Sunday, April 18, 2010

Solution to dark energy problem?

Paul Frampton tells in the blog of Lubos about his proposal explaining dark energy in terms of an argument relying on the observation that the amount of matter in the observed Universe is not far from the mass of a black hole of same radius. Frampton's article Possible solution of dark matter, solution of dark energy and Gell-Mann as great theoretician can be found from archive.

It is assumed that in a reasonable approximation we live inside a blackhole. Hawking temperature (quantal notion) is deduced from the mass of the Universe. After this Unruh formula expressing the temperature of the radiation observed from a system in an accelarating motion is used. Also this formula is quantal. Usually the temperature is deduced from acceleration but now acceleration is deduced from temperature using existing formula so that one goes outside the original context. The assignment of this acceleration with the growth of the radius of the blackhole is second step out-of-context. The third step out-of-context is the identification of the acceleration-essentially given by Hubble constant- as the acceleration of the cosmic expansion. The outcome happens to be consistent with observations.

One can forget the steps leading to the conclusion and notice that the acceleration for purely dimensional reasons is apart from a numerical constant equal to Hubble constant unless one is willing to bring in some genuinely new physics. That the acceleration is proportional to Hubble constant is what should be the starting point since it suggests that the solution of the negative energy puzzle might be "kinematical" in some sense. Despite all of these out-of-contexts I see the emergence of this kind of papers as a positive sign. Theoretical physics is gradually beginning to recover from the social pressures of super string ideology and problem centered approach is beginning to become in fashion again.

This numerical co-incidence could reflect something deeper. What might be essential is that space-time is replaced with a finite region of it: now it is the interior of a black hole in order to get the 3-D surface and the familiar formulas to get numbers which we so much appreciate. Blackhole as such need not be essential. Holography is something respectable but fuzzy enough to justify the adhoc identification of Unruh acceleration reproducing the Hawking temperature as the acceleration for the expansion of the Universe.

In TGD framework space-time surface is replaced with many-sheeted space-time so that one obtains effective boundaries: effective they correspond to pairs of wormhole throats and inside wormhole throats the induced metric is Euclidian. Also holography is key element of TGD. "Partonic" 2-surfaces plus their 4-D tangent space distributions at partonic 2-surfaces code for the information about the physical states in zero energy ontology. The motivation for the "partonic" is that also elementary particles correspond to this kind of 2-surfaces -very tiny in this case.

In TGD inspired quantum cosmology the continuous cosmic expansion is replaced with a sequence of short periods of accelerating expansion followed by longer periods during which a given space-time sheet does not expand. There is a fractal hierarchy of cosmologies within cosmologies. By criticality the period of the accelerated expansion obeys a universal dynamics. The mere condition that 3-space is flat (criticality tolerates no dimensional parameters) and imbeddable to M4×CP2 fixes the Robertson-Walker metric apart from a parameter telling the duration of the expansion period. The duration is necessarily finite for both critical and over-critical cosmology. Accelerated expansion is due to a negative "pressure" and implied by the sub-manifold constraint so that there is no need for mysterious particles with negative kinetic energy nor for cosmological term. This gives a meaning for the "kinematic". Sub-manifold constraint solves the same basic problems of standard cosmology as inflation in terms of flatness of 3-space but avoids the inflation of inflations plaguing the inflationary scenario. It also explains all standard model quantum numbers and leads to a highly predictive scenario for new physics effects. This adds a further meaning to the "kinematic".

While writing this I realized that for more than two decades I have tried to tell about this beautiful solution to the colleagues but in vain! Tells something about the deph of the intellectual abyss in theoretical physics. People waste their time to long discussions about ad hoc dimensional analysis tricks by old names interpreting old formulas outside their original context instead of seeing the trouble of learning something genuinely new. It is so safe and so much easier than trying to understand long arguments leading to completely new formulas!

