Burkhard Heim's Particle Structure Theory

Greetings,


This thread is for the purpose of discussing a Theory by Burkhard Heim, published in the Journal of Scientific Exploration in 1992. [vol. 6, no.3, pp. 217-231]
Authors: T. Auerbach, I. von Ludwiger

Also related would be the nature of mass, gravity, and the nature of dimensions.


To start, here is the link to the paper.

The introduction:

The present article provides an overview of Burkhard Heim´s unified field theory of elementary particles and their internal structures (heim,1984,1989; v.Ludwiger, 1981). Various old and new concepts enter into the theory, including cosmology, quantum field theory, organizing processes similar to Sheldrake’s morphogenetic fields (Sheldrake, 1985), and the existence of a smallest area in a 6-dimensional world. The main results of Heim’s theory are formulas for the masses of elementary particles. Results turn out to be in very good agreement with measured values.

This report is written with the aim of describing the basic architecture of Heim´s theory in mainly non-technical terms for the benefit of the average JSE reader with a scientific background, who is not necessarily a physicist. For this reason the terminology of field theory is often replaced by less specific but more readily comprehensible expressions. In an Appendix selected topics are discussed in more technical terms for the benefit of physicists.

The abstact:

Heim´s Theory is defined in a 6-dimensional world, in 2 dimensions of which events take place that organize processes in the 3 dimensions of our experience. A very small natural constant, called a “metron“, is derived, representing the smallest area that can exist in nature. This lead to the conclusion that space must be composed of a 6-dimensional geometric lattice of very small cells bounded on all sides by metrons. The existence of metrons requires our usual infinitesimal calculus to be replaced by one of finite areas. The unperturbed lattice represents empty vacuum. Local deformations of the lattice indicate of something other than empty space. If the deformation is of the right form and complexity it acquires the property of mass and inertia. Elementary particles are complex dynamical systems of locally confined interacting lattice distortions. Thus the theory geometricizes the world by viewing it as a huge assemblage of very small deformations of a 6-dimensional lattice in vacuum. The theory also has significant consequences for cosmology.


TRoc

Hi TRoc,

A very small natural constant, called a “metron“, is derived, representing the smallest area that can exist in nature.

Career, back online!

Thoughts.

I can't imagine that possible, I can't remember the word for being able to zoom into something “infinitely”.

It’s like saying the universe is not infinite, lets build a wall around where it ends. On the inside of the wall we have galaxies..., on the outside there is nothing, but nothing is still something even if there is nothing there.

Like saying the big bang created everything, what did it bang into, where did the stuff that banged come from...

Suppose a "metron" is not a bad concept for a natural workable constant, hardly the smallest area that can exist in nature, seems infinite.

Later…

Hi TRoc and Bee,

I confess that Heim's Theory is still just as incomprehensible to me now as before. There are some common chords with some minor aspects of my theory but overall it is quite bewildering. The paper on his mathematical structure of particles is incomplete and is more of a descriptive text and I can't say what it means at all other than a claim that it generates the mass of all the particles. I get the feeling that he was a "closet" thinker and intended to keep it that way. I see that he has a spatial dimension... area (metron) smaller than even the Planck Length. This is not going to endear his theory to me and it is some kind of radical interpretation of everything. I am also not one to like lattices embedded directly in space. I still have not worked out what the extra dimensions really mean.

Now I am sure that there are some good ideas in his work as well. The essence of his Unified Field Theory is similar to the later work of Albert Einstein and the generalization of the 4X4 matrices to contain a symmetric and an anti-symmetric part.... since all matrices can be decomposed into the sum of two matrices of this kind, one representing electromagnetism and the other representing gravity. I think this is a good idea but the inter-relationships may be lost to the theory.

I am interested in your comments and if you have been able to find more on this man other than historical narratives it may prove interesting. Here are some references to Einstein's Theories... that is the best I can do at present.
Einsteins Unified Field Theory
or this one...
THE ELECTROSTATICS OF EINSTEIN'S UNIFIED FIELD Theory - S. Antoci et al
much older theories..
Translation of Einstein's Attempt of a Unified Field Theory with Teleparallelism

Cheers

Hello bee & GE,


Bee, I thought of you when reading this.. he uses the term "condensation" often in explaining the theory. And of course, multi dimensions for Good Elf.

