About naturality, fine tuning, and the recent ego catastrophe in theoretical physics

There has been a considerable amount of discussion in blogs about the recent situation in fundamental physics. Do the results from LHC mean end of theoretical physics as a predictive discipline? Should we accept multiverse? Should we give up the notion of naturalness and accept fine tuning? These are the questions.

Phil Gibbs answered affirmatively to these questions in his blog post, Lubos wrote in more skeptic tone about these topics, and Peter Woit touched these questions in his comments about talks held in "Prospects in Theoretical Physics" - a program for graduate students and postdocs in Princeton. I wrote a couple of comments about the situation to the blog of Phil Gibbs and combine them below to a more polished commentary.

To my opinion the situation in fundamental physics should be looked from a wider perspective than that given by last forty - not very successful - years of theoretical high energy physics. Physics is definitely in crisis. Multiverse scenario and the view about necessity of fine tuning are conclusions from sticking to certain basic dogmas and refusal to admit that some of them might be badly wrong. I do not believe in all these dogmas and therefore do not share these pessimistic conclusions. I tend to see the recent situation as an ego catastrophe (we failed to find the theory so that there can be is no theory) which is outcome of accepting quite too many ad hoc assumptions as final truths. The situation can be also seen as the final collapse of reductionistic view about physics.

Alternative for multiverse

I believe that standard model symmetries have fundamental meaning being selected by their very special mathematical and physical character. GUT approach denied this possibility and led theoreticians on wrong track leading to standard SUSY and eventually to M-theory landscape. Also the fact that that the observed space-time is 4-dimensional very probably contains a very important message. But also the idea about 4-dimensional space-time became old-fashioned as super string revolutions revolutions followed each other. Sociological factors played a key role in the process. The attitude that thousands of brilliant theoreticians cannot be wrong allowed the situation to develop to a catastrophe made manifest by the findings at LHC. Even in this situation we are told that we should continue to follow the leaders and now give up even the belief that theoretical physics can explain and predict - the very motivation of super string theory originally. And this only because few generations of theoretical particle physicists became victims of mass psychosis. I will not eat this cake!

Standard model symmetries and also space-time dimension would be forced by the existence of geometry for infinite-dimensional space - "world of classical worlds" (WCW) consisting of 3-surfaces defining the analog of Wheeler's superspace. WCW geometry would realize a generalization of Einstein's geometrization program to a geometrization of the entire quantum physics rather than of only the classical physics. In the case of much simpler loop spaces the mere existence of this Käahler geometry fixes it uniquely for given group G defining the loop group (the existence of Riemann connection requires infinite-dimensional Kac-Moody group as isometries as shown by Freed). Standard model symmetries fix WCW (equivalently, the imbedding space H =M⁴×CP₂ containing space-times as 4-surfaces) and the conjecture is that the mathematical existence of WCW Kahler geometry implies the same WCW. In accordance with the vision about physics as generalized number theory, standard model symmetries would have also number theoretical interpretation in terms of classical number fields. For instance, color group would correspond to isometries of CP₂ and subgroup of automorphisms of octonions.

Concerning the fine tuning of coupling parameters: I believe that fine tuning of dynamical parameters is a basic aspect of quantum evolution leading to life as we identify it, but that standard model symmetries and space-time dimension are mathematical necessities rather than outcomes of evolution in some region of multiverse. p-Adic length scale hypothesis and selection of preferred p-adic primes provides a realization of the evolution selecting preferred mass scales for elementary particles. One should therefore accept the obvious: superstring model describes physics of 2-D space-time but - as has become clear - the attempts to deduce real physics from it are doomed to fail. Nature does not love tricks. Super-conformal symmetry remains the genuine contribution of string models to physics and the natural next step is to finally generalize this symmetry to four dimensions.

Reductionism as the basic cause of the catastrophe

I have spent much time during last decades in trying to understand why we have gradually ended up with this dead end and why the professionals are not able to see that there is no way out except radical rethinking of fundamentals. The history of physics is history of bold and often wrong generalizations. The naive length scale reductionism is one of the most influental of these wrong assumptions. It has been raised to a level of dogma and together with materialistic world view more or less defines nowadays what it is to be scientific. Fractality is very natural candidate for replacing the reductionism and quantum theory strongly encourages to give up materialism but still taken as givens by particle physicists. Reductionism is indeed responsible for many far reaching and probably wrong dogmas in recent day physics.

Reductionism forces us to believe that the strange findings at RHIC and LHC about heavy ion collisions and proton heavy ion collisions are consistent with QCD although here we would have the new physics that we are so desperately searching for. This relates also to naturalness. To my opinion, the attempt to understand mass ratios of various fermion generations group theoretically is doomed to fail. If one accepts the notion of length scale hierarchy implied by fractality there is no need to extend standard model symmetries. The fact that separate B and L conservation is consistent with experimental facts provides an additional strong constraint.

Length scale reductionism also forces us to believe that biology and brain science are just complexity, consciousness is just an epiphenomenon, and free will is an illusion. Theoretical physicists lose a huge treasure trove of anomalies which could help to achieve the sought for unification. As a consequence of this isolation from experiental reality, theoretical physicists have divided into half-religious sects such as super-stringers and loop gravitists. Feynman has talked about general relativists gathering to their yearly meetings and discussing again and again the same old dead ideas. Sadly, Feynman's characterization seems to apply quite well also to Strings 2013 and Loops 2013.

Length scale reductionism guides us to search dark matter from elementary particle length scales. This direction might be completely wrong: TGD suggests generalization of quantum theory by introducing the hierarchy of effective Planck constants and in this framework dark matter as quantum coherent phases would emerge in long length scales. Ironically, already Tesla made observations, which one might be interpret as indications for the existence of something behaving much like dark matter in TGD sense. Tesla spoke of "cold electricity" not seen in ampere-meter but as a child of his time assigned with it what he called aether particles. Did Tesla discover the dark matter for more than century ago? One cannot exclude this possibility since his experiments typically used high voltages, low frequencies, and using sudden pulses resulting in switching on of electrical circuits and in this manner testing the boundaries of Maxwell's theory in long rather than short scales (as particle physics does). In this context one must mention also the strange quantum like effects of ELF radiation on vertebrate brain and the fact that cell membrane resting potential corresponds to an electric field above the dielectric breakdown in air. Tesla's vision about future technology was also surprisingly far reaching and he also saw a possible connection with the energy technology and biology: his ideas are still revolutionary. To me the example of Tesla demonstrates that the history of science is not steady linear evolution but a continual fight between mediocrits and visionaries and mediocrits quite too often win in the short run.

About the art of rediscovery

Lubos has been talking about recent progress related to firewall paradox of blackhole physics (see this and this). Lubos has been especially happy about Maldacena-Susskind proposal for wormhole connections as a correlate of entanglement. I believe that this idea as such is wrong and represents the last attempts to save the general relativity based view about space-time: to make real progress in quantum gravity one must leave the general relativity based view about geometry and replace it with sub-manifold geometry as done in TGD.

The idea about about geometric correlates of entanglement is however deep. The braiding of magnetic flux tubes connecting entangled systems would serve as a geometric and topological space-time correlate of entanglement. It also happens to be ten year old basic ideas of TGD. I have been talking a lot about it also in this blog - and probably also in Lubos blog and viXra log where Lubos has also often visited- and it is nice that my blog is read. Lubos however refused from any public blog communications because he believes that I suffer some fatal infective disease - maybe academic equivalent of leprosy;-).

As a matter of fact, I have been patiently waiting that some name would finally realize the depth of the idea about geometric correlates of entanglement and decide to rediscover it. Now my patience has been repaid. This correspondence has even got a name: ER-EPR correspondence. Maldacena and Susskind apply this idea to solve firewall paradox. This is very nice but to my opinion the idea is applied to solve a wrong problem. The idea of this caliber would deserve something much better.

I see the firewall paradox as a pseudo-problem due to wrong belief about what blackhole interior is (see this and this). In TGD framework blackhole interior is generalized and becomes Euclidian region of space-time surface. Firewall paradox disappears. The Minkowskian-Euclidian horizon is of course something very real: the outer surface of a line of generalised Feynman diagrams thickened to four-surface. If TGD view is correct, the applications are much more wider to every day physics, especially so in biophysics and a detailed vision about quantum biophysics is developing. Here is a something really juicy for a namy-enough rediscoverer!

Susskind already earlier discovered the p-adic number fields and applied them to solve some problem of some hopeless cosmological scenario inspired by string theory - much more intelligent applications are waiting for rediscovery - just visit my hope page and choose your favourite idea! Earlier Susskind rediscovered holography: in TGD framework it follows as a 4-D version from general coordinate invariance (see this). Few years ago TGD version of the holographic principle was replaced with a stronger form in which 2-D surfaces and their 4-D tangent space data carry the data characterising quantum state: effective 2-dimensionality.

