Could the model of Biefeld Brown effect apply to rotating magnetic systems?

Could model of Biefeld Brown be also applied to a rather massive rotating magnetic system studied by Russian researchers Godin and Roschin (see this), which I have tried to understand during years (see this).

1. The system consists of a stator and rollers rotating around it. Also the effect of a radial electric field was studied. The high voltage between stator and electrodes outside the rollers varied in a range 0-20 kV. Therefore a capacitor-like system is in question. Positive potential was associated with the stator so that the force experienced by electrons was towards the electrodes. This generates a strong radial electric field and there is an ionization of air around the rotating magnet, which could be caused by high energy electrons from the surface of the rotor as in coronal discharge.
2. What happens is that the system begins to accelerate spontaneously as the rotation frequency approaches 10 Hz, the alpha frequency of EEG. Rather dramatic weight reduction of 35 per cent and a generation of cylindrical magnetic walls with B=.05 Tesla parallel to the rotation direction are reported. The sign of the effect depends on the direction of rotation.

The situation resembles in many respects to that in the Biefeld Brown effect.

1. Could the Pollack effect feed electrons to the magnetic and/or electric FB of the system. The electrons would also leave some of their angular momentum to the FB and drop back. Otherwise the rotors develop a positive charge Q= ω BS proportional to the rotation frequency ω, magnetic field B and the area S of the vertical boundary of the cylinder, as in the Faraday effect.

   The pumping of electrons to the FB would generate both the momentum and angular momentum as a recoil effect. Now the vertical components of momentum and angular momentum in z-direction would be involved. In the first approximation, the magnetic field can be modelled as a dipole field in Maxwellian theory.

2. Rollers are rotating magnets. What is interesting is that in the Faraday effect a rotating magnet develops a radial voltage proportional to the rotating frequency and magnetic field. One expects that the same occurs for the rollers. This cannot be understood in Maxwell's theory as induction since the motion is not linear and the calculation of the voltage using the same formula requires a generation of a charge density. In TGD, the assumption that the vector potential of the magnetic field rotates with the magnet, explains the effect. Could this charge density be due to a transfer of electrons to the FB of the system? Positive charge density would be generated and create a force opposite to the direction of the Earth's gravitational acceleration so that the Faraday effect for the rollers cannot explain the findings.
3. One expects that the vector potentials for the magnetic fields of rollers rotate as in the Faraday effect. Also the magnetic fields associated with the rollers or rather, their flux tubes should rotate. This could lead to a twisting of the flux tubes. The twisting would suggest that the flux tubes of FBs of the rollers are helical monopole flux tubes (by rotation) emerging from the top and retung back at the bottom of the roller system. There is an obvious analogy with the solar magnetic field.

   Could this generate momentum and angular momentum recoils? The two ends of the rollers should generate different recoils. The only asymmetry between the top and bottom is that the Earth surface bounds the system at the bottom. Could this give rise to a higher degree of quantum coherence at the upper ends of the rollers, which could give rise to a non-vanishing net acceleration and angular acceleration.

4. The observed magnetic walls could correspond to the return flux associated with the magnetic field of the rollers. That they are walls suggests that the flux tubes from the rollers fuse to a single flux wall and this gives rise to a quantum coherence. That the return flux consists of several magnetic walls rather than a single one suggests that the magnetic wall emerging from the roller system decomposes to these walls and the scale of quantum coherence is reduced. If the fluxes of walls return separately to the lower ends of rollers the degree of quantum coherence would be lower and this could give rise to a net effect.
5. Where could the energy of rotation and lift come from? Does it come from some external source, say the MB of the Earth? This could relate to as the 10 Hz cyclotron resonance assignable to the Fe ions in the "endogenous" magnetic field B_end= 2B_E/5 assigned to the monopole flux tubes as the model for the findings of Blackman suggests?

   Does the energy come from the internal magnetic energy of the stator magnet or of rollers? Or does the energy come from the electrostatic energy associated with the horizontal electric field between electrodes and rollers as in the Biefeld Brown effect. This voltage should gradually reduce if this is the case.

See the article About Biefeld Brown effect or the chapter About long range electromagnetic quantum coherence in TGD Universe.

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.

