that a very brief period of geometric time defined by the duration of RTP identifiable as the duration of a unitary time evolution between two sub-sequent state function reductions at the same boundary of CD corresponds to a finite duration of experienced time - the lifetime of the time reversed mental image!
   

   The testable prediction is that the segment corresponding to time-reversed sub-self is located in geometric past and runs in opposite direction of geometric time. This EEG segment should be assignable to motor response accompanying sensory mental image. This is a highly non-trivial prediction testing the new view about time.
   
   

3. One can check whether these EEG segments appear as pairs with first member assignable to sensory mental image and second one to motor mental image. Time reversal implies that second law is obeyed in "wrong" time direction for EEG segment assignable to the motor output and this can be tested. Already Fantappie discovered that both directions of (geometric) time appear in living matter and introduced the notion of syntropy as time reversal of entropy. Spontaneous molecular self-assembly is a basic example of a syntropic process and identifiable as a decay process in reverse direction of geometric time. Phase conjugation is known to occur for phase conjugate laser light and sound. Does a process analogous to self-assembly occur for segments of EEG associated with motor actions: is the motor part of EEG time reversed? To answer this question one needs phase information about EEG besides power spectrum. In principle this information is contained in EEG.
   
   

For background see the chapter About the nature of time or the brief note Questions related to the notions of self and time.

For a summary of earlier postings see Latest progress in TGD.

Very strong support for TGD based model of cold fusion from the recent article of Holmlid and Kotzias

I received from Jouni a very helpful comment to an earlier blog posting telling about the work of Prof. Leif Holmlid related to cold fusion and comparing Holmlid's model with TGD inspired model (see also the article). This helped to find a new article of Holmlid and Kotzias with title "Phase transition temperatures of 405-725 K in superfluid ultra-dense hydrogen clusters on metal surfaces" published towards the end of April and providing very valuable information about the superdense phase of hydrogen/deuterium that he postulates to be crucial for cold fusion (see this ).

The postulated supra dense phase would have properties surprisingly similar to the phase postulated to be formed by dark magnetic flux tubes carrying dark proton sequences generating dark beta stable nuclei by dark weak interactions. My original intuition was that this phase is not superdense but has a density nearer to ordinary condensed matter density. The density however depends on the value of Planck constant and with Planck constant of order m_p/m_e ≈ .94 ×2¹¹=1880 times the ordinary one one obtains the density reported by Holmlid so that the models become surprisingly similar. The earlier representation were mostly based on the assumption that the distance between dark protons is in Angstrom range rather than picometer range and thus by a factor 32 longer. The modification of the model is straightforward: one prediction is that radiation with energy scale of 1-10 keV should accompany the formation of dark nuclei.

In fact, there are also similarities about which I did not know of!

1. The article tells that the structures formed from hydrogen/deuterium atoms are linear string like structures: this was completely new to me. The support comes from the detection of what is interpreted as decay products of these structures resulting in fragmentation in the central regions of these structures. What is detected is the time-of-flight distribution for the fragments. In TGD inspired model magnetic flux tubes carrying dark proton/D sequences giving rise to dark nuclei are also linear structures.
   
   
2. The reported superfluid (superconductor) property and the detection of Meissner effect for the structures were also big news to me and conforms with TGD picture allowing dark supraphases at flux tubes. Superfluid/superconductor property requires that protons form Cooper pairs. The proposal of Holmlid and Kotzias that Cooper pairs are pairs of protons orthogonal to the string like structure corresponds to the model of high Tc superconductivity in TGD inspired model of quantum biology assuming a pair of flux tubes with tubes containing the members of the Cooper pairs. High Tc would be due to the non-standard value of h_eff=n× h. This finding would be a rather direct experimental proof for the basic assumption of TGD inspired quantum biology (see this).
   
   
3. In TGD model it is assumed that the density of protons at dark magnetic flux tube is determined by the value of h_eff. Also ordinary nuclei are identified as nuclear strings and the density of protons would be the linear density protons for ordinary nuclear strings scaled down by the inverse of h_eff - that is by factor h/h_eff=1/n.
   

