Carl's Upcoming Talk at Hawaii Conference

[arivero]

I do not know if he is going, but Carl happens to have a 25 min talk allocated next Wednesday, before Koide's talk:

http://www.phys.hawaii.edu/indico/sessionDisplay.py?sessionId=116&confId=3

It is a middle-to-long talk, but too early morning, fortunately Koide will follow so people has two opportunities

the slides for Brannen and powerpoint for Koide are online there. Carl has gone "only eV" in terms of units, which is better for a presentation. But 41 slides is one every 30 seconds, I guess he will be planning the shortcut now...

 

[Kea]

But 41 slides is one every 30 seconds, I guess he will be planning the shortcut now...

Hee, hee. From what he said he is planning to get in as much as he can! Oh...I just looked at the schedule on the link and noticed that the guy before Carl is also talking about a similar business. Wish I was in Hawaii.

We're smiling for you, CarlB

 

[CarlB]

I really don't know what I should do with the talk.

I figure I have to tell about the incredible coincidence of two 5-digit accurate small fractions in the charged lepton masses. But after that, I've become so adrift from standard physics that it is very difficult for me to talk at all. I can either spout what I think is bullcrap, or I can spout what the audience thinks is bullcrap. Hell of a choice.

A few slides in I show that the -1 you get in spinors when you rotate a spin-1/2 around an axis by 2 pi appears, in the density theory, to show up only because you failed to rotate the "vacuum" that defined the spinor (i.e. complex numbers are geometric objects so you can't go around rotating the states without rotating the complex numbers too). This point is the same thing as the usual assumption that swapping two fermions causes the wave function to get negated.

But none of that -1 stuff happens in the density theory, and you can move from the density theory back to the spinor theory, so are they a part of reality or not? To me, the fact that a simple version exists (without -1s) implies that the usual way of doing QM, the spinor theory, is a mathematical trick; the density operator theory is closer to reality.

Unfortunately, the same sort of thinking has spread through the rest of my understanding of physics, some before, some afterwards. I think that the Wick rotated calculations correspond to the real world, the Minkowski geometry is a bad geometric trick. I think that the geometry should define the symmetry, but physics is defined the opposite way. I believe relativity follows from a simple geometry (not Minkowski). I made a list once of how far I had split from the standard view and found that there were 20 basic assumptions I have that are "cranky".

I'm sort of inclined to stop the lecture there, and ask the audience. "Okay, along this line, would the graduate students in the audience like to know a bunch of facts about physics that will piss off your professors?"

Also, I've got notes for the apparent evidence in cosmic rays for particles traveling sqrt(3) c. I wonder if I should show those too. You can't take the idea of "velocity as eigenstate of Dirac equation" and "electron made out of three/six particles with perpendicular velocities" without concluding that the maximum electron speed is the speed of the constituents/sqrt(3). But I doubt anyone wants to hear it.

By the way, I don't know about pub hopping. I'm not much of a late night drinker. Oh oh, low battery. I'd better go get on a plane.

Thanks for the good vibes.

Carl

 

[Kea]

I think that the geometry should define the symmetry, but physics is defined the opposite way.

Carl, there will be some people in the audience who have taken on board this lesson, although maybe not in your Clifford algebra way.

Also, I've got notes for the apparent evidence in cosmic rays for particles traveling sqrt(3) c. I wonder if I should show those too.
...But I doubt anyone wants to hear it.

Er, you might be surprised. There are a lot of people talking about $c$ change now...at least as of the last few weeks! So go for it.

All the best
Kea

 

[CarlB]

Kea & Arivero,

I had the most useful plane flight from Seattle.

The most controversial thing in the neutrino mass predictions is the supposition that the masses scale like
$$\mu_1/\mu_0 = 3^{12} / 3^1 = 3^{11}$$

And this was supposed to be associated with the assumption that the neutrino mixing matrix is a 12th root of unity (after you correct it by making it translate from mass eigenstates $$(\nu_1,\nu_2,\nu_3)$$ to mass eigenstates $$(e,\mu,\tau)$$which you do by multiplying it by the matrix of eigenvectors of a circulant matrix). I hadn't even included the neutrino mixing angle stuff in the slides.

