Princeton Afternoons with Noble and Nobel Physicists (the Birth of dx4/dt=ic) & A Paper on Quantum Entanglement with John Archibald Wheeler and Joseph Taylor at Princeton University — Within a Context: A Discussion of Paradoxes in Quantum Theory between Curiosity and Perseverance
Princeton Afternoons with Noble and Nobel Physicists (the Birth of dx4/dt=ic) & A Paper on Quantum Entanglement with John Archibald Wheeler and Joseph Taylor at Princeton University — Within a Context: A Discussion of Paradoxes in Quantum Theory between Curiosity and Perseverance
by Dr. Elliot McGucken
PDF: https://elliotmcgucken.substack.com/api/v1/file/dc1b2c4d-0fec-4ece-8a7e-ec61ae9640f0.pdf
1. Princeton Afternoons with Noble and Nobel Physicists (the Birth of dx4/dt=ic)
Albert Einstein: The supreme task of the physicist is to arrive at those universal elementary laws (dx4/dt=ic) from which the cosmos can be built up by pure deduction. There is no logical path to these laws; only intuition, resting on sympathetic understanding of experience, can reach them. From “Motives for Research,” a speech delivered at Max Planck’s sixtieth birthday celebration, April 1918. Reprinted in Ideas and Opinions, 226, as “Principles of Research.” See CPAE, Vol. 7, Doc. 7
Back when the string theory juggernaut of institutionalized failure was preparing to conquer the world and vanquish physics, I found myself running by Ed Witten’s office every day. It was my junior year at Princeton and the outlandish hype proclaiming Witten to be the next Einstein had recently been published in the NYT. Back then, string theory had no physical postulates, principles, nor equations. Today, despite stealing yet one more generation’s livelihood via hype, lies, and deceit, while further entrenching thousands of failed, snarky elite group-thinkers in the ivory towers, string theory still has no physical postulates, principles, nor equations. And it has metastasized and influenced numerous other failed research programs including M-Theory, multiverse mania, inflation, and others. Once it was recognized that all the money was in regions that could never be measured nor visited married to murky, meaningless math, the natural group-thinkers and haters of Western Civilization banded together to build a temple worshipping the very antithesis of science and philosophy — the very opposite of truth, beauty, and poetry. The failure of string theory was so fantastically epic that it not only provided jobs, titles, benefits, and lavish conferences in luxurious locales for tens of thousands of group-thinkers and pyramid-scheme con-artists, but it also provided full-time jobs to detractors of string theory and controlled opposition, who sometimes pretended to criticize it for clickbait links to their physics-free blogs.
Back in my Princeton days, Wheeler, Peebles, Taylor et al. were not buying string theory. As Men of Honor, they shared R.P. Feynman’s view on the pseudoscience of string theory: “I do feel strongly that this is nonsense!”
Witten’s office at the Princeton Institute for Advanced Study (IAS), situated in-between pastoral fields and a deep forest, was just down the road from where I resided. As I loved the outdoors, the IAS’s woods became my oasis of peace and quiet in New Jersey. I loved nature as she was not affected by the vicious postmodern physicists and poets who were violently deconstructing physics and literature upon the Princeton campus. And as the Great Books and Physics only succeeded to the degree that they exalted Natural Truth and Beauty, I knew that at the end of the day, the violent false suitors would only succeed in deconstructing their own spirits and soul — they would only succeed in their own dishonorable, fiat failure.
One fine afternoon, just before I went running, I decided to visit my advisor John Archibald Wheeler (Princeton’s Joseph Henry Professor of Physics) in his third-floor Jadwin Hall office, as I had a question that had been bothering me. It was the fall of my junior year at Princeton, whence we were called upon to initiate the creative research (that would ultimately determine whether or not we were true, heroic physicists!) by working on an independent project. While I could never pay attention in class, and while I never took a single note during my entire Princeton career, I received straight A’s on all my independent research, conducted with the likes of J.A. Wheeler and Nobel Laureate Joseph Taylor.
As I walked through Wheeler’s always-open door, I found him looking out the window at the brilliant autumn foliage. His book-filled, paper-strewn office harkened of the swirling, falling leaves outside, as if the same wind arranged both systems. The distinguished Wheeler slowly turned, dressed in his classic suit and tie, his hand gently clenched in a fist holding a piece of chalk:
“Today’s physics lacks the Noble,” he stated in his quiet, raspy voice, his blue eyes smiling, “And it’s your generation’s duty to bring it back.”
I nodded and paused a bit. But I couldn’t wait to ask my question: “So a photon doesn’t move in the fourth dimension?” I inquired, continuing our conversation from a week earlier. “All of its motion is directed through the three spatial dimensions?”