Many limitations though, as GE pointed out. Apparently the "final anwsers" are in an unpublised manuscript.

Much good stuff too.

A re-post of GE's initial link here.

On dimensions:

Later, he is talking about using 12 dimensions for completeness.

I don't have time for more right at the moment, but I wanted to reply.


TRoc

I was skimming and read about Unified Field Theory which seemed to encompass the use of Quaternions which form 4 vertexes in Computer science at least.
I was drawing some pictures out of the use of vertexes or, ‘latices’ ???, in dimensions which helped me understand more.

Heim was using a lattice and 6 dimensions. The metron being used in the 6th dimension. Is the metron comparable to the Quaternion. The Quaternion representing the 4th dimension and the metron the 6th?
How does that work I am a little newer at this.
The diagram was interesting to look at in the Heim paper.
Would gravity be instant travel?

This doesn't bother me personally too much. The metron is on the order of the Planck Area. In fact, if you calculate the Planck Area using h-bar, then a metron is actually about 2.3 times larger than a Planck Area:
http://scienceworld.wolfram.com/physics/PlanckArea.html

Now, my understanding of what the Planck units are, is that they are the "scale" at which we cease to be able to predict what is going on, physically, due to the failure of General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics to properly "mesh". So, it seems to me it is less of a real physical constraint and more a statement of the limits of current theory.

Heim's theory involves a meshing of quantum and relativistic concepts, so naturally we would expect it to show us how to properly account for things at this scale. Looking down at the end of his paper, we see that the metron, just like the Planck Length, is defined in terms of c, G, and h. (He uses gamma instead of G, but back-calculating you can see the value is identical to the G we are used to.)

So he seems, to me at least, to be preserving the concept of quantized action that the Planck and Dirac constants embody. That, to me, seems more important than the values of the Planck units, which are derived from our admittedly limited knowledge of the nature of the interaction of the phenomena which G, h, and c represent.

The Planck units represent scales at which our understanding fails us. Heim's metron represents the scale at which the forces of the universe literally cease to have physical meaning. He posits that this indicates that effectively no smaller area actually exists, because there is literally no physical phenomena that can probe those scales.

Nope, the true reason is somewhere else. The Heim's approach seems to be a quite right, as it derives the minimal and maximal curvature of space (i.e. the minimal and maximal Universe diameter) just using its topology rules.



It's not the result of some technical possibility to prove or refute it by any way. From the theoretic point of view (i.e. the quantitative predicability), the Heim's theory is the most advanced theory currently available, no question about it.

Zephir... I chose poorly when I used the word "probe", because it implies experimentation is involved.

What I really meant is that the forces define spacetime (just as in GR), and since the forces effectively do not exist beyond these minimum and maximum scales, spacetime does not exist either.

In that respect, under Heim's theory, these constants are the direct result of the minimum action represented by Planck's constant. This would make them as fundamental as Planck's constant, and more fundamental than the "Planck Units".

The big questions that remain about Heim's work are 1) whether the logic and particularly the math are consistent throughout, and 2) whether his envisioning of the nature and interaction of the fundamental forces (in short, his base assumptions/propositions) represents reality.

Obviously rigorous and dilligent peer review can resolve #1. But to enable this his opus needs to be opened to a wider audience than it has been thus far. Testing the implications of the interaction Heim predicted between electro-weak and gravity forces, by way of "gravitophotons" (which hit the news recently and generated all this wonderful buzz) is the first step to resolving #2.

If #1 can be satisfied, Heim theory will have a jump on string theory, in that it predicts phenomena that can actually be tested for #2.

Hello, Goodly Elvish one, TRoc, Zephir, et al.

The paper immed. jumps into using analogs of Minkowski metrics and adopts the rather antiquated Einsteinian tensor notation. So far, it's a phenomenal read if you can swallow the covariant/contravariant switches and what not. The rest is just some clever advanced linear algebra but MUCH easier than the tensor stuff.