Now the justification for all this was that the mass conversion L->R->L is correct for the charged leptons, but is off by an angle of 2 pi/12 for the neutrinos. However, if that angle were taken literally, you'd end up with a complex mass, not a mass that was taken to the 12th power.

On the plane ride over, I realized that the two circulant matrices that represent the charged leptons and the neutrinos were simply:
$$\begin{array}{rcl} M_1 &=& \left(\begin{array}{ccc}1&0&0\\0&1&0\\0&0&1\end{array}\right),\\ M_0 &=& \left(\begin{array}{ccc}0&i&0\\0&0&i\\i&0&0\end{array}\right), \end{array}$$

where the charged lepton transformation acts like $$L_e -> R_e -> M_1L_e$$ and the neutrino transformation acts like $$L_\nu -> R_\nu ->M_0L_\nu$$

The point is that the M_0 matrix can act like a true 12th (or is it 6th) root of unity in a way that does not overuse (burn up) any degrees of freedom the way that trying to make it be a complex 12th root of unity does.

Now the place where all this gets tied back into the theory is this: I now assume that the mass interaction is a change in the sign of $$\gamma_0$$. But $$\gamma_0$$ is not one of the commuting roots of unity that defines the primitive idempotents associated with the elementary particles. So what does nature do? The elementary particles are mass eigenstates and therefore have to be eigenstates of parity.

Nature does the same thing as happens when you want to make a spin-1/2 in the +x direction spinor out of the two +/-z spinors (1,0) and (0,1). She makes a complex linear combination. The result is that one of the linear combinations ends up as M_1, the other as M_0. But instead of the complex linear combination being built out of nice simple complex numbers, instead nature has to use those nasty 3x3 matrices. The result is that the mass interaction is far less probable with the neutrinos than the charged leptons. Neutrinos have to go through the 12 step program in order to achieve sobriety.

Also, I realized that I didn't explain how one got the Koide formula from the 3x3 solutions to the idempotent equation. One does this by adding together the right handed and left handed matrices. When you do this, all the vectors cancel and all that is left is the scalars, which have the form of the Koide mass formula $$1+\sqrt{2}\cos(\delta+2n\pi/3)$$. The only problem is that the angle delta is wrong.

The reason that all the non scalar parts canceled is because the potential energy was assumed to be order Planck energy for every part of a multivector except the scalar part (which corresponds to order of magnitude of muon mass, I guess). The potential energy is a sum of squares of coefficients, and so the mass is the square of the scalar coefficient, which explains why Koide's formula works for square roots of masses instead of masses.

It is possible to derive that the observed particles are what you get when you demand that all but the scalar parts sum to zero but it isn't easy. It is easy, however, to show that this happens with the observed leptons. And the quarks show that of the three (non scalar) roots of unity that define the ``fermion cube'', one of those roots has a potential energy that, while being very high compared to the scalar energy, its low enough that we can sort of see it a little.

As a last addition, I thought I need to put in a slide showing how all this came about, particularly the PhysicsForums contribution, which I sem to recall was Alejandro's doing.

None of this has taken place yet. I got in 7 hours ago, and since I was in my relatively inexpensive hotel by 3PM local time, I engaged a very helpful cab driver to drive me all over Honolulu looking for what we eventually figured out was the Punchbowl Memorial. My father lost a brother, missing in action, in the Pacific in 1944. He had always imagined that some day his children would play with his big brother's children but that was not to be. Instead, as an inadequate substitute, he named his first born son (me) after his brother. In the US, not returning from wars gets your name listed on a memorial, in this case at the Punchbowl Memorial, so of course I went to visit it. I had been thinking that I would do this on the day I flew out, but this worked out much better. It was a beautiful day to be sad. The sky was 40% covered with those sharp edged, very white clouds that make the blue look more intense. Like this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cumulus_cloud

Carl

 

[arivero]

I'm sort of inclined to stop the lecture there, and ask the audience. "Okay, along this line, would the graduate students in the audience like to know a bunch of facts about physics that will piss off your professors?"

It is going to be an intimate audience anyway, having six (seven?) parallel sessions and an early start. I am amazed your talk is not the first in the morning; this implies you hava some advantage scoring, perhaps because of the mention on 's slides, perhaps because you and Koide happen to represent the meaning of the meeting: collaboration across the Pacific.

graduate students do not have professors, they have advisors.

true 12th (or is it 6th)

It seems 6th to me.

