On Nov 27, 2007, at 12:32 PM, Jack Sarfatti wrote:

OK See the Sharon Weinberger articles sharonweinberger@gmail.com mentioning me noted on Wikipedia.
On Nov 27, 2007, at 9:34 AM, David Kaiser wrote:

Dear Jack,

Thanks for your quick and helpful reply. I'm glad to continue via email rather than phone; that's easy enough. I am addressing this email just to you and not to the whole group because I wanted to start with some questions about your own trajectory, to fill in some details beyond what I have been able to piece together from your own writings and from newspaper stories (such as the profile of you by Jerry Carroll in the San Fran Chronicle in 1981, or the more recent interview with you in the San Fran Chronicle by Stephen Schwartz in 1997). So this first round of questions is more about people and places; then once I have a chance to digest more of the scientific writings we can dig in to questions of Bell's theorem and signal locality as it was understood at the time and since. Here are some of the things I'm curious about:

1. Why did you decide to leave your faculty job at San Diego State? I talked with Fred Alan Wolf about his decision to leave -- it sounded like a combination of frustration with bureaucracy and cut-backs, plus new enticements in a writing career. Was your experience similar?

1. frustration with bureaucracy? yes

2. cutbacks? no that was not an issue for me and I left a year or two before Fred. Also I brought money to the department with the NSF Summer Schools for College Teachers on Superfluids and Lasers that I did with Herschel Snodgrass.

Both Fred and I got divorced about same time ~ 1971 and we were room mates. I was too young for that job and was bored and wanted adventure which came soon enough from the CIA with the strange events in 1973 at SRI Remote Viewing Project described in my book - 20 years after the strange 1953 encounter - very uncanny - real X-Files sort of Twilight Zone High Strangeness. I had volunteered for CIA in 1963 in wake of the JFK assassination and was interviewed near UCLA in 1963 though I never heard anything explicitly from that interview. My encounter with Dennis Bardens of British Intelligence in 1974

"Dr Sarfatti, it is my duty to inform you of a psychic war raging across the continents between the Soviet Union and your country and you are to be in the thick of it."

- in conjunction with the Uri Geller tests at Birkbeck etc are also clearly relevant as was my working at UKAEA with Marshall Stoneham in 1966. Then going to Trieste at Abdus Salam's invitation in 1973-74 was no accident. Ask Fred Alan Wolf about his visit to me in Trieste with his ending up in Bulgaria in an affair with the daughter of the local KGB police chief there. Both Fred and I were in Croatia for a day at Ljublana Institute for Nuclear Physics then as well. Trieste of course had many physicists from the Soviet Bloc there that I was in daily contact with. See Andrija Puharich in
http://www.stayaerusa.org movie on CIA & SRI. I am in that movie with Uri Geller, Brian Josephson, Colin Wilson, Colonel John Alexander ...

2. You mentioned in your piece in Mishlove's _Roots of Consciousness_ that your Physics/Consciousness Research Group was actually established as a non-profit, tax-exempt corporation. I was curious why you wanted to set it up in that official way; was there much in the way of official business transactions to worry about, rent to pay for office or meeting space, or anything like that?

That was the way Werner Erhard wanted it. His people took care of details. I had free run of Werner's est offices.

Basically I'm wondering why the PCRG was set up with a different structure than the Fundamental Physics Group at LBL, which (as far as I can tell) consisted mostly of an informal gathering of people in a conference room at the lab.

As above. FPG was basically a spin-off of PCRG organized by Elizabeth Rauscher. We had all the money from est and from George Koopman's Insgroup in Huntington Beach a DOD contractor with US Army Tank Command and USAF. Also we had money from UFO advocate Laurance Rockefeller's mistress Jean Lanier (widow of founder of a large engineering company Stone Webster) who set us up on two floors across from the Episcopal Church on top of Nob Hill. There is a SF Chronicle article about Brian Josephson's visit there with his new wife when he went to visit Hal Puthoff and Russell Targ at SRI about the remote viewing (i.e. "signal nonlocality" beyond orthodox quantum theory).

3. What sort of activities, discussion groups, seminars, etc., did the PCRG organize or host? I have heard a bunch about the Fundamental Physics Group at LBL; were the PCRG events similar?

The main thing we did was the Esalen Month in Jan 1976 I think that Gary Zukav writes about in Dancing Wu Li Masters. I brought David Finkelstein there and that's how he met Werner Erhard leading to the big est physics conferences described by Lenny Susskind with Feynman, Gell-Mann, Wheeler, Hawking, Coleman, I think Kip Thorne et-al. I had met David at Yeshiva visiting Lenny Susskind. Finkelstein also worked with Ken Shoulders and Hal Puthoff at a company set up by the Fried Chicken guy William Church as a result of the Esalen month.
We had seminars at the facility on Nob Hill with the Rockefeller-Lanier money.

4. When did you first meet Werner Erhard, and how did you and he arrange things like financial support for your work?

I think that's in Destiny Matrix? I was in Paris with Fred Alan Wolf at his flat in Odeon - I think it was where the Marquis de Sade had lived - that was the rumor. Fred dragged me to the Ritz Hotel to meet Werner who I had never heard of. I was restless. I asked Werner in the lobby of the Ritz, he in a silly inappropriate casual outfit, with a woman adorer, what he did. He said "I make people happy." I wanted to run and I said in a strong Brooklyn accent, "I think you're an asshole." Werner got up from his chair a big smile, embraced me warmly and said "I am going to give you money." I had no idea about the message of the est-Training being "You're an asshole." Werner thought I was some kind of Guru I guess. I sat down and Werner told me he wanted to set up PCRG with est-Foundation money and that's how it started. Werner is now living in London under a new name across the street from Parliament according to Fred Wolf.

You note in Destiny Matrix that at one point Fritjof Capra came to you asking for money to help pay for his green card application, and that you were able to get Erhard to pay it; so it sounds like a pretty easy-going flow of cash at the time.

Yes. I gave Fritjof $1500 that he needed to pay his lawyer for a Green Card. I also brought my then room-mate Gary Zukav to Esalen and wrote all of the rough draft of the physics parts of Wu Li Masters for him and helped him with the editing in later drafts.

Were there other people besides Erhard who helped pay for the PCRG activities and/or your research?

As I said George Koopman & Jean Lanier (with Laurance Rockefeller in the background calling our Nob Hill place to talk to Jean who kept a room there. Koopman had apparently been keeper of the Weird Desk at DIA before leaving to set up Insgroup. He came from the NY Times family somehow. Big obit on him in NT Times when he suspiciously was killed in auto "accident" on his way to test a rocket at Edwards AFB. George was a "spook" who managed Tim Leary when Nixon let him out of prison. Leary was sent to PCRG in Esalen right from prison. Note also my connection to a Nixon personal advisor Robert Dickson Crane through his daughter Maiti in 1979-80. Crane involved with Herman Kahn Hudson Institute and Minsky at MIT. Crane also advisor to Saudi Royals and he converted to Islam and became first US Army Muslim Chaplain I think (from Maiti). Crane told me that my "signal nonlocality" corresponded to "Tauhid" in Islam metaphysics.

E.g., Edgar Mitchell and the Institute of Noetic Sciences, which helped support some of the early work by Hal Puthoff and Russell Targ at SRI on Uri Geller and remote-viewing? (Part of what I'm interested in for the book is how patrons other than the NSF or DOD stepped in to subsidize research in fundamental aspects of theoretical physics in the 1970s.)

Werner may have also financed some of that. I met Edgar of course but we did not get any money from him.

5. Same question for Michael Murphy of Esalen: how did you first meet him, and how did you set up the mid-1970s Esalen workshops on physics and consciousness? Any need for formal arrangements, or did Murphy basically give the group a blank check to proceed as you saw fit?

The latter. Michael and I were close for awhile. He gave me his Telegraph Hill flat on 2 Whiting when he married Dulce. Dan Ellsberg was a frequent visitor when Michael lived there. This was where his character "Jacob Atabet" lived and where I wrote http://qedcorp.com/book/psi/hitweapon.html in one short sitting high on some magic mushroom tea that a woman visitor served me.

6. Saul-Paul Sirag, in his "Contact" essay within Destiny Matrix, writes that at least for a while, you, he, and Fred Alan Wolf actually worked with Erhard's est trainers, to teach them about quantum physics and nonlocality.

Yes, that's correct.

Can you say more about what kind of things you did with the est trainers, what specific things you talked about, what level of detail they seemed to want to know, etc?

It's 30 years ago so I don't recall much. Saul-Paul Sirag probably took notes at the time and he has (had) a photographic memory for details. At that time the "creative tension" between locality and nonlocality was not understood. Bell's theorem was not well-known yet. Nick Herbert tried to use orthodox QM to get signal nonlocality in his FLASH paper. The remote viewing clearly showed signal nonlocality. Unlike the knee-jerk debunkers we assumed this to be an empirical fact and went from there - and still do. Signal locality in orthodox QM rests on shaky ground as Antony Valentini's papers now show and the spooky "Matrix" nature of consensus reality is becoming more apparent with the discovery of dark energy and dark matter and the intensification of UFO activity with more competent scientific observations now coming on line. Now back then in the 70's we were into John Wheeler's observer participator "delayed choice" and "You create reality" that you see in Fred Alan Wolf's books and in the recent alleged remark by President Bush - or was it Karl Rove?

