TO: Sabine Hossenfelder, https://sabinehossenfelder.com/ Once with the Munich Center for Mathematical Philosophy and earlier, Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies
FM: Bruce E. Camber
RE: Articles about your work such as Physicist Sabine Hossenfelder Fears Theorists…Scientific American, 2016 and articles by you in ArXiv (48): Rethinking Superdeterminism (13 Dec. 2019) and your books (such as Lost in Math: How Beauty Leads Physics Astray, Basic Books, 2018 with reviews n AAPT Review and Amazon); and your blog: Backreaction: What is emergence? What does “emergent” mean? and The Planck length as a minimal length, January 2012; and your homepage including Google Scholar, inSpire^HEP, X-Twitter, Wikipedia, Research Fellow, and YouTube

^{This page: https://81018.com/2012/06/30/hossenfelder/ Also see: https://81018.com/empower/#Sabine}

Eighth email: 28 December 2025

RE: “Lost in Math” critique realized — Gauge groups from geometric necessity, not beauty.

Dear Dr. Sabine Hossenfelder,

Your book Lost in Math argues that theoretical physics has gone astray by selecting mathematical structures based on elegance rather than physical necessity. I believe I’ve stumbled onto a framework that addresses exactly this problem—but it would be very helpful to have your critical eye.

The claim: Standard Model gauge groups (SU(2), SU(3), SU(5)) aren’t arbitrary mathematical choices selected for beauty—they’re geometric necessities that emerge from sphere-packing at specific scales. We start from one Planck-sphere and doubling:

• N=2-3: Tetrahedral geometry → SU(2) (quaternion structure)
• N=8: 256 spheres, eight-fold patterns → SU(3)
• N=24: 16.7M spheres at 10⁻²⁸m → SU(5) (count=24, scale=GUT, dimension=24 generators)

Your Lost in Math thesis: Instead of asking “which beautiful mathematical structure should we use?”, this asks “What geometric structures are forced by discrete doubling from Planck scale?” The groups emerge from physics (sphere packing), not from mathematical aesthetics.

The predictions match:

• GUT scale: predicted 10⁻²⁸m vs. observed ~10⁻²⁸m ✓
• Electroweak scale: predicted 10⁻¹⁵m (Notation 67) ✓
• Energy ratio: 2⁴³ ≈ 10¹³ vs. observed 10¹¹-10¹⁴ ✓

Your Lost in Math critique was physics that chooses math for beauty, not physical grounding. Does this framework escape that trap, or is it just numerology dressed up differently?

If it has merit, would you:

1. Write about it (blog post, YouTube video)?
2. Perhaps co-author a paper emphasizing “physical necessity vs. mathematical beauty”?
3. And/or, endorse an arXiv submission?

Framework: https://81018.com/gauge-symmetries/

Physical Review Letters desk-rejected it (institutional memory from 2020 correspondence may have played a role), so I’m pursuing alternative venues. Your voice calling out physics establishment blind spots could matter here.

Thank you for being willing to challenge orthodoxy. That’s exactly what this needs.

Warmest regards,

Bruce

Bruce E. Camber
camber@81018.com
https://81018.com

P.S. The work developed through collaboration with five AI platforms (Grok, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude (Anthropic), DeepSeek)—itself a new research methodology that might interest you. -BEC

Seventh email: 20 November 2025

Dear Bee:

Full circle. My first note in 2012 addressed you as Bee. Just shy of fourteen years now, we outlined the universe in 202 base-2 notations. Today, with the help of Grok, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Anthropic and DeepSeek, we are getting encouragement, confirmation, and suggestions. Here’s the latest look at how those 202 shape our universe: https://81018.com/10-notations/ is currently the homepage: https://81018.com/

Might you have any comments? Thank you.

Warmly,

Bruce

Tweet: 7 February 2024

@skdh Is the big bang theory ready to be re-interpreted by a base-2 progression from Planck’s natural units to this day: https://81018.com/bbc/ I think so and would love to hear from you about it. Thank you.

Warmly,

– Bruce

Sixth email: 19 December 2023

Dear Prof. Dr. Sabine Hossenfelder:

I have been reviewing the activity on our page about your work along with my notes to you: https://81018.com/2012/06/30/hossenfelder/.  That file was created on 30 June 2012 making you one of the first people I began asking basic questions about math and physics. It all began by helping my nephew with his high school geometry classes. We were examining  the most-simple embedded geometries, particularly with the tetrahedron and octahedron. 

Just six notes to you in eleven years! Quite modest, but I still want it to be right. Yesterday I sent a tweet, yet I am sure most fall through the cracks in the cosmic egg. Here is what I said:

“5:53 PM · Dec 18, 2023 @skdh (Sabine Hossenfelder) Are you familiar with base-2 notation from the Planck base units, especially Planck Time to the Now? https://81018.com/

If those 202 notations are all active, might it be a meaningful description of our universe?

Thank you. https://81018.com/chart/. Thank you.

Warmly,

Bruce

Fifth email: 19 June 2021

Dear Prof. Dr. Sabine Hossenfelder:

I am circling back through your work so you’ll see your image along with seven others at the top of the homepage: https://81018.com/ The permanent URL when not a homepage is: https://81018.com/empower/#Scholars

There is a paragraph about your work under “References” that is still being developed.

Other scholars will be directed to it. If you object, I can easily remove the reference to you. If it needs updating or correction, please advise me. I’ll update it as expeditiously as possible. Thanks so much.