   If one assumes that single proton in ordinary nuclear string occupies length given by proton Compton length equal to (m_e/m_p) time proton Compton length and if the volume occupied by dark proton is 2.3 pm very nearly equal to electron Compton length 2.4 pm in the ultra-dense phase of Holmlid, the value of n must be rather near n≈ m_p/m_e ≈ 2¹¹≈ 2000 as the ratio of Compton lengths of electron and proton. The physical interpretation would be that the p-adic length scale of proton is scaled up to essentially that of electron which from p-adic mass calculations corresponds to p-adic prime M₁₂₇=2¹²⁷-1 (see this). The ultra dense phase of Holmlid would correspond to dark nuclei with h_eff/h≈ 2^11.
   

   My earlier intuition was that the density is of the order of the ordinary condensed matter density. If the nuclear binding energy scales as 1/h_eff (scaling like Coulomb interaction energy) as assumed in the TGD model, the nuclear binding energy per nucleon would scale down from about 7 MeV to about 3.5 keV for k=127. This energy scale is same as that for Coulomb interaction energy for distance of 2.3 pm in Holmlid's model (about 5 keV). It must be emphasized that larger values of h_eff are possible in TGD framework and indeed suggested by TGD inspired quantum biology. The original too restricted hypothesis was that the values of n comes as powers of 2¹¹.
   
   

4. In TGD based model scaled down dark nuclear binding energy would (more than) compensate for the Coulomb repulsion and laser pulse would induce the phase transition increasing the density of protons and increasing also Planck constant making protons dark and leading from the state of free protons to that consisting of dark purely protonic nuclei in turn transforming by dark weak interactions to beta stable nuclei and finally to ordinary nuclei liberating essentially ordinary nuclear binding energy. In TGD based model the phase transition would give rise to charge separation and the transition would be highly analogous to that occurring in Pollack's experiments.
   
   

It seems that the model of Holmlid and TGD based model are very similar and Holmlid's experimental findings support the vision about hierarchy of dark matter as phases of the ordinary matter labelled by the value of h_eff/h=n. There are also other anomalies that might find explanation in terms of dark nuclei with n≈ 2¹¹. The X rays from Sun have been found to induce a yearly variation of nuclear decay rates correlating with the distance of Earth from Sun (see for instance this, this and this).

1. One possible TGD based explanation relies on the nuclear string model). Nucleons are assumed to be connected by color flux tubes, which are usually neutral but can be also charged. For instance, proton plus negative charged flux tube connecting it to the neighboring nucleon behaves effectively as neutron. This predicts exotic nuclei with the same chemical properties as ordinary nuclei but with possibly different statistics. X rays from Sun could induce transitions between ordinary and exotic nuclei affecting the measured nuclear reaction rates which are averages of all states of nuclei. A scaled down variant of gamma ray spectroscopy of ordinary nuclei would provide an experimental proof of TGD based model.
   
   
2. The fact that the energy scale is around 3 keV suggests that X rays could generate transitions of dark nuclei. If so, the transformations of dark nuclei to ordinary ones would affect the measured nuclear transition rates. There are also other anomalies (for instance those reported by Rolfs et al, for referencs see the article), which might find explanation in terms of presence of dark variants of nuclei ordinary nuclei.
   
   

For background and references see the chapter Cold fusion again of "Hyper-finite factors, p-adic length scale hypothesis, and dark matter hierarchy", article with the same title, or the brief note Strong support for TGD based model of cold fusion from the recent article of Holmlid and Kotzias.

For a summary of earlier postings see Latest progress in TGD.

Confirmation of Santilli's detection of antimatter galaxies via a telescope with concave lenses: really?

encountered in Facebook a really bizarre sounding title reading The incredible pictures scientists say prove invisible alien entities ARE here on Earth (see this) and just for curiosity decided to add one click to the web page in question (means higher income from ads) knowing that this is just what they want me to do! The story involves aliens spying us so that that the street credibility index of the story reduced zero. The tool to detect the spies would be Santilli's telescope using concave lenses. Santilli, whose work is familiar to me, also talks about two types of invisible terrestrials detected by his telescope. It would be easy to ridicule but let us be patient.

