Raphael Bousso
University of California at Berkeley
66 LeConte Hall MC 730
Berkeley, CA, 94720-7300

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“Everything would just come out of math and pi and twos. And we came in and said, ‘Look, it’s not going to happen, and there’s a reason it’s not going to happen. We’re thinking about this in totally the wrong way.’” – Is Nature Unnatural? by Natalie Wolchover, Quanta Magazine, May 24, 2013  (also published in Scientific American, June 2013)

ArXiv: Joseph Polchinski: A Biographical Memoir
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FQXi   1999-INI   https://81018.com/1999-ini/

First email: 25 March 2020 @5:43 PM

Dear Prof. Dr. Raphael Bousso:

What a fine read, your tribute to Joe Polchinski. Thank you.

Might you be able to reconstruct a comment you made to Natalie Wolchover when you said, “…everything would just come out of math and pi and twos. And we came in and said, ‘Look, it’s not going to happen, and there’s a reason it’s not going to happen. We’re thinking about this in totally the wrong way.’ “ It prompted these questions:

• Do you know anybody who has thought about starting the universe from Planck Time and his base units? If not, you are meeting one such knucklehead with this note.
• Has anybody thought to apply base-2 exponential notation?
• Has anybody thought that the first manifestation of Planck units could be a sphere?
• Has anybody thought about sphere stacking beyond the density math questions?

Now you know why I was taken back with your quote. Could it possibly be that simple?

You may find our current homepage to be a short summary of our idiosyncratic work: https://81018.com/uni-verse

Thanks.

Most sincerely,

Bruce

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