Biefeld Brown effect in TGD Universe

Biefeld Brown effect is one of the effects studied by "free energy" researchers. What happens is 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 could be also based on this effect. Recently I learned of the experiments carried out by Buhler's team. An acceleration of 1 g is achieved for a capacitor-like system in vacuum and the effect increases rapidly with the strength of the electric field between the electrodes. This raises the question whether new physics is involved: either as a failure of the momentum conservation or as a presence of an unidentified system with which a momentum transfer takes place. In this article I consider the TGD basic model in which the third system is identified as the electric field body associated with the system.

In the TGD basic model, the third system is identified as the electric field body (FB) associated with the system. The key idea is that electronic momentum is pumped from the electrodes to their FBs: an electron is transferred to the FB, leaves some of its momentum to FB and drops back and in this way gives rise to a recoil. For the smaller electrode the quantum coherence is higher and the pumping is more effective. This gives rise to the Biefeld Brown effect, perhaps even in the situation when the dielectric is present. There is also a net transfer of electrons momentum to the positive electrode, which reduces the voltage while keeping the system neutral and provides in this way electrostatic energy to the kicked electrons. This explains why the effect is stronger when the smaller electrode is positively charged.

See the article About Biefeld Brown effect or the chapter About long range electromagnetic quantum coherence in TGD Universe.

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.

Could entanglement entropy have a role similar to that of thermodynamical entropy?

Gary Ehlenberg sent a link to a popular article (see this) telling about the work of Bartosz Regula and Ludovico Lami published as an article with title "Reversibility of quantum resources through probabilistic protocols" in Nature (see this).

Quantum entanglement gives rise to a density matrix analogous to that of a thermodynamic system. One can assign to it entropy by a standard formula. In thermodynamics entropy characterizes the system besides other state variables. Could entanglement entropy have a role similar to that of thermodynamic entropy and allow us to classify entangled systems?

1. In thermodynamics there are transformations of thermodynamic state, which in the adiabatic case preserve entropy. There is also a theorem giving an upper bound for the efficiency of a thermal engine transforming heat to work, which is ordered energy. Could one consider a similar theorem? Could thermodynamics generalize to a science of entropy manipulation?
2. Could adiabatic transformations preserving entanglement entropy be possible between two systems with the same entanglement entropy? Could the second law stating the increase of entropy generalize and state that transformations decreasing the entanglement entropy are not possible?

Suppose that a system A defined as an equivalence class of systems with the same density matrix can be transformed B. Can one transform B to A in this kind of situation? This would be a counterpart of thermodynamic irreversibility stating that adiabatic time evolutions are reversible.

1. It has been indeed proposed that it is possible to connect any two entangled systems with the same entanglement entropy by a transformation preserving the trace of the density matrix and keeping the eigenvalues positive. This transformation generalizes unitary transformations, which preserve the eigenvalues of the density matrix having probability interpretation. This kind of transformation would consist of basic physical transformations: I must confess that I do not quite understand what this means. If the conjecture is true one could classify entangled systems in terms of the entanglement entropy.
2. There are however systems for which the conjecture fails. A weaker condition would be that this kind of transformation exists in a probabilistic sense: the analog of adiabatic transformation would fail for some system pairs. One can apply the transformations of a specified set O of transformations to an ensemble formed by copies of A. Intuitively it would seem that the number of transformations in the set of O transforming A to B adiabatically divided by the total number of transformations gives a measure for the success. I am not quite sure whether this definition is used.
3. It is also stated the relative entropy for the probability distributions defined by the density matrices for systems A and B would in turn serve as an entanglement measure. Each fixed system B with fixed density matrix (or A) would define such a measure.

This could have application to TGD inspired theory of consciousness.

1. In TGD inspired theory of consciousness, one can assign to any system a number theoretic negentropy as a sum of p-adic entanglement: here the sum is over the ramified primes of an algebraic extension of rationals considered. The p-adic negentropies obey a formula similar to that for the ordinary entanglement negentropy. p-Adic negentropies can be however positive unlike the ordinary entanglement negentropy as a negative of entanglement entropy. The sum of p-adic negentropies measures the information of entanglement unlike ordinary entropy which measures the loss of information about either entangled state caused by the entanglement.
2. The number theoretic vision of TGD predicts that the entanglement negentropy is bound to increase in statistical sense in the number theoretic evolution and that this increase forces the increase of the ordinary entanglement entropy. Could the basic theorems of thermodynamics generalize also to this case and provide a mathematical way to understand the evolution of intelligent systems?