Holography represents the oldest layer of quantum TGD born around 1990 when the vision about the geometry of WCW as space of 3-surfaces whose Kähler metric is determined by Kähler function defined by a preferred extremal of Kä:hler action - a 4-surface uniquely associated with a given 3-surface as analog of Bohr orbit: this is just a statement of holographic principle tying together quantum classical correspondence, general coordinate invariance, and making classical physics exact part of quantum physics. This became four years before Susskind's "The world as a hologram". Most importantly, TGD holography is holography in 4-D context and replaces the unphysical 10-D space with 4-D real space-time and - as it became clear much later - also leads to stringy description of elementary particles. I am eagerly waiting that the strong form of holography would be discovered by some name.

Also Tom Banks - the teacher of Lubos - has been busily re-discovering TGD related visions: his CV already contains hyper finite factors of type II₁ and causal diamonds. I am really happy that big names understand the value of great ideas and are ready to take trouble of rediscovering them. It is of course a pity that they forget to mention the real father of the idea! But I of course understand that big names have much more important things to do than worrying about minor details like this!

About Concrete Realization of Remote Metabolism

The idea of remote metabolism - or quantum credit card as I have also called it - emerged for more than decade ago and zero energy ontology (ZEO) provides justification for it. The idea is that the system needing energy sends negative energy to a system able to receive the negative energy and make a transition to a lower energy state. This kind of mechanism would be ideal for biology, where rapid reactions to a changing environment are essential for survival and there is no time for sending a request for energy.

The model of remote metabolism is applied to biology. It is shown that the basic notions of the theory of Ling about cell metabolism inspired by various anomalies have natural counterparts in TGD based model relying on the notion of magnetic body. Remote metabolism can be considered as a completely general mechanism of metabolism with magnetic body of ATP or system containing it carrying the metabolic energy and sucked from it by the user. In particular, the role of ATP is discussed in Ling's theory and from the point of view of TGD inspired theory of consciousness.

It is easy to imagine new technologies relying on negative energy signals propagating to the geometric past and ZEO justifies these speculations. Remote metabolism could make possible a new kind of energy technology making it un-necessary to carry fuel. The discoveries of Tesla made more than century ago plus various free energy anomalies provide excellent material for developing these ideas, and one ends up with a concrete proposal for how dark photons and dark matter could be produced in capacitor like systems analogous to cell membranes and acting as Josephson junctions and how energy could be sucked from "large" magnetic bodies.

The model identifies Josephson frequency with the subharmonic of the frequency characterizing the periodicity of a periodic voltage perturbation assumed to correspond to cyclotron frequency in biological applications. Together with quantization conditions for charge and effective Planck constant leads to precise quantitative predictions for capacitor like systems acting as dark capacitors. Also a relationship between the magnetic field at magnetic body of the system and the voltage of the capacitor like Josephson junction emerges.

The predictions allow new quantitative insights about biological evolution as emergence of Josephson junctions realized as capacitor like systems both at the level of cell, DNA and proteins, and brain. h_eff can be related to Josephson frequency and cyclotron frequency and thus to measurable parameters. h_eff serves as a kind of intelligence quotient and its maximization requires the maximization of both the voltage and area of the membrane like capacitor system involved. This is what has happened during evolution. Indeed, the internal cell membranes, cortical layers and of DNA double strand in chromosomes are strongly folded, and the value of membrane electric field is roughly twice the value of the electric field for which di-electric breakdown occurs in air. Even 40 Hz thalamocortical resonance frequency can be understood in the framework of model.

See the new chapter About Concrete Realization of Remote Metabolism of "Biosystems as conscious holograms" for details.

Evidence for M89 pion at LHC?

Lubos reported interesting news from LHC. The title of the post of Lubos was "Evidence for second Higgs boson at 136.5 GeV". The title is misleading and reflects the dream of Lubos that standard SUSY predicting 5 Higgs like particles could be found at LHC despite all the evidence against standard SUSY. What has been actually found is some evidence for the existence of a particle decaying to two gammas: this of course does not imply that second Higgs is in question. This is not the first time when Lubos is quite too hasty in his conclusions.

The article by CMS where the evidence is discuss is titled "Properties of the observed Higgs-like resonance decaying into two photons". A search for possible other resonance decaying to a gamma pair was made, and the results are given by figure 3 of the paper, which can be found also in the posting of Lubos. The figure demonstrates excess around 136.5 GeV. The local signficance is reported to be 2.73 sigma, which is far from the discovery value of 5 sigma. It must be emphasized that ATLAS does not see the bump: Matt Strassler draws from this the conclusion that there is nothing there. Also this logic is wrong: either ATLAS or CMS is wrong and we cannot a priori know which of them.

The basic LHC prediction of TGD is a scaled up copy of ordinary hadron physics. I have used to call this physics M₈₉ hadron physics since it corresponds to Mersenne prime M₈₉ whereas ordinary hadron physics corresponds to M₁₀₇. The strange findings made already at RHIC and repeated at LHC for both heavy ion collisions and proto-heavy ion collisions in conflict with the expectations from perturbative QCD expectations could be explainable in terms of string like objects of M₈₉ hadrons physics decaying to ordinary hadrons. If one takes seriously the observations of Fermi satellite suggesting the existence of particle with mass about 135 GeV and identifies it as the pion of M₈₉ hadron physics, one can wonder whether also LHC has detected M₈₉ pion from its decays to gamma pairs. Note that the standard interpretation of Fermi particle as a dark matter particle assignable to SUSY has been excluded. This would be encouraging but the experiences during few years have however taught that these bumps come and go and must be taken as entertainment in the dull life of theoretician.

Hypnosis as remote mental interaction

In TGD framework one can argue that hypnosis represents an example about the fact that brain is not "private property": hypnotist uses the biological body and brain of the subject as instrument. Therefore remote mental interaction is in question. This idea generalizes: if one accepts self hierarchy, one can assign to any kind of higher level structure - family, organization, species, .... - a higher level self and magnetic body carrying dark matter, and these magnetic bodies can use lower level magnetic bodies as their instruments to realize their intentions. Biological bodies would be an important level in the hierarchy, which would continue down to cellular, molecular, and perhaps to even lower levels.

This view challenges the prevailing views about brain as a sole seat of consciousness and the assumption that conscious entities assigned with brains are completely isolated. Given magnetic body can use several biological bodies although one can assign to it the one providing the sensory input - at least during wake-up state. Note however that it is easy to produce illusion that some foreign object is part of biological body.

For more than decade ago I proposed a model for so called bicamerality based on the notion of semitrance. In semitrance the brain of subject becomes partially entangled with a higher level self - in this case the self of family or more general social group uses the biological body of member for its purposes. Higher level self gives its commands and advice interpreted by the bicameral as "God's voice". The consciousness of schizophrenic might be basically bicameral. Also hypnotic state and dream consciousness are candidates for bicameral consciousness.

Hypnosis as hijacking of brain?

In TGD framework hypnotist and subject would partially share the biological body of the subject, and hypnotist could realize motor actions using the biological body of the subject and also induce sensory experiences by sending suggestions generating virtual sensory input to the sense organs of the subject (this if one accepts TGD view about the role of sensory organs).

One could see hypnosis as a kind of hijacking of some parts of the subject's brain. Could one identify these parts? The general finding is that there is no universal neural or EEG signature of hypnotic state and possible changes in neural activity can be interpreted as neural correlates of imagination. Only in the case of persons highly susceptible to hypnotic induction one can identify a change of neural activity pattern identifiable as a correlete of hypnotic state.

"Hijacking" can be of course criticized for its negative tone. A more positive manner to express the idea is to say that the subject is voluntarily provides part of her brain to the use of the hypnotist's magnetic body. This conforms with the acronym "TEAM" symbolizing the subject's orientation to hypnosis in terms of "trust", "expectation", "attitude", and "motivation".

The neurophysiological findings conform with the view that the really interesting phenomena take at the level of magnetic bodies. The changes - when they occur - take place in prefrontal cortex (PFC) and anterior cingulate cortex (ACC): this together what is known about methods of hypnotic induction provides hints about what might occur in the hijacking process. The almost-prediction would be a correlation between EEGs of the hypnotist and subject person reflecting the sharing of parts of the subject's brain. It would be therefore highly interesting to study the correlations of the EEGs of subject and hypnotist.

Strongly focused attention to hypnotic suggestion is mentioned as a basic aspect of hypnosis and distinguishes it sharply from sleep. This feature brings in mind various altered states of consciousness reached in meditation and it has been suggested that meditation is one form of self-hypnosis. In TGD framework personal magnetic body has layered onyon-like structure with layers characterized by p-adic length and time scales and the value of hbar_eff. Thefore meditative state could be seen as a resharing of biological body and brain by these layers and even by foreign magnetic bodies.

Do social interactions share something with hypnosis?

More generally, one can also ask whether the phenomena of collaboration and synergy on one hand, and influence, "power" and fight for power on the other hand, could be modelled in terms of the partial ownership of the biological bodies by magnetic bodies identified as intentional agents.