The potential energy is a sum of squares of coefficients, and so the mass is the square of the scalar coefficient, which explains why Koide's formula works for square roots of masses instead of masses.

Seems a good point to isolate in a single slide.

A point to discuss, if you leave time for that, is to wonder if a square root of the masses is an square root of the Dirac operator, and thus a hint for low energy supersymmetry.

I hope you hat got slide pens. These hotels happen not to have blackboards. Besides, blackboard is slower, count your minutes.

As a last addition, I thought I need to put in a slide showing how all this came about, particularly the PhysicsForums contribution, which I sem to recall was Alejandro's doing.

Lat me mention it because it was travel-related, as this plane jump you are doing. I was worried Hans guesswork was to be lost, at a time were the forum structure for speculation was not defined. I had been following it during a travel from Spain to Greece; the travel combined cargo ships with trains and then a lot of stations and some spare time to think and to follow physicsforums. I remember to crawl the pubs of Igumenitsa looking for a internet terminal. When I returned I decided to start that long long thread. No need for an slide, but if you bump against someone having good quality guesses, address them to the thread!

 

[CarlB]

Arivero, Kea,

I've got a new cut of slides. Way too long for 20/25 minutes, but I think the slides should be something people can look at who aren't there:
http://www.brannenworks.com/jpp06.pdf

Those are only half modified, but you can see that the mass comes from an assumption that is based on thinking of a potential energy between two particles that, in the spinor language is:
$$V = |<A|B>|^2 = <A|B><B|A>$$
but with two modifications. First, it is made into the square of a sum of density operators, and second, the scalar part is interpreted as related to gravity and is interpreted as the particle mass. The non scalar parts of the sum are interpreted to have natural masses around the Planck mass, and so they amount to infinities that have to be arranged to cancel. Then the elementary particles are the things with scalar sums, and the scalar sum, when squared, is the measured low energy mass.

Note that the above is 4th order in spinors but only 2nd order in density operators. So we can solve the problem in the density operator language but it makes a more difficult problem in spinors.

Here it is 6:30AM local time. I had 5 hours of sleep and can hardly wait to start the day. A mild touch of hypomania perhaps.

One cool thing about Hawaii is the high degree of foreign influence here. For me, this means that I can buy unusual treats. Last night I picked up a bag of something made from rice, soy sauce and sea weed that turned out to be quite tasty. $2.49 + tax for 4oz. I took the photos to prepare for blogging the event.

Yes, I will include a slide mentioning Physics Forums and your contributions. PF is a remarkable resource.

Carl

 

[arivero]

I think that somewhere between slide 7 and 11 you must stress "up to here the empirical data, now let's search for some model". Because Koide will present other models, and it must be clear that, while Koide original formula comes from a model, you both now take the reversal way: given this surprising empirical input, look for a model.

 

[CarlB]

I think that somewhere between slide 7 and 11 you must stress "up to here the empirical data, now let's search for some model". Because Koide will present other models, and it must be clear that, while Koide original formula comes from a model, you both now take the reversal way: given this surprising empirical input, look for a model.

Yes, I set it up as a transition from observation to theory, but I need to mention that there are alternatives. Also, the lecture preceding mine is about tribimaximal neutrino mixing and I really need to tie in.

This is the first time I've attended the opening remarks at a physics meeting. Perhaps coincidentally, this is the farthest west I've attended one of these things.

I haven't seen Dr. Koide. Reading between the lines of one of his emails, I suspect that he will not arrive until Wednesday. He is well known among the Japanese physicists I have talked with so far. Our presentations are particularly natural at a joint meeting of the US and Japanese particle physicists.

First session starts in 15 minutes. I will attend the session "Low energy tests of the standard model", as this seems germane to me:
http://www.phys.hawaii.edu/%7Edpf06/post/lowenergy/ms1.pdf

The other two parallel sessions I'm planning on are beyond the standard model:
http://www.phys.hawaii.edu/%7Edpf06/post/bsm/ms2.pdf
http://www.phys.hawaii.edu/%7Edpf06/post/bsm/ms3.pdf

I can't imagine paying $400 to attend one of these without attending all the sessions. Since I'm not connected with academia, these are quite a rush.

