Comments inspired by the talk of Anil Seth

The talk of  the neuroscientist and consciousness theoretician  Anil Seth at Friday in Helsinki University was highly interesting. I talked about Anil Seth's  background already in the previous blog posting (see this) and I will not repeat what I said.

Anil Seth is a materialist but admits that living systems are somehow very special. He was also skeptical about conscious AI and stressed that the substrate matters whereas AI people think that eternal life is achieved by  replacing the human brain with a program running in a computer.

The lecture began with an enjoyable discussion of  visual illusions, which support his view that sensory perception  makes  a prediction rather than a representation of the physiological state of  the brain at a particular moment. Prediction  is understood in a very general manner. It can  mean anticipation of the future but also a guess for a sensory percept. In the TGD framework, the meanings of  anticipation and prediction  are more or less the same since sensory perception is essentially 4-dimensional. This leads also to a new view of memory and anticipation.   The reason is that space-time surfaces satisfy almost deterministic holography being analogs to 4-D Bohr orbits.

1. The illusion related to color perception included a cube at a checkerboard, whose presence changed the white color to grey consistent with the symmetric checkerboard coloring. In TGD sensory representation is an artwork built by iteration using virtual sensory input and eventually leading to a standard mental image. This process predicts what is there and   favours symmetries. Checkerboard symmetry won over realism.
2. Second  illusion was related to the shapes.  Human faces are   central for our perception. For instance,  we tend to see faces in the clouds.  The illusion was associated with  a rotating mask representing a human face. Both sides of the faces were perceived in the same way! The image was a mask or its   planar reflection.  The direction of rotation was also changed in the percept.
3. The third example was a video representing a model for how emotional coloring  very strongly affects  what  seems to be  there. The pattern recognition process was weighted so that the features associated with a face of a dog (I experienced it as a wolf) are over emphasized. The psychedelic  video described people moving on the street. By this weighting their faces were very wolf-like.  Everything was very wolfy!

The last example generated some  thoughts. This picture applies also to cognition and language and also to language models.

1. I could imagine that schizophrenic or paranoid could experience  the world in the same psychedelic way as in the video.  What also comes to mind are the  artworks of  Salvador Dali, Hieronymys Bosch, and Vincent van Gogh.
2. I had many discussions with people about the recent world-wide rise of militarism  and also about the extremely cruel policy of the recent  Finnish government in which the cuts to social security strike   the poorest people hardest. Government is also systematically destroying social healthcare and effectively performing a massive  income transfer to the rich people.

   The  discussion  groups  were filled  by fanatic males  defending militarism and the actions of the government. I learned this morning that   about 20 percent of finns belong to this group and males dominate. Basic Finns is the party in which most males see violence as a way to solve problems and agree with the policy of the government. I guess that most of these people in the discussion group belonged to the right wing parties.  

   These participants   did not even try  to represent  comments  based on logical arguments relying on facts and their responses were typically personal insults.    Even small hints that the opponent  is behind the standard human values such as equity, economical safety, justice and  peace made  these people to  identify the opponent as a bloodthirsty bolshevik or  a benchman of Putin receiving orders from Moscow.

   These people  seem to suffer from a paranoia-like state very much like that in the video full of wolfy faces.  One can wonder  whether interaction with more normal people would help them to  widen their perceptive field and end  up in a less  skewed mindframe.   Ordinary people do not however usually want to interact with them and they  are doomed to live in  the small bubbles of similar fanatics.

3. Also a connection with  language models such as GPt is suggestive.  These  models rely on the formation of associations and the response to a question is very much like a perception induced by a sensory input, essentially a prediction.  Here the teaching process defines the perceptive landscape as a region about which the data comes from. There are many white regions in this sensory landscape  of language models  and this is bound to create a very  skewed view of reality.

   For instance, the teaching material included gives an overweight for the mainstream view of science and can totally neglect the non-mainstream, which is  actually the really interesting part of science.  This makes possible a powerful censorship  and I would not be surprised if it were not used.

   For a summary of earlier postings see Latest progress in TGD.

   For the lists of articles (most of them published in journals founded by Huping Hu) and books about TGD see this.

Heliosphere has oblique and rippled structures

It has been found that heliosphere contains oblique and rippled structures (see this).

Here is the abstract of the article.

Past analysis has shown that the heliosphere structure can be deduced from correlations between long-scale solar wind pressure evolution and energetic neutral atom emissions. However, this required spatial and temporal averaging that smoothed out small or dynamic features of the heliosphere. In late 2014, the solar wind dynamic pressure increased by roughly 50 % over a period of 6 months, causing a time and directional-dependent rise in around 2-6 keV energetic neutral atom fluxes from the heliosphere observed by the Interstellar Boundary Explorer. Here, we use the 2014 pressure enhancement to provide a simultaneous derivation of the three-dimensional heliospheric termination shock (HTS) and heliopause (HP) distances at high resolution from Interstellar Boundary Explorer measurements.
The analysis reveals rippled HTS and HP surfaces that are oblique with respect to the local interstellar medium upwind direction, with significant asymmetries in the heliosphere structure compared to steady-state heliosphere models. We estimate that the heliosphere boundaries contain roughly 10 astronomical unit-sized spatial variations, with slightly larger variations on the HTS surface than the HP and a large-scale, southwards-directed obliquity of the surfaces in the meridional plane. Comparisons of the derived HTS and HP distances with Voyager observations indicate substantial differences in the heliosphere boundaries in the northern versus southern hemispheres and their motion over time.