Social structures and organizations are complex networks in which the arrows characterizing relationships between individuals in the simplest situations are uni-directional and static. The person at either end of the arrow is in command. In more complex situtations members are connected by several arrows of this kind, their directions can vary, and need not be static.

Should one therefore give up what physicist would call "single-particle" view and replace it with "many-particle" view by bringing in the notion of magnetic body attaching to several biological bodies and organizing them to loosely bound states of individuals? Under what conditions this kind of partial fusion of conscious entities can take place? Does it occur only only when there is complete trust in either direction or can fear about consequences be enough? It would not be surprising if immune systems against hijacking of the biological body would have evolved: this would allow to understand why the reality of remote mental interactions is so difficult to demonstrate. They could however take place on daily basis in social interactions if the proposed picture makes sense.

The dynamical sharing of biological bodies can be seen also positively: this sharing would make possible collaboration and synergy at much deeper level than we have been used to think. This kind of shared use of biological bodies perhaps defines the direction to which human kind should proceed. Also the possibility to directly experience what it is to be "the other one" - something not allowed by the standard view about consciousness confined inside individual brain - is implicated.

The new view about influence and power might allow to understand better the often highly irrational looking behaviors of organizations and their members - in particular blind obediance of orders and fight for power. The hierarchy of magnetic bodies could serve as a physical correlate for the hierarchy of biological and social structures. In particular, the fight for power could be seen as fight between magnetic bodies for the ownership of biological bodies or lower level magnetic bodies. The dark matter realized as a hierarchy of phases with non-standard value of effective Planck constant would represent a new physics necessary for understanding the physical correlates of these phenomena.

In the new chapter devoted to hypnosis as remote mental interaction I will introduce some basic notions, ideas and theories about hypnosis: the Wikipedia article gives a good overall view about the subject. The techniques of hypnotic induction provide valuable clues if one wants to imagine what hypnosis is. I will also describe the classical test for hypnotic susceptibility using Chevreul pendulum (to me it was quite a stunning experience to find that I am highly susceptible to hypnotic induction!), and propose an explanation in terms of hijacking of PFC and ACC by the magnetic body of hypnotist. The model makes an assumption about the logic of brain functions. Imagined motor action "Don't (really) do this" is realized as "Do this" followed by "Don't" stopping the imagined motor action proceeding otherwise from the magnetic body to PFC to motor regions of cortex via ACC to a real motor action.

In TGD framework sensory perception and motor action are related by time reversal and therefore an analogous mechanism applies to imagination realized as a genuine hallucination unless "Don't" is realized. Hypnotist should therefore hijack the brain regions realizing "Don't" by catching their attention so that they cannot perform their function. ACC is a good candidate for the region in which "Don't" is realized under normal circumstances. This logic makes possible to induce motor actions and sensory hallucinations analogous to dreams. Dreams would be realized in terms of virtual sensory input to sensory organs (REM) rather than only to higher levels in hierarchy of sensory representations at cortex, which do not carry visual qualia conscious-to-us.

For details see the new chapter Hypnosis as remote mental interaction of "TGD based view about living matter and remote mental interactions" or the article with the same title.

Great Unconformity as a new piece of support for Expanding Earth model

I wrote for some years ago to "Genes and Memes" a chapter entitled Expanding Earth model and Precambrian evolution of continents, climate and life . Single hypothesis - a sudden phase transition increasing the radius of Earth by a factor 2 natural in the many-sheeted space-time of TGD - explains Cambrian explosion in biology (a sudden emergence of huge number of life forms after very slow Precambrian evolution, and also provides a model for Precambrian evolution of continents, climate and life.

Already Darwin realized that the absence of fossils from Precambrian era is a deep problem for his theory and assumed that this is an artefact due to the incomplete fossil record. Fossils of Precambrian origin have been indeed found after Darwin's time but they are simple and very rare, and the conclusion is that Cambrian explosion meaning huge diversification was real. Two mysteries therefore remain. Why the development of life was so slow during Precambrian era? Why the diversification was so incredibly fast during Cambrian explosion? Various explanations have been proposed. Did the oxygen content of the atmosphere reach a critical value and lead to the diversification? Or did predation pose the evolutionary pressure making the pace of evolution dramatically faster?

In New Scientist geologists Robert Gaines and Shanan Peters describe a geological finding perhaps related to the Cambrian Explosion: the mysterious "Great Unconformity", which is a juxtaposition of two different types of rock of very different geological ages along a prominent surface of erosion. This surface represents a very long span of "missing" time. More than 1 billion years of geological record is missing in many places! From the figure of the Wikipedia article about Great Unconformity visible in Grand Canyon the thickness of the missing layer can be estimated to be about 12.6 km. Somehow before the Cambrian the uppermost rocks of the continents were stripped away exposing the underlying crystalline basement rocks. The cause of this gap remains a complete mystery so that we have three mysteries! Plus the mysteries related to the evolution of climate (problems of Snowball Earth model).

The authors suggest that the formation of Great Unconformity relates to the Cambrian explosion. Large scale erosion and chemical weathering of the the exposed crystalline rock caused mineralization of the sea water. The hypothesis is that this led to bio-mineralization: animal groups possessing mineral skeletons - such as silica shells and calcium carbonate shells - emerged. This hypothesis looks rather plausible but does not solve the three great mysteries.

The authors indeed leave open the question about the origin of Great Unconformity and of Cambrian explosion. The TGD based explanation of Cambrian explosion comes from the model realizing the old idea about Expanding Earth in terms of TGD inspired new physics. Already Wegener observed that continents can be fit together nicely and this led to the recent view about plate tectonics. Wegener's model however fits only "half" of the continent boundaries together. One could however do much better: the observation is that the continents would fit nicely to cover the entire surface of Earth if the radius of Earth were 1/2 of its recent value! Expanding Earth model postulates that the radius of Earth grows slowly. Geologists have not taken Expanding Earth model seriously: one good reason is that there is no physics allowing it.

TGD predicts this physics.

1. At given sheet of the many-sheeted space-time cosmic expansion is predicted to take place as sudden phase transitions in which the size of some space-time sheet suddenly increases. By p-adic length scale hypothesis the preferred scaling factors are powers of 2 and the most favored scaling factor is just two. The proposal is that during the Precambrian era life resided in underground seas being thus shielded from meteor bombardment and cosmic rays. This explains the scarcity of the fossil records and the simplicity of the fossils found. The sudden phase transition was a very violent process increasing the area of the Earth's surface by a factor of 4. The area of continents is 29.1 per cent from the recent area of the Earth's surface - not too far from the naively predicted fraction 1/4.
   
   
2. It is easy to imagine that the uppermost rocks of the continent covering the entire Earth were stripped away and correspond nowadays to 100 km thick continental tectonic plates consisting of mainly silicon and aluminium). This expansion created split first the topmost layer as continental plates and regions between them giving rise to oceans. The magma which was uncovered by the process cooled down and solidifed and the continued expansion gave rise to ocean plates with different composition (mainly silicon and magnesium).
   
   
3. The expansion phase corresponds to criticality so that fractality of the expansion is expected. At least for continental plates this process could have been fractal occurring in various length scales characterizing the thickness and the area of the sub-plates generated in the process. p-Adic length scale hypothesis suggests that the scales involved should appear as powers of 2^1/2 or 2. Generation of Great Unconformity as a process in which the underlying crystalline basement rocks were uncovered could correspond to a splitting of a layer of the continental plates to pieces. The length scale characterizing the thickness is 12.6 km from the above estimate and with 1 per cent accuracy by a factor 1/8 shorter than 100 km length scale for tectonic plates. This conforms with p-adic fractality. If the process of expansion involved a cascade of scalings by factor 2, one can wonder whether it proceeded from long to short length scales or vice versa. In other words: did continental and oceanic tectonic plates form first and after than the smaller structures such as the Great Unconformity or vice versa?
   
   
4. Note that the p-adic length scale L(237) corresponding p∼ 2²³⁷ is 88 km - ten per cent smaller than 100 km. Maybe thermal expansion could account the discrepancy if the original thickness was L(237). There is a nice fractal analogy with cell membrane. The p-adic length scale L(239) defined by the Gaussian Mersenne M_k,G=(1+i)^k-1 , k=239- the first one after the Gaussian Mersenne M_167,G defining the size of cell nucleus - equals 2× L(237). Remarkably, also M_241,G is Gaussian Mersenne. What it interesting that the scale L(127)=88 km would be in the same relation to L(239) associated with M_k=239,G as the thickness L(149) of the lipid layer of cell membrane to the cell membrane thickness L(151) characterized by Gaussian Mersenne M_151,G. The two kind tectonic plates (continental and oceanic) would be analogous to the lipid layers of cell membrane. Note that 88 km is rather precisely the thickness of the atmosphere above which begins ionosphere. The thickness of Kennelly–Heaviside layer inside which radiowaves used in terrestrial radio communications propagate, has thickness about 150 km which roughly corresponds to L(239). Also the fact Continental litosphere has typical thickness of 200 km (L(239)) whereas oceanic litosphere is 100 km thick (L(237)) fits nicely with the proposed formation mechanism of continental tectonic plates.
   