Carl

 

[Kea]

Those are only half modified, but you can see that the mass comes from an assumption that is based on thinking of a potential energy between two particles that, in the spinor language is:
$$V = |<A|B>|^2 = <A|B><B|A>$$
but with two modifications. First, it is made into the square of a sum of density operators, and second, the scalar part is interpreted as related to gravity and is interpreted as the particle mass.

Hi Carl

Goodness, you managed a lot on such a short flight! We're still working on recovering the idempotents the M-theory way (which will take a while at the pace I go) but we've been distracted by gluon tree amplitudes, which isn't a bad thing because it would (a) indicate a rigorous QFT framework and (b) be useful at the LHC.

Enjoy Hawaii!

 

[CarlB]

Kea,

It turns out that I love taking photographs and Hawaii is going to provide me with some entertainment. However, as a fat old bald guy, with a tendency towards skin cancer, the island does not provide a whole lot of attractions for me. Now Iceland, that I think I would really enjoy.

Which reminds me. I am at a cheap hotel and have to walk to the Waikiki Sheraton where the meetings are. Because of limitations on the human capacity of fat old balding guys to tolerate friction, I picked up a small bottle of baby powder downstairs at the colorful hotel I'm staying at. It has worked well.

The meetings started at a convenient hour for me but there are signs of some very sleepy Japanese here. I like to sit in a single session for the full 2 hours. There were four talks this past session, on the subject of low energy tests of the standard model. At the start of the second talk, a young man came in and sat next to me. Immediately he began dozing off, his head bobbing. Each time he fell over against me, he woke upright. At the end of the talk he vigorously ran out of the room, presumably to attend the next meeting in a different session. So many capabilities are wasted on youth.

Density operators are all about keeping the initial and final states together in a single package. Now in normal density matrix stuff the initial and final states are not necessarily very close together. But in what I'm doing, they are literally at the same point in space time. Is there some relationship between that concept and string theory where the point particles are replaced by pairs, also very close together?

Polchinski is here and will give a talk. There are also a series of sessions devoted to string theory but I wasn't planning on visiting any. There are no printed programs, everyone is complaining. What I'd like to attend would be a meeting titled "string theory for idiots".

Carl

 

[Kea]

Now Iceland, that I think I would really enjoy.

Yes, personally I'm an Iceland type of person myself. Maybe if you get a chance to gain some altitude...go on an astronomy excursion?

But in what I'm doing, they are literally at the same point in space time. Is there some relationship between that concept and string theory where the point particles are replaced by pairs, also very close together?

Er...the way we see it with operads, string theory is just a moduli space technique for doing rigorous QFT (sorry guys). But yes, the similarities are more than superficial. The important point is that the interpretation of a point is permitted in a (let's call it) measurement geometry but not in any other arbitrary geometry, such as interpreting the spacetime literally as a universal background.

Polchinski is here and will give a talk.

Oh, I wonder if he'll come to your talk...

 

[Hurkyl]

M_0 looks like a twelfth-root to me; if you cube it, you get (-i)I, and you need to square it twice more to get the identity.

 

[CarlB]

Hurkyl, Kea, and all,

you're right, but in the context of a mass interaction, the minus stops the process at 6 stages. What I need is an object that has to be raised to the 12th power before it gives unity, and it doesn't repeat any degrees of freedom along the way. Among the reals, the largest Nth such power is 1, but with 3x3 matrices of Clifford algebras you can do something much more interesting. For example,
$$\left(\begin{array}{ccc}0&1&0\\0&0&1\\1&0&0\end{array}\right)$$
is a 3rd root of unity that doesn't repeat any degrees of freedom. If I replace the "1" with a 4th root of unity that doesn't repeat any degrees of freedom then I'm golden.

I know way too much about square roots of unity in Clifford algebras but I don't know much about 4th roots of unity. I kind of doubt that they exist.

Oh, and Kea, I'm suddenly having doubts about my construction. The problem is with the sentence "When you do this, all the vectors cancel and all that is left is the scalars". While listening to a lecture just now I convinced myself that the bivectors didn't cancel. I had assumed that they didn't appear because of stuff I did a long time ago when I was using a different potential energy, but now I have my doubts.

This old man is getting tired. To be young again and able to continuously party for 6 days running. Oh, and to not make as many mistakes.