What makes the findings so interesting from the TGD point of view, is that heliosphere boundaries contain roughly 10 AU sized spatial variations. These variations are oblique with respect to the direction of the galactic wind. What comes first in mind in the TGD framework is that these could correspond to a icosahedral lattice-like structure with 12 vertices and 20 triangular faces (note that spherical geometry allows only Platonic solids as regular tessellations as analogs of condensed matter lattices). The appearance of AU in this context would be seen as an accident in standard physics but in TGD the situation is different.

If astrophysical quantum coherence and Nottale's model are accepted, planets correspond to Bohr orbits of gravitational atom with gravitational Planck constant ℏ_gr(M,m)= GMm/β₀ assignable to the pair formed by Sun with mass M and particle with mass m. β₀≃ 2^-11/5 holds true for the outer planets in the Nottale's model and Earth corresponds to the principal quantum number n=1. Therefore AU is identifiable as the gravitational Bohr radius a_gr given by a_gr= ℏ_gr/2α_grm, where the gravitational fine structure constant is α_gr= GMm/4πℏ_gr. This gives AU= r_S/2β₀² = 2πGM_S/β₀² =πr_S/2β₀²=2πΛ_gr/β₀². The Bohr radius a_gr=AU and gravitational Compton length Λ_gr define fundamental quantum lengths and might appear also elsewhere in the solar system. Intriguingly, the gravitational Compton radius of the Sun is one half of the Earth's radius and Bohr radius is is the distance of Earth from the Sun.

One can compare the situation with atomic lattices where atomic Bohr radius defines a natural scale. The mutual distances of the ripples at the heliosphere are about 10AU. The value of atomic Bohr radius is about .5 Angstrom in the atomic situation. By scaling by a factor 10, this would predict that the distances of atoms would be about 5 A: for atomic lattices this gives the order of magnitude for the lattice constant (see this).

See the chapter Magnetic Bubbles in TGD Universe: Part I.

For a summary of earlier postings see Latest progress in TGD.

For the lists of articles (most of them published in journals founded by Huping Hu) and books about TGD see this.

Anil Seth and his view of consciousness as controlled hallucinations

The neuroscientist and consciousness theoretician Anil Seth will speak in Helsinki University at Friday. The relevant data are here: 26 April at 16.00–18.00 EEST Place: University of Helsinki, Main building (Fabianinkatu 33, 2nd floor), Auditorium (F2044). Live stream can be found here.

I looked at the summary of AS:s book "Being You: A New Science of Consciousness" (see this).

1. Anil Seth (AS) is a materialist and therefore believes that the neurophysiological state of the brain completely determines the contents of consciousness. AS tries to answer the "real problem" that is why a particular sensory input gives rise to a particular conscious experience. AS admits however that the hard problem, that is why there is any experience associated with the perceptions, is real.
2. The usual view in which sensory input arrives the brain and is processed to produce sensory representations and then follows motor action as a reaction. The view of AS is in some sense opposite. Brain is continually making predictions for the future and they are realized as experiences, which can be sensory experiences and also emotions which relate to the state of the body. Sensory experience is not a summary of what was but a prediction of what it will be! We live in a continual hallucination which does its best to predict the future reliably. When it fails, we speak of hallucination instead of a real sensory experience.

From this brief description motor action is missing. What could it mean in this framework? I do not know what Seth's answer is. How does the view of AS relate to the TGD based view of consciousness? TGD view involves the following new elements.

1. Zero energy ontology (ZEO) replaces the standard ontology of quantum theory and solves the basic paradox of quantum measurement theory. The key point is that quantum state is replaced with a superposition of classical deterministic time evolutions of 3-surface, that is 4-surfaces of H=M⁴×CP₂, obeying holography meaning that 3-D initial data dictate the time evolution almost uniquely. The space-time surface is an analog of Bohr orbit for a particle represented by a 3-surface.

   These Bohr orbits reside inside a causal diamond CD, which has the intersection of future and past directed light-cones as its M⁴ projection. CDs form a scale hierarchy and CD defines the 4-D perceptive field of a conscious entity. The 4-dimensionality of the perceptive field conforms with the idea of AS that conscious experience is a prediction rather than a mere representation of what the world is in 3-D sense.

   The 4-surfaces as analogs of Bohr orbits and as classical time evolution correspond to the predictions of AS. Quantum prediction of the future is quantum state, that is a wave function in the set of Bohr orbits.