7. The 1981 San Fran Chronicle piece by Jerry Carroll mentions a falling-out between you and Erhard. Can you say more about what happened? It seems to have coincided with Erhard's new conference series on theoretical physics, which Bob Fuller helped to organize with people like Sidney Coleman and Roman Jackiw (starting around 1976).

Yes. est people were getting jealous of my close relation to Werner (like Putzi Sedgwick-Hanfstaengl with Hitler in 1938? ;-)) Maybe it was Bob Fuller? I don't know. Fred Wolf and I were edged out probably because they thought we were too crazy? Finkelstein sort of took over and I was the guy who brought him there in the first place. It was the usual academic shark cut-throat back-stabbing both Fred & I left SDSU for. There was still a back-channel to Werner through his aide Raz Ingrasci who sent Jenny O Conner to me at 2 Whiting after the "falling out" right before she went to Esalen and "channelled The Nine" and allegedly bamboozled the Soviet KGB "Institute for US & Canada" as part of the "Hot Tub Diplomacy" (see Newsweek article that title in mid 80's).

This is a barrage of questions; sorry for dumping them on you all at once. I look forward to chatting more about all these topics --

many thanks -
best,
Dave


Dear David

Phone is not my preferred mode of communication because the channel capacity for scientific communication is too low. Also I only use a cell phone, quality not good noisy frequent drops on ATT and I do not like to stay on it - microwave radiation danger. This e-mail is much better for complex technical issues because we have a detailed record and can correct errors. So please ask me questions by e-mail. :-)

I am cc'ing this to some of the participants who I am still in touch with. Fred Wolf recently spoke to Werner who now lives in London. I also ran into Stan Klein only a few days ago who is doing very interesting brain research with Stapp. I think Fritjof Capra is still in Berkeley and Stan Klein is in touch with him. Unfortunately Tim Leary, George Koopman and Robert Anton Wilson have died. I think Gary Zukav lives on Mount Shasta. You should also talk to David Finkelstein.

We did not clearly understand "signal locality" issues back then in 1976. Indeed Nick Herbert's FLASH paper led to the no-cloning theorem so important in quantum computing today. Antony Valentini's papers
http://eprintweb.org/S/authors/quant-ph/va/Valentini
show how to hack quantum computers in principle.
Like string theory, quantum computers do not yet exist of course - except possibly our minds, which must be post-quantum computers with signal nonlocality as described here

quant-ph/0203049 (March 2002)
Subquantum Information and Computation
Antony Valentini
Received. 11 March 2002 Last updated. 12 April 2002
Abstract. It is argued that immense physical resources - for nonlocal communication, espionage, and exponentially-fast computation - are hidden from us by quantum noise, and that this noise is not fundamental but merely a property of an equilibrium state in which the universe happens to be at the present time. It is suggested that 'non-quantum' or nonequilibrium matter might exist today in the form of relic particles from the early universe. We describe how such matter could be detected and put to practical use. Nonequilibrium matter could be used to send instantaneous signals, to violate the uncertainty principle, to distinguish non-orthogonal quantum states without disturbing them, to eavesdrop on quantum key distribution, and to outpace quantum computation (solving NP-complete problems in polynomial time).


Signal nonlocality (sub-quantal non-equilibrium) also, obviously, has profound implications for the Hawking-Susskind debate on information loss down a black hole. Susskind was also at some of the later Erhard physics meetings. See his interview with John Brockman's "Edge". I met Lenny at Cornell in 1963 where we worked on the quantum phase operator problem with Johnny Glogower a childhood friend of mine. Phil Morrison got Johnny to Cornell at my urging. Also note my 1969 paper predicting supersolid helium that is reproduced in my book Super Cosmos. My paper was published months before Tony Leggett's. Also note my 1966 paper with Marshall Stoneham "The Goldstone Theorem and the Jahn-Teller Effect" cited in APS Resource Letter on Symmetry in Physics 1980. You should also speak to Ray Chiao now at UC Merced on my 1966 paper on self-trapped laser filaments described by a Landau-Ginzburg eq that he told Charles Townes helped him in his early experiments.


On Nov 26, 2007, at 11:31 AM, David Kaiser wrote:

Dear Dr. Sarfatti,

I'm working on a book about physics in the 20th century, looking in particular at some of the waves of interest in topics like foundations of quantum mechanics. I'd like to talk with you by phone some time when it might be convenient for you. I am interested in your work during the 1970s with the Physics/Consciousness Research Group and related groups such as the Fundamental Physics Group at LBL and the Esalen workshops from that period. I recently read your book, 'Destiny Matrix,' which of course has lots of useful information in it, as well as some of your old essays like the material you contributed to the 1st edition of Jeffrey Mishlove's _Roots of Consciousness_. I have also spoken a few times with Fred Alan Wolf, Henry Stapp, and Robert Fuller, who was (as you know) director of Werner Erhard's 'est foundation' for a few years.

If you have some time this week or next, it would be a great help to my research if we could chat by phone. I'd be happy to give you a call, or you can try me at my current office number (while I'm on sabbatical): 781 283-2719.

Thanks --

best,
Dave Kaiser

_______________________________________
David Kaiser dikaiser@mit.edu
Associate Professor
Program in Science, Technology, & Society
and Lecturer, Department of Physics
Building E51-185
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
77 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, MA 02139 USA
Phone: 617 452-3173 Fax: 617 258-8118
http://web.mit.edu/dikaiser/www



_______________________________________
David Kaiser dikaiser@mit.edu
Associate Professor
Program in Science, Technology, & Society
and Lecturer, Department of Physics
Building E51-185
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
77 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, MA 02139 USA
Phone: 617 452-3173 Fax: 617 258-8118
http://web.mit.edu/dikaiser/www

Note - topological defects are nodes in the single-valued macro-quantum ODLRO parameter where the relative Goldstone phases are undefined like longitude at the North and South Poles. They are energetically stable when the corresponding homotopy group is larger than the identity, e.g. winding integers for first homotopy (1D vortices in 3D space), wrapping integers for second homotopy (0D monopoles in 3D space) etc. Note 0-homotopy in 3D space are 2D domain walls. A certain kind of "brane" as a topological defect would be for hyperspaces > 3D generalizing "domain walls" - where only a subset of real Higgs fields vanish for the orthogonal group of Higgs fields case - there are also other types like projective group (smetics). 2D anyons with fractional "quarky" quantum statistics and q-numbers have a more subtle order seen in the FQHE.

On Nov 27, 2007, at 4:50 AM, Paul J. Werbos, Dr. wrote:

Hi, Jack!

I feel a bit torn in multiple directions here.

There are other ways to talk about what you refer to as a "destiny matrix" which might create more
of a "eureka" feeling among many -- but if the consciousness part is not linked to in a correct way, it could
end up causing more confusion than light.

In the end, for example, I do not believe that consciousness as such requires quantum phenomena.
www.werbos.com/credo.htm.

I have said that also as does David Deutsch. I CONJECTURE "signal nonlocality" is necessary but perhaps not sufficient for the emergence of our actual inner consciousness qualia that define who we are as minds. I base this on Bohm's ontolology ("The Undivided Universe") with a sharp separation of Wheeler's IT matter as "hidden variable" from Wheeler's BIT as Bohm's pilot wave or super quantum potential for classical matter fields etc. As shown in "Undivided Universe" signal locality is the approximation of Wheeler's

IT FROM BIT

without any "direct reaction"

BIT FROM IT

i.e. MIND as pilot wave moves MATTER but not vice versa.

It is the "holo" movement of MATTER back on MIND that is the Engine of Qualia.

IT FROM BIT

with any "direct reaction"

BIT FROM IT

form a self-organizing creative strange loop that via retro-causal signal nonlocality literally appear out of nothing as "free invention of the human imagination" - Radin-Bierman presponse - considered a "time travel paradox" by some, but not by me.


The quantum phenomena exist, and play a secondary role in allowing LEVELS of consciousness
beyond what we see around us every day in the mundane world, but their role should not be overstated.

Sure.

Bernard Shaw's long play Back to Methusaleh shows a lot of insight into what is really going on.

Best of luck,

Paul

On Nov 26, 2007, at 9:58 PM, Jack Sarfatti wrote:

Micro-quantum theory is density matrix theory in the absence of "More is different" (PW Anderson) emergent ground state Off-Diagonal-Long-Range-Order (ODLRO) of the density matrix. ODLRO corresponds to large eigenvalues in the lower order "reduced density matrices" that correspond to nonlocal multiple point (3D + 1) correlation functions and to Green's function propagators when boundary conditions are imposed. The large eigenvalues are "condensates" - only bosons can occupy the same single-particle state. Anyons in 2D do something else. How to connect anyons on 2D surrounding surfaces of the interior 3D bulk containing topological defects is the holography problem. Topological defects correspond to zero eigenvalues of the hierarchy of reduced density matrices - in our case of the virtual quanta of all matter fields in the actual physical vacuum. A density matrix without ODLRO has signal locality and obeys the no-cloning theorem. A density matrix with ODLRO can be a retro-causal DESTINY MATRIX with signal nonlocality evading the no-cloning theorem. This also describes systems with self-consciousness - us!

Example, first-order reduced density matrix of a 3D +1 boson field for its vacuum |0>

<0|A(x)A(x')|0> = <0|A(x)|0><0|A(x')|0> + {<0|A(x)A(x')|0>}

the 2nd term on the RHS is the zero point fluctuation in the vacuum at zero temperature. At finite positive temperature it includes "normal liquid" on-shell elementary excitations (quasi-particles & collective modes).
How does this work for 2D + 1 anyons (topological quantum theory) that is the hologram with the above as its image?

