Hawking and Penrose at GR 17 Dublin 2004

From: Jack Sarfatti (sarfatti_at_pacbell.net)
Date: 07/29/04 

Date: Thu, 29 Jul 2004 16:33:03 GMT

Correction change "Fiction" to "Fantasy" in original. I make some typo
corrections and added comments below.
I am back in Bloomsbury by British Museum until San Francisco soon.
James Joyce Exhibition at Irish National Library in Dublin worth seeing.

Roger Penrose's book "The Road to Reality" is a must read. So is "The
Future of Theoretical Physics and Cosmology" (Cambridge) ed. Gibbons
et-al as well as Wheeler "Science & Ultimate Reality". Little online
time till I return to San Francisco next week.

On Jul 24, 2004, at 1:44 PM, Colin Bennett wrote:

Hello all Savants,
Hal Puthoff wrote:
 
"I suspect that long after all of Jack's missives are rotting away in
old computer disks, people will be reading your book and using it as
text in major universities. Go, go, go!!!"
 
I protest, sir! Jack Sarfatti's books are authentic modern “texts” in
the sense that few scientific documents, shorn of all imagery, are. Part
autobiographical in nature, they contain adventure and excitements that
stretch over some forty years, and apart from their scientific and
historical value alone, they will be remembered as important
mythological texts of our time . What makes them quite unique is that
the included theoretical mathematical physics function as an holistic
part of Jack Sarfatti’s experience. Nothing cancels anything else out.
The equations reflect certainly the rest of the dramatic synthesis. By
analogy, the problems involved in their resolution reflect a broad range
of the social, and psychological problems of our time. This is the
proper socialisation of science that is badly needed in popular education.

Sarfatti is a scholar, a gentleman, and a great communicator with a
universal view of things. Most scientists are not accessible to the
general public in this sense. As shadowy figures working at gadgets,
they lack all that wide reading and broad education that enables them to
see their role in the broadest possible context.
In this sense, most corporate scientists with their singular separations
of the mechanical view are like bulldozers through rainforests. They
destroy creativity, paradox, anomaly in their doomed attempt to
understand the universe “objectively” by piling sand grain upon sand
grain. This is 19th century dictionary–file clerk work that will rot in
those files you talk about, sir! Only art form can penetrate these
interstices as knowledge systems, and Jack Sarfatti's books fall into
the category of an Inferno in this respect being based on image, symbol,
and metaphor, with the added bonus of Jack being a leading theoretical
physicist.

The construction of image, symbol and metaphor is something scientists
have very little understanding, or knowledge of, witness for example,
Stanton Friedman’s engineering approach to MJ12 documentation. These
documents, which after all are literature of a kind, cannot be analysed
adequately by someone with the skills of a mechanical engineer. Stanton
has a lot of homework to do if he is to understand the metaphysical
roots of language as complex expression. It is no use dealing with MJ12
or indeed the books of Jack Sarfatti as they were an objective problem
in engineering physics. Scientists should read more Barthes and Borges
than Agatha Christie.
I have complained many times (I am here again, Bruce!) that debates in
this area lack all modern intellectual sophistication, and this is why
ufology for example is still in a dog kennel surrounded by mountain of
desperately primitive case-history books and not recognised by the outer
world, whose postmodern techniques in aesthetics from to architecture
and literary criticism have bypassed such simple “compilation”
techniques half a century ago.

This whole business is about the development and fruition of images
within cultural advertising levels struggling for prime time and in
respect Jack Sarfatti does better than most.

For a postmodern approach to technology, see my essay The Dream Life of
Prototypes Part 1, on site at http://www.combat-diaries.co.uk Part 2
follows next month.
 
Colin Bennett
**
Politics of the Imagination Introduction by John Keel. Awarded Best
Biography, 2002.
http://www.combat-diaries.co.uk
   

On Jul 25, 2004, at 8:24 AM, Jack Sarfatti wrote:

Writing from Dingle Bay, Ireland:

Penrose has a new book "The Road to Reality" that looks really good. It
was too heavy for me to carry in luggage with my two other Wheeler 90th
and Hawking 60th books, I shall order Penrose's book ASAP. All three
will shape my own "Hidden Variable."

Fiction: String Theory.
I agree with Penrose, String Theory is really interesting pure math, but
so far no evidence for it. No evidence for real on
mass-shell-supersymmetry partners. Since supersymmetry is badly broken
it probably won't make an infinity-free quantum field theory anyway.
Penrose did not mention loop quantum gravity, but same objections apply
to it. Penrose did mention that Ed. Witten is now in past 6 months using
Twistors to get rid of the 11 dimensions and bring it back to 4
dimensions? Raising the supersymmetry partner mass scale all the time
makes string theory Popper unfalsifiable said Penrose.

