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nanning

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Re: Systemic Isolation
« Reply #500 on: September 25, 2019, 07:18:50 PM »
<snip>
Did they used to think there was a 'gravitron' particle? For some reason I remembered something like this, but when I searched, all the came up was a carnival ride by that name!  :o

A graviton is the hypothetical boson responsible for the Gravitational interaction (force of Gravity), like the electromagnetic interaction has the foton boson. The Higgs boson is responsible for giving matter mass.

The graviton will have spin 2. If you understand what that means, you'll find it interesting. ;D
"It is preoccupation with possessions, more than anything else, that prevents us from living freely and nobly" - Bertrand Russell
"It is preoccupation with what other people from your groups think of you, that prevents you from living freely and nobly" - Nanning
Why do you keep accumulating stuff?

wili

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Re: Systemic Isolation
« Reply #501 on: September 25, 2019, 07:47:00 PM »
Thanks, nan.

I should know more about this stuff. A highschool friend of mine, who I used to talk with about this stuff back when neither of us knew much about it, went on to help in the discovery of the Higgs boson 'God Particle.' I have obviously not kept up!  :-\
"A force de chercher de bonnes raisons, on en trouve; on les dit; et après on y tient, non pas tant parce qu'elles sont bonnes que pour ne pas se démentir." Choderlos de Laclos "You struggle to come up with some valid reasons, then cling to them, not because they're good, but just to not back down."

nanning

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Re: Systemic Isolation
« Reply #502 on: September 25, 2019, 08:17:22 PM »
^^
Very nice wili. Is he a particle physicist? Theoretical or experimental?
If you have the possibility of contact, and your curiosity is strong, many nice come-togethers might ensue :).
Old talk and Higgs talk. And of course... cheers!
"It is preoccupation with possessions, more than anything else, that prevents us from living freely and nobly" - Bertrand Russell
"It is preoccupation with what other people from your groups think of you, that prevents you from living freely and nobly" - Nanning
Why do you keep accumulating stuff?

sidd

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Re: Systemic Isolation
« Reply #503 on: September 26, 2019, 12:18:50 AM »
I have already mentioned one great difficulty with quantum mechanics: Bell's theorem. I should have mentioned the other one, that it is not presently known how to construct a quantized version of general relativity. (special relativity is easier, but also has its own difficulties like Haag's theorem, but GR is much tougher)

A readable article for those with some familiarity with math is the "Quantum gravity" article on Wikipedia. Another problem, discussed by Isham, among others, is that time plays a completely different role in QM than GR ... Isham has a paper from 1993 on arxiv:

https://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/9310031

He also has a previous paper from 1992 on arxiv:

https://arxiv.org/abs/1009.2157

Isham writes well, worth reading.

sidd

vox_mundi

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Re: Systemic Isolation
« Reply #504 on: September 26, 2019, 01:56:07 AM »
Numbers Limit How Accurately Digital Computers Model Chaos
https://phys.org/news/2019-09-limit-accurately-digital-chaos.html

... Chaos is more commonplace than many people may realise and even for very simple chaotic systems, numbers used by digital computers can lead to errors that are not obvious but can have a big impact. Ultimately, computers can't simulate everything.

The study, published today in Advanced Theory and Simulations, shows that digital computers cannot reliably reproduce the behaviour of 'chaotic systems' which are widespread. This fundamental limitation could have implications for high performance computation (HPC) and for applications of machine learning to HPC.

The study builds on the work of Edward Lorenz of MIT whose weather simulations using a simple computer model in the 1960s showed that tiny rounding errors in the numbers fed into his computer led to quite different forecasts, which is now known as the 'butterfly effect'.

The team investigated the impact of using floating-point arithmetic—a method standardised by the IEEE and used since the 1950s to approximate real numbers on digital computers.

Digital computers use only rational numbers, ones that can be expressed as fractions. Moreover the denominator of these fractions must be a power of two, such as 2, 4, 8, 16, etc. There are infinitely more real numbers that cannot be expressed this way.

In the present work, the scientists used all four billion of these single-precision floating-point numbers that range from plus to minus infinity. The fact that the numbers are not distributed uniformly may also contribute to some of the inaccuracies.

... "The four billion single-precision floating-point numbers that digital computers use are spread unevenly, so there are as many such numbers between 0.125 and 0.25, as there are between 0.25 and 0.5, as there are between 0.5 and 1.0. It is amazing that they are able to simulate real-world chaotic events as well as they do. But even so, we are now aware that this simplification does not accurately represent the complexity of chaotic dynamical systems, and this is a problem for such simulations on all current and future digital computers."

... "These are being used to predict important scenarios in climate change, in chemical reactions and in nuclear reactors, for example, so it's imperative that computer-based simulations are now carefully scrutinised."

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/adts.201900125
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sidd

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Re: Systemic Isolation
« Reply #505 on: September 26, 2019, 02:34:52 AM »
Re: floating point, chaos, indeterministic calculations

I'm afraid if i were a reviewer for that paper, i would probably say something like "This is a new and interesting paper, but what is new is not interesting and what is interesting is not new ..."

"single-precision floating-point numbers " says it all, really. They erect a straw man and they have some fun knocking him down. We have known since the sixties of the limitations of single precision. There are much better solutions available today.

sidd
 

binntho

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Re: Systemic Isolation
« Reply #506 on: September 26, 2019, 05:39:10 AM »
wili, gravity is counted as one of the four fundamental physical forces. Gravity causes space-time curvature (not the other way around) and the elusive "gravitron" is indeed the hypothetical quantum of gravity, the elementary particle that mediates the force of gravity as Wiki puts it.
because a thing is eloquently expressed it should not be taken to be as necessarily true
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binntho

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Re: Systemic Isolation
« Reply #507 on: September 26, 2019, 06:07:31 AM »
This discussion started when archimid (if I remember correctly) stated that weather predictions could be made 100% accurate if we had all the facts and enough computing power.

In essence this is the old discussion of whether the universe is deterministic or not. If it is, then the words I am writing now could theoretically have been predicted with 100% accuracy at any time in the past, right up to the Big Bang itself. Everything would be predetermined, and knowing what will happen next would simply be a question of computing power and having enough knowledge of the system.

Chaos does not preclude determinism, i.e. chaotic systems can be deterministic or not. Chaotic systems behave pseudo-randomly, i.e. it is not practicable in any realistic sense to predict their state 100% since any such prediction would require significantly more computing power and more information than is present in the chaotic system itself.

In other words, a "computer" for predicting a chaotic system would always be significantly more complex than the system itself. Weather is a good example (perhaps the prime example) of a chaotic system and fully predicting it would take more energy and matter and information than is currently available in the universe.

But then comes the spanner in the works - quantum mechanics and the inherent fundamental unpredictability of events such as radioactive decay. If we accept quantum effects as real, the question then becomes whether they could in some way affect the outcome of chaotic macro systems such as weather. In my opinion the answer is that such an effect would be far too small to be ever detected but that cumulatively over time they could affect the outcome in noticeable ways.

Another interesting question that is still not decided amongst scientists is whether biologial systems can be affected by quantum effects. Certain processes in our brain, or during DNA replication, are certainly small enough to fall within the quantum realm, and important enough to change things in the macro world. Research on the in-built compass that some birds have in their nasal region seems to indicate that they are able to keep tab on the quantum state of small magnetic particles to in order to be able to tell north from south.

But given the inherent impossibilities of determinism, quantum randomness seems to be a much more logical solution even if it causes it's own problems. And to avoid determinism we would have to accept that quantum effects do at times change the outcomes of macroscopic events.
because a thing is eloquently expressed it should not be taken to be as necessarily true
St. Augustine, Confessions V, 6

sidd

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Re: Systemic Isolation
« Reply #508 on: September 26, 2019, 06:19:31 AM »
Heres a famous simple chaotic deterministic system describing a layer of fluid heated from below. EZ to simulate, have fun.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorenz_system

some code examples are given in the article. With some work, one can modify to use extended precision ,bignum libraries or arbitrary precision libraries and observe the slowdown in computational wallclock time.

sidd

Archimid

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Re: Systemic Isolation
« Reply #509 on: September 26, 2019, 09:58:56 AM »
I think the disturbing thing about QM is Bell's theorem. Crudely put, it requires giving up one of the three postulates of locality, causality or free will.

sidd

My bet? Causality is the problem. Time is a limit of human perception like sight limits us to the visible spectrum. QM scratches the surface of that unseen universe but it says nothing about that universe.