Eq of motion of first reduced density matrix couples to second-reduced density matrix and so on.



On Nov 26, 2007, at 9:29 PM, Jack Sarfatti wrote:



"The future and the future alone is the home of explanation."

Henry Dwight Sedgwick (1908)

On Nov 26, 2007, at 3:15 PM, Jack Sarfatti wrote:

Note that I am also proposing a retro-causal universe




where the 2D future de Sitter causal horizon null surface is a hologram retro-causal source of advanced waves that move back in time to cosmic-trigger the moment of inflation out of which the curved tetrads and torsioned spin-connections emerge from the cohering of the pre-inflation random /\(False Vacuum) into the post-inflation vacuum condensate ODLRO Higgs-Goldstone fields with

/\(False Vacuum) ~ 1/Lp^2

/\(Dark Energy) = /\(False Vacuum)/N ~ 1/(Area of Future Horizon) ~ 10^-29 grams/cc

N ~ 10^122 Bekenstein BITS

&Lp* ~ N^1/6Lp

Note that Dark Matter (DM) is ~ AdS on a smaller scale with /\(DM) < 0, hence no on-shell particles will explain Omega(DM) ~ 0.23.

This retro-causal process Omega to Alpha (Teilhard de Chardin) is a globally self-consistent Novikov loop in time.

Mickey Mouse "Maldacena" Conjecture
First note that the symmetry group of AdS is the Poincare group when negative /\ -> 0. Dark matter is like a attractive negative /\ but on short scale. Additional torsion field beyond 1916 GR allows a wavelet spectral resolution of /\(x,L) located at x at scale L (like a Wigner phase space density). At shorter scales /\ goes from positive to negative making galactic halos, Pioneer anomalies (centered on Suns). Einstein's positive cosmological constant is the IR limit of the spectrum of /\(x,L). The 2D null event horizon of a black hole is an anyonic surface with /\ < 0 inside the event horizon? On cosmic scale /\ > 0 and the future de Sitter (dS) Omega horizon is also anyonic emitting advanced waves back from the future to the Alpha moment of inflation.

On Nov 26, 2007, at 2:45 PM, Paul J. Werbos, Dr. wrote:

At 05:08 PM 11/26/2007, Jack Sarfatti wrote:

What do you mean by "second generation"? Still "signal locality?

I am thinking more of operational backwards time kinds of effects.

OK that then is "signal nonlocality" in Valentini's sense - practical retro-causality is one example of signal nonlocality where

quant-ph/0203049 (March 2002)
Subquantum Information and Computation
Antony Valentini
Received. 11 March 2002 Last updated. 12 April 2002
Abstract. It is argued that immense physical resources - for nonlocal communication, espionage, and exponentially-fast computation - are hidden from us by quantum noise, and that this noise is not fundamental but merely a property of an equilibrium state in which the universe happens to be at the present time. It is suggested that 'non-quantum' or nonequilibrium matter might exist today in the form of relic particles from the early universe. We describe how such matter could be detected and put to practical use. Nonequilibrium matter could be used to send instantaneous signals, to violate the uncertainty principle, to distinguish non-orthogonal quantum states without disturbing them, to eavesdrop on quantum key distribution, and to outpace quantum computation (solving NP-complete problems in polynomial time).

Your "second generation" means same as my "post-quantum" AKA Valentini's "sub-quantal non-equilibrium" what at Tucson II (1996) I called "back-action" i.e. in Bohm's ontological interpretation the IT "particle" is not a test particle but directly acts back on the BIT pilot wave, e.g. I think p. 30 & Ch 14 of "The Undivided Universe" by Bohm & Hiley (1993?).



On Nov 26, 2007, at 2:08 PM, Jack Sarfatti wrote:



On Nov 26, 2007, at 1:59 PM, Paul J. Werbos, Dr. wrote:


Like string theory, quantum computers do not yet exist of course - except possibly our minds, which must be post-quantum computers with signal nonlocality as described here

I do have to take exception to this one. The ones built so far are not so big -- 5 to 10 qubits, last I heard -- but they do exist.

OK good. Did not know that. Thanks Paul. :-)

First generation, of course, in the vision of David Deutsch (slightly augmented to account for
density matrices rather than wave functions).

I have my own view of second generation possibilities, but we will see....

What do you mean by "second generation"? Still "signal locality"?

Best of luck to us all,

Paul

Begin forwarded message:

From: Jack Sarfatti
Date: November 26, 2007 1:50:11 PM PST
To: David K
Subject: Re: Physics/Consciousness Research Group in the 1970s

Dear David

Phone is not my preferred mode of communication because the channel capacity for scientific communication is too low. Also I only use a cell phone, quality not good noisy frequent drops on ATT and I do not like to stay on it - microwave radiation danger. This e-mail is much better for complex technical issues because we have a detailed record and can correct errors. So please ask me questions by e-mail. :-)

I am cc'ing this to some of the participants who I am still in touch with. Fred Wolf recently spoke to Werner who now lives in London. I also ran into Stan Klein only a few days ago who is doing very interesting brain research with Stapp. I think Fritjof Capra is still in Berkeley and Stan Klein is in touch with him. Unfortunately Tim Leary, George Koopman and Robert Anton Wilson have died. I think Gary Zukav lives on Mount Shasta. You should also talk to David Finkelstein.

We did not clearly understand "signal locality" issues back then in 1976. Indeed Nick Herbert's FLASH paper led to the no-cloning theorem so important in quantum computing today. Antony Valentini's papers
http://eprintweb.org/S/authors/quant-ph/va/Valentini
show how to hack quantum computers in principle.
Like string theory, quantum computers do not yet exist of course - except possibly our minds, which must be post-quantum computers with signal nonlocality as described here

quant-ph/0203049 (March 2002)
Subquantum Information and Computation
Antony Valentini
Received. 11 March 2002 Last updated. 12 April 2002
Abstract. It is argued that immense physical resources - for nonlocal communication, espionage, and exponentially-fast computation - are hidden from us by quantum noise, and that this noise is not fundamental but merely a property of an equilibrium state in which the universe happens to be at the present time. It is suggested that 'non-quantum' or nonequilibrium matter might exist today in the form of relic particles from the early universe. We describe how such matter could be detected and put to practical use. Nonequilibrium matter could be used to send instantaneous signals, to violate the uncertainty principle, to distinguish non-orthogonal quantum states without disturbing them, to eavesdrop on quantum key distribution, and to outpace quantum computation (solving NP-complete problems in polynomial time).

Signal nonlocality (sub-quantal non-equilibrium) also, obviously, has profound implications for the Hawking-Susskind debate on information loss down a black hole. Susskind was also at some of the later Erhard physics meetings. See his interview with John Brockman's "Edge". I met Lenny at Cornell in 1963 where we worked on the quantum phase operator problem with Johnny Glogower a childhood friend of mine. Phil Morrison got Johnny to Cornell at my urging. Also note my 1969 paper predicting supersolid helium that is reproduced in my book Super Cosmos. My paper was published months before Tony Leggett's. Also note my 1966 paper with Marshall Stoneham "The Goldstone Theorem and the Jahn-Teller Effect" cited in APS Resource Letter on Symmetry in Physics 1980. You should also speak to Ray Chiao now at UC Merced on my 1966 paper on self-trapped laser filaments described by a Landau-Ginzburg eq that he told Charles Townes helped him in his early experiments.


On Nov 26, 2007, at 11:31 AM, David K... wrote:

Dear Dr. Sarfatti,

I'm working on a book about physics in the 20th century, looking in particular at some of the waves of interest in topics like foundations of quantum mechanics. I'd like to talk with you by phone some time when it might be convenient for you. I am interested in your work during the 1970s with the Physics/Consciousness Research Group and related groups such as the Fundamental Physics Group at LBL and the Esalen workshops from that period. I recently read your book, 'Destiny Matrix,' which of course has lots of useful information in it, as well as some of your old essays like the material you contributed to the 1st edition of Jeffrey Mishlove's _Roots of Consciousness_. I have also spoken a few times with Fred Alan Wolf, Henry Stapp, and Robert Fuller, who was (as you know) director of Werner Erhard's 'est foundation' for a few years.

If you have some time this week or next, it would be a great help to my research if we could chat by phone. I'd be happy to give you a call, or you can try me at my current office number (while I'm on sabbatical):

Thanks --

best,
Dave K..

Subject: Re: Skinwalkers, Blue Book and All: TP Black Lodge

It has apparently already opened at the Skinwalker Ranch. See the book by Kelleher and Knapp http://www.huntfortheskinwalker.com/
- creature coming out of the wormhole.
I also discuss it in my book Super Cosmos
http://www.authorhouse.com/BookStore/ItemDetail.aspx?bookid=23999
You know it's like cockroaches. See one, you know there are many more.
On Nov 22, 2007, at 7:35 PM, Sam Arnold wrote:

'Tis but a Sarfattian Coincidence, nothing more!

P.S. Just caught a screening of The Mist- which deals with a military
accident in which a wormhole is opened unleashing hordes of
Lovecraftian mutants on poor folk in a grocery store- gripping,
wrenching, 5 stars! I hope this pandora's box never gets opened!!


