Charles Q. Choi, Forest Hills, N.Y.

Science writer: Inside Science,NOVA-NEXT, Spectrum, Scientific American, as well as The New York Times, National Geographic News, Nature, and Science (AAAS), including Hakai, Popular Mechanics, Popular Science, Wired and others

Articles: (linked page last update by Choi, November 1, 2010)
1.  AIP:
____ • What Can the Death of a Neutron Tell Us About Dark Matter? May 2018
____ • A Tabletop Experiment For Quantum Gravity Nov. 2017
____ • New Findings Muddy Understanding Of Dark Matter Sept. 2016
2.  IEEE: Unhackable Quantum Networks Take to Space  Jul. 2017
3. NOVA-NEXT: Gravitational Waves May Permanently Alter Spacetime
4.  Scientific American:
____ •  Is Gravity Quantum? Aug. 2018
____ •  Dark Matter Did Not Dominate Early Galaxies March 2017
Homepage(s): SciWriter
Twitter: @cqchoi

Most recent email: 26 September 2018

Dear Charles –

It’s been six years since my last note to you. Though I was considered rather idiosyncratic back then, I am even more so today!

I’ve been reviewing your writing around dark matter, quantum gravity, and entanglement. To keep track of it all — you have such depth and breadth within your writings —  I created a special page on our site about your work: https://81018.com/2018/09/26/choi/

As a review, our work on applying base-2 to the Planck scale began in December 2011. In 2016 that work within high schools got its own website. Also in 2016, with students now on to college, graduate school, and beyond, they also got their own site — http://81018.com — and it is where I do most of my work today.

Are you familair with Max Planck’s work on basic units (Wikipedia)?  Have you ever stopped to consider Planck’s most simple definition of Planck Time? It is worth contemplating.

I can see how extraordinarily busy you are. And since married, my goodness, you have more than enough to keep you writing. Yet, would you read the homepage today about gravity? In time, it’ll only be accessible through this url: https://81018.com/gravity/

In light of Planck Time and Hawking-Strominger-Perry’s soft hair, would you be interested to hear a different point of view?

Thanks, Charles.

Warmly,

Bruce

Second email: 27 July 2012

Hi Charles:

I was so pleased to talk with you today. Thank you for returning my call. And, forgive me for my slowness to pick up; I am not sure if it is my hearing (substantially challenged) or my brain (slowing down after all these years).

You are as pleasant on the telephone as you appear in those photographs online!

From nanotechnologies to the LHC, I finally stopped and asked, “Who is this author?” Your website is so very gracious and giving. Besides your body of work, thank you for being so open and responsive. Let me forwarn you, my work has been described by John Baez in personal correspondence as being “idiosyncratic.” That is also the story of my life. In 1977 I was working on my PhD at Boston University, focused on the work of John Bell at CERN and the EPR paradox.

I visited with Bell a couple of times, but as I progressed, my ideas and work were indeed increasing idiosyncratic to my colleagues and professors. Though I knew a little quantum physics, my focus was on “perfected states” within space and time. After a brief stint in 1980 in Paris to study two conflicting points of view between physicists Olivier Costa de Beauregard and J.P. Vigier at the Institut Henri Poincare, I put my studies on hold. It was time to got a real job and get back to work. I had started a technology business in 1972 and they called on me to help shepherd the transition from a service bureau to one of the early software developers.

So, I have never been published in any of the scientific journals. In light of email below, it seemed to me that an interesting shortcut would be to put a rough draft up on Wikipedia and get the academics within these disciplines to shape it up. That was naive in more ways than one. First, Wikipedia editors mostly shape syntax and grammar; the initial content must come from peer-reviewed journals. I had assumed there were illusive papers that the web had not yet indexed. I would bring the article on base-2 exponential notation in as close as I could, and the experts could carry it from there. Wrong, wrong, wrong.

Simple logic sometimes flies in the face of established methodologies:
1. Why can we not multiply the Planck length by two? Even if it is a dimensionful number, it has an actual numerical number. A point becomes two points, then four, the eight, sixteen and onward. And, I think once multiplied, it is just a dimension about which many questions should be asked.

2. First, I would ask, “What are the possible structures points take?” We have the studies of tensors and manifolds to re-examine, then cobordism and so much more. I think such an approach can open doors for a new thought experiment and other explorations!