Tuesday, April 13, 2010

New anomaly in CDF

Jester told about Another Anomaly from CDF. For 18 months ago I spent a quite hectic period with the first CDF anomaly, which turned out to have TGD inspired interpretation in terms of a production of meson like states from from color octet excitations of tau leptons (see for instance this blog posting). Color excitations of leptons and of quarks represent a basic prediction of quantum TGD and already earlier evidence for colored excitations of electron (already at seventies!) and muon had emerged. Since the facts did not fit the standard model and its standard extensions, they were forgotten again, as so many times before. To paraphrase Wheeler: Phenomenon exists only if it is understood phenomenon!

The period ended up with a beautiful model for the anomaly. Also an amusing episode telling much about the intellectual and ethical standards of the decision makes of Helsinki University took place. I lost the possibility to use university computer for my web page (this had been the only positive gesture towards my work) and they even refused to guide visitors to the new URL!

The data relating to the new anomaly is from the same experiment as those for 18 months ago. The cross section for the production of charged particles is three orders of magnitude higher than the QCD prediction at transversal momenta about 100 GeV. In A note on the CDF high-pt charged particle excess it shown that the results cannot be understood in QCD framework. It is also found that the cross section for producing single charge particle is essentially the same than for producing a jet so that the jet should consist of essentially single charged particle. Possible explanations for the findings are discussed and the high value of production cross section is found to be very difficult to understand.

TGD model is based on the production of tau-pions in the strong non-orthogonal magnetic and electric fields of colliding quarks. The subsequent decays of neutral tau-pion coherent state would produce charged tau-pions. The final outcome is mostly muons. This mechanism is not something coming out from standard Feynman diagrammatics but has a justification in terms of anomaly argument: the production amplitude -essentially Fourier component of the instanton density E.B for the electromagnetic field of colliding quarks- is fixed completely from anomaly considerations. I do not have time to work with this but my bet is that the explanation is same as for the former CDF anomaly.

The presence of non-orthogonal electroweak fields implies in TGD framework necessarily parity breaking and an interesting question is whether the vacuum in question could correspond to an almost vacuum extremal of Kähler action. These extremals led to a breakthrough in understanding TGD inspired quantum biology as I told in the earlier posting.

What makes me happy that facts do not seem to care about the desires of power holders. Truth is eventually the winner.

For details about the physics of colored leptons and for the explanation for the first CDF anomaly see the chapter Recent Status of Leptohadron Hypothesis of the book "p-Adic Length Scale Hypothesis and Dark Matter Hierarchy".

Monday, April 12, 2010

Strange: quasars do not show time dilation in their dynamics

Lubos Motl told about Discovery that quasars don't show time dilation mystifies astronomers by Hawkins. I also received a link from Kram about this: thank you. The finding is rather strange.

Consider first what one expects. Lorentz invariance implies red shift for frequencies and in time domain this means the stretching of time intervals so that the evolution of distant objects should look the slower the longer their distance from the observer is. In the case of supernovae this seems to be the case. What was studied now were quasars at distances of 6 and 10 billion years. The time span of the study was 28 years. Their light was red shifted by different amounts as one might expect but their evolution went on exactly the same rhythm! This looks really strange.

One must notice that the frequency assigned to electromagnetic signature is not ordinary light frequency. For instance, is it analogous to a frequency assignable to massive particle or massless particle? Consider ordinary Doppler effect as an analog. If the redsift is effectively that of a massive particle then the redshift is given by f→ (1-v2)1/2f =(1+z)f and for small relative velocities the redshift is about z=Δf/f =v2 smaller than for massless case f→ ((1-v)/(1+v))1/2× f=zf giving z=Δ f/f =v in the same approximation. In the recent case however redshifts are large. From z+1= Hr, with redshift z=7 associated with r=.75 billion years one deduces z=56 for 6 billion ly and z=93.3 for 10 billion ly. Therefore the redshifts for massive and massless case are related by a factor of 2 as one easily finds.

Consider now the situation in TGD framework.