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.

Equivalence Principle in TGD

Understanding Equivalence Principle has been one of the basic challenges of TGD.

1. If one accepts Einstein's equations as a realization of Equivalence Principle, Equivalence Principle could be seen as a remnant of Poincare invariance of TGD at the quantum field theory limit of TGD. Einstein's equations at QFT limit would express what is left from exact Poincare invariance at the microscopic level. Recall that the microscopic level space-times are 4-D surfaces in H=M⁴×CP₂ realizing holography in terms of generalized holomorphy (see this) implying minimal surface property failing at singularities, which in turn give rise to particle vertices (see this and this).
2. At the quantum level the situation is not so easy. Here the principle should be global and state the identity of gravitational and inertial masses.
   1. Inertial mass is associated with the conserved four momentum labeling the modes of second quantized free spinor fields of H, whose oscillator operators can be used to build all elementary particles, both photons and fermions.
   2. What about gravitational mass? In zero energy ontology one considers causal diamonds CD=cd×CP₂ subset H, where cd is the causal diamond of M⁴. Now it is natural to perform the quantization of spinors inside a CD. Lorentz group with respect to either tip of CD and instead of unitary representations of Poincare group one has unitary irreps of this Lorentz group. Momentum eigenstates are replaced with unitary irreps of SO(1,3) at the Lorentz invariant hyperbolic 3-space H³ and Minkowski time is replaced with light-cone proper time, cosmic time. Mass spectrum is however the same. Hence Equivalence Principle.

The unitary representations of the Lorentz group are something completely new and have direct physical applications.

1. The unitary irreps of Lorentz group and H³ allow symmetry breaking to subgroups just as the representations of translation groups do in condensed matter physics. One obtains an infinite hierarchy of tessellations of H³ as counterparts of condensed matter lattices. There are however only a finite number of regular tessellations.
2. The recent findings of gravitational hum could be understnd in terms of diffraction in a lattice formed by stars (see this).
3. There is a completely unique tessellation allowing tetrahedrons,octahedrons, and icosahedrons as basic components and one can understand genetic code in terms of this tessellation. This suggests that genetic code is universal and biosystems provide only one particular realization of it (see this) .

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.

Did Moon turn itself inside out?

The group led by Weigang Liang has presented strong evidence that the Moon has turned inside out (see this). The heavy elements, which should be in the core are at the surface. For a popular summary see this. Can TGD explain this mysterious looking finding?

I have proposed that the Moon was formed in an explosion in which Earth lost a spherical layer, which then condensed to form the Moon. These explosions would have occurred on various scales (see this and this). For instance, in the case of the Sun these kinds of explosions could have formed the spherical layers condensing to planets. During the condensation of the spherical layer to the Moon, the gravitational acceleration experienced by the outer parts of the shell was stronger than that experienced by the inner parts. This implied turning inside out. The outer parts containing originally lighter stuff went to the core and the heavier stuff on the inner boundary of the shell remained on the surface.

A more precise calculation shows that the inversion can occur even with the density gradient.

See the article About the recent TGD based view concerning cosmology and astrophysics 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.

Why the communication of TGD to theoretical physicists is so incredibly difficult?

During these 42 years after my thesis I have often wondered why the communication of TGD to theoretical physicists is so extremely difficult. Communication with people in other fields of science does not seem to be a problem.

A partial answer to the question was provided by a Finnish colleague who pompously stated that not a single colleague would touch anything that I have written, even with a long pole. This might explain the mystery in the case of the community of Finnish colleagues. I of course sent my thesis to Witten and other big names after its publication around 1982 and received no response. Probably they had more important things to do than read my thesis. But is it possible that in the era of the internet my colleagues have never encountered TGD during these 40 years? Even very many lay people know of TGD.

It is difficult to believe that my colleagues would be so stupid as to miss TGD for so long a time. As if my colleagues were afraid to learn what TGD is. If so it would be about egos and losing face. Could they fear that they could not debunk TGD and even that TGD would demonstrate that they have been wrong all these years. It would not be surprising that superstring theorists whose mission ended with a complete catastrophe could suffer from this kind of fear. As a matter of fact, TGD solves the basic problem of quantum theory identified already a hundred years ago. Could the entire clergy of modern theoretical physics suffer the fear of realizing "I have been wrong all these years!"?

