Too many buzzwords. How to couple the electromagnetic field to spacetime geometry is known for a long time and is in every textbook on general relativity. This is, however, only known for classical fields because how to describe spacetime geometries that don’t solve Einstein’s equations isn’t known in full generality.

The holographic correspondence, for the moment, allows the description of quantum effects in flat spacetime in terms of classical effects in curved spacetime; it’s not known how to use it in the other direction, beyond counting the quantum microstates of particular classes of black holes.

Gravitons are the quanta of the gravitational field, phonons are the quanta of density perturbations, incidentally. And known forms of matter have weak and strong interactions, not, just, electromagnetic and gravitational.

Dark matter and dark energy don't require extra spacetime dimensions and can be perfectly well described by four: Dark matter is just new particles, that live in our universe and that interact, as far as is known, with known particles only gravitationally and dark energy is perfectly well described by the cosmological constant, that's as part of general relativity as Newton's constant.

@ Alessandro Rizzo

My apologies! I never saw your message of May 31 until half an hour ago. I have no idea how that happened. My inexperience has revealed itself and I've edited the discussion to acknowledge the inspiration you gave me. I hope it's acceptable.

Dear @Rodney Bartlett

The beauty of scientific exploration lies in the unique perspective each of us brings to the table, much like how every musician lends a distinct voice to the symphony.

That being said, I acknowledge that our ideas overlap and echo each other, much like the intertwined strings of a violin. The synchronicity of our research interests speaks volumes about the interconnectedness of our universe - an idea that is as awe-inspiring as it is humbling.

While it is important to me that my ideas be recognized, I hold no resentment. As I've often said, "Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new." We are all learning, and the path to knowledge is often paved with misunderstandings.

I appreciate your willingness to credit my work in your post. The act of acknowledging the contributions of others is not merely about preserving the integrity of our shared discipline; it's about embracing the collective, cumulative nature of human knowledge.

Thank you for the courtesy and respect. In the spirit of mutual enlightenment and the furthering of our understanding of this marvel we call the universe, I look forward to our ongoing dialogue.

With kindest regards,

Alessandro

Alessandro Rizzo

Sometimes I'm tempted to think we should all pack up our emotions and get out of science and leave it to AI. Would the pure logic of neural nets do away with misunderstandings? Maybe not ... I guess our human impatience, tendency to misunderstand, ego, curiosity, likes and dislikes all add a lot of energy to the quest for truth. They make life interesting too. This might explain why Star Trek's android Data wants an Emotion Chip inserted in his positronic brain. :-)

If we take "It from Bit" literally, it might mean "Spacetime, or Universe, from Binary Digits". We only need to transfer the phrase from linear spacetime to the nonlinear spacetime of Riemann, Minkowski, and Einstein. This connectedness of past, present, and future could then mean artificial intelligence includes the whole cosmos (even every human brain) and has always been with us.

Anyway, I'm really glad we cleared up things and I anticipate that the overlapping and echoing of our ideas - our being part of the interconnectedness of the universe - will enable us to further stimulate each other.

Dear Rodney,

Your observations concerning the intersection of human emotion and scientific pursuit are indeed quite intriguing. It reminds me of a phrase I often used to say: "Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind." In this context, we could reframe it as "Science without emotion is limp, emotion without science is directionless."

This may not be a literal comparison, but it underlines the same sentiment: that a balanced mix of human intuition and rigorous scientific method often paves the way to profound breakthroughs.

Emotions are vibrations too.

Concerning "It from Bit," your interpretation reminds me of my own thought experiments about the nature of spacetime. If spacetime is indeed a construct from binary digits, it presents a beautifully elegant unification of physical reality and information, very much like energy and matter.

Remember, however, that as scientists, our models and theories are only ever approximations of the truth. They help us make sense of the world, predict the outcomes of experiments, and drive technology forward, but they may never capture the full complexity of the universe.

Your final point, about the interconnectedness of all things and people, reminds me of my friends and the idea of "entanglement". In a way, you could say our minds are entangled: even though we are separate entities, we can influence each other's thoughts and ideas, leading to intellectual growth and discovery.

Here's to more entangled and enlightening discussions!

I apologize for any misunderstanding!

Best,

Alessandro

Back to your question Rodney, You're essentially saying that foundation of physical information, may be a rapid display of more basic "frames" in a universe that might be better described as holographic. Your analogy to a film-frame being displayed by a rapid succession of still images is a compelling one. It invites us to consider whether our perception of the universe and its constituent parts (e.g., phonons) might not be as continuous or solid as they seem, but rather the result of rapidly cycling information—akin to the still images. Right ? Your core-idea to represent this underlying, discrete, information as topological figures, like a Mobius strip or a Klein bottle, embedded in higher-dimensional space is fascinating. These complex shapes could indeed offer interesting properties that might help to represent some of the more perplexing aspects of quantum mechanics, or perhaps even quantum gravity. The employment of a Wick rotation to translate between this high-dimensional space and our familiar 4-dimensional spacetime is certainly a novel suggestion. This mathematical tool is often used in quantum field theory to transform difficult problems in quantum mechanics into more manageable ones in statistical mechanics, so it's interesting to see how it being applied here. Thank you.

Hi Alessandro,

“Entangled minds” might account for the whole history of science. Though they’re considered rivals, Newton and Leibniz might have unknowingly been stimulating each other’s thought. Edison, Tesla, and Swan might have been in unconscious communication. So might Darwin and Wallace, or Gell-Mann and Zweig. Since we live in a connected space-time, there’s no reason this entanglement should be restricted to individuals living at the same time. Einstein said his work would have been impossible without Newton. Maybe Newton’s work would have been impossible without Einstein unknowingly stimulating his thoughts. These entangled minds can be extended everywhere - Lennon and McCartney, Mozart and Salieri, everyone who ever lived or will live and everyone else who ever lived or will live. And “if spacetime is indeed a construct from binary digits …”, all these brains would have access to all information that ever existed or will exist.

I’ve also been thinking about a line in my original post in this Discussion – “The cartoon appears to be in motion but the only movement is from the display of one still picture to the next …” If universal motion consists of the rapid display of sets of binary digits which make up still pictures, how can the movement from one set of Bits to the next set be explained? If we cling to traditional linear time, that movement could apparently only be explained by another set of Bits which control the ones making up universal motion. But I don’t like this – we’d have to continually invent new sets of Bits to control other Bits. This can’t be done infinitely … it’s like saying God created everything and then explaining God’s existence with the oversimplistic statement, “He has existed forever”.

A more satisfactory explanation is to be found with nonlinear time. By using the Block Universe or General Relativity’s curvature of space-time, the interconnectedness of past and present and future would revise our simplistic notions of cause and effect. The first set of Bits – the ones whose rapid display of still pictures makes up universal motion – would be the ONLY set of Bits. They’d be the cause of the universe’s existence in the future. If that future is nonlinearly connected to the past, those Bits would also be the effect of the future universe. Movement from one display of Mobius strips/Klein bottles to the next topological display would be controlled by the future. Extrapolating this to an anthropic application – future humanity could oneday use this connection to the past (use time travel) and then use presently undreamt of biotechnology to create man and woman in their image. In this way; the future humans would be the cause of the original humans but they’d obviously be the effect of those first humans too, having descended from them many thousands of years later and having endured changes to anatomy and physiology as a result of mutations and adaptations.

All the best, Rodney