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arXiv:1106.1639

Rhythms of Memory and Bits on Edge: Symbol Recognition as a Physical Phenomenon

John M. Myers, F. Hadi Madjid

Published Jun 7, 2011• 6 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

Preoccupied with measurement, physics has neglected the need, before anything can be measured, to recognize what it is that is to be measured. The recognition of symbols employs a known physical mechanism. The elemental mechanism-a damped inverted pendulum joined by a driven adjustable pendulum (in effect a clock)-both recognizes a binary distinction and records a single bit. Referred to by engineers as a "clocked flip-flop," this paired-pendulum mechanism pervades scientific investigation. It shapes evidence by imposing discrete phases of allowable leeway in clock readings; and it generates a mathematical form of evidence that neither assumes a geometry nor assumes quantum states, and so separates statements of evidence from further assumptions required to explain that evidence, whether the explanations are made in quantum terms or in terms of general relativity. Cleansed of unnecessary assumptions, these expressions of evidence form a platform on which to consider the working together of general relativity and quantum theory as explanatory language for evidence from clock networks, such as the Global Positioning System. Quantum theory puts Planck's constant into explanations of the required timing leeway, while explanations of leeway also draw on the theory of general relativity, prompting the question: does Planck's constant in the timing leeway put the long known tension between quantum theory and general relativity in a new light?