On Nov 22, 2007 10:16 PM, Jack Sarfatti wrote:


Begin forwarded message:

From: "Gary S. Bekkum"
Date: November 22, 2007 7:05:59 PM PST
To: Jack Sarfatti
Subject: Re: Skinwalkers, Blue Book and All: TP Black Lodge

Same theme playing out at Dan's blog over ET vs UT hypothesis.

Jack Sarfatti wrote:
i had nothing to do with it - that's Gary Bekkum not me. I only
forwarded it.
On Nov 22, 2007, at 4:56 AM, Sam ... wrote:

You amazing mind reader at a distance you- how did you happen to add
in that Twin Peaks black lodge reference in your subject line?! What a
"coincidence", I just ordered the new Gold Edition Twin Peaks dvd set-
fully restored and pristine color and quality- and was watching it
last night!

Somebody should fund Lynch to do a follow up movie that delves into
Agent Cooper being possessed by Bob- and dealing with all the
Skinwalker stuff- now that's the story I wanna see! Twin Peaks is a
great mythology- and its weirdness is truth. Agent Cooper also seems
to be a mind reader at a distance- coincidence?

On Nov 22, 2007 12:23 AM, Jack Sarfatti wrote:

Begin forwarded message:

From: "Gary S. Bekkum / STARpod.org"
Date: November 21, 2007 8:40:15 PM PST
To: caryn anscomb , Jack Sarfatti
,
"G.S. Bekkum" , Gary Bekkum, Kit Green

Subject: Re: Skinwalkers, Blue Book and All: TP Black Lodge

"The STAR GATE legacy stands as evidence that the military will make
operational use of anything appearing to offer a technical advantage,
whether or not there is scientific support for the technology.

One unnamed high level source has confirmed that paranormal data was
discussed by members of an elite government committee. Strange events
investigated by Las Vegas businessman Bob Bigelow's National
Institute of Discovery Science (NIDS) have been the topic of discussion between members at DIA sponsored meetings on the threats of emerging technologies.

Dr. Eric Davis, author of the highly controversial report on teleportation commissioned by the U.S. Air Force, has been very forthcoming
answering questions about observations of strange creatures and other anomalous phenomena made by NIDS personnel at Bigelow's Skinwalker Ranch. The Skinwalker is a shape shifting being said to haunt this remote
part of Utah near Salt Lake City. Strange creatures, strange objects, floating
black triangles, animal mutilations, disintegrated dogs, telepathic
messages - a smorgasbord of every strange and imaginable terror has been served to those unfortunates spending any period of time at the ranch. The
strangeness is reported in "Hunt for the Skinwalker," by former NIDS staff
scientist Colm A. Kelleher, and veteran UFO reporter George Knapp. In the Air Force teleportation study Davis examines potential scientific
explanations for the weird phenomena, including spacetime wormholes, teleportation, and manipulation of the quantum vacuum.

If STAR GATE was any measure of the interest displayed by the DIA
in this kind of weirdness, it wouldn't be surprising to learn that the
Utah ranch is the subject of at least a few confidential memos for the record.
Perhaps DIA would like to 'read in' a Skinwalker or two as part of their secret
paranormal war on terror."


Gary S. Bekkum / Starstream Research
P.O. Box 1144
Maple Grove, MN 55311
Office (763) 424-4426
Mobile (763) 439-0719

In mathematics, the special unitary group of degree n, denoted SU(n), is the group of n×n unitary matrices with unit determinant. The group operation is that of matrix multiplication. The special unitary group is a subgroup of the unitary group U(n), consisting of all n×n unitary matrices, which is itself a subgroup of the general linear group GL(n, C).
The simplest case, SU(1), is a trivial group, having only a single element. The group SU(2) is isomorphic to the group of quaternions of absolute value 1, and is thus diffeomorphic to the 3-sphere. Since unit quaternions can be used to represent rotations in 3-dimensional space (up to sign), we have a surjective homomorphism from SU(2) to the rotation group SO(3) whose kernel is { + I, − I}.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SU(2)

Three real Goldstone phases correspond ot the 3-sphere of internal SU(2). Therefore, my eight Goldstone phases THETA^a and PHI^b forming two Lorentz group SO(1,3) 4-vectors project to two internal SU(2) groups when their respective magnitudes are real. These subspaces correspond to stable GMD string quantized vortex filaments in ordinary 3D space with an attached internal SU(2). That is, the "lines" of the 3D "spin lattice" naturally carry SU(2) q-numbers in my model! The two spaces with two Goldstone phase magnitudes taken together give the GMD point defect monopoles at the ends of open string vortices.

The residual 6 internal Goldstone phases after 2 magnitudes are fixed for the 3D spin lattice require one extra real Higgs scalar. Therefore, there is actually the 10D + 1 manifold of Ed Witten's M-Theory naturally in my model along with its 9D + 1 sub-manifold.

On Nov 18, 2007, at 12:03 AM, Jack Sarfatti wrote:

Now if you think the logical flow of ideas below is hard to follow, for comparison look at a paper by almost any string theorist and tell me if what they say is easier for you to follow? ;-)

On Nov 17, 2007, at 11:56 PM, Jack Sarfatti wrote:


On Nov 17, 2007, at 11:15 PM, Jack Sarfatti wrote:


Note the EM vector potential A(em) is compared to the tetrad e^I, i.e. (2.101) & (2.105). Really A(em) should be compared with A^I(gravity) where the torsion field vanishes.

e^I(gravity) = I^a(1905SR) + @A^I(gravity)

where from P.W. Anderson's "More is different" emergent complexity I posit

A^I(gravity) = M^I^I = (dTheta)^I(Phi)^I - (Theta)^I(dPhi)^I

Conjecture:

F^I(gravity) = DA^I ~ 2(dTheta)^I/\(dPhi)^I + w^IJ/\A^J

w^I^J = M^[I,J]

M^I^J = (dTheta)^I(Phi)^J - (Theta)^I(dPhi)^J

DF^I = 0

D*F^I = *J^I

D*J^I = 0

The 8 Goldstone phases form 2 Lorentz group 4-vectors THETA^I and PHI^J. Their 2 magnitudes THETA & PHI are the 2 effective Goldstone phases of the world hologram for 3D + 1 spacetime. This requires 3 real Higgs fields living in our 3D spacelike world. The possible stable topological defects are domain walls S0 vacuum manifold, line vortices S1 vacuum manifold, and point monopole defects S2 vacuum manifold. The 3D "spin network" is a "Abrikosov" lattice of point monopoles connected by line vortices. The finite cores of these soldered defects is the residual random zero point energy density from the pre-inflation false vacuum just like in superfluid helium. The residual 6 Goldstone phases lead to the internal symmetry Calabi-Yau space. E8 obviously applies to my 8 post-inflation Goldstone phases. Since the magnitudes THETA & PHI can be imaginary as well as zero and real, the 3D Goldstone phase space is non-compact. Brane worlds are simply the stable topological defects in the space of the 9 real Higgs fields that form the 8 Goldstone phases.

Horizon area is quantized and the number of area quanta N is the wrapping number of the non-trivial 2nd homotopy group using the S2 vacuum manifold of all 3 Higgs fields for the "visible universe" - the top of the iceberg as it were. Each real Higgs field is essentially a "space dimension" in order to have stable topological defects where subsets of the real Higgs fields vanish leaving subsets of Goldstone phases undefined i.e. Berry phase singularities.

The area element is ~ dTHETA/\dPHI with N quanta, N = # Bekenstein bits

The volume element is d(area element) = 0, i.e. volume without volume (Wheelerism)

The world hologram imaging equation is Jack Ng's equation

&L = (Lp^2L)^1/3 = N^1/6Lp

L = scale of the dominating horizon, which in our universe is the Hubble scale of the retro-causal future de Sitter horizon with dark energy (DE) density

t00(DE) = hc/NLp^4 ~ 10^-29 gm/cc

N ~ 10^122

Note the EM vector potential A(em) is compared to the tetrad e^I, i.e. (2.101) & (2.105). Really A(em) should be compared with A^I(gravity) where the torsion field vanishes.

e^I(gravity) = I^a(1905SR) + @A^I(gravity)

where from P.W. Anderson's "More is different" emergent complexity I posit

A^I(gravity) = M^I^I = (dTheta)^I(Phi)^I - (Theta)^I(dPhi)^I

Conjecture:

F^I(gravity) = DA^I ~ 2(dTheta)^I/\(dPhi)^I + w^IJ/\A^J

w^I^J = M^[I,J]

M^I^J = (dTheta)^I(Phi)^J - (Theta)^I(dPhi)^J

DF^I = 0

D*F^I = *J^I

D*J^I = 0

The 8 Goldstone phases form 2 Lorentz group 4-vectors THETA^I and PHI^J. Their 2 magnitudes THETA & PHI are the 2 effective Goldstone phases of the world hologram for 3D + 1 spacetime. This requires 3 real Higgs fields living in our 3D spacelike world. The possible stable topological defects are domain walls S0 vacuum manifold, line vortices S1 vacuum manifold, and point monopole defects S2 vacuum manifold. The 3D "spin network" is a "Abrikosov" lattice of point monopoles connected by line vortices. The finite cores of these soldered defects is the residual random zero point energy density from the pre-inflation false vacuum just like in superfluid helium. The residual 6 Goldstone phases lead to the internal symmetry Calabi-Yau space. E8 obviously applies to my 8 post-inflation Goldstone phases. Since the magnitudes THETA & PHI can be imaginary as well as zero and real, the 3D Goldstone phase space is non-compact. Brane worlds are simply the stable topological defects in the space of the 9 real Higgs fields that form the 8 Goldstone phases.

