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The corresponding force on the right will be proportional, that is, will
be less as the radius is greater = 10^27+13 = 10^40 times weaker =
gravity. (We don't bother about one order of magnitude in this kind of
picture, so the fact that gravity is 1039 times the electromagnetic
force, rather than 10^40 , can be overlooked.)
We now invoke the speed of light (at the bottom). How long will it take
light to go round the proton? We divide the speed of light by the proton
circumference:
This is close to the computed age of the universe, 40 billion years, and
I will not try to improve it because the model does not purport to
establish what this will be. (It probably has to do with what it is now.)
The electromagnetic force is that which would keep the photon in an
orbit 10^-13 cm. What is gravity? It is the force which keeps light from
escaping from the universe! How great is it? Well it's 10^-40 times the
electromagnetic force. What is it due to? It's due to the /matter/ in
the universe. We can consider this matter to be concentrated at the
center of the universe. Now, if one proton can confine light to moving
in a circle of 10^-13 cm, how many protons would it take to confine
light to a radius of 10^27 ? A lot. (Because the pull of the force
varies inversely as the square of the distance.) So to exert the /same
force/ (as in the proton) at the much greater distance, i.e., 10^27 x
10^13 = 1040, it would take (10^40 )^2 2 = 10^80 protons.
But the force required is less because the radius of curvature is
greater. How much less? Less by the ratio of the radii, i.e. 10^27
/10^-13 = 10^40 . /Gravity/ is this weaker force.
So there must be 10^80 protons in the universe to cause light, under the
pull of gravity, to stay within the universe!
Recall that the ratio of the electromagnetic force to gravity is known
(actually 10^39 ), as are the speed of light, the diameter of the
proton, and the frequency and wave length of the photon which would
create the proton. The diameter and age of the universe are speculative,
but are thought to be approximately what I've given. The number of
protons is that computed by Eddington on the basis of other considerations.
But what should we put at the top of the figure? This is the position
for control, but there is no figure for control in science, so we must
find some other measure to put there.
It so happens that mass has the same ultimate dimensionality, L^4 , (see
/The Geometry of Meaning/ <gmexc.html>), so we can put mass here.
The obvious mass would be that of the proton, and when I first showed
the diagram I put the proton mass here. But someone said, why not the
mass of the universe? This troubled me; it was just as much an absolute
as the other "constants" such as the speed of light, and was of equal
status as the proton.
It then occurred to me that since the acceleration of a curve of the
radius of the proton is 10^40 times that of the radius of the universe,
and these two are one diameter apart, then 180 degrees involves
multiplication by 10^40 (this is also apparent in the ratio of the
universe -- 10^27 cm -- to the smallest particle in it -- 10^-13 ).
Well, if 180 degrees = 10^40 , then 360 degrees = 10^80 (the mass of the
universe)! Both the mass of the proton and the mass of the universe are
predicted by the point at M.
We are now ready to go further, and again I draw on Eddington. I quote
once more from a remarkable passage in Eddington's /Fundamental Theory/
(also see /The Reflexive Universe/ <ruexc.html>, Appendix III):
Realize that Eddington wrote two books on the theory of relativity, /The
Mathematical Theory of Relativity/ and /Relative Theory of Protons and
Electrons/. But now he says, "Having got what we want out of it, space
curvature no longer interests us." What a line! But he goes on to say,
"The scale uncertainty, instead of being disguised as curvature, will be
taken into account openly, so that there is no loss of rigour."
I have already commented on this remarkable passage in /The Reflexive
Universe/, where I quoted it at even greater length, because it was in
this passage I found sanction for two important ideas of /The Reflexive
Universe/:
1. That complete uncertainty is a circle.
2. That the 3/4 which Eddington calls stabilization of scale I call control.
While my interpretation of Eddington in point #2 has not been challenged
in the years since /The Reflexive Universe/ was published, I will still
take the responsibility for a possible misinterpretation -- which does
not mean that what would in that case be my idea, is invalid. The
validity of interpretations is impossible to prove.
In any case, for the present I can leave out #2 and consider only #1:
uncertainty is a circle.^*1*
Eddington, as I understand him, equates the curvature of space to the
curvature or circle of the quantum of action. As I said in /The
Reflexive Universe/, this recognition reconciles quantum theory and
relativity, a goal still not acknowledged by science as having been
achieved, because the goal was misnamed "a unified field theory" and
Eddington's solution does not involve a field but circularity.
Relativity and quantum theory are regarded as two mutually incompatible
theories, which deal with different areas. Relativity deals with
large-scale phenomena and quantum theory with small-scale, or
microphenomena. Paradoxically, quantum theory deals with wholes and
relativity deals with parts. Actually it could not be otherwise, because
the micro-world of quantum physics is the level at which only wholes
exist. While the atom, once thought to be indivisible, has been divided,
the quantum of action cannot be divided. It is the true atom -- an atom
not of matter, but of activity. To deal with the universe in these terms
is not humanly possible, because to do so we would have to have a life
cycle billions of years in duration in order to encompass the "life"
cycle of the universe.
Relativity deals with pieces of curvature, and it fails to emphasize the
cycle of time where all this curvature is put together into one great
cycle of action. Let me point this out another way. What is called the
"volume" of the Einstein-Eddington hypersphere -- which is to say, the
volume of the universe in the sense both of the space it encloses and
the time which is in process of being enclosed -- this "volume" has the
formula:
2/pi/^2 R^3
An ordinary physical sphere has the volume:
4/3pR^3
Without any special knowledge one can see that:
1. There is no "t" (for time) in the hyperspere.
2. There is, however, an extra /pi/.
Could it be the case that /pi/ takes the place of time? Suppose for
simplicity we represent the ordinary (physical) universe, or the
instantaneous universe, as a circle. The area of this circle has the
equation pR2. Suppose now we multiply this by time:
Now suppose we bend this cylinder around to meet itself, that is, into a
circle like a doughnut.
Radius = R'
The circumference of this new circle will be 2/pi/R and the volume of
the cylinder bent into a circle will be:
This gross disparity is not reconciled by any account I've seen. While
I'm given to mixing categories in the sense that I can find a method by
which four categories can be shown to be interrelated, this method
depends on the recognition that the categories can be defined as the
permutation of two dichotomies, a and non-a, b and non-b, a and b being
independent.