Archimid, the EPR paradox has effectively been disproved (your article pointed to a rather weird paper on Bayesian statistics that didn't seem pertinent, except for the discussion of the Einstein - Podolsky - Rosen (EPR) paradox).

The way I understand it is that the EPR paradox has been proved. Einstein meant it as an exercise that proved QM was wrong, hence the paradox part. QM caused "Spooky action at a distance" that shouldn't be possible. But then "spooky action at a distance" was verified. And many more quirks of QM have verified. Since then QM has become a cornerstone of advance sciences and more important, engineering.  QM gets verified time and again.

Einstein was wrong about QM being "wrong". QM is correct, within probability theory. But probability theory is not proof that the world ( or radioactive decay) is random.

The paper I linked could be very helpful to understand why the existence of QM doesn't prove that the universe is random, or that true randomness exists. It is perfectly on topic and it explains why you are wrong about probability distribution being real physical phenomenon.

I am an energy reservoir seemingly intent on lowering entropy for self preservation.

Archimid

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Re: Systemic Isolation
« Reply #510 on: September 26, 2019, 11:18:51 AM »
Heres a famous simple chaotic deterministic system describing a layer of fluid heated from below.


Over at the sacred "extent/area data" thread mitch posted this very excellent link about the topic at hand:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3270390/

From that link:

Quote
In a later, but highly prescient paper, Lorenz [1] also considered the interplay of various scales of motion in determining the predictability of a system. The results showed that errors at the cumulus scale can invade the errors at the synoptic scale in two days and infect the very largest scales in two weeks. Thirty years later, the relevance of this study has been realized in the development of stochastic approaches to represent cumulus convection and its upscale energy transports, and in the emerging efforts to resolve these multi-scale processes in atmospheric simulations at the cloud system-resolving scale


In other words, very small local change can create very large future systemic change. That's chaos.

If an observer of the large scale change don't know about the local change, then large scale changes may appear random to such observer. In that case, by observing the frequency of the event he can develop probabilistic approaches that could help the observer make relatively accurate predictions. Once a distribution is found, the magic of probability and math takes it away. No physical reality needed to obtain useful information.


Quote
Chaotic systems behave pseudo-randomly, i.e. it is not practicable in any realistic sense to predict their state 100% since any such prediction would require significantly more computing power and more information than is present in the chaotic system itself.

A chaotic system is any system for which we haven't found an efficient algorithm. If we find an efficient way to compute a very complex system it is not longer chaotic.


Quote
But then comes the spanner in the works - quantum mechanics and the inherent fundamental unpredictability of events such as radioactive decay. If we accept quantum effects as real, the question then becomes whether they could in some way affect the outcome of chaotic macro systems such as weather. In my opinion the answer is that such an effect would be far too small to be ever detected but that cumulatively over time they could affect the outcome in noticeable ways.

What ever happens at the subatomic level is simultaneously happening at all scales, but it is beyond human perception and for most analysis, completely irrelevant.

 Quantum effects are "real" in that weird stuff is happening that we don't really understand but can predict using probabilities. Quantum effects are not real in terms of quantum theory being based on probability distributions, which only describe frequency of events.

One last try. The probability that an electron is at point A at time B is a very amazing and useful tool. But that probability does not tell me how the electron got to point A at time B.
I am an energy reservoir seemingly intent on lowering entropy for self preservation.

sidd

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Re: Systemic Isolation
« Reply #511 on: September 26, 2019, 11:25:29 PM »
Re:  how the electron got to point A at time B

Feynman might have said that it did the sum over all histories (including conservation violating histories) from the initial to final state, and then chose the trajectory that minimized the action.

Actually, he probably wouldnt. I was never quite sure how literally he took his calculation method.

sidd

vox_mundi

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Re: Systemic Isolation
« Reply #512 on: September 29, 2019, 05:58:18 PM »
“There are three classes of people: those who see. Those who see when they are shown. Those who do not see.” ― anonymous

Insensible before the wave so soon released by callous fate. Affected most, they understand the least, and understanding, when it comes, invariably arrives too late

Susan Anderson

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Re: Systemic Isolation
« Reply #513 on: September 29, 2019, 06:54:21 PM »
FWIW, Feynman hated bullshit. Full stop.

[He hung out with our group of artists at MIT in the mid-80s, when he was working at Thinking Machines. We spent a lot of time with him, and consumed a fair amount (but not too much) of beer together.]

nanning

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Re: Systemic Isolation
« Reply #514 on: September 30, 2019, 04:41:19 AM »
Wow Susan, how I envy you!
You must've had special experiences. Do you perhaps have a little bit of a nice story you could share with us?
Analysing the flow of '1's and '0's to optimize the design :) :) :)
cheers!
"It is preoccupation with possessions, more than anything else, that prevents us from living freely and nobly" - Bertrand Russell
"It is preoccupation with what other people from your groups think of you, that prevents you from living freely and nobly" - Nanning
Why do you keep accumulating stuff?

vox_mundi

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Re: Systemic Isolation
« Reply #515 on: October 03, 2019, 10:47:41 PM »
Rodents With Part-Human Brains Pose a New Challenge for Bioethics
https://gizmodo.com/rodents-with-part-human-brains-pose-a-new-challenge-for-1838741492

Rapid progress in research involving miniature human brains grown in a dish has led to a host of ethical concerns, particularly when these human brain cells are transplanted into nonhuman animals. A new paper evaluates the potential risks of creating “humanized” animals, while providing a pathway for scientists to move forward in this important area.

... Research done in 2013, for example, highlighted the potential for human brain cells to affect the behavior and capacities of nonhuman animals. In experiments, neuroscientists replaced around half of the mice brain with human cells, mostly glia, during development. As my coverage noted at the time, this intervention caused enhancements of the rodent’s cognitive capacities, including “augmentations to memory, learning, and adaptive conditioning.”

... “A chimeric animal that developed evidence of self-awareness and rational decision-making...would warrant a pause in the research and a broader discussion across society about the direction of this research.”

... “The potential generation of a ‘self-aware’ human brain organoid in a vat might create an ethical dilemma. If this is possible, we will need to address the moral status of these organoids.”

... “This concern has already been realized by the creation of mice…[that] perform better than native mice on a battery of learning tests,” in reference to the aforementioned study from 2013. “Thus, the potential of chimeras to manifest enhancement of brain function is a near-term concern, while sentience or self-awareness is a distant future possibility. Nonetheless, as thoughtfully articulated here, the potential behavioral consequences of chimerization should be a concern of all scientists creating human-animal brain chimeras.”

Open Access: H. Isaac Chen, et.al.,  Transplantation of Human Brain Organoids: Revisiting the Science and Ethics of Brain Chimeras, Cell Stem Cell, 2019

« Last Edit: October 04, 2019, 02:37:17 PM by vox_mundi »
“There are three classes of people: those who see. Those who see when they are shown. Those who do not see.” ― anonymous

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Archimid

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Re: Systemic Isolation
« Reply #516 on: October 12, 2019, 12:18:25 PM »
Brain tunes itself to criticality, maximizing information processing

https://source.wustl.edu/2019/10/brain-tunes-itself-to-criticality-maximizing-information-processing/

Quote
Taking advantage of their ability to continuously track the activity of neurons for more than a week, the researchers first confirmed that network dynamics in the visual cortex are robustly tuned to criticality, even across light and dark cycles.

Next, by blocking vision in one eye, the researchers revealed that criticality was severely disrupted, more than a day before the manipulation affected the firing rates of individual neurons.

Twenty-four hours later, criticality re-emerged in the recordings — at which point individual neurons were suppressed by the visual deprivation.
I am an energy reservoir seemingly intent on lowering entropy for self preservation.

