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Looking for a kind Physicist to set me straight [1]

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Date: 2023-08-10

A big CAUTION to any non-physicists walking in. You are very welcome to be here and contribute. But please understand that what follows is wrong. It’s pseudoscience musings of my own, drawing on my limited knowledge of physics. Parts may be correct. I guess there is an infinitesimally small chance I got a bunch correct but we’re strolling into monkeys banging on typewriters writing Shakespeare territory. (I’m the monkey in this analogy). But I’m most likely wrong and I don’t even know how badly at that.

I’m writing this because thinking about the nature of the universe is a hobby of mine. And if I ever get to retire I would love to get a degree in theoretical physics. In college, Math was my best subject but for complicated reasons I never went beyond DifEQ. And while I loved my calc-based physics course I hated the prof, so at the time I went other directions. Regardless I’ve never lost the love of physics itself.

I’m also writing hoping that a few kind souls who know far more about this stuff than I do would take pity on me and send me in the right (or better) direction. Book suggestions would be wonderful. Most physics books meant for the public are hopelessly basic, and anything for the professionals is beyond my current math skills. Anyway, on to my fever dreams of the fundamental nature of the Universe.

I’ve been thinking about the universe existing as a multidimensional field with no actual particles or “energy” in it. Rather everything is simply vibrations of the fabric of the universe in multiple dimensions. I’m aware of string theory, but in my limited understanding of it there are aspects which strike me wrong, particularly the base particles being vibrating strings. I like the vibrating part, I’m less excited about the string part. I can’t even give you a good reason why. It strikes me as wrong.

Now I know quantum physics is basically so bizarre as to be beyond our normal conception of the universe and to apply “it strikes me as wrong” is not really a valid reason in Science. But again, these are my own musings. I’m not trying to do professional science here. Just following my own musings in my off time.

So what makes me think of the universe as one big vibrating multidimensional field? The first would be relativity’s showing that space-time is bendable. Matter bends space and time around it in small (and eventually quite large in composite) ways. And then with the recent discoveries in gravity waves we know that space itself is capable of having a wave structure at a grand scale.

So then the questions becomes WHY does this happen. Hopefully some friendly physicists can give us the correct answer here. But in my personal musings I was imagining matter as tiny knots of space/time. The different quarks would be tiny but strong vibrations in the fabric of space itself (possibly using multiple dimensions beyond space, we’ll come back to that). Larger particles (such as protons) which persist would be stable knots in the fabric. But to create the knot, the fabric has to be stretched and in the tiny stretching bends space around it to accommodate the loss of fabric to the knot. So gravity becomes a function of tiny sections of space being tied up in knots (or perhaps standing waves?).

Further, these knots would help explain the particle/wave duality of things like light. Light would be a version of a knot, but as weightless would not be stretching the fabric, but as the knots are waves themselves a single photon of light would be a wave which effectively forms a single knot. In situations (such as the classical diffuser experiment) where the single photon is both places it’s the wave where the knot doesn’t have to choose it’s location until it runs into a situation requiring it to. I clearly haven’t fully thought out this area.

Quantum entanglement could also be possible explained along some of these lines, perhaps with the knot wave dividing into some long standing wave of resonance.

In addition to just waves in space/time, I imagine there are other dimensions these waves are vibrating in which are not immediately obvious to us in our normal lives. I know string theory expresses a similar concept in terms of tightly rolled up dimensions. I honestly don’t understand enough of string theory to really make sense of that myself. Instead I’m thinking more along the lines of dimensions simply not visible to us but still present. Part of what makes me think this is virtual particles.

I don’t understand enough of quantum physics to understand the normal explanation for virtual particles. Everything I’ve read about them waves them off as a requirement of the mathematics and ends the explanation there. So clearly I need to learn the math. But for those who haven’t even heard of virtual particles, by my understanding they are a particles and its anti-particle which spontaneously form in the void of space, exist for the tiniest fraction of time, and then come back together to annihilate each other and disappear forever.

But in a multi-dimension vibration model these temporary particles could be part of wave forms in the non-standard dimensions not immediately visible to us briefly poking themselves through into our “normal” space before going back. So there are these vibrations in other dimensions which occasional a part of them is visible as the particles before they fall back into the other dimension. Vibrations and “knots” existing in a not easily visible dimension might also be where dark matter lives.

Finally, the expansion of the universe and the progress of time in this model could be described as an unwinding of the fabric. That is, at the start of time the fabric was all tightly constrained and compressed and with its unraveling we get the expansion of space. It might also be able to explain the one way direction of time as the fabric continues its unwinding driving things in a single time direction. Entropy would somehow be connected to the final unraveled state of the fabric.

So again, probably all wrong. I do not write to convince anyone of any of this. Don’t believe a word of it. But if you’re a physicist I wouldn’t mind directions to the nearest reality based approach. ;)

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