INTRODUCTION: (Last updated December 9, 2004)

The present crisis in fundamental science.

In his 1998 book, What Remains to be Discovered, [1] Sir John Maddox, past editor of Nature for 23 years, calls attention to “the present crisis in fundamental science" which stems from two major challenges in fundamental science:

·        The 65 year old incompatibility of the general relativistic description of gravity with quantum field theory.

·        The absence of a mathematical physics and theory for the largely empirical discipline of big bang cosmology (BBC), which is now 40 years old.

According to Maddox, this crisis has been calling, with increasing clarity and anxiety, for “a new physics, regulated by principles not yet imagined”, [1, p. 21] that will introduce itself in one or more of the following three ways: [1, pp. 98-120]

1)      By the readily quantizable description of gravity which it provides.

2)      By the deeper understanding of space, time, and matter, which it provides in doing so, the need for which is “now self evident.”

3)      By its intrinsic suitability for modeling all aspects of big bang cosmology.

But this raises an important practical concern: How can fundamental theorists expect to discover such a new physics? Speaking on “The Final Laws of Physics” in his 1986 Dirac Memorial Lecture [2], physics Nobelist Steven Weinberg, addressed this very concern by stating the theoretical quest that should now challenge fundamental theorists, namely:

4)      “To look for a simple set of physical principles, which have about them the greatest sense of inevitability, and from which everything we know about physics can, in principle, be derived.” [2]

In this regard, Weinberg felt that the following prediction of his colleague, John Wheeler, was worth recalling:

5)      “When we eventually know the final laws of physics, it will surprise us that they weren't obvious from the beginning.” [2]

How my candidate for the new physics addresses this crisis, in principle.

Items 1-5 are plausible characteristics of a candidate for the new physics, and the candidate for the new physics described herein contains all of them; starting with a simple set of physical principles which have about them the greatest sense of inevitability, and which are subsequently employed to derive the general substance and the general mathematics of a new physics that introduces itself by displaying all of the other plausible characteristics of the new physics, (1-3, 5). This driving set of physical principles consists of two physical assumptions, (i, ii), and one postulate, (iii), which are described as follows:

         i.      A classical physical reality: Concordant with the well known forecasts of Albert Einstein and James Clerk Maxwell, I assume that physical reality is rooted in a continuum of some elementary quantity, X, the qualitative identification of which is the object of the next assumption.

        ii.      X = Elementary Substantive Energy (ESE): Concordant with Maxwell's qualitative unification of all energy as mechanical energy [3], and Einstein's quantitative, E = mc2, unification of energy and mass [4], particle energy of every conceivable type exhibits the same substantive quality of mass that before 1905 had been thought to describe only the 'matter content' or massiveness of a particle, as distinct from the various types of energy (kinetic and potential/interaction) that may be attributed to a particle. This revealed that a particle's substantive mass is, more accurately, a particle's substantive mass-energy (SME). The data of high energy particle physics has then shown that SME is not only more fundamental than mass, but far more continuous, deformable, transformable, and transmutable.

I then assume that the conservation law of energy holds and that X is simply a more elementary form of substantive energy than SME. Hence, concordant with (i), I assume that physical reality is rooted in a continuum of Elementary Substantive Energy (ESE).

      iii.      The postulate of substantive space-energy (SSE).

In addition to providing a system of inherently fluidic, Lorentz invariant, equations unifying classical electricity, magnetism, and light, James Clerk Maxwell also provided (in the same paper) a qualitatively consistent substantive-energy theory of gravity and the physical space of the universe, which is referred to herein as Maxwell's qualitative space-energy-gravity (QSEG) theory. Maxwell's QSEG theory asserts that:

The physical space of this universe is characterized and delimited by “an enormous intrinsic energy density" (denoted herein by eo) which is diminished in the region between electrically neutral bodies to account naturally for their perceived 'attraction'. [5]

Referring to the cosmological distribution of eo as Maxwell's Substantive Space-Energy (SSE) continuum, I then raise this particular feature of Maxwell's QSEG theory to the level of an SSE Postulate which formally states that:

The physical space of this universe is characterized and delimited by a substantive energy, called space-energy, whose 3-volume density, eo, compared to an equal 3-volume of any substantive mass-energy, is relatively enormous.

Maxwell left the challenge of explaining the mass-induced distribution of {e < eo} to future fundamental theorists, saying:

“As I am unable to understand in what way a medium can possess such properties, I cannot go any further in this direction in searching for the cause of gravitation." [5]

The paper then shows that, given today's knowledge, (iii) links SME to the ESE-continuum via Maxwell's SSE-continuum in a way that naturally exhibits the characteristics (1-3, 5) of the new physics; thereby revealing, in a logically tight manner, the general physical and geometric features of the ESE continuum, and the general system of classical equations that are, by today's standards, intuitively appropriate for describing how the ESE-continuum can, in principle, account for the explosive creation of Maxwell's SSE-continuum, and thence, all classical and quantum features of the SME system of embedded ESE-field-particles.

In this way I assert that the paper which is available here definitely explains how quantum-field theorists, classical theorists, and pure mathematicians can now realistically pursue the final laws of physics concordant with the most far-reaching aspirations of James Clerk Maxwell and Albert Einstein, due in large measure to their respective landmark contributions to science.

A coarse summary of the natural consequences of (i-iii).

        I.      Some natural Lorentz invariant attributes of the eo-continuum.

Given the relative enormity of eo we are justified in assuming that:

      iv.      All mass-energy carrying fields and particles represent miniscule perturbations of the eo-continuum.

Compliance with Newton’s laws of motion then justifies the assumption that:

       v.       All mass-energy (ME) carrying fields and particles get from one point to another within the eo-continuum via a common primary mode of transport called frictionless propagation, which is generically denoted by a lightspeed normalized point-propagation 3-velocity vector, w.

But propagation of a disturbance within a medium, and convective flow of the medium, are intrinsically complementary dynamic processes in continuum mechanics that are richly exploited in theoretical fluid-dynamics. Accordingly we have good reason to assume that:



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[1] Sir John Maddox, What Remains to be Discovered, (The Free Press, 1998), pp. 98-120.

[2] Steven Weinberg, “Towards the final laws of physics," in Elementary Particles and the Laws of Physics, The 1986 Dirac Memorial Lectures, (Cambridge University Press, 1987,8,9), pp. 63,4.

[3] James Clerk Maxwell, “A Dynamical Theory of the Electromagnetic Field," Phil. Trans. 155, 1865, pp. 459-512, p. 487.

[4] A. Einstein, “Does the inertia of a body depend upon its energy-content?", translation from Annalen der Physik, 17, 1905, in The Principle of Relativity, (Dover, NY, 1951, pp. 67-71). [5] James Clerk Maxwell, op. cit., p. 492-3.

[5] James Clerk Maxwell, op. cit., p. 493.



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 [] Cyril Domb, “James Clerk Maxwell---100 years later," Nature, Vol. 282, November 1979. p. 239
[] R. E. Var, “On a New Mathematical Framework for Fundamental Theoretical Physics," Vol. 5, No. 3, Sept. 1975, pp. 407-431.

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