Example of Fundamental Basis Of Free Energy Time Orientation

Moving towards additional real mathematical physics for the new regime...

1. Starting Point: why I now look more deeply into free energy

My recent blog post proposing a simple experiment to demonstrate backwards time communication (in principle) raises a more basic question: “when is a black body really black?” Actually, it is more precise to ask: “When is a black body truly ‘passive’, as discussed in time-symmetric physics?”

“Black bodies” in standard, mainstream physics are not really “black”; they emit light as a function of frequency based on well-known functions of temperature. The story of Max Planck’s work on light is full of discussion of the black body radiation spectrum. As temperature rises, “black bodies” start to glow red, then white, then blue... “red hot”... a very well-known phenomenon. My proposed experiment simply takes advantage of that phenomenon.

In my view, this is the kind of situation where theory should not run too far ahead of experiment, for two reasons: (1) human culture simply won’t encourage much theory about how time-symmetry works in detail until the “flat earth” psychology is dispelled by a concrete experiment which also wakes people up to some of the new technology possibilities; (2) EQUALLY important here, experiment is very important to give us gross guidance in how to model macroscopic objects, in a set of regimes which are so new and so complex that such guidance is very important. In the old days, for many new technologies, I would argue: “If you consider the size of the possible benefits, even if there is only a 1% probability of success, it is a valid decision, like wildcat drilling, to find out if they are real”; but after looking very closely at the logic I see much  higher probability of success in this case.

Unfortunately, I do not have a quantum optics lab (even the simplest of one) in my house, and I can no longer fund folks who do (thanks to Lamar Smith, who is far more of a threat to science in the US than Trump or Bannon, as I learn more and more every day) ... so it is natural that I “jump the gun” and think about the theory. Maybe some of my recent thoughts could help prepare for what happens when the experiments start, and people need to regroup.

2. Core concepts of Forward and Backwards Time Free Energy – and a Question

2a. Core Concepts

In my view, the clearest and simplest statement of WHAT TIME SYMMETRIC PHYSICS ASSUMES AND REQUIRES is still my (2008) open-access paper in the International Journal of Theoretical Physics, “Bell’s Theorem and the Foundations of Physics: Not Just a Matter of Interpretation.” All my recent more complicated work builds on that foundation. That paper argues why we really should believe in time-symmetric physics, and why it requires a central concept of “time-forwards free energy” and “time-backwards free energy.” Time SEEMS to run forwards only in those regions of space-time where the early-time boundary conditions provide a lot of order, a lot of “time forwards free energy.” Even though the Schrodinger equation which governs our everyday life (the normal Maxwell-Dirac Schrodinger equation)  is absolutely symmetric in time,  we find it hard to take advantage of that symmetry in our technology because we lack a source of backwards-time free energy. Backwards-time free energy would simply be the mirror image in time of the forwards time free energy which is the bloodstream of our lives.

Normal engineering systems assume and make use of forwards time free energy. However, science is also very familiar with an ideal model object which is exactly the opposite of an energetic engineering system: a “dead” inert body in thermodynamic equilibrium. No physical body is truly isolated from its environment, but a huge amount of modern mathematical physics and engineering is based on models of a solid (or liquid) object “floating free” and “isolated,” as represented by very simple boundary conditions.  In practical solid state physics, chunks of matter are usually modelled as rectangular kinds of bodies, subject to “periodic boundary conditions.” “Periodic boundary conditions” basically assume that the chunk of matter is a universe unto itself, such that when you go far enough in any direction you come back to where you started inside the object. Mathematically, this is called a “multidimensional torus.” I first learned this  kind of standard model from a seminal textbook on solid state physics by Ziman, but it has appeared in ever so many other texts since then. It is certainly not a perfect model, since objects are not isolated (and there is a modeling technique called NEGF which goes a step further), but it really is good enough for a very precise understanding, guiding all kinds of advances in modeling and design in electronics. This kind of electronics work has orders of magnitude more empirical evidence behind it than what most theoretical physics ever really uses.