Horizon area is quantized and the number of area quanta N is the wrapping number of the non-trivial 2nd homotopy group using the S2 vacuum manifold of all 3 Higgs fields for the "visible universe" - the top of the iceberg as it were. Each real Higgs fields is essentially a "space dimension" in order to have stable topological defects where subsets of the real Higgs fields vanish leaving subsets of Goldstone phases undefined i.e. Berry phase singularities.

The area element is ~ dTHETA/\dPHI with N quanta, N = # Bekenstein bits

The volume element is d(area element) = 0, i.e. volume without volume (Wheelerism)

The world hologram imaging equation is Jack Ng's equation

&L = (Lp^2L)^1/3 = N^1/6Lp

L = scale of the dominating horizon, which in our universe is the Hubble scale of the retro-causal future de Sitter horizon with dark energy (DE) density

t00(DE) = hc/NLp^4 ~ 10^-29 gm/cc

N ~ 10^122

It's not a cranky review nor is Lisi a crank. The only "crank" here is allegedly the one-and-only Lubos Motl http://motls.blogspot.com/2007/11/exceptionally-simple-theory-of.html

http://www.physics.rutgers.edu/~motl/
IMHO. Lisi paper has serious defects but it is still interesting and better than most papers on the theory archive. Peter Woit writes:

Garrett Lisi has a new paper on the arXiv, with the rather over-the-top title of An Exceptionally Simple Theory of Everything. Sabine Hossenfelder has a typically excellent posting about the paper, and Garrett has been discussing his work with people in the comment section there. Lubos Motl, has a typically, how shall I say, Lubosian posting on the topic.

...
Two of the ideas he is pursuing are general ones I’m also very fond of. One is well-known, and many people have also tried this, it’s the idea of bringing together the internal gauge symmetry and the symmetry of local frame rotations. The problems with this are also well-known, and some have been brought up by the commenters at Sabine’s blog. I don’t think Garrett has found the answer to this, or that he claims to. I’m still hopeful that this line of thinking will lead somewhere, but think some dramatically different new idea about this is still needed. The other idea he likes is that of trying to interpret the fermionic degrees of freedom of the BRST method for handling gauge invariance as providing the fermions of the Standard Model. I suspect there is something to this, but to get anywhere with it, a much deeper understanding of BRST will be required. I’ve been spending a lot of time trying to understand some of the mathematics related to BRST in recent years, and am in the middle of writing some of this up. It seems to me that there is a lot that is not understood yet about this topic even in much simpler lower-dimensional contexts, so we’re a long way from being able to really see whether something can be done with this idea in a realistic four-dimensional setting.

One idea Garrett is fond of that has generally left me cold is the idea of unification via a large simple Lie algebra like E8. While there may be some sort of ultimate truth to this, the problem is that, just as for GUTs and for superstring models, all you’re doing when you do this is changing the unification problem into the problem of what breaks the large symmetry. This change in the problem adds some new structure to it, but just doesn’t seem to help very much, with the bottom line being that you get few if any testable predictions out of it (one exception is with the simplest GUTs, where you do get a prediction, proton decay, which turns out to be wrong, falsifying the models).

http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=617

Sabine Hossenfelder writes:

This is without doubt cool: He has a theory that contains gravity as well as the other interactions of the SM. Given that he has to choose the action by hand to reproduce the SM, one can debate how natural this actually is. However, for me the question remains which problem he can address at this stage. He neither can say anything about the quantization of gravity, renormalizability, nor about the hierarchy problem. When it comes to the cosmological constant, it seems for his theory to work he needs it to be the size of about the Higgs vev, i.e. roughly 12 orders of magnitude too large. (And this is not the common problem with the too large quantum corrections, but actually the constant appearing in the Lagrangian.)

To make predictions with this model, one first needs to find a mechanism for symmetry breaking which is likely to become very involved. I think these two points, the cosmological constant and the symmetry breaking, are the biggest obstacles on the way to making actual predictions [4].

Bottomline

Now I find it hard to make up my mind on Garrett's model because the attractive and the unattractive features seem to balance each other. To me, the most attractive feature is the way he uses the exceptional Lie-groups to get the fermions together with the bosons. The most unattractive feature are the extra assumptions he needs to write down an action that gives the correct equations of motion. So, my opinion on Garrett's work has been flip-flopping since I learned of it.

So far, I admittedly can't hear what Lee referred to in his book as 'the ring of truth'.
http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2007/11/theoretically-simple-exception-of.html


On Nov 17, 2007, at 5:40 PM, Gary S. Bekkum / STARpod.org wrote:


Upon further review, surfer's new Theory of Everything severely
deficient


By Chris Lee | Published: November 17, 2007 - 08:49AM CT

The /New Scientist/ must hire someone to trawl through the arXiv in the hopes of getting the science news one step ahead of everyone else. Unfortunately, its record for distinguishing good science from bad science is not all that great, so I was pretty skeptical when I was pointed to an article on a new theory of everything™ .

This paper is actually a very impressive piece of work, though it is thoroughly overhyped and completely unintelligible to anyone who doesn't regularly do particle physics and group theory. The author, A. Garrett Lisi, has proposed a back-to-the-future approach to uniting quantum mechanics and gravity.

Over the course of the late 19th and 20th centuries, it was discovered that the electric force, the magnetic force, the weak force (responsible for radioactivity), and the strong force (responsible for holding the nucleus together) could all be described by a single theory. The different forces, their properties, and associated particles could all be obtained from different symmetry operations (think rotations and reflections) of an algebraic system. This very successful approach has withstood the test of time, with absolutely every experimental test falling within error bars of the calculated results. However, gravity stands apart as the force which does not get included in this set, so its inclusion (or a totally new theory) would constitute a theory of everything.

Much of the early work focused on exploring higher symmetry algebraic systems that might include gravity. Several were found, but none actually survived contact with reality. This approach has largely fallen out of favor because any object with sufficient symmetry operations can be made to unite gravity with everything else while still not agree with reality as we measure it. Lisi has revived this approach by looking at the shadows cast by an extremely complicated symmetry group (called E8). Unsurprisingly, if you choose (by hand) the right starting methodology, and ignore a large swathe of physical reality, a selection of symmetry operations will result in groups of symmetry operations that correspond to those from particle physics as we know it, something that might be the symmetry operations of gravity—and some other stuff.

The problem is that Lisi has ignored much of physics, where he adds normal numbers to vectors and other similar no-nos (imagine adding a speed to an energy and you have got exactly what Lisi has done). He has found that the chosen symmetry operations correspond to the symmetry groups of particles—not that surprising, considering the number of symmetry operations he has at his disposal—but he hasn't checked to see if the masses come out as found experimentally because he can't; once you put nonsense into a model, the only thing that comes out is nonsense.

this next part is propaganda. Lisi has a PhD in physics from UCSD. His work is interesting even if it is partially or wholly wrong compared to the voodoo cargo cult string physics most of which is "not even wrong" (W. Pauli) at a cost of ~ billion dollars of US tax money over 30 years supporting ~ 1000 theorists counting angels on pinheads. ;-)

In the Observatory thread on this topic, posters have pointed to a blog article that puts Lisi firmly in the crank category, which is exactly right. However, New Scientist/ has to take a good chunk of the blame here by taking something that any good particle physicist can recognize as complete rubbish (it fooled me until I started to look at what his equations actually meant) and turned it (and Lisi) into an anti-establishment star (he's a surfer, not a scientist...).

Many thanks to Geon and his post in the Observatory.

Lisi getting major media coverage despite Lubos Motl calling him a "crackpot". I have my doubts about the claims of E8 with regard to gravity, but I do not know having not yet studied the paper - only Lubos Motl's remarks on it. It's clear E8 is real physics, i.e. testable out on the limb even if it turns out to be partially wrong. String theory is not real physics. I mean most of the "string theory" papers on the archive at best are good math papers having no connection to real phenomena.

Lee Smolin has some very interesting things to say about Alain Connes's non-commuting geometry. Note this gives quantized area trivially. Smolin says the standard model with Higgs-Goldstone macro-quantum vacuum ODLRO fields pops out of Connes's theory - important, indeed startling, claim.

Note on "spin networks" - I have them in my theory quite literally. The "nodes" of the 3D spin networks are my GMD field quantized "monopoles" (second homotopy group ~ integers) and the "edges" are simply GMD field quantized vortex filaments (first homotopy group ~ integers) for 2 world hologram Goldstone phases with 3 real Higgs scalars contracted down from 8 Goldstone phases with 9 real Higgs scalars giving the M-Matrix where c-number ODLRO curved tetrads ~ diagonal part of 4x4 M-Matrix, spin connections ~ anti-symmetrized off-diagonal part of M-Matrix.

One real Higgs scalar for each boson "dimension of space" in order to have stable topological defects in the post-inflation single-valued vacuum condensate ODLRO Higgs-Goldstone order parameters.

Begin forwarded message:


To: "'Jack Sarfatti'"
Subject: lisi theory
Reply-To:..

Jack,

Did you see the animation at www.newscientist.com/article/dn12891.