“Correct.” Wheeler said.
“So a photon remains stationary in the fourth dimension?”
“Yes.”
Later that afternoon, I found myself in P.J.E Peebles’ (the Albert Einstein Professor Emeritus of Science) office, as he was my professor for quantum mechanics. Many argued that Peebles should have been awarded the Nobel in physics for predicting the microwave background radiation shortly before it was accidently discovered by Arno Penzias and Robert Woodrow Wilson as they experimented with the Holmdel Horn Antenna. In Peebles’ class we were using the galleys for his upcoming textbook Quantum Mechanics (now in print — buy one — it’s an epic treatise!) for his two-semester course.
“So in the simplest case,” I began my question to Professor Peebles, “When a photon is emitted from a source, it has an equal chance of being found anywhere upon a spherically-symmetric wavefront expanding at the rate of c?”
“Yes.” PJE Peebles stated.
It wasn’t until years later when I was working on my NSF-funded, award-winning artificial retina Ph.D. dissertation (which is now helping the blind see!), that I realized that as the photon remains stationary in the fourth dimension, it provides the ideal tracer for the motion of the fourth dimension. In the same way that a small GPS tracer tagged to an eagle remains stationary relative to the eagle as it soars through the air, thusly tracking the eagle’s motion in flight, a photon, which remains stationary relative to the fourth dimension, must track its motion. Thus, because a photon is described by a spherically-symmetrically wavefront expanding at the rate of c while remaining stationary in the fourth dimension, the fourth dimension must be expanding at the rate of c, manifesting a spherically-symmetric wavefront of nonlocality expanding through the three spatial dimensions at the rate of c.
I would often take a break from my dissertation research by reading the foundational papers of physics penned by the likes of Einstein, Bohr, Planck, Heisenberg, Wheeler, Bell, Maxwell, Newton, Huygens, Galileo, Copernicus, et al. While I could have pursued string theory or inflation theory, as soon as I found out that they didn’t really have any real equations nor made any actual predictions, I elected not to participate nor promulgate the purely political hoaxes. Wheeler also agreed with his great graduate student — the Nobel Laureate R.P. Feynman:
I do feel strongly that (String Theory) is nonsense! … I think all this superstring stuff is crazy and is in the wrong direction. … I don’t like it that they’re not calculating anything. … Why are the masses of the various particles such as quarks what they are? All these numbers … have no explanations in these string theories — absolutely none! … I don’t like that they don’t check their ideas. I don’t like that for anything that disagrees with an experiment, they cook up an explanation — a fix-up to say, “Well, it might be true.” For example, the theory requires ten dimensions. . . When they write their equation, the equation should decide how many of these things get wrapped up, not the desire to agree with experiment. . . . it doesn’t produce anything. –R.P. Feynman Interview published in Superstrings: A Theory of Everything? (1988) edited by Paul C. W. Davies and Julian R. Brown, p. 193–194 ISBN 0521354625
Unlike the superficial, snark-filled blogs and millions of meaningless arxiv.org papers that were intentionally mired in indecipherable, fallacious maths and deviously faulty reasoning, the primary element of the foundational papers of physics were words of honor and nobility. The beautiful grandeur and nobler soul of physics is completely absent from the failed string theorist’s/YouTube diva’s self-indulgent, hand-wavy, snark-filled videos created not to exalt and illuminate with Truth, but to degrade and debauch — to transform all of physics into their own petty, fallen likeness.
One fine afternoon on a windsurfing trip, while taking a break for a late lunch, I found myself leafing through Einstein’s 1912 Manuscript on Relativity — a masterpiece of simple physics married to profound, meaningful mathematics. Suddenly, like a bolt from the blue — it hit me. The Minkowski-inspired equation x4=ict had a physical meaning! It told of the expansion of the fourth dimension relative to the three spatial dimensions, thusly providing not only the foundations for relativity, but for quantum entanglement, time’s radiative arrow, and the second law of thermodynamics! Have you ever wondered why x4 is the only coordinate related to t in the spacetime metric? It is because the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions, or dx4/dt=ic!