AbruptSLR

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Re: Systemic Isolation
« Reply #517 on: October 24, 2019, 06:25:40 PM »
I like the linked open access paper by Y. Jack Ng (2019) entitled: "Entropy and Gravitation: From Black Hole Computers to Dark Energy and Dark Matter", so I thought that I would share it:

https://arxiv.org/pdf/1910.00040.pdf

Abstract: "We show that the concept of entropy and the dynamics of gravitation provide the linchpin in a unified scheme to understand the physics of black hole computers, space-time foam, dark energy, dark matter and the phenomenon of turbulence.  We use three different methods to estimate the foaminess of spacetime, which, in turn provides a back-door way to derive the Bekenstein-Hawking formula for black hole entropy and the holographic principle.  Generalizing the discussion for a static spacetime region to the cosmos, we find a component of dark energy (resembling an effective positive cosmological constant of the correct magnitude) in the current epoch of the universe.  The conjunction of entropy and gravitation is shown to give rise to a phenomenological model of dark matter, revealing the natural emergence, in galactic and cluster dynamics, of a critical acceleration parameter related to the cosmological constant; the resulting mass profiles are consistent with observations.  Unlike ordinary matter, the quanta of the dark sector are shown to obey infinite statistics.  This property of dark matter may lead to some non-particle phenomenology, and may explain why dark matter particles have not been detected in dark matter search experiments.  We also show that there are deep similarities between the problem of "quantum gravity" (more specifically, the holographic spacetime foam) and turbulence."

See also

Title: "The Universe Is Made of Tiny Bubbles Containing Mini-Universes, Scientists Say"

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/j5yngp/the-universe-is-made-of-tiny-bubbles-containing-mini-universes-scientists-say

Extract: "The key takeaway from Ng's work is: not only can spacetime foam be measured and explored conceptually, but it can also explain the acceleration of the universe by connecting quantum physics, general relativity and dark energy. Ng believes a Theory of Everything is within reach."
“It is not the strongest or the most intelligent who will survive but those who can best manage change.”
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vox_mundi

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Re: Systemic Isolation
« Reply #518 on: October 30, 2019, 04:59:35 PM »
Cosmic Triangles Open a Window to the Origin of Time
https://www.quantamagazine.org/the-origin-of-time-bootstrapped-from-fundamental-symmetries-20191029/

Like fossils, astronomical objects are not randomly strewn throughout space. Rather, spatial correlations between the positions of objects such as galaxies tell a detailed story of the ancient past.

... One curious pattern cosmologists have known about for decades is that space is filled with correlated pairs of objects: pairs of hot spots seen in telescopes’ maps of the early universe; pairs of galaxies or of galaxy clusters or superclusters in the universe today; pairs found at all distances apart. You can see these “two-point correlations” by moving a ruler all over a map of the sky. When there’s an object at one end, cosmologists find that this ups the chance that an object also lies at the other end.

The simplest explanation for the correlations traces them to pairs of quantum particles that fluctuated into existence as space exponentially expanded at the start of the Big Bang. Pairs of particles that arose early on subsequently moved the farthest apart, yielding pairs of objects far away from each other in the sky today. Particle pairs that arose later separated less and now form closer-together pairs of objects. Like fossils, the pairwise correlations seen throughout the sky encode the passage of time — in this case, the very beginning of time.



Cosmologists believe that rare quantum fluctuations involving three, four or even more particles should also have occurred during the birth of the universe. These presumably would have yielded more complicated configurations of objects in the sky today: triangular arrangements of galaxies, along with quadrilaterals, pentagons and other shapes.

Theorists have found it challenging even to calculate what the signals would look like — until recently. In the past four years, a small group of researchers has approached the question in a new way. They have found that the form of the correlations follows directly from symmetries and other deep mathematical principles. The most important findings to date were detailed in a paper by Arkani-Hamed and three co-authors that took its final form this summer.

... Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of the work, Silverstein and others said, is what it implies about the nature of time. There’s no “time” variable anywhere in the new bootstrapped equation. Yet it predicts cosmological triangles, rectangles and other shapes of all sizes that tell a sensible story of quantum particles arising and evolving at the beginning of time.

Quote
... This suggests that the temporal version of the cosmological origin story may be an illusion. Time can be seen as an “emergent” dimension, a kind of hologram springing from the universe’s spatial correlations, which themselves seem to come from basic symmetries. In short, the approach has the potential to help explain why time began, and why it might end.

As Arkani-Hamed put it, “The thing that we’re bootstrapping is time itself.”

----------------------------

A Jewel at the Heart of Quantum Physics
https://www.quantamagazine.org/physicists-discover-geometry-underlying-particle-physics-20130917/



Physicists have discovered a jewel-shaped geometric object that challenges the notion that space and time are fundamental constituents of nature.

The amplituhedron reconceptualized colliding particles — ostensibly temporal events — in terms of timeless geometry. When it was discovered in 2013, many physicists saw yet another reason to think that time must be emergent — a variable that we perceive and that appears in our coarse-grained description of nature, but which is not written into the ultimate laws of reality.

The new geometric version of quantum field theory could facilitate the search for a theory of quantum gravity that would seamlessly connect the large- and small-scale pictures of the universe. Attempts thus far to incorporate gravity into the laws of physics at the quantum scale have run up against nonsensical infinities and deep paradoxes. The amplituhedron, or a similar geometric object, could help by removing two deeply rooted principles of physics: locality and unitarity.

Locality is the notion that particles can interact only from adjoining positions in space and time. And unitarity holds that the probabilities of all possible outcomes of a quantum mechanical interaction must add up to one. The concepts are the central pillars of quantum field theory in its original form, but in certain situations involving gravity, both break down, suggesting neither is a fundamental aspect of nature.

In keeping with this idea, the new geometric approach to particle interactions removes locality and unitarity from its starting assumptions. The amplituhedron is not built out of space-time and probabilities; these properties merely arise as consequences of the jewel’s geometry. The usual picture of space and time, and particles moving around in them, is a construct.

... Recently, a strange duality has been found between string theory and quantum field theory, indicating that the former (which includes gravity) is mathematically equivalent to the latter (which does not) when the two theories describe the same event as if it is taking place in different numbers of dimensions. No one knows quite what to make of this discovery. But the new amplituhedron research suggests space-time, and therefore dimensions, may be illusory anyway.

http://arxiv.org/pdf/1312.2007.pdf
“There are three classes of people: those who see. Those who see when they are shown. Those who do not see.” ― anonymous

Insensible before the wave so soon released by callous fate. Affected most, they understand the least, and understanding, when it comes, invariably arrives too late

AbruptSLR

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Re: Systemic Isolation
« Reply #519 on: November 17, 2019, 01:51:43 AM »
In HIOTTOE, rupa/reality is subject to an observer-dependent interpretation:

Massimiliano Proietti, Alexander Pickston, Francesco Graffitti, Peter Barrow, Dmytro Kundys, Cyril Branciard, Martin Ringbauer and Alessandro Fedrizzi (20 Sep 2019), "Experimental test of local observer independence", Science Advances, Vol. 5, no. 9, eaaw9832, DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.aaw9832

https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/5/9/eaaw9832

Abstract
The scientific method relies on facts, established through repeated measurements and agreed upon universally, independently of who observed them. In quantum mechanics the objectivity of observations is not so clear, most markedly exposed in Wigner’s eponymous thought experiment where two observers can experience seemingly different realities. The question whether the observers’ narratives can be reconciled has only recently been made accessible to empirical investigation, through recent no-go theorems that construct an extended Wigner’s friend scenario with four observers. In a state-of-the-art six-photon experiment, we realize this extended Wigner’s friend scenario, experimentally violating the associated Bell-type inequality by five standard deviations. If one holds fast to the assumptions of locality and free choice, this result implies that quantum theory should be interpreted in an observer-dependent way.
“It is not the strongest or the most intelligent who will survive but those who can best manage change.”
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AbruptSLR

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Re: Systemic Isolation
« Reply #520 on: November 18, 2019, 07:44:13 PM »
In HIOTTOE, rupa/reality is subject to an observer-dependent interpretation:



To some readers it may not be clear as to why per the Holographic Interpretation of the Theory of Everything (HIOTTOE), rupa/physical reality can be both holographic and observer-dependent.  In this regard, I provide the following comments:

In a traditional hologram each part of the 2D surface contains information about the entire 3D bulk, so that if the 2D hologram were to be shattered each piece would include 'fuzzy' information about the whole/bulk.  Similarly, per the holographic principle, the 4D time-space continuum that we accept as rupa/physical reality is connected to successive layers of the 'bulk' down to the 12D F-theory bulk by entanglement as illustrated by the first three images.