In that general type of model, a passive object in thermodynamic equilibrium at some temperature really is time-symmetric. In that model, there is very long but discrete set of possible states of the object, states which we may denote as Si, state number i. “Entropy does not increase, because it is already at its maximum.” The system “oscillates” between states, such that the probability of entering any state Si, Pr(i), follows some kind of Boltzmann distribution, which we may denote roughly as Pr(i)=f(H(Si), T), where H(Si) is simply the usual normal Hamiltonian energy of state Si, and where T is temperature. For most practical purposes, the function f is just exp(-H(Si)/kT), the classic Boltzmann distribution, but there are Fermi or Bose corrections to the function which are significant for states where H is very small, and there are times when we need to add terms to be explicit about physical facts like the fact that we don’t expect silicon atoms to turn into carbon atoms by nuclear transmutation in the middle of an experiment.  (If you really want to know the extra complications, look up grand canonical ensemble in quantum statistical thermodynamics. But these do not change my basic points in this post.)

Here is a key point underlying my proposed experiment: if the “black body” objects really are this kind of traditional object, obeying a Boltzmann distribution, without any time-asymmetry, one would expect a natural tendency to emit “black body radiation” in both time-forwards and time-backwards direction equally. We don’t see that symmetry yet only because of the boundary conditions we impose at the OTHER end of the photon emission process. The experiment which I proposed is simply the most direct way we now have, in present proven technology, to provide proven mirror-image boundary conditions for photons, as explained in the work of Klyshko and the many many experiments validating his approach. My own work on time-symmetric physics provides a more general consistent framework for making sense of what Klyshko was saying, and extending it further. You can find Klyshko’s books on Amazon, and many important papers in google scholar.) That much is very clear, and in my view inescapable. The experiment is essential.

2b. The Question

But here is a question, the question I worried about most when I first thought about this experiment: WHEN is a proposed black body truly “black”, ie. passive, i.e. modeled well enough by a Boltzmann distribution? For sure, a solid chunk heated “red hot” (or “purple hot” if your entangled photons are purple?) by a simple heater over a long time really should obey a Boltzmann distribution, from common sense and hundreds of years of experiment. But many quantum optics folks would feel awkward lighting Bunsen burners or even high intensity hot plates next to their precise computers and lasers and detectors!! So what about a simple incandescent light bulb? From what I remember of Edison’s work... there are ever so many different types of heated filaments in different types of light bulbs. I would tend to expect that most of them would glow steadily from a normal kind of Boltzmann distribution, but I will be happier when we just do it and see.

Yet let’s also consider possible counterexamples. For example, the inverted states we create to make a laser certainly are not a normal Boltzmann distribution; laser physicists (as in the seminal great work of Scully) often talk about “population inversion,” but it’s really focused on some very special states. Stone and Cao of Yale have talked about backwards time lasers, and built real working hardware, and their work might turn out  to be important here, but on 7/14/14, orders from Lamar Smith firmly ordered me to stop talking to them with strong implicit threats from something I call “the gestapo” in informal discussions with friends (many of whom experienced very similar horrors, dozens of them long before they got around to me). Maybe it’s just as well that I think of parallel easier things for now.  It may be unrealistic to hope that Trump’s folks will roots out “the gestapo,” but after such experiences you could understand why I still hope... (The guy who ran this kind of quantum modeling in NSF DMR apparently thought they got to him first because he was Jewish, but I assured people that doesn’t explain me.) I have put a bit of documentation on the cloud, in part because of alterations those folks made to government computer records to try to cover their tracks, in a very secure location respecting its privacy, but even now I understand a need to be careful...

OK, laser chambers are NOT passive black bodies.

But what about the sun itself?

In truth, I really hope that the experiment with light bulbs goes forwards soon and is widely replicated, so that we can then more safely move on to the real nonobvious questions about the sun. Is the sun more like a white hot “black body” for these purposes, or is it more like a reservoir of pure time-forwards free energy like an excited laser chamber?  In truth, I shouldn’t pretend to know. I really would like to see a simple experiment validated on light bulbs.. and then maybe just hooked up to a telescope which can see the sun to see how much (if any) backtime radiation can be seen. And then, if it seems to be nonzero, proceed to simple imaging experiments of the sun, as suggested as “step 3” in www.werbos.com/NATO_terrorism.pdf. I tend to guess that the sun is heavily biased towards time-forwards photon emission, more like a laser than like an incandescent light bulb, but it might well be a mix, and I’d really like to see real measurements.

By the way, AFTER it is shown to work on light bulbs, simple LED and LCD and fluorescent light sources are obvious followons well worth the trouble to test. But the most passive sources should come first... even hot plates in the unlikely case that no light bulbs work.

