James Overduin, Towson University, 8000 York Road, Towson, MD 21252
Articles: What If There Were No Gravity? – Scientific American
ArXiv: Waves and causality in higher dimensions with Paul S. Wesson, 2015
——→ Scaling Relations for the Cosmological “Constant” in Five-Dimensional Relativity, 2014.
——→ Finite cosmology and a CMB cold spot, 2006
Book(s): Principles of Space-Time-Matter: Cosmology, Particles and Waves in Five Dimensions with Paul Wesson, World Scientific, 2018 M12 13 – 276 pages
Homepages (Towson): Google Scholar, inSPIREHEP, YouTube: Why do we need a single theory of physics?
First email: 18 September 2020
Dear Prof. Dr. James Overduin:
Your significant work with Paul S. Wesson has come to my attention. I must say, “Congratulations.” You did so much work together I had to create a reference page just to keep things straight: https://81018.com/2020/09/17/overduin/
Now I am hoping that you can help interpret your colleague’s quote within a Wikipedia article about the Planck units. It says, “Paul S. Wesson wrote that, “Mathematically it is an acceptable trick which saves labour. Physically it represents a loss of information and can lead to confusion.”[3]” Though I am not a scholar, I do ask questions about the presuppositions that we all bring to bear on any conceptual frame of reference. I have asked four in relation to the Wesson quote:
1) What is the assumed understanding of the nature of time? …of space?
2) What, if anything, is assumed about the finite-infinite relation?
3) How is light defined?
4) How are quantum fluctuations defined?
Of course, these questions are never easy to answer and finding even a semblance of an answer is often difficult.
With all your work, I am confident there is clarity within all four areas and that information will help me to understand Paul Wesson’s comments about the proper handling of the Planck units.
This particular track of my work began back in 2011 in our high school geometry classes where we were examining how tetrahedrons and octahedrons can readily tile and tessellate going within smaller-and-smaller and going out larger-and-larger. We got carried away using base-2 notation. We also got carried away with Euler and Zeno and Planck… and, yes, also with pi, spheres, sphere stacking and cubic close packing of equal spheres.
We mapped the universe! Now it is time to reel it in and get real.
I need another week or so with all your writings so I can frame my questions most carefully in light of your joint work with Paul Wesson. Would you object to another email sometime soon? Thank you.
Most sincerely,
Bruce
PS. I’m working to tighten up (at least a little) this article: http://81018.com/continuity/ –BEC