Also, the YouTube video entitled: “What is Entanglement Anyway? Chris Fields” (for link see Reply #350); helps one to appreciate the relationship within HIOTTOE's timelessly evolved free-will information network to rupa (the physical portion of dhamma) via entanglement (see the fourth image and the associated following extract).

Extract: “Observation is the same thing as interaction, and both are just information exchange through an imaginary boundary

Entanglement is: The condition of interacting with the world through an imaginary interface on which classical information appears.”

Thus, each free-will dimple in the timelessly evolved free-will information network, has some understanding of the bulk, but this understanding comes into sharper focus depending both on: a) how many arrows of direct knowledge that the dimple establishes, and b) on how many errs in indirect understanding that a given dimple makes by establishing 'imaginary boundaries'/'Markov Blankets' through which entanglement must connect the 4D time-space continuum to the deeper bulk circuits within the timelessly evolved free-will information network.

See also:

Title: "Markov blanket"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markov_blanket

Extract: "In statistics and machine learning, the Markov blanket for a node in a graphical model contains all the variables that shield the node from the rest of the network. This means that the Markov blanket of a node is the only knowledge needed to predict the behavior of that node and its children."
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nanning

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Re: Systemic Isolation
« Reply #521 on: November 19, 2019, 08:22:40 AM »
Perhaps you'll find this interesting:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropic_gravity
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holographic_principle

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erik_Verlinde:
At a symposium at the Dutch Spinoza-institute on 8 December 2009 he introduced a theory of entropic gravity. In this theory, gravity exists because of a difference in concentration of information in the empty space between two masses and its surroundings; he also extrapolates this to general relativity and quantum mechanics. He said in an interview with the newspaper de Volkskrant,[3] "On the smallest level Newton's laws don't apply, but they do for apples and planets. You can compare this to the pressure of a gas. Molecules themselves don't have any pressure, but a barrel of gas has." It appears that Verlinde's approach to explaining gravity leads naturally to the correct observed strength of dark energy.

From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erik_Verlinde#Emergent_gravity_and_the_dark_universe
On 8 November 2016 Erik Verlinde published his new theory of gravity, where gravity is not one of the four fundamental forces of physics but, rather, gravity is emergent from other fundamental forces.[1][14][15] In this work, he argues that unlike in anti-de Sitter (AdS) space, holography and the area law do not apply exactly in de Sitter space (which models our universe) because there is an additional entropy associated with the cosmological horizon. If this entropy were evenly distributed throughout space, it would contribute a volume law term to the entropy which becomes dominant at large length scales and is related to dark energy.
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vox_mundi

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Re: Systemic Isolation
« Reply #522 on: November 23, 2019, 05:19:44 PM »
The ‘X17’ Particle: Scientists May Have Discovered the Fifth Force of Nature
https://bigthink.com/surprising-science/fifth-force-nature

Essentially the entirety of physics centers on four forces that control our known, visible universe, governing everything from the production of heat in the sun to the way your laptop works. They are gravity, electromagnetism, the weak nuclear force, and the strong force.

New research may be leading us closer to one more.

Scientists at the Institute for Nuclear Research at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (Atomki) have posted findings showing what could be an example of that fifth force at work.

The scientists were closely watching how an excited helium atom emitted light as it decayed. The particles split at an unusual angle, 115 degrees, which couldn't be explained by known physics.

They call the particle X17, because they calculated its mass at 17 mega-electronvolts. X17 could be a particle, which connects our visible world with the dark matter.
  • "[In] the Standard Model of Physics, each of the four fundamental forces has a boson to go with it - the strong force has gluons, the electromagnetic force is carried by particles of light, or photons, and the weak force is carried by W and Z bosons. The new boson proposed by the UCI researchers is unlike others and as such may point to a new force. The new boson has the intriguing characteristic of interacting only with electrons and neutrons at short distances, while electromagnetic forces normally act on protons and electrons."
... Feng says there was only a one in a trillion chance that the results were caused by anything other than the X17 particle, and this new fifth force.

If confirmed by further experiments, this discovery of a possible fifth force would completely change our understanding of the universe, with consequences for the unification of forces and dark matter."

... "There's no reason to stop at the fifth," Feng said. "There could be a sixth, seventh, and eighth force."

A.J. Krasznahorkay, et.al. New evidence supporting the existence of the hypothetic X17 particle, https://arxiv.org/abs/1910.10459
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Re: Systemic Isolation
« Reply #523 on: November 23, 2019, 06:17:24 PM »
Some additional information on wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X17_particle (it is a boson)

The X17 particle is a hypothetical subatomic particle proposed by Attila Krasznahorkay as the cause of anomalous measurement results near 17 MeV.[1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8] The X17 particle could be the force carrier for a hypothetical fifth force, possibly connected with dark matter,[9] and has been described as a 'protophobic (ie, "ignoring protons")[3] X boson' with a mass of 17 MeV.[5] The particle has been proposed to explain anomalous angles consistently observed in the decay of beryllium-8 atoms since 2015, and observed once in stable helium atoms in November 2019.[5]
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Re: Systemic Isolation
« Reply #524 on: November 26, 2019, 11:51:44 AM »
  Julian Assange's health is so bad he 'could die in prison', say 60 doctors

Group’s open letter calls for Wikileaks founder to be moved from London high-security jail to hospital

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2019/nov/25/julian-assanges-health-is-so-bad-he-could-die-in-prison-say-60-doctors
  by Agence France Presse


 excerpts:
In the letter to the British home secretary, Priti Patel, the doctors called for Assange to be moved from Belmarsh prison in southeast London to a university teaching hospital.

The independent UN rights expert said Assange’s “continued exposure to arbitrariness and abuse may soon end up costing his life”.

“Were such urgent assessment and treatment not to take place, we have real concerns, on the evidence currently available, that Mr Assange could die in prison. The medical situation is thereby urgent. There is no time to lose.”

He [Assange] also appeared confused whenever he was asked to talk at Westminster magistrates’ court in London.

He seemed to have difficulties recalling his birth date, and at the end of the hearing told district judge Vanessa Baraitser that he had not understood what had happened in court.
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Re: Systemic Isolation
« Reply #525 on: November 26, 2019, 12:07:56 PM »
Is there any hope that the snap election in Britain will allow Assange a way out?


Has the propaganda been so thick that British voters have turned on Assange, or has this case risen to such a level that British politicians at least are out of the loop.


I fear I know the answer.
Assange will die for our sins of omission.
Terry

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Re: Systemic Isolation
« Reply #526 on: November 26, 2019, 03:53:18 PM »
He seems already part dead and I fear I know that answer as well  :'(
"It is preoccupation with possessions, more than anything else, that prevents us from living freely and nobly" - Bertrand Russell
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Re: Systemic Isolation
« Reply #527 on: November 26, 2019, 07:48:20 PM »
Remember back to our youth, when torture was something "they" did?
Ignorance, at least in some instances does imitate bliss :'( [size=78%].[/size]
Terry

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Re: Systemic Isolation
« Reply #528 on: November 26, 2019, 09:23:52 PM »
This is the weird crazy stuff thread. I think I found a wormhole to the journalism thread @ https://forum.arctic-sea-ice.net/index.php/topic,2272.msg234519.html#msg234519

Assage was the topic du jour in the journalism thread over there.  :)
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Re: Systemic Isolation
« Reply #529 on: November 27, 2019, 06:54:13 AM »
Thank vox. I thought this thread fitting and didn't really understand what falls under "Systemic Isolation".
Do you think it is useful to copy my Assange post to that wormhole? Or should I have asked this question in the "Forum Decorum" thread?  :-\
"It is preoccupation with possessions, more than anything else, that prevents us from living freely and nobly" - Bertrand Russell
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Re: Systemic Isolation
« Reply #530 on: April 15, 2020, 12:26:13 AM »
Truth: the body of real things, events, and facts : actuality

The aim of science is to build true and accurate knowledge about how the world works.

To be interested in scientific truth, one doesn't have to reject other sources of meaning.

---------------------

"To see a world in a grain of sand
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
And eternity in an hour."