  1. Causal diamond defined as the intersection of future and past directed light-cones is the fundamental geometric object in zero energy ontology. In cosmological scales a possible interpretation of CD is as sub-cosmology. In particular, our comology would correspond to this kind of CD having sub-CDs having .... CDs possess moduli space. CD has M4 position identified as say that of the lower tip. One can perform Lorentz boosts for CD leaving the lower tip invariant. The proper time distance between tips of CD is Lorentz invariant and defines an internal time standard of CD. For instance, for electron, d, and u quarks this time is .1 seconds, 1/1.28 milliseconds, and 6.5 milliseconds defining fundamental biorhytms.

  2. p-Adic length scale hypothesis follows if the light-cone propert time distance between the tips of the CD is quantized in powers of two. This means that future light-cone is replaced with a union of light-cone proper time constant hyperboloids with size scales coming as powers of two. Cosmic time identified as the distance between the tips would be quantized and cosmic time would increase in jumps. As a matter fact, the relative coordinate between the tips should be quantized quite generally so that the light-cone proper time constant hyperbloids would be replaced with discrete lattice like structures. This would predict quantization of cosmic redshifts and explain the claimed strange phenomena like God's fingers containing galaxies along the line of sight with a quantized redshift.

  3. Could the quantization of cosmic time relate to the strange observation? What does the dynamics of objects with a frozen value of cosmic time look like when viewed from Earth? What is clear that the distant object does not recede away during the studied evolution period. The overall redshift for the studied events during its evolution is same. No dilation of the time interval between periodic events would takes place. But isn't this the case in good approximation also in the measurements? And obviously this argument does not say anything about the time dilations associated with the samples at different distances.

    This means that the time-like direction defined by the vector connecting tips of CD in M4 is same as the direction of the time-like vector pointing from the tip of the very big CD defining what we call our Big Bang cosmology a to the M4 point at which the CD containing astrophysical object is located. This position characterizes all points of given CD so that the time dilation is constant the for internal dynamics of systems inside the CD.

  4. Why the Lorentz boosts of quasar CDs in the two samples should be identical? Could the explanation relate to the fact that quasars are extremely distant objects meaning that the corresponding CDs are very large? Could the quasars in the two samples belong to the same CD?! If so then the internal dynamics would obey same rhytm but there would be a purely cosmological redshift! This effect would be basic prediction of zero energy ontology in cosmological scales and would become visible in very long length scales.

For background see TGD and Cosmology.

Sunday, April 11, 2010

Quantum model for qualia, sensory receptor, and hearing

I am continung the updating the books about TGD inspired theory of consciousness. I just finished the chapter about quantum model of hearing- certainly the ugliest duckling in the flock represented by the books about TGD and TGD inspired theory of consciousness.

The key idea was inspired by a model of photoreceptors. The question was whether nearly vacuum extremals of Kähler action for which parity breaking is large due to the presence of classical Z0 field might explain chiral selection in living matter and provide model for a sensory receptor and even cell membrane space-time sheet in general as a critical system. The completely unexpected discovery was that the peak frequencies of photoreceptors coincide with Josephson frequencies of the 4 biologically most important ions in the effective membrane potential containing also Z0 contribution provided the value of Weinberg angle is sin2W)=.0295. After this observation the ideas started to flow rapidly and it took two weeks to build a reasonably stable general picture.

  1. Josephson photons have a dual interpretation as large hbar EEG photons and as biophotons: these two phenomena are reflections of one and same thing. This is a victory for the hierachy of Planck constants.
  2. DNA as topological quantum computer model led to the identification of the fundamental sensory qualia as quantum numbers assignable to quark pair (or pair of them depending on option) in turn associated with flux tube connecting DNA nucleotide and lipid.
  3. Cell membrane (at least axon) makes cell (at least neuron) a kind of homunculus with each lipid/nucleotide representing a pixel colored by different fundamental qualia.
  4. Qualia obey quantum synesthesia in the sense that the composites of spin, electroweak, and color numbers are analogous the synesthetic associations of basic qualia: this has nothing to do with ordinary synesthesia. This could make associative neurons in associative areas quantum synesthetes binding various sensory inputs to colors of single pixel of axonal membrane. Cell and genome would be also sensory holograms.
  5. The model for the magnetic body and its function becomes much more detailed and the vision about spectroscopy of consciousness- one of the ultra-romantic ideas which I have felt shame for- is realized since Josephson frequencies code for qualia.

