Roger Penrose, Oxford University, Oxford, UK
ArXiv (20): First results of the LARES 2 space experiment to test the general theory of relativity, November 2023; Correlated “noise” in LIGO gravitational wave signals: an implication of Conformal Cyclic Cosmology, July 2017; Foreward: A Computable Universe: Understanding Computation & Exploring Nature As Computation (PDF), 2012
Books: Among many, The Nature of Space and Time with Stephen Hawking, 1996
Homepage(s): Academia Europaea, Google Scholar, InspireHEP, Nobel prize (2020); Philosophy, Podcasts, Royal Society, X, Wikipedia: Cycles of Time, Video (Oxford) & YouTube: Cycles of Time (2016), Big Bang Creation Myths (Dec. 2018)
This page is: https://81018.com/2017/04/19/penrose/
Sixth and most recent email: 3 March 2025
My dear Prof Dr. Sir Roger,
The document is here: https://81018.com/grok-3/
It may be slightly destabilizing!
My summary page about your work (with copies of my emails) is here:
https://81018.com/2017/04/19/penrose/
I continue to think of you and your prodigious output over the years!
Yours sincerely,
Bruce
Fifth email: 6 December 2023 at 3 PM
My dear Sir Roger,
Even though I expect this email will bounce, I needed to try to reach you. I thought some explanation of my cheeky comment (just below) was important. BTW, my first correspondence with you was back in 1979 for a display project at MIT about first principles. References to it are here: https://81018.com/scholars77/#Penrose https://81018.com/mit/
This is what I’ve said on our homepage today: https://81018.com/missing-keys/#Penrose. I thought some explanation and apology was important. Also, my page for all my emails to you is here: https://81018.com/2017/04/19/penrose/
“The work by esteemed Nobel Laureate, Sir Roger Penrose, is a special case study. He has become the high priest of Conformal Cyclic Cosmology where in his house there are many cycles, not because anybody will ever prove it, but because he says so. Our base-2 model using something like Planck’s base units and assumes the qualitative character of continuity-symmetry-and-harmony within the finite-infinite relation, seems puny by comparison but it certainly is simple and covers all the requirements of current big bang cosmology.”
You’ve been working ever so hard, never stopping, all your life. You deserve our respect, yet the growing abandonment of simplicity and the increasingly acceptance of complexity and obfuscation with theory-given-as-reality has the world’s people increasingly confused, hapless, and helpless. We need a good dose of Occam in these days.
So, I do apologize for my curmudgeonliness in this holiday period.
Best wishes and warm regards,
Bruce
Fourth email: 12 September 2022 @ 2:02 PM (slightly updated)
Dear emeritus professor, Sir Roger,
I am working within your Cycles of Time (CoT), 3.1 Connecting with infinity. My connection to infinity was through an Oxford don, Austin Farrer who authored Finite and Infinite, Dacre, 1943. Asking, “If the finite is considered to be imperfect, does it follow that the infinite is perfect?” Historically, it seems to be the case. In 1972 I explored three relatively common concepts that I considered to be an order of perfection. I thought these three were necessarily and profoundly interrelated: continuity-symmetry-and-harmony. In 2018 in my studies of spheres, I realized those three concepts are also the faces of pi. More recently, I have concluded that pi straddles the finite-infinite.
In the face of David Hilbert and Kurt Gödel, I agree with you when you say, “The circular boundary itself represents infinity for this geometry, and it is this conformal representation of infinity as a smooth finite boundary…” (CoT, 2011, Knopf USA, page 67).
Yet, I do not ascribe to the big bang theory as conceived by our scholarly community as “…a wildly hot violent event…” (CoT, p. 59), but as the natural doublings of the infinitesimal units symbolically defined by Max Planck. I also consider the 1874 calculations of George Stoney to be a symbolic representation. Using either calculations, there are 202 base-2 notations from these infinitesimal units to the current day and approximate size of the universe. The first second is contained in Notation-143 and the first year in Notation-169. The European Space Agency (ESA), using data from the Planck telescope, claimed that the earliest galaxy formed was “560 million years after the Big Bang” (The Conversation, 2015). That would be in Notation-197.
A pivotal part of this development would be within that first second between Notations-1 and Notations-143. And, the most pivotal part of that development is from Notation-0 to Notation-64, just before our laboratories are able to measure quantum fluctuations. It is thought to be the domain of all those studies not on the grid. It seems that the logic and results of base-2 exponential notation have not been examined at the infinitesimal.
Might you comment? Thank you.
Warm regards,
Bruce
Third email: 4 May 2021
Dear Prof. Dr. Roger Penrose:
You have been on our homepage for the past six weeks: https://81018.com/questions-1/
I will be updating our profile about you here : https://81018.com/2017/04/19/penrose/
The openness of your CCC* is slowly being analyzed, i.e. there are 64 infinitesimal doublings from the first instant (or from the beginning) that require further definition. Our work is inhibited by our naïvetés so it goes very slowly.
May I keep you posted? And, always, your advice would be most welcomed.
Best wishes,
Bruce
*Wikipedia on Conformal Cyclic Cosmology (CCC)
Second email: 6 July 2020
Dear Prof. Dr. Penrose, Sir Roger:
Five years have passed since my first email to you, and 24 years have passed since your 65th birthday compendium. So much has been achieved, yet it seems that our scholarly community continues to go in circles. Please allow me to ask a few what-if questions:
- What if the universe starts at the Planck base units, what might be the first “thing” created?
- What if the first thing created is a sphere defined by those Planck base units?
- What if there is an endless stream of spheres and the first functional activity is sphere stacking?
- What if sphere stacking opens cubic close packing of equal spheres and tetrahedrons and octahedrons are generated? Does Plato follow?
- What if the concept of infinity has been so tainted by philosophies, we miss its most simple definition — continuity creating order, symmetry creating relations, and harmony creating dynamics; and then we add, “Please keep all other definitions to yourself. They are not necessary here.”
- And so we finally ask, “Is there a glimmer of truth to our simple what if questions? If so, doesn’t that change our basic equations a bit?”
Our simple extension of that logic is a chart of just 202 base-2 notations encapsulating everything, everywhere for all time. It’s just numbers, but it has a simple expression that our students grasped. BUT, we stopped using all of this “wild-and-crazy thinking” in our curriculum because we didn’t want to taint the students with something so idiosyncratic! Though it has a special logic, nobody seems to care. Could you tell us why? Thank you.
Most sincerely,
Bruce
*First email: 14 February 2015 Resent: Wed, May 6, 2020 at 3:43 PM
Editor’s Note: URLs have been updated
Dear Prof. Dr. Penrose, Sir Roger:
The Planck Units can be extended using base-2 exponential notation, all within 202+ doublings or clusters, domains, groups, or steps. Planck Temperature, of course, offers its own unique set of challenges.
These following links are all within an educational site related to our classroom work.
- Planck Units: http://81018.com/chart
- History: http://81018.com/home
- Analysis: https://81018.com/2016/06/01/quiet/
I have just begun to analyze the simple logic, simple mathematics, and yes, simple geometries associated with all these numbers.
We have started reading your 65th birthday compendium in your honor (1996), The Geometric Universe: Science, Geometry, and the Work of Roger Penrose; and having recently finished the Cycles of Time, it seems you might have something to say about our simple logic, simple mathematics and simple geometry.
I hope so! Thank you.
Most sincerely,
Bruce
*Addendum: Back in 1979, I communicated with you for a display project at MIT. At that time –no email — it was through an old-fashioned letter dropped in the post. –BEC