Suddenly I saw, clear as day, the physical mechanism of time and all its arrows and asymmetries. I saw the foundational source of relativity, quantum nonlocality and entanglement, entropy’s one way-arrow, the second law of thermodynamics, dark energy, dark matter, and the vacuum energy! With a single, bold physical thought I had liberated us from the block universe and exalted free will. The very nonlocality and probability in quantum mechanics came from the nonlocal expansion of the fourth dimension relative to the three spatial dimensions! Because the expansion of x4 was symmetrical, every point on the expanding 3D sphere it manifested was equivalent! The fourth dimension itself exhibited nonlocal properties as it expanded, and as all points on its spherically-symmetrically expanding surface were equivalent, the particulate momenergy of the photon had an equal chance of being found anywhere upon the surface. The fourth dimension itself was nonlocal via its expansion! Are not nonlocality and entanglement empirical elements of our reality? Must they not have some physical foundation and cause, and should not relativity and time and all its arrows also rest upon this common physical foundation and cause? For nonlocality, time and all its arrows, relativity, and entanglement are all empirical properties of our physical reality! The expansion of the fourth dimension exalted wave-particle duality, space-time duality, E-B duality, and mass-energy duality!
Because the fourth dimension is moving at c relative to the three spatial dimensions, a mass in our lab is thusly moving at c relative to the fourth dimension, thereby endowing it with a vast energy given by E=mc2, which is directly derived from dx4/dt=ic in this book. dx4/dt=ic exalts a more concise way of encapsulating Einstein’s two postulates of relativity while also providing the foundational physical reality underlying relativity which Einstein yet sought, as well as providing a physical model and mechanism for quantum nonlocality and entanglement, which Schrodinger deemed the “characteristic trait of quantum mechanics.”
It had been the spring of my junior year at Princeton University when I had first encountered Schrodinger’s epic statement on quantum entanglement:
When two systems, of which we know the states by their respective representatives, enter into temporary physical interaction due to known forces between them, and when after a time of mutual influence the systems separate again, then they can no longer be described in the same way as before, viz. by endowing each of them with a representative of its own. I would not call that one but rather the characteristic trait of quantum mechanics,” the one that enforces its entire departure from classical lines of thought. By the interaction the two representatives (or ψ-functions) have become entangled. To disentangle them we must gather further information by experiment, although we knew as much as anybody could possibly know about all that happened. Of either system, taken separately, all previous knowledge may be entirely lost, leaving us but one privilege: to restrict the experiments to one only of the two systems. After reestablishing one representative by observation, the other one can be inferred simultaneously. In what follows the whole of this procedure will be called the disentanglement… (“Discussion of Probability between Separated Systems”, Proceedings of the Cambridge Physical Society 1935, 31, issue 4, p.555)
I remember hanging out in soon-to-be Nobel Laureate Joseph. Taylor’s office who was both my professor for experimental physics as well as my advisor for my junior paper on quantum nonlocality, entanglement, the EPR Paradox, and delayed-choice experiments. Taylor stated, “Schrodinger said that entanglement is the characteristic trait of quantum mechanics. Figure out the source of entanglement, and you’ll figure out the source of the quantum, as nobody really knows what, nor why, nor how ħ is.” The remarkable thing that I now realize is how the Greats pondered the Great Questions. One can search through ten years of a pop-science blogger’s ramblings and never once come across the sentiment that physics is about finding the deeper causes of observed phenomena such as entanglement, the second law of thermodynamics, and time dilation. While LTD Theory provides a physical mechanism for quantum entanglement, nonlocality, and its probabilistic nature (and so much more!), the failed groupthink projects of string theory, multiverse mania, inflation, and LQG completely ignore such foundational questions, choosing never-ending snark, lies, and hype over physics.
J.A. Wheeler kindly wrote:
“I gave (Dr. E) the proofs of my… A Journey into Gravity and Space Time… the space part of the Schwarzchild geometric is worked out by purely geometric methods. “Can you, by poor-man’s reasoning, derive what I never have, the time part?” He could and did, and wrote it up in a beautifully clear account. . . .his second junior paper . . . was done with another advisor (J. Taylor), and dealt with … the Einstein-Rosen-Podolsky experiment and delayed choice experiments… this paper was so outstanding…”
And so Dynamic Dimensions Theory (MDT) would be born as a unifying, foundational physical model for both the “elementary foundations” of relativity that Einstein yet sought and Schrodinger’s “characteristic trait” of QM — entanglement, showing that both relativity and the discrete, digital nature of energy and measurement arose from the discrete geometry carved into space-time by x4’s expansion, which parcels mass and energy in discrete units proportional to ħ as it propagates at c.