   
   
5. The rapid expansion process could have also brought in daylight the underground seas and the highly developed life in them so that Cambrian diversification would have been only apparent. Skeptic can of course ask whether it is necessary to assume that life resided in underground seas during Precambrian era. Could just the violent geological process be enough to induce extremely fast diversification? This might of course be true.
   
   
6. There is one further argument in favor of the Expanding Earth model. The fact that the solar constant was during proto Earth period only 73 per cent from its recent value, is a problem for the models of the very early evolution of life. If the radius of Earth was 1/2 of its recent value the duration of day and night was from conservation of angular momentum only 1/4:th of the recent value and thus 3 hours. This could have made the environment much more favorable for the evolution of life even at the surface of the Earth since the range for the temperature variation would have been much narrower.
   

This model relates also to the Snowball Earth model of Precambrian climate in an interesting manner. The reader interested in details should read the chapter Expanding Earth model and Precambrian evolution of continents, climate and life of "Genes and Memes".

Biophysics of activated water and the mechanism of water memory

Applied Biophysics of Activated Water by Vysotskii et al gives a nice summary about the experiments carried out by using what they call activated water. One can say that the experiments provide a strong support for the notion of water memory. In the following I present a short summary about the contents of the book with associations to TGD inspired view about water memory and homeopathy. What comes as a surprise is the extreme simplicity of the basic mechanism of water memory and also the profound implications of this mechanism for the evolution.

For background and details see the chapter Homeopathy in Many-Sheeted Space-time or the article "Applied biophysics of activated water" and the basic mechanism of water memory in TGD framework".

Consciousness as a phenomenon in the operational architectonics of brain organization: Criticality and self-organization considerations

I received an interesting article by brothers Fingelkurts (Andrew and Alexander) and Carlos Neves to be published in Chaos, Solitons \& Fractals (to appear here). The title of the article is Consciousness as a phenomenon in the operational architectonics of brain organization: Criticality and self-organization considerations.

Already on basis of the title it is clear that article is interesting also from the point of view of Topological Geometrodynamics (TGD) (for overview see Topological Geometrodynamics: an Overview, especially the part II), where quantum criticality replaces thermodynamical criticality as a basic characteristic of the Universe dictating uniquely the dynamics fixing the geometry of the "world of classical worlds" (WCW) consisting of 3- surfaces in certain 8-dimensional space-time. Quantum criticality is also central in TGD inspired theory of consciousness and the basic picture is roughly the same as in OA model. The chapter Comparison of TGD Inspired Theory of Consciousness with Some Other Theories of Consciousness might help to get an overview about TGD inspired theory of consciousness.

Quantum self-organization is second key element of TGD inspired theory of consciousness and corresponds to a cascade of quantum jumps proceeding from level of given causal diamond (CD) defined as intersection of future and past directed light-cones of 4-D Minkowski space to shorter scales (sub-CDs, their sub-CDs, etc..). Quantum jump corresponds to a state function reduction at either boundary of CD and have interpretation as sensory perception and motor action (time reversed sensory perception). CD is identified as geometric correlate for "spotlight of consciousness".

In this article and also in the chapter "Quantum Model of EEG" of "TGD and EEG" I summarize the basic concepts and ideas of the article and compare them with TGD approach to consciousness. There is also a section devoted to quantum criticality in TGD Universe. The approach is certainly TGD centred and I can only apologize this.

What is the basic mechanism of homeopathic healing?

After a work of more than decade after the realisation that homeopathy might be understood in TGD Universe, I still find that I have not given an absolutely convincing answer to the question "What is the exact mechanism of homeopathy?". The basic rules is that "like cures alike". Why should this be the case? Let us go our arguments through once again.

1. Certainly the imprinting of water using molecules causing the illness - call these molecules just I for brevity - must be an essential part of the healing mechanism. The imprinting means imprinting of water with some frequencies in the low frequency spectrum of I. The TGD inspired idea is that the magnetic body of appropriate water cluster or even dark nucleon sequence representing DNA sequence, call this entity I^*, is able to mimic I in the sense that its cyclotron frequency spectrum is same.
   
   
2. This in turn strongly suggests that the molecules in the organism to be healed - call them P - have a long range interaction with molecules I induced by dark photons with cyclotron frequencies but having energies above thermal threshold. The interaction involves a formation of a magnetic flux tube accompanied by a parallel topological light ray/ "massless extremal" (ME) along which dark photons at specific resonance frequencies propagate and induce resonant interaction between P and I. Thus both the formation of flux tube bridge and the resonant interaction made possible by it, would be essential for the homeopathic healing to take place. In fact, in TGD inspired theory of consciousness, the formation of resonating flux tube connections makes possible the quantum coherence for the combined system I+P and serves as a correlate for attention between I and P.
   
   
3. The presence of the entities I^* able to mimic the cyclotron frequency spectrum of I and forming resonant flux tube bonds with molecules H is however not enough to explain the healing effect (I have already considered some answers but they do not convince me). To understand this, one must be able to understand how I causes the illness. The answer of the standard medicine is that the mechanism is chemical and thus requires contact interaction between I and P. It is easy to believe this. Standard medicine also tells that in order to prevent the chemical interaction between I and P , one must use some medicine molecules M, preventing this chemical interaction. It is easy to believe also this.
   
   In TGD Universe there is indeed a very natural mechanism preventing the chemical interaction between I and P. The reduction of the value of the effective Planck constant associated with the flux tubes connecting I and P leads to a contraction of the flux tube length (proportional to hbar_eff). This indeed makes possible a chemical contact interaction between both I and P causing the illness. In fact, I have proposed this mechanism as a completely general mechanism of catalyst action allowing biomolecules to find each other in the the dense bio-molecular soup. But this holds true also for I^* and P! Using terms of "molecular psychology" , the entities I^* mimicking I steal the attention of molecules P so that molecules I cannot cause the illness anymore!
   

This indeed looks extremely simple and natural and thus also convincing. What is important is that the proposed mechanism is not in conflict with standard medicine: it only makes possible the miracles of bio-chemistry and provides a completely new mechanism of healing. It is easy to imagine that a new kind of medicine using only water imprinted by the cyclotron frequency spectra of molecules responsible for the illness. This medicine would be completely free of the negative -basically chemical - side effects of the ordinary drugs. This mechanism would also use all the knowledge gained by ordinary biochemistry based medicine: if the relevant molecule I is known, it can be used to imprint water to get I^*.

Also the effect of vaccines could rely on the "like cures alike" mechanism albeit in different form. Now the molecules or organisms - call them just B - causing the disease would be injected directly into the body rather than water. Water memory could give rise to a mimicry of B:s and give rise to primitive immunity. A more refined mechanism proposed earlier would involve dark DNA mimicking B:s and translating to ordinary DNA sequences coding for proteins able to catch B:s by the same flux tube mechanism.

The proposed mechanism of homeopathic healing leaves open the exact mechanism behind the cyclotron mimicry. The entities I^* could be water clusters with magnetic bodies mimicking those of I, they could be water clusters which have stolen the magnetic bodies of I, or they could be even dark DNA accompanying water molecules and able to mimic I. Of course, the least science fictive option is that the possibly existing dark DNA couples only with ordinary DNA by the flux tube mechanism.

The interpretation of biophotons as decay products of dark photons in energy conserving phase transition hbar_eff→ hbar suggests that the dark photons involved with the communications have rather large value of hbar_eff given by hbar_eff=f_h/f_l. The simplest working hypothesis is that dark photons have same energy spectrum as biophotons. The prediction would be that biophoton spectrum from a homeopathic remedy - in particular its fluctuations - should correlate with the spectrum of the cyclotron frequencies. A weaker hypothesis is that the energies of dark photons are above thermal energy at physiological temperature.

For background see the chapter Homeopathy in Many-Sheeted Space-time of "Biosystems as Conscious Holograms".

More precise formulation of Negentropy Maximization Principle

Negentropy Maximization Principle (NMP) is assumed to be the variational principle telling what can happen in quantum jump and says that the information content of conscious experience for the entire system is maximized. In zero energy ontology (ZEO) the definition of NMP is far from trivial and the recent progress - as I believe - in the understanding of structure of quantum jump forces to check carefully the details related to NMP. A very intimate connection between quantum criticality, life as something in the intersection of realities and p-adicities, hierarchy of effective vales of Planck constant, negentropic entanglement, and p-adic view about cognition emerges. One ends up also with an argument why p-adic sector is necessary if one wants to speak about conscious information.