William Blake - Auguries of Innocence

------------------------

“There are three classes of people: those who see. Those who see when they are shown. Those who do not see.” ― anonymous

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Re: Systemic Isolation
« Reply #531 on: April 15, 2020, 12:56:11 AM »
Does Relativity Lie at the Source of Quantum Exoticism?
https://phys.org/news/2020-04-relativity-source-quantum-exoticism.html



Since the arrival of quantum mechanics and the theory of relativity, physicists have lost sleep over the incompatibility of these three concepts (three, since there are two theories of relativity: special and general). It has commonly been accepted that it is the description of quantum mechanics that is the more fundamental and that the theory of relativity that will have to be adjusted to it.

Now, in the article "The Quantum Principle of Relativity," published in the New Journal of Physics, researchers prove that the features of quantum mechanics determining its uniqueness and its non-intuitive exoticism—accepted, what's more, on faith (as axioms)—can be explained within the framework of the special theory of relativity. One only has to decide on a certain rather unorthodox step.

... The special theory of relativity is a coherent structure that allows for three mathematically correct types of solutions: a world of particles moving at subluminal velocities, a world of particles moving at the velocity of light and a world of particles moving at superluminal velocities. This third option has always been rejected as having nothing to do with reality.

"We posed the question: what happens if—for the time being without entering into the physicality or non-physicality of the solutions—we take seriously not part of the special theory of relativity, but all of it, together with the superluminal system? We expected cause-effect paradoxes. Meanwhile, we saw exactly those effects that form the deepest core of quantum mechanics," say Dr. Dragan and Prof. Ekert

... Both theorists have also shown that after taking into account superluminal solutions, the motion of a particle on multiple trajectories simultaneously appears naturally, and a description of the course of events requires the introduction of a sum of combined amplitudes of probability that indicate the existence of superposition of states, a phenomenon thus far associated only with quantum mechanics.

"We noticed, incidentally, the possibility of an interesting interpretation of the role of individual dimensions. In the system that looks superluminal to the observer some space-time dimensions seem to change their physical roles. Only one dimension of superluminal light has a spatial character—the one along which the particle moves. The other three dimensions appear to be time dimensions," says Dr. Dragan.

Past, Present, Future

A characteristic feature of spatial dimensions is that a particle can move in any direction or remain at rest, while in a time dimension it always propagates in one direction (what we call aging in everyday language). So, three time dimensions of the superluminal system with one spatial dimension (1+3) would thus mean that particles inevitably age in three times simultaneously. The ageing process of a particle in a superluminal system (1+3), observed from a subluminal system (3+1), would look as if the particle was moving like a spherical wave, leading to the famous Huygens principle (every point on a wavefront can be treated itself as a source of a new spherical wave) and corpuscular-wave dualism.

For almost a hundred years quantum mechanics has been awaiting a deeper theory to explain the nature of its mysterious phenomena. If the reasoning presented by the physicists from FUW and UO stands the test of time, history would cruelly mock all physicists. The "unknown" theory sought for decades, explaining the uniqueness of quantum mechanics, would be something already known from the very first work on quantum theory.

Open Access: Andrzej Dragan et al, Quantum principle of relativity, New Journal of Physics (2020)
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1367-2630/ab76f7

-----------------------------

Spooky!
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AbruptSLR

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Re: Systemic Isolation
« Reply #532 on: April 15, 2020, 02:20:33 AM »
...

Spooky!

vox_mundi,

Thank you very much.

Best,
AbruptSLR
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Re: Systemic Isolation
« Reply #533 on: April 15, 2020, 04:48:07 PM »
I would opt for very interesting and also quite hilarious if it pans out.
Not doing this long ago was probably due to computing power constraints?

Þetta minnismerki er til vitnis um að við vitum hvað er að gerast og hvað þarf að gera. Aðeins þú veist hvort við gerðum eitthvað.

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Re: Systemic Isolation
« Reply #534 on: April 15, 2020, 07:44:48 PM »
I would opt for very interesting and also quite hilarious if it pans out.
Not doing this long ago was probably due to computing power constraints?

While perhaps not hilarious, the linked video discusses a new concept call 'Relative Locality' by Lee Smolin.  When one considers that quantum theory seems to require some kind of superluminal causation (generally described as 'nonlocality'), one can better appreciate the value of Lee Smolin's 'Relative Locality' concept for helping to better understand the relationship between the Theory of Special Relativity (and/or Shape Dynamics) and Quantum Theory (and/or Quantum Gravity).

Title: " Two views of relative locality" by Lee Smolin

http://pirsa.org/displayFlash.php?id=19120038

Edit: Also remember that energy and momentum are related to entropy which is related to both the Holographic Principle and to HIOTTOE.
“It is not the strongest or the most intelligent who will survive but those who can best manage change.”
― Leon C. Megginson

Hefaistos

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Re: Systemic Isolation
« Reply #535 on: April 19, 2020, 12:14:00 AM »
Stephen Wolfram has this write-up on his “physics project” :

"Finally We May Have a Path to the Fundamental Theory of Physics…and It’s Beautiful"

He proposes that the universe is digital at its core and “constructed” out of a small set of simple rules. He's on the path to unifying all the major current theories that, individually, succeed in describing, explaining and predicting so many disparate phenomena of physics on extremely different scales.
Its simplicity is so clean, is it possible that the universe works this way?
What would Gödel say?

https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2020/04/finally-we-may-have-a-path-to-the-fundamental-theory-of-physics-and-its-beautiful/

https://www.wolframphysics.org/

Tom_Mazanec

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Re: Systemic Isolation
« Reply #536 on: April 19, 2020, 02:05:28 PM »
Thanks, Hefaistos.
I have donated that Wolfram article to the Memory of Mankind time capsule.

vox_mundi

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Re: Systemic Isolation
« Reply #537 on: April 27, 2020, 05:52:11 PM »
New Findings Suggest Laws of Nature Not As Constant As Previously Thought
https://newsroom.unsw.edu.au/news/science-tech/new-findings-suggest-laws-nature-not-constant-previously-thought

Not only does a universal constant seem annoyingly inconstant at the outer fringes of the cosmos, it occurs in only one direction, which is downright weird.

In a paper published in prestigious journal Science Advances, scientists from UNSW Sydney reported that four new measurements of light emitted from a quasar 13 billion light years away reaffirm past studies that found tiny variations in the fine structure constant.

UNSW Science’s Professor John Webb says the fine structure constant is a measure of electromagnetism – one of the four fundamental forces in nature (the others are gravity, weak nuclear force and strong nuclear force).

"It's a dimensionless number and it involves the speed of light, something called Planck's constant and the electron charge, and it's a ratio of those things. And it's the number that physicists use to measure the strength of the electromagnetic force.”



https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fine-structure_constant



"We found a hint that that number of the fine structure constant was different in certain regions of the universe. Not just as a function of time, but actually also in direction in the universe, which is really quite odd if it's correct ... but that's what we found.”

... Professor Webb says that in the current study, the team looked at a distant quasar  12 billion light years from us, that enabled them to probe back to when the universe was only a billion years old which had never been done before. The team made four measurements of the fine constant along the one line of sight to this quasar. Individually, the four measurements didn’t provide any conclusive answer as to whether or not there were perceptible changes in the electromagnetic force. However, when combined with lots of other measurements between us and distant quasars made by other scientists and unrelated to this study, the differences in the fine structure constant became evident.

... "In one particular direction, we can look back 13 billion light years and measure electromagnetism when the universe was very young. Putting all the data together, electromagnetism seems to gradually increase the further we look, while towards the opposite direction, it gradually decreases. In other directions in the cosmos, the fine structure constant remains just that – constant. These new very distant measurements have pushed our observations further than has ever been reached before.”

"So the universe may not be isotropic in its laws of physics – one that is the same, statistically, in all directions. But in fact, there could be some direction or preferred direction in the universe where the laws of physics change, but not in the perpendicular direction. In other words, the universe in some sense, has a dipole structure to it.

"Adding to the side of the argument that says these findings are more than just coincidence, a team in the US working completely independently and unknown to Professor Webb’s, made observations about X-rays that seemed to align with the idea that the universe has some sort of directionality.

“I didn't know anything about this paper until it appeared in the literature,” he says.

“And they're not testing the laws of physics, they're testing the properties, the X-ray properties of galaxies and clusters of galaxies and cosmological distances from Earth. They also found that the properties of the universe in this sense are not isotropic and there's a preferred direction. And lo and behold, their direction coincides with ours.”