Faith: That quantum theory applies at ALL levels like Hawking assumes in
his "breakthrough" that information is not lost down a blackhole, but
can be recovered after the black hole evaporates. My theory says linear
unitary nonlocal micro-quantum theory (Schrodinger-Dirac equations)
breaks down to nonlinear nonunitary local macro-quantum theory
(Landau-Ginzburg equation) when the macro-world Einstein curved
space-time non-perturbative background-independent geometrodynamics
emerges from it in a spontaneous breakdown of the unstable false
globally flat vacuum without gravity guv and without inertia rest mass m
in E^2 = (pc)^2 + (mc^2)^2 mass shell to a lower energy density lower
entropy metastable curved vacuum with exotic dark energy of negative ZPF
pressure and exotic dark matter of positive ZPF pressure (not to be
confused with the QED Casimir force).

On Jul 22, 2004, at 3:53 AM, K. Cruft wrote:

>> The latter suggests no
>> quantum foam corrections to cosmic ray spectrum at ultra-high energies
>> and no dark matter as real particles whizzing through space to make
>> detectors click with the right stuff.

"There are two papers up on ArXiv today:

     http://www.arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0407416
     http://www.arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0407417

which suggest that high-energy photons detected long after the
main pulse of gamma ray bursts are evidence for additional
spacelike dimensions. Note that these two paper are essentially based
on the observation of a *single photon*."

In particular micro-quantum gravity and cosmology is an illusion.
Macro-quantum gravity and cosmology is not. Penrose does not say this. I
say it, but it is consistent with Penrose's intuition in his talk at GR
17 that a breakdown of micro-quantum theory at the macro-level is
needed. This is why Hawking's solution at GR 17 is wrong in my opinion.

Fantasy: "Theoretical physics needs some fantasy, otherwise it is
boring." said Penrose. I have often expressed the same sentiment.
Penrose considers Andrei Linde's et-al inflation "fantasy" even though
it may make some correct predictions like the scaling symmetry in the
primordial fluctuations and spatial flatness, it still does not explain
the fine tuning needed to set the arrow of time, i.e. the
irreversibility of the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Penrose points out
that it is the geometry of space that must have low entropy in the Big
Bang because the matter thermalizes quickly to high entropy. In my
theory the geometry of space is from the phase ripples in the phase of
the zero entropy giant quantum vacuum wave so this may solve Penrose's
problem though I am not yet sure. That is, the phase transition from
unstable globally flat micro-quantum vacuum to a more stable curved
macro-quantum vacuum not only lowers the relative ZPF energy density but
also lowers the relative entropy S ~ kBlog(Volume of Phase Space of the
Vacuum).

For a universe of size R(t)Lp in the FRW metric, the hologram Hawking
entropy of the geometry is

S(t) = (kB/4)R(t)^2

S(0) = 0

kB is Boltzmann's constant.

To be continued

On Jul 22, 2004, at 4:35 AM, Jack Sarfatti wrote:

Part 1 of several

First of all no one really understood what Hawking was saying in detail.
This included Kip Thorne, John Preskill, Matt Visser and many others.
The jury is still out. Hawking's paper with the details will be out in a
month.

There are several levels of objections:

1. Can one apply micro-quantum theory to the universe at large? The
"particle" or "hidden variable" in Bohm's ontology is an entire 3D space
geometry which extends to billions of light years across as universe
expands. So we run into the Schrodinger Cat problem with a vengeance!
Hawking basically presented a huge quantum double slit analogy with one
"slit" being topologically simple 3D metrics and the other "slit" being
topologically multiply connected with a "fixed point" obstruction in the
Euclidean signature domain without causal light cones before continuing
into physical space-time with light cones where we live. Also there is
the condensed matter approach of Sakharov and me that gravity is a PW
Anderson "More is different" emergent collective ODLRO phenomenon from a
pre-inflationary epoch without any gravity and without any inertial rest
masses! The latter suggests no quantum foam corrections to cosmic ray
spectrum at ultra-high energies and no dark matter as real particles
whizzing through space to make detectors click with the right stuff.

2. Suppose we accept 1. Then can we use the Feynman path integral method
to include topologically non-trivial 3D metrics that coherently
interfere with the topologically simple ones? Matt Visser cited some old
work by Bryce De Witt that says it is not possible.

3. Kip Thorne noted that Feynman's path integral is broader than
conventional quantum theory that requires unitarity in the dynamical
time evolution. One can have a post-quantum theory using Feynman's path
integral of alternative histories that has nonunitary time evolution!
Hawking simply assumes that the time evolution MUST be unitary and goes
from there. Hawking's argument is probably correct given his initial
assumptions. It is the initial assumptions that I think are wrong as a
matter of fact as I explain in my book SUPER COSMOS and will explain
even more clearly in my new book HIDDEN VARIABLE that I am writing based
on this GR 17 Dublin Conference.