2. A new element is the existence of a hierarchy of phases of ordinary matter for which the number theoretically determined effective Planck constant can be arbitrarily large and therefore the scale of quantum coherence. These phases behave like dark matter and control ordinary matter since the h_eff as a measure of algebraic complexity is also a kind of IQ. In this framework, biosystems become quantum coherent systems in scales of the biological body and even in much longer scales corresponding to EEG wavelengths for instance.
3. The new view of space-time as a 4-D surface in M⁴xCP₂ predicts also a new view of Maxwell fields. Field bodies, in particular magnetic bodies consisting of monopole flux tubes as kinds of body parts in an abstract sense, are a basic prediction and central for biology. Field/magnetic bodies w carry dark matter as h_eff>h phases and receive information from biological bodies containing ordinary matter and control it. EEG relates to the communication between the field body and biological body. This view resonates with the view of Fadden.
4. The ZEO based quantum measurement generalizes ordinary measurement theory, which involves ordinary state function reductions (SFRs) and sequences of repeated measurements which do not affect the system at all (Zeno effect) and in a more general view suggested by quantum optics involve a small change.

   Ordinary SFRs become "big" SFRs (BSFRs) in the TGD framework and in these the arrow of geometric time changes. From the point of view of outsider the system loses consciousness/falls asleep/dies but actually in reincarnates and lives with opposite arrow of time so that signals sent by it go to geometric past and are not received by the system as it has reincarnated by making a second BSFR and therefore has the original arrow of time.

   The sequences of repeated measurements of the same observables correspond to sequences of SSFRs and give rise to a continuous flow of consciousness. They would relate to sensory perceptions. BSFR would correspond to motor actions changing the arrow of time and the second BSFR would bring back the original arrow of time and correspond to wake-up and motor action.

   When the sensory input changes the set of commuting observables measured in SSFR, it becomes impossible to continue the peaceful life and BSFR must take place: self loses consciousness temporarily (dies) for a moment. This corresponds to motor action, which is missing from the view of AS as represented above.

   In the TGD framework sensory perception as a sequence of SSFRs yields continually updated quantum predictions and BSFR forced by the change of the measured observables so that it does not anymore commute with the earlier observables, gives rise to motor action as a reaction.

For a summary of earlier postings see Latest progress in TGD.

For the lists of articles (most of them published in journals founded by Huping Hu) and books about TGD see this.

About Biefeld Brown effect

Biefeld Brown effect is one of the effects studied by "free energy" researchers. What happens that an asymmetry capacitor for which the electrodes are of different size starts to move in the direction of the smaller electrode. The so called emdrive (see this), which I have commented here and here, could be also based on this effect. The has been a lot of overhyping such as vehicles moving with light-velocity to Mars and the failure of momentum conservation by the Biefeld Brown effect is real.

The recent experiments carried out by Buhler's team using capacitors in vacuum chamber acieve a levitation in gravitational field of Earth (see this). If this is really the case, new physics is involved.

Standard physics based models for the effect are discussed here. The electric fields associated with the capacitors are about 30 kV/dm, which is about 10 per cent of the electric field 30 kV/cm causing dielectric breakdown in air. Note that the electric field of Earth 10-30 V/dm and therefore roughly by a factor 1/1000 weaker.

Brown makes several important statements, including:

1. The greatest force on the capacitor is created when the small electrode is positive.
2. The effect occurs in a dielectric medium (air).
3. The effect can be used for vehicle propulsion or as a pump of dielectric fluid.
4. Brown s suggeset that the effect involves ionic motion.
5. The detailed physics of the effect is not understood.

The models assume that the cm motion is due to the loss of energy and momentum to the environment and fail if the effect is possible in vacuum. The first model assumes ionic wind between the electrodes and predicts effect, which is 3 orders of magnitude too small. The model based on ionic drift is a rough order of magnitude model and predicts that the effect can have an order of magnitude consistent with the findings. The reason why the ionic wind predicts a smaller effect is that the absence of dissipation tends to reduce the effect since the ions arriving to the opposite electrode induce an opposite recoil.

The interview of Charles Buhler by Tim Ventura (see this) gives more details about what has been found in the experiments giving a thrust which is now around one g. Buhler's team has been developing the propellantless propulsion based on asymmetric capacitors understood in a very general sense, i.e. there are just two electrodes which are asymmetric. The work is completely independent of NASA and has been patented. From the interview I learned the following.

1. Electric field is more intense at the smaller electrode and is believed to make the effect larger.
2. The electrodes are cased which means that there is no leakage of charge between them. The claim is that this prevents all kinds of leakage currents between the electrodes. The system is also enclosed in high vacuum and this allows use of lower voltages. There are two types of charges involved. The free charge appearing in conductors and the bound charge appearing in insulators. The interpretation would be in terms of electrons. It is reported that at low voltage free charge dominates the effect and at higher voltages bound charge dominates. The interpretation could be in terms of ionization in high enough voltage in which bound charges go somewhere.
3. Mere charge and electric field are enough and there is no external energy feed. The mere existence of the electric field gives rise to the thrust. In the standard physics framework, this raises problems with the conservation laws of energy and momentum.

