Monday, June 15, 2009

Did Aether concept hit the mainstream at last?

By Arthur Schopenhauer all truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed and ignored. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted in quiet as being self-evident. It seems, dense Aether concept has reached its third stage by now. This post is a reaction to recent article Remarks on the world-sheet saga of Prof. Bert Schroer. As Jacques Distler has independently figured out on Clifford Johnson's blog, Schroer's general "reasoning" goes as follows:
  1. Only zero-dimensional particles are acceptable building blocks in physics. ..Wtf...?!?
  2. So string theory must be a theory of point-like particle fields with infinitely many components, too.
    (The only question is, why scientists have realized just after forty years of string theory existence..)
  3. This localization is inconsistent with the idea of world-sheets and the string theoretical interpretation of T-duality.
The expected denouncement of Lubos Motl had to follow. Every introduction of Aether model into physics fulfills predictable scenario, in which particle model will be used for politics and disposal of private animosities, rather then for reconciliation of existing theories. The pluralistic character of AWT model would be ignored during such confrontation completely. The problem isn't indeed in string theory, but in its postulate set. String theory is just formal layer built upon postulates, which could be reformulated anytime later. But because it's popularity serves as source of grant money for theoretical physicists, it's leads to easily predictable situation, when various people would add new and new postulates into theory, while ignoring former ones in order to call the result string theory anyway.

T-duality is the stand of (T)orroidal duality. We can imagine formation of such duality by torsion field inside of repulsing particle system or elastic fluid, which we would jump on like onto heavy urethane mattress. During which toroidal torsion deformations will be formed. At the moment, when the energy density/frequency of undulations exceed certain level, the inertia of environment must be taken into account and new daughter generation of smaller vortices perpendicular to original direction will be formed, and so on... In fluid mechanics this mechanism of vortex propagation is called Widnall's instability. From this follows, its a toroidal symmetry, which connect small and large distances by R-1/R relation. It's a continuous version of one to many duality, as expressed in following scheme:



Which conclusion follows from the above insights for string theory? Well, none specific. String theory is a theory of 1-dimensional quantum objects, which were later extended to N-dimensional quantum objects in M-theory. It's NOT theory of particle field or quantum loops or whatever else - and as such it's fully defined by its postulate set (or at least it should be..). It has no meaning to speculate, if description of T-duality or wordsheet in existing string theory is consistent or not, until it follows from string theory postulates in rigorous way. The introduction of quantum loops or particle field into string theory is indeed possible and string field theory or string net liquid concept takes account into it. But such theories aren't string theory anymore and they can lead to completely different predictions, then the AWT or string theory in its classical form and we cannot expect consistency in anything.

Until we believe, only zero-dimensional particles are acceptable building blocks of physics, no additional constrains or postulates of string theory are required to make such concept testable and predictable - or such theory becomes overloaded by its postulates, thus leading into new generation of fuzzy landscape of many possible solutions.

3 comments:

Ciudadano Kane said...

Hi Zephir,

You already wrote a sentence equivalent to the Schroer arguments in the comments section:

No doubt, string theory is overhyped. For me it's just one of quantum field theories - without Brian Greene nobody of laymans would know about it today.

I'm sure you're right.

P.D. Zephir, resist, Don't matter that the others could say, the truth is only one!!!.

Accipere quam facere praestat iniuriam.

Zephir said...

Hi, Cid,

thank you for moral support, nevethelles, I can fully agree with your claim:

/*..the truth is only one...*/

because in AWT truth always depends on observational perspective. Inside of Aether foam every pair of points (assumption and conclusion) can be connected by infinite ways by causal branes, some of them are more relevant, then others - but that's all. The thicker membrane is more robust, but often more slow and less exact to follow and vice-versa. It depends on what you're expecting from theory: an exact prediction or robust, easy to understand and universally valid explanation. These two criterions (universality and exactness) are in fundamental mutual contradiction due the uncertainty principle and the resulting truth depends on your criterions.

In particular, the criterions of physicists differ from criterions of layman community. Laymans are looking for easy to comprehend, universal and robust explanations, whereas physicists just for exactness. They're not motivated to develop easy to follow solutions and explanations like medicinmans of ancient era - or they would lose their jobs too fast. Exact description of reality has its important usage in particular situations and both approaches must remain in equillibrium.

At the moment, when string theory follows from locally valid theories (general relativity and quantum mechanics), it simply can never be wrong completely. We can discuss, whether the string theory approach is optimal or not - but it can still supply some insights, which other paradigms cannot. And vice-versa.

AWT is more about plurality in thinking, then other theories. Here are infinite number of ways, how density fluctuations in particle system can be interpeted, just because this model is geometrically invariant. It can be fitted by whatever geometry: strings, branes, polygons, vortices, spinors, etc..

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