What could be the origin of this fear? The answer is short: "Ontology!".

1. The development of quantum theory forced us to ask how to test the predictions of the theory. It turned out that the outcomes of the quantum measurements were not predictable and only the probabilities for the outcomes in the measurement of the sect of selected observables were possible. This was in sharp conflict with the determinism of Schrödinger equation and also with classical determinism. Einstein who had constructed general relativity could not accept this since it would have made his theory pointless. This led to the Einstein-Bohr debate. The classical predictions of general relativity have been repeatedly verified as also the predictions of quantum theory. Both were winners and losers in the battle.
2. Numerous interpretations trying to circumvent the paradox of quantum measurement emerged and Copenhagen interpretation became the text book interpretation. It gave up the notion of ontology altogether. No reality actually exists and quantum mechanics is only a collection of computational recipes to predict the probabilities for the outcomes of quantum measurements. In particular, the notions of quantum states and wave function must be given up.
3. This led to a kind of postmodernism. Inflation theory and superstring models represent the extreme in this sense. In the basic version of the superstring model, the 4-D space-time is replaced by 2-D string world sheets in 10-D target space and 4-D space-time is believed to emerge in a mysterious process known as spontaneous compactification. Heterotic strings are one variant of the theory and for these left- resp. right moving fermions move in 10-D resp. 24-D target space. This is of course complete nonsense unless one takes theory as a mere computational recipe. Landscape catastrophe emerged as an outcome of spontaneous compactification and meant a complete loss of predictivity but even this is not a problem if one gives up ontology algother. The outcome is postmodernism: there is no grand narrative and science reduces to science fiction literature.

In TGD the situation is different. Ontology has played a key role in the construction of the TGD.

Consider first the classical TGD.

1. TGD emerged as a solution to an ontological problem. The notions of energy, momentum and angular momentum are not well-defined in general relativity. Already Emmy Noether realized this but her discovery was put under the rug. My discovery was that the hybrid of general and special relativities obtained by fusing the postulates of general relativity, namely general coordinate invariance and Equivalence principle with the relativity principle of special relativity, one ends up to a theory in which conservation laws are not lost.

   The prediction is that space-time at the fundamental level is not an abstract 4-geometry but corresponds to a 4-D surface in some space M⁴xS. By choosing S to be S=CP₂ one obtains standard model symmetries so that TGD is unique. Einsteinian space-time emerges at the quantum field theory limit at long length scales. The new ontology, I call it zero energy ontology (ZEO) identifying space-times as 4-surfaces,has dramatic implications in all scales, in particular cosmology and astrophysics.

2. There is also a connection with string models. Space-time surfaces can be seen as orbits of 3-surfaces representing particles as a generalization of point-like particles (and also of string). In fact, the conformal invariance of string models extends to a 4-D symmetry implying that space-time surfaces are minimal surfaces with lower-dimensional singularities giving rise to vertices. TGD strongly suggests also other infinite-D symmetries as isometries of WCW. If 3-surfaces are identified as particles, the minimal surface property generalizes wave particle duality massless particles. Minimal surface generalizes light-like geodesic and minimal surface equations generalize massless field equations.
3. Twistorilization involves one more ontological miracle. Twistorialization has shown its power in the construction of supersymmetric quantum field theories and the natural question is whether the twistor lift of TGD is possible using induction as the basic recipe. One would start from the product T(M⁴)xT(CP₂) of twistor spaces of M⁴ and CP₂.

   A good candidate for the twistor space of the space-time surface is as a 6-surface which has the structure of S^2 bundle, where S^2 is sphere. Could one obtain this 6-surfaces as 6-D analog of Bohr orbit for some action. This turns out to be possible and dimensional reduction leads to a 4-D action, which is Kähler action as an analog of Maxwell action plus volume action having an interpretation in terms of cosmological constant which depends on length scale and approach to zero in long length scales. This is possible if the twistor spaces in question allow Kähler structure. This is the case but only for M⁴ and CP₂ so that TGD and physics are unique.

Let us now consider ontology at the level of quantum TGD.