I have already earlier commented on the Biefeld Brown effect from the TGD point of view (see this, this and this).

1. In standard physics the center of mass of the system should remain at rest if the system is in vacuum and there is no charge leakage between the electrodes. The findings of Buhler's team demonstrate that there is a center of mass motion in vacuum. Therefore there should exist a momentum and energy exchange with some unidentified system. Charges and/or radiation should leave the capacitor to produce a recoil.

   If the charges leaving a given electrode return to the system, the only possibility is that they end up at the opposite electrode. This cannot take place via standard physics mechanisms in the experiments of Buhler's team since the electrodes are cased. The charges must go to some third system and possibly return back.

2. The findings suggest that the charges involved are conduction electrons at low voltages and bound electrons at high voltages and that the bound electrons increase the thrust dramatically. In the latter case an ionization of atoms is required.

   If the electronic charge is lost from a negatively charged electron, a current is needed to preserve the charges of the electrode. If only the negatively charged electrode emits electronic charge, the system develops a positive charge. The system would experience a force in the electric field of Earth. This cannot explain the effect. Since the Earth is negatively charged, the force would tend to decrease the thrust. The generation of net positive charge could however be relevant for the effect.

3. If negative charge is lost and there is no energy and momentum feed from outside, the electrostatic energy of the system must decrease. The rate of energy loss must be rather slow since the thrust is reported to continue for a rather long time.

   Part of the electrostatic energy should go to the cm motion of the system. Where does the momentum and energy leaving the system responsible for thrust as the recoil effect go? In the experiments of Buhler's team it cannot go to the environment as it is understood in the standard physics.

What could TGD say about the situation? TGD predicts that besides classical gravitational fields of the Sun, Earth and other planets are responsible for very large values of effective Planck constant h_eff for ordinary particles located at the gravitational monopole flux tubes. The generalization of this proposal for electric fields is discussed here. Examples are electric fields of DNA, cell, ionospheres of the Earth and Sun, and also of large capacitor-like systems.

1. Are the charged particles transferred to electric or magnetic flux tubes of the field body (FB) as dark charges as in the Pollack effect (see this)? Can one locate the relevant part of the FB to the interior or exterior of the electrodes? Could the charge transfer via the FB take place by an analog of the Pollack effect and its reversal? Why would the charge transfer be for electrons?

   Is there a fast charge transfer only between the electrodes via FB or is there an accumulation of positive and negative charges at the FB? It is reported that the thrust continues also in absence of a current feed so that there could be accumulation of charges from both electrodes to the FB. Also the electric body of the Earth could be involved.

   Also mere radiation to the FB could produce a recoil effect but would not produce charge transfer. The required force would be between FB and the capacitor system. The force is known to be directed to the smaller electrode on the smaller electrode, especially so if it has a positive charge.

2. If the charge transfer occurs between the electrodes via the FB and no charge remains at the FB, center of mass motion requires that part of the energy is dissipated, perhaps as dark photons at the magnetic or electric body or as ordinary photons.

   Suppose that the net momentum transferred to a given flux tube is parallel to it. The net momentum, which is transferred is the sum of the momenta and in the case of parallel plates of infinite size directed towards another plate. The recoil is in the opposite direction. The deviation of the distribution of flux tubes from spherical symmetry favors transfers of momenta directed towards the opposite electrode so that recoil is away from it. Why should the smaller electrode get a larger recoil momentum? Why should the smaller area favor this?

Could macroscopic quantum coherence predicted by TGD explain why the smaller electrode gets a larger recoil momentum?

1. TGD predicts large scale quantum coherence and this could be highly relevant for the Biefeld Brown effect (see this). The electric Planck constant for a pair of charged particle with charge e and for charged system with charge is h_eff= h_em= Qe/β₀, where β₀= v₀/c≤ 1 is a velocity parameter. For the pair of capacitor plates would be given by h_em= Q²/β₀. h_em would characterize charged particles at the electric body of the system consisting of electric flux tubes, which can be also magnetic since electric flux tubes can obtained as small deformations of the magnetic monopole tubes!

   Note that one cannot exclude the possibility of Maxwellian half-monopole flux tubes having boundary, which I have proposed to be important in the temperature region above the transition temperature in the case of high Tc superconductors (see this).

2. Electric field strength rather than voltage is relevant for the effect. The charge Q of the capacitor as the electric flux Q= ∫ E• dS/ε₀ is indeed proportional to the electric field and this suggests that macroscopic quantum coherence might be important (see this). The effect could become large for strong field strengths suggesting that the transfer of charges to the electric body is a collective quantum effect proportional to the square N² of the number N of charges transferred. If the increase of voltage has been done by keeping the size constant in the experiments of Buhler's team, the dramatic increase of the thrust can be understood in this way.
3. For a particle of mass m, the electric Compton length Λ _em= h_em/m= Qe/β₀m serves as a good guess for the lower bound for the quantum coherence length and is for proton by a factor 1/2000 smaller than for electron. The first guess for the thickness d of the electric flux tube is as d=Λ_em= 2π Qe/β₀m. Here m would refer to electron mass. This would explain why the transfer of electrons is what matters in the experiments. Hitherto its assumed that only valence electrons can become dark having h_eff> h. These findings would require that also bound electrons could become dark.
4. Can one assume that the entire electrodes form quantum coherent systems or should one assume that only the flux tubes are such systems? Suppose that the latter option is realized. A natural first guess is that the flux tube radius d is equal to the electric Compton length so that one would have d= 2πQe/β₀m. The entire electrodes need not be quantum coherent systems.

