The Tablet of the Metalaw

This edition of the FQXi essay contest is called Wandering Towards a Goal. My entry is called The Tablet of the Metalaw. This is the abstract:

Reality presents to us in multiple forms, as a multiple level pyramid. Physics is the foundation, and should be made as solid and complete as possible. Suppose we will find the unified theory of the fundamental physical laws. Then what? Will we be able to deduce the higher levels, or they have their own life, not completely depending on the foundations? At the higher levels arise goals, life, and even consciousness, which seem to be more than mere constructs of the fundamental constituents. Are all these high level structures completely reducible to the basis, or by contrary, they also affect the lower levels? Are mathematics and logic enough to solve these puzzles? Are there questions objective science can't even define rigorously? Why is there something rather than nothing? What is the world made of?

At this time (2017-03-11 08.59 AM ET) my essay is in the top position, so I will immortalize this ephemeral moment in the picture below, since I expect the order will change dramatically, given that the votes will continue for nearly a month, and then the FQXi panel will add their choices:

Black holes can't keep secrets

At first, math seemed to show that anything that enters a black hole, is lost forever. Later, it seemed that black holes evaporate, but the secrets remain lost. But maybe it is not so.

My new video at the FQXi contest is called Can a black hole keep a secret?, and can be seen and rated at http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/2205:

To rate my video or those of my competitors, click "rate this video". You will be required to enter an email address to avoid duplicate votes. Then press "go" and vote.

You can check and rate other videos at FQXi Video Contest - Spring, 2014. You can submit your own video until August 22.

In the previous post, named The puzzle of quantum reality, in theaters near you, and at FQXi, I mentioned my other video, and my son's.

On youtube, my videos can be watched with subtitles, in English or in Romanian:
The puzzle of quantum reality
Can a black hole keep a secret?

The puzzle of quantum reality, in theaters near you, and at FQXi

I made a 7 minutes video introducing some puzzling aspects of quantum mechanics to a general audience. At the end it contains a proposed view which, at least to me, makes the things clearer, so I hope it can help others too.

My video, named The puzzle of quantum reality, can be seen and rated at http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/2183:

To rate my video or those of my competitors, click "rate this video". You will be required to enter an email address to avoid duplicate votes.

I also compete against my son, whose video is at http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/2176:

You can check and rate other videos, ranging from fun to informative, at FQXi Video Contest - Spring, 2014. You can submit your own video until August 22.

FQXi contest 2013 "It From Bit or Bit from It", results announced

The results of this year's FQXi contest are announced.

Here is how the top looked at the end of the community voting:
http://fqxi.org/community/forum/category/31419?sort=community

Now, the members of the jury made their choices too, and here are the results:

http://fqxi.org/community/essay/winners/2013.1

In addition to the winning essays, there are many interesting entries, including some of those that were not among the finalists.

My essay, The Tao of It and Bit (arXiv:1311.0765), got a fourth prize.

A local explanation of entanglement by using wormholes

Recently, a new paper by Maldacena and Susskind appears, named Cool horizons for entangled black holes (arxiv:1306.0533). In the paper, the two authors propose that two entangled particles are connected by an Einsten-Rosen bridge, a wormhole. Their stake is in fact related to the black hole information paradox, the Maldacena correspondence, and the recent idea of black hole firewalls. It was covered, among others, by Sean Carroll.

This article reminded me of an example I gave at FQXi's blog, under an article by Florin Moldoveanu, (whose blog, Elliptic composability, I highly recommend)
http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/976#post_40460


Here is my comment from two years ago:
Cristi Stoica wrote on Aug. 5, 2011 @ 13:32 GMT

AN EXPLICIT LOCAL VARIABLES TOPOLOGICAL MECHANISM FOR THE EPR CORRELATIONS

It is based on a non-trivial topology (wormholes).

Cut two spheres out of our space, and glue the two boundaries of the space together. This wormhole can be traversed by a source free electric field, and used to model a pair of electrically charged particles of opposite charges as its mouths (Einstein-Risen 1935, Misner-Wheeler's charge-without-charge 1957, Rainich 1925).

For EPR we need a wormhole which connects two electrons instead of an electron-positron pair. A wormhole having as mouths two equal charges can be obtained as follows: instead of just gluing together the two spherical boundaries, we first flip the orientation of one of them. Since the electric field is a bivector, the change in orientation changes the sign of the electric field, and the two topological charges have the same sign.

Now associate to the two electrons your favorite local classical description. The communication required to obtain the correlation can be done through the wormhole.

----------------

This may be the basis of a mathematically correct local hidden variable theory. Also, it seems to disprove, or rather circumvent, Bell's theorem. For Bohm's hidden variable theory, it provides a mechanism to get the correlation without faster than light signals. I proposed it here for theoretical purposes only, as an example. My favorite interpretation is another one.

Cristi

I did not want to spend more time on this, only to break my neck proposing local models of entanglement, especially since I did not find the idea of hidden variables relevant.