I made a rookie tactical mistake. I looked up the slides for two lectures I was interested in before attending them. And last night I realized that "Babe in the Universe", who has the speed of light cosmology theory, lives somewhere around here so I sent her an email. I am still thinking that there has to be a symmetry breaking for spacetime that chooses a preferred parity. To get this in Clifford algebra, one replaces c with a multivector that has a parity term in it. The spinor Dirac equation is preserved under this sort of transformation, but the particles end up distinguished from one another. The transformation amounts to a change to the potential energy.

Carl

 

[Kea]

Oh, and Kea, I'm suddenly having doubts about my construction.

Don't worry. I have no doubts whatsoever that the silent army is busily working it all out, and they should soon put us old(ish) folks out of our misery.

And last night I realized that "Babe in the Universe", who has the speed of light cosmology theory, lives somewhere around here so I sent her an email.

It would be wonderful if you could meet Louise Riofrio. Make sure you get some photographs!

 

[CarlB]

It would be wonderful if you could meet Louise Riofrio. Make sure you get some photographs!

I send a lot of emails to academic types and don't get replies. My assumption has been that they have already read enough emails from people on yahoo, they don't need anymore, and they've set their filters to eliminate everything but .edu.

If anyone ever complains that I didn't send them an email with notification of something important back in 2004, I'm going to tell them, "but I did send it to you. I was very excited by the results and I knew you would be too. I remember it clearly. It was titled "Better than sex!", so that I was sure it would get your attention.

I went to a neutrino session. It was well attended in a fairly large room. Mostly experimentalists talking about cuts.

I'm thinking maybe that factor 2/9 is going to explain itself this week. I used to think it was associated with statistical mechanics. The logic goes something like this: QM probabilities are proportional to the density matrix, $$\rho$$. In statistical mechanics, probabilities look something like $$\exp(-H/kT)$$. Equating these two, it shouldn't be a surprise when you find that your probabilities end up with terms in them like $$\exp(i m/n)$$. And mass is, of course, a probability.

Carl

 

[Kea]

If anyone ever complains that I didn't send them an email with notification of something important back in 2004, I'm going to tell them...

LOL. But Louise is really friendly. Why not leave a note on her blog?

 

[Hans de Vries]

Congratulations with your talk Carl! I think you did a poster session before
but this is the first real talk.

Regards, Hans

 

[CarlB]

Kea,

she got back to me and we may meet. But I had forgotten how tiring these things were for me. I've just got back from the "reception". I had pleasant (well, for me), conversation with a group of youngsters working on the D0 at Cern. So long as I don't talk about physics I can carry on fairly intelligent conversations with physicists, LOL.

And I know a little more about 4th roots of unity that touch 4 degrees of freedom:
$$\left(\begin{array}{cccc}0&1&0&0\\0&0&1&0\\0&0&0&1\\1&0&0&0\end{array}\right)$$

The above is a matrix example, of course, so needs to be converted into geometric form in order to understand it. A simple conversion to "Dirac bilinears" on the left and idempotents, on the right, is:

$$=\left(\begin{array}{cccc}0&1&0&0\\1&0&0&0\\0&0&0&1\\0&0&1&0\end{array}\right) \left(\begin{array}{cccc}0&&&\\&1&&\\&&0&\\&&&1\end{array}\right)$$

$$+\left(\begin{array}{cccc}0&0&0&1\\0&0&1&0\\0&1&0&0\\1&0&0&0\end{array}\right) \left(\begin{array}{cccc}1&&&\\&0&&\\&&1&\\&&&0\end{array}\right)$$

Geometrically, the above is defined by three roots of unity, $$a,b,c$$ The three roots each anticommute with the other (i.e. they could be three vectors from a Clifford algebra)). Then the 4th root of unity should be:

$$0.5(a(1-c) + b(1+c))$$

but alas my Clifford algebra calculator says I made a mistake. I need to add a function to the calculator that allows you to input a matrix and get back the geometric equivalent. Or maybe I should try this again tomorrow.

Hans, this may not be my first talk, but I think it's the first talk I've ever given where someone who had an academic position was present who actually wanted to listen to it.

Carl

 

[arivero]

M_0 looks like a twelfth-root to me; if you cube it, you get (-i)I, and you need to square it twice more to get the identity.

Cof, true. Somehow I modded -1 out.