   For instance, if the smaller electrode corresponds to a single flux tube, it decompose to smaller flux tubes near the larger electrode giving rise to smaller quantum coherent units with charge Q_large/Q_small= S_small/S_large and having therefore also a smaller values of electric flux and of Maxwellian electric field. Quite generally, the flux tubes from the smaller electrode would decompose in this way at the larger electrode.

5. The geometric asymmetry of the electrodes, or more precisely the convergence of flux tubes at the smaller electrodes, is believed to somehow explain the thrust towards the smaller electrode.

   Suppose that the flux tubes correspond to bundles of electric field lines as predicted by Maxwell's theory. Suppose that the flux tube acts as a quantum coherent unit. The charges Q(tube) of the flux tubes near the small resp. large electrode are in the ratio S_small/S_large of their areas. By quantum coherence the rate for the momentum transfer is proportional to Q²(tube) and is therefore larger near the smaller electrode. The transfer rates are proportional to the square of the charge per flux tube and in the ratio (S_small/S_large)². This predicts that the rate of momentum transfer is higher at the smaller electrode.

6. The thrust is reported to be larger when the smaller electrode has a positive charge: I do not know whether this is the case in the experiments of Buhler's team. This does not seem to fit the proposed picture. If only electrons are transferred to the electric body, one would expect that the rate is larger at the negatively charged electrode.

See the article About long range electromagnetic quantum coherence in TGD Universe or the chapter with the same title.

For a summary of earlier postings see Latest progress in TGD.

For the lists of articles (most of them published in journals founded by Huping Hu) and books about TGD see this.

Disappearing stars: one further explanation

One of the numerous anomalies of the recent cosmology are the disappearing stars (see for instance this and this) The latter popular article tells that a group of astronomers has discovered around 100 stars, which have disappeared from view in the last 70 years - and they don't know why. For instance, astronomers remain baffled by what appeared to be a trio of stars disappearing 'within 50 minutes' in 1952. The first article gives a list of explanations. The prosaic explanations are as follows:

1. Instrumentation Errors: Some of the vanishings could be due to errors or malfunctions in the astronomical instruments used to observe these stars.
2. Data Processing Errors: Errors in the processing of astronomical data could mistakenly categorize a visible star as having vanished.

There is a long list of less prosaic explanations.

1. Gravitational Lensing: The gravitational field of a massive object, like a black hole, can bend the light from a star, making it appear to vanish. This phenomenon is known as gravitational lensing. The lense effect caused by an object between the observer and star would create a ring which is too weak to be visible.
2. Transient Light Phenomena: Events like gamma-ray bursts or other short-lived luminous events might cause a star to temporarily flare up before disappearing.
3. Natural Dimming: Stars may naturally dim over time due to changes in their life cycle, although this usually doesn’t result in a complete disappearance.
4. Obstruction by Cosmic Objects: The light from a star could be blocked by interstellar objects like dust clouds or newly formed celestial bodies, causing the star to appear as if it vanished.
5. Supernova Events: One explanation for a star’s disappearance could be a supernova, an event marking the explosive death of a star. However, supernovae leave behind distinct signatures, often observable as a bright burst before the star’s remnants fade away. In cases of disappearing stars, such signatures are notably absent.
6. Black Hole Consumption: Another hypothesis is that these stars could be consumed by black holes. This would theoretically happen without the typical bursts of energy associated with such events, leading to a sudden disappearance.
7. Dyson Spheres: This is a speculative theory suggesting advanced civilizations could build massive structures around stars to harness their energy, potentially causing the stars to disappear from our view.

TGD adds one possible item to this list.

1. TGD predicts a hierarchy of effective Planck constants having arbitrarily large values. This implies quantum coherence in arbitrarily long scales. Ordinary matter, when in phases characterized by h_eff different from h, behaves like dark matter but does not correspond to the galactic dark matter. It however explains the increasing fraction of missing baryons as a transformation of ordinary baryons to their large h_eff counterparts predicted by the TGD view. In biology these dark baryons and also electrons could play a key role. In the TGD Universe galactic dark matter would consist mostly of dark energy assignable to the space-time surfaces that I call cosmic strings. They can thicken to monopole flux tubes. This process, which is analogous to inflation, transforms the dark energy to ordinary matter.
2. Zero energy ontology (ZEO) is the second key element of TGD and solves the basic paradox of the quantum measurement theory and extends it to a theory of consciousness. There are two kinds of state function reductions (SFRs).