An earlier article with title Apparent detection of antimatter galaxies via a telescope with convex lenses (see this) reports a detection of antimatter galaxies. There is also an article with title "Confirmation of Santilli’s detection of antimatter galaxies via a telescope with concave lenses" published in American Journal of Modern Physics claiming an independent observation of antimatter galaxies, antimater asteroids, and antimatter cosmic rays by Santilli's telescope (see this). These articles say nothing about aliens spying us.

Since I suffer from a pathological trait of taking half-seriously even the weirdest stories, I decided to learn what Santilli's telescope using concave lenses might mean. Ordinary telescope uses convex lenses (see this). The light rays coming from the other side converge to form a picture of the source. For concave lense the light rays coming from the other side diverge so that concave lense does not sound like a good idea for detecting light coming from distant objects.

It is however claimed that Santilli's telescope detects light sources in darkness. This is only possible if the index of refraction n=c/v characterizing the medium via the ratio of light velocity in vacuum to the velocity of light in medium changes sign. From Snell's law n₁sin(θ₁)= n₂sin(θ₂) follow the basic facts about lenses (see this). It is possible to construct lenses which have negative index of refraction so that concave lense behaves like convex one. Presumably this is not be the case now since according to the existing theory, ordinary light would have the negative index of reflection (unless it is somehow transformed when arriving to the lense).

Concerning the theoretical arguments Santilli makes several claims, which do not make sense to me.

1. The photons are identified as antimatter photons assumed to have negative energies. These antimatter photons are assumed to have repulsive gravitational interaction with ordinary matter. The claim is that this implies negative index of refraction. This does not make sense since gravitational interaction is quite too weak to cause refraction. Electromagnetic interaction must be in question. Antimatter photons are claimed to propagate with superluminal speeds and arrive instantaneously from remote galaxies. The assumption is in dramatic conflict with what we know about antimatter.
   
   
2. Refractive index is claimed to be a property of light. This does not make sense: refractive index characterizes medium. Its sign however changes when the energy of photon changes sign. From Snell's law the sign of refractive index must change sign as the light enters to the concave lense. This would require that Santilli's antimatter photons transform to ordinary photons.
   
   

These arguments are more than enough for dooming the claims of Santilli as pseudoscience but what if there is something in it? The experimental finding is so simple that if it is not an artefact of poor experimentation, some interesting - possibly new - physics could be involved. So let us looks the situation from different point of view forgetting the theory behind it and taking seriously the claimed observations. Could one explain the findings in TGD framework?

Zero energy ontology (ZEO) is one of the cornerstones of TGD and could indeed explain the claims of Santilli and colleagues. In ZEO zero energy states are pairs of positive and negative energy states at opposite light-like boundaries of causal diamonds (CD) forming a scale hierarchy. Zero energy states are counterparts of physical events in standard ontology.

1. ZEO predicts that the arrow of time can have both directions. In ZEO based quantum measurement theory state function reductions occur at either boundary of CD. Conscious entities correspond to sequences of reductions leaving everything unaffected at the boundary (Zeno effect) but changing the situation at the opposite boundary, in particular increasing its distance from the fixed boundary, which gives rise to the experienced flow of time. The first reduction to opposite boundary replaces the zero energy state with time reversed one. This can happen also for photons.
   
   
2. The particles with non-standard arrow of time are not antimatter (I have considered also this possibility since it might explain the experimental absence of antimatter) but propagate in reverse time direction and have negative energies. There is a considerable evidence for this notion. Phase conjugate laser beams known to obey second law in reverse time direction would be one example. There are also old observations of Akimov and Kozyrev claiming that the instrument of Akimov gives three images of distant astrophysical objects: one would be from past, one from recent, and one from future. I do not know about the construction of Kozyrev's instrument but one can ask whether it involved concave lenses. Also the notion of syntropy introduced by the Italian physicists Fantappie conforms with this picture. In biology syntropy is in central role since in biology time reversed radiation would play a key role.
   