4. Hawking's argument in a nut shell is pretty simple:

I. Imagine light impinging on a double slit with a screen behind it.
According to Feynman's histories rule for micro-quantum theory if you
cannot tell which slit the light passes you must coherently add the
complex qubit pilot waves before taking their squared modulus to see
what happens at the screen. So then you interference fringes at the screen.

Hawking then makes a huge quantum leap of faith that this rule seen in
particle scattering experiments applies to the entire multiverse!

The "light" impinging on the two slits is compared to the "information"
falling down the black hole through the classical one-way membrane event
horizon that Hal Puthoff in his PV theory says does not exist. No one
here at GR 17 who has heard of Hal's idea takes it seriously. They
consider Hal's particular positions on both PV and zero point energy
metric engineering to be what Feynman called "Cargo Cult pseudo-science"
ask Cliff Will, William Unruh and Matt Visser for example. They all
volunteered their opinions to me in direct conversation that Marc
Millis's NASA BPP project should never have been funded because the
quality of its theoretical physics was too low. Indeed, this is what I
say in my book SUPER COSMOS. They were all concerned that Hal's
theoretical ideas on metric engineering would be bought by USG DOD and
large aerospace companies. So was Professor X who is quite familiar with
Hal's theories. Allegations of "tens of millions of dollars a year" into
Hal's black budget have been sent to me from several sources. I have no
way to evaluate the accuracy of the sources other than to say that they
appear reliable. Hal, however, denies these allegations. Again this is
not a personal attack on Hal Puthoff or even on some of his past work in
physics. This is their honest judgment and they are just as hard on
themselves and on their closest colleagues as on Hal. Indeed, Kip Thorne
did not immediately embrace Hawking's argument here at GR 17 and neither
did Preskill and they said so on stage. Preskill a particle physicist
said on TV he could not follow Hawking's argument in detail.

II. Hawking then says that the only observables allowed in this
extrapolation of micro-quantum theory to gravity are S-matrix
observables connecting the information falling down the black hole to
what a future observer at infinity will see. Well this is clearly no
good at all for us physicists living now. It is one more argument why
the whole micro-quantum gravity idea is a wrong idea from asking the
wrong questions! Hawking then says that indeed the information in the
topologically non-trivial black hole topology does exponentially decay
in a non-unitary way along that "path" but that the future observer at
the "screen" at future timelike/lightlike infinities, in the sense of
the unitary analytic micro-quantum S-matrix of Geoff Chew and now Lenny
Susskind, neverless sees BOTH Feynman path micro-quantum amplitudes add
coherently at a point on the screen! This does make perfect sense
logically ONLY in Bohm's ontology where EMPTY qubit waves have physical
effects! The initial information I passing BOOTH slits is therefore
recovered completely ONLY AFTER the black hole completely evaporates
because I is REDUNDANTLY ENCODED in BOTH the topologically trivial
"path" and the topologically non-trivial "path" where in fact it does
get lost, but you only need it in one path. This is why Hawking says the
black hole event horizon is "fuzzy" because he assumes quantum wave
interference between macro trivial and non-trivial 3S SPACE topologies.
Given all these dubious assumptions I suppose Hawking's argument will be
correct as a matter of logic, though probably not as a matter of fact.
So far of course what Hawking is saying is in W. Pauli's words "not even
wrong" because there is as yet no way to falsify the idea in Karl
Popper's sense. The same of course is true for John Baez's and
Ashtekar's et-al "loop quantum gravity" and for Ed Witten's, Lenny
Susskind's et-al "M theory" with superstrings - however the colliding
"branes" may be testable along with idea of extra space dimensions
making strong short-range gravity which is an idea I also arrive at
independently from different simpler considerations using only
Einstein's GR and Heisenberg's uncertainty principle with notions of
macro-quantum ODLRO.

* In this regard Feynman's path integral formalism is compatible with
Bohm's ontology and is most general allowing the extension to
macro-quantum theory with ODLRO. None of the Pundit Top Guns at this
elite meeting have understood the role of macro-quantum ODLRO that can
be put into Feynman's path integral formalism. What we need to do next
is to see how Feynman or his students solve the superfluid helium or the
BCS superconductor problem using the path integrals. Hawking would then
need to reconsider since the MACRO-quantum Landau-Ginzburg ODLRO
equations are already NONUNITARY as well as local and nonlinear unlike
the micro-quantum Schrodinger, Dirac et-al equations that are nonlocal
and linear - which is where Hawking & Co are stuck.