The anatomy of quantum jump in zero energy ontology (ZEO)

Zero energy ontology emerged around 2005 and has had profound consequences for the understanding of quantum TGD. The basic implication is that state function reductions occur at the opposite light-like boundaries of causal diamonds (CDs) forming a hierarchy, and produce zero energy states with opposite arrows of imbedding space time. Also concerning the identification of quantum jump as moment of consciousness ZEO encourages rather far reaching conclusions. In ZEO the only difference between motor action and sensory representations on one hand, and intention and cognitive representation on the other hand , is that the arrows of imbedding space time are opposite for them. Furthermore, sensory perception followed by motor action corresponds to a basic structure in the sequence of state function reductions and it seems that these processes occur fractally for CDs of various size scales.

1. State function reduction can be performed to either boundary of CD but not both simultaneously. State function reduction at either boundary is equivalent to state preparation giving rise to a state with well defined quantum numbers (particle numbers, charges, four-momentum, etc...) at this boundary of CD. At the other boundary single particle quantum numbers are not well defined although total conserved quantum numbers at boundaries are opposite by the zero energy property for every pair of positive and negative energy states in the superposition. State pairs with different total energy, fermion number, etc.. for other boundary are possible: for instance, t coherent states of super-conductor for which fermion number is ill defined are possible in zero energy ontology and do not break the super-selection rules.
   
   
2. The basic objects coding for physics are U-matrix, M-matrices and S-matrix. M-matrices correspond to a orthogonal rows of unitary U-matrix between zero energy states, and are expressible as products of a hermitian square root of density matrix and of unitary S-matrix which more or less corresponds to ordinary S-matrix. One can say that quantum theory is formally a square root of thermodynamics. The thermodynamics in question would however relate more naturally to NMP rather than second law, which at ensemble level and for ordinary entanglement can be seen as a consequence of NMP.
   

   The non-triviality of M-matrix requires that for given state reduced at say the "lower" boundary of CD there is entire distribution of statesat "upper boundary" (given initial state can lead to a continuum of final states). Even more, all size scales of CDs are possible since the position of only the "lower" boundary of CD is localized in quantum jump whereas the location of upper boundary of CD can vary so that one has distribution over CDs with different size scales and over their Lorentz boots and translates.
   
   

3. The quantum arrow of time follows from the asymmetry between positive and negative energy parts of the state: the other is prepared and the other corresponds to the superposition of the final states resulting when interactions are turned on. What is remarkable that the arrow of time at imbedding space level at least changes direction when quantum jump occurs to opposite boundary.
   

   This brings strongly in mind the old proposal of Fantappie that in living matter the arrow of time is not fixed and that entropy and its diametric opposite syntropy apply to the two arrows of the imbedding space time. The arrow of subjective time assignable to second law would hold true but the increase of syntropy would be basically a reflection of second law since only the arrow of the geometric time at imbedding space level has changed sign. The arrow of geometric at space-time level which conscious observer experiences directly could be always the same if quantum classical correspondence holds true in the sense that the arrow of time for zero energy states corresponds to arrow of time for preferred extremals. The failure of strict non-determinism making possible phenomena analogous to multifurcations makes this possible.
   
   

4. This picture differs radically from the standard view and if quantum jump represents a fundamental algorith, this
   variation of the arrow of geometric time from quantum jump to quantum jump should manifest itself in the functioning of brain and living organisms. The basic building brick in the functioning of brain is the formation of sensory representation followed by motor action. These processes look very much like temporal mirror images of each other such as the state function reductions to opposite boundaries of CD look like. The fundamental process could correspond to a sequences of these two kinds of state function reductions for opposite boundaries of CDs and maybe independently for CDs of different size scales in a "many-particle" state defined by a union of CDs.
   
   

How the formation of cognitive and sensory representations could relate to quantum jump?

1. ZEO allows quantum jumps between different number fields so that p-adic cognitive representations can be formed and intentional actions realized. How these quantum jumps are realized at the level of generalized Feynman diagrams is non-trivial question: one possibility suggested by the notion of adele combining reals and various p-adic number fields to a larger structure is that the lines and vertices of generalized Feynman diagrams can correspond to different number fields.
   

   The formation of cognitive representation could correspond to a quantum jump in which real space-time sheet identified as a preferred extremal is mapped to its p-adic counterpart or superposition of them with the property that the discretized versions of all p-adic counterparts are identical. In the latter case the chart map of real preferred extremal would be quantal and correspond to delocalized state in WCW. The p-adic chart mappings are not expected to take place but with some probabilities determined by the number theoretically universal U-matrix.
   
   

2. Similar consideration applies to intentional actions realized as real chart maps for p-adically realized intention. The natural interpretation of the process is as a time reversal of cognitive map. Cognitive map would be generated from real sensory represention and intentional action would transform time reversed cognitive map to real "motor" action identifiable as time reversal of sensory perception. This would occur in various length scales in fractal manner.
   
   
3. The formation of superpositions of preferred extremals associated with discrete p-adic chart maps from real preferred extremals could be interpretated as an abstraction process. Similar abstraction could take place also in the mapping of p-adic space-time surface to a superposition of real preferred extrmals representing intentional action. U-matrix should give also the probability amplitudes for these processes, and the intuitive idea is that the larger then number of common rational and algebraic points of real and p-adic surfaces is, the higher the probability for this is: the first guess is that the amplitude is proportional the number of common points. On the other hand, large number of common points means high measurement resolution so that the number of different surfaces in superposition tends to be smaller.
   
   
4. One should not make any un-necessary assumptions about the order of various kinds of quantum jumps. For the most general option real-to-padic and p-adic-to-real quantum jumps can follow any quantum jumps and state function reductions to opposite boundaries of CD can also occur any time in any length scale. Also the length scale of resolution scale assignable to the cognitive representation should be determined probabilistically. Quantal probabilities for quantum jumps should therefore apply to all aspect of quantum jump and now ad hoc assumptions should be made. Very probably internal consistency allows only very few alternative scenarios. The assumption that the cascade beginning from given CD continues downwards until stops due to the emergence of negentropic entanglement looks rather natural constraint.
   
   

What happens in single state function reduction?

State function reduction is a measurement of density matrix. The condition that a measurement of density matrix takes place implies standard measurement theory on both real and p-adic sectors: system ends to an eigen-space of density matrix. This is true in both real and p-adic sectors. NMP is stronger principle at the real side and implies state function reduction to 1-D subspace - its eigenstate.

The resulting N-dimensional space has however rational entanglement probabilities p=1/N so that one can say that it is the intersection of realities and p-adicities. If the number theoretic variant of entanglement entropy is used as a measure for the amount of entropy carried by entanglement rather than either entangled system, the state carries genuine information and is stable with respect to NMP if the p-adic prime p divides N. NMP allows only single p-adic prime for real → p-adic transition: the power of this prime appears is the largest power of prime appearing in the prime decomposition of N. Degeneracy means also criticality so that that ordinary quantum measurement theory for the density matrix favors criticality and NMP fixes the p-adic prime uniquely.

If one - contrary to the above conclusion - assumes that NMP holds true in the entire p-adic sector, NMP gives in p-adic sector rise to a reduction of the negentropy in state function reduction if the original situation is negentropic and the eigen-spaces of the density matrix are 1-dimensional. This situation is avoided if one assumes that state function reduction cascade in real or genuinely p-adic sector occurs first (without NMP) and gives therefore rise to N-dimensional eigen spaces. The state is negentropic and stable if the p-adic prime p divides N. Negentropy is generated.

The real state can be transformed to a p-adic one in quantum jump (defining cognitive map) if the entanglement coefficients are rational or belong to an algebraic extension of p-adic numbers in the case that algebraic extension of p-adic numbers is allowed (number theoretic evolution gradually generates them). The density matrix can be expressed as sum of projection operators multiplied by probabilities for the projection to the corresponding sub-spaces. After state function reduction cascade the probabilities are rational numbers of form p=1/N.

Number theoretic entanglement entropy also allows to avoid some objections related to fermionic and bosonic statistics. Fermionic and bosonic statistics require complete anti-symmetrization/symmetrization. This implies entanglement which cannot be reduced away. By looking for symmetrized or antisymmetrized 2-particle state consisting of spin 1/2 fermions as the simplest example one finds that the density matrix for either particle is the simply unit 2× 2 matrix. This is stable under NMP based on number theoretic negentropy. One expects that the same result holds true in the general case. The interpretation would be that particle symmetrization/antisymmetrization carries negentropy.

The degeneracy of the density matrix is of course not a generic phenomenon and one can argue that it corresponds to some very special kind of physics. The identification of space-time correlates for the hierarchy for the effective values hbar_eff=n×hbar of Planck constant as n-furcations of space-time sheet suggests strongly the identification of this physics in terms of this hierarchy. Hence quantum criticality, the essence of life as something in the rational intersection of realities and p-adicities, the hierarchy of effective values of hbar, negentropic quantum entanglement, and the possibility to make real-p-adic transitions and thus cognition and intentionality would be very intimately related. This is a highly satisfactory outcome, since these ideas have been rather loosely related hitherto.

