Expanding a singularity

[pioneer]

There is a logical way to split the singularity of the BB theory, using basic observations within physics. It only requires a single extrapolation from an old experiment.

 

If you look at photons, these behave as both particles and waves. The double slit experiment helped to demonstrate the wave nature of photons because only a wave could go through both slits at the same time without considerations like binary pairs. Mass particles are also particles and waves but they act more like particles than waves. A rock thrown at a double slit will can only go through one at a time. It wave is rather small in relative energy.

 

All we need to do to expand a mass based singularity, is increase the ratio of wave to particle, so it can be in two places at the same time. Being in two places because of the higher wave ratio implies entropy has to increase, which is the reason for the conversion to a higher wave ratio. This lowers energy by being endothermic and increase entropy, like the rest of nature moving the singularity forward.

[insane_alien]

higher wave ratio?

 

you do realise that everything is generally treated as waves in QM right?

 

there isn't really a distinction when you get to the nitty gritty so it's alreaady 100% wave. not sure how you can increase the ratio when it is already 1:0 or infinity to 1 if you want to think of it that way.

[Martin]

...

All we need to do to expand a mass based singularity, is increase the ratio of wave to particle, so it can be in two places at the same time. Being in two places because of the higher wave ratio implies entropy has to increase, which is the reason for the conversion to a higher wave ratio. This lowers energy by being endothermic and increase entropy, like the rest of nature moving the singularity forward.

 

Your basic intuition is not far from mainstream---and the words you happened to choose to describe it are outside normal physics language and need a dictionary. I think this happens more often we realize. Someone has an intuition and a mental picture which is up-to-date and they think how to express it and happen to choose words that make it sound eccentric just because they aren't the usual words. Where you say "the wave/particle ratio is high" other people might say "at the Planck scale" or "at densities approaching Planck density."

 

Just this past week (up to July 4) there was a large conference in Poland on the Planck Scale. Many physicists suspect that at planck scale (if you zoom in very tiny) it is where quantum effects begin to dominate in spacetime geometry, over classical behavior. So there cannot be a classical "singularity".

 

In a manner of speaking you could say the uncertainty principle prevents there being infinite density. Classical geometry (of 1915 gen rel) could describe a collapse or crunch, for instance, in which density goes higher and higher. But when density reaches a level called planck density then classical geometry fails to apply, because quantum effects dominate, and geometry becomes "fuzzy"----curvature could be several things at once and things can't be in a definite location. When the fuzzy geometry takes over, it is like your example of something going thru two slits, and the researchers suspect a classical singularity does not happen. In effect it is where wave behavior dominates over rock behavior.

 

So you pioneer express this in your pioneer vocabulary and say that at some point the wave/particle "ratio" increases to where wavy behavior dominates. Your intuition is this has to happen because of "entropy"----visually what I see from your words is the kind of fuzzy geometry of what is conjectured to occur at what people sometimes call the quantum regime.

 

I don't adopt your words (like wave-to-particle ratio, and geometric entropy) because I don't see a straightforward way to apply the familiar pictures of wave and particle and the familiar tools of classic thermodynamics entropy in this new situation. But I get a glimpse of an intuition that has become increasingly widespread and is attracting research interest.

 

You offer some concepts. It isn't clear what the right concepts are. There are a half a dozen main approaches to conceptualizing planck scale behavior. That is why they had this conference last week. They don't know. Different bunches of people picture it different ways. It turned out to be a very successful conference. Big turnout. Highly "ecumenical" so to speak (string people, loop people, triangulations, asymptotic safety, noncommutative geometry, some approaches I don't even have a name for) hundreds of people from all over getting together to describe and compare their different ways of talking about the planck regime.

 

The way nature behaves when, in your way of speaking, the wave-over-particle ratio increased to the point that the wavy aspect of geometry itself dominates and it becomes indefinite---the planck scale.

 

I will give a link to the conference, but I caution that you can't learn anything from it because a frontier area of physics tends to be so confused and chaotic---they haven't settled on what the right ideas are, different tribes have different concepts, they have to fight it out among themselves before there is a clear message, and this kind fighting is OK, it can be very constructive and civilized. It can be a polite struggle. But what I am saying is the conference link is useless. I only give it because I don't like anything, even chaos, to be concealed. Even messes should be out in the open, so people can (if nothing else) see how messy they are.

 

Here is what a Edinburgh string theorist blogged about the Planck Scale conference, from his distinctively stringy perspective, from his slant.

Incidentally it is even possible that one of our most savvy people here at SFN knows this guy or is a colleague. Here is Jose Figueroa's page:

http://www.maths.ed.ac.uk/~jmf/

always try to know your source and understand his bias and interest viewpoint.

Here is Jose Figueroa's account of the Poland conference:

http://empg.maths.ed.ac.uk/blog/?p=503

You can see he wasn't entirely happy with it but he had quite a bit to say.

Now here is the official conference website:

http://www.ift.uni.wroc.pl/~planckscale/index.html?page=timetable

You can see from the titles of the talks listed here that they would be almost entirely incomprehensible. But believe me these people are our friends, they are trying to understand what nature and the universe are like down at planck scale, which is a new place to take your mind to.

Edited July 5, 2009 by Martin