Still in my earliest stages after all these years, it seemed that you have a deep heart for the edges of knowledge and as a result of that, I penned this note (and the first one below) to you.

Warmly,

Bruce

First email: Sat, Jun 16, 2012

Hi Charles:

This is my first time to write to you…

Have you discovered that there seems to be some very basic academic oversights?  I believe that I have discovered two that are related to simple geometries. At first, I thought it was my own unique stupidity… that I didn’t pay attention in that tenth grade geometry class. Then I started asking people who would know.

In fifteen years, I have found only a few pockets of people who intuitively know the answers to very simple questions.

Take the simple three-dimensional structure – the tetrahedron — and ask, “What is most perfectly-and-simply enclosed within a tetrahedron?”  The solution is simple.  Divide each edge in half, connect the points, and look. Most people are surprised to find an octahedron in the middle along with the four tetrahedrons in each corner.

Then the next question, “What is most perfectly-and-simply enclosed within that octahedron?”  My old physics professor at BU, Robert Cohen, did not have a clue.

Of literally hundreds of very fine thinkers, even John Conway (Princeton – surreal numbers, geometry) had to stop and think about it. But even among the 1% who knew the answers, people like Conway were not much interested in exploring its interior structures further.

I think that is a huge academic oversight.

Back in 1979 I created a rather large display project under the dome at MIT.  It focused on first principles within each of the academic disciplines and used Erwin Schrödinger’s book, What is life?, as a starting point. There were 77 living scholars who participated; many later became Nobel laureates.

David Bohm was among the 77. I learned about his death a year after he died in 1992.  To stop and reflect a little about life and death, I took down his little book, Fragmentation and Wholeness, that he given me in a  class on October 17, 1977. I was thinking about a discussion in a class when Bohm had us focus for several hours on points, lines, triangles, and tetrahedrons . Then it hit me, and  I winced and said, “Bohm,  you never asked, ‘What’s inside?'”

I wrote about these experiences here:
https://81018.com/tot/
https://81018.com/mit/

First, I wonder if you know what is most-perfectly-and simply enclosed by the octahedron? Are you aware of all the hexagonal and pentagonal bands?

That’s the start.

In 2011, my nephew asked if I would substitute teach his five high-school geometry classes.  My assignment was to teach his classes about the five platonic solids.  I had never made an icosahedron or dodecahedron; so  in the process of preparing for the class, I made models of both with tetrahedrons.

The Basic Five.  There is none simpler and from these all others evolve.  An icosahedron of 20 tetrahedrons needs to be held in one’s hand.  It’s squishy.  It’s imperfect.  Until Dan Shechtman kicked open that door on fivefold symmetries, there has been amazingly little discussion about it. Then, look throughout nature for the dodecahedral structures based on the pentagon.  You’ll find little.  But take each face and move that icosahedral model of five octahedrons within a loose pentagonal structure.  I could not find that structure on the web. It seems so basic and simple.

Then, of course, I had to look inside of it.   I found odd-shaped tetrahedrons and in the very middle, the icosahedron.

The nesting of these objects is significant, yet again, there is very little research of its meaning.

So, with my first classes, they made models and we all had fun.

My nephew asked if I would substitute on December 19, 2011.  It would be my second time with these kids so I had to think what a natural sequel would be.  I began thinking of Zeno’s paradox and the Russian dolls, nesting geometries and combinatorial geometries, and asked myself, “How many steps back would we have to go to get to the Planck length?”  I assumed thousands of divisions by 2.  There were just 112.  I was flummoxed.  “In how many other classes did you fall asleep?” I asked myself.  Yet, in the Google search, I couldn’t find it.

I then asked, “How many steps to the edge of the observable universe (doubling each measurement successively)?  Just another 90+ steps and we were there.

202.34 steps from the smallest to the largest.

Is that crazy?  Too easy?  Why haven’t we seen it?  I pushed Wikipedia on it and they said, “Nope, it is original research.”  I said, “You’re crazy… from a high school geometry class?”

So, what am I doing wrong?  Why is this not part of our basic-basic education?

Warmly,

Bruce

C: 214.801.8521
T: 504.305.4510
Skype: Bruce.Camber