What happens in quantum jump?

Suppose that everything can be reduced to what happens for a given CD characterized by a scale. There are at least two questions to be answered.

1. There are two processes involved. State function reduction and quantum jump transforming real state to p-adic state (matter to cognition) and vice versa (intention to action). Do these transitions occur independently or not? Does the ordering of the processes matter? The proposed view about state function reduction strongly suggests that the p-adic ↔real transition (if possible at all) can occur any time without affecting the outcome of the state function reduction.
   
   
2. State function reduction cascade in turn consists of two different kinds of state function reductions. The M-matrix characterizing the zero energy state is product of square root of density matrix and of unitary S-matrix and the first step means the measurement of the projection operator. It defines a density matrix for both upper and lower boundary of CD and these density matrices are essentially same.
   
   
   1. At the first step a measurement of the density matrix between positive and negative energy parts of the quantum state takes place for CD. One can regard both the lower and upper boundary as an eigenstate of density matrix in absence of negentropic entanglement. The measurement is thus completely symmetric with respect to the boundaries of CDs. At the real sector this leads to a 1-D eigen-space of density matrix if NMP holds true. In the intersection of real and p-adic sectors this need not be the case if the eigenvalues of the density matrix have degeneracy. Zero energy state becomes stable against further state function reductions! The interactions with the external world can of course destroy the stability sooner or later. An interesting question is whether so called higher states of consciousness relate to this kind of states.
      
      
   2. If the first step gave rise to 1-D eigen-space of the density matrix, a state function reduction cascade at either upper of lower boundary of CD proceeding from long to short scales. At given step divides the sub-system into two systems and the sub-system-complement pair which produces maximum negentropy gain is subject to quantum measurement maximizing negentropy gain. The process stops at given subsystem resulting in the process if the resulting eigen-space is 1-D or has negentropic entanglement (p-adic prime p divides the dimension N of eigenspace in the intersection of reality and p-adicity).
      

For details and background see the section "Updates since 2012" of chapter "Negentropy Maximization Principle"
of "TGD Inspired Theory of Consciousness".

How a sequence of quantum jumps could give rise to experience about continuous flow of time?

I am trying to improve my understanding about the relationship between subjective and geometric time. Subjective time corresponds to a sequence of quantum jumps at given level of hierarchy of selves having as correlates causal diamonds (CDs). Geometric time is fourth space-time coordinate and has real and p-adic variants. This raises several questions.

1. How the subjective times at various levels of hierarchy relate to each other? Should/could one somehow map sequences of quantum jumps at various levels to real or p-adic time values in order to compare them - as quantum classical correspondence indeed suggests?
   
   
2. Subjective existence corresponds to a sequence of moments of consciousness: state function reductions at opposite boundaries of CDs. State function reduction reduction localizes either boundary but the the second boundary is in a quantum superposition of several locations and size scales for CD. We however experience time as a continuous flow. Is this a problem or not? One could argue that it is not possible to be conscious about being unconscious so that gaps would not be experienced. But is this so simple? We are indeed able to experience the gap in sensory consciousness caused by sleeping over night (this does not mean we have been unconscious: we just do not remember).
   
   
3. Subjective time is certainly not metricizable whereas geometric time is and defines a continuum. But are moments of consciousness well-ordered as the values of real variant of geometric time are? This relates closely to the relationship of subjective time to geometric time. Certainly subjective time does not allow any continuous measure in real sense as geometric time does. One can however map moments of consciousness to integers.
   
   
   1. It would seem natural to be able to say about two moments of consciousness - call them A and B, - whether A is before B or vice versa. Moments of consciousness would be well-ordered and could be mapped to real integers. But is this the case always? There is experimental evidence for the fact that consciously experience time ordering does not always correspond to the physical one. This was observed already by Libet (I have tried to understand these findings for the first time here).
      
      
   2. What about p-adic integers as labels for moments of consciousness as suggested by the vision about p-adic space-time sheets as correlates for cognition and intention (as time reversal of cognition). Given p-adic integers m and n, one can only say whether the p-adic norm of m is larger than, smaller than, or equal to that of n. One can say that p-adic integers are weakly ordered.
      

p-Adic integers form a continuum in p-adic topology. Could one map the infinite sequence of quantum jumps already occurred to p-adic integers and in this manner to p-adic continuum instead of real one? Could the p-adic cognitive representations allow to achieve this? If so, the experience about conscious flow of time could be due to the p-adic topology for cognitive representation for the sequence of quantum jumps!

Could p-adic integers label moments of consciousness and explain why we experience conscious flow of time?

Next arguments give a more precise formulation for the idea that p-adic integers might label the sequence of quantum jumps at the level of conscious experience, or rather reflective consciousness involving various representations realized as "Akashic records" and read consciously by interaction free measurements (assuming that they make sense in TGD: NMP considerably modifies the standard quantum measurement theory).

1. Most p-adic integers expressible as n= ∑_k n_kp^k are infinite in real sense and in p-adic topology they form a continuum. Suppose that the infinite sequence of moments of consciousness that have already taken place can be labelled by p-adic integers and look what might be the outcome.
   
   
2. Sounds very strange in ears of real analyst but is true: the integers n and n+ kp^N, for N large are very near to each other p-adically. In real sense they are very far. This allows to fill the gaps between say integers n=1 and 2 by p-adic integers which are very large in real sense.
   
   
3. The p-adic correlate of the sequence of discrete quantum jumps/moments of consciousness would define p-adic continuum which in turn can be mapped to real continuum by canonical identification.
   

This map sequence of moments of consciousness to p-adic continuum would be nice but maybe tricky for any-one accustomed to think in terms of real topology!

This raises two questions.

1. p-Adic integers are not well-ordered. Could one induced the well-ordering of real time to p-adic context by mapping p-adic time axis to real one in a continuous manner and in this manner achieving mapping of moments of consciousness to real time axis?
   
   
2. Could canonical identification ∑_k n_kp^k → ∑_k n_kp^-k map (or its appropriate modification) allow to map p-adic integers to real numbers and in this manner induce real well ordering to the p-adic side. The problem is that real number with finite pinary expansion has second infinite expansion (1=.9999... is example using decimal expansion) so that two p-adic time values correspond to any real time value with finite pinary digits. Should one restrict the consideration to integers with finite number of pinary digits (finite measurement resolution) and select either branch? Could the two branches correspond to real time coordinates assignable to the opposite boundaries of CD defining two conscious selves in this scale?
   

What happens when I type letters in wrong order?

One can speak about sensory and cognitive orderings of events corresponding to reals and p-adics (for various values prime p or course). The cognitive ordering of events would not be well-ordering if cognition is p-adic. Is there any empirical support for this besides Libet's mysterious looking findings?

Maybe. For instance, as I am typing text I experience that I am typing the letters of the word in the correct order but now and then it happens that the order is changed, even the order of syllables and sometimes even that of short words can change. It is probably easy to cook up a very mundane explanation in terms of neuroscience or even electric circuits from keyboard to computer memory, or computer itself. One can however also ask whether this could reflect the fact that p-adic ordering of the intentions to type letter is not well-ordering and does not always correspond to the real number based order for what happened ?

In TGD Universe writing process involves a sequence of transformations of p-adically realized intention to type a letter to a real action (doing it). At space-time level it is therefore a map from p-adic realm to real realm by a variant of canonical identification crucial in the definition of p-adic manifold concept assigning to real preferred extremal of Kähler action a p-adic preferred extremal in finite measurement resolution (see this). ´

The variant of canonical identification in question defines chart maps from real to p-adic realm and vice versa, and is defined in such a manner that discrete and rationals in a finite subset of rationals are mapped to themselves and defining intersection of real and p-adic realms.

1. In the case of p-adic integers this subset is characterized by a cutoff telling the power of p below which p-adic integers and real integers correspond to each other as such. For the corresponding moments of consciousness (now intentions to type letter) one has same ordering in both realms. For integers containing higher powers of p a variant of canonical identification mapping p-adics to reals continuously is applied. In this case ordering anomalies can appear.
   
   
2. Another pinary cutoff comes from physics: real preferred extremals are mapped to p-adic preferred extremals and vice versa: without the cutoff the p-adic image of real extremal would be continuous but non-differentiable so that field equations would not make sense. The cutoff tells the largest power of p up to which the variant of canonical identification is performed for p-adic integers. Also now ordering anomalies appear if one regards p-adic integers as ordinary integers.
   
   
3. For the remaining integers the map is obtained by completing the discrete set of points to a preferred extremal of Kähler action on both real and p-adic sides so that physics enters into the game. This assignment need not be unique and the most natural manner to handle the non-uniqueness is to form quantum superposition of all allowed completions with same amplitude: this effective gauge invariance would be very natural from the point of view of finite resolution and conforms with the vision about inclusions of hyper-finite factors as a representation for finite measurement resolution giving rise to the analog of dynamical gauge symmetry.
   

