sra@oddjob.UUCP (Scott R. Anderson) (11/11/85)
In article <639@spar.UUCP> ellis@spar.UUCP (Michael Ellis) writes: > As you have mentioned, Bohm has proposed a "hidden variable" theory in > which he postulates a substratum beneath the quantum level which, though > indistinguishable in its predictions to the orthodox Copenhagen theory > (at least in the experiments to date), diverges substantially from > Bohr's metaphysical conclusions: > > ... > > (4) The apparent irreducible lawlessness of quantum randomness > as well as the nonseparability of correlated particles are both > explained as manifestations of deeper `implicate order' of > higher dimensionality projected into our superficially {3+1}- > dimensional space. > > ... in particular, the universe has an infinite > number of nearly autonomous levels of explanation in which the natural > laws at any level must admit irreducible fluctuations which are only > explicable by the laws of that level's substratum; > emergent properties of a higher level exist on their own terms and are > not totally inferrable from the laws of the substratum: The idea of "observable" physical phenomena being projections from a higher-dimensional space has found several other applications recently. One of these is in supergravity theories, where the universe is really 11 (or 9 or ..) -dimensional, and the extra dimensions have length scales that are too small (~ 10^-30 m) to be observed. These extra dimensions are supposed to make it much easier to produce plausible theories; gravity appears to be hopelessly unrenormalizable, otherwise. Across the physics universe (remember, the universe may be closed!) in condensed matter physics, a recently hot topic is the "quasicrystal" which does not have a periodic structure, yet has a five-fold order which produces coherent scattering like an ordinary crystal. These materials appear to have "icosahedral" order which in theory is a perfectly valid means to fill up space, but without repeating itself periodically. The connection with the above? Icosahedral order is a projection to 3 dimensions of a periodic (hypercubic) lattice in 6 dimensions. These two projections share the property of being space(-time) projections, but I'm not sure if this is true of Bohm's theories. Does anyone know enough about them to explain the nature of the space from which our "physical" universe is projected? -- Scott Anderson ihnp4!oddjob!kaos!sra