   
3. Since the sign of the energy is negative for phase conjugate photons, their refractive index is negative. n₂ for concave lense and n₁ for the medium behind lense must have opposite signs to explain the claims of Santilli and colleagues. This happens if the incoming negative energy photons from the geometric future are transformed to positive energy photons photons at the surface of the lense. This process would represent time reflection of the incoming negative energy photons
   to ordinary positive energy photons propagating inside lense.
   
   

The claimed results could be an outcome of a bad experimentation. What however remains is a test of ZEO - or more precisely, the notion of time reversed photons - using telescopes with convex lenses. The implication would be possibility to see to the geometric future using telescopes with concave lenses! An entire geometric future of the Universe would be open to us! This possibility is a good enough reason for seeing the trouble of proving experimentally that Santilli is (and I am) wrong! Negative index of refraction as a function of frequency is a real phenomenon in condensed matter physics (see this), and one can of course ask whether also it involves the transformation of positive energy photons to negative energy photons.

For background see the chapter TGD About Concrete Realization of Remote Metabolism of "Bio-Systems as Conscious Holograms".

For a summary of earlier postings see Latest progress in TGD.

Inverse Research on Decisions Shows Instinct Makes Us Behave Like Cyborgs, not Robots: Really?

I learned about an interesting work, which relates to the relationship of experienced time and geometric time but ortodoxically assumes that these two and one and the same thing. The title of the popular article was Inverse Research on Decisions Shows Instinct Makes Us Behave Like Cyborgs, not Robots (see this). It tells about the work of Adam Bear and Paul Bloom. The article claims that our mind for some mysterious-to-me reason tricks us to believe that were are responsible for totally automatic or reflexive behaviours. In fact, these behaviors by definition are such that we do not feel of being responsible for them. Bear how allows us some subconscious free will so that we are not programmed robots but cyborgs whatever that might mean.

This work is an excellent example about how a dominating paradigm, which is wrong, leads to wrong interpretation of experimental findings, which as such are correct. The standard belief in neuroscience and standard physics is that causal effects propagate always in the same direction of the geometric time. This interpretation follows from the identification of geometric time (time of physicist) with subjective time. This despite the fact that these times have very different properties: consider only reversibility viz. irreversibility, existence of both future and past viz. only past exists.

The classical experiments of Libet challenge this dogma. Person decides to raise finger but neuro-activity begins fraction of second earlier. Mainstream neuroscientist of interprets this by saying that there is no free will. Second proposed interpretation is that the decision is made earlier at subconscious level and at our level the experience of free will is an illusion. One can of course wonder why this illusion.

The third manner to interpret the situation respects our immediate experience that we indeed have free will but in order to avoid mathematical contradictions must be accompanied by a new more general view about quantum physics accepting as a fact that there are two causalities: that of free will and that of deterministic laws of field equations. In TGD framework Zero Energy Ontology realizes this view. The outcome is prediction of signals which can propagate in both directions of geometric time. If the conscious decision generates a signal to geometric past it initiates a neural activity in geometric past. An excellent tool for survival in jungle or in modern market economy full or merciless predators.

In the experiment considered subject persons saw five dots and selected one. One of the dots became red with a varying time lag but subject person did not know when. Subject person had to tell whether her choice had been correct, wrong, or whether she had failed to make any choice at all before the change took place.

The surprising observation was that the shorter the time interval from the guess to change of color to red was, the better the reported ability to guess correctly was and in conflict with statistical model based on fixed arrow of time. If information can travel backwards in geometric time, the natural interpretation would be the same as in Libet's experiments and in the experiments of say Radin and Bierman claimed to demonstrate precognition. This is possible in zero energy ontology (ZEO). ZEO allows also a slightly different interpretation relies. In ZEO in which mental images correspond to causal diamonds (CDs). For sensory mental images their time scale would be of order .1 seconds so that below this scale one cannot anymore put events in precise time order and one indeed has precognition. What this means that one does not know whether the sensory input corresponds to the "upper" or "lower" boundary of CD so that these interpretations are equivalent.

