Archive for December, 2020

“The Universe” in a Nut’s Hell, (Briefing the Physical Theory)

Dec 06 2020 Published by under Uncategorized

“What is Dan going on about, in terms of physics, in The Universe in a Nut’s Hell and life, generally?” To immediately overstep my academic bounds, I’ve taken to calling the theory “local relativity,” referring to taking boundary conditions of the action by which I try to describe the evolution of patches of space-time even to the infinitesimal limit, when possible. (It probably won’t be called that, but you can attach “local relativity” as a name to the whole ball of wax, if that helps.)

“Local relativity” attempts to resolve the purported (mathematical and philosophical) “incompatibility” between the modern theories of relativity and quantum mechanics by removing a single core assumption from the set of axioms between, which happens to be the “symmetry of the metric tensor” of general relativity. (Yes, with no problems found with the canonical quantum theory.) I’ve gone on (or maybe rather, started thereby) to argue in favor of an antisymmetric graviton mode, since allowing more generality than symmetry opens up this new state to the spectrum. It’s quantitatively plausible that the background temperature of this “quasi-monopole, scalar, composite” graviton cosmological remnant could be maintained high enough to be “dark energy,” exciting proton, neutron, electron and astronomical black hole rest masses sufficiently to keep an equilibrium with it as “dark matter,” yet “weakly interacting” as per a coupling constant of Newton’s gravitational constant times about the mass of a proton. (Maintaining so, the composite quasi-scalar, monopole graviton interaction also points itself out by simple nomenclature as a scalar “inflaton” candidate.) 

All this follows if the graviton spectrum admits a state such as (spin-2) gravitons with identical quantum numbers in a pair, except for exactly opposite spin, but rather therefore due to the physical existence of an (additively-separable) antisymmetric component to the “rank 2 tensor” potential of the gravitational field, i.e. if the assumption of metric tensor symmetry is dropped. (The photon cannot exhibit this degree of freedom, because its potential is a “rank 1 tensor,” though this is closely related to what makes a true “laser.”)

“Why change that one assumption?” It can be argued that this particular assumption was originally added to the theory as an otherwise harmless calculational convenience, upon initial scrutiny of general relativity with and without the assumption. Einstein himself, later in his career, considered whether metric tensor symmetry was required to be anything more than a computational convenience, as in the “Einstein-Cartan theory.” Actually, metric tensor symmetry can seem like something of an arbitrary axiom to take, as compared to, “The speed of light is a constant to all inertial observers,” (special relativity) and, “A gravitational field is locally indistinguishable from a uniform acceleration,” (equivalence principle) as basically the only other assumptions of general relativity, besides the application of classical “mechanics,” (the principles of simple “billiard ball collision” interactions). This assumption has more intuitive consequences than my opaque definition of it, though, like the symmetry of distances measured backwards and forwards between any two points “A” and “B” separated in space and time, yet I think it is intuitive that one cannot travel as easily back in time as one can travel forward, if this is the same asymmetry, (literally, underlying the thermodynamic tendency of “the arrow of time”).

The assumption of metric tensor symmetry in general relativity uniquely fixes the “Levi-Civita connection” as the exactly required metric connection. Without Levi-Civita, we need a principle to describe the mechanical evolution of the metric connection. Allowing monopole radiation from event horizons, (as in “black holes,”) metric connection can vary as a “Palatini geometry,” but, I propose, it evolves over space-time specifically by the action, Lagrangian, or Hamiltonian of the Higgs field as describing “baryonic rest mass excitation” (with “baryon” as in “proton,” or “neutron,”) and selection of a locally preferred frame of accelerated rest, as by an action principle of (as usually rendered) Higgs scalar and vector terms, which happen to describe the metric connection, added to the Ricci scalar of general relativity. The conceptually “real” driver of the changes in the Higgs terms, though, is primarily the evaporation of event horizons into this composite monopole graviton interaction, including and most importantly the event horizon of a “Rindler metric” appearing in the description of any accelerated first-person point-of-view in flat space.

This could be tested as an alternative hypothesis to explain the “Pioneer anomaly,” by hypothetical decay of a “Rindler horizon” tending to shift the locally preferred frame of accelerated rest. (On a long shot, if a quasi-monopole composite mode of the graviton can couple with—brace yourself—electromagnetic charge as it does with “mass monopole interaction,” in charge-neutrally confined packets of fundamental units of charge, this expected interaction even seems consistent with astronomical observation of stellar black hole microwave spectra, but analyzed on envelope-back.)

Without context, without citation, without proof, without a simple happy ending, in a page in a half, that’s “The Universe in a Nut’s Hell.” You could call the theory that, I guess.

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