I attach below the abstract of Quantum Model of Hearing. The material about the model for qualia can be also found from General Theory of Qualia.

The quantum model of hearing has evolved through several twists and turns. The emergence of zero energy ontology, the explanation of dark matter in terms of a hierachy of Planck constants requiring a generalization of the notion of imbedding space, the view about life as something in the intersection of real and p-adic worlds, and the notion of number theoretic entanglement negentropy led to the breakthrough in TGD inspired quantum biology and also to the recent view of qualia and sensory representations including hearing allowing a precise quantitative model at the level of cell membrane. This also modified dramatically the speculative ideas about the role of neutrinos in hearing.

Also in the recent view long range weak play a key role. They are made possible by the exotic ground state represented as almost vacuum extremal of Kähler action for which classical em and Z0 fields are proportional to each other wheras for standard ground state classical Z0 fields are very weak. Neutrinos are present but it seems that they do not define cognitive representations in the time scales characterizing neural activity. Electrons and quarks for which the time scales of causal diamonds correspond to fundamental biorhythms, take this role.

The ensuing general model of how cell membrane acts as a sensory receptor has unexpected implications for the entire TGD inspired view about biology.

  1. The most important implication concerning the model of sensory receptors relates to the vacuum degeneracy of Kähler action. It has been clear from the beginning that the nearly vacuum extremals of Kähler action could play key role key role in living systems. The reason is their criticality making them ideal systems for sensory perception. These extremals carry classical em and Z0 fields related to each other by a constant factor and this could explain the large parity breaking effects characterizing living matter. The assumption that cell membranes are nearly vacuum extremals and that nuclei can feed their Z0 charges to this kind of space-time sheets in living matter leads to a modification of the model for cell membrane as Josephson junction. Also a model of photoreceptors explaining the frequencies of peak sensitivity as ionic Josephson frequencies and allowing the identification of biophotons as Josephson radiation emerges and will be discussed in the sequel. The value of Weinberg angle in this phase is fixed to sin2W)=.0295, whereas in standard phase the value is given by sin2W)=.23.

  2. DNA as topological quantum computer model plus certain simplifying assumption leads to the conclusion that the spectrum of net quantum numbers of quark antiquark pair define the primary qualia assignable to a nucleotide-lipid pair connected by a magnetic flux tube. The most general prediction is that the net quantum numbers of two quark pairs characterize the qualia. In the latter case the qualia would be assigned to a pair of receptor cells.

  3. Composite qualia result when one allows the nucleotide-lipid pairs of the membrane to be characterized by a distribution of quark-antiquark pairs. Cell membrane -or at least the axonal parts of neurons- would define a sensory representation in which is a pair of this kind defines a pixel characterized by primary qualia. Cells would be sensory homunculi and DNA defines a sensory hologram of body of or of part of it. Among other things this would give a precise content to the notion of grandma cell.

  4. Josephson frequencies of biologically important ions are in one-one correspondence with the qualia and Josephson radiation could re-generate the qualia or map them to different qualia in a one-one and synesthetic manner in the neurons of the sensory pathway. For large values of Planck constant Josephson frequencies are in EEG range so that a direct connection with EEG emerges and Josephson radiation indeed corresponds to both biophotons and EEG. This would realize the notion of sensory pathway which originally seemed to me a highly non-realistic notion and led to the vision that sensory qualia can be realized only at the level of sensory organs in TGD framework.