 

[CarlB]

I'm about to attend the string theory morning session:
http://www.phys.hawaii.edu/%7Edpf06/post/strings/ts1.pdf

I expect to understand nothing. Audience size is about 25.

It was originally scheduled for 8AM and got moved back. Somehow the other participants knew this (perhaps it was announced last night), but I didn't, and wondered why there were only 2 people in the room when I arrived. I briefly wondered if the herd had moved away from string theory.

Carl

 

[arivero]

briefly wondered if the herd had moved away from string theory.l

 

[CarlB]

I get the impression that if I attended 3 or 4 conferences per year, and sat through the string theory presentations, I would eventually come to understand the stuff. But eventually could be a long time.

I "saved" the third lecture, an interesting one by Rene Reinbacher:
http://www.phys.hawaii.edu/indico/contributionDisplay.py?contribId=594&amp;sessionId=70&amp;confId=3

For some reason their laptop couldn't find the paper. I had just downloaded it from the net and gave it to them on a memory stick. (Carl saves string theory.) The subject was not as opaque as the abstract would suggest:

Generalizing a recent idea of Donaldson, we show how to obtain explicit numerical solutions of the Hermitian-Yang Mills equation over stable holomorphic vector bundles on Calabi-Yau threefolds. We use these solutions to compute the kinetic terms of the matter and moduli fields in the effective four dimensional action obtained in heterotic string compactification. We also give a formula for the superpotential for the normalized fields. This is joint work with Mike Douglas, Robert Karp and Sergio Lukic.

The 7th page of the paper has a formula for T(h). They noted that there was a limit $$T^n(h)$$ which exists. This limit would be a projection operator, an idempotent. So I asked if there was anyone studying the idempotents of these things in particular. Seems like there isn't.

 

[Kea]

This limit would be a projection operator, an idempotent. So I asked if there was anyone studying the idempotents of these things in particular. Seems like there isn't.

Well, this is interesting Carl. Of course, there are people studying such things. Now I suppose this paper is something else we should look at...sigh...

 

[CarlB]

Kea, I don't think that it is important, except maybe if you wanted to get gravity to work right, LOL. I just have "idempotents on the brain" fever, so when I see limits like that I think of this sort of thing.

I do wonder what would happen if you tried to rewrite GR from an idempotent point of view. The idea is that the idempotent relation is the simplest nonlinear equation one can write, $$\rho^2 = \rho$$, so one expects that properly wielded, it should encapsulate a lot of nonlinear behavior, and yet be symmetric enough that one can explicitly solve it. There was some things that caught my attention besides that in the lecture. There was a requirement that the Ricci tensor be flat that sounded promising (I sadly don't believe in GR, but instead think that gravitation is a force mediated by the graviton on a flat space).

I've been looking for nice Japanese words to describe my way of looking at physics. The standard model has that nature was originally a beautiful symmetric thing, but many of her symmetries spontaneously disappeared. The appropriate Japanese term is "busu":
http://www.flame.org/~calger/animedict.html#g

In my model, nature is good looking, and always has been, but she hides her beauty behind locked doors. The density operator theory provides the tools to unlock her secrets. Now there is a Japanese slang term for the bag of tools that a burglar uses but I can't remember what it is. Ah, here it is, the gudo:
http://koukeisha.net/nihongo-bin/misc.htm

So, in honor of the meeting being a joint US Japanese venture, in my lecture I will refer to the standard model as the busu theory, and my work as the gudo (assuming I don't lose my nerve which is always possible). Too bad the obvious websites are already taken, but "busugudo.com" appears not. Also see:
http://deoxy.org/koan/72

Carl

 

[Kea]

I sadly don't believe in GR, but instead think that gravitation is a force mediated by the graviton on a flat space.

Well, GR does have some uses. GPS engineers use it, and it did help us study binary pulsars. Sadly, neither cosmology nor Quantum Gravity can function with GR. I don't like the word graviton, because it is so misused. Let's make a new word. I'm inspired by gluons...so how about the gluton?

I must rush: there's a Ross Street seminar on soon...

 

[CarlB]

Oh, I don't mean to say that GR is useless; I think it works quite well. I just think that it is unnecessarily complicated. You can derive it from gravitons and a lot of hard work in a flat space.

