The "Strand Model" of fundamental interactions

tom.stoer

I did not follow this discussion in detail: is there an arxiv reference or a web site which provides the latest info? I know some rather old papers and I am not sure if a still have the overview on this subject.

How does the connection between these kind of models and LQG look like? Does LQG require a positive cosmological constant in order to get framed graphs? If yes, were does this constant coem frome if not from LQG itself?

MTd2

This is his website:

http://www.motionmountain.net

But I cannot find the information Heinz told us.

EDIT.:

Just found it!:

"No additional elementary particle will be discovered: the Higgs boson does not exist. The unitarity of scattering for longitudinal W and Z bosons is maintained at all energies. (New on website and 6th volume, August 2009.)"

http://www.motionmountain.net/research/index.html

tom.stoer

http://arxiv.org/abs/0905.3905

Deducing the three gauge interactions from featureless strands
(Christoph Schiller)
It is proposed to deduce the electromagnetic, weak and strong interactions from Planck units through the behaviour of tangles of featureless strands.
In the strand model, particles are modelled as rotating tangles of unobservable strands. Only crossing changes are observable. Each crossing change has an associated action, time, length and entropy given by the corresponding Planck unit. Crossing changes are used to deduce all physical observables. Wave functions are temporal and spatial averages of strand densities leading to crossing changes. This connection is known to imply the Dirac equation.
Using this basis, gauge interactions are modelled as deformations of particle tangle cores. By applying the general approach of Berry, Wilczek, Zee and Shapere to such deformations, the three gauge interactions -- electromagnetic, weak and strong -- appear to follow from the three Reidemeister moves. In particular, U(1), SU(2), parity violation, SU(2) breaking, SU(3) and asymptotic freedom seem to follow naturally.
The model is consistent with all known data and makes several testable predictions, including the absence of other interactions, of grand unification and of higher dimensions. A method for calculating coupling constants seems to appear naturally.

heinz

My impression is that there is little relation with LQG. More with the Bilson-Thompson stuff. The question seems to be: ribbons or strands? The two models have many similarities.

Maybe we can get Christoph to join this discussion again.

heinz

heinz

Christoph Schiller has updated his paper http://arxiv.org/abs/0905.3905 . He changed the title and the abstract:

Deducing the three gauge interactions from the three Reidemeister moves.

We give one of the first known arguments for the origin of the three observed gauge groups. The argument is based on modelling nature at Planck scales as a collection of featureless strands that fluctuate in three dimensions. This approach models vacuum as untangled strands, particles as tangles of strands, and Planck units as crossing switches.
Modelling vacuum as untangled strands implies the field equations of general relativity, when applying an argument from 1995 to the thermodynamics of strands. Modelling fermions as tangles of two or more strands allows to define wave functions as time-averages of strand crossings; using an argument from 1980, this allows to deduce the Dirac equation.
When modelling fermions as tangled strands, gauge interactions appear naturally as deformation of tangle cores. The three possible types of observable core deformations are given by the three Reidemeister moves. They naturally lead to a U(1), a broken and parity-violating SU(2), and a SU(3) gauge group. The corresponding Lagrangians also appear naturally.
The model is unique, is unmodifiable, is consistent with all known data, and makes numerous testable predictions, including the absence of other interactions, of grand unification and of higher dimensions. A method for calculating coupling constants seems to appear naturally.

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This appears to be one of the few approaches around that predicts a lack of GUTs, of SUSY, of usual strings, of branes, and of loops. Christoph really does it in a way that goes against the ideas of almost everybody else :-) He appears to prefer Louis Kauffman's ideas.

He now cites David Deutsch and his talk on http://www.ted.com . Deutsch said in his last talk that truth is defined by "hard to vary" explanations. Christoph claims that his model has this property - that it is hard to vary - and thus that it could be true. Boy, if so, either this is totally wrong or it is totally true ...