  5. At the level of brain motor action and sensory perception look like reversals of each other. In zero energy ontology motor action can be indeed seen as a time reversed sensory perception so that the model of sensory representations implies also a model for motor action. Magnetic body serves as a sensory canvas where cyclotron transitions induced by Josephson frequencies induce conscious sensory map entangling the points of the magnetic body with brain and body.

The model for hearing follows as a special case from the general model for sensory receptor and representations.

  1. Concerning hearing, the basic questions relate to the precise identification of the hearing quale, to the representation of pitch of the sound at the magnetic body, and to the representation of various geometric data about sound. The electromagnetic charge of the quark pair (or equivalently electroweak isospin) looks like an excellent candidate in this respect so that charge increment would define one fundamental hearing quale.

    This quale need not correspond to pitch. The vision about hearing as a frequency quale suggests that cyclotron transition frequency corresponds to the pitch. Sound frequency would be coded to an increment of cyclotron frequency and pitch would be a quale assignable to magnetic body rather than biological body. Hearing would in a well-defined sense represent a higher level sense not understandable without the notion of magnetic body. The strength of the magnetic field would code for cyclotron frequency and therefore for the pitch. One of the mysteries related to hearing is the ability to hear frequencies much higher than the maximum rate of nerve pulses which is below kHz. The coding by Josephson frequencies and representation of them as quale of the magnetic body resolves this mystery.

  2. At quantative level the first challenge is to understand the typical hearing ranges (humans, mice, bats, sea mammals) and here the time scales of CDs associated with quarks and leptons give intriguing hints. Also their cyclotron frequencies are involved and large values of Planck constant are unavoidably involved. Josephson frequencies are given by the effective membrane potential (Z0 potential must be included) divided by Planck constant and it is possible to represent arbitrarily low frequencies in terms of membrane potential by allowing Planck constant to have high enough values.

  3. The extreme rapidity of signalling from hair cells to brain is one of the mysteries of hearing and here Josephson radiation (biophotons) provides a direct neuronal window with practically instantaneous communication. Microtubles could be associated with the flux tubes along which Josephson radiation propagates and also microtubular conformational waves could be involved.

  4. Hearing represent in many respects an exceptional quale: consider only music experience, language, internal speech, the understanding and production of speech, and right brain sings- left brain talks metaphor. This conforms with the assumption that magnetic body is involved in essential manner with hearing. Zero energy ontology leads to a vision explaining basic aspects of music experience and the notion of memetic code plus possible realization of genetic code as temporal patterns could provide first principle understanding of language.

Monday, April 05, 2010

What quark masses have to do with biology?

The latest estimates for the of u and d quarks have emerged. The masses are 2 +/- .12 MeV for u quark and 4.79+/-.16 MeV for quark.

In TGD inspired neuroscience and biology elementary particle mass scales play a fundamental role since the time scale of causal diamond associated with the elementary particle (CD is defined as intersection of future and past directed light-cones, for details see previous postings) coming as an octave of the fundamental CP2 is an additional characteristic of elementary particle in zero energy ontology. The amazing prediction is that these secondary p-adic time scales are macroscopic. An equally amazing observation is that these time scales are highly interesting biologically.

For electron which corresponds to k=127 by p-adic length scale hypothesis the time scale is .1 seconds defining the fundamental 10 Hz biorhythm. For d quark with mass 5 MeV the time scale corresponds to k=120 and the time scale is 1/1.128 ms and corresponds to 1280 Hz (kHz cortical synchrony and duration of action potential). The mass of u quark is 2 MeV and 4 times the mass of electron so that the mass of p-adic time scale 6.25 ms corresponds to k=123 and is 16 times shorter and corresponds to 160 Hz frequency. Also this frequency should be interesting biologically.

Clicking 160 Hz in Google brought the following Journal of Neuroscience article Inactivation of Calcium-Binding Protein Genes Induces 160 Hz Oscillations in the Cerebellar Cortex of Alert Mice. Could it be that this oscillation is analog of 40 Hz oscillation in cortex?