Can fractals help solve the mystery of the universe's unified theory?

[chawdawg]

I recently had a idea after watching nova's special on mendel fractals. I support a string theory as well as M theory. Just like most of us nerds we all want the unified equation that einstein sought after till his last days. Recently fractals were used to describe heart beat's.
What was found? The erratic looking pulse line was zoomed in over and over. The randomness seemed to be in sync with inself, just like all other fractals examples..i though to my self hmmm. I think fractals can be used to finally solve the unified theory. from astrophysics to quantum physics And everywhere in nature fractals remain. the string theory is also tied to fractals. in order to tie it all in one for a unified theory one must use fractals to explain string theory and/or the strange behaviors of quantum particles. i heard of a dimension (6th i think) of a somewhat chaotic random existence.in chaos we find math still at a balance...anyone who would like to comment by all means

 

[HallsofIvy]

I think you have the wrong end of the stick. "Fractal" and "chaotic" processes are NOT random. Just as you can have a random process that gives results that look determinant, chaotic process are completely determinate processes that give results that look random.

 

[NoMoreExams]

I am not sure what mendel fractals are, do you mean Mandelbrot? There is quantum chaos theory out there, I don't know your background so it might be at your level? It might help you to read an intro book on dynamical systems and see how chaos theory flows naturally from it, try the one by Strogatz. I think it only assumes a somewhat working knowledge of DE.

 

[artandscience]

chawdawg, I watched the same Nova program and I had the same thought - in fact, I said it aloud to my boyfriend! I am an artist, not a scientist, but I have always been interested in science. On occasion I have epiphanies, at least they seem to be epiphanies to me. One day I was in a park, and I noticed the patterns in the trees and the grass and the sky, and they all seemed the same to me, and I realized that somehow this meant something. It made me feel that everything was one. When I saw the fractal program, I felt that it would be a key in a unified theory. It was as if they were describing my epiphany, but in a much better way.

Another epiphany I had was related to time and eternity. I had the overwhelming knowing that time did not really exist, and that everything that ever was, is, or will be exists at once, or if you will, at the same time. I later learned that my estranged father wrote his thesis for his Doctor of Philosophy program about very much the same thing - it was based on the work of the poet/artist Thomas Traherne. I was astonished that Thomas Traherne had the same ideas that came to me out of the blue one day. It is a difficult theory to explain, but my father used the analogy of a phonograph record. The record exists in completion, yet the needle moves along on one track, revealing only part of the entire. It is not a good analogy, but it gives something to start with.

I think artists and scientists can benefit each other greatly. I have had other epiphanies which seem to be scientific, if anybody's interested. It may seem silly, but one never knows.

 

[NoMoreExams]

Post them. Some of the greatest ideas seemed radical and bizarre at the time. I guess the only difference is people that theorized those radical ideas gave some scientific reasoning behind it. If you can come up with some to back up your thoughts, they might be worth a read.

 

[ZapperZ]

Post them. Some of the greatest ideas seemed radical and bizarre at the time. I guess the only difference is people that theorized those radical ideas gave some scientific reasoning behind it. If you can come up with some to back up your thoughts, they might be worth a read.

Er... no. Please read the https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=5374" before one does that. And that applies to this thread's topic as well.

Zz.

 

[atyy]

Computationally, there appears to be a link between whether classical systems are chaotic and whether their quantum counterparts have certain energy levels statistics. This is related to an intriguing conjecture about the Riemann hypothesis by Hilbert and Polya, with a modern version by Berry, as described in the introduction of:

Landau levels and Riemann zeros
German Sierra, Paul K. Townsend
http://arxiv.org/abs/0805.4079

 

[Smacal1072]

This isn't necessarily related to quantum systems, but it does show how the structure of a fractal might be used to describe the state of the universe as a whole:

The invariant set (or "attractor") of a chaotic dynamical system has a fractal structure. Tim Palmer, a climate scientist at the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasting in Reading (UK), argues that the universe is a chaotic system whose invariant set can be described as a fractal.

He goes on to show how, by assuming that the universe only exists in this invariant set of states, quantum contextuality (the idea that particles have no properties until they're measured) becomes easier to digest. I haven't read the whole article, but if you take it with a grain of salt its refreshing.

http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/0812/0812.1148.pdf

heres an article in "New Scientist" about it:

http://www.newscientist.com/article...ake-sense-of-the-quantum-world.html?full=true