3. Mathematical Foundations

OK, I’ve said enough times that theory does not and should not rigidly predict this stuff.

But if we go back to the usual periodic solid state model, theory certainly is relevant and can be developed further here.

A key question was: when is a “black body” truly black? Implicitly: “when is (an isolated) object

truly passive, and when does it possess what mix of forwards time free energy and backwards time free energy? GIVEN an actual probability distribution, Pr’(i), can we give a numerical answer to these questions? (And, ultimately, can we then apply that mathematics to the known Pr’(i) to objects like light bulb filaments, LEDs and gasses in a chamber to predict what the kinds of experiments proposed above will show? But then again, how do we know Pr’(i) for an object without measurements?)

Perhaps in the end, it may turn out that the simple concept of time-forwards and time-backwards free energy is too simple – that it only describes two extreme regimes, and that intermediate regimes (and even future technology designs) may be more general, simply accounting for more general Pr’(i).

In fact, if the sun should turn out to emit a mix of photon types (by nature, given suitable boundary conditions ), already the idea of just adding the two types of energy flows might prove to be oversimplified.

Still, the question stands: mathematically, given a Pr’(i), how to operationalize concepts like passive, forward-time free energy and its opposite, to give some kind of metric of what we might expect in these kinds of experiments?

First, we need to review some crucial simplifying foundations of the usual solid state periodic model.

Even the Boltzmann distribution Pr(i) is not nearly so simple and devoid of interest as people might imagine from first year thermodynamics classes. HIDDEN “UNDER THE CARPET” HERE IS A REALLY CRUCIAL PROPERTY of any real chunk of matter used in real technology:

the DENSITY OF STATES (DOS). The Density of states DOS and the distribution Pr(i) are EQUALLY important in real engineering and technology. To explain this... consider... at some temperature T, states

of energy H might have twice the probability Pr(i) of states of higher energy 2H. But what if you design a crystal such that it possesses 100 times as MANY states at energy level 2H as at level H?

That’s not a physically realistic example (I think), but it gives some feeling why realistic understanding here really needs to focus on density of states. Many, many advanced electronics groups experiment with forms of “band pass engineering” which exploit this crucial reality – but some groups are rounded especially well in the underlying principles, like the Langevin Institute in France especially, and their work would be really crucial in fully developing the kind of technology which these experiments will open up to us. (I also regret that Smith’s orders kept me from staying in touch with key groups in the US keeping up to some degree, though there was an Arab-American who gave a great paper at SPIE in 2015... ) Though DOS as Pr(i) is the ultimate physical reality, a crucial quantity is DOS(n), the total density of states “at” frequency or energy level n; yes, the energy levels are discrete in principle for any specific object, but in solid state physics we do consider the limiting case...

All of that is just for the Boltzmann, passive equilibrium.

But when we think about objects “floating in space” exchanging photons with their environment....

what matters is something I call DOSI­(n) and DOSI¯(n), which are simply the density of allowed transitions available in the forwards and backwards time directions. I have the impression that these DOSI functions are what make the imperfectly defined concepts of “forwards and backwards time free energy” more tangible and tractable and predictable.  The frequency dependence is really crucial here.

I always remember how the earth itself inputs a strong stream of light centered on visible frequencies

emitted in forward time from the sun, and then emits an equal amount (with minor fluctuation) of energy centered in the infrared spectrum – a kind of Carnot-like cycle underlying life as we know it on the surface of the earth. But what happens in free space when we have objects floating and staying at different temperatures (e.g. because of fusion reactions in a star), with different DOSI functions?

In any case, it is clear that these DOSI functions are what determine both the intensity of what we can see with “ordinary time forward eyes” (retinas, ordinary cameras) and what we can see with “backwards time eyes” (like the simple SPDC, 2g arrangement I have proposed, or like high resolution mirror-CCD devices we could build with modern photonic VLSI after we get our models straight in this regime). In a way, the experiment I have proposed is basically just a first step towards disentangled measurements of DOSI­ and DOSI¯ for various classes of objects. Please forgive that I have not yet simply tried to design a NEGF simulation of an incandescent light bulb; actually, though, I remember Datta’s paper describing the 2**N computational challenges still outstanding when things become entangled.  Experiments should come first...