   The sequence of "small" SFRs (SSFRs) is the TGD counterpart for the repeated measurements of the same observables and gived rise to the flow of consciousness.

   "Big" SFRs (BSFRs) are the counterpart of ordinary SFRs and involve the change of the arrow of time. In the time reversed state the classical signals sent by the system travel to non-standard direction of time so that this kind of system cannot be detected by classical means. If falling asleep corresponds to BSFR, one can understand why we do not remember anything about the period of deep sleep.

3. TGD predicts an hierarchy of values of h_eff and therefore hierarchy of quantum coherence scales. Magnetic/field bodies of physical systems like stars would carry these phases with a very large value of h_eff. They would also emit radiation which has a large value of h_eff and can be observed only if it transforms to ordinary radiation.

   Could one understand the disappearing stars in terms of BSFRs occurring in astrophysical scales at the level of the magnetic body of an astrophysical system? This would require that most of the observed classical radiation from the star arrives from the magnetic body of the system as a dark radiation. This is because for ordinary matter the period of phases with a reversed arrow of time are very short so that effectively there is no arrow of time.

For a summary of earlier postings see Latest progress in TGD.

For the lists of articles (most of them published in journals founded by Huping Hu) and books about TGD see this.

Leading astronomers meet at London's Royal Society to examine the basic assumptions of the recent cosmology

The leading astronomers will have a conference at London's Royal Society to examine the basic assumptions of the recent cosmology . The conference is organized by Subir Sarkar (see this).

I am happy to hear that also leading cosmologists are aware of what is happening. In contrast to this, in my own country Finland, the local leading cosmologist appearing in the media became completely silent when JWST began to produce its findings.

The TGD view based on the new view of space-time and quantum is consistent with these findings. The following comments include the TGD based reaction on some points represented in the popular article.

The basic new elements brought by TGD to the cosmology are the new view of space-times as 4-surfaces in H=M⁴× CP₂, a generalization of quantum theory based on number theoretical view of physics complementary to the geometric view, and zero energy ontology (ZEO) solving the basic problem of quantum measurement theory and predicting that the arrow of time changes in ordinary state function reductions.

1. A number of researchers have found evidence that the universe may be expanding more quickly in some areas compared to others, raising the tantalizing possibility that megastructures could be influencing the universe's growth in significant ways.

   Comment: The basic prediction of TGD inspired cosmology is the existence of 4-D space-time surfaces that I call cosmic strings. They are unstable against thickening to monopole flux tubes, liberating huge energy transformed to ordinary matter. This would be the TGD counterpart for inflation. These objects can have length scales which are cosmological and can affect the rate of cosmic expansion.

   Number theoretic view of TGD predicts that these cosmic strings are characterized by p-adic length scale characterizing their thickness and length and also by effective Planck constant h_eff which is essentially the dimension of an algebraic extension of rationals assignable to the space-time surface that they correspond. The quantum coherence scale of the cosmic string is proportional to h_eff. The quantum coherent phases characterized by h_eff reside at the monopole flux tubes and behave like dark matter.

   Quantum coherence is possible in arbitrarily long scales and completely changes the views of what quantum gravitation is. For instance, classical gravitational fields of astrophysical objects like the Sun and Earth would play a key role in biology.

   For primordial cosmic strings h_eff is its minimal value smaller than h, but increases during cosmological evolution. The portion of ordinary matter with h_eff=h is reduced during cosmological evolution and this corresponds to the increasing portion of missing baryons. Galactic dark rather would correspond to the energy of cosmic strings consisting of magnetic and volume energy and thus dark energy plus a possible, probably small, contribution of h_eff> h phases. The model explains the flat velocity spectrum of distant stars around galaxies.

2. Sarkar and his colleagues, for instance, are suggesting that the universe is "lopsided" after studying over a million quasars, which are the active nuclei of galaxies where gas and dust are being gobbled up by a supermassive black hole.

   The team found that one hemisphere actually hosted slightly more of these quasars, suggesting one area of the night sky was more massive than the other, undermining our conception of dark energy, a hypothetical form of energy used to explain why the universe is expanding at an accelerated rate.

   Other researchers have suggested that the cosmological constant, which has been used for decades as a way to denote the rate of the universe's expansion, actually varies across space, which would contradict the standard model of physics.

   Comments:

   1. In the TGD framework quasars as active nuclei would be cosmic strings which have just started to decay to ordinary matter and to feed energy and mass to the environment. They are not blackholes, which would "eat" matter from the environment, and are blackhole-like objects in their exterior. They feed energy to their environment and this is the TGD counterpart of inflation. Whitehole might be a better metaphor.
   2. In the TGD framework the fluctuations of the value of h_eff explain density fluctuations inducing CMB temperature fluctuation. The local especially large fluctuation of h_eff could solve the problem of two Hubble constants.
   3. In the fractal cosmology associated with the many-sheeted space-time of the TGD Universe fluctuations of h_eff appear in arbitrary long scales and could also explain the lopsidedness.
   4. Vacuum energy density depends on the value of the Hubble constant, which depends on h_eff and its fluctuations would make average vacuum energy density dependent on position.
3. Stars and galaxies older than the Universe is one paradoxical discovery made already before JWST but not mentioned in the popular article. The zero energy ontology (ZEO) forces by TGD changes profoundly the view about the relationship between experienced time and the geometric time of physics. Ordinary, "big" state function reductions change the arrow of geometric time so that the system can live forth and back in geometric time. This implies that the evolutionary age of a system can be longer than its usual age. One estimate gives an age which is roughly 2 times longer and it has been indeed suggested that the age of the universe explaining the findings could be this.

