Piero Scaruffi

These are excerpts and elaborations from my book "The Nature of Consciousness"

Ripples in Spacetime In 2005 the Italian mathematician Piero Scaruffi proposed an approach to reconciling Quantum Theory and Relativity Theory that is consistent with Linde’s chaotic inflationary theory. Relativity prescribes a spacetime continuum, whereas Quantum Theory prescribes a discrete world. If one views Quantum Theory as a special case of Relativity Theory, this might make sense. Quantum Theory cannot explain why nature only likes some discrete values. Relativity Theory is apparently stating some grander and somewhat more absolute truth about the universe; basically, about the dimensions of existence. Quantum Theory is apparently telling us something about the human world of objects and measurements; basically, about the world of "sizes". One way to visualize these ideas is to think of relativistic spacetime as an ocean, and of quantum values as the ripples caused by an object moving through spacetime. The ocean is a continuum, but the ripples are discrete. Both the ocean and the ripples are real, and one can construct a theory to describe the ocean and a different theory to describe the ripples. Then Relativity is the theory about the ocean, and Quantum Theory is the theory about the ripples. Quantum Theory, basically, describes the ripples in spacetime (or at least in the region of spacetime inhabited by human observers) caused by energy-matter in motion. Einstein's equations describe how spacetime warps because of matter. Schroedinger's equations describe the ripples caused by such matter. If this is correct, Relativity's space and time are different from Quantum Theory's space and time. We use the same name for two different things: Relativity's space is a dimension, an underlying framework, whereas Quantum Theory's space is about the "size" of an object. Spacetime is the continuum that energy-matter interacts with. Quantum values are the results of measuring the ripples caused by that interaction. The reason that the ripples are discrete and not a continuum is exactly the same as for ripples that form on a surface. Any attribute of an object over the ripples admits only some values, because it exists and is measured only over the ripples. Scaruffi believes that the probabilistic nature of Quantum Theory emerges because of the translation from "ocean" to "ripples". Ditto for the attributes (charge, spin, etc). They are all manifestations of the ripples. General relativity is about the dynamics of the universe: it describes an eternal dance between the distribution of masses and the geometry of spacetime, the former determining the latter and the latter determining the motion of the former. Indirectly, Einstein's equations can be interpreted as the relationship (or the connection" of everything to everything else. As connections change, other connections change. Each connection gets adjusted so as to preserve some global feature of the universe. Basically, the universe behaves like a giant brain. The quantization of spacetime is a superficial consequence of the "connection of everything to everything else", as this is equivalent to constructing a landscape of attractors. Equations approximate Algorithms Newton and Einstein were influenced by the Christian idea of an absolute perfect god and they focused on formulas to explain the whole working of the universe, from infinite past to infinite future. But they missed important clues. The most obvious is that nature never repeats itself: no two stones are identical, no two lakes are identical, no two mountains are identical, no two faces are identical, etc. Another clue was that it is incredibly difficult to explain something as simple as that Achilles is faster than the turtle (Zeno’s paradox). If space and time are continuous, and can be split into infinitesimally small intervals, it can be proven logically that Achilles can never overtake the turtle. Quantum Mechanics discovered that energy, mass and many other aspects of matter are discrete, not continuous. If time and space are discrete, Zeno's paradoxes are easy to explain. Darwin and Hebb discovered algorithms that govern important phenomena: life and intelligence. Life evolves according to an algorithm (reproduction, variation, selection) and intelligence is due to an algorithm (reinforcement of neural connections in the brain based on use). Newton and Einstein looked for the perfect beautiful equation to explain the universe, but maybe they missed the clues pointing to algorithms, not formulas. Classical physics assumes that algorithms are approximations of equations, but it could be that the opposite is true: Physics’ beautiful equations are approximations of the algorithms that run the universe. Back to the beginning of the chapter "The New Physics" | Back to the index of all chapters