Thursday, March 24, 2011

The Spacetime Misconception and the Crisis in Physics

The mainstream physicists are still unable to recognize the true nature of space and time, albeit their recognition of the union of the two. The physicists have taken for granted the union which forms a four-dimensional continuum as such as representing the actual universe.
Physically, such a continuum should be homogeneous and isotropic in the sense that all of its dimensions are equivalent. However, physicists seem to lose their physical sense as they assume that the four-dimensional continuum has different dimensions. We can see this confusion from Einstein's statement on the inextricability of the spacetime:" the non-divisibility of the four-dimensional continuum of events does not at all, however, involve the equivalence of the space coordinates with the time coordinate. On the contrary, we must remember that the time co-ordinate is defined physically wholly differently from the space co-ordinates"1.

The dimensions of such spacetime continuum should be equivalent and their intrinsic nature is [undivided] time-like in a sense that there is no present, past, nor future a). It is precisely the condition which prevails in the world model  (spacetime) that mainstream physics have adopted. The notation of [unsplit] spacetime is better to be replaced by the 'eon' which is more appropriate to describe such undivided time which is quasi-eternity (Figure-1).


Einstein himself was worried about the absence of the concept of Now in modern physics as he said to his friend philosopher Rudolf Carnap. The latter wrote2:"… Einstein explained that the experience of the Now means something special for man, something essentially different from the past and the future, but that this important difference does not and cannot occur within physics [… ], so he concluded that there is something essential about the Now which is just outside the realm of science".

It is the background why physics is now in crisis.

Creation by Separation

Physicists are forced to set up a fundamental structure consisting of light cone at every point within the spacetime for the purpose to establish order within otherwise a chaotic world model.  The physicists have to establish such odd construction to preserve the causality because they miss identifying a critical step within the chain of the creation process, i.e., the act of separation, a common phenomenon in physics,  which is often called "symmetry breaking."
At school, we have learned this separation phenomenon, for example, in the electrical process where equal amounts of positive and negative electricity form if we rub a glass rod with a piece of silk. The glass rod becomes charged with positive electricity, and we find a precisely equal negative charge on the silk. This empirical fact shows that friction does not generate but only separates the two kinds of electrification d).
We may think this positive and negative electricity as two fluids that are present in all bodies in equal quantities. In non-electrical neutral bodies, they are everywhere present to the same amount so that their outward effects are counterbalanced. In electrified bodies, they separate. One part of the positive electricity has flowed from one body to another, just as much negative has flowed in the reverse direction 3.

Analogously, the same phenomenon happened in the cosmic creation. The four-dimensional spacetime, which physicists have assumed to be intact,  has spontaneously broken its symmetry as a result of the split of related energy into its positive and negative components (Figure-2). As such the spacetime was split in two, creating a three-dimensional [hyper] interface in between the two halves, transforming the dimensions along the interface into spatial ones.
It is just like the separation of oil and water where we can observe an interface taking place between the two.
Geometrically, we can imagine that the nature of dimensions along the interface is different from those within the bulk of oil and water because of the tension that arises at the interface.

Analogous to this three-dimensional oil-water system, we may posit that the nature of the gravity constant in our four-dimensional world is nothing but the interfacial tension of the 3-[hyper]interface.

Transversality of Light and Hypersurface
The concept of hyper-interface or more generally the hypersurface can be borne out based on the phenomenon of transverse waves. The weird phenomenon that hardly anybody thinks about is the transversality of light waves in which particles vibrate at right angles to the direction of propagation of the wave.  The transverse waves are taking place either on a surface of a liquid (water wave) or as the vibration of a stretch string, and not in the interior of a substance (body). However, as light waves propagate in the [interior of] space, there should be an explanation of this paradox.
Numerous experiments have proved the transversality of light waves. It should lead us to the conclusion that the medium wherein the light propagates should be surface-like. How come that it could be? We live in the interior of a body, not on the surface of something.
The answer lies in the concept of hypersurface that the mathematicians have introduced as a point of departure in the generalization of the concept of space, long before physicists surmise the multi-dimensionality of the spacetime. We may conceptualize the space as a 3-manifold  as a 3-hypersurface embedded in a 4-enveloping space. We can easily extend this concept to any higher multidimensional space (Figure-3).
Now, we have a proper place for light as a transverse wave to propagate on the hypersurface. It is a three-dimensional [hyper] surface in which photons vibrate at right angles (along with the time dimension) to the direction of propagation of the wave across the hypersurface. From this relativity point of view, we see the space as a 3-hypersurface vibrating to and fro in the time direction.
As the propagation of light waves indicates, we are dealing in this case not with waves in the interior of a substance but with phenomena on a surface (hypersurface or hyper-interface) or motions of whole configurations (like a vibration of strings). We have already a string theory which seems going nowhere and now tends to converge into a "brane" theory. We wish to suggest to shift the theory into a more proper hyper-interface theory.
It is in this context that we should develop the current brane theory.  The brane is more like a hyper-interface rather than like a piece of paper floating in the air or in the bulk of something that conceptualized in the current brane theory. Besides, the gravity force should act only along the surface of the brane and not out of it crossing through the higher-dimensional bulk.


Notes:
a.    The ancient creation myths referred to such condition as chaos.
References:
1.   Einstein, Albert: The Meaning of Relativity, Princeton University Press, New Jersey, Fifth Edition, 1954.
2.    Barbour, Julian: The End of Time, Phoenix, London, 2001.
3.    Born, M: "Einstein's Theory of Relativity," Dover Publications, Inc., New York, 1962.