DOI
10.48550/arxiv.1106.1639

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Preoccupied with measurement, physics has neglected the need, before anything can be measured, to recognize what it is that is to be measured. The recognition of symbols employs a known physical mechanism. The elemental mechanism-a damped inverted pendulum joined by a driven adjustable pendulum (in effect a clock)-both recognizes a binary distinction and records a single bit. Referred to by engineers as a "clocked flip-flop," this paired-pendulum mechanism pervades scientific investigation. It shapes evidence by imposing discrete phases of allowable leeway in clock readings; and it generates a mathematical form of evidence that neither assumes a geometry nor assumes quantum states, and so separates statements of evidence from further assumptions required to explain that evidence, whether the explanations are made in quantum terms or in terms of general relativity. Cleansed of unnecessary assumptions, these expressions of evidence form a platform on which to consider the working together of general relativity and quantum theory as explanatory language for evidence from clock networks, such as the Global Positioning System. Quantum theory puts Planck's constant into explanations of the required timing leeway, while explanations of leeway also draw on the theory of general relativity, prompting the question: does Planck's constant in the timing leeway put the long known tension between quantum theory and general relativity in a new light?
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The unexpected plays an important but little-understood role in physics. We are working to understand how the unexpected functions in theory and in experiment. This work leads to novel theoretical and instrumental structures of “two-clock physics”, with implications for the scientific method. The path to these structures that express the unexpected draws on three roots: 1. Physicists write strings of symbols. Quantum theory implies that physicists act as agents who make guesses, expressed as strings of symbols, in the face of unpredictability far more drastic than quantum uncertainty. Assimilating unpredictability as pervasive in theory and experiment opens new avenues to investigation. 2. No two clocks tick alike. We formulate a concept network of transmission of symbols among agents, without assuming any spacetime or any global time variable, but requiring that agents adjust local clock rates. This structure offers alternatives to time and distance adapted to a variety of cases and is an important element of what we call two-clock physics. 3. Sometimes a flipped coin lands on edge. Agents must rely on guesses to steer clock rates to achieve a logical synchronization that avoids confusion of one symbol with another.
Physics is written in mathematics, and at the base of mathematics lies distinction: yes or no, identical or different, one or zero. A bit is the minimal written form of such a distinction. Physics can therefore measure only what can become distinguishable. What cannot be distinguished cannot yet appear as a physical record. From distinguishability comes information; from the registration of information comes physical time. Unified informational Theory (UiT) presents a unified physical framework in which time, mass, force, thermodynamic directionality, electromagnetic coupling, nuclear structure, and horizon physics are expressed through one informational registration mechanism: closed phase becoming physical record. The central object is a closed-light phase carrier: a closed photon-like phase structure carrying informational increments of ℏ, rotating on a complex phase surface at the Compton frequency, with a Planck-scale phase radius. 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All forces are gradients of one underlying registration object, read under different load conditions, geometries, and coupling branches. A force appears where an invariant closed phase carrier is placed in a field whose time-registration rate varies across record-space. The carrier cannot change its own invariant Compton phase throughput, so the mismatch between invariant internal phase and local registration capacity becomes a physical force. Inertia and gravity are therefore not separate mysteries at the deepest level: both are responses of the same closed phase throughput to different ways of limiting temporal registration. Special relativity arises when recorded motion consumes part of the available registration bandwidth. Motion requires information about position and change of position, and this cost enters quadratically. The carrier phase itself never stops moving; what changes is how much of its invariant phase throughput can be written as linear time rather than as recorded motion. Lorentz time dilation is therefore read as a registration-budget partition: motion spends part of the time-writing capacity. Gravity arises from the same Compton throughput read radially. A mass is not merely an object placed inside space. It is closed-light Compton sampling of a Planck registration-stiffness update. Around it, record-space has reduced capacity to write distinguishable temporal information. Less capacity remains for writing time, and the radial gradient of that capacity is read as gravity. In this view, space is not a rubber sheet that literally bends. Space is the local capacity to register distinguishable physical alternatives. Changing the time-registration capacity also changes the spatial registration structure, so the same geodesics are obtained, but their ontology changes: curvature is the metric bookkeeping of variable registration capacity. This same capacity logic leads directly to thermodynamics and entropy. Entropy counts the available or dispersed ways in which distinctions can be written, stabilized, erased, hidden, or made inaccessible. Thermodynamic directionality is not added from outside. It is the cost and irreversibility of registering physical distinction into stable record. Horizon entropy is the saturated boundary count of the same closed phase surface: the point where ordinary exterior registration reaches its limiting boundary. Electromagnetism is read as a phase-connection branch of the same object. Charge is not introduced as an unrelated primitive substance, but as a coupling orientation of phase registration. Electric and magnetic effects are different record-space readouts of this phase connection under different motion and registration conditions. The weak sector gives UiT its primary empirical handle. Radioactive decay is treated as a finite identity-rewrite process. In order for a decay path to be environmentally perturbable, the environment must couple to degrees of freedom required for reverse daughter-to-parent reconstruction. This requires local reverse temporal registration: a limited branch in which identity is locally unwritten and rewritten. From this postulate, UiT produces a taxonomy of radioactive-decay perturbability, functioning like a periodic table of decay influence. The table does not merely classify known decays by name; it identifies which decay channels can be perturbed and why, according to the informational variables required by the reverse reconstruction path. The strong sector is expressed through closed multi-carrier phase geometry. 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The primary tested layer is the weak-sector perturbability table, which organizes radioactive decay channels according to the informational degrees of freedom required for reverse daughter-to-parent reconstruction. A second prospective discriminant predicts photon arrival-time delay with no linear Planck-energy term and leading quadratic Planck suppression. The compact unification principle is this: physical law is the geometry of informational registration. Time is the written order of phase registration; mass is closed-light Compton throughput; force is the gradient of registration mismatch; entropy is the count and cost of distinguishable writing; and the apparent separation between relativity, thermodynamics, electromagnetism, nuclear structure, and horizon physics reflects different readout conditions of the same underlying closed phase surface.
Atomic clocks exchanging signals serve as a background against which to measure the motion of objects on or near the Earth. The background of clocks and signals requires feedback involving computation, both internal to each clock and for regulating relations between clocks. Feedback within a clock responds to a flow of measured outcomes which, by quantum theory, are unpredictable. The steering of atomic clocks in response to unpredictable occurrences of outcomes depends on a wave function, and the choice of this wave function requires an assumption underivable in any logic consistent with quantum theory—another form of unpredictability. Currently backgrounds for motion, for example used in the Global Positioning System, consist of one or another (physical) reference frame as a realization of a (mathematical) reference system that consists of a spacetime coordinate chart with a specified metric tensor field—a structure that expresses neither the unpredictability inherent in atomic clocks nor the feedback by which one deals with this unpredictability. Without requiring the assumption of a metric tensor or even a spacetime, here we introduce a novel type of reference system consisting of the records and criteria resident in real-time computers that mediate feedback, a reference system that, by expressing feedback, structures the unpredictables in a background of motion. The criteria for clock adjustment are discussed. Trade-offs involved in these criteria call for adjusting a background in response to the motion of the objects tracked.
Two axioms were excavated. Axiom 1: Only by allowing communication and generating consensus can we ensure equal rights for different individuals. Axiom 2: Objective existence is an original independent existence that is independent of measurement and does not rely on third parties. Axiom 3: All real things have their objective and independent original existence states. Let A and B move relative to each other and observe each other's clocks. In the language of relativity, they all believe that the observed clock slows down. The consensus between A and B is that A clock is both slower and faster than B clock. According to Axiom 2, it can be concluded that quantum mechanics must be a 'local realism'. So, the Copenhagen quantum mechanics explanation violates Axiom 2. One of the methods for qualitatively and quantitatively coordinating relative and absolute is to assume that the clock of absolute motion slows down, thus establishing a relative absolute spatiotemporal view. According to the Dirac equation, the existence of negative mass matter can be predicted. A positive mass particle and a negative mass particle cannot fall at the same acceleration in the induced field. Einstein's explanation of spacetime curvature was fatally challenged. The potential energy of electromagnetic interactions in the Schrödinger equation can be replaced with gravitational potential energy to form the Schrödinger-Tu equation. The potential energy in the equation can be further transformed into force (electromagnetic force and/or gravitational force). the mathematical factors of quantum theory and classical theory can be written into the same equation. The classical laws of mechanics can be expressed using wave mechanics equations.
Physics is already unified. The unification is not a mathematical framework yet to be discovered. It is an interpretive fact already present in the existing theories, unrecognized because the ontological consequences of null proper time were not consistently applied. The unified description begins from a simple distinction: laws are not time. Physical reality is governed by lawful structure, but time is not a constituent of that structure. A mathematical expression of a law may include a time parameter; that symbolic reference does not make time a component of the law itself. Time belongs to spacetime relations. Some outcomes permitted by lawful structure register within spacetime and thereby possess temporal ordering, causal relation, geometric localization, and observability. This yields a division of explanatory labor that the existing theories already perform: Quantum mechanics describes lawful eligibility: the admissible outcomes and the mathematical relations governing their amplitudes and probabilities. Special and general relativity govern relativistic registration: the coherent spacetime organization of registered outcomes. These are not competing descriptions of one temporal process. They describe different aspects of one lawful order. The diagnostic clue is null proper time. A photon accumulates no proper time. This is not a mathematical curiosity. It means the ordinary persistence narrative, in which a physical thing travels through successive spacetime locations while accumulating a history, does not apply to light. Once that consequence is honored, timebound spacetime registration is recognized as the special case in which time applies rather than the general condition under which law holds. The paper applies the resulting architecture to entanglement (one lawful relation, two local registrations, no propagation speed to compare with c), the measurement problem, and the double slit, and states explicitly what it does not claim. No new equations are required. No existing predictions are altered. The contribution is interpretive: recognizing what the existing theories already describe. Part of the Timeless Light Model (TLM) corpus.