John86

Sounds very interesting to me. Are there crossing points with Loops ?..
My gut feeling is that Schiller's strand model plank unit switch model is somehow a phase transitional phenomonan with respect to possibly what we call the Big bang

Can anybody gi some more insight !..

Spinnor

I guess you were referring to the paper by Schiller,

http://arxiv.org/abs/0905.3905 ?

Where is the fatal flaw, where is the fantasy? Schiller seems to explain a lot from a simple idea, from a quick read I'm not sure what is not explained. If not correct Schiller seems headed in the right direction.

Thanks for any thoughts.

MTd2

The guy was banned. No use quoting him.

Spinnor

Can Loop Quantum Gravity be united with String Theory be united with Strand Theory? Each has something nice.

Strand Theory, http://arxiv.org/abs/0905.3905

Thanks for any thoughts.

heinz

Spinnor, a good friend once told me that in the past, people blinded by prejudice did not look into telescopes; nowadays they do not look at papers ... It is a waste of time to argue with such people.

I am most captivated by the definition of the wave function as a time average of strand crossings. This definition is so simple! I just read the longer explanation of wave functions in chapter 9 of http://www.motionmountain.net/research/index.html and found no errors: the full Hilbert structure is reproduced. This alone is stuff to think about for a while.

heinz

Schiller wrote me that strings live in 10 to 26 dimensions, have tension and have supersymmetry, whereas strands live in 3 dimensions and have no tension and no supersymmetry. So there is a contradiction. LQG lives in 3 dimensions, so maybe there are connections to strands.

marcus

In my not-at-all-original opinion, Christoph deserves a break and should be given some kind of entrée somewhere. He is an intelligent general thinker, and he is in a certain sense "scholarly".
He is gentlemanly, responsible, and sane. And moreover his ideas are quite interesting!*

"Uniting" other theories with string is not very interesting to discuss. String has become a boring Baroque mess. Parts of the mathematics can be salvaged and put to other uses, but as all-embracing fundamental theory it is no longer much of a bid.

In the paper you linked, Christoph makes the very significant point that a unified theory should be impossible to modify.
His theory might be wrong, but it is impossible to modify.
Heinz pointed this out.
Christoph cannot allow extra dimensions, or more than three generations. His theory will not work if any part is changed, say in order to try to "unite" it with some ill-defined alternative.

In a way the guy is a Romantic. He has gambled all on one throw. Hier steh' ich. Ich kann nicht anders. Heh heh. Beautiful. Very North European in style. Tough act.

I want to quote this bit, right at the end:

Any unified description of nature must first of all provide a precise description of observations. This can only be tested by experiment. But a unified description must also have an additional property: it must be unmodifiable. A unified description must leave no alternative.

If a unified description can be modified, it loses its explanatory power. (David Deutsch says that any good explanation must be ‘hard to vary’ [Deutsch 2009].) In particular, the requirement means that a unified description must be impossible to generalize, and that it must be impossible to reduce the unified description to special cases. Exploring the strand model [Schiller 2009] shows that it fulfils these conditions. In particular, the strand model does not work for other spatial dimensions, for other types of fundamental entities, or for other definitions of the Planck units.

Therefore, the strand model is a candidate for a unified description – but only in the case that its predictions are confirmed.

*I see from glancing at that other "crazy enough" thread that Christoph says he is getting a lot of good feedback now. Maybe the establishment is going to open up somewhere and absorb the "strands" idea. I have no way of guessing about this.

jal

@ Spinnor
Thanks for bring this info to my/our attention.

I find that Christoph Schiller has an overlooked and a new way of explaining things.