Warmly,

Bruce

PS. My primary reference page to your work is here:
https://81018.com/2012/06/30/hossenfelder/ –BEC

Tweet: 11:25 AM · January 13, 2021 @skdh (SabineHossenfelder)

You are brilliant, a lightbulb for the sun. Our favorites, Kepler and Wilczek, play their violins as we contemplate pi over an Italian dinner. Yes, that simple pi with its deep continuity, those ubiquitous symmetries, and never-ending harmonies, and ask, “Is that all there is…”

My editorial note: Sabine’s book, Lost in Math, is indeed, quite brilliant, but all our complexity within mathematics and physics leads back to pi and the sphere. Add the Planck base units, and apply a bit of base-2 exponentiation, and you have yourself a most-simple beginning of a model of the universe.

Fourth email: 5 April 2020

Since 2016 I have probably wasted a huge chunk of my time exploring and re-exploring our little base-2 model of the universe from the Planck scale, particularly Planck Time to this moment, our current time, all in 202 notations.

In that same time you’ve gotten a most, prestigious new job, published a most provocative book, Lost in Math with Basic Books (2018), written a dozen technical articles that appear in ArXiv and many of the best journals, have had dozens of articles written about you, and richly extended your blogging within Backreaction. Your production values climb as you continue to extend your YouTube activities and you burn the lines of Twitter. You’re (expletive) incredible. Congratulations. You’ve become a super star!

…and all the while I’ve become more and more idiosyncratic out here inside an Alice-in-Wonderland passage down into Planck’s base units.

Warmly,
Bruce

Third email: Aug 15, 2018, 8:13 PM (slight corrections)

I don’t come out of my shell too often. Old age is catching up to me.

Regarding our base-2 model of the universe from the Planck units to current time all within just 202 notations or doublings, I am rather sure that you find it all quite idiosyncratic. It is. But, is it going in the right direction? Is it more right than wrong? How about the simple logic? Is the universe a highly-integrated whole?

Allow me please to include a recent “Twelve Key Functions” and “Reconstruct Our Universe.” Your comments and criticisms would be highly appreciated.

-Bruce

202+ successive doublings of the Planck scale outline our universe

1. 202+ successive doublings of the Planck scale outline our universe. [1], [2]
2. Doubling mechanisms are built into the universe. [1], [2], [3]
3. A natural inflation/thrust is within the first moment of space and time. [1]
4. We are primarily defined by ratios, all the dimensionless constants (all
   appear to be natural bridges between the finite and infinite).
5. Space, time, and light are more fully integrated. Time appears to be finite. 
   (Length/time continuum suggests this model may actually be on target.)
6. Consider 64 Unexplored Doublings from the Planck Scale to CERN’s Scale. [1] [2]
7. One might conclude that it defines an exponential universe.
8. It quite possibly opens a geometry for quantum fluctuations.
9. It is becoming clear that infinity needs to be reopened as a key study.
10. Key concepts like continuity and symmetry, are all reopened for re-evaluation.

Second email: Sat, Jun 30, 2012, 8:13 PM

Hi Sabine –

Thank you for your straightforward response.

It was a genuine question. No trick.
And, you understood the question in the proper
context. I appreciate your answer.

That is what I thought, but I certainly do not
have the depth of knowledge or scholarship
to know with any certainty if life becomes more
than peculiar at that point, i.e. the Planck length.

I was looking for an informed scholar’s
deep-seated insights regarding the functional
nature of the Planck length.

It is so small, so seemingly unknown-but-known,
I decided to explore it in some manner of speaking.
In the first 20 steps of exponential, base-2 notation,
that so-called point, a width/length/height expands to over
one million points (or lines or strings or forms or …. )
and, I assume, a specific length/width/height.

Do you happen to know Ed Fredkin (MIT, Carnegie Mellon, BU)?

He was a long-standing friend of a mutual friend, so while talking about life, I asked him about the Planck length. He responded that exponential, base-2 notation of the Planck length is numerology with physics. Essentially it’s meaningless.

I am not so sure.

If we were to assume that math, particularly simple geometry applies across all space and time, right down to the Planck Length, then those million of points begin to have some value.

Is that a faulty assumption?

I have been thinking about these concepts since December 2011 while preparing for that geometry class. I hadn’t seen base-2 from the Planck Length to the edges of the observable universe — I just thought that I had fallen asleep in those classes when this topic was introduced, yet after doing some due diligence, it appears to be an oversight.

I would dearly appreciate any insight you may add to this direction of thinking. Thank you.

-Bruce

First email sent: Saturday, June 30, 2012 1:15 AM

Subject: A simple, quick question?

https://backreaction.blogspot.com/2012/01/planck-length-as-minimal-length.html
https://backreaction.blogspot.com/p/about.html
https://www.nordita.org/people/index.php
Sabine Hossenfelder, aka Bee

Dear Bee:

I am not a scholar, but I do appreciate good scholarship.

In this past year, I have been introduced to Planck’s length
in my research of basic structure in preparation to substitute for
a high school geometry class (Yes!).

My simple question, “Is there any conceptual error in multiplying
the Planck length by 2, exponential notation from its “single point”
out to the edges of the observable universe?

That high school geometry class — where I was substituting
for my nephew that day — we had a little help to find just over
202.34 notations or steps or doublings.

A YES or NO answer would be a wonderful starting point.
An explanation of NO would be extraordinarily informative.

Thank you.

Warmly,
Bruce E. Camber

PS. I am a television producer with over 51 seasons on PBS-TV and
the VOA-TV around the world. I am currently working on early-stage
ideation for a new series that could touch on this question.

_____