1. The first guess was that scattering amplitudes are defined in terms of a path integral over all 4-surfaces. However, quantum field theories have an ontological problem. The path integral does not exist in a mathematical sense. In TGD this problem is magnified since any general coordinate invariant action is extremely non-linear and there is no hope of the elimination of divergences by renormalization. Therefore the realization of path integral as integral over all 4-surfaces connecting initial and final 3-surfaces makes no sense mathematically.

   The solution is simple: general coordinate invariance is realized by holography assigning to a 3-surface a unique or almost unique 4-surface analogous to Bohr orbit. Path integral disappears. Instead of 3-surfaces, the 4-D Bohr orbits are the basic dynamical objects and quantum TGD reduces to wave mechanics in the space of these Bohr orbits: world of classical worlds (WCW), as I call it.

   WCW must exist mathematically and allow Kähler geometry, otherwise the geometrization of quantum theory is not possible. Again an ontological problem! Dan Freed studied loops spaces and found that their Kähler geometry exists and is unique. There are excellent reasons to expect that the same is true in TGD.

2. Momentum-position duality plays a key role in wave mechanics. It should generalize to TGD. The natural momentum space-counterpart of H is 8-D Minkowski space M⁸ as its cotangent space. M⁸ and H should provide complementary descriptions of physics. I call this M⁸-H duality.

   Here enters a new ontological element to the picture: number theory, which has not has no fundamental role in standard physics. It took a long time to realize that M⁸ can be interpreted as octonions since the real part of octonions squared gives the Minkowskian norm. Dynamics in M⁸ can be formulated as the condition that the normal space of the 4-surface is quaternionic, that is, associative. M⁸-H duality maps these 4-surfaces to H provided the normal spaces contain an integrable distribution of commutative subspaces. The normal space of 4-surface is parametrized by a point of CP₂, which defines the M⁸-H duality. M⁸-H duality has an interpretation as a physical counterpart of Langlands duality.

   Number theoretic vision predicts that the hierarchy of classical number fields, reals, complex numbers, quaternions, and octonions becomes part of the ontology of TGD.

3. Number theoretic view in turn leads naturally to a hierarchy of p-adic number fields and their algebraic extensions as extension of the ontology of the standard physics. A natural assumption is that the space-time surfaces are characterized as roots of two two polynomials which are functions of the 4 generalized complex coordinates of H. If the coefficients are integers, or even integers smaller than the degree of the polynomials, the space-time surfaces exists also in the p-adic sense: ontology is universal in number theoretical sense.

   One obtains hierarchies of extensions of rationals defined by the roots of the polynomials defining evolutionary hierarchies. The dimension for the extension of rationals defines an effective Planck constant and the larger its value, the longer the scale of quantum coherence. The phases of ordinary matter with non-standard value of effective Planck constant behave like dark matter. It turns out that they do not correspond to the galactic dark matter, which corresponds to dark energy in the TGD framework but to missing baryonic matter whose portion has increased during the cosmological evolution. Galactic dark matter is assignable to cosmic strings and monopole flux tubes so that again new ontology solving physical problems is predicted.

   The ramified primes assignable to the polynomials as divisors of its discriminant have physical interpretation as preferred p-adic primes playing a crucial role in TGD, in particular in p-adic mass calculations.

   Number theoretic physics can be regarded as physics of cognition and the common points of the real and p-adic space-time surfaces consisting of algebraic numbers in the intersection of the extensions of polynomials involved define a universal discretization providing a cognitive representation. Therefore cognitive correlates become part of the ontology.

4. The counterparts of Schrödinger amplitudes are identified superpositions of 4-D orbits, that is WCW spinor fields. This requires spinor structure and gamma matrices identifiable as super counterparts of the infinitesimal generators of the WCW isometries identifiable as Noether charges. The gamma matrices are identifiable in terms of oscillator operators of free second quantize spinor fields of H and this makes it possible to calculate correlation functions. Fermion fields of H define the fundamental fields and bosons can be regarded as bound states of fundamental fermions.

   This however creates an ontological problem. Fermion and antifermion numbers are separately conserved. The idea is that fermion pairs are created from classical induced gauge- and gravitational fields which do exist. It turns out that fermion pair creation is possible but only in dimension D=4. This is due to the fact that in the 4-D case there exists an infinite number of exotic smooth structures, which differ from the standard smooth structures by lower-dimensional defects identifiable as these singularities, that is vertices. In general relativity the existence of the exotic smooth structures is lethal. Ontology shows again its marvellous power (see this): realistic quantum theory allowing pair creation is possible only in dimension 4!