I did not find it a waste of time to look at what he has to say.

http://backreaction.blogspot.com/200...ler-about.html
BY BEE ON FRIDAY, DECEMBER 26, 2008
Guestpost: Christoph Schiller about Motion Mountain
"Please present the free Motion Mountain Physics Text and yourself!" Sabine wrote me some time ago. I answered that I first wanted to put the new version online. That is now done; it can be downloaded at www.motionmountain.net.
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He has three papers at arxiv.
http://arxiv.org/abs/0905.3905

Deducing the three gauge interactions from the three Reidemeister moves
Christoph Schiller
(Submitted on 24 May 2009 (v1), last revised 14 Nov 2009 (this version, v2))

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http://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0607090
General relativity and cosmology derived from principle of maximum power or force
Christoph Schiller
(Submitted on 11 Jul 2006)

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http://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0309118
Maximum force and minimum distance: physics in limit statements
Christoph Schiller
(Submitted on 29 Sep 2003 (v1), last revised 14 Apr 2004 (this version, v5))
-----
jal

SimonA

There are some interesting ideas here for sure. But what are these "strands" ? You say they are "invisible" - by which I assume you mean they are undetectable to macro instruments composed of physical matter ?

How about we play with this a bit ? These strands are seen as determining both the vacuum and particles, lacing 3d space almost as the canvas is to a painting. But what if we say that space is a strand, time is a strand, and there are other strands interwoven to form a connected picture? And each strand interacts with each other in very particular but different ways.

I suspect that when we stand back and take our eyes away from the microscope studying the canvas in such detail, we will see that there is paint on the surface and a canvass behind it. We may even see the paintbrush that drives the wave to become a point, and possibly the force that drives the brush that started the painting. The question I have, is will we see the subject of the painting as it is, rather than as it's shown? I suspect reason alone can't make that leap, no matter what the technalogical understanding of the age the researcher sits in.

heinz

I just saw that wikipedia says in the article on loop quantum gravity http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loop_quantum_gravity : "there is no experimental observation for which loop quantum gravity makes a prediction not made by the Standard Model or general relativity"

Is this really true? If yes, then loop quantum gravity is as dead as string theory. Quite different from the strand model. These are the experimental predictions I found on the strand model site at http://www.motionmountain.net/research/index.html#pred :

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Some predictions of the model (with their timing), made before conclusive experiments (at the LHC, on neutrinos, on electric dipole moments, about QCD, and in astrophysics):

* No additional elementary particle will be discovered: the Higgs boson does not exist. The unitarity of scattering for longitudinal W and Z bosons is maintained at all energies. (On website and 6th volume, August 2009.)
* Non-local and non-perturbative effects in longitudinal W and Z boson scattering will be observed. (On website and 6th volume, October 2009.)
* Gauge couplings, particle masses, mixing angles and their running can be calculated with help of knot, polymer or cosmic string simulation programs. (Website, March 2009, manuscript 4 and 6th volume.)
* All neutrinos have mass and differ from their antiparticles. Neutrinoless double-beta decay will not be observed. (On website and 6th volume, August 2009.)
* Hadron form factors can be calculated ab initio. (On website and 6th volume, October 2009.)
* The light scalar mesons are mostly tetraquarks; knotted two-quark states and knotted glueballs are ruled out. (Website, November 2008, and 6th volume.)
* The probable non-existence of glueballs needs a better argument. (Website, October 2008, changed to opposite in April 2009; see manuscript 4 and the 6th volume.)
* Dark matter is compatible with the standard model. Dark matter detectors will not detect anything new. (Website, September 2008, and the 6th volume.)
* The electric dipole moment of elementary fermions is of the order of the Planck length times the elementary charge. (Website, November 2008, and manuscript 4.)
* The quark mixing and the neutrino mixing matrices are unitary. (Website, November 2008, and 6th volume.)
* The coupling constants, particle masses and mixing angles are constant in time. (Website, November 2008, manuscript 4 and 6th volume.)
* There are only three fermion generations. The proton and the positron charge are equal. (Website, November 2008, and 6th volume.)
* The highest chromoelectric (and chromomagnetic) field in nature is given by the highest force divided by the colour charge; similar limits exist for the weak interaction. The limits can be checked in neutron/quark stars or other astrophysical objects. (Website, September 2008, and manuscript 4.)
* No gauge groups other than those of the standard model exist in particle physics. No form of GUT, technicolour or supersymmetry is valid. No other interaction exists. Protons do not decay. (Website, August 2008, manuscript 4 and 6th volume.)
* No additional elementary gauge bosons, preons, superpartners, magnetic monopoles, axions, sterile neutrinos, additional fermion families or leptoquarks exist. (Website, August 2008, manuscript 4 and 6th volume.)
* No additional spatial dimensions, fermionic coordinates, non-commutative spacetime or different vacua exist in nature. No dilaton exists. (Website, August 2008, and manuscript 4.)
* No quantum gravity effect will ever be observed - not counting the cosmological constant and the masses of the elementary particles. (Website, September 2009, and volume VI.)
* No deviations from QCD and almost none from the standard model appear for any measurable energy scale. In particular, the strand model implies that SU(2) is broken and P, C and CP are violated in the weak interaction, and that SU(3), confinement and asymptotic freedom are properties of the strong interaction. Longitudinal W and Z scattering is slightly changed at LHC energies. (Website, August 2008, manuscript 4 and 6th volume.)