And about those GPS engineers, maybe you're setting up an opening here, but you really should read what the GPS engineers say about GR and SR. It turns out that you don't have to believe GR in order to design a GPS system, and the lead engineer for the project was highly against the whole concept. He's been attempting to pester the physics community by stating the obvious ever since:
http://www.egtphysics.net/scandclock.pdf

However, the physics community being composed of people who are very certain of their version of reality, they've had little problem ignoring him (and others).

Carl

 

[Hans de Vries]

It turns out that you don't have to believe GR in order to design a GPS system

Well, all they need to do is to apply a simple formula which relates height with
faster ticking clocks... They don't need to understand anything about GR.Regards, Hans

 

[Kea]

And about those GPS engineers...

Well, OK. Actually I know some GPS engineers who are quite happy to play with GR, but I can't say how useful it actually is to them...maybe they just like GR.

Seminar was good.

 

[CarlB]

My alarm clock worked, but I woke up 3 minutes before it went off. Now I'm over at the Sheraton Waikiki about to check the timing once again. I guess that means that part of me is looking forward to giving a talk. I updated the talk to include the various things we've discussed here.

 

[marcus]

Best of luck with the talk!
Enjoyed the koans
http://deoxy.org/koan/29

 

[CarlB]

The computer system lost my updated slides so I went with the older ones. This happened to the previous speaker as well. His topic was the tribimaximal mixing matrices, so there were 25x3 = 75 minutes of speakers on pretty much the same subject of neutrino physics.

I met Dr. Koide and obtained his photograph. He obtained mine. I will eventually get this stuff blogged, I hope tonight.

After the talk, I had one man come up to me with the question, "but we know that spinors change state under rotation because we can make them interfere". Well, of course the density operator theory gives identical results as the spinor theory (the Dirac equation is the same in each). Where they differ is that the operator theory does not allow you to split the initial state away from the final state. So long as you keep them together, rotating the initial state causes you to automatically rotate the final state and the two -1 factors cancel.

It is subtle little things like this that reinforce the supremacy of the usual way of looking at things. Physics is very tightly woven together and you can't change the interpretation of the state from vector to operator without having to reinterpret a lot of other things.

I was less nervous than I usually am at these things, maybe repetition does help. And 25 minutes was about the right length of time. Maybe it was good that I didn't bring in my new notes.

Ooooops! I brought along a clock to keep track of time and now I realize that I forgot it.

Enjoyed the koans
http://deoxy.org/koan/29

Basically, my lecture was on the sound of one spinor clapping.

Carl

 

[CarlB]

I saw some interesting lectures from the experimentalists on neutrino oscillation yesterday. The neutrino oscillation experiments are what provide the experimental measurements of the differences of masses of neutrinos and this forms the foundation of the talk I gave.

One of the lectures was on a diamond substrate for charged particle detection near the neutrino source. muon neutrinos are made by the circuituous process of colliding protons with a target to get muons, cleaning up the muon beam and directing it down a long tunnel where some of them decay, and then absorbing all the resulting strongly or electromagnetically interacting trash at a beam dump. The neutrinos continue on for many miles.

The reason for using a vapor deposited diamond surface was for its resistance to radiation near where the neutrinos are created. From what I can understand, they fabricated 4 samples and ended up with a range of "warm up times" that differed from a few seconds to a few minutes. If I saw that level of variability in a key parameter for a process that I was thinking of bringing into production I would be afraid. Very afraid. Maybe the warm up time could drift to months, when in actual production, maybe not. But they seemed relatively unconcerned. I wonder what the process engineers have to say.

There was another lecture that mentioned the beam geometry for some off axis neutrino studies. Off axis reduces the beam intensity but makes for a tighter energy spectrum. The speaker made the comment that this idea was so obvious that "even a string theorist thought of it". The audience laughed, and the author continued, "no, it really happened". I guess theorists, especially string theorists don't have a good reputation for being tightly coupled to the exigencies of experimental reality.

I attended some lectures on the search for very high energy cosmic rays down in South America and Brazil. I think that these are important because new physics is more likely to appear in the cosmic rays where God creates the particles, than on Earth where only Man makes them. There are some interesting correlations between the experimental apparatus and the discrepant observations of these things. These are things that are very natural to talk about with the experimentalists because they understand the limitations of electronics. But more on that later, time for more plenary lecture.