Because a photon exists in a state of pure motion, surfing the expanding fourth dimension, it has zero rest mass, meaning none of it is at rest in the three spatial dimensions as it travels. I realized that there was a frame of absolute rest — the three spatial dimensions — and a frame of absolute motion — the fourth expanding dimension. But due to the tautological relationship between time, measurement, light, and length inherent in the spacetime metric, it is difficult to observe differences in inertial frames. However, as we can measure our motion relative to the CMB, it does appear that there is a frame of absolute rest (the three spatial dimensions), and thus a frame of absolute motion (the fourth expanding dimension). All of this is apparent in the standard spacetime metric, where, for some reason, now at long last given by LTD Theory, only the fourth coordinate is time-dependent.
Wheeler oft referred to the direction of particle physics as “ino-itus” whence more and more funding was spent pursuing smaller and smaller particles and details, void of novel grand ideas or new foundational, physical insights. The LHC is perhaps a noble accomplishment overshadowing string theory’s fantastical farce, but when history is written, we can be sure that a lone patent clerk named Einstein will have made a greater contribution to physics in 1905 with naught but a pencil, a piece of paper, a courageous and free imagination, and an unyielding loyalty to physical Truth exalted by a physical interpretation of the mathematics. Wheeler, like the heroic physicists of yore, was in physics for the big physical ideas, much like Einstein who wrote, “I want to know God’s thoughts; the rest are details.”
When Wheeler sadly passed away a few years back, Colby Cosh saluted the giant with:
“At 96, he had been the last notable figure from the heroic age of physics lingering among us. . . the student of Bohr, teacher of Feynman, and close colleague of Einstein. . . Wheeler was as much philosopher-poet as scientist, seizing on Einsteinian relativity early . . . He was ready to believe in the new world before most physicists. . .”
The above figure presents an illustration from a paper authored by Wheeler’s teacher Bohr which I first saw in Wheeler’s compilation Quantum Theory and Measurement, which I happened upon in my freshman dorm. The illustration pertains to the classic double-slit experiment, of which Wheeler’s student Feynman was fond of stating, “The whole of quantum mechanics can be gleaned from pondering the implications of the double-slit experiment. . . it is a phenomenon which is impossible […] to explain in any classical way, and which has in it the heart of quantum mechanics. In reality, it contains the only mystery [of quantum mechanics].” And thus one can see why the string theorist and professional “physics” blogger ignore the Truth of the simple, foundational experiment, instead waving their hands and using it as “proof” of their many-worlds and multiverse regimes, as the millions of fiat dollars flow into their burgeoning bank accounts inflated via misinformation, hype, and lies — via cultural and monetary debasement.
The above double-slit diagram illustrates the wavelike nature of all particles, including the photon. But what Bohr, Einstein, Feynman, et al. seemed to have missed was that they were looking not only at the motion and character of the photon, but they were looking at the motion and character of x4, as relativity dictates that the ageless photon remains stationary in the fourth dimension, meaning that the photon provides an ideal tracer following the movement of x4. Thus we can conclude that not only is x4 a spherically-symmetric wavefront expanding at c, distributing locality into nonlocality and giving rise to entanglement and entropy as well as time and all its arrows and asymmetries, but it is also oscillating in a quantized manner, thusly quantizing all energy it carries in discrete packets, which in turn quantizes all measurement, as measurement hinges upon the propagation of energy — photons.
And too, LTD Theory presents a physical model and explanation of Huygens’ Principle which stipulates that every point on a spherically-expanding wavefront defined by the photon is itself the source of a spherically-expanding wavefront. As Huygens’ wrote in his 1678 manuscript Treatise on Light:
In which are explained The causes of that which occurs In REFLEXION, & in REFRACTION And particularly In the strange REFRACTION OF ICELAND CRYSTAL, “So it arises that around each particle there is made a wave of which that particle is the center.
If one wishes to see an authentic, noble piece of science writing which shall far outlast all the Stringy hype that Scientific American uses to sell misleading, science-bastardizing magazines, read the beautiful words of Huygens’ masterwork here:
http:/www.gutenberg.org/files/14725/14725-h/14725-h.htm
Finally, for the first time in all of history, an actual mechanism was given for the Huygens’-Fresnel principle. The fourth dimension itself is expanding as a spherically-symmetric wavefront at the rate of c, and thus every point is continually becoming a spherically-expanding wavefront in its own right, distributing locality and fathering probability, as a photon caught in the expanding fourth dimension has an equal probability of being found anywhere upon the surface of the sphere defined by its expansion.