* No deviations from quantum theory or quantum electrodynamics appear for any measurable energy scale. The QED energy dependence of the fine structure constant is reproduced. (Manuscript 3, April 2008, and manuscript 4.)
* No deviations from thermodynamics appear for any measurable energy scale. (Manuscripts 2 and 3, April 2008.)

* The universe's integrated luminosity is c^5/4G. (Manuscript 2, April 2008.)
* If the cosmological constant is nonvanishing, it decreases with time. (Manuscript 2, April 2008.)
* If the cosmological constant is nonvanishing, minimal electric and magnetic fields, a minimum force and a minimum acceleration exist. (Manuscript 2, March 2008.)
* The universe has trivial topology at all measurable energies. (Manuscript 2, April 2008.)
* No singularities, wormholes, time-like loops, negative energy regions, cosmic strings, cosmic domain walls, information loss, torsion or MOND exist; inflation did not occur. (Manuscript 2, April 2008.)
* No deviations from special or general relativity appear for any measurable energy scale. No doubly or deformed special relativity arises in nature. (Manuscript 2, April 2008.)

* There are maximal electric and magnetic fields in nature. (Manuscript 1, March 2008.)
* No deviations from electrodynamics appear for any measurable energy scale. (Manuscript 1, March 2008.)

* The Planck values are the smallest measurable length and time intervals, the Planck momentum and energy are the highest measurable values for elementary particles. A maximum curvature exists and the generalized indeterminacy principle holds. (As predicted by many.)
* The highest force and power values measurable locally in nature are c^4/4G and c^5/4G. (Proved independently by Gary Gibbons, and suggested by several others.)
* The smallest entropy in nature is given by k ln 2. (As stated by many.)
* The quantum of action, hbar, is the smallest action value measurable in nature. (As stated by Niels Bohr.)
* The speed of light, c, is the highest energy speed measurable locally in nature. (As stated by Hendrik Lorentz, Albert Einstein and others.)

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This list looks pretty testable to me!

tom.stoer

I don't think that "unite the three theories ..." is the right wording. You cannot put three theories together and let a forth simply emerge from it. But the three "theories" you are mentioning are not theories like GR, QM, QFT ..., they are research programs! All of them miss experimental support. Even for QM / QFT and GR "putting them together" was not successful so far. The big difference is that for QM and GR you have a (physically) correct starting point, which is missing for the three approaches you are mentioning.

So these programs can learn from each other; they can try to incorporate certain aspects, they can borrow mathematical methods. But I would not call this a unification.

jal

Any approach that tries to explain that which we still do not know and can capture the interest and imagination of an inquisitive mind to study how the universe could be made is worthwhile.

To preview the book without downloading it, click on Motion Mountain on scribd.com.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/11652414/M...cs-edition-235

jal