I suspect Lubos is essentially technically (formally) correct about that particular largely irrelevant point that assumes what it wants to prove. It's like theorems that prove it's impossible to generalize quantum theory, and like theorems that say quantum superposition of charge eigenstates are impossible. It does not apply to my background-independent macro-quantum gravity theory that the fundamental geometrodynamic fields are local gauge fields from Minkowski spacetime non-compact symmetry groups keeping all field global actions invariant. It's an old result Coleman did not invent it. It does apply to string theory that is Minkowski back-ground dependent of course. It may or may not apply to Lisi's E8 model I don't know yet. No direct emergence of non-compact spacetime from compact internal symmetry groups like E8 allegedly is is used or assumed in my MACRO-QUANTUM theory. Simple minimal coupling between internal forces and gravity-torsion comes simply from bilinear products of the tetrads with the gauge potentials in the covariant derivatives as I showed yesterday explicitly. No big deal. Lubos & Company make simple physical ideas obscure with excess mathematical mystical baggage. Honestly now, can you really parse Lubos Motl's sentences when he tries to explain physics? Compare Lubos Motl's pedantic Laputan scriibbles with Lee Smolin's crystal clear plain English explanations of hard string theory, double special relativity, loop et-al ideas in "The Trouble With Physics." Motl is Pot calling Smolin's Kettle black most obviously. Now that's the real truth here. Also Lee Smolin sticks close to experiments pointing out same things I emphasize i.e. dark energy, dark matter, Pioneer anomaly - why Hubble radius R applies on the small scale of the NASA Pioneer Anomaly - very key puzzle of principle. Do you ever see Lubos write about physical phenomena? Maybe he does, but it's like looking for a needle in the haystack.

On Nov 15, 2007, at 8:23 PM, Paul Zielinski wrote:

Do you agree with the Coleman-Mandula result? If so, what do you think this says about
the idea of unifying gravitation non-trivially with all other natural forces under the E8 model?


Jack Sarfatti wrote:

On Nov 15, 2007, at 5:01 PM, Paul Zielinski wrote:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fe/E8_graph.svg

Yes it is, and as an internal gauge group it may be of value, but as Feynman said

"A beautiful theory is murdered by an ugly fact."

I do think what Lisi, Tony Smith are doing is real physics and that most of what Lubos Motl publishes is pure math, but as physics is "not even wrong" - also what does he mean "spinning coordinates" - A. Connes matrix geometry?

Bottom line is that even if Lubos Motl were correct that there is a fundamental flaw in the Lisi-Tony Smith approach, nevertheless, that does not make them "crackpots" it would only make them "wrong" which is better than any paper Lubos ever probably published which falls under the "not even wrong" category. At least Tony and Lisi make some contact with real data - it may be wrong like the platonic solids explanation of the motion of the planets but it is still real physics, though possibly wrong and mathematically inconsistent. I would like to see Lubos prove that his own brand of string theory has no mathematical inconsistencies. QED is not mathematically consisten,t but it is very useful nevertheless. Again arrogant mathematicians mucking up good physics.

On Nov 15, 2007, at 8:34 AM, Gary S. Bekkum wrote:

Didn't Tony Smith have something like this?

Yes, you are right now that I recall. I still have not read the Lisa paper. I see Lubos Motl is compulsively attacking people personally with vague smears again rather than correcting what he thinks may be wrong or not even wrong with their ideas. His list of targets also includes Sir Roger Penrose, Leonard Susskind, Lee Smolin and George Chapline, Jr. George nevertheless, a true Christian turning his other cheek, supports Lubos AKA "Lumos" AKA Abbe Hyupsing Qong http://www.physics.rutgers.edu/~motl/

Tony Smith is among the crackpots thanked to in the acknowledgements. Next time, he may also submit his own paper supported by similar endorsers. And maybe A. Garrett Lisi will become an endorser himself. Really entertaining times will start afterwards: the hep-th era of Jack Sarfatti, Tony Smith, Peter Woit, and their friends.

That's really why he had to leave Harvard Physics department a few months ago and he basically scuttled his academic career. Lubos (Lumo) uses "crackpot" the way the KKK uses the "N" word and the way Senator Joe McCarthy used "Red", "Fellow Traveler". Lubos and others of the so-called "Skeptic Community" use these smear labels as form of totalitarian Orwellian mind-control that we also see in "PC" thinking. Apparently, or so it seems by plausible inductive inference, this connection was not lost on the senior Harvard physics faculty who decided that Lubos was not conducting himself as a potential Ivy League Harvard professor should? By the way you will notice that what Lubos says below is not comprehensible to the intelligent layman who knows some physics. This is in contrast to say Lee Smolin who is able to describe the same ideas in a way that is comprehensible as in "The Trouble With Physics". Lubos is basically a mathematician in physicist's clothing. So like a mathematician! ;-)

Jack Sarfatti wrote:

On Nov 15, 2007, at 7:20 AM, Brian Josephson wrote:
See my comment at the end (timed at 11.38 am) of



linked to the archive freedom site for good measure!

"He's quite lucky that the physics preprint archive (the first link above) didn't bar his paper. There is officially no refereeing of papers, and yet the string theorists who run the archive have a nasty habit of blocking submissions advocating alternative approaches, even when the papers concerned have already been accepted by journals."
Posted by Prof. Brian Josephson on November 15, 2007 11:38 AM

Brian

--On Thursday, November 15, 2007 5:43 -0800 Jack Sarfatti wrote:

E8 is basically an internal symmetry group beyond the standard model
U(1)SU(2)SU(3)



* * * * * * * Prof. Brian D. Josephson :::::::: bdj10@cam.ac.uk
* Mind-Matter * Cavendish Lab., J J Thomson Ave, Cambridge CB3 0HE, U.K.
* Unification * voice: +44(0)1223 337260 fax: +44(0)1223 337356
* Project * WWW: http://www.tcm.phy.cam.ac.uk/~bdj10
* * * * * * *


On Nov 15, 2007, at 5:43 AM, Jack Sarfatti wrote:

Draft 2
I have not read it yet. Be interested what Saul-Paul Sirag thinks since he knows E8. E8 is basically an internal symmetry group inducing compensating gauge boson force fields beyond the standard model U(1)SU(2)SU(3) within the principle of local gauge invariance that my own theory of emergent gravity is consistent with. Note that you need spacetime symmetry groups locally gauged to get the background-independent geometrodynamic tetrad e^a and spin connection fields S^a^b. My theory is background-independent in Lee Smolin's sense and I get e^a and S^a^b from 8 Goldstone coherent phases of the post-inflation vacuum condensate ODLRO very much like
superflow velocity = (h/m)Grad(Phase of superfluid helium)

This is John A. Wheeler's IT FROM BIT.

Lubos Motl seems to think this is a "crackpot" idea. I have no opinion yet on the Lisa paper below not having read it and maybe Lubos is correct about that. I simply do not know at this moment.

Begin forwarded message:

From: ANTIGRAY@cs.com
Date: November 15, 2007 5:26:45 AM PST
To: sarfatti@pacbell.net

Subject: Surfer dude stuns physicists with theory of everything

Surfer dude stuns physicists with theory of everything

By Roger Highfield, Science Editor
14/11/2007

An impoverished surfer has drawn up a new theory of the universe, seen by some as the Holy Grail of physics, which as received rave reviews from scientists.


The E8 pattern (left), Garrett Lisi surfing (middle) and out of the water (right)

