CENTER FOR PERFECTION STUDIES: CONTINUITY•SYMMETRY•HARMONY. GOALS.April 16-17,.2021
PAGES:.ALTERNATIVE.|.DARK.|.CHINESE |.MISTAKES.|.PHILOSOPHY.|. PI (π).|.RELATIONS.|.TIME |.UP
PRIOR POST:.ASSUMPTIONS.|.ENDNOTES.| FOOTNOTES.|.REFERENCES |. EMAILS.| TWEETS | Zzzzs
![]() Kepler c.1611 | ![]() Leibniz c. 1716 | ![]() Euler c. 1740 | ![]() Planck c. 1899 | ![]() Penrose c. 2010 | ![]() Loll c. 2020 | ![]() Alexander c. 2021 | ![]() Ralston c. 2021 | ![]() Connes c. 2021 |
We Stand On The Shoulders Of The Many*
by Bruce E. Camber A Working Draft
Questions about the Planck Scale. Max Planck devised his base units in 1899 and 1900. Though mostly ignored for about 100 years, these numbers have stimulated work by many to determine what is fundamental within cosmology, mathematics, and physics. To find answers that our high school students might understand, there are just eight questions (survey.below) being asked of scholars who are associated with the three disciplines.[1]
Perhaps such naive questions can lead to new insights.
With each question in that survey is an area for comments and it is from those comments that direct quotes will be added to this article and future articles. If you have answers, please do not hesitate to participate. We need as many responses as possible. Simply copy and paste just the questions into a text message and send those answers and comments. Also, we’re glad to include your favorite scholar! Send that name along in any one of the comment fields.
Overly-confident yet insecure. We have been dancing with particles and waves for a very long time. Aspects of that dilemma have roots back to 1905 and our friend, Max Planck. We still haven’t broken through the impasse created by Einstein and Max. Our 100+ years without a solution amounts to an anxiety crisis, confident-insecurity. Nobody knows what is fundamental yet every person has their own fundamentals and clings to them. Nobody really knows about Planck scale physics, yet we are all so quick to judge any new concept about the Planck scale that does not seem to work with our own particular fundamentals.
Our proposal is to start at the bottom with a clean slate or tabula rasa and work up.
Spheres. In my experience, when pressed, scholars tell me that the most simple object is a sphere. If we are to start with spheres, we need to find the experts of pure spheres. With no expectations and no preconceptions, we need guidance to probe the depths of the sphere. Of course, pi and other key dimensionless constants will be part of that probe. There are many such constants. The Standard Model of particle physics has no less than nineteen dimensionless constants about which her insiders seem to agree, “These are fundamental.” We will study their logic to see when each of the nineteen could engage a sphere within our 202 base-2 notations, especially between notations 1-64. Identifying a path through the earliest notations, I believe, is a key. We will assume that every prime-number up to the 199th notation opens a different kind of building block.
James Peebles, Nobel Laureate 2019. “It’s very unfortunate that one thinks of the beginning… in fact, we have no good theory of such a thing as the beginning.” With this inquiry, we continue our efforts to discern the very nature of a good theory. Does sphere stacking and cubic close packing begin to happen within a space-and-time that is magnitudes smaller than particles and waves? Do we start with Kepler? Should we embrace Leibniz over Newton? Do we grasp the nature of numbers, doublings and Euler’s identity? Are the Planck base units at least a good metaphor for basic fundamentals? Who grasps such beginnings today? [2]
Steven Weinberg began his study at 1/100 of a second to consider just the first three minutes. In June 29, 2020 twenty-seven scholars from around the world released a rather provocative article, “The.First Three Seconds.” They were hamstrung by big bang cosmology but provide an excellent overview and references for the current challenge. The most promising work will come out of work where the big bang and our current concepts of space and time are suspended and raw ideation is allowed to postulate radically new concepts.
People like Penrose, Loll, Alexander, Ralston and Connes are all working on different approaches to that same set of problems.
Max Planck. Given the fact that the Planck’s base units have gained some recognition and acceptance within the scholarly community, we will also need experts like Frank Wilczek and Jürgen Jost to defend Max Planck’s work. A group led by physics professor John Ralston of the University of Kansas, questions the efficacy of the Planck constant and thus Planck’s base units. It begs the questions, “How do we discern units of length and time that can not longer be divided?”
Once we have those units, we should have the starting point that James Peebles seeks and it will be a new beginning.