It was quantum measurement theory which led to the Copenhagen interpretation and the recent stagnation of theoretical physics. Can TGD solve the problem?

1. WCW spinor fields in the WCW, the space of 4-D Bohr orbits, define the counterparts of wave functions. Quantum jumps occur between these so that the non-determinism of quantum jump is not in conflict with the classical determinism of the Bohr orbit. Therefore the basic problem of quantum measurement theory disappears.

   The basic implication is that there are two times: the geometric time identified as time coordinate of M⁴ or time coordinate of the space-time surface and subjective time presumably identifiable as the sequence of state function reductions. These times are not identical although they must strongly correlate.

2. To understand this in detail, one must generalize the quantum measurement theory. The outcome is actually a quantum theory of consciousness bringing the observer part of the quantum ontology as a conscious entity, self.

   In standard quantum theory one has two kinds of state function reductions (SFRs): the ordinary state function reduction and the sequences of repeated measurement of the same observables producing the same measurement outcome (Zeno effect). In quantum optics the latter measurements are replaced by weak measurements which affect the system slightly. In TGD one has "big" SFRs as counterparts of ordinary SFRs and "small" SFRs associated with the TGD counterpart of the Zeno effect. The dramatic prediction is that the arrow of geometric time changes in BSFRs.

   In small SFRs the arrow of time is preserved but the state of the system changes. The sequence of small SFRs define a conscious entity, self and BSFR means the death of self.

3. A more precise understanding of the relationship between the geometric time and subjective times requires the introduction of further ontology. Perceptive field characterizes a conscious entity. The perceptive field of the conscious entity is identified as causal diamond CD= cdxCP₂, where cd is the causal diamond of M⁴ identified as the intersection of future and past directed light-cones. Causal diamonds form a scale hierarchy. One can apply Poincare transformations, special conformal transformations of M⁴ and scalings on CDs. The finite-D space of CDs obtained in this way (see this) forms the spine of WCW in the sense that WCW decomposes to sub-WCWs consisting of space-time surfaces inside a given CD.

   In zero energy ontology (ZEO) fermionic parts of states are superpositions of products of fermionic Fock states at the opposite boundaries of CD. The size of CD increases in statistical sense in the sequence of SSFRs, which leave the members of the state pairs at the passive boundary of CD invariant (Zeno effect) but change the state at the CD since each SSFR is preceded by an analog of a unitary time evolution.

   The geometric time can be identified as the distance between the tips of the CD and increases in statistical sense since the unitary time evolution in questions corresponds to dispersion in the space of CDs and SSFR means a localization in this space. There is a natural correlation between the subjective time measured using SSFR as a unit and geometric time identified in this way.

4. Still one key idea about ontology must be mentioned. In standard ontology of classical physics one assumes that there is reality behind its mathematical description. The Quantum Platonia of WCW spinor fields as mathematical objects is the reality: there is no need to postulate anything behind them. The quantum jumps of conscious entities hopping around Quantum Platonia give rise to conscious information about this reality and number theoretical evolution forcing the increase of the algebraic complexity creates increasingly complex memory representations about the Quantum Platonia. The Quantum Platonia of TGD differs from that of Tegmark in that it is not a Zombie but teems with life.

To summarize, the basic difference between the standard view of theoretical physics and TGD is that, since TGD solves the quantum measurement paradox, it can accept ontology. Ontology pops up again and again in the development of TGD and has led to a completely unexpected cascade of new deep ideas with strong predictive power since the mere mathematical existence fixes the physics.

What comes to mind is Copernicus who dared to propose that the Universe is full of solar systems like ours and life is everywhere. It had been realized that Earth is not a center of cosmos but the ideas of Copernicus were simply too much and he was burned on the stake. My crime has been the non-Copenhagenian claim that something exists and even worse: there are two kinds of existences: physical and subjective. I was not burnt on stake but learned what it is to be an academic Zombie.

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.