"The Question is: What is The Question?" John. A. Wheeler

To be continued:

On Jul 21, 2004, at 12:59 PM, Tony Smith wrote:

I was extremely disappointed to read the following,
excerpted from a N Y Times AP article at
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/science/AP-Ireland-Black-Holes.html?hp

"... By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS ... Published: July 21, 2004 ...
... Filed at 1:22 p.m. ET ...

DUBLIN, Ireland (AP) -- Famed astrophysicist Stephen Hawking
said Wednesday that black holes ... do not destroy everything they consume
and instead can fire out matter and energy ``in a mangled form.''

Hawking's radical new thinking, presented in a paper
to the 17th International Conference on General Relativity
and Gravitation in Dublin, capped his three-decade struggle
to explain an elemental paradox in scientific thinking:
...
Hawking's answer is that the black holes hold their contents for eons
but themselves eventually deteriorate and die.
As the black hole disintegrates,
they send their transformed contents back out
into the infinite universal horizons from which they came.
...
Hawking added, ``It is great to solve a problem
that has been troubling me for nearly 30 years ... ''
...
Hawking settled a 7-year-old bet made with Caltech astrophysicist
John Preskill, who ... said he looked forward to reading
the detailed paper that Hawking is expected to publish next month. ...".
...
The final questioner asked him what problem he intended to tackle next,
now that he had solved the paradox of the black hole.

``I don't know,'' Hawking quickly replied,
bringing the house down with laughter. ...".

---------------------------------------------------------

Tony Smith then wrote:

"In my opinion it is disgraceful that Hawking claimed full credit
for solving the "information paradox", completely ignoring
the work of others who (in my opinion) had already solved the paradox
over the past years."

Jack adds: Tony you cannot believe what is written in newspapers.
Hawking was only talking about his independent thinking on the problem.
I suspect he never read any of the papers you cite below. Also, even if
he did, his method is I would guess completely independent of theirs?

Tony continued:

"Such earlier solutions include, but are not
necessarily limited to:

1 - In 1999 Cerf and Adami wrote a paper at
http://xxx.lanl.gov/abs/quant-ph/9904006
that used quantum information theory to solve it
by showing that "... Hawking radiation is effectively non-thermal
(in the sense that quantum correlations between the radiation and
the state of the black hole exist in principle) ...";.

2 - In 2000 Carlos Castro and Alex Granik wrote a paper at
http://xxx.lanl.gov/abs/physics/0002019
that used a Feynman Path Integral Approach to solve it by
showing that "points" on a black hole event horizon are effectively,
from a quantum path integral point of view, complicated enough
to permit information flow.
This is the first paper for which Carlos Castro was blacklisted
by Cornell (a partial blacklist then - the paper was removed from
"hep-th" where it was posted and put into the less-widely read "physics"
archive).
It is interesting to me that Hawking's abstract at
http://www.dcu.ie/~nolanb/gr17_plenary.htm#hawking
refers to a path integral approach, so perhaps Hawking is
"rediscovering" (and getting credit for) the Castro/Granik solution
that was the start of the blacklisting of Carlos Castro.

3 - In 2000 Chapline wrote a paper at
http://xxx.lanl.gov/abs/gr-qc/0012094
that solved it by describing an event horizon as a quantum critical-
opalescent condensate;

4 - In January 2004 Mathur wrote a paper at
http://xxx.lanl.gov/abs/hep-th/0401115
that solved it in terms of string theory by describing a black
hole as a fuzz-ball with information distributed throughout
its interior (and not restricted to a so-called "holographic" smooth
surface ball boundary).

---------------------------------------------------------------

PS Since I am now pretty sure Hawking is wrong in his key assumption
that micro-quantum theory applies to 3-geometries, all of the above
claims appear to be wrong in the sense of starting from false
assumptions even though the logic may be correct.

"The Question is: What is The Question?" John A. Wheeler

Relevant Pages

  • Hawking and Penrose at GR 17 Dublin 2004
    ... Future of Theoretical Physics and Cosmology" ed. Gibbons ... part of Jack Sarfatti’s experience. ... and Hawking 60th books, I shall order Penrose's book ASAP. ... horizon that Hal Puthoff in his PV theory says does not exist. ...
    (sci.math)
  • Hawking and Penrose at GR 17 Dublin 2004
    ... Future of Theoretical Physics and Cosmology" ed. Gibbons ... part of Jack Sarfatti’s experience. ... and Hawking 60th books, I shall order Penrose's book ASAP. ... horizon that Hal Puthoff in his PV theory says does not exist. ...
    (sci.physics)
  • Hawking and Penrose at GR 17 Dublin 2004
    ... Future of Theoretical Physics and Cosmology" ed. Gibbons ... part of Jack Sarfatti’s experience. ... and Hawking 60th books, I shall order Penrose's book ASAP. ... horizon that Hal Puthoff in his PV theory says does not exist. ...
    (sci.physics.relativity)