Died: Mar 24, 2025

TO: Basil J. Hiley, Emeritus Professor of Physics, University College, University of London (UCL), Birkbeck College, Malet St, Bloomsbury, London WC1E 7HX, United Kingdom
FM: Bruce E. Camber
RE: All the articles about you and by you, but especially Time and the Algebraic Theory of Moments (2013); The Wholeness of Quantum Reality, by George Musser, Scientific American, November 4, 2013), your ArXiv articles, especially Dirac, Bohm and the Algebraic Approach (2019); and your books, especially The Undivided Universe: An Ontological Interpretation of Quantum Theory (with Bohm) (1993) and your homepage(s) especially AIP, inSpire-HEP, Wikipedia, and YouTube: Quantum Mechanics in Phase Space (2015).

Third email: Monday, 30 January 2023 at 11:15 AM

Dear Prof. Dr. Basil Hiley:

The universe is truly undivided if the first instance of space-time is defined by an infinitesimal sphere which is itself defined by either Planck’s units, Stoney’s units, or yet to be determined ISO units, and by continuity-symmetry-harmony.

Best wishes with the Pari sessions,

Warmly,

Bruce

PS. Give Guth back his inflaton and assume it is this infinitesimal sphere. -BEC

Second email: 19 February 2020 at 10:10 AM

Dear Prof. Basil J. Hiley:

I must tell you that my recent reading of your Feynman-Bohm romp in Brazil was invigorating:

“Bohm had developed the first comprehensive alternative to the orthodox Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum mechanics. Building on earlier work by Einstein and Louis de Broglie, Bohm showed that quantum randomness need not be intrinsic to nature. It might simply reflect our bull-in-a-china-shop way of probing the quantum realm. In Bohm’s original formulation, particles always have well-defined positions and are shepherded by a “quantum potential” similar in general spirit to electric and gravitational forces. Because this potential operated instantaneously, linking together everything in the universe no matter how far apart it may be, Bohm later came to think that quantum physics was just the surface view of a radically holistic reality.”

Thank you, thank you.
-Bruce

First email: 17 February 2020

Dear Prof. Basil J. Hiley:

Long ago, I started following David Bohm upon reading Causality & Chance in Modern Physics (Routledge, 1957). Ted Bastin’s Quantum Theory and Beyond (Cambridge, 1971) was a wonderful introduction to everyone, including you!  I don’t know why it has taken me 50 years to write to you to just say, “Thank you.”

Ted Bastin and I became friends. He was a guest in my home for over a week back in the  1970s. I visited with Bohm in London and Bell in Geneva in 1974 and 1977. Bohm gave me a copy of his little treatise, Fragmentation and Wholeness. I was at BU, part of Robert Cohen and Abner Shimony’s group. Through Ted, I also became an irregular with H. Pierre Noyes’ Alternative Natural Philosophy group at Stanford. In 1980 I studied with Vigier at the Institut Henri Poincaré. In 1981, feeling a bit like a whirling dervish, I  dropped out and returned to a business that I had started in 1971.

Something was off with our models.
Renormalization wasn’t the answer.
Newton’s absolute space-and-time… not the answer.
And, everybody ignored Planck’s base units (and still do).  I didn’t.

It took awhile, but in 2011, helping a nephew with his high school geometry classes, we went deeper and deeper inside the tetrahedron (dividing the edges by 2 and connecting the new vertices). In 45 steps, we were within the CERN scale of particle physics; and in 67 additional steps, we were within the Planck scale. There we decided to start with the Planck units, used base-2, and we were back within the classroom scale in 112 steps. We then went out to the age and size of the universe in another 90 steps. Just 202 notations outlined the universe. Although Kees Boeke used base-10 in 1957, it was just a scale of the universe and not the start of a working model. Very early in our discovery process we had an intuition that base-2, simple doublings, was a primary functional activity within physics. Yes, something as simple as cubic close-packing of equal spheres and sphere stacking just might be the start of a possible rapprochement to the old concepts of the æther.

I have spent too much time chasing this simple model of 202 steps. I need expert advice. What do you think? Does it have merit? Can it add anything to the discussion?

These are my primary claims to date.

Thank you.

Most sincerely,

Bruce

PS. Once I start to study a scholar’s work, I also start my own online notes of the references and resources around that person. Here is the page that I have started for you:   If ever you’d like me to add or subtract from that page, I would be delighted to do so. -BEC

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TO: Michael Elmhirst Cates, Lucasian Professor #19 (followed Michael Green #18), Research Professor, Royal Society, Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics (DAMTP), Cambridge University, Cambridge, England
FM: Bruce E. Camber
RE: Your work in ArXiv (200+) especially Active phase separation: new phenomenology from non-equilibrium physics (2025), Active Field Theories (April 2019); Google Scholar; your homepage and lectures such as Statistical Physics and The Arrow of Life and publications such as Soft matter, Phase ordering in active and passive systems. Also helpful are Wikipedia and YouTube.