Could the strange inconsistencies between cognitive (sequences of intentions) and sensory time orderings (sequence of typed letters) reflect the fact that the ordering of p-adic integers as real integers is not the same as the ordering of their real images under canonical identification? Could it be possible to test this and perhaps deduce the prime p characterizing p-adic topology of cognitive representation in question?

About God theory of Bernard Haisch

I have found that the best manner to learn about TGD is to read books about other theories, and after many years at the border of basic survival I now have opportunity to do this thanks to some generous people making this possible.

Just now I have been reading Bernard Haisch's book "The God theory". Haisch himself is an astrophysicist who might have become priest. The book discusses the possibility of spirituality consistent with physics. It also discusses Zero Point Energy (ZPE) hypothesis and the idea that inertia might emerge from vacuum fluctuations of various fields.

I agree in many respects with Haisch's vision about possibility to build bridge between fundamental physics and spirituality. The new view about spirituality requires that a lot of horrendous stuff of religions (such as eternal purgatory, the sadistic God of Old Testament killing his own son, blind belief in dogmas, etc...) is thrown away. Where I disagree with Haisch is the notion of ZPE but think that I understand why he wants ZPE. In TGD all that can be done using ZPE can be replaced with zero energy ontology (ZEO) to achieve the possibility of re-creation without breaking of conservation laws: without ability go generate new sub-Universes God would be rather powerless creature. I also disagree with the idea that inertia follows from zero point fields although again I understand the underlying motivations of the proposal as relating to a genuine problem of General Relativity. This problem also inspired TGD.

Haisch lists three questions usually regarded as highly non-scientific. Is there really a God? What am I? What is my destiny? As I started to build theory of consciousness, these questions began to make more and more sense also to me. One must be however ready to give up some dogmas such as God as a sage with white hair and long beard, the idea that we are nothing but our neurophysiology generating a brief flash of light in infinite darkness, and the belief that heat death dictated by second law is the eventual fate of the universe as whole.

Putting Haisch in box

When thinkers happen to encounter genuine thinking they want to classify it in order to feel safe. For safety reason some of us also debunk the new idea. The first classification is philosophical. I use three boxes for this purpose (safety reasons). The first box has label "monism". It contains two smaller boxes. "Materialist" contains thinkers accepting only third person view as an acceptable - objective - view about the world. I close to "Idealist" those thinkers who accept only the first person view as fundamental. Most of my colleagues are happy to live in the box "Materialist". The second box has label "Dualist" and contains thinkers accepting both first and third person views - also this box decomposes to smaller boxes depending on how closely the first and third person views are assumed to be related: if the correspondence is exactly 1-1 then the view reduces to materialism. To the third box - "Miscellaneous" - I put the others and live also myself in this box.

Haisch perfoms the classification himself and completely voluntarily chooses the box "Idealist". Hence consciousness is fundamental form of existence for him. In TGD framework both first and third person perspectives are tolerated: consciousness is however in quantum jump between quantum superpositions of objective realities identified as zero energy states and does not define another world as it does in dualistic theories. As a matter fact, in TGD several ontological levels are accepted: geometric existence at space-time and imbedding space levels in real and various p-adic versions, existence as zero energy states identified as spinor fields of world of classical worlds (WCW)) and subjective existence as quantum jumps.

Universe as God

Haisch postulates God as an infinite intelligence. We are God's eyes and ears through which God experiences her (no reference to gender here) own creation. Haisch's God is not the Newtonian clock-smith who creates deterministic universe and then forgets it completely. This God is free to create universes with he chooses freely using her infinite intelligence. This God is also somehow outside the realm of space-time.

The possibility of universes with different laws of physics inside each of them brings in mind inflationary cosmology, multiverse, and the landscape of M-theory. Haisch indeed takes inflationary scenario and multiverse idea rather seriously and also talks about superstrings. The landscape of string theory is catastrophe from the point of view of physics but would fit with the the idea about God who can freely decide about the laws of physics in the limits of mathematical consistency. But what mathematical consistency means? Have M-theorists really thought about this?

What about TGD? In TGD framework nothing prevents from calling conscious selves gods since free will is genuine and the essence of creation. Thus God is replaced with an infinite hierachy of god like entities. Nothing prevents from calling the entire Universe as God, which is re-creating itself in every quantum jump. This God has us as mental images or to be more precise: as mental images of mental images of ..... of its mental images. The sequence could be rather long;-)!

Concerning the laws of physics the situation in TGD framework. The surprising outcome already from the geometrization of loop spaces is that geometry of the infinite-dimensional world of classical worlds (WCW) is expected to be unique if it consists of 4-D surfaces of some higher-dimensional space. This comes from mere mathematical existence requiring the WCW metric to have infinite-dimensional group of isometries (generalization of various conformal symmetries of super string models). This means that also physics is unique just from its existence. As a matter fact, in TGD there is no need to assume any physical existence behind mathematical existence since consciousness is in quantum jumps. Space-time dimension and the choice imbedding space are forced by very general mathematical conditions closely related to the structure of classical number fields. Four-dimensional Minkowski space and space-time dimension four are forced by the condition of maximal symmetries needed for the existences of WCW geometry.

Inflation in TGD framework is replaced with quantum criticality making the Universe maximally sensitive perceiver and motor instrument. Quantum criticality means absence of scales (or actually discrete hierarchy of them) and the flatness of 3-space (dimensional curvature scalar vanishes) is the correlate of quantum criticality in cosmology. The inflaton field producing via its decay matter is in TGD framework replaced with monopole magnetic fluxes assignable to magnetic flux quanta which near Big Bang correspond to what I call cosmic strings. The decay of magnetic energy of flux quanta to particles produces matter and radiation. The basic difference to string landscape is that standard model symmetries apply in all these sub-cosmologies although there are dynamical parameters distinguishing between them. Hence TGD is highly predictive theory. Even God must bow to the laws of mathematics. TGD space-time is many-sheeted and one has Russian doll cosmology natural also in inflationary scenarios.

In superstring theory the landscape problem forces to assume anthropic principle: the fact that we exist becomes the basic guide line when we try to identify the particular universe in which we happen to live. In TGD framework the evolution implied by Negenropy Maximization Principle (NMP) stating that the conscious information gained in quantum jump is maximal, implies evolution. Evolution gradually fine tunes the values of various parameters so that they generate maximal intelligence. This implies that our existence indeed fixes the values of various parameter very precisely. Of course there are some parameters such as Kähler coupling strength (analogous to critical temperature), whose possible values are dictated by quantum criticality. Note that NMP challenges second law as a universal law - at least a generalization is required in ZEO - and it is now clear that the recent view about universe neglects completely the huge negentropy sources associated with the negentropic entanglement assignable to magnetic flux tubes carrying dark matter. In human scale these resources - "Akashic records"- give rise to memories and plans of future, ideas,...

The purpose of lifes

Haisch adopts the vision about endless sequence of reincarnations as a kind of "life-school" in which one transcends life by life to higher levels of consciousness - to upper class in school (and sometime to same or even to lower one).

This vision could have rather concrete realization in TGD framework. In the average sense the average size scale for personal causal diamonds (CDs) in their quantum superposition grows in a given quantum jump, and a biological death now and then does not stop this process. New sub-CDs also pop up and mean creation of new small sub-Universes which began to evolve. Asymptotically the size of the personal CD approaches infinity - asymptotic Universe, asymptotic Godness;-)!

Biological death would not mean the end of consciousness, only a transformation to a new level: perhaps higher, perhaps same, or maybe even lower. This depending on the Karma - the law of action and reaction at spiritual level as Haisch puts it - that we have gathered by our deeds. By doing bad deeds reduce our level of consciousness guaranteeing the return to a lower level in hierarchy. This has quite concrete quantum physical correlate: reduction of the effective Planck constants reducing the quantal size scales of the magnetic flux tubes connecting as as bridges of attention to the rest of the world and reducing thus quantum coherence lengths and times characterizing us. It also reduces our long range goals from those dictated by a mission to short range goals dictated by opportunism.

What could happen in biological death?

"What is my fate?" is one of the questions of Haisch. A more concrete formulation for this question is "What happens to the magnetic body in biological death?". TGD framework provides the tools for a glass pearl game around this question.

It would not be too surprising if at least some upper layers of this onion-like structure were preserved. NMP might guarantee the approximate conservation of the entire magnetic body since its braiding serves as a correlate for negentropic entanglement defining "Akashic records", a kind of cumulative collective wisdom having as a counterpart Sheldrake's morphic fields defining among other things also species memory.

What it means that in 4-D sense (contents of consciousness are from 4-D imbedding space region: either boundary of CD in given scale) also our biological body still exists as sub-CD of the larger CD we continue to exist subjectively? Only the sensory input and motor output conscious- to-us has ceased in biological death.