Garrett Lisi, 39, has a doctorate but no university affiliation and spends most of the year surfing in Hawaii, where he has also been a hiking guide and bridge builder (when he slept in a jungle yurt). In winter, he heads to the mountains near Lake Tahoe, Nevada, where he snowboards. "Being poor sucks," Lisi says. "It's hard to figure out the secrets of the universe when you're trying to figure out where you and your girlfriend are going to sleep next month." Despite this unusual career path, his proposal is remarkable because, by the arcane standards of particle physics, it does not require highly complex mathematics. Even better, it does not require more than one dimension of time and three of space, when some rival theories need ten or even more spatial dimensions and other bizarre concepts. And it may even be possible to test his theory, which predicts a host of new particles, perhaps even using the new Large Hadron Collider atom smasher that will go into action near Geneva next year.
Although the work of 39 year old Garrett Lisi still has a way to go to convince the establishment, let alone match the achievements of Albert Einstein, the two do have one thing in common: Einstein also began his great adventure in theoretical physics while outside the mainstream scientific establishment, working as a patent officer, though failed to achieve the Holy Grail, an overarching explanation to unite all the particles and forces of the cosmos. Now Lisi, currently in Nevada, has come up with a proposal to do this. Lee Smolin at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, describes Lisi's work as "fabulous." "It is one of the most compelling unification models I've seen in many, many years," he says. "Although he cultivates a bit of a surfer-guy image its clear he has put enormous effort and time into working the complexities of this structure out over several years," Prof Smolin tells The Telegraph. "Some incredibly beautiful stuff falls out of Lisi's theory," adds David Ritz Finkelstein at the Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta. "This must be more than coincidence and he really is touching on something profound." The new theory reported today in New Scientist has been laid out in an online paper entitled "An Exceptionally Simple Theory of Everything" by Lisi, who completed his doctorate in theoretical physics in 1999 at the University of California, San Diego. He has high hopes that his new theory could provide what he says is a "radical new explanation" for the three decade old Standard Model, which weaves together three of the four fundamental forces of nature: the electromagnetic force; the strong force, which binds quarks together in atomic nuclei; and the weak force, which controls radioactive decay. The reason for the excitement is that Lisi's model also takes account of gravity, a force that has only successfully been included by a rival and highly fashionable idea called string theory, one that proposes particles are made up of minute strings, which is highly complex and elegant but has lacked predictions by which to do experiments to see if it works. But some are taking a cooler view. Prof Marcus du Sautoy, of Oxford University and author of Finding Moonshine, told the Telegraph: "The proposal in this paper looks a long shot and there seem to be a lot things still to fill in." And a colleague Eric Weinstein in America added: "Lisi seems like a hell of a guy. I'd love to meet him. But my friend Lee Smolin is betting on a very very long shot." Lisi's inspiration lies in the most elegant and intricate shape known to mathematics, called E8 - a complex, eight-dimensional mathematical pattern with 248 points first found in 1887, but only fully understood by mathematicians this year after workings, that, if written out in tiny print, would cover an area the size of Manhattan. E8 encapsulates the symmetries of a geometric object that is 57-dimensional and is itself is 248-dimensional. Lisi says "I think our universe is this beautiful shape." What makes E8 so exciting is that Nature also seems to have embedded it at the heart of many bits of physics. One interpretation of why we have such a quirky list of fundamental particles is because they all result from different facets of the strange symmetries of E8. Lisi's breakthrough came when he noticed that some of the equations describing E8's structure matched his own. "My brain exploded with the implications and the beauty of the thing," he tells New Scientist. "I thought: 'Holy crap, that's it!'" What Lisi had realized was that he could find a way to place the various elementary particles and forces on E8's 248 points. What remained was 20 gaps which he filled with notional particles, for example those that some physicists predict to be associated with gravity. Physicists have long puzzled over why elementary particles appear to belong to families, but this arises naturally from the geometry of E8, he says. So far, all the interactions predicted by the complex geometrical relationships inside E8 match with observations in the real world. "How cool is that?" he says. The crucial test of Lisi's work will come only when he has made testable predictions. Lisi is now calculating the masses that the 20 new particles should have, in the hope that they may be spotted when the Large Hadron Collider starts up. "The theory is very young, and still in development," he told the Telegraph. "Right now, I'd assign a low (but not tiny) likelihood to this prediction." For comparison, I think the chances are higher that LHC will see some of these particles than it is that the LHC will see superparticles, extra dimensions, or micro black holes as predicted by string theory. I hope to get more (and different) predictions, with more confidence, out of this E8 Theory over the next year, before the LHC comes online."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?view=DETAILS&grid=&xml=/earth/2007/11/14/scisurf114.xml

Jack, this was on Lubos Motl's blog:
Garrett Lisi: An exceptionally simple theory of everything

Wednesday, November 07, 2007 ...

The most entertaining paper that managed to creep into hep-th today is called
An exceptionally simple theory of everything.

Update I : the paper was re-classified from the professional hep-th archive to gen-ph, general physics, an archive mostly dedicated to cranks. Thanks God.Update II: Roger Highfield whom we know from his outrageous article claiming that Einstein may have started the rot has returned. In a new, equally breathtakingly idiotic article, he suggests that crackpot A. Garrett Lisi is a new Einstein.Its author, A. Garrett Lisi , claims to have found nothing less than a theory of everything. An exceptionally simple one. It may sound as a bold statement but from a genius of A. Garrett Lisi's caliber, it shouldn't be surprising. :-) Because the work is based on the E8 group that I love, you bet that I have opened the paper.

Needless to say, the visually intriguing and colorful paper is a huge joke. The first place where I exploded in laughter was the equation (1.1). It says, using words, the following:
My connection of everything = connection for gravity + weak force + strong force + electromagnetism + electron + neutrino + up-quark + down-quark + other-generations

That's pretty cute! :-) The author is not constrained by any old "conventions" and simply adds Grassmann fields together with ordinary numbers i.e. bosons with fermions, one-forms with spinors and scalars. He is just so skillful that he can add up not only apples and oranges but also fields of all kinds you could ever think of. Every high school senior excited about physics should be able to see that the paper is just pure junk. I understood these things when I was 14.
Concerning the title, I present it as a joke but I agree with Freedom of Science that if the title is viewed seriously by some important readers and if the author allows it, it is a case of scientific fraud.

There is not a glimpse of physics in that paper. You won't find anything like a "Lagrangian", "amplitudes", "masses", "cross section", "energy", "force", "Hamiltonian", "entropy", "path integral", "temperature", or other words that you expect in physics paper. When he talks about actions, they're always wrong actions from some previous obscure papers that have clearly nothing to do with observable physics either.

Lubos may be correct on this. I don't know - yet. However, perhaps he should take the mote out of his own eye and show us how any paper he has ever published has any connection with observable physics?

On the other hand, you find a lot of random assignments of particles to vertices of polytopes - something that you know from papers about the octopi.

The main mathematical content in these 30+ pages is the decomposition of the fundamental representation of E8 under its F4 x G2 subgroup. It is an elementary fact that e.g. freshmen in Prague who follow my textbook written with Miloš Zahradník know as equation (12.95) . For A. Garrett Lisi, this single line reflecting a simple calculation that has been done a century ago and that a fraction of freshmen learns is a topic for a 30-page paper and an impressive albeit two-dimensional movie.

If you care how the forces and particles are supposed to be embedded into his group, it's like this. You start with a non-compact real form of E8. You embed a G2 into it. Its centralizer is a non-compact version of F4. Now, you embed the strong SU(3) into the G2 while the non-compact F4 acts as the source of a "graviweak" SO(7,1) group that contains SO(3,1), a "gauge group" that is now fashionable in the crackpot circles to "describe" gravity, and SO(4), their source of cargo cult electroweak symmetry.
So now Lubos smears Utiyama and Kibble as crackpots since their papers of 1956 and 1961 respectively show that Einstein's 1916 GR come from the local gauging of SO(3,1) with T4 (i.e. Poincare P10). This is hardly controversial. What is interesting however is if E8 contains both compact internal symmetry groups like U(1)xSU(2)xSU(3) as well as the non-compact universal spacetime symmetry Poincare group P10 defining 1905 Special Relativity. Two references showing that Lubos is misrepresenting the truth here are:

The Dawning of Gauge Theory ed. Lochlainn O'Raifeartaigh Princeton, 1997 - a "crackpot" press? ;-)

Gauge Theories in the Twentieth Century ed. John C. Taylor Imperial College London Press 2001 - another "crackpot" publisher. Will Lubos have a book burning of crackpot books - at the Octoberfest in Prague perhaps? ;-)

Of course, this group plays a different role (in the vielbein formulation of general relativity) than the Yang-Mills groups and the fact that these two kinds of a group cannot be merged is the content of the Coleman-Mandula theorem to be discussed at the end of my text.
Note that my "crackpot" emergent gravity paper http://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/0602022 on the archive does not merge them at all. Indeed, I am very doubtful that such a merger is possible. It is certainly not needed for anything I do which does connect with observable physics mind you. So on this particular I tentatively tend to agree with Lubos. If the Coleman theorem proves it that's fine with me.

Moreover, the fermions clearly can't arise from the connection because they have a different spin and statistics and they don't transform in the adjoint representation. For people like A. Garrett Lisi, it is not hard to unify everything with everything else because they don't know any difference between different concepts in physics.
I agree with Lubos on this point.

You might think that the E8 starting point is analogous to heterotic GUTs. Except that it is completely crucial for physics that E8 in heterotic string theory is compact.

If E8 is compact, I do not think you can get gravity from it. Background-independent gravity is simply a local gauging of non-compact spacetime universal symmetry groups of the invariant actions of all quantum fields treated equally - democratically. It's really is pretty simple.
Non-compact gauge groups would lead to ghosts and negative probabilities.
What about the ghosts in quantum fields with compact Yang-Mills internal symmetry groups , i.e. Faddeev-Popov? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faddeev-Popov_ghost
Moreover, the whole Standard Model is embedded into the same subgroup of the heterotic E8 once it's broken, e.g. to SO(10). Also, everyone knows that the fermions arise as chiral multiplets and not vector multiplets: they are simply not and cannot be a part of the gauge bundle. Most importantly, no sane person has ever claimed that the E8 portion of the heterotic theory already contains gravity. That would be really silly.

Lubos is correct above, but I don't know if it applies to Lisa's paper not having yet read it.

Endorsement system

A few years ago, such a paper would almost surely be filtered out from hep-th. Paul Ginsparg has introduced the endorsement system which was circumvented in this case and is likely to become a complete joke in the future. Why? Well, we have seen that a completely continuous spectrum of people between serious physicists and manifest crackpots has been created and the recent fashionable trend is to accept an ever broader set of crackpots into the physics circles.

This paper by A. Garrett Lisi had to be endorsed by someone. If you read the acknowledgements, it is not hard to see possible answers. Some of those people may endorse any crackpot because they are both endorsers and crackpots at the same moment. Moreover, they have a vested interest to increase the proportion of similar papers on the arXiv because this is where they belong.

If Ginsparg wants to prevent this possible collapse of his arXiv, he probably has to fine-tune the mechanisms a little bit and make sure that people who are ready to endorse papers like this one are simply not endorsers. Otherwise you can be pretty sure that similar papers will eventually overrun the arXiv.

Tony Smith is among the crackpots thanked to in the acknowledgements. Next time, he may also submit his own paper supported by similar endorsers. And maybe A. Garrett Lisi will become an endorser himself. Really entertaining times will start afterwards: the hep-th era of Jack Sarfatti, Tony Smith, Peter Woit, and their friends.