Neuroscientist cannot of course publicly utter the word "precognition" associating immediately with really dirty word "paranormal". The orthodox conclusion is that subject persons are "cheating" themselves without knowing it. Very bizarre interpretation - if taken completely seriously it forces to question all our knowledge! One can also ask, why the subjects would tend to cheat themselves when the change occurred immediately after their choice: why not always? The interpretation is a heroic attempt to save the standard world view but can we accept irrational heroism in science?

A simple modification of the experiment would be an addition of a keystroke telling the choice when it was done and before the change in color. This would immediately tell whether something like precognition was involved.

For background see the chapter About the nature of time of "TGD Inspired Theory of Consciousness" or the article Questions related to the notions of self and time.

For a summary of earlier postings see Latest progress in TGD.

Gravitational Waves from Black Hole Megamergers Are Weaker Than Predicted

There was an interesting article in Scientific American with title "Gravitational Waves from Black Hole Megamergers Are Weaker Than Predicted" (see this). The article told about the failure to find support for the effects of gravitational waves from the fusion of supermassive blackholes. The fusions of supermassive blackholes generate gravitational radiation. These collisions would be scaled up versions of the LIGO event.

Supermassive blackholes in galactic centers are by statistical arguments expected to fuse in the collisions of galaxies so often that the generated gravitational radiation produces a detectable hum. This should produce a background hum which should be seen as a jitter for the arrival times of photons of radiation from pulsars. This jitter is same for all pulsars and therefore is expected to be detectable as kind of "hum" defined by gravitational radiation at low frequencies. The frequencies happen to be audible frequencies. For the past decade, scientists with the North American Nanohertz Observatory for Gravitational Waves (NANOGrav) collaboration tried to detect this constant "hum" of low-frequency gravitational waves (see this). The outcome is negative and one should explain why this is the case.

I do not know how much evidence there exists for nearby collisions of galaxies in which fusion of galactic supermassive blackholes really take place. What would TGD suggest?

1. In TGD Universe galaxies could be like pearls in necklace carrying dark magnetic energy identifiable as dark matter. This explains galactic rotation curves correctly 1/ρ force in plane orthogonal to the long cosmic string (in TGD sense) defining the necklace gives constant velocity spectrum plus free motion along string: this prediction distinguishes TGD from the competing models. Halo is not spherical since stars are in free motion along cosmic string. The galactic dark matter is identified as dark energy in turn identifiable as magnetic energy of long cosmic string. There is a considerable evidence for these necklaces and this model is one of the oldest parts of TGD inspired astrophysics and cosmology.
   
   
2. Galaxies as vehicles moving along cosmic highways defined by long cosmic strings is more dynamical metaphor than pearls in necklace and better in recent context. The dominating interaction would be the gravitational interaction keeping the galaxy at highway and might make fusion of galactic blackholes a rare process.
   

This model allows to consider the possibility that the fusions of galactic super-massive blackholes are much rarer than expected in the standard model.

1. The gravitational interaction between galaxies at separate highways passing near each other would be secondary interaction and galaxies would pass each other without anything dramatic occurring.
   
   
2. If the highways intersect each other the galaxies could collide with each other if the timing is correct but this would be a rare event. This is like two vehicles arriving a crossing simultaneously. In fact, I wrote for a couple of years ago about the possibility that Milky Way could have resulted as the intersection of two cosmic highways (or as a result of cosmic traffic accident).
   
   
3. If the galaxies are moving in opposite directions along the same highway, the situation changes and a fusion of galactic nuclei in head on collision is unavoidable. It is difficult to say how often this kind of events occur: it could occur that galaxies have after sufficiently many collisions "learned" to move in the same direction and define analog of hydrodynamical flow. A cosmic flow has been observed in "too" long scales and could correspond to a coherent flow along cosmic string.
   

For background see the chapter Quantum Astrophysics.

For a summary of earlier postings see Latest progress in TGD.