Correlations between the brains of monotsygotic twins as a direct evidence for large scale quantum coherence

In Qualia Computing Network  there was a very interesting link to  the popular article describing the work of Richard Silberstein and Felicity Bigelow  published in Frontiers with the title "Brain functional connectivity correlates of anomalous interaction between sensorily isolated monozygotic twins"  (https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnhum.2024.1388049/full). These statistical correlations are   very significant findings but not the first ones. Already 1965 correlations in EEGs of monozotic twins were discovered.

Telepathy is one explanation but what telepathy  is physically? Standard quantum theory suggests that quantum jumps are somehow involved and might relate to the notion of free will  but  it  cannot provide any satisfactory answer since quantum measurement theory has the well-known fundamental problem.

To proceed, one must start from scratch and try to really understand what happens in quantum measurement and how the standard QM must be modified to explain the findings.

1.  The reported long range correlations suggest that this revised form must allow quantum coherence in macro scales and that brains can entangle. This could occur if their brains can become  controlled by some larger structure  such that its long scale quantum coherence involving both brains induces the correlations.
2. Standard quantum theory does not allow this. In the TGD framework the new view of space-time leads to the notions of field body and magnetic body serving replacing Maxwellian fields in the TGD framework. They are excellent candidates here. Number theoretic vision of TGD predicts a hierarchy of effective Planck constants labelling phases of the ordinary matter and making possible quantum coherence in arbitrarily long scales. These phases would reside at the field/magnetic bodies and behave like dark matter but would not be identifiable as galactic dark matter which in TGD framework would correspond to dark energy located at very long monopole flux tubes and not forming halo. These phases would explain the missing baryons whose portion has increased during the cosmological evolution.

   Field body would serve as a "boss" controlling the ordinary matter at the biological body and the  long length scale of its quantum coherence, which can be of order of Earth size scale or even longer,  could induce ordinary coherence of biomatter.  

3. The  reported correlations could be  produced by the "magnetic body", which by its large scale can control the brains of twins simultaneously.  Ordinary telepathy would rely on the same mechanism. For the notions of magnetic body see for instance, https://tgdtheory.fi/public_html/articles/penrose.pdf, https://tgdtheory.fi/public_html/articles/magnbubble1.pdf,  and https://tgdtheory.fi/public_html/articles/magnbubble2.pdf. For the notion of  electric body see https://tgdtheory.fi/public_html/articles/hem.pdf

  As far as the findings are considered, this is enough. But this does not yet allow us to understand consciousness in terms of a generalization of quantum measurement theory.

1. Both subjective and physical existences seem   to be real.  Both  dualistic, materialistic and idealistic views fail.  Dualism leads to grave difficulties with the constraints from deterministic physics as Chalmers demonstrated. Subjective existence must be mathematically something very different from physical existence so that the causalities of classical physics and of free will can be consistent.
2. The answer looks obvious: subjective existence corresponds to a sequence of   quantum jumps,  state function reductions, or more technically,    of state function reductions having interpretation as repeated measurement of the same observables, which in standard QM would not change the state at all (Zeno effect). Self would correspond to the TGD counterpart of Zeno effect.

One must however solve the basic problem of quantum measurement theory.

1. A new ontology is needed to get rid of the conflict between  the deterministic classical causality and non-deterministic quantum causality.  Zero energy ontology (ZEO)     solves  this problem by identifying the  counterpart of a particle's wave function in 3-space with a wave function in the space of its Bohr orbits. Now Bohr orbits are  orbits of 3-surfaces identifiable as particles. This is forced by holography for the space-time surfaces.
2. In the TGD counterpart of ordinary state function reduction (SFR), "big" SFR,  the arrow of time changes. This takes place in all scales.  The TGD counterpart of the sequence of repeated measurement of the same observables (Zeno effect) corresponds to a sequence of "small" SFRs, which affect the system and produce the flow of consciousness, self. Self dies in BSFR and reincarnates with an opposite 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.

Do reincarnations occur?

The idea of reincarnation is gaining a new boost. The Washington post article (see this) describes quite a recent example of a child who remembered experiences of a person who might have been a victim of Holocaust. Since the 1960s, more than 2200 children all round the world have described what looks like memories from a previous life.

What makes this interesting from the point of view of TGD inspired consciousness predicts the possibility of re-incarnation.