Coleman-Mandula theorem

Recently I was stunned that a person who has been a string theorist couldn't understand, despite months or years of working on similar questions and months or years of hearing the right answer, what the Coleman-Mandula theorem actually implies. There seems to be a whole industry of people who are just not getting it.

So let me say a few words about the theorem. They asked what symmetries "G" the scattering matrix of a physical theory can have. They assume that it is a group that contains the Poincaré group as a subgroup. If the Poincaré group is not a symmetry, the theory is dead. If the Poincaré symmetry is broken by small effects, a theory may be partially alive or hoping. But if it is broken by effects of order 100 percent, it is the end of the story.

Depends what is meant by "breaking" the Poincare symmetry.

1) Impose a different group like the Galilean group - this disagrees with experiment.

2) "spontaneously break" or "hide" (Coleman) the symmetry in the vacuum state i.e. ODLRO.

3) "locally gauge" the rigid 1905 SR 10-parameter Poincare group to get compensating gravity (geometrodynamic GMD) vector gauge fields, i.e. the 4 e^a and the 6 spin connections S^a^b = -S^b^a where a,b are SO(1,3) indices raised and lowered with Minkowski metric nab. The Einstein tensor fields are bilinear in these compensating GMD fields. The larger action of all fields in nature is invariant under this larger locally gauged P10(x) group, i.e. x's domain is the space of Einstein's "local coincidences" = nonoverlapping Diff(4) "gauge orbits" as explained in Ch 2 of Rovelli's "Quantum Gravity."

Warning: Lubos says the above is "crackpot". In other words, be an empty suit, be a sheep, do not try to think for yourself. Stay in the herd.

The authors show that such a theory must contain a spinless excitation and study the scattering of several copies of such an excitation. The scattering amplitude is constrained by the Poincaré symmetry and perhaps other symmetries. If you require that there exist Noether conserved charges arising from symmetries that are neither internal (scalar charges) nor the momentum (a vector from the Poincaré symmetry), you can see that it is such a strong constraint that the scattering amplitude is forced to vanish. You can do it with various quantities and prove that a theory with these new kinds of symmetries must be non-interacting, which also means physically unacceptable and uninteresting.

This is essentially a bogus argument by Lubos who is assuming the fixed Minkowski background, which is precisely what you cannot do. This is the Achilles Heel of all the string theorists. Lee Smolin explains this very clearly which is precisely why Lubos tars and feathers him as a "crackpot" along with Peter Woit a professor at Columbia - both wrote popular books specifically attacking Lubos's brand of theoretical physics. This explains why Lubos Motl, with a fanatical zeal not seen since the Spanish Inquisition and the burning of Giordano Bruno in Italy, sets himself up as Lord High Executioner in his own Kangaroo Court.

The only exception - found a few years later, in the early 1970s - are spin 1/2 conserved charges associated with supersymmetry. They also constrain the S-matrix dramatically but the interactions can nevertheless remain nonzero.

The local Lorentz group in general relativity is sometimes used analogously to other gauge groups - when we write down e.g. anomalies in supergravity-super-Yang-Mills coupled system - but it is essential that physics of gravity is technically different from physics of Yang-Mills forces.
There are both significant similarities and significant differences.
Gravitons have spin 2 while gauge bosons have spin 1. It is a technical difference that doesn't spoil certain philosophical analogies between gravity and other forces.
What Lubos does not know is that the tetrad quanta are spin 1 and that the gravitons of spin 2 are entangled pairs of spin 1 tetrads. In quantum theory

1 + 1 = 2,1,0

therefore quantum gravity will also have spin 1 and spin 0.

According to Lubos Motl this is "crackpot" but he does not say why. Take it on Pontifical Authority.

Nevertheless, it is a huge technical difference that certainly prevents you from combining the graviton and gauge bosons into the same multiplet.
That may be true and I make no such claim as allegedly Lisa does? So I seem to agree with Lubos on this particular.

It might be a tempting idea to combine fields of a different spin but in field theory, it simply can't work. That's why all of the hundreds (?) of papers that tried to do such a thing have failed and hundreds (?) of similar papers will fail in the future.
Lubos may be correct on this and that's GOOD for my hobby horse theory of emergent gravity as a macro-quantum vacuum ODLRO phenomenon, i.e. a 4D generally covariant "supersolid". Tetrad fields are translationa distortions of the solid leading to torsion dislocation defects. Spin connections are twisting distortions leading to disclination curvature defects. The world lattice spacing is

&L ~ (Lp^2L)^1/3 ~ N^1/6Lp world hologram of Wheeler's "volume without volume".

L ~ 10^28 cm
Lp ~ 10^-33cm
&L ~ 10^-13cm


Some people - see e.g. the recent paper by Nesti and Percacci - think that if they present the vielbein as a Higgs boson that breaks the local Lorentz symmetry (which is of course possible), they achieve a unification of gravity with gauge forces. That's of course a complete nonsense.
I make no such claim and Lubos may be correct here.
If we use the vielbein approach to general relativity, the local Lorentz symmetry is an additional symmetry that is needed to make the new degrees of freedom in the vielbein unphysical.
This is gibberish. The only thing "unphysical" is string theory as Lubos practices it. The vielbeins (tetrads) are the fundamental geometrodynamical GMD fields in a background independent MACRO-quantum gravity. The spin connections are the physical torsion GMD fields needed to explain both dark energy and dark matter. Lubos has thrown the baby out with the bathwater. I doubt that Lubos really understands much condensed matter physics. He may not like to mud wrestle there? ;-)
Besides this symmetry, there is still the old diffeomorphism symmetry of general relativity that hasn't been moved closer to unification, not even by a millimeter.
Yes, that's simply localizing the 4-parameter translation group T4 to T4(x) and forcing zero torsion as an ad-hoc constraint as in Rovelli's eq. 2.89.
Diffeomorphisms and Yang-Mills symmetries (and, correspondingly, graviton and gauge bosons) can only be unified if the fundamental "coordinates" in the theory carry a nonzero spin.

Unclear. Is Lubos pointing to Alain Connes "noncommuting" geometrodynamics

[Xu,Xv] = Luv^wXw =/= 0

In string theory, it is true that the string field or the first-quantized wave function combines fields of different spins. But the spin is only generated because the fundamental object, namely the string, is extended: extended objects such as strings simply can spin.

Clear as a thick coal-fired London fog in Victorian times.

The expansion in the stringy oscillators - the Fourier modes of the coordinates and fermions over the string - generates internal angular momentum. Alternatively, Kaluza-Klein scenarios also unify these things because the higher-dimensional metric tensor is decomposed into fields of different spins in four dimensions, including a gauge field.
If you read Lee Smolin's "The Trouble With Physics" and Sir Roger Penrose's "The Road to Reality." you will see this is all garbage. It's the real joker in the phony deck Lubos is playing you. These are the mad opium pipe dreams of burnt out theorists without any real physical intuition - that's what Feynman thought to his dying day. He was not alone. Lubos has built his House of Cards on a swamp, it's all quicksand. Of course no intelligent layman has a clue of what Lubos says above. Why should a "higher dimensional metric tensor" even apply to the real world? Start there.

But if you do local, four-dimensional field theory which is equivalent to point-like particles, they can't spin. The only way how to add spin to components of a field is to have spacetime coordinates that carry spin themselves.
That's news to Dirac RIP. The Dirac spinor does not require spinning spacetime coordinates. What does that even mean mathematically?

Lagrangians in quantum field theory


[edit]
Dirac Lagrangian
The Lagrangian density for a Dirac field is:



where is a spinor, is its Dirac adjoint, is the gauge covariant derivative, and is Feynman notation for .

[edit]
Quantum electrodynamic Lagrangian
The Lagrangian density for QED is:



where is the electromagnetic tensor

[edit]
Quantum chromodynamic Lagrangian
The Lagrangian density for quantum chromodynamics is [1] [2] [3]:



where is the QCD gauge covariant derivative, and is the gluon field strength tensor.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagrangian

We don't need no stink'n "spinning coordinates" above. Has Lubos really gone mad? ;-)
Again, spacetime and superspaces of various kinds (and the space of internal string excitations may be included) are the only known spaces of this kind. Under various assumptions, we can prove that other solutions can't exist.

Hogwash.

Of course that one has to work a little bit to see that one can't create many new things analogous to the superspace that would be compatible with observations - or at least with basic consistency and qualitative features of physical theories - but different from the well-known superspaces in an essential way. But Jesus Christ, once you have a pretty well-defined candidate, it is a straightforward homework exercise.
Sure Lubos, sure.

Stephon Alexander and Fabrizio Nesti, just sit down and try to derive the free particles and their leading interactions from whatever bizarre theories with mixed internally external symmeties and with frame-Higgses that you consider conceivable. I guarantee that you will fail and mature physicists know why you will fail.
This part is OK and my theory does not do anything of the kind.
Or analyze what global symmetries remain unbroken and try to follow the Coleman-Mandula procedure. What you're doing is just a completely childish and trivial sequence of mistakes and meaningless mathematical masturbation that puts you into the same category as Tony Smith.
And that's the memo.
Posted by Lumo at 8:51 AM

http://motls.blogspot.com/2007/11/exceptionally-simple-theory-of.html



Gary S. Bekkum / Starstream Research