See for instance https://tgdtheory.fi/public_html/articles/3pieces.pdf .

For a summary of earlier postings see Latest progress in TGD.

For the lists of articles (most of them published in journals founded by Huping Hu) and books about TGD see this.

What singularities can correspond to vertices for fermion pair creation?

It is far from clear whether all singularities have an interpretation in terms of exotic smooth structures. The physical criterion would be that the creation of a fermion pair takes place at the defect and that the minimal surface property fails. Fermions can correspond to induced spinor fields and fermion pairs could be created at surfaces of dimension d<4.

1. For closed two-sheeted cosmic strings and monopole flux tubes, which split by reconnection, the interpretation makes sense and means a generalization of the basic vertex for closed strings. These objects can be 2-sheeted as elementary particles in which case the reconnection would occur in the direction of CP₂. If they are single sheeted, the reconnection would occur in the direction of M⁴.
2. 3-D light-like light-partonic orbits appearing as interfaces between Euclidean and Minkowskian space-time regions and as boundaries of space-time surfaces are singularities (see this). Boundary conditions state that the possible flows of conserved charges from the interior go to the partonic orbit so that the divergence of the Chern-Simons-Kähler canonical momentum current coming from instanton term equals to the sum of the normal components of the canonical currents associated with Kähler action and volume term.
   1. Chern-Simons action at the light-like partonic orbit coming from the instanton term is well-defined and finite and field equations should not give rise to a singularity except at partonic 2-surfaces, which have been identified as analogs of vertices at which the partonic 2-surface X² splits to two.
   2. At the light-like partonic orbit 4-metric has a vanishing determinant and is therefore effectively 2-D (the light-like components of g_uv=g_vu of the 4-metric vanish). As a consequence, g₄^1/2 vanishes like L² at the partonic orbit unless some coordinate gradients diverge.

      The canonical momentum currents for the volume action are proportional to the contravariant induced metric appearing in the trace of the second fundamental form diverging like 1/L² and to g₄^1/2 so that they remain finite.

   3. Kähler action contains the contravariant metric twice and is proportional to g₄^1/2. This can give rise to a divergence of type 1/L² unless the boundary conditions make it finite. I have proposed long ago that the electric-magnetic self-duality at the partonic orbit can transform the Kähler action to an instanton term giving Chern-Simons Kähler term. In this case, a separate instanton term would not be needed. In this case everything would be finite at the partonic orbit. Minimal surface property fails in a smooth manner.

      The intuitive picture is that the contributions from the normal currents at the partonic orbit and the Chern-Simons term cancel each other and the partonic orbit cannot play a role of a vertex.

   4. The possible presence of 1/L² divergence could however give rise to a 2-D defect and genuine vertex. If it is identified as a creation of a pair of partonic 2-surfaces, the interpretation in terms of a creation of a fermion pair is possible and could be assigned to the splitting of a monopole flux tube.

      In accordance with the QFT picture, I have considered the possibility that the 2-D vertex could correspond to a branching of a partonic orbit. In the recent picture it would be accompanied by a creation of a fermion pair. The stringy view however suggests that pair creation occurs in the creation of partonic orbits in the splitting of monopole flux tubes. The stringy view is more attractive.

3. I have also proposed that 1-D singularities identifiable as boundaries of string world sheets and identifiable as fermion lines at the partonic orbits are important. The creation of a pair of fermion lines would give rise to the analogs of gauge theory vertices as 0-D singularities. It is however far from clear whether the stringy singularities are actually present and whether they could correspond to exotic smooth structures. One can imagine two options.
   1. There are no string world sheets. Monopole flux tubes can be regarded as deformations of cosmic strings. Instead of strings several monopole flux tubes can emerge from a wormhole contact. For the minimal option, monopole flux tubes, CP₂ type extremals, and massless extremals as counterparts of radiation fields are the basic extremals and the splitting of monopole flux tubes gives rise to vertices as defects of the ordinary smooth structure.
   2. String world sheets appear as singularities of the monopole flux tubes or even more general 4-surfaces and are analogous to wormhole contacts as blow-ups in which a point of X⁴ explodes to CP₂ type extremal. I have indeed proposed that a blow-up at which the points of the string world sheet as surface X²⊂ X⁴ are replaced with a homologically non-trivial 2-surface Y²⊂ CP₂ takes place. Y² could connect two parallel space-time sheets. Could these singularities correspond to defects of exotic smooth structures such that the ends of the string carry fermion number? The vertex for the creation of a pair of fermion and antifermion lines would correspond to a diffeo defect. Note that also these defects could reduce to a splitting of a monopole flux tube so that TGD would generalize the stringy picture.