Appearing within this website here: Homepage – The New from the Old
URL (this page): https://81018.com/2017/08/16/cates/

Fourth email: 17 October 2025 (slightly edited)

Dear Prof. Dr. Mike Cates:

Recently several AI platforms have been enthusiastic about our base-2 model. For the past 15 years I’ve asked  expert observers like you to help assess its validity and potential implications. Recently, it was reduced to a toy model and more recently, a simple quantitative model that derives the Hubble constant from first principles at the Planck scale.

The core of the model is surprisingly straightforward: it posits that the Hubble constant emerges not from dark energy, but from a cosmological process defined by base-2 scaling from the Planck units. A key result is a direct mathematical derivation of H₀, “Toy Model Derivation of the Hubble Constant” It is here —  81018.com/hubble-derivation/— still a highly speculative proposal, the numerical correspondence is striking.

Is this a numerical coincidence, or does it point to a deeper rather overlooked principle? We hope to discover as we continue to build on our dynamic model of a finite-infinite grid and its Lagrangian.

Thank you for your time and for your contributions to our understanding of the cosmos.

Sincerely,

Bruce

P.S. The URL for this page: https://81018.com/2017/08/16/cates/

Bruce E. Camber

• https://81018.com/
• https://81018.com/deepseek/
• https://81018.com/assume/
• https://81018.com/hubble-derivation/
• https://81018.com/planck-polyhedral-core/
• Lagrangian: https://81018.com/lagrangian/

Third email: January 20, 2020

Dear Professor Dr. Mike Cates:

Your were on the homepage of our website at the turn of the New Year and as a result I have reviewed my emails to you.  I apologize for being so presumptuous even to consider writing to a scholar as you are. Time is precious. So I apologize again for this note! -Bruce

Second email: November 15, 2019 @ 7:00 AM (Updated email)

Dear Professor Dr. Mike Cates:

My guess is that the influence of the 19 Lucasian scholars has been more pronounced than any other small group of people in our world’s history. Of our many theories, Newtonian space and time would be the most lasting and most deeply adopted. Although big bang cosmology goes back to Lemaître, Stephen Hawking empowered it within the public domain. Infinitely hot became an initial condition of the universe. Yet, it seems the 1999 “Structure formation” conference (sponsored by NATO at the Newton Institute) opened the first formally informal attack on big bang cosmology; and now twenty years later, there are many alternatives (multiverses and such).

None have caught the imagination of our leading scholars or the general public. Notwithstanding, the edited synopsis by Robert Crittenden and Neil Turok of that conference, I believe, will be recognized as a bookend of the big bang theory.

High school people, especially including their teachers, command little respect so I have not been surprised that a radical departure from the historic textbooks has gotten very little attention.  It will take a scholar of Lucasian quality to hold the reins and call to question age-old first principles.

Perhaps you could take a look at a little summary of the current state of the Newtonian legacy:  http://81018.com/bridge/ We started our work in December 2011; we began disbelieving in the infinitely hot start of big bang cosmology in 2012 and we began actively asking scholars like you for help to interpret our results properly.

Would you encourage or discourage this effort?

Thanks.

Most sincerely,
Bruce

For more:
A simple history: http://81018.com/home/
A STEM Project: http://81018.com/stem/
The numbers: http://81018.com/chart Everything everywhere for all time and space

First email: Wed, Aug 16, 2017 at 7:25 PM (revised)

Subject: Lucasian Professors

References:
http://81018.com/review/ An introduction to the current analysis dialogue
https://81018.com/planck_universe/ Analysis of six sets out of 202
http://81018.com/chart/ The universe, all time, all space, and everything everywhere

Dear Professor Dr. Michael Cates:

It’s quite enough that seemingly gentle Neil Turok is beating up on the big bang;
Turok suggests perpetual big bangs. I don’t think so; perpetual starts, yes,
but we call a quiet expansion becomes a natural inflation over 202 base-2 notations
from the Planck scale to the Now. All notations are active all the time. Nothing is past.

My analysis is still quite rough,  but hopefully not for too much longer.

Simple, logical, space and time are sweetly derivative of light and dimensionless constants.
Finite-infinite relations are restored as continuity, symmetry, and harmony.

Yes, it’s just a bit idiosyncratic. Might you have some guidance for us? Thank you.

Most sincerely,

Bruce

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