1. In TGD, space-time is replaced with a 4-surface in M^4xCP_2. 4-surface can be regarded as an orbit of a 3-surface identifiable as a 4-D generalization of a point-like particle. General Coordinate Invariance for holography. 4-surfaces are analogous Bohr orbits of these 3-surfaces- rather than 3-surfaces, and quantum states are wave-functions in the space of these 4-D Bohr orbits. Quantum TGD is a kind of wave mechanics in the space of Bohr orbits.
2. The revolutionary idea is that basic physical entities are almost deterministic time 4-D time-evolutions of 3-D particles rather than particles. At quantum level wave functions as quantum states are replaced by the superpositions of these 4-D Bohr orbits. This forces us to replace the standard ontology of quantum theory with "Zero energy ontology" (ZEO). The outcome is a solution to the measurement problem of quantum theory and one gets rid of myriads of "interpretations".
3. Number theoretic vision of TGD predicts the possibility of quantum coherence in arbitrarily long scales. This would be due to a hierarchy of phases of ordinary matter with non-standard value of effective Planck constant. These phases would reside at field bodies/magnetic bodies. This matter behaves like dark matter. Field bodies replace the Maxwellian view of electromagnetic fields and the analog of dark matter resides at field bodies assignable to systems consisting of ordinary matter. This dark matter would be the "boss" that would control ordinary biomatter.
4. The new quantum measurement theory predicts that in the TGD counterparts of ordinary state function reductions (SFRs) ("big" SFRs or BSFRs) the arrow of time changes. On the other hand, the sequences of repeated measurements of the same observables, which in ordinary quantum measurement theory do not affect the state at all, do change it, and the sequence of these "small" SFRs (SSFRs) gives rise to a conscious entity, self. Subjective time flow corresponds to the sequences of SSFRs and must be distinguished from the geometric time.

   Self dies/falls asleep in BSFR and reincarnates with an opposite arrow of time and lives in the opposite direction of time. One might speak of time travel to the geometric past. Eventually also this self dies and reincarnates with the original arrow of time: this would be a re-incarnation in the "ordinary" sense. A rough estimate based on a concrete view of what happens in BSFRs and SSFRs suggests that this happens roughly a typical lifetime later than the death of the previous re-incarnate. The claimed reincarnation described in the article is consistent with this.

But is it possible to remember anything about the previous life? One must distinguish between two situations since previous life could correspond to the same or opposite arrow of time as the recent. Since BSFR and SSFR and the notion of self are universal and not restricted to living matter only, it is better to speak of system S although it might sound rather formal and bring in mind the spherical cows of physicists.

1. If the arrow of the geometric time is the same, the signals from the previous life of S in geometric past can reach the later reincarnate of S and the memory recall is possible. This could explain the memories of previous lives. Especially so if they are related to a very intense experience since in these kinds of situations the classical signals are expected to be very intense.
2. What about the situation in which the arrows of geometric time are opposite? Also falling asleep as "death" and waking-up as a "reincarnation" corresponds to a pair of BSFRs. That we remember practically nothing from the period of deep sleep could be understood: the classical signals from the period of sleep travel to our geometric past so that we never receive them.

   One could however consider a loophole to this. The reincarnate RS of the S or its subsystem could live a short period with a reversed arrow of time and send signals received by the S, which wakes up next morning. Dreams could correspond to these kinds of short periods when a part of the brain is awake and gives information of the dream period. If this smaller part of the brain corresponds to a lower level in the self hierarchy and the temporary period with opposite arrow of time is short, one could understand the decomposition of dreams to short logical periods and surreal character. That the memories from the period of sleep are soon forgotten could be due to the fact that the classical signal is a finite pulse and does not spend a long time in the required part of the brain. It could however arrive again it if rotates around a close monopole flux tuber loop as one might expect.

   Temporary short lasting changes of the arrow of time leading from S to RS are indeed predicted to occur routinely. For instance, homeostasis and the biological self-organization in general, would rely in an essential manner on this. Also learning by trial and error mechanism would involve a pair of BSFRs. In fact, our stream of consciousness is not continuous. We continually fall asleep for short periods of time. Living systems would be dying all the subjective time (to be distinguished from the geometric time) and this might make it possible to have memories of previous lifes with an opposite arrow of time!

See the article Does Consciousness Survive Bodily Death? 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.

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.