MathPages reports on a foundational question regarding Huygens’ Principle that LTD THEORY answers for the first time in all of history, writing:
“From this simple principle Huygens was able to derive the laws of reflection and refraction, but the principle is deficient in that it fails to account for the directionality of the wave propagation in time, i.e., it doesn’t explain why the wave front at time t + Dt in the above figure is the upper rather than the lower envelope of the secondary wavelets. Why does an expanding spherical wave continue to expand outward from its source, rather than re-converging inward back toward the source?”
http://www.mathpages.com/home/kmath242/kmath242.htm
For the first time in the history of physics, LTD THEORY accounts for this foundational asymmetry. An expanding spherical wave continues to expand outward from its source because that is the foundational motion of the fourth expanding dimension and thus the foundational motion of the universe. I had resolved the paradox that had puzzled my advisor Wheeler and his graduate student Feynman back in the day. Wikipedia reports on the Wheeler-Feynman absorber theory:
The Wheeler–Feynman absorber theory (also called the Wheeler–Feynman time-symmetric theory) is an interpretation of electrodynamics derived from the assumption that the solutions of the electromagnetic field equations must be invariant under time-reversal symmetry, as are the field equations themselves. Indeed, there is no apparent reason for the time-reversal symmetry breaking which singles out a preferential time direction and thus makes a distinction between past and future. — http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheeler%E2%80%93Feynman_absorber_theory
The expansion of the fourth dimension, described by dx4/dt=ic and illustrated in the figures exalting McGucken’s Sphere throughout this book is the reason for the symmetry breaking.
The fourth dimension is expanding, not contracting, and thus time and all its arrows and asymmetries, Huygens’ Principle, entropy and the second law of thermodynamics, quantum nonlocality and entanglement, relativity’s time dilation, the constant velocity of light c, and equivalence of mass and energy, E and B, space and time, as well as wave-particle duality. Wikipedia goes on to defend the theorized Wheeler-Feynman time symmetry with, “A time-reversal invariant theory is more logical and elegant.” But it’s not. A sock-puppeting string theorist must have written this, as if a theory fails to match up to physical reality, they conclude that it is naturally “more logical and elegant.” This reminds me of the legend of the “Bed of Procrustes.” Procrustes was a most generous host who would offer all his guests a nice bed during their stay. If the bed was too big or too small, he would kindly make adjustments. The only problem was, he would make adjustments in the guest instead of the bed, chopping their feet off or stretching their body out to make them fit. He would call this “more logical and elegant,” and had he been alive today, he would likely be a YouTube “science” star alongside the pretty string theory divas filming themselves slicing four dimensional loaves of bread.
Huygens’ Principle is a far-reaching beautifully asymmetrical phenomenon, representing the nature’s foundational asymmetry — the one-way expansion of the fourth dimension, which is the causal mechanism of time’s arrows and asymmetries. Each point on an expanding wavefront is in turn an expanding wavefront. And not only does this reality manifest itself in light and wave pools in freshman physics labs, but it is also foundational to Feynman et al.’s Quantum Electrodynamics (QED). This makes perfect sense, as the expansion of the fourth dimension relative to the three spatial dimensions is the very foundation of all motion, as well as of time and all its arrows and asymmetries, including entropy and the second law of thermodynamics.
Numerous sources, including Wikipedia, report on the well-known link between Huygens’ Principle and Quantum Electrodynamics (QED). Wikipedia reports:
Huygens’ Principle can be seen as a consequence of the isotropy of space — all directions in space are equal. Any disturbance created in a sufficiently small region of isotropic space (or in an isotropic medium) propagates from that region in all radial directions. The waves created by this disturbance, in turn, create disturbances in other regions, and so on. The superposition of all the waves results in the observed pattern of wave propagation.
Isotropy of space is fundamental to quantum electrodynamics (QED) where the wave function of any object propagates along all available unobstructed paths. When integrated along all possible paths, with a phase factor proportional to the path length, the interference of the wave-functions correctly predicts observable phenomena. Every point on the wave front acts as the source of secondary wavelets that spread out in the forward direction with the same speed as the wave. The new wave front is found by constructing the surface tangent to the secondary wavelets. — From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huygens%E2%80%93Fresnel_principle#Huygens.27_principle_and_quantum_electrodynamics
And so it is that LTD’s simple principle underlies not only Huygens’ Principle, but QED. This alone would be a great distinction, but LTD Theory’s simple principle of a fourth expanding dimensions also allows us to derive all of relativity, which we will do throughout the rest of this book.
2. A Paper on Quantum Entanglement with J.A. Wheeler and Joseph Taylor at Princeton University — Within a Context: A Discussion of Paradoxes in Quantum Theory between Curiosity and Perseverance
by Dr. Elliot McGucken
Yes! It is quite true that quantum mechanics is an excellent theory!
PDF: https://elliotmcgucken.substack.com/api/v1/file/dc1b2c4d-0fec-4ece-8a7e-ec61ae9640f0.pdf