If there is a directionality in the universe, Professor Webb argues, and if electromagnetism is shown to be very slightly different in certain regions of the cosmos, the most fundamental concepts underpinning much of modern physics will need revision.

“Our standard model of cosmology is based on an isotropic universe, one that is the same, statistically, in all directions,” he says.

"That standard model itself is built upon Einstein’s theory of gravity, which itself explicitly assumes constancy of the laws of Nature. If such fundamental principles turn out to be only good approximations, the doors are open to some very exciting, new ideas in physics.”

Michael R. Wilczynska et al. Four direct measurements of the fine-structure constant 13 billion years ago, Science Advances (2020).
https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/6/17/eaay9672

K. Migkas et al. Probing cosmic isotropy with a new X-ray galaxy cluster sample through the LX–T scaling relation, Astronomy & Astrophysics (2020)
https://www.aanda.org/articles/aa/abs/2020/04/aa36602-19/aa36602-19.html
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Re: Systemic Isolation
« Reply #538 on: May 29, 2020, 12:44:50 PM »
Unplugged from the Matrix? ...

India Yogi Who Claimed to Live Without Food or Water Dies Aged 90
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-05-india-yogi-food-dies-aged.html

An Indian yogi whose claims he spent decades without food or water earned him a band of devotees and the scepticism of doctors died Tuesday, his neighbour told AFP.

The long-haired and bearded Prahlad Jani—who dressed in red and wore a nose ring in the fashion of Hindu goddesses—hailed from Charada village in the western state of Gujarat, where he spent his life in a routine of yoga and mediation.

He was 90 based on his claim that he was born in August 1929.

... Jani's tale that he was blessed by a goddess when he was a child which enabled him to survive without sustenance won him a small group of followers—despite the doubts of medical professionals.

... There was no way of verifying Jani's claims, but doctors have said a person cannot go for long periods without food or water without organ damage and the body breaking down.

Nevertheless, Jani's claims attracted the interest of India's medical community.

In 2010 a team of military doctors studied him for two weeks at a hospital in Ahmedabad, Gujarat's biggest city.

Jani was watched with cameras and closed circuit television. Doctors took scans of his organs, brain and blood vessels, and conducted tests on his heart, lungs and memory capacity.

They said he did not eat, drink or go to the toilet, and his only contact with fluid was during gargling and bathing periodically.

"We still do not know how he survives," neurologist Sudhir Shah told reporters then.

"It is still a mystery what kind of phenomenon this is."

The results of the study, initiated by India's Defence Research and Development Organisation, were never published or submitted for peer review.
“There are three classes of people: those who see. Those who see when they are shown. Those who do not see.” ― anonymous

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Re: Systemic Isolation
« Reply #539 on: June 04, 2020, 04:25:03 PM »
Black Holes? They Are Like a Hologram
https://phys.org/news/2020-06-black-holes-hologram.html

According to new research by SISSA, ICTP and INFN, black holes could be like holograms, in which all the information to produce a three-dimensional image is encoded in a two-dimensional surface. As affirmed by quantum theories, black holes could be incredibly complex, and concentrate an enormous amount of information in two dimensions, like the largest hard disks that exist in nature.

This idea aligns with Einstein's theory of relativity, which describes black holes as three dimensional, simple, spherical and smooth, as depicted in the first-ever image of a black hole that circulated in 2019. In short, black holes appear to be three dimensional, just like holograms. The study, which unites two discordant theories, has recently been published in Physical Review X.

To study black holes, the two authors of the new study, Francesco Benini (SISSA Professor, ICTP scientific consultant and INFN researcher) and Paolo Milan (SISSA and INFN researcher), used a 30-year-old idea called the holographic principle.

The researchers write, "This revolutionary and somewhat counterintuitive principle proposes that the behavior of gravity in a given region of space can alternatively be described in terms of a different system, which lives only along the edge of that region and therefore in a one less dimension. And, more importantly, in this alternative description (called holographic), gravity does not appear explicitly. In other words, the holographic principle allows us to describe gravity using a language that does not contain gravity, thus avoiding friction with quantum mechanics."

What Benini and Milan have done is apply the theory of the holographic principle to black holes. In this way, their mysterious thermodynamic properties have become more understandable: Focusing on predicting that these bodies have a great entropy and observing them in terms of quantum mechanics, you can describe them just like a hologram—they have two dimensions, in which gravity disappears, but they reproduce an object in three dimensions.

Francesco Benini et al, Black Holes in 4-D N=4 Super-Yang-Mills Field Theory, Physical Review X (2020)
https://journals.aps.org/prx/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevX.10.021037
« Last Edit: June 04, 2020, 04:32:18 PM by vox_mundi »
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Re: Systemic Isolation
« Reply #540 on: June 04, 2020, 04:32:52 PM »
Exploring the Nature of Anomalous Psychedelic Experiences
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-06-exploring-nature-anomalous-psychedelic.html

David Luke, a researcher at the University of Greenwich, recently carried out a study investigating the nature of anomalous experiences induced by psychedelic substances from a humanistic, neuroscientific and parapsychological standpoint. His most recent paper on this subject was published in a special issue of the Journal of Humanistic Psychology called "Anomalous Lifeworlds: Mysticism, Magic and Expanded Consciousness."

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0022167820917767

The key goal of Luke's study was to closely examine anomalous experiences often reported by people under the influence of psychedelics or after a psychedelic trip. The researcher wished to offer an overview of the prevalence and effects of these substances, summarizing past research findings while also introducing insight about the neurobiology of similar experiences that can occur spontaneously (i.e., without psychedelics), such as near-death experiences.

Luke has been conducting research exploring anomalous psychedelic experiences for over 20 years now, approaching the subject from an anthropological, psychological and neuroscientific perspective. In his work, he often adopts an interdisciplinary approach, merging ideas from cognitive and behavioural psychology with experimental, lab-based methods, while also conducting surveys, interviews, literature reviews and ethnographical studies with indigenous tribes known to use these substances.

In his paper, Luke reviews and examines 10 anomalous experiences reported by many people who used psychedelics. These include synaesthesia (e.g., seeing sounds as colourful patterns), extradimensional perceptions, out-of-body experiences, near-death experiences, encounters with seemingly sentient entities, alien abduction experiences, sleep paralysis, interspecies communication, possession, and psychic experiences (e.g., telepathy, precognition, clairvoyance, or psychokinesis).

Luke investigated these experiences in relation with results gathered in past neuroscientific and neurobiological studies, which were carried out on people who were having psychedelic trips and in naturally occurring states of consciousness. In his paper, he concludes that anomalous experiences, such as the ones reported by psychedelic users, appear to be induced by altered states of consciousness rather than by psychedelic chemicals per se, as all the experiences examined in his work were also reported by some individuals who had not taken psychedelics or any other psychoactive drug.

... "I believe that anomalous experiences with psychedelics have far-reaching implications for the study of consciousness and its applications, including neuroscience, psychiatry, psychology and even philosophy, as regards the mind, and the branches of metaphysics dealing with ontology and epistemology," Luke said.

David Luke. Anomalous Psychedelic Experiences: At the Neurochemical Juncture of the Humanistic and Parapsychological, Journal of Humanistic Psychology (2020)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0022167820917767
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Re: Systemic Isolation
« Reply #541 on: July 25, 2020, 04:42:16 AM »
New York Times Casually Drops Another Story About How Aliens Are Probably Real
https://gizmodo.com/new-york-times-casually-drops-another-story-about-how-a-1844491014

The New York Times published a story Thursday night about the likelihood that aliens have visited Earth. The main takeaway? Aliens could be real and the U.S. government has been conducting classified briefings in recent years about things left behind by “off-world vehicles.”

Naturally, the new article appears on the 17th page of today’s paper because everything else here on Earth is fucking bonkers and the existence of aliens barely makes headlines. There is, after all, both a pandemic going on and the frightening rise of a neo-fascist government apparatus helmed by a sociopathic narcissist.

So what does the new article have to say about the possibility of little green men—aside from the ones currently in Portland? A well-funded group inside the Office of Naval Intelligence is actively investigating unexplained encounters between members of the military and unidentified flying objects. And while some of the “materials” recovered by U.S. government sources have turned out to have perfectly innocent explanations, some materials are still a total mystery.

