Universe Evolution Under The Claim for Minimum Contradictions
| Scientific Paper | |
|---|---|
| Title | Universe Evolution Under The Claim for Minimum Contradictions |
| Read in full | Link to paper |
| Author(s) | Athanassios A Nassikas |
| Keywords | space-time |
| Published | 2009 |
| No. of pages | 15 |
Read the full paper here
Abstract
The purpose of this paper is to approach the Universe Evolution on the basis of the claim for minimum contradictions. This implies that the evolution is based on the interaction of the gravitational (g) with the electromagnetic (em) space-time-matter field and not on any other entities e.g. dark matter etc. Thus, new working devices related to energy production and phenomena unexplained according to what until now has been accepted as valid, can be explained. Through this interaction particles can acquire mass without the need of Higgs? boson.
Overview
Athanassios A. Nassikas builds his physics from a starting point that is logical rather than empirical. His claim is that every physical theory is stated in a language, that the language carries an unavoidable structure — classical logic, Leibniz's principle of sufficient reason, and what he calls the anterior–posterior axiom ("there is anterior-posterior everywhere in communication") — and that this structure is itself contradictory. Since contradictions cannot be eliminated, the best a theory can do is minimise them: "what includes the minimum possible contradictions is accepted as valid." Any axiom added beyond the basic communication system is, by his Theorem I, a further source of contradiction, so the Claim for Minimum Contradictions functions as a very strong razor.
What follows is an attempt to run cosmology on that razor alone. Nassikas argues that space and time are inseparable from the anterior–posterior structure of description, so that space-time and matter-ether are the same thing; that the resulting space-time is stochastic and fractal rather than continuous; and that reality consists of two coexisting sectors, a real gravitational (g) space-time and an imaginary electromagnetic (em) one, related by a scale factor iα with α the fine structure constant. The Universe is then a splitting of zero into these two energies, its expansion is the reverse process, and the whole apparatus is offered as a substitute for dark matter and for the Higgs mechanism. This is a departure from the mainstream not primarily on empirical grounds but on methodological ones: Nassikas holds that the extra postulates of standard theory are what generate its problems.
The argument
The claim for minimum contradictions
Nassikas defines Λ as the logic consisting of classical logic plus the sufficient reason principle, and states two results: any system including Λ plus a statement that is not a theorem of Λ leads to contradiction (Theorem I); and any system including Λ plus the anterior–posterior axiom leads to contradiction. Since we cannot describe reality except in anterior–posterior terms, contradiction is unavoidable. The Claim for Minimum Contradictions then acts as a "logic attractor." Nassikas compares it to Ockham's razor while noting the difference: Ockham's razor does not itself imply contradiction. He credits Cynthia Kolb Whitney with the term "anterior-posterior," replacing the earlier and more time-bound "earlier–posterior."
Space-time as matter, and the Hypothetical Measuring Field
From "any matter system can be described in anterior–posterior terms" he derives that any matter system can be described in space-time terms, and hence that Space–Time–Everything is Matter–Ether. Because different regions of a matter system have different rates of anterior–posterior, space is deformed, time becomes a fourth dimension, and Lorentz transformations follow — so space-time can be read "either as geometry or as deformable matter-ether," which Nassikas presents as reconciling Einstein with Poincaré.
The working tool is the Hypothetical Measuring Field (HMF), a Euclidean reference space-time in which each point carries the real characteristics of the corresponding deformed real point. Relative magnitudes are ratios to the reference: relative time tr = dt/dt0, relative length, relative volume. Energy is then defined not assumed: the energy of an infinitesimal space-time element is "its ability to exist," measured by its duration, so dE ~ dt and dE/dE0 = dt/dt0. Read one way this is relativistic time dilation; read the other way, with dt fixed and the comparison frequency varying, it becomes dE/dE0 = ν, and with E0 numerically equal to h it yields E = hν. Nassikas presents the same equation as "observation (relativity theory)" and "action (quantum mechanics)" — the two theories being two readings of one energy–time equivalence.
