TO: George Musser, Contributing editor, Scientific American, Glen Ridge, NJ 2014-2015 Knight Science Journalism, MIT
FM: Bruce E. Camber
RE: Your articles in Nature, What Is Spacetime? (May 2018); and your article in Quanta Magazine, The Most Famous Paradox in Physics Nears Its End (IAS), (October 29, 2020); and your many articles within Aeon; your books especially The Complete Idiot’s Guide to String Theory (July 2008), Spooky Action at a Distance, Farrar, Straus & Groux (2015); Spacetime Is Doomed, a chapter withinSpace, Time and the Limits of Human Understanding (Springer, 2017) edited by Shyam Wuppuluri and Giancarlo Ghirardi, foreword by John Stachel, and afterword by Noam Chomsky; your
homepageswithin Big Think, C-Span, Facebook, General Assembly, LinkedIn, Mastodon, Twitter: @gmusser, and Wikipedia
This page: https://81018.com/2020/01/26/musser/ Within this website: George Musser
Fifth communication: September 20, 2023, 2:18 PM
Dear George,
It’s coming up on three years since my last note of thanks to you! I have a log of my communications so I do not arbitrarily send too many notes. In my review and update of that page, I was reminded again of your most impressive work. https://81018.com/2020/01/26/musser/
The Scientific American special on the JWST is a bold, provocative piece, but these times call for bold thinking. Any sequel you all do will be most important for the general population, but especially for the scientific community. You might enjoy reading our recent homepage about it: https://81018.com/jwst/
My recent notes: https://81018.com/scientific-american/
Our sequel homepage continued our exploration: https://81018.com/third-way/
The current homepage does as well: https://81018.com/8-minutes/
I wish you well following up that JWST special. It is a major undertaking. Will we finally reinvent space, time and infinity as Tegmark, Arkani-Hamed, and Turok would like us to do? Are we ready for it as a culture?
I hope you all continue to be bold and lead the way!
Warmly,
Bruce
See: https://81018.com/redefinition/
https://81018.com/tegmark/
https://81018.com/arkani/
https://81018.com/turok/
Fourth communication: January 28, 2020, 7:37 PM
Dear George:
A couple of years ago we exchanged notes. Communicating our work has never been easy. Very early, back in 2012, John Baez told me that our model is idiosyncratic, but at that time we did not know how out of the mainstream it was. Yet, I continued to work to identify its weaknesses and strengths. Have you ever looked at the chart of raw numbers? http://81018.com/chart/
Though you† and Arkani-Hamed say “Spacetime is doomed,” it may be better to understand both in radically new ways.
Our work unwittingly continues the work of David Bohm, one of my mentors from the 1970s.
The current homepage for the site is http://81018.com
I am still asking the questions: Is it meaningful? Is it worth pursuing?
Thanks.
Warmly,
Bruce
† Musser G. (2017) Spacetime Is Doomed. In: Space, Time and the Limits of Human Understanding (Springer, 2017) edited by Shyam Wuppuluri and Giancarlo Ghirardi Foreword by John Stachel, and afterword by Noam Chomsky Particularly see the references.
Third email: Dec 12, 2018, 8:11 PM
Hi George –
I am still at it. You may remember an earlier email where, in a high school geometry class, we created a model of the universe by doubling the Planck base units, then doubling the results over and over again, until in 202 doublings (base-2 notation), we are at the size and age of the universe. The chart is here: http://81018.com/chart/
The current homepage for the site is http://81018.com
I am still asking the questions: Is it meaningful? Is it worth pursing?
Your insights would be helpful. Thank you.
Warm regards,
Bruce
PS. I have aggregated some links to your work. Is there anything you would add or delete? Thanks. -BEC
Second communication: Feb 20, 2018, 5:24 PM
Thank you, George, for being on top of this note to you.
Of course, our work started out as a simple ordering tool. We could set everything within a length that was a multiple of the Planck Length. We were very surprised that it only took 202 doublings to get to the approximate size of the universe.
Reference: http//81018.com/home/
We thought it was most peculiar that there were no references to this simple mathematical progression on the web. Of course, we did find Kees Boeke’s base-10. One of my old professor friends was Phil Morrison who with his wife Phylis created the book, Powers of Ten (1985) based on Boeke’s work.
References: https://81018.com/big-board/
https://81018.com/why-now/
When we added the other Planck base units of time, mass and charge, and observed the logic of that natural inflation without a big bang, we wondered, “What is this simple math doing?”
Reference: https://81018.com/chart/
When it came to us that this was e, Euler’s equation, and it defined an exponential universe, we thought we had something quite special. But, nobody else did. https://81018.com/exponential-universe/
We began to wonder about our commonsense and logic. Then, the more we thought about our simple model, it appeared that every notation was necessarily an active part of the current definition of the universe and that time was some kind of an illusion or was always entirely local so we went back to the other Lucasian professor, Sir Isaac, and delved into his debate with Leibniz.
Reference: https://81018.com/pursuit/#2
Now, this is getting very weighty and most of the kids went off to play football. Some of them hung in and are as curious as I am: What’s wrong with our simple model besides “everything”? Where does the logic break down or does it? Is it possible that the universe is an exponential notation machine?
Reference: https://81018.com/finite-to-infinite/
Personally, I think we fell into something much larger than we are. So, advice? We are all ears! Thanks.
Warmly,
-Bruce
First communication: 20 Feb 2018, @ 4:40pm
RE: Models of the universe
Dear George:
Our work originates from a high school geometry class where we followed the tetrahedron-octahedron, going within, by dividing the edges in half, deeper and deeper, 112 steps to the Planck scale. We then went out just 90 more steps by multiplying by 2, to get in the range of the Observable Universe. We thought it was a good STEM tool. On further consideration the first 67 notations to the CERN-scale began to intrigue us. Then, we added Planck Time to our Planck Length chart, then we added Planck Charge and Planck Mass. We began to think that we lived in an exponential universe and thought Euler would be pleased. Certainly the Hawking-Guth team would not be. Within the chart, there is a natural inflation that does not defy all logic. Then we began looking for alternatives to absolute space and time…
Will it ever stop? Please somebody, help us! We are drowning in issues that are way-way over our heads. But, our simple model? What do we do with it? Why is it wrong?
I am confident you can get us back on the straight and narrow! Maybe you can become an advisor!?!
Our primary websites and webpages are many:
High school work: http://81018.com/stem/
On-going research: http://81018.com
Horizontal-chart: http://81018.com/chart/
Our brief history in time: http://81018.com/home/
We’ve been called idiosyncratic; we know that, but where are we going wrong?
Thanks.
Bruce