See the article What gravitons are and could one detect them in TGD Universe? or the chapter with the same title.

For a summary of earlier postings see Latest progress in TGD.

For the lists of articles (most of them published in journals founded by Huping Hu) and books about TGD see this.

Singularities and infinities from the TGD point of view

Gary Ehlenberg sent two links to Quantamagazine articles, which are very relevant (perhaps not by accident!) for what I have been working with recently.

The first link was to a very interesting article about the the role of singularities in physics. Already in twistor Grassmann approach, singularities of the scattering amplitudes turned out to be central as data determining them. Kind of holography was in question.

I have been just working with singularities of space-time surface and have made a breakthrough in the understanding of what graviton is but also in the understanding of what the fundamental vertices (actually vertex!) of the scattering amplitudes are in the TGD framework.

In holography=generalized holomorphy view space-time surfaces are minimal surfaces with generalized holomorphic imbedding to H=M⁴×CP₂ implying the minimal surface property.

1. The minimal surface property fails at lower-dimensional singularities taking the role of holographic data and the trace of the second fundamental form (SFF) analogous to a acceleration associated with the 4-D Bohr orbit of the particle as 3-surface has a delta function like singularity but vanishes elsewhere.
2. The minimal surface property expressess masslessness for both fields and particles as 3-surfaces. At the singularities masslessness property fails and singularities can be said to serve as sources which in QFTs define scattering amplitudes.
3. The singularities are analogs of poles and cuts for the 4-D generalization of the ordinary holomorphic functions. Also for the ordinary holomorphic functions the Laplace equation as analog massless field equation and expressing analyticity fails. Complex analysis generalizes to dimension 4.
4. The conditions at the singularity give a generalization of Newton's F=ma! I ended up where I started more than 50 years ago!
5. In dimension 4, and only there, there is an infinite number of exotics diff structures, which differ from ordinary ones at singularities of measure zero analogous to defects. These defects correspond naturally to the singularities. For the exotic diff structure one can say that there is no singularity. This means that complex analysis generalizes to dimension 4 and only to dimension 4.
6. Group theoretically the trace of the SFF can be regarded as a generalization of the Higgs field, which is non-vanishing only at the vertices and this is enough. Singularities take the role of generalized particle vertices and determine the scattering amplitudes. The second fundamental form contracted with the embedding space gamma matrices and slashed between the second quantized induced spinor field and its conjugate gives the universal vertex involving only fermions (bosons are bound states of fermions in TGD). It contains both gauge and gravitational contributions to the scattering amplitudes and there is a complete symmetry between gravitational and gauge interactions. Gravitational couplings come out correctly as the radius squared of CP₂ as also in the classical picture.

This generalized Higgs field characterizing singularities would dictate all scattering amplitudes! Generalized Higgs would be really the God particle! Its CP₂ part gives standard model interactions and M⁴ part gives gravitation.

Gary Ehlenberg sent another link to a Quantamagazine article (see this), which is very relevant to what I have been working on recently. I am not going to comment on the so called alien calculus discussed in the article as a proposal to get rid of the infinities of quantum field theories. Rather, I will explain how this problem is solved in the TGD framework (see https://tgdtheory.fi/public_html/articles/whatgravitons.pdf).

The problem of infinities is due to the assumption that the point-like nature of fundamental objects. In superstring models this problem was at least partially solved but superstrings were not the option chosen by Nature.

1. The basic discovery of TGD is that the generalization of complex structure is possible in dimension 4 of the space-time and corresponds to the existence of exotic diff structures (see https://tgdtheory.fi/public_html/articles/intsectform.pdf). Nature wants all that it can get and has chosen the option with the maximal structural richness.
2. In TGD particles become 3-D surfaces whose 4-D orbits are analogs of Bohr orbits with a finite non-determinism at which the minimal surface property fails. The mathematically ill-defined path integral reduces to a finite sum and only the well-defined functional integral over 3-surfaces remains. Divergences disappear completely.
3. Scattering amplitudes reduce to sums over contributions from the lower-D singularities of the minimal surfaces. Singularities are analogous to the poles of holomorphic functions in holography=holomorphy vision and generalized holomorphic maps define an infinite-D symmetry group analogous to holomorphic maps in string models.
4. The trace of the second fundamental form slashed between the induced free spinor fields of M^{42 gives the universal vertex and contains contributions of all basic interactions including gravitation. Induced spinor fields are second quantized spinor fields of H=M4×CP₂ and correlation functions for these free spinor fields determine the scattering amplitudes.}

See the article What gravitons are and could one detect them in TGD Universe? or the chapter with the same title.

For a summary of earlier postings see Latest progress in TGD.

For the lists of articles (most of them published in journals founded by Huping Hu) and books about TGD see this.