Eric W. Davis, an astrophysicist who worked as a subcontractor and then a consultant for the Pentagon U.F.O. program since 2007, said that, in some cases, examination of the materials had so far failed to determine their source and led him to conclude, “We couldn’t make it ourselves.”

Davis says he’s briefed many people in government, including U.S. Senators:

Mr. Davis, who now works for Aerospace Corporation, a defense contractor, said he gave a classified briefing to a Defense Department agency as recently as March about retrievals from “off-world vehicles not made on this earth.”

Mr. Davis said he also gave classified briefings on retrievals of unexplained objects to staff members of the Senate Armed Services Committee on Oct. 21, 2019, and to staff members of the Senate Intelligence Committee two days later.

Former Nevada Senator Harry Reid, who has long championed the cause of exploring UFOs, told the Times that he believes the U.S. government has alien materials in its possession. Perhaps more disturbingly, he also believes that people in the private sector have materials as well.

“After looking into this, I came to the conclusion that there were reports—some were substantive, some not so substantive—that there were actual materials that the government and the private sector had in their possession,” Reid told the Times.

By the end of the article, Reid even notes the possibility of “retrieved craft,” the idea that the U.S. government may have an alien spaceship of some kind in its possession.

------------------------------------

No Longer in Shadows, Pentagon’s U.F.O. Unit Will Make Some Findings Public
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/23/us/politics/pentagon-ufo-harry-reid-navy.html

Despite Pentagon statements that it disbanded a once-covert program to investigate unidentified flying objects, the effort remains underway — renamed and tucked inside the Office of Naval Intelligence, where officials continue to study mystifying encounters between military pilots and unidentified aerial vehicles.

Pentagon officials will not discuss the program, which is not classified but deals with classified matters. Yet it appeared last month in a Senate committee report outlining spending on the nation’s intelligence agencies for the coming year. The report said the program, the Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon Task Force, was “to standardize collection and reporting” on sightings of unexplained aerial vehicles, and was to report at least some of its findings to the public within 180 days after passage of the intelligence authorization act.

... For more than a decade, the Pentagon program has been conducting classified briefings for congressional committees, aerospace company executives and other government officials, according to interviews with program participants and unclassified briefing documents.

Mr. Reid, the former Democratic senator from Nevada who pushed for funding the earlier U.F.O. program when he was the majority leader, said he believed that crashes of objects of unknown origin may have occurred and that retrieved materials should be studied.

“After looking into this, I came to the conclusion that there were reports — some were substantive, some not so substantive — that there were actual materials that the government and the private sector had in their possession,” Mr. Reid said in an interview.

... The constraints on discussing classified programs — and the ambiguity of information cited in unclassified slides from the briefings — have put officials who have studied U.F.O.s in the position of stating their views without presenting any hard evidence.

Public fascination with the topic of U.F.O.s has drawn in President Trump, who told his son Donald Trump Jr. in a June interview that he knew “very interesting” things about Roswell — a city in New Mexico that is central to speculation about the existence of U.F.O.s. The president demurred when asked if he would declassify any information on Roswell. “I’ll have to think about that one,” he said.

Either way, Mr. Reid said, more should be made public to clarify what is known and what is not. “It is extremely important that information about the discovery of physical materials or retrieved craft come out,” he said.
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Re: Systemic Isolation
« Reply #542 on: August 15, 2020, 06:55:32 PM »
US Defense Department Creates Taskforce to Investigate UFOs
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/aug/15/us-department-defense-ufo-taskforce

The US department of Defense has formed a new body to investigate what it calls “unidentified aerial phenomena” (UAPs) following reported sightings of what most people call UFOs.

The Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force (UAPTF) was created by the deputy defense secretary, David Norquist, on 4 August, strengthening an already existing effort that since 2018 has been under the purview of the Office of Naval Intelligence.

https://www.defense.gov/Newsroom/Releases/Release/Article/2314065/establishment-of-unidentified-aerial-phenomena-task-force/

“The Department of Defense established the UAPTF to improve its understanding of, and gain insight into, the nature and origins of UAPs. The mission of the task force is to detect, analyze and catalog UAPs that could potentially pose a threat to US national security,” the Pentagon said in a statement.

The move is only the latest from the Pentagon when it comes to UFOs.

The Senate recently required the director of national intelligence and secretary of defense, working with other intelligence and law enforcement agencies, to prepare a public report of government findings on the UAP issue.

https://www.axios.com/pentagon-unidentified-aerial-phenomena-task-force-4b433f4a-1b8f-4b1e-8f18-276924ff24b1.html

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Re: Systemic Isolation
« Reply #543 on: August 17, 2020, 11:04:12 PM »
Quantum Paradox Points to Shaky Foundations of Reality
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/08/quantum-paradox-points-shaky-foundations-reality

Nearly 60 years ago, the Nobel prize–winning physicist Eugene Wigner captured one of the many oddities of quantum mechanics in a thought experiment. He imagined a friend of his, sealed in a lab, measuring a particle such as an atom while Wigner stood outside. Quantum mechanics famously allows particles to occupy many locations at once—a so-called superposition—but the friend’s observation “collapses” the particle to just one spot. Yet for Wigner, the superposition remains: The collapse occurs only when he makes a measurement sometime later. Worse, Wigner also sees the friend in a superposition. Their experiences directly conflict.

Now, researchers in Australia and Taiwan offer perhaps the sharpest demonstration that Wigner’s paradox is real. In a study published this week in Nature Physics, they transform the thought experiment into a mathematical theorem that confirms the irreconcilable contradiction at the heart of the scenario. The team also tests the theorem with an experiment, using photons as proxies for the humans. Whereas Wigner believed resolving the paradox requires quantum mechanics to break down for large systems such as human observers, some of the new study’s authors believe something just as fundamental is on thin ice: objectivity. It could mean there is no such thing as an absolute fact, one that is as true for me as it is for you.

 “It’s a bit disconcerting,” says co-author Nora Tischler of Griffith University. “A measurement outcome is what science is based on. If somehow that’s not absolute, it’s hard to imagine.”

A strong no-go theorem on the Wigner’s friend paradox
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41567-020-0990-x

----------------------------------

This Twist on Schrödinger’s Cat Paradox Has Major Implications for Quantum Theory
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/this-twist-on-schroedingers-cat-paradox-has-major-implications-for-quantum-theory/?amp=true

... Their study, which appeared in Nature Physics on August 17, has implications for the role that consciousness might play in quantum physics—and even whether quantum theory must be replaced.

The textbook version—sometimes called the Copenhagen interpretation—says that until a system’s properties are measured, they can encompass myriad values. This superposition only collapses into a single state when the system is observed, and physicists can never precisely predict what that state will be. Wigner held the then popular view that consciousness somehow triggers a superposition to collapse.

... Tischler and her colleagues carried out 90,000 runs of the experiment. As expected, the correlations violated Bell’s original bounds—and crucially, they also violated the new local-friendliness threshold. The team could also modify the setup to tune down the degree of entanglement between the photons by sending one of the pair on a detour before it entered its interferometer, gently perturbing the perfect harmony between the partners. When the researchers ran the experiment with this slightly lower level of entanglement, they found a point where the correlations still violated Bell’s bound but not local friendliness. This result proved that the two sets of bounds are not equivalent and that the new local-friendliness constraints are stronger, Tischler says. “If you violate them, you learn more about reality,” she adds. Namely, if your theory says that “friends” can be treated as quantum systems, then you must either give up locality, accept that measurements do not have a single result that observers must agree on or allow superdeterminism. Each of these options has profound—and, to some physicists, distinctly distasteful—implications.

... “The new paper is another confirmation that we have a problem with current quantum theory,” says Renner, who was not involved in the work. He argues that none of today’s quantum interpretations can worm their way out of the so-called Frauchiger-Renner paradox without proponents admitting they do not care whether quantum theory gives consistent results.

« Last Edit: August 17, 2020, 11:13:22 PM by vox_mundi »
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Re: Systemic Isolation
« Reply #544 on: August 18, 2020, 07:27:59 AM »
^^
"The collapse occurs only when he makes a measurement sometime later. Worse, Wigner also sees the friend in a superposition."

