TO: Christian Wüthrich, University of Geneva, Switzerland (Map)
FM: Bruce E. Camber
RE: ArXiv (27): Out of Nowhere: The emergence of spacetime (Jan 2021); Homepage: Academia, Beyond spacetime, Google Scholar, inSPIREHEP,
Publications, Talks, YouTube
References to your work on this website:
1. A footnote about Causal Set Theory (CST)
2. Within an overview of Nick Huggett’s work
3. Footnotes within “The Universe As Extended Planck Base Units”
4. Reference within “What is space? What is time?”
5. Within the listings of Scholars and Leaders
Third email: 31 January 2024 (updated)
Dear Prof. Dr. Christian Wüthrich:
Three years have passed?!? Where did it go? As a result of our emails, I continued my informal analysis of causal set theory — https://81018.com/cst/ — by identifying the key players, then by opening their most recent work.
The web and now AI have made the research profoundly easier. You may remember that my work started in a high school geometry class where we chased Zeno down inside a tetrahedron and its octahedron, going smaller and smaller each time. Within 45 steps we were down in the particle zoo and in 67 more steps we were inside the natural units of Max Planck. Logic told us to use Max’s numbers to get back home and in 112 steps we were back in the classroom. In another 90 steps we had a working model. 202 steps from Planck Time to the current time. 202 steps from Planck Length to the edges of the universe. It has an inherent geometry, mathematics, and more, but does it mean anything? Of course it does, but what?
Brown University professor Phil Davis and I had been arguing about the fundamentality of the tetrahedron and sphere. Back in 1979 I had been arguing with David Bohm, Abner Shimony, John Bell, Olivier Costa de Beauregard, Jean-Pierre Vigier, Alain Aspect, and many others. All professors and friends who befriended a graduate student, all in search of the deep answers to gnarly questions.
Might an infinitesimal sphere defined by the Planck base units be the first thing defined within space-time? Is it the missing building block?
I am recommending the work of your CST group to the Lawrence-Livermore National Lab, particularly the National Ignition Facility. There are at least 64 key notations that they need to know more and I think you all can help define some of those 64 steps. By the 64th notation we gone up from PlanckTime to the yoctosecond (a trillionth of a trillionth of a second). Densities are still extreme. Geometries are different; some may say, perfect.
https://81018.com/star-formation/ is my current homepage and the URL for that discussion. It is all very different. Is it possible?
Thank you.
Warmly,
Bruce
Second email: October 31, 2021
Dear Prof. Dr. Christian Wüthrich:
I have been visualizing causal sets as infinitesimal spheres, a result of those never-ending dimensionless constants within the qualitative state of continuity-symmetry-harmony whereby cubic-close packing of equal spheres is the beginning of all the geometries within and near the Planck scale.
What do you think? …just silliness? ….some possibility?
Thanks.
Warmly,
Bruce
PS. Initially my dyslexia had written “causals set.”
Does causality set the set?
What is being set? -BEC (2 October 2023)
First email: February 6, 2021 (update)
Dear Prof. Dr. Christian Wüthrich:
I’ve just registered for your online Wednesday’s lecture, “Laws Beyond Spacetime.” Your overview is helpful. I have also done a search on ArXiv. The ontology of an idea as it becomes a conceptual frame of reference is fascinating process. As often as possible, I work back to see how ideas are shaped. To that end, I’ve begun reading your talks. It is also quite fascinating to go back to your earlier lectures about the subject, i.e. Thursday, July 12, 2018 at Utrecht conference, Foundations, 19th UK and European Conference on the Foundations of Physics. There are no earlier references (with the title delimited by quotes) so we know that you own the concept. Excellent!
The Humean references will require some time going back to remember those olds days with Hume. Still I’ll be full of questions: What is the first instance of spacetime? What does it look like? Are Max Planck’s base units involved? Are infinitesimal Planck Time and Planck Length the first units? In what shape?
We unwittingly started working in this arena thinking that we had a solid STEM tool. We had backed down into the Planck units within our high school geometry class by going deeper and deeper inside by dividing the edges by 2 (tetrahedrons and octahedrons). That required 112 notations. Then we went larger simply by multiplying by 2. In 90 steps we were somewhere around 13.82 billion years. It was a sweet little model, very approachable with its 202 notations. That was 2011; we had started with Planck Length and its multiples and emerged with a chart of numbers. By 2013, we made it into a desktop chart. In 2014, we brought in Planck Time, and finally in 2016 we added Planck Mass and Planck Charge and made it into a horizontally-scrolled chart. Now what do we do with it?
Excuse the rather long note. I’ll try to do better next time! Thank you.
Most sincerely,
Bruce
The group: Nick Huggett, Carl Hoefer, Craig Callender, Chris Smeenk, Vincent Lam, David B. Malament, James O. Weatherall, and you.