Because minimum contradictions require that matter-space-time be logical and contradictory at once, he concludes it must be stochastic: self-similar, chaotic, non-deterministic, fractal. He quotes Michael C Duffy's description of the modern ether as "a sea of information ... revealed as a discretum rather than a continuum on the smallest scales," and Einstein's remark, via Pais, that if physics cannot be based on continuous structures then "nothing remains of my entire castle in the air."
Minimum-contradiction equations
Nassikas rejects the Dirac equation on his own principle: its requirement of linear operator correlation is an extra restriction, not a theorem of Λ, and therefore adds contradictions. He keeps instead the relativistic Schrödinger (Klein–Gordon) equation without potential, which he says follows from Fourier analysis alone — and he notes the consequence that potential does not exist, since stochastic space-time is matter itself, not a geometrical stage. Negative values of the probability density P(r,t) are read as the geometry of antimatter, the "incomprehensible notion of negative probability" being acceptable precisely because contradictions are expected. Spin ½ is obtained not from a Dirac spinor but from the coexistence of local g and em particle fields, and he cites Peter Rowlands's observation that a fermion and its environment are "two halves of a more complete whole."
Dividing the wave equation by Ψ gives relations whose right-hand side is (m0c/ℏ)2, and differentiating removes the mass entirely, leaving mass-independent equations that he takes as the basic law of matter-space-time. The em sector obeys the same equations with all magnitudes imaginary and the mass scaled by iα.
Conservation, discontinuity, and communication between the two sectors
Applying the quantum operators to E2 = P2c2 + m02c4 Nassikas obtains ∂tE = 0, and hence dE/dt = 0 and dP/dt = 0: energy and momentum are conserved, and if they change at all they change discontinuously. Because only massless particles satisfy the relation for both real and imaginary energy, he concludes that only photons can convert (g) space-time into (em) and inversely. For a closed system this gives Eg + Eem–g = constant, which he identifies with the first law of thermodynamics.
Two further results follow from the relation EiVi = hc between mean local energy and mean volume: a matter space-time system appears in quantum energy states, and — Conclusion III — "a mean volume increase of a matter space-time system implies a mean energy decrease of this system."
Universe from zero
If the Universe is a closed system derived from zero, then EUg + EUem–g = 0. Since increasing volume decreases Eg, expansion means EUg falls toward zero while EUem–g, necessarily of opposite sign, rises toward zero. Creation is "a process of zero splitting into (g) and (em) energy," and evolution is the reverse. Why the Universe expands at all is answered by space-time compatibility: a relative time between two space-times implies motion between them, and since the Universe exists within "non-existing," a relative time appears at its boundary, producing motion toward the non-existing-dimensionless — that is, expansion. This passage from Eg to Eem–g, energy being equivalent to time, is what we experience as the arrow of time. He addresses the objection that a boundary against non-existence should have zero length by appealing to the stochastic structure: there are infinitely many zero-length paths between antipodal points.
Applications
Two "Empirical Statements" — defined as claims compatible with the theory and open to experimental test — carry the applications. Empirical Statement I: during the approach of an electron and a proton there is absorption of gravitational energy. Empirical Statement II: electric charges on a matter system create a gravitational field whose force equals the electric force on the system, and conversely.
From these Nassikas offers: asymmetric-capacitor thrust as a test of Statement II, while insisting that gravitation is not merely a residual electric effect (contrasting his view with Kopernicky's and Hughes's) but "a force required to act per unit of mass so that mass is distributed according to a probability density"; atomic photon emission as gravitational energy absorption partly converted to radiation, rather than as a consequence of decreasing potential — which he argues explains only the ability to do work, not where the emitted energy comes from; the excess-energy claims of Kanarev and Mills for light-water electrolysis; Kozyrev's reported stellar radiation proportional to electron density in non-nuclear-burning stars, read as repeated approach-and-separation of electron–proton pairs; Santilli's etherino reaction e− + p + α → n with its 0.78 MeV absorption, made to balance by treating charge as imaginary mass; Hawking radiation and, by the same volume–energy relation, a general expansion of bodies including the Earth, citing David de Hilster; and finally the acquisition of mass and momentum through g–em interaction "without the need of Higgs' boson."
