Akinbo Ojo
Akinbo Ojo | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Residence | Surulere, Lagos, Nigeria |
| Nationality | Nigeria |
| Known for | Discreteness of space, cosmic growth of matter |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Physics, Philosophy |
| Institutions | Standard Science Centre, Lagos |
Akinbo Ojo is a Nigerian medical physician and independent researcher based in Surulere, Lagos, who is known for his work on the foundations of physics, particularly the nature and divisibility of space. Working outside the mainstream academic physics establishment, he has published in physics journals and on the arXiv preprint archive, and has been a frequent participant in the essay contests run by the Foundational Questions Institute (FQXi).
Biography
Ojo is a practising physician who took up the study of foundational questions in physics as an independent researcher. He is associated with the Standard Science Centre in Surulere, Lagos, Nigeria, from which his published work is authored. In addition to publishing papers, he has been an active contributor to online forums and discussions among physicists and other "truth seekers" on foundational topics.
Scientific contributions
Ojo's principal interest is in the foundations of physics and the philosophy of space and time. His central idea concerns the discreteness of space: he argues that spatial extension is not infinitely divisible in the way that mathematical quantities are, but is instead composed of fundamental, indivisible units. In this view he draws on the classical philosophical debate over atomism and the monad, and on the paradoxes of Zeno and Parmenides, contending that a geometric point can come into and go out of existence and that "Nature uses space discretely." From this premise he has explored consequences for cosmology, including the proposal that the matter–energy content of the universe grows during its evolution rather than remaining constant.
His published and preprinted work includes studies on whether the universe conserves energy through a constant or an increasing mass during its evolution, on the use of clocks to determine the entropy of black holes and other space-time singularities, and a proposal combining parallax and lunar laser ranging as a modern test in the tradition of the Michelson–Morley experiment. In his peer-reviewed paper "The Velocity of Light in Flat Space-time" (African Review of Physics, 2014), he examined how the measured value of the speed of light in the Earth's gravitational environment differs from its value in gravitationally flat (free) space, arguing that this is consistent with the general-relativistic prediction that gravity slows the transit time of light.
These proposals lie outside the mainstream consensus in physics and cosmology, and Ojo has presented them chiefly through independent publication, preprints and foundational-questions essay contests rather than through the standard peer-reviewed literature of the field.
Essays and public engagement
Ojo has been a recurring entrant in the essay contests organised by the Foundational Questions Institute (FQXi). His entries include "Does division of extension mean the same in mathematics as it does in physics?" for the 2015 contest Trick or Truth: The Mysterious Connection Between Physics and Mathematics, in which he argued that the infinite divisibility taken for granted in mathematics does not carry over to physical space, and "Cosmic growth of matter – the evidence" for the 2017 contest Wandering Towards a Goal, in which he presented arguments for the growth of the matter–energy content of the universe within the Big Bang framework.
Works
- "The Velocity of Light in Flat Space-time", African Review of Physics (2014) 9:0010 — a journal of The Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics, Trieste, Italy
- "Does the universe obey the energy conservation law by a constant mass or an increasing mass with radius during its evolution?", arXiv:0810.1629 (2008)
- "Proposal for combined use of parallax and lunar laser ranging for Michelson-Morley experimentation", arXiv:0909.4921 (2009)
- "Using clocks to determine the entropy of black holes and other space-time singularities", arXiv:gr-qc/0502120 (2005)
- Hypotheses Fingo (e-book)
External links
- Akinbo Ojo on the arXiv
- "Does division of extension mean the same in mathematics as it does in physics?" — FQXi essay forum (2015)
- "Cosmic growth of matter – the evidence" — FQXi essay forum (2017)
- "The Velocity of Light in Flat Space-time" on ResearchGate