Carl

 

[CarlB]

The weather in Hawaii has taken a turn for the wet. The morning paper announced that floods have now overtaken a land just recovered from the earthquake of a few weeks ago.

This has probably improved attendance at some of the plenary lectures, but I decided that I'd taken as much sitting quietly as I am capable and came out in the main room to blog. This is where the poster session was held, more about that later.

There is a pair of escalators here. Nominally designated "up" and "down", the "up" elevator has been out of repair for some time. I say "some time" because as far as I can recall it has been out of service for the whole conference. Maybe it never worked at all.

Anyway, in a display of Hawaiian efficiency, the up elevator has been partially dismantled. I have photographed it. I would have liked to have shown it with workers working on it, but this has proved impossible as they are nowhere to be seen.

One has to go up one story from the foyer to reach this room, and without the up escalator this has involved going outside to the beautiful wide staircase that everyone with a camera has photographed.

With the present heavy rain, this has become somewhat unpleasant. Yesterday it was raining a little, and when I arrived in the morning, instead of going outside to get wet, I decided to go up the down escalator.

In addition to being fat, fifty and short, I am also carrying a heavy laptop and a day pack filled with books. This made for an exciting dash up the long escalator. I reached the top swearing and probably sweating more than I would have been watered outside, but triumphant. One of the features of growing old is imagining that you are still as smart and quick as you were when you were 24.

At the moment, there has been an interesting time reversal symmetry applied to the remaining operational escalator. It is now running in the up direction. THIS leads to a problem in the terminology. Is the old down escalator now the up escalator? Ignoring that issue, there are a few further observations.

Gravity breaks the high energy symmetry between up and down and splits the states. Consequently, I expect that it will be easier to run down the up running escalator than it was to run up the down running escalator, particularly in the low energy regime that old fat people are limited to. However, I do not intend on testing this because when I performed the feat the other way, I noticed that there is a nasty grid at the point where the escalator stairs are created and annihilated. I observed that in traversing these objects in the incorrect direction, there was a distinct non zero amplitude for me getting my body parts stuck in the mechanism. I believe that this amplitude would be identical for the reversed direction so I will instead search for alternative methods of getting downstairs.

Carl

 

[CarlB]

I attended the poster session and wine and cheese last night. I had to leave early because I had run out of clean clothes and needed to get to the laundromat in my inexpensive but colorful hotel.

There were not very many posters. Some of the posters had topics on neutrinos of higher quality than my own and I thought it was surprising that they weren't giving talks. One of the more obscure posters was accompanied by a Japanese man with a stick figure of what I recall as a cube truncated by an octahedron with center of symmetry. I recognized this as the symmetry of the preon model I work with and so I had a short talk with him. His poster comes with an abstract, but it was not listed in the program, so here it is:

A Model of Elementary Domain appearing in the deepest space of the Standard Model
Yoshino Takahiko, 21 Soken Science & Technology Institute (Hong Kong)
This is an attempt in the Yukawa tradition to solve the remaining problems of particle physics. Considered here are some spatial structures behind the local symmetries as explained by the Standard Model. In this study I discovered anti-space, hidden states, and "triplet" on a point of local space. This triplet occurs either on a two dimensional plane surface, or in a three dimensional space. All spatial points are arranged on triangular lattices, and they can also be on square lattice points. Assembling these lattices, I build a model of "Elementary Domain" (named by Yukawa) which shows the formation of different elementary particles such as electrons and meson.

I couldn't find references in the literature for the above. In short, he says that three generations follow from three particles making up the leptons. I will look again for better references later, till then, here is a link to a Google search for the name:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q="Yoshino+Takahiko"

While at the meeting, I overheard a few physicists talking about the amateurs who show up at these things. They were not envying the ability of the amateurs, but did think that giving talks was important for the amateurs who really do believe the crap they write.

On the other hand, the sociologists say that the definition of a community is a group of people who believe the same horse-hockey. This explains why societies can be blind to very obvious facts of life that are clear to other societies. And of course physicists are a community too.

Since physicists are a community, I have scrubbed the beliefs from my early work that physicists find most repulsive. That is not because I have been convinced that the fashionable belief is the truth, but because I have observed that the unfashionable beliefs are ignored and so cannot be tested for truth. This is where most amateurs stray.

I also saw a fascinating poster by Kazumi Fukuma which I thought I would mention.

Carl