Does my biological body continue its life in reversed direction of imbedding space geometric time? The answer is negative if one relies on the assumption that the arrow of imbedding space time changes and the folded bath towel argument for the arrow of 4-D time defined by thermodynamical entropy holds true: my body would continue becoming older than it was at the moment of death. Not very plausible or desirable scenario!

NMP requires that negentropic entanglement is generated at the moment of biological death and adds to existing negentropic entanglement defining "Akashic records" about previous life conserved in good approximation. What I painfully learned during my lifetime is not waste! Attention is directed to some target generates negentropic entanglement. It has braiding of magnetic flux tubes connecting the attending system to the attenfed one. Reconnection is the mechanism for building flux tube bridges between the systems.

Tibetan book of dead supports what NMP suggests: I direct my attention somewhere else from my biological body which has become rather uninteresting. The new target of attention could be some new brisk young life form not yet caught the attention (almost anywhere in planet or even elsewhere but inside my personal CD: my magnetic body is big with size scale of - as I hope - about one hundred light years at least!). My new life would proceed in opposite direction of imbedding space time (recall that two subsequent quantum jumps create zero energy states with opposite arrows of imbedding space geometric time). Maybe I remember the teachings of Tibetan book of dead and manage to direct my attention to a higher level in self hierarchy, larger CD, representing perhaps a collective level of consciousness.

If one takes fractality seriously, the death of civilizations and cultures could be a process analogous to biological death. It is difficult to avoid the feeling that this is something which could happen in not so distant future. If this process corresponds to quantum jump, NMP tells that negentropy is generated but does not exclude the possibility of a catastrophe in which even entire species suffers extinction and some of our relatives, maybe bonobos, take the lead. The transition could also lead to a new higher level of consciousness with the prevailing materialistic world view being replaced with a new one? The individuals who have become aware about the need for a new world view and about what it might be could serve as seeds of the quantum phase transition.

ZPE or ZEO?

Laws of physics and conservation laws are the basic problem of Haisch and all those who want free will in the existing ontology of physics. Haisch is also a physicist so that the problem becomes even more difficult to circumvent! How God can re-create the reality without breaking the well-established conservation laws? Or are these laws just rules of game that God has chosen to obey in this particular part of multiverse? But would this lead to mere quantum randomness and does statistical determinism mean a loss of genuine free will?

If I have guessed correctly, Haisch hopes that ZPE could help God over this problem but to my opinion ZPE is mathematically hopelessly ill-defined and reflects the mathematical problems of quantum field theory rather than reality.

In TGD framework ZPE is effectively replaced with ZEO - zero energy ontology instead of zero point energy. Zero energy states have vanishing total quantum numbers so that re-creation can be carried out without breaking conservation laws and standard laws of physics remain true. One can assign to the positive (say) energy part of zero energy state conserved energy and other quantum numbers and positive and negative energy parts correspond to initial and final state of physical event in the usual positive energy ontology: no states - just events! Therefore there is room also for God in TGD Universe. Together with re-creation as quantum jump one obtains maximal free will: any zero energy state can be created or vacuum in principle. ZEO is also necessary for p-adic--real transitions representing formation of thoughts and realization of intentions as actions: essentially time reversals of each other in ZEO as also sensory perception and motor action which generalize to completely universal concepts.

A possible test for ZEO would be creation of zero energy states apparently breaking conservation laws in the framework of positive energy ontology. In cosmology the non-conservation of gravitational energy indeed takes place and can be understood in terms of ZEO: the energy and other quantum numbers are conserved only in scale which correspond to spotlight of consciousness defined by one particular causal diamond (CD). Therefore also the consistency of Poincare invariance of TGD with cosmology requires ZEO.

Are we continually creating tiny Universes as we transform our intentions represented as p-adic space-time sheets to actions represented as real space-time sheets? Does the replacement of personal CD with a larger one in quantum jump (perhaps increasing the effective value of Planck constant) involve also generation of smaller sub-CDs representing mental images. Are our mental images these tiny Universes that we create?

How to a new sub-Universe this in laboratory? Quantum physicists would perhaps speak about generating long lived enough quantum fluctuations creating matter from vacuum. I remember having seen a popular article about a planned experiment in which very intense laser beams would generate particle pairs from vacuum. Of course, the probability for generating CD containing matter might be very small but maybe for some selected CDs this might not be the case!

The origin of inertia

Haisch and Rueda claim of having derived inertia appearing as a mass parameter in Newton's equations from vacuum energy - see this. The basic idea behind the derivation does not however make much sense to me. Here is the condensed form of argument.

If one assumes that the quarks and electrons in such an object scatter this radiation, the semi-classical techniques of stochastic electrodynamics show that there will result a reaction force on that accelerating object having the form f_r = −μa, where the μ parameter quantifies the strength of the scattering process. In order to maintain the state of acceleration, a motive force f must continuously be applied to balance this reaction force f_r. Applying Newton’s third law to the region of contact between the agent and the object, f = −f_r, we thus immediately arrive at f = μa, which is identical to Newton’s equation of motion.

I confess that I have do not have a slightest idea what this statement might mean. The standard wisdom is that particle to which no forces are applied does not suffer acceleration. Now it would suffer acceleration although net force vanishes: f+f_r=0.

The standard view is that in special relativity Poincare invariance combined with Noether's theorem allows to assign to any system conserved four-momentum and angular momentum. Given a variational principle coupling particles to fields one obtains automatically the analog of Newton's equations stating that the momentum lost/gained by fields is gained/lost by particles. Therefore in special relativity based theories there are no problems.

In general relativity situation however changes.

1. First of all, space-time becomes curved and the symmetries behind Poincare invariance are lost. One cannot use Noether's theorem to deduce expressions for conserved quantities: this is especially catastrophic outcome in quantum theory where the conserved quantities interpreted as operators play fundamental role. This was indeed the basic motivation of TGD: by replacing abstract space-time with a 4-D surface in higher-D space possessing the symmetries of empty Minkowski space, one does not loose the classical conservation laws.
   

2. There is also another, closely related problem. In Newtonian approach to gravity gravitation accelerating test particle experiences a genuine force. In general relativity test particle however suffers no acceleration nor force. There seems to be now manner for how these pictures could be consistent. Maybe Haisch and Rueda were thinking about this aspect when they made their attempt to derive inertia from vacuum energy in general relativistic context.
   

   TGD provides a neat solution also to this problem. At 4-D space-time level the orbit of neutral test particle is indeed a geodesic line and 4-D acceleration vanishes. At 8-D imbedding space level the orbit of test particle is not a geodesic line anymore and it experiences genuine 8-D acceleration, whose M⁴ part defines the Newtonian force. The CP₂ part of the force is also present can be neglected since the scale of CP₂ is so small (about 10⁴ Planck lengths).
   

Cold fusion is becoming real

Cold fusion is gradually becoming real: see Tommaso Dorigo's posting telling that Rossi's findings seem to be real (thanks to Ulla for the link). The preprint reporting the results of the tests is titled "Indication of anomalous heat energy production in a reactor device" and can be found from arXiv.

The history of cold fusion begins from the findings of Pons and Fleischmann around 1989. Cold fusion has also prehistory: books have been written about cold fusion in living matter before anyone spoke about cold fusion but official science of course has never taken them seriously (see refences in the chapter Nuclear String Hypothesis of "p-Adic length scale hypothesis and dark matter hierarchy").

Now cold fusion is studied behind the scenes but in public physics community refuses to take cold fusion seriously: it is against "the established laws of physics". And of course, the people doing hot fusion do not want to lose the impressive flow of research money to hot fusion research, which has continued decade after decade despite the absence of concrete results. Freeman Dyson has expressed his view about the situation here and here.

It takes especially long time for super stringers accustomed to think that physics has been reduced to Planck length scales to accept that there might be some genuinely new nuclear physics there and that the reductionistic narrative about natural sciences as a march towards super string theory might be a great illusion. The comments of Lubos Motl about Rossi represent a perfect example of the gigantic arrogance of a person who believes that string theorists belong to a new species intellectualy above all other human beings.

As a matter of fact, super string theory shares a lot with hot fusion. It is as unsuccessful as a theory just like hot fusion is a failure as technological project, and its news to the mankind is that the ultimate theory cannot predict nor explain and that we must just accept this message as a truth because the scientists who created it are so brilliant that they cannot be wrong.

Addition: The latest rant of Lubos about cold fusion appeared today. Now Lubos labels Tommaso Dorigo a crackpot, idiot, etc... The message is clear: everyone ready to consider the possibility that reductionism might not be quite correct, is lunatic. As usual, Lubos appeals to authority and attempts to give a label of swindlers to the group, which has performed the tests. This is much more convenient than saying something about contents. Lubos learns nothing: again and again he manages to be wrong but nothing beats him down! Lubos is completely immune to facts.

For TGD based views about possible new physics behind cold fusion see this and this.