In my non-expert view (I'm not a physicist but have studied Bsc physics 10ya):
The first ('collapsed') superposition was within the quantum mechanical realm and the latter is macroscopic and is not in the quantum realm and is therefore meaningless.

Schrödinger's cat example is imo within the quantum mechanical realm with a hidden macroscopic 'measurement' in the form of the cat in the box. What has the box got to do with it? Look at the cat's life signs. Because you haven't read the 'gauge' (open the box) yet, you do not know what the macroscopic measurement (live/death cat) is. The macroscopic measurement has already taken place or is happening in the proces (timeframe) of opening the box. The cat is never in a macroscopic superposition.

What if I hypothetically put the cat in a box at the edge of a cliff and wait for the wind to push it over out of eye sight. The moment I again lay my eyes on the spot, you could say that I make a measurement. Was the cat in the mean time in superposition? No, of course not because this is not the quantum mechanical realm (i.e. <<1μm). The whole idea of superposition is, in general, not valid for macroscopic objects.

Finally I want to say that physics is modelling reality and it now seems to me that the physics models are seen as so definite and absolute that reality has to change.
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Re: Systemic Isolation
« Reply #545 on: August 18, 2020, 06:33:28 PM »
I am not a physicist either but have read some of the explanations for various experiments. I like the explanation that time does not exist/is not relevant at the quantum level. Any measurement we observe is fixed in time and all of the anomalies we observe are related to that interaction. Others do a much better job of explaining it but if you are interested it has to do with branes which are somehow analogous to membranes hence the name. They are sort of like bubbles on a quantum scale. Outside the branes their is time inside not so much. I am sure anyone with a solid understanding of this would rightly correct my description but I do find it fascinating.

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Re: Systemic Isolation
« Reply #546 on: August 19, 2020, 11:19:45 AM »
Quote
some of the new study’s authors believe something just as fundamental is on thin ice: objectivity. It could mean there is no such thing as an absolute fact, one that is as true for me as it is for you.
The Internet age is finally explained!

vox_mundi

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Re: Systemic Isolation
« Reply #547 on: September 24, 2020, 07:13:12 PM »
Young Physicist 'Squares the Numbers' On Time Travel
https://phys.org/news/2020-09-young-physicist-squares.html

Paradox-free time travel is theoretically possible, according to the mathematical modeling of a prodigious University of Queensland undergraduate student.

... "Classical dynamics says if you know the state of a system at a particular time, this can tell us the entire history of the system," Mr Tobar said.

"However, Einstein's theory of general relativity predicts the existence of time loops or time travel—where an event can be both in the past and future of itself—theoretically turning the study of dynamics on its head."

Mr Tobar said a unified theory that could reconcile both traditional dynamics and Einstein's Theory of Relativity was the holy grail of physics.

"But the current science says both theories cannot both be true," he said.

"As physicists, we want to understand the Universe's most basic, underlying laws and for years I've puzzled on how the science of dynamics can square with Einstein's predictions.

"I wondered: "is time travel mathematically possible?"

Mr Tobar and Dr. Costa say they have found a way to "square the numbers" and Dr. Costa said the calculations could have fascinating consequences for science.

"The maths checks out—and the results are the stuff of science fiction," Dr. Costa said.

... "The range of mathematical processes we discovered show that time travel with free will is logically possible in our universe without any paradox."

Germain Tobar et al, Reversible dynamics with closed time-like curves and freedom of choice, Classical and Quantum Gravity (2020)
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1361-6382/aba4bc
“There are three classes of people: those who see. Those who see when they are shown. Those who do not see.” ― anonymous

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Re: Systemic Isolation
« Reply #548 on: September 24, 2020, 07:22:50 PM »
A Question of Quantum Reality
https://phys.org/news/2020-09-quantum-reality.html

The distinguished quantum physicist John Stewart Bell (1928-1990) is best known for the eponymous theorem that proved current understanding of quantum mechanics to be incompatible with local hidden variable theories. Thirty years after his death, his long-standing collaborator Reinhold Bertlmann of the University of Vienna, Austria, has reviewed his thinking in a paper for EPJ H, "Real or Not Real: That is the question." In this historical and personal account, Bertlmann aims to introduce his readers to Bell's concepts of reality and contrast them with some of his own ideas of virtuality.

Reinhold A. Bertlmann, Real or not real that is the question..., The European Physical Journal H (2020).
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1140/epjh/e2020-10022-x
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Re: Systemic Isolation
« Reply #549 on: October 26, 2020, 12:40:21 AM »
Are We Living In a Computer Simulation? I Don’t Know. Probably.
https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2019/4/10/18275618/simulation-hypothesis-matrix-rizwan-virk

... Sean Illing
Are we living in a simulated universe right now?

Rizwan Virk
There are lots of mysteries in physics that are better explained by the simulation hypothesis than by what would be a material hypothesis. ... one of which is this mystery they call quantum indeterminacy, which is the idea that a particle is in one of multiple states and you don’t know that unless you observe the particle.

Sean Illing
How does quantum indeterminacy relate to a video game or a computer simulation?

Rizwan Virk
... The history of video game development is all about optimizing limited resources. If you asked somebody in the 1980s if you could you render a game like World of Warcraft, which is a full three-dimensional or a virtual reality game, they would say, “No, It would take all the computing power in the world. We couldn’t render all those pixels in real time.”

But what happened over time was that there were optimization techniques. The core of all these optimizations is “only render that which is being observed.” ... and it’s one of the things that reminds me of a video game in the physical world.

... I’ll bring up a very famous physicist, John Wheeler. He was one of the last physicists who worked with Albert Einstein and many of the great physicists of the 20th century. He said that physics was initially thought to be about the study of physical objects, that everything was reducible to particles. This is what’s often called the Newtonian model. But then we discovered quantum physics and we realized that everything was a field of probabilities and it wasn’t actually physical objects. That was the second wave in Wheeler’s career.

The third wave in his career was the discovery that at the core level, everything is information, everything is based on bits. So Wheeler came up with a famous phrase called “it from bit,” which is the idea that anything we see as physical is really the result of bits of information. He didn’t live to see quantum computers come into reality, but it’s looking more like that.

So I would say that if the world isn’t really physical, if it’s based on information, then a simpler explanation might in fact be that we are in a simulation that is generated based on computer science and information.

Sean Illing
If we were living in a simulation as convincing as The Matrix, would there be any discernible difference between the simulation and reality? Why would it matter ultimately whether our world was real or illusory?

Rizwan Virk

Probably the most important question related to this is whether we are NPCs (non-player characters) or PCs (player characters) in the video game. If we are PCs, then that means we are just playing a character inside the video game of life, which I call the Great Simulation. I think many of us would like to know this. We would want to know the parameters of the game we’re playing so that we could better understand it, better navigate it.

If we are NPCs, or simulated characters, then I think it’s a more complicated answer and more frightening. The question is, are all of us NPCs in a simulation, and what is the purpose of that simulation? A knowledge of the fact that we’re in a simulation, and the goals of the simulation and the goals of our character, I think, would still be interesting to many people — and now we’re back to the case of the holodeck character from Star Trek that discovers that there is a world “out there” (outside the holodeck) that he can’t go to, and perhaps some of us would rather not know in that case.

Sean Illing
How close are we to having the technological capacity to build an artificial world that’s as realistic and plausible as The Matrix?

Rizwan Virk
I lay out 10 stages of technology development that a civilization would have to go through to get to what I call the simulation point, which is the point at which we can create a hyperrealistic simulation like this. We’re at about stage five, which is around virtual reality and augmented reality. Stage six is about learning to render these things without us having to put on glasses, and the fact that 3D printers now can print 3D pixels of objects shows us that most objects can be broken down as information.

But the really difficult part — and this is something not a lot of technologists have talked about — is in The Matrix, the reason they thought they were fully immersed was they had this cord going into the cerebral cortex, and that’s where the signal was beamed. This brain-computer interface is the area that we haven’t yet made that much progress in, but we are making progress in it. It’s in the early stages.

So my guess is within a few decades to 100 years from now, we will reach the simulation point.

“There are three classes of people: those who see. Those who see when they are shown. Those who do not see.” ― anonymous

Insensible before the wave so soon released by callous fate. Affected most, they understand the least, and understanding, when it comes, invariably arrives too late