The Larson Research Center

Last night I watched the Nova program “What is Space?”, the first hour of the series by Brian Green, based on his book, The Fabric of of the Cosmos. In the text on the program’s page at the NOVA website they talk about clues which indicate that space is something, not nothing, but in the film the scientists don’t describe these clues as indications of anything. They speak as if the clues were facts of something.

However, these “facts” are unraveling. They are proving to be quite elusive for researchers at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) experiments. So far, they have found no evidence that the strings of finite length, which are supposed to be composed of vibrating nothingness, exist in the extra dimensions that the theorists have imagined to contain them.

Without strings, or more precisely, without the extra dimensions in which to imagine length of strings in various modes of vibration, the concept of the fabric of space that somehow can be twisted and warped enough to move objects, exposes the contradiction between the “facts” of general relativity that lead to small distances in extremely warped space and the “facts” of quantum field theory that posits virtual charges popping in and out of warped space at the same time.

This situation must embarrass LST theorists to no end, but they don’t act or talk like it does. Instead, they make movies for the masses, playing with computer graphics, like children in a high tech science museum, who don’t understand the science, but are fascinated by the displays and models that can be played with anyway.

Here’s the point: There is no point. There is no point that can be consistently defined as having no spatial extent, but yet can carry a charge on its non-existent surface, like an electron or positron. If nothing is perfect, something must be imperfect, by definition, but then how can something come from nothing?

Thus, the very definition of particle, let alone that of space, is jeopardized by their convoluted theories. Regardless, they press on, looking for a Higgs “particle” to get them out of the impasse, by providing a field to generate a force of gravity, which presumably would do away with the concept of warpable space, generating gravity without force.

We have to give them credit, though, because, even though they are looking through a glass darkly, they get many things right. They have the speed of light right and the relations that govern the electromagnetic fields right. These form the corner piece of the puzzle they are seeking to solve, and there’s probably no going back from those first principles, but to replace the dark glass with something more transparent, they are going to have to recognize the fudges that they have accepted in several of their fundamental concepts, most notably in the concepts of motion and force, but also in the concept of points. 

However, to get the concept of point right, they have to get the concept of motion right first. A start would be to consider that the simplification of Dirac’s equation for the electron, through the application of Feynman’s model, invoking quantum field theory, described by Penrose’s “zigs” and “zags,” the “zitterbewegung” of Dirac’s theory and the crux of Hestenes’ work on the electron, could really be a three-dimensional, space/time oscillation.

A three-dimensional space/time oscillation has to be scalar motion, by definition, since it involves a change of size, a simultaneous 1D, 2D and 3D change of size. However, by the failure to recognize such an oscillation as an example of scalar motion, and, therefore, the redefinition of a point that this requires, the mathematicians keep getting all tangled up in their universe of imaginary numbers. Clearly, as John Baez now admits, this experience is like “wading through molasses” (see here.)

Redefining space and time as simply the reciprocal aspects of motion changes the rules of the game entirely, but without throwing out what we already know that is true, just what we know that is not true.

The next episode of Brian’s NOVA program is entitled, “What is time?” A concept even more enigmatic than the concept of space, to be sure.