Assessment
What is distinctive here is the seriousness of the foundational move. Rather than modifying a physical postulate, Nassikas attacks the layer beneath — the descriptive apparatus itself — and asks what physics would look like if no axiom were permitted that is not already forced by the act of description. The resulting razor is genuinely sharp, and he applies it against his own convenience: it is what makes him discard the Dirac equation and the potential energy function, both of which would have been useful to him. The energy–time equivalence dE ~ dt, with relativity and quantum mechanics as two readings of one relation, is an elegant conceit, and the derivation of E = hν from it is a neat piece of construction. The identification of space-time with matter-ether, offered as a reconciliation of Einstein with Poincaré rather than a refutation of either, is more generous than most dissident treatments, and the frank acknowledgement that his framework must contain contradictions — that negative probabilities are to be expected rather than explained away — is at least honest about its own status.
The difficulties begin with the same feature. A framework that declares contradiction unavoidable and elevates "minimum contradictions" to a criterion has no clear way to be wrong: any inconsistency discovered in it can be absorbed as one of the expected residual contradictions, and "minimum" is never quantified, so there is no procedure for comparing two theories by it. Theorem I is asserted with a reference to the author's own book rather than proved here, and the anterior–posterior axiom is never given a form precise enough for a derivation to be checked. More concretely, several key steps are asserted rather than derived. The scale factor iα connecting the g and em sectors is stated as "found to be equal to" that value, with no derivation in this paper — yet the fine structure constant is doing enormous work, and a theory that could actually derive it would be a major result. The relation EiVi = hc, on which Conclusion III and the entire cosmology depend, is likewise imported from reference [1]. And the two central "Empirical Statements" are introduced with "we may assume that the following empirical statement is valid," which is the opposite of a derivation.
There are also internal problems in the paper's own numbering and logic. The equation labels restart and collide — Eqs. (24)–(29) appear twice with different content in sections 4.1 and 4.3 — and section 5.2 refers to "Eq(32)" and to a "relation (31) of section 4.2" that is actually in section 4.4, so the chain of reasoning leading to EUg + EUem–g = 0 cannot be followed without the book. The step from "the Universe exists within non-existing" to a relative time at its boundary and thence to expansion is a verbal argument dressed as a physical one; "non-existing" is not a space-time with respect to which a relative time can be defined, and the reply about infinitely many zero-length paths concedes rather than removes the problem.
Against measurement the paper is largely untested by its own construction: it offers no quantitative prediction that could be compared with data. Where it does touch observation it leans on results that have not survived. The excess-energy claims of Kanarev and of Mills's hydrino-based light-water electrolysis have not been independently replicated, and Mills's below-ground-state hydrogen state conflicts with the extremely well-measured hydrogen spectrum and with the calculation of the electron's anomalous magnetic moment to twelve digits. Asymmetric-capacitor (Biefeld–Brown) thrust has been shown in vacuum tests to be dominated by ion wind and to fall to the noise level when air is removed, so it is poor evidence for a gravitational effect of static charge. Kozyrev's stellar radiation results were never reproduced outside his circle. And the dismissal of the Higgs mechanism is unfortunate in retrospect: the paper's closing appeal to "CERN experiment weakness for this boson to be detected" was written in 2009, three years before the discovery of a 125 GeV scalar with couplings proportional to mass, which is the specific quantitative signature the mechanism predicts and which Nassikas's g–em interaction makes no prediction about at all. The paper is best understood as the compressed programme statement of a much larger system, and it should be judged as such: philosophically ambitious, formally suggestive, but in this form asserting most of what it needs.