An EXCELLENT tutorial on this is found in a great book (how I taught myself, w/ the help of Schaum's Outlines) called A First Course in String Theory by Barton Zwiebach from MIT. A remarkable take on things, I find. Pretty damned provocative.

-gleeeeeeeefully spinning my solids - and finally getting kickass data!

If there are universal boundaries there would be space then NO SPACE. Einstein dealt with that!!!

The universe is the surface of an expanding hypersphere.

Nick,

........A hyperdoughnut, bi-spherical in cross-section...maybe?

I would prefer the sphere of +/- fixed diameter, making itself a more dense like collapsar...

Hi all,

Ummmmmm, " ", now that I've actually read TRoc's link. I dont even know what to tell u. I swear I have never read that or anything like it before. I just had a model of things in my head that seemed so clear. Thought I could be of assistance when I saw the “gravity” page from google, got carried away from there (addicted).

Anyway looks like my assistance here is done! Back to history, mysterious, Egypt… research for me.

All I can say, Heim is a very clever man, no doubt! Hope he makes a difference. Theory may need a bit of work, leave it to your capable hands.

Sorry Nick don’t want to disrupt further.

Cheers, all the best!

All,


We have a good number of responses to deal with, while not expecting perfection, I will try to order through them.


Good Elf:

I feel the same about not liking the direct embedding of the background lattice onto our concept of space. However, to me, it doesn't matter "too much" because we have to have SOMETHING to refer to. It always seemed to me that this is what Einstein did that I didn't like: give properties to the "emptiness" of space(time). I prefer to just imagine the waves that are moving through space to contain the geometries that we measure.

So my first question is: Is Heim's perspective the same as Einstein's on this?

I'll also direct my next question to you, GE. This paper make a good attempt at describing the added dimensions. I have never heard any names for these dimensions. Are there any others that you know of? I don't mean silly names, like most of those for the quarks, but names that, if nothing else, by analogous thinking, lead us to a better understanding of WHAT is being measured. It seems to me that no matter how fancy we get, these added dimensions MUST always relate somehow back to the 3+1 that we are familiar with. Heim's paper used the building of a house, through the "stacking" of efforts of several dissimilar trades. So, in that sense, I can see that if we wanted to somehow describe the building of a house through an equation, we might need to invoke some extra dimensions. However, are we not "shortcutting" the power of our minds? The imagination is SO key to our ability to obtain reason and logic, even though by our compartmentalization, we deem them separate.


Blam: I can not muster an answer to your question on gravity/time travel. I do believe that there are similarities to the "quaternion" and the "metron". That is probably a better question for the authors themselves. By adhering to the correspondence principal, my belief is that we should find where Heim's theory matches current theories that we agree on, and how it disagrees with theories that have NOT worked. We must remember that ultimately, Einstein FAILED at unification through field perspectives/models. (as did MANY others following his lead)


Waterbreath: [long time no hear ] Very astute reasoning, with the need for us to "mesh perspectives" of QM and GR to "unconstrain" modern theory. This also means keeping some concept of "quantums" in the forefront. Using parameters "which are derived from our admittedly limited knowledge of the nature of the interaction of the phenomena which G, h, and c represent." We must remember that it was US that "invented" mass, gravity, energy, etc. and it is US who has the power to change these concepts. They are labels for phenomena, they were NOT conceived by the same mind, nor at the same time. In analogy to Heim's building model, do we need, in the final description, to separately define such independent concepts as the "framers", the "roofers", the "finish carpenters", etc. or can we lump them together in common groups?


Zephir: I agree with the "topology" of a minimum and maximum space that begins to define all that can happen in the "space" that the maximum contains. As Waterbreath said, "In that respect, under Heim's theory, these constants are the direct result of the minimum action represented by Planck's constant. This would make them as fundamental as Planck's constant, and more fundamental than the "Planck Units". " I would add that the Hubble constant play a similarly important role in the big picture.


Don't mean to leave anybody out, but I am out of time.


TRoc

The Heim's theory is the similar extrapolation (improvement) of the Einstein's theory as the Yilmaz's theory (see my older submissions for more details)