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1. Might there be fundamental units of length and time, as well as mass and charge (similar to, but more accurate than the Planck base units), that are among the parameters that define the first moment or instant of the universe? | Ref. 1. . . . Ref. 2 • 2021a • 2021b • 2019
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A Note from Bruce Camber about our first group of questions. To get responses will not be easy. As simple as this survey is, many scholars are quick to judge and quick to be dismissive… “Why waste time with silly concepts? Why waste time with something that’s going nowhere?” So if you have time, please copy the questions into an email and fire them off to me. My first group of scholars, the nine pictured at the top of this page, are the one’s whose work has captured my short-term attention. As this document matures, the nine will be slowly replaced with those recommended by those who have completed the survey and/or recommended other scholar’s work. My original nine will be continue to be highlighted on the bottom of this page.
To copy those questions start with the word, “Comment:” within the eighth question and copy upwards to the first question, “1. Might there be fundamental units…”. I have discovered that bottom-up is easier to control than top down. Thanks. -Bruce
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Endnotes & Footnotes (In process the week of April 12, 2021.)
*The Shoulders of Many. The nine pictured at the top of this page just happen to be part of this week’s research. Within a couple of weeks (April 26, 2021) there will be nine others pictured and the current nine will be saved at the bottom of this page. My guess is that there are over 100,000 scholars around the world who could readily be pictured here. We have only touched base with a few of them. –Bruce
[1] Scholar’s scholars: Of the 100,000 or so scholars who are engaged with the foundations of cosmology, mathematics and physics, my hope is that there are at least 1% who would be open to start with the most fundamental units of space-and-time. Most of these scholars are now familiar with Planck’s base units and his constant. I would guess that most are not familiar with the work of John Ralston to challenge the efficacy of Planck’s calculations. He makes a strong case.
Notwithstanding, a more accurate calculation of of Planck’s constant and then a recalculation of base units would be welcomed. My guess is that it will still yield numbers for space and time that are orders of magnitude smaller than the space-and-time approximated for atomic structures, especially the particles-and-waves defined by the Standard Model for particle physics.
[2] Grasping fundamentals. I was happy to discover James Peebles’ comment where he says, “…we have no good theory of such a thing as the beginning.” Too many of our young scholars seem to think that big bang cosmology is such a construction. Many get quite upset if you suggest it is only a theory. One newly-minted Ph.D. was caustically dismissive when I made such a statement. Grasping fundamentals can be an emotional, even gut-wrenching endeavor. Quite a bit like those involved in the “God-debates.” We set aside all comments and analysis of the emotional ones and simply lift up continuity, symmetry, and harmony, three functions within pi and the sphere, and simply ascribe universality and infinity to them and go no further. One’s historic (family) relations determine how such fundamental are personally interpreted. That one’s personal business, not ours.
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References & Resources (in process)
Mathematicians:
Augustin Banyaga:
Jürgen Jost:
Jacob Lurie: See 15 ArXiv articles on combinatorics, sheaves, Grothendieck, Lie algebras and homotopy theory
Natalie Paquette:
Neil Sloane:
Karen Uhlenbeck:
Progress report: Pages for Johannes Kepler and Alain Connes and nine images on the top of this page have been addressed. The page, Assumptions & Presuppositions, has been updated. Thanks for the help. -BEC
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Communications: Emails about the survey (and more)
April 2: Michael Duff, John Ralston
March 27, 2021: Ari Letho, Martin Rees, Dean Rickles, Steven Strogatz
April 12: Alexander, Connes, Banyaga, Jost
April 14: IAS – Jacob Lurie, Karen Uhlenbeck, Natalie Paquette
April 16: Loll, Penrose (by the end of the day)
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Communications: Instant Messages
Neil deGrasse Tyson: @neiltyson Can you believe it? As of today, 2,430 retweets on that cat crunches story. How about on a new model of the universe starting with pi? https://81018.com Key questions are here: https://81018.com/questions-1/ There are 64 notations (of 202 total) heretofore never considered!
Editor’s note: I hear you. Though some of you think he’s a bit of a P.T. Barnum — it’s just his personality; he’s excited about life — and you can be sure, he works very hard and his science is in the pocket of the generally-accepted concepts within the science of our time, April 2021. Our hope is to influence-the-influencers like Tyson to look at the universe from the first moment until this day and apply mathematical formulas like Kees Boeke’s base-10 (1957). We are doing a base-2 chart and believe it teaches us much more than base-10. -BEC
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Key Dates for this document, Questions-1
- This document was started on March 27, 2021.
- First posted for collaborations: March 31, 2021
- First posted as a homepage: April 12, 2021
- The URL: https://81018.com/questions-1/
- The Prior Homepage: https://81018.com/instance/
- Headline: Standing on the Shoulders of The Many
- First Tagline: Basic questions about the beginning
- The most recent update of this page: April 14, 2021
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